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Who: The Iron Bull & You!
Broadcast: Fleetwide
Action: HS Marsiva, SS Heron, SS Iskaulit and beyond!
When: 4/30-5/4 (Marsiva and that broadcast), 5/5 for the Heron, anytime in the month of May for the rest!

↨ Arrival aboard the Marsiva/his first week ↨

[Before the seven foot, heavily muscled and grey-skinned (which is obvious due to the fact he isn't wearing a shirt)...man with exceptionally prominent horns stirs on the plush bed on the Hospitality Deck, he sniffs and immediately frowns.]

Weird.

[His voice is a deep, slow baritone, with a slight accent that's difficult to place. The transmission is coming from his blind side, though, which is obvious by the eye-patch over where his left eye should be.

He hasn't noticed the camera. He moves to a sitting position, large hands on the edges of the bed and sniffs again, this time himself. And then he snorts.]

Weirder.

[He shakes his head (which is impressive with those horns) as though to clear and stands, giving a look around. To say the big guy looks uneasy is an understatement...and then he notices the huge viewing bay.

It's hard to say what's more disturbing to the giant: the idea that he somehow knows he's drifting through the fast openness of existence, or the simple act of looking at it, but he swallows. Hard. And turns away from the window, taking a seat back on the cot, which creaks slightly but holds.]

...shit. That's...a lot of nothing out there.

[Right out there. Through some glass. Shit.]

(OOC: If you want to just continue the TDM thread, that's cool! Just let me know, and you're totally free to PM this journal)

↨ Arrival aboard the SS Heron, Bridge | Saturday (5/05) ↨

[You know, it's one thing to keep a guy locked up on some weird ship after you kidnapped him, shoved something in his head, and gave him a bath. It's another to randomly move him to some other place surrounded by consoles and glowing lights, shower him with confetti, and just leave him there. Without a warning.

The Bull was a massive form to suddenly appear on the bridge of the SS Heron, and the startled cry and step back did nothing but rap his horns sharply against whatever delicate instrument was behind him at the time and send a painful vibration through his skull.]

Shit! [He took a heavy breath to calm his rising panic. It's fine. No weirder than what was out there.] Tight quarters in here. [The remark was muttered to himself for than anything as he carefully moved a hand to the top of his head to massage away the beginnings of a headache and gave a look around.]

Wherever the hell here is. [He could only assume it was one of the ships in the fleet, but which one? He'd been told there were several of them.]

↨ SS Iskaulit | OTA and Whenever ↨

[He couldn't be more relieved to know this ship existed. Getting there was weird, just knowing how to fly the shuttle, and if he thought about that too much he started to get real twitchy, so he decided to just think of the thing in his head as...like knowing where to aim a swing to take off a guy's head in one blow. You didn't think about where to swing. You just did and off it popped. Yeah. Flying the shuttle was like that.

Bullshit, but it was enough of a comfort to keep him sane, at least for a little while. Now this place? It was going to take a lot of exploration to really get a feel for it. It was almost possible, wandering the random collections of establishments, to ignore the fact that this was all in a giant ship floating in the middle of space. He wasn't difficult to spot, at 7'5" tall and at least three feet wide (with some really impressive horns), and as he gets more acquainted with the fleet over the course of the month, between travelling to planets and whatnot, he'll be found here on off-hours more often than not. You know, if he's not enjoying the fact that there's actual air somewhere.

He can be encountered at a number of establishments throughout, actually, though being the only naturally occurring mountain in a place that's completely fabricated, he steers clear Maab's Sceptre...because there's just something not right about that thing. Maybe it's because it's the only thing around that is right, but...yeah. Space Bar's a nice dive, and he's there pretty often, willing to chat up anyone to walks in, and share a drink...or a few...more. The smells from the Melting Pot get his attention, too, and something other than the fake crap on the Heron is always welcome.]

↨ Wildcard ↨

(OOC: Want to do a thing that isn't here? Awesome! Drop me a line through PM, at

vikael, or on Discord at prettyvikael#0221! I will most likely be doing some stuff with the system and I'd love to plot something out with people! Otherwise, I'll probably throw him at other peoples' things!)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Bull practically reeks of testosterone and booze. Possibly in greater amounts than he had ever seen back home. The voice certainly helps build on the blatant fact that Iron Bull is a distinct figure.]

I think so. She's about your size when in her proper form. I got threatened with vivisection if I ever crossed her boundaries.

[Even his hand feels like shaking a steel bar...] Well-earned and deserved. I'm known for being hell on Earth to deal with back home. Hopefully there won't be too much to maintain on the Heron. Last time a bunch of the ships were brought down, a lot of us were stuck on a red planet crawling with cannibals.

[Good times. Sort of.]

[That he does, Mantis. That he does.]

Vivisection, huh? What are you boundaries? [Because boundaries are important, alright.]

Yeah? you don't seem so bad. What do you do back home, Psycho? [Because that's awesome, and male mantises aren't badass.]

