Mare Internum: An Exalted Quest

[Crumplepunch]

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
- T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

Spoiler

I want to write something this month and I'm going to start before I put it off some more. I hope you enjoy.

This quest aims to be entertaining and at times amusing, but it engages with many dark subjects including grief, suicidality, abandonment and physical and emotional trauma. Please consider this a content warning.

You are nothing and nowhere. Your world is blessedly silent. There is nobody to ponder regrets or crave an altered state. There is only darkness, and nothing horrible to see within it.

(VIII) THE WOLF: Finally.

The word is not a sound, because the world is blessedly silent. Nor is it a thought, because you are nothing and nowhere. It must be that whatever it is comes from part of what you were.

(VIII) THE WOLF: You finally did it. I'm almost impressed. Not that it matters now.

Pain lances through your non-self, a horrible physicality spasms across your non-body, an awareness of the presence of nerves you had hoped to no longer possess. It feels like a candle flame being pressed slowly through your skull.

(III) THE SEA CAPTAIN: No, not this time. See? She lives.

A second un-voice. You hate it, because it's right.

Spoiler

Mare Internum uses some unusual rules, please familiarize yourself with them before voting, especially the first one.

1) Voting in this quest is first-come-first-serve. The first person to make a response with one of the options guides the next action in the quest.
2) To prevent any one person from from monopolizing the action, nobody can make such a vote on two updates in a row. Alternating is fine.
3) Writein options are not permitted except as general suggestions to modify the approach of an existing option, which I will apply at my discretion.
4) These rules do not apply if the post is marked "This is a consquential decision, please vote." Those votes require a majority vote as normal, and writeins are allowed.

[ ] Who the fuck are you?
[ ] Where the fuck am I?
[ ] What the fuck are you talking about?

 

[Crumplepunch]

[X] What the fuck are you talking about?

Click to shrink...

(III) THE SEA CAPTAIN: This is probably a little abstract, isn't it?

(IV) THE MONK: This is the nature of the Five Part World.

(III) THE SEA CAPTAIN: That is not helping at all.

Your confusion and irritation, already significant, only grows.

(III) THE SEA CAPTAIN: You're in a bad spot, you see. You've come a long way, but that was almost the end. Right now, what you need to do is wake up and keep moving.

(XVI) THE PRISONER: For revenge.

[ ] Revenge? For what?
[ ] How bad of a spot are we talking, here?
[ ] Where am I? Where would I move to?
[ ] What was that about a Five Part World?

 

[Crumplepunch]

[X] Revenge? For what?

Click to shrink...

(XVI) THE PRISONER: For what they did to us. For what they made us. They made us a sword, and now we will cut.

(IV) THE MONK: Revenge is a fool's path. Can we even have revenge, when we no longer remember the wrongs done to us? When we can no longer remember why we are here?

You remember nothing. There is only the darkness, and this strange chorus of not-voices. But you know the angry one is right. A terrible wrong has been done to you, and all that is left of you is suffused in it.

(XXVI) THE SUN: We are here for one reason. She has failed.

(IV) THE MONK: That's what you always say.

(XXVI) THE SUN: It is always true.

[ ] So what should I do now?
[ ] How did I fail?
[ ] Who did this to me?

 

[Crumplepunch]

[X] Who did this to me?

Click to shrink...

(XXVI) THE SUN: You did.

The loud one has a real attitude problem.

(III) THE SEA CAPTAIN: I suppose it depends on what you mean by "this." But you can't dwell on the past. You have to move on.

(XXIV) THE STARS: You must look to the future.

(XVI) THE PRISONER: You must make them pay.

(IV) THE MONK: You must make amends.

(XXV) THE MOON: You should change if you can.

(VIII) THE WOLF: There is nothing to be done.

The not-voices overlap until they are a meaningless babble of contradictory demands. A roaring tears through your silent world, mind-breaking, apocalyptic. The pain in your brain spreads across your body, suffusing it with a dull, bone-deep ache. You feel coarse stone grating your body, pressing against your face, the clinging itch of damp clothing on your back.

The scent of sea, and the roar, you realize, of the waves.

After an interminable time, grey light enters your eyes again.

[ ] Close your eyes, it hurts too much.
[ ] Look.

 

[Crumplepunch]

[X] Look.

Click to shrink...

The landscape is desolate, shapeless, dappled with flashes of darkness as your eyes adjust to it, like the residue of your fading dream. You look upon it for a time before being able to align the sky and ground in your mind. Both are grey, rough black volcanic stone and ashen sands, storm-wreathed skies. A sky like half-remembered eyes, like winter at noon. Salt water, pungent and sullen, froths on the beach. You see no signs of life, and no colour save for flashes of dim brown, smudges of dirt, splinters of wood.

You cannot feel your hands or feet. At first you are convinced that they are missing or transformed by some horrible sorcery into senseless rubbery appendages, but you assure yourself you are probably just cold or very hungover. Some further time passes before you are able to move your neck. You regret doing so. It feels like an ancient, half-buried chain being dragged from the dirt.

