SUMMER TEST DRIVE MEME

[rubimods]

⚰︎ ⍢ ⌲ ⍚ TEST DRIVE MEME:

Welcome to RUBILYKSKOYE — a dark, horror-smut game where player choices will drive a mod-run storyline about the world and its NPCs. This test drive meme provides a medley of prompts evoking the game's general tone.

THESE THREADS CAN BE GAME CANON if both players are accepted into the game and agree to it. However, if players who'd prefer to start fresh are welcome to reuse these prompts in their own personal logs upon acceptance into the communities. Note: the universal test drive arrival prompt will not be repeated on the coming event log, but players are welcome to reuse the prompt.

CONTENT WARNINGS for this game include: monsters, body horror, dub-con, non-con, religion, blood/violence, and marking/branding, loss of autonomy/self, and mental influences. This log additionally has warnings for: nudity, D/S mechanics, public sex, aphro, death, missing persons.

If you have QUESTIONS about the test drive prompts, please ask HERE. Questions about the game itself or the general setting should be directed to the FAQ.

FAQ ✧ SETTING ✧ CALENDAR ✧ RESERVES ✧ APPLICATIONS

IN THE WOODS SOMEWHERE

The chirping of partridges in the treetops rouses you. Light barely filters through the canopy, just enough to suggest daylight. By the time it reaches the forest floor, the light has taken on a sickly green. You lie amongst the frost-covered mosses and ferns, the frozen soil cold and just a little damp on your bare skin.

Wherever you were before this moment, whatever you were doing or wearing, when you awaken in this forest, you find yourself naked and helpless as the day you were born. As you sit up and get your bearings, aside from a brief wave of disoriented nausea, you seem to be no worse for wear than you last remember.

You seem to be alone. The gnarled oaks and moss suggest no sign of civilization or sentient life. Just flickers of movement from curious squirrels or brave lizards emerging from a temporary retreat from the wintry weather. With your feet under you, and you'll find the wood is filled with berry bushes and nut trees, though much of the fruit has been picked clean. The freshwater stream that runs north-south, populated by both poisonous toads and delicious crawdads, is running actively again as the weather warms back up from the recent snowstorm.

As you explore, you may run into others with stories just like yours. Some may have already formed clumsy nudist groups, others may still be processing their confusion, with no memory of how they got here. Now is a good time to overcome any hang-ups you have about modesty; it's going to be a long hike, and the weather isn't quite amenable to your lack of.

Turn your back to the darker, shadowy parts of the forest and eventually the glow of manmade lights and the curve of a dirt road may come into view. At the edge of the wood, you'll find a town surrounded by a fifty-foot wall of beige stone. The only entrance is an iron gate positioned on the southern edge. When you arrive, the gate is already open, welcoming people inside.

This quaint, historic town of five-thousand has cobbled street and signs lit by gas lamp. Wooden shutters protect otherwise open-air windows on the buildings, which are all under three stories with gabled roofs. A number of businesses hug the main street — a clockmaker, a cobbler, a grocer — while residential homes sprawl outwards towards the wall. At the far end of the main street, visible about a mile to the north now that the trees and the enormous wall is out of the way, sits a castle with three towers.

When you enter, the streets are full of people, but despite any efforts on your part to hide or make excuses, they don't seem offended by your nakedness. Even families with children don't gawk or look twice. Those determined to find proper clothing regardless will find that modern clothing stores aren't available — the closest this town has is a tailor's shop and a stand in the central marketplace selling scarves and blankets.

breaking and entering

If you intend to have your character break into someone's house or yard to steal some of their clean laundry, please review the info about game laws on the FAQ and give the mods a heads up HERE.

SETTING: CRIME

Fortunately, the people of the town are very generous! Anyone who ask the locals will be directed to the boarding house for both clothes and a place to stay. Accessible through an embellished iron garden gate and obscured by hanging plants, trees, and vines, beyond an overgrown yard in the residential sprawl of the town is a bright-red door, which opens to a spacious cottage of several stories. Parts of the house still bear the dust of disuse, gathered on various furnishings — bedding, sofas, curtains, wooden tables. However, it's already full of people! Anyone who's already appeared in the village just as you did today lives here. Once inside, you may notice patchwork repairs have been made, and some scorch marks still linger from a recent fire, and some furniture is still lying around in splinters.

