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

Yes and no. We have some that don't involve cards, exactly, but they do involve bluffs. I also know card games where you have to make points and add them - the dragons can be one or ten, the kings are nine, the queens are eight - and so forth.

( Sansa looks at the cards before her, trying to learn the symbols and faces of them. )

Is that how you mean?

It... might be. [It sounds a good deal more like the Spanish and Portuguese games the soldiers were always bringing back with them, but one can never be sure.] I expect you'll find this much easier.

[Or, at least, she probably would if Horatio could avoid explaining the probabilities behind each trick. He probably can. Probably.]

Just a matter of who has the highest card of every go 'round.

Oh, well, that shouldn't be so difficult so long as I know how much each one is worth. Of course, that does depend upon you being honest with me. Lord Horatio, are you going to be forthright and honest with me about how much these cards are worth?

( Sansa says it with the softest hint of a smile playing on her lips, eyes alight with amusement. )

I am at your mercy.

[A good deal of conversation with Horatio Hornblower turns out as a series of soft 'hm's and 'ha-hm's. It could take a person years to become properly acclimated to the variations in constricted sound.

This little exhale, at least, actually sounds just the faintest bit amused, even if his features stay largely wooden.]

I expect the numbers will keep me on the righteous path. [But he'll pluck at the ones he's fairly certain, despite their unfamiliar facings, represent the faces.] Knave beat tens, queens beat knaves, and kings beat queens.

( Horatio's gentle manner is a balm to her. He doesn't bother her, not really, because he's not forward and isn't the sort of man to crowd into her space and demand her attention. Horatio isn't the sort of man to do cruel things, either, and she thinks she can consider him a friend.

Sansa turns over the cards, looking at them, and commits the values to memory. )

All right, then. I shall try my best to learn the game so you have someone to truly compete with you.

--hm.

[Directed kindness will never cease to startle him. Wellard's quick attentive presence had been startling, as had William's steady presence; as even more recently had Maria's gentle friendship. It's startling now, another warm rush under his skin.

Dropping his attention to the cards doesn't stop the odd sensation, but it pulls some of the tension from his throat.] You're more than kind to indulge me but at all, Lady Sansa.

Well, I shall like to have something to do in the evenings when it is not advisable for a lady to go out on her own. I do have an escort, of course, but I wouldn't want to ask him to take me somewhere every night.

( Bucky is a godsend, of course, but she doesn't want to occupy his time completely. If she can learn cards and play with Horatio, that can be done within the safety of the residence any time she likes. )

[The soft noise in his throat is something akin to a chuckle as he deftly begins shuffling his second hand into order.]

Will your escort not object to the moral corruption of gambling?

[That's what escorts do, surely? Guardian the innocence of their delicate charges?]

I don't think he will mind that I am gambling. He's from a place very different from where you and I come from. It's not proper for a lady to gamble in Westeros - and it seems not from your home either. I know little about him, to be sure, but I think he's from a place where women do different things.

( It's only in talking to Horatio that she realizes she actually knows nothing about where Bucky comes from, that she'd trusted him based on his kindness and silent strength. It's not a bad thing to trust him on, her instinct, but it does make her wonder a bit about his world and what it's like. That's a conversation for later, though. Now, she's learning to gamble. )

If he doesn't like it, then I shall remind him that he can always come and supervise if he wishes.

[There were certainly Strangers here who seemed utterly at ease with the incredible mechanical improvements nestled though this world--and most of them seemed not to spare a second thought for the generally equitable treatment of women.

Frankly, the far-casters have been much harder to adjust to.]

Then we'd be most of the way to having a proper game of four.

Perhaps we can find someone else who knows how to play or wants to learn. ( Sansa thinks for a moment, going over all the people she's met, and tries to think who's had a manner similar to her own and Horatio's. Then, suddenly: )

Lady Mary! Have you met Lady Mary Crawley? She might know this game and want to play with us.

