four | dictated.

[kethedammit]

[You know what gets boring fast? Camping. Mildmay has recited all the songs and riddles he knows to himself, but, when you've got a magic talking book, those pursuits loose their flavor fast. Instead, itching curiosity dictates...]

Any of y'all got stories where you're from? [And, in case people are from places where this isn't an understood practice...] I'll trade, if'n you got any I ain't heard.

Comments

[eat_me_beat_me]

[You know what else gets boring fast? Being stuck with a broken leg.]

I could probably tell you a few. What kinda stories you looking for?

[kethedammit]

Any kind. I ain't picky.

[eat_me_beat_me]

How 'bout true stories?

[kethedammit]

Oh, sure. Those're great.

[eat_me_beat_me]

You've talked to Mark, right? The guy who does the weekly broadcasts here? Well, sort of weekly. He's not doing them as often now but still.

He's my boyfriend. Back home he did the same thing, except no one knew who he was. He was just broadcasting on a pirated radio station. It pissed a lot of people off, actually, between the fact that he was doing it at all and what he was saying. [she laughs] I wrote poems and sent them to him to read on the air, actually. I never signed my name or anything so he just called me the "Poetry Lady" or the "eat me beat me lady."

[kethedammit]

...The- what? [Good job, lady, you just made Mildmay blush. Thank Kethe this isn't in person. He's distracted enough that he doesn't think to ask what a radio is, just excepts that apparently they've got journals like this back where they're from.] Uh. Okay. That's... good on you. For, uh, writing poetry, I mean.

[eat_me_beat_me]

[She laughs at the stammering. Desired effect achieved.]

Hey thanks. It's nothing amazing but I like it. Anyway he kept dropping clues about who he was. Like saying he ate lunch alone on the stairs and he liked chewing Black Jack gum and shit like that. I really wanted to know who he was, right? So I kept track of all these clues. I finally went to the stairs during lunch one day and figured out who he was. The crazy thing? I met him like the day before, I had a fucking class with the guy and I had no idea who he was. He acted totally different.

So I called him out on being Hard Harry - his radio name - and he kind of spooked and bolted but it was cool. I was able to talk to him again and convince him that I wasn't gonna oust him to the cops or anything.

[kethedammit]

[And Mildmay feels queasy, being laughed at by a young girl. But he takes his lumps; that's what you're good at, Milly-fox.]

Oh, okay. So you already knew him? Shit, would the dogs really've jumped him over a- a radio show?

[eat_me_beat_me]

I knew him but I didn't think he was the kind of guy to do that. He seemed like a colossal geek. Who knew he was so cool?

But yeah the cops were after him hard because... [Yeah we're gonna skip that part of the story because it's more Mark's than hers] well because of some of the shit he was saying. He would pretend he was jacking off on air and shit. He was, like, fucking starting up a revolution in our school! He wanted to back out but I told him that he had a responsibility to keep going. I got kicked out of school because I wouldn't tell the principal who he was, that's how hardcore all of this was.

[radiantwingedone]

There are some histories turned fairy tales that I am familiar with.

[ His voice might be vaguely familiar from that disastrous meeting, but ah well. ]

[kethedammit]

Either's good. I'm game.

[radiantwingedone]

[ He doesn't have a great storyteller voice, but he can try to ... not sound as bland as usual.. ]

In the days before the empire, a great cataclysm occurred that plunged the world into ruin. Countless lives were lost as the people struggled to stand against the oncoming disaster. Energy all but spent, humanity seemed to have lost hope before the arrival of a pair of siblings. This brother and sister fought the calamity together, and saved the world from annihilation. The sister they named the Child of the Full Moon, and after the struggle she stayed with the earth. Her brother they named Brave Vesperia, and he ascended to the skies to watch over the world.

[ There's a pause, and he continues. ]

There is a short version that is phrased like... prayer, or something similar.

[kethedammit]

Huh. [Well, he's never heard this one before. And that's certainly worth an incomplete story and a dull voice telling it.] This from your, uh, religion?

[radiantwingedone]

Empire has tried making it into one, likely to give them something of 'divine right' in ruling.

[ He's vaguely amused. ]

Children of the Full Moon are a... people, one that the remnants of become a bloodline that had formed the empire's royal family.

[kethedammit]

Huh. So it's one of those stories that're trying to explain real stuff?

[radiantwingedone]

Yes. Inaccurate but vaguely close to reality.

[kethedammit]

You talk like you know what's 'accurate'.

[onlythefishiest]

Oh, I know some!

I could tell you about the Empress and the Summoner, or I could tell you the story of the heiress and her maroon-blooded matesprit, or I could tell you the story my lusus used to whisper about the demon who exists beyond time and space.

[kethedammit]

Uh, sure, okay. Whichever one you wanna tell most, I ain't heard of none of 'em.

[onlythefishiest]

Okay! This is one of the versions of this story, anyway. It was always a little hard to find the true version, because the Condesce didn't like people talking about it, but I found it in a book once.

A long time ago, there was an empress who ruled all the trolls. She ruled with an iron grip and a bloodied culling fork, by fear and terror and torment, and no-one dared ever say anything that might be considered an insult to her! The purple-blooded trolls ruled in her name across her empire, her hands and eyes wherever she could not physically be, and they too were often vicious and unjust. Under her, the indigo-bloods spread fear and violence, safe from reprisal; the blue-bloods stood isolated and aloof in their hives, proud of their tiny patches of land, and the green-bloods ran wild where they would. And under them all groaned the trolls they called low-blooded; the yellows, the browns, the reds. More numerous by far, often psychically powerful, still they bent their heads and toiled silently for the empress in her mines and as her ships and shocktroops.

Then, one day, a brown-blooded grub pupated, and he emerged from his cocoon with a strange and unusual mutation; wings. He flew forth, and where he flew the beasts of the wilds looked up and followed, and so they called him the Summoner!

For some years, he lived in the wild, peacefully, but then one day he came across another troll. Another brown-blood, old before her time, worked nearly to death and then culled. They hadn't killed her fully, though, and she called to the Summoner with her mind. To him she passed her story, an entire life compressed into a series of images, and it played out before the Summoner, a short life of pain and anguish, loss and slavery. And the Summoner left the wild, and wandered in the towns, and everywhere he went he saw the same thing.

Enraged, he called forth the beasts of the field! He marched forth upon the Empress, and behind him followed the downtrodden and the animals together. And he met her armies in battle, and they went to war, and neither side would give an inch in battle.

Unfortunately for the Summoner, his opponents had three advantages his armies did not! One, they would live for long sweeps past any brown-blooded troll, and two, their weapons were in machinery and metal, not flesh and mind easily burnt out, and three, there were still those low-bloods who would not or could not join the Summoner.

So the Summoner's rebellion ended in failure, and his generals were culled as an example, and the Condesce lived on, still tyrant and crueler yet than before. But the Summoner lived, once, and where he failed time and chance would succeed, and one day the Empress would fall and all her empire with her.

[kethedammit]

Eh, true don't matter, so long as the story's good. And this'n's good. I guess the point is 'don't fuck with rich people'?

[onlythefishiest]

I think the point was meant to be "don't glub with the Condesce!". I always saw the point as being that no matter how powerful you are, eventually there will always be something more powerful.

[kethedammit]

Yeah, but the Condesce lady won, right?

[onlythefishiest]

She won a war, yes! She was very good at winning wars. Her empire still fell, even if it was hundreds of sweeps later, and maybe the Summoner was a part of that.

[kethedammit]

Huh. So what you're saying is, this Summoner guy, he took her down after he was dead?