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abraxaslogs2021-12-06 09:21 pm
speak_n_spell) wrote in abraxaslogs2021-12-06 09:21 pm
[Open] Find Your Feet
WHO: Sypha Belnades & Sundry
WHAT: December logs and CR starters
WHERE: Cadens - Catterborough Theater, Cadens - The Hall of Natural Relics
WHEN: Winter in the Desert 1) At the Cat
When she'd said 'thank you no thank you' to a position at the outpost, the welcoming committee who'd drawn her from the summoning pool had politely shown her to the gate. As if she'd asked to be here in the first place, thank you very much! Sypha'd huffed, grabbed what few things she'd earned during her recovery, and hopped the next supply wagon to Cadens.
Work wasn't exactly scarce, but her usual methods of sussing it out simply didn't apply in a new world, an alien culture. She'd resorted to marching up to shopkeepers and asking pointblank where she might find a decent day's pay. Only, it turned out the skills sought out in rural Wallachia (scribing, arithmetic, tutoring children) were, if not commonplace in Cadens, at least easily accomplished by any passing student. The market was glutted with such helpers!
At the end of her patience and her purse, Sypha'd snapped. Literally. When asked what she had to offer, she'd snapped her fingers and summoned a glowing ball of fire beneath the nose of a bored inn host. He'd been...not impressed, exactly, but at least mildly interested, and suggested she try her luck at the theaters. The Cat, he'd said, was looking for someone to provide effects.
Sypha'd been too stubborn to ask what the hell that was supposed to mean. So here she is, weeks in, spinning eerie fog across a stage while the Free City Theater Company put on their evening performance of An Aquilan Assignation.
A step down from defeating vampire lords with fire and ice? Maybe. But there's joy in using her magic to weave a story, to trap the audience in a bubble of suspended disbelief, to emphasize Marguerite and Sasha's tense performance of lovers searching for one another in a mausoleum. Depending on the scene, she might summon curtains of fire, buffet the actors with winds, or create a localized rainshower, all for three gold per week, a room of her own upstairs, access to whatever the Company had bubbling in the pot that night, and a troupe of entertainingly big personalities to distract her from her loneliness. Not a bad deal.
The fog rises, as Marguerite spins in panic. The minstrel positioned opposite Sypha, offstage across the way, calls up a jittering wail of strings that rises and rises, drawing the audience's anticipation higher until--
--She snaps her fingers open, palm up towards the ceiling, and a single lightning bolt cracks down from the rafters (and into a special grounding bolt set into the stage). Sypha grins as the seats explode in shrieks and gasps, exchanging thumbs-up with the minstrel while Marguerite wails over Sasha's body.
She'd like to see one of those fancy Free Cities machines pull that off.
2) At the Hall of Natural Relics
Cadens itself wasn't such a bad place to be marooned; all the answers she could ever ask for about this place, its people, its ways, were available behind the right doors! So many libraries, laboratories, academies and repositories of knowledge! For the price of admission, of course, a fee Sypha was in no position to pay just yet.
Ah, but here she found another similarity between The Free Cities and those she'd known in her own world; too few hands balancing too much work in those high institutions. Their tenured staff were desperate for assistance, and while there were always new academy students looking for a good opportunity, some work was below even them. Work like leading exhibit tours, folding pamphlets, overseeing schoolchildren on daytrips, and the like. That's where volunteers came in, driven by nothing but enthusiasm, paid in nothing but behind-the-scenes access to the inner workings of the establishment.
A fair trade for her day off, in Sypha's mind. So what if she wasn't from Abraxas originally, half the people in Cadens weren't from Cadens, and she could memorize a script as easily as anyone else. Better, with her eidetic recall, and genuine hunger to soak up the workings of this world. And on her breaks, or after her shift, she could page through the Hall of Natural Relics' archives, searching for references to the magic The Free Cities had seemingly grown beyond. By the end of her second shift, she had all the interpretive displays note-perfect. By the end of her fourth, the Outreach Supervisor signed her up to lead a few of the school groups.
Which is what she's doing now: guiding a class of fourteen -- no, fifteen, she'd better not lose one -- seven year olds through the Hall of Osteology (better known among the volunteers as the Bone Zone). Arranged throughout the echoing space were the fossilized remains of massive creatures once roamed Abraxas. Sypha's still getting her head around the very concept of extinction, but the arguments put forward in the books she's read so far are airtight. She shares them with the kids with a kind of macabre glee, waving her arms and shaping volumes in the air with her hands as she describes how Cadens was built on the floor of an ancient ocean, populated by the leviathans strung around them on bolts and wires. The children listen with open mouths until their actual teachers clap and summon them away for snacktime in the cafeteria, leaving Sypha to her break.
3) Dealer's Choice
no subject
[Her gaze tempers from wild excitement to something searching, reaching, like an uncertain hand extended in welcome.] Maybe magic works differently where you're from, or differently here, but magic as I understand it is an exercise in willpower. Magical creations and constructs are common, but they're an extension of that will, you see? They're tools built for a purpose, they run errands, they carry out tasks set by their masters. They're predictable and usually disposable.
To create something that then exists, on its own, outside of the maker's purpose and direction for it, is a goal alchemists and philosophers have pursued for centuries! [Carefully, she plucks the chickadee from her shoulder and extends it to Jaskier, leaving her palm open. The bird ignores her attempt to return it to its progenitor, flapping back to her collar to pursue its fixation with her hair. Sypha grins.] Some might say it's the province of wombs and gods alone. So, yes, I would like very much to meet your masterpiece falcon!
[But more than that, she wants to peel back the heart of the mystery around the Singularity. The commanders at the Outpost had refused to go into detail unless she swore herself to their cause, and so far her search of public records has come up dry.] No wonder no one in the Free Cities talks about the Singularity - they're so in love with their science. And it's wonderful stuff, truly! But it sure would upset the local narrative if word got out about some big rock in the desert fucking up all known physical laws.
I AM SO SORRY this notif got lost in the sea of my inbox ;-;
Sypha speaks with magic with a sort of excited understanding combined with a thirst for more knowledge that he has yet to detect in any healer nor mage he's met. Even here, in Abraxas. For the most part, the Summoned had their magics already. Or they viewed them as a mere annoyance.
She's certainly a force of something. Jaskier is rarely ever bowled over by someone's presence, let alone their enthusiasm.]
As far as I understand, the chaos, the magic, is far different. It's... I think it's described as an exchange. Of energy, it's theorized. That something must die so another can live. That sort of thing.
[But here, he's never exchanged anything for his magic except time. Which does not feel like a fair exchange at all. Not for this power. Not for the joy these little darlings can bring.]
Yes, you've noticed, have you? I suppose you get more of the brunt of it as a true mage. The Kingdom of Thorne is quite the opposite. They are far more embedded in magic than this place, which... well, they altogether spurn it, don't they? But please, yes, I'd love to show you Red. He was a gift to a friend of mine, but I'm sure he'll allow me to borrow the falcon for a day. Perhaps I can swing back around here and find you?