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westwhere2022-09-03 10:11 pm
groundrules) wrote in westwhere2022-09-03 10:11 pm
plot roll | gulliver's travels
GULLIVER’S TRAVELS | EIDRIS
The dragons of Eidris remain agitated after Aiva hatches her eggs and her mate Ariste is allegedly wounded by a Minaras reconnaissance ship, the Relint. Outraged, Eidris aristocracy demands satisfaction, but war-wary king Thivar III soothes tempers until Minaras’ involvement is proven. Scouts report the Relint has crashed in the Sibilant Sands wasteland near Serthica, where dragons used to roam and mate. Dragon warlord Cain d’Ubiq organises a three-day flight expedition to recover the Relint, accepting companions.
✘ OBJECTIVE: locate and investigate the Relint.
■ Thirty dragons and riders, led by Cain d’Ubiq, leave once Eidris rises overground at 6:00am. Cain and two of his companions fly martial, fire-breathing dragons.
■ Every dragon rider is given three days of smoked meats for their dragons, food and water supplies for themselves, two blankets, binoculars and climbing hooks and gear. Riders are advised to wear warm full-body clothing and to cover their mouths.
■ Departing Eidris, you learn that you fly in the middle of the sandstorm season, amid deep reddish mists that rapidly exhaust you and vicious whirlwinds prone to unsaddle you. Don’t get lost and catch anyone who falls!
■ Through mental links, riders can sense their dragons are unnerved by the weather and the thought of confronting the Relint. Many transmit image glimpses of the Eidris-Minaras conflict, when dragons frequently battled warships.
■ Dragons are wilful and predatory creatures: try not to slip off when they suddenly pair up to play tag, hunt large birds or chase the flocks of nocturnal peaceful cloud whales.
■ The Sibilant Sands are a long, red, arid and withered stretch of land east of Serthica, littered by fog-drenched peaks and abyssal, sudden canyons. You may experience spells of inexplicable thirst, dizziness and listlessness.
■ Each night, the dragon party alights at watch points — very high plateaus, that host a few man-made caves. Cain d’Ubiq recommends sheltering your dragons. Squeeze in with them, or negotiate warmth with your fellow travellers: the Sibilant Sands are fiercely cold at night, and large fires can alert hungering man-sized hawks.
■ The stormy weather and recent events have left your dragons exceptionally skittish, prone to fits of anguish. Your physical presence — stroking, feeding, or grooming — reassures the dragons, as can your explicit efforts to send them happy, positive feelings. Think. Happy thoughts.
■ At long last, you reach the Relint: a small plane vessel that has crashed and remained stranded at a vast height between two steep cliffs that house several hawk nests.
■ Dragons are too large to fit in the space occupied by the Relint without being seen and attacked by the hawks — but you can leave your mounts behind and ascend with your climbing gear. Beware brutal hawks and storms.
■ Those who finally enter the Relint find no human remains — only two man-sized, straw-filled burlap mannequins, with a puddle of cold dark water at their feet. The mannequin ‘pilot’ wears a crudely painted fox face. The ‘navigator’ has a bear one.
■ Drop a line if your character plans to touch the dark water: you can get information, but please be aware there will be some unpleasant consequences.
■ The ship is very battered, showing Serthica markings: only RELINT remains visible from a distance, from the originally engraved AERIAL HEALING UNIT.
■ Dried blood is smeared on the back of the ship, where a fresh indentation has taken out the Relint’s engine. Any dragon that smells a sample can convey through images this is the blood of Ariste.
■ Grab whatever you need and fly home: the Relint creaks, rattles, and is at all times just about ready to fall.
NPC ACCESS: CAIN D'UBIQ
emilia di carlo, kindom of the wicked.
wildcaaaaaaard
( The dragons, then. If Lan Wangji has learned aught in this citadel, it is transgression — how to reduce himself, splintered into silent steps and hungry, pale hands, and to abscond the shape of himself in silence. How to emerge, more thief in daylight than honoured cultivator, touch trembled when it lingers over that which is not Lan Wangji's to catch.
