Mwenyezi - Ominous Scrubland
You see nothing special.
Exits:
[West] to the Hunting Grounds
[South] to the Sandy Flats
[North] to a Ravine
Present:
None.
Isoba has arrived.
Gwandoya has arrived.
[OOC] You say, "Pick a spot! Quick quick quick!"
[OOC] Isoba says, "Okay. Half-an-hour mark!"
[OOC] You say, "Isoba poses first, OMG!"
[OOC] Mwiba XD
Public> Talmaleki says, "Time for an ironic RP!"
Public> Talmaleki says, "Anyone who wants to see a lightning fast RP about horrifying slowness, mjoin me!"
Public> Storyteller Katibu giggles.
[OOC] You say, "At least it doesn't take long to read the description."
[OOC] Isoba says, "Oops, yeah, I'll have to fix that. xD"
What a day it had been. Isoba trudges grumpily across the dismal scrubland, her staff dragging across the ground. A grumpy look is etched all across her face, augmenting the wrinkles already there. Sighing, she flumps down on a rock, flinging the staff down at her feet, looking up at the moon peeping over the horizon with an air of tired exasperation. Bother.
It's not much of a moon, mind you. Barely a crescent. But what it lacks is made up for in its broad, gaping black earthshine, a welcoming beacon to all things strange and unwelcome. Talmaleki is one such creature. He is roaming the plains in full sight, for once, although his paws are perhaps a centimeter under the earth's crust. He is joined by his fellows, in a quiet, sporadic conversation, and he gladly breaks it off when he sees a figure on the scrub. "Now who is this? Someone important, do you figure?" the voice is somehow neither loud nor soft, perfectly audible while not conspicuous.
The thin lion former king, his narrow eyes squinting to see the mangabey, grins. It's an expression that involves his entire face, making him seem almost cheshire-like. "Important," he snorts. "She carries a stick. She must be."
[OOC] You say, "You know how the secret fourth state of matter was plasma, a state where normal cohesion of molecules and electrons breaks down due to intense heat? That's what happens to @po right now!"
[OOC] You say, "Everyone pose at once!
"
A breath of wind slithers across the mangabey's weathered face, laden with moisture. Angrily, she brushes it off with the back of her hand. As she does so, she notices an obscure beam of light resting across her fingertips. Following its path, she looks up slowly, her bright white eyelids slowly appearing like a set of flares. A whisper? Where had it come from? Isoba had been dabbling in the arcane for years without experiencing so much a single murmur. Well, it was about time, anyway. Looking up again, the grumpy expression still rests flatly on her face. "Important? Depends on what you define as important. Of course I'm important! And who the 'ilk are you?"
Talmaleki nods, and his mane is seen to be broad and intense. It flies through the night sky, filling what would seem to be acres of air, although it casts no shadow, and is mostly visible only in its yellow outline. "Then she is worth taking, I would say. What I wonder about is...her age." He bounds close to the tired mangabey and squints, not caring what she thinks of the examination. "I can't get a grip of whether she's old or young. Perhaps I'm simply too old myself to make that judgment anymore!"
Talmaleki speaks quietly in response to the dabbler's question. "I am the most important of all. That is what i would have said to you during my time, and my colleagues in theirs."
Mwiba lets out a very creepy giggle in his high-pitched voice. "Young," he purrs, licking his lips and leering over at Isoba. "The young, heh heh, are most interesting." Oh how he longed to taste the flesh of youth again!
"A *staff*, you lowlife," Gwandoya replies. "Shamans carried staffs... at least the ones under my rule." He drifts about, invisible in the air above the others, lazily murring. "Otherwise, they were impersonators, and I personally tore their eyes from their heads." He floats over above the mangeby. "You are in no position to ask who we are..." he replies in a growl, which is heard only as a faint echo over the land. "Show proper respect to your elders."
The shaman is knocked backwards off her perch by a sudden gust of wind, and she shrieks as she tumbles, her stick flying out of her hand to clatter upon the stony earth. Perhaps it hadn't only been a gust of wind? She had felt something passing close by, quite close to her, as though investigating. Standing up and retrieving the staff in her hands, she sniffs suspiciously. "Who is it? Who's there? How /dare/ you address a shaman so?"
"It is not a question of daring," chides Talmaleki, who seems to be the leader of the apparitions, although not by a strong margin of command. "We are not really her, in any manner that concerns reality as you know it." He drifts closer to the shaman on the ground, and puts his paw upon the staff. "Or perhaps, you #do# know. You seem a shrewd person. Tell me, is it true what my colleague says, that you are young? And if so, why are you so old? Have you led a breakneck life?"
The giggle sounds again as the thin apparition circles the primate, as though stalking her. "Just a tassste," he hisses quietly. "From her flank, her shoulder. Oh just a tassste." Mwiba stretches forth his neck as though to take a bite, but his fangs just pass through Isoba, with only a lingering chill to manifest their passing.
