ꙮ There was a report of something strange, outside Queenstown, close enough to be concerning, but not ravenous-seeming enough to be dangerous. A confused fiend, possibly. You’re not, strictly speaking, on the Queen’s payroll at the moment – STRICTLY speaking I’m not sure you ever were. But the reports – they don’t match the initial reports that were what you were investigating, in the first place, before you were kidnapped from the Beast. But they’ve got some of the same signatures.
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← Active ScenesThe Mother Of Iron Is Fire
#ck
Small enough to scout out at the very least. Luĉja grabs a signal flare, on the offchance they’ll need backup, and makes their way out of town for a quick check of the area. They would whistle for Kurat to join them, but the hound has already bounded to Luĉja’s side not three paces out the last gate.
I think Luĉja is on the Queen’s payroll in that they feels that they are happy to serve their Queen, especially since she only took them away from Straylight business…well when there wasn’t any.
ꙮ Kurat sticks close by Luĉja’s side, peering and growling at… various things that only Kurat can see, that may or may not even exist. He’s feeling very protective. Ĉasid, as well, is doing their job, standing stalwart guard perched on one of Luĉja’s shoulders, flailing their little tail and whiskers around watchfully.
notes Kurat’s disposition and keeps their unblinking eyes…well, peeled isn’t really the word for it…for any strange fiends or signs of them.
ꙮ It doesn’t take long.
ꙮ You – you don’t smell it, not exactly, you don’t have a nose or organs of olfaction, in the traditional sense. But you have a sense of iron, you know the ‘smell’ of freshly-poured steel. You can taste hammer-sparks, on the wind.
: “That’s not right. A Fresh-forged, this close to town?”
readies their shield and keeps a hand on the hilt of their greatsword, following their…senses.
Would you like a roll?
ꙮ Not as of yet. Your senses are keen, and they lead you through into a small pass in some nearby – they’re foothills with pretensions, forming part of the geological formation that holds Queenstown cradled in its rocky claws. The scent gets greater and greater - and you hear something, distantly. A stalled machine, a whining engine, metal abutting metal in ways which it ought not do.
continues, quietly, carefully, towards the whirring and whining noises. Sound like anything I’m familiar with, or just generic metal noises?
ꙮ Sounds… alive? The way most things on the Beast do, even things that are made of whirring metal and spinning cogs. You’d know. ⁂
ꙮ You round a bend in the pass, and then you see it - trudging towards you, or rather, trying to. It keeps making jerky motions forward, like it’s trying to lumber forth and can’t quite make it, rubberbanding back with softly unpleasant clanks as often as it actually completes a motion. It’s huge - quadripedal, towering over you, modeled after some kind of hulking beast; its insides are all frantically whirling flywheels and springs and pistons, churning for all they’re worth, but all of its lines of motion are mutually locking each other - it shifts one way, releases one catch and engages two others. It’s a wonder it’s moved at all. Its eyes are bright and burning fire, and when it sees Luĉja, it turns towards him - and it bows its head, and seems to slow, observing him.
bows their head in return. “Stranger, where have you come from?” It usually just means fiends get a free first hit in on them, but they’ve got to keep trying. There’s going to be one they can communicate with eventually. There has to be.
ꙮ It looks at him - it lines up one of its great ruby eyes with him, and it says, with a voice like rust and metal fatigue, “C- cousin…?”
This is why Luĉja doesn’t have a jaw. It would drop. “Yes. Cousin. I also come from the Deepforge. Have you been on the surface long?” Luĉja immediately starts looking at whether this is combat damage, missing parts, or just a design flaw. Perhaps they can aid their new cousin.
ꙮ It’s not combat damage. It’s spotless, untouched - but it was made wrong. Hastily, with parts that don’t fit together, with energy crystals overgrowing their bounds and locking the beast’s joints. It starts to spin up, faster. “Cous- in!”
Such hasty construction. Non-standard, certainly. I don’t know if I can fix it, but I’d be interested to try. “Did you surface near here, Cousin?”
ꙮ It takes very slow, deliberate, ponderous step towards him. It is no longer acting in haste, and can adjust, painstakingly, to walk with something almost approximating grace. Its metal paw sinks into the ground, a little. “Mo- ther. Sor- row.”
: “Yes. Though I have been gone long, and I do not know why. I have…seen a vision of it, once. I must return soon. Were you…looking for me?”
ꙮ It nods, and then immediately regrets it; its neck creaks and a bolt cracks and pops, fragile metal shattering under strain. It holds together, though. “Mo- ther. Send gift. Watch- ing. Wait- ing.”
: “Thank you for finding me. Speaking with you is already a gift. May I try to help repair you?” They hold up the fallen bolt.
