WELCOME TO THE FREE CITIES!

[abraxasmods]

WELCOME TO THE FREE CITIES!

Welcome to The Free Cities! The portal exits outside the capital city of Cadens. The first impression of the city is its sheer size. It sprawls out across the landscape like a great hulking beast at rest. The wall that encircles it barely contains it, the buildings of Cadens practically bulging against its restraint.

The air here seems thicker somehow, tinged with a scent that’s acrid and smoky. Smog hangs high over the city, belched out by smokestacks that tower over the industrial district. The desert stretches out behind it, dotted with towers and dust clouds that disappear into the horizon. Multiple gates lead inside and each is staffed by soldiers in unfamiliar uniforms that wave a steady stream of people through without appearing to pay much attention. People are coming and going almost all of the time, to and from the outposts and areas of activity around the city proper. It’s difficult to tell just what’s out there beyond the impression of tall metal structures and a great deal of labor. Wagons carrying travelers to Libertas and Aquila roll out from the Travel Post outside the city wall.

Anyone who can sense magic will notice a much lower concentration here. No one will be stopped or questioned at the gate, even if the soldiers seem to take note of the fugitives from Thorne.

The activity and sheer number of citizens can be overwhelming. It’s crowded and loud and feels constantly in motion with everyone talking and yelling over each other. It’s easy to get swept up in the ever-moving throng or find oneself ducking into the mouth of a narrow alley just to breathe.

Anyone who’s willing to make their way to the northern part of the city and Portham Hall will find Prime Minister Marlo Reiner available to receive them.

Comments

[frontlinetitties]

Yeah?

[Something in her subtly brightens, which both surprises and quietly disgusts her. She's strained and fought and pulled against the grasping dead hands of the Ninth for so long that it still comes up on her like a short, hot shock, to know how much of the Ninth is in her. She can't help it, though; in a world so thoroughly alien to her, it's not unpleasant to find even slight and passing familiarities.

She turns away from the glass case and its dubious inhabitants now, leans her shoulder against it with a casual disregard for the fact that one is probably not meant to touch it.]

And it's...complicated. A long story, mostly featuring me, of course, which naturally makes it very interesting. But to save time let’s say yeah, kind of. Or I was assigned to her. The necromantic heir to each of the Nine Houses - that's...I guess that's what you'd call royalty of a sort - traditionally has a cavalier assigned to them, like from birth. Necros are powerful with the help of their necromancy, but they're usually scrawny little bastards with noodle arms. Cavaliers provide the brute strength.

[And they're ultimately designed to bond in an entirely weirder, more brutal way, but this is relatively new information even for her, and she doesn't want to bore him to sleep with it.]

[cryptsleeper]

He didn't use them well.

[Sorry to sound too cold about that fact, but Alucard was never a fan of used forged night creatures to destroy all of Wallachia plan. There were plenty of other ways to use forging - surely there were positive approaches out there - but it seemed the gift always came with an inclination towards destruction.

There's no correction of maybe don't lean against the glass? Only Alucard's eyes meeting hers, listening.]

So you have an entire class system built on a specific type of magic, and because their arts require certain approaches, they need physical back up because a class system like that always comes with political infighting? Is that roughly correct?

[But okay. You get a flicker of a grin at the descriptive term noodle arms. It's poetic.]

I think this is the first time I've had so little in another world that was familiar.

[Geralt just lives in a weird alternate Wallachia as far as he's concerned.]

[frontlinetitties]

[And just as something in her had lit up like a light going on mere moments before, now she seems to slump into herself, infinitesimally. Given what admittedly little she ever bothered to learn about the Nine Houses and the Resurrection, it's not such a shock. She had known there were worlds out there that functioned very differently from the collection of planets under the benevolent care of the King Undying. But it's still an odd feeling, to know how alone they really are, and how different.]

Probably just as well.

[She says, and her voice is a touch heavier.]

It turns you pretty weird, obsessing over the dead. And it's less that the Houses are pitted against each other, although you wouldn't have thought so, with how things went down...well, never mind that. It's another long story and I'm not trying to bore your ass off, here. But it's more like, the Houses are united under the King Undying - that's our God, who brought all the Houses back from the brink with the Resurrection - and then there are other worlds out there that aren't really into the way our God runs things, and we defend him from them. Or the Cohort does...from what I can tell, the heads of most of the Houses just sit around getting ever more weird and obsessed with the dead, and my House is the worst of the lot, just rotting away in the dark and guarding some chilly weirdo in a coffin...

