You are Thrice-Pierced Chalice of Eternal Regard, or "Grail" for short. Raised to the life of a Vesakh, the peerless hunters, mercenaries and soldiers of fortunes known the world over for their hunger and violence in the monstrous city of Vespergren, you now travel the world for the first time in your life, seeking to learn more about the trade you've always known you'll someday ply. However, in leaving the confines of the City, you will learn more than just how to fight and kill. War looms, the powerful extend their reach, and the wild calls inside you. Lessons that countermand the creed of your people loom just beyond the edge of your vision. Curiosity wars with hunger. How will you respond? What will you become? Learn, explore, fight, eat--it will never be enough.
(C) All rights reserved. Never Full, Iash Qoma, and other elements of the IQNF setting.
Welcome to Never Full! An original story of traveling to exotic locations to crack them open for the juicy meat therein, meeting exciting people in order to shake them down for money, and perhaps challenging the assumptions that have led you to this point.
The people known to themselves as the Vesakh but to the world at large as the Locusts use a culture of valuing strength and cunning over friendship and diplomacy, powered by the use of their unique mutagenic technology, to essentially be an entire civilization of mercenaries and raiders. You are leaving Locust-held territories for the very first time in order to see the world and explore it looking for things to eat, sell, kill, or kill with. Perhaps you'll learn something along the way! Perhaps you'll become the greatest monster the world has ever seen. Perhaps you'll die alone in a ditch.
Only one way to find out! This story contains themes of bodily, environmental and psycho/sociological horror, graphic violence, mutation, and casual disregard for others.
This is a world where, despite the existence of magic, monsters, and demonstrably real and active gods, technology has managed to mature to the point where the engine-powered motor vehicle, the revolving pistol and repeating rifle, the zeppelin and the biplane share space with long-distance magical communication, widespread use of rituals and prayers to ease life or engage in warfare, and the taming and domestication of various magical creatures. Your people, the Vesakh, are united primarily by their use of the mutagen and their basic mores, but form no true nation, only three competing territories. Only the sheer number of Locusts and their propensity for siding with the highest bidder has prevented other nations of the world from ganging up on them. You are an inexperienced member of a culture that fills a role in this world similar to the nuclear bomb but with the ability to pick its own targets and be bribed, so no matter where you go and what you do it will be fraught with danger and intrigue.
You are:
[ ] Thrice-Pierced Chalice of Eternal Regard, a young woman who has recently taken your Second Treatment, making you ready to go out in search of adventure. Young, scrappy and hungry, you're thin and barely-mutated, but full of passion and volition. You have sharp eyes and can move very fast, but you're not as strong or big as you might someday get, and your youthful naivety and inexperience may work for or against you.
[ ] Shards of Mirror Reflect Imminent Demise, and you've killed and stolen in the name of stronger crime lords until you were ready for your Third Treatment. Soon thereafter, your boss kicked you out--go show everyone you earned that treatment, kid, it's time you actually saw the world outside these walls, you believe their words were. More experienced but almost totally ignorant of how the outside works.
[ ] World Bound in Fences of Steel Against the Storm, and unlike those two losers you've actually been in the wider world before. Also unlike them, you've explicitly been kicked out because of your crimes, to make restoration by finding whatever methods you can in the outside world to bilk them of their riches. Third Treatment but not recently, you're somewhat experienced and know some tricks, but are visibly more mutated and also not allowed to seek help from other Locusts abroad.
From:
[ ] Shallow Graves, the largest Vesakh territory. Miles and miles of hills, gorges and copses, studded with the mines, towers and compounds of various Locust enclaves, this fractious territory is barely-ruled by the Bile Sovereign, whose policies are simple: talk shit, get hit, and deliver yearly tribute or I personally will eat you. Those from Shallow Graves are generally better at woodscraft and administering small groups or operations.
[ ] Vespergren, the oldest and largest Vesakh city. A vast Locust-made maze of layered stone and sooty spires, everyone in Vespergren is working an angle, and while violence is widespread the close quarters of the city make it so that gambling and thievery are more viable more often. Vespergren is ruled by the Unchained Prince, the Queen of a Thousand Hands, and Fingernail Cloak, and those from here are more streetwise, canny, and better at climbing.