Tonight, a few of the townspeople will help out with the new arrivals. They stock the kitchen and prepare a communal dinner of parsnips, pheasant, and squash. During dinner, they (and those outsiders who've already begun to settle) sit down at the enormous wooden dining room table and help orient the newcomers and answer their questions.

finding roommates

Don't spend too much time in the dining room going for seconds, though. You'll want to claim a bedroom quickly because each one only has two full-size beds, and there aren't enough spaces for everyone. The last people upstairs will need to double up to squeeze in. Roommates will not be mod-assigned; players should coordinate directly with one another to determine their living arrangements.

Get a good night's rest. By the light of day, locals will help get the new arrivals set up on the coal stove with breakfast. You may notice they're dressed in a way you would almost call normal — at least, in a manner befitting 19th century Eastern Europe. As you find your way around town to get your bearings, folks are eager to help you find a place to apply your skills so you can contribute to your new home.

writer's block?

If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try: naked hiking, acquiring clothing or other inventory items, asking questions at dinner/orientation, or staking your claim on a bedroom!

THE FESTIVAL OF SUMMERTIDE

Summer is in full swing, which means it's time to take advantage of the warm weather! Around the town, various games are being played, some sport-based and some more concerned with creativity, problem-solving, sex, or 'fun'. Each round begins with a prayer to the Duchess. Not bowing your head in prayer may get you a few stares from locals, or worse-- opponents may be extra motivated to defeat someone so disrespectful to her Grace.

Each Thursday, buildings are festooned with wreathes of wildflowers, tables are laden with food and drink, and everyone is given colored sashes to wear over their clothes. Festival goers are not allowed to enter the main events unless they wear a sash, and to get a sash they must reveal their curse marks. Those marked with the curse of Wilk receive blue sashes, Diabel get red, Skala receive green and Niez are as ever adorned with grey.

FAQ: CURSE MARKS

Summertide, the locals are eager to explain, is a festival about adapting to the needs of others, and accepting things as they are. What perhaps isn't explained nearly so well is the expectations placed upon festival goers. Each event has a goal to be achieved, balanced on the point of competition or participation.

Tables overflow with refreshments, especially drinks and chilled fruit to cool the summer heat. Rubeans traditionally spice their foods with aphrodisiacs, something that is so culturally normal to them that they don't feel the need to mention it.

An outdoor feast starts the festivities, with commanders, who are expected to give orders, and followers, who must follow the whims of commanders, whatever they decree. Who commands and who follows is decided by the curse-marked sash participants wear. But there's a twist-- every three hours, a horn blows, and the roles switch at random; commanders become followers and vice versa. Many festival-goers, now in a position of command, are eager to get petty revenge on the followers now at their mercy.

Fencing! For health reasons, any cut must be properly cleaned, and kept free of contaminants; for this reason, fencers are expected to compete fully naked. Otherwise, you might get some cloth in your cuts!

Wrestling! Wrestlers are well-oiled for the matches, making it hard to keep your grip on a slippery opponent. The winner of the match is declared when they have their opponent pinned... and at that point, the winner can do anything they like to the loser until they can get away, if they even want to.

A game going on throughout the town, regardless of whether someone consents to participation, is something the locals call Lock and Key. The rules are explained after you are grabbed and tied by your wrist (or ankle, whatever was available) to someone else: the locked binding tying you two together is blessed to be unbreakable until you each draw one another's blood... or find the key, stashed somewhere in the town. Good luck!

Anyone who refuses to play along will be ejected from the festivities, and made to run through the crowd while being whipped with thin wooden sticks.

Throughout all of this, some of the implementation of these games may occasionally come across as either overly cruel or overly kind. The common people of Rubilykskoye are of two minds when it comes to the treatment of newcomers: some think you are beneficent, sent to fix their problems and free them of your woes. These people, called Blackguards, will do their best to make sure your participation in the games is not marred by cheating, excessive violence, or pain. But others, called the Zlatniki, think little of the outsiders coming into their lands, and will do their best to twist their native traditions toward cruelty and vindictive unfairness when it comes to the Void-touched.

writer's block?

