faderift | DRAGON RAGE: ORIGINS.

A rifter, a mage, an Orlesian noble and an elf walk into a bar.

They are not comped for drinks.

Mhavos has never been much of a drinker. He orders the thing least likely to poison him, and nurses it like it's taken sick. Idly, he says, "that Beshlin fellow... I don't know the Trade word for connerie. But in collaboration with the other stories... well. What do you think?"

He oughtn't speak his own ideas so readily.

Edited 2019-09-25 15:35 (UTC)

"I think the surprising thing about his story, under the circumstances, is that any of it seems to be true," Julius says, quietly rueful as he sips his ale.

He's not in robes for once, in the name of getting slightly more people to talk to him (and ease of moment in the rainy, muddy landscape), but he still doesn't fit here any more than the other three. It keeps his focus mainly outward, even if he appears relaxed. After all, it doesn't hurt to be careful.

"But the dragon seems to have been real enough, which is heartening. We didn't come all the way out here for nothing. And whatever did happen, it hasn't been well-known enough to contradict Beshlin's story, at least in this corner of the world. That's odd, isn't it? Dragons don't typically just vanish at random."

"I would think, if I was a dragon, that as soon as the local population grew too aware of me I would vanish. Or leave quickly enough that everyone thought I'd vanished. But it doesn't sound like your world has dragons that are as intelligent as some stories show them to be."

He's cheerful as he talks, sniffing his wine with no little skepticism before he takes a drink. Sure enough, he should have been skeptical. No matter. He's fitting in! A drink is how you do that! He's even in clothing that fits in somewhat, linen top under heavy jerkin over normal enough trousers. The lack of bow-tie makes him a little wistful, but no one wears one here. It's a shame.

"I think there was one here. And that Beshlin wishes he was the sort of man to challenge one."

A dragon's lair. Excellent. Mhavos can't help but feel like a bloody dragon is about to pop its head out and murder them all, but at least they're where they ought to be. He picks up something, an oblong disk, iridescent in the half light.

Something like a smile curves his expression. "Is this- is this a dragon scale?" He asks no one in particular.

"My friend. It is a dragon scale," Val says, with great reverence.

This is an adventure, one that he is--perhaps to everyone's surprise--well-suited for. A scholar does not remain in a library or a classroom or an office. A scholar may be found--no, should be found--in the field. And fields are where Val has always preferred to be.

All this is to say that he is in this lair outfitted with his personal supplies and equipment which are, by turns, both finer and shabbier than equipment provided by Riftwatch. There is no waiting in line at the general storeroom of supplies for Val. Furthermore: shabby, in this case, refers to the well-worn look of his things. This is a man who has traveled, who has lived off the land and cheerfully eaten insects and shat in the woods and has been drawing dragon scales in the margins of his leather-bound journals since he was seven years of age.

He claps Mhavos on the shoulder as he leans in to peer at the scale in the poor light.

"And it is no artifact, but a true thing itself. Do you know what this means?"

Edited (remember we're riftwatch now? i didn't) 2019-09-25 05:07 (UTC)

Mhavos has learned a lot about Val during this expedition. Mostly, he's learned the volume of the great affection the man has for dragons. Strange, Mhavos had always figured that was a more Tevene affectation, but one can never quite predict the idylls of the nobility. He turns the scale in his hand, weighing it. He thinks it would look fine, mounted on his wall; he also thinks it far too gaudy for the likes of him, and he ought to donate it to Riftwatch's innumerable archives.

"It means," Mhavos says, "a dragon is missing its scale."

Another thing about nobles: there is no point in answering true. Their questions are always rhetorical.

"Oh, very clever."

He is a strange fellow, this Dalat. Very sharp. More amusing than one might expect. Do elves often have surnames? Beleth Ashara has one, of course. Or was Ashara a title? Val is still uncertain. Perhaps Dalat is a title, too. It is safer to say the full name, Mhavos Dalat, even in one's thoughts, or else risk saying aloud the wrong name someday.

But: the dragon scale.

