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pridecroweth) wrote2020-08-27 05:10 pm
pridecroweth) wrote2020-08-27 05:10 pm
psl;
jamjar au;
monster attacks, low resources, no revival mechanics ingame but no power nerfing either.
weapons are available but hard to find. monsters are 'corrupted' but their bites don't transfer it. they are however v slow to heal.
set in a super fancy old museum with active historical displays. however, there's been lots of damage to the building/displays, few are 100 percent intact. the pcs have set up in the basement where the valuable archives were kept bc there's an actual vault.
power has been jury-rigged by pcs (idk, maybe tony stark is wandering around). water and food need to be scavenged for and rationed. maybe 30-40 pcs at present?
sam checks in with them regularly but has a 'hide-out' that's actually an old security/control room that overlooks one of the larger display rooms.
monster attacks, low resources, no revival mechanics ingame but no power nerfing either.
weapons are available but hard to find. monsters are 'corrupted' but their bites don't transfer it. they are however v slow to heal.
set in a super fancy old museum with active historical displays. however, there's been lots of damage to the building/displays, few are 100 percent intact. the pcs have set up in the basement where the valuable archives were kept bc there's an actual vault.
power has been jury-rigged by pcs (idk, maybe tony stark is wandering around). water and food need to be scavenged for and rationed. maybe 30-40 pcs at present?
sam checks in with them regularly but has a 'hide-out' that's actually an old security/control room that overlooks one of the larger display rooms.
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[ Hard to tell if he means that seriously or not. There's a twitch of his fingers where he's holding the cigarette and then: ]
I can teleport, so, you know. Distance ain't no thing if I ain't got that swing.
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Carver rests his head on his knees. He wonders what the fuck he’s supposed to say to that. ]
Why’re you still hanging around, then?
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[ He ducks his head, rubs the back of his neck, fingers hinging on the trap muscle as he stretches a bit. ]
If you live a dozen millennia, you'll hang around places just for the hell of it, too.
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[ He can already picture it stretching out empty before him. An unbroken, brutal landscape.
Carver closes his eyes. He’s so goddamn tired. ]
But I think I’m dead anyway, [ he adds conversationally. ] What’s your name?
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[ It Sucks, Actually. ]
You can call me Cy.
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He shifts a little. Digging his nails into his knee. ]
I'm Carver.
[ He doesn't quite know what to do here. Everything still feels a little distant from him. Unmoored. ]
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[ Ha, ha, get it? ]
I don't do that last name hoo-ah shit. You got a first name floating around in there or am I just gonna religiously call you 'Bob' until the heat death of the universe?
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Nobody uses it anymore.
[ Not even inside his own head. ]
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[ 'Nobody'. Maybe you had to be there. ]
I'll tell you my original name if you tell me your first.
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Okay, Nobody. It was Brandon.
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[ Okay but actually he's delighted that the dude caught his reference, because Cy is in fact a giant fucking nerd. ]
Mine was Auhle. And before you ask — yes I did indeed do my paperwork. Turns out paper isn't designed to last ten thousand years.
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He rests his head on his knees. He wonders if he should grab his gun back. Cy or Auhle took the clip and that's just fucking gone, but Carver has others. He always has backups. ]
It mean something?
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[ The only reason he remembers it at all is because KV wouldn't let him forget. The name was used to mock and deride a weak man. He feels no especial attachment to it now, beyond knowing that he doesn't especially like hearing it. ]
Dead culture, dead language, and a long time ago. If I had to guess, it probably fit the shape of who I was as a human, and a farmer. It doesn't really suit me now.
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He closes his eyes again. Digs his nails hard into his knee. He keeps going until it aches. ]
What shape are you now?
[ He wonders that about himself. What he becomes in the absence of all the others. ]
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[ He's had more names across more worlds than he's lived years, and that's saying something. ]
What do you think I am?
