usir | May Event Log #2

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May Event Log #2

🜙 Seyra's Serenade

	Across most of Idan spring is in full bloom. With spring has come a swathe of new growth overtaking the land and painting it a rainbow of colors. The farmlands are alive with life and the wild and open lands are full of young baby creatures frolicking in and out of bushes, tall grasslands, and trees. Centaurs have come out from their hidden villages to watch over the open lands and the young folk of the various races are celebrating their vacation from academies or apprenticeships by holding sporting competitions, races through the city streets, or sneaking into taverns and other areas of the cities or off into the wildlands and generally getting up to mischief. During the peak blooming season of spring comes Seyra's Serenade, a day used by the people of Idan to celebrate the speckled doe goddess. As the goddess of growth and healing, she is seen across Idan as one of the benevolent deities and affectionately referred to as the mother of the stars. During Seyra's Serenade the three cities and the lands between them are surrounded and filled with floral growth that is used in the Festival of Flowers. Largely seen as a children's festival, the young ones gather the flowers and decorated their homes and the city streets, rivers, bay, and ledges with flower chains, floral graffiti, and petals. Hunting is severely limited for the month in honor of Seyra and to respect the growth of all young creatures just entering the world. Diets are adjusted to a focus of fruits, vegetables, and grains, and the taverns help the older population celebrate 'healing' by offering floral wines, vodkas, and gins, as well as amaretto-based drinks. Powerful wild guardian creatures wake from their winter slumber and can be glimpsed moving slowly through the forests or out in the plains. Most of them look like creatures found in their respective homes, but much larger and with elements of the wild land about them. They are slow and docile but very powerful. They can be killed and their pelts or bones sell for very high value in the black market, but they are protected creatures and killing them will have consequences. Hunting during the month of May is not explicitly forbidden but is strongly discouraged by the three cities. Injuring young creatures or killing the parents of young creatures is a sure way to draw Seyra's ire during May and find oneself cursed by the Mother of Stars. Those who hunt creatures under Seyra's protection are afflicted by a curse known as Hunter's Remorse, a curse that usually only affects those who kill unicorns and is designed to cripple poachers, hunters, and predators. The curse forces the afflicted to feel a crippling and powerful empathy, especially towards the suffering of the world and the animals living in it. Hunter's Remorse is not widely believed to be a real affliction and most of Idan's population write it off as a cautionary tale and a fictional curse.

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🜙 The Huntress

	A new creature has been sighted in the swamps, patrolling the paths and stealing hunters' injured prey from them. It's said to be fast and silent, able to blend into the swamp despite its unusual coloration. A group of hunters from Didymos have put a hefty bounty on the creature. They say it is large and covered in a mix of scales and fur. It is quick, moves soundlessly through the swamp and by their description looks like a lion, a zebra, and a monitor lizard all rolled into one. They never see it coming but its hide is too thick for arrows to penetrate and they haven't been able to get close enough to hit it with other weapons. If you bring back its hide they'll pay in gold, but you'll have to find it for yourself. That means risking the other dangers of the swamp: sinking pits, venomous snakes, carnivorous plants, predators of the land and water, and ornery elementals. They think its nest is somewhere in the Swamp of Lost Souls. Attempting to track down the creature can either lead to the creature itself, or its nest. Astute trackers will find there are more than one of these strange-looking creatures in the swamp, but only one of them matches the full description given by the hunters and she is much larger and leaner than the smaller members of her pack. The hunters will likely be unable to tell the difference. They appear to be amphibious and capable of camouflage. They are quick and silent in both the water and on land. Their furry manes are actually whiskers that help them sense vibrations and shifts in water or air currents. The creatures are not aggressive toward people unless cornered or attacked but they are territorial of the shoreline and the larger one will grab any wounded animals attacked in the swamplands and disappear with them. Their hides are dense and thick, reflecting or shielding them from most attacks other than those that would pierce metal armor and they do seem to possess earth magic focused around the mud that is prevalent throughout the swamp. They will cause the ground to constrict and pull down around the feet of any threats and coat weaponry in mud that quickly hardens to dull weapons and increase their weight.

