Iron Kingdoms - Contracts

Dahlia looked at the contract the dwarf accountant and written up for the mercenary group. The pay would be divided into shares, 1 share each per member of the party, 1 share for company expenses (fair), and 1 share to be awarded to the most outstanding of the job. There were also stipulations as to what would be to happen to the share if something unforseeable had happened to member signing the contract, such as death. She had to figure out what was to happen to her body and her funds should she die.

Dahlia signed then put her pen to the parchment before her:

I Dahlia Vrir of the house of Vrir of Ios, ask that if I should die that my body be returned to Ios or that a member of the Vrir family be notified to come collect my body and belongings. I will warn you now, the Vrir family is not the easiest to contact, but I have faith you will find a member.

If I should die, I ask that my funds go to my elder sister and that my leather bound notebook that I have spent many evenings writing in, be returned to the house of Vrir so that it's contents may help the house. I ask that you do not read the contents of the notebook. If it is easiest, the notebook can be sent to my sister, she will know what to do with it.

Currently my sister is located in eastern Llael. if for some reason you have to travel to deliver my body, I have included a secondary envelope. This is to be delivered to the Vrir that you have met with the seal unbroken.

Dahlia set the letter aside and wrote the secondary letter, asking for the safety of those who deliver her body if they had not been the ones to deliver the killing blow. She noted that a notebook should be in their possession and it is imperative that this notebook be asked for as it will help the Retribution's work.

When she finished penning the secondary letter she put it in a smaller envelope and sealed with with wax and the symbol for Scyrah pressed into the wax.

She slipped the envelope into the larger envelop with the response to the secondary clause of the contract. She sighed signing the contract and delivering it to the dwarf accountant. With that out of the way, the real work could begin.

Dlor'itati'usko = "Ritati" - Chiss Jedi

Might as well add some about my Chiss Jedi - "Ritati" for the Force and Destiny game. The game is set 15 years after Order 66.

Dlor'itati'usko "Ritati" - Chiss Jedi Knight

Strength: Bravery

Weakness: Anger

Story: Dlor'itati'usko joined the jedi when she was very young with her elder brother. It was his idea to join the order and he had always had a way of getting her to see things his way. She idolized him, he was brilliant, cunning, and talented. He wasn't quick to compliment her on her own skills but when he did she believed him. Both of them flourished in the Academy and were eventually split up when they each were given Jedi Masters.

Ritati, as she was now being called was a Padawan for Mylla a Falleen Jedi Master. Ritati worked hard under Mylla, the mantra being the sooner she becomes a Jedi Knight, the sooner she can see her brother again as he promised. She learned the art of hiding in the shadows and hiding herself from Force users and non-Force users alike.

Ritani and Mylla were sent on a covert ops mission, a few specially trained clones with them as well.
With her skills displayed on this mission and her ability to bring everyone home, she was promoted to Jedi Knight. It was the happiest day that was only going to be topped by reuniting with her brother.

She was quickly assigned to Mace Windu's secret project. She called her brother and was talking to him, as he was on his own mission. He congratulated her on her achievement and was very excited to see her again. He suddenly grew serious and looked off to the side then the line went dead. It wasn't long after that Obi-Wan's warning was transmitted. The group she was assigned to quickly left Coruscant.

The group decided to take shifts with the ship and Ritati chose to settle on the planet she last knew her brother to be on. Maridun, she spent those years that she was not on the ship searching for him. It was about her second shift on the reliquary that she finally accepted that he had died when Order 66 went off.

What was she to do now? She was in hiding, her people were rising in ranks with the Empire. Would she turn her back on the Jedi Knights she worked alongside and go home? She wanted to, oh did she want to, she imagined reuniting with her family, mourning over the loss of her brother with them, how grateful her mother would be to learn that for 10 years Ritati searched for her brother, how happy her father would be to finally have her home. She had learned her lesson and she had come home. It was tempting, to say the least.

Would she be able to stay true and honor the Jedi on her third shift with the reliquary?

Ambition: Expertise - Ritati must be the best in her field, there is no excuses to let someone best you at your own game. Her level of the best had always been her brother, now she must train because she does not know the level of skill outside or where her brother would be or where she should be by this point. She spent too long waiting around, it's time to do something.