[But she looks at him then, and shakes her head. Flashes a smile that looks almost self-conscious.]

But I bet this all just sounds like gibberish, doesn't it? I'm even starting to bore myself. What did you mean, he didn't use them well?

[cryptsleeper]

[There's not exactly a laugh from Alucard at how weird one becomes when focused on the dead, but there is a soft noise of acknowledgement at the statement. He's seen it. Saw how one death drove his father to madness and wanting to bring it upon countles thousands. Returned him to the Dracula of legend, but wrecked in emotions. An entire society focused on the dead?

The more she explains, the more the weird bears out. An entire society centered around it would have quirks, but defending a god of death with an actual army? His father couldn't imagine such a thing.

Although he can dig about coffins. That's his current goal right now, so no commentary.]

The particulars are....particular, but the overall concept makes enough sense to my ears. [There's an unfortunate noise in response, part sigh and part ugh no I don't want to.] Precisely that. Used them for more death and destruction with the end goal being annihilation.

[frontlinetitties]

Huh. Pretty shitty end goal.

[She says it bluntly; she's always regarded the fighting her own people have been eternally caught up in as something vital and necessary, a bright act of self-preservation. Although perhaps that's because her ideas about the Cohort are so bound up in her own desperate desire for freedom, the yearning ache to feel as though she's part of something bigger than a decaying old House that has all-but decimated itself in a bid to create one last, powerful necromantic heir. There has been no time or desire for self-reflection, or what she thinks about any of those old dreams anymore. Not when things had become so fraught and urgent back at Canaan House, not when they'd been ripped away from their own worlds and transplanted into something very different. But when presented with the idea of using one's strengths only for annihilation, she seems decidedly nonplussed.]

I mean, are we talking about annihilation of everything? Or just the annihilation of the enemy, whoever that might be?

[cryptsleeper]

On that we agree.

[It was the worst end goal. His father had been too beset with grief to realize how terrible the plan was. That all it really was was a terrible cry for help that he could have had. Hell, if he had only killed the priest that had set everything in motion, things would have been different.

But no. Disproportionate response had been the only logical conclusion so far as he was concerned.]

In the end, everything, even if it started out with only one country.

[frontlinetitties]

What the fuck.

[Is how she eloquently responds to that. She's perplexed enough that she pushes away from the glass case again, her voice having temporarily risen to a level that jars oddly against the hushed silence of the museum. Just as well the hall of natural relics is currently empty save for the two of them; it's the kind of loud exclamation that would have doubtless received some irritable looks.]

I mean, what's the point in that? Where does that leave the annihilator, if everything is gone?

[cryptsleeper]

[Alucard's not surprised by the response, even if the way he flinches might imply otherwise. This is dangerous, tender ground that they've stumbled onto. He's realized too late that he doesn't have a plan to properly back away from it.

His reply is quiet, hardly offended at the reaction but making it clear that this is incredibly personal in a way he doesn't wish to elaborate on.]

Sometimes, destruction is the point.

[frontlinetitties]

[Gideon cannot be said to be well-versed in the picking up of social cues, nor how to respond accordingly. To say she's badly socialised is a monumental understatement. Left alone in a swift-decaying place with only ancient nuns and a few old military leaders too decrepit to fight any longer for company, people who's views on her varied from abject hatred to cool indifference, she hasn't exactly had much chance to practice. Still. There's something in the way his voice drops, in the tone with which he speaks, that has her pausing. She narrows her eyes at him, trying to discern what he's attempting to tell her with his quiet words, the odd stillness of them.

He'd said associates of my father. Which meant they were talking about his dear old dad. Parents who commit terrible acts are something she knows just a little about, even if the parents in question weren't her own. Finally something clicks in her, hot and sharp, and she affects a casual shrug.]

I guess people do all kinds of messed up things for reasons that make sense to them at them time. Like that.

[And she points back toward the taxidermied abomination, having gathered together enough of her sense to attempt a distraction.]

I mean, there are people in this world who go around defiling the bodies of deceased...whatever that thing is, for the fun of it. Now that's fucked up.

