Lightning-Strike Family/New Hope's Roleplays
Whether you are visiting this page by accident, on purpose or through pressured coercion, welcome, one and all! Some of you may know New Hope, having met or fought against him, and those of you who do may know that his roleplays are written in a surrealistic, stream-of-consciousness fashion, playing fast-and-loose with language, grammar and reality. Since I enjoy writing for him so much, I have decided to record them all here, so that I will never forget them.
Please have a little read through. Who knows? You may like them.
Roleplay from New Hope (8 days, 1 hour ago)
The banging on the door resonated through the entire house, rattling New Hope's teeth with the force. He shuddered; he hated anything to with teeth, finding them oddly creepy. Not in some spooky way, obviously, but in an "are they bone, why are they shiny, what are these ridges in them, HOW DO I UNDERSTAND THEM" sort of way. As you do.
He paused, then slowly opened the door, dreading what he might see.
It was a letter.
Well, a letter in a hand, attached to an arm, to a body, legs, head, etc... Wait, why the hell didn't I just write 'a man was at the door, with a letter in his hand'? It's not like New Hope's a simpleton or something.
Anyway, a man was at the door, holding a letter in one meaty hand. Ironically, he was holding meat in the hand as well. New Hope recognised him as the local butcher, a simple man, in that he was comprised solely of shapes and lines, with no details or face.
There seemed to be a struggled desire to speak, but New Hope hurriedly took the letter, not wanting to see the 'no-face' (as he called him) try to speak. He quickly shut the door in his lack-of-face, and scurried upstairs with the letter clutched in his hand tightly.
Settling into his bed, he opened it with glee, and began reading. However, glee kept trying to read it over his shoulder, so he had to tell him to leave quite forcefully, which glee doelfully did. He started from the beginning once more:
'New Hope,
Where on earth have you been, my friend? Things have been hectic around here, and no-one has had the slightest clue where you got to. One day you were there, the next gone! If this letter gets to you, please reply as soon as possible.
Your friend
Hireshmont'
New Hope smiled inwardly (which is to say he did it in his mind, not that he somehow inverted his face to project a smile into his head or something. Ugh, that makes me feel sick just thinking about it. I mean, imagine the pain you'd get. I suppose it would be a good party trick though. 'So what do you do?' 'Get a load of this!' 'Aaaargh, get the hell out of my house!' Yeah, actually you'd not make many friends that way).
So people had been worried about his absence. That always made him feel warm inside, kind of like if you swallowed acid, I guess, but without all the crippling, searing pains and funny looks people would give you.
He pulled his pen out from his pen pocket, and spread out a new parchment on the table in front of him, licked his pen in thought, and began to pen a reply in pen (I'm terribly sorry for the amount of 'pen's in that sentence, but I didn't feel there was any other word that could describe New Hope's inner turmoil accurately. Possibly 'acute inner turmoil' actually. Oh, hindsight, such a wonderful gift, except when you're dead).
Roleplay from New Hope (7 days, 22 hours ago)
Another round of banging on his door made New Hope jump. In shock, of course, not some kind of insane joy garnered from hearing people knock on doors. He'd tried to get the architect to build his house without a door, to remove the shock element from knocking, but the man had simply looked at him in an odd way and told him that would let all the flies and commoners in.
He'd then tried to get some kind of automatic pitchfork firing device installed in the hall to account for such an eventuality, but no-one could think of how to make one. He'd tried himself, but the final invention had been prone to certain mishaps, shall we say. The last straw was when a date that had so far been going wonderfully ended with the beautiful lady being pinned to the wall of the tavern opposite. Luckily for New Hope, the innkeeper was blind, and took it to be some kind of hanging flower basket, and his patrons just figured it was some kind of practical joke.
He flung open the door once more, recoiled at the sight, or lack thereof, of No-Face's non-face, and hurriedly took the letter from the butcher's hand. Hastily shutting the door, he shuddered a little bit, then broke the seal of the letter. Scanning it quickly, he nodded in satisfaction.
Cagamir, hey? he thought to himself. He remembered the last time he'd been to Cagamir. The lush green fields, the rolling hills, the clean country air, the roiling lava pits......hmm, he hoped they'd got rid of those.