Faith: Friends and Family - There is only one thing more important to her than those she considers to be her friends and that is her family. She will do anything for a friend or family member who needs help.

Dahlia Vrir - Iosan Mage Hunter

The following is just a snippit of my Iosan Mage Hunter for the Iron Kingdoms system.

Dahlia sat in the chair looking down, those that called her here were yet to arrive. Had she done something wrong? She had killed the warcaster, the mission had been completed. She could feel her blood trickle down her arm from the wound the caster had been able to give her before she sliced through his throat. After he fell the rest of his company didn't last long as the troops around her swarmed his company.

She was young for an Iosan but still had been able to prove her ability to her superiors, she had been accepted into the mage hunters and been trained from an early age. Maybe her family name had something to do with it. She had come from a long line of mage hunters, her father was a high ranking officer by now, and her sister had joined the company under Garryth, Blade of Retribution. The door opened and an officer came in. Dahlia stood up quickly. "At ease," he said, unrolling a parchment.

"Dahlia of the Vrir house, you are to report to Pellyth Hallyr in Ord. You are being moved to special operation," he looked up. "You have proven yourself capable of handling yourself in a one-on-one situation. Our spec. ops from some of the ships coming have been unable to contact the hunter we have stationed out there. You are to search for Bres Larisar and find what has become of him. That is the least important of your duties. You are to join with Pellyth Hallyr, he is part of the Seekers out there."

"The Seekers do the opposite of what we're trying to do, what I was trained to do," Dahlia argued.

"That is exactly why we need an insider with them. Pellyth may spend some time training you and giving you a license for a cover job. From there we need you to do your job, take care of the human mages who are far from our battle lines."

"Learn from Pellyth, infiltrate the Seekers, travel along that coast looking for human warcasters we cannot yet reach. Can you do this?"

"Without a doubt, sir," Dahlia said.

* * * * * *

Arriving in Ord it wasn't long before Pellyth contacted her and told her to meet him at a local pub. She arrived early so she could observe those coming in and out of the pub, looser lips there than anywhere else. An Iosan came through the door and she could tell right away that was Pellyth even before he spotted her and came over.

"I hear you are in need of some extra training," he smiled.

"That is what I am here for, yes." Dahlia confirmed.

The discussion lasted for at least an hour before Pellyth grinned, "I could tell you were a Seeker from across the room, but I had to be sure. You are very good, a bit serious but good, yes I will train you. I will set you up as an Investigator in town, you won't have any trouble with a job like that, I can tell you're bright and I'll find someone to train you a little bit in what you should know to at least be useful in the area. From there if there is anything else you need to learn come through me and I can find someone to train you. Give me a week, I will have the papers for you, until then you'll be getting tutored for your job.

Dahlia spent the week being trained in forensics, even being taken around by the tutor to his own jobs. She got hands on experience, which was what she was grateful for because that was how she learned the best. During that time she got plenty of practice in learning Ordic.

She was given her own license after the week and continued working under her trainer for a few months. By the time she was sure she had the language and the necessary skill to get started down she started looking for work, Pellyth putting word out into town that an investigator was looking for work. She had been contacted by several people but it all meant that she would be staying in the city so she declined their offers.

Finally she was contacted by a mercenary band. They were a bit of an odd group but she accepted their offer either way. Now, the real work was to begin.

She proved herself to be a vital asset to the group and quickly rose to a high standing in the band. They hadn't pried too much into her past, they didn't need to know her history to know that she could do her job and for that she was grateful. If the time came she was an exceptional liar, always had been and now with this covert ops job it was being put to good use.

Goth

I've spent the last week digging through my closet, looking for some of the old clothes I wore in high school. I will say, I was a goth with purple hair for awhile. After I graduated and spent some time out in the college world, my closet and my personal style transformed into brighter pastels or geeky t-shirts. Lately, I've been yearning for my black clothes again, wanting to wear my dark lipstick, and paint my fingernails black. Even while I had worn the brighter colors, I still loved the goth and punk styles but guided myself towards clothes that were "more adult" in my mind.

I've been looking online and in thrift stores for clothes that look like what I want to wear with not much luck. The closest that I have been able to find has been the Maleficent line at Hot Topic

Who wants to pay $50+ dollars though, and unfortunately by the time I can swing that extra money around it would have gone out the doors and into other's closets. I can sew, however, so I will have to get back to designing clothes and actually going through with making them. First though, I will need to make a dress form as described in the pinterest pages I have come by. Hopefully by that time I can maybe go back to purple hair, with a 9-5 job.

