interlude: ellethia

[groundrules]

ELLETHIA

---

En route to their next destination, the Merchant detours the party through his home citadel of Ellethia — the first, haunted casualty of the undead, now divided into Ellethia-Allayar and Ellethia-Hamsour.

Feel free to tag into this log or make your own posts!

Image source.

ONE FOR THE ROAD

Macaluso Spina’s plans to escort the group out of Taravast are overturned by the Merchant’s transmission:

”It appears many of you remain indifferent to the stakes of our endeavour. So, you will see them. You go to Ellethia, jewel of innovation, the first cradle of the dead. My home.”

With the sorceress Karsa now gone, the party is entrusted to journey master and kindly-mannered biologist Enam.

Characters retain their bare essentials and what little can be carried on their backs. Magical storage is minimal. Everyone receives bags containing: three raw candles, a bundle of red clothes, a light blanket, two flasks of fresh water, a dagger, two bandage strips, two needles, strong thread, four textile patches, dried food, a pouch with two fistfuls of kiln-dried broken firewood and some flint. Supplies are replenished periodically.

Enam and his six assistants carry larger loads — with two aides transporting heavily bound humanoid forms. They’ve got you, Kaneki.

Ellethia requires delicate travel. The group first travels communally by ship, reaching the East Arakuthia Seas at sunset, meeting 25 small boats that can home between one and three passengers.

The group only travels at sea by night, when the depths are safest. The 3-17 January period covers two nights of seaborne travel, broken by journey on land across the two segments of Ellethia. Sea shipment will take characters from East Arakuthia to Ellethia-Allayar. A second voyage will later deliver them from Ellethia-Allayar to Ellethia-Hamsour. They spend roughly seven days at each land location.

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TROUBLE AT SEA

The small boats have been thralled to slowly progress through mist and water to their destination. Enam quickly discloses the rules of seaborne engagement:

■ Keep the light. Enam offers each traveller a lit candle brazier to wave periodically around the boat and “ward away evil.”

■ If your candle blows out, rush to it light back with help from your boat-mate or other vessels.

■ If all of a boat’s candle lights have been died, travellers have three minutes to light fresh candle flames. The vessel begins to sink, seized by hands of rotting flesh and shadow. Undead mermaids attempt to drown those who fall in.

■ Sunken characters can be rescued by other vessels but remain “marked,” experiencing a bitter, unrelenting cold that no fire can tame. The saviours’ ship are intensely targeted by mermaids that seek to capsize it and collect their lost prize. You are rattled but safe as long as your lights hold.

■ Perhaps you dozed off, or briefly looked away — no matter your distraction, a newcomer (?) has now climbed into your boat, teeth chattering and terrified. These undead visitors are unaware of their condition and beg to be delivered to shore. They are not violent, unless ignored and often spark conversations. Over time, they become paranoid that they will not be rescued.

■ Those who share their names with these creatures feel compelled to take them to ground, where they trigger immediate medium-scale explosions. Other boat-mates or vessels can stop this.

■ Forcibly push your stowaway into water, trick them in, or pose a riddle they cannot solve.

Image source.

AHOY, LAND

Ellethia has been cleaved into two — Allayar and Hamsour — by the Huntress, whose extended presence crumbled stone, decayed organic matter and eventually sunk districts and passageways. Crude bridges connect sectors of the citadel that have been partly submerged.

Although the tragedy of Ellethia occurred within the last decade, its ruins have been completely overrun by lush vegetation.

The following applies to both Ellethia-Allayar and Ellethia-Hamsour:

■ Characters must don their fashionable red gear once they reach land. Over 15 minutes of direct exposure to the crisp Ellethia air leads unprotected skin to erupt in a rash, then into gashes and tissue-deep decay. The wound fully regenerates within the hour.

■ Patch your party suit immediately, if it is torn.

■ Science-prone characters can notice no sign of radiation. Sorcerers feel no magic. Necromancers sense a complete absence of death.

