EVENT ★ POKAREKARE ANA

[futurologists]

NALANNI Now as weak as any mortal, Nalanni only needs one person to dispatch her. Though Jason has been selected for the sad deed, it would be smart not to let him go it alone. Once Nalanni ceases to be, the ground quakes and roils. The planet's rock and earth can feel the loss of its mother, and with Ryba still living, the power imbalance throws the world into turmoil. Monsters stream forth from the cave Nalanni had been held on the risen Dakal island. But unlike before, when Pomarr blew through the side of Nalalona and left lava creatures in her wake, these monsters are made of stone. And they are gigantic. Ranging from five to nine meters (roughly 16-30 feet), the stone golems are slow-moving but powerful, capable of crushing anything in their path with their feet or powerful fists. The golems cannot be spoken to or reasoned with; all they feel is the loss of their mother and the vacuum of power she has left behind. Their mindless anger makes them easily distracted, so teamwork is the best way to keep them at bay. Roughly formed of rock and hardened mud, they are weak to water. Luckily, halfway through the day, a light rain begins to fall. The golems will continue to come forth from the earth until Ryba is defeated. Upon her death, they will simply collapse into inert piles of stone. RYBA THE DEVOURING ONE Pomarr stays true to her word and draws the sea goddess to the shore of the deserted island that once housed the Dakal. Without comment, Pomarr turns and steps into an ALASTAIR rift, leaving your team to its business. Ryba is impossibly large, a mass of twisting, searching tentacles with no discernible body. She is especially weak to electrical attacks, but can otherwise be defeated by simply wearing her down with brute force. Now that you've got your collective powers back, it should be a piece of cake. Right? ATTACKS: TENTACLES. Ryba's initial attack is waving her massive, numerous tentacles around to try and keep combatants at bay. Despite their size, they are surprisingly quick -- capable of snapping at anyone who dares get too close, whiplike, or simply crushing those who stay still for too long. Her tentacles are seemingly endless, impossible to count, and move about in a nearly hypnotic way. THE STORM. After enough damage has been dealt, Ryba will grow more desperate and begin to use her connections to the sea itself. Though the battle is near the shore, sudden winds whip at the recruits, pulling them away from the shallows. Drowning becomes a real danger: the waves are high and fast, and intensely swirling waterspouts crisscross with intent to sweep recruits up, scrambling them. SHARKNADO. Ryba's last-ditch effort calls upon the creatures of the sea as well as the wind and waves. She creates a swirling vortex with her massive body in the center in attempts to shield herself from attacks. But that's not all -- spinning around her at high speeds with the vortex are sharks. A lot of sharks. And they are all angry. If characters attempt to speak with Ryba through the battle, she will respond in a calm, dark voice throughout: she has nothing to say to the invaders who would dare take her from the peace of her trench, except that they must destroy her or she will kill them all herself, before the world crumbles to nothing. Once Ryba is defeated, her massive body will simply cease moving. Goddess or not, it seems her form is as physical as any other creature of the sea. ISLANDERS During the day-long battle, characters who choose not to fight are advised to stay behind with the Nalawi to keep them safe. Though the battle rages far to the west, on the once-sunken island of the Dakal, the storms may travel to the westernmost edges of the Nalawi islands. Recruits may attempt to temporarily evacuate the westernmost Nalawi, though there may be considerable resistance. After the battle, the Nalawi can instantly tell that their goddess is gone for good. Where there was once confusion and desperation in the face of Nalanni's disappearance, there is now only sorrow and directionlessness. All recruits are invited to return to Komo, the first island at the start of the mission, for a somber memorial for Nalanni: the Nalawi don't blame the recruits for what has happened, and only expect them to join in their grief. For the rest of the time on Nalawi, characters may spend their time as they wish. The locals will need help learning how to cope without their Gifts and how to live without the goddess on whom they had come to rely. They will need help learning all sorts of trades, from fishing to pottery to plumbing, so characters who have knowledge in the mundane will have their time to shine. But the Timeline is always in need of tending, so recruits can't stay here forever. Say your goodbyes, because soon a rift will open and you'll be headed back to Oska. OOC INFO Mods will not be NPCing the Ryba encounter, so you are free to NPC her attacks yourself. Please remember that defeating her is a group effort; no one person will have the "killing blow." The battle against Ryba will take one full day. After she is defeated, recruits will have 13 days to say goodbye to the Nalawi before departing for Oska. If characters wish to temporarily stay behind in Nalawi, see here for details.

