maskormenacelogs | Seconds pass, and the flames rise [OPEN]

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Seconds pass, and the flames rise [OPEN]

WHO: Darth Jadus and whoever the heck wants to encounter this weirdo
WHERE: De Chima, Heropa, the moonbase
WHEN: uh
WHAT: Experimental meditation, something heroics-shaped, and... more weird-ass meditation he's really into that. Open to wildcard.
WARNINGS: near-drowning, vague sith nonsense

1. (In the woods near De Chima): Begin From Darkened Edges

The early morning was overcast, the air sodden with moisture. Far in the distance, thunder growled and purred. But meditation in the forest still felt entirely unlike the damp murk of the Kaasian wilds. This forest was young. By natural or directed means, no tree older than a century stood here. On Dromund Kaas, the trees rose like great obelisks scattered across a monument field, beasts of great size and ferocity stalked both canopy and forest floor, and everything shivered with Dark.

His chosen place between the trees was slowly becoming more familiar. Plants were twisting in response to his focused thoughts and the remains of his projects, warped and gnarled. Scattered remnants of his experimental organisms formed a wide ring of decomposing meat and plant matter around the periphery, run through with flashes of metal and the dull gleam of plastic, no longer fused by his will.

A wide, shallow bowl sat before him on the forest floor. He'd set a delicate wire mesh upon it, then filled it with a mix of water and algae he'd collected. Onto the vivid green muck he placed a single broad leaf.

He knelt, hands in loose fists in his lap, and slipped fully into a meditative state. Before him in the bowl, the leaf began to soften, edges fraying away.

This was a concept piece. A first concerted test for the life support system he had promised the ship builders. All his other rotting projects had been purely experimental, testing his capabilities. Personal. And yet this was hardly different: If the message of his prophecy was rejected, he would have a use for this.

It was a shame there were no deep woods here. He had claimed this place, but it was still close enough to inhabited land and woodland trails that privacy could not be guaranteed.

2. (At the beach in Heropa): Bind the Ocean to the Earth

He stood at the shore, contemplating not the waves, but the clouds above them. Four months ago, prior to his arrival, a missile had stained the sky on its final approach. He'd seen the simulation of it in the training hall. Now, he stood and watched its absence.

Standing at the end of a nearby breakwater, a native man made a mistake. He lost his footing, pitched forward and fell. The flare of fear was almost immediately dulled to guttering embers as his head struck the uneven concrete, and he tumbled into the water, half-conscious. The current began to pull him out towards the sea. Jadus did not move.

Then the fear rose again, as a heat haze emanating from nearby spectators, and slowly boiling the man in the waves, as he reawakened to his misfortune. Addled as he was, he could not swim. The terror burned hot enough now to rouse the Sith from contemplation. As instructive as chance destruction would be to all who saw it, he would benefit more in the short term from a response.

Should he be given the opportunity, he will raise a hand towards the now distant form, drawing on the fear and loathing of death and shame of inaction around him to lift the man from the water, slow, gentle, like holding something gossamer that could be so easily broken. If another were to reach the man before him, they are welcome to do so.

3. (In the moonbase): Stand Within the Domain of the Enlightened

He returned to the planet's moon with a small sample of his work hidden beneath his robes. The construct functioned appropriately on the planet's surface, in the conditions its component parts had evolved under. But if a ship were to leave this fragile little world, it would do so without artificial gravity. This was the closest he could come to what it would be like.

He ascended to the observation deck, turning away from the crowd gathered at one bank of windows to view their home in the sky above. He faced the black sky opposite, focusing between the stars, on what was not.

By the Porter's machinations, the power he felt within him was not the Force. It was something lesser, bounded by distance, unable to cross even the gulf between planet and moon. Trapping him. Step beyond its bounds, and he might suffocate. Bleed all that he was into the void, and fall cold.

He turned this feeling towards the sample, hidden beneath his robes in the confines of its carrying case, fed slowly by waste air vented from his helmet, unable to taste the sun. The void was so close to it, and it was given so little to flourish.

