tushanshu_logs | [EVENT|4TH WALL] THE NEWCOMERS’ ARRIVAL

[EVENT|4TH WALL] THE NEWCOMERS’ ARRIVAL | APRIL 15-22

Characters: ALL and plus ones.
Date: April 15-22 2015 (2016 in-game)
Location: Farmlands outside the city walls, but this log can also be used for locations within the city.
Situation: Spring planting - fourth wall event, week one!
Warnings/Rating: Add warnings as needed.

The days for the festival dawn sunny if a bit chilly, but the air is clear and the soggy ground has dried enough that there isn’t too much mud in the lanes between fields and homesteads. The broad dirt path to the Woodsmen’s land leads past the tram-line construction, lined with waving ribbons on sticks along the sides. The Woodsmen’s territory circles the city, separated from the city’s walls by five hundred yards of neutral land.

The festival’s central area is Liangken’s Clearing, and this is where the festival will begin and end each day. Liangken is an ancient tree, among the oldest on the turtle’s back. Though it doesn’t flower or bear much in the way of leaves anymore, the kedan have cultivated it carefully and now it’s an excellent representation for the revitalisation of old wisdom.

The lanes between the fields and homesteads will house the stalls, contests and walking areas. The Woodsmen will be keeping an eye on these to prevent anyone from walking off the marked paths. The homesteads provide ‘hotspots’ in among the lanes and fields, with Woodsmen families lending their yards to the comfort and entertainment of their guests.

In general, the Woodsmen are a taciturn, soft-spoken lot who nevertheless take great pride in their work. Their lands are all but sacred -- they accept no attitude, no trespassing, no attempts to thwart their authority. This causes some noticeable tension with the Snakes, who are accustomed to being the sole enforcers within the city; but though there may be some ill tempers and raised voices, at no point will anyone come to blows. It’s hard to argue with someone built like a brick wall and carrying sharp farm implements.

The Woodsmen are a touch anxious about having strangers on their land and this shows in them being overly officious or bossy, but at the same time their pride shows clearly and they are eager to show off the state of their lands, their greenhouses, and their farming processes -- practically without being asked. The residents of Keeliai tend to think of the Woodsmen as ‘cowards’, and the Woodsmen are taking this opportunity to prove themselves otherwise with feats of strength and tall tales.

Due to the farmers’ hours of “early to bed and early to rise”, the festival ends in the early evening at sundown, but begins again before dawn -- usually by greeting the sun with a song.

LINKS
Heojin, Ran and Lin | Liangken’s Clearing | Stalls and Lanes | OOC Information post | 4th Wall Character Check In

OOC
While Heojin and his bodyguards are open to everyone (including fourth-wall characters!), they are not available for small talk and general directionless CR. For the integrity of the mod’s inbox, please only request a thread with him if you already have an idea of what you’d like your character to ask/do. Other NPCs can be requested by sending a PM to the appropriate journals directly, with the same guidelines.

The top-level comments are for the festival, but fourth-wall characters should feel free to use the rest of the post for anything within the city of Keeliai itself! Just remember to label the top-level comment for location and date.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

After all the events of the past month - and particularly since more and more of the gem-less Foreigners were arriving each day - there came a point where Skulduggery couldn't help wondering if putting all his current investigations on hold for a few hours wasn't the best thing to do. It felt like he was going around in circles, and Larrikin's presence in the Hotel was a further reminder that Keeliai routinely escaped understanding. A break could be just what he needed, and there was always a chance he'd meet someone else he knew from his world.

Raine went with him. They hadn't had the chance to talk about anything unimportant for a while, after all.

"I'm not a scientist," said Skulduggery, peering down at the glowing plant for sale, "but I imagine studying that would help us figure out whether or not Asti is still alive."

... Mostly unimportant.

Raine could not initially decide whether or not Skulduggery was serious about this proposition, not least because there were a number of things wrong with it, but she recalled before too long that this was, after all, Skulduggery she was talking to. The answer was probably yes.

The plant he was talking about was lovely, in any case, and as requested Raine gave it her attention for a little time, gently touching one of the luminescent puffs. "I don't see the connection," Raine admitted in a moment, treating the idea entirely seriously for now. "Save perhaps the glow, but there are enough plants and animals with bioluminescent qualities that I wouldn't call it a large anomaly."

Skulduggery shook his head. "Usually, maybe, but not on the shell. These plants are harvested from the shoreline. Asti's shell hasn't glowed since we defeated Malicant, and these are the first things I've seen that come even close." He shrugged. "As I said, I'm not a scientist, but I imagine someone could probably - "

- study them, he meant to say. But Skulduggery's attention was caught by the next stall over.

