wildestlogs | FLIGHT TO THE FORD

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FLIGHT TO THE FORD

The Palace is not a safe place. It's far too open and elegant, its walls broken down, its doors thrown open. There are far too many places their enemies can crawl in through. But there is an entirely different land on the other side of the palace, with an entirely different climate.

It's a land of cool temperate forests. It has a gnarled look to it. While things glow, they're knotty and thorny and a little dreary. Every so often a petrified troll can be found, covered in moss. These aren't like the trolls some of them saw frozen in Trollmarket - they're larger, uglier, and more menacing. But they're permanently frozen and no longer a danger.

Otherwise it's just misty forest. Mountains can be seen in the distance. In some areas, a road is visible, but it's perhaps not a safe place to travel, given they have enemies after them. The forest is a genuinely good place to hide. The Shadowhunters have given up chase, frightened off by the Nazgul.

And while the occasional Nazgul screech can be heard far off in the distance, they don't try to attack again.

But this is not because they've given up. They're simply waiting. Because some of the group have been poisoned by the shards of Morgul-blades. They're simply biding their time until those people turn into wraiths under their command.

They're biding their time until they can command them to destroy the group from within.

OOC DETAILS
❧ Quest magic: Players can handwave that the quest bond magic is tugging the group together, so they can regroup.

❧ Archivist Spells: There will be little eddies of magic left near the occasional little bit of human ruins. These spells run a little dark.

Death flashback spells: This spell causes a target to get stuck in a 15 second traumatic flashback of a death of a human warrior in the ancient realm of Arnor, a place that was once filled with people that were gradually culled by the dark forces of one o the Nazgul - the Witch-king. The target is completely distracted during this time. Archivists can bank up to 3 iterations of this spell. Casting the spell causes a temporary Necromancer style curse effect on the Archivist: eyes going completely black for 2 minutes, and plants withering and dying around the caster. The effects are not permanent.

❧ Network: Feel free to use the network in parallel with the log events. The log can be where characters regroup, get first aid, etc. A network post can go up to allow everyone to coordinate their efforts. The mods will leave that up to one of the players.

❧ Resources: As far as food goes, there are not many edible plants in the area, just the occasional edible root. Deer and rabbits can be found but they're rare. The occasional beehive can also be found but one has to somehow get rid of the bees or mop up honey that's dripped below it. There are not many supplies to be found here. However, there are a few plants and substances that can be used for first aid, if some among their number know about them:

Athelas: A sweet smelling green plant with small blue flowers. It can be used to cure the Black Breath by boiling it in water and allowing the victim to breathe in the vapors. It can also slow the transformation caused by Morgul-blades if the wound is washed by water that has had athelas boiled in it. This can also help relieve some of the pain and cold. It smells extremely fresh and sweet, often reminding people smelling of it specific scents that remind them of home. This means it can smell different ways to different people, such making one person smell apple orchards from back home, and another fresh cut grass after a rain. Use of this herb is more potent in the hands of a king. Thanks to the magic affecting the land, it will do so for any king.

Honey: This can offer some help for disinfecting puncture wounds, but works especially well for burns, like ones caused by the grazes of the Shadowhunters' angel blades.

Foxglove: A mashed poultice of this can be put on wounds to help with healing and prevent infection.

Pine sap: Can be used as a wound disinfectant.

Willow Bark: A tea made from willow bark can be used for pain but is not recommended if someone is still bleeding heavily, as it is also a blood thinner.

Poppies: There are a few small patches of poppies. Poppies can be used as an opioid pain reliever, by eating the seeds or making a tea out of them.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Her ears give something away again: the brief flash of not quite fear, but something close to 'oh god' at the idea of being stitched up. It's a reaction that itself no doubt confirms some of his suspicions; she's never even had to be treated by the Vanguard's medics herself, let alone been taught anything about doing any field medicine.

She may seem hesitant for a moment, but Dan's not led her wrong yet and he's probably not fussing over her more than he'd fuss over anyone else so— okay. "Okay. Right."

