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ximilialog2022-09-04 12:21 pm
MISSION: WISH FULL, PART 2
● ● ● M I S S I O N 8 . 2
The morning following the disappearance of both queen and the princess, the orbers begin to corral in order to conduct their own investigations. Kovacs and Clara speak to the distraught King Krolis who tasks them with finding his wife and child. Sabriel sneaks into the palace to find the empty place where the orb used to be. And Yzak begins to follow the princess’ trail throughout the city to learn that she was seen alone, and swimming away from the city.
All of these things, coupled with the information Mal and Alina discovered through speaking with the queen on the night of the gala, all point to one thing: the princess, currently in possession of the orb and without real knowledge of what it was, has fled the city… but where the queen is in all this, no one seems to know.
The telepaths of the team attempt to see if the hvalus can track the source of the chaos that had led them to disappear beyond the city, while Sabriel gathers magic users to scry the queendom for the princess’ location. Meanwhile, a team of orbers led by Bucky, seek out Zivi, princess Xoria’s sea dragonling pet, in an attempt to track her down, and finally request an audience with the Queen Mother Xemiane to explain the situation ask that she come with them in trying to locate the princess.
When the information from the hvalus and the scrying has been pooled together, it becomes evident that Xemiane’s presence may be even more necessary than the team initially thought when the efforts of both the hvalus and the scrying pinpoint the princess’ location: Beliandria Grave.
It is with the memory of that unsettling name that the orbers set off — with the niggling suspicion that perhaps “stone-gazer” is a better descriptor than they might have thought.
The trip to Beliandria Grave is a three-hour swim that takes the orbers past a number of sights and locations that might already be familiar to some who have ventured out past Qruria City’s gates, with its deeper, darker waters and forested kelpscapes. The water here is quieter somehow, peaceful to some but a little eerie to others.
1.0 If the team leave for Beliandria Grave early enough, they might catch the last of the monks’ ceremony for the hvalus still gathered above them, their bioluminescent markings glowing in bright shapes against the calm waters. Their looming forms seem a little more distant than usual now — higher towards the Surface. The telepaths of the team might catch snippets of communication if they wish, the Presto Hvalus sending their hopes, dreams, and gratitudes, and the hvalus accepting them. They might pause as the crew draws nearer, their voice encouraging them past Kelpwood and ever towards the pull of chaos in the Grave, but it becomes very clear, very quickly, that this ceremony isn’t to be disturbed. Orbers can either pause to join the ceremony or will have to make their way around it, past the long, dark green foliage and out through the wood.
2.0 Once the team have made it through Kelpwood, they will start to see the terrain change dramatically from its lush (albeit just a little slimy) forest to bright white, soft dunes of fine beach-sand, marking their arrival to Valzria Sands. This desertscape is wide and covers a great expanse past what the team can see.
Depending on when you arrive, the late-morning or early-afternoon light from the Surface filters through the large leaves of the Zaarean’s Hat above shielding much of the Sands from the heat. All seems peaceful, just an uneventful swim past the sand dunes, but some of you may notice the way the ocean’s current begins to stir up the sands — and as you swim deeper through the terrain a storm begins. The only way forward, unfortunately, is to get past it and try not to get bogged down by the sand in your fins.
3.0 As if the sands weren’t enough, the team will swim their way towards Irian’s Grotto, native home of the Witch’s bark. They are quickly surrounded by craggly brambles and sharp, thorny bushes which are home to the venomous moray eels that slink through the vines and hide under the rocks on the seabed.
However, there is a small school of vampire sharks already at Irian’s Grotto, and they appear to be waiting. Among them is Jhiaaal, the vampire shark who befriended Finn, Marta and Itachi, and he has amassed a few of his friends to accompany the orbers down to Beliandria Grave.
The entrance to Beliandria Grave and Gorgoneion City can only be described quite literally as a giant ravine that cuts a sharp path into the rocky ground. It leads its descent several thousand meters towards the centre of the planet itself.