"Still, you are correct as well as clever. A dragon is missing its scale. And I would suppose she is quite nearby. This would be one of the tubercler-shaped scales toward the dorsal area--the shape, you see--and the curve, there, at the bottom, will be for now less chitinous than if this example were several days old. If we are lucky, we will find more quite close by. Exciting, yes?"

"If one wishes to be killed by a dragon," Mhavos says. "A goal of yours?"

Still, he carefully places the dragon scale in one of his bags, away from anything that may scratch or crack it.

"Oh, I will not be killed," Val says with great confidence and self-assurance. And he is right. People like Val de Foncé are not killed. Instead they move smoothly through life, side-stepping tragedies and terrors that befall those lesser blessed than they. All of this goes without saying.

"But I do wish to see this dragon," he continues, conversationally. "Of course I have seen others. Do not mistake me: I am no amateur. It is more than a dragon is not so commonplace that one would grow tired of beholding it. I should love to be able to boast of beholding this one, one day."

People like Val de Foncé are killed all the time, in Mhavos' experience. A thought he keeps to himself, along with the quiet gush of self-loathing accompanying it.

"And how did you survive the other dragons? Speaking as I am, an amateur."

It's not necessary, Mhavos has found, to always puff up the egos of the nobility. Simply playing up one's own failings is often the same, and hurts Mhavos' pride none at all.

"By observing it from a safe and concealed distance, of course. Though I find it distasteful, I have made study of the dragon hunters. Their finishing methods are but sheer barbarism. Their stalking technique is what interest me. There are ways to create blinds, as one would use to hunt game for sport, but these are far more advanced. Think of the dragon's senses--a predator like no other. How soft one must touch upon these sharper senses, and how hard one might tread upon the senses that are blunter. Most of their kind do not see so well as they smell, for instance. So a hunter relies upon that. So, too, does the researcher in the field."

Here Val pauses to sigh, happily, caught up in his memory. There is such peace upon his face as he continues, "Ah, my friend. To have hidden among the craggy places of some mountain roost, tucked away in a narrow cave, with a woven thatch of twigs and brush ahead, scent obscured by oils, and to see a dragon alight, as lightly as a dragonfly, upon a stony peak. You cannot imagine. I hope someday you are to behold it for yourself. Perhaps soon. It is a thing of indescribable beauty that few have been permitted to see, but if the sight were mine to give, I would give it to everyone."

Mhavos lets the man talk. He's rather obsessed with dragons, isn't he? It's something to take note of for later, if he ever needs the man's favor. He also listens to the details, of course-- they're clearly well-researched and prescient. They may even soon be relevant. But this is not a conversation, it's a string of speeches where Mhavos will occasionally interject to give the Val a new subject on which to pontificate. He's played this role before.

"And would you," Mhavos says, looking at the detritus around them. Ah, look, a femur, "consider this a safe place from which to observe?"

Val abruptly stops walking so that he can look around them, and study their surroundings. His eyes narrow thoughtfully. He side-steps, to the left, and tips his head--then steps back to where he was, and tips his head the other direction.

He looks over at Mhavos.

"I would say that it is a place where we might be caught by a dragon before we can secret ourselves to make these observations. Is that a femur?"

Inevitably the dragon appears. Mhavos has never had an interest in animal husbandry, and isn't sure of the correct terminology. Only, it's there, where they also are, and it's angry.

He ducks behind the nearest bolder, expression stony in its calmness. "We can outrun it," he says, "unless it can breathe fire. I don't think it can fly."

The creature roars. Mhavos doesn't react. His posture has turned to one readying themselves for battle, a spring coiled in waiting.

This was supposed to be a research mission Julius thinks but does not say, staff in hand. "Right, I think," glancing at the other three, "running might be the best plan, as we're not exactly --"

The drake picks that moment to charge and Julius cuts himself short and pushes out his free hand to the left. The intricate lines of a barrier spell flare beneath their feet (assuming no one has wandered too far away to catch in the 4 meter circle). He hopes someone else has the presence of mind to hit the creature before it actually barrels into them, but if no one does, at least it won't hurt quite as badly to be wrong.

