My Name is Spooks

Jomi hits Madeira's cat with a magical stick, chaos ensues.

(This is a thread from Mizahar's fantasy role playing forums. Why don't you register today? This message is not shown when you are logged in. Come roleplay with us, it's fun!)

The Diamond of Kalea is located on Kalea's extreme west coast and called as such because its completely made of a crystalline substance called Skyglass. Home of the Alvina of the Stars, cultural mecca of knowledge seekers, and rife with Ethaefal, this remote city shimmers with its own unique light.

My Name is Spooks

Postby Madeira Dusk on December 29th, 2019, 2:09 am

Image
17th of Winter, 519


"Jomi!" Madeira shouted, her trademark Mom Voice slicing through the quiet morning like weaponized disappointment. "I know you're here. If you make me call you again it'll not go well for you."

The small spiritist stood in the middle of the open first floor of the Infinity Manor in her pink nightdress and robe, a hundred pounds of concentrated displeasure, with a frown on her lips and thunder in her eyes. In one hand was her cocked hip, the other held a small stone figurine. Spooks the not-cat, an inky black creature with bone armour and long wickedly pointed teeth, was winding around her bare feet, meowing plaintively. He was bored, all cooped up in the house while the snow fell in endless drifts. He wanted her attention and his new ploy was to try and get it with pity. The Spiritist edged him and his sharp claws away with her toe.

Then the moment Jomi showed himself Madeira's eyes snapped to the ghost, and she thrust the familiar figurine out so hard it ended up halfway through his chest. It was a small, polished stone Okomo made of jade that sat prettily in her uncovered hand.

"Look at what Moritz was playing with!" she hissed like an angry goose, waving it in Jomi's face like shame was something that could be applied with vigorous scrubbing. "You can't just leave these things lying about! He's just a toddler, he could have been crushed!"

It looked innocuous to the naked eye, but both of them knew better. The thing was a magic item, made to animate and expand to the size of a real Okomo upon a verbal command. Harmless in itself, but certainly not something a curious toddler should be sticking in his mouth.

Suddenly the figurine dropped to the floor with a crack and Madeira wheezed with exertion as a ten pound cat creature dropped into her arms out of nowhere. Spooks looked up at her, on his back with his paws curled and his lamp like eyes wide and beseeching. He mewled like a tiny kitten.

"Not now, Spooks", Madeira huffed, unceremoniously dumping the cat to the floor. But Spooks never hit the ground. With a shiver of disturbed air and a lingering smell of liquorice candy the creature disappeared, only to reappear on the kitchen table several feet away with his armoured back to them and the tip of his tail flicking his displeasure.

"Listen," she turned back to the ghost, ignoring the cat. "We're going to get everything you own all laid out and we're going to pack it away... somewhere. Go hunt it all down, I'll corral everything down here. I want every bobble and knicknack accounted for. If you have so much as sneezed a glob of soulmist I want it accounted for. Understood?"
User avatar
Madeira Dusk
long may she reign
 
Posts: 1774
Words: 1599220
Joined roleplay: October 11th, 2016, 7:45 pm
Race: Human
Character sheet
Storyteller secrets
Journal
Plotnotes
Medals: 11
Featured Contributor (1) Featured Thread (3)
Mizahar Grader (1) Overlored (1)
Donor (1) One Thousand Posts! (1)
One Million Words! (1) Lhavit Seasonal Challenge (1)
2018 Mizahar NaNo Winner (1)

My Name is Spooks

Postby Jomi on January 2nd, 2020, 6:17 pm

Image

"Good morning Jomi, I'm so glad to see you!"

The ghost cocked his hip and flicked his wrist in a sarcastic imitation of the small woman. His voice was high and mocking while he sassed the master of the house to her face. It was too early in the day for a lecture and Jomi wanted to make it sure his displeasure was known. In the kitchen the Spooks yowled mournfully while sneaking a look with its back still facing the pair. Just to make sure they remembered that he was ignoring them.

Jomi disliked being summoned away from his amusements. Especially for menial chores. But to disobey orders meant a having the master grade soulmist supply cut off. It was the only thing left on Mizahar that could make the restless dead feel anything. And Jomi was willing to put up with a lot to keep himself in the spiritists favour.

Except for being nice.

Jomi scoffed hard, his eyes taking a wolfish shine. "Alright Titless, I'll find the items. But if I'm now in charge of watching what your kids get into, I'd better get a space for myself and my things."

The ghost vanished with a puff of disturbed air and began blinking around the house. Returning every few chimes to deposit his treasures on the sitting room rug.

