Dark Encounters

From FiranMUX

(It is an icy, sleety February night, and Lord Aldrikos Ista Aldrik has returned to the Ranivor's Palace, preparing to retire for the night in the guest room.)

Aldrikos enters from the hallway.

The room is dark, and nothing appears out of the ordinary.

Aldrikos trucks in with all the general subtlety of a piano falling down a flight of stairs (although his absent humming isn't nearly quite as musical). He elbows the door closed behind him and squints, confident in his eyes' quick ability to adjust to the dark as he proceeds to the small table in the corner.

<OOC: ROLL> Aldrikos rolls his Coordination at difficulty 8 and gets NO successes.

Nothing stirs. Yet.

Aldrikos starts wandering around the room haphazardly, managing to evade contact with the walls or funiture or, well, just about anything for several seconds owing to a extended series of mistimed turns. Somewhere in the darkness, he hmms. He seems to recall the room not seeming to be quite this large.

If there is another presence in the room, it is frozen into silence as footsteps bumble and armor creaks.

Aldrikos hangs a right and trusts his innate sense of direction to return him to a known location.

<OOC: ROLL> Aldrikos rolls his Luck at difficulty 10 and gets 1 success.

Aldrikos happens upon a chair. "Aha!" he ahas triumphantly, and sits down in it to start offloading large segments of iron before dropping them into what he presumes is a neat pile on the floor.

Aldrikos removes his Vrelander helmet. Aldrikos sets down the Vrelander helmet.

The blankets on the bed seem to twitch in the dark with each *thunk* of iron.

Clank!

<OOC: ROLL> Aldrikos rolls his Perception at difficulty 10 and gets NO successes.

Aldrikos rather fails to notice any untoward movements of blankets and accumulates a large pile of armor and boots and everything on the floor and stands up with a yawn. Well, it's been a long day, certainly. Time to get some sleep.

<OOC: ROLL> Aldrikos rolls his Coordination at difficulty 7 and gets 1 success.

Aldrikos finds the bed and climbs in, immediately taking possession of all of the blankets.

A very feminine shriek rends the air, and the bed rocks violently as if a body has shot out of it!

Aldrikos is, of course, rather surprised by this turn of events. "Egad!" he declares, scrambling to his feet. "Lanesh assassins!" Well, he'd better not let them get away, even if he's only armed with a pillow. Heroically diving towards the source of the scream, he prepares to bravely tackle the evil infiltrators in the palace and bring them downstairs to Damocles.

<OOC: ROLL> Dianora rolls her Perception + Agility at difficulty 10 and gets NO successes.

Her eyes barely accustomed to the dark, Dianora senses more than sees the dark shape hurtling towards her! With another shriek she tries to get out of the way, but only succeeds in crashing into a chair and spilling backwards!

Aldrikos dives at random and ends up back on the bed for as long as it takes him to bounce once, roll of the side and get rather entangled in the blankets and possibly an innocent bystander in the process. "Surrender, agent of evil! Your plans have failed!" he thunders fearlessly, standing up somewhat recklessly. Aldrikos finds he still has the pillow and flings it at crashing noises. Obviously an attempted escape!

<OOC: ROLL> Aldrikos rolls his Luck + Combat/thrown Weapons at difficulty 10 and gets 1 success.

The pillow smacks right into the hapless woman's face, cutting short any scream she was about to make. Arms and legs flail wildly as she tries to get untangled from her borrowed night stola and escape whatever assassin is after her!

Aldrikos ahas! in victory as his pillow finds its mark. He thinks. "Stand down before I am forced to smite your dark tainted presence with deadlier arms!" Now is the time to take the offensive to the enemy, while they're stunned from the sure strike of the linen-enveloped feathers of justice! Assuming he doesn't trip and fall over due to the blankets still wrapped around his feet, anyway.

<OOC: ROLL> Aldrikos rolls his Luck + Combat/brawling at difficulty 10 and gets 1 success.

Dianora finally manages to get the pillow off her face and collect her wits. "Vahlgellan, not only are you drunker than ever, you're in the wrong room!" she shouts into the dark in exasperation. "What did you do, sneak into the Palace kitchen and get more ale?"

Aldrikos starts ahead valiantly. "Oh ho! Your target is the Prince, eh? You'll not succeed, you murdering maiden menace!" Instead of socking the invader a good one and taking her into custody, however, he happens to trip over the same chair and kind of fall on the invader, which is probably equally effective in a sort of backwards way. Especially when the blankets get involved and sort of war net everybody in general. "I have you now, evil-doer!" he proclaims. Perhaps sitting on somebody else in the middle of a really dark room isn't strict victory conditions, but he'll take it for now.

