ENDPLOT | ROLL THE BONES, PART 1

[ironwood]

Characters: ALL!
Date: Early/Mid November
Location: Under the shell
Situation: It's either Malicant or the Foreigners... and their worlds.
Warnings/Rating: Add warnings as needed.

The Foreigners had begun their counterattack by trying to possess the Great Turtle whom Malicant had taken, and although the movement had failed, some vital information had been uncovered. Under the shell lay Malicant's weakness, and inside the Dreaming was where he could be fought.

Any help from the kedan is uncommon. They're wary, watching, as a group beginning to lose sight of the community. Their family groups are more tightly-knit than ever, and any approach from the Foreigners is answered by suspicion at best and violence at worst. That makes daily life difficult, when the majority of the city refuses to have much to do with them. Why aren't you doing anything? they seem to say. What good are any of you? All you've done is make things worse. We'd be better if you'd never come.

The Foreigners are unwelcome in Keeliai. The cultists are becoming a majority. Now is the time.

There aren't many left of the Foreigners left, but inside the Dreaming the limitations of the waking world no longer exist. For every Foreigner and their worlds, their loved ones, this is the chance to make themselves safe for good. And all of them will be needed.

---

LINKS
Beneath The Shell/Midnight Hotel | Malicant’s Tools/The Vilii Stone | OOC Plot Post

OOC
There are two main headers, one for preparation at the Hotel where Milyn and Eva will be available to speak with The second section where they will be able to search the caves beneath the Shell inside the Dreaming to find the Vilii Stone, and where the boon'd characters will be affected. If you are threading something that doesn't fit one of those categories, just add it to the bottom of the post. Questions go to the plotting post, please! Once the Stone has been acquired the second half of the plot will go live in the logs comm.

Comments

Solomon Wreath | for Cain but also OTA

[peacefullywreathed]

When Solomon entered the Hotel, the first thing he did was collect a special delivery from Shudder. The next thing he did was wait for one Jacob Kane. Solomon hadn't contacted the man beforehand, but he needed to do so now. It was rather pressing. Solomon's boon was constant--he had no control over it. He couldn't turn it off. It kept him sane while it was active.

The moment Malicant took him, he'd no longer be sane, and the death-aura could take everyone in the turtle. It could also take the Dreaming into the death-plane, and wouldn't that just give Malicant all the access he could possibly want. What Solomon needed was someone immune to death to keep an eye on him.

He needed Kane.

While Solomon waited he went to one of the chairs in the commons and sat to examine the restraints Shudder had made. They were almost silver, but felt like steel; far too pure to have been forged here in Keeliai and holding the binding sigils well. They weren't hinged, but bound at the sides with leather like old style armour, and with that would be easy to slide on over his hands. Shudder had beaten them into shape using measurements Solomon had given him, thinning them enough that he could wear them as sturdy wristbands rather than have them burden him as manacles. That was unexpectedly thoughtful.

Solomon turned them over in his hands and stared at them and felt their weight, negligible to what they could have been, and still they looked like chains to him. When this was all over, chances were the boons would go away. When they did, Solomon would be back to being addicted, to his magic controlling him instead of him controlling his magic--unless he bound his magic altogether.

[insertdadjoke]

When it came down to what Cain could do in the effort, there wasn't a whole lot. He had his immortality but that was about all that was going for him. Others had magic and superpowers and experience with the situation at hand, and that was all right. None of that meant Cain would sit out, but it did mean he was going to be more than willing to follow the lead of everyone else until his own picture of the situation formed into something more solid.

There were a couple of people he recognized in the Hotel when he got there. Not nearly enough, Cain hadn't been making as many friends within the foreigners as he probably should have been, but there were definite faces among the crowd that he could pick out with certainty. One of the more interesting loiterers was hanging out in the commons and Cain pulled up a chair opposite of him, studying the wristlets in his hands before glancing up to Solomon with a quirked brow.

"Fashion statement or is that functional, too?" he asked dryly.

[peacefullywreathed]

Every now and then Solomon looked up to see who was entering the common-room, and did so on this occasion to see Kane had noticed him and was approaching of his own accord. In spite of everything a corner of Solomon's mouth pulled up ironically, and he put the wristlets down on the small table in front of him.

"Function," he said. "They're magic-binding restraints. I need your help, Mr Kane." Solomon spoke calmly, meeting Kane's gaze, but the way he clasped his hands and rubbed the shadows between his fingers--the shadows, not his fingers, rolling them under his touch like strings--revealed a sense of deep unease. "Necromancy in my world is addictive. Usually necromancers use a channeling item to filter the addiction out, but mine was destroyed before I arrived and I wasn't able to secure another. In order to avoid being driven insane I accepted a boon from the being I thought was the great turtle: a permanent passive filter on my magic."

[insertdadjoke]

Getting himself comfortable, Cain rested his weight along his arms after he placed them on the table. He studied the manacles for a moment, head tilted as if the perspective would tell him something about the make that might help them seem a bit more powerful than the pieces of metal and leather that they were. Unfortunately, for whatever extra he could see because of his Deathsight, Cain was no further privy to the secrets of the restraints.