"Right", he said to no-one in particular, well, except his servant, who had been standing there all along.
Bill the Peasant, New Hope's life-long and most trusted servant, writer of notes, maker of teas, and dispenser of pants! (in that he dispensed with wearing them, not that he was some kind of vending machine for pants. This is a feudal society, not some kind of really odd and pervy sci-fi universe).
His recently shaven legs glistening in the glare of the lamps, he sprang to attention. New Hope really wished he wouldn't do that, as it made the bulge in his undergarments bounce up and down. Averting his eyes, he pointed to his belongings.
"Get my belongings together, Bill! We have travelling to do!"
Bill did some sort of hop, skip and jump to the bedroom, which made New Hope feel a little bit sick. If he wasn't going to wear pants, why did he have to walk around like that? He picked up his pen again to reply to Hireshmont, hoping it would distract him from the cries behind him of: "Aah, what a nice breeze!", "Real freedom dressing like this!" and "Ooh, careful now, Bill, we don't want to trap that in there!".
'Dear Hireshmont,
The illness seems to be subsiding now, although I still get the occasional twinge. Bill and I will be heading up to Cagamir straight away. I hope not too much has happened in my absence, since I do hate to feel left out.
Regards
New Hope
P.S You don't know how lucky you are, having fully dressed servants. These images will haunt me forever.'
He sealed the letter, tied it to the leg of his carrier pigeon, and cast it out the window, where it fell to the ground with a thump. Of cours! All his carrier pigeons were dead, he hadn't fed them for months after all. Pausing to reflect on the short but poignant life of his now deceased avian messenger, he plucked the letter from it and handed it to Bill, who was still dancing around like a........dancing thing (agh, make up your own damn similes!).
"Bill, deliver this for me, will you? Manson's dead."
Bill nodded sternly, and, tears sprouting from his face, sprinted out of the house. Hmm, possibly could have used a better verb there, but it gives the right impression of sadness tempered by discipline, or possibly the plant-like sadness of a man. Poor Bill.
Roleplay from New Hope (6 days, 19 hours ago)
New Hope arrived in Cagamir with a glint in his eye and a spring in his step (although the glint was just the reflection of the sun in his eyes, not some indication of steely determination, and the spring was actually a spring that had got stuck in his shoe and was now chafing really badly, nothing to do with a wild enthusiasm), still pondering over Hireshmont's letter.
What did he want him to do? It wasn't like Bill really worked for him, as much as he just existed in New Hope's general vicinity and occasionally interacted somewhat with his belongings. He scratched his head thoughtfully, wondering whether there was a common solution to their common problem. Unfortunately everything he came up with involved explosions so he stopped. He sighed in annoyance, blaming his lack of brainwaves on his new hat.
He'd only got it recently, and hadn't yet tried it out. It was a trendy little thing, with a flat broad rim, but was made entirely of chainmail. This polished metal caught the sun, and gave him a sort of halo around his head. It also admittedly was incredibly heavy and caused his neck to bend awkwardly, giving him terrible cramps, but such was the price of style he guessed.
A group of peasants caught sight of the halo, and mistook him for some kind of messiah, which sent them into a burning rage (peasants have a dim view of religion). Upon realising it was in fact New Hope, they were even more enraged (peasants have a dim view of New Hope), and they hurled a volley of pitchforks his way. Luckily for New Hope, peasants also have a dim view of perspective, and they all fell short. Blinded by his glowing halo, however, he passed on oblivious to the whole debacle, pausing only to absentmindedly side-step a raging peasant swinging wildly at the air a few metres from him.
The little settlement of Cagamir loomed in front of him (well, not so much 'loomed' as 'sat uneventfully on the horizon', but you have to spice some things up), and he felt a tear in his eye as he recognised the familiar haphazard layout of the town, almost as if someone had vomited the buildings onto the landscape in an architectural fever (one of the lead architects had been called Mr. Vomit, but that was just one of life's big coincidences).
He couldn't see Bill anywhere, so presumed that he must have gone ahead to set things up for him. Thinking of Bill set his mind off again. What was he going to do about him? The world answered this thought with a piercing scream coming from the direction of Cagamir.
"Where the hell are your pants?"
