Prepare for the #LodanRespawn2024 Existing characters may choose to be displace from/have memories of different timelines, thereby allowing returning members the option to retcon their whole character. These changes are the result of the "Unnatural Fog" plot device that is running between now and the Respawn. The plot is simple: no matter where your character is, that place is shrouded in a thick fog that suspends time, but not thoughts or memories, so even if they're repeating the same day over and over again, they continue to remember, so each time feels like a new day. For those retconning OCs; this is where new versions of themselves have the opportunity to replace the old versions. Official lore and tree updates will be announced asap
Post by Lasair Landevier Lupen on May 25, 2016 8:55:00 GMT
Open to Clairee Donya Takes place before Touchez Pas au Grisbi Tonight wasn’t much different from any other night Lasair spent at the guild. Tonight his eyes were on the Gating spell, since he found a new book that covered it and was slowly working through the translations. He was almost to the point where he could read Anderswelter, but the progress was slow. Somewhere in the mountain of books that had come to call his desk home there was another book, the first one he had found evidence of beginner-level Gating in. But at the moment, it was the new one on his desk and one side of it was the translation guide he had written himself. On the other side was the parchment he was writing the translations on, to copy into an actual book on another night. It was slow progress, but it was something to focus his mind on, to keep him busy from the usual troubles.
Other than the sounds of pages turning and pen writings, the halls of headquarters were quiet. As they usually were on most nights, especially with the majority of members spending their time outside of the halls.
Clairee rarely found time these days to sneak off. what with the war and all, her family had been keeping an unnaturally close eye on her. They were so paranoid, always telling her there were villians in the streets, and to trust no one. They believed that the Sveds were in the city, a secret society like all the rest, just joining the cluster of guilds that operated independently of the government. She knew a thing or two about that herself, but she'd never tell.
At long last though, she found a night where she could slip out and check on her own secret society. It was a long flight to the guild HQ but at least it was a dark stormy night and so no moonlight to give her away as she flew over the forest. Her heart beat was racing the whole time she was out in the open, truly afraid of the enemy in the woods. They had the city surrounded for so long, it was hard to believe they might have packed up and left.
She landed on the door steps without incident and proceeded quickly inside. Her hair was wet, her clothing soaked from the drizzling rain. it wasn't thundering, but it was raining a good deal, a constant stream of rainfall, like the tears of the cities victims since that fateful night at the palace ball. She shook out her wings and retracted them into her tattoo. When she entered the library, (her favorite place to go) she was still ringing water out from her hair. It was long, and she flipped her head upside down so she could shake it out with two hands. When she flipped her head back up and the hair flew in an arc to her back she froze in place, realizing even at this hour of hte night, the library wasn't abandon.
"Oh." was all she managed to say. It had been a long time since she'd exchanged anything with Lasair.
Post by Lasair Landevier Lupen on Jul 2, 2016 6:15:25 GMT
Lasair heard Clairee before he saw her, but he wasn’t sure whom the footsteps belonged to until he saw the signature raven hair hiding the face of its owner. He smiled slightly as he realized she had no idea he was present here, but that was alright. Most of the members didn’t know he had taken up residence at the guild for the time being. Raising a hand to shield himself from the rain being splattered from her hair (how long had it been raining?), he almost chuckled at the single syllable she spoke in reaction.
“Hey Clair,” he greeted. “Haven’t seen your face around here in a long time.” He didn’t say it in a judgmental or offensive way, instead using a calm tone hoping to start a conversation with it. If he didn’t know some of the details about her family, he would have been worried about her in all the time she was gone, but given her siblings, he was certain she was well during the time away. He hoped the war wasn’t affecting her too badly. At least she could still come here to escape from time to time.
"Nor have I seen yours," it was a simple statement, no more an accusation or question than his had been. After a quiet beat, she straightened the loose neckline of her purple tunic and padded over to where he was sitting. "Quite the collection you have here," she spoke gently as she peered at what he was reading and writing on. "Any new and fantastical discoveries?" By new she meant since their previous foray into the tomes of this library when the pair of them had discovered the guilds illustrious history and his own name marked within its pages.
Post by Lasair Landevier Lupen on Jul 3, 2016 0:48:44 GMT
As she came forward to glance at the array of books on his desk, he watched her eyes to see which things she was drawn to first. At her question, he chuckled lightly. “Well, I’ve managed to make a cipher for translating between Anderswelter and English. And with that, I uncovered two branches of magic that were previously lost to history; Aeromancy and Gating. The skills merchant paid a pretty penny for them and now they’re available to all Anders for teaching. It was sort of my way to try and help knowledge get passed around.” The Lasair who would normally be beaming with a giant smile right now was instead, holding a calm face with only one corner of his mouth turned upward. In the back of his mind he hoped Clair wouldn’t question him on the personality change like so many others had.
