Acanthus

Ariel blinked into the shadows without so much as a whisper. Acanthus found the effect mildly unsettling. She also found Ariel’s stealth to be an impressive tool, but the wrong one for such a lowly quest. More than anything, the stealth annoyed her because it left her to talk with Gambit. “So… what do you do all day?” The search for the nest distracted Acanthus; why couldn’t the stupid thing be easier to find? She thought that surely enough people had done the quest that the map data would be cheap. But here she was, turning over rock after rock, trying to hold a conversation while she lo

Acanthus relaxed muscle by muscle as they walked into the coliseum. Meeting Baldur again was a necessity bound by a thoughtless promise; truthfully, she would have preferred handling the boss by herself. Talking with the samurai felt like a stroll in a field of razorwire. Every step she took had a chance to open herself up. But meeting with Baldur was its own reward, in a strange way. It was another chance to show him her worth. “The shield suits you.” “Thank you. I’m still getting used to fighting with it. I picked it up during the Clash of Blades. I miss the feeling of mobilit

“In… Indubit…Dubital…. Yea, it’s drinking time.” She crossed the threshold with some trepidation. Last time, Acanthus had met a familiar face and made an ass of herself. She hoped for the former, and prayed desperately against the latter. But the alcohol felt warm and inviting. It promised to behave this time. Acanthus pulled the cleanest glass off the back shelf and smacked it against the table a few times. With each hit, the glass filled from the bottom sip by sip. The last smack was a little harder than she expected, causing the glass to fill up all at once and then some, sloshing

Her team’s efforts had been tight, coordinated—and now, Belregor’s flank was wide open. Morningstar and Ara had struck and backed off, leaving Acanthus a clear opening for Wilting Higanbana. The rift in her inventory called to her. It was an item labeled “Temporal Distortion,” but with precious little description besides. When she had asked around, nobody could tell her what it was or what it did. The item itself merely had the playful description “EAT ME.” “Ok then.” She pulled the Distortion from her inventory. It couldn’t be looked at directly, and she could only describe the phys

“Lightnin’ rod shord.” “I should have suspected. Freyd always has a way out, doesn’t he?” Recovering from her “seasickness,” Acanthus watched Kat lead Mari back to the carriage hand-in-hand. Love, infatuation, plain horniness—whatever the emotion was, Acanthus watched it develop with an air of dispassionate intrigue. How did those feelings develop? Was it a conscious effort on her part? Anytime she’d asked her friends, the answer was the same: a casual shrug and a non-committal “you just know.” But I don’t. So either I’m clueless, or uninterested in the mystery. Uninterested mos

@Morningstar 14 :)

Gungir's Shard Evaluation Post 7/20: Loading the following consumable onto Gungir's Shard: Memory-Whisking Whiskey | Crafter's Respite | 231851 No cost.

Hello yes one Gungan please. Muzzle preferred Gungir's Shard | 248140 | [10 Mon] Caches and expends a craftable consumable. The item to be cached must be submitted to a player's evaluation thread. Once confirmed, players may use the item to provide a buff to their characters once per thread. Other players can be affected by this item’s effects (eg. feasts, mass healing crystals), but the item cannot be used in combat. This item is tradable until an item has been evaluated on it, and a character can never own more then 1 evaluated Gungir's Shard at a given time. This item can be reset by

No quests this time. Just slaughter. Beautiful, fruitful slaughter. Four more goblins lay before her, freshly harvested. “Today is as good a day as any,” she said out loud. Changing her direction, she began to move in the direction of the nearest floating island. It appeared a good distance away, maybe two or three kilometers. There would be plenty of foraging opportunities along the way. Deciding to take a break from the flora of floor 1, she changed tactics. Equipping her mattock, she stopped and worked on some of the rocks along the way. It didn’t seem realistic for such rich nodes to