[ ] The Everbore, a large subterranean compound of miners, explorers and fugitives built around an endlessly-descending pit with a bottom that nobody has ever confirmed to exist. Ruled by the Blind Council of Nine, the Everbore may be cramped and full of strangers, but it's also prosperous, and those from here are a little more familiar with the outside world, better at maneuvering in close quarters, and discerning value in the darkness and the depths of the earth.
[Your choices here determine what your use-name, or shorter, less jawbreaking name will be, as well as your starting equipment and some details of your mutation and appearance. Where you go first will be decided at the end of the first story update.]
[X] Thrice-Pierced Chalice of Eternal Regard, a young woman who has recently taken your Second Treatment, making you ready to go out in search of adventure. Young, scrappy and hungry, you're thin and barely-mutated, but full of passion and volition. You have sharp eyes and can move very fast, but you're not as strong or big as you might someday get, and your youthful naivety and inexperience may work for or against you.
[X] Vespergren, the oldest and largest Vesakh city. A vast Locust-made maze of layered stone and sooty spires, everyone in Vespergren is working an angle, and while violence is widespread the close quarters of the city make it so that gambling and thievery are more viable more often. Vespergren is ruled by the Unchained Prince, the Queen of a Thousand Hands, and Cloaked in Nails and those from here are more streetwise, canny, and better at climbing.
Your name is Thrice-Pierced Chalice of Eternal Regard, but, because of the use-name traditions of Vespergren, you're called Grail. You are probably about 19, you'd guess, and taller than some while shorter than most. You're not too mutated yet, having only backwards knees, extra knuckles, wrist spurs, ankle spurs, sallow yellow-grey skin, mismatched eyes, one white and one yellow, grey hair and a mouth that extends into a fang-lined gash up your left cheek, but you're fast, tougher than your skinny build would indicate, and can jump really high.
Coming from Vespergren, you're attired in the traditional long, flared leather coat reinforced and decorated with random bits of metal, teeth and hide, over a scavenged breastplate, grimy canvas and leathers, boots and bracers with holes gnawed for your spurs, and a big backpack for your spoils. You used to have a hat, to keep the sooty rain off, but you recently traded it for: (Choose one)
[ ] A bag of miscellaneous tools
[ ] A medical kit which is probably reliable
[ ]A cookery kit, worn but reliable
[ ] A grenado, stuffed with iron nails and shed teeth
In your bag and at your side are your weapons: (Choose two)
[ ] A jezail, decorated with your trophies and carvings along its femur stock, and a pouch of ammo.
[ ] A serrated saber with a brass-knuckle hilt, taken from the corpse of a much bigger and stronger person.
[ ] A billhook, a steel-bladed spear with a hook below the blade and a folding wooden haft.
[ ] A long-barreled revolver with bone grips which almost certainly won't explode!
[ ] A pair of thin knives, sharp and worn and very reliable, balanced for throwing.
[ ] A coil of thin serrated steel wire, for... wire purposes. Certainly not for sawing bolts or windpipes.
Finally, you have your most precious possession: (Choose one other)
[X] A journal hidden within a larger book, that you didn't write. You've been slowly solving its code, and it's about the outside world...
[ ] A book of harms, containing all manner of knowledge about occult threats and various poisons, weapons, and creatures, mostly local ones.
[ ] An amulet of bone and chitin on a hair cord, sacred to the god of growth, change, and violence.
[ ] An amulet of antler and teeth, sacred to the god of hunger, distant places and destruction.
[ ] A locket with a picture of two people who kind of look like you did before your First Treatment.
[ ] A tangled chatelaine of pocketwatches and keys, none with any clear origin.
[ ] A tiny, perfect skeleton suspended in red amber.
[ ] A blue rock shaped like a heart.
Here are some basic rules for this quest, active in perpetuity until I say otherwise:
Voting works by the Approval Voting system, can begin immediately after I post, and will only be closed when I say so
Discussion, questions, and other such non-voting posting is encouraged between voting, though I reserve the right not to answer questions that might be spoilers
Be excellent to each other and also to me, we're all doing our best out here
Your name is Thrice-Pierced Chalice of Eternal Regard, but, because of the use-name traditions of Vespergren, you're called Grail. You are probably about 18 or 19, you'd guess, and taller than some while shorter than most, a little under 4 cubits.
