Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

[DragonParadox]

A Bird in the Hand ​

13th of March 2007 A.D.

There's a lot of things you could say, you could be grand and mysterious and hope that it intrigues, you could be curt and sharp and hope that he's looking for direction. In the end you settle for letting your shoulders slump a little, a mark of very real weariness that he should be feeling even more of. "When your wings grow tired what are you planning to do, hitchhike?"

"That's of no concern to..." he narrow his eye, dropping the affection, but not the spell still unfolding in his soul. "What's it to you?"

"There are others like you, all showed up at the time time, I'm looking for you to keep what almost happened here from happening. I know enough to know it would be very unfortunate indeed if the Denarians had gotten their way."

"Denarians?" comes the question, from the tone almost in spite of himself.

"After the coins, that's where the demons are. I know a wizard who calls them Nickleheads instead though."You flash a smile that only grows when Lydia chines in:

"That's not really accurate though, assuming you take the wheat equivalent value during the reign of Augustus it would be worth about 20 USD, not counting the Fallen Angel, not sure what that would be priced at."

Wiping the blood from his hands he looks at the girl as if she's mad, then he seems to realize she's joking and unsure of what to do with that.

"We're full of useful little facts like that and we are willing to share for free unlike some others I could name who would extract a dear prince for it."

"Oh yeah? Why, out of the goodness of your hearts?"

"Out of a desire not to see someone like you get cornered or worse, snared." Previously you had assumed that someone who Exalted in the presence of a Denarian had some insight into the unseen world, but thinking back now you begin to wonder if you had mistaken affectation for knowledge. "Personally I'd rather not turn on the evening news to find out the real life Sentinel Program is in the works and I'm one of the targets."

"I'd like to see them try," he boasts as the flow of Essence finally acheives the required density, but his will is not yet on it.

With a jerk of your head in the direction of the train and the shell shoked passangers bursting out you say simply: "I wouldn't."

Something almost wild and very much cornered gleams in his eyes: "I don't care! I can't care, don't you get it!"

"If we save people," the girl who had been until this afternoon Inari Raith says, "something bad will happen. That's not the same as having to go out of our way to put people in danger."

To that Azhi Dahaka narrows his eyes. "How do you know?"

"A whisper," Something of the eerie precision had gone out of her words, but it had been replaced with fervent passion that was if anything even more potent for how raw, how human it was. "A hope. I'd rather think too much of myself than too little."

"That's not..." he doesn't finish the sentece, nor the spell.

While they had been speaking you had taken the moment to call Tiffany, to confirm the success of the meeting and ask about hers. Alas Harry's limitations had caught up with him, the first attempt at the ritual had failed, though it does mean that she is availibile to deal with the consequences of Shaggy's loss of a host. Bezaliel you learn his name is, but you like yours better.

"Are you going to pick me up or are you bringing everyone back here?" your freind asks and there's the rub isn't it. You can trust Silver by asoaciation with Thomas, but do you want to bring someone of little known character and a great deal of power and understanding into you soul? On the other hand just vanishing into the bushes and showing up with Tiffany is going to be hard to explain to the crowd and it's going to leave Harry with one fewer people to do his search with.

What do you do?

[] Bring everyone who may have been infected though your soul and back to New Orleans

[] Bring Tiffany here while Harry continues his next attempt at the ritual

[] Write in

OOC: Enjoy.

 

[DragonParadox]

Raise Hue and Cry​

13th of March 2007 A.D.

For a few seconds you just look at the tarnished silver coin in your hand, unsure of who to hand it to. Lydia you know and Lydia you trust best of all, but she is also the one who'd going to have to talk to the people. Not to mention, if you're to be any judge she is worryingly close to running on empty. "Here," you had it to Silver Phantom who takes it reflexively and slips it into the same pocket as the other one, to judge by the clink. A far cry from the care the knights have to take with them. The thought isn't as comforting as it could be. To the rest of them know where...

"Where's Listens to the Wind?' you ask after a moment to which Lydia points down the track... at the runaway locomotive. Right, someone should really stop that as well.

"Any reason she gets too and I get none?" the other Deathknight asks, tone far too sullen for your taste, but before you can answer she hands him Akariel's coin.

"There, now we can both be targets."

