Event Annex - The Senate Room

[pumpkinhollow]

CRY HAVOC, AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR.

W

elcome, esteemed guests, to the Senate Room.

The rules of the game are simple. You have a word over your head that you cannot see, and the same word written on a piece of paper in an envelope that also contains a key. There is a door out of this room. Each key opens the door for only one person. You can see the words above others' heads, but you cannot say them, nor can you say any direct synonyms that might give it away too easily, nor can you spell the word or its synonyms. You must find other ways to describe it to allow the other person to guess. More abstract. Get creative with it.

If you believe you know the word, speak it aloud and open your envelope to retrieve your key. If you are correct, you can leave without incident. If you are wrong, your organs will immediately fail and you will die.

Here are the words each participant has been assigned. Players can use them to refer to other players' characters to help them guess, and you can use them to check your answers when you guess, but you can also OOCly know your answer provided you don't use it to ICly cheat. Good luck.

Agent Connecticut

Fickle

Agni Azimar

Traitor (there is an additional document contained in this envelope)

Aloy

Obstinate

Ancient Fuelweaver

Ruined

Anzu Menelikov

Deceitful

Artemy Burakh

Tainted

Capochin Bastone

Inadequate

Cassandra de Rolo

Cynical

Dahlia Leeds

Insatiable

Daisy Tonner

Merciless

Elias Coldwood

Discarded

Ethan Winters

Insufficient

Felix Gaeta

Imprudent

Hector Monaque

Covetous

Jonathan Sims

Hubristic

Lev/Lyubov Morgenshtern

Weak

Luo Binghe

Alone

Marik Ishtar

Megalomaniacal

Mr. Ant Tenna

Histrionic

Papyrus

Ineffectual

Sasavachi Chunome

Misanthropic

Shen Qingqiu

Pretentious

Simon

Selfish

Violet Vespertine

Cowardly

✦Return to Event ✦

Comments

[mortifer]

Fate's patterns are indiscernible to mortal eyes. This, Sasavachi made peace with from a young age. It is better to speak to a familiar face, even if he's only spoken to Ethan once, than it is to scramble for rapport with strangers.

Insufficient. Perhaps they share the same failing.

"Not enough, either." Sasavachi traces another circle on the smooth surface of his bracelets. One above, two beside. One above, two beside. It's a pattern that comes to him as easily as breathing. "... I am waiting."

[mycotic]

"Think you got a habit of that? Not talking to enough people, I mean."

An English major, he is not. Despite this bump in the road, Ethan is relatively positive about what he knows regarding the word misanthrope. They're stuck in here, unable to move, and watching Sasavachi's hands move is giving Ethan an itch. If this is how things are in here, what about outside the room? He thinks of the people he's met recently— for the first time tonight, he wonders if they're alright. Hands moving, dragging circles onto the table. Last time, Sasavachi had moved his hands, and it had helped him move into Ethan's room. If only he could force their way out just like that.

He wonders, but says nothing.

[mortifer]

"I don't like to talk more than I need to."

Words are easily misinterpreted. People always want something and never say what they mean. Small wonder, then, that their captor chose to brand them with words. It's a tactic as potent as poison, capable of breaking spirits down without a knife's touch. This room simmers with tension. It sets Sasavachi's teeth on the edge.

Someone is going to die. It feels inevitable.

"It's troublesome, especially in times like these."

[mycotic]

Wordlessly, Ethan agrees with the sentiment. The weight of a sentence can be measured; words are expensive currency and people are eager to spend them. In the minutes and seconds between October of 2014 and July 18th 2017, Ethan has learned how much people value the cheapest kind of words. Hand to his face, he exhales, words dead on his tongue. Inky black pitchforks, slants and dots forming on white paper, coagulating into sentences, a report, a file. His hands on the paper, scratching the worthless words into the worthless paper.

But in here, words are secrets. Nothing more important to the universe than secret, and right now, their existence is tied to them. He wonders if this is what Mia felt like, back in Texas, in their home.

"If we had choices right now, I'd agree. But right now, all we've got is each other for those." At this, he points to Sasavachi's head, at the word hanging there like a noose ready to tighten. At least the guy's self-aware, he supposes.

[mortifer]

Ethan's right. Sasavachi knows he is, but he doesn't want to drink from the truth. Life and death was easier when it was in matters of steel and blood. In situations like these, he may as well be drowning.

He shrugs, more resigned than defiant.

"You don't fit your word," he says. "Not when it comes to pragmatism."

[mycotic]

"Words are cheap," Ethan says. "Lives aren't." He tries not to think about the part of him stuck in Dulvey, on the rotted over floorboards, the small of mildew strong enough to make you sick. He had smelled copper back then, too, tasted pennies in his mouth. He looks at Sasa without looking at the man whose size does not betray the weight on his shoulders, and Ethan says nothing.

"And, uh. Thanks." He believes what Sasavachi says is his truth, honesty. And what he believes is that this is a man who measures words beyond pennies, beyond blood. He doesn't know if he can say the same for him in the moment, so what Ethan musters up is, "Can't say I'd be surprised if people have called you your before." But they'd probably be wrong, in some semblance. Ethan knows it to be true; you can only come to the conclusion that talk is bullshit without love, love has to be lost to see the value. He blinks, tries to tell himself that he can't relate to the man with hair the color of stardust, an eye like koi fish scales.

[mortifer]

Ethan appears the sort of Hyur who would be lost in any settlement. When Sasavachi first ran into him, he appeared more a blank slate than a true presence. An annoyance similar to a locked door, featureless in its simple purpose. It's always the unassuming ones you got to watch out for, Baidar had told him long ago, words as sharp as her nails. Danger strips a man down to his true nature. That's why you can't afford to spare anyone little pup. She's still being proven right, even after all this time.

