These trips out with a different boyfriend each time remind me of the best parts of Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and New Vegas when you do stuff that has input from a companion.
One or two guys at a time, and we will get a trip with everyone. And I don't think we have to worry about silly loyalty missions like in those games.
But I think Jun-ho will be extra cute here. ^^
[X] Take Jun-ho to search for a map-marker you remember. He was the first to show up at your spire and he's approved of the map's taste thus far, maybe he'd enjoy getting to meet a brand new boyfriend-to-be first.
--[X] The island. It's a long flight and it'll burn the rest of the day for sure, but he seems the type to relish a dive for some sunken city.
She hasn't seen him in a long time, and appears entirely ignorant or uncaring of his displeasure at the situation. It's hard to exercise parental powers if your status as a parent verges on dispute.
[X] Take Jun-ho to search for a map-marker you remember. He was the first to show up at your spire and he's approved of the map's taste thus far, maybe he'd enjoy getting to meet a brand new boyfriend-to-be first.
--[X] The island. It's a long flight and it'll burn the rest of the day for sure, but he seems the type to relish a dive for some sunken city.
Hrm. I'll be honest, like, I don't at all mind the "take 'im out to dinner" option but I'll say that the mid-level stuff feels kinda...I mean it's pretty milquetoast tbh? It's not like Eldingar's poor exactly so saving and scrimping isn't something he has to worry about, but it doesn't have the kinda seedy, sloppy charm of just getting to pig out at a cheaper place on the rougher side of town either. It's not classy, it's not adventurous, it's pretty safe and conservative and like I mean I guess there'll be unlimited breadsticks and shit. But if you want to break the ice with Jun-ho or spoil him or shit there's better ways I think. Like again it's not a trap option by any means it just comes off as pretty middle of the road. Lesser risks with lesser rewards in terms of developing the relationship.
I mean part of the reason I'm voting for the Island, besides taking Jun-ho to a white sand beach to knock back mai tais and plow each other senseless explore R'yleh, is that it takes a lot of the pressure off of Eldingar while providing a lot more interesting fodder for conversation/exploration than, like, endless pasta combinations or the lobster entree special. Plus, I mean, Jun-ho does seem to enjoy simple games and puzzles, he was playing the shit out of djinn Bejeweled and getting him out of the kinda grey and rainy Arosan coast will probably improve his mood a fair bit overall. He's putting up with it pretty well but the narration has mentioned that he doesn't seem to enjoy the climate all that much. What with being mostly fire-aspected and shit.
[X] Take Jun-ho to search for a map-marker you remember. He was the first to show up at your spire and he's approved of the map's taste thus far, maybe he'd enjoy getting to meet a brand new boyfriend-to-be first.
--[X] The island. It's a long flight and it'll burn the rest of the day for sure, but he seems the type to relish a dive for some sunken city.
[X] Take Jun-ho to search for a map-marker you remember. He was the first to show up at your spire and he's approved of the map's taste thus far, maybe he'd enjoy getting to meet a brand new boyfriend-to-be first.
--[X] The island. It's a long flight and it'll burn the rest of the day for sure, but he seems the type to relish a dive for some sunken city.
[X] Take Jun-ho to search for a map-marker you remember. He was the first to show up at your spire and he's approved of the map's taste thus far, maybe he'd enjoy getting to meet a brand new boyfriend-to-be first.
--[X] The island. It's a long flight and it'll burn the rest of the day for sure, but he seems the type to relish a dive for some sunken city.
[X] Take Jun-ho to search for a map-marker you remember. He was the first to show up at your spire and he's approved of the map's taste thus far, maybe he'd enjoy getting to meet a brand new boyfriend-to-be first.
--[X] The island. It's a long flight and it'll burn the rest of the day for sure, but he seems the type to relish a dive for some sunken city.
[X] Take Jun-ho to search for a map-marker you remember. He was the first to show up at your spire and he's approved of the map's taste thus far, maybe he'd enjoy getting to meet a brand new boyfriend-to-be first.
