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IMLADRIS

IMLADRIS
The group is told to take a week of rest in the Last Homely House as the injured and sick among them heal. The Elves promise them that after the injured are healed, there will be a great Council, with representatives of several peoples in attendance. There Lord Elrond will meet and assist them with speaking with the Green.

Until then, they can wander the peaceful halls of Rivendell, which are filled with travelers from all over the Wilderlands who are making a rest stop while they travel through the lands of Middle-Earth.

There are many halls in Rivendell, but the most notable part of Rivendell is the Hall of Fire, a great feast hall where people can eat, drink, and be merry. Alongside chairs, cushions line the floors in much of the hall. This is the great social hall of Rivendell, where the Elves and their visitors share news of lands far beyond, tell stories, or perform music. The music here almost sounds divine, especially when the Elves sing and play instruments, but they're just as eager to hear songs from other lands, so if any of the squad decide to share, they'll be glad to listen.

Some of the hall's guests are a touch more lively than the others, like a party of dwarves staying at Rivendell. Their stories are a mite more adventurous and if you get in their good graces, they might be willing to share some of the beer they brought with them. Listening to their stories or their talk about their craftmanship is a way to get into their good graces. They have news of the lands beyond.

The Elves love learning, so there are libraries the group is allowed to browse, though they mostly only contain tales of Middle-Earth (for now), though the Elves seem to be collecting what books about other lands they can. These libraries often have viewing stations with telescopes pointing at the sky. Though concerned about what it portents, Elves have been almost delighted by the changing skies, enjoying the challenge of trying to understand how the sky has been knitting itself together with the addition of new worlds.

There are also beautiful balconies here, overlooking the gorge and the waters below, and terraced gardens filled with flowers, bushes, and flowering trees. Their rooms are open to the outdoors and have beds that seem grown into the shape of bed-frames instead of carved. The bathrooms actually have running water. The Elves have figured out how to direct the clean running waters of the gorge in primitive indoor plumbing. Water for hot baths has to be heated first in brass cauldrons over coal braziers before getting dumped into the bath, but are at least located right next to the tubs.

Different flowing slides and fountains can also be used as waterslides for the adventurous, though this will make the Elves tut in disapproval. (X cw: warning for mild nudity from a distance.)

It's time for the squad to rest, eat, and regroup. If a great Council is going to be called involving them, it might be a good idea to make sure they go into it as a united front, because the Green is clearly fine with trying to make decisions for them.

OOC DETAILS
❧ Cursed Weapons/Powers: So they know about how they'll be treated: those with cursed weapons and dark powers will be tolerated by the Elves after entry. While they'll get the same general treatment, the Elves around them may at times seem uncomfortable. Those with cursed weapons will only be distrusted a little, as the weapons themselves will seem more suspicious than their bearers. Those with dark powers or some kind of dark nature (such as being a vampire, Necromancer mage, werewolf, etc.) will be treated with the greatest distrust. But they'll be allowed to wander freely.

❧ Communication: The Elves will make it clear a Council will be called when the injured have time enough to heal and that the group can stay in Rivendell until they're all healed and refreshed. They'll be told they'll be equipped with weapons, clothes, and supplies when they eventually leave. The characters can move freely and characters can stay at the bedside of injured friends.

❧ Injuries: Characters with morgul-blade wounds will be find that any areas or limbs where the shard was will no longer hurt but will be numb at first, with feeling returning over several days. They'll be physically weak for several days at well, winded when walking a short distance. Within a week or two, depending on their constitution and the severity of where the wound was, they'll be able to walk on their own and start to rebuild stamina. Other non-Morgul-blade injuries will heal fully within a few days of treatment.

❧ Clothes: The group will not yet be fully equipped for their travels (that will happen upon leaving) but everyone will at least be given new clothes in Elven styles since theirs are dirty or torn. These are in many different colors but most commonly colors found in nature, like green and blue. Characters without appropriate footwear will also be given light and sturdy boots that will somehow be in their size without their size being asked. They'll also be given basic toiletries like scissors that can be used to cut hair and beards. There are no razors, however, because the Elves don't need to shave so they don't keep them on hand.

❧ Food: Food and drink are plentiful. The food leans towards fruits and veggies but there's enough game for any meat-eaters, cooked well in unknown spices. Wine is abundant, some vintages more inebriating than others. The restorative cordial miruvor is available to help weary travelers get their energy up and revive their strength. It doesn't get characters drunk but helps them revive their strength. It has a light, pleasant floral taste and smell. Beer can also be provided, though that of the traveling dwarves is superior to what Rivendell has to offer.

