open and closed.

[propulsion]

WHO: Tony Stark and some well coordinated back up dancers.
WHAT: Some open prompts about scientific pursuit under the cut, and some pre-planned starters below.
WHEN: Throughout Harvestmere. What is time?
WHERE: The workshops in the Gallows; the wilds of the Free Marches; and others.
NOTES: Feel free to use action spam tags if you prefer, and contact me if you'd like to do something different/specific! The field work has two prompts, feel free to pick either one and threadjack if your preferred already exists.

WORKSHOPS; LATE AT NIGHT.

Golden lamp light creeps out from beneath the door of one workshop, and for most evenings, well into the pre-dawn hours, that's really all the output that anyone need worry about. Maybe the occasional mutter, mostly muffled by thick wood and thick stone.

Tonight, however, disturbance and noise ekes through the barriers. It mostly starts as an intermittent sound of shattering glass, the strange thunder-strike sound of an anchor-shard firing, should you have the familiarity to make that connection, along with the spill of green light peeking from beneath the door into the hallway, flashing like lightning.

Glass scraped aside, some thumps of moving furniture, footsteps.

And then ("three, two--") another shattering, louder, that crack of sonic energy detonating, and then--

Yelling. "Damnit-- ow, ow, crap--" And if the lamp light coming out from beneath the door looks a little brighter, flickering, hotter-- well, there's probably a reason.

FIELD WORK; VARIOUS.

There is a rift taking up space in a paddock, hovering something like ten feet in the air. Nearby, a sheep corpse is decaying in the late afternoon haze, eyes staring and stupider than when it was alive, oily grey wool burned black where errant energy struck it dead where it stood. Its companions had the sense to get out of the way, but not the better sense to do so more than something like forty, fifty feet.

Tidy piles of sheep shit are dispersed intermittently among the dewy grass.

"Look alive," Tony says, to those he dragged out here today. "We're losing the light. Hand me that?"

Without too much in the way of explanation, he starts moving in a circle around the rift with a bundle of what look like bronze pokers in his hand, well-made, tapering into a spiral at the end, the other sharp so as best to be staked into the ground, which he does. Mages of specific studious inclination may recognise these as measuring tools to capture outputs of spells, as with the device in his hand -- also bronze, finely made, a little scratched and dull in spots.

The rift pulses with warning, green lightning bolt-type activity licking the grass beneath it, and the dense clouds above rumble with coming lashings of rain.

A later day, Riftwatch locates a rift over a river -- more like a stream, but wide, almost a hundred feet across of water rushing around and occasionally burbling over water-smooth rocks, some enough to stand and step on, others enough to catch a foot and turn an ankle. The latest distribution of demons have been dispatched, disintegrating into the glistening water with oozing demonic ichor under a late day sun, in a rare clear sky.

Tony comes to a stop near the rift, absently shaking his anchor-shard having hand as it pulses and glows brightly from both recent combat use as well as the rift nearby. In his other hand, which has his attention, is the thaumoscope, its dials and innerworks clicking. "Okay, are you listening?" he calls over towards whomever he saddled scribe duties with today. He is 80% soaked through with river water, and ignores the flow of it high around his ankles. "Passive reading is--"

And he starts listing off the various numerical indicators that we're just gonna handwave.

"Reset," he says, mostly for himself, twisting some dial on the scope. "I wanna get a reading of when it's activated, and then we'll-- give some considerable thought towards closing it, how's that sound."

Comments

[heorte]

Ellis is distracted from his own mild consternation at an extra lantern (if it meant to soothe his concerns, Wysteria has failed) by Houston. Tony's habit of tossing names off the cuff with the expectant air of someone who assumes his audience can identify them has meant Ellis has learned many new words and names but has very little context for any of them.

Houston. Probably not a monster. Maybe a scholar?

"I'd be glad of the help," Ellis answers as he straightens up, wades all the way up onto the bank over to Wysteria to pick up the bag of dried fruit. He takes care to mind where he's dripping. "But we're all lucky it hasn't started spitting out things bigger than me. I've heard that can happen."

Partly true. Everything Ellis has heard has been in the past month and only vaguely reputable. But still, a good case for quitting while they're ahead as far as he's concerned.

[heirring]

"It certainly could do." With a last punctuating jab of the pen, Wysteria finally lifts her attention from the notes.

"I saw a rage demon once while closing a rift near Tantervale. It was just dreadful. But not to worry, Messere. You have two good strong arms there and--" And she has pressing questions which demand her attention. "I'm sorry, Mister Rhodes-Potts, who am I meant to be? I can't very well pretend to be someone if I don't know who they are."

