distant_one: (pic#12360449)
D ([personal profile] distant_one) wrote in [community profile] deercountry2022-08-14 08:52 pm

[OPEN] OUTPOST HAVEN [player plot]

Who: Anyone and Everyone
What: Open Post for Player Plot
When: Early August and Onward
Where: Staging Point in Crenshaw and Outpost

Content Warning: None in the main post

[Ooc: This is an open log place for the Outpost player plot, plotting post here and location post here. Feel free to post starters here and tag one another.]



Wall Complete


On one of the days after the wall is finished but before the gate is added D schedules a section of time when only a few people will be at the outpost so a hazardous construction project can take place, just a handful of guards.

When the all-clear is given for construction crews and day shift guards to return the outer wall is practically glowing with heat and the individual stone blocks have been fused together. The ground around it is scorched but there's no lingering fire anywhere despite the smoking and blackened trees and greenery.


Staging Point


On the main floor of the house D has chosen to use as the staging point is an area set up for collecting and preserving blood. Darkblood and coldblood keep easily enough but more care is needed when dealing with vileblood and there's an abundance of dried plants ready to be ground to a powder and added to collected vileblood in the first stage of making the special blood mortar.

In one of the rooms upstairs are scales and measuring devices and glass and metal jars ready to receive the mixture of all three blood types in specific parts along with another plant mixture, the last stage before it's mixed into mortar, which is better done in large batches at the outpost itself.


Tree Clearing


One of the tasks to start off the next step of construction is clearing trees for fifty yards in every direction outside the wall as well as any bushes that are large enough to obscure vision. Felled trees are moved inside the outer wall to be processed mostly into logs for use in construction.

Simple wooden watch towers will be erected at the corner of each wall and wooden stairs in a few other places to allow rapid access to the walls for defensive purposes.

Extra wood and other plant material will be processed for firewood and any other purpose it can serve.

Excavating



Digging and leveling start for both the eventual large basement as well as long trench corridors to run under what will be the kitchen and bath house and clean up area to provide places to run pipes or access the foundation from below. Both buildings share a wall with the already completed bunk house and form the basis of what will eventually be expanded to become a barracks.

Construction



The main focus in this phase is making the place livable for people full time. Getting clean is especially important with blood pollution and corruption still being large issues. There's a bath area to be constructed with six individual bathing areas and a pair of large fireplaces to heat water until more permanent systems can go in. Before plumbing and other things can be done the baths will drain into a set of underground paths and from there to a gravel-filled pit beneath what will be another rose garden.

A kitchen will also go up with a pair of fireplaces and room for people to cook and clean with room for plumbing and more advanced options to eventually be added but for now all food and water will come from storage barrels brought in from the staging point and taken back when they're empty.

grice: (pic#15776416)

[personal profile] grice 2022-08-17 12:59 pm (UTC)(link)
"People who have the same ability as me— the giant." Surely he'd seen the massive creature quick on its legs, and sharp with its talons, each black armored curve a monstrous meat hanger capable of denting even the most unyielding of precious stones. The tree trunks were like paper. Duty's next inquiry takes longer, and Falco does look between them with the answer packed at the tip of his tongue, but—

He's too occupied with constraining his lips together, in hopes that it would stop the sharp burn swelling under the bridge of his nose. A shining veil gleams over his eyes, where he begins to busy himself with the cloth. He's never spoken to anyone about it. He fears it. But most of all, he fears for those much closer to him and how it would shatter moments he still had with all of them. Sleeper Squids could be reborn— as well as they could never return. Was ignorance better, in this case? In any case? He's died before, twice now, and here he was (the fear still lingered, regardless).

"Uhm, it's, a little more than a decade—" the boy's voice cracks, high, then settles low with a faint shiver. "Would you tell anyone?"

