This post has the following content warnings:
Mar 31, 2023 8:22 PM
Daémon Fleet characters dropped on The Untamed
Permalink

Alizara, Azure, and Verity are walking through Topaz Hall.

Despite being one of the habitat sections of a large generational ship drifting through the interstellar void, it has been made up to be comfortable.  The center of the street-wide hall is a canal where water-type daemons can comfortably travel.  Small trees line the canal, patches of tall grass and flower gardens beneath them, before giving way to wide tile-paved edges.  The walls aren't made of separate buildings - instead, there's a solid wall of shop windows and private residences, with the occasional small branch hallway leading off to apartments deeper in the bowels of the ship.  Above them, two layers of balcony roads rise above them holding more shops and houses, bridges occasionally extending to connect the two sides through the wide open space.  Flowers bloom from planters lining the edges of the balconies and bridges, and each blossom at least as large as a person's palm.  Also hanging from each bridge are silk banners with the flag of the given Hall, these ones in bright yellow which match the walls.  

The people pass, traveling mostly on foot.  Each is accompanied by a daemon: their soul in an external form.  Their silk clothing - shirts and either pants or shorts or skirts, for the most part - always matches their daemon.  Blue with lacy white edges for the woman with a swablu, red and cream with black accents for the man with a ledyba. 

Total: 669
Posts Per Page:
Permalink

Alizara's Salanaya floats above them.  There is plenty of space between the floors.  Every door and path, save for some of the cheapest housing, is meant to be traverse-able by large daemons.

Alizara wears a dress of the same blue-gray as the metang's body.  It's quite elaborate, as outfits go on the Fleet, mostly because it was picked out by Azure.  The skirt is ankle-length and pleated in a way that lets it swish freely as she walks.  The sleeves and neckline are trimmed in white flowers that glisten with well-placed reflective beads.  She doesn't care either way - most of her day is studying science in order to join the research corps looking to develop faster-than-light travel, and she can sit at her computer in anything.  

Permalink

Araeneve, Verity's daemon, does their best to blend in.  As the largest daemon in the group, and the completely opposite color to the pale yellow walls, this doesn't work.  Whispers follow them, people getting out of the way with respectful bows.  Suicune are Legendary, and that means something even though it shouldn't.

They stare straight ahead, mostly avoiding cringing away from the attention.  Araeneve steps so close to Verity's back that if they weren't so subconsciously aware of one another's movements they probably would have knocked her over by now.  If Verity were alone, she could have gotten on Araeneve's back and sprinted to the restaurant.  Instead, they have to walk at the same slow pace of the two shorter humans.  

Like her daemon, Verity is also unusually tall, and quite muscular.  Her own clothing is loose trousers that can be run around in, though Azure had also been the one to help pick out her clothing and had insisted that nearly every inch of silk to be embroidered in patterns of blue and teal and purple.  The Church would also not have let a Legendary walk around in anything less than what others would only wear to a formal dinner event.  At least with Azure to help pick them out, she wasn't forced to put up with anything jangle-y or drape-y getting in her way.

Permalink

Azure, at least, is taking this attention in stride.  He walks at the outer side of the path, between his friend and the majority of the passers by.  With a humanoid gallade as a daemon and being about 6 inches shorter than Verity he can't physically block the attention, but he does what he can. 

His own outfit is at the cutting edge of fashion, elaborately embroidered with thousands of tiny glittering beads in green and white.  

Permalink

The street isn't crowded but there is a constant murmur of noise.  People talk in the distance.  Music is playing in a few shops, faintly audible through their open doors.  The occasional bird-like flying daemon carries their human through the air between the bridges, their passing creating wind which rustles the trees and the flowering vines.  Ignored in the background but ever present is the humming of the spaceship itself.  

Behind all of these is a sound coming from a side hallway.  It sounds like someone screaming for help?

Permalink

Verity, closest to the wall, hears it best.  

She is entirely ready to take a break from getting bowed at to go explore this random side-hall, and dutifully informs her companions.

Permalink

Azure follows behind.  

Florentho can sense the emotions of others, even if not exactly where they come from.  Right now he's detecting annoyance that has quickly turned to curiosity (probably Verity) and not much of anything which is now mild annoyance and curiosity (probably Alizara).  In the range from six feet to about twenty the feelings are much fuzzier and blur together into an average of everyone around - some curiosity and awe which always follows Verity around.  

He walks to see if there's a point where that blurrier mood-of-the-room sense gets tinted by anger or fear.  

Permalink

Nope!

The hallway has a set of restrooms, a janitor's closet, and a recessed unlabeled door that is currently open.  

Permalink

Doors can be searched!  Alizara and Azure get the respective restrooms.  Verity checks the janitor's closet.  

All three are currently empty.  

Permalink

Mystery unlabeled door it is.

Permalink

The door leads to a downwards ramp, heading to the short layer between the Hall and the outer hull which is mostly used for pipes and wiring.

It is a small storage space, dingy and badly lit.  Flaking graffiti can be seen on a few of the walls, and the floor space is partially taken up with boxes of junk.  Heavy tiles of cheap stone, moldering rolls of wallpaper in tacky designs.  Various other cumbersome things.  There's the unpleasant scent of ammonia in the air, and it doesn't look like the concrete floor has been mopped in over a decade.  

