Bloody Rose Guild House

Guanicus brings the lot of you into the guild house, smiling to himself, eyes glassy as he navigates through the tiny hallways narrow stairways. From the outside, the place doesn't look like it could house a peat farmer, but somehow, you've been walking for almost five minutes, and nothing seems at all familiar. In fact, the deeper you go, the older things seem; not just the building materials seem old and worn, but the very style of the banisters, the trim, and the torch brackets on the walls.

As expected, when you first entered the house, the thick stench of decay and methane, sickly sweet and pungently organic, was all you could smell. Even the garlic tainted breath of your host, Guanicus, was completely overwhelmed by it, and you were almost certain you could actually see green wisps of the death stench waft in through the window. Every single window, as you looked around, was as wide open as could be. Before you could ask your questions, the mad magician circled his hands through the air. "Keep the air flowing." he said, matter-of-factly, and continued leading you deeper in.

Within the bowels, surely somewhere beneath the swamp by now, in danger of its putrid goo collapsing en masse atop your head, you smelled nothing of the marshes. Instead, the smells of something much older, something ancient, occasionally stirred long enough to grace you with their aroma. You realize that the wood had long since been replaced with various forms of stone, and the shelves along the walls aren't covered with books, but with...bones. It's then that you realize you are in a crypt, long forgotten by probably everyone save for Guanicus himself.

Walking through one last doorway, the flickering torchlight is replaced with a steady, ambient light. Soothing, peaceful light. The smell is gone, as is the stone, replaced by a massive library, complete with lush, overstuffed chairs upholstered with the butter soft skin of baby cows. The walls are adorned with massive paintings, some of stunning vistas of dragons assaulting castles, others of a less fantastical, but still attention grabbing portrayals of women writhing like snakes in the throes of apparent ecstasy. The large chair that Guanicus moves to sit in is actually a huge stuffed polar bear, and the enormous desk in front of him takes your breath away more than anything else in the room; A slab of crystal over an inch thick is held squarely aloft by the smooth flat stomachs of four stunning, naked mermaids, their hands and fins on the ground as they form a bridge, full breasts framing the corners of the crystal superbly.

As if nothing in his study mattered, Guanicus the Mad sat and motioned for each to do the same. No two chairs were alike, and there were exactly seven.

The first was composed of a dryad, a female spirit of nature, made of wood and plant. She lay upon her back, her buttocks resting on a small wedge of wood, her legs curved back over her torso, calves pointing straight up to the sky. The backs of her thighs are the seat, soft calves serving to support the back of whoever would sit upon her.

The second was the largest boa constrictor you've probably ever seen. It lay in a 'U' shape, curling back upon itself several times, each tier building higher than the last, offering a seat, back support, and arm rests. Its head serves as the foot step to simplify getting into or out of the miniature throne.

The third was a spider, also lying on its back. The back four legs came together for the back support, while the front two on each side rested side by side as a grooved arm rest. Its hard carapace is cold to the touch for whoever would dare sit there.

The fourth is a young Minotaur, bent over so that his horns would be its user’s footrest, and his massive hands will hold the user at whatever angle the user desires.

The fifth, initially, seems less remarkable than the others, though certainly is visually stunning, for it seems to be carved from pure obsidian. A snap from Guanicus' finger, however, and the Deep Earth elemental opens its eyes, points of even darker light that burn with hatred at this trivial and mundane service.

The sixth chair is a chimera, the center head the seat and the other two serving as the arm rests. Thick muzzles of silk and magic wrap one of the heads almost completely, but the other two seem docile enough.

The seventh chair seems almost incorporeal, a shadowy substance that seems harder to see the more directly one looks at it. It is, in fact, a creature of the Plane of Shadow. It simply sits cross-legged on the ground, its lap the seat, its arms the arm rest.

Guanicus, again as if nothing in the room mattered, as if he expected all of you to have seen all of it before, sighs. "Whenever you're done staring, please pick the seat you think best suits you. With no blood shed. Should someone get there before you, suck it up and pick another." He waves his hand and cracks open the ancient-looking tome that rests upon his desk, finds his page, and idly strokes the breast of one of the mermaids nearest to him.