It was more time than perhaps they'd stay in Trench. Perhaps not. He had to throw it all up to chance. But, the implication still stands: Please don't tell anyone.
martyrofduty: (Default)

[personal profile] martyrofduty 2022-08-17 06:10 pm (UTC)(link)
Falco's gifts are great, perhaps so great people consider it worth the cost. Duty doesn't know their situation. Trench is much smaller than the world he lived in before. The saints are not, for good reason, allowed home. That kept the children, the sick children, at a distance. Something known but not seen. Not that his decisions and actions forget that. He's briefly been to the Dominicus system when truly needed. The problems he handled were on a much larger scale–millions or billions. He left the rest to others, for good news for bad.

Whatever their concerns here, they aren't what troubled Falco's home, just as Duty's attentions are kept local. He's glad to be able to concern himself with it.

How much of the decade is left? That's the question Falco draws some line, though Duty isn't sure how much general illness can be concealed. "I will not tell anyone," Duty says, "I would prefer not to lie to anyone else who figures it out themselves, but I can."

If Falco dies and people get mad at Duty, he can handle it. The kid has little enough control over his life.
grice: (pic#15887051)

[personal profile] grice 2022-08-18 07:02 pm (UTC)(link)
"Me neither," he admits, one of the very reasons why he was even spilling this information to Duty in the first place when he could've easily kept quiet and asked for space on the subject.

"You don't have to lie, but . . . Thank you." At least when it comes to keeping it between them and keeping it close. "I just don't think it's worth telling, now."
martyrofduty: (g1deon!face srs talk)

[personal profile] martyrofduty 2022-08-19 02:06 am (UTC)(link)
Duty inclines his head in acknowledgement. Once aware something is wrong, there's no readily turning back. Solid choice, and he's appreciates it.

"The decade—is that what you have left or had once you got it?" Duty clarifies. The answer changes a great deal.

He looks at Falco seriously, considering the last words. "What would you want, if it were someone you loved?" Duty asks. Answers can shift so easily depending where one stands.
grice: (pic#14283557)

[personal profile] grice 2022-08-20 01:07 pm (UTC)(link)
“It’s thirteen years . . . I’m on my eleventh.”

Next year, it’d hit ten. It seemed like quite a bit now, but in the blink of an eye, close to two years have passed. In a few more blinks, he’d be halfway there, then even less. Falco hadn’t liked to think about it too much— it meant that there was a chance in Trench he wouldn’t be able to experience plenty of things that growing up offers. At home, there was already no way out. It was a chance. It could and couldn’t be. Too much thinking would bury him into a spiraling hole. At least it wasn’t the person he’d been trying to protect it from.

If the tables were turned— his answer could change. Conflict rises and bubbles across his features, and he ends up settling with a quiet, guilty but genuine reply: “. . . I don’t know. I’d want to know, but—”

It’s selfish. The boy gathers the fabric in his hands, and rests his chin upon the top of his bent knees, close to his chest.

“I just don’t want to make a possibility a problem for anyone. There’re so many problems already.”
martyrofduty: (Default)

[personal profile] martyrofduty 2022-08-20 09:34 pm (UTC)(link)
Eleven more years, rounded to ten. That may allow Falco to become an adult in many worlds, it remains a short lifespan all the worse for the knowledge it is coming. Here, where they may not be an answer until that decade is up, Falco lacks any way to know, so he cannot have relief away from home. The ability remains; so too could its cost.

"The choice is yours," Duty reiterates. To go behind the boy's back, even if Duty had not promised to keep it secret, only adds to the problems and makes this one worse than it is.

"Think about what they and you would want," Duty says, "and what kind of relationships you want to have." Life has hard lessons, and many kids have to learn them young. Duty wishes that weren't the case, but as with this issue, people frequently don't get what they want.

"You are not a burden, Falco," Duty says. He holds out one hand, one arm, as an open gesture.
grice: (pic#15776414)

[personal profile] grice 2022-08-22 02:40 am (UTC)(link)
Falco’s eyes tear upward when the palm of Duty’s hand is within range of sight, then his arm, extended— the boy feels something tremor between his ribs with his heart, be it a strain or a simple pull, or a thrum that made the beat seem harsher. With his thoughts running hard and deep through the other’s input, there was a swell.

