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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
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Truly demeaning.
He catches Lan Wangji's gaze and narrows his eyes, gives a more begrudgingly soft grumble of assent and flares his wings a little to try and... encourage those around him to give him room. If they want him to move they need to allow him space. Titans, what is wrong with people?
Once a few shuffle back he begins to inch forward, lashing his tail unhappily to try and encourage more of them away.
Please. He is not opposed to leaving. He would love to get away from him and toward the nest if they would only let him.
A child steps forward, desperate to touch his wings, and Wrathion's enormous head turns to glower at it.
These children truly have no manners -- correction, these people have no manners. He saw that man with a pitchfork. ]
no subject
( A slow, slithering, wormed exit. The first citizens who come close do so with open hands, some seeking to stroke. It has arrived with them, with something like delayed finality, that if the Great Dark Dragon departs now, he will not be seen again — and with him will flee their single opportunity to say they've touched his fine, nightmarish scales.
A part of Lan Wangji metabolises their curiosity as affection. They are people fond of dragons, inured to them. Accustomed to their presence, from life as young as that barely drifted from a cradle.
They do not intend to offend or ridicule him. And Lan Wangji, carefully gliding to lower the nearest searching fingers with a slow swing of his sheathed blade's hilt, does not reward their overture with violence.
When he reaches Wrathion, he thinks to search him for reins. Shudders, with the abrupt realisation that he has neglected a freed creature wants no fetters. But submission is expected, cooperation paramount, and so in the world's most unexpected approximation of Wei Ying, he —
...whistles. Once, curly, done. And a nod later sees him giving the start, waiting on the great beast to shift his heft beside him. )
We intend to depart peacefully to the nests. ( A pause, then. ) Do not touch him. He is — ...dark. For his sorrows.
( Not a lie, in truth. Most of Wrathion's griefs, after all, start in his head. Come along, now. )
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The one blessing of being in this shape, the perils of children aside, is that his expressions are harder to read.
What does Lan Wangji know of his sorrows? Nothing. The storm of his tumultuous emotional state roils under his scales but Wrathion controls it, lets out another low rumble -- quieter and more controlled but the slight opening of his mouth adds an edge of warning to it. With teeth as big as his, the warning is not subtle.
Still, he moves. The sound is enough to ward back those who had for some reason lingered, and Wrathion slinks along around Lan Wangji in the direction they intend to move. He offers a sideways glance, then one upward -- wondering if it would be safer to take to the sky again. Will people question why he has no rider, he wonders, or why he left his supposed rider on the ground?
What little freedom there is to be had here, despite the blessing of natural light. His tail thrashes again unhappily, and Wrathion pulls himself up -- waiting with barely disguised tension for the man to lead. ]
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( ...this is, he supposes, not unlike herding the rabbits of Cloud Recesses, if ever they turned rabid sooner than docile, mean-spirited and hostile. Wrathion trots on, heft of him sending petty quivers across crackled stone, and Lan Wangji does not ask, Might you perhaps briskly saunter? But instead drifts beside him, hand soft when it threatens to cascade over Wrathion's long neck, his spine.
Touch never lands. Fingers curl in, settle away. Wangji has not survived to decades of wander to misconstrue pained, obvious indications. Ownership is expected of paired dragons, this much is certain. And they cannot both linger under the glaring eye of a dumbed, but no doubt soon wakeful crowd.
He lets the silence between them settle, ferment. Wrathion, he has learned, suits haste and offence no better than these people tolerate sickness. Finally, when Wangji has started them on the path guardsmen direct as bleeding into the nests, and they have borrowed something not unlike privacy: )
You do not often claim this shape. You assumed it to shield your identity?
( A dragon in a citadel of such creatures might prove better guarded, if he were of the appropriate colouring. )
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[ Unfortunately, this shape seems to equally draw them. Whatever benefits he might be gaining with Aiva are likely outweighed by all this fuss he is generating.
The obsession humans have with the colour of his scales and what it means is, quite frankly, dispiriting. He pauses, turning to glance sideways at Wangji. ]
I do not take it often because it inspires fervour. The Beastmaster's creatures were not the first to seek to control me. I had hoped here it might be... different.