--[X] The island. It's a long flight and it'll burn the rest of the day for sure, but he seems the type to relish a dive for some sunken city.
[X] Take Jun-ho to search for a map-marker you remember. He was the first to show up at your spire and he's approved of the map's taste thus far, maybe he'd enjoy getting to meet a brand new boyfriend-to-be first.
--[X] The island. It's a long flight and it'll burn the rest of the day for sure, but he seems the type to relish a dive for some sunken city.
[X] Take Jun-ho to search for a map-marker you remember. He was the first to show up at your spire and he's approved of the map's taste thus far, maybe he'd enjoy getting to meet a brand new boyfriend-to-be first.
--[X] The island. It's a long flight and it'll burn the rest of the day for sure, but he seems the type to relish a dive for some sunken city.
Jun-ho gives off the air of a dog that thinks it just heard the word 'walk' but it's not entirely sure yet, wagging at a medium pace. Thankfully despite possessing a shark-tail he does not proceed to literally do so, instead cocking his head slightly. "What sort of trip?"
"Weeeelllll..." you say, drawing closer and lowering your voice so as to be less easily overheard. "You remember how you said you quite like everyone the map picked out for me so far? I still remember where the other lights were last I checked - and while I don't much fancy my chances of finding all of them unaided, I do recall one on an island off the southeastern Republic coast. It's a bit of a fly, but if you'd like to-"
"I'd love to!" Jun-ho interjects, a bit louder than necessary. His gaze flicks left and right, his head bobbing down to your level as he continues, quieter. "You're sure? You're not worried about all the other stuff you have going on?"
"Of course I'm sure," you say, a lot more confidently than you feel, because you've been practising that chestnut your entire life. "I can just send a message back via Belial next time I fall asleep if I have to, and either way I warned everyone ahead of time we might be out for the night."
"Then I'd love to!" Jun-ho repeats enthusiastically. "So do we have to do anything special, was there prep stuff you did with the others that I didn't know about, do we-"
"No no no," you say, patting his chest to calm him down (good lord you could use it like a writing desk it's so firm- ahem-hem focus, focus). "We're dragons, Jun-ho. Prep time is for mortals. We just show up and do as we please, and if anyone causes any trouble we incinerate them with our breath for crossing us."
His lips curl up and down like a disconcerted squiggle. "Preferably not... right away, I'd hope."
"Of course not, always throw out a 'begone, puny mortal' or two before you let loose so they have time to grovel or run away. Anyway, shall we?"
You stop by one of the street food places Amina pointed out to you on the way out for a quick snack before departing. You don't have as much time to really teach Jun-ho the ins and outs of the Söfnun dining experience, so it mostly amounts to the two of you hurrying off the minute you've paid, champing viciously on literally inhuman quantities of food. You may have shifted to a matching aquean form for a set of jagged fangs worthy of the task while you were at it. Either way, you remind yourself to enlist Amina for her impeccable street sense again next time you're in town.
You head out the way you came and return to your true forms beyond the treeline - at this point probably just so nobody bothers you more than to preserve the thin veneer of secrecy still clinging to what you once thought of as a double-life.
"Have the heading set?" you ask once the two of you are airborne and comfortably gliding. Well, you're gliding. He's doing that wiggle-corkscrew thing like a snake swimming in air. You should ask him how that works sometime, it really is quite fascinating. Your own flight only barely pays attention to the laws of physics of course, but his is that extra step too far to be anything but pure magic.
"Mhm! You?" He glances at you.
"Of course!" You tap your temple knowingly with one massive talon. "Natural compass. Never lost my bearings in my life."
"Mhm! Just like a pigeon!" Jun-ho agrees enthusiastically.
"... n-no not- not like a pigeon!" you splutter. "I have not and will never again be compared to a mere pigeon! We are dragons!"
"So how's it different?" he asks.
The wind whistles across the great leathery sails of your outstretched wings as you furiously ponder the question.
