preparation post

[zuhrovet]

This post is for out-of-character notes on things you want your character to accomplish before the next move. For continuing players: is your character making something, building something, studying something, or trying to foster a personal connection? For new players: does your character have prior experience with the rebellion, backstory with another character, or a particular skill they like to practice?

We also have a silly character quiz post and a music post, if you'd like to share some things about your character!

Comments

Re: free foxes (note to Sasha)

[yhlee]

Over one of the jeng-zai games, Jedao finally says to Reshad, "It's not anyone's secret that my past is being withheld from me. I can make certain deductions from that very fact, but I would prefer to know, if it's permitted. I doubt whatever you tell me is worse than my imagination."

Re: free foxes (note to Sasha)

[hoardingpearls]

Reshad folds her hand up, a measure of respect. "I apologise for the delay. But, yes - would you like to have this conversation here or more privately?"

She'll follow his lead on that. This is...well, she's been rehearsing this or something like it in her head since it was agreed there was a chance of capture.

Re: free foxes (note to Sasha)

[yhlee]

"Thank you for the option," Jedao says. "More privately, please, wherever you deem suitable. I trust we're being monitored anyway." He smiles sardonically.

Jedao's History

[hoardingpearls]

"Let's take it to quarters." Neutral ground would be better, but every neutral area aboard is public. She leads the way to hers.

"We may be." The grid, at least, is watching; whether anyone has eyes on it is another question. "Including by Cantata, who usually has a good sense of when things are private." But if he doesn't already know the moth can listen, he needs to.

Once they've arrived, she sits, invites him to sit. "So: you're famous for military skill. That's not different from what you know. You already know you attained immortality. You were present in battles well past even the record lifespan, even with the technology of my time." Her tone is as neutral as she can make it.

"But you were called an arch-traitor after the catastrophe at Hellspin Fortress."

[Sorry for the slow! I had to make sure she's getting it somewhere in the vicinity of useful.]

Re: Jedao's History

[yhlee]

[No worries! I mean, it's New Year's! XD ]

Jedao sits. He's watching her with an intensity normally reserved for prey.

"Hellspin Fortress means the Lanterners," Jedao says. "Their loyalties have always been precarious. Did I turn coat? Or was it worse than that?"

Despite the calmness of his voice, he's gone very still--too still.

Re: Jedao's History

[hoardingpearls]

There's a lot of versions of that story, and in preparation, Reshad has been reviewing which are the most likely to be factual. There's no point in belaboring him with ghosts.

"You turned coat," she confirms. He'd told them as much in his interrogation: he planned to, when the time was right. That leaves a lot of missing 'why.'

"There was a massacre." The history books would put every death at his feet. "But I wonder: you were the only person alive on the bridge, and one person doesn't kill a fleet without help."

She's watching him, uncertain how this news will land - near certain that it will come badly.

Re: Jedao's History

[yhlee]

"Alive on the bridge," Jedao repeats slowly. "But you didn't speak of killing the crew of a moth, but of an entire swarm." His eyes are focused on a point somewhere beyond Reshad's shoulder. "So I went through with it after all. Help wouldn't have been needed, if one enjoyed a high enough rank and a certain level of trust. The kind of trust one builds up through impeccable service over two decades."

He falls silent, then. His eyes have gone blank, unseeing.

Re: Jedao's History

[hoardingpearls]

Whatever he's seeing, it isn't good. Reshad moves just enough to put a hand on the little table, slow and nonthreatening.

"What you planned, you don't have to do it now." Mindful, careful: Sasha had a point about not tearing the future out from under him when it may be all that's kept him together. "There are other ways to bring it down."

Re: Jedao's History

[yhlee]

"I must have seen other ways, and ruled them out." Jedao's voice is soft. His eyes are still not focused on her. It's not clear if he even registerd the movement of Reshad's hand. "Tell me--in later times, is there a Kel hivemind? Did they go through with that? There were only rumors, in my time, that it was coming down the line."

Re: Jedao's History

[hoardingpearls]

"You may have, but there's other options now."

She's worried about him: that his focus has gone so far elsewhere speaks of bad things happening. She lowers her voice to match his, and keeps her tone gentle. Touch can help, sometimes, with things like this - but she doesn't know him, and she doesn't know if it would help or hurt.

"The Kel in my time have composites. Sort of a hive mind, but not of all Kel. They have formation instinct, too, and that didn't come until well after your time."

He could have read about that. Hells, he could have read about composites. She opts to make a quiet space, and see if more words come.

Re: Jedao's History

[yhlee]

"I always wondered what that would be like," Jedao said. "I didn't dare wait until it was instituted, for the obvious reasons." A soft pause, then his eyes focus back on her. "Formation instinct is a perversion of Kel service. What happened to dissenters? The histories available to me were vague on that point."

[Feel free to invent whatever Reshad knows on the subject. The details would be classified or possibly garbled, but on the other hand, Shuos.]

