2018.12.11: Orrery Adventures: Eshtarra (P2)
| Adventures in Orrery Making: Eshtarra (pt.2) | |
|---|---|
| A journey to Eshtarra's Glade to pay respects and request a pure stone. | |
| IC Date | December |
| IC Time | Afternoon |
| Players | Pancake Branton Isla Jes |
| Location | Antarctica |
| Prp/Tp | Adventures in Orrery Making: Eshtarra (pt.2) previous / next |
| Spheres | Gaian |
The night's sleep is... not great. The ground is hard, it's like sleeping in a garden shed while it's snowing outside, ALMOST but not quite so fucking cold as to be completely miserable, thanks to some proper packing and having lots of warm stuff. In 'the morning', whenever exactly the group starts waking up and coming to, everyone's stiff, sniffly, and there's probably a lot of that 'I feel like I probably have a fever' type sensation when your body's trying to compensate for a really shitty environment. The tops of everyone's furs are ice crusted, and even though it's a bunch of work to do it, NOT having a hot breakfast is probably a riot worthy suggestion.
Once packed up and going again through the dark under-mountain caves of stone and ice, things are about how you'd expect. Dark, chilly, largely lacking in interesting things to look at and it's mostly up to the group itself to keep their own moral up since there's next to no interesting stimulation around here. Yay, look, rocks. Wow, ice. Sigh. Jes is probably invaluable during this portion of the trip, lest everyone die from sheer boredom.
It's several hours into wandering through the blackness without so much as a fork in the road to spice things up before the air starts getting misty. It's just a little at first, nothing to worry about, but the farther they go, the thicker it gets, until specks of floating water vapor are reflecting the low flames of Iris as she keeps warm (and possibly Branton as well if his own inner heat and fur garments aren't enough), not to mention anyone's flashlights or glow sticks or whatever. The misty air smells of minerals and fresh water, and is it your imagination or is your face not *completely* frozen any more?
Isla can feel the mist in her hair as it begins to get weighed down a bit. She sniffs, and looks to Jes and then to Iris. "What is this? This does not seem right. Could we be where we were lookin' fer?" She moves forward further, taking the lead here. She has to find what this is coming from. She has her eyes looking everywhere she can get light right now.
"And the cop is like, 'so if you don't have a gun, then what's this?', all smug-like," Jes says, ending a story, "and Carey steps in for me and is all, 'officer, if you're gonna give my brother a reach-around, you should know his safe word is 'hijinks'. And the cop's partner laughs so hard he fuckin' /farts/, and even the guy running the 7-Eleven was laughing too hard to be mad." He's got a cigarette in his mouth, and... hey, if he's in dimmed spirits, it doesn't show. He stops when Isla speaks, however, getting serious, and pays more attention to their surroundings.
Branton is conserving most of his power for now, yes its cold and miserable but since he's mostly doing alright from having invested in fancy gortex arctic survival gear he's leaning on that for the moment. He also has a full cover face mask with eye holes that were covered by goggles but when the mist started getting thicker he pulled them up. Then when Isla speaks he tilts his head and inhales deeply through his nose "Something's warm enough to have a smell. And its not just a me thing to say 'where there's warmth, there's life'."
Iris stops as well when everyone else does, still all goose-bumpy, but the flames from the sun really do help when you're basically wandering a frozen cave in a halter top. She gestures to Branton's words while nodding to Isla, "That'd be my best guess. It doesn't smell *bad* though, which is good, right?" she asks, and takes another couple of steps, squinting and trying to see through the fog.
Jes and Branton can see some irregularity shadows in the foggy ground, like there might be a step or something like that not too far ahead.
Isla, on the other hand, identifies the shadows much better and sees that there's an actual drop off not too far ahead. She notices that fact about half a second before Iris yelps a high pitched sound of surprise right after walking off the edge!
Well, the good news is that you know there's a lot more than just a step right there. The bad news is the fog swirls so much with all this movement of bodies that it's hard to keep track of exactly *where* that drop off starts. Be cautious.
Isla puts an arm out to stop them. "STOP!" Nothing more than an order barked now. She holds them back now, all behind her until they can figure out what else is ahead. Iris has wings, and that should save her if they can come out fast enough. She leans a bit further forward, testing the ground with her feet first. "Iris! Ye got this? Need a rope?" Cause seriously, she has fucking wings. If it were Jes or Branton, she'd be following them over the edge already.
Jes stops /immediately/ -- she has him /trained/ -- and he peers forward, arching an eyebrow. "Umm... is she fucking dead?" he asks quietly, looking aside at Branton. Unable to help himself, he adds, "You know, I can just hang my dick over the edge for her...."