***​

The next ten minutes are among the longest in what has been a very long day as you race down the hill aloft until you are out of sight and then depart into the depths of your soul to a thankfully empty transit chamber. "Thaumic pathogen contamination likely. Engage clean up procedures... once I am no longer here," you inform the waiting SUTRA. True you might not die from being immersed in high concentration acids and solutions of sodium fluoroacetate, but that doesn't mean you'd enjoy the experience.

The moment she lays eyes on you Tiffany grabs both of your wrists as a strange sort of over-pressure you feel somewhere behind your heart washes over the room, will focused with singular purpose. "There, if you were ill now you are not."

"You don't know?" you ask, trying not to sound as amused as you feel. The last few hours had delivered precious few reasons for levity.

"If I looked and found something that would have been the cure and if I looked and found nothing I'd have done the same out of an abundance of caution. Time is not our friend. They will be seeking those coins, especially as Nicodemus will fear you might have something more exotic in mind for them than handing them to the Church to go through the usual conveyor belt."

There's a part of you that would like to argue with that framing, but you can think of nothing to say that she'd care to listen to. Plus... she's not wrong that you might have other plans.

Lost 2 Essence (King and Kingdom)

***​

Fortuneteller you do not return to the shadowed side of the nameless ridge to the sight of hellfire and fury raining down over your new acquaintances as the Fallen seek their brethren, unfortunately you find them being chased by a small crowd which from the shouts and and assorted 'fucks' 'damns' and more exotic curses is not satisfied with Lydia's answers, even though most of the passengers at least are listening to her. What had probably started as an attempt to distance themselves from people so as not to pass on the sickness had devolved into scrambling across the rocky ground trying to keep ahead with only their feet to carry them.

"Remind me again," Tiffany fights back laughter that seems genuine, if tinged with bitterness. "What is it about mankind that makes demonstrates worthiness to inherit the Earth?"

Sometimes I wonder that as well, you sigh inwardly then chide yourself for being unkind, these people have had their whole world shattered, of course they would want answers and once the pair had started running they'd only look more suspicious. At least there are only about a dozen people actually chasing the Silver and Azhi Dahaka. About twice that many had tried to judge from the ones hurling insults and haranguing them with questions, but they hadn't been in good enough shape to keep up.

Lydia Essence 3/7 (0/3 Jade Talisman)
Lydia Willpower 9/10
Molly Essence 7/18
Molly Willpower 6/9
Silver Essence 5/10

How do you deal with the crowd chasing the pair of Abyssals?

[] Scare them off, most of them probably didn't get a good look at the fight earlier, but one more look at things over the edges of the map won't hurt, especially if it keeps them from doing their damnedest to catch demon plague (Cha+Intimidation)

[] Time for Agent Smith to show up again, looks like (Manipulation+Empathy)

[] Write in

OOC: This could have been a lot worse if the Denarians were in position to make a move on the Coins, but fortuently for you they are not.

 

[DragonParadox]

Troubles of Life and Death ​

13th of March 2007 A.D.

Builders, clerks, doctors, teachers, students, clerks and cashiers, you look out over the worried people trying to get answers to questions the world doesn't want them to get. They shouldn't be involved in all this, in a better world they wouldn't be. In a better world no one would have died, this isn't that world. You raise your voice and pitch it just so with an air of authority of knowing where you stand and where others should too: "Agent Smith, Department of Homeland Security, Bio-Terrorism Taskforce. Why are you people assaulting the agents who just saved you all from being exposed to weaponized Ebola?"

Ignore for a moment the fact that neither of them look like any sort of agent: Silver's still dressed in faded pastels wrapped in black leather and metal studs, like wild flowers on a gave while Azhi Dahaka looks even less professional under all that blood, you had thrown out an answer in an official voice and so the crowd half stumbles to a halt, strung up along the track, some less willing than others to give up the chase, not not quite willing to continue without the benefit of numbers.

"Well ain't that a load of horseshit!" a large man, his physique like a wrestler or a quarterback gone to seed and what you think might be a faded tattoo along his right bicep shouts back. "Do you see that!" he motions at the hole in the side of the train. "Did fucking Ebola do that?"

"No," you reply calmly, "That was a bomb unfortunately not that we can assess the damage since you accosted us, sir." You do your best to load the courtesy with all the threats of consequences your presumed authority might conjure.