The dragons fend for themselves, after their — trouble. A hushed, ill-gotten tragedy, the turbulence of one creature, infecting the many. They say, Aiva had her reasons, the better part of her soul nearly slain. And can Wangji, of all men, fault the grief of her and how it shaped her anger, wrong? It has left the remaining dragons at tenuous balance, skittish or hissing or prone to fits of arrogant disaster Lan Wangji has been instructed not to provoke. Better, more learned men than he say, Do not approach the dragon in their nests.
Yet the dragons, Wrathion has shown him, harbour death. The dragon might be the key to this. Come break of bleeding, liminal dawns, when the flock of winged creatures cuts the skies like arrow tips, descending back down — he does not think, he has entered Eidris without cause, without passport, no doubt without the leave of its caretakers. Certainly, without invitation.
He does not think he will intensify discomfort that the dragons already hungrily harbour. He does not think he is unwanted, unnecessary, wrong — he barters only a barrel of fresh well water from the nest attendants who crowd and wait and murmur, all youthful effervescence, That's him, Cain, you see his mount? They say they took down fifteen ships together in the war, can you imagine? In one day? That's him! And Lan Wangji's feet skid on fresh oils and lamp spill like viscera, gleaming, and it's to draw the dragons close, they say, to reflect lights, They like flame.
When they come down, they're jut of gem beauty, span of their strong wings a forlorn, carnal majesty, and breath's ribboned from Lan Wangji's lungs as if it's their claws wrenching it raw, raking — as if, when Emilia descends, dainty sweet shine of her dragon's skins blinding, he is somehow yet expected to survive the moment. At the last second, before the dragon's coiling tail nearly sweeps him, when the hand of an attendant draws him clumsily back, he recovers himself — retreats, lets the dragon find its footing, compact, then loosen it in place. When he nears again, it's to sit the barrel of water before the creature, where it sways tentatively under the heft of her greedy muzzle.
He anticipates rejection before Emilia must hiss it — but all the same, he binds his hands near the dragon's thick, heaving flank, to offer the witch a step for her dismount. )
Say nothing. ( By way of greeting, where they are watched. Do not betray him, the irregularity of his presence, as ill-fitting here as the cloying stench of spiritual rot that descends now, gelid, the more heartbeats he spends in Emilia's company, and he blinks, blinks again and his eyes nearly water, blinks and corrects himself — ) ...tell everything.
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And so, the racing.
Have dark waters changed dragons in some way, as they changed animals and vegetation in the House of Ravens? Since then, they've not seen an undead liege. Is one closer than she realizes? Did Serthica make a deal the way Taravast once did, born of desperation from the coal sickness?
If eyes are rent willingly, what else? Does Chrichter have a mirror, is he being consumed? He's lost it.
So on. So forth. Upon arrival, she has no venom to give. She would not betray Lan Wangji, his presence, even if she could think of something to say. He anticipates where she braces, and he does not disappoint: Emilia can see it, see the moment he registers the difference. The mark of a deadened thing.
Aiva is creating enough disruption in the dragons. Emilia is encouraged to seek distance, lest she aggravate it. She does finally speak, once there is enough space between herself and the nesting grounds. ) We found the ship. It housed dark waters.
( Housed much more, but she begins here, with a constant that has followed since Sa-Hareth. )
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( He stills. It is natural to him, inertia, as if he were born to death and made exorcist through the timid, contorted extension of his flesh, purposed. As if he were less man, more lake — a surface untroubled. Indifferent. Resilient.
His eyes strain, to look at her as if he sees light, blinding. He anticipates, briefly, a state of disaster: that she brings news of further wickedness, of cruelty, of death, of pox, of plague, of madness. Malice and misfortune come three in the cradle. She has only delivered the first babe.
