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wildestlogs2021-11-09 09:35 pm
wildestmods) wrote in wildestlogs2021-11-09 09:35 pm
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.
❧ 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.
no subject
"Sarah Kerrigan." She starts back towards the trunk, unhurried movements silent in the darkness as she places each hand and foot carefully. Hastings went a few meters higher than she did, she thinks, based on the sounds and the feel of her mind. That far up, the branches get too thin for Kerrigan's purposes—she wants to be able to edge far enough out to be able to keep an eye on the camp.
Which would be a lot easier if her IR visor was working.
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"Spencer Hastings." She starts to wiggle out of her cocoon a little, like an oversized, clumsy, very unimpressive moth. Or a silkworm. A flea. What's the least glamorous type of creature that comes out of a cocoon? Spencer relates to that.
"Look, I don't mean any harm, I just thought this was the safest place to sleep, so um..." Spencer considers. If she just dropped, suddenly, undid her belts and plummeted straight downwards along the trunk, that would get her out of Kerrigan's reach or knock Kerrigan down with her, but it would likely end in injuries. And Kerrigan isn't acting aggressive, although peering down through the leaves, Spencer realizes she doesn't know where in the tree Kerrigan is anymore. "Are you watching everyone go get radiation poisoning from that glowing rock? Or whatever it's doing?"
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She's not clear on what a prom dress is, exactly—seems to be in the neighborhood of a ball gown, but...for kids? She's getting that Hastings is younger than she is, maybe still a teenager. Sound self-preservation instincts, at least, which puts her one up on the presumed adults wandering around ignoring a world full of unfamiliar risks like they're at a campground in their hometown.
"Rad poisoning, magic mind control, mutation..." She's about halfway back to the trunk, prioritizing silent movement over speed despite her willingness to chat. "Can't believe everyone's just setting up camp like it's normal."
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Then again, people who want to hurt Spencer often aren't threatening, until they are.
"I'm pretty sure they're all behaving as if everything's normal because they know more about this than we do." Than Spencer does. "And they want to keep us from panicking and going against the grain for whatever they might have planned."
Does that sound paranoid? Probably. Spencer thinks that three weeks of being kidnapped and tortured in a massive dollhouse after years of being stalked and anonymously bullied have earned her that right.
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"Uh." She wonders what to say to that. "I think they're probably just being careless. That dust-up at the fair would have been hard to plan." Trust her. She has planned some dust-ups in her day.
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Spencer realizes she sounds loopy. She sounds like Mona. But she doesn't know this woman from Adam and things have been so disorienting that she's fallen back into the posture that the last few years have made her default: suspicious, afraid, agitated.
"Besides, the dust-up at the faire looked coordinated between the two women with masks."
no subject
"There were two hostile forces," she says with decisiveness, on firm ground there after a lifetime in the military. Shifting her rifle around, she settles against the trunk, letting one leg dangle. "The women commanded the smoke monsters. Those weird twitchy things were operating on their own. Both were after the unprotected group. Someone either bought off the 'winter fairies' who were supposed to be running security, or they got wind of what was coming and decided they didn't want any part of it."
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"Do you think the women with the...smoke things, were completely independent from the twitchy ones?" Nothing in Spencer's life is ever random. It's all been carefully orchestrated. "And do you think a fairground, you know, cheap ale, lots of children playing, enough people roleplaying that a few screams wouldn't go noticed at first, was a setup to feed us straight to the enemy?"
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"They were working at cross purposes. The sisters wanted to capture and the other things were trying to kill." She sighs and lets her head fall back against the trunk. "The fairground wasn't the right terrain for an ambush—too open. Either they hit us as a target of opportunity, without time to plan, or both sides are so incompetent they'll be easy to counter in the future."
Kerrigan doesn't know what to do with the paranoid ideas Hastings is proposing, and the even more paranoid ones she's only thinking. "Yeah, you could assume it was all a setup. I can't prove otherwise. But why? That's a lot of effort to chase some people into the woods."
no subject
This is what soothes Spencer's fried nerves, being able to hear someone explain to her the very reasonable, very rational, very experienced reasons that Spencer's overreacting. It's not just that she wants to believe Kerrigan; she actually feels like believing Kerrigan would be founded.
