02 . december catch-all

[necrolord]

Who: necrolord and you!
What: A necromancer enjoys Bone Season.
When: December.
Where: Throughout Trench.

Content Warnings: Will be marked as needed. Note all the usual warnings of this character.

(1) recruitment: OTA.

There is a man in the Archives. He doesn't look like much: average height, average build, dressed in simple blacks. He chews his lip as he thumbs through some borrowed tome. There's an untidy stack of ancient books beside him, the titles Rituals of Trench: Remembering Our Pasts and Legends of Trench: Curses and Causations glinting in the lamplight. The one in his hands seems to be The Sleeper Condition. If you've come to do some research on the current issues plaguing town, you'll have to approach this plain and faintly rumpled-looking stranger.

He drums his fingers against the tabletop as he reads, and at the approach of any passerby, he looks up.

His eyes are oil-black and horribly, weightily inhuman.

"I don't suppose," he says, by way of greeting, "you've run across much explanation for the squidly reincarnation? All our esteemed authors seem to take the tentacles as a normal fact of life."

(2) recruitment: existing CR.

It is, by and large, a quiet day in Trench. The God of Necromancers can be found ambling from Gaze to the Blood Ministers' District and back again, sometimes with his facepainted attaché and sometimes not. You might even spot him down by the docks, standing out among the brawn and bustle of sailors.

Regardless, he brightens when he spots an even slightly familiar face, and raises a hand in hello.

"Remind me," he says, bracingly, "how you feel about sailing?"

(3) wildcard.

[ Happy to match formatting! ]

Comments

[lipochrome]

[ WHAT ABOUT LYCTORHOOD?? IS THAT NOT HORRIBLE???

Gideon just. Stares at him, absolutely flabbergasted. Why is he like this? Why is the worst old person in the universe the only one willing to buy her snacks?

Eventually: ] You sound like Harrow. She gets real pretentious about meat.

[ Speaking of which: time to try this hot dog! It's got some funky red and yellow sauce on it, which Gideon thinks is a nice aesthetic touch. She takes a bite, still wondering why more people aren't making crude jokes about this, and -- hmm. It's salty. And meaty? But also not-meaty. The bread is nice, she decides, and it's always a treat to have hot food. Gideon chews, swallows, shrugs. ]

Not bad. Pretty cool that you can eat it standing up.

[necrolord]

[ Lyctorhood is not good snacktime conversation! He would hate to bring down the family bonding mood. ]

Oh, there's fascinating and valuable work to be done across all schools, et cetera, I wouldn't want it to sound like I'm playing favorites. But they've always been very reliable and an excellent aesthetic choice, if you ask me. Skeletons are a classic.

[ God takes a bite and gets a smudge of mustard at the corner of his mouth. He wipes it away with the back of a knuckle and immediately disrupts his makeup. ]

Still, I suspect Harrow would rather be home than here eating fried meat on a stick.

[arclightning]

Mako snorts in something like agreement, ducking his head very briefly to hide the smile. The sentiment is more or less something he'd said to Wu the other night, and it puts him at ease to hear it here again. This guy gets it. Whatever it is: the whole broad scope of this, a brand new world that Korra doesn't trust and Wu absolutely does. Mako is caught somewhere in the middle of it, trying to build a life here and sure at the same time that it's going to be yanked down around his ears. The Pthumerians don't give a shit about them or their happiness.

"I know a place to start," he says after a moment, and flips the notebook a few pages back. "There's a remnant of the dream here. A... weird part of town that looks like the one we all came from. Might have some answers to those bigger questions."

[necrolord]

"'Sleepy Town,'" he observes, leaning in to look. "I've heard of it, though I've not yet gone poking around. I hear something about a guardian monster who doesn't take well to trespassers."

The monster doesn't worry him particularly. He has walked the length of that wall, the stone that sections the quarantined neighborhood off from the surrounding forests and roads. He's been of half a mind to send Harrow and Gideon in to have a look around; there's something there he can't touch yet, but it feels like a sore spot in reality, the right weak point to press.

[arclightning]

"It's our town," Mako says sourly, "kind of. As much ours as this place. It's worth investigating. I don't think we're gonna get a lot out of the gods in this place. They were exactly the ones who were cagey about the answers before. I just—" he's complaining now, he knows that, but it feels good to bounce this frustration off someone. There is an imaginary Lin Beifong in his head, and the memory of her scoffing voice will do in a pinch, but—

Mako's mouth twists. "If we're supposed to survive long-term in this place, we need a lot more info than we have, and I'm not equipped to spend days with my nose buried in books to figure it out."

[lipochrome]

Okay, cool. I'm gonna tell Harrow flesh magic's your favorite.

[ You know, as a bit. Gideon frankly does not care about what God thinks of skeletons. That's nerd shit.

At his comment about Harrow, Gideon blinks, a touch surprised. Does this mean -- did he know she hated the biscuits this whole time? Does he know that Harrow hates flavors, and also smells? Surely not. ]

Yeah, this really isn't her thing. I do wanna bring her back something, though. Like -- [ Gideon frowns, searching for the right word, and lands on a phrase she's only ever read in comics ] -- a party favor? Yeah.

[necrolord]

If anything, the teenage frustration is charmingly familiar. If he does not have Gideon or Harrow at his side while he rifles through books, it's probably good practice to have someone else bristling about the uselessness of local gods.

He doesn't even take it personally.

"I suspect," he says, with a note of amusement, "that's where teamwork is meant to come in. Seems a stretch to hope the same folks who're good at breaking into a walled-off ghost town are also glad to rifle through the library day and night."

He looks Mako up and down, and says in the tone of a proposal:

"I am genuinely terrible at jumping fences."

[necrolord]

[ He nods as though defeated. If there's anything God can respect, it's a bit. ]

A souvenir, [ he supplies, as though this is a brilliant idea. ] Deeply important to bring something back from a fair, it's how you show appreciation or shame them into coming next time. It's a longstanding tradition.

[ He turns to survey the stands and the bustle. Aside from festival food, their options are limited to weird little noisemakers, shiny trinkets, odd accessories, and masks. God regards their options, and says: ]

What do you think she'd like?

[arclightning]

Mako perks up a little bit like a crowcat seeing a scrap, his eyes going sharp. This place, full of books and dust and knowledge, this is alien to him. For all that he loved the contours of stories as a child, for all that he is perfectly at home with pages of notes or numbers to sort through, Mako has been molded by his own world into something sharper and fiercer than that.

It eats at him. It eats at him particularly this month: a close glance will reveal cracked patches on his skin, like he's burning from the inside out, and a certain burning wildness behind his eyes. Corruption is a subtle thing when it starts, and Mako is an expert at ignoring his own body's warnings.

But even uncorrupted, even with the shapes of him changing around himself, Mako is good at a very specific set of things.

"Lucky for you," he says with just a hint of a smile, "I'm an expert at jumping fences."