[propulsion]

"Nothing, it doesn't matter-- here."

Tony's occasional impatience with people getting caught up on his ~References~ never really seems to inspire him stopping. That would require a conscious decision behind how he runs his mouth.

Occupied instead, right now, with holding out the thaumoscope for her to take. "It means, this is you," he says. "And you hit this switch when I do the hand laser thing, and then you let it do its thing and then that's gonna start spinning, and you take down those numbers." And then maybe when they have enough numbers, it'll make some sort of sense. That's how science works.

He turns back to Ellis -- or rather, he turns back to the rift, but claps Ellis on the shoulder as he moves to wade out.

"Come on, time's a-wastin'."

[heorte]

"Houston is a scholar," Ellis tells her as he hands back the bag of dried fruits. Ellis delivers this misinformation very sincerely. "Just be yourself, and that'll do fine."

Refraining from saying, Be yourself and don't get to close to the dangerous part of this outing. He doesn't need to make the attempt to wave her back to a comfortable distance to know that would be shot down immediately. He lifts his mace again in his right hand, shaking out his left, and follows Tony in the water.

"If I land the killing blow, we close it. How's that wager sound?"

Though Ellis doesn't sound particularly smug, he is absolutely offering this because he's confident he'll be the one murdering whatever the Rift blurts out into the river. This doesn't feel like a risky bet to him.

[heirring]

With the thaumoscope in one hand, the bag of dried apricots in the other, and a medieval clipboard pinched clumsily between her elbow and side, Wysteria splutters after them: "A scholar of which discipline?"

Be herself. Oh for heaven's sake; what a fundamentally useless thing to advise a person to do.

With a grumble, she nips the edge of the bag between her teeth to free up a hand and sweeps her skirts back so she can rearrange herself and her myriad accouterments on a marginally less grimy patch of riverbank. She does not, it should be stated, fiddle with the bits and bobs on the measurement device while their backs are turned although it would be wholly forgivable were she to have done so. Instead, she sets the thaumoscope carefully down in the grass and readies the sheaf of papers over her knees for recording.

"Houston is ready!"

[propulsion]

River water splashes up around Tony's ankles even as he makes an effort to navigate where the flat-headed rocks rise up a little more, arms flung out to keep some balance. For a normal human man in his mid forties, he is a fairly chaotic, energetic quality to follow out towards a demon river, but he does stay on his feet.

As Ellis catches up and Wysteria shouts out her readiness, Tony twists to look back at both, raising a thumbs up to the latter. There's a half-grin out of him, as even sincere smiles must go through a sarcastic filter, but there's real amusement stamped into the corners of his eyes.

"Saucy," he says, approving. "Okay boss, you're on." He points. "But don't make me do all the work and swoop in at the last second, that's dirty tactics."

Tony turns his attention back up at the rift, which is already begin to spark and flare. He knows a small twinge of nervousness of a kind he can only chalk up to the fact he is wearing leather and some chain and not, you know, a titanium alloy with rockets on his feet, and squashes it back down. "Let's give it a tickle," he says, to himself, and raises his hand.

Crackaboom, and green lightning slams into his open palm.

[heorte]

The various qualms Ellis has about their chosen field of battle (seriously, fighting in water sucks) flare up as he watches Tony wade out. He glances back at Wysteria and is reminded that he's not going to find any help there, and squares off opposite Tony. There's a few decent footholds here. It's not the worst conditions he's fought in.

He has a moment to be very aware of Tony's leather armor and Wysteria's relative proximity when the rift belches out a pair of terror demons and a handful of wisps that skitter away across the surface of the river. That's a problem for later, Ellis assumes. How dangerous are wisps, really? Compared with a pair of spindly terror demons, Ellis is content write them both off.

"Go for the legs!" He yells immediately. Ellis' entire strategy is generally to knock things down and beat them into nothingness. It hasn't gone wrong so far.

[heirring]

With the first pulsing snap of energy, the thaumoscope leaps to life and Wysteria's writing hand with it. Her head (covered with a heretofore unmentioned but deeply necessary broad brimmed hat) bows and her attention fixes itself away from the burgeoning chaos (controlled! controlled chaos!) at the river's middle and on the page. If she concentrates very hard on the fact that this would all be much easier were she more talented or if Ralston had ever gotten to teaching her workaround methods of automation which might be applied to make the pen take notes on its own it is easier to ignore the matching surge of discomfort that swells in her offhand with each crackle and pop of the rift as it disgorges its menagerie.