[cryptsleeper]

[Thank God for that taxidermy nightmare. Having to go on would not be Alucard's ideal, and it might finally let Hector's little secret of I definitely helped Dracula with his crusade against humanity secret slip. Not that Alucard is opposed to that part, precisely, but it is probably better unspoken for now.

To move away from the topic is a blessing in and of itself, although there's no thank you from Alucard's lips. Just a moment where he pauses, stuffing every thought rising to the surface back down into the hole he has forced it into. He'll address all of this later. Run out into the night in his wolf form and howl for a time, or else try and enter the Horizon again to make and destroy and make and destroy until he's reached a temporary catharsis. It is all he is capable of obtaining recently.]

At least it is given some time in the spotlight. Perhaps it is a means of apology for the poor craftsmanship.

[frontlinetitties]

[She lets it go, easily. Even politely looks away whilst he seems to be regrouping, pulling something inside of him back into some corner of himself where it's usually contained. There may be whole swarths of things she knows jack shit about, but having something shitty and bad defining the past is not one of them. so she just makes a rude sound when he answers her, still turned toward the unfortunate, long-dead creature inside its glass case.]

I dunno. Would you want people staring at you all day if you looked like a bag of ass?

[cryptsleeper]

[There's relief in being provided that courtesy. Alucard, once he's had time to decompress from the emotions of his, will realize it is the first time he's even brushed against a portion of what happened back home with anyone - even Hector who was an active participant in some of it. It is probably a step of some sort, but he isn't sure if it's forward or just off to the side.]

I don't think most of us get a choice of when that happens. I existed in that dungeon for three months in a similar enough state.

[He still looked decent, save for his hair. It had been a mess by his standards, although a little bit of frizz was probably the opposite of noteworthy for anyone else.]

[frontlinetitties]

That was a bit different, surely. People weren't coming down there specifically to gawk at you. I know I came down there asking stupid questions, but I wasn't gawking.

[She says this last part in a tone caught somewhere between defensiveness and apology.]

I just needed to know where I stood, you know? I guess you could have been bullshitting me when you said you'd been tossed down there for no reason, but things already weren't adding up. I just needed to hear it.

[She shrugs, and once more she's quick to try pulling away from anything that gets too deep, or dark, or serious.]

Besides, there's a significant difference between needing a sonic and hairbrush, and looking like that.

[cryptsleeper]

I was going more for the feeling, rather than the practical truth of it. And more to the actual point, plenty of people feel that way when in public on any given day.

[He doesn't care about the apology, or the defense. Observation is observation as far as he is concerned. It is also a chance to sidestep most of this.]

But I take your point all the same.

[frontlinetitties]

Can't relate. I was born devastatingly attractive, of course people are gonna look. I can't hold it against them.

[She says, with a shrug and a wink, despite the fact that there have been plenty of times when she's felt less than devastatingly attractive. When she's been observed, in fact, as though she's something that can only be killed with a stake through the heart at midnight. But that makes for much less interesting and far more vulnerable conversation, so naturally it remains unsaid.]

But whatever. I don't know about you, but I'm gonna look around and see if I can find any more hideously ugly corpses to gawk at. You have to admit that they make the place more interesting.

[That way she can bring Harrow here later and try to get a laugh out of her, regardless of the fact that it's a sound so seldom heard she'd be better off searching for unicorns.]

Oh, right. And I'm Gideon, by the way.

[cryptsleeper]

[There's a soft noise that in better times might have been a laugh at that. If nothing else, the way Gideon phrases her total self assurance is enjoyable, and her turns of phrases prove yet again to be a source of genuine humour.

also like come on this is the son of dracula he's got some opinions on driving stakes through hearts]

I think there's a map up ahead. You could look at the listings of exhibits and try to divine what might deliver your exacting specifications. [Or like, just walk through the museum like a normal person?]

Alucard.

[frontlinetitties]

Well, it's been real, Alucard. I'm glad we got to meet under less shitty and altogether more amusing circumstances than last time. Maybe I'll catch you around?

[And she finds that she actually kinda hopes she does. Whilst his wit may be drier and more dusty than the most ancient of Ninth House bones, she can see the potential. Perhaps she can test more puns out on him at a later date, see if she can raise a real laugh out of him.]

I think I'll check out that map. You never know, maybe they do have a fugly category hidden around here somewhere.

[She'll saunter off through the hushed silence of the hall once their parting words have died away, in search of more hilarious monstrosities to tell her necromancer about later.]