You're not too mutated yet, compared to your peers and your potential. Your legs from the knee down are jointed, carapaced insect-like feet, your hands bear extra knuckles and wrist spurs, your skin is a sallow yellow-grey, your eyes are mismatched, the left blank white and the right yellow, your hair is grey and shaved on the sides and your mouth extends into a fang-lined gash up your left cheek. You're fast, tougher than your skinny build would indicate, and can jump really high, and you have an increasing connection to the magical force that defines many Vespergrenites, the misty force of confusion and urban hostility called the Fog.
CLOTHING
Mountebank's Raiment (Incomplete) - Currently, a long grey coat with thorny green designs around the mantle, hem and cuffs. Still bears your favorite pauldron.
Simple Locust Outfit - Waistcoat, shirt, and pants, bandage-like wrappings, panels of hardened hide or metal where they matter.
WEAPONRY
Dragonbone Spear: A lance of Nashaxi make, sturdy, whippy dragonbone and a head crafted from a fang.
Wrist Spurs - Curved bone spikes growing from your wrists, opposite your thumbs. Innate.
Bariq and Corcell Fernali - A brass-finished revolver with runic carvings and a wire-wrapped grip, which channels your innate magic to cloak your bullets in it.
Military-issue Dissian Bolt-Action Rifle - A well-forged and precision workhorse rifle with a hemacite stock.
RESOURCES
Canteen of water Almanack of the Horizon, the coded journal of a past Locust who took a journey much like your own.
A fist-sized chunk of red amber with a tiny, perfect skeleton curled up inside.
A bag of miscellaneous tools, including lockpicks, pliers, and razors.
2 Standard Medical Kits (Bandages, Needles, Thread, Woundglue, Disinfectant, Inflammation Nostrum, Matches, Beeswax Candle, Magnifying Lens, Leech Vial)
Pandemonian Flick-Lighter
Nostrian? Bone Badge
100ft Spider-Silk Rope
50ft Alloy Chain
Alloy Grapnel
Homeward Coin
Harrier's Bee
2 Uses Cofferwax
Dose Dreamwax
1 Pack Afrish's Choice Cigarettes
1 Pack Guaranteed Mostly Rat Authentic Gnawing Gyurma
You're young, scrappy and hungry, and by old tradition you're going out into the world to see what you can make of it. You have ambition and desire to test your capabilities, and a resilience in your bones that just won't allow you to quit--for good or ill.
You have 48 bullets, or 8 full reloads.
You have 142 astrels in cash.
You are Second-Treatment.
Hunger: 22/100, Upper Threshold 75, Lower Threshold 20.
Saturation: 4
Vim: 6
Iron: 6
Charm: 5
Wit: 6
Waxday 11th of Fading Sun. A time of increasing cold and darkness as the year grinds through the latter third. An inauspicious time for beginnings.
In any time of year, Vespergren is hardly hospitable. Rainclouds gather above the high spires and the shard-like rises of damaged mountain, swallowing up the pillars of soot from the city's fires and foundries and returning it in the form of grimy torrents of rain, and cold winds sweep in from the west, forcing everyone in the storm-channeling canyons that the high buildings make of every street and alley to gather cloak and coat around them and seek shelter. In Fading Sun, it's worse, the halflight that the clouds allow the Sun to provide giving in earlier and earlier every week, the rain freezing overnight and slushing in the morning. Flash floods harry the otherwise dry tunnels and warrens of the undercity, built up by the brief periods of freezing. For the Vesakh who live here, it's unpleasant. For almost anyone else, unlivable.
But for you, it's home, and you find yourself reluctant to leave, here at the threshold.
Your name is Thrice-Pierced Chalice of Eternal Regard, and your use-name is Grail. A month ago, you had finally earned your Second Treatment, and the excitement you felt about the milestone almost outweigh the bone-deep terror as the Bearers shackled you in place for the dose of Ves, so that your spasms would not shake your bones apart or tear their lab to shreds. Your new teeth and spurs, the lambent glare of your eye, the way your legs could bend wherever you wanted to--those were merely the changes you could see in the mirror. The way you could eat even more of everything now, the ability to see in the dark and smell blood with truer acuity, your incredible vertical leap--those stayed with you even without finding something to preen in front of. It feels good to be Second-Treatment now, and of course it's a great opportunity to leave the city and make something of yourself, to come back strong, ready to be a predator among scavengers. But, packing your things and taking one last look around the grimy chamber you squat in, it's all starting to hit you--this is the only place you've ever known. How will you deal with the Outside?
