Chronicles of Pietro Ludvigs (original fantasy)

[Academia Nut]

Yeah, there will be a couple of training sessions for the next little while as they get ready for the next set of games, which will be coming in about a month's time. So far I've got Alech, who is the role of grizzled veteran (except of course for the fact that he doesn't have much body hair due to his ancestry so "grizzled" is a relative term) and mentor. I'm still trying to come up with what other archetypes should be used though.

I suppose I could go with the Five Man Band but I don't think they would fit very well. Any sort of characters you would like to see? Trust me, even a couple of adjectives would be enough for me to generate a moderately original character.

[LadyTevar]

Well... you need the 'warrior-princess' for one of the girls

The dwarf or dwarf-blood should be solid, sturdy, and surly.

[Alferd Packer]

How about a hot but manipulative and shallow woman who attempts to attach herself to the strongest male? While a competent fighter on her own, she's compulsive in wanting to be seen with the best. Now that Pietro's managed to do the (nearly) impossible again, he might find himself the object of some of her affection, or at least on her radar. That might make for a deliciously awkward situation if, say, Cherach came to visit at an inopportune time.

Also, what about a gay couple? Men or women, whichever. Kicked out of their home for refusing to be separated (or having escaped execution), they fled here and survive by fighting.

[Academia Nut]

Good news everyone! I managed to find a scanner so I could get my picture of Cherach uploaded.



And a full sized version if you're interested

I'll see if I can work out how to clean up the image a bit, but there is the original pencil and pencil crayon work.

[Academia Nut]

Huzzah, it took me forever, but I managed to clean the picture up significantly, make the colours sharper and all that. The colouring really should be closer to orca than zebra, although Cherach is a bit different from the typical vanver.



So tell me, now that I have this cleaned version is Cherach at all how you pictured her?

[LadyTevar]

Wow... the guy drawing her doesn't know how to do proportions right, does he.

[Academia Nut]

That would be me, and no, I don't. I don't think I'd picked up a pencil for those purposes in oh... four years probably. I just did it to give another, better artist an idea of what I wanted.

[Academia Nut]

Away from visual art and back to literary art.

Chapter 19: Rest

Pietro rested quietly in his cell for the rest of the day after getting a round with the doctors and their medical spider swarms. Aside from the immediately obvious damage like the various lacerations and the broken knuckle in his left hand, Pietro also had numerous scrapes, abrasions, and bruises to deal with, along with a healthy dose of exhaustion.

By the end of his treatment he looked like some sort of mummy he was swathed in so much silk, either directly from the spiders or applied as immobilizing bandages, and he was high as a kite on the various venoms the spiders had injected him with.

Fortunately with his injuries, or perhaps because of his spectacular win, they had given him a small cot, a ratty blanket, and a tiny copper brazier for warmth, although with his level of fatigue and all the stuff in his veins he could have easily slept on the cold stone ground despite his wounds.

Pietro’s sleep was for the most part long and dreamless, the sort of sleep that comes from the body healing and having no energy for other pursuits. It was a slow, relaxing calm sort of sleep that took away cares and troubles.

Somewhere in the darkness though, things started to take a strange turn.

The name given to him by his birth mother was Jayendra, but he knew that the name upon his soul was Ochre, and that three generations ago he had created this land, created this place for his people, at the cost of his life and a piece of himself. What he had seen in this place all those lifetimes ago would forever leave a mark on him, as it would forever leave a mark on countless others.

It had certainly left a mark on this land. Gone was the white desert and the bleak mountains, this place of suffering now a bowl of life, the thick, loamy soil a fresh, vibrant black and the stones of the mountains a spectacular red. Even the sands outside this sheltered valley had become a wondrous orange, used by his people to make a beautiful kind of glass.

