[A Time Apart] (Current IC) What once was

"Perhaps we can blame yozi cultists? I mean, they're bound to do horrible, horrible things to their victims."


Pause.


"Horrible, HORRIBLE things."


The detached, sensible part of her is disturbed by how much being in this world of darkness disturbs her.


"Maybe we could bluff being dragonblooded? I mean, I have a partly jade artifact and I know Air Dragon Style. I can probably fake it well enough unless they encounter them a lot..."
 
“We might not have to bluff being anything,” says Grant. “These people had never even heard of Solar Exalted until the Bull of the North, three hundred years from now.” She makes a face. “Time travel tenses. Hate ’em. Anyway, they’ve heard of the Lunars, but they don’t have any beef with them. I’m not suggesting we loudly go around shouting about being Chosen of the Sun, but we might not need to take any special precautions.


“We do need to come up with a plausible story, and fast, for Barbara’s sake. It doesn’t have to be very long. We’re from the Riverlands, or the North, passing through, and we found her hurt.”
 
"Right right." Dylan says, annoyed with the situation. "What about this? We're travelers from the Riverlands on our way to Greybark; which if I'm remembering the map correctly, should be west of here. We were attacked by an anathema not too long ago, and though we all got away, our friend was heavily injured. When the guards say that this isn't Greybark, we 'realize' that we must have gotten lost while fleeing."
 
Grant rubs her forehead. “Devin,” she says patiently, “did you hear what I just said? These aren’t Realm people or Lookshy people. They don’t follow the Immaculate Philosophy. They might not even know what ‘anathema’ means. And if they do, they’ll think we’re Immaculate-followers, which probably won’t incline them favorably towards us!


“Look,” she says, glancing around at the others, and making her voice sound as authoritative and captain-like as she can, “we’re from the Riverlands -- somewhere small and obscure in the Hundred Kingdoms. We’re heading North. And we found her, injured, not far from here.


“Let’s do this, people.”
 
"Hrm, I suppose, but it isn't really much of a sexy story. Alright, so.. maybe if I just do this..." A bit of essence runs over her skin and when it is done the silvery tattoos look brown and ordinary, if eccentric and alluring. Again and the uncertain fluidity of her bracers is cunningly wrought silver with a polished stone inset.


Looking to the others briefly, Bria starts back towards the road and the gate.

4m treasure as trash misdirection


Personal 5/15
 
Growing impatient and starting to feel a little worn out from carrying an old women for half a mile, he decided to put an end to the debate and walked right up to the guardsmen. "Our cousin was hurt, we need lodgings, where is the doctor?"
 
"By the dragons, is she even still alive?" One of the guards asks, getting a good look at the severly wounded Barbara. He then notices her labored breathing, having been carried with horrible wounds. He points to one of the other men. "Escort the man to Rose, Private."


The man nods, his own eyes wide at the wounds.


As the private goes to escort Jake off, the first guard holds up a hand. "Rose Blossom is a very good healer, she'll be able to help your cousin. And though I hate to slow you, but I need someone to log you all into town. We've had some trouble with raiders recently, so we're trying to keep track of people in town."
 
"Sir, I don't know what happened with him and his cousin, but I don't think we should record them. I've travelled these past.. uh.. roads with them and whatever could do something like that to a person... Well, I doubt it would be a good idea to leave a record. Safer for everyone you know?"
 
The guard puts a hand on the sword on his belt, and the other four follow suite. "If that's the case, I'll send a second man to go collect them back up, and you can leave town. If you're not going to register everyone, then I'll assume you're with the raiders and you can leave."
 
Grant manages to recover from her double facepalm of dismay. “Of course we’re going to register everyone,” she says, giving Bria a death glare. “Please excuse my friends, good sir -- we’re new in these parts, and we’re not familiar with all the rules. Perhaps you could explain them to us, so we don’t make any more mistakes?”
 
The captain looks at Grant with suspucion, and then at the others in the group, noting the giant warhammer that one carries, and the varied other gear that denotes Exalted.


Finally he motions to one of his other men and they step inside the gates, returning a moment later with a rather large book. The man flips it open and offers to to Grant.


"Names please."


The first man, obviously the captain or sergant of the group shakes his head. "I'm not going to ask where you're actually from, since I'd hoped that I wouldn't have to fight godbloods or the Dragonbloods. But if you're truly that much babes out of the water, I'm going to guess you're runaways. Don't cause any havoc and if you actually know how to use your gear, maybe help out of we're raided while your here. And pay Rose, she's not working for free or on retainer, like you're probably used to."
 
“We don’t plan to cause any havoc, and we’d be more than happy to help you,” says Grant firmly, accepting the book. “And as for Rose…we’ll make sure she’s compensated for her trouble.” Though I hope she accepts rabbits or something in payment.


