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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.

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He's confused about recognizing her? She only has one shape! If Kerrigan weren't a telepath it would have been a coin toss whether Alloran got a knife in the eye.

"What the hell." Too tired to make that into even a rhetorical question, she sighs and starts to edge down the branch towards him, careful to make sure it can support her weight. "Let's get you out of there."

Kerrigan can't claim to be a fan of non-humans, but at least she hasn't spent a lifetime being outright indoctrinated into xenophobia like certain space marines of their common acquaintance. Alloran had always struck her as alien in all meanings and she'd avoided him generally, but not from a fully conscious decision. Neither is it a fully conscious decision to aid him now—he's trapped, in pain, and needs help, and her response comes automatically, even a lifetime of abuse not enough to make a telepath callous.

The bird instincts really want to flare threateningly and brandish his beak at Big Unfamiliar Tree Predator coming closer, but Alloran has them underhoof now. This is embarrassing but not in the top fourteen stupidest predicaments he's ever been in, not unless he leaves out everything Esplin carried him unwillingly into. If he does, it's probably about number eleven, defeated by that time as a cadet when he gave himself a close haircut trying to impress a girl and nicked himself and still had to report to duty the next day.

 He's got the vague idea that he can extricate himself by partially demorphing. Andalites are very not made for trees and that's risky, but literally nothing that happens to his body matters as long as he can focus enough to morph. That's knowledge that carries a lot of despair even when Esplin has been absent for over a year. No matter how mangled he gets or how close to death, inside of two minutes he's useful again. <...I would appreciate assistance,> he says, forcibly redirecting his thoughts. <If it's safe for you.>

This is something he likes about humans, that many of them will default to kindness. It makes them seem less inexplicable and alien. An Andalite not completely poisoned in the mind would also want to help a bird, and not just because they see this particular species as beautiful.

Relax, Alloran's bird brain—humans haven't been fully arboreal for millions of years. Kerrigan's a much better predator on the ground. Bipedalism and thumbs are pretty scary, though.

"Don't worry, I will absolutely let you fall if it comes to that," she says dryly, remembering Alloran's ability to heal by shapeshifting. Studying the branches entangling him, she draws one of her many knives and flips it around in her hand with a much-practiced gesture so she can use its serrated reverse as a saw.

"Did you hit that stupid invisible perimeter?" she asks as she starts in on one of the problematic branches. "I don't remember you being able to teleport."

<It's better to fall as a bird than as a human. Hollow bones, and maybe I can open some wings on the way down,> he says, looking up at Kerrigan and matching her tone. The sawing motion jars the branch repeatedly and makes leaves rustle.

Alloran extends his long head on his flexible bird neck - he's got a three part beak that just opens to an airway, his bird mouth is in his chest, Andalite animals are just like that - to see if there's anything he can contribute. Between the angle and the throbbing in his ribs it's hard to tell, plus he's not that experienced with this morph. He tries plucking at and removing some of the leaves that make it harder to see exactly what's happening here.

<I was trying to determine the bounds of it. It seems to be somewhat flexible rather than a hard limit, such that I wonder if it's geographical at all. Previous dislocations weren't as jarring as this one.> Possibly because his bird overlay managed to navigate him out of getting stuck in any other trees he's suddenly encountered.

A bit of memory clicks - right. Kerrigan's a true telepath. Higher than Leeran-level, Alloran's forgotten most of how Andalites measure these things but he knows that much. He's not really happy about the thought but is immediately resigned to it. At least she isn't going to make him track down and eat people and doesn't have a specific horrible complex about Andalites, or it would have come up already.

Edited 2021-11-25 02:44 (UTC)

"Aliens are harder to understand, if that helps," Kerrigan says with studied neutrality, working away at the branch. "But surface thoughts are like overhearing a conversation. I can't not do it."

Wait. Alien.

"Uh. Humans can't turn off our ears the way we can close our eyes. In case that's...a thing you can do."

Nailed it.

Leerans can disengage from their psychic senses - he's had to sit through meetings about it while infested, that Leerans could be infested themselves had been a nightmare for the Yeerk hierarchy and all its sordid secrets - but that amphibious people is very far from human, so after a moment he dismisses the idea that she's lying.

<I'm sure this is an awkward conversation you've had to have several times,> he says with dry self-consciousness. He can also project output that's received as emotion, a process he considers something like 'singing' and 'listening to song'.

