[Lawtan]

Oh...
*Much cursing as that was only 1/3 of what was written*

Rurik saw the man…the helpful one…chased by a handful of the slippery-scaled fellows…but another, a rusty black-brown and milky belly-crawler was among them, with ivory horns. Rurik’s rear legs bent, the rotors resisting gravity’s pull to sit, and leapt across the corridor. With a crunch and release of bodily spew, the front paws landed on a sandy viper clinging to an abandoned scarf. Springs dampening the impact, Rurik bounded again, visual sensors trying to identify the odd snake of the two chasing Dante.

[Snake.colors == {33000, fffaa; 04400, ffaac}
Snake.pattern == 2:1_upperlower _ratio
Snake.head == Large and narrow, coffin-like
Snake.bodysize ~~ 2.2 meters
Identifying snake…]

Rurik was catching up, but Dante’s pace slowed as he seemed weakened. The odd snake hissed loudly, angrily…like a cross between a rattle and steam. The dark snake collided with the man, and bit hard. Oddly, the man did not seem to notice this one, but the sandy snake sent him falling. A third snake Rurik snapped with powerful jaws of steel canines, crushing the flying meat-spine.

[Snake identified…
Unknown.snake == Dendroaspis polylepis mortus]

Rurik rapidly clawed at the creatures, tearing snake meat from bone and freeing the convulsing Dante from their bites. Still, the Devil’s Mamba tried to strike Rurik’s hide, black mouth open. Rurik answered with a bite to the head, and continued to the man.

Almost in mourning…for a robot…he curled his flexible tail around Dante, Rurik began tugging the man. Kadia would have to help him…
Dante began vomiting, but otherwise, his limbs hung, paralyzed. Rurik turned the feverish, unconscious Dante so as to avoid bile-choking. Rurik pedaled faster forward towards Kadia and Thomas, unleashing a mental cry.

----------

Kadia tried to run to assist the soldiers, flamewheels sent ahead. She sliced through a snake sneaking up, rearing up to strike, attracting their attention. Shrugging, she joined in to finish off the foe, and prepared to run towards the nameless fellow…

A howl in her head alerted her to Rurik, bounding towards her, a convulsing Dante behind, slowing him down. Kadia ran towards the pair. Dante was a mess of puke, with red/black blood streaming from three bite wounds…

Kadia had Rurik keep Dante on his side, and opened the aid box inside of Rurik. Grapping one of Rurik’s syringe-pumps, and a relaxant, she administered that to Dante to reduce the convulsing. Now able to grab the bitten limbs, she wrapped chords around them, greatly reducing the bloodflow momentarily to those limbs. She could not flush such toxins out of Dante’s system, and he had went eerily still. With another syringe, she tried multiple antivenoms…to little effect. Limited, Kadia did the only thing possible. Cleaning the blood away, she tied Dante’s limb stiff, and injected the two now-empty syringe-pumps near the black-red swollen bite-marks on the leg. Pulling in reverse, despite being a near futile effort, she tried to draw the tainted blood. In coagulated clumps, it collected…
Dante was starting to grow cold and stiff. In a panic, Kadia, frantic to not let another person die…not again…withdrew the syringes. Shoulders over his chest, in a vertical position above his sternum, she began CPR.

“One…Two…Three…Four…Live!”

She went down and forced a breath through his still mouth. She got back up, and repeated, not quite remembering the proper count…

"You...Have...To...Live!" Kadia had tears raining from her eyes...desperate.

[Gallagher]

You can space it out just by delving into what's going on around her, not just what she's doing. Is she so focused that she doesn't really notice anyone else anymore? Is she jumpy about more snakes getting him again? Does she feel like time is racing against her, or it's all going slow, even her own movements?

You're doing well. Take a step back for a while if you need it. It's alright.

-sees edit- Actually.