"What about the lights, tell her about the lights Jack!" A woman standing next to him grabs onto the man's arm. His wife? No, not the right kind of familiarity, but either a friend or close family.

"Ma'am we suspect there might have been hallucinogenic compounds involved..." Because corpse-pale doves and dragons made of pale shadows aren't the kind of thing most people expect to see even in the aftermath of a terrorist attack. Please ignore the fact one of the 'agents' looks half dead other than being ambulatory.

While you'd been speaking Tiffany had beelined straight for the pair of Exalts laying hands on them to heal ills subtle and overt.

"Are you the..." As Silver cuts herself off her face scrunches into a look of confusion even as her gaze darts to the newly healed Azhi Dakaka, unsure if she should trust him, which he catches on all too quickly.

You need to get these two out of here and explain the realities of his situation more to him, unfortunetly claiming to be a federal agent at the side of an attack isn't exactly conductive to vanishing in a puff of smoke, metaphorical or literal, though after ten minutes of exponding and expanding on your spur of the moment lie you at least have the chance to call the actual authorities. A tired sounding Von Trier assures you they have people on the way, by road and helicopter, but it's going to take at least half an hour before you can vanish among the first responders.

"Don't talk to them here!" you hear Lydia hiss at Silver, though only because you had been keeping an ear out in that quorter. A worried look shows nothing out of the ordinary, they had just wandered towards the front of the train to take 'messurements'... but then you realize the metal of of the passanger car is starting to frost over.

Oridnarily the newly dead would take days to weeks to manifest, ordinarily they would not do so while even a sliver of the sun was still in the sky... these are not normal circumstances nor normal company. Two of the Chosen of Death are abroad and they had been fountaining black essence into the air. Any ghosts incarnating by that power aren't going to be friendly.

What do you do?

[] Try to evacuate the car in which people died, the last thing you need is ghostly manifestations to cover up

[] Leave it to Lydia, calming ghosts with witnesses is not ideal, but she'd good at it, the best you know

[] Write in

OOC: Normally the reaction time would be faster, but they have to brief the first responders in question about things like 'not arresting Molly and Co' and 'Don't ask questions about the giant pile of smoldering meat'.

 

[DragonParadox]

Of the Black ​

13th of March 2007 A.D.

As the first helicopters come flying in, the thwack of rotor blades against the air seeming to banish the sense of strange and otherworldly from the scene as they do the silence Lydia draws near frowning in worry that's hard to place, long as you'd known her. "Something wrong with the ghosts?" you ask softly. Having only just managed to get the people quieted down the last thing you want to do is bring back the fear of the unknown.

"No... and that's the problem."

"Count me befuddled with your sphinx-like riddle," you smile in hopes of lifting the mood. "Now what's the matter?"

"Po souls, roused to awareness by the battle while the other half had been sent wandering, thought for sure I'd have a fight on my hands, can't really talk down the essence or rage and passion and will unshackled by reason... and then that's what they did."

"Silver and Azi Dahaka?" you ask with a quick look back at the pair. They are sticking together and talking in half whispers not like old friends maybe, but closer to that than the strangers they had been until less than an hour ago.

"They have an affinity for not even Po souls, for the darkness that drags those of awakened Po down into the Yomi Wan. On cajoled the other commanded, but it amounted to the same thing, broken souls ripped from life swirl around them like a coterie of servants. I almost wonder if that's intentional." Seeing your look she hastens to add. "Not voluntary on their part, I mean a part of their nature, hollowed souls unleashed in their company and thus proving them with ready made servants in the work of their masters."

"When you say 'hollow'?"

"Alike in nature but not in potency to those we faught down in the Underworld below the tomb of the Nephilim, or before that along the Ebon Road," she explains briefly. "If they are fortunate sorrowful souls might become Wan Kuei and that should tell you all you need to know about their more common fate."

"Just being near someone when they pass can make these specters..." you trail off. "How common is it?"

"Five dead and three horrors rising."

"The Denarians?"

She shakes her head and you're not sure if you should be relieved there aren't centuries old maddened wraiths with whatever black insights such might hold in thrall to the pair or disappointing for the lack of such lost souls you can interrogate for more insights into the Fallen and those who serve them.

"One could always attempt to bargain with the coin-bound demons Majesty." Usum offers, not even particularly slyly, just a statement of fact. "Their position is hardly enviable."

