The Labyrinth of the Faun

[Netdroid9]

((Super-Subforum-Ninja-BUMP!

We haven't had a post here since early May. Are people afraid to post, or have we all just gotten too good? Anywho, the purpose of this thread is to trial new characters in innovative situations, as a exercise in maintaining and RPing with multiple independent characters.

In other words, in this RP you make a new character and test him or her out. You don't need to commit to a particular character throughout the RP, but it'll be easier for everyone if you start with a character you like the idea of.

Also: You don't need to make any character sheets or the like for this RP, but it's recommended that you have a good idea of who and what your character is, as well as their general background.))

Deep in the Black Forest, further than any had dared venture, there lies a labyrinth. This labyrinth was special, not just because of it's location, but because it was inhabited by a Faun. This faun was old, long past his years, and yet he still lived, powered by some mysterious force that he knew, through some unknown reasoning, had to be in the center of that labyrinth.

Every day he would take a piece of string and use it to trace his path as he searched for the center of that labyrinth, and every night he would make his way back unsuccessfully, following the string back to his home nestled among the trees outside the labyrinth. One day he ran out of string, but still he ventured into the labyrinth, believing himself to understand the labyrinth well enough to find his way out without it. That night, however, it was especially dark and he lost his way, stumbling into dead end after dead end until eventually, he gave up searching for the entrance and fell asleep.

Although he slept, his mind was active, conjuring images of what he had often imagined might be at the center of the labyrinth, now intermingled with self-hatred at having entered the labyrinth without taking the proper precautions. Eventually, he woke up, and continued searching for the entrance unsuccessfully. Soon, he found himself tired and sickly, incapable of sustaining himself on what meager sustenance he could find throughout the labyrinth. Summoning the last of his strength, he faces skywards and screams for help.

[3kul]

((Not a bad idea Net, I think I'll try joining in .))

A monster also wanders the labyrinth who, for lack of a better name, refers to himself as 3kul. Try as he might he cannot remember having any other name, nor anything about himself before he came here. He also didn't know too much about what he looked like, as he hadn't seen his reflection as of yet, though he knew that he had two arms, two legs and was wearing a mask of some kind over his head.

Whether his amnesia was some sort of enchantment of the maze itself or a medical problem of his own he had no idea, as neither were fields of knowledge that he knew too much about. However, in his wanderings he had come to one conclusion, and that was that he must be here for a reason, and that reason must lie at the end of this maze.

He had yet to find anything in the maze itself, save for the one weapon that he'd been carrying since he got here. Though 3kul lugged it with him everywhere he found it to be a terribly confusing piece of work - spikes on one side, a blade on the other and a barrel through the centre... It was as if the maker hadn't been able to decide as to whether he'd wanted an axe, a club or a gun. Thankfully there hadn't been any reason for him to use it yet, as he was somewhat nervous that he'd only end up hurting himself if he tried.

3kul spent most of his time wondering what else might be in this maze as he wandered. Were there others like himself here? Were there people looking for him in here? Were there things that he should be looking out for? So far the answer to all three questions had proven to be 'no', but he still thought about them often anyway because... Well, he didn't really have much else to do.

Upon hearing the fawn's cry for help though, it seemed like the answer to all three questions had suddenly changed to 'yes'. The cry wasn't too far away from where he was (or so he believed, despite not knowing how exactly he'd make his way around to the exact location of the voice), so 3kul picked up his pace and marched towards where it seemed to be coming from.

[TheBlackSoul]

Walking towards the entrance of the Labyrinth was a large lion with golden-colored fur.

He appeared to be an ordinary lion, but with several diffrences-One, he was walking on two legs, two, he had a pair of large, bat-like wings coming out of his back, and his tail was a snake.

He had since forgotten his original name, so he referred to himself as 'Heartless,' although that wasn't entirely true.

Although he hadn't heard the faun's screams, he walked into the labyrinth out of sheer curiousity of what might be in there.