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🜙 Friend or Foe

	Along the shore and out further into the bay the spectators that were formerly just observing the city and its people have had a shift of demeanor. Now every boat that tries to leave the docks and every person who approaches the docks or the shore with a boat is met with a very different interaction. From the 14th to the 17th the merfolk observers suddenly grow aggressive, sinking ships that attempt to exit the gate, harassing city citizens at the dock, and using wind or water magic to force vessels back to the docks. Their sudden turn from largely harmless observers to an attacking force demands action from Queen Adira and she prepares her knights for the prospect of a battle on waters where they will not have the upper hand. Retaliation from the Didymos knights trying to protect the ships and the docks from the merfolk causes a matched rise in aggression from the sea dwellers. The knights work to load their ships with weapons and the mages enchant the vessels to protect them, fighting back the merfolk attackers to prepare two of the armed fleet ships for battle. During the preparation on the 17th, the merfolk suddenly and unexpectedly retreat from the bay and the waters go still. Determined to get to the bottom of the strange attacks, Queen Adira puts out a call for those who have been in contact with the merfolk or anyone who might better be able to try and understand the confusing actions of the sea people. She makes plans to send a small fleet through the guarded Sunset Gate to investigate where the rest of the merfolk went and why they launched such a sudden and brief attack on the bay. On the 18th fish briefly begin schooling up on the shorelines and small, aquatic animals begin beaching themselves or becoming trapped upstream in the estuaries and rivers. The actions of the sea-life in the bay becomes erratic, aggressive, and frenzied as diluted red water begins draining into the estuaries and the bay before dissipating, the ocean water diluting and eventually eradicating any sign of the polluted fresh water. The bay calms down once more and the naval vessel Perspective begins its voyage out the sunset gate. Armed with a collection of Didymos knights, a group of scholars and mages, and a small group of volunteers, the vessel travels out to Logistykon's reef, heading for the shelf that drops off into the deeper, dark waters of the Glass Sea. Once they pass the gate they are followed by a blue-skinned, spiny merwoman with a spotted porpoise-like tail. She circles the vessel a few times, passing closer and closer near the hull and pushing back on the sails with wind magic before they finally anchor just past Logistykon's reef, only a nautical mile from the shelf. Several other merfolk can be glimpsed watching from just below or with their heads just above the water's surface, surrounding the vessel at a distance that keeps them out of range from most weapons. The blue merwoman approaches the ship, keeping a shorter distance between herself and the vessel, and seems to wait for them to come to her aboard one of the ship's smaller lifeboats. From where they are anchored, one of the scholars idly comments that the reef looks different and anyone who has observed the reef before will see the skeleton has suffered heavy damage. Cracks now cover the surface of the bones and Logistykon's skull has split down the center.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I want to see if he likes it," Strange explains. People like hats and Bell's grown to tolerate the bows she occasionally wears. Why not see if Alistair likes hats? Besides, it would be terribly cute.

But back to the matter at hand. Strange takes one of the books from his bag and then goes to the bookshelf to grab another one. As he talks, he also flips through a stack of papers on the bookshelf, adding a hefty chunk of them to the stack.

"I've been doing some research on empathic magic. As expected there's a lot of different theories and methods of how people think is the best way to do it. I want you to read these notes and skim this book. If you feel any strong connections to one of the methods, we'll try that. If you don't feel that way about any of them, we'll do the one I feel the most comfortable with."

As Strange talks, Alistair clambers around Billie's shoulders, arranging himself in a way where he's comfortable and can look out on Strange while still being close enough to Billie that he can touch her if possible.

"Yeah, that's asking for him to get bullied by the other kids."

There are no other kids, so, that's not a fact. Unless the handful of other dragonets count, which are far more likely to stick the hat in their mouths than bully Alistair, so there's that. Now, that's all said as Billie warily eyes the mountain of reading Strange appears to have for her, gauging just how much effort she's feeling like putting forth just about now.

She did ask him to help with this. This is helping. It means stifling a sigh as she picks up the book, opening it to page through.

"You can't just summarize all of this?"

"The notes are the summary," Strange explains, as if it's the most obvious thing ever. "I read plenty of articles and books when I was researching this at the academy. The notes are the summary, the book is the most basic, easy to read text I could find about what we want to learn."