■ There is no other human presence on land. Plants develop abundantly. Animals live an entire cycle of birth, growth, maturity and decay in the period between sunrise and sundown, reaching their prime around midday. Corpse remains patch back together into the creature’s new-born form at sunrise.

■ There are no human corpses anywhere.

TASKS

■ Forage or hunt. Replenish resources. Water from Ellethia’s canals is potable.

■ Help Enam find samples of the Widow’s Yearning. The plants grow in small fields whose scent woos travellers into a restful sleep they struggle to wake back from on their own. Widow’s Yearning can be ground into a potent hallucinogen.

■ Explore the pastoral surroundings.

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ELLETHIA-ALLAYAR

The party first reaches Ellethia-Allayar, which hosts the ruins of the citadel’s seats of banking, commerce and governance. Ellethia-Allayar has been deeply flooded, with many streets partly overcome by water.

■ Amid torn-down halls of rhetoric and administration, characters can find bright flags on public office buildings, and glitter debris and street cups on the ground.

■ Several decaying pamphlets remain in the main piazza, whose halls have been submerged 1 meter underwater. If recovered, the pamphlets bemoan: Toss a Bone to Your Taxman: He’s Already Got the Meat, Gristle and Fat, Dowries: Sense or Sentiment? Join Tonight’s March for Free Wedlock, Who Watches through Your Mirrors?, Selling: Minor Palace with Main Street View and Cat, 90 Days Since Conscription: Where Are Your Sons?, Taravast Was Our Fathers’ Question, We Are the Answer.

■ Fresher pamphlets littered on public streets announce extended burial grounds in the botanical garden.

■ Roads and buildings show signs of clawing and trampling, along with spattering of long-dried blood.

■ The carriages, streetlights and infrastructure of Ellethia suggest a technology level near the 1800s.

THE SILENCE GAME

Ellethia-Allayar’s impromptu “canals” have made it a prime target for mermaids, who only infiltrate at midday — the peak of the accelerated animal life cycle.

■ Enam urges retreating to the high ground of the peripheral residential areas, as midday draws near.

■ Between noon and 13:00 each day, swathes of vicious mermaids storm the Allayar canals, working in packs to draw unsuspecting animals or humans into water. Some mermaids are dead, some living. While they always circle Ellethia during the day, they only proactively hunt in this period.

■ The thick fogs of Ellethia throw a boon: if they are very silent and very still, characters can hide even on low ground. Beware: the mermaids’ hearing has evolved to compensate their weaker sight, helping them locate close-by characters who speak or heave.

■ Mermaids imitate the animal calls and human voices they have heard to lure out prey.

■ Most central and public buildings are on low land.

Enam directs characters to their boats again to head to Ellethia-Hamsour within the week.

Image source.

ELLETHIA-HAMSOUR

Unlike Allayar, Ellethia-Hamsour is a completely demolished territory, bordering a wasteland. Water infiltrations have been minimal.

The fog runs thicker than in Allayar, compounding the dangers of the collapsing, decayed roads and bridges.

The strong, vibrant greenery only breaks in coastal regions. Beneath the plant beds, you can find signs of the academic, science or technological districts. In some manicured gardens, flowers have overtaken hundreds of newer stone plates bearing local names and the marker, Truth Bows Only to the Sun.

Any remaining stone edifices display intense clawing and blood residue.

Characters are tasked to head to a distant lighthouse, lone in the horizon.

■ Characters become increasingly obsessed with reaching the lighthouse, often neglecting food, safety and sleep.

■ The single-minded focus leaves some vulnerable to being lured into steep pits or down cliff edges, into the sea.

■ Some characters become possessive of the lighthouse and plot to prevent their fellow travellers from reaching it. The lighthouse is not safe, if others get near it. It does not want them. Only you.

PLOTTING POST

QUESTIONS

Comments

ahoy land

[downswing]

( The creature calls to him with childish wonder.

He watches it coil and chase the silhouettes of watered clouds, barely pale fever stains of themselves. Since reaching Allayar, he has not glimpsed rain: only endless, cruel beauty and the venomous squeaks of the crude red cloth that corsets his touch.