Comments

3!

[conqueress]

[ On the outskirts of any battlefield, there are tents. Tents for camp followers, for supplies, for healing.

There is little doubt what function the tent below her serves; she has watched the injured flee to its cover. Between fights, Dany has cracked the whip and commanded Drogon to fly higher, wishing to look upon the field. She is safe here, free to exercise her advantage to contemplate how best to strike, and where.

Only one golem has found the healers for now, but others will come, drawn to screams and movement. Her arms and legs locked around the base of Drogon's neck, she shouts to him to fly lower. Occupants of Sieglinde's tent will see a long, sinuous black shadow fall across their cover: a neck, first; then wings.

The dragon lands halfway between queer-looking Isengrim and the stone beast itself, the force of his wings stirring small storms of sand as they're spread. Dany's silver hair is windblown and coming out of her braid, her whip clutched in one fist, yet somehow the disarray suits her. ]

Keep to your tent! [ she shouts fiercely over her shoulder to Sieglinde and Isengrim, tasting salt and ash in her mouth as Drogon's neck twists toward the golem. It is half warning, half assurance to them all that they may continue their efforts in peace--and as if in punctuation, a roar shatters the air, sending the space around the dragon to shimmer in waves of heat. ]

[grunehexe]

[It's the shadow that draws her eyes to the sky, a familiar shape she had seen before, but much, much larger. It's a shape that would inspire fear in an enemy upon the ground, and even Sieglinde, for all she had been struck with wonder when she'd seen her first dragon...

She understands the sort of horror that could fill a person, if that shadow darkened their door... but when Drogon landed and Sieglinde caught sight of Daenerys, looking like some sort of draconian valkyrie, she could only feel a surge of something like relief. Dragonfire was an entirely different matter than regular flames-]

Queen Daenerys- ?!

[Even as she said it, she knew it could be no one else, and Sieglinde tried to obey, throwing herself forward and grabbing hold of the thick leather collar around Isengrim's neck to try and hold the familiar back, digging her half-useless feet into the sand as the canine bared its teeth at the stone beast, still raring to lunge at it despite the fact that it possessed only claws and teeth.

Thank goodness Drogon had grown-]

The golems are magical! They may be able to withstand fire!

[Now that magic had returned, so had her spells and what abilities she had learned and studied from other recruits- including her sense of magic in the air and other beings. At least she should warn about what she could.]

[conqueress]

[ Yes, Dany thinks, but I will defeat them all the same. Her face is curiously calm, but behind the steel mask she wears lies a queer sort of exultation.

She is a dragon, and dragons do not fear stone men.

Drogon thrashes his tail from side to side, bellowing out another scorching warning. Paying him no heed, the golem howls in rage, the ground reverberating beneath its feet. Dany feels her blood sing to hear the sound, and her ankles lock together between his shoulders. ]

Fly! [ she cries, and Drogon puts forth one leg, then another, his wings rising and falling as he gathers his strength. Now, now, now. And then, with one tremendous push from the ground, his front legs leave the sand, his hindquarters following close behind. They fly almost lazily toward the creature, which reaches out with unwieldy arms to swipe at them--but the dragon banks left, and Dany feels a breeze harmlessly flutter against her cheek in the gesture's wake. Irritated, the giant spins around to find its new quarry gone.

It fails to look up.

Three old syllables fly from her lips, and in an instant, a swirling plume of dark flame lances down through the air, enough to bathe head and shoulders in searing heat. As Drogon sends a curtain of shimmering waves around them, Dany holds her own breath, praying to gods far away as ashes rise into her mouth. Drogon's wings beat once, twice--

CRACK.

It takes some moments, but what once was black is turning orange and glowing, little crevices forming in what was once cool, solid rock. In distress, the creature reaches hands up to clutch its melting head and stumbles, the force of its feet sending a few waves of sand to whip against the tent's entrance. In a moment, Dany will use her newfound status as a target to drive the creature away and toward the water, if it is even able to walk with a damaged head. ]

[grunehexe]

[It was both magnificent and terrible, to see a dragon at work. The image is seared into Sieglinde's brain, reflected on the back of her eyes along with the thunderous flap of wings and the splash of dark flame.

Her knuckles are white, grip tight on the collar of her familiar that still strained to join the fray, the sharp bones of his teeth bared as Isengrim kept watch over the action, following Drogon through the air, the stumbling golem.