She hesitates for a moment before signing. Her character is called simply ‘The Sentinel of Liberty’, which she now thinks was a rather stupid choice. With a mental sigh and shrug, she signs her own name and passes the book to Emily with a I’m-not-going-to-tolerate-any-more-crap look.
 
Jake:


You are quickly led through the town past citizens who almost recoil at the visible damage done to Barbara. The guard seems to know his way though, and within a few minutes you are fairly deep into the town, standing before a fairly large building. Hanging from a window is a sign of health, and the guard bangs on the door.


"Rose, Rose Blossom. Are you home?"


The door is openend a moment later and a woman with pale green hair and bright green eyes that faintly have their own glow steps out and is about to speak to the guard, fairly crossly by the look on her face, when she sees Barbara. "Come in, come in. Quickly please."


Jake and the guard are ushered inside where the woman directs Jake to lay her in a bed while she begins looking her over, almost afraid to touch her at first because she's not sure where to start. "What happened to her?"
 
It's May Blossom. Dylan swallows down a brief moment of panic. That sidereal's name is May, not Rose. Calm down, or else you're gonna see viziers everywhere you look.


When the book comes to him he jots down "Ranan," the name he had given this character. He left out the "Four-Winged" part because sounding completely like an exalt probably wasn't the best idea here; and the lack of a last name would simply cement the runaway suspicion. Perfect.


"Sorry for the trouble." Ranan gives the guard his best calm no-I-wasn't-just-freaking-out-I-don't-know-what-you're-talking-about smile. "When you've been on the road a while, you forget that it's okay to let your guard down. Where would be the best place to find a place to stay? We may be here a while waiting for our friend to recover."
 
"There's a couple of inns. The Green Dragon is the cheaper one and is usually busier. The Northern Wind is nicer, but more expensive." After everyone signs the book, he offers it back to Grant. "Can you put down the names of the other two?"


He hesitates. "And if I may ask? What happened to her? If there's something roaming around nearby that can do that to someone, we'll need to be on guard for it."
 
Grant grimaces. This, this is where it gets tricky. Mentally, she swears at Jake. “Unfortunately, we don’t know. It was…the Walker, her…cousin, who found her that way, a few hours before we came across your town. He’s been too agitated to answer questions, and we were too concerned with getting Barbara to a healer to investigate our surroundings. Hopefully, once she gets medical care, he’ll steady down enough to describe what he saw.”
 
Jake shook his head and gave the doctor a regretful look. "It's probably best for all involved if you don't know. Suffice to say that the wounds are magical in origin and any help you can give would be greatly appreciated." Given the extent of the injuries, it was pretty obvious that it had a supernatural cause, the less information the nice lady had the better, but telling her the literal truth wouldn't hurt anyone.
 
The guard doesn't say anything to that, but it's fairly easy to tell he's not buying it. "Hopefully then."


After everyone is signed into the book, the man makes some notes in the book as well. Anyone being rude enough to read while he's still writing, or surreptitiously checks, sees he's writing physical descriptions of each of you, along with weaponry. Once he's finished, he closes the book. "Alright, welcome to Black Branches then." He motions to another guard. "Jennison here will show you to Rose's home, where your friend was taken to."

Perception+Aware difficulty 1 to be overt about reading what he annotated about you, d3 to be sneaky about it.
 
Jake:


The guard has left by now.


Rose looks up from working on the woman's wounds. "Then you'd better pay me up front. Fifty silver dinars right here, right now, or an explanation that isn't going to get me killed for helping heal someone who's gotten on the wrong side of a god."
 
Grant cranes her neck, trying to sneak a quick, unobtrusive peek at what the guard is writing. Since they seem to be helpfully leaving traces of their passage all over the place (she doubts the Wyld Hunt will be properly grateful for the way the circle is making their work easier) she had better find out what those traces are.

Per + Awareness →

5,7,9,2,9
 
"Fair enough. We were meeting with some friends to discuss our plans for the day. There was an accident however and she was injured, so I had to take her to the nearest doctor, which happens to be you. Nothing complicated or dramatic like a vengeful god. Just some assumptions gone wrong." He was being polite in referring to Barbra's massive paradox backlash a 'mistaken assumption', but he figured it was nice than calling it a 'traumatic fuck up'.
 
"What kind of accident causes horrendous wounds that actually reflect upon her soul?" Rose asks.


Apparently, she's a good enough doctor to tell the difference between physical and spiritual woundings.
 
Bria glances around at the other guards and prepares to follow Jennison. This whole thing was going wrong and they weren't even started. How were they supposed to save this place if things on the level of buying a bus ticket were cause for worries?

Bria wears her amulet and sling under her clothes, the sling around her waist. Probably should have specified that when I disguised the other stuffs. >.<
 
He rubbed the back of his head sheepishly "The kind where you mess around with powers you don't fully understand and get burned for it." He gave a helpless shrug. "Thaumaturgy is complicated." Two completely unrelated yet true statements, spoken close enough together that they imply correlation. The literal truth at its best.
 
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