Session 72 - Half-Life

Previously, Across the Horizon…
The Edge of the World is in the Starfall’s wake, but the damage done may take time to heal.
Our brave adventurers have spent the last few days recovering, physically, mentally, and emotionally, though a few appear to have escaped mostly unscathed. Three days after the escape finds the officers taking lunch together, in a welcome reprieve from the captain having to listen to the crew's concerns about gil (”we’d like more of it”), actors (”we’d like fewer of them”) and the matter of the Starfall’s spheres (”just give us ten minutes with the hammers, c’mon”).
Before Linnet can reveal what magic has been worked in the kitchen this time, though, there comes an interruption at the table’s edge…
**
The ukulele pauses just long enough for its wielder ('player' seems too kind a label) to turn and address the table. "Oh, right," Keke says, resting back on their tail. "I forgot to tell you, Yves. Your cabin is calling for you."
Yves blinks. Then blinks again. "...the cabin, itself, or someone in the cabin? Because while I have some interesting theories about the nature of this ship, none of them involved communication or sentience from, well, individual rooms. As it were."
"That's new," Isa says, without an inch of surprise in her voice.
"I don't know," Keke replies. "We've been told not to go into the officers' cabins without their permission." Isa gets a sidelong glance, one based entirely on the power of whispered rumors.
"And it would probably be a sphere first, if a specific subset of the ship were to proclaim an identity and communicate it," Yves continues, mostly to himself. "Or the engine room, but that's another matter entirely. I think. Is 'individual' maybe the wrong word, when talking about an organism so interconnected as a ship?"
Their fingers draw ever nearer to the ukulele's strings, the silence becoming too much to bear. The 'silence' referring to any amount of time going by without musical accompaniment, that is.
"And you're certain it's not Principia? --well, never mind, I should go see what I'm needed for." Yves pushes back from the table, an ear twitching with thought. "I should be back by the main course."
"Say hello for us," Isa offers with sudden cheer.
"If it's someone who eats meals, bring them in; if not and you want backup, holler." Linnet passes a couple of salads (one of beans, one panzanella) and begins carving the meat.
Yves gives the meat a wistful glance, but nods as he sets out to see who needs his help. A stagehand accidentally broke through a storage room from the other side? Principia has a question? All the possibilities that spring to mind do justify delaying dinner for a few minutes.
"To science?" Bast wryly offers over a bowl of salad as Yves heads off.
When Yves reaches his door, there is no shouting from inside, nor the knocking of any missing stagehands desperate for rescue. Chmurka does not fall out of the ceiling. Principia does not need anything, for Yves already saw to all of their needs before, of course. Instead, there is the simple silence of all being well.
Then gold script forms across Yves's door, reading Bring the viera to me, and yes, that would be the cabin calling, that makes sense.
"...oh!" Yves has another one of those blinks. "I would really consider that 'writing' rather than 'calling', but we haven't been hiring based on word choice, have we." He offers the script a little wave before opening the door.
You arrive, the script reads, though it does not add finally after, it is merely implied. There is a faint light shining from the Diabolos mask.
Yves hurries over to the Diabolos zone in the room. About half of his cabin is Yves space: bed, desk, a bookshelf, a modest sort of mess. The other half has been divided roughly among masks with his best guess at what sort of environment masks (or, in the most recent case, books) might enjoy most. For lack of a better idea, Diabolos was given a dark corner and a nice print of bats hung on the wall. "Diabolos," he says, genuinely pleased. "Would you like to come to dinner? I expect you don't eat in the current form, but all the same."
No.
A beat passes, one where someone could potentially be wondering if it would be best to say but thank you. No one says that. Or writes it.
"Oh, well. I suppose not." Yves sits down on the floor of the cabin to put himself nearer to face-to-approximate-face with the mask. "So, what's on your, uh, mind? I'm here now."
You fulfilled the terms of our Pact. Cerberus is safe. You also rescued another, Fenrir, from bondage and mockery.
"I do try," Yves says. "I mean--we tried. We did! Please do give credit to everyone involved in these events, not just me. I couldn't do it without them. But yes. I wish I had a better way of keeping you and your, uh, associates safe than as masks, but for now it seems better than some of the alternatives. How are you doing? Did you need anything else?"
You would aid more of us, Diabolos writes across the corner of darkness. It is very patient writing. It does not overlap the print of the bats.
"I want to," Yves says, all serious as he has been since the dinner invitation was turned down. "I'm not always sure how to best help you and your kind. I hate having to fight any of you, and sometimes that seems like the only route to resolving matters and keeping some of you safe. And when those fights get particularly bad, it makes my friends uneasy. But I would aid more of you, as best I could, given the chance. ..and, uh, given no sudden dramatic revelation that doing so would destroy the world or the like," Yves adds hastily, given some recent events and discussions.
You need to be able to speak to the Guardian Forces, reads the text. You have proven yourself to be of like mind and guileless heart. I can aid you.
"I usually wouldn't take guileless as a compliment, but I think in this case it is," Yves says. "I would very much like to be able to speak with them better. What do I need to do, so that you can help me learn how?"
Before you, there was a Speaker. A unique individual, able to communicate with all. One who bridged the gap between Person and Esper. Terrestrial and Celestial. They are dead. You can be Speaker now. Find their mask. "Find the mask of the Speaker," Yves says slowly. "I will do my best. Where, or how, should I begin searching for it?"
The land of plenty. Far from here. South. Once the ageless. Find what remains.
Yves digs a notebook out of his satchel, and carefully records this. "I will. As soon as I'm able to turn this ship that direction. I'll have to speak with the others, but of course, I couldn't do any of this alone. It was like when my parents unionized; divided we're crushed, united we stand. And find masks, in this case."
Go, the wall writes, and then falls silent, no further chapters to share.
"It was good talking--and reading--with you again," Yves says earnestly, and stands up to take this round of news back to the dining room.
Back in the dining room...
Linnet passes Yves a covered plate and checks him over quickly for any signs of unusual activity. "Doesn't look like there was a fight, so that's good. What happened?"
The ukulele is very faint, down the hall, as Owen carried the table with the tonberry out of here to allow them to have a better stage, at the officers' request. He's now enjoying a plate of brownies and listening to Celeste talk about her three month stint as a sous chef.
"Oh, it was great news," Yves says, accepting the plate after he's dropped back into his seat. "Diabolos has a new request, and this one will help us too! Also, some very nice compliments about helping out Cerberus and Fenris, to pass on to everyone else. The instructions are a little vague, but I'm sure we'll be able to figure it out, with a professional mapper on board and so forth."
"...that's...probably great? Is there another friend we need to go free? Does it have something to do with Asura?" Linnet asks.
"Oh, this is different," Yves says brightly, uncovering his plate. "We're looking for the mask of the Speaker, who was once the bridge between worlds--well, between types of people. 'Person and Esper, Terrestrial and Celestial,' as Diabolos said. Then I'll be able to learn how to speak with Guardian Forces. Oh, bean salad, excellent. Do we have any pressing business we need to deal with before pursuing that?"
"...finish your bean salad, at least. Do you have anything by way of directions?" Linnet asks.
"You mean actually deal with them directly, instead of relying on second- and third-hand reports about who they are and what they want?" Isa asks.
"Sounds pretty useful. This Speaker's...mask, you said?" Bast asks.
"Yes! ...and yes!" Yves is full of good cheer, though given the questions, he has not yet managed to become full of dinner. "I wrote down the directions. Here." He slides the open notebook to the center of the table so that everyone can read the details he recorded about the conversation, and especially the directions within. "The previous Speaker died, apparently. Which, if they were anything like me, stands to reason, given how long ago the job was likely held. Wouldn't it be amazing to leave a mask at the end of your lifespan, even if you lived a normal amount of time for your kind? Like... lanterns for everyone, I suppose. I wonder if there's a connection of any sort there."
"'The land of plenty, south, far from here'...sounds straight out of a folktale to me, but unfortunately I don't have anything more useful to go on. Bast, Isa, any ideas?"