Post by Clairee Donya on Jul 11, 2016 16:10:44 GMT
Her eyes lit up in absolute shock and awe.
"You are the one who discovered them?!" She had noticed the shining new offers at the last merchant visit, all the chatter about some new magical discovery, and of course all the hub-bub from the humans who detested the idea. She had kept her composure in public, seemingly indifferent to the whole affair but inside she was as curious as a cat. "Well look at you!" She mused, beaming a smile at his success. He gave a humble grin in response and she tilted her head slightly at him. It was a strange effect, seeing him so .... so ... was there a word for it? Darling. It wasn't exact but it was close enough. He seemed much more darling than even his most charming confidence had ever been before.
"And you didn't keep the glory for yourself? I didn't hear a name being praised for the sudden upturn of two new branches." There was a sweetness to seeing someone take comfort in their own quiet victories. Something to cherish. "May I?" She asked, motioning to a chair nearby. She wanted to sit beside him. This was certainly worth the venture now to the HQ.
Last Edit: Jul 11, 2016 16:11:22 GMT by Clairee Donya
Post by Lasair Landevier Lupen on Jul 11, 2016 19:15:46 GMT
Scooting his chair over a little, he nodded. “You may.” Someone wanting to join him in his books, that was a first. Still it’s a welcomed first and he wouldn’t dare turn her down.
“The skills master knows my name. That’s enough for me. If word spread that I was the one to discover them, the EIRAL would be all over me like flies on dung. They’d want to know how I did it, from what books, and then they’d confiscate the books and probably burn them. As well as find some reason to arrest me so that I don’t go around spreading any more Ander knowledge.” He shook his head, not enjoying the sad truth but still willing to admit it all the same. “But I did leave a little note for the merchant to share with the public.”
He cleared his throat as he recited the message. “The new skills were discovered by an organization of Anders looking to create equality between Anders and humans. Word goes that if you wander into the forest at sundown, you just might be able to find them.” A light chuckle sounded before he continued in his normal voice. “Of course a handful of EIRAL soldiers tried to enter the woods, but with a few dancing lights and a scary voice, they turned tail and fled. These woods are our home, not theirs, after all.” Leaning back in his chair a little, he glanced at Clair to see how she was reacting to all the information.
Post by Clairee Donya on Jul 14, 2016 13:23:50 GMT
She frowned. Both for the reality that he'd be detained and questioned, and the unfortunate truth that the EIRALs would try and find them in the woods. She couldn't help but imagine her own brother being sent into the wilderness to try and uncover mages, only to be preyed upon by shadow beasts, enemy soldiers from Sveden, or least of all Lasair's trickery.
"They only do what they are made to do," she spoke in a sad, quiet voice. Even still she pulled up a chair and sat herself beside him.
Post by Lasair Landevier Lupen on Jul 14, 2016 19:04:08 GMT
“…I know,” he answered after a few quiet moments. “But it doesn’t change the way the guild treats anders. If we could change that, it would be a step closer to changing the city.” Because that was the goal, right? Changing the city, the home of most anders, into something more bearable to live in.
He shook his head, hoping to dispel the sadder topic. “Anyway, have you learned any Gating? It’s rather interesting the way the spell works and opens up possibilities to uncover even more magical spells in the future. I’m hoping this book will have more details about that, but this is what I’ve translated so far.” He reached over to the parchment of English translations he had been working on and set it in front of her. It detailed some of the history of gating and how winged anders were said to have been the first ones using the spell. However, it was mostly generals who made the most of the spell in later times, given that they didn’t have any means of fast travel like the other two races did.
Post by Clairee Donya on Jul 21, 2016 16:07:13 GMT
"N-no I, I can't afford it right now." Clairee replied but that didn't stop her from looking at the book as he explained what he knew. The symbols were so strange and foreign to her, but it struck her curiosity rather than deterred her from the text.
"Do you think you could teach me to read it?" She looked up, and her hair snagged under the weight of the heavy bound book, drawing her up short. "Oww..." she murmurred as she turned her head sideways to loosen the tension and free the tangled strands.
Last Edit: Jul 21, 2016 16:09:40 GMT by Clairee Donya
Post by Lasair Landevier Lupen on Jul 22, 2016 7:35:49 GMT
He picked up the edge of the book when he noticed her hair getting caught under it, apologizing briefly. “I can show you how the cipher works,” he explained. “It doesn’t translate directly into English, but it’s pretty close; only a two-step process. When I was researching how to build it, I saw some ciphers that required dozens of steps; it was pretty intimidating.”