There's no more time for debate--Leaving-Hour is almost here, and if you're late, you'll at best be beaten and thrown out ignominiously, and at worst eaten by whoever's manning the walls today as compensation for wasting their time. You leap from the window, landing with a quiet little tak on the cobbles outside, and sprint for the closest Gatehouse, taking lots of vaults and leaps along the way for the pure joy of jumping, vaulting over piles of rubble and around lamp-posts, dodging people in the streets. The crowds are thicker than usual around the Gatehouse, as they usually are around Leaving-Hour--anyone with any business in the outside world, from first-time Second-Treatments like you to experienced explorers and traders, bristling with goods and weapons, has to get out of the city during the imminent Hour or else remain trapped until the next one. The bulbous grey walls of the Gatehouse, like a wasp's nest rendered in concrete, loom ahead of you as you slip past the throng and into the humid interior. Various lamps and fires burn, illuminating the exits to the outside world--gates that lead to roads and highways, a stable of riding-beasts for finding somewhere to fly to, and the big bronze mirrors that could transport you to somewhere too far to travel by muscle or wing alone. Any one of these places could be the place you begin your legacy from, a staging point for a glorious career of cunning and might! Or, they could be your grave.
[ ] Take the bronze mirror to Iash Qoma, a cosmopolitan city built atop a stalagmite rising through a hole in the earth from a subterranean ocean. There's trade and opportunity galore here, wealth and different cultures and even transport to a lot of the world from there, if you get bored. However, if a place has a lot of opportunity, it also has a lot of competition, and the Locust population here is high.
[ ] Take the long road to the Graver's Hills. This region of rolling hills and burial mounds is famous for its gloomy atmosphere, its restless dead, and its ample opportunities for graverobbing and ruin-exploring. The locals aren't quite friendly, and the opportunities are very specific, but it's close by, and who knows what might be waiting beneath those hills?
[ ] Take a bat to Pandemonium, capital of the Brimstone Republic. Hedonistic, opportunistic, and ostensibly egalitarian, the Devils of the Brimstone Republic love a good scheme and a good party, and both are to be found in rollicking Pandemonium, rising from its caldera lake. Bustling, boisterous, and hot, you'd have to watch your step here, but what else is new? There's a lot of potential here. Devil-trickery is different from Locust-cunning, though...
[ ] Take a boat to Iad Ekrekein. The dense jungles, full of hidden redoubts and rare animals, serve as natural defense to one of the great Teuthis city-states, chitinous buildings connected by rope bridges and vertiginous stone cliffs lush with ambitiously climbing vegetation. It's wet, it's rich, it's surrounded by lawless and fertile jungle, and you could always travel to the various lands around it if you exhausted your options.
You may be setting out for a new horizon, exploring beyond your boundaries, and all of those pretty Expansionist words, but you are, at heart, a city person, and finding another city to explore sounds better than just about anything else. The Hills are tempting, but they're also right there--you can see the spires of Vespergren from them on clear days! No, for your first expedition, you want to go somewhere far, somewhere big, somewhere with a lot of chances for getting out, if you so need them.
You get in line behind a procession of robed and masked individuals carrying a large, cloth-draped palanquin with the vague shape of some kind of urn or jar under it. With a little thrill down your spine, you realize what they have to be--the guards with their glaives, eyes on a swivel, the masks fashioned from molted chitin, the faint but undefinable smell of hackle-raising power--that must be a shipment of Ves, the Sacrament, the stuff you've been trained to fear and covet all your life as the source of the Locust people's transformations. They must be delivering it to whoever the authority is in Iash Qoma. You've only seen this procession in person once, and that was right before your First.
Someone behind you clicks and chirrs in frustration, and you realize with a start that the line's moving again. The mirror glows, from a faint shimmer to a massive bloom of white light, before discharging it with a bone-rattling thrum as each person and party going through is sent on. THROOM as a hulking 7th steps through, weapons rattling. THROOM as the Ves-bearing procession steps through, and another THROOM for their rearguard. Finally, it's time for you to go through. The Gatekeeper, enormously tall and thinner even than you, their collection of prisms and mirror-charms rattling, signs to you as you approach. <Going to Iash Qoma, yes?>
<I am. First outing.>
<Congratulations. Eat well and fear naught, cousin.>
You hand them the carefully-hoarded offering, a little bundle of dried meat, polished glass, and two golden coins wrapped in a scrap of bathide, and they nod before slamming the base of staff against the ground. The mirror begins to charge up again, and you take a deep breath before stepping into the glow, into Iash Qoma, and out of Vespergren, to greatness or to death. THROOM.
