A Break

Armoured again against the threat of snipers, Adri made her way down from Manor Hill to the Merchant’s Coin. There’s probably no real danger here, she mused to herself, for perhaps the hundredth time that week, but this is one of the most predictable places to find me. She kept a watch above as well as in the shadows, and listened for the calls of the local ravens. They all knew her, and she counted them among her friends. They would warn her of things she couldn’t see.

As she’d expected – or so she told herself – she made it to the Coin without incident, and made her way upstairs to her friend’s room, where she knocked. The much taller and stockier priestess opened the door and ushered her in, closing it quickly after her.

“Good evening, dearie. I see you got my message.” The raven-haired priestess seemed amused, as she often was, though it could be hard to tell with her Grenth-marked gaze. Adri’s initial attempt at a response was interrupted by insistent head-butting and leg-twining accompanying the sudden appearance of a loudly purring grey-black ball of fur.

“Yes, Mister Percival, I missed you, too!” The faux redhead squatted to pet the cat. She fed him a fish treat, looking back up at the priestess. ‘Aye. I got it.” She canted her head, pondering briefly. When she next spoke, she had switched from Krytan to Old High Kurzick. “You said you may have found a clue?”

Alyssia arched a brow, then slowly lowered it as she nodded. “Full of surprises, aren’t you, dearie?” That came in Krytan, after which she, too, switched languages. “I believe I have found such, yes. It’s not much. Barely more than a pair of names, but it seems to be the names of Houses.” She pulled out much-abused scrap of a letter or note which had been in a fire at some point, and showed it to her smaller friend.

careful which Valdis you report to
word the last Jardin has been handled

The scrap’s edges were burned away, and it was clear that the lines had originally been longer. Adriwyn turned it a bit, looking at it from various angles in the light, and even sniffed at it, then sighed. “Names. Names I can even try to look into. Not sure that’s enough watermark left to trace, though, and the soot blots out anything the ink might have told me.”

Aly nodded. “As I had told you, yes? A pair of names.”

An answering nod from the smaller woman, who resumed petting the insistent cat. “Yes. Names of Houses, and apparently a warning as to which member of one House to report to about… doing me in. You’re sure this was related, and not just finding something else going on in the area?”

“The right deaths had been involved, and the ravens you had sent me were sure of the trail of refuse.”

Adri nodded, playing with Percy some more as she thought. “Have you any further use for this?”

“No. It is yours.”

“Thank you. I know someone who might get further with tracing things like watermarks from it than I would.”

“Good.” Switching back to Krytan, the priestess added, “And you clearly need a decent meal, dearie! Tut! No arguments! Come! Eat!”

Adri rolled her eyes and shook her head in amusement. “Fine. For once, I remembered not to eat before I came over.”

Interlude / Synopsis

(( A recap of events not blogged because work has been eating my time and nearly my soul. As they are also old news, the whole post is OOCly done and just telling rather than showing in the interests of brevity. It’s about IC events, yes, but not ICly told. That comes next, when I get the current part of the story. ))

About 7-8 weeks ago now, Adri was out mining (as she often has). This time, though, the hazards were not the usual bandits, centaurs, or Risen. On a plateau above the southern end of Lake Bounty, collecting a bit of exposed iron, she barely felt a disturbance in the air behind her before something large pushed her over the edge, almost scooping her away, and falling toward the rocks and water below. Having been completely unprepared, she angled to try to turn her fall into a dive, aiming for deeper water as best she could. Shots rang out from above, from two different positions (and two different sizes of guns). Her armour was better than it looked, and she was mostly only bruised, but then one shot, probably technically a miss, got inside the tails of the outer coat, creasing her hip and hitting her in the back. Controlling her dive became much more difficult, as her legs were no longer responding to her will – but it was late enough in the process that she made it fists first into the lake.

Swimming in a lake with skale and barracuda in it, while bleeding, and with no use of her legs, was a trying thing. Fortunately she had her Pact-issued rebreather still, and her usual collection of weapons. After a lot of fighting off the lake’s denizens, and leaving more blood and easier pickings in her wake, she surfaced in a cavern complex, and pulled herself up onto the rocks with her arms, dragging her useless lower body along. Trying to catch her breath, she realised that her communications devices had been lost in the fighting, or perhaps even just in the first impact in the water. She started watching the local skale (and fighting more of them off or killing them when they decided she looked like lunch), trying to find patterns enough in their movements that there might be a good time to try swimming back out. It took a while, and a fair amount of eating raw skale, and trying to bandage up what she could reach of the injuries they did to her useless legs, after long enough, she found a time that worked well enough.