[ Clearly there is still some danger. He wonders, uneasily, if some might decide his apparently unusual colouring might require investigation. ]
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( Different from siege, from conquest, from occupation. From slavery, and dragons criss-cross the skies above in lightning wisps of shadow, and upon them sit riders. Lan Wangji has not claimed a mount, though Wei Ying shares of himself thusly. If feels — inauspicious, strange. A violation, to seduce a creature into the companionship of a handful of months, wrested thereafter.
What must it be like, to live in this world, hunted? To know it means you only chase and reins and harness? )
Here, they intend you worship. ( Hesitant off his mouth, like flecks of paint, withered. ) Your skin bemuses them.
( Much as the presence of dragons, so different from those of lore, awes Lan Wangji with their majesty. But there is a homogeneity that the dragons of Eidris have achieved with their pale skins, their eerie, strange comportment.
Wrathion feels too lively beside them, and as they cross to delve into the nest grounds, he anticipates the contrast might well curry disaster. )
Will the resting dragons assail you?
( A creature that is not their own might yet be perceived as an enemy. )
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Wrathion wonders how worshipful it is. None have approached him so yet, but how long before awe because curiosity, wariness, mistrust, fear. Still: ]
We shall see. I have met Aiva before, in my visage. She may recognise my scent, at least..
[ Any others? Well... still to be seen how they respond. ]
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( It must be noted, here, now, to the understanding and increasing terror of many — or one, Lan Wangji, mouth heroically gaping — that 'we shall see' is not 'no.'
That he may well be leading a hapless, if incorrigibly hefty dragon to his bitter end. There is a moment, mid ungainly progress, when the cut of Lan Wangji's eyes land squarely on Wrathion's cheek, his long neck — when it seeks prey and gashing. )
I do not intend to relinquish you.
( If the plan were surrender, were bloodshed, were an admirable, honoured concession, a tragic accident —
Then, gracefully, Lan Wangji respectfully declines. )
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What does that even mean? Is this some peculiar, abrupt confession? ]
I beg your pardon?
[ Wrathion comes to a full halt now, turning a little to try and getting better look at Wangji's much smaller figure. ]
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( Excuse the gentleman kindly averting his gaze, lost to the shreds and diffused dispersions of light that drift down with motes of golden, warmed dust. He has missed this, the calm of morning, denied to them in Eidris.
Later, when they retreat to their assigned abodes, he will remember that sunlight whipped his forehead, cradled his cheeks. That he was briefly, fleeting, a child of Cloud Recesses once more.
And that Wrathion, forgiven of his natural circumspection, thought lesser of him. )
Pardoned. ( Let courtesy prevail first, above all, foremost relation of duty. ) If you are assaulted as threat in the nests, you will have sword.
( Bichen, fettered in her sheath wraps, tight-held in Wangji's clasp. Also unrelinquished. )
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I do not intend to stand and fight. If they do not wish me present, in this form, I shall not intrude.
[ He's not going to start a brawl around infants! What gain would that be? ]
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( A small, whispered consideration: Perhaps they wish no dragon present. But then, these are not feral creatures to Wrathion, no riddles to solve, no paragons of ancient ambiguity.
He intends, just as Lan Wangji, whose feet skid on hardening, marbling floor as they approach the ancestral formality of Eidris at its finest, its most lavish — to negotiate their entrance. So be it, then, one nod to sign off his approval. )
Permitted, we withdraw peacefully.
( ...see here. No blood on his lips. No vestige of uncertainty. Only a slight perk of his brows, when the guards who behold them seem — ...bemused that Lan Wangji walks beside his alleged mount, sooner than rides him in.
All the same, they uncross their weapons, part to broker passage. All the same, the vast and carefully sculpted paths tremble under Wrathion's heavy foot. They near a second set of gargantuan gates, beyond which the quiet, timed rattling of breath suggests dragons, nestled. )
May we enter?
( ...this is, after all, Wrathion's people. )
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[ Wrathion moves slowly, but not with deliberate quiet. Instead, with care to be heard.
It wouldn't do to sneak up on a nest, after all. That way is the bloodshed that Wangji seems to anticipate. Nobody likes to be surprised, even by a fellow dragon.
He pauses just inside the gates, then flares his wings a little. Just enough display to show his size before he... sits neatly, folds away his wings while waiting for the dragons to give him their full attention --
... and inclines his head. Just enough to show some small amount of respect, but not enough to lower himself beneath them.
