hadriel_logs | Event Log: A Hope for the Future

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Event Log: A Hope for the Future

Who: All characters participating in the event
What: The event log for the A Hope for the Future event
Where: All over the city!
When: April 15th-April 19th
Warnings: Stealth Rock

It's finally time to reap the rewards you've earned from all that hard work collecting and returning the Hope orbs! Be careful walking the streets during the small earthquakes, but feel free to admire the scenery as your beautiful city reassembles its way back into its former glory.

There are new houses where the destroyed buildings once were, and they're perfect for a single person or pair of lovebirds. In addition, you'll find that the electricity to these new houses, and all other homes and shops in the city is restored. The food is better, the monsters are gone- hey, this city might be livable again!

To cap it all off, we've got a feast waiting for you on the 19th! Come one, come all, and enjoy all of your favorite foods, drinks, and party games. It's been awhile since we've all gotten together to celebrate something good, so get your party on and toss all your troubles away!

► This log covers April 14th-April 19th.
► Feel free to make your own logs as well!
► Please tag headers of threads with content warnings where they apply
► Please put your character's name and open/closed in the subject line of your starters!
► If you get hit by levitating rubble or eat a food that wasn't meant for you, please let us know here.

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"Hmm, you're a terrible storyteller. Acquisition of what? Something expensive, I hope."

There aren't many thieves she can say she trusts, where she comes from. Sending someone out to steal something means they'll likely keep it. One is far more likely to find someone who considers themself a collector. The exception, of course, are the yugolothi mercenaries who drift through the city from time to time. When paid well, they're more than happy to take jobs of any sort. Sometimes they even succeed without getting themselves killed.

But all that aside, it's an exciting lifestyle to hear about. Makes for good stories.

"Hey," he says, mildly offended. "I am a great storyteller. I'm just getting started."

Leaning up against the table he does the objectively rude thing - pointing with his cup - and takes another sip of coffee. Her assumption isn't wrong; Nate has, in the past, screwed a couple clients out of larger prizes affiliated with the one they were searching for. He's also assisted in the aversion of complete assholes getting a hold of major sources of old world ephemera that would have qualified as biological warfare. Sometimes ya gotta.

"We've been looking for this stuff for...Jesus, years. Decades. This was our break."

As he speaks Nate gets considerably more animated, tugged into his own narrative.

"See, there was this pirate - Henry Avery - who managed to pull off one of the biggest naval heists in known history. Hundreds of millions in gold from a fleet of ships that he stowed away, and then he disappeared off the face of the earth. Nobody knows what happened to him or the treasure."

Oh good, the mild insult has paid off. Caedra has no patience for 'just getting started', has no interest in buildup. Hasn't had time, really, to develop the finer skills of patience and caution. Immediate gratification and impulse satisfaction or bust.

Well, okay, perhaps she's not quite that bad or she'd be failing completely at keeping her hands to herself. Already she can feel a slight buzz from the alcohol creeping in and she finds herself leaning closer as she listens eagerly to his tale. She drinks, and listens, eyes fixed on him with rapt attention.

"Mm. And?" She doesn't really want to interrupt beyond that, not when it's just getting interesting.

Nate realizes that with her general everything she probably needs some context, as any respectable person would, and given that he's imbibed a decent amount of liquor he isn't as impatient as usual to barrel through to the revelations he came to before arriving here.

"So the last affiliated artifacts that we found were these- these crosses, with a man tied to them. Representations of a saint from my world, who had been a thief and repented as he was dying, and his god led him to paradise. Avery had given them to other successful pirates, and the crosses themselves were hollow. They had this...sort of invitation inside, clues we originally thought would lead to the treasure."

Fifteen years, and Nate had assumed that Avery either hid his haul superbly well in the highlands of the Hebrides, or never hid it at all. Stayed rich and got fat and happy somewhere more tropical up until his dying days, or went down with his ship somewhere in the Atlantic, or around the Cape of Good Hope. He wouldn't be the first man to let the sea overtake him.

"We followed it to the last place he had been sighted before his disappearance and found this-" For a moment Nate frowns, trying to accurately articulate what he wants to say in his enthusiasm. As a very passionate history nerd, he has the tendency to get worked up once he's on a roll. "-this series of elaborate puzzles and traps. Like a test. Like he was testing the people he had invited to see if they were worthy of joining him, wherever he was. We reached this final chamber and before our, uh, competitors blew it up, got the next location which was hundreds of miles away, and barely got out with our lives."

By the skin of their teeth, really.

"But- but here's the thing, he wouldn't go to that much trouble to hide it, right? What's the point?" Perhaps less to her, and more introspectively, Nate takes another sip of coffee and hastily shrugs and continues. "Because it's- I mean, it just makes more sense if he was recruiting other pirates. Getting them to join him, pool their resources, their gold, away from the arm of the monarchy. Like a...nautical thief coalition."

She finishes the first pour of her drink as he talks, but she's paying close attention, surprising herself by finding how invested she already feels in his tale. Now that he's gotten going, he really is a decent storyteller - and tales of high adventure and pirate treasure have a wide appeal that reaches even to her. No surprise, perhaps, given her own background, as she struck out on her own as a child in search of something greater than what she had, and how she now revels in luxury and freedoms she could never have dreamed of. But Nate's own enthusiasm is luring her in as well, and she can't help but picture him out at sea, facing into the wind, looking over the horizon - shirtless. Nice.

And the clever pirate lord! The adventures, the seafaring, the puzzles and traps, oh her grandson would be so jealous. Nate's life sounds quite a lot like Malthus' in some ways, and she does miss that clever boy who hopefully is being taken care of by his grandfather. Caedra follows along, and grins at Nate's deduction. "A coalition of the most cunning thieves in particular, by the sound of things. It's brilliant."