And he remembers, he should fear the dragon. The white coarse roil of the sea's temper swells and bursts below, and he watches it spume past coastal teeth, tastes its vain inefficacy. He could drown, slipped or thrown from here, the victim of his own absentmindedness of footing. He could drown, deafened by the stuttered madness of waves that beat themselves, by growth unending. Each moment, each heartbeat, he hears and feels the obscenity of the world's fecundity. A shi's time before midday, the sun turns hoary-white, a blight on itself. Swelter drags tender beads of sweat that sour Lan Wangji's nape in the claustrophobic confines of his — garments.

What evil lives here knows nothing of its own malice. Unbidden — ignored, for who is Lan Wangji but a scarlet beetle, a fire bug, vermin before the distant, wandered eye of a creature born to wings? — he waves the dragon away from where it hunts the rising shadow of a visiting deer.

Do not be tempted by its meats. Rot lives within it. Within all creatures of the land.

Each dawn betrays itself, like a child scraping parchment with his young, brittle nail to erase fat brush smears that have thickened to lessen his task of calligraphy. Paper thins, darkens. Time does not unspool itself, or walk back its steps, or allow its demolition. Action is plastic in permanence. And though death and rebirth meander hand in hand and turn in turn, like gentlemen vying for one maiden's favour in court games — the spirits of Ellethia-Allayar must surely crust or crumble, flake, break.

He need not ask who has become his companion on the coastal road, rubble spearing the stiffened soles of their fresh boots. The dragon, look at it: how it neglects Lan Wangji, but sweeps in, now and then, as if to knock the great muscle of its heft against the red explorer, before lifting itself at the last moment, content with its inspection. Look how the creature dotes. This is the girl, then. The child-bride, its mother. )

Will it feed of the land?

( And unspoken: or will the dragon turn fang and claw once more on men, to sate whatever hungers linger? There are no children here to bear the burden of a serpent turned bird, of its appetites. Perhaps in this, there are small mercies. )

[song_of_fire]

He will look for dear or fish. He doesn't trust the waters.

[She has no fear of what Drogon may do. The risk here is less than it was at the Citadel. None crowd him, none try to touch him in wonder. He isn't confined as he was before. There is open sky and many ruins to make his lair. For however long they were here, he would eat well and live as a dragon, the way he was meant to. He may not be his normal size, but that didn't deter him from his pleasures.

It was comforting to have him close, even if she sometimes lost him in the sky. He was the blood of the dragon and so was she, her strength came from him. No matter how wrong this place felt, there was a small candle flame to guide her through the mists and rot. He had been at her side at the House of the Undying and the magic there was a venomous snake, circling round until there was no more air to suck in.

He would not let her fall or be swallowed in this place.

Still, she took precautions. Her dagger was in her belt and the whip was tied around her forearm. She was prepared should things take a sour turn. Drogon was still a dragon at heart and the wrong scent or too great a hunger might spell danger. With so much though to feed on, there wasn't so great a risk. How often had he sailed or traveled with her armies and men without incident?]

He will find a place to make his lair and likely come out to only spread his wings or to feed on whatever animal he finds.

[downswing]

( Dragon's scales so dipped in charcoal, the sun oils them glistened. What did night make of him, this creature? It itches Wangji, tongue and gums and the edges of his scalding awareness, to ask if the moon drenched the dragon pale, or the night ate of him first, if he vanished.

No matter. He is come. The dragon holds the watch, no lesser than the men who have taken the mantle to guard each other's sleep sweet in martial shifts. The girl — woman, he must think of her so, no matter the pearl-shine of her youth, she bears a name — Daenerys is under constant, stalwart survey. Above her, the dragon swerves, a king shadowing bracken, and it strikes Lan Wangji, with foolish gladness: the dragon plays. When he dips and dances and breaks the clouds again, as if he were a fete lantern surrendered to the heavens, the creature only amuses himself.