The familiar music that herald's a call from Harry interrupts the suggestions of if not your worse nature than at least the least risk adverse nature.

"One of them's in Antarctica, tried to drown himself then he just looked surprised and started walking out onto the ice, maybe he just figured if water couldn't do it the ice would."

"Harry, I would be no more than bored taking a walk across Antarctica. Do you have the location?"

"Yup, Wilkins-Reed Station, they had a sign and everything. It's on this little speck of land called Ongul Island just off the coast. Not sure how we can get there. They aren't going to be playing your music and if there's a Way it's sure to be long and winding." He pauses a moment, half unwilling to to let the next words past his lips. "Mab would know how to get there fast."

How are you planning to get to Antarctica?

[] Use RVD, simple and costs no resources, but you would have to go alone and would have a hell of a time explaining what you are doing there

[] Call on Winter for the proper Way

[] OK... so you did just drop a lot of work on the magically knowledgeable part of the US Goverment, but maybe they would be wiling to set you up with some transpiration in the right part of the ocean once you explain the danger

[] Write in

OOC: A lot of Abyssal charms deal with specters which aren't normally very common in this setting, the key word being normally, to compensate for this when someone dies in the presence of one of the Chosen of Death they must roll a willpower check and if they fail their souls are violently ripped apart into their components in a way that produces a specter for the Abyssal to influence.

 

[DragonParadox]

Dark Down South ​

13th of March 2007 A.D.

Untangling yourselves from the only a little less than arcane than magic clutches of bureaucracy proves easier than you had anticipated as the agents involved seem to have been instructed to let you draw back from the crowd and then ask no questions as six people vanish between one moment and the next. One can only hope they manage to get a grip on the rumors, with the recent astronomical discontinuity you wouldn't be surprised if there are dozens of new Churches proclaiming the End of Days is nigh. Dad tends to let that kind of thing slide him but Mom's opinions of 'Bible code' are the sort that descent into dark and indistinct muttering, one suspects to keep the wrong sort of word off her lips where her children can hear her. Which isn't to say that the word lacks for beings that would see its end or for that matter to render it down to something the Children of Man would find most unpleasant.

Once the others are back on a road in a vehicle of Lydia's conjuring that might perhaps bear some passing resemblance to a hearse with the combined but very distinct skills of one old wizard and one former angel, even older to keep them on the straight path, at least as far as the next roadside diner you make a quick escape.

The sea so close and with a bit of navigation —still need to get those satellites up and running— you find yourself standing on... well to be honest it might as well be the shore of some alien world, a place of bare gravel that stretches out from the lip of the black waters busy with the grinding of ice shards.

In this place it is the habitations of man, blue and red and bright yellow that break the monochrome garb of nature, one assumes in the name of visibility should any of its inhabitants lose their way in the snow, though the sky is clear today, the light diffuse in the long twilight that precedes the Polar Night.

Less than thirty people in all move with hurried steps between the water treatment plant —you had grown familiar enough with those to recognize it— and various blocky buildings some of which have odd instruments jutting from them. It looks busier than it is, Usum notes clinically, like orange fireflies in the dark and before what awoke in this place just as fragile. A good sign that the one we seek did not slay them, from roused passion or as a harvest to their magic.

Creepy as that sentiment is, it's not wrong, almost enough to make one hope that you would find your quarry sitting down quietly at a table somewhere, wondering at the thing that had overcome them. Alas you had come to learn that is not the nature of Exalted.

How do you approach the search?

[] Use Anonymity Through Propriety to search though the files and effects of the research personnel for cules as to what happened here

[] Use Black Mirror Incarnation to take on a disguise and interrogate the staff
-[] Write in Disguise and reason you are here.

[] Use Hellscry Chakra in order to try to follow the trail of Necrotic Essence that an Abyssal fresh from their incarnation would have left behind them

[] Write in

OOC: A bit short, but there are a lot of options here.

 

[DragonParadox]

A Whiff of Treachery ​

13th of March 2007 A.D.