If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try participating in events, having your characters go against opponents, be drafted into the games against their will, or watching others perform!

NIGHT OF THE HUNTSMEN

Rumor moves through town quickly: two nights ago, a hunting party went out into the wood, and no one has seen them since. Anyone who wants to prove their worth to the community is encouraged to join the search parties going out to look for them; in Rubilykskoye, those who provide food for the community are highly prized, especially when they brave the woods to do so.

You see, the woods aren't entirely safe. Near the town, it's nothing to be alarmed by, and of course the search parties find nothing there. They must delve deeper, and that's where you end up. At the outer edges of the forest, shadows grow long and the air grows thick. Though the sun never grows warm red-gold with sunset, the wood darkens. Birdsong is replaced by the click of mandibles and the skitter of many legs. Anyone who ventures out this way will soon find it difficult to see before them, even in the middle of the day — eventually, even the brightest magical light source or darkvision cannot stretch further than a few inches.


Many peel off, going back to the town proper. The searchers become fewer and fewer. Maybe some of them are going back home, but maybe they're getting lost. Eventually, you walk around a large tree, and you're alone. It's just you and the Void.

The air feels heavy, as if it were not air at all but some more solid mass. Almost like liquid-smoke, it presses down upon you. Slowing your movements. Characters who push too far into the void may stop being able to move at all, and find themselves given over to insanity if they collapse, unable to draw themselves out. This is just one of many dangers.

Monsters thrive this far out. Huge, blood-red spiders the size of hunting dogs drop from the treetops. In addition to their venomous bite, which contains a fast-acting paralytic, these creatures are clever: they attempt to use their webbing to entangle any trespassers, binding limbs together or to trees. If you're unfortunate to become fully cocooned, you don't have long before this forest will be the last thing you see.

FAQ: DEATH RULES

Those who seem lucky enough not to run afoul of the monsters here are in for a worse fate. The void can play tricks on your senses. As madness sets in and you lose all sense of direction, you may also lose control of your body — what is that steers your hands to turn against your friends? Why does it sound like your own voice whispering?

Yet the further you go, the more convinced you become that the missing hunters are near by. You're sure you can hear them on the wind, their voices calling out between the trees. Did you just see something out of the corner of your eye? You have to find them. You have to make all this darkness worth it.

writer's block?

If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try fighting a monster, hallucinating your worst nightmares, and/or attacking a friend or stranger! Feel free to find the bodies of the missing hunting party-- or hallucinate that you did.

RELEASE YOUR INNER BEAST

Something's wrong here.

The marks worn by all residents of Rubilykskoye aren't just cool body art, as it turns out. The town is full of rumors, whispered in shadows and over candles of a starving creature hiding in the dark corners of your chest. Feed your inner beast, they say, before it finds a way to feed itself.

FAQ: MONSTER CURSES & TIMELINES

Alas, its emergence is inevitable — sooner or later, the horrible things that happen here pile up and make someone repulsed by the idea of human contact. Someone holds themselves back, bites their tongue, or simply does not believe the stories. Today, for one reason or another, that creature is coming out. Someone hasn't been keeping it sated.

Symptoms escalate over weeks, from monstrous irritability to full-blown body horror transformation, where people physically shed their human forms and evolve into the monsters this place made them. Once a person becomes something more (or less) than human there's only one way to go back — sate the beast.

someone else transforms

Early one morning, alarm bells are rung. The people of Rubilykskoye are quick to explain while boarding up their windows and locking their doors: The Szymanskiy brothers have all transformed! Their inner beasts - duchozweirz, the natives call it - take the form of creeping, skeletal horrors. The beasts hunt and to kill, ripping their prey apart, but that's not all they can do.

Those who are lucky enough to escape one of the Szymanskiy triplets will leave feeling... changed. The psychic residue these monsters give off cause the afflicted to seek out danger with reckless abandon; they will run toward the monster, into fights, and refuse safety when offered. They must be restrained in a secure location to wait for the pheromones to wear off.