And hopefully there's more to this story still to come, so she pours herself another drink, noticing but not minding how she awkwardly clunks the bottle against the rim of her cup. It's fine. She's fine. Alcohol is great.

He's spent more than his fair share of time on ships of all sizes, from dinghies in the Caribbean to pirate-commandeered cruise liners off the coast of Yemen, so her mental image - discounting the shirtless part - isn't altogether inaccurate. People, Nate believes, love an adventure story, and he milks her renewed interest for all it is worth. Hard not to be enthused by a tale of historical conspiracy and lost treasures.

"That's what I was thinking!"

He interjects eagerly, distractedly reaching for the bottle of cachaça and pouring some into his coffee mug. It mixes with the dregs and he takes another sip, leaning back against the table.

"There are plenty of other pirates who have disappeared, or escaped hanging. The thing is, we- we didn't get to follow the lead, because then we ended up here." Nate's frustration is abundantly apparent, because King's Bay had been within their reach. "But I've spent all this time in Hadriel racking my brain over the reason why they would pool their money like that, if they weren't trying to build some kind of settlement."

"Well," she starts, then pauses. Her brain feels a little more muddled than she had expected and it takes her a moment to formulate a thought. There are other reasons to pool money - to buy out politicians, to use it as a magical catalyst in certain spells if the gold is pure, or possibly to pay off an even larger threat. But. Isn't Nate from ... From one of those awful worlds where the mortals haven't discovered magic?

No, wait, that sounds amazing, it would leave them powerless. What a good world. What a good, good world.

Caedra takes a long drink, then smiles lazily as she approaches Nate and reaches for one of his arms. "I have a few ideas. About pirates but more importantly about you. Ideas that really ought to be shared privately. Will you come with me?"

Fuck it, he's hot, and she wants him. The cachaça brought her some clarity.

Nate is halfway done with his third (fourth? probably fifth, he's lost count) drink, caffeine mixing fairly well with the alcohol - like an Irish coffee, but better - and he's a split second away from swaying to the other side of the table to grab something to eat when a delicate, fur-clad arm loops through his.

He blinks at it.

"Uh. Sure? Where are we going?"

"Hmm." She draws the syllable out, leaning on him a little for both contact and support as her knees wobble a little.

"My house isn't that far. I'll take you there."

Walking... walking is hard. What about a teleport? That would be faster. Does she dare risk a teleport while drunk though?

Probably.

It takes him a second, which is long enough to push into two seconds - maybe three - before it sinks in that the lean is something bordering on affectionate in such a way that he is no longer buoyed by the comfortable embrace of the alcohol he's imbibed. It is a distinctly flirtatious gesture, and one he should have recognized a Hell of a lot sooner.

House. Touching. Privacy. Shit.

"Yeah, um-"

Perhaps more gently than is outright deserved, Nate makes an effort to extricate himself from her surprisingly strong grasp.

"Listen, I'm- flattered, but I'm married."

Edited 2018-05-21 23:43 (UTC)

She giggles as he pries her hand off and instead she reaches for the nearest table to stabilize herself, then flashes her own ring at him.

"Me too! Come on, it's not like your partner's here, right?"

Are they? Caedra looks around for some jealous lover but nope, looks like Nate's alone. Shame, a threesome might have been even more fun. Especially if then she took them both by surprise and killed them afterward! Alcohol gives her the best ideas when she's not immune to its effects, it seems.

Thank God for small mercies, like potentially psychopathic demons releasing you from their clutches. Nate puts a few - slightly unsteady - steps between them. The ring surprises him, partly because he has to wonder how the Hell someone like this gets married in the first place, and how that kind of relationship functions. Who is she married to? A bigger demon?

Probably.

"Sorry."

By design he neglects to specify whether his partner is in residence. He wouldn't trust someone who sows chaos for fun with the identity of a loved one, it's like asking for trouble.

"I'm a one-woman kinda guy."

The secret, of course, is that someone like this does not get married, because that's a contractual agreement and therefore would probably cause her to break out in hives at the very thought.

But yes. A bigger demon.

Caedra laughs as she clutches the table, needing something to keep herself upright. "One woman! That's right, some of you try so hard to stick to those arrangements. Don't worry, having a little fun won't hurt anything. It's not like she will ever know."

But Caedra doesn't seem particularly insistent - her tone is mostly full of teasing. There are plenty of others here tonight, and Nate isn't even the best she's seen. Sure, she wants him, but she wants others too. She is absolutely not a one-person kind of woman.

That said, her nature drives her to thoughts of all sorts of gory dismemberment should she discover Nate's wife is here. She'll have to keep her eyes and ears open. And Nate, she decides, ought to be the one to suffer first. Carving up his very attractive chest and turning him inside-out would be more fun than fucking him.

To be fair, the idea of getting married also used to give Nate an allergic reaction, but people change. Maybe demons don't. Maybe they're trapped forever in a state of wanting and craving and having zero impulse control.

But what does he know?

"Yeah, well."

Think fucking fast, Nate.

"Just 'cause she's not here doesn't mean I wouldn't feel shitty about it. So...thanks, but no thanks. Maybe you'll get lucky elsewhere."

"Aw, true love. How cute," she teases. For a moment, she loses focus on his face. What in the world was that drink?

She's just going to stay here for a bit and try not to slump against the table too hard. She's definitely not used to getting this drunk, especially not so easily, and the alcohol meanwhile is continuing to soak into her from the amount she consumed so quickly. Feel free to run, Nate - it doesn't look like she's going anywhere fast.

"Yep. Definitely."

Best to adjourn this conversation as quickly as possible. Nate takes the opening afforded to him by the very alcohol he offered to raise his cup in a little mock-toast before excusing himself, post-haste.

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Event Log: A Hope for the Future

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