Branton stops also, not trained by Ilsa in particular but it works for the moment just the same "I can fly down and check on her if we need to." He offers, not remembering how much of his toolbox his new compatriots know.
A careful, caaaaareful scooching finds the edge, and also a stupidly slim ice bridge that Iris just walked right past and fell off the edge next to.
Iris DOES have wings! Sadly, however, she tends to completely forget how to Theurge when she gets panicked. Her survival is noted by a 'oh my god I'm gonna diiiiiie!' style wail of terror from not too far away, her red/yellow glow holding more or less steady down below. The fog makes it nigh impossible to tell distance accurately since it's all just a swirling white mass of cloud, but the occasional glance of her flickers and the sound of her voice say maybe 15-ish feet below.
"I'm slipping! The fire's melting everything!" she wails, and like that her flames extinguish and her visual placement marker is no more. But it's either douse the fire and be cold as fuck, or keep the fire and melt the ice you're hanging onto.
Isla looks to Branton. "Go get her. Do we need to do anything to help ye do that?" She just smacks Jes in the arm a bit for his comment, but does not otherwise respond. "We'll get'cha outta this! Just hang in there!" Like she can do anything much else. "Fire God, I dinnae know what'cha can do here, but if ye can fly, then do it."
"Man, this is so fucking stupid," Jes murmurs to himself, inching closer to the ledge and trying to look down, but... nope, too foggy. He shrugs, sighing softly, and puffs on his cigarette. "If you find a pyramid down there, /don't touch the eggs/, they're xenomorphs!" he shouts, just... not helping at all.
Branton gives a step and the wing sigil embossed on the ankle of his boot glows as he nods at Jes and says "I've seen that one." And he steps off the edge, floating down to lift Iris out. "Leave the flame going, its not going to be hot enough to bother me." he says to her and reaches for her.
There's a good long moment of hesitation before Iris reignites herself. Blessings and curses though, her fingers were starting to burn and cramp from the cold, and now they're slipping again. But there's Branton, like fuckin Superman, comin down for the damsel rescue! Iris hangs from a random jut of ice over a deep pit of what looks like twisting, irregular ice spikes covered in snow, created by the movement of freezing mists.
In a super dramatic movie moment of 'jump and I'll catch you' type action, the Theurge kicks off and Branton is able to get a hold of her without either of them missing, slipping, punching the other in the face, or any other such mishaps. The day is saved, hooray for Kinfolk! Iris expresses this sentiment in a stream of cursing and freaking out, but it's prettily done in Greek.
Isla watches just over the edge, grabbing Jes's hand while they see this unfold. "Aye, he is an even better addition than I thought. Fucking hell, have we got a great pack to work with here."
"No shit, Peach," Jes replies softly while he watches events unfold, puffing on his cigarette and smirking. "This is fucking /rad/. But... what do we do now?"
Branton sets Iris back down on solid ground and offers, still floating an inch off the ground "Well the boots stay on for this function for an hour or so, I could ferry you each across? Maybe?"
After reaching solid ground, Iris clings to Branton like a tick for a minute or two. Fuck you, Garou pride, this was very nearly a pee your pants moment! "Yeah, yeah you should definitely do that, because that bridge is super not okay underneath! I mean, it might be, but I betcha anything it'll break in the middle." This may or may not be entirely true, she might be basically trying to make her whole mishap useful in some way...
She eventually untangles herself from Branton and says, "Maybe you two should go first, and I'll stay with Jes. Just in case there's giant ice squid or something over there. The Ahroun's probably better to keep that at bay!"
Isla looks at Jes, and let's go of his hand. "Giant Ice Squid? Well, that'll be a first fer me. I'm sure FlyingFireGod and we'll be just fine." She waits to see if Branton is down for it or what first. If so, she'll do whatever he asks her to for said flight.
"Yeah, no problem, Goop Mistress. Just grab a hold of my dick in case you fall again, so you can climb back up," Jes retorts to Iris, letting Isla's hand free and looking to Branton semi-seriously. "Okay, Comet; you ferry her across safe or I'm throwing an entire bottle of vinegar on you. You drop her, I drop you, dig?"
Branton turns around, giving his back to Isla "Like a piggyback ride." Offering Jes a wink "Everything will be fine." Branton flies Isla across slowly and carefully once she's on.
Iris shoots an on-fire fist out to the side to punch Jes in the ribs. Sadly, he's covered in big thick yak-et and it probably accomplishes nothing.