You did not only dream remembering nothing. You do not remember this place. You do not remember this body, or its face.

[ ] Examine yourself.
[ ] Get up and start walking.
[ ] Just lie here for a while.

 

[Crumplepunch]

[x] Examine yourself.

Click to shrink...

With great effort you roll onto your back. You hear, rather than feel, the pop of synovial fluid in your joints. Your world spins in a vortex as you right yourself and lurch laboriously into a sitting position.

First, you examine your hands. They are present, as you assured yourself, but not as whole as you hoped. The ring finger of your left hand is missing, cut roughly between the first and second knuckle.

AWARENESS

CHECK SUCCESS

AWARENESS: A deep scar, rough and broad, in the corresponding section of the middle finger, indicates the cause. Someone severed your finger with a small hatchet.

[ ] How recently did this happen?
[ ] Where is my finger now?
[ ] Why would someone do that?

 

[Crumplepunch]

[X] Why would someone do that?

Click to shrink...

STEALTH

CHECK SUCCESS

Spoiler

We're using simplified Essence Abilities here, so Awareness covers Investigation and Stealth covers Larceny.

STEALTH: To retrieve the ring, of course.

The ring?

STEALTH: Sure thing, boss. Someone thought you were dead and had a go of your hand to get a ring that was stuck on your finger. Pretty standard scavenger's trick. You'd better hope you weren't wearing earrings or a jade tooth, eh?

A horror comes over you in anticipation for your further examinations.

SAGACITY: But that must have happened a long time ago, my student. The wound is healed over.

I can't have been out that long, right?

SAGACITY: Perhaps you have been almost dead more than once.

You shudder.

[ ] Continue to examine your body.
[ ] Look at your reflection in the sea.
[ ] Cease your examination and start walking elsewhere.

 

[Crumplepunch]

[x] Look at your reflection in the sea.

Click to shrink...

Why wait? You stand, unsteady at first. Water foams through the holes in your rough leather shoes. You take one stumbling step towars the sea, and then another.

INTEGRITY: What you are about to do cannot be undone.

That's life, isn't it? You don't stop. You can't.

The water gathers around your ankles in eddies, like an old friend patting you on the shoulder as you return to work. The water ripples as you look, then stills, as though responding to your intent. A face resolves in the surface.

She is a weathered twenty-five, or a well-preserved fifty. Her hair is lank and dark, chin-length. A spiderweb of fine, almost invisible scars runs down the left side of her lean face, like overfired earthenware. Her eyes are dark as the ocean depths, with unnaturally wide corneas or black, reflective sclera. You have no idea who she is.

[ ] Keep staring at the face.
[ ] Look at the water.
[ ] Walk away.

 

[Crumplepunch]

[x] Keep staring at the face.

Click to shrink...

It's just a face. The face of someone else, somewhere else, full of misery and mistakes and a burning need. First came the desire to be better, but little by little that was washed away by the desire to be different. It's the face of someone who has destroyed everything she cared about in her need for change.

You don't know who she is. You badly want to stop looking at her.

INTEGRITY

CHECK FAILURE

You stagger back to shore and fall to your knees. You are breathing fast. What's wrong with you?

SAGACITY

CHECK FAILURE

SAGACITY: Surely some kind of allergic reaction, student. Maybe you were stung by some species of tropical fish in the shallows.

Yes, that must be it. No more examinations for you, there are stinging tropical fish about.

[ ] Search the shore.
[ ] Leave.

 

[Crumplepunch]

[x] Search the shore.

Click to shrink...

Wet grey sand next to wet grey sea under wet grey sky. Your location is secluded by a morose outcropping of charcoal coloured volcanic rock to your left and by a broad expanse of dune ahead and to your right. At least they are sparing you the worst of the wintry winds that are blowing in off the coast. You see scrubby ash-white grass, the only sign of life you can see, dancing on the crest of the dune.

What about the wood? You saw wood. Ah, but the wood is old and dead. Stakes and splinters of it have washed up on shore. You pluck a sample from the sand, a jagged scrap the size of your forearm, and examine it.

CRAFT

CHECK SUCCESS

CRAFT: This shard of wood is a remnant of a destroyed Realm naval galley.

Wow, how can I know that?

CRAFT: The whorls in the smooth side and the springing character of the splintered edge indicate that this is seasoned lowland oak. This type of wood is found on Realm ships generally. The tiny chunk of brass embedded in the top is the remnant of a sheared pin nail, type two, used on naval warships. The hole bored near the bottom has the characteristic beveled edge of a doweling plug, used only to afix shell paneling to the deepwater vessels. Only one class fits all three categories, the deep hull galleys used in Western naval deployments.

No, I mean, how can I know that when I can't remember my name?

CRAFT: Not my department ma'am, I just deal with the stuff.

You've done everything you can here, it's time to leave. If you were shipwrecked, maybe there are other survivors. Or maybe you'd prefer not to meet them.

[ ] Continue up the coast.
[ ] Go inland.