ꙮ Its paw flexes in the ground, and its eye gleams bright. “One-way. Ser- vice.”
didn’t like that answer.
: “I will wait for now, Cousin. I am unconvinced that it must be thus. If I can provide you no aid at the moment, what have you brought from Mother?”
ꙮ It hunkers down, and some of its flywheels rapidly transfer their energy to– the part of its components that functions, a shell of shimmering metal, plated very very thinly with aurichalcum, around its gigantic ruby heart. The plates hinge away, exposing it. “Fi- re. Guides.”
’s gears and plates spin and turn, until their aurichalcum core is also visible. “The Fire guides all of us, Cousin.”
reaches out and touches their new family, attempting a twofold plan. First, strengthening their shell. Second, they have spent enough time with Salme to attempt Methexis. Though they are not certain it will function.
ꙮ A bold, impulsive play. Invoke Burning, DC 8?
- Luĉja, The Clockwork Knight invoked their 🔴burning gnosis [d6] -> 3.
ꙮ One moment.
ꙮ In this, you are starlit. Roll again?
- Luĉja, The Clockwork Knight invoked their 🔴burning gnosis [d6] -> 5.
- Luĉja, The Clockwork Knight spent 1 Arete and now has 6 remaining.
- Luĉja, The Clockwork Knight invoked their ⭐Starlit 🔴burning gnosis [d6: (1, 4)] -> 4.
- Luĉja, The Clockwork Knight spent 2 Arete and now has 4 remaining.
ꙮ Ascension!
- Luĉja, The Clockwork Knight‘s 🔴burning gnosis has ascended unto the 8ᵗʰ rank.
- Luĉja, The Clockwork Knight invoked their ⭐Starlit 🔴burning gnosis [d8: (5, 4)] -> 5.
The d20 can wait. :D
ꙮ A line of searing fire connects your heart to theirs, and you see them as they ought to be - noble, shimmering, prowling, tail lashing to and fro, a clockwork churning fiend-behemoth. Their name, if they had one, would be Boda; there was not time for it to be given to them. They are falling apart, swiftly, now that they are close to accomplishing their task. The fire of their heart swells. “Please,” they say, “It is a gift from Mother. It will keep you safe on the path towards her.”
: “Cousin-Boda, I accept your gift.” They look down slightly “I know that I will one day, have a choice to make as well. I cannot stop you here and expect the same when it is my time.”
ꙮ It braces against the dirt, crystal heart exposed, and shimmering with holy fire.
ꙮ How, then, do you accept its gift?
Our hearts are as one. Their fire is my fire. Would that mine be theirs as well. Perhaps in a world no longer dying, someday, that might be true. Luĉja reaches out, and as they do, the fire roars out from Boda’s crystal heart, and into Luĉja’s arm, through Luĉja’s arm, straight into their chest. Glowing red with the flames of their kin, forged in the Heart of the Beast, it permeates their shell, forming some form of warding. Luĉja keeps two pieces of it aside. One, they carry in their heart, as a reminder. The other, held tightly in their fist, as they draw their blade.
Using their fire as a magnet, Luĉja pulls out a torrent of flames down from the sky and up from the earth. Burning gnosis wrapped around the brightest fire. As if it rose from the Deepforge and fell from the moons. There is an empty space in the sky. There is an empty space in their heart. There is an empty space in their blade. At least, they have the power to rectify one of these.
What's the roll to weave in burning?
ꙮ Actually, that will be a Radiant invocation, DC 6/10.
- Luĉja, The Clockwork Knight invoked their 🟡radiant gnosis [d12] -> 7.
ꙮ You’re still starlit; your fate is bound to them. Roll again?
- Luĉja, The Clockwork Knight invoked their 🟡radiant gnosis [d12] -> 1.
- Luĉja, The Clockwork Knight spent 3 Arete and now has 1 remaining.
ꙮ Luĉja’s aurichalcum heart burns white-hot and bright; they channel the Beast’s natural gnosis up from the ground, and down from the sky, and it weaves in counter-spirals around a pillar of white light piercing the ground, suddenly, meets in the middle where Luĉja’s and Boda’s heart-fires meet, and the Clockwork Knight does something just shy of impossible - with the fire burns Boda’s self, their soul, and it flows into the crystal blade, immediately finding a home in the latticework interwoven with flourishing threads. ⁂
ꙮ The blade erupts with light. Light that could be fire, light that could be warmth, light that could guide the path forward. It dims at Luĉja’s will, but even when it dims it is bright; the heart of the blade and its fullers are shimmering irrica, clad in sharp, unbreakable crystal. In the hilt of the blade, there’s a shimmering ruby, warm and alive.