With so many people going in and out of the heavily insulated doors it's easy enough to find a moment to dash in, eerie as it might be to get close enough to feel another's breath on your cheek from imposed courtesy, but that's not all. Inside you are met with what might be called carefully regimented chaos, the tools of trade and the repositories of knowledge as well as the distractions of the long winters set next to one another as only long habitation might make sense of, binders and bags, books and board games, note books bound with metal rings, colored markets tucked in odd corners, half made puzzles and sticky pads. It somehow feels more personal than intruding in an office building or a portmaster's office, but laying aside voyeuristic shame you find a computer and soon enough you have a name to put to your target, though he won't answer to it: Valentin Romero, a Doctor in Geology, an Argentinian citizen like most people on the base.

Lost 1 Essence (ATP)

A thin almost emancipated face ironically sunburned from last summer's sun looks out at you from the low resolution image eyes dark and lips quirked down into a frown. He had apparently been some kind of discipline problem, not aggressive but... if you were to summarize what's in here you'd say 'does not play well with others'. At first glance it's bizarre that one of the most isolated places on Earth would be this interested in team building and the like, but then when the nearest other people are thousand of miles away, yeah you can see it.

According to the director, one doctor Alvaro Zarka, Valentin had been foisted on them late in the 'project' and... Wait a second, 'the project', you haven't seen that form used before. There were of course several ongoing studies in meteorology, geology and astronomy going on, but that form is odd.

"Clippy is this as odd in the original Spanish?"

Gone were the days when your assistant couldn't understand context or would flood you with minutia, unsure of the standards she should use.

"Affirmative."

Even though it had not been immediately obvious at first since the good doctor isn't very good at making the distinction between official reports and unofficial analyses you had stumbled onto something of the latter, the start of a report that isn't meant to go though official channels to Buenos Aires. Unfortunately he wasn't so considerate as to leave the address it was meant to be saved as under S for Suspicious Patron, but a bit more digging around the room finds what looks like a board game box that looks suspiciously well used. Inside... well it looks like a code wheel from those old time games Dad showed one time, but something tells you it's not meant for playing Star Control.

After snapping pictures on all sides you move on to the combs building only to find a distressed operator trying to get the backup running. According to your running translation, rather than your own shaky grasp of the language the the satellite dish had just suffered a major short circuit, even though it had undergone maintenance less than a month ago.

Not for nothing did you spend so much time around Harry. A short circuit is the most common way for the tech-bane to manifest, say if someone didn't want news of a disappearance to. Seeing as you didn't want to resort to intorogation just yet and a search of on base digital fingerprints showed nothing but that one report you decide to have a look at the sleeping arangements of the missing researcher.... and find them cramped startan and almost agresively lacking in the kind of personality that seem comonplace across the rest of the base. Either you are dealing with someone who is genuinely ascetic or... someone who expects their belongings to be searched. Who the hell vacum-seals their toothbrush?

Molly Essence 7/18
Molly Willpower 6/9

What do you do?

[] Have code-breakers in Sanctuary work on the odd wheel

[] Time to get in the kidnapping buisness, find out who the director was sending reports to

[] Stick a cyber-demon in their satelite dish, find out what's wrong with it

[] Use the belongings you fount to ask questions about the new Exalt
-[] Write in questions (Limited by your Essence more than foci)

[] Write in

OOC: Enjoy.

 

[DragonParadox]

Accounting for the End​

13th of March 2007 A.D.

Another mote of essence spent, another spirit racing though the maze of circuitry, to read what has been sent and wiped clean, at least to eyes that need to look through a screen.

Lost 1 Essence (HMP)

Yet as minutes tick by the soft harmonies that mark a Sutra's attention but not their voice stretch out longer and longer and when at last impatience gets the best of you the best they can answer is 'no further anomalous data found'. So you ask them for the non anomalous one for a look. The last message your quarry had send back was seemingly to an old colleague and 'potential romantic entanglement', Ida, he doesn't mention her last name and you don't have the time to scour the internet for a match for the face of the tall, somewhat stern blonde woman in the pictures. Their conversation is of the sort people stuck here at the bottom of the world do as often enough, mundane, without being so ordinary as to trip the filters that would have marked some hidden meaning. The pair do seem to be planning an event on Valentin's return, itself ordinary enough, a wedding as soon as they are together again. It makes you squirm a little to be reading their emails back and forth only....

The picture of a black dress, not that uncommon if you want to stand out.

The mention of inviting his parents but not hers.

The mention of what she would be saying to their shared friends but never him.