For Isla and Branton, those two seem to vanish into the mist as Branton flies her away, and from their perspective they're quickly lost in a misty void. Even the slim bridge is hard to see, sparkling white on sparkling white. There's some frightening moments where it seems like they're just plain lost, the mist obscuring visual landmarks and even seeming to stop their voices from carrying very far. It starts getting really sultry while floating, maybe even a little bit sweaty, and then all of a sudden there's land!
When everyone's over, there's a chance to really take a look around (except for Isla, who got to do it while waiting). The mist is still thick, but it's easier to see due to light filtering down from an ice cealing. A large lake steams like a hot bath in winter, occasionally with lazily bubbling places. The air is a lot warmer here than on the other side of the fo void, and the constant heat and freeze of a hot lake under a glacier has created a gleaming, rippling, almost glass-like cavern. Surprisingly, there's moss growing down here, closer to the lake, living off the warmth there and the light through the roof.
"You want me to push you in the pit again? Or have you had enough Antarctic trips today?" Jes says aside to Iris with an arched eyebrow, pulling out his cigarette case and offering the Theurge a Nat Sherman and his Zippo.
Iris gives Jes her very best squinty eyed 'I will get you' look, while also taking a smoke with a shivery "Thanks." Once it's lit, she blows out a plume of smoke and tells him, "I will turn your pubes into tiny angry snakes, as is the way of my people." Hey, YOU don't know where the Medusa shake hair thing came from, maybe she can!
"That's gonna leave a lot of bite marks on your ass tonight," Jes retorts coolly, blowing out a smoke ring and watching anxiously across the pit. "They over yet? I can't see. Did they make it? HEY, PEACH, DID YOU MAKE IT?"
Isla has been just fascinated with this all. "Ice and heat. I almost want to strip down right here and now and jump in. But why is this here? Is there some volcano underneath? Flying Fire Guy, what do you make of this? Yer close with the fire spirits and all." A glance back at the comedy team, and then she's back looking around to see if there is anything else that could be danger around here or what. Is there an exit? Other creatures... whatever. Although she has a smirk on her face as Jes continues. "Aye, Sprinkles. Now keep yer pants on and yer dick covered. Let's see what sorta place we've found here."
Branton gets everyone across and has a look around "It is totally worth asking a bird spirit to teach you how to fly. Kind of a great trick for a Fostern gift." Pausing for a moment he just looks around distractedly at alllll the shinies.
Once he's across, Jes rubs Branton's head and says, "Good ifrit!", smirking and puffing on his cigarette before looking around and adjusting. "This... is weird to find in Antarctica. Right? Fuck. I don't know a lot about Antarctica. Maybe it isn't. Maybe this is totally normal. Like werewolves. And Calcifer over there. Fuck. Why did I bother going to college?"
Iris is unable to help a snirk at Jes's comeback, and chokes on her smoke a bit.
While they have a smoke, Branton and Isla make sure the coast is clear. If there's any enemies in here, they're not showing up.. It's a bigass cavern, and the glassy quality of its ice makes it difficult to make out any other readily apparent exits in the shifting light and shadows of their light source. It's pretty cool looking though.
Assuming they feel safe enough that Branton can continue his ferrying work, Iris ends up tucking her ashes and cigarette butt into her pocket for the trip. Once everyone's on the other side, Iris finally extinguishes her flames again and sighs with relief. "Oh man, this is so much nicer than back there." And then to explore!
Isla finds Jes herself, and reassures him that she is there and just fine. "C'mon let's see what we can find here. It is a wonder in here. Considering where we are and all."
Branton shakes his head at Jes and says "This isn't normal. But to be fair considering the size of the continent mundane science knows fuck all about Antarctica." then he looks around some as well.
"Awesome. We're in a reality-free zone," Jes replies to Branton with a roll of his eyes, puffing on his cigarette and reaching out to take Isla's hand. She's excited, he's apprehensive; pack dynamics, ladies and gentlemen and gender-nonconforming individuals. He steps forward, though; where the fuck else are they gonna go?
Isla grins to Jes, "Hey, we're in fucking Antarctica. We just flew up into the heavens and back down again with a half naked lady, and a fire guy. So, reality ain't shit no more." She leads him around toward the water and checking things out.
"...Are we even still in that mountain?" Iris asks while looking around and wandering with the group, "Or did we come out in a glacier, or...?" She's puzzled as well but seems to find the whole thing enchanting and fascinating. "It's like a hot spring or something! I'd look it up, but my phone don't work." She doesn't actually check, but she assumes this is the case.
