aterat | Pulse 001

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Pulse 001

Speaking Crystal

[Mid-morning, a familiar voice rings out over the crystals.]

Good morning, everyone! We trust you've settled in well! We'd like to meet you all formally and invite you to join us in the fountain square this afternoon! We look forward to seeing you there!

Who; The Aspects (Halcyn & Athony) and YOU!
What; The Aspects welcome their new summons to Aterat
Where; The Fountain Square
When; Thursday; Mid-day
Warnings; None I can think of. Will update if necessary

The Fountain square remains unchanged from your arrival, the multiple tiers containing archways all dim save for the one from which Halcyn and her counterpart, Athony, step at the appointed time. Around the fountain, though, have gathered artisans, performers, and salesman as well as recruiters. People are looking for clerks, delivery persons, and people to run small tasks for them. There are leatherworkers interested in hiring intrepid individuals to acquire more exotic skins for their trade and various other ways to earn coin.

And then there is a larger stall built into the back of a large covered wagon pulled by two oxen. It's set off a little ways from the others, either to set itself apart from the vulgus or simply to afford it room. Two people dressed smartly stand a bit apart from it and will encourage any passersby to come speak with the clerk behind the desk. Emblazoned across the side in intricate gold leaf are the letters "MGB" and the callers will inform anyone inquiring they are representatives of the Merchant's Guild Bank, and that they are willing to negotiate investment in any business ventures newcomers may be interested in...for a modest cut, of course. They assure the contract is thoroughly negotiable and urge you to speak with the broker in the carriage.

All business dealings cease when the portal on the highest level of the fountain activates and Halcyn and Athony step through. She is tall, lithe, with flowing red hair and an aura of goodness and life that overrides any attempts to read her mind. He has a darker aura, clad in deep gray armor with a gem-encrusted sword at his hip and a formidable shield strapped to his back. The murk around his mind is just as difficult to pierce, and anyone sensative to the flow of time would sense these two seem to exist as though apart from it.

They descend the dias to stand at ground level, equal to the gathered crowd, but when Halcyn speaks, her soft melodious voice carries as though its amplified, though there seems to be no source of amplification save for a subtle vibration of magic those sensative to it may sense.

"I'm so glad you all came!" She claps her hands together, clasping them before her before spreading her arms wide. "We have so much work to do, as I've told you all already. We have been tasked with the reconstruction of this world, and we simply can't without all of you. The reason why is complicated, but I can assure you we require nothing of any of you that you are not capable of." She motions around at the square and all those gathered here.

"The people of Aterat are eager to welcome you as well, but Athony and myself will remain around should you wish to speak more privatly. Again, thank you all for coming!"

With that, the gathering dispurses into it's former form, though the Aspects remain should anyone wish to speak with them.

Feel free to post top levels to meet and greet your fellow arrivals and to explore the offerings of this strange new city.

Throughout the city, not only today, but at random times, a new rhyme seems to have been picked up by the children at play, skipping rope or playing hopscotch, or dancing in a strange circle. There's a haunting quality to it, but maybe that's only because no one's taken notice of its existence before:

Traveler, traveler, what do you seek?
Riches and fame make oaken souls weap.

Traveler, traveler, watch where you're led.
One turn left, three turns right will take you to bed.

Traveler, traveler, try not to get lost.
The dwellers in the mirk may well be the cost.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She hesitated before she answered, as if she were trying to decide whether she wanted to give a real answer or something elusive like she had been. For some reason she felt a strange pull to give an actual answer to his question and she was not certain why. "My stepping discs allow for more than just teleportation," she said with a shrug. "Recently I was stepping through timelines in pursuit of a great enemy. The Elder Gods." Her voice almost sounded strangely confused. It was not particularly like her to offer too much information and yet here she was.

"There are many reasons the world is going to shit," she said with a bitter little scoff. "No. It does not. Not any longer." Now she had no idea what she was. Was she a girl again? No. There was still too much missing and too much tainted. She shook her head and then made a poor attempt at changing the subject. "Mutant. That is what I was born as. The discs are my power."

Jagger, in his dozens of meeting with people who claimed to have had traumatic experiences with the otherworldly, had heard many things: Bigfoot, Poltergeists, Demonic possession, aliens, it was all visited. This was an entirely different story. "I'm sorry. Did you say Elder God? As in...what? Eldritch horrors?" He was willing to believe anything at this point.

"...Mutant? It...sounds like an insult in itself."

"Yes. Ancient eldritch beings that wanted nothing more than to devour all they ruled," she replied. "The former ruler of my realm attempted to use my soul to release them upon the realms." She gave a slightly twisted smirk. "I found a way to erase them from existence." So, in the end, she'd won. It had cost quite a lot, but from her perspective it was worth it.

Her eyes narrowed slightly at his comment about the word mutant. "Why would that be an insult?"

