Kasimir

A Shardblade in his hands. He heard them, baying for his blood. A dead king's blood on his hands. Kingkiller, he thought. That's what I've become. He moved to block in Ironstance, but desperation lent speed to his opponent's strikes and-- Kasimar felt someone rifling through his clothing. He opened his eyes, tasting blood in his mouth. His head hurt, terribly. Heralds, he thought, everywhere hurt. That darkeyes had given him one chull of a thrashing. The thought that he'd somehow survived didn't bring any sense of satisfaction. He wondered if he'd broken something. And he wondered that he was still alive. And then the thief found his spheres. He hadn't many of them. That was why he'd taken the offer, tried to find Rejkvar. Now it was uncertain if Rejkvar was even in Kholinar, if the man was still alive, or lost somewhere in the collective fury and madness of the mob. He didn't even know if Rejkvar had existed, if he could remember the face of the man who'd sat on the fence and told him that grey, grey afternoon about a job in Kholinar, if he was up for it. He made a sound of protest or pain--Kasimar wasn't sure which--and tried to catch the man's hand. He was shaken off easily. His head spun--and then the thief's hands slipped into his pocket and found the dagger. He pulled it out, and glanced at it and let out an admiring whistle. "That," said the thief, shaking his head slowly, "Is one fine dagger. Judging from your sorry state, one far better than you'll be needing." He pocketed it, as he did the rest of Kasimar's remaining spheres. Something snapped. I am the Bridgeman, I am the walrus, goo goo ga joob! "Mine," Kasimar whispered, reaching out with surprising strength and speed to grab the thief. He pulled himself up on his feet, slowly, painfully. Cold steel pricked his arm. He was, Kasimar thought, beyond such little pinpoints of pain. "I don't think you're in the shape to start anything," warned the thief. And then, his eyes burned. Steel jutted out from his chest. There was no blood, Kasimar realised, as the thief died. The fellow who had stealthily walked up behind the thief pulled his Blade free. A Shardblade, Kasimar thought, staring wildly, dripping with beaded water from its summoning. A storming Shardblade! He'd never seen one, not in his entire life. The lighteyes glanced at him, and said, "Keep acting like that and you won't be long for this world." "I...I don't understand." The lighteyes looked strangely familiar. Clearly a soldier, even though Kasimar couldn't recognise his colours. The strange lighteyes snorted. "I can't keep saving your hide," he added. "And I've got somewhere I really need to be right now. So stop acting like a storming chull for brains. Think." Kasimar said, "Are you Rejkvar?" The lighteyes rolled his eyes. "Get out of the city, darkeyes," he said. "It's a deathtrap." "I...can't." He realised it was true. He'd lost almost everything here. He'd have to find Rejkvar and make it good, or he'd have nothing for the road home. The lighteyes studied him. "We all choose our deaths," he said, finally. "When the end comes for you, darkeyes, I hope it will be quick." He turned about, and walked away. The Shardblade he held in his hand began to disperse. Kasimar called out after him, but he vanished into the spreading mist that accompanied the slow dismissal of the Shardblade. And then the doorway to the broken-down store was empty.Joining the group of people who have made a callback. Kasimar lay back on the ground, and just breathed, trying to force the pain in his head to subside. Eventually, he crawled over to the thief's body and searched it, reclaiming his spheres. He found his dagger, and hesitated. And then he pocketed it. If he was going to die, Kasimar thought, he was going to make a good run of it. Edit: Might I confirm that we cannot ask the GMs questions--either in-thread or through a PM--during a highstorm?

Why tactical facepalm or die laughing? Now you've got my undivided attention.

Argh, I almost forgot about this. I wanted to comment that I understand feedback in an earlier thread suggested that the thief be noble or GB, but I felt it was slightly more interesting that the thief be someone who could ally himself with (and therefore win with) either faction. The ah, interesting exchange between Awes and Wurum as they tried to get Dust on their side and the layer of uncertainty that built into plans was, I felt, something that adding flexibility to the thief role would allow for.