The water IS super warm and tempting, in all honesty there's nothing wrong with it aside from just being hot-tub-cranked-way-up temperatures. There ARE several passage ways to be found out of here, of all different sizes and found in several different places, some of them slowly pouring a bit of water from melt elsewhere. While covering ground of alternating rock and ice and trying to figure out which of these passageways might be their ticket, there's an ominous cracking sound...
All of a sudden, the large sheet of ice under their feet gives way and sends every one of them plummeting out of the nice warm-ish cavern! A second or two later, their butts slam onto more ice and they're sent on an uncontrollable skid through slick glacial tunnels, even being split up unavoidably by random barriers that shoot them into smaller tunnels.
Branton, the lucky buck, finds the super cool jump, being shot up and over Jes and Isla during an open spot, landing badly and hurting himself a bit while sliding along. Iris also gets to have fun! She shoots off an ice ramp and slams into a white wall before dropping into another channel, just screaming her head off the entire way.
Isla screeeeaaammmmss as they go flllyyyiiiinng through the ice sheet and on the ramps and tunnels. Fucking chutes and ladders game! WTF! Off they go and she tries to hold onto Jes, but she had no idea if she did, what is going one or WTF???? They just go until they can finally stop. Wherever or whatever it will be.
Jes is torn between screaming and whooping, and settles on 'keep the cigarette in your mouth' as his medium. He slides, he glides, he worries, he revels; being a Ragabash is a fucking trip. But what he /definitely/ does is shift to Crinos as soon as Isla is near enough and wrap his arms around her, pulling her against him and trying to /for fuck's sake/ keep from /dying/ while he privately enjoys the fuck out of this.
Branton gets bounced like a pinball, and lands with a jarring thud as he skids along. Armor is great for knives and claws, less useful for getting bodily slammed into walls. He does keep sliding along, trying to get control back of his careening voyage.
We all know Jess is just using Isla as an impact air-bag. Poor Isla, the things she has to put up with!
Anyhow, the crew speeds and slides out of control, once passing a limitless drop where the wrong scooch could spell death by falling, another time there's a purely comical amount of sharp pointy bits ready to stab anyone that doesn't scrunch up tight (this sucks for Crinos-Jes, but he can man up), and for a brief second there was the reddish glow of some distant, long reflected ribbon of molten rock flowing somewhere below. Their tunnels turn dark as rock over takes them again, coated in ice to shoot them through these age worn tunnels, until THOONK! they are each, one by one, shot out of a solid rock face with a sploosh of water from their butt friction.
The first thing they see is light! And then immediately after that water, when all four are dumped unceremoniously into a pond.
It's a nice pond, warm and not too deep, but now everyone's covered in soaked fur, so that's not fun. Surrounding the little pond, fed from trickles from holes in a bigass cliff beside it, are a lot of enormous pale ferns clumped up in groups. Several odd species of bird squawk and flee as fast as they can when the group splashes down, and are still making their panicked sounds as they attempt to not fall down and drown.
Isla grips, fingers digging into Jes as she screams the whole way. As they finally splash down, and take on the look of drowned rats...or worse - koalas! - Isla finally stops. She leans back into Jes and wipes her face. "Everyone here? Everyone have all their limbs??" She knows no one is quite ok. Save maybe Jes who will be howling soon in delight.
Jes gets up and shakes off like the giant shaggy dog he is, looking around and gauging the level of danger they're seeing. << That was rad, but only because no one died, >> he comments, moving out of the pond and carrying Isla with him. He sets her down, then shifts back to homid before planting a kiss on her cheek and saying, "Love you, Peach," before moving to look at the pale ferns, and positing, "So... we get out of here /how/?"
Branton is soaking wet and trying to find his feet "As long as we don't get trapped somewhere with an air tight seal I can teleport us back to any point we've passed on our journey so far. Some landings will be easier than others to arrange. So we do have an exit strategy but I prefer through and forward rather than back. Still working on which way that is though."
Iris jerks herself upright when she hits the lake, punch drunk as fuck from hitting the wall (stamina botches are not awesome!), face wet and a bit bloody from a broken nose and falling all over the place from fur pants and boots filled with water. When she finally flails herself over to the shore, she collapses and for once is more interested in something other than exploring. Namely stopping the spins before she pukes.
Having a look at their surroundings, it's like a tropical forest and a giant mushroom cave had a baby and this was the result. Big shrooms and ferns mingle, tall palm trees and tall shrooms share space, and everything seems happy. This cave must be as large as the Mystic Valley's cavern, the ceiling can scarcely be seen. At the upper reaches of the visible cliff there is an abundance of bio-luminescent moss. It's spread along the cavern's roof gives the appearance of a perpetual twilight throughout this weird place, giving the foliage its pale coloring.
