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

Cammie takes the jar and nods along as she always does when she's taking in information he's giving her, then her ears spread as her eyes widen for a moment in a very 'oh god good question' way. "Uhhh, I probably wouldnae make a baby cry or anythin', so like, not terrible, but not like, y'know, amazing?"

"I can guarantee it's better than mine." Dan leans into that natural ugliness his voice has - which sort of sounds like if you put a bunch of BBs in a metal can and shook it around, but low and breathy - for comedic effect. He's under no delusions that his voice is pleasant. Thank God he's pretty.

"So, the way magic works on my world, it's tonal, because half our monsters out there using it don't got mouths like ours. Most of it's just humming." He clears his throat, which seems like an effort in vain, and tries to match the tuning fork, then go down a note, then up two. It's clearly a lot for his range. "That's the melody for a seance."

He spreads out the sprigs of plants, then grabs some pine needles and starts to tie them in knots. "This is honeysuckle, marigold and witch hazel. These are plants for communication and openness. Now, we need to build a little fortress for a fire, so these plants get smoked without catching light. What we're going to do is smoke these out, then use the jar to focus, and you're going to do the intonation in groups of seven."

Okay, yeah, fair point, she can agree that she's probably got the better voice here just by default considering Dan's like, whole deal there.

She makes the effort to mimic the hum to make sure she can in fact mimic the hum, and she might have sold herself a tiny bit short but otherwise she's about average, musically. She doesn't do a lot of singing, she's not really been one for the performance games on the Ether. Though she hums and sings to herself about as much as anyone might.

"Right, gotcha." She at least knows how to start a fire now, but she listens well as always to follow along with the rest of it.

Dan has a lighter. He always carries at least two, on account of being a nicotine addict, and bringing it out triggers that association-happy part of his brain that screams for a cigarette. The tobacco leaf tucked into his cheek helps. It doesn't fix the issue.

He lights a little patch of dry wood, and while that takes he fixes the sprigs in a ringlet, balanced on top of a tower of pine needles.

When the fire is both smoke and a flame, he takes Cammie's hands and positions them palm-up, with each finger progressively less folded. He sits back. "Alright, close your eyes and start humming. If it works, the magic we got back home works. If it don't, either the magic ain't universal or you're a Mundane, like me."

He hopes she's not a Mundane. It's always just been a burden to him.

"You'll start to feel the temperature drop if it's working."

Cammie nods, closes her eyes and starts humming the notes again. She's going into trying this with few expectations but endless curiosity, and isn't too surprised when she doesn't feel anything changing.

"Cannae say I'm feeling the temperature change." She opens one eye, not both. "Probably just that it's not universal? I mean— thing I've noticed, our worlds are all very... how do I put this... I mean, I'm basically livin' out the mecha animes I've watched. Worlds like yours sound like things from y'know, fantasy an' supernatural media in mine. An' there's folks from places with, like, superheroes. Y'know?"

She would not feel wrong describing her own world as sci-fi, because as much it's hardly fiction when she's living it, she feels like she's living out games she's played, mangas she's read, animes she's watched. This is a lens she's familiar with viewing the world through: media, the internet, the worlds she's thrown herself into when she's escaping the real one.

"Hell, this place feels like an extended questline from one of my favourite games. Y'know, if I ignore the actual danger..."

"Might could be that it don't transfer over here. Oh well." Dan sighs. He doesn't feel like he's contributing much today, except for stitching Cammie up.

"I do, but also...don't, really. I don't know media much, except audiobooks."

And while Dan remembers almost everything he hears and can recite several books from memory, first word to last, he can't exactly pick the sort of media he absorbs. He ends up listening to a lot of trashy crime and romance novels, on account of them being the easiest to find on tape and not knowing how to find anything better.

"Ain't never had a TV or a videogame. Except TVs in motels, I reckon. And I mostly just watch poker on those."

"Was worth a try. An' I like hearin' about this stuff, even if it doesn't work here, or for me, or whichever it is. It's all so different from what I know."

Cammie shifts her sitting position again, hugging her knees and propping her chin on them. It is comfortable like this, she has less of an instinct to shift around and risk tugging her side.

