tushanshu_logs | ENDPLOT | BEFORE THE DAWN

ENDPLOT | BEFORE THE DAWN

Characters: ALL!
Date: December 1-7, 2014
Location: Under the shell and in the Dreaming
Situation: Malicant’s defeated, but it seems the Foreigners have gotten a little bit stuck ...
Warnings/Rating: Add warnings as needed.

Where are you going?

What did you do?

Can you hear me?

Hello?

At first the Dreaming twists and warps around the Foreigners, radiating with the sort of unheard shriek that causes adults to wake sweating in their beds. The only problem is--they don’t. Something cracks like a thud in the skin and the surroundings of the turtle’s body dissolves, and their environment changes in a heartbeat between blank greyscale and any familiar environment.

Eventually it settles, but something is wrong. Where before the Foreigners had clarity of thought even in the Dreaming while battling Malicant, at first it feels as though their minds are shrouded, groggy with half-sleep. They might find it difficult to realize where they are--that their most familiar environment, surrounding them now, is not because they've been sent home. They’re still Dreaming, and the Dream is subtle, but can be manipulated and can be shared if they remember their comrades strongly enough. More of them converging in one place will help shed that torpor, leaving them to realize what might be happening...

They’re trapped. Every now and then they hear Eva’s voice speaking, and some of them will even see her in person, walking through their Dream with a trail of grey mist in her wake.

Can you hear me?

Follow me.

If you want to go home, follow me.

[OOC: If you’re intending to canon update your character (even if they just want to return home to "check in") OR if your character is departing Tu Vishan for good, please use Eva’s subheading! If you’re not going to canon update but your character will still try to follow Eva, she will vanish into grey mist and they’ll be unable to follow.

The rest of the log is general "mingling" while the characters who choose to remain in Keeliai are trapped together in the Dreaming. They can share details of their battles against Malicant, try to brainstorm a way to escape the Dreaming, anything they want. They will be aware of the passage of time, though they won't have any concrete way of knowing how much, only that it seems like it's much longer than it should be.

Please see this OOC post for additional information regarding timing and posting during this log, or questions. Thank you! ]

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It was something Cain had come to accept very early into his immortality. There was a lot someone could do with that much time, but there was also the fact that humans simply weren't built to handle having that long to live; their memories were especially fragile considering. It was a balancing act and one that he felt he was handling to the best of his ability. "The death of my brother triggered it," he said softly, then shook his head. That one wasn't easily admitted, but Raine had already seen so much related to it that he didn't feel as twisted up inside as usual to mention it. "But I don't really know the specifics otherwise."

"Half-elf?" His head tilted, regarding her curiously with the new information. That would explain the hair and probably the magic, actually. The only reason he hadn't fully made the connection was because of the... He made a motion up near his ear to indicate where her own ears were hidden by her hair, a light smile on his face. "Pointy ears and all? No, but okay. That would explain a lot."

Raine was beginning to suspect that most things, with Cain, came back to his brother. "Hm," she said, and didn't question the specifics further. She was most assuredly still curious about his state of being, but some of those things that had flickered by... no. It could be let be. "Tell me about your brother? I... presume what was presented was inaccurate."

He just had to bring up the ears, didn't he. "Half-elf, yes," Raine confirmed, and ignored the other question entirely. Malicant had mentioned it, but it wasn't surprising he'd missed it. She'd missed some things, too, in the mess of emotion and confusion. "It's not usually a good thing to be, in my world." She tipped her head a bit in return, herself curious. "Are there elves, or something like them, in yours?"

There was a lot Cain could say to Raine's suspicion. It was certainly true, Abel meant far too much to him and had influenced so many huge things in his life, but that didn't mean he couldn't live without Abel if necessary. Like it had been for most of his life, actually. Maybe he was still in that stage of disbelieving awe that he was getting another chance to actually know his brother again after thousands of years of self-imposed separation. "In a way," Cain allowed with a dip of his head. "It's... hard to explain. He's an Enforcer, been one for a very long time. I mentioned those, right? He's dry like that, but uh... you know, usually not as violent with anyone but runners. He's a really good guy even if he doesn't know what that means."

Cain let himself take that information in stride and adjusted his perception again. He was doing that a lot lately, and it was getting easier and easier every time. Being half-elf for Raine wasn't easy. He wondered why, but knew better than to press for now. "Only fictional," he said, a wry and apologetic smile on his lips. "It's a very popular thing to have elves and sometimes half-elves work as foils to human nature. I'm not gonna presume that's the same when they're real people, but that's how I know about it."