It's filled with the sounds of as much nature and wildlife as you'd expect to hear in a natural jungle: birds and mammals, and louder things. The sounds, much like the foliage, is all just a bit... different, as though it took a separate yet similar evolution to thrive here compared to the sun-lit world the pack is used to.
Isla blushes reflexively and starts peeling off her furs and down to whatever she can to start to dry a bit. "Love ye too, Sprinkles. Thanks for the catch. Now what to do now that our hearts and stomachs have come up and then moved back to their places - hopefully. With a place this big, maybe we need to setup a base camp. Then figure out a plan to find a way out.
"Oh, that's way handy, Scaldy Baldy. Nice to know," Jes replies cheerfully, fishing out another cigarette and putting it to his lips before lighting it. He also fishes an energy drink out of his duffel, opening it and chugging it down halfway while he looks around. "This is some Jules Verne shit. You think any of this stuff gets you high? I mean, I know we're on an adventure, but what a time to be stoned as fuck, right? Who else can say they tripped balls in the heart of Antarctica? Not even Timothy Leary or Hunter S. Thompson. Might even be able to name an animal after myself or something. Fuck, I really need to pee. Do you think it's okay to pee on a mushroom? Fuck it, I'm gonna pee on a mushroom." And so he does.
Branton considers Jes' question seriously and looks around as he wades for 'dry land' "If a local offering doesn't work out as practical, I've got some weed with me. I brought it along for ceremonial purposes mostly but I'm sure we can come up with some sort of reason, something to commemorate."
The mushroom lightly dusts Jes in spores. You pee on me, I jizz on you. That's fair, right?
Iris flops over and groans, sloooowly sitting up to avoid a headache, and complaining in a whiny voice, "I think I peed, but I'm not sure because of all the water." Speaking of which, she slowly gets to her feet and starts peeling out of her fur pants and boots, just kind of flinging them aside because *fuck you*, soggy pants! "I could go for some weed right now. I have some also, it's just for getting fucked up though. I bet Branton has more than me, though." She also nods her agreement to a base camp, "That sounds like a good idea. I don't wanna walk any more today. Today *sucks*."
"I really, really, REALLY want to get crossfaded and just enjoy that no one else has ever ever ever ever EVER been here before," Jes replies while shaking his cock at the mushroom, not at all minding it jizzing back at him because, hey, fair play to fungus. "Bust out that weed, I'll bust out the scotch, we'll set up tents and shit, and I wanna get fucking /gone/ like you would /not/ believe. Are we just rolling a spliff, or...? I mean, I think I brought cigars, we could do a blunt, or... can we make a bong? Fuck, I bet we can make a bong. I have shit to make a bong. Quick, if we drink all the scotch from this bottle... PEACH! Bottle's all yours!" He takes the scotch bottle from his pocket and hands it to Isla, cock still hanging out, and /then/ puts it away, digging in his duffel.
Isla takes the bottle, looking at Jes, and then the others. "We may as well make this a fucking Fianna party. Strip down and paint each other an everything." She knows 3 of them would be down for that. "Let's setup the tents first before we are too ... gone to do that." She opens the bottle for a small sip, and then goes to gather all the shit and make a base camp setup. "Ye'll get yer shit together. I'll start with the tents."
Branton nods and starts unabashedly striping off "Lets get out of the furs and get them laid out so I can dry them. Maybe get a fire started so I'll have enough spare power to splurge on getting things dried out properly." One of the layers coming off is his ultra-fine chain-mail, the pants fit him like under-armor and he rummages through his pack to find a sealed metal cigarette case "Waterproof sealed for weather but with how wrapped up it was its probably fine. Joints of Awakened weed from my greenhouse. More than enough for all of us."
Zero hesitation from Jes, who is stripping off his wet tuxedo while pulling out goodies, setting aside bottles, snacks, cigars, and other implements as he goes. By the time he's done, all the necessaries are out, including his wang, and he's even strung up a couple poles and a long string to hang wet clothing. Ever the Beta. He sets his clothes to dry, then pads over naked to Branton with his Zippo, snagging a joint and putting it to his lips to light and drag like a pro. "Fuuuuuck yeeeeess," he hisses as he exhales in the Sorcerer's face, handing the joint back. "Excellent."