"I-it's magic!" you say at last. "That's it. Magic. Dragons are magic so the head compass is magic too!"
"Oooooooh." Jun-ho's gaze drifts forward, peering through the low-hanging cloud cover and towards your quarry. "So pigeons are magic too."
"NO-"
Flying isn't the easiest thing in the world, despite how you make it look, so the trip is relatively low on chatter. For the most part Jun-ho seems content to crane his long, long neck straight down at the world as it passes beneath him, drinking in what sights he can spy from his lofty perch. You don't begrudge him the sightseeing. You've ventured beyond the immediate Söfnun area only very rarely yourself. Were it not for your pathological hatred of being anywhere but your lair for more than a day perhaps you could be a bit of a tour guide to your foreign guest, regaling him with tales and useful information from the land below. Instead you mostly just stare gormlessly down at the ground right along with him.
The steadily setting sun casts its golden light across the world as the more grassy and windswept Arosan lands give way to forests, the vegetation growing denser and lusher by the wingflap (or wiggle) as the weather grows warmer. The shadows stretch out long and lanky across the calmer waters, the sunlight sparkling gold across the gentle peaks and valleys of its gentle currents. The sun in your eyes makes you grumpily squint, but Jun-ho seems a lot happier with the proceedings. The peaks of a couple stepped pyramids break through the canopy here and there, although which ones are still actively open for worship and which ones are cultural preservation sites you can't quite say. One just so happens to sit right beneath your flight path, and you itch to swoop down and give the little dots flitting about on the apex a nice scare. But Jun-ho would probably get all shirty about it and you don't want to waste the energy, so you heroically resist the urge and fly on.
You pass by a towering mountain on the left, its peak so high that even in this climate it remains dusted in snow all year 'round. Jutting up into the clouds like a pronounced fang - actually you think they call it 'Icefang' or something obvious like that? Or maybe it was the name of the dragon that used to live there. Either way, he really did have great taste in lair location. Sheer altitude goes a long way, and from that lofty perch you could practically glide anywhere in the Republic without so much as a single flap. Shame it's gone unused ever since he died. They say he was the legendary Xiomara's first kill, that his demand for yearly sacrifices finally pushed someone too far and created his own downfall. He was a white dragon so of course he deserved it, but still. What a way to go.
You pass over city, nearly missing it in your thoughtful fugue. You notice mostly because of Jun-ho's enchanted 'ooooh', craning your neck and peering down through the low-hanging cloud to see what he's looking at. Yeah it's certainly Republic alright, a big ol' city built dead centre in a massive lake because mortals make things as difficult as possible for themselves in order to look cool in front of other mortals. You wouldn't know anything about that of course. What once might've been based off a natural island has long since been artificially expanded to the point of being unrecognisable, four entire districts of tightly-clustered buildings all connected to the mainland by four matching massive causeways. You try to remember what it's called... starts with a... c'mon you've got to know this... 'P' for 'Pricklepear'? No that's dumb, nobody would name a city that. Or maybe that's just what the name literally translates to in your head. Sometimes the gift of tongues is really unhelpful. Shit you should really pay more attention to maps.
"Look, there it is!" you say, pointing to distract yourself from your own shortcomings and head off any awkward questions Jun-ho may or may not be about to ask.
It lies not far off the brilliant white-sand beach, almost near enough to beat the sunset there if you got down to shore and pulled a boat out of thin air. You can tell from one glance that it doesn't belong here, all rough and harsh and dark like an infected tooth pried free of the seabed, some strange lingering artefact of the old world that just decided to abruptly pop up out of the blue. It's slightly more difficult to tell with the lengthening shadows, but you think there's even a ship anchored off the rocky southern edge of the island - monitoring the place, maybe organising an adventurer expedition? Either way, beneath your notice. You're here on dragon business. You trim your wings and begin to dive, Jun-ho naturally falling in line beside you. Space looks to be at a bit of a premium, so you smoothly shift down to bipedal form as you go. Jun-ho just gets as close as he can and falls the rest of the way.
The island comes into clearer and clearer view as you descend, and by the time you touch down you can safely say that it... looks like shit, to be perfectly honest. You heard tell of it literally rising from the ocean floor but to see it up close it actually looks the part - there's dead or swiftly dying coral scattered everywhere, deep-sea grasses paired with actual normal grass all mutually hating their strange plant lives right now, and the ever-present stench of salt mixed with what you're pretty sure is dead fish. You're not entirely confident about any boyfriends that might be hiding out in here. But then again, you did find Lyrros inside a dungeon, so what do you know? You set off looking for an entrance to this so-called sunken city.
"Uh, Eldingar?"
"Mm?" You stop, half-turn. Jun-ho's barely taken a step from where he landed. Looks like he hit the ground not far from where out-of-luck mortals would have to dock and climb the cliffs via time- and water-worn steps cut into the rock. There's a sign hammered deep into the rock, facing away from you. He seems to remember this little detail a second later and grabs hold of it, flipping it around with a soft grunt of effort.
'DANGER - THIS ISLAND IS QUARANTINED. ONLY QUALIFIED GUILD PERSONNEL BEYOND THIS POINT. IF YOU HAVE LANDED HERE IN ERROR, PLEASE TURN AROUND AND RETURN TO THE MAINLAND. THE ADVENTURER'S GUILD CANNOT GUARANTEE YOUR SAFETY IF YOU VENTURE ANY FURTHER'
You blink twice at it, then look up at Jun-ho. "... and?"
"And shouldn't we be a little worried?" he asks.
"Jun-ho, we're dragons," you say, trying not to overtly sound like you're mentally adding 'you dumbass'. "It takes the Guild an entire team of geared-up veterans to try and kill one of us. Do you honestly expect anything that's down there to be a threat to the two of us at once?"
He looks like he's thinking of a very specific thing that could be a threat to him, but he doesn't elaborate so you ignore it. "I... dunno," he says instead. "I think we should take it at least a little seriously. Aren't you getting a bad feeling about this place?"
You take another look around, brow ridges furrowed. You don't know what kind of 'bad feeling' he could be having. It's ugly and salty but if you try to block out the dead fish part it smells of riches. Of something buried deep down, something meant just for you. If anything you're getting a good feeling about it. You just barely restrain yourself from scoffing, settling instead on a smirk.
"Jun-ho, relax." You waggle your claw dismissively. "The map was pointing to a potential boyfriend here, how bad could it possibly be?"
"I... guess." He shakes his head and flips the sign around. "Right, right sorry, didn't mean to hold things up."
"It's fine." You glance at the sun, barely more than a muted golden sliver on the very horizon as the magic twilight hour slowly descends upon the briny crags of the risen island. "If anything I'm glad we killed some time, might be easier to find the way in once our nightvision kicks in."
You're swiftly proven right. As the sun sinks completely out of sight and the moon begins to rise, in the grey-silver world of darkness you spy something like a cave or a sinkhole. It's on the narrow side, bit of a squeeze, but with the help of draconic strength and talons fit to rend through plate it's fairly easy for you and Jun-ho to scrabble your way fearlessly down into the depths. There's a bit of a drop at the bottom, the dull shock of impact thrumming up your shins as you land flat-clawed, and you take a few steps forward to give Jun-ho space to do likewise. And then keep walking as what you see catches your eye.
It's not quite an entire sunken city, these things having a way of warping and growing as they travel mouth to mouth, but you certainly wouldn't call it a letdown. It looks like some kind of... subterranean temple-fortress? You and Jun-ho are standing on a water-slick causeway over a dizzying drop, deep enough that even your darkvision can't quite reach the bottom. Behind you, past Jun-ho, seems to be the main body of the complex, a gilded gatehouse and dark rooms filled with cold, dead braziers. Up ahead seems to be the shrine itself, a circular terminus ringed in angular pillars, dominated by a towering golden statue you can't quite make out from here. It all looks... you're not quite sure. Precursor? If it came from the bottom of the ocean it's got to be precursor, right? You're no archaeologist, you're just here to pick up guys.
eldingar
"Hm?"
