wildestlogs | HOME SWEET HOME

Entry tags:

HOME SWEET HOME

Elrond let the gang decide when to leave, providing hospitality and medical care until they're ready. When the quest calls to them and they know it'll tug them along soon, he makes sure each is fully supplied and armed with weapons of their choosing, some custom made. They each have a pack, food supplies, and extra clothing. All of them get offered sturdy boots, even those who have stranger body types like Filbo.

He gives the group four copies of a book transcribed with the prophecies that had been brought to Rivendell, to be studied and interpreted on their journey.

Those who mentioned knowledge of the One Ring are briefly pulled aside away from the guests at Elrond's Council. They're implored to keep it secret, for the knowledge of Frodo's task could lead to people trying to steal the Ring when he's on a journey to destroy it.

Crowley is also released from the dungeon, with Elrond apologizing for the Elves' caution. It's at least clear he's been shown some of the same hospitality. He's healed up, well fed, and clothed in replacement clothes just like they all are.

Elrond's final goodbye to the whole group is warm and genuine.

"Namárië. It is a word we use for greetings and goodbyes. It means 'be well.' Whether you seek to help this world or try to find a way home, it is our hope that whatever paths you tread fly beneath your feet, and whatever obstacles you face are quickly overcome."

A pause.

"It would be easy to try to make you feel that the hopes of those in this new world go with you; but such burdens should only be carried by those who choose it. The Green will not admit it, but they have done you a great wrong. If you try to only find your way home, it's justified, and I hope you do find it."

Yes, there are prophecies, but making people do something by force is wrong, and all weary travelers deserve to find their way home. After a brief time of saying any goodbyes, they get to make their way to the other side of the valley. On the other side of the pass is the castle the Green spoke about.

The castle is a Frankenstein monstrosity that seems cobbled together from many buildings and machines. The second the last of the gang piles inside, it starts moving, massive legs clanking along. But where it's going is unknown. At least that means they have time to explore, rest, and get settled.

There are many mystical objects and mysteries within. One half of the castle seems to be a strange frozen realm of faerie, with strange sights to explore. But even the warmer side of the castle has its oddities. Magic waterfalls that show memories, and a scrying pool that shows frozen images of home, locked to the times each member of the squad left theirs. There are magical doors that lead to sights beyond the imagination, strange collections and even entire small realms, some beautiful, some dangerous.

The three magical creatures, Jonald, Ronald, and Rolkien constantly get underfoot trying to get the group settled, but refuse to talk about their former master, seemingly hurt at his leaving the castle.

The castle also seems to like assigning roommates for some of the group, making it so doors only open to their assigned room anytime they try to go to a place to sleep, even teleporting to them to the room if they fall asleep elsewhere.

It's a strange place, sometimes dangerous, sometimes annoying, but at least they have even more time to rest, train, plan, and prepare. They will have a few weeks to adjust to their new normal.

Then...who knows where the road will take them.
OOC DETAILS
❧ Prompts. The mods aren't doing prompts, but players can check out the page on the Moving castle for inspiration. The castle has many mysteries and oddities and absolutely anything can be behind the magical doors.

❧ Food and water. The castle seems to have an internal pressurized water supply and food is plentiful...for now. The food supply will not last forever but some food was left behind by the castle's previous occupants. There there's enough for a long break without hunting. There is some fresh food that's rotten and needs to be thrown away but whoever lived here clearly knew how to keep food prepared. There are cooking oils, flour, and sugar for bread and baked goods. There is jerky of various types of meats, dried fruit, sun-dried tomatoes, stores of nuts, jars of preserved fruit and jams (and empty jars to make more), and hard cheeses that need only a little mold cut off them to still be edible. Some of the jars have confit, meat cooked and preserved in lard, or garlic preserved in oil. A small root cellar has a few barrels of potatoes, parsnips, and onions.

It also has some barrels of beer and bottles of wine.

There are also dried herbs hanging in bundles from the kitchen ceiling, jarred pickled vegetables, and vinegar for pickling more. There are also fresh veggies the group can harvest together. The gardens will not be infinite in supplying the group but luck has it that many vegetables are ripe for harvest right now. The squad can pick juicy tomatoes, green beans, peppers, carrots, radishes, blackberries from a small thicket, squash, and plenty of zucchini. The garden does need tending to stay healthy. Aside from harvesting from it, weeds need to be pulled, beans and tomatoes need to be trellised, spoiled veggies on the ground need to be tossed away.