Traveling by mirror turns out to feel like being struck by lightning, but also being too drunk to feel the pain--every nerve in your body going into a blind panic under a blanket of toxic numbness. You stagger through the other side, smoke pouring off you in hot white plumes. You haven't been able to vomit since your First Treatment--you kind of wish you could. As your vision clears, you register the chamber around you, rounded, smooth stone walls inscribed with line after line of names, a large drain in the polished floor, white werelights bouncing around the ceiling. Another Gatekeeper waits by the side of the mirror, and waves when you register him.
"Welcome to Iash Qoma! First outing?"
You nod, not trusting your voice right now.
"You're out of Vespergren, so here's the local rules. Don't get caught killing or stealing but it's still okay, no trafficking with the dead, and you'll need to figure out money at some point. Have fun, and get out of my Xhaal-damned mirror room."
You stagger forward and pause at the door. Sure, you just got your entire body fired from one city to the other on a beam of light, but the room beyond was nothing you haven't seen in Vespergren. Beyond is the real outside world, full of victims, threats, and people who haven't even taken the Ves. Academically, you have a vague idea of what to expect. In reality? You're
[ ] Terrified.
[ ] Eager.
[ ] Ready.
[ ] Not at all ready.
You take a deep breath, quickly check to make sure you have everything you brought, and step through the door.
In all honesty, you're more excited than you've ever been. Fear has rarely been your guide in the relatively short time you've been alive, and you're not going to invite it into you now that you're facing the biggest opportunity of your entire life. You push open the door and step through, getting your first look at Iash Qoma proper.
Beyond the doors stretches a vast chamber with high, vaulted ceilings and stained glass windows letting in dull shafts of sunlight. The walls are covered in mosaics depicting elaborate allegorical scenes--groups of people hoisting various weapons and tools in front of sunrises, towers being built by what look like crabs wearing treasure chests on their backs, even a group of Vesakh standing triumphantly over the corpse of a nine-headed snake. Bars and bulbs of glass containing white and yellow light illuminate everything that the many werelights and gaslamps do not, shedding their light on various tiers and terraces of floor connected by ramps and stairs. On the far side from where you stand--a short balcony beneath a sign that says VESPERGREN 1-06--is a tunnel entrance from which emerges an enormous hissing machine, pulling a string of carriages behind it. The first train you've ever seen in operation, and not as a picked-over carcass on the outskirts. Over to the left, a variety of clattering machines that move on a mixture of steel legs and large wheels rattle in and out of the station. And between it all moves more non-Locust people than you've ever seen in your life.
Across the tiled floors of the station move crowds of people in more shapes and varieties than you've ever seen outside of the presentations in school. Humans, like you used to be, in various shades of brown and beige, Erzan, taller, bald, and horned, with no noses, long ears and skin in shades of orange and yellow, muscular Oriza with formidable external teeth and manes of quills for hair--nothing new to you, save in how many of them look so similar--all familiar to you from the clutch you grew up in, before you all took First Sacrament and changed for good, leaving whatever you were born as behind.
Among these crowds scuttle Teuthis, covered in chitin and waving tentacles, their long, centipede-like lower bodies rushing over the shining floors, and Mimics, most of them just tangles of crab-like legs extending from the bases of boxes, coffins, barrels, and carriages. And everywhere, distinguishable by the universally cocksure way they move, are Devils, looking like versions of all the other peoples but with warm or metallic colors and glowing eyes, dressed in a way that makes even you, who has worn the same thing since First Sacrament, feel fashionably inadequate.
The members of your own people, your fellow Vesakh, look less shabby and hungry than they do back home. Other types of person that you don't recognize mingle with the crowds, and you resolve to learn what's what as soon as possible.
You step down to join the crowds, and nobody looks at you twice--another skinny little Locust in a shabby coat and leathers, nothing exceptional in this throng of seemingly everything that all the world has to offer. Smells rise up to meet your sharp nose, of metal, coal, steam, sulfur, magic, spices, sweat, greed, fear, lust. Clutching tight to your bag, you look around for your next goal:
[ ] Someone to ask questions of--you're alone and new, and need information.
