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wildestlogs2022-02-14 01:51 am
wildestmods) wrote in wildestlogs2022-02-14 01:51 am
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.
❧ 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.
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Dan looks up at her, finally not watching the cards. He's not being sarcastic. He wants to know where CT considers herself now, whether it's still under the thumb of those from her home universe - the way Price does, thinking himself damned to return to prison - or if she considers herself permanently enlisted by the Green. Does she see this as her future?
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CT presses her lips together.
"I'm dead, back home. So..." A tiny little shrug. The neckline of the elven dress she's ended up in isn't particularly low, but it only takes pushing it down a little to show the top of the nasty scar that bisects her chest. She's not shy about it. She's not fresh from death. "That's where. I can't go home. Not easily, anyway. If it's possible for any of us, at all, from here."
Stacia mentioned the portal that a lot of the rig people remember going through only to be spat out here, instead of at home, but who knows what might happen here.
"I've already lived over six months longer than I should have been alive. I was almost content to accept being stuck in the simulation I was in for the rest of my unnatural life. Instead..." She gestures, vaguely. "Here I am."
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"The way I been thinking about it, this is a new lease on life. It don't have to be a matter of holding onto the past." Which is probably easier for Dan to say, because he had nothing to go back to back home, and here he has excitement and a husband. "Maybe it's a gift."
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"Maybe. I appreciate having an actual body again, I was never sure back in the simulation; whether I was just... code, or if I was alive outside it. It's just—"
She sighs, and when she drops her hand from her neckline it's to start picking at the scar across it again. She debates for a good thirty seconds on how to say this.
"If I had a choice, I wouldn't go back to my world, anyway. There's somewhere else I'd rather be. I miss my friends from my world, but I've been dead a decade for the versions of them I met in the simulation. I can't imagine dropping back into their lives, without specifically following them back." 'Hi, I died but I'm alive again thanks to multiversal shenanigans' will just make her sound... insane, to anyone who hasn't lived this, she's sure. "There's something a lot more recent I want to hold onto, instead. I just don't think that getting back to it's possible."
Be extremely cryptic why don't you, CT.
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Because they've been ripped through so much time and space to be here, and he's certain there's no way she could have predicted that. Because Dan's traveled through time with Bunny and they've undone all the deaths that made Dan who he is, gave his family a second chance at life. Because, for as paranoid and fatalistic as Dan is, he's still an optimist, deep down.
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"Well, no. None of this would've ever crossed my mind as a possibility before being yanked into that simulation, and then I thought I was stuck there until I died again when the server did. But..."
Another shrug.
"If I get my hopes up, I'm just going to be disappointed. I got my hopes up in the simulation and then I had everything taken away again, before I even got here."
She can't build herself up just to fall again. She just can't. She has to take this all day by day and see where it gets her at the end, if she even makes it that far. This Price mess is, if nothing else, some kind of thing to focus on, besides the whole fantasy quest side that she's still struggling to just go along with on some level.
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It's why Dan can't stand to be happy without ruining it for himself. If he starts to expect a certain amount of happiness or stability, if he comes to anticipate that it'll still be there for him, the disappointment will crush him. Better to just ruin it before it gets too familiar.
"I ain't saying hope. I'm just saying, don't preclude no possibilities. Bad or good."
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It's far too easy here for her to fall into the habit of not letting anyone get close at all, again. Too easy to long for people that aren't here, instead; too easy to not want to bother putting any part of her heart on the line.
She's spent long enough alone, isolated, to be used to it. It doesn't mean she likes it, but she's used to it. At least the atmosphere here isn't as tense as Project Freelancer.
CT considers what he says for a long moment, before nodding her head to the side. "Mm. Alright. That's doable. It would be stupid to rule out certain possibilities entirely."
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He pauses for a moment, spinning a card on his ring finger. "Thanks for coming to me with your questions, by the way."
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"No kidding."
She manages a quiet laugh herself. She idly watches the way he shuffles the cards, with an unspoken sort of mild fascination. Somehow it's making her hands more restless by proxy.
