stcrmborne-a - Tumblr blog

[stcrmborne-a]

High volts through these veins Trouble is our gain Keepin' aces up every sleeve Ready set, ready set l e t ' s g o

Rules 🗲 About 🗲 Nav

Indie, 18+, based in D&D and Pathfinder. Written by Veerah

[stcrmborne-a]

ooc: Alright, I’ve made the migration to the new blog over at stcrmborne. I’m still working on page updates and tweaks but for the most part it’s ready to rock. I’ll still be very slow and as mentioned previously a lot of the replies I owed are probably going to be wiped for a fresher start on threads, so if you follow me over and there were any threads we had that were either planned or ongoing that you’d like to continue before I reach out to check, please let me know! I’ll probably post the ‘hey I’ve moved’ reminder a few more times but otherwise it’s gonna be quiet over here.

[stcrmborne-a]

ooc: Alright, I’ve made the migration to the new blog over at stcrmborne. I’m still working on page updates and tweaks but for the most part it’s ready to rock. I’ll still be very slow and as mentioned previously a lot of the replies I owed are probably going to be wiped for a fresher start on threads, so if you follow me over and there were any threads we had that were either planned or ongoing that you’d like to continue before I reach out to check, please let me know! I’ll probably post the ‘hey I’ve moved’ reminder a few more times but otherwise it’s gonna be quiet over here.

[stcrmborne-a]

(( ooc: OKAY SO. I’ll be the first to admit I’m flightier than Rhaya is when it comes to remaining active and then getting burnt out and disappearing for a bit, and to those I’ve been interacting with, I want to apologize. Between work and life ramping up (We lost a few team members at work so the load has gone a bit crazy & I got engaged, so any spare time went into planning a wedding before both of us realized we’re not about the cost or stress involved and decided eloping is going to be where it’s at) I know I dropped off the radar again.  I don’t have the spare time yet to dedicate to coming back and writing as much as I used to, but I’d like to come back soon. The campaign Rhaya is based in is ending this year (We just hit level 18 and are about to tackle the climax of the base adventure path) and I suspect once that ends I’ll be jonesing to keep her alive in writing. I tried to avoid it, but I think the call here is going to be to restart this blog. My hope is that a fresh start and cleared drafts (I tried to save so many drafts the last time that they became immediately overwhelming) are going to help with my weird head thing where I get scared of how many replies are owed. Obviously as soon as I remake it I’ll go on a refollow spree and post the new blog here for anyone else I may miss to follow back, as I’d love to keep writing with all the amazing creators I’ve interacted with so far. And any character bonds that have already formed/things that have already happened will stay the same unless the other writer would also like a clean slate -- I’ll definitely be reaching out to see what people would prefer with the revamp. There are a couple threads I’d like to save as well so I’ll be checking in about that as well with those involved. But that’s the plan for now, and this week the hope is to start pulling together that new blog and re-writing/updating everything in whatever spare time I get. Thank you to everyone that has been bearing with my nonsense from the start. I look forward to writing with you soon (for real this time). **Pic below of how my fiancé proposed; he carved a pumpkin at a small pumpkin carving party without me seeing and then came out with it once we were all done.))

[stcrmborne-a]

✨🧡🌙SEND THIS TO TEN OTHER BLOGGERS YOU THINK ARE WONDERFUL. KEEP THE GAME GOING❤️

(( 😭 Thank you, friend! That means so much to come back to. You've been an absolute joy to write with and I know I've been MIA for a bit again but you're one of the writers I do want to continue interacting with once I get my shoot together! ))

[stcrmborne-a]

[stcrmborne-a]

Lost to the wonders of the sea ~

Vincent Van Gogh - Seascape near Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer // Meredith T. Taylor - Clashing Waters: The Obyascon Prince // Mitski - Pearl Diver // corryvreckan whirlpool, scotland // John Masefield - Sea-Fever //

[stcrmborne-a]

MOODBOARD IMAGE SEARCH: LIGHTNING MAGIC

[stcrmborne-a]

redemptioninchaos​:

Grollor, having long legs, was able to take longer strides, which helped him maintain a brisk walking pace with Rhaya as she accelerated her gait. Her hand wouldn’t have been able to even reach all the way around his wrist, but Grollor understood the vibes immediately, following her to…wherever, really. He didn’t have a location in mind, either, but knowing Rhaya’s navigation background, he trusted in her judgment. 