❧ Weather/Atmosphere: Rivendell is open to the outside air but the temperature is always perfectly temperate and pleasant. The sun shines frequently and is only lost behind shimmering mist. Sunsets and sunrises paint the sky in sections of the valley in every color imaginable. The valley is safe to travel in as long as they don't go back past the Ford of Bruinen or through the gap in the mountains past Rivendell on the valley's opposite end. The air is filled with the smell of green things and delicate perfume of flowers.

❧ Archivist Spells: Around the valley, Archivists can bank up to (4) iterations of a water spells that blasts a brief torrent at an enemy, with the force of a fire hose.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ various starters below ]

CT's not exactly been the most social person in the group, since they all got here. She always makes sure to pitch in, she has no desire to be a non-contributing member of this ragtag party, but when she's not strictly needed she's been hovering at the edges of the group, just... watching.

That's sort of her thing, in the end. Watching. Observing. Gathering intel. In the absence of all else, especially of preferred technology and all the people she cares about, that's what she falls back on. She's listened to the mirrors, she's observed the group as they gathered together, and she's almost ashamed of how long it took her to take note of those who interact with Price.

Maybe it's not surprising that she missed it, at first, when she's been trying to stay as far away from Price as possible and only even talking about him to Stacia. And it's not... it's not her duty to watch him, not really, but it feels like it is. Because she knows. Because she knows what Price can do if you let him. Because she's the one who has all that information in her head, so ingrained she can't ever really forget it.

Which is all a very long way to explain why she chooses to approach Elle, after they've been at Rivendell for a few days. There's not a lot of people she's noticed interacting with Price more than once as it is, but there's two things about Elle that draw her attention even before Dan: Elle is a teenager, and Elle has made a point on more than one occasion of trying to be the sensible voice in the room.

"Hey. Elle, right? Do... do you have a minute to talk about something? It's... well," she sighs, and makes the effort to be upfront instead of her instinctive 'say as little as possible until you have to', "it's about Price."

Elle is a little surprised at being approached. She's been trying to keep a low profile after her semi-public breakdown the other day. This is someone she hasn't interacted with, yet.

"That's me! I'm sorry, I haven't caught your name yet."

Her expression sobers a little at the mention of Price. "Yeah, of course."

She wonders if it'll be a warning like Stacia's (which, honestly, didn't give her much information she hadn't already figured out for herself, but it's always good to have support for her analysis.)

"What about him?"

CT shakes her head, "That's alright, I haven't exactly been... mingling, much." She's even avoided the mirror network except to watch, spare a few interactions early on. "I'm CT. Short for Connecticut. I'm— well, to put it frankly I'm one of the people Price used to be 'responsible' for. I'm also the person who set the collapse of the Project he was part of in motion, sort of. I wasn't... around anymore, by the time that really got going."

She's not usually immediately forthcoming with this information. It goes against just about every instinct she has, because keeping secrets became so ingrained in her over the years gathering the information that let her be that person. But keeping secrets doesn't do any good, here.

Elle nods. Here's someone who has first-hand information about Price. She doesn't want to ask a lot of questions, she would rather let CT give what information she's comfortable with. Price was her abuser and she has no desire to force her to relive that abuse for the sake of Elle's curiosity.

"He hurt you."

It's not a question.

"Not as much as he hurt some of my teammates, but... yes." A beat, and then she adds with a note of not quite humorous laughter, "Well, actually, he and the Director ordered my eventual death, but that wasn't Price's... primary area, as I'm sure you already know."

If Elle knows enough to state that outright, then she figures she's not wrong to assume she's someone Stacia's given at least some info to.

She speaks of her own death with a sort of distance. She's had a good six months since then to get over being dead, it doesn't really bother her anymore. Not unless she's wearing her armour, and that didn't even come with her. Plenty of other things bother her, but not that.

"How much— how much do you know? You weren't one of those who was on the rig, right, so you wouldn't have seen that message Stacia's mentioned first hand?"

Yikes. This whole situation is one big yikes.

"I've gotten a pretty good profile of Price's personality here and now, but I don't know any details about what happened. Just that he was a psychologist in charge of a military project and that he used his position of power as part of that project to psychologically torture and abuse the participating agents."

