Ivar
Dark Reaper
- Location
- Russia Moscow
Well, this is the opinion of Lydia, who wants to let them go to the afterlife. And I agree that their imprisonment should end anyway. The question is whether it will end with a second chance or death.
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
Arc 13 Post 15: A Game Interrupted
A Game Interrupted
4rd of February 2007 A.D.
What's stood more than fifteen hundred years will hold a few months longer, of that you are sure as one can be of the works of powers in days gone by. Bar the door a little sturdier and Lydia can take those who want to come but... you're here now. Why not have a look now so as to judge knowing all sides of the matter. Lydia wants to offer them mercy, even if only the mercy of the grave. "On the scale of one to Perdition's Edge, how safe would it be for us speak through the bars?"
"Safer than you'd be under the shadow of a mountain on any clear day," Lydia answers, earning a curious look from Daniel.
"Earthquakes," she explains. "Even mountains break, but the gates of the Tower of Annwfn were made to last longer still."
"Well then it's a good thing I didn't have to climb on them on a strand of your hair," he jokes, she giggles and you are reminded again, if there is any need that they are young and in love.
Down the Afon Teifi under the stone bridge in Cardigan, what an odd sight the five of you must make, following hounds that aren't quite there, a flash of light always at the edge of the street lamps, never head on... on to the great wide sea, cold and black and full of memories. And there on the shore a coracle, skin of bullock sticks and willow branch, the boats that brought the Celts to these farthest shores, but no further. For years uncounted none who sailed west ever returned so to their kin the western sea was the gateway to death, where the ghosts of the fallen took ship to a strange dark land. In this narrow ship jostling knees together you are not rowing out in the direction of the lights on the other shore, New York and Boston, Portland and Baltimore, but on to Annwfn. The hounds aren't hounds anymore but seals, their eyes still red, their faces sad as the lights on the shore vanish faster than they should, no one that isn't looking notices the boat. The bull this boat is made of passed many years ago.
How long it takes you could not say for certain, save that it's long enough to make the shirt feel clammy against your skin, just long enough to wonder what kind of navigation seals use out on the open ocean.
"Land ho!" Your brother breaks the silence, in what sounds suspiciously like the voice a much younger Daniel used to play pirate earning an eye-roll from you, a fond look from Lydia while Olivia's gaze darts right to the shore.
It's black sand ahead and not just from the veil that slipped over the stars the moment you left the living shore with nothing but Tiffany's hand-fire to guide the way. The sand is obsidian sharp as tiny knives and from it rises a wall of the same substance, great slabs of it blacker than night rising two hundred feet above your heads. Atop its ramparts not a soul can be seen and yet a pale bonfire burns, guide to the dead and warning to the living.
No living foot had marked these sands for years uncounted and yet when the ship reaches the shore you find prepared a place to tie the mooring line. The hook isn't steel or even iron, but bronze. Once it would have been a sign of wealth and distinction you know, such precious metal cast to so mundane a task, now it's a reminder of all the years that piled up above this place.
"Lydia?" your brother asks.
"Yes," says the girl already halfway up the beach.
"I don't think your hair is long enough," he says seriously.
She shakes her head and laughs again, the sound making all the seals... now hounds again, tip their heads quizzically to the side. Then she turns a silver key in a lock almost unseen. A stone door opens without hinges into a great hall lit all with silver bowls alight with pale flame reflecting in their mirror sheen.
Along the right wall are the weapons of wars uncounted, modern riffles giving way to single shot, to musket to longbow, spear and sword and along the left trophies, some animals yes deer rabbit and fox, but also the facsimiles of medals and commendations, in modern print, in telegram, newspaper clippings and scrolls of crackling parchment. Even without their master the hound had done their work, bringing the newly dead to the tower together with such relics of their lives as they counted grave goods, left here to wander with their thoughts a day, a year, a spell until they gathered the courage or the will to pass on, safe behind these walls from all those who might make use of shades in darker dealings.
Daniel reaches out to touch a kite shield on the wall, marked with lions, there's a lot of lions on offer.
"Don't..." you start, but Lydia interrupts. "If it's on the wall it's alright, it means whoever brought it here no longer has need of it, though I'm afraid you won't be able to take it out with you. All you would be left with it a handful of rust staining your hand."
She picks up one of the lamps seemingly at random and just as a man, a spirit still dripping with the water he had drowned in, eyes too black against the bone white skin, emerges from one of the corridors, she turns aside to the left. The walk is shorted than the boat trip and not just from not having to row, but it's still hard to count the heartbeats, in this place where hearts are not meant to beat.