"Less than you'd think," she says with a sigh, twisting at the green wood to pull it clear of Alloran. "Everyone where I'm from knows what telepaths can do, but they mostly think we're an urban legend. When they find out I'm real, they steer clear all on their own."

The Rig was the first time a group had just...gone with it. Only a handful had reacted with the angry or fearful distrust she'd been expecting. It had made the whole experience even more surreal.

"I'd think people'd be more worried about that tail you've got in your normal form." Who cares about telepathy when evolution gave the thing you're talking to a built-in knife-whip?

<Ah.> He’s taken aback. Alloran is used to the idea of psychic ability having a physiological basis - his thought-speech is possible through specialized organs, which are miniaturized and duplicated in morph so he can still speak as a bird or a human. It seems like it would be difficult to both have this ability and have it be rare.

Tailblades certainly aren’t, for Andalites. Alloran, like everyone, was trained extensively since childhood in tail discipline. Society functions poorly when prey instincts to lash out when upset or frightened go unregulated.

<You would imagine so. I downplayed what I’m capable of while on the Rig, both my tailfighting aptitude and my morphing repertoire, but it’s not as if I could hide that I have some of both.> He can, and has, morphed large monsters and torn humans apart, or cut heads and limbs from bodies before they noticed his tail starting to move - he can’t avoid the knowledge while mentioning the ability. <Please note that I’ve only ever killed one human of my own accord, to spare her the situation I was living under.>

A ripping, cracking sound heralds the demise of the branch Kerrigan's been destroying, and whatever she's going to say gives way to the task at hand. Saved by circumstance—she wasn't sure how to respond, anyway.

"I think if I pull this one back you can clear a wing." She lets the cut branch fall to the forest floor with a rustle and a thump and pries a second limb away from Alloran. Her concealment's already blown.

Edited 2021-11-26 02:57 (UTC)

Some of these wings have clawed digits on them and can do double duty as legs or, in a pinch, as arms. This bird's approximation of being any bird of Earth is a lot like an Andalite's approximation of being an antelope; it might be the closest living fit, but there are a lot of differences, some major.

He jostles and tucks all of his wings in tight, then extends one to grip a lower branch and pull, extending his neck to bite with his three-part beak so that can join the effort. With Kerrigan's help and a great deal of rustling he manages to dislodge and even not to fall out of the tree, though that definitely takes some scrambling on his part before he can perch and do a little bit of bird-instinct preening.

It's really tempting to just fly away and not have this kind of conversation at all. Glide away, really, he's managed to injure this fragile morph but he could power through the pain. It's probably better he doesn't. He's enjoyed no one knowing those things and worse for over a year but there's no undoing them. Also, it would be childish to avoid the subject that way.

<Thank you. I wasn't aware you were here,> he says, so there's an option for a topic change. Oh yes, he's a bastion of maturity.

Kerrigan scoots back on the branch to give him some room while he arranges his feathers with that odd tripartite beak. She's a pro at not talking about difficult topics. Or any topics, really. She's not very social. Plus, telepathy lets her realize Alloran's no more interested in hashing out the subject than she is. She'll happily take that topic change opening.

"I wasn't expecting to run into any familiar faces." So to speak. She can't call his current face familiar. "But I guess more than one of us coming out of that portal in the same place isn't too much of a surprise. It's not like Stuff effects ever made sense before."

Explaining his war crimes was difficult enough with Saturday, whose reaction had raised the unsettling prospect that maybe he's not the worst person around. At least Kerrigan's not going ah, you got possessed by hostile aliens, that's something to want you dead for.

 It's preposterous to think of Stuff spread across space and changing the positions of the stars. Space is big, and while Stuff has uncomfortable elements of the Time Matrix to it, it actually has to touch something to work on it. <Were you here for the flight from that festival and the arrival of those masked humans and singing monsters?>

They sing something like what Esplin always made him sing, the warsong of radiating power and dread, but amplified to a sickening degree and promoting a wider range of stronger reactions.

"'Singing?'" Kerrigan echoes, cocking her head as she tries to sort his thoughts into a framework she recognizes, reading Alloran's mind like hearing an unfamiliar accent. At least he's spent a lot of time around humans, or it would be even harder. "I didn't hear them singi—oh, the emotional projection."

