epidemiology | EVENT ★ WILL O' WISP

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EVENT ★ WILL O' WISP

WELCOME TO NALAWI

When the newest recruits are surrounded and taken away from Oska by the white mist of an opening rift, they’ll find themselves brought somewhere no one meant for them to be.

There is stone all around, and recruits seem to have been transported into some sort of cave network. If the recruit in question has any sort of non-human powers, magic, or abilities, they will find that this has been either severely dampened by an unknown force, or removed altogether.

There isn’t any sunlight to be had anywhere, and some places in this strange, sprawling labyrinth are thrown into deep and complete darkness. In other places a subterranean, luminescent fungus grows on the wall, providing an eerie sort of green-blue light. There doesn’t seem to be anyone around to provide guide or explanation; recruits are free to explore this strange, silent place as they will. It’s no use trying to keep from getting lost, it’s a hopeless maze of unending stone hallways. But at least they have each other in this stifling darkness, right?

Be careful, though. Small clicks sound now and then in the darkness: little shelled insects that scuttle up the walls and across the floor. They seem to feed on the fungus, and are peaceful enough if left alone. If approached, though, they’ll lash out with the stinger on their long tails before rushing away again into the darkness. The stings from these creatures are painful, and temporarily paralyze whatever limb has been struck. It will last for at least an hour before wearing off again.

There is one other creature of note within this stone labyrinth: there is exactly one large cavern in this mess of halls and dead ends, and it contains a woman. She is hard to define, her form is made of living flame that casts dancing shadows from the bars of her cage. She sits peacefully against the far wall of the room, and thick bars of stone, shaped from the ceiling and floor themselves, provide her cell. She can be approached, and will speak if spoken to, but makes no attempt to move or escape.

No matter how ALASTAIR’s newest arrivals spend their time, eventually there is an interruption. Maybe you’re in that single, occupied cavern when she arrives and you spot her, or maybe you’re still lost in the maze and never even found the cavern or saw either creature at all. It doesn’t matter. A tall, cat-like woman with eerie blue light gleaming from her dead eyes arrives in time, and she knows immediately she and her captive are not alone here. She will say nothing, she will allow no time for questions. With one wave of her hand, a fierce wind stirs to life and begins to howl through the maze. It’s strong enough to literally pick you up off your feet and hurdle you through the darkness, and somehow avoids smashing its prizes into any walls. This wind knows exactly where it’s taking its captives, and it knows the way. All at once the recruits will find themselves blasted straight up into the open sky, and into the middle of a powerful hurricane.

This windy, dizzying experience lasts a good ten minutes as recruits are buffeted and spun end-over end in the hurricane as they leave land and travel over the sea, but it does end eventually. They are dumped unceremoniously on the western shore of a new place, the island of Pu’ulai, Nalawi, and the storm dissipates instantly after leaving them there.

Those recruits that have been on Nalawi a little longer are welcome to spot the odd, impossibly brief storm along that western edge and investigate. They’ll find that Pomarr has delivered them a few wayward recruits.

Welcome to Nalawi. Sorry about the local gods.

OOC NOTES

Characters will arrive in these caves first and spend an unspecified amount of time within them. This section of the log is closed to new arrivals only. You may choose to have your character run into the fiery lady (please see the thread below to have an encounter) solo, with another character (or characters), or not at all. Either way, they will eventually be brought to Nalawi proper, where any character in the game may encounter them.

To catch up on the recent goings-on, there's an OOC post here that should answer your questions, accompanied by this IC post. The mission briefing your character received is here, and you can find more information on the island your characters ended up on, Pu'ulai, here.

If you have any questions, feel free to direct them to the subthread below!

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After what feels like an interminable walk, both with dead ends and with squeezes much too tight for a creature of Laedo's bulk to manage, the askan is almost startled to feel the cavern open up before him into the great chamber of Nalanni's cage. He scents the air, noting the dry smell of fire before he comes around a pillar to spot the glow of the Goddess.

Taking not another step further, Laedo suppresses the urge to drop a foreleg to bow. He's done with Goddesses, or so he tells himself.... but Nalanni is almost enough like his Aska that he is finding himself unable to take her with complete irreverence. Settling on inclining his sharp muzzle--one should never leave an obvious hierarchy unacknowledged--he settles carefully to his haunches and turns his head away to preen at armor scraped and dented by the labyrinth's rocky walls. His gold-plumed tail twitches nervously, and he can't help but keep his ears back a little, despite his efforts to remain calm.

"You must be the great fire goddess," he growls, pausing to shuffle his wings into a more comfortable position.

She had been set against the wall, her hands held peaceably in her lap, legs folded beneath her, silent and still. But the fire stirs as the woman it forms shifts to lift her head toward the voice. Fiery eyes fix upon her newcome audience, difficult to read.

"I am Nalanni," comes her voice, soft and musical. It could be confirmation, or maybe it's a correction. She certainly doesn't seem very great at the moment, after all.

