Beneath the Horizon (AJS Roleplaying x NurseMaxine)

[AJS Roleplaying]

Beneath the Horizon A Roleplay Brought to You By: ​

Adrian Locke written by AJS Roleplaying ​

Eloine Quinn written by NurseMaxine ​

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[AJS Roleplaying]

The yacht was christened The Horizon Club, though the name was nowhere to be seen on her gleaming hull. Adrian Locke didn't believe in signposting power. Let others speak names; he preferred impressions. What mattered wasn't what people read - it was what they felt the moment their soles met the deck. And boarding The Horizon Club was designed to make one truth unmistakably clear: the man behind this vessel didn't just live in another tax bracket - he lived in another dimension entirely.

She was over two hundred feet of floating poise and command, conceived in the hushed corridors of a discreet Italian shipyard that produced no more than six vessels per year. Not out of scarcity, but by design. Each yacht was a whisper, not a shout. White steel gleamed like bone against the sea; obsidian glass caught the light like a promise. The decks were teak, polished to a warmth that invited barefoot wandering, and the interiors were less decorated than curated - clean lines, soft lights, and a discipline of luxury that spoke not of expense, but of exacting taste.

There was a helipad, naturally. A pool that shimmered like molten silver in the daylight. Quarters that felt more like secluded suites atop a Himalayan retreat than anything one might find on water. But Adrian hadn't commissioned this vessel for leisure cruises or social climbing. He had no intention of hosting moguls or being photographed mid-toast with hedge fund titans for glossy business spreads. The Horizon Club wasn't a toy, and it wasn't a stage. It was something far more precise, a liminal space. A pressure-sealed environment, untethered from land, where influence could stretch and thoughts could roam. A domain where the game could pause, even if the player never did.

The yacht's final boarding took place off the rugged west coast of Ireland, under a sky thick with salt and the kind of wind that stripped artifice from a person. It was the last stop in Adrian's recruitment tour - one that had taken months, cities, and silence. He'd dismissed the original staff within twenty-four hours of the yacht's delivery. Not out of disdain - they were technically flawless, trained in elite schools of discretion and finesse. But Adrian wasn't interested in inheritance. He was interested in invention. He didn't want experience. He wanted instinct. Presence. A certain tension in the posture. A refusal to be predictable.

He hired young women. Not randomly. Not recklessly. Each one had passed through layers of quiet scrutiny - background checks, yes, but also unannounced meetings that revealed more than any résumé. No warning, no entourage. Just a chair across from Adrian Locke, who asked very little, but noticed everything. How they moved. How they occupied space. How they sat in silence. Some of the women came from hospitality. Some from university campuses or portfolios of uncertain modelling work. A few had walked away from lives too heavy to carry. All of them had a look in their eyes that told him they'd seen something. Survived something. They weren't naïve. They weren't tame. And none of them arrived to be owned.

He wasn't after control. He had enough of that. What he sought was atmosphere - an energy that hummed just below the surface, a sense that anything might happen, that he might be understood or outwitted or surprised. He paid more than generously, and the expectations were crystal clear. They would work. They would learn. They would be safe. But they were stepping out of the familiar and into his world. And in his world, silence wasn't an absence - it was a contract. Loyalty wasn't a currency that matured over time - it was the price of admission.

Now, The Horizon Club pulled away from Ireland's jagged silhouette, the coast fading behind them as if retreating from the future. Adrian stood at the top deck, linen trousers rippling against his legs, bare chest kissed by the wind that still tasted faintly of peat smoke and seaweed. The Atlantic stretched ahead like an unfinished thought. Beneath him, the low murmur of life stirred - heels clicking on teak, the clink of ice in crystal, music tuned just low enough to leave room for secrets.

The crew had assembled. His crew. Handpicked. Not for how they served champagne or folded towels - but for the way they altered a room without speaking. They moved with the easy confidence of people who had made peace with ambiguity. Some were already laughing, their voices caught in the wind like birdsong. Others were quieter, gauging the contours of this new reality, unlearning whatever rules they had followed before stepping aboard.

From where he stood, the world felt suspended. Sky and sea met with no agenda, no deadline. Just infinite, bruised blue. But Adrian's mind never slept. Not entirely. Beneath the calm, something flickered - a thrum behind his ribs, like the distant hum of a coming storm. He wasn't chasing peace. He wasn't chasing anything, really. He was building something. Not a fantasy, but a framework. A space between departure and arrival. Between what had been and what could be. Between the man he showed to the world and the one who still haunted him when the noise fell away. The yacht wasn't about indulgence. Not for him. It was about proximity - to danger that was elegant, to mystery that felt earned, to potential that lived at the edge of structure. These women weren't ornaments. They weren't pieces on a board. They were catalysts. And Adrian Locke had always understood chemistry far better than strategy.