Acanthus turned a color reserved for PK markers. Her eyes slid down to Kat’s lap, where Mari’s thumb playfully stroked the girl’s thigh, and Acanthus realized that she was sending an awful lot of false positives to her friends. The carriage had not yet stopped before Acanthus tumbled out, nearly caught under a slow wheel. “Ah, um, my hand just slipped on the door. Also, it was getting a little hot in the carriage. Just a lot of heat. That’s my bad.” “Absolutely.” Acanthus was grateful for the invitation, something to direct her gnawing anxieties towards. “Lead the way, Kat.” The d

Acanthus received the Topaz gemstone a quickly tossed it into her inventory. “Yes, thank you.” When she looked up, Ariel was talking with the dragon still. It looked like they would be continuing along the chain. Surely not the *entire* chain? Acanthus had intended to catch up on Katoka’s soundtrack. And her other daily routines still called to her… Acanthus sighed internally. It was a change of plans, but probably a good change. Finding people willing to do this quest was not easy. She could always catch up later. “Next quest is this way, Ariel. And… Um…” Acanthus looked back at the

Acanthus watched Freyd pummel the grotesque from a whole being into thin layers of blood on the dungeon walls. It was the first time she had seen him laugh. And even then, it wasn’t a laugh. Eerie cackling bounced off of the walls, lending to the unsettling air, but it did not slow her down. Acanthus was no stranger to strange behavior in combat. How people preferred to fight (and cope with the fighting) was their own journey, and she had little desire to judge. But she did have an uncharacteristic desire to pry, if only a little. “Sounds like you’ve been to Floor 29 for that bugged quest

Acanthus looked to Ariel, and the Gambit. And then the dragon. With a sigh, she sheathed her sword. Three times she’d done the quest, and every time she had been the one stuck talking to the dragon. She liked dragons, but her fascination with the quest had ended a while back. She spoke plainly to the wounded dragon, like asking a stranger for directions. “Hi, yes. Acanthus. You don’t remember me because it’s a new quest instance, but—” “Be ye friends or foes?” The dragon rasped. “I—we’re friends. And who talks like that? They didn’t even talk like that in the 1400s.” Fuzzie

Acanthus grinned back. Nicknames were not really her thing: they were so informal. And she didn’t really know how to be informal. But she had engaged with the bit for a little too long, and now Mari—Marigold—had accepted the name. Ah, a little informality won’t kill you. Kat extended her shotglass with a playful pout. "Another?" Acanthus laughed. “Enjoy it for now; once we’re done, you’ll have to pace yourself.” * * * The cart hobbled along with its familiar pace. The three girls rode in the carriage side by side, with Acanthus crammed to the side like nori in a bento box.

A familiar signature at the bottom of the LFG post. Acanthus grinned, and leaned in to finish the rest of the message. “The Ripper, hm? I’ve been meaning to swing by and get that chain. Freyd seems to get a fair amount of use from his. I can think of worse ways to spend a day.” She arrived in Glyndbourne (far later than she had intended) and approached the group with an apologetic nod. “I lost track of time. I hope I didn’t keep you all waiting too long.” Acanthus chided herself for slacking off. In the real world, she made an effort to be places before anyone else. And while she had

Baldur, Made it down to the Coliseum. Whenever you’re ready. No rush. Acanthus had been putting off this day far too long. Ever since she had visited for tea, she dreaded meeting with the samurai again. It wasn’t his fault, he had been nothing short of the perfect host: gracious, pleasant, and accommodating. The fault was with her. She had left on an awkward note, practically begging to be released from the conversation that she had started. “We have veterans returned from battle, broken and crying in their sleep. I am one of them.” The bluntness of his

If the info brokers were to be trusted, Sand Crab was hands-down the most popular respawning fight. Acanthus believed it, too; anytime she was in town, there was another group of people on their way to the beach. There were always six, always engaged in that kind of small talk that made you think they were all on the same page. It made Acanthus just a tinge jealous. She had killed the crab once, a while back. But it had been so long ago, she strained to recall how it had gone. Morningstar and Freyd, Oscar and Wulfrin, and Cordelia… it had been too long since she had seen a few of them. Sh