The clunk-clunk of sabatons grew louder as the guards closed in on the two. “Stop!” Grollor instinctively pulled Rhaya closer to him, gentle in his movement, but firm in his grip. He turned toward the guards, a protective scowl on his face as he hid Rhaya behind one of his arms, standing his ground. 

“What’s the problem, boys?” His tone sounded somewhat friendly, but there was an edge to his tone meant to ward off any ill will towards Rhaya. Whatever they planned to do with him was irrelevant. 

“Seems like you two have a penchant for trouble. Do you know who both of you assaulted today?” The guard in front squinted at Grollor, then at Rhaya.

     Under the protective guidance of Grollor’s movements, Rhaya fell easily into the role of feigned naïveté, her expression smoothing out to mirror one of open and innocent surprise. From her repositioned vantage she peered around the swell of her companion’s arm at the group that had closed in on them, wide eyes immediately finding the male she had so viciously stabbed no less than an hour ago.      Just the sight of him boiled her blood and made her want to leap at him, feral and snarling, with teeth and lightning and fury... but she smothered the compulsion. Still her skin crawled and she had to dedicate conscious effort to keep any traces of loathing off her face, the only indication of her discomfort evident in flared nostrils, quick and shallow breaths, and the way her fingers furled tightly against Grollor’s arm.      He was the smooth talker. He could get them out of this. She just needed to keep her mouth shut long enough to--                            Do you know who both of you assaulted today?                                       Oh, damnit.      “You mean besides a creep that doesn’t understand the concept of keeping his hands to himself?”                               Hmm. Well… Y i k e s.      The shift in her mannerisms was abrupt; a posture that had been hunched in unassuming meekness now crouched in preparation for either fight or flight. Her teeth bared, muscles tensed, the young girl resembled more closely a cornered animal than person. Facial features wiped clean of any intention to resolve this peacefully glared up with focused animosity towards one individual in particular, her eyes narrowing before shifting to stare at a cleared area beyond the small group of guards and their unfortunately handsy ward, calculating the distance. She could make that. Probably. At her side a hand flexed in preparation, the other hand finding its way from it’s clenched grip on Grollor’s arm to grab at his hand as she aimed a meaningful glance up at him.                            Fighting or running?

[stcrmborne-a]

justashadetalkative​:

Explosive booms–artillery, magic, or both, Diamond couldn’t tell–joined the sounds of fighting coming from above deck. He grimaced and raised a defensive shield around himself, trying not to think about the way it tugged at the fatigued tension that had been building at the back of his skull over the past few days. Whether or not he had the energy to rescue the prisoners below wasn’t going to matter much if he let himself get killed before he could even start the attempt. And letting some other group of pirates sink the ship wasn’t going to end well for anyone, either.

He let his senses stretch out, trying to get a feel for how many additional minds he could sense above them, hoping for a general impression of the boarding party’s intentions. He didn’t get much of use; the frantic focus of battle dominated most everyone’s surface thoughts, and the chaos of it all made it hard for him to separate any one person from another.

The sounds of battle were just starting to come more clearly when the wood of the ship rattled under his guiding hand, a shockwave of air accompanied by the sound of a body tumbling down the stairs and landing with a thud that sounded like it was barely a few feet in front of him. Diamond drew in a sharp, startled breath and backed up several steps.

He could sense that the person who had fallen was unconscious, but that still left what was probably a spellcaster still racing down the stairs–he could hear their footsteps rapidly approaching.

Diamond quickly thought through his options, and the risks of each–but in the end, he wasn’t in any shape to play one man army, particularly without a sighted guide. He needed information; if he didn’t try to get it from this person, he’d just be trying to track someone else down next, and it was too late to escape without a confrontation here. If they were a mundane person he might have gone straight for force, but with the possibility that they were a magic user of some sort and with his own fatigue, that seemed far more of a gamble.

So Diamond backed up further as their footsteps reached the opening to the stairwell, the sound subtly changing as it came directly through the room rather than funneled down the corridor, and raised both hands in a placating gesture.

“Don’t fire! I’m harmless,” he urged. A lie, potentially, but he was certainly hoping not to have to get violent. “What’s going on?”