Undoubtedly a woman's voice, undoubtedly involving Bill and that would most likely undoubtedly end up involving him. Sighing heavily, he set off at a run, hoping that he'd get to Bill before Hireshmont. Otherwise it would be one hell of a proper introduction.
Roleplay from New Hope (3 hours, 26 minutes ago)
"Ruefillo's ahead, sir!"
The cry awoke New Hope, who had been sleeping in his hammock cart. Well, it wasn't so much a cart as a hammock carried by two servants, but Human Hammock Mobile didn't quite have the same ring to it. He'd tried to patent it, but apparently a particularly fat noble had managed, in attempting to use one, to collapse the structure (well, servants) and then get them stuck into his belly. The healers did what they could, but he somehow ingested them through his stomach and died of CMC (Commoner Related Colic). It never really took off after that, so the remaining models had been broken into their constituent parts (hammocks and servants) and distributed amongst the population; servants to nobles to be servants, hammocks to commoners as a cheap source of food (nobles aren't always that bright). The hammocks weren't really eaten though, so the countryside was now littered with unwanted bedding.
He came up alongside the captain but failed to see any sign of Ruefillo, only a man by the side of the road, waving. He strained to see further ahead but still, nothing, so he strained more and started seeing flashing spots. He stopped at that point.
"I thought you said Ruefillo was ahead?"
"Yes, sir! My cousin Ruefillo, sir!"
New Hope's brow furrowed in concentration.
"But you distinctly said 'The town of Ruefillo's ahead!'"
"His first name is 'The Town Of', sir!"
There was a brief moment of confusion (and among one of the men, arousal, but that's neither here nor there), in which New Hope furrowed his brow even more intensely, so that his eyebrows joined in the middle and looked like a hairy caterpillar (ironically, there was actually a hairy caterpillar on his eyebrow, but he hadn't noticed that yet).
"Why the hell is he called 'The Town Of Ruefillo'? Thats just bloody confusing!"
"His parents really love Ruefillo, sir!"
New Hope made to say something but stopped. It wasn't like his name was normal, although his parents had never revealed the hidden meaning behind why they had given to him. (In actuality, his name should have been 'New Hops' (his father had been an avid self-brewer of ale, but often suffered from poor harvests), but there had been a typo when they registered him as a child). He settled instead for a kind of understanding yet bemused sigh, mixed with an exasperated groan and small chuckle, but the resultant noise sounded like a man dying in a filmy soup of oats, and he got some funny looks from the men, so he cut it short, covering it up with a pretend coughing fit. Turning to leave, he realised something else, and rallied on the man once again.
"Wait, why the hell did you call me then? Why do I care about your cousin and his locational names?"
The captain just shrugged indifferently. New Hope shudded, running through in his mind all of the terrible things he could do to him. Unfortunately, his imagination was terrible, and all he could think of was making him bite on wool or to scratch at a blackboard in front of him, so he chose instead to dance away in a scuttling rage to the HHM (Human Hammock Mobile, remember?), which got him some more funny looks (and an admiring glance, but again, that's neither here nor there).
He didn't even know who the hell the guy was. He'd just appeared one day with the men New Hope had hired, tagging along and asking for spare change, until New Hope had put him in charge out of sheer frustration. Oh, well, he thought, killed two birds with an early worm. The saying didn't make any real sense, but New Hope couldn't remember any sayings fully so he just stuck bits of them together and hoped no-one would notice.
The group set off again as New Hope fell back to sleep, lulled by the drifting sway of the hammock's movement. Life was good, he thought.
Well, except for all the crap bits.
Roleplay from New Hope (just sent)
The sound of steel clashing on steel rent the air, and smoke masked the sun's heavy glow. New Hope's men were performing their normal ritual of rebuilding in Ruefillo, which consisted of gathering materials, building, realising they didn't have enough materials, going to get more, coming back to find the building they'd done had collapsed, rebuilding it, deconstructing it as they realised they had managed to build themselves into the walls, building it again, seeing it was in the wrong place, kicking it down in a rage, kicking passing peasants down in a rage, kicking each other down in a rage, kicking rage down in a rage, etc, etc...