The shuddering in the sand from the creature's injured stumbling sent Sieglinde stumbling back, falling back to her rear in a flurry of skirts and dragging her familiar down with her, unwilling to let go of his collar and let him potentially injure himself against a stone golem when all he had was claws and teeth- no dragon fire.

The golem had a new target that was more dangerous than the tent full of healers... and while Sieglinde didn't want to leave the other woman alone... there was nothing she could do to aid her, and more likely... she'd be a burden, someone to worry about in the midst of battle.]

Isengrim, come- Or I shall enchant you.

[Leaving the golem to Dany, Sieglinde tried to drag herself and the canine back in the tent. Thanks would have to come later, but come they would.]

cw: gross wound stuff

[conqueress]

[ At first, the giant is lured by the prospect of Drogon dancing too closely to its face: drawing nearer, and then quickly, darting out of reach again. Each time a hand swipes, Dany shouts again, and they fly in a different direction, casting away another plume of flame in a vicious parting kiss.

Eventually, whether by madness or panic, it flees on its own, desperate to cool its own melting. Dany thinks idly that it reminds her of how people might leap from burning ships into the waiting sea: the water may kill them all the same, but better to flee to its depths than to stay and burn. More than even drowning, it is death by fire that terrifies men most.

When the queen returns, it is to claim a brief respite from the fighting. Anyone peering outside the tent will see the terrible shadow again, this time soaring to them from across the sands. Drogon alights some yards away, his wings stirring up stinging hot grains, and gingerly, Dany unlocks her legs and begins to dismount. Her hands are held before her with splayed fingers, as though they are covered in something--and when she enters the tent, her uniform lightly coated in ash, silver hair completely undone from her braid, it is easy to see why. The backs of her fingers and knuckles have been seared, the soft skin marred by angry pink burns. Across her right knuckles, the skin has already broken, beginning to weep clear fluid.

A dragon queen she is, but it was not so long ago that she first flew away upon Drogon's back. Until she has some harness, she must cling to his neck, and that shall expose her hands when his targets are so close. She walks just far enough through the tent to find Sieglinde, her injuries held out by way of explanation. ]

I have no wish to deprive you of your supplies, but I cannot fly like this, [ she confesses. Bandages, anyone? Some salve? Her face is curiously calm, for all that her hands have just been seared by proximity to dragonfire. ] Might you have some dressing?

[grunehexe]

[With Daenerys and Drogon at work, Sieglinde had been able to return to her own work, dealing with the patients she already had and the few who straggled in accompanied by those volunteers with more transportation enabling powers.

The more close sound of flapping wings, though, that drew her attention, and she was already looking towards the entrance of the tent when the older woman entered, quick to react once she spotted the cause for her visit, held out gingerly to be inspected.]

Queen Daenerys, please, seat yourself-

[If the other woman planned to get in and out quickly it seemed Sieglinde wasn't too keen on that, trying to usher her to a clean cot on the sand even as she awkwardly moved there herself, arms spread as she navigated shifting sand on too-small feet. But she wasn't going for bandages or salves, despite there being plenty of vials and jars prepared on the nearby table.]

Are you averse to magic? There is no need to suffer those wounds in the midst of all this...

[conqueress]

[ The question is not unexpected, but it gives her pause all the same. She had been only two years Sieglinde's elder when Mirri Maz Duur had taken away her happiness. The maegi had professed to know healing arts, as well, but all her remedies had been poison.

Dany turns her hands over before her eyes. The last time she'd been burned, she had not truly noticed the destruction to her palms and her thigh until after Drogon had carried her to the Dothraki Sea. Her burns had still been leaking when she'd first found ALASTAIR's kitchens, filthy and half-starved. She'd been able to fly with bandages then, torn in strips from her dirty linen shift.

And yet her hands ache painfully, raw in their exposure to the air, the longer she looks at them. A light dusting of sand irritates them both. She grimaces, then resigns herself to Sieglinde's thinly-veiled determination. How harmful could it be? Mirri Maz Duur had been a sorceress who wished her ill. Sieglinde is a Green Witch, serving the wounded in a tent. The powers shall be as unlike as night and day. ]

I've no objection to your green magic-- [ --she bites her tongue before she can call the little healer something sweeter than she would like. ] You made it seem good and kind. [ A faint smile, then Dany seats herself upon the cot as gracefully as she can (which isn't as much as she'd like, with no hands). ]

[grunehexe]

It is, I promise- I shall use a simple spell...

