ph_logs | [July/August] Dog Days

Who: River la Croix and YOU

What:
Getting a summer log up god fucking damn it
When:
July & August
Where:
Check prompts
Warning(s): Relationship arguments, potential violence and/or curses, bitching about the heat, and whatever you take with you (check individual posts/threads)

Dying In This Forge | Infernal Arms And Armor

The only mercy about running a smithy during the summer is that River has never had to experience air conditioning and therefore has no idea how much better it could be. The pace of the work here at Infernal Arms and Armor has slowed considerably; every door and window is thrown wide open, hydration and shade breaks are mandatory, and no less than twice a week River's apprentices and customers both arrive to find the forge locked up with a sign posted outside which reads:

Fucked off to go swimming If you need us, don't.

Still, if there's work to be done, here's still the place to order it. Just expect River to be pissy about it, she's a bit on fire, y'know?

Cooling Off | Beach

River's desperate to not die of fucking heat stroke and it's an uphill battle. While she usually enjoys the hot springs, right now the beach is a more likely bet, even with the crabs. Friends might be invited to an afternoon crab roast down by the water, or you might find her swimming in a soot-stained shirt too ruined even for forge work these days. Either way, it's not hard to spot River. Look for the steam coming off the water. No, really. It's not a joke. Look for the steam and you will find an elf and friend.

Fire Dancing | Nighttime

It may be hotter than a succubus's asshole from River's perspective, but that's no excuse to slow down her studies. A couple nights a week, towards the bridge over the river into the woods, one can find River practicing her pyromancy. She doesn't take much with her, just a brazier, some coals, and a MASSIVE stone jug that formerly housed whiskey and now contains a great deal of water with lemon juice mixed into it, for hydration. Oh, right, and an undead dragon. It hovers ominously near her, a passive protection against oncoming monsters while River strips down to her shirtsleeves and goes dancing amidst ribbons of tame fire, flickering in many colors while they shift and twirl, never quite kissing her skin, her arms smoldering coal-bright.

You'll never get her to admit it while the sun is up, because she's fuckin' dying in this heat, but these are the moments when the world falls away, and River can lose herself in her art. It feels remarkably freeing.

Blunt Love | Closed to Ruby

A hand on Ruby Rose's shoulder, during a work day. River's sweating buckets, panting like a damn dog, and if her ears drooped any lower they'd fall the hell off, but still the expression on her face is gentle concern. "Lunchtime," River says, with a little shrug. "C'mon, you're eating with me. We should chat, O Mine Apprentice. Plus I got those meat pies from Max that never go stale and girl lemme tell you, my ambition when I bought 'em? Vastly exceeded my grasp."

Wildcard

Fuck me up.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

River saw a lot of weird shit in the Dungeon but this is taking the cake. Narrowly, but still. She blinks a few times, nods when Imbros says his name to show she's paying attention, and tries not to say any of the obvious shit he must clearly hear all the time. There is a juncture at which 'why are you a squid' is a dumb question and she's gonna mentally put her money on the entire island being past it by now.

Praise be to Wren, then, that he's immediately bringing up another topic. She rubs her arm with a self-aware little grin. "It's the portals," she explains, kinda tapping one. "Gates to summon forge-fire. Handy, love 'em during the winter, but right now I'd kill a man with no questions asked to cool off."

Beat.

"...Can't hurt to like post a bounty for an ice elemental or something, if anyone spots one that isn't a person I could solve this problem..."

The unfortunate truth is the answer to why he's a squid isn't very interesting. When a tadpole finds a brain that especially delicious...

"Considering everything else here, I'm sure any ice elemental would start talking as soon as you attacked it." He sounds morose, because apparently that's the point at which people start pulling their punches. "If one shows up it's becoming a cold storage space whether it wants to or not."

Imbros has no such compunctions.

"Are you summoning fire from... your realm?"

"I have bad news for you about how dead things vanish immediately," River says glumly, on the topic of the ice elementals.

She touches one of the sigils when Imbros asks his question, though, kinda looking down at it with a thoughtful lil' frown. "...I suppose so," River muses, because she doesn't have the education to really think of it as her 'reality' or her 'cosmos' or her 'universe'. "Though it's more like these are half-open doors, right? Incomplete spells. Hence only being a little on fire."

"All dead things or just people? How does anyone eat if the livestock disappears when slaughtered?" He'd had this same conversation with Watson before, who didn't have any answers either.