His fingers draw to a curl, half-moons tracing the flesh of his palm. In his head, sallow screams. )
And the dead...? ( This, then, has been the marriage: dark waters. The insidious sorcery of the land. Disaster. )
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There were no human remains. These were no men, but two mannequins sized to their likeness, made of straw and burlap. The dark water was a cold puddle at their would-be feet. I believe — I believe this to be Chrichter's work.
( Though he would not have worked alone, no.
Her hand furls and unfurls, as though phantom pinpricks can still be felt along her fingertips. )
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( Chrichter. A moment, and wheels and cogs ready and turn and there is no grease for them, no native appetite for political machination that might recommend him to understand this strategy. He sees the hand mere moments before it's played. Now, in retrospect, even Lan Wangji concludes: )
You suspect he conspired the dragon's siege.
( An injury that nearly cost the creature's mate her children. And how Lan Wangji remembers that, screams like flesh tearing from bone, the raw quality of shredded muscle, thinning.
Rasped, raw, his voice is leaves twisting underfoot — a secret. Theirs, under the watchful gaze of men who misunderstand why he lingers, and he indulges them, taking a step too close to Emilia, allowing his hand to linger on the warm, spasming flank of her dragon, as she negotiates the winding down. A hard flight, the descent in turbulence. Ferrying death on her back.
Let them think he is perhaps the vulgar paramour of a beautiful rider, come to take advantage of his intended's need to see her dragon attended. Let them presume. )
Your... betrothed refused cleansing. I ask.
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Anguish that lingers since the night those eggs hatched.
It froths in Emilia's throat, this sense of wrongness. How it still longs to scrape her from the inside out. Enough of her selfness has been taken. What remains will not be lost so easily. She understands why Wrath refused, understands the rawness of the wound left by the Huntress.
But she looks to Lan Wangji and she gives a nod, heavy with the weight of this darkness. )
I'll need make my own offerings. To my goddesses.
( She clears her throat, touches it with too-cold fingers. ) Somewhere close to the water.
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( Against belief and hurt and conviction. Against that which holds Emilia's spine upright, serpent turned steel and her hackles raised, the turn of her voice shifting, leaden. He anticipates opposition — it comes, not in open rejection but in the measured, spartan increments in which she gives herself, her concession.
It spills like sand between fingertips, or light dappled and tarry that drips down at the dragon's feet. Unbidden, he nears Opal again, touch light and fingers drumming, until she pays him obeisance of her own volition and drops her head to catch the scent of his nails, of blood buried dark beneath.
Certain animals fear the kill. Dragons, he finds, hunger for it. )
We soothe the spirits you disrupt. Those who in turn disrupt you.
( Balance restored, world tipped back unto balance. He does not ask her to follow, only nods on and starts them in step. )
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She doesn't have a candle at hand, and then chastises herself for that thought. You can summon fire, a reminder, one that stings. They didn't tell her that, did they? No, they made her fear it, fear the pyres as they made her fear the Wicked. Raised her to know nothing else, to believe nothing else. )
What do you need from me?
( Lan Wangji has suggested ablution before. Has been at work with spirits in her presence before, though not quite like this.
Not with her as the death-touched thing, the dark water having attempted to fill her shape. )
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shelter for the night
The dragon's dismissal is as easily felt in return.
"I can offer us warming talismans, or those stones from... were you even here yet, when we had the thralled stones for heat?"
He smiles, more the awkward black-clad gaunt man than he ever is, uneasy with the whole of this, knowing that's no small part coming from the dragon he shares bond with. That this is finding one answer in many, and what new questions they'll have, and where those will lead too.
To a citadel with dragons born feeling dead, and the sickness it leaves in his stomach, wondering what if. His nightmares are worse, for all he can't recall their details waking, and that too drags his feet, even with Lethe already making a place to curl up along with Emilia's dragon bond.
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She turns to Wei Wuxian, to the figure that he cuts, and thinks of Lan Wangji's commitment to be a learned cook. She thinks of that aforementioned cliff, and the bones, if not skeletons full of heartache, they all have in their closets.
