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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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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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He stiffens at that. Almost as bad as flinching. But he listens. He's being told something true, now. A story of the end.
No, Carver thinks, watching Cy close. Endings. Over and over and over again, until - ]
You just decided?
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[ He calls something else — a bottle of that shitty moonshine being made in the basecamp, that tastes uncannily like a diesel engine. ]
I was injured by another god, as close to fatally as we ever get. Someone interred my body in an ancient catacomb, because I must've been pretty close to functionally dead. When I woke up, I wasn't really a person anymore. Brain damage. I have no idea how long I was in the catacombs, but I remember eating rats. Crawling into caskets alongside long-dead kings just to feel a little less lonely. Trailing a hand along the wall until my fingers were bloody and I'd torn off every nail and regrown them a hundred times. The place was a fucking maze, and I didn't realize or remember I had the power to get out of it.
[ He shrugs. ]
Couldn't talk. Couldn't speak. Don't remember all that much, everything's — hazy. But eventually, this old guy found me. Took me in. Didn't really care that I was feral. That I kept trying to kill myself in his kiln baking myself to the bone alongside ceramic tchotchkes or hanging from his rafters or drowning in the lake near his house. I didn't remember being immortal. Or why I was. I just remembered hurting people. The pieces came back slower.
[ It's not a story he tells much, but it's not — hard, to tell. He's just private. ]
He was a fisherman. We used to fish together, and then one day I slit open a fish and her eggs spilled all over my hands, and I didn't want to kill anything anymore. I won't say I haven't — definitely nuked a civilization off their planet once — but mostly I've kept to that.
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But there was something else, eventually. Carver wonders if he's jealous of that. That...shift.
Carver watches Cy's hands. Holding the bottle, the way he gestures, or has. Strong hands. But not bloody, or at least not right now. ]
And now you're here. What happened to the fisherman?
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[ It's said a bit sourly, but only in jest as he takes the cap off the liquor and takes a drink. Holds it out. After a grimacing suck of his teeth at the taste as it hits him, he says: ]
He wasn't immortal. But he gave me a name when I didn't remember mine. Taught me how to be a person again. Taught me music and dance. Didn't fuss when I couldn't help with the fish anymore. Told me the name of every constellation. Gave me a blanket when I kept sleeping under the porch because it was the closest thing to a tomb, you know. Normal stuff. But he really was the father of who I became.
[ And he's fought to remember him. But there are days he feels the name slipping away. The sound of his voice, the rough callouses of his hands. ]
So I can just try to live up to that.
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He takes it, though. Drinks and wonders why he doesn't flinch at the taste. Why it doesn't feel like much at all. He wonders why Cy's bothering with any of this. And he wonders too if Cy tells this story often.
Somehow, Carver gets the feeling that he doesn't. ]
The commander was like my father, [ he offers quietly. He passes the bottle back. ] And the sergeant, she was like a sister. They made me.
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[ He takes the bottle back, its neck held loosely between his index and middle finger, thumb stabilizing the bottle further down. ]
What were they like?
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[ Carver shifts to rest his head on his knees again. Watching Cy. Wondering what Sam got into. If his busted nose healed up okay. And then Carver wonders what happened to Leah Shaw way back in the world. If she's even still alive. Or if it's like Matthew and she was gone from the start, and Carver's just been wandering through the world praying to her ghost.
Hard to say. ]
Honest, [ he says finally. ] Brutal. They taught me how to survive.
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And is that the same as living, to you?
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[ He returns Cy's gaze. Not for the first time, he wonders if any of this is real. What he's supposed to do if it is. ]
I want to go home. Can you help me with that?
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