deercountry | 02 . december catch-all

Entry tags:

02 . december catch-all

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! ]

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Anna's been doing more research on her own here, lately, after a productive session with Cloverfield and several late-night ponderings towards the Moon Presence. The thing is that tonight, most of the books she wants to pull that seem like they could give answers—about Pthumerians, about Trench, about the bridge between myth and reality that they seem to live between—aren't there.

The guy with all the books is pretty easy to spot, at least. She approaches him a little standoffishly, but relaxes once she realizes she recognizes him. "Hey, you're, uh. From the graveyard." Anna might not look very familiar with her new longcoat and missing eyepatch, and she's pretty sure she never gave him her name, but it's hard to forget this guy.

She puts a hand on the table and takes a look at the spines of some of the books, then at his eyes, which. Eesh. "You been at this a while?" Bold words for someone with a black-and-gold glass eye. "'Cause I haven't had a lot of luck since September either."

Will's also down at the docks, sketchbook resting on his knees, trying to commit the strange ships and surly dockworkers to paper. He's found an out of the way corner to tuck himself into, bundled up against the wintry chill and balancing on a barrel that's fairly well encrusted with salt and grime. So far nobody's tried to take it or gotten irritated at him for sitting there, so he's let himself get raptly involved in his drawing.

When someone speaks, Will looks up, eyes wide, pulled out of his reverie by the question and momentarily disoriented. He blinks a couple times. Oh hey, it's that guy. The dead guy boat guy.

"I feel...fine about it?"

[ From here. ]

The boy stands carefully straight, carefully still. His eyes are not so careful, and John knows very well to watch the eyes.

Well, fair enough; he can see the sense in paranoia. It's the mark of a scholar who will live long enough to finish their notes. He inclines his head in agreement, though for a moment there is something grave and weary written across his face.

"Simple rituals," he agrees, tone still unremarkably soft. "We'll call it a gentle welcome. Warm-up exercises. Let's turn our attention now to the big leagues of blood magic, as that seems to be our intended domain."

He does not resume drumming his fingers. Instead he gestures to an open chair, an easy invitation.

"Though I would hate to take you from your own research, if you've come for something unrelated."

Oh. He's here. Willow supposes she shouldn't be too surprised - it's not the first time she's run into him in this end of town. Fine. This is fine. Her eyes land on the books that happen to be the exact ones she's been looking for.

Of course.

"Umm, I never really looked into the whole, uh, 'Squiddening' thing. It's a thing that happens, doesn't seem dangerous, just a little weird. So, priorities." She shrugs a little, and shifts uncomfortably before gesturing to the pile of books. "Are you done with any of those?"

"That seems to be the common approach," he says, pleasantly. "Somewhere lower on the to-do list than 'don't die by tentacles,' which seems bang on to me. But supposing one has a bit of free time, the question does arise: why squids?"

He closes the book, drums his fingers on the cover, and politely disregards her look of open discomfort.

"None of these seem interested in answering, so I could be convinced to part with one. I suppose you're on the trail of something more pressing?"

"Well, that's a start." Dead guy boat guy ambles over and comes to a stop just in front of him. He regards Will's sketchbook with gentle curiosity and rubs at his chin. "I'm planning a bit of a voyage. If you know any interested sailors, I'll need all hands."

Ah. It's the young woman whose soul he'd rather like to pick apart under a microscope. But, you know, in a friendly way.

The God of Necromancers looks up at the— girl, construct, necromantic marvel?— who'd commiserated with him over magic flowers. He makes no move to correct The guy from the graveyard as his working title, and just tips his head in hello.

"It doesn't seem there's much luck to be had." He flips his book shut, and gently sets it back upon the stack. "But I can at least point you in the direction of my latest failures, if you've come to look up something specific. Might save you a bit of time skimming."

This is a test, Paul thinks - thinks, doesn't know, and that's the core of the problem, isn't it? He hadn't understood how much he had relied on knowing, the extent to which he had assumed his ability to immerse and understand would hold true anywhere he went. The stranger is an opacity to him, his face so perfectly pleasant it has to be a mask, the brief glimpse of emotion a way to draw Paul out - but does it? Is it? If it is, does it matter?

"But that's it," Paul says, flexing his right hand, the one with his teethmarks on all four fingers down to the bone under the glove, "It's all of a piece, isn't it?"

He sinks into the chair with an exhaustion he uses to mask over pain, his head dipped and his messy hair falling in front of him. He rests his fingers on his knees in raised tents, feels Sophia quivering unseen at the back of his neck.

"Simple rituals any stranger could perform, binding them together, to this place," softly, softly, "Gifts and enticements of power. Radical physical alterations to disrupt the continuity of the self, the immediate embrace of a new community. It's all the same thing, the same purpose."

He looks up from under his eyelashes, still wary, but it's not all focused on the other man, not by halves: "So. Our intended domain?"

