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

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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: All over Trench, the Jungle, and the Catacombs
Number available: Lots - one of the most common
Conditions to receive from Iskierka: None

The first thing you must understand about Nephele is the Throne Above Thrones. It is the axis of our world and our magic, the cause of war and its solution. To Princes, it is a ladder to godhood. To the rest of us, it's death.

A Prince is a Prince through the devotion of her followers. A Prince becomes a Monarch by ascending the Throne and thereafter has no need of devotion, for she's a self-stating natural law, wed to Generation. Her domain pervades the world and grants it her Throne-gift--a magic she believed all the world should have, so much she would climb over the bodies of all her competitors to gift it to us. While Enthroned, she forms angels to be her hands and her eyes in the world.

For thirty years (give or take) she grants her gifts, until her hold on the Throne becomes so tenuous a rival can unseat her and we change the name of the years. So it has gone for all of recorded time. So there is no mortal generation in millennia that has not known a war.

~~Has it been worth it? O Loneliness, First-Spouse, who called us forth from the void and Generation's mind, was this what you wanted?~~

Note location: At a number of Lamp locations throughout Trench, stuck to the Lamp Friends
Number available: Lots - one of the most common
Conditions to receive from Iskierka: None

The Throne is not a place. To arrive at it, you must climb the Spire, but in climbing you climb out of the world entirely. I have not been to the foot of the Throne. ~~I have been to the foot of the Throne.~~ By and by I will make the attempt, for the sake of this briefing, but ~~she will devour me~~ I don't know what happens if I die up there.

It is said to be a space entirely in the Monarch's influence. It is said to take the shape of her domain and inner self, grown vast in apotheosis.

What does it look like, standing inside the mind and heart of a woman who only wishes the world dead?

Note location: In the Pale Sanctuary; on the shore where Leviathan died
Number available: Two
Conditions to receive from Iskierka: Most likely to award to a Disciple or Night Walker

The Throne will sing to you, if you're near enough to see it. Though "seeing" is a tricky thing. The story of Foolish Berthold says he touched the Throne while blindfolded and found only a rock. But the Prince of Song, who was blind from birth, followed its call thirty miles through a fog as thick as night, unseen by her enemies' armies. I'm no Song, but I'd estimate I hear it at ten miles.

Throne-song, I'm told, is different for everyone; Princes hear it clearer, stronger, and almost welcoming. I hear a buzzing in my bones and a vast slow inhalation, like a sleeping tyrant dragon. ~~I don't want to climb the Spire again.~~

It will offer you Infinity and the pain and glory that come with it. Don't listen--anyone but a Prince who mounts the Throne will die in the attempt.

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

Note location: Anywhere in Trench, the Jungle, or the Catacombs
Number available: Lots
Conditions to receive from Iskierka: Slightly more likely to award to someone who is an obvious Leader

There are two primary magics on Nephele: The magic of devotion and the magic of effort.

A Prince is the product of the first. She arises through the devotion of her followers, her Court. Once there are enough of them, they grant her apotheosis and the Prince-gift of her domain; she grants them their Court-gift as an echo of her own magic. As long as Courtiers remain devoted to their Prince, they keep their magic and she hers. Any who fall away lose their Court-gifts, and if enough leave her--or are killed--she will lose her Princehood.

Only a Prince may ascend the Throne and become a god, and only a Prince would think it reasonable to spend her Court in war for that end.

My lone consolation here is that my Prince is alive and so I find myself a Knight-Preserver again. This would be more useful if I knew any of these twisted echoes of ~~the~~ people ~~I loved~~ well enough to heal them, or cared. ~~I do care.~~

Note location: All throughout Trench, though most are in Gaze, Prufrock, and Lumenwood; inexplicably, one in the Jungle has been pinned to the Hunter's back
Number available: Lots
Conditions to receive from Iskierka: None

There are two primary magics on Nephele: The magic of devotion and the magic of effort.

A mage is the product of the second. She immerses herself so completely in her art that--with a decade of practice--her expertise transcends nature. An effort-mage may grow so strong she crushes boulders to powder with her fists, or so sturdy her skin can't be cut by blades, or so skilled a rider her steeds run on water.

It is rare, but possible, to make a mage in much less time. All the avenues are bitter, though some less than others. Children who devote themselves obsessively to study happen in every generation. Children whose parents or minders or leaders devote them obsessively to something are more common. Children whose very survival depends on desperate daily practice of some skill may be mages before their majority, and permanently maimed for it.