"Watch out for the claws as well, Mister Rhodes-Potts!" Wysteria calls without looking up.

[propulsion]

One of the wisps is dealt with in spite of the low priority, mostly because it skitters in Tony's way -- he raises his hand and fires off a glimmer of green light, slamming into drifting spirit, which dissipates like fog. And reforms again behind him, if greatly diminished, quavering in the air and barely visible.

Tony is busy loping his way around to the nearest terror demon. "Which are the legs," is Tony's complaining holler back at Ellis, but does as suggested anyway -- ducking down a little, firing off another brightly flaring blast of Fade energy. Water explodes beneath the assault, turning to vapor, and the terror demon shrieks as it stumbles, assaulted leg bending strangely.

Out the corner of Tony's eye, he sees the second terror demon suddenly dive down into the ground, leaving behind bubbling black and green ichor in the water.

"Watch your feet!" he yells out, before ducking out of the way of the aggro'd demon's clawed assault, a flash of a magical green barrier exploding out of his hand like an umbrella. Ms Poppell can take credit for that if she likes.

[heorte]

Terror demons are an annoyance. It's the thought most clear in Ellis' mind as one of the demons rakes its claws rakes across his breastplate while it's twin disappears into the earth. At least darkspawn don't have any vanishing tricks. Sure, they just try to rip you apart, but they don't pop up behind you while you're trying to kill them.

And speaking of—

"Behind you!" Ellis warns, bringing his mace down again like punctuation on the demon howling between them as the demon bursts out of the water. "Point your hand behind you!"

Belatedly, Ellis considers that they haven't brought a healer. Have they brought a healer? Wysteria doesn't strike him as one, but who knows?

[heirring]

The unrelenting fixation of Wysteria's attention of the instrument and her notes says: No. They have not brought a healer with them.

[propulsion]

At the feeling of the river erupting behind him and the sound of demon screeching above his head-- I mean, Tony won't be ashamed to admit that maybe a little pee comes out, but he does do as told--

Blindly, splayed hand flung backwards, slamming up a shield before he darts out of the way between one demon engaged in getting smashed by a mace, and the other uselessly trying to tear through magical barricade. "God, these things sss--" The next firing off of energy manages to catch his attacker at an angle that has its head snap backwards. "--suck real bad."

Fortunately for Ellis, a second slam of his mace down on the one they'd tagged team is enough to leave it twitching and disintegrating into the river.

Unfortunately, the sound of damp foot steps and splashing indicates that Tony has put him in between himself and the remaining demon while the wists continue to keep firing off enfeebling rays of green, and missing. Over his head, Tony points his hand against the rift, which pulses as Fade energy is dragged out of it with force -- and then sends out a shockwave that disintegrates a wist, makes the terror demon stagger.

"You get that!" is called back to the shore.

[heorte]

Unsurprisingly, it's actually more stressful to have Tony in the mix than it was to square off against demons on his own. Caring about people, what a racket.

As Tony turns, Ellis sloshes quickly around him to take advantage of the momentarily inconvenienced demon and bring his mace down with a sickening crack onto what might be a rib cage. Ellis doesn't know the anatomy of demons. He hits it, it screams, that's enough for him.

"Nevermind the machine!" is something Ellis says while fully knowing his good advice is going to be ignored. "There's still wisps, and this—

Claws scrape across Ellis' breastplate, one nicking his chin before he can fully jerk back out of the way.

[heirring]

A less effective research assistant might at this point glance up from either the thaumoscope or the page upon which she was transcribing the readings, but while Wysteria Poppell may be a sixth rate magician she is nothing if not a first rate assistant. Her attention remains stubbornly fixed on the machine as it jitters out a series of reading - that was a rather impressive spike - and her hand moves in rapid shorthand. She had not spent nearly a year in the service of a petulant, demanding, self-centered academic of note only to end up incompetent at note taking over a lot of men shouting in her general vicinity.

"Do you want me to stop? I could help with closing the rift if you need it!" Wysteria shouts back, which is not an answer for either of them really. Obviously she got it. Obviously she knows there must be wisps and all sorts of other nasty things spilling out of the activated rift. She isn't dim.

[propulsion]

"Woah!" Tony shouts. Objection. That's his emotional support Grey Warden.

Too bad this anchor-shard doesn't have a quick fire mode, but Tony is at least a little versed in weapons that take a second to charge up. A darting wisps fires off shimmering ray of green light that catches Ellis in the shoulder, sinking a brief moment of weakness into his muscles. Out the corner of his eye, he sees Tony rounding on it, firing off his own shimmering ray of green light of a stronger kind of oomph.

The ghost scatters into particles. The next shot fired is at the thrashing terror demon, hitting it square enough that it falls backwards in its attempt to reclaim balance for a second attack on Ellis.

"Okay okay okay. HOUSTON!" Tony barks back to the river edge. "Get your happy ass over here."

In the time it'll take her to do so, he's pretty sure someone will finish off the thrashing bloodied mess wallowing in the river. And if it's not Ellis for some ding dang reason, well-- he can think of a few more tests they can run. For now, he picks off wists. He hums something as the next one explodes, but no one is here to recognise and appreciate a good Ghostbusters reference.

[heorte]

Even cursing, slightly blood and shaking off the effect at about the time Tony knocks the terror demon on it's ass, Ellis recognizes his cue. (He would like to hold off to demand Wysteria wait with Tony's contraption on the bank, but Ellis is aware enough to recognize what is and isn't a good use of his time at this point.)

So Ellis does exactly as Tony assumed he'd do: he obligingly bludgeons the terror demon into bubbling ooze while Wysteria makes her way over to them.

"That was well done," Ellis tells him, nodding towards where the wisps had been darting back and forth. He can feel blood dripping from his chin, but it's likely just a knick. He can leave it for the moment. He spins his mace, stepping back out of Wysteria's way. Ellis doesn't have a shard. He can't be useful here.

"Perhaps we can practice with it next time we come out here."

Very easy to be generous when he senses that Tony and Wysteria's experiment is winding down.

[heirring]

With the promptness of a young lady who has already thought this part through, Wysteria casts down her notes, gathers up the ends of her skirts and stuffs them up into her wide belt to keep them from the water. Considering the volume of fabric and the finnickiness of that broad brimmed hat, the extremely sensible boots she's wearing are a surprise as is the speed with with she manages to traipse her way through the shallows to join them. The exploding filaments of the last wisp have yet to fully dissipate before she's there, left hand crackling with energy.

"Ellis, you look ghastly," Wysteria crisply informs him. "And this water is freezing."

Sweeping her sleeve out of the way, she raises her hand toward the pulsing wound of the rift.

[propulsion]

"Take it to the complaint box," says Tony, irreverent, watching her first as she lifts her hand, the way Fade-lightning immediately leaps and attaches to the shard of magic embedded in her hand, the way it lashes fitfully between these two points. He shakes out his own hand and does the same thing, nose wrankling as energy hits his raised palm.

It takes some several seconds, and there's that sound of energy overloading, charging, accumulating, and then the thunder crack of the Veil snapping closed, leaving behind nothing but a faint, dwindling green glow, and the demonic remains still bubbling away and dissolving into the river.

The energy immediately leaves Tony's body, but he has enough left not to sit down in the rush of icy water -- he leans hands on knees and bends over, regaining his breath.

"Thanks," he says, on delay, to Ellis. "You could probably be quicker on the recoil there."

You know, if we're giving notes.

[heorte]

Oh, the water's freezing, is it? Ellis' eyebrows shoot up, but declines to point out that he's been sloshing around in it for the better part of the afternoon. He lifts a hand to his chin, gingerly mapping out the source of the blood as Tony catches his breath.

"I'll keep that in mind," he answers, wincing and drawing his fingers back. He bends to rinse the blood off in the water, then nods towards shore in the same movement. "We should pack up your contraption before something else opens up overhead."

And because Ellis somehow hasn't yet learned his lesson, he looks directly at Wysteria expectantly for support. Surely she'll agree with him this time.

[heirring]

At last, gratification: "Ellis is right, Mister Rhodes-Potts. I rather doubt we're at risk of another rift opening up, but it's getting dark and I for one don't play nursemaid very well should anyone catch a cold." Wysteria says, dusting her hand (shaking the ache out of her fingers; ouch, that smarts). To Ellis: "That said, I have a salve for cuts with my things and will lend the pot to you if you promise to wash your hands first. Now, Mister Rhodes-Potts, we shall have to review the numbers. I think you'll find that the burst in tandem with activating the rift was slightly more powerful than the last and I would be curious as to whether the effect would be cumulative over time. Say, does the rift's output always multiply in intensity? And if so, at what rate? And how does that affect the capacity of our shards to--"

And so on and so forth as she slogs along in the heavy boots back toward the riverbank.