agentlelog | event: a gentle explosion

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event: a gentle explosion

I see a world just out of reach
With shoulders of giants at my feet
There’s not a challenge I’m afraid to meet

► The OOC plotting post for this event can be found here.

► Direct all questions to the mods at this link.

STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND
You wake, warm and comfortable, and realize that you’re no longer where you were when you went to sleep. The dream was real. As you clamber out of bed and open your door, an impassive footman greets you and leads you to breakfast in a large hall filled with many, many people. They sit around a hodgepodge of tables in a mishmash of furniture—nothing matches anything else, and no two chairs are the same.

The woman from your dream catches your eyes. She stares at you with open shock. “Well,” she says, as a number of males turn to her with withering looks. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.” She smiles at you. “Welcome to Draega, Stranger. Please, join us.”

Join them at the table and have your breakfast, Stranger. There isn’t much to offer: porridge, water, a bit of milk, some wrinkled fruits, and bread. Coffee, thankfully, is not in short supply. Meet your fellow Strangers, both the ones choosing to live at the Queen’s Residence and those who arrived in the night with you.

As breakfast draws to a close, the Queen’s Steward, Prince Loren Sorey, explains that you may choose to find your own home or stay in the residence for as long as you please. Those who stay will receive a modest stipend but are required to participate in Allairavar’s morning trainings every day. At dawn. Before breakfast. Those who go will need to find their own homes among the ruined buildings of the city and make their own money.

The court begins filtering out of the Great Hall, dispersing to attend their many duties. Linger, Stranger, and overhear…

“What did you mean?” The man leaning over the Queen is Prince Allairavar. His membranous wings flare around him, and his expression is menacing. “This wasn’t supposed to happen?”

Queen Fayura doesn’t look at all alarmed by the massive man caging her against a wall. “It was a one-time spell,” she says. “The web was—” Her eyes go wide. “I need to go look at the web.” She ducks under Allairavar’s arm, which could put a tree trunk to shame, really, grabs Prince Verim, and drags him from the hall.

Allairavar bares his teeth at the wall and snarls. The sound rumbles through the room, and dark temper washes briefly through the residence before all the tangled webs tucked in corners absorb it, leaving the building peaceful and clean of psychic feeling once more.

A TALE OF TWO IDEALS
At exactly 5:46pm, an explosion rocks the city of Draega. Black clouds belch fire to the northwest of the city. Concurrently, in Old Town, a mob of landens armed with Breakers and Muters descends on The Last Meal. They surround an older, Blood woman.

i. Black Out
The power plant maintained by the Tinkers and the Elektrics has exploded. Across Draega, e-line appliances shut down and the city plunges into darkness—the sun set some 45 minutes ago.

Prince Loren reaches out to approximately half the Strangers, asking them to go to the power plant. He shares a mental map with them so they know how to reach the building, as well as the Craft used for air-walking. The tutorial is quick and hardly complete, but now you’ll be able to run above the city to reach your destination.

The power plant burns. Black smoke pours into the air. Master Elektric Doriah organizes the Tinkers and Elektrics who were able to escape on their own. A quick glance reveals how absolutely exhausted she is. When Strangers approach, she sneers but isn’t about to turn away good help.

“There are still people inside. The Blood who did this trapped us in shields.” She hesitates only a moment before collecting Breakers from guildmembers carrying them. “Take these. Your Jewel may not be able to break through the shields.”

Inside, well-ordered building is a mess of fire and melting steel. Airwalking protects your feet, and shields can keep out the heat, but you’ll need something more to protect your lungs. Put out fires, stop systems from overloading, save the machines from complete destruction, and rescue missing workers who are suffocating and cooking inside shields. The guildmembers trapped in the power plant will assist the Strangers who free them, helping mitigate the damage done to the plant and keep it from exploding the rest of the way.

ii. Death of a Councilwoman
Councilwoman Vera enjoys dinners at The Last Meal, and this is well known by everyone in the city. Today, public knowledge of her schedule doesn’t work so well in her favor.

As she approaches the restaurant with her family, a group of landens descends on them. Muters prevent the Blood from taking any action that isn’t purely physical, and this is enough to throw most of them off their stride; they’re used to relying on Craft to fight. The landens separate Vera from her family in a short-lived brawl. She shouts and screams—“Let me go! Don’t you know who I am? The Queen will have you executed for this! Your families will be thrown out of the city! You’re making a mis—”

A shot rings through the air.

