The Smiling Fist and the Frowning Smile

Lawman Armor, magical suit: a suit of armor designed and enchanted based on rank, such gear is usually cheaply made with soft materials and hardened/enchanted by novice enchanters sent down from the Peak. The armor encloses and protects the Lawman, offering limited survivability against Violet, and provides a mindlink to the Lawman Network. The suit is also enchanted to supplement the physical attributes of the wearer and, for upper-ranking members, may include other features as well. The Hammer variant is bulbous, gold-tinted, and mass-produced with weak bok; +10 STR, +10 AGI, Mindlink, +10 physical DR. The Brave variant is bulbous, gold-tinted, and mass-produced with high-grade bok; +20 STR, +20 AGI, Mindlink, +20 physical DR.

Lawman Pacifier, magical weapon: a gold-colored bok cane with a heavy, club-like end. Pacifiers have pure lethal damage enchantments that cannot be modified for non-lethal engagement. They're lightweight and, on their club-ends, extremely dense. 25-50 base damage.

Bag of keel nuts: harvested from real keel, a delicacy grown and distributed from the middle disks. A single bag like this is worth seventeen food rations, making it wildly unaffordable for anyone except Lawmen and upper-diskers. Tastes like almonds with a sponge-like texture, rich in protein.

Bok-whittling knife: a simple knife made from hardened bok to whittle soft, basic bok or carve in standard bok housing units.

The music faded as Miles left John's sight, and then it was gone. The world seemed dimmer and darker, as if the shadows of the dead husk in which he now squatted might grow physical and ambush him as he tapped through his inventory, and John would be relieved to find some company to remind him that the world he had seen so much of was still out there.

<This must be a high-magic Kingdom,> suddenly concluded Juniluny, <if they're enchanting the armor of every grunt on the ****. These enchantments aren't too shabby either, if I'm gauging what "+10" really means in this "Game" of yours.>

What do you think of her fighting game system? What's that about?

<I don't even understand YOUR system, you drooling drill-dick, much less how it interprets others! She apparently knew nothing of your babblings, so I'd chalk it up to more of your alleged Gaia-inspired nonsense.>

John gently tapped his armor in the various places it had been ripped--including where Miles' fingers had left him aroused and then alarmed--and peered into the dark. The hallway was tall and dominating, and the walls were bereft of the art or script in the hovel he left everyone in. Tara had made no report; John did not bother her to get one anyways, but he eventually gave in and slowly heard of the goings-on there. He occupied himself, squatting against the wall in the dark, for almost ten minutes before a low, heavy vibration shook the ground.

John glanced to where a shuffling noise brought something else into the chamber... but he saw no flaming hair or glowing skin, now. Something was there with him... and it probably wasn't Miles. John wondered if the denizens of Vantage could see in the inky blackness of the immovable; the flame lamps suggested they could not. But the thing was shuffling closer, and it was picking up its pace.

John decided he'd have the first surprise and opened a head-sized tunnel from in front of him leading right over the artificial sun back at the popot field. The portal became a blinding spotlight that brought day to kill shadows and punish wide-open eyes. The one approaching was lit for him to see, and hardly too soon as it had come within twenty feet in a lumbering charge: gorilla-like in structure and covered in patches of thick, black hair, this massive, red humanoid's oversized forearms and fists came up to block the light from his wincing face. A human-like body of muscles and hair was shown off from below a massive, squared chin, and thick stumps for legs wore small blue-green pants up to the intruder's low waist. The creature was ironically bald and without eyebrows, but thin, pencil mustache strips hung on either side of his massive, teeth-gritting mouth as he hollered, "Damn the stars!"

John decided not to answer, taking the chance to look over the brute's information.

Hurk the Smiling Fist
<The Bitter Nines>
Level 21 Berserker
HP: 3,100/3,100
Stats: Str 89 Agi 11 End 50 Int 14 Wis 13 Cha 19 Lib 12
Status Effect: Blinded (1 round)
Qualities: None
A huge, freakish Dorsin who ironically grows hair in almost human-like patterns, Hurk the Smiling Fist has lived on the Plate ever since his existence was discovered after his parents tried to hide him. Hurk worked as a potent and valued laborer until news reached him of his sister's **** and the reasons alleged by the Lawman who killed her.