"You are recognized across many worlds," Laedo countermands, eyes narrowed. "Is this where you have been where your children whither?" It's not meant to be a disparaging statement, though he has the unfortunate tendency to make bad choices in words, but rather an educated guess.

That she is known elsewhere is new — irrelevant. She does not consider it long. She dips her head to acknowledge his accusation.

"This is my second prison. The first was my very own home." But between those two places, yes. That is where she waited while her children suffered.

Goddesses have always been indecipherable creatures. Cosseting their own creations, then turning a blind eye in their time of need, or worse, using them as pawns in their own confrontations. But he's faintly aware of the circumstances that must have put Nalanni in her prison, and so he doesn't pursue that depressing thought.

Laedo's tail flicks a little harder, his muzzle twitches in distaste. "What would you do, were you free?"

The question seems to take some thought. One of those flaming hands balls at her chest, held against her breast. When she speaks again her voice comes more slowly, lower with a deep sorrow.

"I would save my children," she says. "I would try."

'Saving' could mean so much, Laedo had discovered... but he thought he could hear her sorrow, and despite himself, he felt moved. Lowering his head on his long neck, the askan murmured a condolence that was more automatic in his culture than he'd like to admit. Ears flicking forward in curious attention, he said, "surely there is a key to this prison, or a keeper." Musing onward, he rumbled, "however... I was informed that you have committed a disturbing crime. If you are judged unworthy of freedom, you may require another means by which to protect them."

"A keeper, yes," she murmurs. Her voice grows stronger as her head lifts again, and the light of her fire brightens. It seems there is at least a little passion left here. "She will not release me, she keeps me for the crime of defending my children."

Passion is dangerous in a being of limitless power, whether she's made of fire or light or whatever else Goddesses pass for these days. Laedo therefore bites his tongue. Around anybody else, he would have chosen this moment to snipe, with the information he's been given. For all he knows, Nalanni can dip inside his mind and take every petty gripe before it's even on his tongue. That thought makes him drop his head on his long neck.

"Sometimes, what we think we are doing in all justness turns out to be the fulcrum of our own ruin, or worse, the ruin of innocent people." He has no idea that Nalanni is being held by a representative or Ryba at this point; he can't know that Nalanni's fate is so pat. Instead he's thinking of his own recent trials, of the way that trying to uncover a mass deception had only landed a similar direct intervention from goddesses, with a lot of deaths. And Nalanni here has killed. Killed to protect? Maybe that's all she can see.

"A civilization with a Goddess is a civilization, your brightness," he decides to go on, trying to shake some conscious forward motion out of his own fears. Rock-solid morals sweep up out of his own turmoil to carry him onward again. "A civilization acts with certain laws and order and honour, and refrains from annihilating the opposition down to the last murderous scum even if the consequences are to remain locked in contention until they can... until they can see some common ground." Just speaking that aloud makes him feel ill, thinking of his own species and the caetrans that oppose them. There is no common ground there, except perhaps that their respective goddesses are beyond reason. "A civilization with a Goddess at the helm is there to protect those who have not got the same privilege. Your chosen were enlightened by you. Surely you need only have let them practice the laws and values you taught to protect themselves and uplift the others?"

Nalanni retreats back into dispassion, watching Laedo with those glowing, indecipherable eyes. She listens. To his question she dips her head, neither a yes nor a no. Acknowledgement.

"Your words are not without merit," she muses, "But they have come to me very, very late. We have passed these concerns and any chances they may have brought, and I do not think we shall ever return."

"I don't suppose you can turn back time," Laedo wonders drily. How much easier this all would be if Goddesses could unknit their own consequences like a mis-woven spell. It's the first amount of sass that he's allowed himself, and now he feels terrible for it.

"Where I come from, my Goddess, Aska, has been at war with her sister," and the way he says it is far from impartial, "Zenite, since before any of us can remember. Like you she is big, bright, and benevolent... or so we believed down to the last of us. Yet she still sacrificed hundreds of our number in an argument with her sister over how to maintain the status quo..." Dipping his head further, fingering the pendant he wore, he refuses to look at Nalanni directly. "I have to admit, after what I have witnessed, I suspect if I could have had a choice I would have rather been bound to a goddess who could make swift, certain decisions, like you, over one who dithers." It's an extremely petty wish, and he knows it, but he'd grown up with making admissions to Goddesses as though they were standing before him. That is what worship is all about, isn't it? (Well, that and service. Speaking of which...)

"You deserve to know that I and people like me have been sent to pass a final judgement, and that if you have not resigned yourself to your fate, you deserve fairer circumstances than these." He grows a little more agitated. "Our superiors wish either to remove you and your sister from this existence, or to let you both free to the detriment of all the living things on this planet, though I cannot say I know my compatriots well enough to judge their decision. You must gird yourself: darker corners have yet to be turned."

It is not a pleasant wish to make, and doesn't make any less grave her own past actions, but it does underscore the trials he has witnessed and survived. His news to her, though, is news indeed. She stirs at his words, sitting a little straighter, glowing a little brighter.