"Yeah, I'm kinda scared of how wet my blankets are." Iris agrees, having still not put on other pants, so she's halfway to a Fianna party already! Getting up and shifting to Glabro to heal her poor nose while she helps unpack some stuff. While Isla does the tents and Branton gets things unrolled to hang on Jes's lines, she starts working on finding stones and non-soggy wood for a fire pit. She's quiet and thoughtful during all this at first, and then blurts out, "We should do some kinda guard rotation tonight. I'm a little worried about being eaten by a.. a... whatever, I don't even know. Giant mushroom, maybe." She *eyes* those shrooms. You never know, they might be silent killers!
Isla grins, "Aye, guard duty is a must. I'll take the first shift while ye all get baked. Then someone will need to take over so I can at least get a few winks of rest." Sleep may not come to her, but at least trying and being inside her tent will be a must for the Ahroun. She finishes up the tents, strips the rest of her clothes off, and then climbs inside hers for a few minutes just to get some things setup before coming back out and taking the clothes to be hung up to dry.
Branton takes a puff and holds the joint out for whoever's next as he settles in to getting the fire going and he comments "The light from the fire and the warm from kicking the heat up to get our things dry is going to attract some attention, maybe it won't be hostile?"
"Cool, I'll take watch two," Jes replies, watching Isla scurry about and rolling his eyes. "The curse of the untouchable ass," he murmurs, taking the joint back and dragging deep before opening a new bottle of scotch and swigging away. He rummages through his small tool kit, finding the proper devices for the need, and says, "Yep, I can hella make a bong with this. Peach, when that bottle's empty, let me do my thing."
With the prep more or less handled and maybe done, Iris puts her shirt on the line last and goes to sit her nekkid butt down on the grassy/mossy ground of their camp amidst the shrooms and ferns, and puffs up that joint! "Yes, bong the shit out of something, Jes!" She cant help but ask, though, "What's your thing?" She should know better than to ask these things. She shrugs at Branton and says, "I hope not. I dunno, if I was a weird jungle thing underground somewhere and aliens dropped in, I'd just stay away."
Isla has the bottle mostly gone, and when Jes calls for it she says, "Aye, just a tick." She takes one last LOooOOOOOOooooONG drink, and then tosses the bottle toward him. "Catch it, Sprinkles!" She grins waiting to see if he does.
Branton nods at Iris and shrugs "The wilderness survival part isn't really my strongest suit. I mean, I've learned the basics because it seemed like I ought to so there's that."
Jes cannot -- CAN-fucking-NOT -- resist answering Iris' question with a full-hand sweep indicating his bait and tackle, lighting up another Nat Sherman and washing down his drag off the cigarette with a swig of scotch. "Seriously, though," he replies, "my thing is making what /she wants/ what /I did/." He puts his bottle down and catches the one tossed at him /without looking/, because he is /so fucking cool/, and puts that cigarette back between his lips, taking out a little glass cutter and making a circle in the bottle. "Somebody purify some water, I don't want to smoke algae," he murmurs around his cigarette while he punches out a tiny circle of glass and screws in a little metal bevel, attaching a pipe bowl and beginning to bore a carburetor with a multitool. Fucker knows his pot science.
"We need to get you back to nature, Bran." Iris says with a sagely nod, "It's in your blood, you should meet it properly like this. ...More or less." she says with a gesture around. And then an eye roll at Jes! "Why you gotta be algaeist?!" she asks in a Totes Triggered Super Liberal sort of way, but at the same time she gets up to do some of that with a couple bottles, some coffee filters, maybe a little boiling to boot.
Isla calls back to Jes, "DAMN STRAIGHT." Being done with the bottle, the tents and stripping so her clothes can get dry, Isla starts to walk the perimeter, keeping a mental map of what is around there. Size, shape, etc. Listening to see what is around, and rolling her eyes at the mushroom that was peed on. She makes her way all the way around before finding a place by the fire and warming up some more. Her naked body could use a bit of warmth it appears.
Branton finishes stripping off and nods at Iris "I'm working on it, I just...keep getting distracted by projects. Remind me when we get home to show you the thing the Den Father and I are working on."
"When we get home, you should just come live under some bushes with me for a bit." Iris suggests with a grin at Branton, and as Isla returns to their fire, she asks, "How's it lookin out there?"
"Because it makes weed taste like an aquarium?" Jes replies to Iris with an arched eyebrow, smoking his cigarette and constructing his bong. Small rubber pipe here, rubber funnel at the end... perfect. It's like a scotch baby bottle for greeners. "Done, son," he declares, handing it aside to Iris, along with his Zippo. "Take it for a spin and tell me how great I am."
"GASP! A Zippo." adds with a tisk, and finds her Bic in her own ziplock of pot. She pours in what water's gotten filtered and packs the cone for a hit. And then puff puff pass.