For his part, Jayendra preferred to tend to the gardens of this valley, to play his part in the grand cycle his god demanded of all of those touched by his blessings. The fields and gardens would be watered with their sweat and blood and the soil fed with their flesh when they passed away, and in turn the bounty of the earth would sustain them. The ground did not just give up food though, there were also springs to quench their thirst and they could pull nodules of copper from the soil that they could work into tools.

The earth gave up more than just food and tools though; it gave them a brightness and colour they had not seen before in their past lives. The ground readily gave up red ochre that they used to paint their bodies a rich red-brown to accompany the colour of their hair, eyes, and blood. The skins of the animals they hunted could be stretched over hollowed out logs to create drums, and bones could have holes drilled in them to make flutes. They had music; they had art; they had all the things that said that they were more than just surviving, they were thriving.

Finally, the forgotten, abused, and ultimately unwanted children of the sun and the earth had a place in the grand scheme of things. They were to be the ones that lived in a circle. At long last the suffering would be over.

Jayendra was bringing back a bunch of apples from the orchard in a leather sack, enjoying the sweet tang of a large, juicy example of the specimen. That was one of the advantages of working in the gardens; you always got to enjoy the best fruits and vegetables that you found. He was thinking about how they could preserve them this year when he heard a cry come out and someone shouted to look at the sky.

Glancing upwards, Jayendra found a trio of elves mounted on nightmares circling the village. So far the number of elves that most people weren’t afraid of in the village numbered exactly one, and that was a special case anyway. Jayendra was one of the few who were not terrified of the pale creatures because of his past life as the now mythical Elf Slayer Ochre, not that he talked about it, so he immediately sped off towards the cluster of huts.

Jayendra was one of the few people still standing out in the open when he got to the village, most of the others cowering in their huts, the exceptions being Sher, the village leader; Priti, the medicine woman; and of course, Singer, the one exception to the regular fear of elves because she was the one elf who had joined their village peacefully. Jayendra could only hope that these three were equally peaceful.

From the looks on their faces as they descended Jayendra doubted it.

Landing their mounts, the three elves hopped off and glanced about the collection of mud and straw huts with looks of contempt before focusing upon Singer. One of them, the leader if the twitching bear skin upon his back was anything to go by, said, “What are you doing crawling amongst these worms.”

“I am teaching them the proper way to live brothers. We have wronged them greatly in the past and they have responded to our entreaties for change with fear and hatred, as they should considering what has happened,” Singer explained.

The leader spat and said, “These worms got everything that was coming to them for their greed and short sightedness and if they listened to reason. Whatever grievances they think they have pale in comparison to the atrocities they have committed against their masters, for the plague they have unleashed upon this world.”

Jayendra’s fists tightened into angry balls as he heard those words spoken. How dare those bastards compare the deaths of a few dozen of their fellows to the millennia of suffering they had inflicted upon his people? He only held his tongue for Singer’s sake. She was the first elf who had actually given a damn about his people, and he would not insult her friendship by insulting her race in front of her.

Singer looked pissed as well, but instead she said, “It is unfortunate what has happened between our peoples, but they have accepted that I have much to offer them, that we have much to offer them as they make their own way in this world. They will not harm us if we do not harm them. Death is their gift, their burden, from their god. It is not our place to interfere with them now. If they are allowed to live in peace, to sow their crops, to raise their children, and to pass away quietly, they shall let all grievances they have with us pass on with those that have been subject to us directly.”

“Not good enough,” the leader said. “Her Serenity set our kind above all others, to rule over all of those that fall under our, and thus Her, sight. These worms defied us and thus her. They must be made to answer for their crimes. The one who slew our kind and defiled our lands must be made to pay.”

“He is dead,” Singer said. “He died liberating his people in the event that made this place.” She then gestured to the high, red faced mountains that sheltered the valley.

“Do they not claim to come back?” The elf demanded.

“They do reincarnate, but it is not always immediate, it can take generations, and the memories of their past lives can take decades to return. Plus, their people are born all across the world, the chances of the Elf Slayer Ochre being here are very small,” Singer explained.