Isa thinks. "What's south of Caerwyn?" she wonders.
Bast's shrug dislodges some of the salad on his fork, and the cleanup temporarily takes him out of the conversation.
Linnet stares into her bowl of bean salad with the intensity of a crystal ball reader. "Straight out of a folktale..."
Yves shrugs vaguely. "I mean, more Caerwyn, I suppose? You hear about odd estates there, sometimes. Even I've heard of a few. I suppose we would have to head that direction to find out."
"Many moons ago, in a far off place / in a land of plenty lived a maid of grace... Right! Nobody's quite sure where Goldstone Tower was, but everybody sort of assumes it's in Caerwyn because all the heroic stuff starts there. Knew the song was in my head somewhere. Thanks, Yves!" (The song goes on to chronicle the lonely life of a maiden imprisoned in Goldstone Tower and the tragic and gruesome deaths of the many adventurers who sought to free her. The maiden had grown to like her solitude and thus enchanted the local wildlife to keep her rescuers away, and when they became annoyingly persistent, it escalated.)
"You're welcome?" Yves is trying to get through salad and meat in time to be ready for dessert by the time everyone else is, now that he has the time.
"I mean, I'm not sure we should go haring off on an adventure on the basis of a half-remembered ballad, but if the Captain could stand to get out of Mechon for a bit..."
"It's the best lead we have, and of course we want to find that mask," Yves says, with a hopeful glance toward Bast. And then towards Isa, just in case she has something quelling to say about pursuing fairytales.
Isa shrugs. "I like Caerwyn," she says simply.
"I heard there might be some work with that clock of theirs, but I don't think we've got the tools for it yet. Let's go see Caerwyn."
"I'll have to let Diabolos know we're heading there," Yves says. "...right after dessert."
The Starfall takes to the skies.
After dessert.
During the journey, maps are broken out, and Celeste shoos half the crew out of her immediate vicinity, using Orrey and Isa to keep her maps in order as she attempts to translate Linnet's songs and Yves's water-cooler conversations into an actual destination.
(About half the gruesome deaths are edited out of the songs.)
When stanzas and meeting minutes fail to narrow down the destination station, Caerwyn crew members are polled, with Rahel being brought in to recite the rest of the song and the stories behind it. Rahel's mood noticeably darkens when Caerwyn is mentioned, but her memory and experience there shrinks the circle further, until there is only one station that meets all of the requirements; Trepe Station, far, far to the south of the heart of Caerwyn.
"We all heard about the Mosvanni family growing up," Rahel said as Celeste conveyed the directions to Marina an hour ago. "The family who never died." Without waiting for an actual dismissal, the lead actor of the Theatre of the Untranslatable excused herself.
And now, in the outer reaches of Caerwyn, our brave adventurers fly over the Trepe Station, ready to land and find this mysterious mask...
Near the prow, Bast surveys the land below for signs of any mythical towers - or at least habitation and a good place to land.
Yves is practically vibrating with excitement, scientific and otherwise; he's put on his best Adventuring Coat--the one with the dramatically stitched up rips from when he got stabbed viciously in the back--and his satchel is clutched to his side. He waits on the deck, staring out at the scenery.
Trepe Station is devoid of conversation, festivals, or even inhabitants. The timetable on the station's door indicates that trains only arrive here once a week. There are three estates here; Mosvanni, Genesius, and Forster. Of the three, the only one that looks well kept up, at least at the entrance, is Forster. Mosvanni's gate looks as though it has not been opened in years; vines have grown up around the hinges of the wrought-iron doors, and the stone pillars are weathered and dirty.
"...so, do we go knock on the door that looks like it might have people behind it, or do we try not to let them know we're here?" Linnet shoulders her day pack and double-checks for spare pencils.
"I suppose it depends on whether the mask is hidden in an abandoned estate, or on the shelf in someone's library," Yves says. "Because if it's the latter, we should probably be..." He considers the size of the ship, and the traffic in the area, or lack thereof. "....discreet?"
"If I were a mask lost for countless ages, I am pretty sure I know which time-worn manor I'd be hiding in," Isa points out.
