So it's time to return to one of your favorite pastimes--wandering around until you see something relevant to your interests! Truly, the sport of queens.
[ ] Your old crew. One of the only relationships not built on a mercenary basis or mutual screwing-over that your people tend to form, crew are people with complimentary strengths and weaknesses who band together and watch each other's backs. The ones formed before first outing tend not to last, but they were close to you, and you miss them.
I like having old friends. Pity the few people we can trust tend to drift away - which seems kind of odd, honestly, but I guess it's because we tend to find different jobs? But it's better than no friends.
[ ] Your old partner. Being full of hormones and nervousness makes the tail end of schooling a hot mess, but partnerships tend to form up in the morass of backstabbing. They were close to you, you watched out for each other, you shared a squat--and then
[ ] Your perpetual loneliness. You were never able to form crew, to find a partner, to band together with anyone for long. You've spent all your time being able to rely on, ultimately, no one else but you.
-[ ] And you want to change that. Maybe someone else, someone who isn't Vesakh, might work with you!
-[ ] And you're fine with that. You don't need crew, you don't need anyone but yourself.
Eh. Self-reliance is okay, but I like banter and team dynamics. Grail's solo headvoice isn't bad, but it's not really a draw on its' own. Not good enough for a solo character.
[ ] Head northwest, towards the central pillar, with the lights and machines and lifts and vertiginous buildings.
[ ] Go northeast, towards where the land slopes off into the dark waters of the Unfound Sea, and the docks and bridges there.
[ ] Go due south, where it smells like hot metal and booze and aggression, carried to you on warm winds over the sea.
[ ] Go west-southwest, where the snapping and crackling you heard from within the station is just about audible.
Docks is the only place that doesn't really sound like it could be our target, so I'm happy to amble in any of the other directions. Maybe train first, since it's most likely to have a city map?
[X] Your old crew. One of the only relationships not built on a mercenary basis or mutual screwing-over that your people tend to form, crew are people with complimentary strengths and weaknesses who band together and watch each other's backs. The ones formed before first outing tend not to last, but they were close to you, and you miss them.
[X] Head northwest, towards the central pillar, with the lights and machines and lifts and vertiginous buildings.
[X] Go due south, where it smells like hot metal and booze and aggression, carried to you on warm winds over the sea.
[X] Go west-southwest, where the snapping and crackling you heard from within the station is just about audible.
Eh. Self-reliance is okay, but I like banter and team dynamics. Grail's solo headvoice isn't bad, but it's not really a draw on its' own. Not good enough for a solo character.
I will say that Grail is getting friends, this primarily informs how she'll react and what kind of person she winds up running with
She will not be alone forever but this informs how happy she is about that and the eventual selection of people she'll have to deal with
[x] Your old partner. Being full of hormones and nervousness makes the tail end of schooling a hot mess, but partnerships tend to form up in the morass of backstabbing. They were close to you, you watched out for each other, you shared a squat--and then
-[x] They stabbed you in the back.
[x] Go due south, where it smells like hot metal and booze and aggression, carried to you on warm winds over the sea.
[X] Your perpetual loneliness. You were never able to form crew, to find a partner, to band together with anyone for long. You've spent all your time being able to rely on, ultimately, no one else but you.
-[X] And you want to change that. Maybe someone else, someone who isn't Vesakh, might work with you!
[X] Go due south, where it smells like hot metal and booze and aggression, carried to you on warm winds over the sea.
[X] Your old crew. One of the only relationships not built on a mercenary basis or mutual screwing-over that your people tend to form, crew are people with complimentary strengths and weaknesses who band together and watch each other's backs. The ones formed before first outing tend not to last, but they were close to you, and you miss them.
[X] Head northwest, towards the central pillar, with the lights and machines and lifts and vertiginous buildings.
