UWA Olympus, Kalinda RP 1/1: Darko's Self-Loathing On a Forklift Match

The Raeth Report
By Ron Raeth

Leading into Olympus the UWA's two day fan festival was quite a success, though there were some interesting highlights, or lowlights if you will.

The last signing of the first day featuring Kalinda Kriegsdottir, Angelica Jones, and P. Clarence Whitman was marred by the notably sensitive British gentleman making his way to the tables first, and shortly thereafter being introduced to Kalinda.

Apparently having repressed the memories of the horrible horrible Kalinda/Hush/Whitman vs. Leviticus/Fitzgerald/Stumpy Rodriguez feud in IWC, a feat that I'm sure many IWC fans would like to be able to replicate (I know I would), Mr. Whitman took one look at the towering form of the Azure Nightmare and promptly passed out.

Every time he would reawaken he would look around with his usual look of befuddlement at the world around him, catch sight of the Big Blue Beastie, and then return to the great state of unconsciousness.

About halfway through the signing Kalinda got up to her usual mischievous tricks and in between signing autographs spent several minutes of the signing using her marker to inscribe devil horns on Whitman's temples, Frankenstein-esque stitching on his neck and wrists, and for the magnum opus added what appeared to be KISS inspired facial designs.

Mr. Whitman can only hope that the marker manages to wash off before his debut match with Lilith Evans later tonight.

UWA Outbreak #7, Kalinda RP 1/1: The Flaccid, Dangling Terror of the Nudistry

I hate adventuring. It requires too much trust in unreliable people. The folks that hand out the quests seldom do anything themselves. They park their butts in one place and yell at passing sword-sporting individuals to go out and help rid the scourge of ogres ravaging the countryside by slaying ten ogres and retrieving their buttocks as proof of the deed.

And then when you complete the unpleasant task of battling nearly a dozen creatures that are like NFL lineman with an extra two or three feet of height and two hundred pounds of blubber packed on, you've got to remove the buttocks from the corpses, which is a stinky, unpleasant task as ogres are culturally opposed to bathing. Much like Rayne Young they don't think that scrubbing under the folds is gangsta, yo.

With all that unpleasant business behind you, you haul in your burlap sack of severed buttocks, plop it at the guy's feet, and get rewarded with whatever coinage he found in the couch cushions and some article of clothing or weaponry from the back of his basement closet.

UWA Outbreak #6, Kalinda RP 1/1: The Dark Lord of Denny's

You know what the worst part of my job is?

Well, aside from having to deal with egomaniacal shitweasels all day.

Let me try that again, d'ya know what the second worst part of my job is?

Besides all the politicking and institutional racism.

Dammit. Try that again from the top.

D'ya know what the third or fourth worst part of being a professional wrestler is?

Well, probably all the travel and being on the road 300 days a year and not being able to see your family unless you drag them along skipping merrily along the whole jet lagging way.

Okay now. Do you know what one of the worst parts of being an exquisite grapple-master is?

It's that a significant portion of people think you're a fucking idiot. Some are that way because they think there's a slider that has physical development on one side and mental development on the other, so if you're an athlete than you're also a barely functional, drooling moron who can't be trusted to put their singlet on with the correct side facing forward.

UWA Outbreak #5, Kalinda RP 1/1: The Diet Mr. Pibb of Evil

I stared at my minion like she'd grown a second head, or had her skull spontaneously burst through her skin. Again.

I'd explained the basics of the system used to measure magical power, how much was contained in a typical human being, how many would be earned with a victorious title match with a prestigious wrestling title with a million people watching, and the massive amount of power it'd take to breach the barrier between realities and be able to safely deliver my big blue butt back to where it belong.

And of course the batshits insane clown dragon thing manages to make a logical point: if I'd started draining one relatively nasty demon a week, I'd have about enough magical oomph stored up to get myself home by now.

But that would be adventuring. I hate adventuring.

UWA Outbreak #4, Kalinda RP 1/1: I've Had it with These Motherfucking Snakes with Motherfucking Delusions of Grandeur

Technology is weird where I come from.

Despite having been one of those Medieval Stasis type worlds where magic just does so much (and civilizations keep wrecking one another's shit) for most of its existance, upon being sucked into the Void and stuck to Tatheon like a continent-sized Band Aid the Empire of Blood has managed to acquire a great deal of technology.

It took awhile to figure out how to work most of it, and just as long to determine that the resident god of nature hates mass production, and the light of her particular sun rapidly speeds the breakdown of anything that wasn't hand made.

But anything portable tends to come with its own carrying case, protecting it from the degenerating light of our luddite sun. If you have a steady supply of machines you don't mind having taken apart, broken, and exploded (not always in that order) you can toss them into a room full of dwarves and gnomes and end up having the principles that the things work on pretty well understood.

And the thing with dwarves is that they live underground, well away from nasty technology-hating solar goddesses, so if you can bring something out of the Urban Wasteland and get it to a Dwarfhold, you've got a pretty good chance of keeping you perfectly functional piece of technology.

Provided the gnomes don't get hold of it.

UWA Outbreak #3, Kalinda RP 1/1: A Not-So-Brief Kayfabe History of the Universe

Delilah Darkbolt.

Fuck.

While she was the closest thing I had to a friend amongst the dark elf nobility, I'd kind of been avoiding her for the past few days. Not for the usual reasons either. I mean the usual reasons why everybody else avoided her.

Delilah na Kinai, Scion of House Darkbolt, Firstborn True Daughter of Dara na Kinai, Heir to the Matriarchy.

Dark elves are born with innate magic, tied to the totem animals of their race, house, and family. It always manifests in the same three ways: sorcery; the application of raw magical power as destructive energy, enchantment; the application of magical power for strengthening one's self or allies and weakening one's foes, and channeling; the act of imbuing one's self with the raw essence of one's patron, gaining their traits and physical aspects.

Delilah was a pure Enchanter, and to compliment their powers of being able to enhance others most enchanters went out and found a fearsome beastie and bound it to them as a loyal protector.

Delilah had tried that. Dozens of times.

UWA Outbreak #2, Kalinda RP 1/1

"New log in found, user Kalinda Kriegsdottir, Maintenance Necrotechnician Lead Subterranean. Accessing profile..." chirped the computer with its obnoxious, Stepford Wife-esque secretary voice.

Three, two, one...

"Error. Your data file appears to be corrupted."

I sighed, "No, it's not. It's fine."

"Kriegsdottir is an awarded title of nobility to a dwarven child whose parents were slain in battle. A cursory inspection of you with my optical sensors indicates..."

"I'm an elf/kobold crossbreed and am also a dragonblood. My grandma's dwarven and she found my egg not far from a battlefield."

"According to protocol all elves are to be subjected to bloodline testing to determine proper House and Clan affiliations."

"No, it's fine. Really. Let's just ignore my file."