[Mr. Barret]

((yay! this sounds like fun, and as I'm not really in any RP's right now (besides a battle with Polygeist that is going slowly) I'll join in. Out of curiosity, would this thread count for an RP that I could get ten posts in for working toward a red belt?

and another question that I've been wondering for some time, but have never posed: 3kul, how do you pronounce your name? is it: three-cull? Or is the 3 supposed to be an "E" or what? Thank you for assisting in the killing of the cat

Oh, and I'll be using Fafnir. I do have a character sheet for him, but I haven't used him yet. I don't know entirely what I'm going to do with him, and here seems a good place to play with him))

A blue portal materialized in the middle of the Black Forest. It was small at first and obviously not entirely stable, but it grew from the small first sized blue orb it started as, and expanded to reach a somewhat normal size of seven feet in height. From these depths fell Fafnir. “Uff. . . .” Immediately after spitting out its cargo, the portal began wobbling and shrinking back down into nothingness, and was soon gone. Its other passenger, Boris, was nowhere to be seen. Apparently he was put down somewhere else, but not in the Black Forest.

Fafnir didn’t move at once, but lay still and let himself recover a moment from being flung to the earth in such a fashion. While lying there, his black eyes took in what surroundings he could while not moving his head. He appeared to be in a forest, somewhat like the one he had just left in that it had trees, but these living wooden pillars were much closer together, and there were more of them than the forest he was just in. The size of the trees and the spacing between them left the forest floor quite dark, and lacking in sunshine.

Just as Fafnir was getting up and checking to see what had some with him on his abrupt journey, he heard a desperate scream. There were no words to it, but it was filled with the despair of something without any hope. The cry didn’t sound entirely human, but not the noise of an animal, as it carried with it that sense of hopelessness.

“Humph,” Fafnir released a grunt. I’d better investigate. He really didn’t want to, but his sense of right tugged at him until he consented to its wishes. It really was a drag to have a conscience.

It seemed as though his bag made it through the passage with him. Somehow the machine had recognized his things and sent only that with him, and sent Boris’ equipment with him. The things that he had with him were only meant for traveling, and Fafnir was a little saddened that he didn’t have any kind of offensive weaponry with him, as whatever caused that scream was certainly something not good. Not good things were usually better to meet when one was properly armed. There was nothing to be done about it though. As a stopgap, Fafnir reached up with a meaty paw and tore off a stout length of tree branch. Using his powerful fingers and claws, he proceeded to remove the perpendicular growths from this particular straight piece of wood. After he was finished, Fafnir held a fresh staff five feet long. It will do.

Rucksack over shoulder, and staff in hand, Fafnir turned towards the space in the forest where the bellow had originated. That was when he realized for the first time that he was at the edge of a structure of sorts, built right into the forest. His current location placed him somewhere at one outside walls of the structure. He hadn't noticed the stone walls until now because they were well camoflauged in the thick growth of the forest, and were about a stone's throw away from him, hunched comfortably within the trees.

He at first tried the direct approach to gaining access to the other side of the openingless wall: he tried climbing it. His black claws did nothing but run tracks in the moss growing on the wall. The stones that formed the walls of the structure were fit together too well to allow any purchase with his claws, much less his booted feet. Hmmm. . . Fafnir's gaze turned from the wall in front of him, to the trees that surrounded him and the wall. The thought was no sooner in his head than his powerful fingernails were biting successfully into tree bark.

From his elevated position fifteen feet in a tree, Fafnir could see that what lay before him was not the type of structure that he had initially thought it would be. Instead of a roofed building, an open topped network of conected hallways stretched off into the forest until being lost to sight in the gloom.

A moment of worry passed over Fafnir’s reptilian features, but would only be noticed by one who was very adept at reading faces, as his leathery skin didn’t move over much to mark his change in mood. He knew that he wanted to reach the sound that he had heard, but he feared stepping into the maze that he knew nothing about. Based upon his experience with the outside of the walls, he conjectured that the inside of the walls would be no easier to climb. Casting a fairly experienced eye over the construction of the stone and mortar, he also knew that it would take a substantial amount of force to rip a significant hole in one of these walls, not to mention that it would require the destruction of many blockades to acquire an exit from the maze if one were trapped deep within it. Brawn over brains would not be a suitable tactic here.