“Then that makes our plans more difficult,” the elf said. “They spread their plague with their blood, but the worst is from that monster Ochre. This ‘death’ of theirs must be stopped, this insolence must be stopped. If he does not come forward, then we will begin hunting for him, systematically, to ensure he and his line does not pollute this world further.”

“It is not pollution! It is who and what they are now! Every child of their people born from now one will carry the power of death,” Singer told them furiously. “And no matter how many times you slain them, they will come back.”

The leader sneered and said, “Then we shall have to ensure that no more are born, that no more grow up.”

“If the one who was Ochre’s soul were to surrender to you, now and forevermore, and we were to stay well away from your lands, would it be enough to leave us alone?” Sher asked, butting into the conversation about the people under his care that he had not been privy to.

The elf looked at him disgustedly before saying, “Everything is our land, but since we are loathe to interact with you dirt grubbing… corpse fucking worms, then yes, if you stayed in the land you have already soiled and took not one step off it and surrendered the monster Ochre to us for punishment, then we might considering letting you continue wallowing about in the mud like the pigs you are.”

Jayendra snarled but knew what he had to do. He stepped forward.

He and Sher and Priti all said simultaneously, “I am the reincarnation of Ochre.”

There was a shocked silence for a moment before all three of them again repeated the statement before they started bickering and arguing. It both gave Jayendra great pride and an enormous sense of horror that these two would be willing to subject themselves to a lifetime of torture terminated by death to try and save the lives of others.

Finally Sher said, “No you two, I am Ochre. I am the leader of this village, a role naturally suited for someone like Ochre.”

Shaking her head, Priti replied, “Ah, but I have wisdom and knowledge passed on by the Deathlord! Surely that must be something that only Ochre would be privileged to.”

Jayendra was about to speak when suddenly he heard another voice say, “I’m Ochre.”

“I’m Ochre.”

“I’m Ochre.”

“I’m Ochre.”

All through the village the people were leaving their huts and saying, “I’m Ochre.”

Eventually the leader cried out, “Silence! You all seek to shield the criminal, so you shall all share… his…”

The elf’s face suddenly became pained and he clutched at his chest in agony, doubling over and collapsing to the ground, his left hand hanging limp at his side while he wheezed in agony.

Lowering his hand, Jayendra said, “I am Ochre, or least one of the nine who went on the journey to this valley, and when I died creating this place this, inadvertently I might add, the blood of the event washed into my soul. Blood is mine to command now, including the blood in your heart. Take me if you wish, but I swear, if I reincarnate and you have broken your promise I shall cut a path of destruction through your race that will not end until you all lie broken and humbled.”

Regaining some of his strength, the elf immediately ran, or rather hobbled, for his nightmare, his assistants following in his wake.

Singer looked at Jayendra and asked, “You truly are Ochre then?”

“Yes… and your kin will never leave us in peace now. We have never had magic before with which to fight back. Death is bad enough, but now we corpse fuckers… we humans can use magic, there will be no peace, not so long as there is a chance I can come back. If you all weren’t so damned noble I could have truthfully taken the blame for this, but now…” Jayendra said in deep frustration.

Sher sighed and said, “I can see why you would have wanted to keep your past life secret Jayendra, but I never would have believed you and if you had taken the fall I would have felt in my heart for the rest of my life, and all my lives after that, that I had let an innocent man go to a fate undeserved by a guilty one.”

“I too,” Priti admittedly.

“What will you all do now?” Singer asked.

Jayendra shook his head and said, “I don’t know, just that we will have to prepare to defend ourselves. We were willing to forgive them the entire enormity of their sins if they just left us alone, but now it looks like there will be no peace in our time… no peace at all…”

Pietro awoke from his dream feeling confused and upset. He knew the story of Jayendra and his vast list of achievements, but for the life of him he could not remember all the little important details. For example, he had trouble remembering if there were eight or nine Blood Sorcerers. And while he knew that the First Singer was supposedly ‘an outsider’ he had no idea where the downright blasphemous concept that she could have been an elf came from. Or the idea that anyone could have ever entertained the idea of forgiving the elves their crimes during the First Age, especially the abomination of the Blood Bowl.