Honestly, her not knowing what he did, so far, might have been for the best. But willful ignorance doesn't help anyone, so it's time for her to learn more.

“That’s a good starting point. I think what’s most important to understand is Price’s abuse wasn’t a bug of the program, it was a feature.”

This is… going to require a lot of explaining, and CT knows she has a tendency to sort of dump information, so she beckons Elle over to sit somewhere before going on.

“The world I come from, we spent twenty five years fighting a war against an enemy called the Covenant.” CT herself cannot be older than 30. “A collective of alien species hell-bent on wiping humanity from the face of the universe. We were losing. We’d always been losing, from day one. We lost tens and then hundreds of colonies. So, we… humanity got desperate.”

It’s necessary context, to understand why a program like the Project was allowed to run unimpeded for so long. To understand why most of them were in the program to begin with.

“Project Freelancer was just the latest in a long line of attempts to find the ‘magic bullet’ that would turn the tide and end the war. You know the Chief? He’s from my world; him and people like him were one of the only programs of this kind that… kinda worked. Supersoldiers in suped up power armour. But there weren’t enough of them, and… so programs like Project Freelancer were born. Trying to mimic that success in greater numbers and at half the cost. All sorts of experiments could get greenlit under the conditions we were dealing with, how ethical they were didn’t always come into the picture, not really. At Project Freelancer, our focus was on partnering artificial intelligence with human soldiers in the field.”

She sighs, and her nervous tic of picking at an old scar across the palm of her hand starts up.

“I tell you all that even if it’s not strictly relevant because I want you to understand why it was allowed to get so bad. These programs had minimal oversight and that oversight was far more concerned with misuse of sensitive equipment than the human cost. Everything was about ending the war, it was the only thing that mattered to anyone; people would do just about anything if it meant there was a chance it would end and we’d survive.”

It’s not something she wishes she had to explain to a teenager, but CT’s experiences have also skewed her perspective a little on how much talk of war teenagers are expected to be used to. Elle seems like a smart kid, from what she’s seen of her, and CT isn’t going to patronise her by dumbing anything down; if she has any dealings with Price, she deserves to understand exactly what she’s dealing with.

Edited 2022-02-15 11:40 (UTC)

CT must not know a lot of about the world the shifters come from, because an organization willing to use desperate, ethically questionable measures to win and world-threatening war is not unfamiliar. Throw in a cult and child soldiers, and it would feel like home.

Now that she has the background, it's time for Elle to learn the information that CT has been building to.

"Not that I'm not appreciative, or don't care, but why are you telling me this?"

This way CT doesn't have to figure out that transition for herself.

Edited 2022-02-16 10:05 (UTC)

"Because most of the camp avoids Price completely, but I've seen you approach him on more than one occasion and... I'm not necessarily saying— not to, I'm sure you have a reason considering what you already knew, but... anyone dealing with him deserves to know what they're dealing with."

She sighs, pointedly uncurls her hand so she's not picking at the scar again, and runs her hand back through the long side of her hair.

"Almost every agent in the Project was borderline blackmailed into joining. Some of us probably would have if offered, anyway, because 'anything to end the war', but they chose people with court martial charges hanging over their heads—often, charges that were only bad by the letter of the law. I was charged with leaking sensitive documents to expose a military supplier who was supplying my company with shoddy equipment that got multiple people killed."

It will probably be noticeable, the way she'll stick mostly to examples about herself or at least avoiding names where it's impossible not to explain what happened to others. Unlike Price, she does actually value her friends' privacy.

"We were discouraged from talking about our pasts. We were discouraged from using our real names. But it was a special ops program, secrecy is expected, so no one batted an eye. Things only started to get noticeable when they introduced a leaderboard, ranking us based on metrics none of us understood, pitting us all against each other even though we were meant to be a team."

The Project is still a lot more recent for her than most Freelancers who end up in these worlds. She died before the Project even fell apart.

"They never actually told us they were running the experiments they did. There were a set of twins in the program, and the Counselor helped the Director engineer an experiment to see what treating them differently would do to their relationship. What giving one an AI whilst snubbing the other would do. Their relationship was already... complicated, and it destroyed them.

"And that's only one of the most obvious examples. I still don't understand most of the subtle ways they played with our heads, but the Counselor knew exactly how to target all of us. Give him something to work with and he will find a way."

He still gets under her skin now and she hates it.