Leaning forward, he reached for the book that held the cipher in it and set it atop the large tome already open. “Making this was the hard part. What you do it find the character in the text, swap it for its English equivalent, and then look up the new word it spells. If it’s a word that isn’t in the book, then you need to look through the meanings of the prefixes and suffixes to try and figure out the meaning. Or just skip it and then assume the meaning from its use in the context of the sentence.” He showed her the scratch sheet he had been writing on, where there were various words written with English letters, yet appeared to be a mess of letters to the naked eye.
He pointed to one word in specific; “Taigalsut,” he attempted to say. “I just figured this word out earlier; it means something like transportation method. In the sentence, it was used to describe how winged anders had their wings to fly and feline anders could travel in the trees. General anders didn’t have any Taigalsut like that, so they were the ones to really put time and research into gating magic, even though it was a group of wingeds who first discovered it.” The page with the English translations had been buried under the other books, but that was alright. He remembered most of it as he went along. “I’ve been working with this long enough that I can recognize some characters as the letters they sort of represent, but memorizing the different words is a slow process. I still have to look up their word for general ander whenever I see it; it’s some kind of hybrid between the words black, blood, and some other word I haven’t figured out yet. But every time I see it I’m confused. The words for feline and winged are easy to recognize though, as are a lot of common words.”
She nodded along. It sounded reasonable, though by no means simple. He had done something rather amazing here and she wondered how long he had been at it. Had it been all this time? She thought back to the last of their encounters, it had been a quick mission to initiate some new guildie into the fold. She didn't even remember how the trial turned out, because after the fact she had flown back home to sneak into her room and pretend to be asleep when her pa came to get her in the morning.
Living this double life had always sound exciting and fun when she read such things in books. Now that it was a reality for her, and had been for some time, the honeymoon phase was over - and the exhaustion was long past settled in. With the war, her families attempts to volunteer for the refugee camps in the central square, etc. there was hardly ever time to be an MI agent. Clairee let out a deep breath. She'd been gone too long, and even that caused her guilt.
She always felt guilty. Guilty for being here and fighting her own brother, guilty for not being here and letting down her own kind. She looked across at Lasair. So normal, so human until you cut him. Clairee tilted her head and really looked at him.
He was different than before. Sure he was just as able to slip in and out of society as he pleased, no irritating wing concealments, no gloved hands to hide feline claws, no goggles for glowing eyes.... but the princely cockiness was .... missing. And there was something new in its place. A studious quality.... a genuine princeliness rather than the sham or the ego from before. He had a genuine divinity about him now. Probably came from being a guild leader...
"Do you live here now?" The question slipped out before she thought it through. Her face blushed red and she covered her cheek with her hand, pretending to push hair behind her ears as she hid her face.
Post by Lasair Landevier Lupen on Jul 25, 2016 2:54:33 GMT
Her intense gaze was confusing for the guild leader, but he matcher her stare with his own cobalt eyes, not blinking as she regarded him. As her question left her lips, embarrassment sprouting on her face, Lasair found himself surprised. Not for the fact she had asked it, but for the fact she blushed upon saying so.
“Yes. I do,” he stated plainly. “I picked here over the alternative. An empty house full of memories wasn’t something I wanted to face every night. But here, I can do more for the guild. More research, more chances of seeing the other members, more everything really.” Leaning back in his chair, he rubbed the back of his neck. “The war has hit us all,” he said in a disconnected sort of way.
"More of everything but relaxation. Breathing even..." She commented observantly as he rubbed the back of his neck. "Have you taken a break? The rain outside looks really soothing against the skylights in the atrium, we could go watch it for a while... if that's not too weird." She offered. She had her blush under control now, since the subject had passed. Awfully forward of her to inquire to his personal life like that. But they were beyond that now. Truth be told they had been for a while, all of them, family in these halls. But even still she felt like an outcast - a traitor.... a confused soul torn between her actual family and this one. She tried not to think about it. It always made her feel weak and vulnerable. That was why she kept her distance, even when everyone else had settled in.
Last Edit: Jul 25, 2016 21:08:40 GMT by Clairee Donya
Post by Lasair Landevier Lupen on Jul 25, 2016 4:26:23 GMT
A part of him knew that her question wasn’t meant in a literal sense, yet he could only answer it as such. “I take breaks to rest or eat sometimes. I can’t sleep so much, but I do get some shut eye.” It was at this point that she would probably notice the dark rings under his eyes that had never been present there before. They sort of faded into his face and weren’t overly noticeable, because of his general heritage no doubt, but they were there contrasting his eyes.
At the mention of watching rain in the atrium, his eyes looked into the distance, thinking some things over. Without speaking, he stood up and closed some of the books on the cluttered desk, making it a tiny bit neater before straightening himself. “Watching the rain sounds nice right now.” He said with the smallest hint of a smile coming to his lips.
"All you need is love." -John Lennon
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