wildestlogs | HEARTSTONE TROLLMARKET ※ CAMP

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HEARTSTONE TROLLMARKET ※ CAMP

HEARTSTONE TROLLMARKET

The Nightrenders and the Sisters stop following their prey once they get some distance into the woods. The protective aura coming from the shelter up north is full of deep protective magic.

It is a strange place. It looks like a massive cavern underground was somehow thrust up through earth and stone, until the roof and one wall cracked and fell in many places, creating a sort of canyon with rounded inner walls. If they look up they'll see a starry band of the night sky through the cracked roof. The rocks clearly crushed some houses and businesses but seem to have finally settled, so it's safe to wander around.

The way the ceiling opened was a source of far more tragedy than the falling rocks, though. When day breaks, they'll see the band of sunlight that cut through this community. Scattered through this band of light are large figures wrapped in sheets and blankets, tied in place with pieces of bright cloth. Little trinkets lay scattered at their feet. If anyone takes one of the blankets off, they'll see the petrified figure of a troll, their stone face forever etched in fear and surprise. It's clear from the cloth coverings and the trinkets that this is a people that cared for their dead, and that had community and family life. Among some of the trinkets are the drawings of children and dolls left for their lost loved one.

Market stalls have been ransacked, house doors are open, with larders of whatever this people ate empty, like the people here left very suddenly. Perhaps they felt the need to leave because of their sudden exposure - their community not thrust on the surface, the walls and ceiling holding back the sun crumbling.

Or perhaps the were nervous because of what was happening to the great crystal at the center of their world: the Heartstone. This great glowing crystal that got folded into the Wilderlands, was the nexus of magical energy of a world, its lifeblood, the beating heart of all magic. It sustained and protected the trolls.

It is cracked and dying. Dimming to a deeper color, occasionally flickering in a way that shows that someday it will dim completely. But not tonight. Tonight its nourishing, protective magic will keep the monsters away and give them some light in the dark. Even without the torches of the trolls, the Heartstone's light causes gems and crystals in the cavern - now a canyon - to glimmer with its protective light.

OOC DETAILS
❧ Quest magic: Players can handwave that the quest bond magic ultimately tugged the group to the Heartstone, eventually teleporting any stragglers to it. Once the group is gathered there, no one can go far without getting teleported back.

❧ Time Period: The mods will set up a top-level for the night they all arrived, and a top-level for players to post their ongoing threads set over the ensuing days. Unless the group decides to leave faster, they will likely stay there for several IC days. (And the mods will probably allow this rest stop to run 1-2 OOC weeks, but will touch base with the playerbase on their preferences.)

❧ NPCing: No npcs are left in Trollmarket - the trolls have abandoned their now unsafe home. However, gnomes can be found wandering the canyon. The gnomes seem sentient, as they clearly speak a squeaky language that just can't be translated, but they're near feral, once the pests of the trolls. They're small, extremely fast, massively strong for their tiny sizes, and love to steal the belongings of bigger people. Groups of them sometimes gang up to carry larger items. They're also aggressive: prone to biting with their pointy teeth, and taking off their pointy caps and leaping at people to stab them with the pointy horns on the tops of their heads.

❧ Supplies: There is no human food in Trollmarket and the remains of any stalls advertising food make that clear. The trollish writing on the signs is translated by translation magic to Sylvaen, the language they've all gained knowledge of. Apparently the trolls liked to eat rocks and various minerals, socks stolen from humans, and cats. Fortunately, the cages from the stalls advertising the last one are empty, and the feral cat colony around Trollmarket makes it clear they weren't taken as emergency rations. (Occasionally there is a great racket as the gnomes and cats go to war.) However, there are resources like course cloth, woolen blankets, and sewing and cobbling materials. There are also leather goods like satchels, packs, and belts. There is rope. And waxy paper that can be used to wrap food supplies.

❧ Weapons: There are weapons that can be found in places, but not many. The trolls were not a peaceful people but they settled most of their problems with simple, non-fatal brawling, rather than anything crueler, only fighting against outside attackers. The few weapons that can be found are very large and heavy, clearly meant for war. They're built for a people that averages 8-10 feet tall and only the strongest and largest among the squad will find them anything but unwieldy. However, there are a few "small" knives of crude metal that can be used as short swords, and metal shields probably used as bucklers, that would work as full shields for normal-sized people.