A short, puzzled laugh rasps from Isoba's throat. Ghosts! Well, wonders would never cease. 'Twas part of her work as a shaman, after all. She attempts to jerk the staff away from the pressure of a sudden, unexpected pressure on her staff, not really looking up to see where it came from. If she had looked up, she would have seen a myriad of ghostly apparitions dancing all about her, leering at her...but anyhow. "My age is thirty-three." Her voice is sharp. "Why does it concern /you/ if I've lead a 'breakneck life?' What business is it of yours?" She angrily brushes off a cold, flitting presence settling on her shoulder. "Bother!" she says under her breath.
Talmaleki drives the staff down into the earth--in the process, his color all flows to his leg and foot, and his paw sinks through the staff itself until the two are merged to an extent. It is the only way he can apply pressure to a material object. "We are concerned for the health of the lands you walk," he explains coldly. "Not so much for your own health, although we are not insensible. We do not wish to see these parts deprived of their shaman before her natural time has come." He looks to Mwiba and tilts his head. "Did you get your bite, my friend?"
"It is our business to test those who need testing... who show the excesses we indulged in." Gwandoya's spirit hovers malevolently above. "I wonder... how would a shaman who can react so quickly and speak so sharply care for her lands if that speed was taken and that..." He grins evilly. "Biting tongue removed." Now who's talking excess...
A disappointed frown passes over Mwiba's ethereal face. "It tastes of nothing to me," he sighs, cursing his state. Oh, to be alive again! It's apparent that, though Mwiba desires to be among the stars, he's got a long way to go yet. The former Mwenyezi king lets out a low growl, lifting a small swirl of cold wind in the process.
Isoba gasps at the unearthly display of luminescence, stumbling backwards at the sight. She shudders at the sudden chill whirling in the air. Oh, no- it WAS ghosts. Something Great-Aunt Enu had warned her about, but something she'd never quite believed in... Out loud, she gives no indication of her fear, and her voice remains sharp, though with a distinctly shaky edge to it. "Fear for the health of the lands I walk? Deprived of their shaman? What on /earth/ are you talking about? I have worshipped your kind, performed rituals in your honor...why are you here? What do you want?"
"Now, now," Talmaleki cautions the eager Gwondoya. "Would such a project truly be testing only one variable, or two? Is there a coherent connection between the speed and the tongue? Speak!" And with a whirl he turns to Mwiba as well. "Then bite HARDER, man! And CONCENTRATE, as I do!" Even as he speaks, his paw, pierced by the staff, is glowing a solid lime green. "Concentrate on the joints, Mwiba, and the muscles, and if Gwandoya can convince us...the tongue." He laughs in the face of the primate. "I have heard none of your rituals, mortal. And I care not for your worship. You are millennia too late."
With renewed fervor, Mwiba springs at the mangabey, focusing all his concentration on Isoba's shoulder joint. To taste the flesh again. Even if Isoba is not as young as a cub, the apparition is eager to taste youth again--/any/ youth. His fangs seem to take on a physical pressure that can be felt by Isoba. The thrill is absolutely intoxicating to Mwiba.
This time around, Isoba gets a hard gleam to her eyes. She bats at the spirit called 'Mwiba.' "Stop that!" she says shrilly. "I have done nothing to you. Are you a leech, that you should gnaw at me so? Stop!" Staring back at the apparent leader of the group, her jaw sets itself in a firm line. She is exasperated, and rightly so, in this case. "Millennia too late? How on earth is that /my/ fault? It was not up to me when I was born! And if you do not want worship (for I have never heard of a beast who didn't), then what /do/ you want? You still have not told me."
"*Now* she speaks of supplications!" Gwandoya seethes in the air above. "Whose honor is there to worship? Was there ever any? Were *we* ever given truth before being cast down so?! Such foolish questions do not *deserve* to be spoken, chieftain!" He snarls, looking over at Talmaleki. "Too little too late... Let us make the sluggishness that deprives us of justice afflict this ignoramus. What fool, to try and catch up to the herd *now* when it has in seasons past long since passed you by."
"I want #answers#!!" roars Talmaleki harshly, standing firm, his form strong and muscles tense. "I want a world of answers! And you! YOU!! You may have some for me, mayn't you?" The question is delivered in a more friendly, conspiratorial tone. "It doesn't matter whether it's your fault or not--WE decide your faults from now on! And YOU will decide whether to keep them. If you would undo what Mwiba is doing to you, travel north to the valley of old and wait for us when the moon is half full! Until then...do your best, sorry creature, do your best!!"
Talmaleki nods with sagacious manner to Gwandoya's decision.
The mangabey's hand passes right through Mwiba's muzzle. Quick as a wink, the lanky one is attached to Isoba's other shoulder, giggling the whole while. Ahh, the taste! Then, to her knees, her wrists, her neck--every joint she has. With each bite, a feeling of stiffness and sluggishness overcomes the joints. The tongue he'll leave for Gwandoya, if he decides he wants it. It was his idea, after all.
Isoba shouts back in the face the roaring apparition, her words already taking on a more and more lethargic tone. "Then you are no better than tyrants!! No wonder you were not accepted to be counted amongst the blessed stars!! Deserve it! Fools, slanderers, outcasts of heaven... It is YOU are the cursed ones, not I! N-nnnot I-I...nooo..."