A Strafire dagger he'd been gifted by the god Leth was first. A silver blade with a blue sheen that was as light as a feather. Next the cloth sack that contained an entire bar and a taxidermied monkey that would answer any question. Both 'acquired' by threatening a black market merchant in Lahvit. The jade Okomo figurine and two sticks of questionable origin that had been lifted from the same dealer were placed to the side.

The Tanora ring stayed in the saddlebag hidden in the chicken coup. A small silver ring that could turn back time was too precious of an item to be shown off.

Once everything had been accounted for and laid out the ghost fetched his most treasured magic item. The plump red hen laid nestled in his arms, perfectly content to be carried. Rosie had been found in a shipwreck on the Suvan sea. The ghost had fished her out of the ocean and they'd been inseparable ever since. They had had many chickens at the Infinity manor, but this one was undoubtably his.

The ghost placed the hen on the richly embroidered ottoman. Leaving the bird to peck at the loose threads as he straitened out his items.

"There." Jomi exclaimed proudly. "Everything you asked for is here. Now what?"

A pop of punctured fabric announced the arrival of Spooks. Now seemingly done with the aloof act, the creature blinked on to the back of the couch with his dagger like mitts already outstretched and batting at the hen. A flurry of red feathers took flight as the startled Rosie jumped back towards the ghost for safety. Jomi's features pulled back into a snarl as his long dead protective instincts activated and in the space of a tick, snatched at the closest hitting weapon he had, and punted the creature off the couch with a badger-like hiss.
User avatar
Jomi
One more day would have been nice
 
Posts: 234
Words: 234471
Joined roleplay: April 11th, 2017, 7:55 pm
Race: Ghost
Character sheet
Storyteller secrets
Plotnotes
Medals: 2
Featured Thread (1) Overlored (1)

My Name is Spooks

Postby Madeira Dusk on January 19th, 2020, 9:40 pm

Image
Madeira reared back, preparing to bring the Hand of Judgment down upon the ghost's snarky mouth, but he was already gone.

The spiritist paused, exhaling hard through her nose. The room around her seemed to recoil as the Architectrix attempted to physically remove itself from the blast zone. Through their long years together Madeira had learned the trick to controlling Jomi; and it was that you can't. He could be wrangled and redirected and coerced, but he could not be stopped. Jomi was the only one who ever insulted her to her face, and that was because was the only one who could. When ones field of fucks was empty, there were no consequences to reap.

"Titless", she hissed, her lips curled back as if to minimize how much of her mouth made contact with the word. "That should be his gods damned name. I bet that little weasel hasn't seen one in over a decade. And what's this about space", she turned to the indifferent cat-thing, which looked coolly over its bony shoulder at her. "He's petching incorporeal. He takes up less space than a fart, and is about as equally welcomed in this house. If he wants space he can haunt the lawn. Be the king of chicken shit and lawn trimmings."

Calling upon the endless patience of teachers and mothers, Madeira mastered herself with a few dark muttering and got to work. She was going to purge this house of all things dangerous. And considering all the mages, beasts, and angry ghosts that lived there, not to mention the sentient house itself, this would not be an easy task.

She was making sure the workshop and basement were securely locked, and instructing the Manor on exactly what was and was not allowed within its boarders, when Jomi finally returned with his last magic items. It was quite an impressive array, for a ghost. He had made like a bandit when they had busted the black market smuggling ring the year prior. They weren't sure what all of it did, but the nature of magic made her wary of testing them out. That was an easy way to lose some fingers, or ones mind.

Lastly he had brought Rosie, the magical miracle chicken. Madeira had neglected to tell those few envious and admiring acquaintance of hers that the thousands of kina worth of jewels she wore every day came out of the back end of that chicken.

"Why'd you bring her?" Madeira huffed, exasperated. "She's not exactly danger-"

At that moment two things happened at once. The cat, frustrated and ignored, disappeared in a flicker and launched himself at the fat red hen. Then Jomi, in his haste to rescue his pet, picked up the nearest item and batted Spooks out of the air like a fluffy baseball. Madeira saw the event as if in slow motion: the flared-up ghost holding a rod that was somehow disintegrating in his hands, and the cat sailing across the room at the speed of panic. Spooks yowled out a very distinct "Ow!" before disappearing in a blink before he hit the drapes.

Madeira rushed forward and snatched the panicked chicken from its spread-wing rampage. Its claws immediately found purchase in the Spirtist's nightdress, and her hands were pinched mercilessly by its sharp little beak. "You complete idiot", she shot at the ghost, who stood in a ring of dust that was all that was left of one of his magic items. "If you cannot leave magic items laying around, you most certainly cannot hit things with them! Spooks is probably dust now! Or stone. Or maybe you shot him into space. Gods I have no idea why I put up with you."