Belregor’s form shattered into pieces that struck out against the players. Each step around the boss forced different images into shape: Hirru, then Mina, and finally Lessa. The thought of fighting players chilled her to the bone. Rise. Clash. Move; dispatch. The river of time slowed sluggishly, washing to shore painful memories of careless rage. Acanthus recalled the rhythm of that fight: the heavy reports of steel on steel, footwork thudding through the sand like a dance that afforded no mistakes. It was a rhythm that lifted Acanthus effortlessly above herself and allowed her to ri

"I have a request. It's a bit of a larger order, so I don't know how you want to handle pricing. Just name whatever you want and I can pay." Requesting from @Demian. Plain Tofu and Rice | ROLLID | T4 Demonic Feast | ACC II | Protein II Generous portions of bland staples to share with the party. The absence of seasoning is a Demian staple itself.

Another call to kill Terra Firma. How could she refuse? One day, that scale was going to make the difference between life or death. It never hurt to have some additional mitigation whenever it counted the most. After getting lost in Fortaleza longer than she cared to admit, Acanthus finally found Ciela, waiting just off the main path through town, sipping on what looked like a refreshing drink. “I’m still not used to seeing you in all that armor,” Acanthus remarked. She approached her friend with a warm smile. “Not that it’s a bad look; it’s just that we only ever seem to meet up for

“Right, an adult. I’m sorry.” When she was a child, it bothered her for adults to talk down to her so regularly. Here she was, doing the same thing. Something in the boy’s—the man’s—attitude shifted. Gambit sprinted ahead of the other two, inspecting rocks and shrubs for any sign of dragons. “The searching skill… doesn’t actually work that way, right?” Acanthus whispered to Ariel. “I typically activate it so that it can tell me where to go. I have to be close to wherever I’m searching, but I don’t have to…” She trailed off, observing the boy enthusiastically turn over rocks and peel apart

The force of the titan’s quake left her reeling in its hand. With a sense of dread, she looked out over the landscape again, only to see Pinball flying off the mountain. Her breath caught, and she swallowed the urge to yell or scream, or Cardinal forbid leap off the mountain to check on him. The fall would not kill him—it was mathematical certainty. But that did not change the height she perceived, or the cold wind whipping through her hair, reminding her that she would meet the same fate if she did not finish the job. As if to remind Acanthus, the Colossus rumbled, shaking loose bits of

“I t htink that four set ts of S tairs wil be a goo d w aty to sober up just enough.” Over the long trek, her speech slowly returned to a semblance of normalcy. “The nickname… I didn’t mean to make it a thing. My mind was just wandering from syllable to syllable. Mari. Gold. Marigold. The funny thing is that I’m not really sure what you’re hearing. I’m speaking Japanese; is that what you’re hearing? Puns and word associations don’t really translate very well either. So how does Cardinal know what to say on my behalf? Honestly,” Acanthus slugged something amber from a dark bottle (wit

A bear statue? Did she mean the totem? From Scents of the Wild? The remark about a minor damage boost certainly matched. Acanthus opened her mouth to say something, and then closed it again. Ariel knew what she was doing, and Acanthus did not want to risk the revelation that she did not. This quest yielded a boss fight, and possibly some other mysterious benefit. Perhaps it was a bear statue. As far as she had asked around, nobody had ever completed the quest. Whatever rewards lay at the end of the chain remained hidden to her (and all the info brokers she had talked to). “Last time

Her tactics had changed since the last floor boss. She was used to maneuvering: to rolling underneath the broad swipes, approaching from the flank, and taking advantage of the chaos. With heavy armor, she became the chaos. With uncharacteristic disregard, she waded to the front of the fighting, eager to test her vitality to the limit. She had survived no fewer than three spectral knights. This was the fourth and nothing more. “What a pathetic boss fight.” She caught a hewing blow meant for Jomei, straining under the weight. “Do some damage! I guarantee I’ll hit you harder. So come on!!”