"I thought their motives were less intelligible than that." It was callous, really, to make a joke at the time, but when one is suddenly told all the Old Gods from fiction were real, what else can they do but sarcastically joke about it?

"I dunno. Because to 'mutate' is to change from the normal into something else?"

"Is wanting to devour all really that intelligible?" She inclined her head slightly. "They desire nothing but human fear and suffering. Not worship. Not a kingdom. Just chaos, fear, and pain." And now she was finally rid of them. No longer did she have to settle for simply banishing them over and over again. Finally, they were just gone from existence. It was such a strange relief.

"Mutants are born with the X-Gene," Irritation seeped into her voice as she responded to his other comment. "We are never normal. And what is wrong with being abnormal?"

"Sure. It's brutal and completely without thought, and the actual scope's hard to grasp, but it's still direct, to the point. You can understand what's driving that sort of desire. It's monstrous but not indescribable."

"...if you're born with an X-Gene, wouldn't that mean you are normal, just not human?"

"In our world there are many tiers of Elder Gods," she said with a slight smirk. It wasn't an untrue statement, but it was vague and offered little more information. For some reason she found some a strange amount of enjoyment from being vague with Jagger.

"What a strange way to look at it," she said with a slight chuckle. "Simple. In my world, humans hate us. They consider themselves the baseline for normal and thus we are freaks to them." And that was why she found it mildly irritating for him to question whether or not being called a mutant was an insult or not.

He was catching on, albeit slowly, that Illyana was toying with him somewhat, but it didn't seem cruel more mean-spirited. In fact, if anything, it came off to him as the sort of teasing banter one might make with a friend. Lord knew he and Carl had their share of traded barbs and teasing comments. Hell, if he had a nickel for every time he'd led his partner by the nose to a conclusion rather than just spelling it out, he wouldn't need to moonlight as a police consultant. In the spirit of things, he decided to play along.

"So, only some of the are unintelligible, that it?" He was smirking when he asked, though that smile quickly wavered as she continued, his eyes darkening. He didn't know what it was like to have powers like hers, but even his, minor as they were, labeled him similarly.

"People fear what they don't understand so hard they try to deny it exists, or...convince you you're crazy, or...somehow wrong." He was having difficulty understanding why the topic of a word was offensive to her, at least at first, but her explanation made things clearer for him. "Mutant was a slur, wasn't it, but it's your word. I'm sorry. I didn't mean any insult."

"Ah, you can catch on," she said with a hint of a smile on her face. "My Elder Gods were more...well, I suppose it does not matter. They are no longer an issue." Which seemed to leave her quite pleased in tone. The thought that she was finally rid of them was quite a pleasant one to have.

She shrugged in response to his attempt at an apology. "Mutie is more offensive. So try to not use that." She shook her head. "Humans are...generally unpleasant to deal with for our kind. Many think we are abominations, demons that are being punished by their God. There is some enjoyment to be found in teaching them what demons are truly like." She couldn't deny that she found enjoyment in dropping them off in Limbo and letting them see what Hell really could be.

"Just went down to the local feed store, eh? Got some Elder-God-Away, or is that something you hire a professional for?"

He grimaced at the term. He wasn't even familiar and it sounded offensive. "I'll do my model best." He didn't have a reason to use it in the first place. He cast a long gaze at her. There was no mistaking Illyana had a malicious streak, but if even part of what she implied regarding the treatment of mutants was true, could he blame her for wanting revenge? Wouldn't he?

Yeah, he would, and he wasn't even sure he'd feel bad about it later. He even had an idea of how she might go about doing just that. "That's...a way to go, I suppose."

"I found a weapon capable of eliminating them," she said with a hint of pride. It had taken her a long time to figure out that Legion could be her key to getting rid of them. Then it had taken an even longer time to plan how to release him and get him into Limbo. It had required a lot of work in order to get everything aligned perfectly. Some might have called it manipulation and she would be hard-pressed to disagree.

"Some were not happy about it. But sacrifices had to be made." Was the justification to him or to herself? What a strange feeling.

"Ominous." He wondered at the pride, and even more so at her lack of explanation if she was so proud of it."Do you just like people to prod you for more information?" Or was it something more than that? Did she think he couldn't handle it?

"Ominous. I get that a lot," she said with an almost genuine smile of amusement. "Would you like to know?" There was a head tilt on her part as she waited for his response. Almost as if she couldn't quite figure out why he would want to know.

Unlike many of the people gathered here, Jagger didn't have much in the way of defense. He wasn't a fighter, he had not devastating magical abilities. The best he could hope for was a strategic advantage and that involved collecting information. Did that mean he was looking for something he could potentially use against Illyana in the future? No, but it would give him a better idea of what she was capable of. He nodded.

"I wouldn't have asked otherwise."