"Will you fail?"

4. (Wildcard): enjoy this Day

[I'm on plurk at

paleantiquarian and discord at CellarSpider#9984. Hit me up there or in DMs if you want a special prompt!]

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[ Lando isn't always a beachgoing type, but there are few finer places to scope out beautiful bodies than by the water. He's there today, dressed appropriately, mirrored sunglasses on his face to watch the bathing beauties. He notices the Sith he'd talked to before, mostly because of how inappropriately he's dressed, but his attention gets sharper as he watches Darth Jadus lift a drowning man out of the water.

As a lifeguard rushes over to help the poor sod, Lando stalks over to speak to his rescuer. ]

That was... unexpectedly altruistic of you.

[He pulls the man back to the shore, deliberate and slow.]

This action matters only in the moment, to a man on a single, isolated planet. The galaxy in all its vastness is indifferent. Any action that resists the apathy that engenders is unexpected.

[The man is loosed from his invisible grip and kneels on the sand nearby, coughing up seawater, and Jadus feels a thorn of contempt sink into his thoughts. He takes no further steps to help him as the lifeguard takes over, utterly still.]

Sith require this. Without lives to leave their mark within the Force, we are diminished.

[ Lando supposes Darth Jadus has a point about an apathetic galaxy. A circuitous, overly dramatic point, but a point nonetheless. ]

Well, you left your mark on that man's life, that's for sure. Feeling particularly heroic, or was this simply an example of "right place, right time?"

[His mask turns slightly towards Calrissian.]

I did not wait on this beach in anticipation of death to thwart.

[Only once the wound on the man's scalp begins to drip red onto the sand does he stir again, walking forward. A superficial wound, and a likely concussion beneath it. The man is still disoriented, dulled by the impact, but the fear brought on by labored breathing is a deep, searing ember at the core of human behavior. A power to draw from.]

Stand back, [He commands the lifeguard,] I will heal him.

[Despite his affinity for Sith sorcery, mending has never been a simple task for him, and Earth has seen fit to make it more complicated. An injury that is feared and rejected by the one who bears it, they are trivial. But a wound accepted, met with grace, he has no power over them.

And so the blood flow staunches within seconds of concentration, and after a last wracking cough, the man's breathing eases. But...] He is concussed. This, I cannot fix. He will have to recover naturally.

[And then he turns away, back in Calrissian's direction. He has a question he has been interested in.] Your older self was reacted especially poorly to my arrival on Earth. Do you know why?

[ Lando didn't know that the Force could heal. Granted, there's a lot he doesn't know about the Force and how it works. He believes in it, sure. Hard not to, now that he's watching it in action. But he knows he's just not meant to have that deep of an understanding of its ways. ]

I can only imagine he was put off by the title. People going by "Darth" something aren't typically very pleasant to deal with.

You do not know, then. He had been hurt by the Sith of your era. He hid it imperfectly. [He had been appropriately wary with him, and then inappropriately rambling drunk to Marr.]

Is Darth Vader the only Sith you are aware of?

He's certainly the loudest Force presence in the galaxy.

[ Considering the Jedi were all gone. ]

I try to stay out of that stuff, if I can help it. The Force never did me any favors.

Anders liked going out and just seeing the cities, since he actually had that freedom. He didn't have to constantly look over his shoulder for Templars waiting to arrest him. ImPorts were only punished if they misused their powers, and not just for something they might do. Anders was still unused to the locals treating him with awe upon seeing him and realizing he was an ImPort.

The mage took a break from his walk to sit at a large fountain, listening to the water splash. Usually you had to go to Orlais to see a fountain as nice.

A sudden gust of wind knocked a bird off course and its wing clipped part of the fountain's statue, causing it to fall into the water. Anders immediately ran into the water to retrieve it, cradling it in his hands. The mage walked back out of the fountain, blue magic pouring out of his hands and into the bird.

The bird got up like nothing happened and flew out of Anders' hands.