They were giving away handmade gems and small sparkling stones, pieces probably meant to be set in jewelry or threaded on chains. One of them was thicker than the rest, smoother, and rounder; it was a pale blue throughout, instead of speckled or multi-coloured like the more natural stones next to it. Skulduggery walked over and picked it up, and even though no intangible person faded into view nearby, he could still feel the magic in the stone. He still knew what it was.

"Where did you find this?" he asked the lanky kedan behind the stall.

"Woods somewhere. Strange things appear on our land sometimes, you know; that's one of 'em."

"I suppose it may be worth looking into," Raine conceded, though it was a little doubtful. Shared bioluminescence was a thin thread to go on, but then again she'd pursued theories on about that much before. No harm in following the thought, at least. She meant to give the plant another, closer look, but by that point Skulduggery was wandering away.

It seemed unusual, that he'd abandon the point he'd been trying to make. With one last glance at the plant Raine trailed after Skulduggery, curious as she peered around his elbow at what he'd found. Interesting-- there was mana to it, though faint. "Something you recognize?"

"Something from my world," Skulduggery affirmed for her, turning the stone over in the palm of his gloved hand. "It's called an echo stone. It can hold someone's memories and personality. Sorcerers on the brink of death pay a lot of money for these; they afford a kind of immortality." He glanced up at the kedan. "Do you mind if I keep this?"

The kedan snorted. "If it's from your world, go ahead."

"Thank you." Skulduggery moved away from the stall, heading almost absentmindedly for a relatively empty spot away from the crowds. "This one has something recorded on it," he told Raine, "but not something I recognise."

If anything Raine was more dubious now, though about something entirely different. Frankly, she had ethical concerns. "A kind of immortality," she echoed, frowning a little. "I wonder. Are imprints left in 'echo stones' considered to be people? How long can they last? Are they conscious even when they're not, ah, active?"

She did remember to stop herself before it could turn into an outright torrent of questions, however, and she followed Skulduggery away from the crowds. "You've probably already reached this conclusion, but if it's from your world there's a significant chance it's also personally relevant," she added. "If not to you, then to one of the others. Whatever -- whoever it holds, it wound up here for a reason."

"Really?" said Skulduggery. "I hadn't thought of that. Thank you for enlightening me, Raine."

The torrent of questions actually made for a fairly good distraction, so Skulduggery answered them without complaint, ignoring Raine's observation about the echo stone's personal relevance beyond his earlier sarcasm. "Echo stones are very rare and very valuable," he explained. "They're certainly treated like real people, even if they're not considered to be. They last forever as long as they're magically charged, but the echoes aren't conscious when they're not active."

A fact he hadn't actually been aware of before Echo Gordon, although he'd always assumed that was how the stones worked. The alternative was far too depressing to think about.

That was-- a relief, actually, and Raine relaxed a little at those answers. Much better than the alternative possibilities. Much better than exspheres, especially.

"You're welcome," she said, blithe, though the flat look she appended suggested she was not entirely unaware of the sarcasm. "Even you occasionally miss the obvious. I take it this one is charged?" Ordinarily by this point she'd have been clamoring to get her hands on the artifact, but it was magic she didn't know what to do with, and almost certainly personal to boot. Raine contented herself with peering at it as close as Skulduggery would permit her. "How does one activate it?"

"That's the interesting thing," said Skulduggery, returning his gaze to the stone as they reached a place where the crowd was thinning. "That's one of many interesting things, in fact. It's fully charged, and if I'm not mistaken, it doesn't need charging."

He wasn't sure how he knew that. He simply did. The thought arrived as fact without passing through any form of logic first, something Skulduggery had to consciously decide not to consider a rude trespass.

"Ordinarily, you activate it by picking it up." Skulduggery held the stone out for Raine to give it a try, although he could already predict it wouldn't work. "This one feels different. If it's a product of the Dreaming, I might have to actively will it to life, which I haven't done yet." Quite obviously.

"That is odd. Energy doesn't come from nowhere." Raine took the stone from his hand, turning it over to examine from all angles before cupping it in her hands. Thoughtful, she nudged a raw bit of her mana at it, not shaped as if to cast, only to see if there would be any reaction. "Of course the Dreaming must be involved in some way. I wonder..."

She'd never seen something from her world here. Was it that nothing had shown up, or nothing she had found? That was immaterial, though there was an interesting question to be considered in whether or not people were drawn to the things from their world -- Skulduggery's discovery of the item had certainly been fortuitous. "Never mind." In a moment, provided nothing happened to the stone, she'd offer it back to Skulduggery.

Another possibility was that the stone wasn't meant for Skulduggery. He almost hoped that was the case, actually, given what the Dreaming was capable of. While an echo stone was meant to work for anyone who touched it, the rules in the Dreaming tailored to individual unspoken desires - or at least, what it believed were individual unspoken desires.

"If it's anything like what I've been wondering," said Skulduggery, "then I'm afraid I don't have an answer. The Dreaming does love flying in the face of logic."