Without too much additional injury or fighting on the way, she made it to the shoreline as close as she could get to the roads by the southern-most bridge over the lake, and eventually got the attention of a Lionguard patrol. They weren’t sure what to do with her, but they did use her coat as a sort of stretcher to get her to a nearby waypoint, which she used to take herself to Baroness Sharo’s Kessex/Brisban border estate. It wasn’t long before Rose found her trying to pull herself up the stairs of the front portico, and from there a near army of staff was mobilised into getting her inside, and examined.

After seeing just how bad it was (multiple fractures and septic wounds in her left leg, bullet extracted from the a crushed vertebra), Rose told her, “However this turns out, know that it was worth it.” An explosion of magic around her later, Adri was shaking her head and trying to piece it all together, when she realised she could move her feet – and that she had no pain. She turned to see Rose crumpled up against the wall, and looking rather grey. She took the risk of moving, and found she could. She revived Rose (eventually, and with the help of Rose’s staff), and discovered that she wasn’t just – somehow – fully healed from her recent injuries, but that she had no scars at all any more.

A few days of recuperation for both of them, and Adri was caught up on correspondence – including the letter from Luna Lancastir dumping her, and exchanges with her friend Alyssia Dore (who had been looking for her). When she could, she looked for clues in the area where she’d been attacked, but couldn’t find anything. Later, in discussion with Rose over such things, she felt forced to promise not to go out alone like that any more, at least until the perpetrators were caught or dealt with. Given that she nearly lost Rose as the price of her own healing, she’s not arguing, even though it does make trying to find the culprits a lot trickier.

In the meanwhile, Alyssia Dore has taken it upon herself to investigate on her friend’s behalf.

Age 17: What are you up to?

The skinny, small girl looked suspiciously at her questioner. Her white-blonde hair was shaggy and a day past starting to want a wash, and even at her small size, she’d clearly had a growth spurt, as the mis-matched rags pieced together in a semblance of clothing were only barely covering her any more.

‘I’s lookin’ f’ food. Or coin. Or even job, if’n y’ gots one a run’y girl like me can do – wha’ don’ involve bein’ on m’ back. Go’ any food or coppers t’ spare?’

20:Childhood illnesses? Any interesting stories behind them?

‘Well, I don’ remember all of ‘em, but I ‘ad the usual, I’s told. Mumps, measles, chicken pox, mumps again – an’ tha’ weren’ ‘spected, but it ‘appent. Though, for all I got some bad thin’s to say about Priestess Japera as a administrator for the orphanage, she were good ‘nough at ‘er ‘ealin’ arts. Din’ get no scars from all o’ tha’, nor playground accidents – though them wasn’ really, bein’s as I got pushed, I din’ fall.’ She shrugged, more or less dismissing the memory.

Muse Thing Prompt

MUSE THING PROMPT!

Tagged by many, and I forget by now who was the first to make it general rather than for Adri.

Name of Your Muse: Lorelei Hydrangea Larkspur

One Picture You Like Best of Your Muse’s FC:

No actual FC, but while trying to find one, I did find this that I think does a pretty good Lori:

Two headcanons that you have for your muse that you never told anyone.

1. Lori’s getting used to being the de facto Lady of her little piece of the House, and really isn’t’t that interested in her mother’s possible cure or recovery any more.

2. She’s not an actual separatist, but she does have something of a chip on her shoulder about how Kryta has chosen to deal with Ebonhawke as a client state with its nobles as second-class when recognised at all.

Three things that your muse likes doing in their free time:

1. Reading (almost anything).

2. Walking.

3. Recently, she’s added practicing her magic, though that has its risks.

Two things your muse regrets:

1. Not having started trying relevant magics herself sooner, either for her mother’s benefit or her own.

2. Not having paid better attention to the politics of the Reach even while so busy taking care of her mother.

Two phobias your muse has:

Suffering a debilitating, wasting disease like her mother.

Losing her wealth and privilege – she knows that she has no “commoner” skills, and is sure of that thus leading to starving in squalor and obscurity.

Tag ten people to do the same thing:

Everyone’s already been tagged several times by now.

Muse Thing Prompt

Of course, I can’t resist pointing out that my muse is

Melpomeni, and this meme is actually about characters – but with that aside….

MUSE THING PROMPT!

Tagged by many, but first by luxelen.

Name of Your Muse: Adriwyn (as given by the orphanage – original name unknown)

One Picture You Like Best of Your Muse’s FC:

No FC – I’ve looked repeatedly, and there isn’t one that suits me.

Two headcanons that you have for your muse that you never told anyone.