[If she's a bit too quick with that response, a bit too eager to reassure, it's because her past and Daenerys' experience with magic are a bit too similar. Her magic, in her own world, had been poison. A gas that crept into a human's lungs and burned them from within, boiled and swoll their skin and stole the life from them.

The worst chemical weapon her world had ever seen had been made unknowingly with the small hands that reached out to Daenerys then, moving to her knees beside the older woman and desperately wanting to prove not just to her, but to everyone.

Even if they didn't know what she'd done, she did. And she had to prove that the Green Witch could do good. That she could heal, like she'd believed she was all along.]

As I see thee weltering in thine blood, I call upon the goddess who governs...

[ALASTAIR turned the near-dead language of her own world into understandable words, as the healing magic she possessed flowed from her hands into Daenerys' own, slowly stopping the flow of blood, soothing the pain, and coaxing the skin to grow back over the wounds, wiping away the burns as if they'd never existed at all as her voice slowly died away and the spell ended.]

[conqueress]

[ Dany is silent, watching in awe--but inwardly, she feels a tinge of fear. She will never be certain whether Drogo's wound festered from a befouled poultice, or whether the maegi had merely given him directions she knew he would disobey, but in the end, the result had been the same. She'd lost her sun-and-stars that night in the tent, just as she'd lost Rhaego the instant Ser Jorah had carried her writhing past the threshold.

But Sieglinde does not make blood offers to shadows. She does not ululate shrilly, nor does she dance. Her words are the offering, some deep measure of respect. And in her prayer, some goddess answers. Slowly, the pain fades: The weeping fluid crusts over, and dark pink skin grows around it, sealing it until she no longer feels the sting of air or sand.

When it is done, Dany holds her hands halfway to her face, turning them over in wonder. ]

You have my thanks. [ She offers a smile, enough to gentle her face. ] For returning my hands to me, for your truths. For your kindness. Unless ... [ she pauses, ] The price you paid for the spell--were your words the end of it?

[grunehexe]

[As the spell faded, Sieglinde sat back on her haunches in a pile of her voluminous skirts, taking a moment to blink away the aftermath of the magic, which drew from her own internal source of the stuff, transferred from her hands into the body of another.

But Daenerys smiled- and she was healed. Even if it had not been a life threatening wound... She had erased it. Done something good.]

The price is nothing you need concern yourself with.

[She says if to reassure, with an echoed slight turn up in the corners of her mouth, but as it hangs in the air Sieglinde realizes that it might sound dark in its vaguensss, hurrying to clarify.]

Whaf I mean to say is- the price is paid by me, not my patients. And it is not so heavy a thing... Merely my vitality. It returns to me after a rest, so you need not worry.

[If she healed many in a short time, she would perhaps at worst faint... Thankfully she had never pushed herself that far- though more than once she'd been forced to sleep for almost an entire day to recover.

But when what you did could literally pull people from the brink of death... What was your own energy?]

[conqueress]

[ It is not for myself that I worry, Dany wishes to protest, but Sieglinde answers the query for her. ]

A temporary blow to your constitution, but a blow all the same.

[ She sighs, sitting back in the cot she will soon abandon. The tent is swarming with people, and so long as more golems are roaming beyond the reach of the camp, Dany cannot afford to be idle. Gently, she raises the girl's hands and presses a kiss in thanks atop each one, heedless of any residue from poultices or otherwise that might linger in traces. ]

I'll not keep you from your work, but what you've done for me shall not be forgotten, [ she tells her, sweetly. ] Should you want for my protection in the future, you need only say the word.

[ She'll fly to the little witch, if she can. ]

[grunehexe]

[Sieglinde thought for a moment to chime in, to say yes, but only temporary, truly- In the end, though, she simply nodded. If the older woman was kind enough to feel such concern, she ought to accept it, and let that be that.

The kisses she was not expecting, and she stared somewhat wide-eyed at such a chivalrous display, almost blushing despite herself. Her protests died before they became word, and she simply accepted it, afraid to say anything to try and dissuade her. After all... It was quite gallant.

And as much as she hated to admit it... With her feet the way they were, she couldn't run away from things that presented a danger to her. She either had to face it... Or hope someone would come to her aid.]

I hope such a time will never come... But you have my thanks.

[Tried to send Daenerys off with a smile, even though outside of the tent was where danger still awaited.]

May your dragon carry you to victory.