She tilted her head back and forth and continued to hesitate before explaining. What would a stranger think of the choices she had made there. The truly strange thing was that she seemed to care. Why was that? She shook her head and then started in on her story.

"There is a mutant with powers greater than most," she said with a degree of trepidation. "He is called Legion. Inside of him exist many personalities, each with their own powers. Those personalities cause him...quite a bit of instability," to say the least. "For the safety of the world Legion was kept in isolation. I chose to free Legion to use one of his personalities against the Elder Gods. To do so required...eliminating some of his other more dominated personalities in order to draw out the true Legion, a god-mutant capable of altering reality itself," she managed to keep any expression from showing on her face as she said that. "I brought him to Limbo and used him to alter reality in a way that the Elder Gods of Limbo no longer existed and to regain my bloodstones. Many, particularly our leader, were...unhappy with my choices.," she shrugged though. Nothing would convince her that it had not been the right choice.

He couldn't deny how dangerous this mutant sounded, how questionable her choices in the situation were...or how far-fetched the situation itself sounded. There was nothing in her voice or her explanation that suggested she was lying or exaggerating. If anything, she was holding back information, probably for fear of persecution, and with reason. She'd used another person who already suffered from more mental illnesses than simply his many personalities implied in order to seal away something else, but...

"It sounds like you didn't have a choice. If he was capable of all that and even you weren't..." It was a hard thing to accept, even if everything she'd said was 100% true, but sometimes things...had to happen, even if they weren't the morally correct answers.

"They had taken everything from me." For the first time her voice changed and emotions seeped through. Anger. Frustration. And a deep amount of ...regret? Perhaps regret was the most accurate description. After a second she shook her head and looked away.

"In the futures I went to Legion broke free on his own. He turned against my team and none of them stood a chance. Then the Elder Ones came through from Limbo, freed by someone else. We were already weakened by our fighting with Legion. We stood no chance against the onslaught and all was lost," she explained further. "My only choice was to release Legion on my own and use him before any of those events could take place." Was that truly the truth? Or had she done it because of what the Elder's had taken from her? It was something even she was not fully certain of herself.

He listened without interrupting. It was clear she felt guilty over things that happened, even with the knowledge the possessed. He didn't pretend to know enough about guilt and punishment to be an authority. There was a reason he never tried to become a cop. He couldn't trust himself to make a decision that was unbiased.

"Maybe it was a bad call, but it saved a lot of lives, yeah?"

"It was not a bad call," she said firmly. At least that was one thing she was very certain on. No matter her reasoning, it had been the right call. "Not all understand the sacrifices must be made in order to save many."

"I don't think it's about understanding." He shook his head. "I think some people can't even entertain the idea of sacrifices." He'd never had to. He honestly didn't know what he'd do in the same situation.

"The things we have gone through..." she shook her head. Her people went through so much so often that she felt as though. "All of us should understand when sacrifices must be made. The problem is some think they are above it. They leave it to others to do the things that would tarnish them."

The more he spoke with her, the more he realized what a charmed existence he'd led. It wasn't perfect, his father had blamed him for his mother's death and had alienated him because of it, people thought he was weird for wearing gloves all the time, but all in all, he'd been pretty well-off. They'd struggled financially because his father's alcoholism had meant he'd had a hard time keeping a job, but none of that even began to compare to the hardship Illyana and her people had faced and she'd only just begun to scratch the surface of the things they'd endured.

"Maybe...too many of us take for granted the privilege of leaving it to others."

"Perhaps that is so," she said. Her features softened for a moment and she looked down. "I will take the punishment they have decided for me. Perhaps in time they will come to understand. I would like to be able to go home." That was not a statement about being stuck here. It would be nice to be understood. Accepted. To be able to live with her brother once again without knowing she was seen as a demonic danger. But, these were not thought she wished to share with anyone. At least she could get away with it here with the current situation. It would be all too easy to claim she meant she wished she could leave this place.

He frowned at her response. He didn't know how to comfort her after such a sentiment, or if she even wanted comfort. What she'd done may have been in the best interests of everyone, but she'd still used another person against their will to achieve her goals. It wasn't black and white and he had a feeling he didn't have all the information regardless.

But he could hear the loneliness in her voice, he didn't need psychic abilities to see it was a burden she was shouldering alone. He nodded. "I hope you get to." And he knew she wasn't talking about Aterat, her tone was too personal for that to be the case.

"I...as do I," she admitted with hesitation. She looked thoughtful for a second and then shook her head. "It will cause problems. Many of our newer members do not trust me. Or like that I am there at all. It causes...friction among our different teams." Not that she could particularly blame them after all she had done. Even if she had been completely lacking a soul while doing it.

"And Piotr will not agree with the decision to imprison me." That was a certainty. It would rest on her shoulders to convince him to hold back if he became too unhappy.

Pulse 001

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