A burden is the last thing he wants to be for anyone, and the hand that slips behind Duty’s back to tighten his embrace some was a second in which he felt like he could believe it. He didn’t have to be a burden.

Before he had managed to breathe out the sigh he’s kept in, Falco is shuffling enough to lean onto the man’s side and take his gesture for half an embrace. The withheld air shimmers out, shallow, thin like scattered mist, and he asks with a bowed head, “Do you mean trust?”
martyrofduty: (g1deon!face watchful)

[personal profile] martyrofduty 2022-08-22 07:42 pm (UTC)(link)
Duty hugs Falco back and leaves his arm around the kid's shoulder afterward. It's a physical connection Duty never did back in the Nine Houses. No one would presume such familiarity with a saint. The Saint of Duty was always more removed, even from his brother and sister saints, than the rest. Duty, appropriately, did the same. He could not afford to have done differently. Here, this softening is something new, an acknowledgement not only of other people's needs but the luxury of his own.

He also knows and mentally acknowledges the irony to a conversation around trust and secrets, given his personal life. However, he's seen enough of the consequences. Time only calcifies matters and makes the revelation that much harder, feelings that much stronger, and bridging the gap that much more work.

"Yes, trust and relationships," Duty confirms, "It's hard, but it's worth living what you believe, what you want." His brown eyes are warm with reddish sparks, and his heart aches. Oh it hurts, when it's over, but he wouldn't change it for the world.
grice: (pic#15887062)

[personal profile] grice 2022-08-23 04:55 pm (UTC)(link)
Falco doesn't overstay his welcome; as soon as his time feels like it has expired, his arms release from the brief press and dwindle toward a return to his sides and lap.

"I'll think it through," he asserts, with an implication that did not point to doubt on honesty with the subject, but a simply deeper reflection from within himself. It was not a matter to be acted upon with urgency, lest he preferred to make unnecessary mistakes. It made him nervous and fearful of the distress it could cause— though he does realize that speaking about it has opened up another path, and it wasn't one of complete silence.

He's reminded of the story Paul had told him, of Eros and Psyche, of a tale that manifested the importance of trust and devotion for love to remain secure under the dull gleam of The Rock's natural cave bioluminescence and mysterious carvings. He does not want to neglect either wing.

". . . Thank you, Mister Duty." —Oh. And about his fabric, held up in gesture and stained with Vileblood, he curtly adds: "And I'll get you a new one."
martyrofduty: (Default)

[personal profile] martyrofduty 2022-08-24 12:07 am (UTC)(link)
Each person has their own beliefs. Rarely do they entirely line up with another person's. Duty cares more that Falco acts according to his beliefs than that those actions follow Duty's. They are in a different world, and no Sleeper has been here ten years. None of them may have ten years. It may be that it will not matter what happens in a decade. It matters what Falco does now, the relationships he builds.

He nods, in acceptance. It is in Falco's hands. "You are welcome, Falco," he says. The replacement matters little to Duty. It's served its purpose, but he accepts the offer for what it is.

"You can find me here most days," he tells the kid, "for any reason." He wants this to be the beginning, not the end.
grice: (pic#15887061)

looks like a good place to ~fin~!

[personal profile] grice 2022-08-24 05:10 pm (UTC)(link)
"Of course." His words are short, soft-spoken, but palpably appreciative. If anything, and certainly— he wouldn't forget how this was treated and by who. Falco wishes to rest now, and that is what he'll do: resting the side of his head against the top of his knees and using his arms as a cushion.

He offers a smile to Duty, one of reassurance and albeit weak compared to a sunshiny grin, it's present. With the fabric bunched up in his hand, he allows his eyes to close, and from there, simply rests.