The room is empty.

Permalink

"Ugh.  Who would let a place in Topaz Hall get this dirty?"  

Space was precious - with a bit of cleaning, it could be turned into something.  

Permalink

"Doesn't your family own most of this Hall's businesses?"

It is terrible down here, but it being empty does mean that it's an improvement to being on the street.

Permalink

"True.  Maybe I'll go bug Gramps to see who specifically has it.

"Anyway, if there was anyone here they must have teleported away."

That's more immediately concerning.  

Permalink

Alizara has been looking around.  An old bottle of something viscous and opaque had fallen and cracked open, leaving a wide puddle.  There are footprints of it through the back half of the room.  

Careful to avoid stepping on the evidence, she moves closer to see behind some crates.  

"Hey, this is strange - these prints are going into the wall there."

Permalink

The latch is very well hidden.  Luckily, the footprints have given her a good place to start looking.  It doesn't take long before the well-concealed hidden door slides open.  

Permalink

The lab within does not bare much resemblance to the abandoned storage room outside.  It is far cleaner, for one thing.  Its walls and floor are white, and the room is strangely shaped instead of the usual squares and rectangles.  The entire room is packed with strange machines and large computer banks.  Only a narrow path is left clear of machines.  

There's a single door on the opposite side from the entrance.

Permalink

Araeneve is the obvious choice to go first, though they fill the entire path and their large mane only barely avoids getting snagged on the machine casings.

Permalink

One of the walls begins to open up in a manner similar to the original hidden door.  

A woman with a drowzee daemon is on the other side, holding cleaning supplies.  She freezes and shrieks and backs up when she spots a Suicune standing in the middle of her secret base.  Frantically, before the door is even fully opened, she begins tapping at a control panel on the other side to try and shut it again.

Permalink

This doesn't happen fast enough!  Araeneve quickly reaches the door (knocking into a few machines in the process) and rams it hard enough that the hinges malfunction and the door freezes in place about a foot off of the ground with some unhappy grinding and clicking noises from the door mechanisms.

Permalink

The doors are reinforced, and this one is very stuck.  

None of them have a daemon small enough to fit through the gap.  

Still, there is very little a determined Legendary can not destroy.  After about thirty seconds of having a six and a half foot tall, 412 pound, nigh-indestructible beast slamming into it, one side of the hinge system snaps and the door can be forced open.

It is similarly white and oddly-shaped, though lacks the machinery of the first room.  There's a stack of pallets holding shelf-stable supplies, and a table surrounded by three chairs.  

No one is inside.

Permalink

This information gets passed down.

"Damn.  Think there's another door in that room, or that the drowzee knew teleport?"

Permalink

"I can check for more doors."

This is going to be difficult.  Not the door finding - getting her over to the room.  Why is this place so cramped?  

They shuffle themselves, the humans having to carefully avoid daemons who aren't theirs.  Salanaya continues to hover over everyone else.  Florentho briefly climbs on top of one of the sturdier machines.  Eventually, Azure is in the room the drowzee-daemoned woman vanished from and Alizara and Verity are in two other places in the first room that look a bit like paths terminating at blank walls.  Florentho winds up in the center where he can see everyone - they might need to Teleport themselves, and he can grab them all from there.  

The one non-hidden door appears to be a normal, if very tiny, restroom.

Alizara finds a door first, shouting for the others.  Salanaya rushes in once the door opens far enough, followed by everyone else.

Permalink

The room isn't larger, but it is emptier.  There's room for everyone.  A single large machine takes up the entire back wall.  Some flat monitors line a second wall.  Two more machines are sitting off to one corner.  

Most notable are the two men and daemons in the room.  

One is wearing a white lab coat, illegally blank.  It looks like it might have been taken from a stock intended to be altered with thin ribbons of a person's colors.  The fabric has no pattern printed into it, which on adult clothing is usually the mark of a uniform.  His hair is dark, hanging limply to just past his ears.  He turns around and growls under his breath, then turns back to the machine.  There's a control panel in front of him.  

Despite the white outfit, the liepard is probably his.  She hisses threateningly towards Salanaya when she floats in.  When it becomes clear that they are very outnumbered and outmatched, she presses closer and closer to her human, scrunching down in panic.

Permalink

The other is clearly not here because he wants to be.  Both the human and his honchkrow are tied up in thick tangles of grass.  

From the handful of damaged feathers, it is clear that the honchkrow had fainted while trying to fight the kidnappers off.  He blinks woozily, barely making an effort to struggle out of the cocoon of knotted grass.  

Permalink

Verity doesn't know what the scientist is doing.  But he should stop. 

Araeneve uses Surf.  From beneath their forepaws swells a contained bubble of water which raises them up as it appears from nothingness.  With a forceful push downward, they shove it in a wave towards the liepard and her human.  It's not at full strength as they don't want to kill the human or knock a hole in a wall, but it's more than enough to knock them over.  

Total: 669
Posts Per Page: