deercountry | Real & Half-Real: Iskierka's Notes

Entry tags:

illarion albireo: lark

Real & Half-Real: Iskierka's Notes | OTA

Who: Illarion's Omen Iskierka and anyone who happens to stumble across her notes.
What: Receiving messages from hell.
When: March 5 onward, after Sayo's full return to the Waking World.
Where: Throughout Trench and the Levels

Content warnings: All of the following are mentioned or discussed obliquely: magical zombies, mind control, emotional manipulation, war-time violence, murder of family members, drug use, cannibalism, suicide, hallucinations/derealization, existential horror, apocalyptic setting, kidnapping, enslavement.

Iskierka has not been idle while her Sleeper is missing from Trench. Somewhere, he's wandering a hell far removed from the Waking World; somewhere, he rehearses to himself the briefing he might give to any would-be rescuers when they arrive, what is necessary to survive and sufficient for Sayo's ritual. When hoping for rescue pales on him, he dictates his thoughts to the air or an animal or a corpse's patient ear, and she hears it.

She hears every word of it, and she cannot respond; she listens faithfully, and the words fill her head to the point of forgetting. When there's no more room for them, she writes. With whatever comes to hand--beg buy borrow or steal--on whatever surface she can find, she writes--scratches out--rewrites. Notes and letters emerge beneath her pen, and she takes them where she thinks they belong. Some she abandons in significant places and others she brings to significant people, urging them to take this fragment of her lost Sleeper.

 It may help, when they go to rescue him. If anyone can.

[[ OOC: Real & Half-Real Plot Write-Up and Interest Check, for those just joining us. Even if you haven't left a comment there you're more than welcome to join in on finding notes!

See comments for how to use this post and tasty tasty plot hooks. ]]

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Note location: Found in Prufrock wherever guns are sold; found in Cassandra by Paleblood stones
Number available: A few
Conditions to receive from Iskierka: More likely to award to Palebloods or Sleepers smelling of gunpowder

Five minutes more or less.

If she sees you once [This note is interrupted by a truly remarkable ink stain. Sometimes it's in red.]

She knows everywhere you will be in the next five minutes until you [Another red stain.]

You get far enough away from her.

Note location: In Gaze and the Archives; in Willful Machine; recently used altars to Remina and Mariana
Number available: Lots
Conditions to receive from Iskierka: Most likely to award to Arcane Scholars

I do not know what to say of the Prince of Sacrifices that isn't tainted by bias unbecoming in a Warlord. ~~It was tainted by bias from the beginning; we all thought he was Sacrifice Reborn.~~

His father was the world to us. He could have been that world again, if he'd seen us as people and not a project. Not a fascinating mistake. ~~Not as Evdokim's Folly, to be fixed.~~ For all his centuries his hesitation made him vulnerable as a child and Biding exploited that. ~~We courted that hesitation. We have ourselves to blame.~~ I saw it happening and could do nothing, by then; I was his champion and he

~~was he jealous of me? I never knew,~~

sought other counsel. I considered seduction but he had eyes for only one man. And--I'll begrudge him--Biding had eyes for him. Even if he was enough of a narcissistic self-aggrandizing monster to send his whole Court to their deaths and pretend it was an injury done to him, he did--does--seem to feel something for ~~his doxy~~ his lover.

Now they're a gut-fused monster enthroned in a pile of corpses. May it bring them joy because nothing appears able to kill them. Whether or not one of them would wish it--Sacrifices' Prince-gift might have grown malignant and out of his control.

Biding always was good at getting him to do what he wanted.

~~He only really saw you as a tool, Velimir. Your father would have taught you better. He did me.~~

Edited 2022-03-14 05:19 (UTC)

Note location: In the Catacombs, often found by the Calling Fire
Number available: Several
Conditions to receive from Iskierka: None

What does one say about a man who's been alive--he says--for as long as elves have been elves? What does one say about the Courtless Prince, the Ebon Swan?

What does one say of the man who would murder all your people, erase them entirely, for his vision of revenge?

We didn't even merit his malice. He simply began a war to eliminate us, to put us from our desperate misery and vigil-keeping against madness. He simply told our Prince to sacrifice us to himself, hoarding up our deaths to magnify his own power.

He simply believed he, and only he, had the determination to save us. ~~To save whatever paltry few he left alive.~~ That he, and only he, had truly understood the wrong Monarch could tear apart the world. That he, and only he, was excused by this in whatever he did.

~~I'll take his pretty talons for a necklace I'll flay him alive I'll kill him I'll kill him for what he did to us~~

At least he has trapped himself now, gut-to-gut with Sacrifices. It hinders his reach as a swordsmage, but he will still be lethal inside that range.

Whether his Prince-gift can reach beyond, I don't know. We have only legends of what it might be. [Red and black ink drops spatter the page here.

There may be an ~~eye~~ blinking among them.]

Three meters beyond the outer ring of corpses with his sword. Give or take.

I am (was) (will be) too much a dust mote to provoke more.

Edited 2022-03-17 14:47 (UTC)

Note location: Altars to Bausphomette; in Willful Machine; in Lumenwood
Number available: Several
Conditions to receive from Iskierka: None

N. Sinfonia--whose mother-name I don't give you, out of respect--is one of the best men on Nephele-that-is. The gods that long blessed the Empire in war now turned their favor to this rose who preached peace, and preached it so loudly the skies would roar back with lightnings. Omens of the orcs' Thunderer, the King of Roses, followed him wherever he tread.

It's said in the moment the Senate turned the boars on him for treason--the first time--he erupted from his shackles in the shape of a sacred sow, and led the whole sounder from the temple grounds.

As a matter of justice, he had my whole and free support in his efforts to keep the Empire tame and put its worst impulses back in the grave where they belonged. He, of course, didn't accept it. Were that more of our clients weren't, in the same way he isn't.

Edited 2022-03-17 04:54 (UTC)

Note location: In Gaze and the Archives; in Willful Machine; altars to Remina and Mariana
Number available: Several
Conditions to receive from Iskierka: Most likely to award to Arcane Scholars

Taneli Karaburan as I knew him was the Prince of Auroras and captain of the Price of Stars. He was a peerless scholar of mathematics, a dreamer of worlds beyond our own, and a necessary pacifist--how could we reach the stars without each other?

The one here bears the grief-name Windwrecked--by which I conclude his ship's dead--and the domain Noon--by which I conclude his fleet and Court died with it. What killed them, I haven't discovered. The angel's being odd when I ask; says I already know, or I should know, or I will know (depending). ~~Putting that down to corruption.~~

I suspect the Empire (they are easy to suspect). I suspect Thundering part-guilty in what happened, Didn't he admit as much to me,

or do I imagine a conversation? as his Court keeps the sky above the Steppes clogged with storms, impassible. As--I am told--Noon's nameless dreadnought is the last flying airship, it's easy to draw the line.

I'll seek an audience with him. He sought peace on Nephele-that-is; he paid Thundering in his father's blood for it. Perhaps he can be reasoned with.

[A section of the note has been singed here, as by sun pinpoint-focused through a lens.]

He can't.

The grief that mantles him won't let him.

Edited 2022-03-17 06:20 (UTC)

Note location: Pinned to a statue of the Doorway in Cassandra
Number available: One
Conditions to receive from Iskierka: Very close CR

I went too close when she was dying I shouldn't have should have put her out of her misery far away should have given her the mercy she never gave me

I didn't oh gods black and white I didn't I healed her because what else could I do she was weeping as she bled like she never weeps and I couldn't

listen

I had to o Generation hear me o stars witness what I have done I had to help I had to put her back as she was, Eska dearer than life itself and I healed her and it went wrong

her face

the sounds the blood the ~~eyes~~

the cries at the end I thought I wanted her to suffer as I did but I didn't I don't I should have killed her instead of that anything instead of that

o Eska I am sorry I am sorry do not forgive me for what I did to you

Note location: Exclusively in Cellar Door, mostly within the Red
Number available: Lots
Conditions to receive from Iskierka: None

The less said about the Prince of Pleasure, the better.

~~Why can't you be like Mitya? Mother would ask. Anything hatched of her having a conscience was beyond her comprehension.~~

He can grant euphoria to anyone he wants, or ruin their capacity to feel pleasure. His Court does the same. His current Court is mostly vampires who do not need the help (same rules as us: don't look them in the eyes). He can make anyone fight over him, for his favor--bosom friends as much as enemies.