This deep place was affecting him in unpleasant ways.

Blinking his eyes, he glanced over at the bars of his cell and found one of the other gladiators, one of the few females, looking down at him. There was a hunger in her eyes, but it was not just that physical lust he knew so well from these women, there were other forms of avarice mixed in as well. Eventually she just said, “You’re up are you? Alech wants to talk to you.”

Before Pietro could respond she walked away, but it was the sort of low, slinking walk that was filled with arrogance and greed that was trying to be concealed by slowness and nonchalant apathy.

Pietro did not know her name and he already did not like her. She was dangerous in a great many ways.

[Darth Yoshi]

Perhaps the Deathlord is getting ready for a nice purge.

[LadyTevar]

Shit.
Pietro is Ochre.

[Alferd Packer]

I'm Spartacus!

Is it wrong that I delight in Pietro's fuckups? For some reason, I can tell that the encounters with this woman are going to end poorly...for someone, anyway.

[Academia Nut]

Is it wrong that I delight in Pietro's fuckups? For some reason, I can tell that the encounters with this woman are going to end poorly...for someone, anyway.

No, not really wrong, considering the fact that his fuck ups just lead to new and grander adventures. Plus right now his luck with women seems to be... hmmm... what's the word? The word for tons of shit falling down a steep slope at high velocity? Oh yeah, avalanche. Right now Pietro's luck with women is best described as an avalanche of pain.

[Academia Nut]

Chapter 20: Discussion

Rising shakily from his cot, Pietro limped out of his cell to find the barracks mostly deserted except for Alech and a small cluster of others around him, the woman being one of them, along with another woman and a man, all of them being a rather curious bunch.

The predatory looking woman was clearly a noble, or at a bastard child of nobility, as her skin patterns were in the top ten of what Pietro had seen. Her features were sharp and aquiline and Pietro guessed that her family had a decent dosage of elf within the past two or three generations, especially judging by the large flecks of blue in her eyes. She kept her hair in a long braid that wrapped down about her throat and hung between her breasts like some sort of necklace, a curious choice considering how easy it would be to grab in a fight. Also, her body was free of the usual gaunt and wiry look that typified veteran warriors, instead looking well filled out and curvy. She was also missing the scars that covered pretty much every other gladiator Pietro had yet seen, although he thought he saw some faint lines here and there.

Hovering next to her was the other woman, who looked as different from her as possible. This woman was, to put it nicely, built like a horse. A mighty warhorse as would be used by a knight in full barding, but a horse nonetheless. It didn’t look like she had exactly started life out like that, but it appeared that she had suffered several blows to the face too many, causing a general flattening and elongation of the fine bone structure. It also seemed that she had taken all the scars of the other woman instead. Also, while she clearly wasn’t underfed, her body had few curves, having a general brick-like appearance, which probably wasn’t undeserved as she looked like she could break Pietro in two with her arms alone.

The fact that she seemed to be hovering protectively about the predatory woman only raised the danger rating for both of them. Especially since the predator was mostly ignoring the other woman. There was something quite wrong about the both of them.

The other man besides Alech was a somewhat shorter fellow, but only noticeable in comparison to the others as he was not that far outside the norms. The fact that the normally white bands of his hair were a vibrant orange-pink somewhat like a sunset and his eyes where alternating chunks of white and gold-yellow more or less confirmed the fact that he had a large amount of dwarf in his blood. Less noticeable but still good indicators were the way his neck seemed to blend into his shoulders and the odd proportions of his limbs.

Alech had a nasty cut across his cheek sealed with spider silk and was idly spinning a wooden practice sword, looking at Pietro, he just said, “You’re insane.”