"Now to make things interesting... and amusing, I hope," Gwandoya mutters to himself, flashing into view right before the Mangeby and tearing through her snout with his paw, roaring his wrath. "Be *silent*, or as silent as this will make you...!"
Talmaleki releases his grip on the benighted creature's staff. "So your last words, for a time, are truthful," he says. "Yes, we are the accursed...and what more is there to be said, indeed?" He turns with a bloody amusement to the others. "Give Mwiba the tongue," he says. "He will appreciate it the most."
Isoba continues to splutter angrily, jerkily raising her arm, inch by painful inch, to point accusingly at her tormentors. She gaggles as her tongue is forcibly manhandled, clutching her throat in absolute agony. "Hhhheeeeeaarrr meeeee! Iiiiit issss YYYOOOOUUUU whoo aarre theee aaacccuuurssed oonnness! Ooooutcassstss! Iiiiidddiotts! Yyyoouu shhoouulldd bbee *aasshhammed!* Thhhrroouughh yoouur oownn faaiiluuress iiinnn lllliiiffee, yyyooouu tooormmennt mmee inssteeeadd--- mmeee, yyyooouur ooowwwn foolloowerr!! Haaavvveee youuu loossst yoouurr wiitts?!?
[OOC] Isoba says, "Most fun pose EVER. xD"
[OOC] Talmaleki lols.
[OOC] You say, "You must be rolling on little red squiggles, if your client spellchecks."
[OOC] Isoba nods. xD
[OOC] Mwiba says, "Bwa haha!"
Oh ho ho, the tongue! When he was alive, the intestines had been his favorites, but now /anything/ is appreciated. Mwiba lets out an excited, shrill cackle, like a schoolgirl just given the most incredible of gifts. He prances about joyously, just waiting for Gwandoya to hand over the tongue.
Talmaleki turns away, his mane collapsing to earth, and waits for the mangabey's tirade to end, as it inevitably must. So she can still speak--no matter, it makes things more scientific. "We have lost our wits and found them again more times than you can count," he says, not looking back. "Pray we find them one last time, shaman." And he, having had enough of this barren landscape, treads onward.
Gwandoya growls and snatches out the 'sense' of speech that they had chosen for this specific test from the shaman's mouth, holding it tantalizingly before Mwiba. "Gorge yourself, brother," he says murderously. "Make the torment *last.*
[OOC] Talmaleki will write a cookbook that calls for ingredients like '1 Mangabey's sense of speech.'
[OOC] Mwiba XD
[OOC] Isoba hees.
Isoba bounds forward -or tries to- snarling angrily as her limbs drag hideously against her will, as though she were wading through a swamp. "Waait! Aaat leeeassst teeeelll meee wheeeree thiisss Vaaallleeey iss! Aaaand ---wwwwhhhyyy---" This last word comes as a howl of misery, all but moaning to the indifferent winds. Why?!?
"It's behind us!" roars Talmaleki, as with a great stride his elongated legs carry him like a leaping shadow away to the south. His voice is left alone, quiet and smug, hanging in the air. "And don't...push your luck."
Mwiba hops about giddily, snatching up the sense of speech with a cackle of glee. Instead of mulling it over to savor the taste, he swallows it with a mighty gulp, then smacks his lips, satisfied. Then, he bounds after Talmaleki, his shrieking laughter echoing in the night.
Gwandoya eurrghs a bit at Mwiba's flamboyant behavior, shaking off his paw where Mwiba's 'spit' had gotten on it and muttering to himself as he lazily trails after the other two, leaving the shaman unfortunately alone in the night.
A long (very long), low snarl pulses from Isoba's throat as she shakily and slowly picks up her dropped stick. She found she could barely hang on to it. Well, /this/ would certainly change the ways she went about her shaman-ly duties! See if she'd reference the spirits with the same reverence she once had, eh. Idiotic malevolent spirits, all smug just because they had Power. She'd have to consult Enu again, find out a remedy that could repel mad ghosts.../what/ would Enu say, she didn't know...the horror of it... "/Ohhhh/...whhhy mmeee..." These last words, spoken in torment, echo to the cruelly callous winds whipping about her horridly torpid limbs. Why...
[OOC] Isoba wants a cool status, now. Please? xD
[OOC] You say, "Done!"
NAME AGE X SPECIES STAT
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gwandoya Ghost M Lion Idle 3m
Mwiba Ghost M Lion OOC Idle 6m
Isoba Adult F Red-Capped Mangabey ...! Idle 3s
Talmaleki Ghost M Lion AFK Idle 0s
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[OOC] Isoba says, "Well, that fits. I was half-expecting :E or something. xDDD"
[OOC] Isoba says, "Eep! I really have to go right now. Thanks for the RP, guys! Someone should post this!
"
[OOC] You say, "Good night, Iso!"
[OOC] Mwiba says, "Later Iso!"
Not bad for 40 minutes, eh?
"