Boy I tell you guys it's very difficult to resist the temptation to just tell people lore and overanswer questions, and instead just let the story unfold naturally
though, if people want an epistolary sort of expansion thing as a sideline, you'd not need to twist my arm
Boy I tell you guys it's very difficult to resist the temptation to just tell people lore and overanswer questions, and instead just let the story unfold naturally
though, if people want an epistolary sort of expansion thing as a sideline, you'd not need to twist my arm
The only problem with that is they'd be limited in scope given that Grail is 18 and has spent all her life as a weird bug hobo surrounded by bigger, meaner bug hobos, and has not that much to say about the state of the world outside Vespergren
The only problem with that is they'd be limited in scope given that Grail is 18 and has spent all her life as a weird bug hobo surrounded by bigger, meaner bug hobos, and has not that much to say about the state of the world outside Vespergren
Inventions always kind of interested you, though you never had the patience to sit down and put things together. The patience, or maybe the time--you don't get a lot of opportunities to sequester yourself and focus on building and experimenting
[X] Your old crew. One of the only relationships not built on a mercenary basis or mutual screwing-over that your people tend to form, crew are people with complimentary strengths and weaknesses who band together and watch each other's backs. The ones formed before first outing tend not to last, but they were close to you, and you miss them.
[X] Your perpetual loneliness. You were never able to form crew, to find a partner, to band together with anyone for long. You've spent all your time being able to rely on, ultimately, no one else but you.
-[X] And you want to change that. Maybe someone else, someone who isn't Vesakh, might work with you!
[X] Go due south, where it smells like hot metal and booze and aggression, carried to you on warm winds over the sea.
I've currently got midterms, so 1.11 will be coming out Soon but not immediately. Sorry for the delay! And I'll have something interesting coming out alongside it!
[X] Your old crew. One of the only relationships not built on a mercenary basis or mutual screwing-over that your people tend to form, crew are people with complimentary strengths and weaknesses who band together and watch each other's backs. The ones formed before first outing tend not to last, but they were close to you, and you miss them.
[X] Go due south, where it smells like hot metal and booze and aggression, carried to you on warm winds over the sea.
You met Rubble and Ember in schooling, and the three of you adopted Glaive into your crew after they helped you escape from a heist gone wrong. Young and hungry like everyone else, you all spent the years between First and Second Treatments running together, stealing and robbing and exploring, sleeping in a pile for safety and fighting as a group. Enough rats together can take on any horned moth or ratwolf, after all, it's why a big chunk of extant crews are made up of kids. Now that you've gone on your first outing, you'd imagine the others are on theirs. You hope to run into them again, but you hear stories about how first crews never hold together after outings. It can't be helped, you suppose... nothing lasts forever, and nothing can't be taken from you. You just get up and move on.
Even as you reminisce, you move south, following the distant smell of hot metal, of alcohol, of anger. Surely there'll be a lead here, even if your quarry isn't--it just feels too right to find something related to weapon designing and scheming for power amid the source of such a foundry-smell, a war-smell. You move quickly along the edge of a large, curving road, buildings sloping up to the pillar on one side and down to the water on the other side, ducking neatly between knots of pedestrians.
The further you get from the little Locust enclave, the more you see of those odd machines from the station--little metal conveyances with one or more large wheels in back and a cluster of metallic, jointed legs, like beetle limbs, in the front, with a little space like a box, roof mounted on stilts, in the middle. People sit inside them, riding them here and there, carrying passengers or loads of cargo. Among them move similar conveyances, but these are wooden carts and rickshaws, moving on living, organic crab-like legs, eyestalks waving from gaps in the front, and at least you know what these are--Mimics. You've never met one, but schooling makes sure that everyone knows that some objects aren't just chests or wardrobes or coffins, they're the homes of Mimics, who never feel safe without something to hide in. It pays to be careful and to recognize them when your business involves rifling through containers for valuables. Here, they appear to be vehicles, accepting little bundles or handfuls of metal in exchange for transport. You consider trying to use one, but you still don't have any money, and if you understand money at all, you understand that most people will want it instead of barter or favor trade. So, walking it is.