There was one idea that did spring to his mind in regards to navigating the maze that came to him after inspecting the durable construction of the walls. It was entirely possible to walk along the top edges of the walls. They appeared to be wide enough and strong enough to support even a weight such as his. The only risk would be that of falling off due to the slick moss, or the fall risk due to having to cross over hallways to another section of wall by jumping.

A solution to his dilemma was not forthcoming, and gave the great Beastil pause as he thought about how to overcome this current problem.

He decided to check through the supplies of foodstuffs that he had in his pack. Depending on how long he could independently survive in that maze might sway his decision to even eneter it. It appeared that he had enough ration on his bag to last him only a couple days, if he stretched what he had. It couldn't take that long. That information locked in Fafnir's decision. He would attempt the maze.

He wasn't going to be stupid about it though. He would try his thought about the tops of the walls at first, and then, if he did fall in, he would be doing no less than he'd already decided. If his idea regarding the walking on the tops of the walls succeeded he would be that much further ahead.

From his perch atop a thick tree branch, Fafnir secured his bag and clutched his staff firm in hand. For this venture it would function more as a balance pole than as a walking stick, but he wished to keep it with him, as it might not make a horrible balance assisting device.

Gear stowed and mind prepared, Fafnir stepped gingerly out onto the moss enveloped stone.

((I have a concern. What is this maze made of? Is it a building with a roof? Is it made of stone, wood, tree trunks, coral? If it has no roof, escape would be quite simple, if you had the strength to scale the walls, but I’m assume it does have a roof, or else your faun would most likely have utilized that option. I guess I’m just looking for some more description about our location.

And is my short blurb about the Black Forest accurate?? I don’t know much about that locale either I guess.

thanks in advance

I guess I'm not done. . . even though I thought I was. Are we to assume that this labyrinth has many entrances on the outside, and the objective is to reach the enter of it? Or is it as 3kul would have it, as it is a one way maze, with one entrance, and one exit? I think we should come to a consensus on that information as well, or just have Net make a command decision.))

edited once

[Netdroid9]

[TheBlackSoul]

'Heartless' wandered around the labyrinth, looking for some compainionship. Normally, he was a loner, but he had a feeling he might go insane if he didn't find someone.

[3kul]

[Netdroid9]

*The weapon struck successfully, denting the wall and making a horrible noise in the process. Slowly, however, the wall began regenerating, the dent disappearing before 3kul's very eyes.*

***

*The fawn had been resting for a while when he heard the noise. Leaping to his feet, he immediately begins running to find the source, hoping that whatever it was had (or was) food.*

((Up to you if I find you or not .))

[TheBlackSoul]

'Heartless' heard a terrible, screeching noise that nearly caused him to jump out of his skin.

However, whatever it was that made the noise, it had to be another person, or at least another living being.

Running through the maze, he hoped to find the source of the noise.

[Somefreakoverthere]

Tentical awoke, a loud screeching noise making her jerk upright. The remains of broken chains hung from her wrists and ankels from where she'd broken free from some dungon somewhere from a time she counlding remember. The torn and dusty remains of what was once possibly a nice skirt hung limply around her legs. The strange being's torn and muddy shirt is covered in more dirt than her skirt and bare feet, and her pale white skin has numerous cuts, brusies and small wounds showing up clearly against it. Her face is strange: she has an otherwise pretty face, unclean as it is, but she has no eyes. Where they should be is just skin, no visable eye sockets either.

As she follows where she'd originly heard the noise from, it is easy to see where her eyes are. Her hair is slimy green in colour, and moves like it was snakes. Four of the large "strands" hang around her face, frameing it slightly. At the end of the things with the texture of a slug, is an eye. Each one has a small, black eye with a slitted green pupil and move around like they had a mind of their own yet are being asked to do something and, at this present time, are looking in the requested direction.

Tentical as she'd come to call herself moves carefuly, the things with her eyes on looking carefuly at the ground, studing the marks from the chains around her feet she'd left yesterday. She knew the maze had most likely removed them, but she was so used it that she'd began to learn her way through.

((For some bizzare reason, I'm pround of Tentical. She seems to be, for some reason, a rather good character but she's most likely not too great.))

