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

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. ]]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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?

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

MAGIC | Angels and demons - 1A

Re: MAGIC | Angels and demons - 1A

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