He is the epitome of male beauty, jewel-decked and bright-hued, immaculately groomed, and he is all the worst of male flaws--fickle, vicious, violent, and shallow.

He has still led so many to their deaths, and so many more to dissolution.

Edited 2022-03-16 18:06 (UTC)

Note location: Anywhere near water, especially the Pthumerian Ocean and the Salt Lake
Number available: Lots
Conditions to receive from Iskierka: None

Lankhet, Admiral of the Fleet Undying, remains an enigma to me still.

To hear my Prince tell it, she is a woman millions of years out of time and place. She is the last unliving relic of the Sea People, who were extinct before our ancestors left the trees.

She is a bard and the universe bends to listen to her when she speaks. She does not have the power of a Monarch or even a Prince. There are mages who could best her in their areas of expertise.

But she is not limited to a single domain or expertise. Bardic magic is flexible the way most Sleepers expect magic to be. A bard may achieve anything she can ask of the universe, if she is able to persuade it.

The Admiral is very persuasive.

I don't know if Eyes was lucky or knew what he was doing in sending her after us in Shroudwood. Her magic denies our nature at its root. She killed my Prince. She trapped him and us beyond our power to escape.

Nothing should have been capable. We were too complacent.

Note location: Prufrock, especially the Shape of Blood; Achelliac; shrines to the Reckoning and Bausphomette
Number available: Several
Conditions to receive from Iskierka: None

Vopiscus Rufus Valerius is a man I should have known, and didn't. It is a testament the the Empire and the Crownbreaker Legion we never learned the names of the Suncrowned while they were alive.

That damned impressive secrecy may still cost us the whole war and the world with it.

The Suncrowned--the Dagger of the Imperium, the Witchhammers, etcetera, part of the secrecy and mystique is going by a thousand names (as I well-practice)--were the hidden hand of the Imperial cult. Where the visible hand--the Crownbreakers--punished devotion to Princes the Empire didn't want ascendant, the Suncrowned dealt silently with warlocks and Throneborn and anything else threatening the Imperial Peace.

Eyes beheaded them years before making his first overt move. We knew something had happened to them but never what. If a single one of them had broken his vows, we would have known about the Unearthed in time to prepare for them. ~~If the world had believed him. The Suncrowned were rarely granted belief.~~

Atratus, the Prince of the Forlorn Hope, is a man I should know, and don't. He leads the Knights Pariah; he is a just man. He honors his dead--all of us--walking and burned and buried. He is worthy of the name Prince. But he is not my Prince; I do not know if there is room for a fourth in my heart.

I do know that the slavering jackal prowling the Spire isn't him. It wears his face and his magecraft--no magic touches him, for good or ill--and its Court fights harder the more of them die, but it isn't Atratus.

Atratus never wanted the Throne. To take it would have been to abandon us and complete our exile in truth as much as name.

Note location: In the Catacombs; in Gaze; on altars to the Doorway; within the Archives
Number available: Several
Conditions to receive from Iskierka: Most likely to award to Arcane Scholars and those with Doorway's patronage

I never had much traffic with the Archlich beyond what all the Unearthed did: His necromancers were responsible for my creation. He may have put a hand in directly--I never asked--and ensured the success of his experiment. ~~His prototype. How many did they make like me? Did they even know what they did to us? Why would they tell us if they did?~~

He is named the Father of Necromancy and in truth, he has earned it. He is named the Archlich, the first of those mortal necromancers who learned to put their souls elsewhere. He eschewed the traditional needle in the egg in the hare in etcetera for something easier to catch and harder to kill: a glacier in Kirminai. So long as it's intact, he can't--strictly--die, so getting rid of him is already a pretty puzzle. This is without considering his stitched-together menagerie and the doting azhdarch guards given him by the Prince of Frost.

I never had much traffic with him. But anyone with eyes (ha) could see the way he was around his Fext, our Prince of Locusts. They were friends as much as allies, her torments more teasing than torture when it came to him; his biting wit with only fangs enough to sting her to wiser action. He loved her, and she--perhaps; I am a romantic, after all--him.

He watched that woman wither away into the Prince as she walked the path his hands pushed her onto--his hands among dozens, but impelling her still. He watched his friend, sister of his heart, consumed.