The landens peel away from one of their own, a young man gripping a Breaker in both hands. He trembles as he stands over Councilwoman Vera, whose expression is frozen forever in shocked disbelief. Her body crumples to the ground, blood from a gunshot wound on her chest staining the white fabric of her blouse.

In the silence that follows the shot, Allairavar shoves free of the crowd. “Go home!” he snarled, Craft powering his voice.

No one moves.

Except the young landen man. He takes off at a run, and the crowd is still too horrified to do much to stop him. Allairavar wastes no time. He plunges after the young man. At the same time, he reaches out to the minds of the Strangers closest to Old Town. *The Ebon Council is, collectively, a sack of reeking shit, and Lady Vera was a bitch,* Allairavar tells the Strangers. *But if we don’t get between the Blood and the landens, we’ll have another war. We can’t afford another war. Keep them from killing each other while I deal with this idiot.*

AIR TIME
Whether you catch the news on a Far-caster in the city or you’re spinning the dial on your own device, you’ll hear…

the news
…angered local landen families by her hard-line position that Blood homes should receive priority as the city continues to recover from the fires set by the Hunter Guild last month. [The man speaks at a brisk pace, hurried and harried as though he has too much to say and not enough time to say it.]

Councilwoman Vera is known for her vocal disdain for the landen Guilds, isn’t that right, Garret? [Another man, nasally in tone. He doesn’t sound rushed so much as put upon.]

[Garret:] Correct, Wilt. She—excuse the interruption, but we are just now hearing— [The feed abruptly cuts off. Static pours from the Far-caster regardless of what local channel it is tuned to.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

a. STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND

[ This whole thing still feels like part of an elaborate dream to Calvin. As he walks towards the dinning room he's subtly pinching at the skin around his palm. No good, he can feel the pain, and it doesn't seem to be jolting him awake. He knows there's a number of other things you're supposedly not able to do in a dream, but he'll be damned if he can remember what those are.

So instead of running through the "am I dreaming?" checklist, he takes his spot at the table and eats in silence as he tries to take in the scene around him, and listen in on whatever conversation he can.

That includes that little exchange at the end of the meal between the Queen and Allairavar. Nothing about Allairavar's demeanor makes Calvin feel like he really wants to get close during the conversation, but he does want some answers from the woman he thought brought him here in the first place.

So when she sweeps off with Verim, Calvin takes off after her.

Only by the time he makes his way across the dinning hall and into the hallway proper, the Queen isn't anywhere in sight. That leaves a confused teenager standing there looking completely lost as he glances around, and tries to decide which way to go. ]

B. BLACK OUT

i. arriving on the scene

[ Prince Loren is kind enough to provide everyone a useful tutorial to teach them air-walking, and Calvin, newly powered (and barely at that) mess that he is has given up pretty quickly on getting the magic right. There were a few cursory attempts made as he charged down the streets, but they were eventually deemed useless distractions, and promptly abandoned.

That means when he arrives on the scene he's taken the long way to get there, is now panting heavily, and is doubled over a short distance away from the gathering.

Give him a second. Hold on... ]

ii. actually doing some saving

[ The condition of the plant's floor means that Calvin is unable to pass on learning that hastily taught spell any longer. It's a little wobbly, but he is in the air now, a torn and soaked shirt sleeve pressed over his nose and mouth as he makes his way deeper into the building, to see if he can find anyone to help.

He arrived late on the scene, and some of the fire seems to have been put out, and the people closest to the front rescued. That means he has to travel in deeper to find the remaining survivors, with a Breaker in his free hand, because there's no way his White jewel is going to do the job of breaking those shields. ]

( Sansa, too, had thought to follow the Queen and her steward along the corridor and is disappointed when she makes a wrong turn and ends up losing them. She does run into someone who looks just as stunned as she, though, and Sansa makes a quick curtsy on the off chance he's part of the Court; she doesn't know the rules quite yet but she definitely wants to keep from making any enemies. )

It seems I lost them. I was trying to hear what was happening and I turned the wrong way, I think.

[ The polite curtsy brings him back to the fact that they are currently in some kind of old fashioned fantasy world, and rules of civility are different here. Unfortunately, he's still a bit scrambled up and frazzled, and when he tries to match manners he manages to fuck it up. For a brief and incredibly stupid moment Calvin actually starts to curtsy back, before he realizes what he's doing, and tries to recover it into a bow.

It doesn't work. It's very obvious what he was doing there.

Please don't notice, and just focus on the Queen thing. ]

Uh, yeah same.