Isla laughs! "It's all good out there, for what it is so far. Sure seems like a slice of Jurassic Park, and yet... I cannae put my finger on it all yet. We protect our area here, get some rest relaxin' in. It'll be there later and then tomorrow... or whenever we decide it's tomorrow - we move on." She watches the bong pass along and says to Jes, "Nice work, Sprinkles. I got something in the tent later that'll need yer attention too. Since yer so handy with that stuff and all."
"On it, Peach," Jes replies with a laugh, taking another pull on his scotch before handling the bottle over to his Alpha and puffing on his cigarette. He warms up happily, letting the fire dry his freckles as it does, and just... chills. He's got a good buzz going, and he's in a fucking secret Antarctic world. This is exactly what he wanted.
Iris is quiet for a little bit as well, sharing drinks and smoke with kin and prospective packmates while sitting nekkid in an unknown world. "You know.." she says while looking at the foliage, "There's this type of tree that grows in Tasmania that basically just spreads by cloning itself. They found fossils somewhere on Antarctica that matched almost exactly to that kind of tree, and they're pretty sure that, because of how it propagates, it's pretty much the exact same tree that was growing here when this place wasn't frozen. What if that's what this is? Like, what survived the freezing up above by.. I dunno, falling through the cracks kinda like how our forest at Prospect ended up in that big cave. You know, spending all that time evolving and stuff, just right in here, all contained and untouched for like a bazillion years."
Isla lifts an eyebrow. "Soooo sort of like this is a Caern underneath the frozen wasteland? Some sort of special place for clones?" She's trying to follow all that. "As long as no dodo birds or t-rex's come running out of the foliage, it's all cool."
"Huh," Jes replies softly, looking around in a totally normal, sober fashion at the plants and considering the Goop Mistress' hypothesis. "People, like... they theorize about finding 'untouched' places like this, where things are 'like they were' however long ago, but... like, that really doesn't take into account that the world doesn't /work/ that way. Things evolve; just because it's in this hidden place doesn't mean it was, like... removed from time. It's just... different circumstances. Time only really goes in one direction; the stuff that doesn't evolve as rapidly just... found its niche and didn't /have to/. So... yeah." Yup, he lost his own point. He did, however, find the bong; he takes it and has another rip before handing it around, commenting, "Anyhow, I peed on that mushroom."
"Well yeah, that's what I mean," Iris agrees with a nod at Jes, "I mean like, these ferns are really pale and abundant, so whatever ended up down here probably went through a period where other plants just couldn't hack it for whatever reason. Temperature or soil or too little light or something, but these guys managed to cling to life down here and then over the whoever how long, they ended up becoming less and less dependent on chlorophyll or whatever it is. The trees are kinda like palm trees, stuff less concerned with light soaking. And then eventually after a longass time you get a good balance and things just go until there's some other thing to spark a change."
She points to Isla and shrugs also, "Maybe! I mean, I dunno what the rest of this place is like but this surely *seems* like the sort of place you'd find a font of Gaia's energy, surely. Course, that's also kinda what we're looking for if we're looking for the Lady herself, but it'd be like... *the* fount."
She points back to Jes, "You're a fuckin weirdo. But also you own a continent and a mushroom now, so that's cool."
Isla falls over on the ground, laughing now. She wags a finger at Iris, "Ye are fucking rad. Shit... I could listen to ye ALL THE FUCKING TIME." She holds her stomach as she laughs. "I kinda think this is where we were supposed to find. Tomorrow, we'll search around. We're gonna find here.. and I bet it will be here." She turns and lays then out on her back. She stretches a bit, enjoying the chance to just be free.
"Hey, if you're gonna build an empire, think big," Jes replies with a shrug and a puff on his cigarette, blowing a smoke ring and closing his eyes. "Antarctica, a patch of woods in California, and a big fucking mushroom. Alexander the Great did a lot with less."
He looks over at the madly-cackling Isla, keeping it very cool himself, and grabs the bottle to take another drink. "You know what I fucking love about nearly dying? Being alive at the end." He smirks, taking another swig and another drag on his cigarette.
"Thank you, thank you, I'm here all week!" Iris says while making exaggerated seated bows to Isla. She snorts a laugh at Jes also, but she's forced to nod her agreement to the last. "Yeah that's the *best* part. Did I ever tell you guys about the time I tackled a Shadow Lord off the back of a dragon"
Isla shakes her head. "Nae, I have nae heard that one. Sounds like an awesome story. But where are the smores? We need smores and more liquor." She begins to sit up, and fluffs her hair as it is now mostly dry and quite the mane.