How does it feel, o Archlich, to see your masterwork devour itself and your dear ones with it?

Edited 2022-03-17 05:50 (UTC)

Note location: Scattered on the Farthest Shore; at shrines to Mariana
Number available: Several
Conditions to receive from Iskierka: More likely to award to Sleepers with Mariana's patronage or those who smell of the sea

She had a name for us. Sraati. "Little corpse," you could translate it. More literal was "little shred of someone I knew, glimpsed in the teeth of a bigger hunter".

I liked that better, among the Unearthed.

She was kind in her way. She still is kind here despite everything, when I speak to her, but there are fangs in that kindness.

Treat her kindly in turn. The Admiral honors her word.

Note location: In Bone House; in Gaze
Number available: Few
Conditions to receive from Iskierka: Most likely to award to those claiming godhood

There is an Angel of Eyes on the path to the Throne and it speaks in dulcet tones of who I was and who I could be.

It says it can free me. It says this in the voice of the god who discarded and abandoned me.

~~I know it's lying. I know he has always lied he always w~~ANYONE SOMEONE IF YOU'RE READING THIS HELP ME HELP US WE'RE TRAPPED IN HERE HE'LL KILL US ALL TO GET OUT

HELP

DON'T LISTEN TO HIM WE'RE ALIVE WE'RE RE—

Edited 2022-03-13 17:00 (UTC)

Note location: Where Leviathan fell; in places where insects can be heard singing; the Gate; Feed
Number available: Few
Conditions to receive from Iskierka: Most likely to award to those with Mariana or the Reckoning's patronage

The last of my Princes was the Prince of Locusts. She is Queen now and Queen she may remain until Nephele is no more than ash and frost.

What waits on the Throne is not her--her tactical grace her casual strength her unthinking violence her cruel humor--

A Queen is not the person she had been. This Queen may be less and more than most--a heart empty of all but hate, a woman reduced to ash and rot and insect wings.

It is fitting that it ends how it began: Loneliness will forever be a cipher to us and Locusts has been reduced to one in her apotheosis.

~~I will go to stand before her one last time. There is no reason she remembers me. There is no reason to believe I'll hear her.~~

Edited 2022-03-13 09:06 (UTC)

Link to L and Iskierka in the first week of March!

There was a time when Paul believed in coincidences.

The note flutters in a stray breeze, motion on the motionless impassivity of what passes for a god in this poisoned world, and Paul plucks the pin that holds it to stone with a face to match the carved marble blankness of the Doorway.

He reads it twice. Folds it and slips it under the band of his wrist-knife's sheath, into one of the niches set for exactly that purpose, and walks on as if what he saw was as unremarkable as one of the lists pinned to the fridge in the place that feels less and less like someone else's home.

It's good, he thinks, as imperfectly folded paper itches at the fragile skin of his wrist until its edges are as pink as orchid-petals, as the inner curve of shells. It's good that he found this one, of anyone, and so he leaves a juice-heavy plum at an untended altar on his way back to the First House.

In a room that isn't his, Paul writes out a new note on a clean slip of paper.

Eska - Critical point. Vulnerable to physical injury. Vulnerable to nostalgia. Isolate from subject before elimination.

He pins it to a board scattered with other notes with the same pin he's carried since the Doorway, pried out of his numb palm.

Without the Old Man, the yurt seems much more like a place of isolation rather than respite. Kaworu doesn't wish to linger, as the feeling of being unsettled runs down his spine like a freezing drop of water.

The note is on his bed, waiting there on the pillow like it was meant for him. Maybe it was meant for him. He kneels down and takes the note. His hands don't shake but the sensation of parchment to skin is somehow unpleasant in that moment and he has to hold down a shudder. He reads it and doesn't know how many times he reads it. These letters are a void and they pull him in and he loses track of time and space.

Eventually, he stands, suddenly aware of but unconcerned by stiff and bruised knees knees, and returns home. There, he adds the note to a map that grows larger each day, larger, more complicated, deeper, darker. He doesn't think he'll like what it becomes but he needs to understand it, harness it, in order to feel whole again.

But he already understands one thing, as he drops into his bed, cross-legged, like a chick left alone in the nest: he will find the old man's Prince and he will kill him. And he'll probably enjoy it too.