Redjack screwed up his nose and waved away the last of the lingering stench of swamp gas with his hand. I've lived in this city my whole life and it never gets less disgusting. I suspect foul play. Making a smell perpetually annoying would be a petty use of magic, but knowing the people here I would not be surprised. Redjack glared at Guanicus for a moment. Redjack had dealt with many crazy people in his life, particularly in prison, and Guanicus resembled the people who were locked in the stone rooms in the basement and fed through trapdoors. Not as dangerous as the guy with skin made of scar tissue who could tear the bars off the windows and fashion it into a shiv with his teeth, but deeply unsettling. Tuning out the screaming was the worst part. Redjack needed his beauty sleep. Ah well, I've had worse employers. Like that guy with the missing fingers and the very bad information. Feeding that man his own intestines and searching his pockets was the most satisfying part of that job. Letting the pleasant memories of bloodshed and revenge drift away on the ethereal wind of nostalgia, Redjack turned his mind to more important pursuits.

Where do I sit? The dryad is attractive, certainly, but it lacks style...and nature elementals are so spiteful. thought Redjack. Images of poisoned thorns shooting out of the chair and into his tender skin quickly disabused any notion of sitting in the dryad chair. Redjack's gaze skipped over the next three chairs for the same reason. Boa constrictor? Death by strangulation. Spider? Death by poisonous bite. Minotaur? Death by being dispersed into a fine red mist on the ground. His gaze lingered on the clearly furious earth elemental, and Redjack considered sitting down and really digging his ass in before he decided he had enough enemies. Chimera? Please. That thing is a death trap! Anyone who sits there deserves being bitten into a few separate pieces. Being drawn and trisected by a chimera is not how I want to die. Redjack's gaze settled on the last chair. He grinned almost imperceptibly and plopped into the shadow-thing's lap. He glanced over his shoulder at the incorporeal face behind him and said, "I imagine you and I will get along well. We both seem to appreciate the darkness. I shall call you...Shady Samuel." Redjack turned his gaze to the wizard and waited for him to speak, occasionally darting suspicious glances at the other inhabitants of the room.

Scarlet bounced along as Guanicus led the crew into the guild house, her face twisting at each fowl stench. Her fingers twirled through her blonde locks as she began turning in every direction, mouth agape, to examine their surrounding. She paused in front of a skull lying upon one of the bookshelves and grinned for a moment, noting to herself that without flesh, most people appeared to smiling. It was a novel idea to her.

Realizing their old leader was continuing, she quickly skipped to catch the caboose of the group. She hummed gleefully to herself, not bothering to acknowledge any of her companions. She was in her own world of wonders here, even with the stench. Discreetly, she sniffed herself to be positive she had washed throughly enough and wasn't omitting the odor herself.

Soon enough, they reached the doorway into the study and Scarlet's happy grin grew. Her eyes went up to the paintings immediately, smile turning to a look of vague confusion as she tried to understand exactly what was happening within each canvas. Giving up on her art analysis, her next interest was Guanicus' big polar bear chair. She cautiously approached, poking the frozen muzzle and muttering something about it's sharp teeth to herself. When she glanced down and realized the old man had sat in the big bear's lap, she backed away and turned to the seven chairs.

"This one is pretty!" She exclaimed, rushing to chimera chair and running her hands over the silk muzzle. She plopped down, rocking back and forth contently. As Redjack spoke, her brilliant blue eyes shot up to him.

"Do I get a nickname?" She asked eagerly as her fingers absentmindedly traced the mouth of the goat head. Her gaze darted down as she swore she felt the mouth try to close around her fingertips and she quickly moved her hands to her lap.

Annalee was no fan of the smell of this place, and she instantly began to regret her decision to go along with her family's wishes. Her family may have been a family of assassins, but at least they were clean. She followed Guanicus into his study, and stared in fascination at the different chairs. I have to sit on one of these? She crinkled her nose in a disapproving frown. So many options, and yet I want none of them.

This must be some sort of test, she reasoned. But what is he trying to figure out? Well, whatever the case, I will definitely stay far away from whomever picks that chair. She was looking at the first chair, the dryad. How crass and uncouth.

Annalee decided to pick the spider. She wasn't too excited about the chair, since it looked sort of scratchy and uncomfortable to sit on, but she rather liked spiders. Always had. As a child, Annalee had not had many friends, which is the sort of social shunning that inevitably happens when all of your family members are well-known murderers. She also never had a dog or cat because they were deemed too messy. Therefore, Annalee had spent most of her time playing with the spiders in the yard. She quite liked spiders. They were cute. They never lectured you about your shuriken-throwing or asked you to kill the nice old man down the street, unlike certain people in her family.

Annalee took a seat on the spider. "Excuse me," she said, reflexively, feeling bad for sitting on another creature. Then she blushed, feeling embarrassed that she had just apologized to her seat. Surely this room of ruffians had already judged her as weak and foolish.