There wasn't any outward change on the stone itself, but Raine would feel an oddly-shaped circle of magic surrounding it, a bit like the stone was a self-recharging battery. It pulled energy in, then released it, over and over in a slow, balanced cycle.

That really should have been impossible. "It's definitely charging itself, somehow," Raine confirmed. Turned it over once more, in hopes of anything else revealing itself, then passed it back to Skulduggery. "I've never encountered something that works quite like that. There doesn't appear to be any loss of energy along the way, only a cycle."

She folded her arms across her chest, studying both the stone and Skulduggery with very faint annoyance. "The Dreaming does have its own sort of logic, which appears as far as I've been able to determine internally consistent. It simply isn't constrained to what we think of as logic." Which was both frustrating and fascinating. "Do you plan to see if it will respond to you, or would you rather be alone for that?"

Skulduggery nodded. The laws of energy conservation, he knew, would be upset - not just by the stone, but by the whole city. Someone like Raine could do very well studying exactly why that was, and perhaps discovering an entirely new law. Maybe she already had.

"I would rather be alone," he said slowly, "which means you should probably be there. I don't trust Malicant to stay dead, and I certainly don't trust when objects from my world conveniently appear right where I happen to be walking."

The crowd was almost nonexistent this far out along the field. A few kedan still passed by - a couple out on a romantic walk, a mother comforting a tired child. The Foreigners' strange antics were usually ignored, so Skulduggery ignored them right back, and stopped underneath one of the larger trees.

The city in general, perhaps, but that stone in particular. As much as Raine had studied, there was no precedent for it feeding on itself that she was aware of. Fascinating. She wasn't likely to get the chance to study the stone further, though, and she accepted that with only a little resignation.

Skulduggery's rationale was a little peculiar, but did make sense after a fashion. As much as Raine had accepted the nature of the Dreaming, the suspicion was warranted. "All right," Raine said, and stopped where Skulduggery did, leaning against the trunk of the tree to watch him. "Whenever you're ready. If Malicant isn't going to stay dead, do you think he'll show it in our lifetimes?"

Skulduggery hefted the stone in his palm. "That very much depends on how irritated he is over his defeat at our hands. If he wants revenge, then yes. If he isn't quite so short-sighted, then no."

His fingers curled around it, and an image of a blonde woman faded up from nowhere only a few feet away from Raine. She was wearing a hooded cloak with the hood pushed back off her head, her hair braided and swept back over her shoulder. She was about to laugh, head tipped back and eyes sparkling, but her mouth had scarcely opened before Skulduggery dropped the stone and the image faded again.

"Ah," he said. His voice, usually like smooth velvet, seemed to lose all change in tenor whatsoever. "My wife."

"He seemed to be adept at the long game, but it's certainly more than possible..." Raine stopped talking when the woman appeared, in favor of observing; she had just enough time to take in the image before Skulduggery dropped it.

That, combined with his pronounced change in demeanor, told her enough. Dead or otherwise gone, almost certainly. Was this discovery then cruel, or kind? Hard to tell right now. Raine stooped to pick up the stone, offered it back to Skulduggery in her open palm. "Do you still think Malicant is involved?" she asked, maintaining her typical measured calm.

He'd said these carried imprints of memories and personality, were often considered as good as the person themselves. Something was different about this one, certainly, but did that mean she now held his wife, in a tidy little blue jewel? The thought did not leave her at ease.

Sorcerers had ways of contacting the dead. Skulduggery himself was proof of that. It had been offered to him, the first time he was capable of understanding the offer; the chance to speak to Liliya through a Sensitive.

He'd turned it down. He'd always turned it down. Wherever Liliya was now, there was no doubt in Skulduggery's mind that she wouldn't want to be dragged back to a world in which her last memory was of an agonising death. He wouldn't do that to her. He'd made the conscious choice never to see or hear her again, and he'd stayed by that choice throughout the centuries.

But an echo stone was different. It could only contain what had already been recorded. It wouldn't have Liliya's death on it - not unless the Dreaming was somehow able to add it. The Liliya within the stone wouldn't remember; nor would she remember watching her daughter murdered.

"I don't know," Skulduggery finally answered. "It depends."

He reached out and took the stone back. Almost immediately, the same image flickered up, and Skulduggery's wife looked at a space off to Skulduggery's right. No longer laughing, no longer good-humoured. Annoyed.

"Are you sure?" she asked. "You speak as if removing yourself from the war would be allowing him to win. That's a fair bit of arrogance, Skulduggery, even for you. No one can fight in your condition, not with all the poppy leaves in the world."

As Skulduggery didn't drop the stone this time, it gave Raine a chance to study the woman. She circled the projection, observing, returned to her original position in a moment with a thoughtful look on her face. No reaction from the woman, and the lack of any context for what she said-- she wasn't responding to the situation at hand.