                      Amidst the heat of battle, Rhaya’s blood sang.      There was a certain amount of grim satisfaction in hearing how many times Harrigan’s crew member hit stairs before coming to a halt at the bottom, her footsteps light as she dashed after him. In her haste to get through the enclosed space she had been poised to vault over his unconscious form rather than clamber around, though upon emerging from the hallway she was forced to rethink the reckless approach.      A golden gaze landed on the other figure in the room and she dug her heels in hard against the floorboard to avoid mowing him down, the motion so jarring she nearly stumbled sideways into a support beam. With a quick pass of his appearance, obvious surprise bloomed across her features.                “How did you—”      Her words were interrupted by a sharp series of cracks from somewhere above, muffled by the layers of wood. Ah. Captain Freidrich had apparently just boarded and begun firing off gunshots. Her attention had been pulled from the figure long enough to glance upwards before darting back down to find him again and her hands, having already been raised slightly, lifted further with palms splayed and fingers outward in a cautiously submissive gesture. She was breathing heavier than she realized, but she swallowed and tried again.      “How did you get out?” Hearing her own question voiced aloud seemed to rattle something in her and her eyes slimmed, shifting her focus to briefly peer past him. Something else invaded her expression then: Unease. Just because he was by all appearances an old man should mean little by way of trustworthiness; The previous Master of Gales had been an old man aging in the hundreds and he had still been powerful enough to whoop her younger self six ways to Sunday.      How had he gotten out…? Especially if she was the first one down here, unless he wasn’t held with the captives in the first place.              “Were you one of the prisoners? Or are you a member of this ship’s crew?”      Her fingers twitched but her hands remained where they were, though the lines of her face had grown sharper; wary.

[stcrmborne-a]

☀︎︎𝐵𝑢𝑡 𝑏𝑒𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝐼 𝑓𝑎𝑑𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑡𝑒☀︎︎

[stcrmborne-a]

promiseofdawn​:

“Right, right…” He scratches the back of his neck, only sparing her a passing glance. Now that the confusion and surprise has passed, he feels a little guilty for forgetting his manners.

“Thanks for the help, really,” he kneels down, rolling the unlucky assailant onto his back “takes guts to jump to a stranger’s defense like that.”

His belated gratitude is followed by a few moments of tense silence as he stares at his assailant, reaching down to pull off the bandana he used to cover his face. He’s a sea elf, with feathers growing from his scalp that tangles with strands of silver hair. The faint trickle of blood from his lip is streaked with gold, and when Havedas pries open his eyes, he’s met with gold compound patterns against black sclera.

“…You know, I have no idea who this is,” Havedas finally admits “he just screamed something about Dunhallow and came at me. He looks weird as hell though… not that I’m one to talk.”

     Features blossomed into an easygoing grin the moment a thanks rolled from the other, the druid’s whole posture releasing the tension it held like an exhale. Rhaya was granted a few fleeting moments of silent reprieve before it was interrupted by the subtle sound of a shifting body below her. Amber eyes flicked downwards and upon doing so that tension immediately surged back into her with all the strength of an electric current, wide eyes immediately locking onto the one trait of the attacker’s demanding her attention: The feathers in his hair. Or rather, the feathers growing from his head.      Just as quickly her attention darted back up, searching the towering stranger for any indication that he might have made the connection that the tawny brown feathers in her own hair weren’t just woven in either.      “Dunhallow?” In spite of her own lack of recognition, the word felt dry in her mouth. She cleared her throat. “Is that a place, do you know? Or a person…?”      She couldn’t help it; again her stare swiveled down to openly gawk at the prone individual, taking in the rest of his odd features with a sinking feeling. The hair, the eyes, the gold-tinted blood… She had never before met another aasimar or celestial-blooded person, but the lurching panic in her gut brought the realization that she now perhaps might have, if only for just the briefest moment.

[stcrmborne-a]

@springvaletales || Continued from here.       Fortunately for Vashael, on occasion Rhaya knew how to take a hint. Bouncing in place on the balls of her feet, the young druid kept her lips tightly sealed as she watched with perhaps a bit too much interest while the other set himself to begin shedding the bits of dirt and grass and wood that clung to him on his abrupt way down. A noise that might have been something close to passing acknowledgement escaped her as she stood there, inwardly mulling over the line she was about to start playing jump rope with.                                  Oh, but it was just so much fun.      “Come on now, that’s a bit harsh... Are they really half-rate if someone managed to fall for one of their traps after all this time? I’d say that’s pretty impressive.”      Even as the last part rolled over her tongue she took a measured step backwards, away from the ledge and hopefully past the immediate trajectory of anything that may or may not be thrown from the pit. Arms tucked behind her back now, she bent forward just enough to peek over and meet his gaze. “Would you like a hand?”