She gets up and grabs the pack with the red stripe, bringing them back to Dan. She hesitates more about actually taking off the material that's covering the wound, because her toning down of the injury will be clear once she takes it off, but she sighs dramatically and does so anyway. The innermost layer definitely has blood on it.

It's nowhere near as bad as Dan's injury, but it's not as small as she'd prefer to make it out to be, either. It's a thin, long slash, running at a slight angle on her side, about level with her belly button. It hurts like a bitch, but she's muscled through the pain because that, at least, she's kind of used to. It's the rest that's a new kind of terrible.

It's not that Dan isn't worried about Cammie; it's just that, with the last week or so spent with her, he's picked up that any amount of fretting and fussing will just alienate her. He isn't sure if it's because she wants to be taken seriously as a peer and not a child, because she's had her good nature betrayed in the past to the point that doling trust out feels keenly dangerous, or because being fussed over reminds her of people she misses, or some combination of those, or something else - the point isn't to psychoanalyze. The point is just to be a friend.

And right now, being a friend means not making a big ordeal out of the slice in her side. Dan winces sympathetically, but that's it. The rest will just be walking her through the steps.

"Yeah, that's enough broken skin to need disinfecting. And it looks like you got a little bit of burning here, too, which is real infection-prone." Dan doesn't know what the Shadowhunters did to make their blades heat up like that, but he doesn't appreciate it. "When you were limping a little earlier, was that because of pain or because you actually can't move your muscles right?"

Dan suspects, given the shallowness of the injury and the location, that the blade didn't sever any important muscle or nerve groups, but he figures he should check. He digs through the pack for the jar of pine sap, a second waterskin, and his herbs. He has the thread, a needle and a lighter in his pocket, and he uses that as an excuse to pull out his flask and take a small drink, which he realizes a little belatedly probably isn't a comforting gesture from someone about to apply wound care.

"Lay down on your side so I can get a good angle, alright?" With an evident small grunt of pain, he sits up and switches position so that he can work on her. He rinses his hands as thoroughly as he can from his waterskin, which is sadly the best they can do out here in the wilds.

She makes the conscious choice to set her ears up into their most confident position, which is a blatant tell of its own, but it's psychological in some ways. Fake it 'til it's real, right? If she acts like she's in no way offput by the idea of being stitched up for the first time, she'll handle it all just fine. Totally.

"Just the pain," she answers, and she sounds extremely sure of that, for someone who has no medical knowledge, as she shuffles around to lay herself down on her side. "Had muscle function cut off before, even if, y'know, only in synthetic muscle cables. Doesn't feel like that, I can still move alright."

Sometimes Spider Tanks get lucky shots or a drone pilot gets smart and slashes at less armoured areas, she had her fair share of Holon damage during engagements with the Union. There's a lot of things she's experienced without ever really experiencing them.

Edited (missing word) 2022-01-04 21:25 (UTC)

"Okay. Good." He frowns a little as he opens the sap jar; the sap inside is a little firmer than he'd like for this purpose, but not so firm that it seems worth the effort to start a fire just to get it a tiny bit gummier. May as well make that Cammie's judgment call. She'll be the one in pain, after all.

"So, I'm going to rinse out the wound with water - I boiled this water this morning, so it shouldn't be carrying anything from the river where I got it - and then I got some eucalyptus juice here-" he holds out a small jar for her to take a sniff- "that'll protect from infection. Then I'm going to stitch. After that, I'm going to seal anything that can't be stitched of the wound up with pine sap, like putting saran wrap over something so you keep it fresh. It's going to sting."

He starts to rinse the injury, watching her face and her ears for her reaction to the pain of having the wound manhandled. "The pine sap's a little tacky right now, which means I'll have to press it harder into the wound to get it to seal. Do you want to wait ten minutes for me to get a fire going so I can warm it up, or would you rather might just get it over with?"

Cammie nods along as he lists the steps, listening closely and committing it all to memory like she has everything else Dan's taught her so far. Focusing on that might help, too, she figures; learning can be a distraction.

