[closed] uncrossing the crossroads

[nonvenomous]

WHO: Athessa, Loxley, Richard and Yngvi
WHAT: Exploring the Crossroads, mapping eluvians, not pooching stealth rolls.
WHEN: Drakonis
WHERE: Everywhere and In Between
NOTES: OOC Notes

peren art

Comments

ON BREAK

[nonvenomous]

Even the light here is grey, lending a stony, petrified cast to the ruins that constitute the Crossroads. Some one hundred feet afield in empty space, an active eluvian juts from the side of a floating island that’s really more of a boulder, a cascade of rock frozen in time in it’s crumbled from the foundation.

Richard studies it from the stairway to nothing he’s sat at the foot of to eat. Two stairs down from the anchor of his boots, the floor falls away into a concave cliff face. Beyond that, oblivion.

His back is to the others -- broadcasting in plain trade that he isn’t interested in water cooler chatter while he works his way through a wedge of flatbread roughly the same color and texture as the surrounding masonry.

Gods know he’s spent enough time listening to (and looking at) them as is.

[charmoffensive]

Having seen more madness than the average person in the last few months of his life, this place is quite something else. Curiousity and honest intimidation are at war with one another in which Loxley keeps to obvious paths and defers to opinion as to where they should go next.

Left to his own devices as they break for a light lunch, curiousity wins out. It doesn't manifest itself too dangerously, and in fact, he's taken extra precaution by lowering himself to lie on his stomach so that he can most safely peer down over the edge of their current island, and stare at the endlessness beneath.

If there wasn't a girl watching, he might give into the boyhood impulse of spitting over the side.

As it stands, he simply collects a loose pebble nearby into a hand, and tosses it lightly, squinting after it as it disappears from view. "If we let someone down on a rope," he says, after a moment, "a very long rope, and set them swinging, that might reach that one. And then tie it off on both ends and climb over."

[sulahnan]

The girl in question already spat over the ledge. Maybe not this ledge, but every ledge in the Fade is simultaneously the same as and different from the one before. Same diff.

"Do we even have a rope that long?" Athessa looks around at her companions, judging the supplies they brought along. "Yngvi, you got a super-duper long rope hidden away somewhere?"

[filthydipper]

There are times in a dwarf's life where he has taken about six left turns and still hasn't come full circle. This is one of them because by rights this is, you know, the whole realm of bullshit Yngvi prefers to leave to other people because as he said once a long time ago now I get knocked down, but I get up again.

If a dwarf gets knocked out in the Fade--

"Why d'you reckon I'm the one who has rope?" He complains for the sake of complaining, the odd comfort of it when he wants to leave here immediately as you do why is he in scouting this is a terrible division why is there a war in Nevarra ruining his retirement plan? "Do dwarves just-- have rope spooling out our bellybuttons?"

(The rope comes out of the armpit. Because he's pulling it out one sleeve.)

"We're not anchoring it to my traps, no dwarven craftsmanship will be left behind here, dwarf stuff don't belong."

quarantine means no tag order

[sulahnan]

Her answer to his complaint is just to gesture at the rope.

"You just always have useful stuff, I dunno. Is that long enough to reach down there?" She points to the weird floating island in question.

It's pretty far.

[nonvenomous]

Richard slows in his chewing, bread rolled to his cheek. There’s a scuff of seat on stone; he’s turned, slightly. Just enough to gauge whether or not Loxley’s suggestion is a serious one with a Look over his shoulder.

His uncertainty goes arch when Athessa pitches in and -- with Yngvi’s help -- spins stage one of a brainstorm into deadly reality in record time.

“Are you going to draw straws?”

He twists off another piece of bread, and pushes it into his mouth by way of deliberate demonstration: he has no intention of drawing one himself. He is too busy eating. Also, he is the cleric.

[charmoffensive]

Loxley remains as he is as they speak, bellydown and lizard-like on the lip of their floating island and half-twisted to watch people debate long ropes. When Richard speaks up is when he makes eye contact, maybe senses a little bit of dubiousness as to the seriousness or credibility or merit of his idea, and says; "It would only be fair. I know we're all excited at the prospect of volunteering."

He pushes himself up to sit. "We could braid another length of rope together to make it long enough, but this would all depend on everyone's confidence in climbing along a rope that distance over endless void."

He seems chill about it, personally.

[sulahnan]

Athessa glances at Richard, then looks back to Loxley, shrugging.

"Why bother with straws? I'll do it." Will it be easy? No. But it'll be fun.

[nonvenomous]

Dick has too much to chew on to mount any kind of real protest. Any number of the plans they’ve executed thus far have driven him into the strange, silent and deliberately separate break he’s in the process of taking. Hollow-jawed, bread between his knees.

Without speaking, the sentiment behind a look he shoots Loxley after the idea of him climbing along a rope that distance over endless void is clear.

He would prefer not to.