That'd be a 'yes' on the festival, then.

"They were vulnerable to emotions on the opposite side of the scale," she adds, having no other way to categorize Aziraphale's holy magic, "but I'm not sure I can project strongly enough to cancel it out. I've never tried to do an area effect like that."

A lot of the things Alloran says have best-fit translations. There is some sound-based Andalite music but song is all about projecting emotion and imagery. He's aware that to humans certain kinds of noise are music and certain vocalizations are singing, or its equivalent.

He makes an awkward birdy attempt at a nod. this time he uses a word that for him is a simple handsign and that comes across as a mash of syllables, and which means something like 'thought-voice', that covers speech and song - <easily enough but it's possible for a listener to learn to ignore its effect. Still, I wonder if it's not the singing of that stone underground that keeps the 'nightrenders' at bay here.>

They're too far out here in the woods for him to pick it up and there are definitely things in its 'song' that don't match what he's thinking of, but Alloran reaches for explanations closer to home before leaping out into the void that is speculating about, sigh, magic.

"Yeah, whatever it is, it's definitely projecting emotions," Kerrigan agrees with a much less awkward nod. "But I don't know if that's the intent, or a side effect. I didn't want to get anywhere near it."

Hence being up a tree at the very edge of her magically-enforced leash, like a totally normal person.

"Could be doing something to your minds, could be giving you radiation poisoning." Kerrigan shakes her head. If Alloran feels like he's being judged, it's only because he is.

He just doesn't want to be underground. The market space isn't that much like a Yeerk Pool cavern - really, the only similarities are that they're both vast and have an assortment of sub-buildings and cages are involved - but he'd imagined with vivid clarity the oily-sweet smell of the Pool and the sound of screaming, and it had been such an intense relief to be able to stop and walk right back out into the open air.

<Regardless, you should know there are others who were on the Rig here.> Back at the fair he'd considered taking a flying morph and broadcasting in wide-ranging thought-speech about meeting up. Probably should have held that thought tighter. <Among them are Saturday, Stacia, Dan Sagittarius...> Ah. Right. He doesn't know a lot of names, but she's a telepath, maybe that will work. Alloran pictures the others he's recognized clearly, one at a time. If this doesn't work he'll sing images of them.

This isn't like sharing photographs. Since he struggles with facial identification there's something odd about them. It's not that they're blurred or missing features, there's just a vagueness and confusion there. Besides that, he's an alien and focuses on different things, so among other things, while he thinks of male and female, they're not the same solid, one-of-the-first-things-you-determine categories she might be more used to, and there's a suggestion of finding all their eyes tiny and deep-set, all their noses ugly.

He's seen a number of these people at a distance or through a mirror but he did also speak to one of them, one of the two huge men carrying swords, at night while on watch.

"Huh, that's a lot of us," Kerrigan says, her eyes going glassy as she switches the bulk of her attention from the physical to the psychic world. "I don't think Dan really wanted to go home, and Saturday and Stacia's universes didn't sound all that great, either."

She sorts through the memories of the people to whom Alloran can't attach names, trying to match his mental images with her own. Tenten and Kenzie have too few distinguishing traits for an identification, at least when filtered through an alien's face blindness, but most of the rest give her something to work with.

"The one with darker skin is probably Price. Cammie's the one with the mechanical bunny ear implants. The actual bunny is, uh, Bunny. Catra has brown fur and ears on top of her head too, but her ears are smaller and she's shorter than Bunny. The big guy with the sword is Guts, and—" she cuts herself off with a sharp inhale as she recognizes the other big guy with a sword, blond hair paired with heavy white armor a distinctive combination even without Alloran having much ability to tell humans apart. "Garviel!"

His universe had sounded like an absolute garbage fire as well, but he'd wanted so badly to return and fulfill his oaths that she feels selfish for the excitement welling up in her at the realization he's here along with the others.

Decades ago Alloran had enough training in psychic 'song' that he can hold a series of images clearly in the surface of his mind, all the better to share them. Between faceblindness and his being an alien it's definitely some work for her, but these pieces of memory are offered up easily instead of having to be searched or dug for. And it is enough like he's just sang them that Alloran can get his discomfort at having his thoughts reacted to underhoof and doesn't squirm.

It's actually very helpful to hear these people identified by features he's able to recognize. Various of these names are ones he's heard before. They just didn't stick. Alloran blinks his four birdy eyes as Kerrigan exclaims over one of them.

<Your friend,> he says, because while Alloran has absolutely no awareness of their relationship he has seen them standing together before and it's a reasonable guess. <...He was very uncomfortable when I spoke to him.>

Which was partly the 'xenos' thing but it was about the thought-speech too.

Yes. Friend. Certainly nothing closer. That would be shockable. No canoodling occurring here!

"Yeah, he doesn't trust aliens," Kerrigan agrees with a sigh. "Or psychic powers. He's had it rough, and I get the feeling his universe is an even bigger mess than mine. That's saying something."

She herself doesn't trust aliens, at least in the aggregate. Over the course of this conversation, any individual animus she'd felt for Alloran has been eroding away as she begins to see him as an individual rather than a faceless representative of a foreign threat. He's not infesting people or saturation-bombing inhabited planets. He's just someone who's been through hell and gotten all tangled up in the process, like everyone else.

He can't blame anyone for distrusting Andalites and him specifically. It's probably the correct response, even if he did put his tail in to keep his people from doing any of a number of terrible things to Earth after the Animorphs freed him. It's just also incredibly tiring to deal with when it's that blatant and hostile.

<You should go speak to him, then. I'm sure he'll be pleased to see you.> Alloran's distasteful of the man but not to the point of wanting to sabotage his life, or whatever. It occurs to him now that Garviel - yeah, he's just going to think of him by his first name now - is one of the most immediately identifiable former New Hires in the area and if Kerrigan hadn't been aware of him before that has to mean she's been avoiding the group, or possibly just the cave, entirely. <Have you been out here alone?>

Is that safe? Sure, she can take care of herself, but even Alloran, who's been into the cavern once for about three minutes, is sleeping easier with the knowledge that someone - not Kerrigan's friend, who'd probably be quite happy if he was eaten by something - is keeping watch.

"Yeah?" Kerrigan looks at Alloran like he's grown a second head, which, while within the realm of possibility for him, would still be something of a surprise. "I don't trust magic glowing rocks, and I can't get past that perimeter effect to scout a better location."

Therefore: hide your presence, climb a tree, and spy on everyone. It makes perfect sense.

Alloran tilts his one, sharp-ended head at her. <You don't need to trust the magic glowing rocks. You can come in closer without actually entering the cave. And then you can extract, even. Humans appreciate warmed food, don't you? There are fires.>

A year pulling kitchen duty on the Rig and while Alloran now understands how to make a great salad and can dismantle various ingredients to be reassembled in different proportions and prepared, he still doesn't have the best grasp on human cuisine and where the line is between acceptable and unthinkable foods are. He doesn't know if he should feel concern about if she's been finding things to eat, just that it probably will have been cold.

Kerrigan's not a picky eater, and her survival skills, while geared towards having high-tech equipment to work with, are at least good enough to keep her from starving in the short term. She wouldn't make it on her own in the long term and she knows it, but everything that's occurred so far has caused her old ghost training to rear its ugly but extremely thorough head and send her into hiding. Finding out about the presence of so many people she knows and trusts (more or less) has relaxed her considerably already.

"Well, I guess none of you have turned into bug monsters yet and the protoss haven't showed up to 'sterilize' the place...." she mutters.

Alloran immediately thinks that he can turn into a bug monster if Kerrigan likes. Then- 

Because there's no reason not to make the stupid joke if she already knows it came to mind, right? And if he's said it she can't steal it. (Esplin stole a lot of his more idiotic jokes and worse, since the Yeerks under him knew how volatile he was, people laughed at them.)

He's not sure how much this level of distance will help if either disaster happens. Andalites are a species that evolved to live in herds. They - he - understand a more solitary and independent existence than that, and he's lost the knack for reaching out and forming connections, but 'living in hiding and having no contact with your friends when that's not required or enforced' seems inherently wrong to him.

"I will push you out of this tree." Kerrigan knows he's joking, but even after months, the zerg are still too fresh a memory for her to play along. Maybe it's because she doesn't know how the battle at Tarsonis turned out. She does manage to make the threat light enough not to be taken seriously.

But seriously, she'll push him out of the tree.

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takenalive - 2021-12-01 00:26 (UTC) - Expand

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