The air is driven out of Dianora with a sharp "oof!" and she lays stunned for several minutes. Until it slowly seeps into her brain that not only is a body of decidedly male build on top of her, he just called her a murderer. Then she starts kicking and thrashing - or tries to, given the mess of man and blankets entangled with her. "How dare you? Get off of me, you .. you.. you BEAST!" she shouts. "Who are you?!?"

Aldrikos declares somewhat smugly, "Beast? Aye, surely the agents of law and justice must seem as such to nefarious scum such as yourself and the rest of your Lanesh ilk. But if you must know, t'was Aldrikos Ista Aldrik who stopped your fell plans from succeeding. I must say it was very clever hiding in my room as a staging area before you sought to kill the Prince! But not clever enough, foul villainess!"

Dianora abruptly stops her thrashing and tries to make out her attacker's face in the dark. "Lord Ista Aldrik? Is that you? And I beg your humble pardon.. it was Prince Vahlgellan himself who put me up in this room for the night! Nefarious scum, indeed!" The petite woman sounds highly offended.

Aldrikos hmphs. "A likely story, foiled rogue slayer of innocents! You'll stay in custody until I can see well enough to tie you up and present you to the guards to be processed properly."

Dianora sputters in outrage. "TIE ME UP? Get off of me, you lout!" she shouts, forgetting for the moment that this is the great Lord Aldrikos Ista Aldrikos laying on top of her. Which many a female might consider a blushing honor, if not a thrill, but right now she's too furious. "I'll have Princess Eliana process YOU for assaulting her sponsoree!"

Aldrikos says "Egad! Infiltrating the Princess' own coterie of social alignments merely to draw close enough to assassinate her husband? Foul traitor to the Republic! You'll get no aid from any person of honor in our great city!"

Dianora peers at Aldrikos in the dark. "Would you mind getting off of me, and lighting a light?" she asks, suddenly calm and reasonable. "I really want to make sure you're not Prince Vahlgellan. Because if you are him, then you're drunker than a skunk that got into overripe apples."

Aldrikos sounds rather obstinate. "And leave you with a full range of motion and free to continue your spree of treason and uprising? Certainly not!" To make his point, he starts poking his prisoner with a stern finger of justice. "You *poke* are not going anywhere save directly to the prisons, *poke* miscreant! *poke*"

Dianora has quite had enough of this nutcase, whether it's a famous Lord or a drunken Prince. The next time a finger pokes at her, one hand lashes out and grabs the offending digit.. and her teeth crunch down on it!

Aldrikos jerks the finger away. "Hey!" he declares indignantly. "Ouch! Ah, your moral flimsiness is again shown in your cowardly tactics! Well, obviously you need to be incarcerated right away, evil one." With a general lack of courtesy, he twists around and hauls his prisoner over one shoulder like a large sack of potatoes and stands up. Which end up she ends up in is a matter open to interpretation. "We'll just take you downstairs right now!" Assuming he can find his way out of the room, anyway.

<OOC: ROLL> Aldrikos rolls his Luck at difficulty 8 and gets NO successes.

Aldrikos wanders around the room a while in a few circles. "Aye, downstairs right now," he repeats. As soon as he finds downstairs. Or maybe just as soon as his passenger gets really dizzy.

Dianora yelps. "Let me down, you madman!" she howls. For a petite woman, she has a surprisingly strong set of lungs. "You're making a mistake! I'm General Lidanos' wife and a friend of Princess Eliana!"

Aldrikos pauses in his search for the door in startlement. Hey, he knows this person! "Mes Dianora? A traitor? Egad! What could have turned you against the Republic so? This is awful!" He sounds really distressed. Although not enough to release his captive. "What a sad day for the Republic this is."

Dianora snaps in exasperation, "Do you think I'd really turn against the very Republic my husband serves so dearly?" A sudden wave of dizziness envelopes her, and she grabs hold of the nearest object to steady herself. Given her position, this just happens to be Aldrikos' thighs. "Will you /please/ let me go? Prince Vahlgellan ordered me to be put up in the Guest Room for the night because he didn't want me traveling back to the villa in this weather!"

Aldrikos hmms. "Stranger things have happened. Who's to say you're not really Lianora, Mes Dianora's evil twin, eh? Clan Leader Bannos had one of them, you know, and with all the time I've spent with his family I've learned to be very careful indeed." He pauses. "Besides, I still haven't seen you well enough to establish your veracity in any event."

<OOC: ROLL> Aldrikos rolls his Luck at difficulty 8 and gets 2 successes.

Aldrikos finds the door and tows his prisoner outside. Aldrikos heads out into the hallway.