There's a poetry in it, Wangji's laughter that tastes like candied dragon beard on the tongue. He swallows against it. Discipline. )

Sirens will assail him.

( He has seen them, gristly and lean, savage and riotous, shaped by starvation. The mermaids of the land take few prisoners, offer no sanctuary. And the dragon is slight, for all his valour, and so many of the water creatures throw themselves in the air, batting their tails. )

You do not fear his freedom?

allayar | just going to wildcard WTFery based off your prompt, don't mind me

[downswing]

( The man Enam, their shepherd-guide, has begged of them his flowers, round and clever golden swells of mystery that have eluded Lan Wangji for the better part of the half-shi. No matter the promised reward; he intends nothing past offering recompense to Enam, who has acquitted himself of their rearing with the animal kindness of a bird forced to accept a cuckoo's offspring. It is Lan Wangji's understanding that the group is not always... finely mannered.

Over a day stretched taut and wild and long, ungainly past midday, he has not been alone in the hunt. The syrens came, fled, deserted them, waters spumed and maddened in their wake. The prior savage, blood-curdling electric restlessness has dispelled itself into blunt silence. Since, they've walked the same radius, like a spillage of red-luck beads.

...except for the one traveller Lan Wangji has glimpsed, now and then, who has been seemingly tormented by their outfit. Then, by their helmet. Their path. Perhaps, throughout it all, by the tragedy of human existence. Wangji is not often lent to curiosity, but he admits... an occasional penchant. Here. Now. With the latest bundle of worthless flowers flickered at his feet.

Their fresh gear is the one great neutraliser, reducing all party members to an amorphous, red flag. Lan Wangji cannot tell faces, names, the tells of strength or gender. Uniformed, they are all as one: scarlet, squeaky, sweating, sordid legion. Height alone satisfies him, seeding fertile ground for the riddling. The wanderer is slight, the breadth of their form fettered. A woman, or a child, or perhaps Shen Qingqiu. But then, no mortal peril blinks into the horizon, and the scant youthful faces in their numbers comport themselves with... dignity.

Therefore, he faces, through exclusion, a woman, step thunderous and purpose unknown. He waddles towards her with the patience of a man who has learned his gear no more flatters or allies him than do riding leathers. It thrives on him, a placid weight likely to animate itself at the dark of Lan Wangji's last hour, only to point and laugh at him. There is evil in this red contraption. Lan Wangji likes it not, but accepts it as his due, an exorcist studied in sacrifice, penitence and ill luck.

For now, he approaches the woman (?) at fair enough of a distance that he invites neither her wrath nor that of the whispered, yellowed haze of pollen that swarms them. She appears... frustrated. Angered? Adrift. He suspects why. )

You seek — ( The pause, inevitable. )Privacy? ( ...how else to ask of a woman if she is possessed of relief only distant bathing room facilities may meet? ) We left abandoned shelters an hour northbound.

[song_of_fire]

[It was a complicated question, born from a strange journey in the Red Waste. She could remember Jorah's voice, "The dragon knows, do you?" There had been thoughts of simply staying on Drogon's Dragonstone, the hill where he made his nest. A place they had eaten charred horse meat, sat amongst blackened bones and the sharp smell of smoke.

How would she ever explain what happened after she ate the berries? When the fever was at its worse and her wounds were growing pus filled. If she could tell him, break it down in a way that he might understand the revelations she had come to, about how Drogon was free, so must she be.

Fire and Blood.

Instead, she watched her dragon, red and black, his eyes obscured by his upturned head. His neck was craning towards the sky, as though he were testing how high he could truly fly, that he might pierce through and return to Essos.]

No. [She envied it, in all truth. Her voice was wistful, missing the wind in her face as he rose higher and higher as she clutched to his back. Higher and higher.] He and I are of an understanding now. We are bonded.

I think that, while I don't know the secrets that my ancestors did of dragons, I do know how to keep him under control.

trouble at sea.