"It seems magic works here regardless of what it pulls from. That's intensely powerful. Everything is either functioning intra-planar, or every system of magic works at once with no regards to any conflicts in methodology."

River ignores the first question because she's been fighting her own sense of curiosity to ignore it for Some Fucking Time, and in any event the second one gets her rubbing her chin thoughtfully. "...Not no regard," she muses. "Some things work less well, and a few don't work at all. Someone, maybe a lot of someones, have their fingers on the scale."

"True, I can't teleport between planes anymore. Nor can I use Sending to communicate with those I knew." Something almost audibly clicks in his brain, "Or perhaps I can talk to them and they can't respond cross-dimensionally. I hadn't considered that..."

Which gives him the horrible idea of just being incredibly annoying at all hours of the day and night with no repurcussions.

"You think that's due to the goddesses I've heard about?"

"Without knowing how your magic operates I got no fuckin' clue, but last I heard the big issue is that this place is cut off in general," the elf muses. Her eyes go a little distant, a little nostalgic, as she quotes something: "It is a city in a bottle. I did not construct it; it was given to me. And it is no longer for sale..."

She shakes her head, stepping further onto the beach. "In any event there's no end of assholes who've gotta be at least partly culpable. You have any skill with necromancy, Mister Imbros? Even just basic necromantic divination will do, for demonstration purposes."

"A city in a bottle sounds more poetic than this place deserves." He doesn't quite get the part about it not being for sale, and before he can inquire she continues on and immediately piques his attention.

This is where he should insert his standard protest that he's not a wizard. But she's talking about necromancy, and he didn't even bring it up first.

"Conjuration." He holds his hand out, several large black spiders appearing in pinkish webs that drop down from his fingers before they all disappear. "But I do know the basic concepts for scrying."

"Well shit, good on you. I can't scry at all. But if you focus close, you might notice something mistakable for just the island's background energy. This place is concentrating raw death and other energies that are...toxic in this kind of concentration. Take a peek."

She'll wait. It took River ages to figure this out and she didn't even actually figure it out, someone else had to tell her.

Finding out about concentrated death energy is not where he anticipated his day of moping around on the beach going. He's never attempted anything necromatic but all arcane magic in his world draws from the same basic principles, this should be no different.

Cupping some of the water in his hands he stares down into it, the water stilling in his palms to become a pristine mirrored surface, solidifying where no droplets escape between his fingers. Instead of reaching out towards the Weave, as he would in his realm, he heads down the same path and lets this world pull him where it needs to go. He's not sure what he's looking for but feels vaguely confident he'll know it when it happens.

So, Imbros, my man. Have you ever seen a place that's just the fucking worst? Not 'the worst' as in 'mind flayer society', more like, 'in hit CRPG Baldur's Gate 3, you can cast animate dead without needing a corpse'? 'Cause that's where you are. This entire island is suffused not with necromancy, it isn't a field of necrotic energy, but with death, with the energy released by every man, bird, beast, monster, and demon that has died here since the barrier went up. It has nowhere to go; it cannot disperse. It is in the air, and in the soil; it is in the water, and it is in you.

"Ah." That confidence pays off because he indeed does know it when he sees it. This should probably be horrifying but really he finds it all fascinating - the idea that death energy can become trapped and build up forever with nowhere to go.

He removes his hands, dropping the solid chunk of water that reforms to liquid once it hits the surface of the ocean.

"Who is utilizing that power source right now?"

"Besides me? Good question. Presumably the demon princes, but there's been other factors too." River sighs. "It's convenient for me specifically, because my magic needs a certain amount of this energy and it normally has to come off the top of my lifespan. But whoever installed this is a fuckin' asshole. I shudder to think of the environmental impact when the barrier actually falls."

"Demon princes? I presume they can come and go as they please." He huffs, typical demons - nothing ever sticks to them.

"If we're lucky everyone won't drop dead when this explodes out to its rightful place when the barrier is destroyed." He's never dealt with such power before, but when the Elder Brain was killed it destroyed the entire colony and would have killed him too if he hadn't been hundreds of miles away. "Someone must be utilizing it, and has a huge incentive to keep us from destroying the barrier. Perhaps they're keeping this as a battery while they do ... whatever it is they're doing outside the barrier that we don't even know about."

Hmm, "What do we know about the world outside this isle?"

[July/August] Dog Days | OTA

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