Raine knew the type, more or less. "I believe you mentioned them, yes," she said. She could grasp the meaning of 'runners' from there, given what she recalled he'd said Enforcers did. And she could tell Cain cared for him, very much. Cared, and blamed himself for his brother's death. Rather than anything more prying, she asked, "What's his name?"

And the thought of elves as fictional was a strange one, but once she'd blinked, and realigned that in her head, Raine could, she supposed, see how that might work. "In broad generalizations, perhaps. Elves are long-lived, patient, and more given to scholarly pursuits, where humans live shorter, more violent lives. The Kharlan War, which changed the shape of the entire world, was a human war, and would only have increased that perception of each other. The elves tend to stand apart. And both sides tend to have similar reactions to half-elf children." Her smile was a little wry, not a happy one. "Generalities, stereotypes, yes, and within each race there are of course variations, exceptions to every rule, but in the way they think of each other..."

Good enough for Cain. If Raine understood what he was getting at through contextual clues, that just meant there was less that he needed to explain overall. It wasn't his usual line of explanations, anyway; most people he spoke to about this sort of thing already had the basics down due to their own life experiences. "Abel," he answered after a moment's pause. It wasn't as if Raine was likely to get the reference considering they didn't have the same frame to work from. "That's what he goes by now."

"It's more or less the same idea," Cain surmised. That was definitely interesting, because he had little faith in the ability of people to correctly interpret the nature of something they couldn't possibly experience. That didn't mean he couldn't enjoy the products containing those impossibilities, but the fact that humans in a world without them could predict elves well enough overall had captured some of his curiosity. "You mean the elves refused to participate in that war. How long-lived are they usually?"

He didn't care if asking that made him predictable. Cain had his own interests and there was nothing wrong with pursuing them.

It wasn't something she had any real reference for, but Raine tucked the name Abel away, with the other names and people she had plans to remember even when she was left alone again. There were plenty of them, these days.

"Usually about a thousand years," Raine answered. "Half-elves, nearly that, though fewer of them die of natural causes. And yes, they refused to participate. The war originated in a conflict between two human kingdoms, and it made extensive use of magitechnology, which elves aren't particularly fond of. There may have been exceptions, but it was four thousand years ago, and many of the details have since been lost."

Fascinating, that a nearly completely foreign world had that kind of parallel, if only fictional. Now that the threat of Malicant was over -- hopefully -- perhaps she could make a proper study, surveying the other Foreigners for details of their worlds as well. Even among those few she'd had a chance to talk to in depth, the places and ways in which parallels occurred were surprising.

A thousand years was a long time for an entire culture to live. Much as he wished there were others he could commiserate with sometimes, Cain wouldn't be able to imagine so many people living so long. That was a lot of power to have over another race with such a relatively short lifespan.

"Four thousand?" Whistling in appreciation, Cain then grinned. "That is a long time ago. Hell, I can barely remember what happened two thousand years ago now. Magitechnology, though. Obviously magical-run technology, but did anything make it actually different from regular tech?"

Never let it be said that Cain grew totally complacent in his age. There were definitely new things to discover and learn, or to accept about the way the world changed around him. This was definitely beyond that pale but it was a similar idea. He was getting used to taking things in stride and accepting them as real to someone else, even if he was unlikely to ever experience most of it for himself. It almost felt too normal to have things that he couldn't someday accomplish, just like everyone else, and that feeling itself was going to take the most getting used to.

Raine held off on exactly how long some people in her world had lived, rather focusing on the question about magitechnology. She'd studied it, after all, more than just in passing, and Cain had hit on the very issue that made the war so terrible. "The consumption of mana," she said, nodding. "In my world, mana is the source of life itself-- it's in all living things, from the earth to the people. There was, before the War, a great tree that was the source of it all. I suppose it was such an integral part of the world that no one ever thought about it."

She gestured as she spoke, growing steadily more animated. "When an arte is cast, there's a tiny portion of the mana that, rather than being shaped into something else, is simply consumed. It's small enough that all the elves in the world couldn't hope to outpace the Tree, but when it comes to magitechnology-- it was created by humans, after all, to mimic the magic that they couldn't use, and it had the same effect. And even then that might have been fine, but for the war. Magitechnology grew larger and more powerful and plentiful, and because humans can't feel mana, they couldn't sense that the Tree could no longer match it. Soon the Tree itself began to wither, and fade."

"They induced their own energy crisis." No matter how terrible the actual plight was, Cain couldn't help but laugh at it. Even in a world where apparently the issue could have been avoided for alternate means of easily accessible energy or tools of warfare, humans had fucked up and destroyed their perfect generator. After his laughter died down, Cain shook his head and said, "Sorry. It's not funny... but it is. There's a parallel there to some things going on in my own world right now."