[ He clears his throat. ]

So hey, when you say hear what was happening... do you mean hear for the royalty gossip aspect, or because you don't really know what's going on here?

The latter, rather than the former. I'm afraid my memories of last evening are a bit hazy at best and while I seem to remember agreeing to come here, the hows and whys of it are a mystery to me. I do recall it being an invitation with acceptance on each side, though, so the comments I overheard seemed a bit amiss.

( Is this person another who come through on a promise the same as she? If so, he might prove a worthy companion in this particular investigation. )

Did you have the same feeling?

[ Calvin snaps his fingers, points at Sansa, and gives a single affirmative nod. Yeah, that story definitely sounds familiar to him. ]

Exactly that, yeah!

[ Though in that case...

"It was a one-time spell"... ]

Weird question, but how magically inclined are you?

Not at all, I'm afraid. Magic isn't something done by ladies in Westeros or, really, in Westeros at all. What little I know of it is rumor of strange priests from Essos. I don't know what to do with the idea of it, to be honest with you.

( Even at their short breakfast, she'd seen it used so casually and it's something Sansa will have to take time to grow used to; it's not something she thinks will ever come naturally to her. )

[ Westeros? Essos?

Wow, okay, well he was already kind of working on the assumption that if there is one other world there is likely more than one other one, and this is doing a good job confirming that. He's not exactly a geography expert or anything, but... ]

Cool, same boat...

[ That's muttered mostly to himself. He'll speak up a little louder, actually addressing her with the next comment. ]

I wonder if anyone besides the Queen might be able to answer some questions I have about it. I mean, finding her would be better, but...

Their idea of a Court is a bit different than mine at home but it isn't so dissimilar that I think I'll have trouble assimilating. Usually there's any number of courtiers who will have some idea what's going on - or it was that way at home, anyway. We need to just find someone who has been here long enough to know the lay of it.

( Sansa doesn't mention that they ought to avoid those who seem to be obvious social climbers. It's a nuanced thing, determining that, and she doesn't know that she's that good at seeing it herself considering how long she'd been blinded by Baelish. )

It could even be another person brought here by a dream - only one who came earlier than us. While I am inclined to trust the Queen since we are in her custody and care, I also do not think it will reflect well if we're skulking about trying to listen to her private conversations in an obvious way.

At least that's something.

[ His knowledge of Court comes from tv and movies, and somehow he's not sure how well he can apply his knowledge of fantasy movies to a situation like this. It's better to leave the manners to the person who already has them.

He's not sure he's all that inclined to trust the Queen personally, but Sansa is making an excellent point about not looking like eavesdropper. ]

And yeah, probably wanna avoid that. So we should just look for someone who is more open to... chatting...

[ He trails off a bit as he glances around the hallway, trying to decide if they should head back into the dinning room or--

Oh. ]

Sorry, in all of that I was kind of-- I didn't introduce myself. I'm Calvin.

[ Court manners are going to take him a bit, because he automatically holds his hand out for a handshake. ]

( Hand-shaking isn't a custom in Westeros, at least not between men and women, and so Sansa gently clasps his hand for a moment before dropping it. She isn't sure if that's what he expected or not and she hopes she isn't seen as rude. )

I am Lady Sansa Stark. Well met, Calvin. As to finding someone who can explain a little more, I am amenable to helping you find such a person. I have questions of my own and it might go easier with two of us.

[ That was probably on him for expecting more, but he does smile awkwardly at her attempt without calling her out on not getting it right. Again, different worlds, or certainly different cultures seem pretty apparent right now.

Also wow. Lady, huh? So she's nobility? She really might know her way around this mess. ]

Yeah, you too. Well met.

[ He's attempting. ]

And yeah, that's what I was thinking. The problem is finding someone who looks like they actually know something.

And pretending as if we're merely interested in solving a problem, as well. We should find someone who seems inclined to talk and is friendly. A gossip will give us words but words are wind - we need someone who won't lead us astray.

( Sansa thinks she reads people better than she has in the past but she still thinks it's a failing of hers, being unable to diffuse through the layers a person uses to conceal their true motives. She needs help. )

Right, right.

[ He's a little nervous about lying in this situation, but it's hard to say if they can trust these people. Honestly, it's hard to say if he can trust her either, but if she really is going through the same thing he is then there's some solidarity in that. ]

Any chance you're good at spotting gossips? Because I definitely could back home, but... people dress a little differently here.

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strangers in a strange land

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wildcard!

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