...yeah, heard about the cannibals. Glad I missed it.

Mostly physical for my part. My job back home was something along the lines of psychological warfare specialist.

[He lifts his glass in a small toast before pulling up the mask just far enough he can drink.]

People paid me to create a personalized house of horrors so winning the fight was a little bit easier. It's good money and I am the greatest practitioner of my particular style of scaring people to death.

It wasn't so bad on the planet once the whiplash wore off. Looma and I had a good time keeping the survivors who came our way safe.

[Bull's actually not that put off by Mantis' admission, and he's got a good imagination. He nods.]

Professional torturer, huh, or something more specific?

[He'll ask what's up with the mask in a minute.]

...a good time? [He chuckles. He could see that.] Like killing that much or are you just that much of a good Samaritan?

More like a reverse therapist. Instead of helping others find peace, I find the most visceral and deep seated fears and make them as much of a reality as I can. I torture the mind before I concern myself with the flesh.

[Mantis shrugs at the second question, although there is the shake of amusement in the motion as well.]

Looma and I share in a very different idea of a good time than others. The locals shot down our ships. We decided to show our appreciation through dismemberment. It was more enjoyable and productive than sitting around waiting for the end to come.

...you sound like the Ben-Hassrath re-educators. [Which one would think was a bad thing, but he doesn't seem offended by the notion. In fact, he used to have a good friend who was a re-educator for the Ben-Hassrath. Creepy guy. Awesome but creepy.

Really changed how he read a book, that guy.]

Heh, sounds like a hell of a way to go, honestly. If you're going down, take as many of the bastards down with you as you can.

[Creepy is the least Mantis can do when the pay is good. He raises his chin slightly at the phrase Bull used. It's almost familiar in sound, but nothing he ever heard before.]

Re-Educator sounds a bit old fashioned to me. More cold war dictatorship than a modern idea of torture. I can get a good idea of what they do, though. My greatest gift is that I can get into someone's head without ever having to see them.

You would have definitely done well on the planet. The civilian types weren't able to really pull themselves together enough. Wr had an athlete in our camp who had never held a knife in his life for self-defense.

Sounds about right, yeah. [Though he chuckles. "Cold War" sounded like something they could use to describe the fight against Corpyheus, but only because of all the damned snow. Somehow, he got the feeling Psycho meant something else.

Something a lot more sinister.]

...who the Hell's never held a knife to defend themselves?

[See...Thedas isn't a place that really...affords for things like that...]

[Mantis laughs loudly, his shoulders shaking. It's a good few seconds before he can have another sip of his drink.]

I almost asked the same thing. He does this sport called ice skating, taught me a bit about how it works, and I told him it's like using the blade of the shoes against an enemy rather than the ice.

[His smile remains as he keeps drinking.]

Hell, I started killing people with far more creative means than a simple knife.

Sometimes, a well-placed knife with the right poison's all you need, Psycho.

[And he doesn't say anything else on the matter (because whatever the hell ice skating is. Sounds cold and painful.]

So, what's with the mask? You don't need it, obviously. You move it to drink.

Cheers to that.

[He briefly raises his glass and has a long sip before setting it down. Then he points at the scars around his mouth. The smile fades, but not completely.]

It's worse than just this. I prefer people staring at the mask than what's under it.

[The Bull's totally down with drinking to that as well, but he nods when Mantis indicates his scars.]

I get it. Eyepatches are badass, too, but sometimes they just, you know, make you feel better.

You feel more like a pirate than someone who's disfigured. If I could, I would go with a smaller mask. This kind has been in my life for a long time.

[His head tilts slightly to one side.]

What...exactly are you? You're mostly human-shaped, but those horns look like they came off of an actual bull.

Yeah, something like that. People stare less. [He rolls his shoulder.] They stare enough already. Southerners don't see us much. [He nods, raising an eyebrow in interest.] What happened? I get it's probably sad, or traumatic or something, but it doesn't have to be. It's a part of you now, you know?

[He chuckles.] Like I said, southerners don't see "us" much. Qunari. Sometimes they're dicks and call us "ox-men".

[Mantis lets out a breathy laugh before holding his glass in both hands, rubbing his thumbs over the condensation.] First time someone outright asked since I got here. The real trauma is in how people treated me because of what happened. [He take a deep breath.] I was a child. Someone frightened me and...I got angry. Next thing I remember is everything being on fire and knowing I did something horrible. The rest is doctors who either meant well or saw me as an experiment.

[There's a new word. He mutters 'Qunari' under his breath a few times, getting used to the sounds.]

Qunari sounds like a word that could have come from my world. And you used that other term, Ben-Hassrath, with relative calm. I'm guessing the muscle got put to use rather than being a consequence of genetics. Not military, though. Too casual for that. A government agent?

Magic? Or something like it? Damn...

...but not something common, if doctors were experimenting on you. Blackouts aren't fun, though.