"Thank you for answering. I know I came in wielding the conversational equivalent of a loaded gun there."
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"Well, if I had any problems with loaded guns, I wouldn't have might made it through my childhood." He grins.
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The thing about these alternate universes, or well people as a whole really, is she honestly can't tell if Dan's joking or if he was seriously around some abundance of loaded guns as a child.
She splits the difference with a jokey, "Should I be picturing a six year old with a gun right now?" Then, "Actually, more importantly, would you call that card work you're doing easier or harder than simple knife tricks? The inherent risks of a sharp blade notwithstanding."
So the lady might be a bit of a fidget as well as just curious. Some of the scars on her hands may suddenly make a specific kind of sense.
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Even the smallest little pop gun was so big in his hands that he had to have his parents holding him at the shoulders, helping him steady the weight. He was too young to remember, but he remembers teaching his siblings the same way, at the same age. It's a good memory, and there's an ambient warmth to his expression.
"This?" He walks a card between his fingers, slips it into the deck and shuffles the deck by walking the corners of the cards between each other like a chain. "I reckon it's a little harder, since cards are more apt to fly away. Less good weight to them."
Some of the scars on his hands, like hers, betray that knife tricks do require a fee in blood to learn. "Why, want to learn some sleight of hand?"
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She's still not entirely sure if he's messing around until she takes in the look on his face. Alright, probably not joking. That's sure one hell of an age to be wielding a gun. Unfortunately by now it barely even ranks on the scale of 'concerning things about people's lives' she's heard since she ended up in Svelte and if Dan looks sort of... contented with it, she's not touching it with a ten foot pole.
"Watching is making me wonder if I should. I'm not used to being as idle as I've been, here. I've been pitching in where I can but usually I'm always up to something. Having something to do with my hands takes the edge off quiet stretches, and playing with knives for fun seems like a bad idea when we're a couple dozen universes away from regular access to a hospital."
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He does a one-handed shuffle, then leaves the deck on the table and roots through his corduroy jacket for his other deck. He passes it over to her.
"I can teach you how to cheat, too."
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She takes the deck with a quiet laugh, giving them a simple shuffle just to start getting a feel for the cards themselves.
"Oh, boy, you should have seen early days Freelancer card games, at least two of us were cheating at any one time. Everyone always thought I was hiding or switching cards, but I wasn't. It's too obvious a trick from me, if you know me well enough to guess."
The glint in her eye and crooked smile probably say all they need to about if that means she wasn't cheating at all, though.
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One of the many odd jobs Dan's had in his illustrious career. He holds his deck out where CT can see it, then flips through a quick fake chain shuffle. "See, this one's just a matter of making it look like you're losing control of the cards while don't none of them actually leave your fingers. It don't actually mix the cards up so it's useless for playing, great for cheating."
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"Sure. Challenge accepted. I am rather out of practice, though, so with that history the odds are very stacked."
She doesn't betray any emotion related to that on her face or in her tone, but that it's been a while is entirely because the camaraderie between the squad was rather... strained, at the end, and she doesn't even remember when they stopped doing things like playing cards in the rec room.
She watches Dan display the trick and tries to mimic the steps and motions with her own deck, not getting it anywhere near as smooth first go, especially as she's getting used to the shape of the cards, but not totally fumbling it by dropping everything, at least.
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Dan demonstrates again, big smile revealing just how much he enjoys getting to show her how to do these trivial tricks.
"So, Price aside, how are you enjoying Rivendell?"
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CT watches again and takes the advice on her next attempt, which goes smoother in comparison. Still not perfect, but she tries again a couple of times and she does seem to pick up work with her hands pretty quickly.
"It's nice to be able to relax a little, without worrying so much about everything we have to deal with on the road. And the clothes are nice, Coda would probably enjoy seeing me dressed like this."
...she realises she said the name an instant after she says it, but just chooses to breeze past it to not draw attention to not meaning to say it. It's that paranoia again, she doesn't want to mention people close to her out loud because of Price.