After all, he is the Black Prince. Why should he? ]
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( It would not do to sneak up, and yet they've readied for subterfuge, for the subtle, calculated dance of what passes for... draconic courtesy. Lan Wangji's peripatetic youth has prepared him to dress the uncommon in easy, carefree tolerance — to swallow his hesitations and assume an appetite for the eccentric. He digests the curious and the obscene better than he is often credited.
Beside him, Wrathion carries out the bestial greetings of his people. Lan Wangji, hand flirting over the hilt of his sword, never clawing into a hard clasp, walks in a lazy arc, allowing his dragon companion his berth and open to securing him, should the other, nesting creatures assault him.
The mouth of the Heavens is a cleaved smile, pleased and pleasing. )
May you speak to them? ( As Lan Wangji, unbound, cannot. As Lan Wangji, corseted by human flesh and human manner, cannot. ) Beg their leave that we may near the children.
( The mother, he sees her: like a whip, trashing, coiled round and round, gathered to bracket the shape of her beautiful pearls, her eggs. She does not hiss or scowl or seek to incinerate them. She seems, a lethargic candle sheen lighting her back, to barely flinch at all. )
no subject
We communicate... differently, but I believe so.
[ After all, he has never heard one of these dragons speak openly the way Wrathion does. Assured, he moves closer -- slow enough that any approach can be stopped if challenged.
-- And stop he does. One the smaller dragons uncurls and approaches him, curious. He glances between it and Aiva, hesitating, but gives it a low rumble of greeting anyway as it... sniffs him.
His body language says he is not quite used to being... sniffed, and he glances back at Wangji.
Wangji, this is your problem too. Wangji, don't leave him to be sniffed by dragons here. ]
We are here to greet Aiva.
[ Said plainly, in the hope either it will stop the sniffing or that Aiva will stir and intervene.
Instead, he feels the sensation of the smaller dragon... headbutting his side. Or, perhaps... rubbing its face against him?
This is... unusual. At least it doesn't appear to be a threat. ]
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( ...ah, the sweet, sibilant sight of younglings cooing, coiling around Wrathion as if they're lizards on hot stone, soaking in sun. There must be a draw to the dark of him, how the infant lizards twine and search Wrathion's legs to climb up the steps of his spine, while those possessed of strength in their burgeoning wings scatter the bones, spread out thin membranes. They cannot yet fly.
Wangji's stillness speaks for him, draws him down like collapsed marble. He breaks the descent like a fall, on one knee, then its brother, then the dragons gather and swarm — until his fingers insinuate themselves, serpentine and demure, catching the dragons where bones knot into wings and their young, shedding skin itches like pox. He scratches there, tip of his nail scrying sweet mewls of dragon pleasure. Aiva, tense like a brittle sword, watches on.
He says, softened: )
They appear... ( But then, others have spoken the words before him. He brings no epiphany, no wisdom. Only the dulled, bruise hurt of reiteration. ) Dead.
( More so, when the pass of his hand summons forth the half-coagulated silhouette of his zither, and he touches and teases strings, to signal in tongues of qi. He speaks, and yet — )
No ghosts answer.
( Well, then. The zither, released, dispels. )
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He had hoped for some change, for some mistake, for it to be different this time. Instead, the pain continues.
Grief knots in his stomach. How do you process grief for something which yet lives? How do you mourn creatures which still crawl over you and beg for your attention? He turns his gaze on Aiva, watching him intently, then slowly shifts his weight -- sinks to lay down so the children can better use him as a climbing frame. There is no dignity in it, but neither is there dignity in whatever is being done here. In whatever deprives them of life, of the chance to be children. To grow into whoever they will become. ]
Yet they live.
[ Wrathion curls his body a little, as if shielding the children from something as they explore him. ]
Their hearts beat. They move, breathe. Tell me. How do you define death? What is it your senses tell you? They lack in something?
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( Academic discourse does not benefit the grieving, the living, the lost. He watches Wrathion answer, feels the cold slither of scales under his hand, and knowns instinctively where the questions direct themselves — towards a clash of answers, a moment of brutality where Wrathion, clinging to hope, might conclude Lan Wangji's reading is merely too rigid, too narrow.
