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.]

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It's really hard not to notice when a person who not quite recently nearly went feral and ripped your throat out looks a little peckish. So maybe he's staring- that's being cautious, really, but the tobacco holds his attention more, anyway. Things being as they are, he could use a smoke.

"If you're offering, yeah." He steps closer, trying not to showcase his wariness too much. "You, my friend, look like you could do with about ten and a stiff drink, as well."

Jonathan is strangely grateful to see Mollymauk's rather eye-catching self; the other man is the one of the few who know what he is here and he finds that right now he could do with some blunt frankness about his situation.

Holding the paper to his lips to wet it, Jonathan seals the cigarette and offers it to Molly with a dry chuckle. "I would enjoy the drink were I still capable of it. This is the only vice still left to me, it would seem."

He doesn't fault Molly his weariness in the slightest, flicking him a faintly concerned look. "Is it that obvious? I have been doing what I can to manage it but this place has made everything about me more potent. Including my hunger."

Molly pokes the cigarette into the corner of his mouth, just enjoying the taste of an unfamiliar tobacco as he fumbles in his pockets for a light of his own and comes up short. "It's fairly obvious, yeah. Don't suppose you can just pop off to a butcher and drain the livestock for them?"

The words sort of fall out absently. Aside from that first encounter with Jonathan, Molly has never met a vampire before, and yet he feels like he has knowledge of them, coming out of a dark corner of his mind where the information about Fjord's strange patron and Kylre's race emerged. He tries not to think of where that information really came from.

Edited 2019-02-25 20:08 (UTC)

Finishing his own, Jonathan reaches into his coat to retrieve a rather battered box of matches, striking a light and offering it to Molly after seeing his own fruitless search. After lighting his own as well, he tucks the box away and exhales smoke with a sigh.

"I doubt many people would welcome that, for one thing," Jonathan remarks, uncertain himself how he'd feel about it either. "'Vampire slain' hardly seems appetising, I imagine. And the other problem is the... quantity required."

Keg's tobacco was trash compared to this. Unsurprising- she didn't strike him as the sort of person who could throw down silvers for the top shelf stuff. It dulls his nerves a little bit, which aren't nearly as frayed as they were when he last had a cigarette, but sometimes you just need the burn and the cloying taste and the rush of something that will definitely eat you up inside bit by bit.

He'd argue that meat is meat, regardless of what may have drained it of its vital essence, but he also eats bacon out of people's pockets, so what does he know? Some people shouldn't be so picky when there are travelers out there who have to eat their horses in winter. Ah, but that's a classist rant for another day. "What sort of quantity are we talking about here? Like five cows worth? A handful of goats?"

Jonathan took a drag, holding his breath enough to feel the burn of smoke in his lungs, something that seemed too human for what he was now, and exhaled slowly. He appreciated Molly's acceptance, but he still expected it to change as he learned more of what Jonathan was and what his affliction required now.

"I haven't been free of hunger since I first... fed on a human. I killed her," he said quietly. "Since then, I've survived on rats mostly. But the hunger is never sated. I would guess, based on what little I know, that I require at least five litres of fresh blood per day in order to be properly sated at normal levels. Here I do not know."

"That's..." Yikes. Always hungry, never truly sated. That's certainly something. "I take it that wasn't a choice? You didn't..." He makes an agitated sound. He hates it so much when he has information come up that he just knows. "Where I'm from, people aren't born like that. They become... Vampires or various other forms of undead." He takes a longer drag off the cigarette.

"I'm not trying to pry, of course. I'm just trying to get my head around it."

Jonathan nods, knowing what Molly is implying even if he's dancing around the question. "You're quite correct," he says. "My kind are not born, but made. Willingly or unwillingly. Mine was the latter."

His gaze lost focus for a moment, the memory still extremely vivid in his mind. "I was attacked by the docks, left for dead. I remember awakening in a mass grave and climbing out over the bodies." He took another drag of his cigarette and the burn helped pull him back somewhat. Enough to give Molly a considering look.

"But you seem to know much of vampires even if we are from other worlds. Have you had dealings with us before?"

Molly schools his reaction to a person climbing out of a mass grave, alive (in a sense). His situation is highly different, but probably no less traumatic. All it really does is solidify an unpleasant connection between the two of them Molly may never speak of- crawling out of graves and realizing your previous life is gone and doesn't even matter. Molly thinks he fared better in that regard.

"Not vampires specifically. Just creatures of an undead persuasion. Things that siphon life force, and so on. You see a lot when you travel." A good answer that's truthful inasmuch as Molly can recall. "But people talk. They tell stories."

