annexedlogs | Relief Log #2

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Relief Log #2

I. In The Aftermath

After the mission is complete, the new recruits are invited back to Central Command for a patch-up and celebration to let loose and socialize a little bit.

The first order of business is the patching up. Anyone who was injured is welcome to go to the Hospital, if the injuries are more serious. Everyone else, those with smaller injuries like scrapes and bruises, minor cuts or burns or abrasions, are welcome to come to the Infirmary in Central Command. There will also be attendants that tell returning new recruits that if they'd like to learn a little first aid and tend to their comrades, they can also head to the Infirmary.

In the Infirmary, anyone who's not injured but shows up will be instructed in basic first aid so they can tend to their teammates and friends. Nurses will be rotating around to check in on people and make sure nothing is more serious than it looks, but generally, the new recruits will be encouraged to tend to their teammates in order to encourage group bonding.

II. A Fine Meal

On an evening a few days after the mission is complete, all the extra-universal new arrivals will be summoned to one of the large meeting rooms in the Central Command for a feast. When they arrive in the room, it is decorated with orange and brown streamers and fall iconography - bundles of twigs and dried flowers, bundles of fragrant herbs, dried pumpkins with faces and fall scenes carved into them, and other decorations. In the center of the room there is a large table laden with delicious-looking fall foods - poultry birds so large they had to have been roasted on a spit, huge roasted portobello-style mushrooms, mashed tubers, gravy, stuffing, bean casserole, candied yams, mooncakes, boiled spicy crayfish, roast herring, various types of stews ranging from traditional stew to fish stew to mushroom stew, and tons of desserts like tarte tatin, ice cream, apple crumble, pumpkin pie, and almost any other fall food you can think of.

Characters will be invited to sit around the table and feast together, while quiet music plays in the background, facilitating conversation. Some of the rebels have volunteered to keep restocking the table as people wander in and out to sit at the table and eat in rough shifts, and these volunteers will encourage characters to share things they're thankful for, things that make their lives better. All of those things that make life worth living, that make the fight worth fighting.

On a table near the door to the room, there is a stack of beautifully cloth-wrapped bento-style boxes that characters are invited to take with them. They are told by volunteers that these boxes aren't just leftovers for later, but a necessary component of the night's test of courage. They encourage characters to take one and participate, as it's a particularly bright feather in the cap of anyone who undertakes it.

III. The Skyclad Light Show

Once the feasting throughout the late afternoon and early evening is about complete, characters will be invited out into the courtyard of the Central Command for the evening's entertainment. The courtyard is essentially a small but beautiful park, with benches, patches of grass, a few ornamental trees and gardens, and plenty of places to spread out a blanket (provided by friendly volunteers!) and watch the show. And what a show it is!

Every year around this time the Skyclad take magical lights that trail behind them, and put on a spectacular light show in the sky. Streaks of vibrant color follow each hoverboard as those riding them in the sky flip, twirl, dive, and perform other feats of hoverboard artistry for the crowd below. The show goes on for about 45 minutes, with the Skyclad twisting and twirling, drawing beautiful designs against the evening sky.

Characters who really bonded with their hoverboards and took to tricks and flips and kicks after the mission would have been invited to participate, especially if they were interested in joining the Skyclad. The Skydance, as they call it, is quite highly choreographed to avoid midair collisions, all with the goal of producing something truly beautiful and ephemeral. Try not to choke!

IV. Night of Remembrance

The final tradition of the evening is a solemn remembrance of the warriors who have fallen in the fight against the Sylphid. After the Skydance, volunteers would have set up another table of those bento boxes from earlier as well as little bags containing 5 mandarin oranges, and would brief the people in small groups about the traditional Night of Remembrance. The Night of Remembrance is a really big deal among the Witches, and is a great opportunity to prove yourself if you're looking to gain respect and rise up the ranks, as it's also partially a test of courage. The tradition involves taking leftover food from the feast to the shrine at the cemetery in the Mages Sector in order to 'prepare a feast' for the dead and honor those who have fallen, and offering oranges to the fallen along the way. The food must still be at least a little warm when it's presented to the spirits. Sounds simple, right?

Once characters who wish to participate find their way to the cemetery, they will discover a couple more volunteers with a variety of lanterns. For some reason, nothing electric, battery-powered, or at all technological will work in the cemetery, and they haven't for as long as anyone can remember. Any light source must be either very old-school or magical in nature, and texting someone for help would be completely impossible. But why would you need to call someone for help?