[Mr. Barret]

Pebbled hands clutched fresh stripped wood. Claws bit marks of concentration deep into newly cut-off timber. Fafnir was moving along, slowly, across the top of a maze wall. He was not entirely sure of his sanity for trying to do this, but he was actually proceeding with a fair amount of success. The only issues were the gaps in the walls. Not actually damaged places of the walls, but places where the hallways had to be spanned to reach the next wall. In Fafnir’s case he was navigating the maze inverted of everyone else, he was walking on the walls and avoiding the hallways.

Pause. Crouch. Jump. Land. Smash all four limbs down onto the wall and grip with all twenty claws. For this exercise of negotiating the moss encrusted stone, Fafnir had removed his boots for the added traction that his clawed toes and rough soled feet could give him.

It was just as he was landing from a hallway hop that 3kul decided to wallop his device into the maze wall. What?!? The interjection flew through Fafnir’s mind. It was most everything he could do to keep his position atop the wall as it was, and the mental surprise of the sound of metal gouging stone didn’t help matters.

Up til now, Fafnir had been trying to seek out the voice he had heard at first. He hadn’t heard anything since, and was moving on memory, and glancing down every hallway he could see for signs of life or movement. As far as he could tell, this new mellifluous tone came from a similar location as the first noise, but not exactly. He was headed in the right direction.

A thought struck Fafnir as he was making another leap across the gap of a hallway. What was the point of just trying to hunt down sporadic sounds? The best way to find someone you couldn’t see was to call back and forth to them, and keep in constant verbal communication.

Based on this thought, Fafnir quit moving and kept still, crouched upon a wall. “Do you need help?!?” Fafnir’s deep, slightly gravely voice bellowed out across the stone landscape. It echoed a little down the hallways, but seemed damped and almost muffled by the moss and foliage of the forest.

He remained motionless, listening for any kind of response that might give him another clue as to where the source of the sounds was.

((How stupid are we? I can’t believe someone didn’t think of shouting earlier. It is an open topped maze!

Thanks for the respond 3kul. I always was interested in your name and its origin. I never would have guessed Luke though.

And yay about the red belt requirements. It’s taking me far longer than I anticipated to get that crimson thread))

[Netdroid9]

((Very good posts all round, sorry for the late response . Quick analysis of how people are in terms of RP capability:

3kul is as expected for the Second-in-Command of the EC .

'The Black Soul' could probably make longer, more descriptive posts and avoid putting apostrophes around Heartless' name (unless they're part of it, that is), but other than that the posts are of fairly good quality. Heartless seems well-developed (based on a Chimera, perhaps?), but it doesn't really show, again because of a lack of detail in posts.

Mr. Barret should use a color other than blue for his character's speech (it clashes with the green on the default theme), but other than that he seems to have a natural gift for roleplay. Previous experience, perhaps?

SFOT might want to work on her sentence structure and spelling (Firefox is great for this, it's got a built-in spellcheck ). Tentical (Tentacle?) is developing nicely, it'll be interesting to see how she reacts to meeting other people.

Other than those relatively minor gripes everything I've seen is at the same quality I've come to expect from posts in The Wilds and other such sections.

Now all we're waiting for is for 3kul to post .))

[3kul]

((Sorry for the delayed response, it's taken me a while to think it up. I wasn't really expecting to have everybody in the maze suddenly chasing me down ))

Shoot! 3kul cursed mentally as his weapon bounced off of the wall, wondering why he hadn't considered the noise factor in doing this. He had to drop the weapon as his arms were shaking with the reverberations, though the loud clattering that this caused made him feel even more anxious. Something is definately going to have heard this, he thought to himself as he looked about.

He couldn't see anybody, but he could hear them. More than one from the sounds of it, though he couldn't quite settle on a definate number, the sounds of the footsteps were too different. He noticed that the mark he'd made on the wall was gone, which just added insult to injury really, as he'd achieved nothing for alerting whatever lurked into this maze as to his whereabouts.

Hastily picking up his weapon, he hopped from one foot to the other as he wondered what to do. Thoughts of finding others stuck here like him were replaced by nightmarish visions of horrible labyrinth dwelling beasts ripping him limb from limb, which was more than enough to convince 3kul that staying here was a bad idea.

