and all the sinners, saints, and winners [September, catchall, OPEN]

[ruinsprofessor]

Characters: Raine Sage or China Sorrows, and you! [open]
Date: September
Location: assorted: notably, Healer’s Guild, Fire Sector, Earth Sector.
Situation: assorted, open-ended
Warnings/Rating: obligatory mention of China's magic, which can't help but come up; minor violence in the thread with Cain and China.

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Raine

A; open; the Guild; most mornings and afternoons;

As Raine is anticipating disaster, she spends more and more time at the Guild leading up to the Chihuelans’ presence. Even after they’re gone, she’ll be relatively easy to find here.

Sometimes she’ll be at the desk in the front hall, taking her turn handling people walking in the door like the rest of the healers and students. In such cases she usually has a book open in front of her, and is usually frowning. When she’s not immediately apparent, any of the kedan who also work there will be able to direct someone looking for Raine to her office, a small room deeper in the Guild, notably ornamented with an ever-increasing number of notebooks and a single extra chair.

She’ll often seem lost in thought; barring screaming and blood, it may take her a few moments to focus on the person in front of her.

B; open and/or Duke?; Earth Sector; pre-Chihuelans;

Some few early evenings, it's possible to find Raine in a small park a little ways from the place she and Solomon live; she often takes her practical arte work outside, when she has any in mind. Lately, though, she’s been taking these infrequent occasions more to just sit in peace-- it looks rather like she’s meditating, in fact, save perhaps for the pale glow around her hands.

Though her eyes are closed, she will look up as soon as anyone comes within twenty to thirty feet, focusing on the person as the glow fades. “Did you need something?”

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China

C; open; Fire Sector; most times of the month;

It’s not difficult to track down China Sorrows, if you’re putting your mind to it; she doesn’t make a secret of where she lives, and she stands out regardless. Most people in the area can direct the asker to the place where the too-beautiful Foreigner lives. In this case it’s in one of the nicer areas in Fire, a place she’s spent a good deal of time warding and is now almost entirely comfortable in.

Previously during the summer, she was doing work with sigils on the door, inscribing intricate designs in primarily circular patterns for a day or two. Those are all invisible now, leaving only unremarkable door and walls and windows.

It is still most advisable to knock.

D; open; College campus; specifically during the Chihuelan visit;

China does not manage inconspicuous well, but her network of informants is still not what it was. Thus, there are days when she’ll find herself a bench or a fountain’s edge or something equally useful to sit on, and watch the comings and goings from the College from one direction or another.

Not obviously, of course, she always has her head bent over some paper or book and she’s always arrayed in that elegantly artless way that suggests she just happens to be in the perfect light, but she hasn’t taken up a sudden interest in craftswork.

People stop to look at her, but most of them manage to restrain the urge to throw themselves at her feet. Once in a while someone stops to talk to her; if it’s not someone with a useful piece of information for her, China is much less inclined to smile.

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[ooc; so it looked like, overall, no specific starters were necessary, but if you want to plot or want something I have not produced drop me a pm or a plurk at makaricrow. I'm always happy to adapt. c:]

Comments

[ruinsprofessor]

One thing, to think he had helped the matter; another entirely, to be informed Cain had been a king. Raine blinked at him, speechless for a moment, and put her fork down.

She could see it, briefly. Then he was only Cain again-- but only Cain still encompassed multitudes.

"Would you prefer it to stay that way?" she asked after a moment's thought, regaining her composure. And, when she'd had an opportunity to continue a little further: "'Rome' doesn't sound much like Cain." It was oblique, but still a question.

[insertdadjoke]

"Because Cain is a pseudonym," he said easily enough. "Or an alias, however you want to put it." He'd never claimed it was actually his name, just something he preferred to go by and that was nothing less than the truth. Tricky wording, yes, but words were generally easy to play with after having so long to learn them. "My real name is Romulus."

Returning to her earlier question, Cain paused, thought about it, then shook his head. "It doesn't bother me all that much, but bringing it up here would likely just cause more trouble than it would solve. There's literally no way to prove I'm telling the truth, after all," he said. Not that he would lie about that, but he wasn't going to assume everyone might take him at his word.

[ruinsprofessor]

"In some cases, the wild nature of the story would actually increase its credibility," Raine said thoughtfully. "Most people with any experience, after all, would prefer to tell a lie that would be believed." But it wasn't the sort of thing that would be necessary to bring up, either, and, as he said, it would cause more trouble than it solved. Not worth lying about, but not worth raising.

Romulus. Hm. Raine gave that a little thought, too, considering Cain. But he'd said he preferred Cain, back then, and evidently he wasn't in the habit of using the name he was born under. It made sense, even if layer after layer of pseudonym made her a little uneasy. In a moment she just nodded, and moved past it to think about later. "Romulus. I see." And her attention was back on the map. "There are a few other places that are of interest to me at the moment, if you wouldn't mind pointing them out." And a small, wry smile. "You can likely guess which." She knew she was not subtle.

[insertdadjoke]

"Something stranger than fiction," Cain agreed. She had a point and yet there were just too many variables to actually make it viable. To some, it would be seen as a grab for power and others might consider him delusional. Many might believe him, but it would be of no help without any resources with which to garner any power enough to make a difference. "So out there that it has to be true."