Parks provided an open space to meditate, and remember how to tune out minds of the unperfected. He did this with regularity, seeking these unpleasant places, littered with stray thoughts and wavering emotions. A pitty he could not yet improve them.

By chance, he ascended back to conscious awareness just in time to watch a stranger walk through the fountain to retrieve something small and suffering. He rose to his feet as the bird flew away, still afraid, but unhurt.

"Your powers may find more use in the days to come."

Anders sensed him before he spoke. His mood took a sudden shift from joy to dread. It was the same feeling he got when a Templar raised their sword at him.

He turned around and gasped slightly. The man before him was intimidating, from the general aura of him to the way Anders couldn't see his face. Justice also got the same feeling from this man that he had from Marr. His outfit wouldn't look out of place among Tevinter Magisters.

Finding his voice, Anders asked, "Who are you?"

"I am Darth Jadus." He stopped several paces from the man. "There are people of this world who hold resentment for us, hidden amongst the awestruck."

There was something strange about him. Like the aura of a ghost-eater. Contours not doubled, but overlaid. "Their sentiments are being fomented into open protest. Soon, they will take to the streets."

"I'm Anders," He managed to get out. Were they not positive that Jadus wasn't from Thedas, they would have sworn that he was a fear demon or possessed by one.

His anxiety was diffused somewhat at Jadus' words. "Tell me you're joking."

Anders' mind immediately began jumping to the worst possible conclusions. What if the protesters turned violent and got hurt? What if the protesters began to demand something like Templars and the government complied?

Something of that statement had a fearful resonance for the man. Something deep, but it did not reach both of him. It made the other stand out more clearly in silhouette. "The day of protest has already been declared. Within days, they will take to the streets."

"It would be wise to secure shelter beyond government-appointed housing. For you, and the mind you hold within."

Anders hadn't been paying close attention to the news, since he didn't watch a lot of television or use the internet a lot. He guessed it was time to start doing that more often. Especially since the internet was actually rather fascinating.

He froze when he heard Jadus' last sentence. "How do you..?" Anders hadn't told anyone about Justice.

"If what you say is true, then maybe I should be out that day. People might need me."

Something else seemed to push the water around the man as well, or at least before Jadus could in full. It was a figure who looked utterly ridiculous; blue hair, a strange greenish spring outfit and enough caked on makeup that one had to wonder what he was doing at the beach (just happened to have come to draw people).

With a swift movement bluish energy under his feet and a cry of Persona!, wind erupted upwards as the bluish glow went through him and exited as Floating figure nearly three times his height appeared. In all appearances, frightening, and not at all suited for such a rescue. The boy's own energy seemed to be reflected in the creature's own - a strange mixture of both darkness and light.

"Let's go!"

He walked with confidence towards the beach as the creature floated behind him, the skeletal bouquet raised in the air. The water under the man bubbled, before seemingly out of thin air, the water spat him upwards at a calculated angle. It wasn't kind of gentle (and perhaps someone else had a hand in it?) but served it's purpose and despite his figure, the boy managed to catch the man with both his hands as he landed.

The Persona behind him disappeared as onlookers let out a few gasps. He put down the man and looked at his wounds.

"Do you need healing? I could take you to someone who'll patch you up real quick. Hey no! I promise nothing bad is happening, there's no need to panic about the creature that was there, my POCKET MONSTER is not evil I promise!"

Give him a minute and he'd notice the Sith soon enough.

The man's head had only just risen above the water when he was interrupted. Bizarrely so. By monitoring the network he had become distantly aware that some of the imPorts had powers like these, but he had yet to observe any himself. He halted his efforts, waiting to see what would happen.

The results were just as odd as the creature itself. Perhaps it was a conduit for skill the interloper could not muster otherwise. It disappeared even more suddenly than it arrived, leaving behind nothing more than a human.

Pity. "I will heal him," he declared, advancing towards them. Mending flesh had never been his greatest strength, but his time spent shaping the Eradicators had given him a greater understanding of the living.