It is so, with mourning, and those who do not wish all lost. Wangji cannot fault the attempt, even as the creatures that squirm and coo in the cradle of his palms lift their heads and touch his wrist's span and feel — estranged from normality. )
Against life, death is a sickness. It does not shape or perpetuate itself. It is — parasitic.
( To say such things and look below, where one of the dragons now slides and latches with its teeth on Wangji's sash, before a brother drags him up, and they both turn and knead the span of his lap with greedy claws — to say such things is no kindness. )
These children do not feel... solid. Self-contained.
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[ Wrathion ruminates on that, watching a small creature burrow against his side. The overpowering warmth he gives off seems pleasing to them, and he wonders if their kind are simply colder by nature or if they are cold from lack of life. ]
Yet things are not normally born dead, but still moving. I cannot sense any sign of necromancy on them, any deliberation reanimation.
[ So then, what? What is happening? He lowers his head, resting it against the ground so he can watch the children more closely. ]
If we can understand it better, something can be done.
[ He doesn't dispute, after all, whatever it is Lan Wangji senses. What he wants is to undo it. ]
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( No sign of necromancy. No spirit violated, brutally injected back in bodily confines that are no longer equipped to sustain it. His touch lingers, snags on the head of a dragon babe, while the second hisses, growls and curls in — not so much endangered as its curiosity piqued, riled by Lan Wangji's daring to shift.
Beyond them, Aiva settles, whatever incipient waves of exasperation rode her back dissolving when Lan Wangji demonstrates himself a calm constant, unwavering. The quarters feel hot in ways that verge on unpleasantness, the nest claustrophobic. Soured sweat drips and rounds on his nap, crawling down. )
Death cannot sustain itself. ( Spoken once, said again. It aches him. ) What they live now is borrowed time.
( Unless, and his gaze sharpens, landing on the mother-dragon, as if she might give him answer — )
Unless this state is transient.
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Wrathion tilts his head, curious. ]
Give voice to your theory.
[ How could such a thing be possible? What would it mean if this were transient? ]
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( Voice, yet his withers. He sees them: the children splayed before them, tender, kind. Curled in his hand, learning the shape of his warmth, chasing his fingertips. Cooing, aggressively. He had not anticipated that young babes of the serpentine kind could — but then, his only example are the feral creatures grown, and Wrathion, spill of his dark scales glistened ominously before him.
Below, a dragon babe nips the fat of his thumb's pad, tears skin. Instinct prevails — he recoils, rescinds his hand. It wakes the second dragon, infuriates a third, and before he knows it, this one gesture of timid reluctance has offended the better part of a clutch. )
We cannot presume they are forever dead only because —
( ...because they seem to him, so. While they tumble by his knee and scratch the heating floor and rub their heads against his thigh, and it does not please him to consider the proposition. )
I have beheld the living dead. ( Here. Among Wei Ying's legions. ) They do not seem... joyous in their resurgence.
( Look at them, he needn't say, because one of the babes is already seeking comfort by Wrathion's side, looking to draw this great big brother into the conflict. )
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Stasis.
[ A single word, a thought. He looks up again at Wangji. ]
The tongue from the ship, the heart from Taravast. Both alive yet not alive. Preserved. In stasis. I wonder if this is similar. I wonder if the architect is the same.
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( The heart from the ship. Excuse the sharp-slanted perk of his brows as he pierces Wrathion with a gaze that might remind any young man of a particularly fangless but perpetually dissatisfied tutor.
Do they all remember, perhaps, who asked to study the tongue, but was denied the opportunity? Ah, how that point of comparison might have served them all. )
Perhaps.
( Salt, dripping into the still water of his words. His mouth is a cleaved line, short of grimace. A fine time for the youngest creature at his knee to dig its teeth into him again. This time, flinching, he allows it suckle, until the babe coos, confused when Wangji's qi already heals the blossomed nip, declining it feed. )
Stasis denies growth. These children have... flourished.
( He suspects, at a glance, that they were not born and preserved to this proportion and so cleanly formed. They appear to have progressed since hatching. )
no subject
Still, he has a point. If they were in true stasis, they would not grow at all. ]
I have little experience with young creatures.
[ A tired confession. He doesn't even know what a normal rate of growth is for them, in truth. ]
(no subject)