: “Irrica….Fascinating. So plentiful on Almachadta, despite…the overabundance of flourishing gnosis and comparative lack of burning and pellucid.”
(“Cousin, are you still here?”)
ꙮ (I am, Cousin.)
(“Good. I am Luĉja, First-Endjinn, this time around. We will return to Mother together. This was not meant to be your end.”)
ꙮ (It was. It was deemed thus. And yet.)
ꙮ (We go together. I am glad.)
(As am I. We are Endjinn. We live hundreds of years, at least. Perhaps our ends must not be when we dream them. Perhaps we can choose. Thank you, Cousin.) Luĉja reaches down to pet Kurat and then up to scratch Casid. “It’s time to head back to town. I’m going to get quite the reputation for giant flashes of light every time the rest of the Clan leaves me unsupervised.”
ꙮ Ĉasid mews, utterly unconcerned by the pyrotechnics. Luĉja’s safe and that’s what matters. And they… made a new friend? And with Kurat by your side, and a luminous sword lighting your path, you return to Queenstown, to give your report.
On their way back to town, Luĉja stops still for a moment.
ꙮ Kurat barks in confusion.
They immediately grab their small stonecarving pouch, and fish out one of the pieces of irrica they bought at the market, months ago. “Sorry, Kurat. It took me near the full walk, but I had an idea. It won’t be long, I don’t think.”
sprints back to town. The report will have to wait. Irrica in hand, they bolt their way to a train station that will take them to the inn. They have to get to the Library.
Kurat, thankful for the exercise, cuts loose, following Luĉja.
: “Curses. No sign of Archie or his goggles.” Not to be deterred, Luĉja finds the tablet. “Kurat, please wait here calmly. I am going to turn into a statue. I will be back soon.”
Two fingers on the tablet, and Luĉja is ivory and gold, stepping into the Library.
: “Now then. Let’s see if I can see what you’re made of.” Luĉja holds up the irrica and attempts to pull out threads of gnosis from within it.
- Luĉja, The Clockwork Knight invoked their 🔵pellucid gnosis [d4] -> 1.
ꙮ Ĉasid still isn’t used to that happening, neither is Kurat, and they tilt their heads at each other and make weird animal noises.
ꙮ Within the Library:
- Luĉja, The Clockwork Knight has gained 1 Arete, and now has 2.
ꙮ The delicate approach doesn’t seem like it’s going to cut it, here.
: “Well, it was worth a shot. Time to do this the easy way.”
- Luĉja, The Clockwork Knight invoked their 🟡radiant gnosis [d12] -> 6.
ꙮ That, on the other hand, succeeds.
’s hands glow bright white, attempting to reverse the actions they’d taken just hours before and weeks before that. If spiraling gnosis into something worked, unspiraling it with a whole lot of force must do the trick, right?
ꙮ A blast of raw power diminishes the distinctions between the irrica ftagment and its environs; you’ve got enough of a sense of it to feel it twisting and warping and releasing itself– immediately igniting into a billowing sphere of flourishing gnosis that expands until it bursts, escaping into the environment and covering Luĉja with a fine dusting of bright pollen.
: “I should really leave this stuff to the Samudrans.”
ꙮ On the contrary, you’ve gathered useful information!
: “I appreciate the enthusiasm. I think Archie might have a better idea of what to do with my useful information. And perhaps a more delicate procedure.” They chuckle a bit.
: “One more test for the road.”
takes out a stone that they’d picked up while staying with V and their crew.
: “This one should mostly be burning, since I got it on the Beast. Let’s see what happens.” Although the Library isn’t a gnosis-rich environment, compared to the planes, Luĉja attempts to pull any remaining flourishing gnosis from the pollen cloud into this new rock.
Radiant? Flourishing? ....Pellucid?
ꙮ Pellucid, [Take Half] - you succeed at engaging some of the remnant cloud of flourishing gnosis, and shoving it towards the rock - there’s not a LOT, but there’s enough - and very little happens; what it feels like is that the rock is too mundane, too much earthly stuff, has too little Burning gnosis in the first place within it, even though it’s of the Beast. There’s a slight reaction - but it can’t seem to support itself, and fades.
: “Okay, so it needs a LOT of gnosis. Certainly gives me something to work on when we get back to the Ziggurat. I’ll tell Archie, see if I can’t get him and Caion on it as well.” Luĉja wipes the pollen off their face and exits the Library.
: “See, Kurat, right back.”
ꙮ The next person to enter the Library will have an uncontrollable sneezing fit, and they won’t even know why!
ꙮ The hazards of Science.
: “Oh well. I guess it’s time to go submit that report after all.”
RIP Luĉja doesn't know that pollen is an allergen probably. My bad.