She flinches as he starts to rinse it out, ears twitching to try and splay out only for her to make them revert to that upright, confident position again. It hurts, but she pushed through combat when the wound was fresh, and she's had worse. It's fine. Totally, totally fine.

Which is exactly what she's repeating to herself when she says, "Ach, just get it over with, I think. Cannae be worse than some of the shite I've felt."

Is it partially wanting to look tougher than she probably is? Absolutely. Does she just not want to sit there in anticipation, waiting for it to warm up, building up nerves for no good reason? Also yes.

"Alright, let's get right into it. Tell me if you need me to hold off at any point." He picks up the driftwood he was whittling and places it in her hand. "Squeeze this to distract yourself, if you have to."

The water probably isn't pleasant, and the eucalyptus probably stings all the more, what with Dan having had to use salt to pull the juice out of the leaves and get it into oil. And there's really no way to make stitches an enjoyable experience, even with a hand as quick and deft as Dan's.

"When I was a kid, my dad made us practice doing stitches on pigskin anytime we lost a sow. I probably did that two hundred, two hundred and fifty times before I ever put stitches on a living thing. This here's a continuous stitch, which means I'm using just one line of thread so I don't got to worry about rethreading the needle between each stitch. Probably not a great angle for you to see how I'm doing it-"

-plus, not many people want to watch their own stitching-

"-but I'm tying off each loop at the top, so it'll be hard to rip open. This is just some thread I boiled, so once you're healed the stitches will have to be removed."

The burned edges are the part Dan's worried about; those are the part that'll need pine sap. He rinses his hands again, just for good measure, finishing off the waterskin, and then he starts to press the sap, like it's chewed gum, over the wound to seal it. It's firm, but he doesn't want to overhandle it and get oils from his hands all in the material, and thankfully it softens a little with the combined heat of his hands and her side.

To Cammie's credit, she toughs it out without much in the way of audible complaint. Some quiet grunts and a hiss or two, but she grits her teeth and squeezes down on the driftwood; no tears, no dramatic reaction, just stubborn determination to look like the tough soldier she's meant to be.

Whenever she feels like she might overreact, she thinks about how it felt to have her head wrenched off her shoulders, the agony of each synthetic muscle fibre tearing, of the metal spine cracking, to remind herself she's had worse. She's had so much worse.

Listening to Dan's explanation does help, it gives her something else to focus on. And no, she's not too keen to even try and give more than a quick glance at what he's doing, but she takes it all in. She knows how to handle a needle and thread in other contexts, thanks to him, and recontextualising what she already knows to match what he's saying is useful.

She breathes out through her nose and nods. "Right. Okay. Think I followed that."

"Good. We're almost done." It takes only a few more moments of holding the softened sap down into the wound and letting it seal, and then Dan pulls his hands back and surveys his work. He pulls out a length of soft, tight-knit fabric from the supply bag and starts to cut it to the right size for a bandage that isn't soaked in dirt and blood.

"Alright, you can sit up now. That's the worst of it over with. Now it's just making sure you keep it clean, checking its progress, and taking out the stitches when it's all healed up." He wraps her up. "Thanks for letting me take care of that for you. I'm all on pins and needles worrying about what we're going to do if someone ends up with an infection."

That someone might be him, given that Dean had to cauterize such a large gash on Dan's leg, raising the odds of a lethal infection to beat the odds of Dan bleeding to death then and there. He winces as he lies back down in the moss.

"So, tell me about this magic armor."

"Thanks for doin' it," she says, and means it, because as reluctant as she was to even admit her wound probably needed medical attention of some kind, she'd also rather not have it get worse, and Dan helped without big fanfare and lectures. "Our odds are sure better with people who know what they're doin', at least."

She sits herself up, wincing a bit but otherwise fine. She takes her sword off her back to make things easier, and manages to get comfortable enough with her knees up.

