15[04:32] That was a nearly-unqualified success! [04:32] 14Not for Dryas it wasn't. [04:32] 14Poor babe. [04:32] 14But in terms of learning shit? Yep. 15[04:34] A perhaps-disproportionate amount of qualification is borne by Piu's dear hearth-sister. But aside from that, things are looking up, as much as they can be in the midst of a scorched-earth mutual siege between the bleeding edge of empire and an insane cult that's arguably engaging in child sacrifice. 15[04:35] You've got goals, you've got leads, you've maybe got help coming. And Rinca's good as new! [04:36] 14Piu wants to really interrogate the assumptions behind that last part. Mainly, she wants to know whether or not one of these kids exalting into a Solar -- she's alone in her mind, she doesn't have to call them 'Golden Anathema' -- actually eradicates the kid. Is it possession, or is it inflection? If it's inflection, how deep does it go? Would be nice to have one to talk to but the [04:36] 14Solars she's run into have been incredibly surly or stupid. [04:36] 14Not a criticism really. They've been fun. But it is what it is. [04:37] 14So where's Rinca hanging out? And does he just immediately want to retreat to bed for like four hours? 15[04:37] Maybe this one will like to talk. If they come. [04:37] 14Because Piu's really fine with that. 15[04:40] Well he's still recovering, and they had the whole couple days at sea to convalesce. So he's only demanding two hours. 15[04:40] That said: definitely good as new. [04:40] 14Oh hell yeah. [04:42] 14When they're done-- well, they'll go again. And again after that. And after that. And then a dip in a moonpool if the P&T has one, or just over the side if it doesn't, and then probably once more. But when they're fully exhausted and reclining on furs and she's basically still got the towel artfully draped to try to get him horny again and he's probably just buck naked with his [04:42] 14dick swangin: "So did I ever tell you why they're marching all those kids around blindfolded?" 15[04:45] Rinca's just lounging, half drowsy, fully nude. Lidded eyes face the ceiling. "No. I'd remember, cause whatever it is it's gotta be fuckin weird or fuckin stupid." [04:46] "It's both." [04:46] "They want to make a Solar." [04:46] "They've got one in mind." [04:46] "He's blind." 15[04:47] Rinca: "Can you do that?" [04:48] "They think so. I'm agnostic. Frankly, from what I've heard, trying to stop them is just as likely to set things off as letting it go through." [04:48] "Like no one actually knows why that shit happens. We start running around killing their mentors..." [04:48] "Anyway." [04:49] "I just wanted to ask about the hypothetical...and this might be a little bit personal, but we've gotten a little bit personal..." [04:49] "What's going to happen to that kid if they do get the Solar call-up?" [04:49] "Is it anything like what happened to you?" 15[04:56] Rinca pushes to a reluctant sitting position, propping himself against the bulkhead-slash-headboard. "I don't know. I've only met a couple, and I've never seen one get called up. For us - for me - it's not like you become a different person. It's like..." He frowns. This is more reflective than he usually gets. More than he's ever gotten, really. There's a silence that lingers. [04:56] 14She gives him the space. 15[05:00] With dissatisfaction: "I don't know what it's like. I remember everything. How I came up. The trouble I got in. The trouble I didn't get in that I shoulda. I was fighting in a pit in Whitewall when it happened. Long long way from here." 15[05:01] "This little girl asks me for an autograph. I thought she was making fun of me. I'd just lost, and it wasn't close. Or good. I looked like shit, before during and especially after." 15[05:01] "So I thought she was being shitty. Like, can this guy even sign his name?" [05:01] "Mmm." 15[05:03] "But even that's brassy, right? Little kid walks up to a guy bleeding from the hairline down, like he's about to drop, for an autograph. So I'm like, fuck it, kid, you got me. I signed my name." 15[05:04] "It wasn't a magic contract or anything, it was just the event card." [05:04] "She didn't call you a corn cob ass or anything." 15[05:05] "Nope. She thanked me, looked at the name I signed, thanked me again by name, and then I didn't see her again." [05:05] "Well. I will reveal to you now that she wasn't me, so this isn't gonna get incredibly weird." 15[05:06] Rinca finds this really funny for some reason. It takes him a couple minutes to recover. [05:06] 14...She's really grown fond of him. [05:06] 14Like, beyond what 'fond' describes. [05:06] 14Shelve that for now. 15[05:09] When he does: "So later that night. I cleaned up, I ate, I was heading home. I see some guys roughing up a guy, young guy. That happens every night in Whitewall, so I figure it's not my problem and I keep going. But they're really going to town on this kid. Like above and beyond muggers or killers or even what's personal." [05:09] 14She's done this bit before too, even when the guy wasn't hot. A hot guy might've been watching, after all. 15[05:10] "And like... I hurt people professionally. I don't think anyone should enjoy their job that much when it's nice. So I keep looking back. It was a long street, with an open yard, and the moon was full. So I could see it walking for a while. And I keep looking back. And eventually one of the guys going to town on this kid catches me looking. He thinks I'm eyefucking them." [05:11] 14Piu: "That'll happen." [05:11] "They call that shit 'riding the Dragon' sometimes." [05:12] "Arrogance into hubris." 