Maybe if you didn't know how all this started you would have missed it, but knowing what you do it's clear, they aren't planning a wedding, they are planning a funeral, one without a body in the casket.

Alright, recontextualize, he's getting ready to die and she knows it and supports it, or at least doesn't oppose it. Does he want to die, is she pushing him? The thought makes you feels queasy in a altogether different way, their interactions had seemed filled with a quiet warmth before.

Talk of settling affairs, of helping his brother stay way from drink, of making sure his sister passes her exams in good form. The warmth is still there and it doesn't have the poison sweetness of compulsion wrapped in lies, nor the fanaticism of those who had lost themseves to some cause as to utterly discard their own lives. It was simply necessary, the both of them saw it that way and under the iron-clad veil of secrecy Ida and Valentin regretted the need. So what were they afraid of them?

You turn then to the information on what he was working on here and the station only to be stymied by an incredibly dense mass of technical jargon, charts and graphs that serves to obfuscate as well as any code, but there in the mass of technical data you find mention of discontinuities under the ice, studies into the anomalous magnetic and thermal properties properties and finally... finally coordinates. As far as a quick search has been able to ascertain there's nothing there, not on any survey, just another mountain jutting out from the kilometer thick ice, one of the Fimbulheimen.

"Named for the all-encompassing winter that comes before Ragnarok, auspicious," you mutter to your cybernetic allies.

Before now you didn't know that static could sound commiserating.

Regardless that is the project he had been working at and likely the thing that scared him so much that his death was something to plan around, including offering consolation to his family. If nothing else he should be particularly in dune with the dark shard that now nestles in his soul.

A man on foot, even one who doesn't mind the cold or require sustenance would take weeks to reach the location marked but you remember Lydia's car and your own means of arcane travel, no guarantee he would be heading there on foot. Do I try to get there before him, do I search an arc south-east and hope I find one living being in all this ice?

Molly Essence 6/18
Molly Willpower 6/9

What do you do?

[] Try to get to the mountains and figure out what's there
-[] Write in means of transportation

[] Try to find your quarry from the air now that you have a direction at least

[] Write in

OOC: Not the best rolls this time around, but enough to give you a direction at least .

 

[DragonParadox]

Ruin's Mist ​

13th of March 2007 A.D.

Unnoticed still you rise into the air, eyes peeling back the everyday onto the arc of deeper darkness head already turning to the distant mountains and there you stop... well not dead under the circumstances it feels good to specify, but certainly as frozen as the fine snow drifts that march towards the dark waters of the Antarctic. The camp is alive with otherworldly marks.

Lost 1 Essence (HC)
Regained 2 Essence (Urge)

Not the pale-flame auras of the White Court, bending and swaying towards other souls as the flame that would consume the moth, not the void-black maw of the Black Court's hunger, though it does remind you of a not-child you left looking at the sky a world away, It's like mist, like the cloying breath of some antediluvian beast poised unseen over the research enclave, enough to draw an eye skyward in alarm.

There's nothing there.

There is nothing there and yet it clings to the metal of every structure, it spills from mouths mouths covered against the cold and swirls in the gaps between buildings that aren't quite roads, but aren't quite not.

There's no way they're as alright as they seem, you reason as you turn your eyes down on the people who call this place home.

It almost seems like the water-proof orange of their outer layers rejects the strange mist. A ward? You wonder in spite of yourself before realizing that you might have spent too long among the magically aware. It's not that the evil in this place is being held at bay, it's that it has grown wise enough in wickedness not to gulp down so small a morsel when there is so much more it could devour.

As soon as that insight clicks in place you almost don't have to look to the building belonging to the expedition leader. You find its door distorted to seem akin to a fanged maw and from its depths, even closed the mist spreads. Floating closer, no sense walking on that ground if you don't have to, you finally catch a whiff of the strange miasma, one of the sea, of rot and ancient things, one you had sensed once as strongly, in a place under waters much more northerly and much warmer than these: Pathfinders or whatever these ones are falling, servants of the Fomori. One might even call it a good sign, you think bleakly, that the one you seek has good taste in foes, but life isn't always easy like that. If evil didn't fight evil as readily as good for pride and for power, why it wouldn't be itself.

Why a spell that does nothing? You wonder, still hesitating between your original course and remaining here long enough to get to the bottom of this new danger.