1. Adri’s far more psycho than anyone seems to have picked up on. She’s not really as fluffy-cuddly-minded as most people think. Well, she is with those she likes, but it isn’t just hard luck that’s had her lose track of how many people she’s killed.

2. Adri flat-out doesn’t understand what other people think of when they think of “family”. She “gets” that you’re supposed to ask people about how their family is doing, and she do genealogies, but the closest matching concept in her head is “gang”.

Three things that your muse likes doing in their free time:

1. Reading.

2. Exercise (fighting training, gymnastics, etc.), if she hasn’t had enough already from actual fighting while out and about.

3. Doodling and then actually properly drawing up new jewellery designs.

Two things your muse regrets:

1. Messing up her relationship with Adilah (and thus also with Caileen). Not that it was entirely her fault, and intellectually she knows that, but some of it was, and it’s all very much unresolved emotional pain for her.

2. Not being the leader her troops needed her to be in Orr – no matter how much of that was their own prejudices. She feels she should have managed better despite that.

Two phobias your muse has:

Technically, she doesn’t have any phobias, though she does have PTSD, and other fears and anxieties that people sometimes mis-label as phobias. Two specific entries in that category, though….

1. Abandonment. She’s only actively walked away from one of her relationships. Everyone else has dumped her. The more entangled her life gets with those she loves, the worse it hurts when it happens again.

2. Being crippled – especially in combination with the above. This is getting a little better as she begins to have some fallback resources of her own, so she’s not as dependent on being able to fight for a living, but it’s still a big one in her psyche.

Tag ten people to do the same thing:

Everyone’s already been tagged several times by now. If you have other characters that haven’t been done, you could consider yourself re-tagged.

Histories, Geographies, and Biographies

(( The events here took place 60 Phoenix 1327 AE. ))

The Asura scholar half-jumped at the nearness of the boot-scuff that broke the quiet in his corner of the archives. Even deep inside the Durmand Priory, trauma from old battles intruded with surprises. He looked up, saw nothing, and peered around the volumes on his desk. He smiled when he saw the diminutive, platinum-haired woman waiting to be noticed, realising that, even so close, she’d had to scuff her foot on purpose to attract his attention. ‘Good day, Adriwyn. To what do I owe this surprise?’

‘G’day, Grupta, an’ I’s lookin’ f’ some books.’

The Asura chuckled dryly. ‘When aren’t you looking for books?’

The girl smirked faintly as she pretended to consider the question. ‘When I’s in bed wi’ Senty.’

Grupta shook his head, one ear folding in amusement. ‘Right. And only then. I’m told you’ve been finding several books of late here, in various sections of the libraries. Geographies and biographies, primarily, and a smattering of histories. What brings you to me now?’

‘Two titles wha’ seems t’ be missin’. “Izibuko angaqondakali endala” an’ “vioo siri ya zamani.”’

A blink of surprise, and ears slowly curling upward. ‘Mirrors, is it? And why do you pronounce those languages better than your own?’

A shrug. ‘I only been taugh’ them proper, ‘stead o’ gowin’ up manglin’ ’em in th’ streets, I reckons. An’ one p’tic’lar mirror – Lyssa’s.’

Grupta nodded. ‘Thus the rather obscure Elonian tomes.’ His ears folded down again as he thought. ‘If you know to look for those books, and you’re here, it’s because nobody else in the library knows where they are, either.’ He looked up until he got her nod of agreement. ‘Right. Good thinking. Problem is, I don’t have them, either.’

‘So… Gixx, or missin’ entirely.’

‘Precisely, Magister.’

‘Thank y’, Arcanist.’ Her head tilted as she grew more serious again. ‘Don’ s’pose you’s read ’em an’ ‘members anythin’ o’ use?’

His eyes narrow as he frowns. ‘I see by your liveried coat that you’ve taken service with a noble house again. Perhaps, if you ask me as befits your current social standing, rather than that of your childhood, I could see what I can remember.’

A long, slow, deep breath, then a nod. Her speech came slowly and mostly with overly-precise enunciation now. ‘Th-the Six kn-know I could use th-the practice. Tell me, Arcanist, h-have you read either of th-those books, and d-do you remember anything from them that would be of use in t-trying to find that mirror?’

‘You’re coming along, but you do need to practice more. And, sadly, I’ve barely skimmed those books. There were some hints that there is such a mirror, and that it was brought out of Vabbi to Kryta at some point. It was then lost, or stolen, or some such. It may even be cursed. It could be anywhere from the Crystal Desert to Frostgorge, for all that I can recall from what I read.’

