A Cold Wind Blowing 23
Wicked Sanguine
All I Want Is Everything
- Location
- The High Desert
[X] goes in search of the unfamiliar. Someone from a group she hasn't had much or any chance to interact with.
Stay tuned for an announcement this week!
Stay tuned for an announcement this week!
No thinking. Not right now. After Mavaro's story, Roscuro's intervention, and the absolute glut of ominous warnings you've received tonight, you have so much to think about and so little time. You're surrounded by Unchosen who've made a reputation and a living off the skills you've been taught to hone and prize all your life, far from home, with no crechemaster or scheming higher-Treatment as a last resort. You can't rely on Steele either, as much as there is that growing traitor part of your brain that very much wants to. She's an Unchosen you barely know. Nobody has your back. Save the rumination for when you're in your squat with the traps set, a joint of meat and a jar of jam to yourself. For now, you grab another plate of little snacky things and set to circulating, keeping a conscious distance from the recognizable scents of Steele, Roscuro and everyone else you know. You need to branch out, to expand, to put some distance between your heels and Xhaal's jaws. So that means seeking out something unfamiliar. Something new. You're young and hungry and you need to learn more, really take advantage of that rumination time later. So… here you go.
Following your old method of clearing your mind and letting your feet lead the way, you make a circuit of the room. You're thin and can flatten yourself pretty well (not quite so well as Trifle back home, who could squeeze himself through a bullet-hole, but pretty good for a gargoyle, you'd like to think), which means it's pretty easy to dance between meandering little circles of mercenaries, which constantly break apart and reform around wherever food can be found. Even the Unchosen are eating like you're all at one of the victory celebrations being held by Column, with food vanishing between lips, teeth or mandibles wherever you look. The smell of opportunistic gluttony and eager scavenging fills the air, mingling with the smoke and the noise of conversation. A sellsword never passes up a chance at a meal, whether or not they're Chosen, it seems.
The width and breadth of what the outside world has to offer, at least as far as those called to the same occupation as you, are on full display in the echoing and revelry-filled space of the Old Hook. By the light of lanterns and werelights, under rafters hung with trophies, across battered floorboards heaped with rugs and pelts, the mercenaries, sellswords, hunters, killers, thieves and explorers of Iash Qoma drink and talk and plan and scheme and feast, and as you travel among them, notables seem to stand out from the crowd, a selection of the world's vastness and potential before you like offerings across a piece of slate.
Here, a Teuthis covered in inky black chitin with glowing green tentacles and "freckles", clattering with the various mechanical parts and half-assembled traps dangling from its gear, holds a conversation full of innuendo and sly references with a brassy Pandemonian in distinctive and ornate gold-and-red-leather armor and an unassuming human woman with a hammer as big as she is strapped across her back. Elaborate references to past exploits and 'cleverly'-concealed dirty jokes are slung back and forth between them like three-cornered catch, laughter tinkling like silver bells as they put away bottle after bottle of wine.
There, a mechanical contrivance that makes your nose wrinkle, all steel and coal-fire, shaped like a human and wrapped in an expensive-smelling suit of grey cloth, with the violet-scaled neck and head of a three-eyed Ophidian poking out above the neckcloth. Lightning crackling faintly around her eyes and teeth, she waves an abacus at a fully armored figure, their nature hidden behind the smell of dragon-leather and oiled metal. The abacus, or whatever it represents to her, seems to make her very angry, and the rattle of the beads provides a backing track to her sibilant ranting, which seems to leave the armored one unmoved.
Behind them, a young human woman, clad in a deep, dark blue-green robe sewn with patterns in pearl and ivory scales, a hood fringed with glass beads drawn over her eyes and a skirt of woven rope forming a net around her waist, sits demurely cross-legged on the back of a heavily armored creature like a prawn the size of an ox, covered in elaborate spirals painted onto its green-black shell with luminous orange paint. She's playing tawle, board balanced on her steed's head, with a short, stocky Oriza in a tartan cloak, a 5th wearing armor made entirely out of torn pieces of war-machine plating watching on and criticizing them both sharply. Your fellow Vesakh makes eye contact as you pass by, and winks, before making an unmistakable move-along whistle, only properly audible to one with ears like yours, though the Oriza hears enough to wince at the sudden sharp noise.
And everywhere is the subtle yet insistent presence of the Crow Brotherhood, masked figures in dark clothing circulating amid the crowd, gauntlets and lenses gleaming.
All of these you see and note, but you choose to pass them by. Your instincts say 'Not this one, not yet,' and following them down the road they cut for you seems to have gotten you this far. Why not continue? Instead, while finishing off a glass of weak Unchosen wine you chose more because it smelled like bright fruits than for any intoxicating properties, you let your eyes wander, until they fall upon a scene that draws you like a lanternjack to the sound of laughter.
[ ] A trio clad in the bones, scales, and brightly patterned skirts and ponchos of Nashax, that far southern place whose craftsmanship provided you your spear of dragon's bone. Seated at a table with room for at least one more, balanced among the Three Mortals with one each of human, Erzan and Oriza, they've got quite the selection of spiced shellfish, and their conversation has mentioned the keywords of "Locust", "War", "Intercession" and "Avoidance". Nashax is far from Vespergren, true, but it directly borders the Shallow Graves, and so, in the name of the common interest of Vesakh that the world seems determined to treat you as part of, their disposition is of interest to you. They look calm but competent, too, and aren't talking of hunting and contracts so much as world politics, another welcome change. As you settle your gaze on them, the Erzan, a Grey with ornate gauntlets, fixes you with bright orange eyes and makes a subtle beckoning gesture with her chin.
[ ] A pair who've claimed a standing table upon which is a deck of cards and a small candelabra, each of its tapers producing a queasy teal light. She's a Lamassu, with the lower body and head of a brindled, winged goat, long notched horns hanging with bells, plumage bearing the mixture of browns and blacks of a hunting hawk, clad in lacquered leather and an embroidered grey caparison; he's an olive-skinned human with his hair gathered in a long braid, wearing large round spectacles and the thick metal breastplate and cordite-stinking gear harness and coverall of a sapper. The tangle of possibilities around them suggests the availability of your old vice of divination, and she at least is from Navath-Qor, something you don't know nearly enough about considering it borders the High Ice. He meets your eyes and mouths a polite query as to whether you're looking at him.
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