4.0 Following the ravine, you’ll find that it eventually narrows down into a path only wide enough for one average-sized mer-person to fit through. The urgency with which you’d been swimming has slowed and not by choice, and as you continue downward it becomes harder to see too. The water is almost too dark to see, so you’ll have to feel your way along the craggy rock surface. Just be careful as more Witch’s bark grows here, tendrils of bramble and thorns attaching itself into the nooks and crannies — and with its poisonous barbs, it’s vital that you avoid getting nicked. Some have even created blocks in the path but they are not impervious to destruction with the right amount of force — or maybe you deem it safer to find another way forward.
5.0 With a couple thousand metres behind you and the last thousand to go, the ravine finally begins to open back up, its mouth widening to allow a visual of all manners of sea creatures swimming past. Some of these creatures appear to be ten times bigger than the largest of you, some bearing bioluminescent markings along their skin (or scales), and some spreading a hallucinogenic aroma through the current with each wave of their fins.
Swimming through this water feels different, the temperature changing from cold to downright hot. There’s an underwater geyser here, and while it isn’t active, it seems to be spouting a cloud of hot ash, fogging up the waters and making it impossible to navigate the area — to say nothing of the way the cloudy water scalds your fins. You’ll have to wait for the geyser’s tantrum to pass, or figure out a way to cool the water’s temperature so you can move past it.
Finally, after leagues of swimming and what feels like endless travel, past the poisonous flora and hardier fauna, the orbers will find themselves drawing towards the ocean floor where a giant rocky archway opens its gates before them — it’s kind of beautiful in its own way, covered in kelp and underwater moss growing over its surface, but the most notable aspect about it is the carving of a face where a keystone should be. It’s a woman’s face, her expression severe and authoritative, with a tangle of swirling serpents framing her face for hair.
Every muscle in your body suddenly stills as you stare up at the face, and if you shift your gaze with as much movement as you can muster (it’ll be mostly the effort of your eyeballs) you’ll find that the rest of your teammates and the Queen Mother herself appear to be locked in place too. It isn’t just you. For those of you familiar with the myths, you might begin to wonder whether they’re a little more truth than legend.
And then you hear a voice.
The voice seems to be coming from past the gate, a low and languid female voice that commands attention. After a moment, a lone figure emerges, resembling the carved face with sharp accuracy. She has deep, all-green eyes, and snake-like tentacles for hair, and looking in her direction only reinforces that feeling of being in locked stasis. The longer you look at her, however, you’ll realize it isn’t her eyes at all but something else about her that has already managed to ensnare you.
Another moment later, and a second woman swims forward, the coils of her hair twisting and turning as live snakes wind themselves around her head. They hiss when she comes to a stop and turns to the first woman.
The second gorgon sighs and swims in-between the paralysed orbers and Xemiane’s guards alike, before she pauses in front of the Queen Mother.
Xemiane, free from the paralysis, nods; and as Mixaedre swims back to the gate, she seems to pull something in the water back towards her … and as she does, one by one, you’ll find yourselves able to move again, fin by fin, and limb by limb. From there, it seems that there is only one thing left to do: it’s time to follow the two gorgon sisters into their city.
6.0 Where Qruria City seemed so colourful and lush, coral and flora surrounding organic forms that have been shaped by the water itself, Gorgoneion City seems to be one steady, earthy palette of yellows and browns and bright (and warm) water. Every structure looks sturdy and unmoveable, all no taller than one or two storeys, sprawling across the seabed as though the earth beneath the water erected a city for its citizens rather than the other way around. Somehow the buildings appear dry even underwater.
By contrast, any citizens you might sight between archways and walls and stone columns are bright green or blue, with elaborate tentacles for hair. More than most will also have visible scars carved into their skin, and as you draw near, some will quickly pull away from you, hiding themselves from view. It is also interesting to note that the citizens of Gorgoneion City are all female.
7.0 Past a cluster of residences is a long columned path leading you and the rest of the entourage through a large oval amphitheatre, a colosseum of sorts. It looks as though the arena hasn’t seen as much action, or perhaps it was never quite meant for battle. Instead it seems to be a lead-up towards the domed rotonda where the Queen of Gorgoneion can be found. With open entrances on all sides and very few gorgon guards to secure the grounds, it might seem like an unlikely and unprotected place for royalty to hold her court but the seemingly modest size of the villa should not be mistaken for anything but a throne.