This Bridgeman gig, it's no Shardplate, but it's the next best deal in Kholinar. Carry bridges! Survive attempts to kill you!GM, might I confirm that the highstorm will come after the first 24 hours?

I saw Meta/Tion do this last game. I never expected to do it this game. What were you thinking? You can't kill the Freed Bridgeman. I'm the strongest storming man in this city--and it'll take more than a mob to put me down for good! Edit: Storm it, spelling.

I have, unfortunately, a clarificatory question. Just to be sure: we can vote and take role-based actions at the same time? So the Worldsinger can silence someone and vote at the same time? Is there a limit on the number of actions? (Can the Worldsinger use both his abilities and vote at the same time?) I do understand that visiting the Nightwatcher precludes any other actions.

I'm guessing that the dearth of blue text at the moment is partly due to uncertainty, really. Still, with regard to the number of cycles, I don't think I'd care to make an estimate except to guess that once the deaths begin, the chull will hit the ceiling fan. The 28+ people comment seems to indicate that you can't swing a one-armed Herdazian in here without hitting someone with a role. The riots had gone quiet for now. Perhaps they'd gone quiet for a long time. Kholinar simmered; rage a slow-burning undercurrent in a city that had seen flashfires of violence. It wouldn't last, Kasimar thought. Now, as he wandered the streets numbly, trying to work out his next course of action, he came across other people, many of them with the same frightened looks on their faces as they sized each other up. They didn't speak to each other. It seemed best. There were looters as well; people scavenging the rubble and corpses for some spheres or some food. What for, Kasimar didn't know. He'd yet to see a store that was actually open. Even the bustling markets in the tradesman's quarter that had first stunned him with their colour and scale and noise when he'd first walked into Kholinar--they had fallen silent. Ghosts, all of us, he thought. He found himself wondering if he would know if he was dead. He wasn't a very good Vorin. His mother had burned prayers to the Almighty and, as a child, he'd found himself tracing shapes in the smoke, trying to make sense of the dark strokes rather than turning away from them. His stomach growled, correcting that thought, and Kasimar almost smiled. His shoulder still ached from where he'd scraped it raw against a building running away from a fierce-looking guard with his sword drawn. No, such worries and cares and pains were of the living. He looked for food. Most of the remaining stores had already been raided by looters, but in a forgotten corner, Kasimar found a few bruised fruit, fallen to the ground, and left behind. He stared at them. They were bruised, juices running and mixing with the dirt, but... He picked them up, trying to hide them in his shirt. Should he leave a sphere behind? He'd only a few left. Spheres seemed to be useless in this harsh new place Kholinar had become. Yet he felt guilty, somehow. A large hand fell onto his shoulder, gripping it with the unmoveable strength of stone. He startled, and jerked, but could not get free. "I think," said the largest, strongest darkeyes Kasimar had ever seen, "You have something that belongs to me." "I--" Kasimar struggled, but with the other hand, the darkeyes smiled, caught his arm and twisted it back. He cried out and staggered, spilling fruit, and then man bent down and picked them, one by one, not relenquishing his grip on Kasimar. "I don't see a point in killing you," said the man, almost-conversationally, as he stowed the dirtied, muddied fruit in his pack. "But if you push me, I'll do so." Not a darkeyes, Kasimar thought. His eyes were a whitespine's; gleaming, ruthless. As his captor picked up the last fruit, Kasimar lashed out, twisting around and trying to hit something with his elbow and leg. He hit something soft, and the man cursed. Then, a strong arm snaked around him and immobilised him. "Stupid," the darkeyes said, quietly. "I'll tell you something. In this city, there's only one thing that matters now. It's not food. It's not even your life. It's strength. And you're weak. It's nothing personal." A fist smashed into his head, and Kasimar gasped, arching in pain, his vision blurring. He didn't feel the second blow. The darkness was neither gentle nor cruel; it simply came up upon him, all at once, and swept him away in the numb void of its being.?