(There are other monsters lurking in every townsperson — feel free to invent your own npc monsters and scenarios!)

you waited too long

At first, as you hide yourself from your darker impulses, a subtle itch develops under your skin. An irritability that makes you snap at the person who bumps into you on the stairs because all those fleeting emotions that you've been repressing bubble to the surface. Every dark thought you've had about being here, all the fears of never getting home, of being surrounded by ticking time bombs, the anxiety of wondering who you might hurt or what relationships you might betray by doing what you have to do. The anger. Oh, the anger.

Maybe you shut yourself in your room or run into the woods to hide away, but there's only so much you can do to deny the itch that grows into hunger like a spark catching and growing to wildfire. Someone comes to check on you. That knock on the door or crunch of leaves in the wood that fills you with dread at what you might do and hope that you will be sated.

As claws and fangs and scales and spines and fur grow and your body transforms with a sickening crunch of bones and peeling of skin, so do your appetites. If you won't sate them, you'll lose yourself to your beastly impulses sooner or later, mauling friends and taking your fill. Is it better or worse if only your claws get inside of them?

RULES: CONTENT WARNINGS

Comments

daemon targaryen | hotd | ota.

[fiat]

a. OUT OF THE WOODS.

A man walks naked out of the treeline. He is six feet tall, pale as death, with hair roughly the color of his skin. A livid splash of red stains his torso, blood splattered over his body. He's carrying a tree branch like a club, but he drops it at the feet of the first person he comes across.

It's bloody as well. Hair seems to be clumped on a protruding edge.

"There's a dead boy in the woods."

b. FEASTING.

Skala, of course Skala, bright and green against his throat. He is only fond of the color insofar as it gets him what he wants. One black-booted foot finds a bent back-- cleaning up a mess, bowing to someone else, it hardly matters. A follower is a follower. He folds his legs and uses you like a footstool.

"If you want to get up," he says, "you'll have to make it interesting for me."

c. LOCK AND KEY.

His pale wrist to yours, and his look of reptilian displeasure. He tugs harder.

He takes out a knife. Where he got it hardly matters. "Hold still, or this might really hurt."

d. Wildcard.

[I'm open to whatever, especially threads where Daemon isn't coming out on top. Daemon is a very bad man with very little sense of consent, and while I'm not going to push that angle too hard on a TDM, please consider reading his content warnings, especially if you're canon unfamiliar.]

lock and key

[minuteofangle]

Oh. This is the game they're playing today, huh? Gabe's grin flashes teeth as he tilts his head, cycling his tech and sizing the other man up. Tall fucker. And with a sure hand on that knife.

"How fast are you?" Gabe drawls, eyebrows raising behind his sunglasses. "Just curious."

The moment that fucker so much as breathes, Gabe's kicking him straight in the dick. He's already got his own knife hidden against his palm. Ready to punch somewhere tender.

[fiat]

They always squabble.

Daemon has spent too much time in dirty back alleys and dimly-lit brothels to be so easily manhandled. The ones who think they're clever-- and this one clearly does-- have a tendency to give warnings. Daemon can understand the impulse. It is a fine thing to think oneself the victor beforehand. He sees himself as a victor in all things.

The difference is, he's not interested in fucking around.

The chain that links them is a point of strength. Daemon, shifting away so that this creature's kick lands on his knee, pulls him to the side. All six feet of Daemon come crashing forward, with the full intention of landing atop his companion.

[minuteofangle]

Pretty damn fast, it turns out. Gabe just flashes his teeth as his kick connects somewhere decidedly less tender and his new best friend surges forward, using weight and momentum to try and get him on the ground where that knife will certainly come into play.

Gabe doesn't bother yelling or thrashing. Just twists and goes for a judo throw, trying to toss the fucker over his shoulder and put him down hard. They're connected, bound together by one of the local bullshit games, but so what? He refuses to bend.

[fiat]

So Daemon is thrown over the shoulder of a small, ill-bred simpleton. He lands rough, and intends to make it rougher; they are still connected, and every yank and pull is a message to both of their bodies. Move, move. So he moves this ruffian, pulling his arms together and rolling to the side, intending to catch his wrist and reel him in.

[minuteofangle]

It's a good throw. Unfortunately, the other fucker doesn't get stunned by it. The reaction is nearly immediate; this fucker's fast, all right. And trained. Gabe hisses as he's hauled forward, stumbling before he can correct and going down hard.