Jonathan shakes his head and blows smoke in a long exhale. "Your world is very different from mine it seems. Or perhaps I was blinder than I realised before I became this... creature. I never would have thought such things existed outside of stories told to scare children."

Moving a bit slower, making certain that the movement is clearly telegraphed and allowing Mollymauk the chance to withdraw if he wished, Jonathan reaches out to put a hand on his shoulder.

"I thank you for your understanding. Few people are willing to give me a chance after finding out the truth, and I appreciate that you have."

As a person who touches and likes being touched, even someone who could rip his throat out with nary a thought encroaching on his space is given little reaction. He even relaxes a bit at the hand on his shoulder, as if he's just more comfortable when there's physical contact involved.

"I find it really easy to make snap judgments on people, and I'm comfortable doing it, since people make them about me all the time." He sticks the cigarette in his mouth and lets it dangle so he can pat Jonathan's hand. "But I all but gave you permission to tear into those arseholes and you didn't do it, so I'm inclined to believe that you're probably a politer person than I am, all told."

Jonathan had expected the opposite reaction to the contact, so he's clearly a little surprised that Mollymauk reacts so positively to it. He gives a slightly awkward, though still friendly squeeze and pulls his hand away, clearing his throat. Physical contact is slightly foreign to him, raised in a conservative culture as he was, and he finds it easier to keep his distance.

Although it surprises him somewhat to hear that the other man, as bright and vibrant looking as he is, has so many issues with how people see him.

"Are people not used to... tieflings? where you are from? If it earns you such negative attention, why not hide it?"

Molly blows a puff of smoke over his head through pursed lips, almost as if he's sighing. "Well, we're not uncommon, but I mean... Look at me." He trails a hand up and down his form, making sure attention is paid to his curved ram-like horns. "They don't call us devil-bloods as a slur- well, not just as a slur. It is legitimately what we are. We've got hellish taint in our bloodlines and it makes a lot of people distrusting."

He's not bothered by it- this is just fact to him. People are like that and so he can be like that right back. People with privilege are shit, people with too much power need less of it. It's a two-way street.

Jonathan follows the gesture, his eyes flickering briefly to the tail that flickers behind Mollymauk, then back to the crimson eyes, slightly unnerving but no less so than his own at times. He shook his head.

"I've never been a religious enough man to believe in notions of devils or angels," he answers, entirely honest. "Nor can I speak to much of how others act here or elsewhere. But you know what I am and don't fault me for it, and I would hope that none here would hold you accountable for what occurred before you were born."

He's starting to get a little more of an idea of the the brilliantly coloured man, that the standing out might be less about wanting attention as demanding it on his own terms.

"And I'll admit," Jonathan continues. "I have only spoken with Lady Fayura briefly, but I imagine that if you were finding anyone insulting based on your appearance, she would be quick to help put them in their place if you wished. Although having seen you in action I don't imagine it's a concern."

"Most people are just taken aback here. It's nice to not have all those expectations or assumptions automatically." Molly preens a bit, as audacious as the peacock gracing his cheek and neck- that has been one good thing about all of this. He's just one more Stranger- exotic, but meaning well for the most part.

And it's impossible not to notice how that preening turns smug when he mentions Fayura. "I've never had the favor of royalty before, but Fayura seems completely enamored with me. The lady has good taste, and not the slightest hint of a stick up her arse like some nobles."

Edited 2019-03-13 19:06 (UTC)

"I'm glad that you have that freedom then," Jonathan says, a faint smile curling his lips at the clear delight Mollymauk takes in the simple fact. He equally cannot blame his friend for his reaction to the Queen; Jonathan has found himself with a great deal of respect for her as well.

"She cares for people, regardless of who or what they are," he agrees, and his mind strays to her offering again. Despite himself, he bites at the edge of the cigarette instinctively and hisses as his punctures it with a fang. The taste of tobacco is far less appealing and Jonathan puts the remains of it out with a growl and tries to get the bits of paper and plant matter out of his teeth.

"How absolutely--"

- embarrassing. Because the second he makes that face, Molly breaks into a series of giggles that he has to remove his own cigarette to indulge. "Oh, it happens to the best of us, friend. Better you than me."

He clicks his tongue and shows off his own pointed canines that have always been obvious given how often he bares his teeth when he smiles, but seem particularly worthy of note right this second, especially when he slides his cigarette back behind the left canine and resumes his smoke.

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event: a gentle explosion

strangers in a strange land

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