"So, like I said, a few of those Shadowhunter guys had me cornered, and after they slashed me up... well, I was thinkin' about how I miss havin' armour, y'know? And the next time they hit me, after that, it just... glanced off? Spot they hit lit up like a Christmas tree. Magical field."

"I try to chip in. I'm just lucky that my folks thought to give me an earful of real knowledge when I was young."

Dan's skills transfer much better to this wilderness setting than they ever did in the 'Real World' back home, where his literacy held him back in ways that are difficult to even express to people. He ended up hunting monsters largely because it was one of the only things he could do that he excelled at, rather than just could barely manage.

"That's handy as hell. I'm glad you had it." He taps his lip. "Would you be open to trying something out with me? I think I have something of a magical field myself, but it's just a hypothesis now."

"It sure is. Lot more like the way I'm used to fighting, having it up." Then she nods. "Aye, sure. I did a bit of testin' myself back after I got out of that mess, tryna figure out if it was the sword or somethin' else. Turns out it's the sword."

The highly sophisticated testing was putting the sword down, trying to turn the field on, then picking it back up and trying the same. It's definitely the sword, and she kept it up the rest of the fight.

"That tracks with what I'm thinking about mine. I reckon my armor or...whatever it is, I reckon it comes from my bow." Dan picks it up from where it was lying beside him in the moss. "I think...I think I got some kind of anti-magic effect when I have it in hand. So I was wondering if you could stand next to me and try to activate your armor."

Dan sounds the slightest bit bitter, because it feels like the Green is rubbing his nose in the most frustrating part of his work back home: his complete and total inability to do magic, only to be its victim. Ha ha, what if your magic ability is that you screw up magic for everyone?

"Oh, damn," is the first thing out of her mouth, because that... well, it could be useful if it were something easy to use on enemies, but centred on someone, it'd equally affect the people you wanted close to you, right? That's not so grand. "Aye, aye I can do that. Lemme just..."

She has to remember not to hop to her feet like she usually would, because she's pretty sure that would hurt. So she shifts to her knees, then pushes herself up normally, grabbing her sword.

Dan pulls his bow into position, sans arrow, watching Cammie from the corner of his eye.

"As far as I can tell, it works on friend and foe, so...probably best to know now if that's correct, before I end up getting someone hurt on the battlefield." Dan sighs.

"Probably, aye. Not somethin' ye wanna risk."

She grips the sword in both hands like it's designed for and thinks hard about wanting armour, like she's used as the cue every other time she's tried it. She feels the same sensation she did when it activated before, but— a little to the left, and when she looks at her hands the shielding is visible in the way it only was when she was actually struck, before.

Cammie blinks, letting go of the hilt with one hand to hit herself on the stomach, and the relatively light impact doesn't just make the field flare up brighter, it makes it dissipate entirely.

"...right, yeah, that's not right."

"Hmm. Alright, try again." Dan sets the bow down, curling his hand under his chin in thought as he watches the effect. Even he can tell that it's not right, and he's never seen Cammie use it before.

Cammie nods, making the conscious choice to dismiss it first, just in case the visual dissipation wasn't it actually turning off. Keeping the sword in just the one hand for now since she only really needs the contact, she tries again and the sensation is more like she expects this time.

When it works right, there's no immediate visual signs of it. It's only when she knocks herself on the stomach again that it lights up, radiating warm light from the point of impact before fading out again. She repeats the motion a couple of times to check it's still up, and it does it again each time.

"That's what it was doin' before. Invisible unless I'm hit."

"Mm."

Dan lets out a long sigh. He wants to just enthuse about Cammie's newfound protection, ask her all the details, ask her how she feels about it, but the thing about pain is that it shrinks the amount of energy you have to hold different things. Right now, Dan's holding the fact that his leg hurts, and he's holding frustration that he can't do much with an injury incapacitating him, and he's holding the frustration that he's a menace to anyone relying on magic in the battlefield.

He just doesn't have energy to be vocally happy for Cammie, and he hates that.

"Reckon we won't be fighting at each others' sides, then."