He began to run down a corridor, hoping that nobody was coming up this way. As he ran, he realized that he was now holding his weapon as if it were a gun, and his movements felt quite odd compared to how he'd previously been wandering this maze. He was moving as though he'd been trained to do this sort of thing, jogging so as not to waste too much energy but taking long strides... It was a kind of silent effeciency that felt a little bizarre at first, but 3kul felt comforted to know that he was used to this sort of thing.

As he considered the possibility that there may be something following behind him, he felt compelled to reach over his shoulder for something. There was a tightly strapped bag there, which 3kul had previously believed to be a part of his clothing, and he found it remarkably easy to open and search through even though he wasn't looking at it, like he'd done this a thousand times before. There were a number of large round baubles inside and several pouches. Hm, ammunition and gunpow- Wait, how did he know that? Why did he have such scary things? Wasn't it really dangerous to be carrying what could make a small bomb on his back?

He quickly withdrew his hand as he focused his attention to fleeing, now fearful of the contents of his bag and what they entailed. He'd lost the rythym that he'd had going before and was no running in a slight panic, his feet pounding hard against the floor of the stony maze.

3kul hadn't realized however, that in jostling his bag as he'd done a small pouch had spilled out, and a bright green powder slowly began to spill out from his bag behind him. Even if they didn't hear his footsteps as his ran, any pursuers would now have a faint trail that led right the 3kul.

[TheBlackSoul]

Ack! This is getting confusing! Heartless thought as he randomly ran through the maze.

First, there was the horrible screech of some weapon against the wall. Then shortly after that, a deep voice that seemed to belong to some reptile sounded throughout the labyrinth.

The screech at first didn't concern him, but after hearing the other voice, he was seriously wondering what his point was coming into this irritatingly confusing system of halls was in the first place. It scared him.

Because of his fear, he got down on all fours and started running. It didn't prove to be a good idea, because of the narrowness of the hallways. Before Heartless knew it, there was a wall coming up very fast, and he wasn't able to stop quickly enough.

He crashed into the wall, the sickening thump of flesh against stone making echoes. Peeling himself off the wall, Heartless made a mental note never to run indoors again.

Shaking his head to regain his senses, he noticed some green stuff stuck to his paws. At closer inspection, he noticed a faint trail of the stuff leading to somewhere-perhaps compainionship. However, the snake head at the end of his tail started making frightened sounding hisses. While he understood what it was going on about, Heartless grabbed his other head and told it to shut up. He didn't want to attract attention to himself.

Looking again at the faint green powder, Heartless considered ignoring the path and trying to find his way out of this maze. Who knew what this stuff originally belonged too? Perhaps the person was heavily armed, and this stuff was gunpowder? Heartless doubted anybody weilding weapons would react too kindly towards a bat-winged lion with a snake for a tail.

However, he shook off such thoughts. He might as well take the risk. Two people travelling together were less likely to be attacked by Zeus-knew-what lived in this labyrinth.

After hesitating a few seconds, he began to follow the trail of green powder.

[Raven]

(( Net, will you be my beautiful wife? xD I've been looking for something to get me back into role playing. This is the perfect place to try out a new character I've been pondering about! ))

“HEEEELLLPPP!” The frantic call echoed through the dark forest that Serenity, no, Rasberry , was strolling through. She cocked her head up as a deranged, sick grin spread across her pallid face. “Oooooh, help, help, help! Rasberry wonders who is calling! Away, away, away Rasberry goes!” She carolled in a sing-song voice, beginning to skip in the direction that the desperate voice called from.

Some time later she arrived at the entrance to the labyrinth. “Amazing, what a sight! What could this be! I must find out, I must go inside! What’s inside I simply must see!” She sang, rhyming her words in her sickly sweet voice that was much like an exited child’s.
She skipped inside, not caring whether she got lost or not – no, not that she didn’t care, more so that she didn’t think of her own demise. She would welcome it, of course, if she was in her right mind, but at that time, as per usual, she wasn’t.
“Skip, skip, flying in the aiiiiir!” She sang as she made her way through the dark labyrinth moving towards what would seem to be where the voice came from.

(( Gah! So bad. ): ))