New Hope was sitting nearby in a chair he'd built out of some of the left-over rubble from the work. In retrospect, building it out of nails hadn't been the best idea, but he was nothing if not lazy, so he was content to groan in pain and slowly impale himself on them. Wincing slightly, he watched the antics of his men with a wry smile on his face (nothing to do with his men mind, the nails had given him tetanus, and he'd now got lock-jaw), and lost himself in thought.
By God, they were slow workers! They'd been here since sunrise, and so far all they'd managed to permanently build was a fence, but even that was leaning at an odd angle and somehow embedded in the side of a house. He guessed soldiers just weren't made for this kind of labour, although coming to think of it, they weren't really made for soldiering either. When he'd asked for them from the recruiting office he'd wondered why the man there had given him such a funny look that he'd burst several veins in his head and had to be tended to by the healers. Now he could see why. There seemed to be a serious knowledge gap within his troops about weaponry, armour, or in fact anything to do with war, related to war or with the word war anywhere within five miles of it. Three men had already had to leave to injuries obtained through trying to wield their chainmail and wear their swords in confusion.
A yell awoke him from his reverie; one of them had managed to compress himself into a window, and in trying to help him, two others had accidentally nailed themselves together. Why they were even using nails in conjunction with extracting a man from a window, New Hope had no idea, but it had probably made sense to them somewhere along the line. Wait, were some of them naked? He sat bolt up right, which sent pain signals shooting to his brain as hundreds of rusty nails dove straight into his backside, and part grimaced, part gasped in shock ( that sounds a bit like 'Hnghogh!?' if you want to try it out for yourself). Yes, they were! He was so stunned for a second he forgot to breathe, and when he finally did, managed to take in a massive lungful of dust. Coughing desperately he stumbled out of his chair and into a well-dressed man standing next to him. Hurriedly apologising, he helped the man to his feet and stepped back to take a look at the stranger.
The first thing he noticed was his moustache. It was wonderfully thick, obscuring not only his mouth, but also his chin, and curled at the ends before being tucked into his ears. Ironically, he had very little hair, although what he did have was twisted into a single spike on the top of his head, and dyed bright green. The rest of his scalp was pallid in colour, but incredibly shiny, to the extent that it actually glowed and blinded passersby (one of whom fell into a pit dug in error by one of New Hope's men). His eyes shone also, but with the kind of wild spirit that you might see in the eyes of a madman, or possibly a happy child (this is not to say that happy children are mad, nor that madman should be treated like happy children. That would probably be a really bad idea). The eyebrows were thick too, sitting above the eyes like hawks, mostly because they were shaped like hawks, and gave New Hope the impression that this man was more perceptive than he could guess (or, you know, an idiot with odd eyebrows).
All in all, he was classically good looking.
"Sir New Hope?"
New Hope started. The voice was so at odds with the face. It was oddly high, with a lilting quality, but with bassy undertones and a harsh, clipped diction to it. Each word was pronounced carefully, and with a slight breathyness. The whole effect was terribly bizarre.
"Er, yes? Do you need me?"
"His Majesty Hireshmont has requested your presence, sir. After a bath, he adds."
"Bath? Oh, whatever. Of course, thank you. Tell him I will be along shortly."
"The pleasure was mine, sir. Farewell!"
With those words, he took off at a loping gait, swinging one arm slightly higher than the other, and dragging his left foot along the ground. Several women swooned and fainted as he passed. New Hope watched until he disappeared, then turned to his bumbling men.
"Listen up! I will be leaving shortly to visit his Majesty, I expect at least something to have been accomplished by the time I return."
His Captain approached nonchalantly, whistling.
"We've repaired the house there", he said, pointing behind him.
"The one that's collapsing?"
He turned to face it and shrugged again, which made New Hope's eyebrow twitch a little.
"Meh, at least it's collapsing slower than it did before."
"Thats...! Ugh, just continue doing what you're doing. Eventually something has to stay in one piece!"
Spinning on his heel (although he did it one time to many, and had to turn it into a kind of pirouette to save face), he left, doing his best to stride puposefully down the street, although the pirouette meant he had to purposefully turn round a lot to hide the fact that his head was spinning.
He wondered why Hireshmont wanted to see him, although he could guess. Those naked men of his! Why hadn't he noticed it before? He didn't know when it had started but he could guess who was responsible, since there was only one man he knew who underdressed as standard. His eyes narrowed. Just you wait, Bill!