"No," she answers at last, soft and not without some heaviness, too.
"No, I don't believe I was. Sa-Hareth?"
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Wei Wuxian, patient, steps over it, anticipating the slight lift up as Lethe thumps back down, a gambit to see if he'll be tripped this time. Thus far, it's only worked the once. Lethe continues to try, simply getting more creative with time.
He pats his front, the padded jacket for flight a strangeness in being short to his estimates, but functional enough. From within come talismans on paper, and a handful of small stones, thralled and blossoming with heat with a brush of his finger and a whispered word.
Better to have a stone which would not run all its heat at once, ah? Better to have held on to such trinkets for the year and more that passed since Karsa had begrudgingly roused to assist; since he had bought and traded with the thrallers of Sa-Hareth, to prepare for their party, to keep his ragtag group safe and cared for in the ways he could.
He holds three stones out to her now.
"Karsa as you know her was tasked to helping with the thralling, and I went to find and procure some others from one of the more reputable thrallers in Sa-Hareth. Very cold there, not just from the weather. We woke up all in chains or chained in cells, the first of us." A jangling tinkling tap of three stones against each other, laid into her palm.
"Did you know, it was one of us who freed Anurr? There was a war there as surely as each place we've been since, but also wraiths we've not yet seen again, powerful, dead creatures watching over us until the Merchant's agents gave us chance to flee. Who, perchance, I believe also includes Anurr, which is a delightful absurdity on several levels. Only to call back on him, from one of ours, when Unhalad closed in, and I arrived from the citadel bearing the resentment of all its dead along with."
He settles, as if this is a cheery conversation, against Lethe's side. The settled wing adjusts, offering partial shelter and the cupped space for Emilia too, in Lethe's chosen boundless grace... to sandwich them between one draconic bulk and another.
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She takes the three stones offered to her, weighs them in her palm.
"More subtle than my fire," she admits, a touch of rue and humor.
It was an option she had considered and quickly discarded, lest they be seized upon by hawks. Emilia is still
re-learning to control the fire humming inside of her, when to let it burn and when to put it away. Even now, the mention of Karsa threatens a flame, albeit internally. She still needs to tell Wei Wuxian what she learned of the Merchant, how it roils in her."I did not know, but I am unsurprised. Better Anurr than Unhalad, I suppose." Sometimes there are no good choices. Sometimes there are only terrible choices, and one must pick the less terrible one. She considers what Wei Wuxian has said, his bearing of so much resentment, the presence of so many undead... "Did Lan Wangji offer ablution?"
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Too much to question, time to time. None of it is in kindness.
"I'm rarely accused of subtlety," he says, "Though I have my moments."
It's a jest in and of itself, Wei Wuxian a far more subtle man than his at times too laid back appearance can lead others to believing. He's not overt, or showy, in the ways he was when younger; even Taravast's show was bombast for a role he'd been assigned, and his tackling of it being part of showing up in Emilia's rooms to collect an errant spouse, before he'd known he was twice married.
The question leaves him cuhckling, then laughing, fondness softening his features. The shadows settle there under his eyes, but smudges, not sharp things; it's a newness, to allow himself the happiness of a thought of someone else for his sake, and not simply their own. Not as equals, hard fought as it was in the finding.
"When doesn't he? His clan taught him well, and Lan Zhan has been slow in the learning of compromise... but he's learned. He's learning. Arche wasn't interested at the time, though I'd have advised he find a way to... digest or disperse or contain what he swallowed. It was a dramatic battle."
The one time Wei Wuxian had pulled out stops with the permission of those resentful energies he'd guided, and it had been as horrific as one might expect.
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Of the two di Carlo twins, Vittoria was the one with a penchant for theatrics. But much like Wei Wuxian, she was capable of engaging people with an ease that felt effortless. Her ability to make friends and dance for hours on end was unparalleled, a quality Emilia has always admired and wished to possess. But looking at the Yiling Patriarch now, shadows under his eyes and gauntness to his frame, she is reminded there's a vastness to those she meets, ocean-deep, and there is much to learn still.