[stcrmborne-a]

redemptioninchaos​:

“I don’t know this place. Never been to Briarwood before.” He shrugged. “The inns here are too expensive anyway, and nobody likes my music. Guess we’re roughing it again.”

Camping in the woods wasn’t a problem, but the half-orc seemed genuinely hurt after he mentioned his music. Usually he could get at least a few people passing by interested in his music enough to stick around. He even performed impromptu chants towards people who passed by, complimenting them, making lighthearted jokes, and making up outlandish stories of passersby based on what he could see of them while strumming away on his lyre. The most emotion he got from anyone was from a noble (or at least Grollor thought he was; it was hard to tell who was noble and who wasn’t) who told him, “Stop playing that rubbish and get a real job, tuskface!” 

The guy ended up with a black eye when Grollor pressed him about the epithet, having been called that a few times in his past. He started to slip into his old ways before downing a couple drinks at the tavern. He would have gotten more if the prices weren’t so high…

Grollor saw the same human he punched behind Rhaya talking to a few guards. Though he was too far away for Grollor to hear, the way he glared at Grollor and pointed at him indicated that it was time to leave. 

“Yep, we’re camping tonight,” the half-orc said suddenly before gently clamping a hand on Rhaya’s shoulder, directing her away from the guards’ gaze. 

     “Sounds like they’ve got some pretty garbage taste in music,” Rhaya chimed in an attempt to cheer him up, and maybe only partially to divert the topic from it’s current path. Having reached up to pat his arm, she caught wind of his diverted attention and the nervous smile she wore wavered.           Upon following his gaze, that neutral look morphed into one of panicked recognition.      “Shit, ah—” Her head whipped back around and she seemed to shrink into herself, her body language becoming timid and jittery. “Yes, please, yes, camping’s good. Let’s go. Right now.” It took much restraint not to turn around and more closely oggle the familiar man standing a short distance away conversing with guards, his leg wrapped ‘round with bandaging that was tight enough to keep a stab wound in check.      Without actually possessing the physical strength to do so, Rhaya took hold of Grollor’s wrist and began attempting to guide-drag him in the opposite direction. It occurred to her he hadn’t actually mentioned where they would be camping, but that didn’t matter right now. Not when--              “Hey!”                     Oh goddamnit.      The sharp tone of someone, either the guards or the man, called out from behind, undoubtedly towards them. The sound made her only attempt to move faster, her head ducked low as if that would somehow obscure her presence.

[stcrmborne-a]

@theovergrowth continued from here.      Walking at a brisk pace now, the young druid’s stride faltered just momentarily as she canted her head to the side, able to detect something off in the distance but not quite sure of what it had been or where it was coming from. The stranger’s words were enough to prompt her legs to move faster, carrying her the short walk through the village and onto the docks.      Rhaya looked over her shoulder once to confirm he was still trailing before slowing her pace a bit to match the more purposeful movements of those around them. The Drunken Calamity, a former cargo ship that had been squibbed and refitted to more closely resemble something fit for shadier affairs, sat towards the far end of the pier.      “Here, put this on,” she prompted quietly as they approached, shrugging out of the brown cloak she wore and passing it to him. Regardless of if he put it on or not she continued forth, offering a cheerful if not somewhat forced smile in greeting to those they passed. As they set foot onto the gangplank, her shoulders set more back and chin lifted in a show of confidence she hoped would dissuade any crew from calling attention to the strange newcomer. Only one addressed her on deck, and though she knew it came from a place of casual concern, the way he had worded his inquiry came off presumptive and crude.      “Shove off and mind your own business,” Rhaya snipped, normally one for more eloquent comebacks but having little patience for them now. She turned as she walked to more closely guide the newcomer towards the back end of one of the middeck levels, which looked to be where the majority of the crew slept.      “So these things following you… How good’s their tracking? Reckon you’re okay tucked here for a bit as a stowaway, or do you need to be on more of a mobile hideout?” 

[stcrmborne-a]

Wind's howling

[stcrmborne-a]

ooc: Life has been hectic, but tentatively peeking back in to see who’s still around and interested in continuing and/or starting new interactions. I’m going to do my best to get on this weekend to sort through drafts and see where to pick back up if I can slowly dip my toes back into the blog, even if it’s just doing a reply or two every other day where I can. I’ve dearly missed writing and I’ve very much missed my mutuals.