"I mean, I'm more just looking for stuff on the gods instead of the squid stuff. One mystery at a time, yeah?" It's just that he's decided to approach a different one than her, it looks like. Still, she takes a closer look at the titles for things that might be of interest while she talks.

"I spent some time with Cloverfield in October, and I'm, like, still sorting out the right question to ask Never Mind when I meet with him." Not to mention her recent meeting with the Reckoning, her own patron. "I figure it probably can't hurt us to try to get in good with them. But I don't really know how to track some of them down. I was thinking of asking Never Mind how to get in touch with, like, Baus or Mariana or Dorothea. One of them's gotta know more about why we're all squids."

"Priorities," Willow answers with a shrug. She hasn't really given much thought to why squids exactly, although it certainly wouldn't have been her first choice. "I guess the next person might ask, why not squids?"

Her main focus is still on the books on the table.

"I'm sure you've noticed a lot of people are acting kind of weird. Plus, rabbit prints all over town - that's kind of new too," she notes. It feels like there's probably a connection between the two.

"There's a funny amount of overlap." He leans back in his chair and begins drumming his fingers against his knee, an absent little tap-tap tap-tap. "The squids— while odd enough to merit at least a bit of interest, if you ask me— are symptoms of a much broader incomprehensibility."

The right question for Never Mind. He has very little he'd like to ask Never Mind and quite a lot he'd like to do to Never Mind, personally; if the creature ever wanted civility from him, it wouldn't have strung up her body as carrion for birds.

All he says is, mildly: "I've an interest in Mariana, now you mention it. As best I can tell, reincarnation is her domain. Might get me some answers for the squid thing."

He watches the exhaustion, and watches the pain. It isn't surprising; he has spent his share of time alongside the Blood Ministers, easing crystals out of fingers and wrists. If anything, it's the boy's poker face that merits interest. He hasn't yet encountered a Sleeper this successfully stoic.

Or this paranoid, or this desperate for answers. Not outside the one he tends to keep at his right hand, anyway.

"A welcome," he repeats, more softly to suit to Paul's murmur. "An embrace that's getting to be a bit much, if you ask me."

Paul looks up to him, and he resettles, resumes tapping his fingers now along the wooden arm of his chair. The God of Necromancers tips his head in thought.

"Blood magic is the breath of this world," he says. "And we've arrived with an innate knack for it. But it's still a young world." Tap-tap, tap-tap. "Have you read up on the history? We're only a few millennia into the rebirth, a few centuries into the discovery of the art. All the nitty-gritty theory is ahead of us. Bit exciting, if you ask me, but a hell of a learning curve too."

His tone doesn't vary from something mild, thoughtfully level. It's all true, after all. He has lived it all before; just not from the role of a disciple.

"Maybe it's considered gauche to ask why of our hosts," he acknowledges. "But it's for the advancement of the art, the science, to ask how."

Edited 2021-12-20 03:21 (UTC)

Interesting. Yeah, it'd make sense that the two things overlap, and probably that Mariana's in charge of it. She considers the possibilities for a moment and briefly remembers the ship she'd ended up commandeering on her first arrival here. She hadn't captained it, really, but it turns out when you have a sword and a commanding presence, you can whip a lot of pirates into shape.

"Wonder if she's out there on the ocean somewhere, then," she muses. "That's also supposed to be her domain, right? Plus we have this underwater trench with the same name back home. Deepest place on the planet." Maybe it's a bit of a stretch, but she treats the idea like it's got exactly as much merit as anything else. "Wouldn't bet on that being a coincidence. The problem is how to get out there to commune with her in the first place."

Edited 2021-12-20 04:13 (UTC)

Will resists the instinctive urge to clutch the sketchbook to his chest and hide it. It's just some roughly penciled out boats so far. And a couple cool-looking deck guys. Just a couple.

"A voyage? To...where?" He's still used to being in a place like Deerington, where once you travel too far from the town, you just get bounced back.

"If we're being wholly honest," he says, leaning forward to set his current volume aside, "I am more interested in the how of squids than the why. Where exists the line between blood magic and divine power? To what degree do Sleepers contain a spark of the same godhood? Is Mariana the originator of this world's magic in all its forms, and in all things we see traces of her will; ergo, squids?"

But he waves her towards the books with an air of have at it, and sits back in his chair.

"Odd fluctuations in behavior seems to be a staple," he admits. "Though I'll confess it's a bit more hostile than average, this month."

"The open sea." He casts a hand out to the not-so-picturesque grey horizon. "Something of a research trip. We'll just pop out and back, to start with. Take a few readings, get an idea of baseline energy levels, that sort of thing. Blood magic seems to be more an art and less a science, locally, and there's a hope of changing that."

He claps his hands together and leans in other them, warm approval in his tone.

"I've been thinking the very same!" (He says nothing about the trench; every offhand reference to a world long dead honestly fucks him up a little, even now.) "But it's less of a problem than you'd think. I have a boat."