She sits now on a dais with a seat made of stone, its surface decorated in encrusted jewels and strange corals, and shiny hunks of metal of indiscernible origins. She is young and ageless, the tendrils of her hair longer than her subjects. With a skirt made of shimmery translucent kelp, and armour plated over her chest and shoulders, she looks like both a warrior and something altogether ethereal. Behind her, two eels turn their heads simultaneously to stare at their new guests. The Queen shifts her gaze towards them too, the tiny tongues at the ends of her hair twisting forward, and then she begins to speak.
A hum of understanding passes through the guards around Xemiane — clearly the caves have a meaning, and the gorgon queen’s reluctance to let outsiders there without compensation stems from their importance.
There is little else for Xemiane and the orbers to do but agree to the terms, and Queen Thise explains the task: for countless high-turns, the gorgons and sea beasts have lived alongside one another in harmony, the beasts in their tunnels and grottos at the edge of the gorgons’ city, but recently, they have abandoned their tunnels and started to make new grottos for themselves inside the city, taking over buildings and even trying to swim into the sacred caves.
They need to be taken back to their own tunnels, but only after finding out what is keeping them from living there… and hopefully removing whatever it is.
There’s nothing else to it but go, the few of Xemiane’s real guards accompanying you out of the rotonda.
8.0 The guard will share as much of their information about the sea beasts as they know as the orbers are led back into the city when they’ve finished speaking with Queen Thise. Often seen as a contrasting force to the hvalus, the appearance of the sea beasts are referred to as bad omens, and having shared similar treatment throughout history means that the sea beasts generally lived in equilibrium with the gorgons. Outcasts in a state of self-imposed exile by the xrisora, the sea beasts were also feared for their ability to breathe venom into the water, paralyzing their prey and their enemies — a mirror of the gorgons’ ability. They were easier to avoid than to face head-on in most cases.
Either way, it seems that being seen with the Queen seems to assuage their own anxieties and fears, even sparking some interest in so many new faces. The city suddenly seems to rumble into life, opening itself for exploration, and to offer any orbers who might need the right tools to deal with the outsiders the queen spoke of — all without killing them.
9.0 When you have prepared yourself for the queen’s task, her guard will lead you and the rest of the orbers towards the general vicinity where the sea beasts have been sighted: mostly outside of the city’s gates, but there are some that have made permanent homes of a neighbourhood now cleared of gorgon residents and their families.
It’s easy enough to spot them, and to see how they have taken over the structures in the neighbourhood. They are larger in size than you had imagined, with a long snake-like shape not quite unlike the gorgon’s hair, as though they had removed themselves from the scalps of the women of Gorgoneion City and taken charge of their own lives. They hiss with their tongues and reveal rows and rows of small razor-sharp teeth. And with sharp, ebony-coloured barbs at the tips of their tails to contrast the deep grey-green scales of their skin, they have clustered in areas like a dark and aimless cloud.
Moving past them and getting to the source of the problem will be your first priority. The sea beasts’ grottos and the deep crevices of their homes have become uninhabitable and you’ll see why when you swim closer. It’s the chittering and scraping of claws against rock that alert you first. And there’s movement in the dark holes of the sea beasts invaded homes — a flash of bright red and orange, and big, shiny ink-black eyes that peer through the cracks before disappearing again before the deafening screech that follows.
Swim back a couple of paces and you’ll see truly gargantuan crab-like forms squeeze themselves out from their hiding spots, bursting through cracks, many-legs first. They claw at the rock, crumbling and cracking the edges as they do so, destroying the walls in their wake. The walls, too, seem to be coated in a slimy fluorescent substance that eats away at the rock’s surface, making it clear why the sea beasts couldn’t stay here. “They’ve mutated,” one of the queen’s guard will shout. “They were never this large or this aggressive, as though something has taken hold of their minds and has set them off so they can’t control themselves!”
You’ll have to gather your resolve and combine your abilities to best these beasts by force before getting rid of the slime itself — only then can this place return to being homes for the sea beasts.
The orbers will feel exhausted but accomplished when the Titan Crabs are defeated, and the sea beasts are led back to their homes. The grottos returned to their original dark, ‘dry’ state will need some repairs, but the sea beasts seem more content to be back in their homes than to make temporary shelters of the gorgon’s city.
