Island at the World's End
26st of February 2007 A.D.
Looking into the fire you ask of it the simplest question: Where do you flow? And the fire answers... Buildings white and silver, concrete and steel on a meadow black,
Svartsengi. Fire to steam, passing though the stone, steam to lightning bound, lightning life to serve. . Among its pipes and turbines men and women walk just a little closer than you would expect to the scalding shrouds of steam and some are surer on their feet than they aught to be upon the shifting ground, those touched by the Flame and the Stone. Once they had other names, mirrors immaculate, but those memories slip from you like the currents swirling all around and so you are left with the glimpse of the power plant,
geomancy hidden in plain sight.
Lost 2 Essence -> Now at 14/18 (Question and Occult Excellency)
As you kick off and start the long ascent back into the light you wonder if they are the last. It feels wrong somehow, almost obscene for there to be only two of the five still living then you remember the knights again. Would they be welcomed as distant kin, honored elders if they were to set foot in the town by the power plant, or would draconic hackles rise even in human form at the prospect of a rival in their domain?
For that matter how would they see me?
Thankfully that question at least has an easy answer, they won't. Just like you had in Norway and Maryland you hide behind a mask, though just to be on the safe side not the same one.
Lost 1 Essence -> Now at 13/18 (BMI)
Thankfully the chilly harbor of Grindavik is not without its tourists, this close to the capital there are people going to and fro small commercial and private ships while fishing trawlers ply their trade in the grey waters and gulls fly in their wake ever-hungry for their share. You wouldn't think this is a magical place from a distance, or even from up close, which one imagines is just how those who dwell here prefer, though looking closely one does notice there's a lot more red in people's hair and eyes of slate grey and black as obsidian are just as common, the whispers of a dragon's passage in the blood long ago. But no one here has the power in the blood, no one feels the thrum of essence and shapes it to their will, of that much you're sure.
Someone has to be up at the plant, between the flow of power along the dragon lines and the much more mundane, but no less dangerous job of boring for super-heated water to turn turbines and make electricity it's hard to imagine anyone leaving it without supervision. Alas there are very few ways to show up in someone's place of power unannounced without coming off as at best presumptuous and at worst threatening.
So you decide to do something a little bit different, play the tourist... which is how you end up perusing the particulars of Icelandic fishing almost a hundred years ago. You wouldn't think the process of fishing and then salting the fish would be worth a whole museum to itself, but the Icelandic Saltfish Museum begs to differ and if there is one thing that's true of these local museums the world over it's that they are staffed by people who are always willing to have a chat. After all it's more interesting than sitting and looking at nets the whole day. The history of the town, a girl around your age named Kristin explains, starts in the ninth century when the modern settlement of Grindavik was called Járngerðarstaðarhverfi.
"Wow, not gonna lie that sounds like a a whole incantation. Hope it was a good luck one," you laugh, inviting confidence.
"Wanna know a secret?" he asks with a smile. "The names are pretty simple, salt of the earth stuff, we just smush them together. That one just means Ironworks place."
"So is this one of the oldest towns in Iceland or...?"
"Oh sure, we're close to Reykjavík and that was founded in 870 according to the records, that is sort of the touchstone for earliest settlement. Grindavik was founded about fifty years later towards the tail end of the Age of Settlement." She pauses. "If we sound like we're from Middle Earth that's because Tolkien sounds like
us to be clear."
"Got it," you reply seriously, though a smile almost bubbles to the surface. You like the girl, it feels like you could have been friends if you really had come here on holiday and not to investigate dragon-kin linked to a great wyrm sleeping beneath the sea near at hand. "What about older settlement though?"
"According to the Book of Settlements the island was settled by Irish Monks
before the Scandinavians came and we do have place names that hint at it, though they haven't found the archeological smoking gun for that yet. Mind you absolutely can sail from Ireland to Iceland in a coracle, you just probably shouldn't if you have sense."
"And no idea when
they show up?" you press.
The girl shrugs. "At that point it's trying to date ghosts" she turns to look at a kin who was about to yoink at one of the exhibits over the rope divider. "Looking, no touching, OK?" Then without missing a beat she returns to the conversation: "No material evidence. All we have is a word in a chronicle about 'papar', how they left because they didn't want to be around 'heathens' and hints in other texts that they around generally north. Not like there aren't other islands closer to home they could have landed on. Then again hermits trying to get away from the world don't really leave a lot of signs do they?"
No they do not, though they do provide very good cover for incidental sightings of strangers when the Norse settlers were so few that one couldn't lose one's self in a crowd. You have no doubt that the kindred of dragons has been here a long time warming the embers of their blood in the leyline.
"Cool, listen I have to go..."
"Oh
come on, I didn't even tell you about that one time in time in 1627 we had Barbary Pirate abductions, I think they were just figured norsemen were worth extra points or something to come all the way up here."
"You did tell me now," you point out.
What do you do?
[] Drop more obviously magical hints in conversation, see if she bites
[] Go up to the power plant after all
[] Drop Black Mirror Incarnation and see what kind of greeting you'll get
[] Write in
OOC: Enjoy.