Val lifts his writing-book so he can peer down at the lines of the spell, as they brighten into being. He has his book in his hand because he has been writing, of all things. Kept his back to a boulder, peered around to take in the sight of the beast as he had time and opportunity, making notes on the drake that is now coming toward their party.

He's not stupid. And he has a crossbow, which he is quite good with--and a knife--and a sense of self-preservation--but honestly, it is not every day that one has the chance to observe a drake in the wild.

"Very good!" he congratulates Julius, just as the drake barrels around the corner and roars. Its breath is hot, even without the ability to breathe fire. Spittle flies off of its teeth and tongue and spatter the ground. Its claws look like obsidian dipped in ink, black and liquid and endless. Fascinating.

Mhavos can't help but start at the magic forming under and around them. It's a small thing, and he has it under control almost immediately. He's seen magic before. He's seen mages before. But no one has ever used a spell on him, and it's... new.

It's new, it's fine, get over it.

"Can you move the barrier," Mhavos hisses to Julius, ignoring Val entirely. "Or do we need to wait it out?"

He's not going to suggest, oh, you fight the dragon, when he himself cannot.

It's a dragon. A real, actual dragon. Aziraphale has always wanted to see one even knowing it was stupid to 1) want to be near something so dangerous and 2) wish they existed. For several seconds, as magic (real magic!) flares up around him and the dragon starts to move, he's nearly giddy with excitement.

Then it dawns on him quite how dangerous this is.

"We might need a miracle to get away," he says, quietly, and tries whisking them away. It doesn't happen. Another try doesn't do anything either, and he looks up, wide-eyed, at the dragon. Maybe a distraction? Somehow? If it was on slowed down, for instance. This time, something happens - the dragon does slow a little as ice crystals form around its forelegs.

He really should have thought about this possibility beforehand.

"Good thought," he says to Aziraphale. Presumably he means the ice, not the wishing for a miracle.

He doesn't linger over it, though. "The barrier doesn't have to move, it's on you until it deteriorates or absorbs too much damage," he says to Mhavos - not as if he should have known, necessarily, but briskly because his concentration is somewhat split. Understandably.

("It's on you" is maybe not the most comforting way to express that thought.)

"Waiting it out isn't tenable regardless, it won't make you invulnerable, just tougher." Julius himself is already moving a bit, fanning out to make the four of them a less conveniently crowded together target. "I can try to slow it down a bit, at least, but it'll take me a moment." It has occurred to him it would have been useful to learn more than two offensive spells, one of which is fire-based.

The drake, meanwhile, is seething, heat coming off of it in waves. It feels like standing too close to a forge, and Val makes another note before he snaps his book shut and tucks it back into his satchel. The ice that binds the creature's feet crackles dangerously, as the drake flexes its legs, straining for freedom.

"A distraction," Val suggests, brightly. "The thing about these creatures is that their attention is easily caught. It is looking at us now, yes. If we give it something else to look at, it will then, naturally, look away. I can run over there and make a great deal of noise. Any one of us might do it. But if we have the gift of spellwork... can not that create a distraction that might give us the chance to head for safer ground? Perhaps that way?"

He points, the way out, or back, or to safety, however you want to think of it. Primarily it is a way currently behind the drake's great scaled tail, which is as thick as a burly man. It will also afford Val a better angle from which to draw the creature's spade-shaped head as well. Very good, for him.

"Risky, but possibly our best chance." Julius mentally runs through his spells, looking for something handy. "A flame blast wouldn't hurt it much as a direct hit. Centered elsewhere, though, it's loud and literally flashy. It might buy us a few moments of divided attention." He wishes he had something better; he knows a lot of mages who would, but his own specialties lend themselves more to traps and dueling other mages.

He glances back at the other three. "If I give a try, are you ready to make a run for it? I can protect our rear if the three of you are a quick about it." They don't have long to decide, based on the loud crack of ice as the drake approaches renewed mobility. "If you can make it to that ridge, we can create a choke point there." Glyphs will be much more effective that w ay; thank the Maker that drakes don't fly, he thinks fleetingly.

DRAGON RAGE: ORIGINS.

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FINDER'S KEEPERS.

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HOTLINE BLING.

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