He twists as he goes down, wrenching hard against the chain. And punching forward with his hidden knife in the same breath. Gabe knows himself. He has to win this thing fast or he won't win at all. Shock and awe, the way the Wolves taught him.

out of the woods

[seaboard]

With her cottage not far from said woods, it is not hard to miss him on her way into town for the day.

A woman raised to no violence, the sight of him once would have terrified her, bloody and proud of himself. But of late, it has been worn down and the one exhausted thought: I am going to need to start carrying spare shifts with me.

"There will be more." is all she can say as he stands in front of him. Tall for a woman, some 5'10 even before all of her curly hair that peeks out wildly from her hair veil, so that she can meet his gaze evenly. "Come. There is a river. Let's get you clean and I have something for you to wear." A pause, because he is just so distinctive. "Are you what they - Targaryen? Their clan name is Targeryn? If so, I suspect I may know your kin."

[fiat]

Daemon Targaryen is comforted that someone knows the respect he is owed. His head tilts to the side. Perhaps he'll favor this woman. Perhaps he won't. He hasn't decided, and in that ambiguity lies his own power.

He steps forward.

"How warm for the north," he says, droll. He doesn't know where he is, but he knows where he isn't. Still, nowhere else can he reason being identified without being bowed to. And he should like to see her pretty head bobbing.

"Daemon," he says, and takes this as an opportunity. "King Consort of the Seven Kingdoms." (Even he knows what his title will be, and it's a stretch to think himself not Prince Consort, but if a man cannot dream when faced with an ignorant peasant, what can he do?)

[seaboard]

The man clearly has already had a time of getting to the main road leading into the village, and it would get no better for him - especially as he says his title. Was this Alicent's husband then? Hm.

She bows her head and dips a curtsey that is respectful, before she rises back up again to meet his gaze squarely. There is a careful and kept blankness to her expression, neither mirth nor grief. "Queen Gilia, Second-Child of the Isle St. Loe, She Who Sings the Ocean to Prosperity and Daughter-Sea." Time to get it over with, then. "I am afraid you are to be in for a shock. Wherever you think you are, I must regretfully tell you, you are not there at all, Your Grace."

[fiat]

A queen is a queen, be it from Tyrosh or Pentos. Yet she speaks an unfamiliar babble of nonsense, and Daemon sees an opportunity. He steps forward, a knife's smile on his lips. "Are we in your lands, Daughter of the Sea?"

[seaboard]

She shakes her head, a pull of something like longing in her gaze for a home she was so long cut from now.

"No, there is not even a Sea here to console me." Gilia shakes her head. "The ruler of these lands, is the Duchess." May she rot. "The town is called Rubilykskoye." She adjusted her basket on her arm, all her sewing in it.

"Come. We will get you cleaned up, and you can ask me all you want. You'll probably have as many questions as I did no doubt."

Best not to frighten him with her gifts first thing, instead she waves him along the road. There went her plans for the morning. So she waves him to come with her.

out of the woods

[onlycake]

[ She looks different than he's ever seen her, except maybe for that night he'd led her into Flea Bottom in borrowed rags. Fabrics made for walking the trails in the woods, for helping Ari around the cabin. Still in her skirts, even though plenty of women wear pants here.

He looks different than she's ever seen him, but nothing could matter less to her. Blood and all, the sight of him cuts so sharply she could cry. Very few could have come out of the woods and screamed 'home' louder than him. It's only his nakedness, the disorientation she knows he must be feeling like she had, that keeps her from dissolving.

The Valyrian comes so naturally to her lips that one would never known she'd only once had the occasion to use it in months. ]

𝖄𝖔𝖚 𝖈𝖆𝖒𝖊.

[fiat]

[She is always beautiful. That is the problem. Seeing her so small and weak, has always pressed a bruise into his heart. It feels like something infectious, something hot and inflamed. It feels like dragonfire.]

[He wants to touch her.]

[He does not. (She's filthy.)]

𝖂𝖍𝖆𝖙 𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖕𝖊𝖓𝖊𝖉 𝖙𝖔 𝖞𝖔𝖚? [Anger is a finely tailored suit, for him, but that makes it no less true.] 𝖂𝖍𝖔 𝖉𝖎𝖉 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖘?

[onlycake]

[ The way he looks at her and sees her, even with that tinge of disgust that does not elude her notice, feels enough like an embrace that she does not reach for him. He's found her, he knows her, he's here.

But how could he know what Aegon had done to her? Her hand flies to the scar on her chest without thinking, the taste of steel never far from her memory. She's been out of her finery so long she doesn't even think about what she's wearing. ]

𝕬𝖊𝖌𝖔𝖓. [ The name tumbles out, hot with hatred. ] 𝕳𝖊'𝖘 𝖍𝖊𝖗𝖊, 𝖇𝖚𝖙 𝖘𝖔 𝖒𝖚𝖈𝖍 𝖔𝖑𝖉𝖊𝖗.

[ She doesn't expect him to understand. She hadn't at first, but he needs to know. If Aegon came after her, who's to say he won't send Aemond after him? But that's when she finally seems to notice the hair clinging to his improvised club.

Brown, not silver. Disappointment rather than horror colors her face. ]

I don't believe that was him. I'd never have such good luck.

[fiat]

𝕺𝖑𝖉𝖊𝖗 𝖆𝖓𝖉 𝖓𝖔𝖙 𝖉𝖊𝖆𝖉? 𝕳𝖔𝖜 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖌𝖔𝖉𝖘 𝖗𝖔𝖇 𝖚𝖘 𝖔𝖋 𝖏𝖚𝖘𝖙𝖎𝖈𝖊.

[He spits each sibilant with a disgusted hiss. This kind of poetic theatre is also his due, and it feels right. If he cannot stab and kill his enemy now, he may as well swear it to the stars.]

[And there is Rhaenyra, small and soft as a maiden, as the beautiful light she was. It is a relief, perhaps even a guilty one, to see her so, and not the woman wracked by bitter grief. Did he leave her? Is she gone? Has he traded her for this waif, unruined by Harwin Strong?]

[He kneels and holds her face between his hands. There's nothing to be done about the nudity, now. He keeps it out of mind until it's relevant.] It will be his soon enough. I need only sword and plate. Not even plate, if he is in his cups. [Anything for her.]

i'm living for the timeline disparity

[onlycake]

[ It feels like sunlight, his righteous anger on her behalf. He'd left her, he hadn't stolen her from her wedding, nothing had been enough for him to act and take her as she'd wished.

But he's here now and the promise is what breaks her, the promise of justice and revenge and most tempting of all, protection. She lets the tiniest of sobs escape her before surging past his hands and throwing her arms around him, a girl once again.

She's never allowed herself to show weakness in front of him before, but she's felt so weak without him. ]

𝕴'𝖛𝖊 𝖒𝖎𝖘𝖘𝖊𝖉 𝖞𝖔𝖚, 𝖚𝖓𝖈𝖑𝖊.

d. out of the woods (and into the fire)

[sapphyre]

It's not him Daemon crosses at the edge of the wood, but a Rubean watchman under Aemond's fold. Word bubbles around quickly. The image in his mind's eye isn't enough to satisfy a sudden and unquenchable dread.

Fuck.

He needs to see him with his own eye. Breathe the same air. Gods be willing he doesn't cleave his uncle's head clean from his body the moment he does. Were their circumstances swapped, he knows he'd be greeted the same. It would be wise to eliminate him swiftly. If only he wouldn't have to do it from one month to the next.

Fuck!

Aemond waits for him at the city gate with two of his men. His hand postured obnoxiously on the pommel of his Valyiran blade still sheathed on his belt. Posed to look lazily menacing, but every inch of him has run cold. Tension lines his shoulders as the pale, naked vision of Daemon lands before him. The prince would seem nearly frozen, violet eye locked sharply on him. As if he could flay him with it alone.

The question is, does he know who he is? What he did?

"Uncle." (Derogatory.)

https://shorturl.at/OIhrc

[fiat]

Daemon sees his wife, her eyes puffy, her pale face red with wracking sobs. He sees the blood oozing out from under her dress again-- that is a nightmare that repeats, one he will not admit to the old gods or the new. He sees- he sees her puny half-brother, that misbegotten thing with the shriveled soul. He sees a mistake to be corrected. His hands itch to reach around Aemond's ivory throat and rip it out.

That would be insufficient.

(He never cared for the Strong boy, but he was Viserys' grandson.)

"These men," Daemon says with a sly joviality, as though he is the one wearing armor, "do they know what you did?"

[sapphyre]

He sees a man he once idolized, a second son who carved a name for himself and a reputation of a dragon. His sister's agony, his brother's rage, his mother's crippling fear. He had stumbled into these woods hunting Daemon, who knew it would him a half year to catch up.

The threat gives little but a flash of indignance.

"Shall I tell them what you did?" There's warmth underneath the surface, bubbling in wait. A flinch of his eyebrow, challenging him as if he were any other broad chested squire in the yard. He's not afraid of him, he never was. Why would he now? "I cannot say they would side in your favor."

[fiat]

Daemon sees a boy pale enough to be a corpse, and it is only a shame he cannot make him one. Yes, yes, he'll arise in a month's time. Daemon did not torture that peasant boy for sport. Information is the first thing you get when you appear in a new place. That, and reputation. Both served Daemon's needs.

He grins. He laughs. "This man goaded his drunken brother to kill my wife." He speaks directly to the guardsmen. "The brother is a milksop. I doubt he could feed himself unaided. The true villain is your guard captain, and my wife has been reduced to a child by your Duchess' magic, long may she rule." A brief bow for a monarch he plans to behead. "I will be her champion, and I demand satisfaction."

The guards take a step back, but only a step.

b., has daemon been timing the changes?

[bequin]

His ankles are in reach, probably through just a few millimeters of leather. Beta mentally choreographs the unsheathing of the knife and the twist to cut above his heel and buy herself a few seconds to roll into standing while he bleeds. Sauer would be pleased, but this isn't real, and Beta isn't prideful. Whoever this man is, he is not worth the aftermath.

The grey sash on her shoulder slides down as she goes from hands and knees to an easy stretch, arms out before her, chest on the ground, knees shoulder width apart, ass up. Not intentionally-- this is for stretching the hips and the lower back, as it was taught at the schola, but Beta is adaptable, and this has the advantage of pulling the archaically fitting trousers tight across her bottom and freeing the secondhand men's shirt out of where she tucked it at the waistband, showing off the skin at her lower back.

She turns her head, looking up at him over her arm. She can do alluring.

"From down here?"

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[fiat]

Daemon can appreciate a willingness to play the fucking game. There's altogether too much flinching going on for his tastes. He does not ask for enthusiasm-- even his bloodlust has its limits-- but this is a competition. Be a good sport.

(He was never much of an ass man, but a prize is a prize. He looks.)

"You've already made a good start." Because he's not speaking to a relative, there's something like enthusiasm in his voice. "I'm curious to see where you'll go from here."

[bequin]

She looks away, watching the crowd mill about around them. In shifting her position, she finally pulls the tails of her shirt out from where she tucked them; gravity has the hem slid down her back and pool right about where her torso touches the ground. One of the pairs of feet walking by leads up to one of the waiting staff, carrying a tray of drinks.

"It's hot," she says, verging away from anything that might sound like a whine. "I might be more creative after having a drink."

Beta spares a hand to pull her hair over one shoulder, angle her chest towards him as her fingers linger on the collar. The shirt's linen and will go translucent when wet. She mostly hopes for her own sake that he picks something low on sugar.

[fiat]

If Daemon had not spent his whole life being pandered to, he might get the sense that he's being pandered to. As a prince, it just feels normal. Of course she isn't doing this out of the kindness of her heart. They're both adults, here. She wants something. He wants something, too. If she plays the game, they both... well, they don't both win. They get something.

Today, she gets mercy.

"I hate mess," he lies. But his feet are removed from her back; and he curls his hand toward himself, a beckoning gesture. "Come here. Let me see you."

[bequin]

They are edging out of 'wary' and into 'comfortable'; Beta's happy to play any part required of her, but they usually come with dossiers beforehand. Not like she needs one for this. What he says goes, so it's time to get upright, or at least on her knees.

She makes a show of the roll of her spine up into straight, like a feline stretch, and then she braces a hand on the ground so she can slide forward into his personal space and sit back on her heels, with her hands on her thighs, palms down. Her eyes are dark and large, and her teeth are white and orderly, but everything else is plain.