"You would remove us?" She sounds not aghast, but hopeful. Her eyes, twin tiny suns, fix on Laedo. "I have long sensed this, that this world cannot support us here for much longer. My sister does not share my concern for the fact, if even she knows it. It is in relation to her that I must ask: can you?"

"It is our sworn mission." Laedo refuses the urge to pick at grit that has settled on him, the better to meet her gaze. It's unnerving, immortal as the twin eyes of a sun. "A... ALASTAIR would not have taken great pains to craft a large team such as ours to assist your world were it not in such dire need. To that end..." he hesitates. Oska had been in such a state of disrepair that he can't entirely believe that it has the resources to tackle a goddess. Yet it has powers above and beyond any he's known to belong in mortal hands, and that includes his own kind's.

His resolve hardens and he decides, then, to put his faith in the sketchy mission, seeing the hope in Nalanni's unearthly eyes. "To that end we can because we must." And, to assuage his own ego, he puffs his chest up a little, "your children deserve to grow into their own, and you deserve the opportunity to absolve yourself, in time. If your sister refuses larger opportunities, we will act as we must."

It is reassuring. Nalanni's hard, desperate interest softens slightly with relief, but she shakes her head at that, at absolve yourself.

"Absolution, that does not matter. All that matters is this word go on, and my children with it." She half reaches a flaming hand toward Laedo, beseeching. "Please, if nothing else is possible, I would have your word that they live on past their mother."

He can feel the warmth from here... but he refrains from drawing closer, despite the fact that his heart picks up at the direct intervention. A few weeks ago he'd have been squeaming with joy at being tasked to do good for an entire nation at the behest of a goddess in need. He'd have become a pompous asshole about it, too--it was the kind of thing that his sister and his people claimed they were doing when they merely meant to advance their own tails in life, but Laedo was different. So he figured.

Now he lowers his head gravely, thoughtful. "If I can speak with our superiors before our time here is through, I shall ask them to provide safe harbour for your people, seeing as they take in refugees across worlds... and even if I cannot provide that, I shall see that your will is done some other way." It's a promise that he's been slow to keep, but by the time he makes it, he's resolved to follow through with it.

His promise is enough to satisfy. It will have to be, it's all she has. She nods solemnly, and begins the slow process of pushing herself to her feet. She's weak, painfully mortal; it takes time and effort.

"Thank you," she murmurs as she does. "My power is slight, almost nothing, but I would give you a small token nonetheless."

Laedo has to wonder how Nalanni was stripped of her own power. The idea lodges his heart in his throat. "Who has taken the rest?" He asks, horrified, yet approaching none the less. If she's lying, well, he's a gullible fool, but that's never been any different.

"Pomarr," she answers, in the low tone of resignation. This has gone on for some time, the theft is no longer new or outrageous. "She grants it to my sister."

She's on her feet, and begins to make her way toward the stone bars. A thin, black line is looped loosely about one of her ankles, and trails away into the dark along the wall she's left behind. Her heat grows as she approaches, but never becomes unbearable, and as she stretches out one hand toward Laedo, the flames recede from her limb to leave smooth, black stone.

Laedo bristles with indignity. A thin line it might be, but he's familiar with spelled items. For all he knows that could be a charged wire with enough power to throw him off the mortal coil in an instant. If he'd had more of his own magic to work with, he could have sat and picked at it, perhaps, but for now he hangs his head in thought and frustration as Nalanni approaches. When she gets within reaching distance, he hunkers down on hands and feet, belly scraping the ground, neck arched so that he can interact with her. He extends one palm towards her, finger and palm-beans plain pink against the iridescence that flickers under her light. In a sign of respect, he does his best to sheathe his golden claws so that not even the tips are visible.

"Such theft cannot be abided," he murmurs, deference in every line of his posture.

"Some outrages must be suffered," she says quietly. This battle is a losing one, she has no desire to stir up this mortal on her behalf.

Her hands come together over Laedo's, cupping together, palms down, hovering as she concentrates. The black stone of her hands radiates a warmth, but again, not an intolerable one. When her hands finally sink down to touch to his, it's a comforting heat. She leaves a single stone behind, about the size of a human fist. He will find that in dim lighting, holding it will cause a soft, golden light to emanate from his entire body, somehow always fitted to just the amount of light he might need.

Nalanni slumps weakly against the bars of her prison with this gift delivered.

"You must go," she says, voice gone into a whisper. "Pomarr will return soon, very soon."

Laedo knew all too well the sentiment--had he not suffered his entire life?

...And yet, not like this. He whuffled an apology, then firmed his resolve. "Your children will grow old on my watch," he promised. "Do not lose hope!"

A moment later, he pulled loose the plate of gold at his chest. Trying for a moment to underwrite its spelled shape, he wound up getting the tiniest fragment of magic from it. Catching it before it could wriggle from his hands, he fused the opal to the little groove it had left in its place. Turning on his tail, he cast a single look back to the prisoner and inclined his head, then he sinuously disappeared down the long corridor.

It would not be long before Pomarr's stiff wind caught up with him.

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EVENT ★ WILL O' WISP

+1 light dragon for the fire goddess!

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