Well, it wouldn't be a test of courage without a little danger, right? On this night, every year, the spirits in the cemetery are stirred up and come back into the land of the living. Yes, ghosts do really exist. The ghosts have a variety of temperaments - some of the ghosts are very pleasant and will chat with people for a while before accepting their orange, some are playful and mischievous and will play pranks on people coming into the cemetery (these pranks are sometimes harmless and sometimes very not-harmless), and others are angry and resentful at being dead and won't hesitate to viciously attack interlopers. Some of the more unfriendly ghosts can be calmed down with pleasantries and shows of respect, but others cannot be and will continue to attack interlopers until offered one of the oranges that they've brought.

There are two types of lanterns available: traditional lamps that are simply a candle in a glass bell that can be easily carried with a ring on the top, and magic lamps that attract spirits and appear as a glowing blue-green orb floating in a glass bell fitted with a ring for portability. People carrying traditional lamps are seen as quite brave, but those who take a magical lamp are absolute legends.

Participants will need to take a bento, some oranges, and a lantern of either variety, present the oranges to various ghosts as they make their way to a shrine on the other side of the cemetery, where they will set out the food from the bento as beautifully as possible...and don't let that food get cold, or your offering will be worthless - who wants congealed gravy and soggy stuffing?! At the shrine, they will find an assortment of delicate beaded charms attached to the branches of a large weeping willow tree. These are protected by magic, and can only be taken by someone who's completed the tradition. They will light up a different color depending on what kind of lantern the participant is carrying. These charms will provide a one-time magical boon to whoever takes them.

Characters carrying traditional lanterns will find their charms lighting up orange and these charms will, when used through the calling of a keyword by either Heba or Tian characters, summon the spirits of the dead in an area with a radius of around 50 feet to attack an enemy or group of enemies. The keyword can be set simply by speaking it to the charm. This charm can be offered to another person as a gift or kept for the character's own use, and can be used only once. If the charm has been gifted to someone, it will turn red, but will still be functional.

Characters carrying magical lanterns will find their charms lighting up blue and these charms will, when carried on a character's person, provide one resurrection from death without the loss of memory that usually comes as a side effect of resurrections. This charm can be offered to another person as a gift or kept for the character's own use, and can be used only once. If the charm has been gifted to someone, it will turn purple, but will still be functional.

Regardless of which charms are given, characters are encouraged to show them off as evidence of having participated in the Night of Remembrance. Anyone who is gifted one of these charms should be grateful, they are regarded as high-value gifts to be given only to someone you care about a great deal. Many people, regardless of whether they've earned the charms themselves or been gifted them, will attach them to their network devices to show them off.

NAVIGATION

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Fff. He'd meant for her to do it, but he'll just chalk that up to him being unclear. Mentally shrugging, he twists the cap off with one hand to pour some onto one of those long cotton applicators, then began scrubbing over the guy's back.

"Got hauled out yesterday, woke up to this today. I gather I missed all the fun and got stuck on clean-up duty." Yes, missions would have been fun! That's the sort of thing Morgan likes. But then again, he doesn't mind this, and it shows; despite his words, he's all smiles and good cheer as he sets the bottle aside, then draws out the first needle to slide it through the skin so delicately his patient felt nothing more than an itch.

Codi is none the wiser of Morgan's intentions; she's much more interested in watching him acupuncture his way through medical treatment. He had offered that for her during the dream, hadn't he? Apparently that wasn't a bluff. Or, at least he doesn't consider it a bluff.

"Sadly late to the party, yes," she hums in mock resignation. "Don't let the Witch fool you - the post-mission relief party is just a pale illusion of the fun the rest of us had today."

"I got a taste of that in the dream later, too. Big old battle through a facility and everything" Let her think he'd been fighting heroically and epically. Morgan has a hunch that though she might appreciate dropping foes in their tracks with cheap magic instead of a fierce battle, she wouldn't exactly be impressed by it.

He can talk and work at the same time, too. In the course of those two sentences he inserts a half-dozen more needles with the sort of casual ease that meant he's either very good or a total fraud.

"Hmm, I'm sure," Codi says, eyebrows arcing. She will neither challenge nor completely accept Morgan's claims; he seems to her like the type to lean on bravado, and she's not sure if he's willing to take that into the realm of flat-out lying yet. He's certainly told her a lot of unbelievable things in their dream, but part of the reason they seemed so strange at the time was because the dream itself was muddling with her expectations. The waking world has turned out to be a lot stranger.