[ The presence is noticable well before her unpleasant meat body gets close. It will be in his discarded experiments that it is the most obvious. The flies begin to swarm in seemingly unnatural numbers. Beetles gather to gnaw at the dying plant matter. Or maybe he can simply feel her himself: a small piece of death itself is wandering his woods. ]

[Flies crawl across his mask, and he does not move. Any that land in the bowl before him sink beneath the surface and do not rise again. Still in his trance, he can sense a little of what is driving them, but its nature is alien, even to him. He has felt something like it before, but only ever in fleeting moments, or standing in places where many met their end. Fascinating.]

You are welcome here.

[The leaf unravels faster, stripping away the lamina and leaving only the veins, twitching oddly.]

Yes. . . . Yes, yes, yes.

[ She steps into the clearing shortly: a young woman in a white dress, with pale, tangled hair and a dirty face. She bends down to lay her fingers on a lump of rotting flesh, and a host of the crawling things within start climbing up her arm. ]

I'm very welcome. We're all friends here.

Edited 2018-07-01 21:25 (UTC)

[It's a disappointment to find that aura attached to a human voice. But beneath the mask, his eyes are closed, and he so he does not have to see a face.]

Yes. You bring corruption with you. Bring out what was already rooted. [Yet, it is not entirely like the Dark Side tainting the grove. Something else is there.]

I am Darth Jadus. We have spoken before.

[His mind reaches out, long and grasping filaments from beneath his mental armor. Carefully stopping short, tasting the ambient aura around her. Something else about it feels familiar.]

You gave me a busy boy, Darth Jadus. You've been busy too.

[ Not entirely dissimilar to Dark Side, no. There is corruption and death, certainly, and something that most would call madness. But there's neither malice nor mercy in it- just hunger, diligence, patience, love. There is no readable human mind in this shell. Whatever she (it?) is was not meant to be contained in a mortal form- and without the porter's nanobots, her living body would surely consume itself.

No one is more disappointed in the Maiden's humanity than the Maiden herself. ]

The meat humans called me Many-Wriggle. I'm always busy. Always, always.

Edited 2018-07-01 23:42 (UTC)

I once crafted beings that spread the gifts of fear and degradation to an Empire. Here, I am limited.

[The rules have changed. He can use less refined materials, create without the support of alchemical artifacts and Imperial laboratories. But they fall to madness soon without his intervention, and lose their forms soon after.

And now, something new, and more constrained. Despite his desire to examine further, he does not do so. Not until some acceptance or ignorance of it could be discerned. She first real sign that the Porter would stray far beyond the humanoid, but could not abide them to remain as such.

Something to observe and learn from.]

And you are limited as well. Will you seek to escape the flesh?

[ Still perched by the decay, she watches the creatures that gather to her curiously. For a long moment it seems almost like she won't answer him at all. When she finally does, there's a strange stilted quality to the way she talks- almost like an animal mimicking speech. ]

Sought. Stubborn meat. But we're patient, patient. Living is- what we c-call- a self-solving. Problem.

Edited 2018-07-02 03:50 (UTC)

These bodies are restored in death. The Porter has captured us in forms it chooses.

[The veins that were once a leaf have arranged themselves into a ragged grid, overlaid on the metal lattice suspended in the liquid, slowly growing new tendrils that weave and fuse together.]

[ she lets out a long, low noise. it's not the sort of noise a human would intentionally make, but it communicates her disgust and frustration well enough. ]

Porter bitch.

[ Or if the noise didn't, that does.

She peers over to his work. It's not hard to grasp the generals of it. Human invention was rarely of interest, but this is her business. ]

Edited 2018-07-03 22:40 (UTC)

Indeed.

[The mesh and plant matter are slowly fusing together, wires now looping and twisting around and through organic tissue solidifying on the metal. Crude, he thinks. He's not yet at his limit. But this will suffice for its purpose.]

Others are seeking foes beyond Earth. Should humans make the journey, I will see to their life support. My constructs will consume their waste and provide them their air and water.

[This one was a test. Many more would be produced, joined together and given roots to drink from. Pores to bleed fresh water from. If the ship is built, as some still hope.]

The journey may tell us how far the Porter's reach truly extends.

Kkhhhhhhhh.

[ A noise of agreement.

She looks over his experiment again, cocking her head like a curious animal. After a long moment, and certainly without asking permission, she extends a hand over the vessel, and a number of creatures obediently step off her fingertips and into the muck. ]

I see her. Your little daughter. A tiny, tiny circle, but complete to keep the canned meat fresh.

[ ]Her eyes close to better listen to the reaction as the little scraps of life are recycled. ]

Edited (hup ok sorry done for real now) 2018-07-04 17:36 (UTC)

Yes.

[A more reliable daughter.]

I volunteered to keep them alive. They are driven by terror to explore and attack. Their ambitions are useful.

[The algal scum in the tray is thinner now, but it crawls over the tiny interlopers, submerging them in the liquid.]

But they act without consideration of danger. They stir the humans to fear, and they do not have the grace to shape it. The results may devour our ambitions for freedom.

[Beneath the surface, new roots reach out from the developing construct, branching to ensnare them, nearly microscopic root hairs growing like mold over their captured prey.]

If they do not heed my warnings, I will break the circle.

[The ideal contingency would be to sabotage the mission before it could launch. But if the opportunity did not present itself, he could abandon this daughter of his. Without his guidance, she would go mad within days.]

And the canned meat spoils.

[ An insurance plan. How very human of him. But in truth his disregard for his creation and comrades doesn't bother her overmuch. It's his motivations and methodologies that hold her interest. Escaping Lachesis' bullshit would become necessary sooner or later, but space travel was only theoretical to even the most advanced humans she had known.

She makes another wordless thinking noise. ]

How far, how long?

Meat always spoils. But the Porter will return them to life within days.

[The root hairs enter through mouthparts, respiratory pores, anything they can find to reach inside the creatures and leech the life from them.]

Sixty million kilometers, to a moon of Earth's closest neighbor. A trivial distance, but it will take them days.

[The little hybrid thing in the dish strengthens, roiling slowly with new deposition of algal skin.]

There are humans here who may have the skill to build better craft. But this world lacks the parts they need.

[With no way to isolate hypermatter, there would be no faster than light travel. But even simple sublight drives were beyond this planet, as were the inertial dampeners to render them truly useful. Technicalities that rarely had to be dealt with.]

Or maybe, or maybe, far enough away from Porter Bitch, and the meat doesn't come back.

[ She smiles beatifically at the bugs as they're subsumed. It's an intriguing question, and possible option for escaping this humiliating flesh prison. ]

Edited 2018-07-18 21:57 (UTC)

There may be a way.

[He brings a hand down over the construct, gathering an electrical charge around it, reaching his senses out to the new little creature, monitoring it to see how it fares as the first stirrings of current flow through the wires.]

I traveled through a Porter to stand upon Earth's moon, looked up at this planet and its mass of living and dying creatures, and I sensed none of them. I turned to the stars, and I felt nothing. Utter void.

[It had been terrifying, a betrayal of reality itself.]

I could sense only my immediate surroundings. The Porter's range of influence must therefore be smaller than the moon's orbit.

[He tilted his head towards his guest for the first time since she had made herself known.]

There may be a test flight of the Alke, sending it beyond the moon. It would be a suitable opportunity for you to try.

Until then, the moon provides a unique experience. I travel there regularly to meditate. I would invite you to make the journey as well.

[ Her head tips as she listened. She understands the implications of what he's said, though it is difficult to believe them. Leave the planet, leave the Porter, become as a mortal- it is an almost incomprehensible concept. It is terrifying in its implications for her self and reality, but the scientific and metaphysical implications are fascinating. Far too valuable an opportunity to pass up.

She nods. ]

Yes. Let's take a walk.

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Seconds pass, and the flames rise [OPEN]

2.

TOO FASHIONABLE THAT'S ILLEGAL

donald's just being ic

he's perfect

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Re: 4

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2

that is a goddamn fantastic entrance

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eventually i remember what tags are

o haaay

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