Boat implies something lesser than a two-masted brigantine crewed by the tentacled undead. But compared to spacefaring warships, well.

Oh, good. She loves it when a plan (that she didn't know anyone was making) comes together. Both her hands gently press down on the table as she leans in with a conspiratorial grin on her face.

"Well, I've got the eyepatch already if you feel like doing some piracy." That's a stupid thing to say. No dignity in it whatsoever. But she's already said it. "Actually, you seem like the kind of guy who does stuff 35 minutes before he announces he was even planning something. If you've got room on your crew, I'd love to join you."

He snaps and points to her, which is definitely a gesture of godlike dignity now that he's done it.

"Love the attitude and the style. Welcome aboard."

He settles back into his chair and resumes drumming his fingers.

"It will take a few days to get the plans squared away, but the moment we've some decent weather, we'll be off. No time like the present."

She straightens her back and turns up one corner of her mouth in triumph. "Hell yeah. Let's find some answers together." And hopefully not die in the ocean, which is a startlingly real possibility if she stops to think about it for too long. Which is exactly why she's not letting herself do that.

"Oh, right, uh. Name's Anna if you need to track me down." Short A. German. She never really did give her name, did she? That seems like the bigger concern than vice versa. "grollschwert on the network. Or just ask around for the android chick."

It's not that Paul is put at ease when he finally allows to himself that they both understand what they're doing in this sideways conversation. It's more like watching someone catch their balance, their feet steadying underneath them. His hands smooth over his knees and he sits back against the chair, spine straight, his demeanor shifting to one of mild interest to match the stranger's.

But his pupils dilate every time the stranger talks about magic, and the interest there is not mild. It's not interest, either. It's an avid, envious yearning.

"The crisis and the transformation," Paul says, in acknowledgment of the stranger's question about whether he's read his history, "Which led back to crisis."

"There is a certain latitude for asking how," he continues, with a slight referential tilt of his head at the Archives around them, "But you're right, the real work - it's amazing what's been accomplished, with what they have," and he means that, "But the field still might as well be humourism, or miasma theory. An attempt is being made here and there, there are some practical frameworks, but a true discipline of study isn't culturally supported. I don't blame them for that. They're dying, and a dying society rarely innovates in that way."

He says that last part as though it's obvious. He thinks it should be, and the thin veneer of denial spread over it is obscene.

He catches the attention. He catches the longing, and files it away as useful.

"Desperation can breed innovation," he says, and means it so much more deeply than he lets show in the casual tilt of his shoulders. "It can at least breed willingness to follow along when someone gets it really right. And we," he snaps his fingers between them, quirks the edge of his mouth in what is nearly a smile, "can make all the difference.

"The society may be dying. But then in come the Sleepers, each of us specialized in a field that barely exists. Each of us immortal. The timing's so convenient you could chalk it up to divine benevolence."

"It's an interesting idea, isn't it? If you look past the divine aspect - there's precedent for uplift through talent-seeding." Paul nods, a little charmed by the showmanship of the finger snap despite himself. It's a good touch; he'll have to remember it.

"That said, you would want to attribute it to divine benevolence," he says, and there's something like a flicker of doubt there, then a steeling of will, "It's easier to accept that way."

"So - the hypothetical: Sleepers are intended to revitalize the world by progressing magic." He tilts his head to the left, watching closely. "Let's accept it. Where do they start?"

He tips his head in agreement, watching that flicker of emotion and the firm edge that comes after.

"Oh, we can start anywhere. The locals may not take an interest in teasing out the different schools, but we can recognize adepts of every variety: energy generation, transmutation of matter, manipulation of the mind." He gestures to the Archives at large, as though it's his personal collection of examples. "We might pay a closer attention to what people can do, and categorize by something more useful than color.

"Now, if you're asking my personal preference? I'd like to know how death plays in. The origin and continuation of spirit. Where did we come from, where do we go?" He taps out another little rhythm on the arm of his chair, then quirks his eyebrows at Paul. "Hence: why squids?"

Paul nods his approval at the idea of improving the categorization, and he might have even had something to add to it if they hadn't come back to, of course, the squids. The squids and the sea and death.

"Why not squids?" Paul says, and it's too quick out of his mouth for him not to have thought about this before. "They have a sophisticated nervous system to imprint a mind on. They're adaptable to a wide range of depths. They're quick to grow, if they're being cultured somewhere. Clearly, these have a migratory instinct, so they travel in the right direction. But -"

He turns his left hand over on his knee, palm up and empty, and shrugs with his right. He isn't sure; these are theories, extrapolations backwards from the thing itself, trying to work out the reasoning of a being whose one common agreed feature is her incomprehensibility. For all he knows, maybe she just likes them.

Edited 2021-12-21 03:49 (UTC)

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02 . december catch-all

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