❧ Forest resources: The woods around Trollmarket are safe, especially if traversed during the day. They're full of potential food, for those that know what to look for. There are wild blueberries, raspberries, and huckleberries, and enough flat, dark rocks to dry fruit in the sun. At the edge of a nearby pond are cattails, with edible roots, and reeds and grasses that can be used for basket-making. Dandelions grow everywhere, with edible flowers and roots, and there are edible marigold flowers. There's ample firewood, pieces of flint (though it takes time to find them), and wild game like deer and rabbits. The trolls' cookware, cutlery, and knives can be used to cook and dress animals, but might be heavy to take along. Water can be found in the pond (though it'd need boiling), or in small, cleaner springs in the woods.

❧ Spells: Archivists will find that there are little springs in the woods that they can draw spells from. The mods will make up random spells for Archivist players that request one.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

“Ah.” Dan laughs and pops a raspberry into his mouth. “Do tell.”

"So he ran into me while I was getting these," Bunny says, of the raspberries, "and we were having a perfectly fine conversation until all of a sudden he started disrespecting my work, then speculating about our sex life."

Why in the world is that a thing he has to say now?

"Well, mine at least." He didn't understand Dean's references enough to truly appreciate the insult. "I told him to ask you. Figured you'd have a better comeback joke than I did. He went away faster and quieter than Price, and he at least enjoyed the gift I gave him, I can give him that."

Dan knows how seriously Bunny takes his work, how much pride and care Bunny puts in, and can envision with perfect clarity how an overgrown child who didn’t have a childhood may start dismissing that work. Bunny’s sense of purpose makes his work excellent. It also exposes a chink in the armor.

“Odds are that in his crapsack world, with his father, Dean ain’t never seen your work up close. He wouldn’t even know what he’s disrespecting. He’s got no concept of it.”

"He asked me if I crapped the eggs out. Not sure it takes formal teaching to tell how I'd take that," Bunny grumbles.

“So ask him if he enjoys his job hunting Casper the Friendly Ghost.” Dan grins, then looks thoughtful.

“In my opinion, folks behaving like Dean does - they ain’t ever had a chance to feel like they had ownership of something. Not their belongings, not their job, it’s all just stuff that they’ve had to make do with. So they don’t handle other people’s things or priorities gently because the idea of having something that’s yours, that you take pride in, that you hold above insult, it’s confusing to them. Foreign.”

He takes a long drag. “Dean didn’t choose to be a hunter. His dad chose it. He don’t know how sacred it is to have purpose and how disgruntling it is to have it trampled on.”

"Casper the who?" the reference goes flying over his head, just like most of Dean's did.

But Dan figures out what, with his explanation, seems the most likely thing by far. Bunny has a little moment of silence as he appreciate's Dan's interpretation of the event, the gentle insight, the practical but kindness of the logic.

"He reminded me of Jack." More now that Dan's put it into words, now that Bunny can think about that in retrospect, apply it to Jack's early interactions with him, when negative attention was still attention and no matter what, Jack could get that from Bunny if he couldn't get attention from anybody else. "More now that you've said that."

And Jack is as much like a little brother to him as anybody can possibly be. His sympathy for Dean, still present, restores a bit. More than his scrapings of sympathy for Price, anyway.

“It’s a cartoon character. I’m just saying if he’s ribbing you you should rib him back.”

That seems to be the kind of language Dean responds to, the haha nothing’s wrong attitude that’s become a comfort zone.

“So be as patient with him as you wish you’d been with Jack.” Dan grinds out his cigarette against the ground then tucks the extinguished butt in his pocket for safe disposal later. He gets up and wraps his arms around Bunny’s waist. He rests his head on Bunny’s shoulder.

"Well that's hard," Bunny grumps, without real heat, as he puts his arm around Dan's back and tucks him into a side hug. He rests his cheek on Dan's head. "It took me 300 years and a few near death experiences to get patient with Jack. I better hurry it up this time."

A little joke at his own expense, as he nuzzle's Dan's scalp.