I counted three? Kasimar watched the tumult of death and fire; hours framed by splintered wood. Someone on the streets had been yelling about someone coming through with a war panda, whatever those things were. He had no idea at all; heart in his mouth, he peered around the corner of the building. No one in sight. He darted across the gap, fear lending surprising alacrity to his movements. I can't keep this up forever, he thought. He noticed swords now, clasped, carried openly. The last thing anybody wanted to do was to appear a victim. The dagger was in his pocket. He wasn't sure if he could bring himself to use it. Come to Kholinar, they'd said. They'd offered him a surprising number of spheres for the job, if he could just find his contact. If he could just find Rejkvar. He'd come and waited, and waited, as the city imploded around him, and still there was no Rejkvar. Perhaps there never was, he found himself thinking. He rested his forehead briefly against the cooling, charred wood of the building. Someone had tried to set the tradesman's quarter ablaze, but the fire had gone out now. He stepped back, and then frowned as his foot encountered something unstable. He tripped, caught himself against the building, and straightened up. Bones. Charred bones. Someone had died here. Kasimar threw up.

Almighty GM: Two more questions. -Does the Ardent invariably die in place of whoever is being lynched, or is the Ardent's ability target-specific. (So if the Ardent targets Rubix, but Rubix is not in danger of being lynched that day, then the ability just doesn't come into effect.) -Can players both vote and use role-specific abilities? (I understand they can't do either if they go visit the Nightwatcher. I'm just wondering about players who stay in the nice, warm, burning city of Kholinar.) Edit: color issues--again!

The correct spikes should solve that problem

I think I was reading Sarah Ash's Lord of Snow and Shadows and had finished a physics lecture on the Casimir effect. For some reason, I got the names mixed up (the character Kazimir) and the Casimir effect, and thus ended up with the name Kasimir. Which I needed to register for some forum or other. By now, I've been using it for a while, so I just picked it up again for this forum.

About the Spy -- unless you're Alv j/k Thanks for the game once more, Maili. Really enjoyed playing it. Could I ask about your cackle moments, now that the game is over? You mentioned some particular cackle moments, one of them being when we went after Tion not knowing he had Plate. I'm just curious that way Feedback-wise, I think I'd agree with Wurum about the Plate. Insofar as that I'm not sure if it's just me, but the game balance seemed to be a bit off in terms of how protective items became proportionally so much more effective towards the end of the game--although that might be a good thing, holding off the Ghostbloods and allowing for a recovery. It sure made the game more exciting. In any case, thank you for all the effort you put into GMing It was great.

The screams, Kasimar thought. Those were the worst--the shouting and the screams and the sound of splintering wood and shattering stone. Easy to forget the way the day had begun--a man with two knives buried in his chest, a column of light--in the howls of the highstorm and the sounds of a city tearing itself apart from the inside. But the silence that came after--the silence was the worst of all. It preyed on a man's imagination, the silence. One could go crazy imagining all sorts of things happening. He crawled over to the barred window of his temporary shelter and peered from between the slats of wood. No one in sight. The rain dripped down, unrelenting, but the force of the highstorm had passed. Go or stay? He didn't know. Either way, he thought, there wasn't much he could do except to try to keep out of the way of the destruction. He wasn't much of a fighter. Rejkvar, he found himself thinking. I have to find Rejkvar.

As requested (for all clarifications to take place in the thread itself), Rubix: might I clarify what the win conditions are? Also, are we allowed to PM other members, or is communication strictly through the docs? And last, silly question: is mountain time MDT or MST? I can figure the rest from there My bad, sorry! Edit: Coding error.

Adding in to all the Game 5 references... Kasimar watched them all, stunned. He'd left safety to seek out Rejkvar but had stopped short at the sight of the man being dragged away on the street by soldiers. Not that they're doing much, these days, he thought grimly. He couldn't remember Kholinar ever having been such a dangerous place. The man with the two knives driven through his body seemed, somehow, familiar. He almost went up to him, then, but didn't. He looked around. His gaze met that of a traveller--Shin, from the looks of him. Kasimar shivered, for no reason at all. Perhaps in another life, he found himself thinking. He stuck his hands in his pockets and walked away.

When thousand-page books are lighter than feathers if they're written by Brandon Sanderson.