"Huh," he said eloquently. He was watching the movement rather than meeting Solomon's gaze, pure curiosity and interest rather than rudeness; the manipulation of the shadows wasn't something he saw very often consider that was where someones' Reaper lay in wait. "So you've got a gift that might be more like a curse right now. Sorry to say I'm not much of a curse-breaker."

[peacefullywreathed]

"But you have a gift of your own," Solomon pointed out. "You can't be killed. Not just undying; you can't be killed. You literally repel death. Right now, you are the only person who isn't in danger from me." He nodded toward the bracelets. "The bracelets, theoretically, should keep me from accessing my magic as long as I wear them. I'm going to put them on before we leave the Hotel. But it doesn't make my magic nonexistent and it may not affect the boon, and if it doesn't then I need someone nearby who can talk me down or kill me before I can remove that restraint."

[insertdadjoke]

"What makes you think I'm capable of killing?" asked Cain. Oh, it was an entirely fair assessment and it was probably born of necessity and desperation than an actual commentary on how Cain presented himself. Still, it was amusing to be immediately singled out as a buffer between a necromancer gone wild and the rest of the population. If nothing else, it would give Cain something definitive to do during their assault on Malicant.

He dipped his head and added, "Though you're right. Assuming what you've said about how this works is true, anyway. You want me to be your bodyguard."

[peacefullywreathed]

"You've lived for nearly three millennia," Solomon said, almost mildly and with a hint of a sardonic undertone. "If you've never killed before then I'm going to have to call you a liar, and that would be something of a detriment to our burgeoning relationship, don't you think?"

At that, Solomon laughed, but not quite with any humour. "More like a bodyguard for everyone else," he said. "I'm not the one who needs protecting, Kane. An overpowered necromancer has a technique that can kill whole groups of people in an instant without ever being near them. That's what I'm risking, and that's what you'll need to stop if the restraints don't work."

[insertdadjoke]

"Maybe I'm just extremely pacifistic," Cain said, brows quirked high and teasing. The idea of being nonviolent was just an incredibly amusing one to him. There was no point to holding back no matter how many years of experience Cain had on anyone else. If someone wanted to fuck with him, Cain had always reserved the right to fuck with them back.

Cain nodded in understanding, arms shifting to cross in front of him. The least he could do was show Solomon how much attention he was actually paying. "What's the quickest way to take you down?" he asked. There was no point in beating around the bush about something like this. "Is there a way I can restrain you, or am I going straight for incapacitation and lethal force?"

[peacefullywreathed]

Solomon didn't bother to answer the first comment. Though if anyone could be, it would be Kane, since he wouldn't die regardless; but he didn't speak or act like someone invested in non-violence. He teased with the subjects of death and harm, he moved in the manner of a man accustomed to watching his back if not quite to the level Bakura did. Pacifists were passionate in taking non-violence seriously.

"You might be able to talk me down," Solomon admitted, "but don't spend too long trying. Don't bother with incapacitation; if I'm compromised, it won't work. Do pursue overkill. Chances are I'll reanimate myself the first time I die and that will only make me harder to put down, though if we're lucky it would soak up enough of my power to remove a good deal of the risk."

[insertdadjoke]

Solomon had the right of it. That didn't mean Cain couldn't act like a man devoted to peace; he'd done so in the past, either because of where he was or the period of time he had been living through. There were a lot of reasons to abhor violence but Cain had never been invested in trying to stop any of it; it happened and one man, no matter how invincible or long-lived, was not going to change human nature. All of that aside, violence could be entertaining if one didn't get caught up in the morality of it and indulged when necessary.

Cain nodded thoughtfully, going over possible methods to take down someone who would likely not stay down. "Knives do okay? Should I get some firearms?" he asked. With the idea of overkill in mind, he added, "Rocket launcher? I could probably find one somewhere."

[peacefullywreathed]

The dry sort of humour, in spite of the circumstances, made Solomon's mouth quirk up. "A rocket-launcher should work," he said, "if only because I'll be strewn across too much a distance to pull myself together, self-animation or no self-animation. Otherwise, just off with my head might be enough--if you can get close enough."

That had always been one of the problems with fighting Vile; so few could get near enough for a long enough length of time to do anything with the proximity. And bullets were like flies--easy to block with a shield, easy to ignore in an animation. "Guns won't be too much use, in this instance."

[insertdadjoke]

Too far strewn about? Cain offered a grin in response to that. At least one of them couldn't survive a rocket launcher — not that Cain had practical experience with that one, but he knew being broken down into pieces didn't stop whatever type of immortality he had. "I'll see what I can do about a rocket launcher, then. Or maybe a harpoon gun," he said, now just being ridiculous for the sake of it.

Cain nodded thoughtfully. He could see how bullets might be ineffective where old-fashioned might prevail. "Stick to the classics. Got it."