Raine leaned back against the tree once more. "A memory?" she said aloud, half a question. It seemed the most logical conclusion, though it wasn't what Raine would have expected from the Echo Stone given Skulduggery's description. Then again, with the Dreaming involved... irregularities were much more common than they really should be.

The image of Liliya flickered again, like the static image of a television show, her expression changing as if she was jumping between two different scenes of her life. She opened her mouth to say something else, but faded completely before she could. The stone sat inert in Skulduggery's palm.

"A memory," he agreed. His voice was hollow. "A recording of her life, not of her. I appreciate the thought, but I hope it comes with some sort of intangible gift receipt."

That, or Skulduggery could throw it into the sea. At the very least he could stand on a beach and hold the stone out and pretend he was capable of throwing it into the sea.

Was that worse, or better? Hard to say. His wife was dead; even a recording of her would not be quite her, could it, even with what Skulduggery had said about the way Echo Stones were regarded. Raine thought perhaps the worst might be the hope of it, so suddenly raised and dashed. That Skulduggery would have thought to see his wife again, converse with her, and then-- only a memory.

"From what you said, that's not the way Echo Stones usually work." Raine frowned a little, moving on to the practical consideration rather than lingering on the emotional at the moment. "The way it sustains itself shouldn't be possible; what it contains is atypical if not also impossible, in one way or another. I'd guess it's a creation of the Dreaming, not simply something brought here-- though perhaps that's true for the rest of the things we see from our worlds here. Not summoned, simply made from our memories." Maybe, in one way or another, Skulduggery had brought this forth himself, by missing her. Impossible to create a proper Echo Stone, so the Dreaming had... improvised.

All supposition. She fell silent there, well aware that she was filling space with her words, that she was intruding on a loss she had no real way to touch. Raine couldn't quite make herself go, though; maybe it was the uncharacteristic hollowness in Skulduggery's voice. "Would it be better, if it was her?" she asked, quiet. Trying for sympathetic.

In theory, Skulduggery agreed. Or at least, he assumed he did; without the ability to think objectively, he couldn't be sure. It sounded plausible. It also implied the Dreaming was somehow sentient, and that was a frightening thought. Sentient and impressionable never really led to good things when wielded by such a potent power.

"I don't know," Skulduggery said - not for the first time, and probably not for the last. "She died before there were photographs, let alone movies. All I had was a painting, and that was... destroyed." He paused for a moment. "No. It wouldn't be better. I'm not sure why, but it wouldn't be."

He slipped the stone into his pocket and turned to look at Raine, snapping himself out of the trance. "Thank you for your help. I didn't realise I'd be quite so useless, or I wouldn't have asked you to come."

"Useless?" Raine echoed, raising her eyebrows. "Practically speaking, 'useless' is the state in which it's most necessary to have a friend along." Though she could acknowledge such times might also be the times in which one least wanted a friend around to witness that weakness. "If, however, by 'useless' you mean 'emotionally compromised'--"

She broke off there, and the look she gave Skulduggery in return was a little wry. "Dead or not, you're still human," she told him. She thought it obvious, but perhaps he forgot sometimes. "I'd be more worried if you felt nothing." A breath, and then, judging it appropriate, "I'm sorry to have intruded." And, however belatedly, for his loss.

How was it Skulduggery managed to befriend everyone who believed friendship was a cure-all? Granted, most of those friends had gotten the idea from Larrikin, but Valkyrie hadn't. Raine certainly hadn't. Was the idea a universal constant, or was Skulduggery simply that much of a magnet?

She was right about one thing, though, especially in Skulduggery's case. Being upset was scores better than feeling nothing.

Skulduggery dismissed the apology with a little wave of his hand. "You couldn't have known. Unless this was all some intricately elaborate scheme to catch me off my guard, you have nothing to apologise for. Shall we start heading back?"

In fairness to her, Raine had spent a good deal of time in the company of a young woman who believed that people, at their hearts, only ever misunderstood each other, and that every person was only a friend she had not yet met. Who had aggressively befriended an assassin sent to murder her.

Friendship could solve a lot.

"I don't think I could possibly have planned this," Raine said dryly, taking that for what it was. She tilted her head a little to one side, studying Skulduggery like she could divine meaning from his featureless countenance. Finally: "Yes, let's head back. You were saying something about the sea wisps?"

"Ah, yes." Skulduggery led the way back through the narrow lanes between fields which would eventually take them back to the main thoroughfare. "I'm not a scientist, but whatever quality allows them to glow used to allow Asti's shell to glow, too. It should be possible to pinpoint what made the shell stop glowing..."

And so the conversation went, taking them all the way back into the city.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[EVENT|4TH WALL] THE NEWCOMERS’ ARRIVAL | APRIL 15-22

Around the 20th | Closed to Raine

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject