lifeaftr | Nothing like the smell of rotting ape corpse in the morning

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Nothing like the smell of rotting ape corpse in the morning

Who: Newt and Everyone Who Either Commented or Is Listed in This Post
What: Searching that Monkey Compound
When: 10/7
Where: Everyone's on a D8
Warnings: Rotting monkey corpses? IDK, tag ur stuff, friendos

"Picking over the remnants of that bloody battle will prove quite advantageous, as long as you don't mind the smell. Not only did the monkeys fashion several abodes mounted in the branches of the trees in the compound, but they had quite a supply of various items on hand. For those who may have been concerned about islet over-crowding, it seems they need not worry; most of the homes remain undamaged, and aside from the strong smell of monkey, are completely habitable."

"Investigating the back of the compound will reveal a very small plot of farmland, where several rows of plants with dark green leaves can be seen growing. Anyone with a knack for identifying useful plants - or anyone who's simply willing to take one for the team and give them a taste - will soon discover that these leaves are the plants from which the monkeys drew their sedative. It makes quite a useful anesthetic in a pinch!"

"The sigil etched deeply onto the door itself will, as the Storyteller warned, be quite effective in keeping people out. The door repels any and all efforts to break through it; those sensitive to magic may note that it does indeed exude a very powerful and dense aura that makes its origins difficult to discern. One thing is clear, however: it will take a great deal more than teamwork between mortals to get through it." ( x )

[Welcome to the Mingle Log, Fam. Around you are the rotting corpses of many dead apes. There's also many items for you to lay claim to. Or you might feel like checking out those sweet sweet monkey nests. Or checking out that door. Whatever you feel like doing, leave a top level for people to pester you with. Or pester other people with top levels. The Mingle Log is your Oyster.]

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It was a rather pleasant situation, if an imperfect one- but one makes do with what's at hand.

[Muffet's fairly calm about it, even under the circumstances- she's not happy to have been brought here without her consent, but getting upset about it won't fix the problem, so she'd rather just keep working at it.]

As for unique, it could be that, but I have to wonder if there are any worlds that aren't unique, from somebody's perspective. We've certainly found examples from a very wide variety, here.

Hey, if we're going to count the possibility of multiple universes, we've gotta accept the possibility of infinite universes. There's bound to be some doubles, maybe even triples, out there.

[Gobbet looks to the sky as if she'll see some sort of answer up there. In reality, she's imagining all the worlds beyond her own. Peaceful places, war-torn places, places that haven't reached young adulthood in the cosmic sense, places that are ancient even on that scale...There's got to be another place out there with SINs and trideo, at least. Those can't be original concepts.]

I don't know if that's good or bad, really. Can't imagine a second Kowloon without getting sick to my stomach.

Hm... My first instinct is to wonder if one could go around doubling up on all the good things, and leaving the bad things behind them, but it seems unkind to leave some other universe without anything more pleasant.

[Gobbet blinks.]

You mean like...hop from world to world and freeload on all the good parts? I guess it depends on your idea of what's good in a world. I think a little danger and dirt makes life worth living, but that inevitably puts someone on the losing end. To be honest, I've stopped trying to imagine scenarios where everyone wins.

[Muffet smiles wryly.]

Perhaps it is a little much to want everything pleasant and insist that no one else suffer in the bargain- but I must admit, I've always been a terribly greedy person. One can't always have both, but it doesn't stop me from trying.

[At least she's self-aware about her flaws, even if she doesn't sound particularly ashamed of them.]

Ha, I like the way you think.

[Gobbet gives a half-smirk to Muffet's wry smile and pauses to take stock of her surroundings. Headway has been made on clearing the place of ape corpses, thankfully. The smell seems less suffocating now. The sun is high and merciless, though. It's only a matter of time before the rot accelerates to intolerable levels again.]

Man, there were a ton of these things. We probably caused some damage to the island by killing them off, you know. Might have made resources a tad less scarce, but the land must have relied on them for balance for them to thrive like this.

[It was a valuable part of her skill set - reading the lay of the land like this. If she was right, they had just decimated the local ecosystem. Her grin turns to a hard frown.]

[Muffet nods ruefully, grimacing at the thought.]

To be entirely honest, a sudden influx of visitors from other dimensions was probably causing a bit of an imbalance all by itself, let alone with this thrown in the mix.

...Although, one does have to wonder what having a local deity actively involved with things does to the function of this island's ecosystem. There may be entirely different factors involved that we're unfamiliar with.

Fair enough. Gotta be real, it's above my paygrade to figure out the specifics. I was just making an observation.

