Illarion Albireo (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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deercountry2022-03-13 01:59 am
unsheathedfromreality) wrote in deercountry2022-03-13 01:59 am
Entry tags:
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. ]]
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. ]]
LOCATION | Iron Steppes - 1A
Number available: Lots
Conditions to receive from Iskierka: None
The Steppes are too vast to easily describe. You don't grasp it entirely on foot, standing hip-high in the grass that stretches horizon to horizon. You don't grasp it entirely in the cities of the Fringes, varied and bright-hued as they are, home to a hundred peoples of all the four principles. You don't grasp it entirely in Nirraz, looking down from their mountain as they drive their herds out to roam and forage for the summer. You don't grasp it entirely from above, where the Skilled soar the high vault of the sky above the teeming Verdant Sea.
Though I lose myself in nostalgia and sentiment, here--understanding the Steppes entire would require my Prince's years. Require having seen it all from the beginning. I did not.
haven't, couldn't. We sold our years for children. They are worth eternity and now I have no regrets that he would be abandoned by the mayfly Court he had made. He shouldn't have preceded us it upset the order of the world.The crossing from Tmutarakan to Shroudwood--the shortest way, due north--has two great risks now: the storms and the dryads.
Thundering's Court has turned the whole sky dark and windtorn--unnavigable to to an airship, proved by the half dozen you will find ground -wrecked on your way. Do not approach these, where they appear overgrown; the dryads have taken them, as they have taken most of the Steppes. I do not know why they've spread so far but that Locusts' ascension has maddened them--their only war on Nephele-that-is is with each other, and whatever wheat-field or orchard or garden was placed in their way. They didn't always kill animals who walked through their battlefields (as often tried to coerce them, to eat the other side)--but tore them swiftly apart, when they did kill, fuel for growth.
Here you will die smothered and clambered with vines, saved alive for weeks as they grow through. Better to cut your own throat before that, and lie down in the long grasses to give your blood to the soil. It will not appease them, but it may slow them down to drink and spare those who come after you.