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

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)

And the conclusion she comes to is...

"This would be more interesting with a murder weapon," Billie says, though her glowering lessens as she actually does get a reading off of the washcloth. It isn't a thrilling revelation but it means she can do it, so, she looks up and quirks an eyebrow at Strange.

"Alistair knocked something over, huh?"

Well. She must have gotten the magic. Strange nods a little, sighing as he looks over at the little dragon. Alistair's still hanging around near Billie, though he's taking the opportunity to try and chew her clothes.

"He keeps climbing on top of things and jumping to the ground. He's knocked over a few drinks that way and scared poor Bell half to death." Alistair makes a happy chirping noise. They're talking about him, that's good!

There's a small pause before Strange keeps talking. "And I don't have a murder weapon, but I do have something with stronger emotions tied to it. You could try and read that next to see how the magic fares."

"He has to get how flying works somehow," Billie says, automatically letting go of the washcloth to intervene with the dragon going after her clothes. No, Alistair, she's shoving you away, gently but firmly, though her attention is on Strange still. Having dealt with Red enough times by now, removing dragonets from herself doesn't actually require looking at the scaly little monsters.

"But sure, let's go with that. What is it?"

Alistair makes a high-pitched whining noise as Billie shoves him away. What gives, he wanted to eat that! He waddles over towards Strange, making smaller whining noises all the while.

"It's my shirt," Strange starts to explain. "During the werewolf attack, I was injured. I was going to throw it out, but I haven't gotten around to doing so yet. You can practice on that."

During the werewolf attack, he died. But he doesn't want to bring that up unless he has to.

But she was there for the werewolf attack, he wasn't hurt— oh. The other one. The bigger one. Billie stares at him, considering that, for a moment too long to just be deciding whether or not to handle a gross, bloody shirt. That part doesn't bother her.

"You haven't noticed any new sensitivity to silver since then, have you?"

She's got to ask. Yes, she knows the giant ass wolves were some kind of double-cursed dragonborn, but they had still had lycanthropy. That shit's infectious.

"I'm not a werewolf, if that's what you're asking," Strange sighs. "The bigger, bony ones weren't infectious." Probably because of the whole double-cursed thing, but Strange doesn't know enough about werewolves to definitively state that.

Anyway, Billie hasn't said that she didn't want to touch the nasty bloody shirt, so Strange is assuming she's alright with it.

"And thank the gods for that," he says, as he stands up. Nasty bloody shirt's in the other room. "I've already got enough problems in my life, I don't want to add lycanthropy to the mix."

"It is," Billie admits but if he's sure, that's that. She'll just have to believe it. "Glad to hear I won't have to worry about you getting all fuzzy and howling at moons. Might have given Alistair the wrong ideas."

Dragonet pretending to be a wolf, trilling at the sky. Unlike Strange, he may stay fuzzy enough to pull it off, right? Well, jokes aside, she doesn't have a problem with a nasty, blood-covered shirt, so she waves him onward. Go ahead, go get it, pal.

"I think he would make an adorable werewolf," Strange calls out to Billie, as he leaves the room.

Now that Strange is gone, Alistair turns his attention to Billie. She said his name, that means she wants to play, right? He waddles over towards her, accidentally knocking some papers on the floor, and then stares up at Billie, giving her the dragon equivalent of puppy dog eyes.

It only takes a few seconds for Strange to return with the shirt. It's covered in dried blood, mostly around the sleeve and chest. One of the sleeves has long gashes in it, while there's a tear in the chest area as well, the result of a stab wound. Strange's jokey mood has lessened a bit as he offers the shirt to Billie.

"If you manage to glean some circumstances from the shirt, can you keep them secret? There's people I don't want to worry."

Billie eyes Alistair as he waddles back over and wrinkles her nose some. That look...

"You're not going to get anywhere like that when you're older," she tells the dragonet, even if she does reach over to give him a little pat on the head. That's it, though, because then Strange is back with a horribly bloody-looking shirt. Old blood, sure, that doesn't make the sharp look she gives it and then him directly any different.

She would ask what happened, but that defeats the purpose of the exercise, now doesn't it? Billie purses her lips at him asking that, consider it for a second, two, then nod and hold her hand out for the shirt. Once he gives it over, she'll run through the same process as before: glare at the shirt, tell it to tell her what it's most recent experience was.

Alistair trills happily as Billie pets him. He might not get anywhere like that when he's older, but it's working now and that's what matters!

It's most recent experience is pain. There's an overwhelming, blinding feeling of pain the moment Billie reaches out with her empathy. Mixed within that pain are lesser, yet still pretty intense, feelings of fear and aggression.

This is the shirt that Strange was wearing when he died.

Pain is something Billie is familiar with. She's been hurt. She's hurt others considerably more. It would take a lot more than what the shirt throws at her to make her drop it. Instead, she tightens her grip on the cloth and works through the blinding sensation, the fear, the aggression--

No, that's the part where she needs to drop it. She knows what that is and she doesn't need a surprise relapse. Strange isn't like to enjoy being ripped apart... again, apparently.

Shirt dropped on the table, she looks at him again, doing a fair job of staying neutral-seeming about this particular mess.

"That was the water." More importantly, "Did you die?"

The amount of blood says yes but you never know.

Strange nods. Wordlessly, he unbuttons the top button of his shirt, so that he can better pull out his vial necklace: it's less than halfway full. He's not saying 'yep, I totally died' but it's fairly obvious that he did totally die.

"You seemed relatively calm during all that. That's good. When I tried the magic on something with a strong emotional pull behind it, it threw me for a loop."

He's trying to make this neutral and focus on the magic mostly because it's obvious that thinking about his death still bothers him—something that Alistair notices. As Strange talks, the dragon bounds across the table and leaps into Strange's lap, making content trilling noises as he attempts to forcefully snuggle into Strange's arms.

Billie will look at the vial, nod, and that's that. There's no admonishment, no asking what exactly happened. He died, he's back, she isn't going to pry. It's not as though she's about to share her own death over here.

"The shirt just has emotions I'm used to," she says with a shrug like that's somehow normal. It is for her, anyway. "I'd rather not handle anything else that's come in contact with the water, though. That stuff was nasty."

"That's what's odd about all this," Strange chimes in, expression fading to a small smile. "I never touched the water. I was in Einjar, I knew how dangerous that stuff was. But obviously I was changed. There must have been something else the water brought that made me act that way."

What it is, he's not sure. Understandably, his memories of that time are a bit of a haze thanks to the unrelenting paranoia, the bloodlust, and the outright murder. Or at least, Strange would like to think they're a bit of a haze as he honestly doesn't want to think too hard about the fact that he and someone else essentially mutually killed each other.

"It was the sound," Billie says, pointing to an ear as she does. "It's what got most people in the end. Most people aren't going to go near blood red water, right? But the city still nearly burned itself to the ground. That ringing... It gets under your skin, you know? You had to have felt it."

Billie did, though she didn't realize it until it was too late. Daud had warned her and she'd still been foolish. It isn't something she wants to dwell on for too long, either, some parts too indistinct to recall, others clear to her now that she's had time to think about it. Overall, nothing pleasant.

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