❧ Bathing. There is no soap other than what the Elves may have given them but there are hot baths. The water has to be heated on a fire down the hall and carried to the tubs.

❧ Weather/Atmosphere: The air outside and inside is on the warmer side. Even though the stone is cool, the cooking fires warm the air to something comfortable. The air outside in the gardens is warm and sunny, with the occasional cool breeze due to the altitude.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

<That's your prerogative, I suppose.> He really can't relate. Humans, with their limited vision and small, slow, vertically-oriented bodies, probably do find security in being closed in on most sides, in tighter warrens than Yeerk architecture creates. It could, undoubtedly, be much worse. Humans prefer brighter lighting than the Yeerk Empire. They also aren't Taxxons, they have some concept of maintaining open space around them.

Hah. If he'd been expected to live in Taxxon tunnels, well, he wouldn't be alive for long. Alloran doesn't know how Arbron managed to stand it. Taxxon instincts, probably.

He manages not to sigh. <I have had nothing to do with 'magic'. Is this a literal expectation or a kind of metaphor I don't understand?>

"Well, it's magic, so... both?" Saturday offers, unhelpfully. "Sorry. Dunno exactly how to explain it."

Particularly not to an alien doesn't share her priors. She thinks for a second.

"I can give you the kinda sciency explanation we have for stuff back home, but I dunno if it exactly works the same way here. My magic's still working so it's gotta be kinda the same, but my magic works in a particular way that I dunno if you could change it. Maybe start with like... hell, do Andalites even have magic as a concept, like in stories? I mean I guess you probably have something like it."

Alloran considers and shows one black-skinned palm in a gesture like sure. <We have the concept. It's closely associated with psychic powers and Ellimist-tales. Those latter we've come around to regarding as stories of technological aliens advanced beyond our understanding, but they evolved from stories of them as gods or spirits with magic powers. Generally there are not a lot of consistent rules associated across cultures. This hasn't been an area of great interest to me, though.>

The days when Andalites sincerely believed in magic are several thousand years gone. Alloran could muddle through explaining the systems associated with some stories, maybe, but they're very much incorporated into those stories.

<You may as well tell me, if you would.>

"Well, there's a lot of math I don't understand involved, but the kiddie version is that all life generates a kind of mystical energy. Mostly people call it mana these days, but it's been called other things. Magic is done by harnassing, manipulating, and spending that energy to create effects that appear to violate the laws of reality. Maggie - my best friend, she's a mage - she says that actually what it does is change the rules of reality in a small area, or something like that. How strong any given spell or effect is depends on how much mana the mage can access and how much they're able to safely use.

"A weird part of magic people don't quite understand is spirits. Best guess, other'n religious explanations, is that if mana pools in a place long enough, it starts to develop a sort of mind. People's belief, their energy, going into it, helps make it stronger. Eventually you've got a person, but made of magic, the way we're made of flesh and bone.

"An', well, this castle is very old, an' very magic, an' clearly has got some way of sensing what's going on and making choices about it. To me, that says the castle is probably a kind of spirit, or otherwise given a mind by the accumulation of magic and suchlike, so - I'm gonna treat it like one."

She pats the balustrade again, fondly. "We take care of the castle, it'll take good care of us. I'm willing to bet on it."

<It's reassuring to think of magic as having rules and limitations,> Alloran says with his usual dryness. He's relieved by how prosaic the short form of the explanation is. <The way you describe it sounds like a form of animism, though it goes further than our examples typically do. And reminiscent of Stuff, unfortunately.>

He gestures with one hand at 'Stuff', as if indicating a tiny sphere; this is meant to distinguish the word that would be rendered with a capital initial from normal, prosaic 'stuff'. Which is a word he's not really inclined to use, really.

Carefully, he says, <I suppose it is literally animated and it's uncertain whether there is a pilot or some kind of AI system. And it's true that the interior moves. My navigation-sense is proving unreliable. It seems... reasonable as a supposition.>

"Well, I gave you the version they teach in like, kindergarten. There's a bunch more stuff that people who study it for a living could tell you, but the thing about magic is, you don't have to understand it to use it. Like how you don't gotta be a biologist t'be an athlete."