"You're so good at finding the kindest explanation for everyone," he says, admiring, loving in his tone. Dan knows he loves Dan for that. "Don't any of them ever get under your skin?"

“Most skills get easier the more you use them.” Dan gives Bunny a squeeze, considering how to answer Bunny’s question when all Dan really wants to do is bask in Bunny’s praise.

“Life’s too short and precious for me to spend it taking other folks’ damage personally.” But he does take it personally sometimes. He can’t help it, and then it shows up sometimes when he feels like his competence is being second-guessed.

But kindness is easier when he can remind himself that people’s bad behavior is usually about them, not a reflection on him. It’s usually their pasts and coping mechanisms from pains he’s grateful to not have been privy to. It’s just people shadowboxing without knowing who they might catch with an errant hook.

Edited 2021-11-12 05:36 (UTC)

"Yeah, it is." Too short. It's always too short a time.

Cuddling with Dan in the woods is nice, so Bunny's content to do it for a while. But eventually - "You think I should find Dean and try to make nice, or do you wanna talk to him first?"

"What would you prefer?"

Dan sprawls out on a moss-soft slab of rock, taking some of the pressure off his back, which is still not as mobile or pain-free as he'd like it to be on a day when he's collecting firewood and game meat and potentially responding to threats. He pulls Bunny down to cuddle with him on this soft patch of ground, a nice rare precious find.

"I wasn't a part of the conversation that went south between you two-- unless I was, I reckon. How did our sex life even come into the conversation?"

"I don't know, he brought it up. Made a few references, couldn't even tell you what they were. Something about some guy and a lucky rabbit's foot? Niagara?" Bunny rolls his eyes. "It was the tone that got it across."

He positions himself after Dan's settled, ensuring Dan with his aching back gets the most comfort out of the sun-warmed stone.

"How's your back? Did the hot compress help?"

Early morning, he carried out his plan from the night before. Dan sleeps well past dawn every day. It's always productive time for Bunny to go and do whatever work he wants to get done before Dan wakes, and this morning, that work was finding another troll blanket, boiling some rocks in hot water, and folding the blanket around the hot rocks to leave Dan for a few more hours of sleep with the warm, damp heat on his back, underneath the oversized troll blanket folded over twice.

"I can heat up the stones again before bed tonight if you like."

"Sounds like he was just trying to get a rise out of you." Dan raises his eyebrows, as if to silently tease Bunny with a and apparently he succeeded.

He wraps his arms around Bunny.

"I'd like that very much. It's helping a lot." Dan was worried a few times last night that he'd hurt himself more badly than he could bounce back from quickly, but the combination of the compress and the promise of a few more days to recover has been soothing. He didn't even know what to say when Bunny slipped the compress in behind his back this morning. He doesn't have words for how that type of tender attention makes him feel, how he would repay it every second if he could think of all the ways how. "I'll be back to a hundred percent in no time, with the way you pamper me."

"Well I guess he's happy, wherever he is," Bunny mutters, ruefully. "I'm not tracking him down just to give him more of what he wants if that's it." He realizes he's dipping into a sulk territory, but frankly, he appreciates it when people are - like Dan - just kind as a default. Why go out of one's way to make things worse than they are? They're not as bad as on the Rig, but they're still far from ideal.

Bunny settles into his position supporting Dan, happy to have made a difference in his sense of wellbeing. "That's the idea," he says, gently, breathing in the contentment of a nice sunlit bask with Dan, of being able to make even slow progress towards the better end of Dan all healed up again. "You can get me back next time I get the snot knocked out of me with whatever we fight next."

Goodness but he misses his speed. His fast healing. His not needing to sleep, nice as sleeping with Dan is.

"I'd bet he isn't," Dan says softly. Dean may be satisfied in the short term, sure, at having gotten Bunny to react, but that type of irreverent, needless provocation doesn't usually come from happy people. Happy people get along. Hurt people start shit.

But it's hard to think of anything bad now, when he's warm and in the sunlight and cuddled up with Bunny and still tasting raspberries and menthol on his tongue. "Are you adjusting okay? To having lessened power, for now. I want to know if there's some way I can help."