"Shit, tell me a story, Auntie Mame," Jes replies to Iris with a smirk, eyebrows waggling. He passes the bottle to Isla, taking a deep breath, and laughs. "Shit, this weed is /crazy/. The snozberries taste like snozberries." He sighs, shaking his head, and adds, "Y'know, Roald Dahl slipped that in as a dick joke? Seriously, look it up, it's in his adult stuff."
"Who's Ronald Dahl?" Iris asks like the clueless heathen she is. "It's a pretty short story since I pretty much just told you the meat of it. Also, I spoke wrong, I meant an uh... A Wendigo? I think. Any how, so this Kin and Cliath come to town and they're like woe my Sept is failing for some reason and we don't have food. I don't have a ton of information on all the set up for this catastrophe but I believe it started out something like that. Any how, it turns out that their sept's like... Grand elder or something like that - shut up, I'm not a Galliard - had gotten himself totally corrupted and was trying to sink the sept from the inside, but people were getting wise to what's up. The whole thing comes out into the open with formal accusations and a lot of dick waving, until it eventually broke out into a full scale battle.
So, this Kin and Garou, they'd recruited up some of us to go deal with this, and good thing they did because shit went *crazy*. Fomori and Wyrm-spawn come pouring out of the fuckin woodwork and Garou are getting bridged in left and right as emergency calls go out, the sept's armed to the teeth and right in the middle of it. And this fuckin elder calls in a *dragon*, like an actual hugeass dragon, that starts just *leveling* shit with fire breath."
Isla takes the bottle from from Jes, but really just listens to Iris. "Aye? Fer reals? I want to battle a dragon... and a T-Rex... maybe a raptor?" She turns back to Iris, and wants to hear more about this. Although she does take a moment to look at Jes and evaluate just how baked he is.
"If this ends with 'and the whole bus stood up and applauded' I'm gonna be so pissed," Jes comments, puffing on his cigarette but otherwise /riveted/ by the story. He is lightly toasted to a golden-freckly-brown, but still coherent; he knows his limit, and he has second watch.
Well, shit was... dicey for a while there," Iris goes on with one of those thinking-about-it winces, "I think our main advantage was that so many on our side had good direction and pack tactics, while on the other side the fomori were less organized, maybe. But this dragon was pretty much uncontested, and the asshole sitting on its back was a force to be reckoned with. Part of my decision was based around the fact that we were all land locked, aside from a carefully observing Corax or two probably, and then the other part of my decision was based on apparently having no self-preservation what so ever, I guess, cause I'm like, I have wings! And then without asking anyone, up I go. Like a shorter version of what we did when coming here, just straight up into the air, and then turn around and fly straight down at the guy's back, wings folded, Crinos, gaining maximum momentum before WHAM! Right into the guy. I was also on fire at the time, and not to brag or anything but I'm pretty sure it looked amazing."
Any how, so I slam the guy off the dragon's back and we go hurtling down to the ground. I let go and swoop up, but Elder dude doesn't have wings, so he slams into the ground right in the middle of the combat zone. He's throwing up walls of granite and hurling lightning, but powerful as he was, the guy was now surrounded by dozens and dozens of people that want his head on a spike. He didn't last too long like that, and he didn't deserve to. Turns out I cant steer a dragon though, I tried to run it into something, but that didn't work out. I did get to hit it in the head a lot though."
Isla smirks, "Nice one. So what happened to the Dragon? Did you kill it? Or tame it or something?" She has to know. Dragons are just.. well fuck, it's a dragon! Writing reality out to disk. Please wait... Reality saved. Thank you for your patience.
"A shooting star," Jes observes with a nod, smirking to himself and finishing his cigarette, flicking the butt into the fire. "And yeah, I also wanna know about the dragon. Because, like... I think you'd have to hit one pretty hard in the head for it to give a shit."
"I think it left." Iris says with a shrug, "I mean, what were we gonna do about it, shout 'no' and throw sticks at it?" As a player note, I legitimately can not remember. You'd think that detail would stick, 'what happened to the giant fire breathing fucking dragon', but it didn't. So we'll just have to assume she was busy at the time, and did a lot of drugs and isn't sure.
She nods to Jes and agrees, "Yeah it really didn't care. I mean I hit its eye lid a few times, I bet that smarted at least a little bit. It DID keep it from raining hell down on people though. I remember getting shaken off once it landed and then a lot of other stuff is a big huge blur. Probably due to concussion."
Drinking, smoking and talking was done in (more or less) moderation, watches kept, and everyone got a little sleep after being soggy.