[ ] Something to eat--it's been a whole two hours, after all, and your stomach rumbles now that the mirror nausea is gone..
[ ] Something exceptionally new to goggle at--there's so much on offer here!
[ ] Someone to tail--no need to start a conversation to get intel out of someone, after all.
[ ] Some way out of the station--surely the streets of Iash Qoma have more to offer than the very first thing you see upon arrival...
[ ] Write-in.
First things first--you're hungry, and that eclipses other concerns. Now that your stomach's stopped rotating from the mirror transit, it's very concerned with letting you know how empty it is. A state of affairs that demands attention! You hop up onto the railing stanchion for a better vantage point, picking your external teeth with your wrist-spur idly as you scan the station with both your eyes and your nose. The latter begins categorizing the rich sensory profile of the station into person-smells, threat-smells, concept-smells and food-smells, and you zero in on every example of the latter that you can find, finally settling on:
[ ] A cart that smells of mushrooms and shellfish, run by a Teuthis who's coiled around the cart and watching the crowds in between dishing out bowls of noodles. They accepted a handful of your bullets as payment. (-Iron)
[ ] A small kiosk run by an Oriza with her quills tied back, dispensing spicy meat-and-vegetable kebabs--while everything here is new to you, you don't even recognize what meat she's using, let alone the veggies. She asked you to arm-wrestle for your meal. (-Vim)
[ ] A pale human in dark glasses, selling knots of dark brown, salt-sprinkled dough that his sign claims are "pretzels". He wanted a riddle in exchange. (-Wit)
[ ] The birds that are roosted up in the rafters--wouldn't take but a minute to scramble up a pillar and catch yourself something hot and fresh, but the fact that nobody else is doing that is a little strange. (-Charm)
You fill your belly and pay the cost, whatever it may be, and move away, the gnawing panic of the part of you dedicated to physical hunger sated for the time being. Now, for the next stage--finding somewhere to go from here. This station is big and fancy and full of people, but it's also full of obvious charlatans and the most basic, tourist-facing facets of Qoman life. There's more out here! And you're gonna find it.
You spot some exits right away, since spotting patterns in crowd movement is never a useless skill back home, but the real question is which exit? Opportunity knocks once more.
[ ] The low arches where those machines with the legs and wheels come and go--lots of traffic is over there, which would indicate that a significant portion of the city beyond is accessible. Plus, you could get a closer look at the machines.
[ ] The train--why go by half measures? Lock yourself in with dozens of strangers and travel across the city just to see what's on the other side and get a feel for the local zeitgeist.
[ ] Wait, over there, beyond the train--that's the Ves-bearing procession! You could follow them to find an important part of the local Locust culture, get in touch with your own people within Qoma. They do seem a little different from back home.
[ ] Under that clock is an arch that people are going through by foot, which would seem to be an obvious exit, and from outside comes a lot of snapping and crackling noises, laughter, and the sound and smell of rain. Could be interesting?
[x] A small kiosk run by an Oriza with her quills tied back, dispensing spicy meat-and-vegetable kebabs--while everything here is new to you, you don't even recognize what meat she's using, let alone the veggies. She asked you to arm-wrestle for your meal. (-Vim)
[x] Wait, over there, beyond the train--that's the Ves-bearing procession! You could follow them to find an important part of the local Locust culture, get in touch with your own people within Qoma. They do seem a little different from back home.
You chose the kiosk, and sat down for a few moments on one of the crates near it to eat your well-earned meal. Trading food for little challenges like arm wrestling or gambling is nothing new in Vespergren, after all. The meat is rich and muscular, the spices complicated and intense, the vegetables fresh-tasting like you've almost never had. The Oriza looked a little relieved to lose, and so you ask her what's up while you eat--poison's nothing to be afraid of, after all.
"Sho, what'sh up with throwing the game?" you ask, mouth half-full of spicy meat.
"...Ya figured it out that easy, huh? Shoulda guessed," she responds, smiling sheepishly as she scratches at the back of her head. "I don't really expect ya to understand, really, but I gotta get rid of all this beef before sundown tonight, and y'all Locusts don't think it's weird to charge an arm-wrestle for food."