"Man. All I ever really did besides hackin' or engineerin' stuff was play games, watch sci-fi and fantasy stuff, read manga and comics..." She nods her head side to side with each thing she lists. "Especially when I was a kid. Remember pullin' out all my faves onto the floor to show the twins, when they weren't even big enough to really get it..."

Her smile turns sad, for a moment, before she sets her ears upright again and fixes her expression to match.

The heroes tend to win, in those stories, and you can beat any game if you try hard enough for long enough. It's the kind of stuff you need when the world's falling apart around you. The kind she needed, at least.

There's a pain in Dan's smile as he's hit with a sad thought he didn't expect; he, too, had younger twin siblings growing up. His died too. He meets Cammie's eyes, but he can't find enough voice to say yeah, me too.

What a horrible thing to have in common.

"If we ever get out of here and are still in touch, I want you to show me all your favorites, and every manga and comic that this place reminds you of."

Her smile warms with genuine happiness again and she nods, snickering softly. "Ye might live to regret that, there's a lot. An' that's not even gettin' into the clips of Siege I could show ye, I use a sword that looks a lot like this one but I'm a like, three foot tall rabbit, so it looks even more badass."

Yes having a sword far too big for her looks badass, not silly, she will not be taking criticism at this time.

"I've been tryna beat this one raid to finish the questline I'm on for donkey's now. Bet I'll be able to beat it when I get back. Computer enemies got nothin' on the real thing."

Cammie may say "badass", but the idea of a little rabbit waving around a giant sword looks ridiculous to Dan - and he's married to a giant rabbit who dual-wields boomerangs. Still, his smile is very genuine.

"I hope it's not too easy for you when you get back. Where'll the fun be in that?"

"Heh. Good point. Buuuut Castle Eldar is the hardest raid in the game, 'til they add somethin' harder, I've run it so many times an' not made it to the end. So it might just give me just enough edge to get there."

Of course, the game runs on its own rules, its own idea of fighting and magic, but hey. It'd be funny if she really did get back and found it easier now she's done it all for real.

"Be the envy of the whole server."

"I hope you do." He really does wish that for her. Wouldn't that be so nice, for her to take the things she's learned her and turn them into joy instead of trauma? To come out the other side of this ordeal better, instead of broken?

He doesn't even know what a server is, but he can guess.

"Are you and Miranda setting down together tonight? I reckon Bunny may be a while to come join me. Herbal remedies are a skillset of his."

Her ears, as ever, give away her moment of uncertainty. It would definitely make sense to, they have a lot to catch up about for one, but if she falls asleep and wakes up from a nightmare... gah.

"Might do, aye. Though I need to figure out where she's actually got to at some point... she made it, we got past the Palace together, but..."

She broke off from her to come find people like Dan, check they made it too.

"I'd help you find her, but." Dan gestures at his leg. "I reckon she's fine. Anyway, you know you're always welcome to keep me company here. I probably won't be getting much sleep."

Pain has a way of keeping people awake.

She gives him a smile that's definitely got a sympathetic note to it—yeah, yeah, that's not a surprise, considering. "Thanks. Think... think I might, even if I spend some time with Miranda catchin' her up. Can't imagine me gettin' down to an easy sleep."

She's exhausted, but it's the wrong kind of exhausted to dodge bad dreams. It's the wired kind of exhausted, being injured for the first time herself and worrying about everyone else who's injured sure doesn't make for a calm mind.

"Me neither." There's no shame in admitting it, and maybe being open about it will help Cammie feel less ashamed of hers. "I ain't slept without nightmares in twenty years.

Her ears shoot up and her eyes widen a little—she knew he said before that he had nightmares, too, but twenty years? That's... she can't help but wonder just how bad the shite he's been through is, how much worse it must be than the shite she should already be over, to last that long.

The ears splay out a little and she fusses a little with the material of her clothes, suddenly needing something to occupy her hands.

"Hell, that's... that sucks." Words are not generally her strong suit. Her ears splay out more, settling low, and she isn't actually looking at Dan as she mumbles: "...I get some quiet nights, if I'm tired enough."