"That's not even getting into the fact the AI were all made by them torturing one AI into splitting off pieces of itself, and they put those fragments in multiple people's heads without ever telling us how they were made. One of them tore itself apart in someone's head, another apparently went on to take control of his agent and kill others for their AI. By the end... we were all broken. None of us trusted anyone else."

She opens her mouth again as if to go on, but then shakes her head and sighs. No, that's... about it. That's as much as she can say without going into detail about things too private to talk about and it probably says enough, more than enough, as it is.

"That's a lot. I know. I wouldn't usually just spill all of this, but..."

In CT's mind, Price is still dangerous, even outside his power structure. Because he's still dangerous to her, if she lets him get under her skin too much.

Edited (adds cw) 2022-02-16 15:39 (UTC)

"You're trying to make sure I can protect myself," Elle finishes.

She takes a moment to process everything CT just said. It's... a lot. Not anything she can't handle, but a lot nonetheless.

She takes a deep breath.

"Right now, Price is a risk. Everyone who avoids him has every right to do so for completely understandable reasons, but... socially isolating him has the potential to make him more erratic and dangerous. Not to the extent he was when he had a position of power, but to the point where he may not be predictable or safe to be around. This group is not currently equipped to deal with internal threats like the one Price could pose.

"Basically, he needs to managed, and as far as I can tell I'm one of few people who are in a position where doing so wouldn't do more harm than good. I have some hope that his behavior may improve, but I am under no illusions about who he is as a person. I know he's a skilled manipulator but right now, he has no power over me and I am taking very careful steps to make sure it stays that way."

Elle runs a hand through her own hair. "I'm not stupid. I know what I'm doing is risky, but I've weighed the options and this seems like the safest one, to me. Isolating him will cause him to escalate. Targeting him will cause him to escalate. Ideally, he would be in a facility to be treated by actual professionals who aren't ethically fucked, but unfortunately that's not an option. Showing him compassion doesn't cost me what it would other people and I'm familiar with the tactics people like him use."

All of this probably sounds kind of absurd coming out a teens mouth, but her face and tone is serious.

"But that doesn't mean I absolve him of what he's done. He hurt people in unforgivable ways. I'm just trying to do what I can to keep it from happening here because I'm one of the few people who are able and willing without being re-traumatized by his behavior."

She hopes CT can understand why Elle's doing what she's doing. She doesn't want to come out with the whole "he's awful, but he's also still a person and he's hurting" because he did awful, unforgivable things to CT and the people she cares about and right now, that's what matters.

Edited 2022-02-16 19:24 (UTC)

CT does nod at Elle's assessment of why she's explaining all this—first and foremost, she just doesn't want Price to be able to hurt more people, and she wants those who put themselves in front of him to know how to defend themselves if he tries.

She listens to Elle's explanation closely, with a rapt sort of focus set in her expression. This is— all certainly a lot to hear coming from a teenager, and a part of her does ache at the idea that Elle's taken this on her shoulders at her age, but whilst unfamiliar with the detail of Elle and Stacia's world, she's not unfamiliar with the idea of worlds that force teenagers and younger into these positions.

(She thinks of little Mono, not even a teenager and yet so used to running and hiding and defending himself. Wonders if he's doing okay, wherever he is now. Puts the thought aside when she realises she probably wouldn't like the answer.)

"I understand what you're saying. He... he's more of a threat if he's made to feel like he has reason to be, and god knows I'm not one of the people equipped to make sure he isn't." She lets out another of those not quite humourous laughs, "I already nearly stabbed him once, when he wouldn't leave me alone. Couldn't do it, though. That's— it's not who I am."

A deep, weary sigh. She almost wishes she was, but not really.

"Just— be careful. If you say you can handle him without putting yourself at risk, I believe you, but I also know just how insidious he can be. I've been scared to even mention some things around camp on the off-chance he hears and uses it against me. Which is— paranoid, I'll cop to just how paranoid that is, but that's how I am these days."

'Because of him' goes unspoken, but the implication is certainly there. It's not just Price's fault, it's the fault of the way everything went at the Project, but he obviously had no small part in creating those conditions.

"Honestly? That sounds reasonable to me," she doesn't know if that says more about. her or CT.

And she didn't say she could handle him without putting herself at risk, just that she was at less risk than others. She isn't going to correct CT on that, though. That won't help.

"Thank you for telling me all this. I know it can't have been easy."

Agent Connecticut / CT

for Elle

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cw: discussion of psychological abuse/manipulation

Re: cw: discussion of psychological abuse/manipulation

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for Dan

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