Which is pretty close to her situation. She uses magic unconsciously and instinctively to enhance her senses and physical abilities; in fact, for most of her life, she didn't even really understand that what she was doing was magic, and not just talent and training. Didn't want to understand - didn't want to think about how much of it was the magic and how much of it was her.

But the magic is her; she is the magic. Being ashamed of it makes about as much sense as saying that elites athletes haven't earned their medals, because they never would have gotten them if they hadn't been born with the potential to be elite and received training and support that allowed them to fulfill it.

"I'm convinced. I asked it for a private room, an' it delivered. Just put my hand on a doorknob, asked politely, and walked through to here."

<The same way those given the power aren't required to understand the principles to be able to morph,> he says with an ironic note. Alloran understands some of those but he takes a lot of it on faith, too, and he knows what understanding he does have is out of date and skewed by his masculine lack of background in the sciences. Mostly, what he has is from listening to his wife and her partner.

The Animorphs hadn't had that. Aximili started off as a cadet and the Fleet has feminized since Alloran went through it, so he might have some science training, but the ability to pass it on? To aliens? He doesn't expect they understand it at all.

<I'm glad for you,> he says, which is sincere. <I... am not pleased about being so completely enclosed again, but I can grasp that you have a different concept of it.>

"Yeah, you tend to like big spaces, right? So you can bolt for the horizon. The creept elf castle merged in with the place has a kind of an outside to run in, but it's really fuckin' creepy. Probably got giant spiders an' bullshit everywhere."

She hadn't done more than stick her head in and decide she wasn't rested enough for whatever that bullshit is. Sooner or later, she suspects, there will be problems from frozen fairytopia; until then, she's content to mark the doors that lead to it and pretend it's not a problem. They have too many problems, she has to start prioritizing somewhere.

"Maybe if you asked the castle nicely it'd stop and let you off regular to run around? Or would that not help."

<That's less concerning than having to turn at sharp ninety-degree angles to keep from colliding with walls, not being able to see, and having my tail restricted,> Alloran insists. The chance to run if pressed is important, but the 'fight' instinct kicks in before the 'flight' one.

He is small for a male Andalite, so he can navigate doorways and stairs without visible difficulty, but human structures just aren't built for him. His hooves don't get good purchase on slick tile, turning corners or outright turning around is something of a process if he's in a corridor, and a spiral staircase is something he'd rather not have to manage.

<That place looks very hazardous,> he continues, ignoring Saturday's question for the moment because otherwise he's going to start comparing the Castle to a cage. <The grass is barely palatable so there's not even a good reason to run there.>

Saturday frowns. She can see his point; she'd seen him going down stairs once, on the Rig, and deeply admired the co-ordination.

"Maybe the Castle can help with that? Ramps, and wider halls, at least for the time that you're in an area? I don't know how much control it has over itself, really. But explaining the problem and asking couldn't hurt, even if it doesn't help." She shrugs. "Up to you."

"I think we oughta make a policy of not to that part of the castle, frankly," she says, on the subject of the frozen fairy realm. "Like I'm considering getting on the mirrors about it. You don't need to be a genius or a mage to see there's trouble over there."

<It's responsive to that degree?> Alloran asks, skeptical and also too pessimistic to agree that it can't hurt to ask. He expects if there's a controlling intelligence here it already doesn't care for him, for not being the sort of creature it's made to serve and for not rejoicing in its embrace.

Really, the frozen castle combined with the unreliable structure of this half makes him want even less to do with the entire concept. Sometimes Alloran keenly regrets being this surrounded by tiny bipedal aliens. <I suppose it's worth making a statement.>

"It might be? At least when it comes to things that touch directly on its domain." Saturday is half-bullshitting; spirits and magical intelligences aren't even close to her area of expertise. She has some what-you-might-call practical experience with them, but the ones she's encountered have rarely been as friendly and helpful and nice as the Castle.

"I might say something, later. Dunno. Might just encourage some people to investigate the place. I almost miss the rig, sometimes - it sucked ass, but it was simple."

Job one, survival. Job two, escape. Job three, don't go crazy from stress. It had been her life for a year before Piper Ninety; she'd been used to it, found an equilibrium in it. Now... they're still trapped, still compelled, but it's "nice" because they're "needed," or some shit. An in-between.

Saturday hates ambiguity.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

HOME SWEET HOME

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject