O2 ♚ I'M A LONG TIME TRAVELER HERE

[slaveking]

WHO: Character(s)
WHAT: Several Rifters and native drop-ins congregate at the Tavern as advertised via messenger crystal.
WHEN: Late January (forward-dated for recentmost app approvals!)
WHERE: The Tavern, private room
NOTES: OOC plotting here! Feel free to treat this like a general mingle log, but I will be making empty starters below for specific topics for group threads/conversation. An infodump/glossary link may also be pending from Araceli/Church.

It's past dinner time. This provides a reasonable excuse to drink only out of the ale pitchers set up for the expected guest, although there's a little bread and salt pork set up on the one bench along the wall. Dozens of chairs and a few less tables are loosely organized into groups. There's no dais or marked center for the room, the bar room version of the principles of the Arthurian round table, all being equal in the private room. Which, granted, is only as private as the public announcement and common courtesy might enforce. In other words, that can't be a real expectation.

However, the other Tavern workers are watching the door and main floor discreetly, multi-tasking with running the usual evening business. It's not so different from any other night, not even for the involuntary immigrants gathering on the second level. Drink, talk, and get to know.

Comments

[demonicbeauty]

"I've heard of it," Ariadne said. "It's a form of magic derived from making blood sacrifices. Mages get a power boost when they spill their own blood for their spells only..."

She paused, her forehead creasing a little bit as she tried not to look disgusted. "...only from what I understand, the power can become addicting. And they can start sacrificing the lives of others to derive more of it."

Ariadne did not approve.

"I spoke with a Templar named Lord Norrington about it," she continued. "I may have given him an idea to institute a rehabilitation for blood mages. They're usually just killed on sight."

[slaveking]

Necromancy. Marcel's attention sharpens when he hears that word, but as the conversation drifts away from it, he's careful to maintain a carefully relaxed facade. Everything is fine. He's chill. There are definitely no animated quasi-corpses sitting amongst you fine living folks. Don't worry about it.

"What I've heard is basically that." He nods at Ariadne. "Furthermore, Dorian Pavus let on that the use of blood magic actually weakens a mage's connection with the Fade. That's-- their original source of power." Marcel gathers his tankard a little closer to him, pensively. His drink has been a prop for most of the evening. Much of the conversation has been rather sobering in nature. His eyes shift back to Lenneth in a moment, brows quirking.

Hmm. "I don't doubt this is what you've heard," he says. "But it's strange, isn't it? That the spirits have names like-- virtues, vices, and emotions, when the other etiology suggests they used to be humans. I mean I guess they aren't mutually exclusive, but every human I've ever known is a pretty good mix of many of the above. Might be another place where Thedosian mythology contradicts itself and just winds up in the rough neighborhood of the real truth."

[lennethvalkyrie]

"Interesting. So using a mortal source of magic weakens the mage's ability to connect to the true source--thus they must use more and more of this blood magic in order to be similarly powerful..." Lenneth said, looking somber, "That is indeed very dangerous."

"As far as mortals, I agree with you. In my world they can be honed after death into their truest of forms, but I have never met an einharjar who could be considered a paragon of a single trait. Perhaps Battle-Maidens such as I, created by the All-Father for but one purpose, might be so distilled, but not mortals." Despite the confidence with which she spoke, she doubted it even as she said it. Could she say that of herself? Was she so true? Like a lodestone of the gods, to seek, train, fight, and nothing more? And if so, what did that mean for her to be in a world that did not need that service?

Her face shuttered slightly as she thought.

Name confusing ftw?

[demonicbeauty]

There was something off about both of them. Ariadne smelled it in adrenaline and heard it in strange pulses. Normally, back home, she could pinpoint the cause of such things with the trademark ease of her people.

Here, she was only left guessing.

"I have met one spirit here," she said slowly, eyes vanishing into the middle distance. "I'm not sure what virtue he was supposed to embody. Compassion, maybe. He seemed compassionate to the Rifters, anyway. His name was Cole."

[slaveking]

Marcel's eyes stay on the valkyrie for a moment as she sinks into her reverie. He's not worried; a little bit of troubled thinking never killed anybody, especially not a battle maiden. Still, he can guess at that. If she's anything like the legends, she had legends to live up to, to inhabit, and real life tends to be a lot more strange and complex than that. Even without getting crapped out of a glowy green hole in the sky.

"'Distilled,'" he repeats simply, and nods.

But then Ariadne asserts something that he hadn't really thought likely at all. His eyebrows hook upward. He could've believed that demons and spirits relate somehow, but— "What was he like?"

[lennethvalkyrie]

Lenenth lets her thoughts be interrupted by curiosity as Ariadne spoke. Spirits could manifest? Take human form?

Marcel asks the same question she would, and so she simply watches the young woman and waits for the reply.

[demonicbeauty]

"Pleasant," Ariadne said. It was always the first word to pop into her head when she thought of Cole. Not that she thought of him terribly often. Only in the way a riddle could nag at you for days, somewhere in the back of your mind, floating to the surface only in the place between asleep and awake. "He seems concerned with the well-being of the Rifters."

Or at least, her. He had saved her life once.

"And a capable warrior. Especially for someone who...seems foreign." To the physical world. To being flesh and bone.

But that was just a guess on her part.

[slaveking]

The time is long gone for skepticism. Marcel arches an eyebrow thoughtfully, dark against his complexion, and then he nods his head. Nice men who can fight, and are interested in the welfare of theirs-- if more people fit that description, the Rifters would probably be better off. "Should've figured anybody worth knowing out here is handy in battle," he notes. A beat.

"Any idea if he's immortal?" It's not so strange a question, he thinks. Spirits in battle. One would naturally wonder about the perks. No need to suspect there's a vampire in your midst, ladies.

[lennethvalkyrie]

"He sounds almost..." But no, surely not. If there were no Valkyries here, then what called the spirit? From what source was its energy? Despite her disbelief, she finished the thought anyway.

"Like one of my einherjar. A soul, past death and beyond it, who may manifest to fight in the mortal world. But it takes divine energy for such beings to manifest outside of Valhalla." She frowned slightly. "Or the Fade, perhaps, in Thedas. In my world, such energy comes from a Valkyrie. We give them form--if we are defeated, so too are they. They are immortal, in their own way. As am I."

Her eyes flickered downward briefly. "Was. As was I. Not so here, I think."

"But," her energy returns as she resumes her theorizing, "I cannot know if it is similar in Thedas. If some other being grants him the energy necessary to appear, or if it comes from another source entirely. Perhaps he is able to maintain himself, as a Valkyrie is. If so, if he is hurt enough, he will not be able to keep himself on this plane, but given enough time, he will return. That is immortality enough, yes?"

[demonicbeauty]

It was interesting, the way the two of them talked about immortality. Like it was an everyday sort of occurrence. Ariadne knew that immortality existed, of course. Just like the gods. But she had to admit her personal experience with such a concept was...limited. She only knew the two children of Kallista, who were both demi-gods and therefore said to exist forever.

But they were young. Not much older than her. It was hard to think of them that way. And it was probably harder for them.

She frowned a little, a crease forming between her eyes as she listened to Marcel and Lenneth. "I don't know...if Cole is immortal," she said carefully. "But...there's a kind of...otherness. To him. I sort of like it."

[slaveking]

Marcel looks very interested in the valkyrie's discussion of einherjar. Energy, its transformations, corporeality. It clearly is a little novel to him, but Ariadne is right; immortality isn't a strange concept for him in and of itself. "The ghosts and spirits of my world are a little like that," he nods, and then a smile tricks up one corner of his mouth, wryly. "Though the matter of mortality becomes a complicated where they're concerned." Are you immortal if the substance of yourself goes on forever, after your mortal body is shed? A question for real witches.

The vampire is merely an impersonator. And harmless at that. His eyes shift to Ariadne, and he smiles, lopsided and mild. He likes that about her, he's decided. That she finds something lovely in the strangeness of people unlike herself. "Sounds like someone i'll enjoy running into, when I get the chance. And not too demonic. I guess that's another plus one for the Fade Rift ejecting things that aren't pure evil that begs burning at the stake."

[lennethvalkyrie]

Another plus for the Fade Rift...

Lenneth raised a silver eyebrow. "I wonder... did this spirit exist before the rift? Everyone seems more familiar with spirits than they do with the Breach. Demons as well. This breach seems but an escalation." She huffed a wry breath through her nose. "I do not mean to deem it a trifle. Surely it threatens this world and its people gravely. But knowledge about ones enemy is beyond gold."