Redecorating

Alright, so it is Memorial Day weekend, which means I have plenty of time to get projects finished (or started). I have been in the process of redecorating the room I moved into after my brother moved out. I can safely say after spending half the day working on the ceiling fan, the ceiling is finished.

First, I want to show you what the ceiling looked like before:

Yeah, it was that bad. My brother was a huge fan of Linkin Park and he had a giant version of their logo on the ceiling. I will admit, it was his request and I did it for him, but that was way before the thought of still being at home after he left crossed my mind. So after moving in, it took me a little while, but I got the walls and ceiling repainted.

Green walls with a tan ceiling, but the ceiling fan remained largely untouched for a few more months. One afternoon I decided that I needed to replace the glass part of the ceiling fan (there's got to be a technical term, but honestly I can't come up with it right now). So I discovered these beauties at Menards and on clearance no less!

I let it sit for about another month before I decided I really needed to finish this project. I decided on a paint color for the blades and went out and bought it, waiting for a weekend or an afternoon where I can get to it. That time finally came around, I spent the entire afternoon this Saturday taking down, painting, and putting back up, the blades.

I can finally call my ceiling finished and I am incredibly happy. Next this weekend I think will be to finally get up some curtains in the room.

My Week

So I set off this past week with the intention of just kicking back and hanging out with my boyfriend while he is on spring break from grad school. Sunday I got an early phone call from my family telling me that they were rushing my dad to the hospital. I spent all day that day making life changing decisions while my dad fought for his life, having a stroke. He had a blood clot in his brain and as they looked him over they informed us that it was a very massive stroke. 25 on their scale, with 0 being perfectly normal, single digits being a good chance of survival, teens an okay chance at survival, and a very low chance of survival in the 20s. We went through with a surgery to remove the clot and was able to get some of it but not all. Luckily the brain automatically started redirecting blood to try and get to the part that was blocked.

He has spent the rest of the week fighting for his life, with most of the week trying to prevent the brain from swelling too much.

There has been a glimmer of hope, he's been able to stay conscious for a little while, can speak the phrase "I don't care," and has been trying to say more, and he recognizes those who are in the room and most of his communication has been facial expressions and hand squeezing. Today he's been using more of the side of the body that was affected by the stroke as well.

Next week will be a lot of taking care of the house and pets while my mom stays by his side and prepping for my new job at a local hospital as a scheduling specialist. When I was offered the job at a higher rate than they had originally offered me, I knew this was meant to be and it couldn't have happened at a better time.

I will have extra funds to help out around the house, pay off my student loans, and hopefully get a very badly needed car.

What Catwoman Means to Me

If you know me, you have probably been the victim of me fangirling about Selena Kyle, Catwoman. Catwoman comics are my go to for anything, I absolutely adore them. When asked why I like Catwoman, I'll give the superficial answers: she plays by her own rules, she's a strong woman: THE femme fatale, she's beautiful in any imagining of her. If I had the opportunity to become Selena Kyle, I would think seriously hard about it. Didn't expect that part did you?

 Here's a little bit about me:

Several years ago, I would have jumped at the opportunity to become anyone, especially a drop dead gorgeous super thief, even if my facebook relationship status would have to change to "It's Complicated." This was before I started to see myself through the fog.

In high school during my junior year, maybe only half the school year into it something happened. I, who had a group of friends I could talk books or boys with, basketball player, softball player, flutist, youth and government participant, thespian, bibliophile changed somehow. I lost that spark, the thing that made me care about doing things at all, let alone well... it just fizzled out. I trudged through the days, at first trying to pretend like everything was okay, assuring teachers and the counselor that I was fine, but then I just stopped pretending. I forgot what it was like to be happy and because of this the group of friends I thought would be there for me just started leaving me out of conversations until I became almost entirely invisible unless someone was making fun of me. It's high school, the bullies like easy targets.