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[ Carver breathes out slow. He sits with the heaviness he feels. That sick sort of exhaustion. He wants to die, maybe, if he hasn't already. Or maybe feel something different. Anything. The gloves blunt whatever damage he might've done to himself with his nails and he can't afford to fuck up his knee. It's pointless to get caught on that idea among all the others. And yet. ]
Nobody, I guess.
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Huh. Well — that's as good an explanation as any.
[ The cigarette is burnt to the filter. He pinches the cherry with his fingers, unconcerned about any cosmetic damage from the brief contact. ]
Just for that, I'll tell you if you really want to know.
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Tell me.
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Do you know, [ he begins, conversant. Genial. ] That there have been sixteen thousand, eleven hundred and nineteen named deities on Earth that have, throughout history, been thought to govern war?
[ Many are gone, lost to time or the very thing he speaks of now. Dead languages, dead cultures, as he said. Humans have really only been recording information for a few thousand years. Less than half his life. ]
Not just war, necessarily. Lots of gods pull double duty. Indra is a bunch of other shit, too — sky, lightning, storms, a bunch of different affiliations with water, and war. Athena is, you know, tactics and all that jazz, and Ares is kind of the bravery, bloodlust and berserker side of it. Kastetanach was conflict, which included martial conflict, but then other things like childbirth or illness. Sauvi was warfare, night, the moon. Etc, etc.
[ Parlour tricks are always a good way to make a point. He knows the gun Carver's holding down to its atoms — weapons that have been blooded always call to him in some way, so it's easier here than it would otherwise be to call it to hand. It vanishes from his grip and reappears in Cy's, and he turns it over in his hands. ]
She likes you. You treat her well. She'll do her best not to jam or rust for you.
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In a better moment, he'd have something to say about that. He'd go on the attack the way he was taught.
In this one, Carver just watches. Too tired to do much of anything except stare. He reaches out almost unthinkingly, pressing his fingertips very briefly against Cy's wrist. Just to make sure he's solid. The gloves blunt the touch, dull what might be felt, but it's an answer.
It's something. ]
War, [ he repeats softly. A god of war. ] You should make sense to me.
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[ A pause. Then: ]
And, I mean, I am Canadian on paper, so maybe you're just picking up on the hon hon baguette oui monsieur side of me, I can't promise you Quebecois French makes all that much sense to anyone.
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It isn't helping him sift through Cy's nonsense, though.
A god of war. Different from all the others, but among them. Of them, somehow. ]
Why aren't you a soldier?
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[ He wasn't, not in any traditional sense. He's never trained, and drilled, and held weapons with the absolute intention of taking a life. He's never lead men, or been lead. But he remembers sharing a fire once, with people who thought war was a calling. That its purpose was to protect, and save, and heal. But he doesn't think even those bright souls would mind very much if he pretended, at least for a time. He's earned the mistruth, after centuries under KV's thumb. Worlds burnt black beneath his hands. After Aikelyk. ]
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[ He watches Cy. Feeling flattened down. There are other things below that, all brittle lines and jagged edges, but Carver has a feeling that if he dredges them, it's going to get bad again. That he's going to shoot someone. ]
That's not your shape.
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[ He lets it settle in the air, reaching to give the gun back. Carver might not notice through the gloves that it seems warmer somehow, as if it's just been run through a magazine on full auto. ]
I killed eleven worlds. All life on them. Not just — people. When I say a world, I mean everything on it. Plants, bacteria. Every strange little bird, magnificent quadruped, all the insects. Easy. I broke armies on the back of a power no one should ever really have. I tortured people and I enjoyed it. I followed people until they left bloody footprints on sand trying to escape me. People tried to fight. Magic, weapons that would make nukes look like a fucking lego set. They tried sacrifice, appeasement, diplomacy. They sent champions, and all of them died bloody. People can survive so much more than they think, if you're careful. Patient. You can hold a beating heart in your hands and squeeze, and feel the ventricles flutter as the pulse spikes high and hard.
[ He doesn't believe in avoiding ownership of what happened. It doesn't matter to him that he wasn't in control, then. It matters that it was his hands, and it always has. ]
And then one day, I decided I didn't want to be what I was made anymore.
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