And she — some long-forgotten part of her knows if she is ever truly seen for all that she is and all she can do, she will be feared. Emilia does not want to be feared. Not by those she has not deemed an enemy.
"It sounds it," she answers after some contemplation. It sounds dramatic and the sort of story her Nonna would have told at bedtime long ago, except this is no tall tale. And for now, no end in sight, either.
"Where is he now? Arche."
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Tented as they are now, dragons acting as warmth and living, breathing support, he lets some of his bond with Lethe bubble over into a sort of reassuring hum. Lethe, dropping fast toward slumber in the way of a wise creature, sends a questioning feeling back, but has no return answer.
"Long gone," he says, shoulders lifted a fraction, "In the way of so many of us. Whatever magics call us here, they're not steady. The gateways make it a choice, a sort of guarantee we return, but it's not the only way we're swept away."
A litany of names, those who had gone fast, those who had gone slow. Not spirits harvest and collected; not energy converted. Simply here, then gone.
(He preferred them leaving through the gateways. Those were easier, more certain. Less steeped in uncomfortable, melancholy truths that companionship here is no guarantee.)
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Opal, as though sensing her roiling emotions, nudges her drowsily. Like Emilia, the dragon has worried sick for that which was missing. Like Emilia, she knows what it is like to exist with a hunger so bottomless.
"No," she allows. "If they were steady, we'd have found a working beacon by now."
Among other factors, she well knows.
"You've been here from the start. How do you do it?"
How does he bear this?
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wildcard. video.
still he worries for her. the further she went - the less he could feel of her through the bond. it's still there, but he worries he will not know if she is in danger or if something were to happen. she told him she would reach out when she has the chance, and so he waits for her call while he sits on the rooftop of the building where five and wrath share space.
the sky is dark, which is utterly familiar to him. his body is poised with tension as if waiting to strike though there are no enemies near, no sign of danger, nothing to make bleed. one of the many candles she has given to five sits beside him, lit. it reminds him of her, the smell of it sweet like cannolis, the firelight warm. )
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the feathery of her scales can be faintly spotted behind emilia, as she's chosen to make a pillow out of opal's side. )
I'm surprised you managed to get one of those.
( as it turns out, five hargreeves really likes candles. )
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he drinks her in - the sight of her before she makes mention of the candle, and he glances at it. )
I have my ways.
...but I fear he has an addiction now.
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You've noticed, as well.
( this hardly surprises her. very little escapes him, and he lives with five. )
He is a determined man. As far as resources go, candles are rather harmless.
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( wrath concedes her point with ease. it could be a far worse substance that his roommate had an addiction to, but their alcove does smell of marshmallows now - sweet and strange. and absolutely no sleep is happening, and there is writing on the walls, but he feels those two point are merely parts of living with five in general.
he meets her gaze again, however, as his concern at the moment is her and how her trip has gone thus far. she seems to be in one piece for the time being with her large dragon curled up behind her. )
How has your journey been?
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( would samael appreciate knowing she was almost lost to the reddish mists of a sandstorm and they find themselves in a high plateau to circumvent man-sized hawks? perhaps. he'll find out soon enough, but it's not what emilia personally wishes to discuss with him. she managed well enough. )
Something happened with Opal earlier. With our bond.
( something she would like to share with him, in spite of being well aware he can neither confirm or deny. she likes to study his reactions all the same. to take in what he holds back, to read his silences. )
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he pauses though at what she does share.
his gaze drifts to meet her own, cautious, waiting. )
And what was that?
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I... think when we are linked, she has access to certain memories I do not. She showed me what felt like a memory, at least. I was riding Tanzie, and there were these baby ice dragons after us.
( she imagines that's what caught opal's attention in the first place: the dragons. )
It felt like a happy memory, though. ( absurd, but happy. ) Opal was amused, in any case.
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