At one point she stops in front of a pair of pale doors that seem at first of bone, but then you recognize the yew and and horn, the latch of silver. "Throne room, no one's been in there since father left..." she explains. Then guessing the question you at least were about to ask she adds. "I have no desire to go in there and never did. It feels... unnerving, guilt too anxious to even settle and brood. No one's even asked me you understand, but it feels like I'm cheating, the scepter without the crown's weight."
One of the hounds, younger than the others or at least smaller jumps under her hand. "I know you want to come with me and I am very glad for the company."
"If you're cheating than I'm the greatest charlatan to ever live," Tiffany offers with a smile that pokes fun mostly at herself. "The world is filled with crumbling heaps of stone, with legacies that time left behind. A poor shrine that would make. As above so below."
"When I was a kid I always wanted to meet a girl with a castle, not quite how I expected this to go," Olivia offers. "Didn't expect the dungeons to the occupied for one."
"What have they been doing all this time?" you ask, visions of prisoners so broken by their ordeal they could not even speak flashing though your mind. Had Arawn been as cruel as Mab.
"We brought them games, whenever they grew bored of each other's company and conversation, a new one." the hound under Lydia's hand said with a vigorous wag of his tail.
"What kind of games?" you press.
That is how you find out that Llyr Half-Speech, Mabon son of Modron, and Gwair son of Geirioedd had been playing board games for the past several centuries. You are not sure what Othello is but apparently they had 'just' gotten a board and so were still engrossed in it. You are not sure you trust the hounds sense of time. Down and down you go, the walls are starting to perspire, the kind of dungeon you would expect to find rats in, but rats are living things and only three yet living beings are still here. Of stone too is carved the final door, more solid than the mountains, but there's a plug about head height that you can pull to speak to... and that a large determined hound might be able to slip a board through.
"I'm just going to offer to guide them to to the final gate," Lydia says, not taking out the plug yet. "It's been a long time since last they walked under the sun. I think it might be cruel to ask of them to live again and see all that has changed, but what do you all think?"
"You're asking me?" Daniel sounds like more scared of the prospect than he had ever been of things that go bump in the night.
"Why shouldn't I ask you?" Lydia bristles. "I get to choose what counsel I follow."
"I think we should speak to them first." you answer reasonably, that is the whole point of coming this far together. "What language do they speak?"
"Llyr Half-Speech is as skilled in Latin as ever he was in Welsh. Who er... speaks Latin?" Lydia looks around.
You raise your hand as does Daniel, a little wobbly and Tiffany of course, though she can speak all tongues, not just some, leaving only Olivia to shrug. "What? We took alive languages when I was in high school."
"I could make it so everyone understands each other perfectly, it might impress upon them the seriousness of the situation," you offer, essence already smoldering on your lips.
To this friend stops to think a moment, setting down the lamps into a alcove in the stone. "Lets make due with mortal tongues first, they will be wary enough to see us, to see anyone that's not a hound after all this time."
She pulls out the plug and declares in Latin: "Hail Llyr Half-Speech, hail Mabon son of Modron, hail Gwair son of Geirioedd. I bring thee tidings if you would hear them!"
What follows is worryingly long moment of dead silence, followed by what you suspect are muffled Brythonic cursing, someone telling someone else to stop it, complete with thunk on the side of the head then a rather large man, golden hair and beard grown shaggy, but still handsome and more importantly clear eyed looking out over the odd collection of folk before the stone door. What he must think of modern street clothes you cannot even begin to guess. Would it seem scandalous or just wholly alien?
"All our names you know, but we know not what to call ye. We would ask for that at least if you would trade words with us."
How does Molly introduce herself?
[] Just Margret will do
[] As queen
[] As a sorceress
[] Write in
OOC: Imagine if you are a dog spirit, it is the sixteen hundreds and you are feeling pretty sorry for the prisoners, but there are limits to what you can fit though the door and in any case there is no room in there to play with a ball. So you ask a recently dead noble for advice on games of the living that would work They say the the Game of the Goose and the rest is history. Good thing people occasionally bury board games with the dead.
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The Curse altering how the Exalted where functioning was noticed by Autocron, the god of Celestial exaltation's, and Saturn, almost instantly after the war was over. In order the first two said nothing, and Saturn could not say anything. And towards the end of the first age, a couple of Solar's where starting to suspect it existence.
The Solar did not instantly notice the cause of the Limit breaks as they feel entirely natural. But the Solar's did know that, this stuff sets me off, and I start crying for a month straight, or go into a blinding rage. Engineering society and their realms so that they did not trigger limit breaks is pretty explicitly something that happened.
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If releasing them into the world is not an option we should offer our hell as an alternate much nicer prison. It's not like they can get out unless we let them out and it would give them an entire world to roam as a cell.
[X] As queen
This is the closest to "as hero" of the options presented, and it is appropriate, I think.
Also, it's sad, and hopefully this place can be restored. I feel sad for the dogs, the last guardians of a kingdom abandoned, loyal dogs living on the grave of their master. This place should be restored.
This is the closest to "as hero" of the options presented, and it is appropriate, I think.
Also, it's sad, and hopefully this place can be restored. I feel sad for the dogs, the last guardians of a kingdom abandoned, loyal dogs living on the grave of their master. This place should be restored.
I'm very much in favour of offering them the chance to live again if they pass an interview. And having them visit Harry's game night with the Alphas.
I also want to see if we can help Arawn recover faster. He too doesn't to linger as a spectre barely able to interact with the world.
I also want to see if we can help Arawn recover faster. He too doesn't to linger as a spectre barely able to interact with the world.
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- Location
- Brazil
This is wrong, in addition to the possible harm they can cause to our subjects, if they have the will to endure the dangers they can throw themselves from the borders of our kingdom, into the deep nevernever area where it is.
Our kingdom is still Hell and there must always be a way out of hell.
Just kill they.
Oops, I forgot to put the write in option, it has been added now. You guys can use it if you wish, those three were just what came to mind for me.
Silvereagle21
Soaring through the Sky
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
[X] As queen
I think you conflated Autochthon, who created the Exaltations, and Lytek who is the god of Celestial Exaltations.
[X] As queen
- Location
- Estonia
[X] As queen
I see literally no reason to choose otherwise. Even if the idea is that "sorceress" would be more "honest", it actually wouldn't be, because a royal title (and responsibility) trumps everything else.
Not even going to touch "just Margaret" (without even "daughter of Michael"), that's almost lying.
I see literally no reason to choose otherwise. Even if the idea is that "sorceress" would be more "honest", it actually wouldn't be, because a royal title (and responsibility) trumps everything else.
Not even going to touch "just Margaret" (without even "daughter of Michael"), that's almost lying.
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Ivar
Dark Reaper
- Location
- Russia Moscow
I think the situation is much better than I feared. Thanks to the doggos of death for the humane treatment of prisoners. And I agree with Yog that we could help restore the place... later, because for now we have plenty of other things to do. But fortunately we have a chance for good negotiations and perhaps we will be able to convince them to calm down. At least I hope so.
In general, I think they themselves should understand that everything has changed if they haven't heard already. The question is how much they know and how much it will change their opinion.
In general, I think they themselves should understand that everything has changed if they haven't heard already. The question is how much they know and how much it will change their opinion.
Modus_Tollens
SCREAMING AT THE APOCALYPSE
- Location
- ALSO SCREAMING.
A queen has authority and presence but we'll need to be mindful of where we speak from. It rings a little hollow for one who rules to speak in the name of those who might not want to be ruled even if every word is true. We rule as Arthur might in that single perceived good future and we spread our black and burning wings unseen upon men and mortality as well. It does not invalidate our words but still we will have to be mindful of them.
'Molly', on the other hand, would have less weight but would speak as one who has lived under the authority of others as one of teeming mankind. As a sorceress been under the judgement and executioner's blade of others, having committed sins worthy of it in the name of helping others.
All are valid in different ways.
'Molly', on the other hand, would have less weight but would speak as one who has lived under the authority of others as one of teeming mankind. As a sorceress been under the judgement and executioner's blade of others, having committed sins worthy of it in the name of helping others.
All are valid in different ways.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
[X] As queen
- Location
- Brazil
Why kill Arthur? He did nothing and has nothing to do with it, other than in a completely indirect way. The culprits are the three idiots who killed the God of Dead wife, in their castles and in front of her husband, just because they didn't want to give away their divine treasure.
Just kill them and the dogs are free. But people want to talk and spend even more time on this topic.
You know there's no way we're killing these people right. Not while the nagoloshi the spirit of fucking torture still walks this not technically forsaken world. Not to mention the fact they've apparently been conscious this whole time in a Cell so small that the only thing they could do is play board games for the last 500 years and before that 1,000 years of not doing that. By any valuable metric they have served their time even if we can't take them back to Earth even if we can't do anything with them these men need like some kind of Rehabilitation because holy shit just trapped in a cage for fucking 1500 years. By the way most life sentences 25 to life means they spent 60 consecutive life sentences or 15 actual real life sentences of 100 years a piece but either way there's no crime they could have committed here that would warrant such an extreme punishment especially not in such confined quarters essentially till the end of days.
To be honest if these men beg for death I would not be surprised and it would be a mercy to give it to them at this point but I don't think they will and I don't think Molly's a cold-blooded murderer so something is going to go down here even it's just we'll expand your cells a bit.