Shrugging, Pietro said, “Insane enough to survive.”

“You got lucky,” Alech countered.

“Lucky is better than dead,” Pietro stated.

“You have almost no skills,” Alech continued.

“Training can fix that,” Pietro replied.

Nodding, Alech said, “That it can. And I intend to help you out in that regard, because unlike so many others in the arena you have the two factors that make a champion. The first is the sort of ruthlessness and killer instinct needed to make you a good fighter. The second is a keen mind and intellect to rein in the bloodlust and make you a superb fighter. The mirror trick is going to cost many elves dearly from now on.”

“They’ll adapt… eventually. If Slasher hadn’t been toying with me I never would have made it as far as I did. Fortunately just about every elf I’ve fought seems to suffer from that conceit,” Pietro said.

Nodding, Alech replied, “Good, you’re identifying weaknesses in the styles of others already. But that’s just a surface observation; any amateur can tell that elves have a tendency to aim to wound rather than aim to kill like they should.”

“I have much to learn,” Pietro pointed out.

Nodding, Alech said, “That you do, and not much time. Yesterday was a small set of games, lasting only perhaps half a day before they let the theatre take over for historical plays. Six weeks from now is the big show, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the queen’s ascension to the throne. It will be a three day event with lots of spectacle.”

Pietro noted very subtly the way that the predatory woman tensed up at that statement before covering her emotions up again with an air of bored arrogance. There was a story there.

Nodding, Pietro said, “And lots of opportunity to try and kill me.”

“Yes, although you will hopefully be quite a bit harder to kill by then… of course so will your opponents as you’re already in the second tier. You have to hand it to the queen, she is a clever bitch. In the off possibility that Slasher lost, you would be thrown directly into the second tier with very little additional training and equipment, making you easy pickings,” Alech said.

“The lack of armour will definitely hurt,” Pietro notes.

Bobbing his head to the side a bit, Alech finally said, “Not quite. You see, Slasher had quite a bit of credit stored up because he took a lot of trophies that he didn’t want, and all of that is now yours, so you can obtain some better equipment now. Of course there is the slight problem that the guys in charge of the armoury are probably under orders to gouge you and cheat you.”

“If I can get a spear and shield and made some sort of armour I should be okay. I’ll have to learn how to use that sword… club… thing Slasher used though. It’s probably one of the best things I’ll be able to use for a while. A pity about the design though,” Pietro notes.

“Oh? It’s no bronze sword but what’s wrong with the design?” Alech asked, obviously more probative than inquisitive. He wanted to know what Pietro knew.

“There’s no way to thrust with it. The sword I trained with was mostly meant for cutting and slashing, but you could also thrust with it and thus not disrupt a shield wall,” Pietro explained.

Alech looked like he was about to commend Pietro when he furrowed his eyebrows and asked, “Shield wall? What’s that?”

Pietro gaped at Alech. The shield wall had been mostly abandoned centuries… perhaps even millennia ago by spearmen as the lengthening of pikes to counter cavalry mandated the abandonment of the shield to free up the off hand, but it was still well known just from the history classes in church and certain blocks of swordsmen still used the technique. Shield walls were such a fundamental part of warfare Pietro could not understand how anyone could not know about it.

“Uh… well, you stand shoulder to shoulder with the other soldiers such that your shield protects both your left side and the right side of the man to your left, and the same with you and the man on your right. You can close the shields together and create a wall really, sticking only your sword or spear out between or over top of the shields. The men behind you can also raise their shields in order to ward off arrows,” Pietro explained, remembering the murals in the church that showed just such a thing happening.

“Doesn’t that make it impossible to manoeuvre?” Alech asked.

“Well a square block composed of four or five hundred men isn’t exactly the most agile formation anyway,” Pietro said.

Alech’s jaw dropped. “Four or five hundred men?”