"You have time for the slideshow?" she continues, deciding to change the subject. "The one about why we're here and such. I'm hoping at least somebody had time to give you a primer before just throwing you in the infirmary."

"Oh yeah, believe it or not they didn't want to just let some random himbo loose on the patients without getting him up to speed." Of course, Morgan isn't a himbo, but no one could really be faulted for thinking that of him based on first impressions. And he is treating acupuncture as a serious medical technique.

...or more accurately, he believes it is one so absolutely that reality itself can't compete with his willpower. The patient's breathing slows, and the tense back muscles relax like a wave.

"I like my body enough to want to keep using it."

Codi huffs a skeptical laugh, but otherwise doesn't openly agree or disagree with Morgan's assessment of himself. Let him believe what he wants to believe - she'll just take that into consideration and make her own conclusions based on what she sees, and so far, that's someone who is confident enough in his skills and knowledge to casually play dumb about them while still being dangerous. It's an admirable game he's playing.

"No surprises there," she says with a playful wink. "Heba or Tian?"

"Tian," Morgan says, immensely amused. They made a Mage into a -- mage. Of course, there's no small amount of irony to it, since it's a very Hermetic style of magic, and he'd never quite seen eye to eye with the Order of Hermes on... most things, let's be fair. He wouldn't describe them as the magickal Tradition he had the most in common with outside of his own, that's for sure.

Just like that, he begins withdrawing the needles, as sure-handed as you could ask for -- fingers keeping the skin from stretching, other hand pulling them free and tossing them onto a nearby tray. Technically speaking, they didn't need to be sterilized or anything for him to treat another person with them, but there's so much wrong with that it's better not to try.

"I hate rushing this," he says conversationally, rocking his head from side to side to stretch his muscles. "But we don't have an hour to burn."

"That so?" Codi says, tilting her head curiously. "Me too! Whatever on the Broken World gives those out has good taste."

Her thoughts on the matter are a bit more complicated than that; she's been trying to figure out a pattern between Hebas and Tians for a while now, based on her observations of each group, and so far has been drawing a blank. The only thing she's really determined in that there seem to be significantly fewer Tians among the rescued Witches and they are typically very quiet. Codi finds herself a notable exception. Morgan also seems to break that mold, which means that he's probably got a lot going on that's similar to her - which makes him someone she should keep a very close eye on.

Not that she wasn't planning on doing this anyway; it just helps to have extra incentive.

Speaking of, she hasn't been paying nearly enough attention to what Morgan's been up to with those needles. Her attention snaps back to them with a slight lean forward (probably the most she's focused on their patient this whole time). "Where'd you learn to do that?" she asks. Codi is tempted to follow up and ask if it's actually healing them or just making them feel better, but she doesn't want to offend Morgan's sensibilities by implying that he's a fraud, even if he is.

"I had help from my teacher, but primarily I developed this skill myself. I kind of went across it backwards -- I figured out how to manipulate qi, then studied existing works and treatises on the skill to refine my technique into acupressure and acupuncture manipulations. Incidentally, it falls under the general umbrella of magick-with-a-k."

Don't think for a second he doesn't assume she's skeptical. Most people are -- a lot of science has gone into disproving the theories and practice of acupuncture, since it directly benefited the people who wanted those theories and practice to not work. But the ideological battle -- hell, the fight for fundamental control of reality -- between the Traditions and the Technocracy is way too heavy and deep to even touch on without expecting a hell of a lot of explaining and effort.

But considering it actually and definitely healed the patient here? Might make a believer out of her yet!

It hardly takes a glance at their patient with her untrained eye for Codi to believe him; once Morgan mentions magic in any form, her eyes light and she hums an "ah" of genuine understanding. Of course it's magic. Before coming here she would have called bullshit, but here, where she is actually learning spells and sees mana worked in ways she doesn't understand yet? The concept that another world could utilize the same techniques with different language and using different fundamental practices is hardly a stretch.

Does she still think that Morgan isn't giving her all the relevant details, or could be sugarcoating his descriptions for flair? Sure. Does she still think he's a total charlatan? Absolutely not.

"Then it sounds like you have a head-start on your magic classes," Codi remarks. "Lucky you. What else can you do with your 'magick-with-a-k?' Is it all medical and needle-based?"