"I just feel tired and achy all the time. Like when I got that cold back in Monterey."

Bunny mulls over the idea that Dean must be unhappy actually, somewhere, with an unhappiness he doesn't honestly think there's anything for him to do about. Except not rise to his bait in the future, he supposes. Joke about it? About his work? About his private life? Dan is skilled at those things. He guesses if it's practice he needs, it's practice he might be about to get.

"It's hard to complain about when nobody else has the luxury of not feeling this way all the time," he points out, resting his chin on Dan's head.

“You’re allowed to complain to me. I got a tolerance to feeling aches and pains. Ain’t a learning curve like you got.”

Maybe it would be insensitive for Bunny to complain generally, but Dan’s an open landing space for it. He rests his hand on Bunny’s chest, knowing that in the human form Bunny can’t reach anymore, there’s a tattoo there to mark where Dan’s been.

“Just because it’s common don’t mean being mortal is comfortable.”

"Oh, I will. Mark me, I'll complain to you plenty when I have something to complain about."

For now, though, he's warm in the sunshine, cuddled up to Dan, any aches and pains from the strenuous fight a few days before stretched out in the day's foraging.

These magic mirror things have been useful for taking stock of all the kids who did make it here, recently, and checking the network brings up a relevant question - "What can we do about the vampires? I can't just give them berries to eat, and blood doesn't keep easy. One day we might be traveling through a patch of world that doesn't have deer everywhere for them to grab."

Dan was keeping watch on the magic mirror too. “Right, right - that blonde girl who ran screaming from me was on that mirror thing, looking none the worse, and she said she was a vampire. Caroline. And that kid Kevin. There might could be more, too, just waiting until they see how folks react to those two.”

It seems like the schism between vampires and werewolves isn’t exclusive to Dan’s world, and of the openly supernatural here, the werecreatures outnumber the vampires and seem to all know each other.

He pets Bunny’s fur as they snuggle.

“We probably ought to ask them what they need. I’ve had vampires feed on me before in a pinch. It ain’t that bad, but only if the one doing the bloodsucking can restrain themselves. But it might be moot if they got other options or have a plan to store it.” He’s sure whatever thought he and Bunny have given to it, those two kids have many times over.

"I'll ask 'em." He does so, keeping Dan just out of frame. "We can help them work on it at least. You want me to ask if she's all right after being on fire, for you?'

"Yeah, if you could. Pass on my apologies if she thinks it's anything that I did." He settles into being curled around Bunny at such an angle that he can hear the conversation on the mirror and still remain out of frame, eavesdropping.

Bunny passes the question on, gets the reply, and winces hard.

That Dan was the deciding factor in her ring no longer working seems clear to Caroline, and he's not sure why it'd happen, but the why is less important than the up front conclusion.

"Steer clear of her I reckon," he says, checking that Dan's not too upset that a kid thinks getting too close to him almost killed her. They can puzzle over the why next.

Dan winces. “I wonder if it might could be my Mundane blood.”

Usually Dan’s anti-magical properties are just inconvenient and marginalizing, not threatening, but all the magic and powers here are messed up.

“I’m glad she’s alright, at least. Reckon you’re going to have to nurture her for both of us.” Since they’ve agreed that this is what they’re doing.

"I'll give her double the attention." He won't, he already divvies up his attention as best he can under the conditions for every kid that seems like they need it, but he'll bring Caroline's problems to Dan if she's fine with it, will discuss her with him and keep her in mind just a touch more. "I don't reckon I can offer them up any of my blood safely," he adds. He may be underpowered here, but he has solar magic wrapped up in his being allowing him to think and speak and be a person. "Might turn out not to be good for them. It'll be hard to convince others to donate if I don't appear willing myself though."

And he's not known for being good at campaigning.

“You can offer my blood. I’m a universal donor, and we may as well find out now instead of when it’s desperate if the issue is my blood or something else about me or just a freak coincidence. And it’s a gesture of goodwill if you can’t donate yourself, offering up some from your spouse.”

He thinks about the people he knows here, the baggage and the xenophobia and the vulnerabilities. “Reckon we’ll need to find out if they need human blood or if they can take supernaturals too. If it’s just humans, that might could run short of volunteers.”

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