“Per formation. I think… I can’t remember how many are used in a pike block these days, but they’ve gotten bigger since the hundred man squares of Emperor Maxim’s day, which were in turn smaller than the thousand man squares of King Vlahos before him,” Pietro explained.

Alech took sometime to digest this before he asked, “How do your armies get through the tunnels?”

The other coin dropped. The vanver fought underground, in tight tunnels for the most part. Giant caves like these had to be rare and hard to find. Fighting had to resolve around narrow choke points, useful places for a shield wall… if the terrain were regular enough for it to work. Somehow Pietro doubted that the ground would comply so easily without coaxing from an outside source. And if you were doing that you might as well throw up an actual wall rather than a considerably more flimsy one made of shields.

Also, with the hot, cloying air fighting outside of such giant spaces had to be hard, and compounding that with a thick formation of hot, sweaty bodies with little ability to get away and Pietro realized that they probably fought in loose skirmish formations to prevent getting jammed on geological features and to reduce fatigue build up by allowing the front liners to exchange places with those in the rear more easily. Finally, if you were attacking, carrying the shields large enough to be useful in a shield wall could be problematic if the tunnels became too narrow.

Suddenly Pietro saw the reason why Queen Verach was trying to keep Duchess Vanach on her side. With that fear ability of her clan just a few of her warriors could break a light skirmish line. If they were isolationist and backwards before the disadvantage in weapons and armour might have made the difference, but if suddenly given better equipment and backed up with elite troops from the royals…

The results would be ugly.

Shaking his head to clear out the sudden contemplation, Pietro says, “We fight in the open or around fortified positions, not in tunnels. We have much more room.”

“Open? You fight in your farms?” Alech asked, and Pietro suddenly realized that while the meaning could be caught from the wind, if Alech had no reference point he had no idea what was being talked about. The closest he had to the idea of an open field of battle had to be farm land.

“Sometimes, if that is where the battle takes place. Sometimes it’s just… open space not being used for anything. We don’t live in caves, so we have lots of room,” Pietro explained.

“How very strange,” Alech muttered.

Pietro was tempted to point out that living down in caves so far from the sun and fresh air that they didn’t even have the proper concept of open space was far stranger, but he held his tongue. There seemed little point.

Shaking his head, Alech finally says, “I think we will just have to see how you fight for ourselves. You of course will see how we fight.”

Pietro glanced about the assembled vanver gladiators and he asked, “So are these those you train with?”

Nodding, Alech said, “Yes, we are you could say the elite members of these barracks. Or at least those who we feel have the capacity to become elite, like you and your fellow second tier gladiator Jushar here.” Alech waved casually to the yellow tinted vanver man next to him.

“Hello Jushar,” Pietro said politely in the vanver tongue.

The vanver man snorted derisively before he said in a nearly incomprehensible accent, “We don’t need any fancy talk down here.” The tone was oddly clipped or drawled in comparison to what Pietro was used to.

Pietro looked at Alech oddly and the translator replied, “Your speech, while slow and odd sounding, is very formal in comparison to what we’re used to down here.”

Nodding, Pietro replied, “That makes sense I suppose.” He had learned from royalty, and in retrospect the speech of the servants had been a little different away from their masters, although having to speech formally around them most of the time had probably wiped out most of the coarser ways of speaking.

Shrugging, Alech replied, “Not that I care really, it all sounds the same to me. Anyway, since it looks like we’re going into introductions, the two ladies behind me are the long haired Biesti and the indomitable Liles.”

“Nice to meet you,” the predatory woman, Biesti said. She too had the same odd accent as Jushar, although when Pietro thought about he could not recall her using it when she had told him to get up. He mentally shrugged it off; he had only been half awake at the time.

“Hey,” the one behind her, Liles said, her voice sounding about what one would expect from someone with a severely and artificially flattened noise. There was also just the slightest trace of mistrust that Pietro thought he heard although it was hard to tell since it was a foreign language he was still learning to a large extent.