As someone who's picked up a few Tian spells himself, the difference is night and day -- but explaining that, succinctly and sensibly, to someone wandering into the difference between static magic and Awakened Magick is not exactly easy and this definitely isn't the time for it.

"Martial arts," he says with a decisive nod. "Everything is martial arts. Some of it I'm better at than other parts, though. We have a --" One finger rotates in the air, a mental pause as he's trying to think of how to describe it. "A sort of convention, since Mages all come at their magick from entirely different perspectives, that bundles up what we can do into 'Spheres'. So if I acupuncture someone back to health or a priest prays them well or a giant steam-hissing machine fixes them up with weirdass healing radiation, that all falls under the Sphere of Life, if you see what I'm saying."

Codi nods along, although the slight squint to her eyes says that she is not following as well as she's pretending to. In fact, she's mostly stuck on the concept of 'martial arts' - a thing that she would classify exclusively as, well, martial. Punching and the like. The concept that it could encapsulate anything else is massively confusing to her, but that's what you get when you attend only combat training sessions and skip on the methodology and lore behind them. As it is, Codi just assumes Morgan is being intentionally hyperbolic and eventually manages to move on.

"So...kind of a different way of processing the same material," she answers slowly, folding her arms in her lap. "Like how some people learn better through lecture and others learn through application. Am I on the right track?"

No one gets what he means by that, or how fundamentally and powerfully true the sentiment is, and that's okay.

"More like... well, let's say the starting point is New York and the end point is Los Angeles. One person walks there. One person runs. One person bikes. One person takes a plane. One person drives. One person swims clean around South America. Everyone gets there through immensely different ways, and has immensely different experiences, and gets entirely different things out of the journey. But at the end of the day, you can sum every single one of them up as 'the person went from NY to LA.' That make sense?"

Codi nods with increasing enthusiasm. "Yeah. That's what I said, right?" That is not what she said. Still, Codi continues without pause. "That's really neat! You think you'll end up interpreting the Tian spells the same way, then?"

That is 100% not what she said and Morgan knows it.

"Nope," he says, grinning casually again. "Tian spells are what we'd call 'static' magic. Exists within the rules, something you might think of as a generally unknown possibility like electricity and radio would be to medieval-era people. Perform a certain action, get a certain result. Leave your house, turn left, then right, then straight through the intersection and there's the Burger King every single time."

Codi continues nodding, her eyes slowly glazing over. She has the sense that someone more engrossed with Tian magic theory - someone like Luke, who has actually attended and pays attention to most of the classes - would be able to have a lively debate about this particular interpretation. Codi is not that person.

Evidence in point: "...Okay, you're gonna have to explain that colloquialism to me," she says with a laugh. "'The Burger King?' Famous surname or an actual king of burgers?"

Codi has not spent a life embroiled in not only Mage but werewolf politics as well. She should be thankful she doesn't have the background to have that debate, honestly.

"Fast food chain, very well known but not the number one reference, with a mascot who is definitely the actual king of both burgers and the uncanny valley, and they lean hard into the latter in the advertising. Also, home of the Whopper!"

Codi squints at him, calculating - not because she's trying to determine if he's telling the truth, but because she's deciding how well that advertising model could run here and if she could get away with stealing it. Maybe she could come up with a similar mascot for Cyborg, and use it as a springboard to launch a franchise location on the other side of the camp...

But she's getting ahead of herself. "Sounds horrifyingly greasy," Codi says with a wry smile. "They don't have typical burger places like that around here, but there's a sandwich cart that shows up in the Markets every once in a while that comes pretty close. I can show it to you sometime?"

Morgan suppresses a snort as he gathers up the last of his needles. "If neither of us have been turned off by meat by the time we're done here, I'd love that."

Rising fully, he pats the back of their (okay, his) patient in a gesture that seems reassuring but honestly has a lot more to do with smoothing out one final twist in the guy's chi. If he can leave a patient sleeping soundly after all this, he considers his job to be done, and done well.

"Still a ton more to do here, though. The fun never ends."

Codi chuffs a laugh and straightens up, though she mirrors Morgan's gesture and pats the peacefully dozing patient on the calf as an afterthought. "I'll catch you if you end up swooning from seeing too much blood," she teases as they wander away. "But something tells me you'll be fine."

There are quite a few more patients to go through before her quota with her teacher is finally met, sure. But the presence of fun (competent) company definitely makes the time go by faster.

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Relief Log #2

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