When they return to Gorgoneion City, Queen Thise is already waiting for them, with new gorgon faces at her charge to guide the orbers towards the sacred caves behind the city — as promised, albeit a little reluctantly.
10.0 It is not immediately clear why the sacred caves are named that way, but past the winding tunnels and forks along the path meant, perhaps, to confuse and render any intruder eternally lost, the caves begin to tell a story. Quite literally, the gorgons have engraved beautiful and intricate illustrations into the walls that tell the history of their people, starting from their first queen Beliandria, and the sadness and tragedy that preempts the city that stands today. As the story concludes with a large drawing that shares the likeness of Queen Thise, the caves start to reveal walls of encrusted jewels and brightly-coloured clusters of coral exposed to channels of light from above. The refracted light from the jewels and the illusion of the corals glowing seem to turn the domed cavern into a truly magical place; someplace sacred, indeed.
But before you can pause to take it all in for too long, or become too lost if you fall behind, you’ll be urged to keep going. Time is of the essence, after all, and Xoria’s trail is becoming cooler with each moment that passes.
Just past the large chamber room with Thise’s portrait, a small and familiar sea dragonling suddenly flits into existence as though through some magic of its own, appearing before two orbers at eye-level. Zivi turns circles and spins on its axis, and seems to be desperately vying for their attention. If they decide to follow it, Zivi will quicken its pace, darting through the water like an arrow’s spear. It moves through the tunnel, tilting its head to glance briefly back and ensure that the two orbers are still following, and then ducks through an archway, making a beeline for a small form that has curled in on herself on the other side. She looks up when Zivi nuzzles at her cheek, her wide eyes suddenly unreadable — and then scared.
F Y I
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• And finally, your soundtrack for this log: ♪ ♪ ♪
9.0
The sea beasts were kind of cool looking. They would have made great extras in a sci-fi movie with kaiju in it or something. Though he'd feel bad if they were treated like monsters. For some reason, he too was kind of fond of them. Perhaps similar to Wei Wuxian, he held a bit of sympathy for these misplaced beasts. After all, he was Liumang and it was right there in the name: floating population, those that were bereft of a home due to extenuating circumstances. Of course, it usually referred to dangerous and often illegal groups these days and Zhao was no exception to this modern day rule. So maybe he liked them a little bit because they looked so dangerous, too.
Either way, he had no qualms swimming after the misplaced beast. He put forth a burst of speed and, snake-like tail whipping out behind him in rapid swishes, he headed off the sea beast from the direction it was going and got it to stop, trapped between the two smaller mer forms reluctantly.]
Hey there. Calm down. [He used his most soothing voice, the one he used on his beautiful lady tiger, a beast that could easily maul him and eat him if she so pleased. But just as with her, he wasn't scared here. He held up his hands placatingly.] No one wants to hurt you. Just trying to lead you back home, beautiful.
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You don't want to disappoint the very nice man over there, do you? He even called you beautiful, that means he likes you. [Wei Wuxian speaks soothingly to the sea beast, mouthing the last part conspiratorially as he offers Zhao a wink. The sea beast seems to consider Wei Wuxian's words (as much as a sea beast can consider words in a language it does not speak) and then it lets out a squawking sound and turns its back on Wei Wuxian, facing Zhao instead.
Clearly, it did not appreciate Wei Wuxian's extremely funny joke.]
no subject
Of nothing else, it did seem calm for the moment at least. Zhao was unsure how it would react to his next action. The snake-mer drifted closer until he was within touching distance. He heard deep rumble and hesitated. However, he took a guess that it was simply an sound of uncertainty and continued carefully, bravely, because if he showed no fear he was less likely to be eaten for his trespass.
Besides, even large scary carnivores liked to be pet every now and again. Although to be honest Zhao wasn't even certain whether this big creature was a carnivore or something else. It was big, it was strong, and he hoped it was gentle.
He touched the beast's head and somehow managed to remain calm as he got a big snort of water current in his face at the effort. He giggled again, softly.]
There, there. You're just a big ol' softie underneath that craggy shell, aren't you, love?
[He began to rub his hand back and forth, soothing motions, essentially petting the big beast like it was his new best friend. It made Zhao smile. It was always a treat to get to touch such untamed beauty.]