You mull that over as you pull the last piece off the kebab, then begin chewing meditatively on the stick.
"...What's beef?" you ask eventually, picking an onion out of your exposed fangs.
She blinks in response, before chuckling. "I never get used to y'all... 'S meat from cattle, big chunky animals with horns. Not too common 'round here, but people are eating it all the time outside Qoma. Didja enjoy it, at least?"
You nod as you stand, licking the last of the sauce off your fingers and wiping them unconcernedly on your pants. "I did. Eat well and live bloody."
She smiles in response, and you find yourself lingering on it--her mouth looks like yours does, but all around, and it's oddly comforting, considering how most of the people you've seen so far keep their teeth behind their lips.
"Savnok shield you, lil Locust. See ya 'round."
With that, you take your leave, rolling around what you just learned inside your head.
When you look around for an exit, the procession of Ves-bearers catches your eye, and the old fascination comes back. You remember when the bearers came to your block, bringing the load that would become your creche's First Sacrament. You remember the ritual, the sacrifice, every ripple and creak of your muscles as the Sacrament changed you--more than human. More than the world. Vesakh, the Anointed, Those Who Take. You didn't even see them last time, your Second. You only showed up and let them Treat you once more. If you follow them you'll be able to see it again, to recapture that feeling... plus, you'll probably find whatever the locals consider important to your people at the other end. Mind resolved, you set to following them at a safe distance, relying on the scent of the Ves, faint but unmistakable, to prevent you losing them in a crowd.
The bearers move briskly, keeping the urn at an even level as the ring of guards parts the sea of people all around them. You track them across the station and through a gateway, and out--into Iash Qoma proper.
Buildings rise all around you, most blockier and more simple than the baroque spires of home, and high above is not the ceiling of smoggy rainclouds, but a literal ceiling of stone, glittering with crystals and luminous fungi, stretching around a massive hole in the center. Watery sunlight filters down through that hole, around the gigantic pillar that rises from the center of the city up into the light. The lights of buildings and machines glint everywhere you look, vast mechanisms and tangles of architecture rising up the central pillar like moss up a dead tree. Other pillars rise, from islands in a dark and gleaming sea, connected to the central by tangles of bridges, cables and dangling structures, all laid out before you from the station's position atop a low hill. It's so simultaneously familiar and alien that you're lost for a moment, senses jumping from sensation to sensation--here, a distant cry of laughter, there, the smell of coal and phlogiston, there a gleam of pale orange crystal, high up along a sheer stone wall. Eventually, the sharp, pale tendril of the Ves cuts through your confusion, and you zero in on the bearers, almost out of sight as they move down a busy hill, keeping the urn level even along the incline. You move swiftly, cursing yourself for being distracted.
The bearers move faster as you get further from the station, the various civilians giving them a wide berth--you make sure to keep your distance, blending in with the crowds as they close back up in the procession's wake, an act of almost second nature to you. As you go, the architecture becomes more familiar--Name-signs and pictographs are daubed on the walls in chalk, natural pigment and glowing fungal smear, skeletons and sculptures of found garbage decorate the doorways and lamp-posts, and the air smells like Locusts, charred meat, and the old reliable undercurrent of distrust, a smell more familiar to you than any other. Even so, it remains alien--tubes of glass full of light snake along the walls, people without visible weapons, natural or manufactured, walk the streets unafraid, and the clothing is less grimy, less damaged--some even wear signs of visible wealth, something that back home indicates utter confidence or absolute stupidity. It takes everything you have to stay focused on your goal, as the procession winds on, towards a tall, leaning structure made of wood and fungal timber, perched atop a low building of columns and soot-stained marble.
The procession is slowing down, this is their stop, meaning this is a vital structure to the locals. What do you do?
[ ] Follow them right in, see if you can catch a glimpse of where exactly they're taking it.
-[ ] Try to find the local Boss immediately.
-[ ] Track the bearers.
-[ ] Case the joint.
[ ] Bide your time, wait for them to leave, then go in. Seeing the local Boss is fine, interfering with the Ves... isn't.
-[ ] Find an Augur and negotiate for a reading.
-[ ] Find someone to jump for what they have, keep yourself in fighting trim.
-[ ] Find someone who's hiring, see if there's any opportunities that don't involve talking directly to the Boss. Follow them/Bide your time is a binary choice, choose one and then a sub-vote. Approval voting is fine for the sub-votes but any individual voter can choose only one of the bolded choices.
