[OPEN] OUTPOST HAVEN [player plot]

[distant_one]

Who: Anyone and Everyone
What: Open Post for Player Plot Outpost Haven
When: September
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.]

Defensive Measures

After the presence of massive monster crawling out of the sea last month, measures have been taken to ensure even those without abilities to handle large foes can take them on.

These come in the form of multiple ballistae made from bone mounted on the walls, sized more for shooting small trees as ammo than anything more traditional. D has rigged the swivels they sit on to keep them from aiming at other ballistae or inside the walls.

All have stacks of crude 'ammo' set near them, but one in particular has been set up with more. At the edge of the cleared forest is a large ten foot diameter hoop set up to use as target practice.

Great Hall Construction

Excavation went much more quickly due to the big help of Falco Grice, so the basement has been finished ahead of schedule. The center of the walled area will now see construction begin on a large great hall, big enough to shelter the sleeper population of Trench in an emergency although it will be tight quarters.

Use of blood mortar will continue, and multiple hearths will be built for warmth. More of the trees felled during last month's tree clearing efforts will be used as scaffolding.

Barracks Addition

The makeshift drainage from last month is at last replaced with a proper system, and now rather than just sinks and bath tubs the rest room and makeshift changing area of what will eventually be the barracks is going to be complete.

Sleeping is still bunk style in a shared room, but there's now a fully functional kitchen and everything one needs to live cleanly if not comfortably without leaving the outpost.

Supplies

Most of the food and medical supplies previously kept at the staging point are moved away and a vast majority end up in carefully prepared storage rooms in the outpost basement. Joining them are barrels for storing water and kits for starting mushroom growing.

There's still no ready supply of safe water at the outpost itself, but supplies are brought in regularly along with rain water catchers and filters.

Sashes with the outpost sigil are available for anyone who wants them, and there are now banners hanging by the completed gate with the red sun over blue waves.

Comments

[martyrofduty]

Duty inclined his head. It amused him terribly, this description of magic that ate at itself and that brought its own destruction. It isn't necromancy, but it's necromantic.

With that in mind and a single note lighter tone, Duty asks, "Would such prolific and promiscuous knowledge sharing not hasten the end of magecraft?"

[slightlytaller]

"It's the astronomers and the biologists. Magecraft is very tightly restricted from the regular population to the point that they don't even know about us "

He shrugged. That was an entirely different conversation.

"My thesis was laughed at-- because I'm the first one to seriously practice in my family. My grandmother had a few connections, but my mother didn't practice.

"Allowing better accessibility would allow new people with new ideas to come in, but the traditionalists prefer playing genetic Tetris for hundreds of generations over allowing someone they don't know into the room."

[martyrofduty]

Huh, the question was a joke, but the answer is a curious one. Understanding magic didn't count as understanding the universe. Also, magic being secret sounded strange, like something in a book or movie. Waver wasn't joking about the differences between their universes.

"Sounds like self-interest to them," Duty said, "It's not enough that it benefits magecraft. You have to grease their palms and their egos."

[slightlytaller]

"Trust me. I know."

It had only been the song and dance he had been playing for the last decade.

"I'm not sure there's anything I can do on my own... But, maybe my students will have a better shot."

[martyrofduty]

Fair. Duty had usually been near the top of the ladder. Blood of Eden, the exception, was the roiling mass of murderous bullshit that comes from a couple decades of highly isolated units handling a vacuum of uniting leadership. Wake's death ensured she never fell from status. The long term issues were coming to roost, but no one put that on Wake's shoulders. We Suffer was well named.

"You don't have to do it alone," Duty said. He glanced over. Surely the person proposing working together would work with others. Oh the irony.

[slightlytaller]

Waver, meanwhile, had always been at the bottom of the ladder. Even his current status was thrust into his hands as the result of an immense cost. He snorted in bitter humor at Duty's words.

"I have my allies," he explained. "My apprentice. My students. A Necromancer--the last of his line. A man too ill to take on the mantle of heir despite his talents at healing and bolstering his peers. A rival in another department. My younger sister."

Waver shook his head. As straightforward as Duty's suggestion was, it was impossible to implement on a practical level.

They were all bound by that which they couldn't control.

"We still have to play by rules we didn't make, suck up to people who would bleed us dry and see us dead before we succeed. The very possibility of my own work benefiting the future is held hostage while I fulfill three lifetimes worth of meticulous labor alone to make up for my childish misdeeds--"

A sigh punctuated his words. Casting Duty a wearied look, he explained:

"Its enough just to live as ourselves at this point."

[martyrofduty]

Duty's demanding. Life isn't easy. Living by one's principles isn't easy. Nothing is ever, truly, enough.

"If you say so," Duty says. He weighs down the silence with thought, the kind that holds the conversational baton. "You don't have to do it alone here."

[slightlytaller]

"I'm not alone here,"

He replied quickly, brows lifting in silent inquiry.

"I have Iskandar, Captain Amaranth... As well as Ortus, probably, and yourself, I hope."

[martyrofduty]

Duty nodded. "Yes. I request you avoid giving me the headache of going after John unless he truly deserves it." Not a condition, no. Just a way to be nice, between friends.

[slightlytaller]

[He stopped then, and looked up at Duty. It was not a significant distance that he had to look up to any longer, not since he had somehow accomplished the impossible feat of growing thirty centimeters in his twenties. He was no longer a small man, but it was still somewhat odd-- looking up.

It was different from looking up at Iskandar. He didn't still feel small with Duty; the distance wasn't so great.

Perhaps they were more alike than he realized.]

I'm not like Anna. I'm not as good as Kate Bush.

[He had to reason to run up any hills to make any deals with God. The Pthumerians had already switched his place-- and put him next to his King. ]

There's no reason to go after him, not when half the town has already given him their very loud opinion. Anything I add would be useless.

Besides. [He chuckled, genuinely in good humor.]

Iskandar seemed to get along fine with him.

Not that this says much. He follows different standards-- but, it's good enough for me.

[martyrofduty]

Duty's mouth stretched a little while. "Iskander fits in with the lyctor crowd just fine," he said. He'd probably get along fine with Mercymorn even, despite Waver's problems in that department.

[slightlytaller]

"...Iskandar is Macedonian, not Roman. He was also high ranked enough to have a bodyguard himself-- not be one for a magistrate."

Clearly someone hadn't gotten the memo about Lyctors and was mixing them up with Roman Lictors.

[martyrofduty]

Rare though it was, Duty laughed. There was nothing remarkable about it. The clearing of corruption was why conversation was encouraged in Trench. It was neither cut short nor extended long.

"Sweet Mackenzie," Duty said, "you need to do your homework."

Someone called his name from behind them. Duty inclined his head to Waver. "Excuse me," he said and stepped away to help someone from his crew.

[slightlytaller]

"Wha--?"

But he had no choice but to watch Duty leave. All he had left to hold was his spiralling questions about what kind of universe Ortus and Duty (And Palamedes... and Harrowhark, and..... Woe???) came from. Anna had told him a lot, but not everything. As with everything in this equation, he was left once more on the sidelines, trying to put together a puzzle which only had half of the pieces.

"But, the Latin...? Hm."

He had no idea where to begin, nor whom to ask.

Another day would give him an opening. Perhaps.