“Hello Biesti and Liles,” Pietro stated.

“It will be interesting to say the least when you make it to the third tier. Liles and I respected, successful fighters there,” Biesti said with a slight smile and half hooded eyes. The way she said it gave Pietro the creeps.

“You have more confidence than usual for the new guy,” Alech said to Biesti.

“He killed Slasher, of course I have confidence. He just needs a second win and red will be the most popular colour in the city,” Biesti replied.

Somehow Pietro really didn’t like the way she put that.

[LadyTevar]

I really don't like the way she put that either.

Biesti is former Royalty, I'm betting. You've said nothing to my comment about Pietro being Ochre reborn, as well.

[Singular Quartet]

I really don't like the way she put that either.

Biesti is former Royalty, I'm betting. You've said nothing to my comment about Pietro being Ochre reborn, as well.

You're quite correct. He hasn't. The correct response, I feel, is "Do you want him to?"

[Academia Nut]

If I comment on the whole Ochre thing, it will probably be a huge spoiler for something else later, which is in of it itself something of a spoiler if you think about it. As I've said throughout, if you really want to know, I'm willing to tell you, just send me a PM and say that you don't mind being spoiled.

Biesti being former royalty on the other hand is pretty obvious, although if she were the result of a male member of a noble family sleeping around with the commoners then that would also explain the markings on her skin without her being a legitimate member of the nobility.

[Academia Nut]

Sort of a general update for those of you used to the rather quick pace I had a little earlier. I just completed my finals today, so I should be able to get in a few more updates over the next couple of days, once the seasonal exhaustion and post school celebration/commiseration hangover wears off.

Now, I really don't want to skip too much time, but I don't want to drag on too much with the training bit until the next event. So there will probably be a chapter or two of a few things and then a montage sequence or something along those lines. I've hit a bit of a dry spell at the moment, but I know that there are springs of creativity just over the horizon, so any suggestions for things you would like to see over the next little bit, from dream sequences to discussions of culture and such would be greatly appreciated.

[Alferd Packer]

I want to see Pietro get the shit kicked out of him by a girl in training. Perhaps accompanied by some sort of ludicrous bet if he loses.

[Academia Nut]

Okay, that I like. Now the question is... Biesti or Liles? Hmmm... decisions, decisions...

A ludicrious bet is also a good idea, but what to do for it? Hmmm...

[Alferd Packer]

Okay, that I like. Now the question is... Biesti or Liles? Hmmm... decisions, decisions...

A ludicrious bet is also a good idea, but what to do for it? Hmmm...

Gotta be Biesti. From how you describe her, Liles is built like a brick shithouse. So she's probably a physical match for Pietro, and, being better trained, you'd expect her to knock his nuts up into his stomach.

Biesti should beat him, but more than that, she should beat him at something that Pietro would expect to excel at, like wrestling. This has the advantage of being doubly uncomfortable for him, since she's now going to have to have her hands all over him, and vice versa.

As for enticing Pietro to do it, perhaps the wager could be this: winning gets him an absurdly high credit at the armorer, so that he can buy the best equipment for his tier. Losing gets him humiliated in such a way that he can't get angry and kill someone (like having to renounce his religion or something like that), but makes him a target for ridicule beyond what having his ass kicked by Biesti would do. I'm still trying to come up with a specific degradation.

[Academia Nut]

Okay, now I know what the bet will be, and it will be most amusing. Mwuahahahahaha! Thanks for the help there Alferd.

[Alferd Packer]

Ha, no problem. As the Germans say, "Schadenfreude ist die reinste Freude."

[Darth Smiley]

This I gotta see....

[Academia Nut]

Okay, I promise once I get over my current bout of writer's block and blahs I'll get an update up. To tide you over, here is the promised better image of Cherach.

[TithonusSyndrome]

Duuuuuuuuuude. That totally adds depth and clarity to my mental image of the vanver aesthetic you've poured so much effort into describing.