Because Raine would probably be interested to know, Cain continued without prompting. "On Earth, people are facing a lot of difficulty because we've begun to hit the bottom of the well. We use finite resources that produce a good amount of energy, but they also damage the atmosphere in large enough quantities and can be harmful to living things. So it's all going to lead itself into a race to find a way to clean things up and continue living in the same way as we are despite it currently being unsustainable. No one knew the consequences of it until later, when it was way too late to make such a massive shift in lifestyle to turn things around."

She didn't find it particularly funny, even and especially when he explained. Ironic, perhaps, but mostly just sad. "It's a closer parallel than is comfortable," she said in a moment. "When the Tree withered, no one noticed or understood the consequences till too late. Save one person, and the three closest to her, and she was a half-elf, so her warnings went largely unheard. They eventually took... drastic action." Raine shook her head, sighing just a little. "Four thousand years, and only now have we begun to repair what the Kharlan War did. For your world's sake, I hope your people will be able to act positively before anything worse can happen."

The humor came with perspective, or perhaps the large amount of distance Cain had from most of the world's current problems. He wasn't so naive as to think he was better than any of it, but he still remembered what it was like only a short time ago before electricity and engines and everything that currently killed the world in the name of its greatness. Briefly he wondered if Raine would feel the same if she were older yet, and decided against really inspecting the thought. As old as Cain was, there was no way he could observe or predict how anyone else would react to living so long: his own life had been full of extenuating circumstances and he doubted even another immortal would be as messed up by it as he was.

"They've already begun to notice," he allowed. "With what the problem is, though, all of their research is going into how to not make it worse rather than truly finding a solution yet. Buying themselves more time. You say it's finally being resolved for you?"

Possible Raine would have been able to find more humor in it given the distance that years would bring, but many things were still very raw.

"Slowly," she said, nodding. "We managed to finally germinate the Great Seed, all that remained of the Tree. It's just a sapling, and it will be vulnerable for some time, but it has good guardians." And she and Genis would look after it, of course, so long as they lived and remembered, even after the rest of their friends had passed into history. "The political climate is about to become very awkward, I suspect, and possibly hostile, but enough of my friends have some sway in that arena that it shouldn't be unsalvageable. It will take time, and patience, but I believe we can avoid the mistakes of the past."

And make all-new ones, most likely. Still, they'd be hard-put to break the world as thoroughly as first the War and then Mithos had.

Cain began to look around at the village more intently as he learned. He wondered what state of the village this represented in Raine's dreams. What it really was, what she hoped it to be, a mixture with something else that she didn't care to name? It was hard to tell when they were in the influence of their own subconscious. Still, Iselia was somewhere he didn't mind being no matter what it was made up of at the time.

"As long as the political climate doesn't endanger the tree, I doubt there's much to worry about for a while," he agreed. "In the sense of putting the whole world at risk again, I mean. To be honest, you've probably got more patience than I do if you're willing to stick it out that long."

To Cain's scrutiny, the village looked almost rounded off at the corners. Softened, almost, with a warmness like an idealized pastoral scene. Iselia as it could have been, maybe, or a composite of all the best memories with the worse tucked away farther beneath the surface. It was clear, in any case, that Raine thought kindly of the place.

"I don't think there's enough active magitechnology left to endanger it," Raine said, after some thought. "With the world flourishing again, and Sylvarant and Tethe'alla no longer separated, it will bear watching. But-- yes. It should be safe. For a time."

The glance she slanted over at him at his last sentence was a little bemused. "Perhaps that's true," she allowed after a moment, "but someone has to."

A softened version of the world was all right with Cain. He could do with soft after the time he'd been having not only in the Dreaming but before that, being ripped away from his brother and in a stupid stalemate even earlier than that. It was a moment to rest, and Cain wasn't going to feel guilty for admitting he needed that.

"Separated?" he asked. Separated could mean a lot of things, but somehow Raine's tone was implying something much more than what he wanted to assume. "Yeah, but that someone doesn't have to be you. That's all I meant."

"It doesn't have to be, no, but my brother and I are among those in the best position to make sure the mistakes of the past are neither forgotten nor repeated." This Raine answered almost absently, already moving on to the other question. That was a complex piece of work, especially with so little context for her world.

"I mean it literally," she said at length. "When the Tree died, Mithos split the world in two. The two kingdoms that had caused the Kharlan War became two worlds, intertwined with each other as shadow and light are, with the Great Seed in the place between them. Within a century or two, each had nearly forgotten the other's existence. Only recently did that become common knowledge again." And even then, common knowledge wasn't quite the exact truth, and she doubted it ever would be.

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ENDPLOT | BEFORE THE DAWN

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