"And it's more fun to burglarize a place where no one is currently living!" Yves says brightly. "...I'm told. I wouldn't know. Uh. Anyway."
"Let's go check on some immortal maidens." Bast picks up his toolbox and heads for the Mosvanni gates.
The Mosvanni Estate has seen better days. The outbuildings are all but destroyed by the ravages of time, overgrown and decayed. The central building is in the best shape, perhaps due to its size over anything else, but vines climb the walls, windows have been broken for an age, and the fountains are full of fetid standing water. The doors remain shut. No lights shine from within.
Yves walks right up to the front doors, and hesitates. "...okay, so if we're breaking in, we probably shouldn't knock? But what if the mask is listening? I'd like to be polite."
Isa steps to the side of the door, trying to peek in windows. "What'd you do if there was an answer?"
"...ask... nicely?" Yves clutches his satchel a little closer.
"And that is why you're leading the way here, Yves. We'll be right behind you if it goes south, but you've gotten on excellently with everything you've asked nicely so far," Linnet says.
The interior of the Mosvanni Estate is an absolute disaster, full of blown leaves, water damage, moldy couches, and ruined tapestries. Interestingly, Bast's practiced eye notices, there are aspects of it that are pristine. A hallway past this entertaining room looks very clean, and a dark red wood bureau is in perfect condition.
"So much for the magic of untouched ages. Yech." Linnet unties her sash and wraps it around her nose and mouth as a filter.
"That's weird." Bast mutters quietly as he steps away from the window. "It's like someone gave up on the front hall about a lifetime ago, but what's behind it looks clean?"
"...lonely mask doing housekeeping?" Even Yves doesn't look like he quite believes that one. "A hermit who gets meal deliveries through a back door?" He lifts a hand tentatively toward the front door. "I mean, if someone is here, we should probably knock. Or be sneakier. Or split up to do both."
"What's our story if someone answers?" Bast asks.
"I'm not sure getting separated is the best path, Yves," Isa says.
"Let's just knock and figure that out as we go, Bast," Linnet says.
"Right, so we knock, and if no one answers, then it's burglary," Yves says, a bit relieved now that he's found an ethical approach to this situation. He follows this with a polite rap on the door, the good old Comb And A Nailtrim rhythm.
There is silence.
Then, the door ponderously swings open.
"Oh! Well, see, there we go," says Yves, stepping cheerfully into the mold house. "It's polite and welcoming and... uh... well that part further in looks quite nice?"
Yves offers a polite little wave towards his best guess of the speaker's direction. "Hello! We're, uh, we've come looking for a friend of a friend, our information is a little imprecise, and were hoping you might know where to find them. Or possibly that they were here themselves. I'm Yves, it's nice to... meet you?"
There is a pause. "Who are you looking for? Sola carinobe, sue valo?"
"We're looking for the Speaker," Yves says, one ear popping upright for an instant. "Our friend said they were a unique individual, but... I think that might have been a long time ago, and we might just be looking for where they used to be."
"Speaker."
"Yes! Do you know them? Or where they used to be? Or... what's left of them?" Yves hesitates a long moment, remembering a particularly unfortunate encounter that also involved not saying or doing the right thing when it came to the remains of the long dead. "...is it you? I thought they might be... dead."
"A vuelye avo. Ages ago. Nuvo kirinje acost doen. Hated by his mother. Avro mahasta thalen sovus." From atop the pristine bureau, something rattles itself loose and into the air.
"Ah. Oh. Uh." Yves is at a loss for words. "I'm... sorry? That sounds difficult. Perhaps for both of them."
A curved eyepiece, blackened by fire and the passage of time.
Half a mask.
Yves takes another step forward, toward the half mask. "Are you...?"
"Half-human. Akas-esper. Half of me is dead. Akas sue alhrandra covre."
Isa says, only, "Huh."
"...I'm sorry," Yves says, quite differently than before. "Can I help? Is there anything we can do for you?"
The mask shudders, the memory of a humanoid shape wearing it appearing in the flash of light from outside. "Tue soldra. Just like I did the rest."
End session 72.