"Good. I'm glad you get some." He watches her reaction with a muted sort of dismay, feeling that his words must be hitting wrong. "I reckon it's just easier to start having nightmares than it is to stop them. They ain't as bad as they used to be now that I'm married."

Sleeping in Bunny's arms has been grounding. Now, he wakes up in a cold sweat in strange places, but immediately knows who he's with, that his husband's alive and well here with him so Dan isn't grieving alone somewhere.

"It ain't got to be another person, but I know that the longer you live the more ways to find to take the edge off of nightmares. So maybe you might could find a way that ain't just running yourself ragged, in time."

She doesn't want to find ways to take the edge off, she wants them to disappear. She wants to be over it, already. It's been months since Nemesis tore her head off, and it's not like it really happened, and she should be over it by now.

Nevermind that it's been one stressful or traumatic event after another ever since. Nevermind that she's been grieving for people since she was only nine, first the twins, then her mother, then her father. Nevermind that fighting in a war is, in itself, traumatic.

Nevermind that on the rig, at the end, she had the weight of everyone's survival on her shoulders as the only techie left.

"Guess I might. Rather they just went away."

She knows, on some level, that Chase—and Dan, here and now—are right about it taking time, but she wishes it wouldn't. And she knows that Chase is right that talking might help, but she can't hardly bring herself to, not when the people around her have always been through worse.

"As far as I can tell, they never do."

Dan knows that that's a dire prediction, that maybe he's wrong. Twenty years, after all, isn't that long for the heart to heal. Thirteen years, since Dan's tragedies were so drawn out. And Cammie may be made of sturdier stuff than he is.

"But you find ways to keep them from being as big a problem." Dan doesn't want to suggest that Cammie get herself wasted or shack up with a stranger before going to sleep every night, but that's what Dan's used when he's most stressed out. She'll surely find her own coping mechanisms, maybe her videogames, maybe something else.

"All the books say they're meant to. Eventually."

And the coping mechanisms she's used are ones she's meant to be getting past, because whenever she spends late nights working or playing her games to keep her mind off it all, she's too tired the next day to be of use to her team. She can't afford that. She has to be at the top of her game, or people will die.

"But I dunno. Maybe they're wrong." After all, if they were right, shouldn't she already be having less nightmares? Not more? "Chase says you gotta give it time, but he doesnae dream anymore anyway."

No sleep when you're only code. No dreams when you can't sleep.

"I wouldn't know what books say." Dan gives her a wry smile. "Maybe they're right, but I reckon it takes a long, long time, at least, going by my experience."

The idea of not dreaming anymore - Dan feels flush with envy.

"Chase is right, you know. And you got to give it more than just time. You got to give it kindness. Be gentle with yourself, too."

She doesn't reign in the little scoff she lets out before it makes it into the air, but it's not meant to be aimed at Dan. He's right. Everything he's saying is right, just like everything Chase said was right, but she doesn't know what to do with it. It's hard to be kind to herself when she feels like such a failure at what she's meant to be.

"I know," she says with a dramatic sigh. "Just— I dunno. What happened wasn't that bad. Feels..."

She makes vague wavey hand gestures. What she wants to say is it feels stupid, pathetic, weak, but he just told her to be kind to herself and she's not looking to provide outright proof she's being the opposite.

"It was bad enough to give you nightmares. That's all that really matters about it."

Dan's experience was so horrible that that's been his only reprieve, the fact that he's never had to wonder if his suffering was horrible enough.

"You're in a war, where you're from. That's stressful even on the best day. Human brains don't heal when they're under stress. And right now you're somewhere disorienting, in a place where you don't know hardly anybody and don't have any of the technology you're used to, with things trying to kill you all the time. You don't got time to process whatever's giving you nightmares. Of course they ain't just going away."

But my brain's meant to be different, is what she wants to say, but bites back. She's meant to be wired to handle this, she's meant to be better than this. None of her team are affected so badly by what they've been through as she is, and some of them have been through much worse in their lives.

She huffs at herself, her ears flattening. "I know. All that's true, aye, it's just... I dunno. It really wasn't that bad. Nothing really happened to me." She sighs, scrubs a hand over her face. "Sorry. I dinnae get into this much for a reason, I guess."

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