[He has. Oh, Sansa, he has, and there was no adult there to supervise him.

Still, the faint hum isn't for that. The faint hum is for the fact that the title sounds less kind and more the sort of thing that fit properly into place. It's startling how many more duchesses there were here than Kittys.]

We'll work up to a proper four, then, shall we?

I certainly hope so. I do want to play the game with you and if we need four to do it, then I shall find our four. I know more than four people here. I am absolutely certain of that.

( Sansa laughs a bit and looks at the cards, touching the faces of them to learn their marks and names. They're a little different from Westerosi cards but Sansa imagines she could paint a set of those from memory, if she had to. )

We used to read cards in Lady Margaery's solar sometimes. It was just something fun to do in an afternoon, though. I don't think anyone can tell the future.

[That deserves a brief glance up from his cards, a flicker of something amused at the back of his eyes.]

Where was the fun, then?

[Useless distractions were hardly unfamiliar, but surely women like Sansa had more fulsome opportunities than idly wasting time to stay sane. ]

( Sansa feels a bit embarrassed now to explain it. It had simply been a way for wealthy women to pass their time, no more and no less, and now that she says it out loud it just seems stupid. Oh well. She owes the explanation, doesn't she? )

It was just something to do in the afternoons to pass time. There was no real point to it, I'm afraid. Wealthy women often find themselves at loose ends, especially in Westeros. Women are only meant to be wives and bear heirs. We're not meant to rule.

[For his own part, Horatio hasn't spent much idle time considering this particular hiccough of humanity. Kitty Cobham had been far cleverer than many of the men he'd seen in positions of power; Maria Mason more even-handed and compassionate for those in her limited thrall. The thought of serving either of their wills--or, indeed, even Sansa's--isn't half as hard as thinking of finding himself under the thumb of a man such as Captain Sawyer ever again.

Odd, now he's focused on it.

His first hand is set down, and he reaches across for the second hand to arrange.] Have you much time for reading, then?

Here? No. I think we just made up what the cards meant anyway. It was always that we were going to find a great fortune or that a handsome husband would be coming to marry us. The ones who were already married saw children in their hands, that sort of things. Harmless things.

( Sansa feels a bit silly even mentioning it now and her face colors as she describes the foolish things she used to do with Margaery and her ladies. )

[Lots of things are silly. Funnily enough, those silly little things could be what kept a person from falling to pieces in the more difficult moments.]

What would you have read for me, Lady Sansa?

[Horatio suspects it would be something not dissimilar to what sailors tended to carry talismans against--and that was more than a bit silly too.]

( Sansa's never read cards for a man so she's not quite sure what she'd think of for him. It takes a moment, but then she lets a smile fall on her lips and draws little nonsense patterns against the wood of the table. )

Oh, well, you're a seaman, aren't you? You'd find a great treasure, perhaps, or capture an enemy fleet. If you were looking longingly at one of the ladies over supper, I would say that you'd find a wife very soon. It's all about looking at the person and seeing what they want written in their eyes.

I'm certain I'd be quite pleased with that reading.

[At least with the chance at an enemy fleet. The rest seemed rather like something which ought to belong in someone else's future rather than his own.]

We'll make an absolute menace of you.

[True, the gambling Horatio knows doesn't require reading others as much as the games which will crop up in his future, but the seed of a thought is there.]

( Sansa laughs, surprised he'd say such a thing about her. Still, if he's seeing a keen intellect in her and a way to read people, she supposes she's glad for it. It's the only thing Baelish left with her that isn't a stain or something to be ashamed of. It's something she can use. )

Well, I don't intend of relieving anyone of their valuables just yet. I just want to know the game because you seem to like it.

[There had been a faint bitterness, lately, to playing whist. Horatio could sometimes forget in the playing, but at the end of the night, counting out his winnings always brought back the sharp remembrance of the stoppages.

Today, it's actually easy to simple smile about, soft but uncomplicated.]

I do favour it.

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