Anarinuell: The Palace -- The Cubicula

Dianora just stares at Aldrikos. Or rather, at his backside, now moving in a rather tantalizing way just inches from her face. And teeth. "Twin? Lianora?" she sputters. "What on Aerval are you talking about? I don't have a twin, and I have nothing against any of the Royals! And what is this Lanesh you keep babbling about??"

Aldrikos hms, and sets Dianora down on her feet in front of him and eyes her sternly with his mega crime-detecto telepathy stare powered gazeomatic expression. "Hmmmm." Well, she seems genuinely confused. "I see." He'll just have to trick her into revealing her Lanesh tendencies or lack thereof. "Who's the mayor of the Caldera City!" he asks suddenly. "Answer quickly!" he says, urgently. Pop quiz! Pop quiz!

Dianora staggers slightly at finding herself back on her feet and tries to restore her dignity along with smoothing out her badly rumpled stola. Aldrikos' question takes her off guard, and she blinks. "How would I know?" she answers crossly. "I've never been there.. wait." She squints as her eyes try to adjust. "You're really not Vahlgellan. You're really Lord Ista Aldrik!"

Aldrikos hmms again. Well, the Caldera City is full of a bunch of wacky Lanesh stuff or something, so obviously she can't be all that Lanesh. Or either that or she's really bad at being Lanesh, and an expert Lanesh assassin hardly seems unqualified in evil doings. "Aye, and you're really Mes Dianora," he admits, suspcion lapsing. He looks behind him a moment, and returns with a look more confused than suspicious. "Er, shouldn't you be somewhere else than in my bed?" he points out.

Dianora looks confused in turn. "Your bed? That's the guest room, where I stay whenever I'm at the Palace. Do you mean to say you walked into my room by mistake?"

Aldrikos says "Uh, no, I've been staying here ever since I returned from Vreland. Things are sort of disorganized back home with my room being given to somebody else and Cousin Junia sick and the subsequent quarantining of the west wing as I understand it."

Dianora tries to smooth her rumpled hair in place, too. "Your room? You've been staying in the guest room? Well! That explains a lot!" She looks annoyed. "I am going to have a bit of talk with Prince Vahlgellan when I see him again."

Aldrikos grimaces. "Oh dear, he forgot about that too?" He sighs, shaking his head. "It's all due to that horse kicking him in the head, you know. He's had terribly memory failures ever since, I tell you."

Dianora looks blank. "Horse kick...?" she repeats, then shakes her head and holds up her hands, palms out. "Never mind, I don't want to know. Not now, anyway." Looking down at the thin night-stola she says ruefully, "Do you mind if I fetch my clothing from the room, then? I'll just return to my home." Or I'll smack Vahlgellan in the morning when I see him, she doesn't add.

Aldrikos nods agreeably. "Oh, certainly." He gets out of the way of the door. "Yes, it was a terrible accident. Apparently he tried to stop a runaway horse and it ran him over."

Dianora refrains from replying, "Well, that explains a lot, doesn't it?" Instead, she gives her would-be abductor a smile. "Thank you. And I am so terribly sorry about the misunderstanding, Lord Ista Aldrik. I do hope you'll allow me to make up for it."

Aldrikos says "Oh! Well, if you'd like to, I surely won't turn down any such generosity, but that's really not mandatory or anything."

Dianora laughs, clasping her hands in front of her. "Yes, I'd really like to. It's rather embarassing to find out I've bitten a great Republic figure!"

Aldrikos eyes his finger and blinks, as if only right at that point making the mental transition from 'having been bit by an evil assassin' to 'having been bit by Mes Dianora'. Which earns her something of an odd look. "Yes, I suppose I can see how that would be so," he replies dubiously.

Dianora eyes the door to the guest room. "If you will allow me, then..?" she asks politely. "I'll pick up my clothing and be on my way."

Aldrikos says "Yes, yes, go right ahead."

Dianora quickly vanishes into the room, then reappears a few minutes later, clothing bundled up and a cloak over her shoulders. "Thank you," she smiles sweetly. "And will you please give my regrets to Prince Vahlgellan - and an explanation - when he discovers me gone?"

Aldrikos says "You're welcome! I'll leave word with him directly or the palace staff if he's unavailable in the morning."

Dianora curtsies cheerfully. Not only will she be able to avoid a badly hung over Prince in the morning, she's getting to leave Aldrikos and Vahlgellan to try to explain things to each other. "Thank you. And do sleep well, Lord Ista Aldrik. I'm sure we shall meet again."

Aldrikos yawns agreeably. "Ah, hopefully under calmer cirumstances. Good night!"

Dianora drops a curstey, smiles, and disappears down the hallway.