A slow nodding as she absorbed the information, clearly correlating it with other things she’d read. ‘Tug-o’-war between th-the Elder Dragons… belike Maguuma or Frostgorge. M-moving between, maybe, d-depending on wh-what curse… but m-more l-likely hid in one or th-the other place.’ She shrugs. ‘Well, th-thank you, Grupta. I r-reckon I’ll pester Gixx anyway, j-just in case… though I s-suspect the books really are m-missing.’

‘Good thinking, Adriwyn. Do be careful out there as you look.’

She turned and headed away from the archives again, moving silently enough to give the Asura chills as he watched her. She called over her shoulder as she rounded the lintel, ‘I will, f-friend, and th-thank you again.’

18: Favorite beverage?

She twisted a loose strand of hair about her finger as she pondered, then caught herself at it and switched to tapping the side of her chin. ‘Now that’s an interesting one. What I order the most often is Ascalonian whiskey – but that’s partly a matter of availability. Historical availability, I mean. Before the asura gate was re-opened, conditions in Ebonhawke were such that fruit juices were something of a delicacy. When I think about having some, almost anything like that tops even the products of my cousin’s distillery. Limeade, lemonade, orange juice – they’re all marvellous!’

fuchsia:if you got married, what would you want the ring to look like?

selinisgw2:

adriwynofkryta:

selinisgw2:

“Ring…huh. Let’s see…if, and I do mean IF I were to give up my oodles of freedom and wild nights of fun…I really think it wouldn’t matter. I mean, if I loved someone enough to tie the knot, I don’t think the ring itself matters. If the relationship was that far along they would know enough about me to find something I liked anyway. So…blue I guess. Something blue.”

Adriwyn sighed wistfully. ‘So much f’ preparin’ it in advance for y’, an’ bein’ set up to be y’ jeweller o’ choice.’ She gave a wry smile and sipped some brandy.

“You are a sly one! Thinking about rings already before we’ve even finished a drink! Moving a little fast, hmmm?” She flashed a smile and leaned back in her chair once she had finished her teasing remark. “What about you? Shouldn’t I have a hint to what ring I should be looking for to please you?”

She giggled softly at first, then sighed. ‘The jewellery be my business an’ liveli’ood, m’lady. But, f’ me…? I’s ‘ad a ring afore. I gave it back when… I ‘ad to leave ‘er.’ She took a drink. ‘An’ I don’ reckon to be ‘avin’ another. I ain’ real… monogamous. Wouldn’ wanna be settin’ any wrong expectations from wearin’ one.’

5. What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever done?

selinisgw2:

adriwynofkryta:

selinisgw2:

“Serious answer…and you owe me a drink for this one.” she took a breath and drained her glass, slamming the empty glass onto the bar top. “The bravest thing I ever done…hmmm…Most would tell a story about some fight. An epic battle for something or other. In all truth…Once I bared my soul to someone. I put myself out there in the arms of someone that could destroy me and guess what. He did. I am not into the huge real life tales of heroism. Anyone can swing a sword. Real strength comes from within…and true bravery is even more rare. Now, where is that drink?”

‘Wha’s y’ poison, then, m’lady? Rum? Brandy? Whiskey? Bourbon?’ She waved to the barkeeper regardless.

“How about all of the above, and you tell me a story about the bravest thing you’ve ever done?” She flashes another smile and leans on the bar, her head propped up in her hand.

She chuckled and nodded to the bartender, sliding some coins across. ‘You ‘eard the lady, mate – an’ a brandy f’ me.’ She pondered a bit while their drinks were prepared. ‘Mm. “Dyin’ be easy – livin’ be ‘ard.” Can’ remember where I read tha’, but… aye, mos’ tales o’ apparent ‘eroism… from me, at leas’, ain’ all tha’ brave. Not to me.’ She fidgeted and sipped from her drink when it came.

‘Mm. Admittin’, weakness be a big one… but dealin’ with m’ weakness migh’ be more so. I suffers attacks o’ serious depression, m’lady – the sort wha’ ‘as a dark pit o’ despair poppin’ up inside m’ mind, suckin’ all the joy out o’ m’ life, an’ most other feelin’s, too. But I doesn’ lie in m’ blankets an’ wait to die. I gets up, cleans up, gets dressed, an’ walks to m’ shop. I fights the temptation every time I starts down the ‘Igh road, an’ some’ow I doesn’ take no ‘eader onto some spiked fence in the Ossan below me, but I gets to m’ shop, opens it, an’ deals wi’ people.’ She shrugged as she swallowed more brandy.

‘Mebbe mos’ o’ tha’ jus’ be strength. I ain’ so sure I’s a good judge o’ “brave”. Bu’ resistin’ tha’ pull to jump… there be a lot o’ mornin’s I reckons tha’ takes more’n jus’ strength.’