Perhaps unsurprisingly it is your more practical sense that answers. "If I may be pardoned of the sin of speculation Majesty... fine control is better than a throttling grip, but even than is better than having something slip entirely through one's fingers."

Sounds like there could be something to that, you think as the actual physical wind cuts against your cheek in a reminder that these are real and very much helpless people, not just pawns in the games of powers and principalities. But why go to the trouble of preparing and sustaining such a spell when they can just... your gaze is drawn to the ocean that could at any time be filled with the same sea-born horrors that fill Irish legend and the darkest memories of the Sidhe.

Because there was something here they couldn't afford the barest chance to getting out. The question now is has it gotten away already and should I follow or deal with this first.

Molly Essence 7/18
Molly Willpower 6/9

What do you do?

[] Continue to chase the Abyssal

[] Try to break the Fomori spell that lies in wait around the station

[] Bring someone else in
-[] Write in how

[] Write in

OOC: I hesitated on this one since it slows things down, but you guys did turn on the 'evil spirits' sight and there is a lot to be seen around, so a vote seemed appropriate.

 

[DragonParadox]

Dead Man's Tracks ​

13th of March 2007 A.D.

You sigh and turn away. Is this wisdom, knowing how to pick my battles, you wonder, or is my heart hardening against the horrors of the world that I would leave these people shrouded by fomori curse?

The wind that howls over ice and stone only to meet the -ha!- warmer air over the ocean offers no answer, but you will have to make due. Turning along the line you had discovered the trail is clear to see, a line of murk that does not deviate from its almost mathematical precision as if the one who drew it cares naught for stone or crevice... nor, you soon discover for the sea. This is an island after all, but the line of fraying darkness that only you can see cuts across the water as easily as it had land. On and on, into the teeth of the killing frost, not snow, as you had half expected, the air here is dry and what ice crystals cut against your cheek are stirred up from the ground are thrown up by the wind that cuts across your path. A few years ago, another, younger Molly Carpenter which now seems so very far away had noted in a report on Scott's Antarctic expedition that it had been rather silly of them to risk to much simply to say they reached the South Pole when there's nothing to see here, and nothing ever could be. So it seems at first, for half hour, then one hour and then two, but then, driven perhaps by the sameness of the journey which alone of all its perils your power does nothing to alleviate, you begin to find some beauty in the white shroud of ice over bare stone which more and more peeks out as you head towards the mountains.

Until at last you see a moving speck up ahead, helpful that he had kept the straight path, you note, already marshaling your arguments for why he should at least here you out and then with a suddenness that can only be magic the dot vanishes into thin air, like a mirage at the edge of vision.

Bullshit. Times like this you wish you could curse without feeling guilty. With little else to go by you head to where the dot had been, where the trail of residual essence still leads. Good thing he can't wipe his tracks at least.

It just stops at the point where you had seen him vanish and none of your senses can make sense of it. Had he teleported away like Olivia could do? Parted the veil into the Nevernever? Or as you had been shielded from the attention of the scientists back at the base was he now shielded from yours.

The thought of being compelled to overlook something sends outrage and worry roiling in your stomach. After all what better position to start an ambush?

If he had teleported it has to be pretty far away where as if he slipped across the veil... would be a damn waste of a Gate to just hop to the other side, but you can follow. Opening your mouth to call out you stop to wonder what one would even call to someone who had given up their name.

Ah, heck with etiquette.

"It's really cold and really boring out here! Would be nice if anyone who may or may not be hiding under a rock showed themselves so we could talk and then I can go back to that base and kick some scaly fomori ass!"

"What...?" An oddly rough voice asks in faintly accented English. You turn and see... skin pale, lips blue, one eye lid frozen in place. Being polite you'd say the otherwise handsome young man you had seen in those pictures looks cold. More truthfully he looks dead. "What. Are. You, Doing. Here?"

The words have enough of the weight of a command, but not the touch of compulsion thankfully.

"Looking for you," you reply honestly as you consider the more wide ranging reply to come.

"Why?"

[] Imply that you are here to fight Fomori, it's at least half true, you are planning to do so

[] Be straightforward in your intent, you are here to check up on him and his newfound cosmic power over death to make sure things don't go bad for... everyone everywhere truth be told.

