lostcarnival | ⇨ THE SUMMERLANDS

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⇨ THE SUMMERLANDS

Who: Everyone!
When: Day 138 - Day 152
Where: The Summerlands
What: The Ringmaster brings the carnival to the Summerlands immediately after being freed from Portland so that everyone can take a fucking nap. Her included.
Warnings: Individually marked! Most likely discussion of torture and trauma in here.

DAYS OF SUMMER↴

You made it! And things are back to normal... more or less. Upon waking, you will be greeted with a clear blue sky and gentle breeze – the carnival has found itself situated between a pair of mountain peaks, with great fields of flowers extending in the distance. In the other direction, you’ll see mountain-top cities and tall waterfalls accenting vast swaths of forest.

Some of you will already know this place. It’s the Summerlands. You game here once to rest in safety nearly a year ago, and now you’ve come to rest once again.

► WAKING UP: Shortly after the carnival arrives, the Ringmaster will send out a somewhat cryptic radio message - but her immediate location won't be clear. Whatever items you had on your person at the time the Severing was broken will still be on your person, including whatever clothing. All of the animals and pets of the carnival will have returned to the grounds as well, though they are currently free from their designated living spaces. Things in the carnival will appeared to have naturally aged a month, as if the carnival was been sitting here empty and waiting while everyone was in Portland. The lawn needs mowing.

► SUMMER CITY: After the Summer Fae become aware of everyone's presence, they will welcome you into their city. There are stairs that lead up the sides of the mountains, but thankfully there are also magical means of getting up there as well. The Summer Fae will be willing to help workers with the injured as needed, offering herbal remedies and healing magic to those that want it. You'll also be invited to join them for dinner, but they will not be particularly offended if they are turned down, for now.

► SUMMER PEOPLE: The fae here will mostly enjoy the company of any carnival members that offer it - it doesn't seem that much happens here besides day after day of peaceful meditation and relaxation. It is not uncommon to see Summer Fae spent days doing exactly the same thing, whether that be enjoying the weather, listening to music, or dancing - the day and night periods may be similar to earth, but when you don't need rest it can all blur together just the same. Some of the fae work on feats of agriculture or craftsmanship, and while there is no particularly need to work in this place, they take pride in the fact that they do.

► NEW ARRIVALS: Though the Ringmaster will not be offering much guidance for the first week or so, eventually the carnival will begin running for a few small performance sessions, off and on, as a thank you to their fae hosts. The carnival will also be open to receiving new arrivals during that period, and so there will likely be some newbies to train and get orientated as well.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

On at least one of the days Rita decides to take out her frustration on the training dummies, someone else is going to beat her to the course.

Lambert still looks like death warmed over, but at least he's got a bit of color to his cheeks now. He's dragged over a small wooden table which currently has an assortment of small, paper-and-twine-wrapped bundles lined up on them. Right now, he's poring over the paper and drumming against it with a pen, lips worrying at an unlit cigarette held between them. When he hears someone approach, he looks up, squinting.

"Hey." It's not much of a greeting, but there isn't really much else to say here, is it. The Nightrider is back to full Carnival glory as Rita remembers him, tail and horns and all, though she certainly looks a little different from how he remembers her. His gaze lingers briefly and curiously on those wings, before snapping back to focus on her.

"You here to practice?"

Edited 2017-08-04 00:04 (UTC)

Rita pauses when he greets her, taking a moment to look him over. She'd gotten so used to the sight of the other Lambert that seeing him with all these changes is almost shocking, even though they met like this a couple times before. Having only met him in a few brief instances before Portland, Rita has to wonder... how much of him is the same person as the one she knew in that world? Does she know the real Lambert at all?

Well... there's no point in standing around and wondering. She shakes off that hesitation and continues walking, veering over to approach Lambert and his table.

"Something like that," she offers vaguely in response to his question. But the bundles attract her attention, so instead of elaborating in any way, she reaches out to examine one. "What's all this stuff?"

Hard to say, right now, how much of Lambert's demeanor his his own and how much is due to the constant prickle of irritation from the pain still lancing his insides. Just how long is this damn recovery going to take...?

He doesn't press her on her evasion -- it's easier to just address her question, which is thankfully pretty easy to answer. Upon examining one, she'll find it's pretty self-explanatory anyway, since she'll be able to see the short fuse leading out of it and a faint smell of lime.

"Bombs," he explains, simply. "Witchers use 'em for hunting monsters, but I can't get all the right ingredients here so I've been improvising. Now I have to see if it actually works."

Rita raises an eyebrow at the realization and subsequent confirmation. "Explosives? Huh..." She turns the bundle over in her hand, sniffing it to try and identify some of the components.

Right, he mentioned witchers before... What did he call them? Magic-mutated monster killers? Rita had been wondering about that... "Didn't expect you to be much of a chemist. What'd you put in these?"

The bombs aren't identical -- to distinguish them, Lambert's marked each one in different colors according to their components. The one Rita's holding right now is banded with red twine.

"The right oil or potion can give you the edge you need in a tight spot," Lambert shrugs, like it's any explanation for a skillset he hasn't previously had to explain or display. "And it varies. Saltpeter's a given, anything else depends on the effect it needs to create."

"Interesting. It's been a while since I got to perform chemistry experiments. You got a lab here at the carnival?" Now that Rita thinks about it... all of her chemistry equipment was destroyed. She'll probably have to build a new laboratory from scratch, along with all the other rebuilding that needs doing. Just another item on her long to-do list for after the world's been saved.

"Can't say I've ever had much use for bombs, though. Don't you have magic in your world?" As a matter of fact, she knows he does. But she doesn't know how accessible it is, or what its uses might be.

"Yeah. Got it set up in the supervisor's grove. If you wanted your own, you could probably build it yourself or ask the Ringmaster for something." Well. If she ever gets de-egged again!

As to the matter of magic, Lambert shrugs. "We've got plenty of magic where I'm from. Not much use if you don't have the ability to handle it."

Magic, books, a lab... the list of things she'd like to request keeps growing. It's nice to know there is a lab on the premises, though. She'd sure like to see it. Lambert pretty much just told her to go get her own, but she could probably push her luck and get him to let her borrow it... Failing that, if it really comes down to it, she might be able to convert the trailer's kitchenette into one... assuming Childermass wouldn't make a fuss about it.

There's a glimmer of interest in her eyes when he mentions the ability to handle magic. "You don't?" she asks, setting the bomb down and picking up a different one to examine.

The first bomb she'd looked at had smelled of sulfur; this one doesn't give off as obvious a scent, but it feels strangely cooler in her hand, and the string tying the whole thing together is a bright teal instead of red.

"No," Lambert confirms, tapping his pen absently against the table. "Witchers can do basic spells, and figure out our way around a ritual, but the potential of someone who's born with it is on a completely different level."

"So it's something you need to be born with, normally?" she asks, looking intently at the bomb in her hand. This one's pretty unusual... "Is that rare?"

Rita's heard of worlds where magic can only be used by those with an innate talent, or some sort of necessary biological feature. Perhaps that's the case here.

"Normally, yeah," he affirms. "Not so rare that every village doesn't have at least one hedge witch or herbalist, but rare enough that schools only take those with real power."

Lambert waves a hand, like that's all got nothing to do with him. "I'm not an expert, though. If the Carnival ever signs on one of the sorceresses, they'd probably be able to explain it better to you."

Herbalists? As far as magic goes, that sounds pretty... dull. Hopefully those sorceresses, if Rita ever gets to meet one, could tell her about magic that more closely aligns with her interests.

"I see... then I'll ask about something you seem to know more about." She sets the bomb down gently, looking directly up at Lambert. "You only gave a brief answer before, but... what exactly are witchers?" It's been hard to contain her curiosity, ever since the first time he mentioned it.

It's harder for Lambert to scrape up the memory of a conversation that happened what feels like a lifetime ago, but then again, it's a part of his existence he more or less takes for granted. If she's heard the word before, though, he must have mentioned it at some point, though he doesn't exactly recall what he might have said then...

Leaning a hip against the table, Lambert shrugs. "A witcher's what I am." It's strange, as usual, explaining the concept to someone who has completely no context for what that is. Even the people who had all the wrong ideas about witchers at least had those stories to go off of...

"To put it simply, we're monster slayers for hire. You take a boy, put him through physical training and feed him some potions for a few years, run him through some trials. If he's lucky enough to survive all that, you've got yourself a witcher."

A boy...? Rita's eyes narrow at that. The one time Lambert mentioned witchers before, he'd suggested that the process of making them wasn't a pleasant one. "How young a boy are we talking about?"

A process that some won't even survive... it seems cruel, but not just that... even from a pragmatic point of view, it seems unnecessary. "And why go to that trouble? Aren't there soldiers and mages who can handle the monsters?" He mentioned sorceresses. Surely they've got some half-decent combat magic.

How young ... Lambert has to pause and think about that. Nobody really know how old they were, when he'd been in training, but he can make a guess.

"From nine to twelve years old, or around that." He says that in a matter-of-fact way. "And mages were the ones who came up with the idea of witchers in the first place." His expression grows wry. "Why risk the lives of several men to kill a monster when one will do?"

Nine to twelve... Even younger than the runt Rita used to travel with. It doesn't sound like Lambert's interested in pity, though. She just listens, her lips pulled into a tight line as she considers the implications of what he's saying.

"My world has a pretty serious monster problem, too," she says after a moment. "Our solution was to set up magic barriers around every town and city to repel them." It's not a perfect solution. In fact, it turned out to cause more problems than Rita could have imagined. But all things considered, it beats poisoning kids, so there's that.

That's the first time Lambert's really heard another Carnival member discuss having monsters in their world, so his interest's immediately piqued. Rita's right about one thing, though -- he isn't interested in pity. For better or worse, he's a witcher, and no platitudes are going to change that

"What kind of monsters? Did it work?"

What kind of monsters? "I don't know... lots of kinds. Some are just oversized animals or insects, but there's moving plants, mermen, golems... " She shrugs. Monsters make up a large portion of the fauna of her world.

"Generally speaking, it works. The barriers repel monsters while allowing humans to pass through, and any place with a working barrier is safe from them. But..." Her expression darkens slightly. "There were other issues. The blastia powering the barriers create an imbalance in the environment. It's not sustainable... and we're already out of time."

"Like the Severing drew power from the Earth Spirit?" Lambert guesses. It's probably not the perfect analogy, but it's the best one he has at the moment, with Portland so fresh in their memories. He's pretty sure he explained that to Rita at some point... probably?

"That must mean magic is pretty common in your world, if every city could afford to have it. But that must have sped up the damage, too. When were they put up?"

It's... a pretty accurate analogy, actually. Rita nods.

"It's an ancient technology, developed about a thousand years ago, and lost for some centuries in between. We'd been excavating blastia, studying them, and putting them to use. Turns out they were abandoned for a reason." She frowns at that, but continues in a matter-of-fact tone. "Since we can't make new cores easily, they're always in limited supply. Governing bodies decide where to install barrier blastia or aque blastia - things necessary for infrastructure. Smaller blastia can be bought or sold, or are issued to people in certain positions."

Her hand goes to her neck, fingers fondly tracing the red jewel on her choker. "For example... mages and knights usually carry a bodhi blastia, like this one."

Edited (checked my magic bullshit facts) 2017-08-09 12:46 (UTC)

See, that sounds more like it. When you've got something that useful, there's always going to be some dick deciding who should get it or not. Even if they'd had something like it where Lambert comes from, the peasants would still be getting the shit end of the stick. In fact, it wouldn't surprise him to learn the sorceresses had something similar to that already in place and he didn't just know about it.

"We've got something like that ... sort of." Lambert frowns. Elven ruins are everywhere, almost under every city, and they always seem to be full of curses or magical artifacts that were sealed away for a reason. At any rate, it's probably better to take a chance to learn more about Rita's world and magic than talk about his own (again), so he gestures for her to go on.

"How does it work?"

Rita's eyes light up at the question. The workings of blastia is her favorite topic, both to read and talk about. But she'll have to try and keep things simple enough for a layman to understand... and someone alien to her world, at that.

"There's a substance in the atmosphere that we call aer. Blastia are devices that draw in that aer, use a formula to convert it into magical energy, and then produce an effect based on the type of blastia. A bodhi blastia produces magic to enhance a person's combat abilities, add magical effects to attacks... and, of course, it's used for casting spells. Like so..."

She steps away from the table. While Rita's go-to spell is usually a fireball, it doesn't seem wise to do that next to a bunch of bombs. She opts for water magic instead. Rita holds up a hand, and a magic circle traced in blue light appears below her feet. The red core of her blastia, too, begins to glow. "The converted aer becomes magic energy, and by further applying a magic formula and using a chant to guide it, I complete a spell." And, because it would be boring to only half-cast a spell, she goes on to use one such chant. "O caprice of innocent waters... Champagne!"

The light gathered around her vanishes in an instant. She points to one of the training dummies; below it, a small rippling pool forms, gushes water upward, and vanishes. The dummy merely wobbles in response.

It's not much of a flashy display, for such a lengthy explanation, but Lambert listens intently anyway. This is more the kind of magic he can get on board with -- something with a direct application to combat, though the chanting puts him more in mind of what the sorceresses in his own world can do than anything else.

"So without that thing around your neck, you can't cast magic?" He quizzes, then waves a hand before Rita can inevitably correct him like the huge nerd she is. "Theoretically, I mean. I'm assuming not everyone can just strap on one of those and burn a house down either. How do people learn to use them?"

Rita nods. There are some exceptions to the rule... but for now she'll limit the explanation to standard blastia magic. "That's right. To use a bodhi blastia, one needs an intimate understanding of blastia formulas, including the precise chemical and mathematical processes involved in magic. That's the only way to properly control the flow and conversion of the aer."

She offers a shrug. "Basically, if you can't do math, you can't do magic."

The face Lambert makes says a lot about what he thinks of that. No thanks. Alchemy formulas are enough for him to deal with, let alone trying to do calculations and cast at the same time. But there is something of interest to him...

"You said knights use these too?"

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