Rurik's part is good. I would cut Kadia's first paragraph, because the snakes are pretty much handled, then break up her actions a bit more like you did with his. Of course, it's up to you.

...

One more slight note on the actual aid aspects, there's no way he would get cold and stiff that quickly. It could easily be her panic and imagination making her think it, though.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Not only are the snakes mostly handled his soldiers are actually completely impervious to them -- they're wearing powered, exoskeletal titanium armor. Honestly, we all should have just retreated down the hallway and let them block off the entrance, speaking tactically.

[Espy]

Depending on the type of venom, stiffness from swelling is quite possible. Also, muscle cells can turn stuff when battling foreign substances.

TBH, Dante's decent constitution gives him a bit more time than any normal person in terms of how long it'd take for him to succumb to the toxin's effects. Hence, he wouldn't be puking or running a fever until an hour or so in.

[Gallagher]

HELL VENOM, ESPY.

[Espy]

I...okay, I...oh, fine. Hmph.

[Lawtan]

Dante is dead in 10 minutes. He is lucky it isn't the soul-stealing kind. (May be bending it here, but that may be because it has the tortured angel's soul)
I need to research the dying process, now...in a while...
*Is in the habit of burying the dead, bot so much seeing their final moments, unless it is sudden death stuff...

[Gallagher]

Rigor sets in in about 4 hours or so, give or take, and the body has to actually dissipate its heat before it's cold, so it will take a bit. Like Espy said, stiffness could happen from swelling, but that is a very different kind.

[Lawtan]

Okay...as said, I am used to dealing with road splats and burying those who died overnight. I'll need to look it (dying) up some more.

[Espy]

-grimace- I think most of the people in here aren't quite right in the head. Hell, I might even be the only one who's never actually had to deal w depression. Yet.

[Lawtan]

*Offers Flower*

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Originally Posted by Lawtan

Okay...as said, I am used to dealing with road splats and burying those who died overnight. I'll need to look it (dying) up some more.

Are you a mortician, Lawtan?

[Lawtan]

Nope. Just life.

[Espy]

Suze, correct me if I'm wrong, but Law -- I think you use a few too many adjectives and names at times.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

I don't know, I've definitely seen worse, and the names thing is a bit of a tough call with how many characters we have on-screen, when the default is to, for instance, call Dante "the blind man", that really shouldn't happen more than once a post.

I didn't notice all that many adjectives in his last post, or at least where there were they were conveying relevant or semi-relevant information for the most part. I mean, there are probably places where the rhythm of a sentence would be helped by excising them, but again, I'm a lot more lenient on RP posts than I am on formal writing.

If I had to call out one thing, it'd be the instance where Rurik is "rapidly clawing", it's a good example of when not to use an ad-verb, since it doesn't really tell us anything essential about the action or why he's performing it. Lawtan, you seem to be pretty good with ad-verbs in general, though, since I haven't noticed many like that so far, which is good. (I tend to notice :P)

Anyway, you *can* have Kadia do something too, if you want, Law, either in this post or just make a separate one. When we talk about keeping your posts reined-in, we mean the actual content of what happens, you can make them 7 or 8 paragraphs or more if you want to really get into the psychoses of what your characters are going through (see Salone's posts :D), but it's hardly necessary, either.

Just need to find your balance. :)

Anyway, I'll probably make a post tonight with Thomas (don't have much for Diogenes to do, but we'll see.), so if anyone wants to squeeze anything else in before then, now's your chance.

[Lawtan]

I would say don't be lenient - my education sucks, in truth - but also, that I can't correct everything at once, and as Espy could tell you, I have a strong personal inclination to "focus on only one thing" and simultaneously "do everything at once."

What is confusing to me is that I can't personally tell how the other posts are better.

I think I made a mistake with Kadia...I am not sure I can write her correctly, as of yet...and there is a great deal of my issues that come into writing her. She is supposed to be stronger than she is, but so far is coming across as an ant-like rebel crybaby.