Because Strange knows that the chance he got all nerdy and technical in those summaries is super high and Billie might benefit from Magical Theory For Dummies. It's not his fault he's the only one of his friends who's graduated fantasy college!

"You read the notes, I'll practice throwing, we'll bother each other should we get to a bit we're having trouble with."

"This is not a summary..."

Seriously, Strange? Ugh. Fine, fine.

"And I'm not going to have any trouble," Billie says, absolutely already sure she's going to have trouble. She doesn't have any sort of background in academics over here, even if she has muddled on through rather well so far. She does take the stack of notes and the book, though, and heads for the nearest chair, Alistair still perched across her shoulders.

The dragonet is free to stick around, provided he doesn't start bugging her.

"I don't think I've ever learned any magic from just reading about it."

Edited 2019-05-23 04:59 (UTC)

Alistair seems content with just physical content. He snuggles around Billie's neck watching her and paying attention to what she's doing.

Strange watches Alistair for a moment, making certain the dragon doesn't do anything funny, before he walks over towards one of the bookshelves. Inside a basket is a set of slightly bootleg throwing knives, aka regular knives that Strange magically made more pointy and magically shaped to look closer to Billie's throwing knives.

"There's a first time for everything!" Strange cheerfully responds. "Really, the theory is mostly so you'll know what you're doing when we actually practice the empathy magic. It's like how learning to ride a horse is easier once you know how to approach it."

"Yeah, yeah," Billie can't help but grumble before kicking her boots up on the nearest edge to her chair — rudeness be damned — and starting from page one. If Strange had hoped for banter while she read, he's about to find that, for all her complaints before, she really is going to concentrate on getting through this without questions.

There's a lot of cross-referencing in the first hour but once the terms are familiar enough, there's less of it. Of course, there's also less of it because she only makes it the first hour before she's dozing off...

There's only so much energy she has to spare between coming back to life, getting the hell out of the city to lay low in Didymos, finding where Strange even lived, and now this. A warm dragonet curled up against her doesn't help. So, at some point in Strange's own rambling, should he be filling the air with his own chatter, and knife-throwing, he'll turn to find she's nodded off halfway through the notes.

Anywhere else and she wouldn't have even been tempted to. With Strange, though, she really doubts he has plans to murder her in her sleep.

Unfortunately for Billie, Strange occasionally fills the air with chatter. He'll mention something about empathic magic, how he's found that there seem to be two main strains of it, or he'll talk about the theory of learning magic in general, or occasionally he'll just talk about why it's easier to learn some spells than others. He doesn't talk constantly: occasionally, he'll stop and focus, putting all of his energy on knife-throwing instead of talking. But he talks enough that it's annoying.

After one period of relative silence, he turns to ask Billie about the proper grip of a knife...only to see that she's fallen asleep. And Alistair's also fallen asleep, using her neck and shoulders as a makeshift pillow. Oh no. That's super cute and also blackmail material for the inevitable future.

And honestly? Strange is fine taking a break. Between resurrecting and spending all his time studying to distract him from the fact that he came back to life, he's also fairly tired. Still, might as well wake her up: or at least, might as well wake Alistair up. It'll ruin his sleep schedule if he naps for too long. So, Strange takes a quick break from throwing practice to go to the kitchen and make two mugs of caffeinated tea and get one bowl of warm milk (as he's learned already not to give the baby caffeine.)

He comes back a few moments later, setting the milk on the ground and the mugs on the table. The smell of food does a good job waking Alistair up, as the dragon kneads Billie's shoulder a little bit while waking up. Hopefully that will wake her up—Strange doesn't want to bother the person who he's pretty sure would stab him if he startled her too badly.

"Alistair, yours is on the floor," Strange instructs. "And don't give me that noise: you still spill occasionally and I don't want you getting my notes or this book wet."

There's a fifty-fifty chance of getting stabbed, sure, though Billie doesn't look armed right now. Anyone who's spent enough time around her knows that means you just can't see what she's armed with, though, so Strange is right to worry. He's also lucky that Alistair pawing at her shoulder does get a sleepy grumble out of her.

"...not now, Red," is what she mutters before actually opening her eyes and looking over to see a blue dragonet rather than her own. Right. This is Didymos and Red isn't here. That's actually a little off-putting, not that she'll ever admit to missing him to pretty much anyone — except Deirdre, anyway, who already knows and is sure to make fun of her for it from her perch on the roof somewhere.

"Or you. What are you, a cat?"

Dragons are just scaly cats. That's got to be it.

Alistair makes an indignant huff. How dare you call him a cat, he is a majestic dragon. To prove his point, he spreads his wings out (possibly hitting Billie in the face in the process), shifts his posture, leaps off of Billie's shoulder like he's going to fly all around the room in a glorious fashion...then hits the floor with a smack.

The only thing wounded is the dragon's pride, but he starts to make a high-pitched whining noise anyway. And so, Strange jumps in with the spoiling. He's not actively worried about Alistair taking a tumble, he's just reassuring.

"What did I tell you? These things happen when you practice, just walk it off. You'll be fine."

Billie does, in fact, get smacked in the face with a wing, but then Alistair is gone and ungracefully landing on the floor, meaning all she's going to do is rub the side of her face. Good thing he's too small to actually do damage with those things... She turns to look down at where he's ended up.

"He's already trying to fly?"

She does recall either Strange or his book mentioning a timeline for that. Two months? Three?

"He is," Strange says, with a nod. "Though I'm not sure whether this is him trying to fly due to a natural instinct or trying to fly because that's what all the dragons in the stories I tell him do."

Because of course Strange has been raising this dragon on a steady diet of dragon stories. As he looks down to watch Alistair, Strange lightly pushes one of the mugs of tea in Billie's direction as he picks up the second one to take a sip from himself.

Alistair has ended up on the floor, ass up in the air, in the world's most awkward landing. He pushes himself back on his feet, unsteadily getting up, before he spots the milk and makes a beeline to it like the chonky little boy he is.

"I sure hope those stories don't have all the cannibalism and city wrecking in them, too, if that's the case," Billie says with a sort before dropping her boots off of the table and moving the notes up to it instead. That settled, she'll pick up the mug of tea for her.

Always tea, never whiskey...

She'll just have to live with it.

"Of course not, he's a baby," Strange explains. He can't help himself, however, and gives Billie a wry smile as he continues talking. "The stories about cannibalism are for when he's older."

There's no point in sugarcoating history, everything's terrible and occasionally dragons eat other dragons. Strange blows on the tea, trying to cool it down a little, before taking a sip from his mug.

"How's the study going, by the way?"

"As long as he doesn't decide to try that when you finally do," Billie says with a faint snort before turning her attention to the notes and book she's dumped off on the table.

"Well, it was going fine until I dozed off." Such is life. "I figure we want to pursue the one where we pick up information off of an item, not people. All we have are the scales to go on."

Strange nods. Looking over to the notes, he continues talking.

"I was thinking the same thing. Of course, this will probably take a lot of study and practice. I suspect the first thing we'll be able to do is pick up information based on the item's most recent history."

Which, at least for Strange's scale, would tell everybody that the scale was kept in a box at the bottom of his closet.

There's really no short cut with empathic magic? Billie would very much like it if there was but even she will accept that some kinds of magic just aren't like that. She does her best not to look annoyed by that. It's hard.

"That's fine," she says. Even if she's annoyed, it's a start! "How about we cut right to trying that out now that we've settled on how to go about it? There's no way you did all this research without looking over how they go already."

How impatient! But honestly, Strange can't blame Billie. The moment he started this research, he was also thinking of ways that he could use it.

"I think the best thing to start with is a newer item. That way, it's got less history to work with. What we'll do is take the item in our hands and draw upon the world's inherent magic in order to view the item's history—or at least, know it. I don't think we'll physically see the history, we'll just mentally know it."

But they won't know until they try. And Strange is doing a poor job of hiding his excitement as he thinks about the possibilities of empathic magic.

Strange probably has an endless amount of ideas for that kind of magic but Billie only has one: find who sent those damn scales. It's a little tunnel-visioned, sure, but one goal at a time, right?

"Sounds good to me," she agrees to the newer item. Going straight for the black scale would just get anger, mostly hers. She does look around the house, though. "Do you actually have anything new in here to work with? Or am I going to have to use my coat?"

Strange nods, as he gets to his feet. "I am stocking a house. Give me a moment."

He walks out of the room for a moment. When he returns, he's holding a washcloth. "While there are some things I don't mind buying used, toiletries aren't one of them."

People's butts have been on washcloths, he's not going to buy a used one. He sits back down at the table and places the washcloth on top of the notes, in between them. Alistair has decided they're doing something interesting. Abandoning the milk for a moment, he starts to climb up Strange's leg, so that he can scramble onto his magician's shoulder and get a better look of everything.

"Reach into you, call upon the magic, and then touch the washcloth."

Look, for all she knows wizards use magic for all that mundane shit. She wouldn't put it beyond Strange, alright? But a washcloth — more importantly, a clean one, she doesn't want to handle some gross cloth, either — seems reasonable.

"You know how vague that sounds, right?"

But she does reach out to grab an edge of the cloth, focusing on that rather than Strange or the dragonet. Reach for magic, huh? That shouldn't be hard. She doesn't even think about it when she shapeshifts or transverses or sets things on fire which is immediately what happens. Wrong magic, Billie! Wrong magic to call upon!

Billie jerks her hand back as soon as the washcloth lights up, startled.

Oh shit.

Strange reaches over to quickly pat out the edge of the fire, being super careful not to catch any of the notes on fire. Unfortunately, this means he's less careful and pats out the fire with his actual hand, giving himself a few burns in the process. It's frantic patting out the fire, followed by a whole bunch of muffled cursing.

Alright. Apparently he's going to have to do baby steps here.

"Let's try that again," Strange responds, as he rubs at the burns on his hand. Ouch ouch ouch ouch, he'll have to put some cream on that later. "Don't call upon your magic just yet. Instead, I want you to visualize what you're going to do first. This will be you working with your magic as well as the item itself. How do you plan to do that? What would you say to the item?"

Billie was reaching back for the fire again but Strange has already moved to put it out, leaving her to look outright awkward about this for a second or two. She won't apologize, even if she does look embarrassed by that little accident. It's always the damn dragon magic...

She really needs to work on that but, right now, she apparently needs to... say something? To a washcloth?

"What I would say to it?" Billie frowns at him, then at the washcloth, now with its blackened corner. She wants to say 'you don't talk to objects' but isn't that what the magic they're after kind of does? "Probably 'sorry I set you on fire'."

Yeah, the object gets an apology while Strange does not.

"You don't have to say it out loud," Strange gently teases. But he should probably explain this in a better way. He pauses for a moment, frowning a little before he starts explaining.

"You just say it with your magic. Everything in this world has a magical aura or some inherent magic of it's own. You just reach out with yours to try and touch it and that's when you 'speak.'"

Maybe a demonstration would work? Strange closes his eyes for a moment, before making a hand gesture. "Help cool Billie down," he murmurs, audible enough for Billie to hear but still slightly under his breath. And then, barely a moment later, a small gust swirls around Billie, giving her a pleasant breeze.

Billie isn't exactly amused by wind ruffling her hair. For her, it's less about asking and more about directing herself, not the magic. Rather than asking to move from one place to another, she tells herself where she absolutely wants to be. There, not here, and then it's done.

But that's the same thing, isn't it?

Rather than tell Strange any of that, lest he points that out and laughs at her over it, she reaches for the cloth again. She won't think of dragon fire — or even fire in general, just in case — and ends up glaring at it instead, telling herself and, she hopes, her magic that she needs to know about the last person who held it.

The last living person to touch the washcloth was Strange. And unsurprisingly, there are very few strong emotions attached to a washcloth. Billie gets a feeling of annoyance and slight worry. After all, the washcloth was most recently used to help clean up a mess made by the slightly more rambunctious Alistair.

But Strange is downright staring at Billie, waiting expectantly as she (hopefully) does some magic. He's obviously waiting on pins and needles, hoping for an answer of some kind. Well, go on! Tell him how it went!

Edited 2019-06-03 02:58 (UTC)

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oh god he has homework for her, she's turning around and going back to hell city

she's the one who chose to hang out with the nerd, she brought this on herself

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