We did wonder, at the beginning of the war, how Eyes could field so many mages. Even when he slaughtered Clarent and the Shroudwood, he didn't kill as many as were in his ranks.

The solution to that problem comes clear, if you give it a little thought: We dead need never take time off from practice, and it is a matter of our survival that we obey the necromancer who raised us.

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.

Note location: All around Cassandra; at Pthumerian altars; in Moss King's home; on the beach where Leviathan fell
Number available: Lots
Conditions to receive from Iskierka: Most likely to award to Disciples or those close to their Patron Pthumerians

The Monarch enthroned needs hands and eyes to shape the world, and so angels are born from the Throne. The Monarch dethroned sheds their ambition to rule as they fly to Generation's side, and so demons are born from the Throne. These Throneborn are shards of a Monarch's person and power that can--are you surprised?--be wielded as any other weapon.

Angels are all reason and no will. Once their Monarchs have died, they wait inert for another's will to summon them. The ambitious and the desperate may contract with angels for their powers--becoming warlocks, and using a dead Monarch's Court-gift like it was their own. But beware, o thou would-be warlock, that their contracts are more iron than ours and never as sensible. The Joy-of-Roses demanded a thousand poems and a thousand duels in ten days from its last unlucky warlock.

It's said that foolish soul failed and instead of the glorious death he expected, was forced to live his threescore years so blighted no one would recognize him for a rose.

Demons are all will and no reason. Courting possession isn't wise but the even more desperate may do it, and the unfortunate may stumble into it. Warlocks run special risks: A Monarch's demons can smell the imprint of their angels.

A demon consumes the host's will, becomes the host's will. In return for being driven forever to seek the Throne and die on it, a demonhost gains a Prince-gift without the knowledge to use it. Few survive and fewer thrive.

Nephele-that-is has no Demons of Sacrifice. To willingly renounce the Throne, it seems, leaves one's will intact.

Since taking a contract of my own, here, I have been followed by lean and starving temple animals.

It is good I don't need to sleep.

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?

Note location: The Archives, the Catacombs, the Sleepy Town deer statues
Number available: Several
Conditions to receive from Iskierka: None

St. Sacrifice's angels are among the most contested and desired of contract-partners--for those peculiar individuals who risk the crime of warlocking to help others. Sacrifice's Court-gift is a subtle thing, taking truly-felt altruism and magnifying its effects to the miraculous.

St. Sacrifice's angels are also sought by those who've learned to tear apart Throneborn for the power in them. The Blade of Sacrifice was once an angel itself, though it is said it consented to its use. Insofar as an angel might consent.

 The unscrupulous make no pretense of asking the angel before consuming it. So we shrikes learned to our woe with Biding and Sacrifices; so we ate a half-dozen of these precious angels to save ourselves from our own dissolution.

The ones here have halos of white phosphorus and pyre-smoke. They offer the deadly gift that our St. Sacrifice abjured the Throne to write out of reality: A life for the magic to wipe a battlefield clean.

I hate that they have it. I hate that we will need every one of them we can find.

It isn't unusual for Fern to be in the catacombs, doing typical Hunter business. It's a good place to find monsters trying to sneak a meal out of Trenchies, and even though it isn't the cleanest place it reminds him of the dungeons back in Ooo. That gives it a nostalgic edge, so he doesn't mind.

He isn't expecting to find a note down there, shoved in between two bricks just over his head. He very nearly misses it but Blodeuwedd, perched on top of his hat, catches it and grabs it with her forelegs with a chirp. Confused, he takes it from her and reads it, his brows knitting together in bewilderment. It seems like something out of an old book rather than some discarded note, so he pockets it for safekeeping.

Note location: The Archives, the Catacombs, and a statue to the Reckoning in Prufrock
Number available: Two or three
Conditions to receive from Iskierka: Most likely to award to someone Illarion knows to be self-abnegating

I've found Unremembered Gift and contracted with it again. ~~If I had that day in the ruins of Haunt-of-Owls, when it told me everything would be all right, would I be here? Would I be dead?~~ It's more durable than I remember Angels of Sacrifice being. Or whatever I did to get her home wasn't enough to destroy it even if it destroyed me.

It gave me new terms this time. With no life, no line, and no legacy to live for, I find them acceptable.