[] Write in

OOC: And here we see other people using perfect effects on you, in this case Splinter in the Mind's Eye. Also an Abyssal who did not luck out on the pretty privilege. They either have appearance 3+... or they look like corpses.

 

[DragonParadox]

Quest of a Nameless Knight ​

13th of March 2007 A.D.

Will and power straining with the effort you reach again for answers, how far to push and what to stand firm, what posture would move the one before you to flight or violence. "I am here to help and get to know you. I have made a point of getting to know all the Princes of the Earth..."

Lost 1 Willpower (TTC)

No flicker of recognition in those in the one visible eye at the sound of alien syllables. You could make him understand of course, but that every instinct screams would be a mistake. So you scoop up some snow with a brass mug the framework of monocular wire embedded within it already starting to hum until the water melts at a speed just shy of flash boiling and continue: "...and the best way to do that is help them with their first self appointed mission."

"Why?" He rasps. God how you wish Lydia was here, not for her authority over the dead, but for her simple understanding of the pain they suffer.

All you can do is your best. A self-heating sponge-blanket designed by the Hand to let its agents warm without being observable in infrared is by barest definition a tool, enough for you to conjure and hand over, careful, but insistent. To the suspicious mind too much cajoling can seem a trap after all and to the proud compassion can be confused for an accusation of weakness.

"You know why." You look at him seriously. "Same reason I couldn't see you just now, same reason I'm flying."

"Power." Again one word. You wonder if that might not be to keep from shivering with the cold, he is certainly dressed in the same warm underlayer and water proof outer layer as the people back at the station, but you can't imagine his dip in the ocean helped with retaining either of those qualities.

"New power," you correct then warn frankly. "There are beings aplenty more powerful than us, but they are bound to their natures."

He laughs... and seems surprised when you ignore it, still holding out the blanket. "First, let's get you at least some warmth - chosen of death or not, you have to be cold?"

"How old are you?" From the tone the question almost seems like it had been startled out of him in place of some more cogent, maybe harsher.

For a long moment you don't answer until he finally takes the blanket in one hand the mug in the other, seemingly surprised by their head, or maybe just by the fact that are solid at all since you had made no attempt to hide the conjuring. Once the former is around his shoulders and the other raises to his lips to drink you answer honestly: "Eighteen."

It's not that you tried to get him to sputter, it is kind of funny that he did it and so the smile that curves your lips is entirely sincere, even as it was also planned, just in case he has some means to see truth from falsehood.

"So about those fomor?"

"Who are you?"

The questions come almost at the same time, but after a moment to prove you are not too eager you answer: 'Molly Carpenter. That's two personal questions you asked me so far.'

"I'm not the one who flew up and started talking."

You quirk an eyebrow, waiting as the wind picks up, the subtle hiss of ice grinding against ice as it has done for millions upon millions of years on this nameless incline.

"Twenty seven," he gives the age that was in his files, though of course not a name. "Look kid I appreciate the..."

"When you look at me is that word the first that pops into your mind, even the hundredth?" you cut in.

"No." The Chosen of the Grave admits, though he doesn't say what does. He falls silent then, for longer than any of his previous silences. "Go... fly I guess back to the station. You don't want to go where I'm going."

Oh great, trying to protect me. At least you have quite a bit of experience with that. Instead of the obvious question though you ask: "What are you doing?"

"My job, my actual job not what those... What did you call them? Fomori asses wanted me to do. I am going to get some answers and after that stop it... if I can that is."

"Stop what?"

"The Awakening." You can hear the capital letter in the word and it does not make a good hearing. He looks you over carefully for some sign of recognition, but you already decided to play this straight.

With a shake of your head that sends whirling snow-flakes caught in it from the wind aflutter you admit: "Doesn't ring any bells."

"It is what they call the day when their masters will rise and rule over the land once more. Nameless things or maybe things you shouldn't name. I got the word out at least, but maybe now I can do more. After all..." he gives an unsettling smile. "Now I'm nameless too."

Molly Essence 7/18
Molly Willpower 5/9

What do you do?

[] Offer to help, even if you don't know all the details this sounds right up your alley

[] Ask who he got the word to, a delicate subject since they are likely to be in danger from the fomori, but it should fill in the gaps in your understanding

[] Write in

OOC: Enjoy