"I didn't wake up until it was already dark. It was hard to tell what was going on." That reminds Spencer - she reaches into her hair and tugs some twigs and straw out. She hasn't combed her hair in almost four weeks, and it means she's carrying the last few days of trials and tribulations on her head. "And then when I tried to go anywhere but north, I started blacking out and ending up right where I started or running into a wolf."
Which excuses at least some bit of her incomplete knowledge, but Spencer hates having incomplete knowledge about anything.
"I don't think anything good can come from assuming they're incompetent, even if it's possible." She sighs. "I don't pretend to know why someone might manipulate others like this. That's a question for philosophers and criminologists."
no subject
Since it doesn't make much difference, Kerrigan closes her eyes. She wishes some of her teammates from the Rig were here. All right, she mostly wishes Garviel were here. His home universe didn't sound like a place worth being, really. Chalk up another one for caring about people being a bad plan. Every time she does it, something goes badly wrong.
"Anyway, I think I hit that same...perimeter. Got a certain distance out and suddenly I was back where I started, no matter which direction I headed." She huffs out another sigh, exasperated this time. "No wolves, though."
no subject
She undoes the other belt and clambers onto a large branch, folding up the blanket that held her moments ago and tucking it into a fork in the trunk, which is also balancing her other pilfered supplies: a half-full waterskin, an empty leather bag for carrying things, her high-heeled shoes that she got stuck with when she arrived here, some lengths of thin rope, anything that looked useful to swipe or save in her small journeys outside her arboreal refuge. There's no food. She hasn't eaten anything but a few stray berries and fungi - thank goodness she got her Mushroom Identification badge in Girl Scouts - since she got here, too scared of the others to try and cooperate with them in hunting down anything substantial.
She reaches an arm down and tries to brush away the branches to peek at the last place she heard Kerrigan's voice, hoping to put a face to the person she's talking to.
no subject
She feels more than hears Spencer moving to peep down at her through the leaves. Ghost armor isn't meant as camouflage—the designers had assumed a ghost's psionic abilities would take care of that—and in the gloom its pale gray reflects what light there is, making Kerrigan resemble her namesake, even if the scary type of ghost doesn't tend to be sprawled along a branch, one dangling leg swinging idly. Despite not being able to see anything herself, Kerrigan looks up at the spot from which she knows she's being observed, and waggles the fingers of one hand in a wave.
no subject
For whatever reason, it's the leg swinging, so casual and unaggressive, that relaxes Spencer most. She doesn't take comfort in the fact that Kerrigan's a woman - after all, women have been just as instrumental as men in driving Spencer off the deep end - but she does take comfort in the fact that Kerrigan is no longer approaching.
For lack of any more fitting response, she waves back.
no subject
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Maybe it's easy for her, here up a tree and not contributing anything, with no military strategy expertise besides reading lots of Sun Tzu and furiously studying Constantine the Great when that was her passing obsession, for her to think that they should at least have a perimeter of armed people setting up barricades or cover in case the nightrenders have followed them here. But it still seems like they're incredibly unprotected.
Her stomach growls loud enough that she's surprised it doesn't wake the camp.
"So, uh. Ms. Kerrigan. You wouldn't happen to have any food you'd be willing to part with, would you?" Spencer doesn't want to eat anything she hasn't seen prepared, but Kerrigan found her by accident rather than design, it seems. That reduces the chance of being poisoned.
itt: EATIN' BUGS
Wait.
"They don't taste good, but they're full of protein," she clarifies. Kerrigan is not a picky eater, and she hopes Hastings isn't, either. In a survival situation, you can't be. "Rule of thumb, animals are less likely to be poisonous than plants are, but don't eat anything that looks diseased."
no subject
So, that's a yes. Spencer fully disentangles herself from her nest; the branch under her groans, but stays solid.
"I'm going to climb down now. Do you mind...would you watch my back and shout if anyone approaches me?"