Finding a place to stay following his forced removal from his parents’ manor had been very difficult for Kier Mon Duvell. His many supposed “friends” had cut off contact the moment Kier was cut off from his generous allowance. He wasn’t particularly bothered by this- he would have done the same in their place. In any case, as a result of abruptly finding himself with no money and no friends, he had been forced to seduce women of varying attractiveness and marital status to let him stay the night, every night following his eviction. That was about seven or eight fair and not-so-fair maidens, and Kier was growing tired of playing the charming gentleman. Besides, the best maiden-picking times were in the afternoon, which meant that Kier was unable to take any dust all afternoon or all evening. He was beginning to get night jitters, but there was nothing to be done for it. Just a smidgeon of dust almost rendered him almost incapable of keeping a straight face, and Kier needed control of his face for his smouldering seductive stares.
Otherwise he’d have to sleep out in the streets or marshes, and that just seemed awful and uncomfortable. Added to that, he would probably starve- he’d been stealing his meals from the kitchens of his feminine conquests.

And today was his first day of guild life. The foul smell of the guild house was successfully blocked by the dash of fairy dust lingering in his nostrils. Kier supposed it would be interesting to earn something for himself, after having worked for a grand total of 7 or 8 days in his life. Kier was counting his recent seductions in that final tally. And why not? It sort of felt like work. Sort of like being a prostitute, almost.

Kier paused behind the rest of the group in the guild house, pondering. Was he a prostitute? No. Then he would have been paid. Actually, getting paid sounded pretty good right about now- why hadn’t he been a prostitute? Maybe that wasn’t right. The fairy dust was kicking in and his mind was beginning to feel a bit floofy. He hadn’t taken too much- just enough to take the edge off life, but not enough for him to, say, go and chop a limb off of his future employer.

And speaking of his employer...Guanicus seemed decent enough. Within a few seconds of the dust really hitting his brain, Kier concluded that he liked the man, and he liked his robes. Good robes, good man! He barely held back a giggle.

Kier was accustomed to finery, but the fantastic furnishings of Guanicus’s final room were more impressive than anything in Kier’s former manor home. His mother certainly wouldn’t have allowed that desk. Ah, and he got to choose his own chair! The rest of the group fanned out, and Kier headed straight for his pick of the litter. There was only one chair in the entire set that looked comfortable, and that was the Minotaur. It had a big fuzzy head, after all! He settled into the creature’s large hands, grinning to himself.

Saro kept his mouth in a line, as well as he could anyway. His Glasgow smile stretched taut on his face, and firelight giving it an eerie glow. His black robe covered his entire upper torso, which was crisscrossed with the scars of rituals. He inhaled deeply, smelling the musk of the old building. Striding across the floor, he sat down in the large boa constrictor. He stroked the head of the boa, letting it's tongue flick his hand. He clicked to the boa, and murmured to it.

"I shall call you Casir.", he said. A contented hiss followed his comment, as if the boa approved of his name.

Looking over the table at his fellow guildmates, he sized them up. Saro fingered his Glasgow scar, observing from the depths of his cowl. There were three men and two women, himself not included. For the majority of the people in the room, they kept to themselves, even though nobody was trying to talk to each other. Nothing moved, so he was content to sit and observe.

However, upon noticing a cut on his hand, which he had totally not felt, he used his powers slightly. A few drops of blood left the cut, making a small globe about the size of an eyeball. It spun over his hand, catching the light at odd angles. The constrictor raised its head, flicking its tongue at the blood. His smile stretched.

Saro, still playing with his "blood marble" (as he called it), casually scanned the room. Truthfully, the atmosphere was quite enjoyable, especially the walk through. Crypts were no stranger to him, as most of his "art" took place inside their black innards. Libraries were his second-most favorite locations, as he considered them bastions against ignorance and stupidity. Scanning the massive wooden bookshelves, he noticed that not a single volume, tome, or book was covered in any hint of dust. Nice and clean. Good for working unannoyed., he thought happily. As he read some of the titles, he realized all the books were from every school of magic, even some of the "banned" arts. Well, Guanicus seems to have amassed quite the collection in his time. I like that in a man. With a stray thought, Saro flattened the "marble" into a disc and began to thread it between his fingers.

The one who called his chair "Shady Samuel" seemed to like to talk, although his language was rather coarse. He too was weighing the others in his mind, just like Saro was. As the elf's eyes settled on Saro and his marble, they widened and his face paled. Saro smiled, at least as well as he could.

"What's the matter? Afraid of a little blood?", asked Saro casually with a slightly mocking tone.

The others, for the moment, seemed to be immersed in observing their surroundings. He didn't care, he was content with the relative silence for now. Casir continued to watch the disc of blood, crimson tongue flicking the air occaisonally. This will get interesting.