plot roll | gulliver's travels

[groundrules]

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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.

QUESTIONS

NPC ACCESS: CAIN D'UBIQ

Comments

QUESTIONS

[groundrules]

Like camping, but bring your own wasteland.

IT'S A LEAK

[groundrules]

Up to three characters can get information by touching the dark water in the Relint, but it will come at the cost of a bit of temporary body horror. No permanent physical damage.

First come, first served...

NPC ACCESS | CAIN D'UBIQ

[groundrules]

Drop a starter here, if you want a thread with Cain d'Ubiq — the only request is to please bring questions and be available to finish this by 20 September.

emilia di carlo, kindom of the wicked.

[valeas]

» THE RED MISTS

The sun looks blooded when the mist gathers. Then there is nowhere to look.

An already skittish dragon veers sharply in her attempt to circumvent the inevitable, locked in redness and strengthening winds. The fine grit of dust pervades everything: above and below, at the fore and back.

Suddenly, recognition.

Opal need not see to know that one of her brethren is close, and unnerved just the same. Her rider prepares to pitch them lower, pulse pounding in her ears. The mist recedes just long enough to give her a glimpse —

» SHELTER FOR A NIGHT

"There is room for us both," Emilia declares.

It will be a snug fit, two dragons and two riders, but the alternative is worse. The fog has grown denser, and the cold biting. It is not the unforgiving ice of the Seven Circles, but it is vicious and will spare no one.

If not the cold, then surely the hawks.

And so cave it is.

» RELINT

She ignores her exhaustion, the kind that wants to sink to bone.

They're too close to turn back now, to stop and rest now, to suffer misgivings. Far from Serthica, it's as though she can still hear the heartbeat of Vassarizhia, the tick of its clock growing louder. They race against it, time.

From this vantage point, the plane looks small, though she knows little of planes.

"It could fall any moment," she finds herself saying.

It's never, or now.

» WILDCARD

[ anything else goes here! feel free to surprise me. brackets and prose both equally welcome. ]

→ wrathion

[downswing]

( A cultivator and a majestic dragon of lore walk into a tavern —

Tale as old as tattered time, but Lan Wangji humbly begs correction: he drifts, dragged down the labyrinthine, gilded streets of Eidris by the hand of every urchin he has tipped unnecessarily with Wei Ying's coin. It strikes him, onnce they have brought him near the drink establishment, that they intend for the handsome rich man to weaponise the advantage of his age and procure them wine for their untried mouths.

...and Wrathion — distinguished, if not through the gleaming dark of his skins, than the absurd radiance of his disapproval — doesn't saunter into the tavern, as much as he seems to have gently... rolled close to its walls and decided in favour of glaring gawking passers-by into submission. A wise tactic. Lan Wangji himself deploys him often, when he isn't dominated by children.

To tell by the startled, pointing, awkwardly laughing crowd that's gathered — including the one painter rushing to claim rights of distribution for every two-pence sketch of Eidris' single black dragon, you saw it here first, don't be buying from no other — he's doing a poor job of it. Lan Wangji, who partly intercedes only to escape the fetters of his juvenile captors, hasn't accomplished much better on this day.

In the crowd circle closest to Wrathion, a woman's searching her market bags, shining an apple as if she has discovered the sophisticated heights of bribery. Near her, a man launches into a detailed historical review of dark dragons and why they are, in fact, carbon blue, and it is only through a deviation of light beams and the weakness of the human eye, that this here shiny scale spread is perceived as black — Another man clumsily presents a pitchfork, as if he is uncertain whether he prepares to poke Wrathion, or scratch his hide.

Lan Wangji's long-suffering sigh could quake the earth. )

Apologies. This is my dragon companion. ( 'lo, but the Lan cannot utter a word of lie. ) He is. ( One blink. Another. Truly, the bliss of addressing a crowd. ) ...lost.