Re: Jedao's History

[hoardingpearls]

It's something the histories remarked upon: he can be very Kel. Reshad nods to the curiosity, though on the matter of hiveminds, the thought fills her with dread. (Dread he may detect, she thinks: he is still Shuos, and one of the finest.)

Of course her studies of his career led her to place an eye on the Kel, but on some ways, the hawks are as secretive as the foxes. "Dissent is called failure among the Kel." Infamously, in some cases. "I'm not clear either, on what they do to dissenters. I assume they're given to the Vidona, but they may have a different way of handling it before they cut a member off." It is not lack of care that drives the ignorance, but rather, suppression of the information she needs to make an accurate judgement.

"When I was a cadet, someone I knew had a Kel cousin who was disowned when it was found that formation instinct didn't take. I never heard about them after that. Was it different, among your Kel?"

Re: Jedao's History

[yhlee]

"The families themselves sometimes covered up disgrace, in my time," Jedao says. "But the records were usually public, unless the mission itself was classified." He makes a moue. "It doesn't matter anymore--I've given up my rank." He rubs his left wrist, drawing attention to the broad scar there, and the fact of his bare hands. "It's been years since I went around ungloved."

Re: Jedao's History

[hoardingpearls]

But it was still disgrace.

"I know we have at least a few former Kel in the rebellion. One of whom you've met." Not all of them are open about their past, but Seyli, they wear it on their sleeve. "Here, at least, it's more complicated than disgrace."

She follows the motion to his wrist, neither shocked nor pitying of the visible scar, but accepting it as a fact. "It must be strange."

Her eyes narrow and lips make a humorless smile. "An organization I was assigned once had scarves of rank. For months I was trying to adjust the fall." The hand not on the table pats at the air before her throat.

Re: Jedao's History

[yhlee]

Jedao is silent for a long moment, then: "I couldn't find information on what happened to my family after I turned coat." He lets the statement hang there.

Re: Jedao's History

[hoardingpearls]

That is a subject Reshad had never thoroughly studied. An interest in family would have been unbecoming in a Temuy, separated from her own; to show it would be to betray the thinness of the veneer of Hexarchate-appropriate submission. And so:

"I'm sorry; I don't know." Her brows knit together in concern, until another thought occurs. "Do you think they'd be interested in rebellion?"

Re: Jedao's History

[yhlee]

Jedao's lips part in a sudden silent laugh. "Rebellion? Not unless it involved bioengineering or, I suppose, radical poetry. My sister was the poetical one; I don't have the ear for it, I'm afraid." Then: "I know what the heptarchate does to the families of traitors."

Re: Jedao's History

[hoardingpearls]

They're going to need all sorts of skills before this is done. And, thinking of a very peculiar conversation she'd once had with Mafyyil, Reshad wonders about the efficacy of a poet in the right place.

This, though? Not the time.

"The hexarchate is not kind to them, either." She inclines her head. "Truly, I don't know. We can find out, if it helps. Or, if your disappearance is likely to endanger them? We can try to prevent that from happening." That's a question simply because she doesn't know the protocol, at this point in time. Another thing she should have looked up before the operation.

She'd never thought she might need to justify historical research decisions to the very subject of that history.

Re: Jedao's History

[yhlee]

Jedao lifts one shoulder, lets it fall. "It's important to me," he says dryly, "but that doesn't make it an operational priority for your group. I do understand the distinction."

A quick OOC request-

[hoardingpearls]

[would Reshad know if it's possible for the rebellion to visit the same time period more than once, or would she know if they have multiple moths? This affects timing rather than content of her actions.]

Re: A quick OOC request-

[yhlee]

[They can visit the same time period more than once, although this tends to result in new timelines, unless I've missed something from earlier that contradicts this. She'd know about the multiple moths.]

Re: Jedao's History

[hoardingpearls]

"I wouldn't suggest otherwise. But as you say, we'll need something to come after our triumph." She turns the hand on the table palm up.

"A poet can inspire and chronicle; that is valuable in itself. Biology isn't going to be optional -you've heard about the Mothlings. And no doubt there will be stranger things than I have yet imagined. So - I won't promise success, but we can make a pitch for pulling them out."

And the other thing, the one she's still learning to work around. "The nice thing about time travel is that we can regroup and plan. Soonest is only best in linear calendars."

Re: Jedao's History

[yhlee]

Jedao's mouth quirks. "I appreciate your efforts to motivate me," he says. "But I can't be the only one who's lost family or friends or lovers." He's watching for her reaction.

Re: Jedao's History

[hoardingpearls]

"Of course not. But you're the first one I've asked."

This time, her smile is a scar. "And my family would no more recognize Shuos Reshad than they would Hexarch Mikodez."

Re: Jedao's History

[yhlee]

Jedao's gaze sharpens as he considers that. "I can hardly be," he says, "the only asset whose loyalty you'd like to secure. Is this is a personal interest, or a strategic one?"

As to the latter--"That's a difficult position to be in." He's not sympathetic, exactly, but he's not unsympathetic, either. "My birthworld Eshpatan 'chose' to join the heptarchate in my grandparents' time. It was a fact of life by the time I was born, but I heard some of the stories."