This continued until I was attempting to get through college while not on academic probation due to the days I was unable to climb out of bed, let alone get the required homework done. Finally one night I swallowed a handful of pills that I had smuggled into my room and climbed into bed to wait for death. I don't remember anything until about 5pm the next day, I don't remember if I had managed to go to the bathroom and throw up the pills or if I had simply not taken enough but I woke up still unhappy but somehow relieved to see the sunshine. I started researching. Wishing for death, the scars I covered up on my arms with oversized hoodies, they weren't me... this wasn't who I wanted to be and I finally realized that something had to be wrong. The next day I went to the doctors and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I started taking a medication that I still take today and slowly began to rebuild my life.

First was trying to remember what having fun was like again, it may sound strange but I couldn't remember what made me happy or how to enjoy a day. Through the months of self discovery I found comic books, my first hero actually wasn't Catwoman, it was X-23. I devoured the series and then DC launched their New 52. I saw the Catwoman comic on the shelf and there was a click in my mind, I grabbed it and read it that day at a coffee shop. Shortly after that I took the next step: My brother had been dating a girl, we'll call her Aislin, and he encouraged me to talk to her.

After a little bit of talking, I invited Aislin to what would be both of our first comic book convention. We laughed, and talked, and I left with a bag full of Catwoman comics. That was 2 years ago. At that point I realized I was hooked: Batgirl is great, Batwoman is pretty cool, there's a connection I feel with Catwoman.

Maybe it's that nobody really understands what goes on in her head, maybe it's the cat scratches she uses as a weapon. I had used blades as a weapon too only instead of using them on others, I used them on myself. I had been a cutter for awhile, I have not cut in about a year. I had used my cats as story to explain the scratches to get people who saw them when I pulled up my sleeves even before I discovered Catwoman, people always drop it after that.

Throughout the process of making new friends and learning that real friends won't stop talking to you because you're depressed or hyperactive, sometimes in the same day, discovering table-top games thanks to Aislin, and meeting a very special man who I share a strong connection to (also thanks to Aislin), Catwoman had been there through it all. She had been a distraction on the really bad days, a rush of excitement when new issues came out, and an ever growing connection as I continue to dive into the story surrounding Catwoman.

Tomorrow, Aislin and I will again go to that small comic book convention that was our first step into a really good friendship that has brought so much happiness into my life. I hope to find more Catwoman comics.

Long Time No See

So it's been awhile since I've updated this. November was the last time I posted anything. The last several months have been a whirlwind adventure of job searching, role-playing, family time, crafting, and organizing.

I was a part of a Star Wars: Edge of the Empire campaign that finished last week and in that game I got to alternate weeks playing 2 different characters (1 per week) in the same universe and working for the same employer. It was a blast, but that's not to say that there were some hiccups. There were a few people who seemed to have taken player knowledge and used it as character knowledge which caused a large enough issue that made somebody leave the game (or at least that is the reason I gathered he left). Overall though, I really enjoyed it. The GM is one who encourages role-playing as opposed to just stating what your character is doing and rolling the dice as was my experience with a few games at Armored Gopher Games. What was great was that the system really encourages role-playing in which the dice have triumphs, successes, advantages, despairs, failures, and disadvantages to gauge how an action gets accomplished. Depending on what you roll something could fail but if you get enough advantages, something good comes out of that failure. I also got to create Dia (pictured below) a Twi'lek Assassin who was trained by a slave master but was mysteriously freed and spent some time trying to change herself into a scholar. That is until she got herself arrested for protesting alien slaving and was freed and employed by Honest Cid who knew about her special skills. It was fun playing a Twi'lek who is not very typical even though by end game she had lost almost everyone she had come to love.

I have joined a few other games to take up the time that this game after ending, left open. So I will be giving 13th Age another try as well as a Star Wars: Age of Rebellion (I will be playing without the book until the finished copy comes out as the game is still in Beta, with the finished copy coming out some time this quarter). I have also joined a Shadowrun game which is a very complex game with a lot more strategy than I am used to, but based on my older character concepts, I have had some practice in. Basically I will be playing a B&E expert with a bit of a Catwoman fetish. She grew up in a Russian immigrant household and fell in love with the character Selena. So when she turned criminal and became a Shadowrunner she took the name Selena with her secret identities being named for actresses who had played the femme-fatale on screen.

I plan on keeping up with this blog again now that I am not in school, having graduated in December with an Associates. A Bachelors is to follow but not for a little bit at least.