"Yes, why do you put up with him?"

Silence fell upon the room as human, ghost, chicken and sentient building seemed to turn as one to regard the cat-thing sitting back on the kitchen table where he'd been not two chimes before. His big orange eyes were narrowed and his tail was twitching irritatedly. Above the bony ridge of his plate armored brow a welt was developing under his inky fur. Madeira's brain stuttered and stalled as her and Spooks' eyes met.

"What."

"What?"

"WHAT."

"What?!"

The cat's miffedness was dissolving under Madeira's shock. He was shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, his ears back and his dagger claws digging great furrows in the table. But it was clear he was alarmed and confused by the Spiritist's reaction, rather than reacting to his own sudden ability to speak. And the longer Madeira looked at this strange creature the more confused she became in turn. There was something new in the creature's huge eyes. A spark of awareness or even intelligence that had most assuredly not been there before.

Spooks used to be a cat. A kind of vacant, dizzy little cat that she had purchased in Alvadas years ago. Now three years later it had aged backwards into an enormous kitten, and was growing all the time. Plate armor made of bone sat across its back, back legs and brow. It had teeth right out of an thalassophobics worst nightmare, and claws that made mountain lions feel inadequate. It blinked like a ghost, moved across graves like a ghost, and somehow smelled like every grandmothers candy bowl. And now, to top it all off, the thing seemed to have developed sentience out of nowhere. She had to wonder if the fact she bought him from a shop called Impawsable Pets in the City of Illusion had anything to do with these developments. Or maybe it was just that the life he was accompanying them through was just that weird. She glanced at the small pile of artifacts at Jomi's feet.

Most of the things that went haywire in Madeira's life could be traced back to the ghost. So now, flustered and looking for someone to blame, she naturally turned to Jomi. Winding up, she speedballed the chicken at him. Rosie opened her wings and sailed harmlessly through the ghost. The house cracked the front door open, and the chicken ran for its life with a terrified squawk.
User avatar
Madeira Dusk
long may she reign
 
Posts: 1774
Words: 1599220
Joined roleplay: October 11th, 2016, 7:45 pm
Race: Human
Character sheet
Storyteller secrets
Journal
Plotnotes
Medals: 11
Featured Contributor (1) Featured Thread (3)
Mizahar Grader (1) Overlored (1)
Donor (1) One Thousand Posts! (1)
One Million Words! (1) Lhavit Seasonal Challenge (1)
2018 Mizahar NaNo Winner (1)

My Name is Spooks

Postby Jomi on February 1st, 2020, 11:18 pm

Image

"Wait, did Spooks say 'Ow'?"

A plume of dust rose out of the ghosts hand as the last sliver of his magic stick fell away to nothing. The ghost peered at the spot above the floor where Spooks had vanished with miffed curiosity as his plundered artifact dissolved into a shimmering dust of that settled at his feet. Rosie, meanwhile, squawked with the kind of wings out, puffed up, fluffy panicked pose of prey animals desperately trying to look intimidating. The fat red hen leapt away from the ghost to flap about the room to spread her chaos.

"You complete idiot", The master of the house scooped up the hen and stomped over to the ghost wielding the wrath of gods in her eyes. "If you cannot leave magic items laying around, you most certainly cannot hit things with them!"

"How was I to know a petching stick would catapult spooks into space!" The ghost roared back defensively. For once the ghost had no retort. Instead he adverted his eyes in shame like a naughty puppy. He might have hit the creature in defence of his pet but he did feel bad for the little black tom...thing.

"Gods I have no idea why I put up with you."

"Yes, why do you put up with him?"

A long, pregnant pause fell over the house as each resident and creature in turn rotated slowly towards the kitchen. Every thought in the ghosts mind tied, even tentatively, to the realms of reason and logic came to an abrupt stop and died on his tongue. Spooks had materialized back onto the kitchen counter and had stated his question very matter-of-factly. As if it were the most normal thing in the world.

Jomi raised his hackles in surprise and hissed at the bone armoured creature several seconds too late. Just as Rosie took Madeira's toss as the blessing it was and sprinted for the exit with one last distressed squawk

"What the PETCH are YOU?!"