Ethan speaks like someone who's taken a life. Sasavachi meets those ice blue eyes with newfound caution. But he does not take his leave.

"Foolish?" No, it doesn't hurt enough when it leaves his lips. He's watched enough people by now to know the label must be painful. He hesitates before digging in deep. "Selfish?"

[mycotic]

What Sasa is correct about, above all else, is that Ethan blends into the background. He'd be another man in the matrix, a face in the crowd, were it not for the fact that the world wants to swallow him whole. Something, deep down, is killing him bit by bit— it is this danger that strips him down to his true nature. Death isn't something he's unacquainted with. Perhaps if Ethan were a hair more intelligent, he might have considered the same about Sasavachi. He hasn't met anyone who hasn't killed recently, thought. Even Zoe... He wondered about her.

"Subjectively related," he says in a puff of air, leaning back in his chair. Fingernails tapping the pristinely polished, luxurious table they're all sat around. Staples around his wrist glimmering like a silver bracelet. "Depends on who you ask. Ever read Frankenstein?"

[mortifer]

Metal? The glint catches Sasavachi's eye and -- if Ethan is paying close attention -- he will see the tension threading through the Lalafell's spine, the way his hand curls in preparation for a weapon. But there is no knife. There is no gun. There is only a strange line of steel that curves over Ethan's wrist, like the broken links of a chain. Sasavachi's fingers bite into his palm, instead.

"I've never heard of it," he says. Decides to let his eyes settle on the polished marble between them, to follow the to-and-fro of shadow and light instead. Exhaustion suddenly gnaws at him. "If you believe the story will help, tell me it. I will listen, heart and mind."

[mycotic]

"Okay," he says softly, finality laced into his tone. There is more than a bit of him that feels guilt over this. It burns warmly, like a match burning the edges of a fuse. "How to start.

Alright. Frankenstein is this story about a reanimated corpse. A medical student puts him together from bodies, gives him life again, then rejects him. He experiences rejection for what he is everywhere he goes. In the end, he comes to... resent them. Project it all on everyone— even the people in the world who haven't met him. It's a, uh. Horror story. About playing God, I guess."

[mortifer]

A man born again -- a man without a place to go. Sasavachi's heard stories like this before, has heard them from storytellers much more skilled than Ethan's clumsy sentences. He does not anticipate the story to nestle in him like mold upon a corpse, itchy and unpleasant as it grows in his chest.

He does not look up from the table. His jaw is clenched. It's a story Baidar would've liked. He wished the thought didn't cross his mind. It makes him sad more than it does angry, and he doesn't like that.

He's never been the unwanted and unloved corpse. He's always been selfish, entitled, and greedy despite the gods' grace in plucking him from death's yawning gulf. He has to share this with Ethan. He has to tell him it's the wrong story, that it's Baidar's story, not his, why did he choose this one, of all tales?

"Ungrateful, then," Sasavachi says to the marble, diminished.

[mycotic]

Sasavachi's jaw adopts a tightness that immediately has Ethan questioning if he can do this. Guilt is a stone trying to rip through him, from the belly. "Uh, no." He scratches his face a little. "Pretty far off, actually. Ice cold."

How does he re-route this. "Okay. Does Scrooge ring a bell?"

[mortifer]

Sasavachi's answer is to lift his head and give him the most pathetic look he's made since his arrival. He shakes his head.

1/2

[mycotic]

"...Right."

[mycotic]

Raking his hand through his hair, Ethan exhales. A collection of still clumsy sentences falls from his mouth, a nervousness now threaded into his voice. "Scrooge is an old man in this story about Christmas. Think they call him a miserable killjoy at one point." It's been a while. "But his problem is he, uh, doesn't like— ....?"

Something invades his throat. Forces it closed, traps breath in his chest. Jaw dropping, Ethan tries to breathe, but finds it is stuck inside of him. Panic blows through him, reflects on his face, pressurizes itself into his heart, his organs, like a virus assailing his system. Only when he forgets what he was supposed to be saying does the breath hitch back into his body, oxygen flooding him so quickly that he grows dizzy. Vision blurred at the edges, he lets out a hiss of frustration.

"Jesus, what the fuck." Terms of the game fucking noted.

"Scrooge struggles with, uh." Sniff. Inhale. A bead of sweat trickles down the side of his face, falling from the line of sweat dotting his forehead now. "Connection."

[mortifer]

When Ethan's face twists in panic -- when it seems as if the air won't return to his lungs -- Sasavachi's mind immediately paces through the possibilities. Poison. Magic. He can't heal, nor does he have any soul crystals to pass such knowledge onto him, but even so he moves from his chair onto the table out of instinct.

Then the moment passes. Ethan, sweaty but alive, is breathing again. Sasavachi stares at him with no small amount of dismay.

"What was that?"

Forget his word. That concerns him.

[mycotic]

Explaining what he thinks it was is hard. Softly, he admits, "I don't know exactly." It is delivered in a way that betrays his nature, but he doesn't realize it; stay calm, collected. He's fine. He can handle this.

"Maybe— maybe I said too much?"

[mortifer]

Of course. It'd be far too simple if they were allowed to speak freely. Sasavachi realizes his hands are clenched, his nails biting into his palms. He forces himself to let go.

"... you've given me enough. Thank you."

Ethan is a stranger, yes; all the more reason why he shouldn't risk himself further for another stranger.

"I should help you with your word, now."