15[05:12] "Yeah." 15[05:14] "They stop wailing on the kid to look at me. Kid drops to the stones. I'm far enough away that I could run. And I was gonna. I swear I was gonna. But in the moonlight I can see the kid huddle into his coat, and I can see a scroll stuck in the pocket. It ripped up in the beating so it was sort of flapping in like a flag half-hanging out of his coat." [05:14] "Ah shit." 15[05:14] "It was the event card. It had my signature on it. It had my blood and his." [05:14] "That's why, all the laughing. Right." 15[05:15] "And I thought... this sounds stupid now, but for the sake of the story, complete honesty, I thought, what am I, exactly?" 15[05:15] "What am I doing here?" 15[05:15] "Am I a man or a mouse?" 15[05:15] "And that was it." 15[05:15] "Kid starts laughing. The other guys stop." [05:16] "Damn." 15[05:16] "But I didn't become someone else. That's just... who I was always supposed to be." 15[05:17] "But I don't know from solars. Those guys are on a whole other level of power and crazy." 15[05:17] "Maybe you can just beat it out of someone. Or into them." [05:18] 14Piu: "That's always what I guessed. Like, none of those guys seemed like they were body snatchers. Because you can do that with sorcery, right. Like a bunch of insanely evil sorcerers have indeed descended from on high and taken control of bodies." 15[05:18] Rinca: "Yeah. Like you met Bruiser, right? Bruiser Khang's down in Abalone." [05:18] "But I've met...four? Solars now. Maybe five. They all just seem like they're really in their feelings and doing drama all the time." [05:18] "Yeah. First time I met him he ringed me out." 15[05:18] "I love the man but he is not a schemer." [05:19] "Second time I met him, my commanding officer was riding his dick." 15[05:19] Rinca makes a face. "That's why I never worked Abalone. Dogshit loss condition." 15[05:19] "The first one, I mean. Your CO's hot." [05:20] "Oh, no shit. We can probably figure something out there. But yeah, ring outs suck, unless a Solar broke your arm on the first blow." [05:20] "They just don't seem like they've lost themselves, though." [05:20] "The last time this guy was around it was out in Nexus." [05:21] "I dunno anything about that." [05:21] "But apparently it's still standing." 15[05:22] Rinca: "Me neither. I know guys who might. But I've never been out there and I don't really follow, uh, events. So whatever it is passed me by." 15[05:22] "What do they want the solar for?" [05:23] 14Piu: "They want a hero to oppose Skullstone, rekindle the Deliberative, if that's what it was called, and uh, do something about the sun." [05:23] "The cult here thinks the sun isn't the Unconquered Sun." 15[05:24] Rinca: "What?" [05:24] "Yep." 15[05:24] "Fuck else would it be?" [05:24] "Fucked up thing?" [05:24] "They might be right." 15[05:24] "What?" [05:24] "You know Dryas? Cute hardass I take orders from, has a bow." 15[05:24] "Yeah, big money." [05:25] "She's got this amulet that is actually an artifact of dread religious astrology. It can get people's songs out of them. Real Heavenly fate shit." [05:25] "Ligier, the Green Sun of Hell, he has a song." [05:25] "That thing going across the sky, though?" [05:25] "Weird bullshit." 15[05:26] Rinca: "That's fucked." [05:26] "So we're considering that maybe this cult has the right diagnosis but the wrong treatment." 15[05:26] Rinca: "So what, you gotta bust the kids out?" [05:26] "Because I'm pretty sure that creepy blind fuck Gu Len is gonna start blinding kids himself if he doesn't get his Solar come the Eclipse." [05:26] "If we have to." [05:27] "But again, like. An actual monumental hinge point is approaching. If we just kill 'em all now, maybe we trigger an exaltation anyway. And it's in opposition to us, not the weird culto-guys." [05:27] "Ohhhh. Oh shit. Okay." [05:27] "Something else." [05:27] "How, uh." [05:28] "How much do you want to kill everyone from Heaven?" 15[05:29] Rinca makes a 'oh, this bullshit' kind of face. "Not half as much as they want to kill me." [05:30] "I fully understand, babe. Daizo's just got a different set of friends than the rest of us do, and one of them is this really nice and skilled old lady who...just happens to have some numbers in front of her name." 15[05:31] "There's some ancient grudge between us and the star-crossed. I don't really understand the specifics except that I know it's on sight for them and it's on sight for us, but we never know who's watching who." 15[05:31] "Ah, shit." [05:31] "You know what my position is on this, which is that she couldn't get you out of me no matter how hard she tried. But I don't think she will." 15[05:32] "What's her number?" [05:33] 14Piu: "49." [05:33] "She was..." [05:33] "Before I met you, one of my lovers was a...Deathknight? Whatever they're called. His name was Ted." 15[05:34] "That's not a very deathknight name." [05:34] "His actual name was Idle Witness Wasted the Keenest Eye. I saw him murdered in front of me by one of those Blessed Isle fuckers." [05:34] "As he died he gave me this." [05:35] 14She raises her arm and lights the rune. 15[05:35] Rinca grunts. [05:35] "It means I will die by violence, and whoever kills me will get it." [05:35] "She was Ted's mother." 15[05:35] "Shit." 15[05:36] "...there is some good news. 49's not one of the bad numbers." [05:36] "If you'd like to talk to her I can set that up. But my default main concern would be getting you to a safe place far away from wherever she treads." 15[05:37] "One of the things they made sure I knew was that some numbers are way worse than others. Anything between 20 and 40. Anything above 60. And the worst number to see is 86. Those are the dangerous ones." [05:37] 14Piu: "Yeah, the one that killed Ted was a 66." [05:37] "I let him go once, for reasons that made sense at the time." [05:38] "Next time I see him, well." 15[05:38] "They're good at making it seem like killing them is more trouble than it's worth." [05:38] "No use threatening the air." [05:38] "They are." [05:38] 14Piu stands, shedding the towel. [05:40] "Let's investigate this railing..."