Test your might... Test your might....

[meat_mooks]

||Attention. Attention. Volunteers are requested for a mission. This mission will require active combat in a controlled environment against other sentient beings as well as fellow crew members. No fatalities are expected. Successful participation may be rewarded with increased personal power. Successful completion will result in increased resources for crew usage. Volunteers report to the Observation Deck.||



Planet Designation: Arena Planet LXIII
Status: Artifically created.
Non-sentient life: Moderate flora and fauna.
Semi-Sentient Life: None native. Multiple species have been imported post-creation.
Sentient Life: None native. Substantial extraterrestrial tourism.
Water: 25% of the planet's surface.

Climate: Multiple individual biomes maintained artificially.
Landscape: Varies by biome.
Air: Normoxic concentration: 29% oxygen, 60% nitrogen, 3% xenon, 6% trace gases, such as hydrogen, krypton, and argon. Atmosphere is artificially maintained.

Air Pressure: 12.7 pounds per square inch.
Sky: Indigo with white clouds.
Sun: Class K1V

Warnings: Artificially created.

Mission: Participate in combat-oriented tournament.

Comments

[zombiewolf]

How to explain Death Knights to someone who didn't know the threat of the Scourge or the might of the Lich King?

Best to keep it simple. "We were champions of Azeroth once, dying in service to our cause. The Lich King raised us from death and instilled in us a thirst for suffering." Kyladriss tilted her head. "What manner of creature are you?"

[nize_hat]

Equally difficult, in a different way, explaining Jägers.

"Hy vas human, vunce. But for services performed, Hy vas given a potion kalled de Jägerdraught. Dangerous schtuff. But it made me vat Hy em today." Maxim grinned at that. "Don' know vat vas in it, und Hy know Hy'm not de only vun--dere vere plenty uf us back home! But it didn' alvays vork de vay de Heterodynes vanted it to. More pipple died den turned. Very sad."

He plucked his hat off of his head, and bowed. "Und dat, among odder tinks, makes me a Jägermonster."

[zombiewolf]

How strangely coincidental. "I was human once," she said. "I didn't volunteer for this, though, and it is hardly considered an honor - the opposite, actually. It's known as the worgen curse, and not all of those afflicted with it survive the transformation."

There was more than a little bitterness in her voice, but after explaining her condition to more than a few people on the ship, it was getting easier for her to talk about the life that was stolen from her and what she was now.

[nize_hat]

Hmm. Sounded a bit like he'd stepped in it there. He was silent for a few moments.

"Sorry for hyu loss. Hyu must be strong, 'cauze--" Of course, what Maxim was about to say was cut off as a gust of wind (slighter than a certain red-headed sorceress had intended, thanks to a certain purple-haired girl's magical meddling) blew him into the worgen knight.

"Uff! I din' mean to do dat!"

[zombiewolf]

Despite his assurances that bumping into her was unintentional, Kyladriss's immediate and instinctual reaction to someone else getting into her personal space was to snarl and shove him back, her hackles going up and ears going flat.

After he was out of her personal bubble, the fur on the back of her neck started to flatten and the snarl diminished into a low growl, just a small warning that he should stay out of said personal bubble for the near future.

[nize_hat]

"It vas an excident," Maxim repeated, holding up both his hands. Though it was really only the knowledge that they had a fighting mission imminent, and that Stacy and her tentacles were also around, that had him restraining the urge to start something right there.

He shook his head. "Hy tink ven dis iz hall over, ve schould go to de Sensoriums und see hu iz...betta. Vat do hyu tink?"

[zombiewolf]

Kyladriss closed her eyes. She took a very deep breath, despite the fact that her lungs didn't technically do anything anymore, and then let it out. "Apologies," she said with difficulty. Her runeblade hissed in the back of her mind, demanding his blood. Her lupine instincts said that what he'd just done was challenge her position in the pack. She shoved both of them aside and focused on his proposal.

"We would have to find somewhere in the City. Even in the Sensoriums, Stacy doesn't permit us to harm one another - and she has a very low threshold for what constitutes 'harm,'" she growled, still trying to quell her temper. Conversation she could do. Conversation was safe.

[moves_like_jaeger]

"Eh, it still vould not be a goot idea to kill. Not each odder. Dot would be a vaste. At least until all dis is over." By which Maxim meant this war they'd been persuaded into. The tournament? That was just a bit of fun.

"Uf cauze, if hyu vant to get a leedle bloody, ve could alvays hendle it before ve go back to de ship..." The grin he displayed then was devious, to say the least.

[zombiewolf]

Kyladriss gave Maxim a very toothy smile, one that others would probably find threatening, but his smile was rather toothsome itself. "That idea," she said, "definitely has merit."

She relaxed. He was right. It was useless to kill each other when they all had necessary skills to keep each other alive. It was her blasted instincts, the ones she could never seem to control. "You said the transformation was offered to you for services rendered," she said, changing the subject. "Were you a soldier?"

[nize_hat]

"Ho, yez," Maxim agreed, nodding. "Cavalry officer, even if after all dis time I have lost my horse. Waz a nize horse." He chuckled a bit at that.

"De Heterodynes, dey may be krezy, but dey all seem to believe in rewarding goot service." So at least in Maxim's mind, what he had become was a reward. Well, longetivity, enhanced strength, resilience, heightened senses...hard for him to argue with that.

[zombiewolf]

"It is always unfortunate to lose a good mount," Kyladriss said. "Thankfully mine is both magical and undead, and therefore impossible to part from me." Not that she particularly needed one, since she could run as fast as a horse if she wished, but riding the Deathcharger was so much more dignified than loping about like an animal.

[moves_like_jaeger]

"Eh, mebbe I get lucky, ve go all over vereever dis is, mebbe I find a new horse! Or zummetink else to ride, hu knows?" Maxim shrugged.

"Still, iz good hyu have hyour own horse, and dat it is a goot horse! Alvays goot to have a goot horse. Hyu know." He sort of missed looking over horses. It was really a pity he'd lost his--and there was always the fact that Maxim made many a horse...nervous, these days.