My son.

He can hear the Old Man's voice say those words to him in his mind. As if he was very far away when they were spoken to him and not right there on the beach as the Old Man pled for his life. As if they were spoken on the surface when he was underwater.

Kaworu holds the letter to his chest. There's no reason to memorize this one. Instead he wonders: Would the Old Man's son have liked him? Would the Old Man even have considered him if his son had still been alive? What did it mean to have a father? Or to be a son? Do humans understand these things by nature of creating life and being born?

Is there even anyone he can ask these questions of?

[Some copies of the above note have text on the back of them, nearly invisible.

Those who can see kata or ana of the world, like a shrike would, can read it much more clearly.]

He's a shadow of himself here. As they all are. He is less twisted than most--enough he doesn't attack me on approach, though he startles like he'd seen a revenant. You were dead and burned, he says. How did you come back? Are the gates of hell thrown open for the Conflagration?

I don't have an answer for him. (I don't have one for myself. It is and isn't the vision we all had from the p̷̹̫̝̋͑i̶͈͎̓̒̕l̶̲̺͎̋͐͝l̷̦̊a̵̛̬r̴͙͕̹͠, the All-War. If not there, where am I?)

Would you still contract with me? he asks.

I promise only myself, but you can have me. What do you bid for?

Clear enough from the look on his face I wouldn't be sufficient for the job. Kill all of them. The Empire, the Skilled, the colonies. Erase it and put them out of their misery. That's what you've always wanted, isn't it?

~~Isn't it?~~

We wanted peace as much as you and your sworn-brother. Where is he? Why do you keep him away with storms?

I ((feel)) his face twist; I ((feel)) him turn away. I can't bear his grief. He hasn't forgiven me. He shouldn't. I haven't forgiven him.

What, I start to say, and he interrupts: Will you free us, butcher?

The price to kill a kingdom and a people would be staggering beyond his ability to pay. Yet we don't ask mortals to pay for the inevitable, whether or not we ease it along. You will submit yourself to my knife when I call your turn, I tell him, as payment, and for that, I will end the Empire and the Skilled and the colonies. ~~All these people. All these warriors. Are they real? Am I?~~

Will you contract? I ask him, and he takes my hand in his own.

Edited 2022-03-17 13:19 (UTC)

Note location: A statue of the Reckoning in Cassandra
Number available: 1
Conditions to receive from Iskierka: Very close CR; should a Sleeper receive this note from Iskierka she will remain with them for the rest of the day

I knew.

I knew, I think

that a world like this could not have had St. Sacrifice as we knew them.

They did not give themself up here. They didn't relinquish their rule.

 The world paid us the price to kill a Monarch. The Suncrowned pulled apart an angel to make the Blade of Sacrifice and put it in our hands.

We murdered them. We murdered our saint upon their Throne.

 The age of miracles lasted five short months.

[This is the final note to appear. No new ones follow it.]

Luz had been at the blood tree in Cassandra from time to time, and since having seen a glimpse of Doorway and been corrupted, found herself coming to the tree at least three times a week. She would never have said she was religious but did find importance in both Doorway and meditation since coming to Trench. On this day she was meditating and contemplating Doorway when she heard the rustle of paper.

She looked down at the note, blinking as she read it, re-read it over and over, turning the paper over in her hand. Angels? Demons? Princes and Monarchs and Thrones? It didn't fully make sense to her, but she had a feeling it was important. She didn't think she'd just find it out of the blue for no reason.

And whoever wrote this seemed to be in trouble too. This meant she was probably going to have to ask around and see of anyone knew anything about this. Something big was clearly happening here.

Luz reread the note and calmly put it in her pocket but felt a sense of unease. She may have not immediately understood what she was reading, but it didn't seem like a complete haze. This was going to be relevant, she thought, in helping whoever wrote the note.

She just had to figure out how that would work.

A pair of faceted red eyes watch from over the shoulder of a Pthumerian effigy as Luz finds the note and reads it. This is someone the watcher recognizes only faintly--someone who is not often around the people who could offer context for the note.

A thought ticks over: Something needs to be done.

A minute or two after Luz talks the note away, a moth-bird creature swoops down to land on the ground beside her. It has a stubby pencil clenched in one of its six feet, and a scrap of parchment in its beak. Something about it suggests Omen and not natural animal.