Your eyes aren't as good as your nose, but you'd like to think that just goes to show how good your nose is. Before long, your path puts in your sight what has to be the source of the smell, a glow across the water. Another island, a massive stalagmite rising up from the Unfound Sea, covered in foundries, metal structures, towers and fortifications and smokestacks, sending smoke and orange light into the air. Bridges lead from the island you're on to that one, with trains rattling back and forth across them, and a few vessels travel across the water in parallel courses with the trains. Hurrying over to where the bridges begin, you see a large slab, carved with a diagram of blobs and lines that it takes you a second to parse as a stylized map of Iash Qoma's islands and bridges. Where you are is, apparently, "The Rise," and way up in the northeast is Great Men. This bridge leads to the source of the smell, the island of the forges, "Irontown", but while it's on the other side of the city from Great Men, there's apparently a bridge that runs directly between them. Otherwise, you'd need to retrace your steps and cross the entire rest of the Rise. So, you're faced with a choice:
[ ] Visit and explore Irontown, following that smell, then take the train or bridge or whatever directly to Great Men and get on with it.
[ ] Cross the Rise, seeing the rest of what that island has to offer beyond the station and the Embassy, then get to Great Men from there.
Midterms are over and I've got time on my hands, so I will be intermittently and irregularly posting excerpts from the Coded Journal as a sort of epistolary sideline to the main story. There will be votes at the end of each entry on which one will be posted next, so stay tuned for that!
So that was why the docks were an option. Huh.
I think... I want to see Irontown. Scab Palace might be along the other route, but this is probably a good place to buy weapons. And maybe to take jobs. Let's take a look.
[X] Visit and explore Irontown, following that smell, then take the train or bridge or whatever directly to Great Men and get on with it.
(The very first page of the Coded Journal, this entry appears to have been added at a much later date than the majority of the rest of the book, in a shakier, more rushed hand and paler ink. The code on this one was relatively trivial, and the page appears to have been crudely stitched into the front of the book's actual first page.)
If you are reading this, congratulations. You have accepted a great and terrible burden. I would apologize for it, but if you are strong, and fast, and clever, if you are worthy--worthier than I was--then this will be not a curse but a boon. Eventually. Everything I've done, seen done, or had done to me that I deemed important to the cause is here. No Book of Harms, no Catalog of Outlands will tell you everything that I can.
I am assuming you are young. First, Second Treatment. I have written on the subject of the lands outside our own and those that dwell there, and I have written about our own lands. There is much you do not know. There is little you do know. This will change. I do not expect you to thank me. I do expect you to curse me. I was not enough. I cursed her that turned me onto this path. But perhaps you will be enough.
You will see the world. You will flee from it, fight it, seek it, eat it. You will find terrible things. You will find wonderful things. You will be hungry. You will never be full. If you are not clever and fast and strong and vicious and lucky, then you will die. Perhaps this has happened several times. Perhaps you found this, not on my corpse, but on that of the last person to try to follow my path, or sold by someone who dared not risk what I offer. It is of no matter. This book will change hands until my mission succeeds, until it is destroyed, or until the Sun eats the world.
If you are still reading, then you are brave or foolish or do not truly believe me. I hope for your sake, it is the first. I assume it is one of the other two. It is of no matter to me. Not where I am now.
This is my Almanack of the Horizon. Heed it. Or die.
(The page is signed with a blot of dried blood and a string of numbers, which turned out to be the key to another entry's cypher.)
The Almanack of the Horizon is the author's name for the Coded Journal, and appears to be a book of secrets and information about the world at large, aimed towards testing young Locusts in trial by fire. Grail has been translating it slowly and irregularly, and as time goes on more entries will become available. At the end of each Almanack page will be an approval vote for which page will go up next. (And yes, I know it's spelled Almanac ;p)
Preface votes with which category you're voting in, i.e.
STORY VOTES
[x] Go to Irontown
ALMANACK VOTES
[x] Meteor Children
[x] Gunpowder People
[ ] On the Meteor Children
[ ] On the Gunpowder People
[ ] On the False-Shelled Lurkers
[ ] On the City in the Pit
[ ] On the Hellfire Countries
[ ] On Lucre and Tribute