[The downside of saying what's on your mind is that sometimes you don't have anything to follow up with. Gobbet tries to think of something else to add, settling on:]

It kind of depends on how involved the local deities are, though. A lot of god-like beings don't like the interfere too directly.

I'll take your word for it, I think- by the standards of my home, the Storyteller is very involved indeed, but the standards of my home were essentially never seeing any gods in person at all.

Well, back home the closest things to "gods" we have are totems and idols. They're animal avatars or powerful spirits that grant shamans their powers. I follow Rat, personally. Totems don't really directly interfere with the world, but they do give us gifts that let us get the upper hand in a lot of situations.

[Gobbet shrugs.]

For example, Rat can - could, I guess - tell me where to go if I was in a maze or an unfamiliar place. But she wouldn't like. Appear before me in a firefight and turn the tables in my favor, you know?

Hm, still more involved than ours, I think- the various deities from my world weren't proven to be definitely real or false either way, the last I checked.

May I ask more about what Rat is like, out of curiosity?

She's clever, I'll tell you that much. Rat has gotten me out of some pretty tight places before.

[The ork smiles faintly, remembering narrow escapes and lessons learned. Her eyes meet two of Muffet's and for the first time since their meeting she looks truly comfortable. All the awkwardness of just meeting and being stranded on an island and what not sort of melts away in the face of fond memories.]

She doesn't directly speak to me, but I do have a special kind of connection with her. She takes care of me and I've always done my best to take care of her, too. I don't feel her as strongly out here but. Well, she's taught me things that distance can't take away, you know?

[Muffet smiles at the expression on Gobbet's face, happy to see the genuine warmth in it. There's something comforting, about knowing people have fond memories to hold onto in the midst of all this.]

She sounds like an excellent mentor to me. I'm sure she'd be pleased to know you took her lessons to heart.

If she wasn't, I don't think I'd be able to use my magic at all.

[Gobbet holds up a hand and focuses her attention on her palm. A small cloud of sickly green mist swirls to life and pitches in time with the sound of the waves below them. A light breeze picks it up, dissipates it. She's pretty much running on fumes magic-wise, but the display serves a purpose. Confirmation that her totem could still reach her, even if just barely, way out here on this mystery island.]

Shamans get their magic from their totems. All they ask for in return is that we use their gifts to further their influence in the world. For Rat, that's basically meant surviving any way I can.

[It's a little more complicated than that, but that's the abbreviated version that Gobbet passes along when people ask.]

That seems a reasonable arrangement, to me.

[Muffet nods, looking curiously at Gobbet's display of her own magic.]

Does the color of that mist signify anything, if you don't mind my asking? We classify our magic by color, at home.

Eh, not really? That was a very weak acid fog spell. Burns the skin and usually lingers wherever you put it, even in the wind.

[Gobbet cocks her head to the side in thought. She'd never really thought about the colors before, or what they could mean.]

I think shamanic spells are usually green and hermetic magic is blue or red, though. You classify your magic by color, huh? How does that work?

[Muffet explains, as she has a few times before on this island:]

Basic magic, the easy and instinctive kind we all can use, appears white. More advanced skills come in seven colors: blue, green, gold, cyan, red, orange, and purple. In theory one can learn any of them with sufficient time and effort, but in practice people generally stick to one or two that they happen to have a talent with.

Each color represents a different set of abilities, and is associated with a specific virtue. For example, green is the magic of shielding and healing, associated with the virtue of kindness.

[Gobbet is listening, even if it looks like she's scanning the area and paying Muffet no mind. It's all very interesting stuff, it's just. She has a short attention span. Don't take it too personally. Besides, she focuses better when multi-tasking. In this case, scanning for exits and entrances to the compound, evaluating the state of the remaining nests, and half-counting the remaining corpses serve as her secondary tasks as she absorbs the wealth of info.]

[When Muffet finishes speaking, Gobbet sets her hands on her hips and turns to face her proper. She lets out a breathy laugh and shakes her head.]

Yeah, the spells I know do more hurting than healing and shielding, I'll tell you that for free. I mean I do know a healing spell but it's colorless. It just sort of. [She waves her hands vaguely, scrunching up her nose as she tries to visualize the spell in action.] Works.

[Usually she's casting it in combat, so she rarely pays close attention to what it looks like. She just waves her hands, calls on the power, and next time she looks, her allies aren't bleeding so bad.]

What's the virtue and color for combat magic? Like slinging fireballs and stuff.

[Muffet doesn't take offense, familiar as she is with the desire to be getting things done as efficiently as one can.]

Fire- or water, or other elemental abilities- generally tends to fall under white magic, oddly enough. It depends on what one has an innate affinity with. As for combat... in theory, any color of magic can be quite effective in a fight. It all depends on how it's used, really.

Of course, everyone has their own preferences.

[She winks playfully, and holds up one pair of her hands to show Gobbet the threads of purple light strung between them, appearing out of nowhere at a moment's thought.]

I myself tend to favor purple magic- the magic of binding, for the virtue of persistence. Perhaps not the most straightforwardly destructive technique, but it's remarkably hard to fight someone while bound immovably to the nearest heavy object.

Ha, that's true. Kind of a "defense is the best offense" scenario, huh?

[Gobbet eyes the purple thread and nods approvingly. Persistence, huh? Did "the unshakable will to survive" fall under persistence, too, or was there another category for that? Was being laid back and not taking things seriously, being carefree perhaps even when you should care immensely, a virtue or a problem?]

Our worlds aren't that different. See, instead of colors and virtues, shamans have totems. It's basically the same thing, though - your personality traits determine who gives you your power, and who the power is coming from determines what the power is. Your world pretty much streamlined the process, I guess.

[While she wonders about the color of her magic - the symbolic color, not the pale, sickly green of acid clouds - Gobbet also wonders about what totem might choose Muffet. She doesn't have a ton to go on: just persistence and purple.]

[Maybe the clever, aloof Cat who toys with Her prey - binding magic would be good for that.]

Precisely that, yes.

[Muffet grins, pleased that Gobbet seems to understand her view on the matter. She nods thoughtfully at the explanation of totems.]

That makes sense- if there's someone out there choosing to empower people, it's only natural that they would pick those that they could understand and get along well with.

[Stubborn survival could very well be purple- or red, if you went by the theory that it was for determination, or blue for integrity. There's no way to be sure without looking at Gobbet's soul directly, and Muffet would never be so rude as to just do that without any warning.]

I'm not clear on the details, but I know magic works differently for humans than it does for my people, on the very rare occasions when they have it- or had it, I suppose, since they seem to have lost the ability entirely in the modern day.

Edited (added extra narration) 2017-11-26 21:52 (UTC)

Ha. That's kind of funny, because my world didn't have magic until...well it's been a while now, I guess.

[Gobbet leans against the nearest tree, folding her arms across her chest. She tilts her head in thought. Never really went to school, so history wasn't exactly her strong suit, but she knew how the world worked. Knew as much as anyone else.]

The whole world went through a magical awakening. People got magical powers, found out about totems, the world spawned different races, like me - I'm an ork. It even changed certain animals into their mythical counterparts. Like basilisks weren't a thing until the Awakening.

[Hellhounds, devil rats, chimeras, banshees, basilisks - the Awakening had made the world a very dangerous place to be. It was already full of violence and strife, but now it was full of violence, strife, and marauding magical beasts. She tosses her dreadlocks over her shoulder with a flick of her head. Honestly, she's enjoying sharing world info with Muffet.]

On the whole, no race is more or less magical than any other. Between you and me, though, elves make better shamans and I can't put my finger on why. I think they've just got this natural charm that makes spirits more willing to listen.

[Muffet... doesn't raise an eyebrow, because she doesn't actually have any, but her expression is still a pretty good rough equivalent of doing so.]

My, that must have been a shock. I can't imagine what it might be like for a world to not have magic at all and then gain it- it would be like hearing that a planet somehow didn't have gravity until it suddenly did, with how much it's a part of everyday life for monsters.

[Actually, if you're good at blue magic, a lack of gravity might be less of a problem.]

I certainly can see charm being a good advantage, although I wouldn't sell yourself short in that department- you've been a lovely conversationalist thus far.

I wasn't there but I imagine it was pretty rough, to be honest. I mean people turned into freakin' dragons - talk about a rude awakening.

[At the compliment, Gobbet widens her stance, puts a hand on her hip, and strikes a pose. Her grin spreads into a full-blown smile, almost comical with her tusks poking out the way they do.]

[If Muffet is familiar with the concept of Elvis Presley, she might be reminded of him now.]

Thank you, thank you very much.

[She returns to her original position, leaning against the tree, with a little laugh.]

No but seriously, thanks. You're pretty charming, yourself. Especially considering I didn't consider myself a fan of spiders until today.

[Muffet doesn't quite get the reference, but she can tell that Gobbet is being playful and is amused anyway.]

Sadly, it seems our less magical counterparts have done terrible things for the reputation of spiders everywhere.

[She puts one hand over her heart and sighs in mock-disappointment.]

It seems I'll just have to keep working to make our image a bit better.

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ratsinadaze - 2017-12-04 07:57 (UTC) - Expand

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