It drops the parchment to sing for her attention, giving voice to a garbling liquid trill. As soon as the girl turns, it indicates the parchment scrap, whereon is written:

Paul Atreides
Kaworu Nagisa

help.

When the bird descends, its actually the Palisman, Owlbert, that gives Luz warning. She looks up at the moth/bird, and staring at it a moment Luz could tell that this was not just an animal, but an Omen.

And it gave her another sheet, which Luz took and read aloud.

Help, and two names. She didn't know the two specifically, but she got the message loud and clear: they'd help in directing her toward who needed the help, unless the two names were people who needed the help? She'd find out soon enough by contacting them.

Hmm. She wondered a moment. Were there other notes like this?

Should she check?

[After finding the first letter, Luz figured it might be good to search around and see if there were any more. She still wasn't sure what they meant yet, but the instruction of HELP was enough for her to start looking for more. She got onto her staff and was looking around as keenly as she could, and though it took about ten minutes, she finally came across another and snatched it up pretty quickly].

Huh. This Volkhv lady sounds like no joke. This sounds like it's going to be pretty bad when it goes down. I think I better get this to that Paul or Karou guy pretty soon.

The Archives are bordering on a second home for Ford, and the nice thing about home is that you start to relax after a while. And in Ford's case, 'relaxing' means leaving his notes and papers unattended for a few moments while he slips off to grab another book on the shelf.

Not completely unattended, however. He leaves Castor there to keep an eye on things, the little bat Omen contentedly hanging from a candelabra on the desk. So when Iskierka decides to show up and help herself to his pen and journal, she has a witness. Just... not a witness interested in interfering. Castor turns her head to watch, her ears tilting this way and that as she attempts to puzzle out the scene in front of her. It's only once Iskierka has made substantial headway on her task that Castor thinks to inform Ford that he should return.

She doesn't tell him why, however. So when Ford rounds the corner he is completely unprepared to witness some sort of bizarre bird-slash-moth Omen filching his writing tools. It's a sight that's weird even by Trench's standards, weird enough to have Ford drawing up short. Normally he'd immediately whip out his journal and start scribbling down notes, but since she has both his journal and his pen...

"Do you need help with that?"

Omens talk, on occasion, and if this one is forward enough to take his stuff maybe it'll be forward enough for actual words.

Gaze had quickly become Oscar's home, despite it's dense libraries being so different from the fields he grew up in, and it was a place where a Oscar felt comfortable spreading the wings he had only found in the Dream. Night flights had become a way to pass his time-- and gliding silently though the towers in the shape of a small owl was a strange comfort to him. He knew most of the nooks and crannies that lurked above eye level and, spotting a paper tucked into a strange spot, he gave into curiosity and retrieved it.

In the blink of an eye he was a teenager settled into the high boughs of a tree, hazel eyes that gleamed in the moonlight squinted while he read the text.

...a chill crept up his spine unbidden at reference to children being maimed.

In some ways, it sounded hauntingly familiar... And it made him uncomfortable.

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Page 2 of 3

Real & Half-Real: Iskierka's Notes | OTA

TARGET | Generation's Volkhv (Esfir) - 2A

TARGET | Prince of Sacrifices (Velimir Praesaepe) - 1A

TARGET | Prince of Biding (Cersephon) - 1A

TARGET | Prince of Thundering (N. Sinfonia) - 1A

TARGET | Prince of Noon (Taneli Karaburan Windwrecked) - 1A

TARGET | Generation's Volkhv (Esfir) - 3O

TARGET | Prince of Pleasure (Demetraeus) - 1A

TARGET | Admiral Lankhet - 1A

TARGET | Prince of the Forlorn Hope - 1A

TARGET | Kirsi, Archlich - 1A

TARGET | Admiral Lankhet - 2O

TARGET | King of Eyes - 1?

TARGET | Queen of Locusts - 1O

1/2

cw: self-harm

no subject

no subject

TARGET | Prince of Thundering (N. Sinfonia) - 1.5A

MAGIC | The Blade of Sacrifice - 1O

Re: MAGIC | Angels and demons - 1A

no subject

no subject

Re: TARGET | Generation's Volkhv (Esfir) - 1A

for Iskierka

no subject