"What?" Jun-ho takes a few steps forward, stopping by your side. "What is it?"
"Didn't you hear that?" you ask.
"Hear what?"
prince eldingar
"There it is again!" You snap your head around, looking him in the eye. "Do you really not hear that?"
"I don't... know what you're talking about," Jun-ho replies, brow furrowing as he stares into your eyes. "Um. That bad feeling I was getting up there? It's getting a lot worse right now."
"What did I tell you about our being dragons Jun-ho?" you snap, rather more forcefully than you meant to.
sire... king...
"I just don't think barrelling into things just because we think we're invincible is really the best idea," he says, his tone growing more worried by the word. He breaks eye contact, his gaze flitting nervously around the room. Honestly it's really starting to grate on you how skittish and... and un-dragony he can be. Is that part of why Mother threw him at you?
"Let's at least go check out that way?" he suggests, indicating over his shoulder with his thumb. "Plenty of rooms over there, we can go shout for whoever the map was pointing to here. Maybe there's gold, too! You like gold, right?"
son of aži
"There's a shrine right there," you say irritably, jabbing your talon the other way along the causeway. "I just want to make sure I cover all the- what's the matter with you anyway?" you ask, dropping your arm all of a sudden. "Are all dragons this skittish where you come from? Even the vast majority of magic has difficulty affecting us! The two of us together? We could burn down a city if we wanted to, and no one would be able to stop us!"
"... yeah but... we wouldn't want to," he says haltingly. You grimace, rubbing your forehead.
"That's not the point, Jun-ho. The point is that there is nothing, absolutely nothing in this world or Beyond, that could be any realistic threat to us. So I ask you again, why all the hesitance?"
"I don't know!" he exclaims. "I don't- I don't know okay! I'm sorry, I know I'm annoying and I know this isn't what you had in mind when you brought me but I just- I don't feel right here!"
let us praise you
"And... I'm worried about you," he adds haltingly.
You double-take. What's gotten into him? Whatever tentative hopes you had that the day could be salvaged with a spot of adventuring are curdling in your gut, turning sour and toxic as mud. Your lips curl into a grimace, a grunt of annoyance escaping you as you half-turn away, glaring at nothing. You just got done having your life dictated to you for the hundredth time, you'd think the least Jun-ho could do is be supportive! Mgh. You don't have to take this. You don't have to take anything. Isn't that what being a dragon is all about?
[ ] Go to the shrine and inspect what it has to offer. You're not afraid of some old ruin just because it's dark. [x2]
[ ] Listen to Jun-ho, you guess. Let him drag you down the causeway to go poke around in some dusty old rooms. [x0.5]
Adhoc vote count started by ZerbanDaGreat on Jun 12, 2018 at 7:34 AM, finished with 2524 posts and 42 votes.
[x] Listen to Jun-ho, you guess. Let him drag you down the causeway to go poke around in some dusty old rooms. [x0.5]
I was (implicitly) promised a beach volleyball filler episode, I have been given a sunken city that just screams "The QM has been binging Leila Hann's Lovecraft thread" and it has weird mind altering boogity boogity I demand my money back and that Jun-ho get a hug and an apology for upsetting him
Well there's an obvious right answer, and then there's blatant schmuck bait.
[X] Go to the shrine and inspect what it has to offer. You're not afraid of some old ruin just because it's dark. [x2]
WE'RE A DRAGON WE DO WHAT WE WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANT
[x] Listen to Jun-ho, you guess. Let him drag you down the causeway to go poke around in some dusty old rooms. [x0.5]
I really don't like how out of character the blue baby is getting. Also Jun-ho is more important than a potential boyfriend who's messing with our head.
Also, what's the [x0.5] all about?