-1 Sentience stick
Last edited by Jomi on March 14th, 2020, 3:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Jomi
One more day would have been nice
 
Posts: 234
Words: 234471
Joined roleplay: April 11th, 2017, 7:55 pm
Race: Ghost
Character sheet
Storyteller secrets
Plotnotes
Medals: 2
Featured Thread (1) Overlored (1)

My Name is Spooks

Postby Madeira Dusk on February 2nd, 2020, 1:23 am

Image
"He's our cat you bonce", Madeira stated factually, while groping for something else to throw at the ghost. "Our cat, who's not a cat, who you've ruined. Now stand still while I find something to wail you with."

"I'm Spooks", the cat supplied helpfully, his armored shoulders still hunched uncomfortably. "My name is Spooks. And I don't feel particularly ruined."

Madeira stopped with her hands dual wielding someone's forgotten teacups and took a moment to really look at the cat. Dijed pooled and sparked behind her eyes, and slowly the shape of his aura began to slide in and out of focus. She squinted at him, the hazy idea of shape and colour sharpening, until suddenly she yelped with surprise. The teacups tumbled out of her hands and shattered at her feet.

Spook's aura was enormous. It reached a full half meter further from where it used to. It had also deepened, and what little she could decipher moved in new, complicated ways. It was the kind of aura she had only ever seen on adult humanoids. There was no question about it: Spooks was sentient.

Stepping carefully over the mess on the floor, Madeira slowly approached the kitchen and the large bone crusted cat that sat atop the table. She was tipping her head from one side to the other, as if this was a mystery that could be solved by observing it from another angle.

"Are you sure you're still Spooks?"

The cat gave a very human like sigh, then swiped the pad of his paw down his face in a very cat-like way. "Yes", he answered patiently. If could have humor her with a smile, he probably would have.

"This isn't some sort of possession? Hypnotic trance? Nuit brain-swap?"

"What? No!"

"Just making sure."

She knelt in front of him until the two were nearly nose to nose. Spook's ears flattened back to his head, and he shuffled back a bit. Madeira activated her dijed enhanced sight again, and this time, knowing what to expect, she was able to hold the focus. Beneath the staggering complexity, the emotional range of which she could read but little, and the depth of the patterns, deep into the corona that barely extended from his furry body, she could still see Spooks. It had warped a little, and grown a lot, but beneath the madness she was sure this was the same soul that resided in the kitten she had bought three years ago in a little shop on the Alvadas streets. That was good enough for her. She blinked away the excess dijed and stood, hands on her hips and her eye narrowed critically.

"I guess now you're going to want your own space too."

The cat opened its spiked maw and a strange guff of sound rattled from his chest. It took a moment for the Spiritist to realize he was laughing. " About that..."
User avatar
Madeira Dusk
long may she reign
 
Posts: 1774
Words: 1599220
Joined roleplay: October 11th, 2016, 7:45 pm
Race: Human
Character sheet
Storyteller secrets
Journal
Plotnotes
Medals: 11
Featured Contributor (1) Featured Thread (3)
Mizahar Grader (1) Overlored (1)
Donor (1) One Thousand Posts! (1)
One Million Words! (1) Lhavit Seasonal Challenge (1)
2018 Mizahar NaNo Winner (1)

My Name is Spooks

Postby Madeira Dusk on March 15th, 2020, 6:58 pm

Image
Grades Awarded!

Don't forget to edit/delete your grade request!


Madeira Craven

Skills
  • Intimidation: 2xp
  • Organization: 2xp
  • Auristics: 1xp
  • Interrogation: 1xp

Lores
  • Organization: making a tally
  • Intimidation: aggressive shaming
  • Jomi: can't be controlled
  • Spooks: sentient
  • Intimidation: Mom Voice
  • Auristics: recognizing sentience
  • Interrogation: straightening out the facts

Awards & Retribution


Notes
Notes here.


Jomi

Skills
  • N/A

Lores
  • Jomi: sass master
  • Mockery: imitation
  • Tanora ring: kept secret
  • Negotiation: nothing for free
  • Spooks: sentient
  • Brawling: anything is a weapon in a pinch

Awards & Retribution
-Sentience Stick

Notes
Notes here.
User avatar
Madeira Dusk
long may she reign
 
Posts: 1774
Words: 1599220
Joined roleplay: October 11th, 2016, 7:45 pm
Race: Human
Character sheet
Storyteller secrets
Journal
Plotnotes
Medals: 11
Featured Contributor (1) Featured Thread (3)
Mizahar Grader (1) Overlored (1)
Donor (1) One Thousand Posts! (1)
One Million Words! (1) Lhavit Seasonal Challenge (1)
2018 Mizahar NaNo Winner (1)


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 0 guests