Note location: All over Trench and the Catacombs, but most frequent near blood blisters; typically left in places they would be easy to overlook, like rubbish heaps
Number available: Many more than anyone would like
Conditions to receive from Iskierka: Iskierka will not give this note to anyone

[The text of this note is completely illegible.

Touching it has a small chance of immediately infecting a Sleeper with a single golden ~~eye~~. Attempting to read it has a better-than-even chance of causing an outbreak of ~~eyes~~ or a period of 112 minutes where the Sleeper sees unnatural colors and cannot comprehend written language.

Omens are not affected by touching or viewing it.]

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.]

While Fern isn't a fan of the Patrons (it's hard to be, when he and the Moss King got off on the wrong foot, and Never Mind and the Tower killed him), it's hard to avoid the statues of them when you live in Cassandra. That, and Blodeuwedd for some reason enjoys perching on them. He's asked her about it but all she does is chirp, and secretly he's begun to think she just does it to either sass him or them. Or both.

The Reckoning's statues are especially painful for him, but not because he's ever had a bad encounter with her. No, it's because the sword she always seems to be holding seems so... cool. One he'd love to try using sometime, though he's certain that's never happening.

That's why he's stopped briefly in front of this statue today: his orchid mantis omen has fluttered on up to the top of the Reckoning's head, and while he waits for her to come back down Fern is examining the statue's sword.

There's a furtive shadow perched on one of the statue's shoulders, one that watches Bloduewedd pass with faceted red eyes as the mantis ascends to the Reckoning's crowned head. Iskierka's been here for--she doesn't know how long, huddled in a place that feels right for want of anything else to do now that the words have stopped. For anything else to do now that she's written the last of them and kept them to her, a feeble little scroll she clutches like a lifeline to her Sleeper.

The sight of an Omen she knows is like another lifeline. Bloduewedd means Fern, and Fern's someone her Sleeper trusted; in the absence of any other directing force, Fern's a direction she can go in and the thought gives her a jolt of energy. She pops out of the hollow she'd tucked herself in and leaps into the air, more falling than flying in her haste to get to Fern. It's only in the last second before she'd collide with his head that she remembers herself and flares her wings to drop to the ground instead.

friend. The not-word's impatient, worried, impassioned. friend. help. read. She waves the rolled note above her head in emphasis.

Blodeuwedd catches the movement of Iskierka's fumbly flight out of the corner of her eye while on the top of the statue, and lets out a little chirp as she turns to watch. The other omen isn't a threat and, well. It's kind of funny to watch her.

Fern looks up at the chirp to see the omen, and blinks in surprise as she very nearly beans him in the head. When she lands on the ground he immediately moves to crouch, the sword forgotten.

"Dude -" Hold on, " - Lady -" There, he should be a little more respectful. Since she's a lady and all. He carefully takes the note as Blodeuwedd flutters down from her perch, landing daintily on Fern's head. "Are you alright?"

no. Unambiguously, she is not--worse, she's aware now she's not. Her Sleeper is missing; her connection to him is all-but-severed. She doesn't know what's caused it nor whether this means he's beyond hope of rescue.

Fern's taken the note, and that means she can wring her tiny claws together and stare up at him with distressed intensity. no. no. read. help.

Her efforts with the notes have to have been worth something--right?

Ah geez, the poor thing. If she'll let him, Fern will scoop Iskierka up into his hands, petting her head gently in hopes of calming her down a little bit. Once he's done that he'll open up the note and read it over. Blodeuwedd scoots over to read as well, tilting her head.

Twice, because what the heck, man. He looks confused as he tries to work out the meaning in the words, but he's sorely lacking in context.

"I got no idea what any of this means." He shoots Iskierka an apologetic look. "It, uh. It doesn't sound good, though."

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

MAGIC | The basics of Nephelian magic, and what one needs to survive it

MAGIC | The Throne Above Thrones - 1A

MAGIC | The Throne Above Thrones - 2A

MAGIC | Throne-song - 1A

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MAGIC | Princes - 1A

MAGIC | Effort-gifts - 1A

no subject

MAGIC | Angels and demons - 1A

Re: MAGIC | Angels and demons - 1A

no subject

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MAGIC | Angels of Sacrifice - 1A

no subject

MAGIC | Angels of Sacrifice - 2O

??? | Pillars of the World - 1?

MAGIC | The Blade of Sacrifice - 1O

for Iskierka

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject