HEARTSTONE TROLLMARKET ※ CAMP

[wildestmods]

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.

Comments

[hellbentley]

"What?"

[cachedout]

"You're pretending you don't know. It won't work, because that's what I do."

This street goes two ways, Crowley.

[hellbentley]

"What am I supposed to do about it?" he asks, raising his eyebrow. "Go up to him and say, 'Oi, demon hunter, I can tell you have some kind of long-standing trauma, apparently related to what was most likely the untimely death of your mother, probably caused by the kind of murderous demons it'd be justified to have a grudge against. But despite every instinct you have telling you to kill me, and the fact I'm the only demon I've ever known that hasn't been an unrepentant monster, how about you drop it just because I asked nicely. Bygones?'"

He shakes his head with a little shake, as if to say, 'Really?'

[cachedout]

"Oh. Good. You're worried about him, too."

[hellbentley]

He lets out a little growl, because he got caught out.

Yes, he is concerned. He knows how badly demons can ruin someone's life.

He was terrified of being caught out by his coworkers for years. To such a degree he'd kept holy water to use against other demons as insurance - despite how dangerous it was to him, too.

"All the more reason I should completely avoid him. It's for his own good."

[cachedout]

"Don't worry I'm not gonna tell you to hug it out. But I don't think you can avoid him forever. That's not a luxury we have. Small group. Small area."

He lays back, hands behind his head, one knee bent and the other leg propped on it in a display of faux leisure.

Cayde doesn't have answers, but he's feeling out the shape of a problem and trying to guess what they might look like.

[hellbentley]

"Look, I've known enough other demons and what they're capable of to know that there's probably nothing I can say or do to fix this."

He finally unbundles himself and sits up.

"Contrary to what some of you might believe, I understand how humans think and feel. I've spent 6000 years living among them. For some of them, you don't heal a wound by picking at it. I'd just be an irritant, making an old hurt worse."

He shakes his head.

"The rest of you want to do something for the lad, by all means, help him as much as you can. But I'm the last one that should be trying to soothe his ills when I've got the face of whoever caused them in the first place. When there's this kind of injury, sometimes space is the best medicine you can give."

[cachedout]

"We don't have to fix his thing with demons. We don't even gotta fix his thing with you. We just need to keep it from edging him out of this group."

Cayde tips his head to the side Crowley's on to look at him.

"You may not have noticed this, with your 6000 years of experience with humans? But people here like you."

[hellbentley]

Crowley squints his eyes and his face wrinkles in confusion.

"...Why would anyone want to go and do that? Bad idea all around."

[cachedout]

Cayde just laughs.

"Humanity works in mysterious ways."

[hellbentley]

Crowley just lets out another irritated noise.

He doesn't want the responsibility of being liked. Caring about feelings and so on.

It's worth navigating with Aziraphale for many reasons and because of a very long, very deep friendship - and maybe something even deeper - but the idea of acquiring a bunch of strangers who like him is...

No thanks.

Not when it's him-him. Back when he was fully demon-ing he would become very popular - or, more accurately, infamous - but that was always putting on a certain affect. Playing a character. Twisting himself into whatever shape he needed to be to insinuate himself into a crowd.

He's never been himself around this many people - not unless you count back when he was an angel. And he's certainly never had this many non-celestial people know he's a demon.

"Well, they've got to stop because I don't want it."

It's very contradictory to the charm he was laying down in his mirror conversation, but he's very comfortable being an enigma.

[cachedout]

"Free will's terrible when other people have it too," Cayde says.

"You don't get to pick what they feel. Gotta pick what you do with it, though, and I don't envy you the responsibility one bit."

He has been really, really enjoying being irresponsible lately, but even then Cayde hasn't been actively detrimental. Just more relaxed. He can joke all he likes, but he's speaking from experience.

[hellbentley]

"I don't do friends." He realizes the irony of this when Aziraphale is snoozing right near him. "Other than him, that is."

That entails trust and he's spent years and years with lots of the opposite of it brewing in his system. If the other demons had figured out he was soft, or found out about his arrangement with Aziraphale...

Well, they would've tried to execute him.

Like they...actually tried in the end.

"I've never socialized with humans unless I was doing a temptation or a scheme or something that wasn't exactly in their best interests. They never knew what I was. And if I needed to, I could make them forget they ever met me."

His conclusion after this:

"Clearly I have to be more putoffish. Straddle that line, you know. Try to keep them from killing me but also from talking to me."

[cachedout]

"You could," Cayde says, nodding his head, musing. "But would you like it?"

[hellbentley]

"You say that like I haven't spent 6 millennia being ignored by most people and wishing I could ignore the rest."

He raises an eyebrow.