[inferus]

( Wrath eyes the portal created by magic - it is not magic he is familiar with, not like what comes from his world, not like the magic he has sensed from others within their group either. It means the woman who flops on to the boat must be new. He steps out of the way with unnatural speed as she starts to get sick, narrowly missing his shoes.

He is already pressed about the suit he must wear. He would not be happy to have disgusting shoes as well. )

...does your method of teleportation often make you sick?

[violetchaos]

[ Yennefer busies herself with her hair, long fingers working the smaller knots out while half paying attention to what the man was saying. She sounds a note of confirmation, now noticing how her information was being received.

She takes the cord, glancing up with a vague smile of appreciation. Not because she wasn't thankful, but because she was very much distracted now by why her landing in the water was so unsettling.

Her brows pinch curiously, knowing he knew something that she wanted to know, too.]

Or someone put me there. It would make sense since the rock I was holding is all over the ground here.

[ It was as bizarre as it sounded, and she was still trying to convince herself that it had everything to do with the fact that her injury was no longer a gaping hole in her stomach.

Belatedly, she gives her name in return.]

Yennefer. And thanks.

Sounds like you've had some experience with this place. How long exactly have you been here and why does my landing in water seem to surprise you?

[violetchaos]

[ The voice that replies is nothing short of curt, though it has nothing to do with the woman offering her help and everything to do with tiny hairs being pulled out at the root that were bringing her closer and closer to a violent burst of irrational anger.

After another groan, she straightens and presses a hand to the side of her head and winced. ]

I have, only one can only go without this stupid thing for so long before the flesh starts melting off my face.

[ Luckily it's only been a few minutes so far. ]

I don't have any tie to hold it together.

[ Purple eyes go to the other woman's head and the state of her hair. Or lack thereof. Such irony. ]

[sergeant_slick]

[Honestly, if she got all smiley and chipper, that'd be off-putting. The practical focus was a good sign.]

Everything I've heard is that we were being snatched by hostile forces. Undead stuff. [He still wasn't sure how to even process that whole business.] And in the last couple cities, that kind of made sense. I got nabbed... fuck me, it's been half a year. [By the Galactic Standard Calendar, at least. He still had no idea how long a day actually was on this planet. Too fucking long, anyway.]

I showed up in a prison run by an undead lord. People back in Taravast mostly got the same treatment. Some of the locations seemed a bit random, but you showing up right near the boats? No. That's too much to just be lucky coincidence. [He sighs.] Unless you're secretly some kind of hallucination-monster that lures clueless shitheads off to get cursed, that's hit people a few times here. If you are, I wouldn't bother--whoever designed this suit's already got me covered on curses.

2

[inferus]

Wrath hates this suit. He hates this unnatural place. He watches at the reaction to the animal coming back to life when it has no reason or purpose to, and he grimaces. His shoulders straighten, and his eyes darken.

"...an unnatural cycle."

He has killed an animal now, watched as it remained dead. He feels no death here, and yet death clearly can claim these beasts.

But not death by 'old' age.

wildcard wtfery is love and always encouraged!

[violetchaos]

[ For as much as she tried to remain calm, the upheaval, lack of answers and the mandatory wearing of something that she couldn't even fathom in a dream, which she still hadn't completely ruled out. All of it made her feel like she was out of her own body; an unnerving feeling considering what she's been through already. It all seems so far away now that what is happening there puts even more distance between her and what might have come to be in Sodden Hill. Even still, if she's dead, it would be nice to know.

At least her hair is braided now and not getting stuck in her helmet every time she takes it off. Silver linings.

When the next new face approaches, Yennefer isn't as annoyed as she has been. She's exhausted and feeling a level of defeat that she hasn't ever felt before. ]

And do what exactly? Can't take the suit off and even if I could I smell like a set of balls trapped in a pair of leather pants on a hot day. No one wants to be around that.

[ She sighs softly (but dramatically) and looks across the field. In her hand is the gold device that Enam gave her that is a wonder, in and of itself. Nothing that she's ever seen. ]

Unless you know something I don't. Like there's something stronger than water on this pathetic piece of land.