Most of the card was lost to John once "Hurk" resumed his charge, galloping on his massive arms to clear the distance in one bound. John had left his displacement on while he drilled over 2,000 subdual damage into the brute; all the same, John leapt sideways as the Dorsin's meaty hands fully engulfed the displaced image of John. The huge man's confused expression only barely managed to turn and regard John before the latter prepared for another salvo... at least until new lights cut through the air towards him.

-47HP
-23HP
-24HP

Three of five bolts of flames drilled into John's sides. He followed them to their source: a feminine, petite body wrapped not unlike Miles before the shit hit the fan earlier. She stood in a strange pose, her flame-covered right hand extended, her eyes two dots of orange, and her right clutching what could only be this world's version of a giant, burlap sack that seemed lumpy with loot.

Cidi the Shameless
<The Bitter Nines>
Level 9 Evoker
HP: 185/185
MP: 93/123
Status Effects: Fire-Eyes
Qualities: None
A Dorani who might've grown up to become the next Peak if her almost human-like beauty did not earn the current one's attention. Banished to the Plate as one who artificially assumed human form, Cidi was abandoned by her family to save their face; so began the journey from the topmost disk to the bottomost Plate, where Cidi might've died for "continuing" to imitate a human, were it not for the intervention of her present gang.

There were two, then, but the bigger threat was already visibly regenerating health on his card. With another full battery of strikes, John felled the giant as his hands came up to try and crush the Gamer anew; the beast's fingers, each the width of a child's forearm, relaxed to neatly flank John.

"H-Hurk?" came a voice more confused than alarmed as the giant was sent into a nap.

John blinked behind the girl as confusion set into alarm. Nothing personnel- no, no, I'm better than this.

CRIT! Your serpent's bite deals 986 subdual damage to Cidi!
Cidi falls ****!

Bitter Nines party defeated!
+2,940XP
+$404
+one large bok-hemp sak containing 520 bars of grade IV tubok, 330 blocks of grade III tubok, and 29 rods of grade I zeebok
+one fire-resisting bok stealth suit

John glanced all around the newly lit chamber. Its dimensions had not grown more interesting in the light of the far-off, artificial sun, but it was clearly more attention-grabbing as the radiance no doubt poured from the various gashes John now noticed in the walls; quietly, he replaced the tunnel with a flashlight-sized one on his forehead. He pointed down at the girl's slumbering form... which, judging by her state, was how John had acquired the stealth suit.

Her flesh was more gray than pink, but she might have passed for a human being all the same. Her lithe body was less than five feet in height and showed no signs of muscles or particularly hearty fat save for the handfuls of tit she laid **** upon. Her head, a slumbering, quiet thing, revealed the Dorani distinction for her: first, her head of shimmering black hair was a wig that had fallen to the ground to reveal a perfectly bald, but otherwise human, skull. The other, more striking difference was that Dorani smile: while normal, human lips dominated the center of it, thinner extensions thereof reached all the way to just short of her ears, creating a massive, snake-like mouth through which the glinting of small, sharp teeth could be seen. Drool began to seep from that mouth onto the stones beneath her head; only now did John realize that the flat pane of her crotch had a slit so tight that it nearly vanished from sight.

Still... I need answers... John could revive the strange girl; with some bondage, mind-reading, and prep, he could probably even control her when he did so.

<Just brand her and be done with it,> Juniluny taunted, <and order us to handle the information-gathering while you stay safe.>

That's a pretty shit reason to brand a stranger, isn't it?

<You'd certainly get your answers quicker and cleaner... and you'd worry less about being burned again, pitiful as her attempts proved. Besides! You haven't captured anyone from here yet, or have you forgotten how **** and blind you really are? I suppose those starving strumpets stewing in stasis back there can keep on suffering...>

Are all hobbits this bad at advice?