[He shook his head. He's never filled that gap in his memory with anything but death and a rampaging madness. It doesn't hurt anymore, not as much as it had before he'd submitted himself to the re-educators, but...it sucked, knowing there was a part of you, you couldn't control, that could hurt people you care about.]

So that...fire...thing. That still something you lose control over or do you have a handle on that?

[He shrugs.] The Ben-Hassrath are...sort of like the internal police. We keep the peace, protect the people of the Qun from internal and external threats...

[He takes a breath. I was Ben-Hassrath. Not anymore.

Something like it. We call them psychic powers where I come from. I have a few that I'm good at, including the pyrokinesis. That's how I ended up setting everything on fire.

[He waves his hand at his drink and the glass rises slowly into the air. Mantis even passes his hand around it in circles to show that there's no wires or any kind of help.]

I am far better at what I do now than I was when I was young. If I weren't, these powers could have eaten me alive.

[Then he takes the glass from the air and drains it.]

Like the KGB back home. I got dragged into that before the collapse of the government that supported it. It taught me to be careful of how I expressed who I really was. They were quick to eliminate or exile people who went against the ideals of the motherland.

All you can hope for is that leaving the life you once knew leaves you happier than you were before.

Fancy. Making crap float just looks like magic to me.

[He shrugs and finishes off his ale.]

Yeah...maybe. The Qun...shapes you, you know what you're doing is right because it's what you're meant to be. This? [He takes a deep breath.] It's hard to explain. Qunari...we're fierce. We've got a...a bloodlust. The Qun keeps you focused.

[He snorts, giving his head a shake.] This place makes my horns itch.

Edited 2018-06-03 02:04 (UTC)

Then I suppose this is what magic looks like where I come from. We just call it by a different name. There have been magic users here, but I never really got to know any of them. Sometimes I wonder what kind of magician I would be on someone else's world.

[He nods as Bull speaks, turning to face him a little.]

A moral code. We have a lot of those where I come from, usually in the form of some kind of military training. You can fall back on the habits of boot camp even when everything else is falling to ruin.

[He laughs quietly.] You too? I was never meant for this kind of idle life that the Fleet puts us on.

Maybe you should ask one of the mages around here. I know at least two, and one'll rattle your ear off about it.

[He's gotten almost okay with magic, but he's still far from an expert.]

It's more than that, but...sure. That works. Only...when you go against the Qun, it's leaders, their orders? You become Tal-Vashoth, and you're not welcome home anymore.

[And there's a note of sadness in the big guy's voice when he says that, and the grunt he adds is pretty sad, too.] Tell me about it. I just really want to hit something.

Motormouth type? We had one of those at the facility I worked at before I wound up here. He liked cartoons and my coworker. Strangely enough, she liked him too.

[Mantis might enjoy a foray into true magic. One can't have too much power.]

Ohh... I think I get it. It encompasses every aspect of how you live, how you conduct yourself. It takes a lot of effort and willpower to be okay with breaking from that kind of life, but some find it to be rewarding.

There's always the gym if you prefer inanimate objects for venting frustrations. Someone always needs good muscle whenever we go from planet to planet if you prefer the real thing.

[The Iron Bull chuckles at the assessment. It's not inaccurate, after all. At least not completely.] Something like that, yeah, but when he's not complaining about the cold, he's usually rambling about something pretty important. And he's pretty fucking smart. [And there's a very subtle undertone to that assessment that suggests he really likes that guy.]

Yeah. I'm...I was on assignment, pretending to be someone who'd separated from the Qun. Pretending is easy. This...? I'm working on it.

[He smiles, though, appreciative of the suggestion.] Thanks, Psycho. I think I'm good for now.

[It's hard to not hear the admiration when people talk like that about someone else. Mantis can appreciate the way language shifts when talking like that.] I'll have to seek them out. They sound like someone who is interesting to simply sit down next to and listen while prodding them on with a few questions.

[Mantis nods before gesturing to the bar itself. A couple of bottles come his way and he mixes another drink while keeping his hands in his lap.]

I never had to pretend much back home. The angry man who killed for the fun of it was exactly the same when he clocked out for the day. My captain reminds me all the time of my boss. All muscle and ego and a strong love for the thrill of a fight.

If you do want to find work beating up the real thing, I usually earn my money that way. It's been ages since I had a coworker that I knew longer than a month.

[Bull nodded at that.] Dorian's a good guy. The trick isn't getting him talking, though. It's getting him to shut up afterward.

[He watches the telekinetic display with a raised eyebrow. He's been ass-deep in mages long enough now that they weren't off-putting anymore, but come on. That was just lazy.]

Tell you what. Next time we're in a system that's looking for muscle to win battles, not contests, give me a call. I'm there.

Dorian? Dorian, Dorian... Well groomed head and facial hair, looks like he waxes off everything else? I remember when he arrived. You couldn't miss that personality.

[Lazy, yes, but it was fun and necessary practice. He even sends the bottles back to their spots and takes a long sip.]

I'll hedge the bets for maximum payout. We'll be rich in no time.

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