Soon, corks would pop. Music would swell. And somewhere below, eyes would meet across a room not yet charged with expectation. None of them quite knew what they'd signed up for. But they knew, in their bones, that it was more than a paycheck. That it was beginning. A shift. A pull toward something nameless. Adrian didn't smile. But his gaze settled on the horizon as though he recognized it - not as a boundary, but as an invitation. Whatever this was, it had started now. And he was ready to see where it would take him.​

 

[NurseMaxine]

Eloine was a simple young girl just 19, living with her parents near the small village of Coughfin. Located just Northeast of Donegal, it was the best naturally sheltered port in the whole of Ireland's rugged Northwest, and home to the linen mill which was a near ancient establishment and the only industrial employer within a 50 mile radius. Otherwise, the local populace were either fisherman of one sort or another, raised sheep, or worked as merchants in Donegal. The mill employed a few mechanic's but primarily hired young girls like Eloine that lived secluded lives,had minimal education, and generally hoped to find a good man who owned some land and wanted a family. Untill that happy result could be found the mill provided safe employment and a modest income.

Eloine had few ambitions beyond those that befell most every local young women and she would soon likely have been sheparding a passel of rugrats around a family farm within 3 years were it not for the appearance in the Harbor that afternoon of one of the most stunningly beautiful vessels afloat, the Horizon. It had appeared near Donegal silently just at sunset near the mouth of the Harbor, just as the girls were mounting their bicycles to head back home after 10 hours working a loom, or folding table linens.

Eloine's jaw dropped at the site, and after parking her bike again, she slowly walked the nearly one-eighth of a mile of dock the ship now occupied, and as she reached the bow, saw a table with two women seated nearbye, and sign stating "HIRING Laundress" "females only may apply". Her life was about to change. Eloine took a hasty second look at the sleek lines and beautiful decks of the ship and requested an application. After describing her current duties, washing and pressing new fine Irish table linens, her name was put on a list, and she was offered a seat.

 

[AJS Roleplaying]

Adrian stood alone on the top deck beside the bridge, the vast horizon stretching out before him, as the wind curled around his frame like an old companion. His thoughts, however, were far from the sea. They drifted, unbidden, to their newest recruit - Eloine.

She was a petite thing, barely five foot one, with a cascade of rich red hair that shimmered like polished copper under sunlight. Her eyes - brilliant emerald green - had an arresting intensity, like they saw more than they let on. At only nineteen, she was young, but there was a vibrant energy to her, a natural sensuality that lived in her movements, her expressions, even her silences. She carried her curves with unconscious grace, her figure drawing more than one glance during that crowded recruitment day down at the harbour.

It had been a long, exhausting process, sifting through a wide array of candidates who ranged from seasoned deckhands to fresh-faced hopefuls clinging to dreams of the sea. Eloine had arrived with no connections, no family name to open doors, and certainly no nautical background to bolster her application. Her upbringing had clearly been modest, maybe even harsh, though she had offered little detail. And yet, she had made it through the first few rounds with an ease that had surprised even the more cynical officers involved in selection.

Adrian had made it a point to personally meet with every final-round candidate, and when Eloine sat before him, there had been something instantly disarming about her. "She had this quiet way of holding herself, like she knew she didn't belong but refused to let that stop her," he'd reflected later. There had been a softness in her voice when she spoke, a careful choice of words that hinted at intelligence and thoughtfulness. He had found himself leaning in, not because he couldn't hear her, but because he wanted to catch every nuance in her tone.

"She stood out," he'd told the XO after the interviews. "Not just because she's a walking Irish postcard, but because she's... sweet. Not naive. Not stupid. But genuinely sweet. It's rare."

And it was that sweetness, mingled with something else - something he still hadn't put his finger on - that kept her circling in his thoughts. She didn't flirt, but there was a natural magnetism to her presence, a kind of quiet allure that seemed to hum just beneath the surface. It wasn't just her looks, though those alone would have made her memorable. No, it was the entire package: the confident way she met his gaze without challenge or fear, the delicate blush that rose on her cheeks when she was complimented, the subtle curiosity that lived in her expressions. He couldn't quite place it yet. Was it innocence? Hunger? A sense of wonder? Or something darker, something caged?

Now, as he gazed over the ocean, he knew she was below, somewhere on the lower deck. "She's settled in fast," he mused. "Mingled well. She's already working with some of the others, getting the cabins sorted - towels, linens, all that." It had been a small task, a test of how she functioned as part of a team. And by all accounts, she had taken to it without complaint.

Adrian exhaled slowly, watching the sky fade toward dusk. Eloine might have seemed like a sweet, curvy little redheaded thing from nowhere - but he knew better than to judge on appearances. The sea had a way of peeling back layers, and Adrian was certain that whatever Eloine was hiding - or perhaps whatever she didn't yet know about herself - would eventually surface.

And when it did, he'd be watching.​