"...guess not," she dismisses the armour again, and sits back down, setting her sword by her side. "Depends, I guess; dinnae think I can keep it up forever, longer I had it up the tireder I was. Might not always use it."

As if she didn't keep it up the whole battle once she knew she had it. It's a very lacking attempt at actual reassurance; it's clear to her how much this sucks, with so many people in the group using magic.

She props her chin on her knees, ears not quite flat but definitely in a more subdued position. "Y'know, apparently it's these things," she nods between their weapons, "that had the Shadowhunters pissed at us, specifically. One woman I met said it had some fearful power, an' when me an' Miranda beat down the one guy, she got him to spill that I didnae count as a 'normal human' for some reason. Put two and two together and..."

She doesn't think to explain who Miranda is yet, focused on the whole weird weapons part of the equation.

Edited (wording) 2022-01-05 01:45 (UTC)

"Huh." Dan settles into lying back down, thinking of how it felt like the Shadowhunters were targeting him in particular. He winces again because, as much as his leg's taken his attention, his back and shoulders hurt from falling off the horse, and he's got an ugly bruise forming on the side and back of his neck from where he was clotheslined at twenty miles an hour.

"When me and Alloran captured one of them, she told us that she was trying to accomplish the same goal as them Sisters back at the faire. I should probably let folks know that on the network." Dan looks like he'd rather eat broken glass than make a network announcement. "I've spent my whole career getting beat on and kicked around for being just a normal human and now someone's got a bead on me because I don't count as one. Don't seem right."

He doesn't want to wallow in self-pity. He tries to shake it off. "Who's Miranda? New girl?"

She sees that look, and says, "I might pass it on, at some point. 'bout that and the weapons bein' a possible problem. I know we're not the only ones with them."

It's not exactly a guarantee that she really will make an announcement, either. And she doesn't realise, of course, that some weapons are different from theirs. As far as she can tell, right now, Dan has a weapon with a downside, and she has one with only an upside; why would she think there was any difference in treatment for some magic weapon users compared to others?

Her ears shoot up as she remembers right, she hasn't actually mentioned Miranda in any of what she's said about home. "Oh! Aye, yeah, Miranda's new here, but uh, she's also from home? Not one of my team, but she helped train us an' goes into battles with us sometimes, just, y'know, not as a robot."

"Oh, that's great."

Certainly anyone who understands Cammie's world, whom Cammie has a positive relationship with, will be a good thing. It must be lonely and isolating, being the only person to come from such a high-tech setting, dumped here in the wilderness and being forced into relying on others. Dan gets it. He has to rely on others to read for him, and it means he's always uneasy and insecure.

"You ought to introduce us. I always love meeting new folks."

Cammie flashes a smile. "Definitely I should. She's great, Miranda; I once carried her into a fight on my shoulder when I was in my Holon an' it was her idea. She plays all serious professional sometimes but she's got a chaotic streak, I know it."

They've not been super close, she's not someone Cammie gets chance to just hang with, considering they don't operate out of the Anvil much these days, but she likes her. And it's nice to have someone here from home.

"Apparently last she knew, I was off on the last mission I remember, so, sounds like life back home hasn't moved on without me."

She looks tangibly relieved by that. That was one of her biggest fears about home, really.

"Love me a good chaotic streak. You know, what some people call chaotic, I just call adaptable." Dan grins. It's good, taking his mind off his leg, hers off her own injury.

That grin softens from something wild into something warmer. "Good. I'm glad it'll still be waiting for you there."

Dan has no intention on returning to his home, because there's nothing left there. If his daughter were still alive, he'd be worried sick, but...

He isn't in any rush to go back.

She snickers at that, "Gotta agree with that. Mission we did that on was adjustin' our plans last second, same one I suggested Kazu came through the wall like the Kool-Aid man."

Was it a serious mission? Yes. Did they end up choosing some chaotic methods of entry when just blowing the place to hell became unviable? Also yes.

"Miranda an' me will have some wild stories to tell, that's for sure. Confuse the hell out of the others."

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cw: description of decapitation

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