[violetchaos]

[ She remains still, the words coming from the man barely registering while she coughs and sputters before glancing up at the man standing a few feet away. ]

No. Never.

[ Yennefer pushes off her knees onto her rear, closing her eyes as another wave of nausea hits. She manages to swallow back the bile rising again. ]

But then I've never opened them in other worlds before.

[inferus]

The change in worlds does affect magic.

( Wrath has experienced this himself. He is still angry at how his powers were ripped from him when he was dragged back into this world directly before the beacon closed. His power comes from Hell itself, from the way he dug and clawed his way on to that throne.

Some of it stays with him, but he still more powerless than he would like. He gives her a moment and then another to recover before he speaks. )

This world in particular appears to be able to dilute the magic that comes through it.

[violetchaos]

So it see-

[ The word is cut off by another violent churn of her stomach, one that takes some steady breaths to work through. Yennefer takes another moment before looking at him again. ]

This is far from being diluted. Unstable, yes, but not dampened.

Has that been your experience then?

[inferus]

When we activated the beacon, it drew us back to our own world and then dragged us back. When we were dragged back, it did appear to have an effect on my magic.

( In the fact, he had none at all. It was a horrible realization given the life he has made for himself, the power he has clawed for his own. He gives her the time as she grapples with this latest sickness. )

Unstable might be a better word for it in general. I have not seen magic like that you wield.

[downswing]

( Here, before them, a creature spanning an eternity — this is the 'dragon,' a winged serpent by any other name. Lan Wangji makes no claim on it. On him.

The world is strangled by the inequality of myths favouring the strong, the bold, the formidable. An accident of birth positioned this creature above them in location, metaphor and status. Now, they behold it.

This, then, is what it means to look above at a superior, and find oneself intrinsically, irrevocably lacking in ways time, experience and craftsmanship cannot hope to address. He will not bridge the distance. He will not rise. )

You subjugated his kind. Your people. ( Her ancestors, who whispered the secrets of dragons. What is there to begrudge her? Decades before, Wangji slew another legend, suffocated in a cave. )

TROUBLE AT SEA....

[blackscales]

[ Well, that's one way to make an entrance.

Wrathion blinks once, then his face slowly twists in distaste.

His boots! Those were nice boots.

The boat sways violently. Wrathion's candle goes out, and he lights it again with a gesture. ]

If you were aiming for the shore you've missed by a considerable distance.

[downswing]

Discipline.

( Spoken just so: calmly, enticingly, shrewdly. He knows the frustration that absolute certainty invites in those who still weigh and decide their footing. How the example of definitive contentment does nothing more than spurn and irritate them. Children and disciples forever despise a firm hand.

No footsteps, muted underfoot. The red that shrouds his limbs absorbs sound, sloshes weeds and grass under a firm boot. He does not enclose her, nor removes his helmet — this the time and this the place, for example. The flickered arc of his arms waves calm more than acceptance. Anger breathes and lives and sprawls the same in men as in animals, like the spread of a watered stain. )

Enough. ( Settle, as if she were a storm-maddened horse, rebellious thunder rushing to prickle her ears. ) What troubles you? Think. Your health is secure. Needs met. You are at advantage.

( Perhaps no chipped ceramic tiles sit above them, no silks welcome their bodies, no salted waters and oils whisper their skins fresh — but they are not weakened. What is there to complain of? )

Ease.

allayaaaass

[reparo]

[What she has learned in the months of being here (gods, really? Months already?), is that there are more than one way to practice magic. It still doesn't stop being incredibly interesting, to see other people practice forms of magic that are familiar to her but also are not.

Wrath, for instance, has some sort of disapparition skills that feels altogether different, darker and older than the skill Hermione knows.

Others get from point A to point B by running across rooftops. (Weird, moving on.)

The portals, though, she's not seen anything like it yet. So of course, though she spies the whole thing from a different boat, she keeps an eye out for the woman who's been pulling those portals out of thin air.