"Look, I like humans well enough. Wonderful, clever people, when you're not doing wrong to each other." He counts Cayde, he did say he had a human mind. "But at the end of the day you're apes with anxiety - it was in the design, trust me, I was there at the meetings about roll-out. The old instincts, the ones that make you want to have your little families, your little social groups, your tribes working together??" He doesn't sound like he's insulting it. "It's actually a wonderful thing, those instincts, when they don't drive you to fight outsiders. Makes you build towers so high God strikes them down, but it's not something I've got. I don't need people the way you all do."

He gestures to Aziraphale.

"And even if I did, I've already got someone."

It is the truth. The need isn't there.

The want, on the other hand...

[cachedout]

Cayde's optic lamps roll, another wonderfully human quality that some engineer somewhere got paid actual money to replicate.

"I get it, you're a demon, you're old, and you're a rat bastard. But I'm an old rat bastard too, and the important difference between you and me?"

Cayde sits up now too, coming to rest with legs folded. He points toward the center of Crowley's chest.

"You are miserable."

This is not a secret. It's not remotely a secret, Crowley has been freely broadcasting his long-suffering resentment to anyone who cares to pay attention.

[hellbentley]

Crowley, being the wily little snake he is, and faced with someone slamming him in the face with the truth and pinning him down in an argument, does what he always does when that happens.

"...Am not."

It is a bald-faced lie but that's what you do when you're out-argued.

[cachedout]

The Exo laughs. He manages to keep it down for Aziraphale's sake, but he laughs.

"C'mon, seriously. I can almost see the suffering lines coming off you. You radiate."

Cayde's not mocking him, he loves the denial. It's the joy of seeing a person you think you're getting to know prove you might be right.

[hellbentley]

He keeps digging a deeper hole.

He crosses his arms.

"M'not miserable. I'm just usually not happy. Entirely different."

[cachedout]

"You're miserable. You're doing it right now."

Cayde defies him. He seems pleased with himself for his contribution, even.

"Think about this one. No jokes this time. If you've been doing the same dance for six thousand years and it's still not working for you? Might be time to shake it up. I know, I know, you're ancient, but in my experience it's not like doing the same thing changes after a century or so anyway."

He shrugs, a gesture full of hey-what-can-ya-do.

[hellbentley]

"It is working for me. I'm not dead, for one. World's not ended. I'm a free agent and no longer working for hell. I've got Aziraphale and he's not dead. We get to have lunch as often as we want now. And sometimes I'm unmiserable."

Usually when he and the angel are together.

He holds out his hands as if to say "see??"

And then something real comes out.

"And for me, that's the best it will ever get."

Because of what's running underneath.

"Demons don't do happy. We don't get to be happy. Happy is for humans. You may be older than some of the rest of them and that's why I'm even entertaining this conversation, but being immortal isn't the same as what I am."

The misery runs very very deep.

"And even if I was looking for it to be different, socializing wouldn't change that."

[cachedout]

Dammit. First Winchester, now Crowley. Cayde has only been here five minutes and gotten smacked upside the head with people he likes that, it turns out, are deeply sad inside.

He won't let him just retreat back into the question of socialization. This isn't about that. They both know it.

"Why the low bar, huh? Who says you don't get to be happy? If you're such a free agent, who's stopping you?"

It's not far from the question he found himself asking Dean. What's stopping you from making choices? Why aren't you free? Whose boot is on your neck, Crowley?

He has a theory he's looking at 'em.

[hellbentley]

He rolls his eyes and then just jabs a finger skyward.

"Who do you think?"

It's been decided for him what he gets to be.

[cachedout]

Cayde follows the finger up, sort of concerned now, is it going to rain?

It's not.

"...You shouldn't bring the sun into this. The sun's been through enough. This guy I knew almost blew it up last year, give it a break."

[hellbentley]

Crowley facepalms so hard he almost knocks off his glasses.

"'I've got a human mind' says the robot, but of course he's a human that doesn't know his Biblical history." He has never had to straight up explain to anyone what a demon actually is and he doesn't like where the conversation makes him have to go to do it.

If it wasn't for the fact he was completely ignorant, and ancient enough to be worth talking to, and had treated him very well so far, he wouldn't be going here at all.

He looks up, gesturing with both hands. "God. Our Maker, possibly your maker - who knows how it works with a multiverse? She certainly never told us - creator of all existence. We used to serve Her as angels, but we're the ones She threw down."

He drops his hands and looks at him with a gaze that pierces right through those glasses.

"The unforgivable ones."

He briefly raises his eyebrows for emphasis.

"So, all things considered, I think I've done very well for myself, what with not being pure evil and having a friend and all that. I can't see overcomplicating things with multiple people and their many feelings as making anything better. Probably only make me more miserable."