Pseudonyms were a necessity of Cain's life. He didn't so much as create something new every time he took one, but decided which part of himself to indulge in; every identity was another part of the whole that made up Cain, who he was right now in Keeliai. It was the only way to really survive in a world where he simply couldn't keep existing in static for the rest of his life.

"Right, I get you," he said. Shifting to set the sandwich down and place a hand underneath the map and the pen over top of it, Cain lightly filled in the island country northwest of Europe. Ireland he wrote beside it, once again in the Elven he had been learning. "This is where Solomon and all the rest are from. Their accents are a dead giveaway to this particular region of the world," he added, his own accent shifting from American to Irish just to emphasize the point.

[ruinsprofessor]

"Granted, it's not a perfect metric, but it's a start." And in any case, Raine believed him and didn't intend to bandy the matter about, so the matter was more or less academic. She took up her half of sandwich instead, and continued to watch, intent, as Cain filled in Ireland.

He had predicted her. Ireland. She knew something of it, of course, that was unavoidable, but it was something different, seeing the entire shape sketched out and put in relation to the rest of Earth. "I take it then that English has evolved different ways in different locations?" Raine asked, curious. Their common tongue, evidently close enough to English itself, had been prevented from changing overmuch by the linked nature of the two worlds, and Cruxis' involvement. "How many languages are there, across Earth?" With such a large scale, she wouldn't be surprised if there were quite a few.

[insertdadjoke]

"Still, it'll probably end up more useful than not in the coming times," Cain said with a somewhat rueful smile. With all of the confusion over the Chihuelans on their way, it was not hard to imagine someone might have to step up and be a voice of leadership or reason. He had really just been hoping to avoid that.

Of course he had predicted her. Her boyfriend was from a place she had never heard of before, never had the concept of it until now, and a boyfriend was probably the closest relationship one had in a place like this. It would be the first thing Cain would want to know, after all. "Yes," he said. "It's become something of a global language after American grew and became a super power in the world so even countries that don't have it as a native language still learn it. Which... there's nearly countless languages," he said with a shrug. "Some dead by now, some still evolving. Different people, times and cultures all changing and modifying how they communicate. Thousands, at the least. I've spoken a lot of them but only keep around forty really at hand nowadays."

[ruinsprofessor]

If he'd founded the city with such principles that it survived? Yes, Cain's skill in that location very much might become useful. Raine nodded agreement.

"I have to wonder if something similar would have been the case, had our world been allowed to grow naturally," Raine said aloud, not quite a simply idle wondering. "Some things remain, of course, and the evolution in certain forms is easy to see, but for the most part..."

She shook her head, looked down at the map again. Italy, and Ireland. "And Egypt?"

[insertdadjoke]

"Now you'll have the chance to see," Cain said with the tone of a polite observer. It wasn't anything he would get to experience in her world, but he'd already seen it dozens of times over. This was the natural progression of humanity left to their own devices and he had no doubt Raine's world would start upon the same path now that their dictator had been overthrown. "Whether it will evolve that way or not. It can't stay the same if there's no centralized organization anymore."

Egypt? Cain raised a brow, the connection being made immediately, and he shifted downward below Italy to mark the country as it existed today. "Egypt. Definitely oldest of the three so far."

[ruinsprofessor]

"Yes," Raine agreed. "I will." It sounded almost wistful, just for a moment; after all, to watch the world change over the sort of time involved, she would also outlive most of her friends. But even so, she wanted to see Aselia have that opportunity to grow. "I'm sure new authorities will evolve in its wake -- the Church still exists, even if Cruxis is now defunct -- but from here, it's impossible to tell. Things must change."

And then, the focus on Egypt. "How old?" Raine wanted to know. "I know Bakura's time was in excess of three thousand years ago, so far as your 'modern' era is concerned, but he gave the impression Egypt had been relatively well developed for a while."

[insertdadjoke]

That wistfulness was something Cain knew well, had experienced many times over. It was almost easy to forget that someone who had time didn't understand that, that they call started somewhere. However, Cain was mindful as he could be about it in the face of what should have been impossibilities. "Whether the Church exists or not, it's a different entity now. I can only imagine other entities are going to start vying for recognition any day, as well, to fill the void."

"That depends on who you believe or what sources you look at," Cain said with a tilt of his head. History had not been the easiest thing to chronicle the further one went back and for things older than Cain, even he couldn't have all the answers. It had been impossible to know what information would be important to keep and what he could let slip through. "General consensus is that Egypt was formally founded near to five thousand years ago, over two thousand years before my time. So: very old."

[ruinsprofessor]

"Almost certainly." Raine nodded, having moved past wistful to brisk in only a few moments. "It would be impossible for them not to, I assume. A great deal will depend of course on how much knowledge is disseminated to the wider populace." That was still up for debate, likely as soon as time resumed at home.

"Then Bakura would have been from a -- kingdom? -- that was already quite ancient," Raine said, brows raised. It fit -- with the weight of tradition, with some of the way he spoke, sometimes -- but this was proper confirmation. "I see. It's a warmer country, isn't it?" She smiled over at Cain, a little wry; she knew she was straying from what he'd initially wanted to show her, and more regarding Egypt and Ireland could be teased out of their respective denizens, most likely. "I do want to hear more of Rome, as well."