When they finally reach land, it gets harder to find her in the crowd of red suits (Hermione feels like they're about to step outside of a submarine), so she looses track of her. Eventually, though she does think she has found her. She can tell, by the absolutely committed way with which the witch (is she a witch?) yells out Fuuuuuuuck.]

Oh - hold on, do you need help with that? [Because she's very graceful herself in the suit. She'll waddle over, reaching out to gingerly pull a black hairstrand out of the grip of the helmet.]

Ahoy Land!

[blackscales]

[ The red suit is unpleasant.

Wrathion had put on most of it, but he'd been hesitating over the helmet. It limits his peripheral vision, his hearing, his sense of smell -- and it's also heavy and ugly and liable to ruin his hair.

Whatever the cause of what this suit protects against, surely it cannot harm a dragon?

Not that Wrathion is immune to harm, but if it's a sickness that touches humans --- ]

There is life, of a sort, but no human life.

[ He turns to her, helmet tucked under one arm. The absence of Drogon is marked by a quick glance over her, to the sky, then away thoughtfully. ]

I sense no magic here.

[ Troubling. If a magical event caused this, he'd feel its signature surely? ]

[violetchaos]

[ Undead anything, in her experience, was usually bad news. But then so were plenty of other things. If this place had magic and the undead and conflict and politics, then this place was only different to her on a surface level.

Her attention is pulled rather quickly at the name of the city that she happened to land in with her first attempt out via portal; an embarrassing story that she will keep to herself.

Yennefer, despite having a tiny knowing smile, shakes her head. ]

I'm capable of a lot of things but it takes a pretty special occasion for me to pull hallucinations and curses out. Neither of which I would do to myself.

[ Her arms lift to show the same red suit. ]

Taravast. Is that where all this undead stuff began for all of you?

[sergeant_slick]

[He brightened a little more.] Oh, well, good to know I'm not earning any special treatment yet. [He won't say it won't happen for certain, that'd be wildly optimistic.]

No, there's been at least one other city. Sa-Hareth. That's where I showed up. By the time I escaped the prison, that Merchant guy had already started financing the rest of this lot. [And... Shit. He was discussing all this without proper security. That was sloppy.]

One more thing--the translators we're using? They act as... [Hells. How should he describe it? Barely anybody here knew what a commlink was. Or even a radio.] They're long-distance communications devices. And I haven't seen any evidence that they're really secured. So if you've ever got something to say that you can't risk others listening in on, everyone in the conversation's got to take them off and leave them somewhere out of range.

...And if nobody else here speaks your language, you're out of luck. I don't suppose you speak Basic, do you?

[violetchaos]

Am I though?

[ The question is asked honestly, although with an acerbic note. Since her arrival, she can't seem to shrug the chronic tension out of her shoulders. Everything isn't as it should be and her mind is a swirl of disorder and clutter because of it; her equilibrium precarious.

What troubles you?

It's a question with two answers, really. Everything and nothing. Or perhaps it comes down to being far too much that she can do nothing about. Yennefer has always been in a battle of some kind, be it against herself or with people who constantly fail her. They always want something and this place was proving to have its own reasons, too.

Think.

She shrugs, closing her eyes and finally surrendering because she was far too tired to think anymore. Thinking upset her and deflecting kept her from stumbling on all the reasons that she needs to stay angry. ]

Ease. I don't know what that means. Where I'm from, slowing down allows something to catch up.

[violetchaos]

[ Yennefer had heard of the beacon, which was meant to return them home, but the news of it not working sparks curiosity on why. What played into that failure?

Nevermind that.. ]

No? So, what kind of magic have you seen before?

[ For the moment, her nausea eases, though it's hard to say for sure if it's simply distracted by her conversation with this dark and mysterious man. ]

Are there no sorceresses where you come from?

[violetchaos]

[ Hardly the apologetic type, Yennefer shifts back and leans against the side of the boat and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. ]

Not aiming for this shore. I was trying to get back to where I was.

[ She looks at his boots, then up at the man's face, saying nothing. ]