agentlelog | 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

[ Overall, Calvin isn't sure how useful he's been in all of this. He arrived late to this mess, has mostly been stumbling around awkwardly a foot or so off the ground, and unlike Leo has been trying hard not to choke on smoke. He's made himself a makeshift mask, but it's not a proper vent for smoke like this, and his lungs still feel like absolute shit from all this wandering around a smoking building he's been doing.

Still, what kind of person would he be to leave people trapped inside a burning building if he's got some means to help?

And in this case, help means awkwardly trotting over to the person who calls out to him, before noticing the person trapped behind a green shield. ]

Oh fuck...

[ It comes out a little muffled, considering he's got cloth shoved over his mouth. He looks ]

[ looking closer at his approaching helping hand, leo grimaces. the guy doesn't look too good, and judging by the way he's holding that cloth in front of his mouth, the smoke is definitely not doing his health any favors.

so leo breathes out, and tries to absorb even more of everything around them: flames, but the smoke, too. if they're going to break the shield, they're going to need their hands free. ]

Can you breathe now?

[ and then, with his attention turned back to the shield, ] And you said it, my man. This is pretty much worst-case scenario right here! [ somehow, he still manages to sound cheerful about this. ]

[ It's an understatement, but when the flames just, well, absorb into Leo, Calvin starts slightly. It's going to take him awhile to get used to magic, but at least he's not about to ask a stupid question about how Leo did that.

He drops the cloth from this face, taking a proper breath of air for the first time in awhile, and nods. God, that's so much nicer. ]

And yeah, no kidding... I've got this.

[ He holds up the Breaker. ]

But that's about it.

[ the flames dance under his skin — he can do this for a while, still, before he needs to let them out somewhere far from the plant.

and the quicker they get this shield broken, the quicker he can go do just that. ]

Me too, [ says leo, lifting up his breaker. ] I wonder if we can smash it down between the two of us? I mean, it's worth trying.

[ it's all they can do, really. leaving whoever's trapped inside the shield there would be abandoning them to die, basically, if they were to leave to find someone else with a higher jewel. ]

[ Better than leaving the guy trapped behind it to die, for sure. ]

If we time it to fire at the same time maybe?

[ Not that they'll get it exactly at the same time. Things rarely work that way, but maybe the very rapid succession will be enough to break it down. ]

Not a bad plan.

[ applying more pressure at the same time, enough times to weaken the shield and hopefully break down whatever magical molecules are holding it together. ]

Ready to see if it works?

[ That's the theory anyway, it works with solid, physical substances at least. You apply enough pressure at a specific point over time it weakens and breaks.

Who the hell knows how it'll work with magic though. Not Calvin, that's for sure.

He aims the breaker in a way that looks more "nervous child fires first gun" rather than "harden badass saves lives". ]

Fire on three?

[ neither does leo, but he's willing to find out.

he looks at least somewhat more comfortable with the breaker — it's not that far from his favored sledgehammer, really, and so leo grins and nods to calvin's question. ]

Sure. [ a breath, and then, ] Uno, dos, tres!

[ And with that it's magic on-- anti-magic? Magic of a different sort? Calvin didn't really have time to ask what made up the breakers that could bust down a magical shield when he took one.

The sound is definitely loud though, and echoes through the room. Calvin ends up flinching away, almost afraid to see the results if their attempt didn't work, because he's got nothing else here. ]

[ calvin may be afraid to look, but leo isn't. as soon as the sound stops reverberating around the room, making them shake where they stand, leo looks — and though the shield isn't broken, there is a clear, blindingly white crack forming right in the middle of it.

he grins. ]

Dude, it's working! One more time, and I think we've got it.

Holy shit? Holy shit!

[ That really did work? He wasn't thinking it actually would, and was just kind of blindly hoping because he didn't have any other plans in the works. Are they actually going to save this guy? It seems like they might considering the other guy's weird magic that let him absorb the fire from around them.

For one of the first times in all of this there's a little spark of hope in Calvin as he aims again. ]

Okay... okay okay. Give us another countdown?

You got it.

[ there's something fire-bright and mischievous in leo's smile as he counts again, this time in greek just because he can, and when they punch the shield again, this time the crack widens, opens —

shatters. ]

Heyyyy! [ turning to calvin, leo holds his hand up for a high-five. ]

[ The Greek Calvin is a lot less familiar with, but it doesn't take a genius to figure it out in context. The breakers goes off, and--

And they really did it!

He grins uncertainly at Leo, and gives him a hasty high-five where only about 1/3 of his hand actually makes contact with Leo's.

He'd give him a better one, but right now Calvin is too busy darting forward and getting down on his knees to make sure the man that was behind the shield is okay.

Glancing back at Leo now. ]

Hey, you can keep fire away from us the whole time we make it out of here, right?

[ He's hoping. ]

event: a gentle explosion

smash and burn.

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