[X] Bide your time, wait for them to leave, then go in. Seeing the local Boss is fine, interfering with the Ves... isn't.
-[X] Find an Augur and negotiate for a reading.
Now that you're here, surrounded by familiar-foreign sights and smells, you remember why people don't tend to follow around Ves-bearers. Even though this is an important place to be and to start, that doesn't change the fact that you going in there while the local Boss accepts the shipment might be construed as interfering with the Ves--and that's something everyone knows to fear. With that in mind, it's probably wiser to wait out here--and that means you've got to find something to occupy your time. Standing around and waiting for something to happen is for snipers and the suicidal, so it's time to look around!
Back home, everyone knows that there are ways of seeing the future, most imprecise, bloody, or both. You, however, tended to make a lot of use of them, mostly bone-throwers and card-shufflers, streetcorner prophets you could trade a marrowbone or a secret to in exchange for a vague impression of the future and its contents. Something about the process, of throwing cards or dice or pigeon entrails at the future in order to get a vague impression of its shape, has never been anything but fascinating for you, though you've never mastered the knack for your own self. Now that you're here, it feels like a good idea to find someone qualified--not just an ordinary shuffler of dice or back-alley haruspice, but a real, legitimate Augur, a higher order of seer. One has to be around here somewhere...
As you roam these unfamiliarly familiar streets, looking for an appropriate sign or smell, you become aware of how many eyes are on you--you may be Vesakh, but you're not like these are--grimier, leaner, more unsure of yourself. Everything that makes you stand out is something of which you're uncomfortably aware, and you do something you haven't since shortly after your first Treatment and hug your coat a little closer around yourself, an imagined shield against the world around you. Everyone here is at least 3rd as well, which only adds to your discomfort--you're surrounded by people who smell bigger, stronger, and more violent than you've ever been, and the fact that they aren't doing anything just makes you more nervous.
Eventually, you see a sign, a stylized representation of an eye and six crossed bones, scrawled in red on a piece of wood and nailed up above a building which seems to just be a door and a coop crudely affixed to a round bulge of stone emerging from the very ground. You approach the door and knock three times rapidly. A voice filters up from inside, thin and sharp and tinged with metallic reverb: "Who's out there?" The pupil of the eye painted on the sign rolls to focus on you. "I haven't seen you before... fresh off the spire, neh? Looking for a reading?" You nod, unsurprised--if an Augur couldn't make basic observations about you at a remove, would they even be worthy of the title? "I seek knowledge of the yet-to-be-woven!" you call back. There's a moment's pause, before the voice responds: "Enter, then." The door creaks slightly open, and you slip through.
Inside is a dim hexagonal room, walled with cloth weavings and pieces of scrap wood. From everywhere along the walls and ceiling hang dulled bronze chains, from which are suspended glass tubes containing eyes, small oil lanterns, pocket watches, bird and bat skeletons. In the center is a table, a crude wooden thing topped with a steel basin, and sat cross-legged behind the table on a cushion is a hooded, cloaked figure, draped in layers of tattered cloth. All that's visible is their hands, completely coated in pallid, chitinous exoskeleton and folded neatly in their lap, and six yellow-white dots of light from within the recesses of the hood. "Oh, you're even smaller than you looked," they say, lights flashing. "Why, you can't be more than, what, 2nd? I'd say First, but you'd not be here. Xhaal but they're making them small these days, neh?" Their accent isn't quite familiar to you, but it's closer than nothing. You don't respond to the barb, only waiting for the pitch. "You want a reading, but you can't be but just arrived--you still smell like the Mirror Road and Vespergren-smog--so I can't imagine you'll be able to pay me in goods. So, how about services? I'll give you a reading, but I'll want a favor or one of your weapons. Will you still pay for the future in such coin?"
[ ] Accept a reading for a favor. Favor trade is just about sacred--nobody'd renege unless they were certain they'd get away with it, and this is both a city and an establishment.
[ ] Accept a reading for a weapon. You'll lose your billhook or your revolver--write in which, if you select this option--and you don't know where to get a replacement as of yet.
[ ] Try to negotiate. You want a reading, but surely there's a different price they'll accept?
[ ] Take your leave. If this is the cost of the future, you'll wait before making your down payment.