I'm going to have to remember not to sacrifice things to Maili any longer, and that I can't (necessarily) completely trust Awes anymore. Ok. This will probably be interesting.

I really wanted a break after the last game. But is it too late to sign on anyway? I'll just leave the character as Kasimar for now. I'll fill him in later, if that's cool.

I loved it, and most people have already picked out scenes and things I enjoyed (for some reason, I do like Binder, and Goodman Gray was awesome) but I'm still pretty confused about whether Murphy was or was never meant to be a Knight. The dialogue towards the end seems to indicate that wasn't the case, but at the same time, I could've sworn Harry said in an earlier book that she had a job offer.

I'm perfectly fine turning this into UFC Roshar and going up against him weaponless and Plateless. Besides, y'know, if I had a Shardblade, I'd just throw it at them and yell, "Are you not entertained?! Is that not why you came?"

Actually, a stroke of luck too. I was the Ghostblood who started with Plate and a spanreed. Because of the timezones, I didn't get on to use it until after Grellin had contacted me, and Aonar had contacted Awes. That was how we figured we shouldn't be using it. And in the end, I did what we'd been planning to do for a while: I threw the spanreed at Jost right before H. killed him. As Jost already had a spanreed, ours disappeared. It took a bit of luck, but we didn't get that bad penny back.Edit: I don't know why I typed 'I'. I was the one who attacked Wurum that night. H. attacked Jost, my bad.

This is not something a Ghostblood about to die should be saying, but please: Khas. Imagine if you got some other innocent Khaz in the warcamps hung! The horror! The tragedy!

Khas held out his hand. Ten heartbeats. They came, slow and steady. He was surprised how calm he felt, now that he'd made up his mind. The Blade coalesced, the smooth lines of steel shaping itself from mist. He gripped it and stalked through the warcamp, and those who knew enough to recognise a Shardblade when they saw one kept out of his way. He found the man he was looking for. "Jim," he said, the tip of the Blade finding the man's throat. It would be so easy to ram it in, to burn his eyes out, but that wasn't the point of today. "I challenge you to a fight to the death." Sometimes, you had to pick your death, he thought, teeth bared in a smile. He'd killed and killed, and he was tired of it. Sometimes, you had to die for a good cause. This was it. Strange to think that a choice could mean so much to him. Well, good game, guys. Frankly, I'm kind of glad it's mostly over Team Evil on my first game was pretty much not what I had bargained for! Edit: Whoops, forgot to highlight Jim in red. Fixed.

I am going to try to keep this short and to the point, because I'm sick (the bug's all over the university at the moment), and the meds are all just making me tired and drowsy. My vote is for Tion. I've mentioned earlier that while I don't think the trio of Macen, Tion, and Jost are all GBs, I think we have at least one leak there, and I still stand by it. Add the fact that they’ve been awfully good at leading the charge to getting innocent people killed and it reads to me as though the fact that Joe turned out to be a noble only raises in my eyes the likelihood that at least one of them is a GB. And I think the most likely candidate, in the end, is still Tion. There have been concerns voiced about Tion over the past days, and I decided I wasn't certain enough to vote Tion yesterday. But add to that the events of last night: According to what everyone else so far has been saying, only three people knew that Awes was going to get hit, right before Awes acquired a shiny new set of Plate and was painrialled. He had to have gotten that Plate from somewhere, and I'm more convinced that Tion gave it to him. Which would mean that Tion is now Plate-less and we can get him. As far as I am concerned, if we add up everything, including the attempted Shard challenge on Faialen and last night's events, I think it's an arrow pointing to Tion. From my perspective, anything else looks like a crapshoot. And I'm just going to throw one last thing as food for thought: I've noticed that Awes has tried to push for the lynching of players with a slightly more passive playstyle. Players, that is, who prefer a measure of certainty before calling for a lynch. I find it pretty interesting that the players currently controlling the discussion are employing the same strategy. Which is why I am exceedingly wary of attempting to vote in any direction except where my suspicions currently lead me.

Jost. How did he ruin your plan, again? (As I recall, you proposed several of them.)