Some fields will blossom while others lay brown beneath the August sun.

[baldrshand]

Who: Ethlyn and others
Where: Mostly around Aldrip
What: Open log for August!
Warnings: Probably thinking about her own death in here.


Keeping busy
[She's been feeling unsettled since last month's journey to the desert, so much so that part of her wishes she hadn't gone at all. That's not a very productive or mature feeling, in her opinion. Still it is there, dogging at her heels as she buys vinegar for the clinic, fruit for her kitchen, takes her boots to be mended after their punishment in the hot sands.

She's so focused on getting her tasks done that she's too busy checking her little list to realize she's about to walk right into another person--until it's too late to stop it.]

Oh no--! Sorry!!

More monsters more problems

[Ethlyn's already somewhat used to the wildness of the animals that live around town, but they've still been animals that she recognizes. She can handle precautions against wolves and wildcats and territorial deer.

What she's not expecting to see as she gathers medicinal herbs in the woods is a huge... mossy boulder... with eyes. And arms. And a froglike mouth. And disproportionately tiny little legs.

She's frozen for a moment until it lumbers past the clearing she's in, and then she backs away slowly.]

I have never see that before.

The voices

[Ethlyn is sleeping less than soundly in her room at the boarding house. This time the new arrivals aren't people--they're plants and animals, some benign and some frightening. Between that and other people's disturbing speculation on the plantlike colossus that attacked the town in May, she's been somewhat on edge.

She's sure it's only the remnants of a dream when she hears a familiar voice--but then it comes again as her eyes fully open. She hasn't heard that voice in months. The last time she did...

She's up and out of bed in a moment, pulling on her boots over bare feet, throwing a coat over her nightdress, her sword in one hand and her staff as she pelts downstairs and out the front door. Quan's voice, calling her name away towards the meadows, and she doesn't hesitate to hurry and find it.]

Quan! Where are you!

Wildcard!

[None of these starters suit? Hit me with your own, or hit me up in the discord, via PM, or @ compassinks to plot something out!]

Comments

[feintofhart]

I'm not sure if that would be possible in Fodlan. The position of Prince, King, or whatever else falls to the one with a Crest. I suppose if their parents were gone and there was nobody else of the bloodline to take over, they would allow a crestless person to seize control, but... [ He tilts his head, considering this. ] I couldn't say.

[ There's so much he doesn't understand about Fodlan, still. So many unspoken rules, so much that is taken as implicit knowledge of everyone who was born and raised there, the sort of thing he can't seem to figure out no matter how many books he reads, no matter how many people he speaks with, no matter how much knowledge he seeks out. ]

But as far as gifts go, the gift of swordsmanship is a fine one. [ His lips twitch upwards. ] Are you certain that it's up to your gift? Perhaps you all just happen to be industrious workers and trained your way into fulfilling your birthright.

[baldrshand]

There is a kingdom like that, where the holder of the Crusader's major line is the only one permitted to inherit--and the late king's brothers were so unhappy about it that they started a civil war.

[It had been ridiculous to Ethlyn. Lewyn's uncles didn't have a drop of Forseti's blessing. They had spent their whole life knowing they would never be eligible under the laws that had founded their kingdom. Why, in the past numerous decades of their life, had they never made peace with their nephew's birthright? They had tolerated his mother, as bloodless as they were, but couldn't abide Lewyn's absolutely inarguable claim.

But her lips also twitch upward when Claude suggests that a hearty training regimen must be responsible for her family's ability.]

I'm sure I could pick up a sword without having trained a day of my life and fight someone to a standstill with it--I can feel it even when I pick up a blade of a type I've never used

That doesn't mean I wouldn't be sore and stiff for the next week if I neglected that industrious training.

[feintofhart]

You think so?

[ Well... if she says so. He's not convinced, though. If he knows Ethlyn the way he thinks he does - they may not be bosom friends, but they're fond of each other, and have been through enough to get a feel for the other one - he's certain that she has trained with a blade from the moment she was old enough to do so, that the idea of fighting, training, improving is natural to her. ]

Some gift. As for us, we get the power to wield weapons that... other people aren't able to. [ He wades out of the water enough to perch on a rock and sun his upper body, relishing in the heat. ] But if you asked me what I wish my ancestors would bless us with for leading, I'd say I'd prefer knowledge. Or a gifted tongue. The skill to tell what our people want, and why. The ability to change minds, to shape history without raising a single weapon!

[ He raises one hand for emphasis as he speaks, then lets it fall back to his side, granting her a smile that makes it sound like he's just making fun. Though he's not, not really. Not unless someone takes issue with his ideology. ]

It's a shame, isn't it? That the gifts given to us are used only for conflict, and never for peace time.

[baldrshand]

[That gives Ethlyn pause, and she looks up at Claude, surprised. Such an idea had truly never occurred to her.

All the gifts that Claude names may actually be more useful to a king than simply the ability to fight very well with a sword, or a lance or a bow. To be able to understand the shifting hearts of the populace--what they hope, what they fear--maybe that could keep the peace better than any blade.

He's very passionate about it--and then in a moment, he isn't anymore. But Ethlyn finds herself not quite trusting that. She remembers the lecture that Lewyn, "just a bard," gave her brother on the responsibilities of a general and a leader.]

...I suppose it is, when you put it that way. [She stands again, wading a bit, feeling the river stones with her feet.] My ancestors needed their gifts to win a hopeless war. But if their gifts had... I don't know, if they had grown or changed into the ones you want for yourself, Jugdral could be a more peaceful place. I know a few people who would rather have that than a holy weapon.

[feintofhart]

That's precisely it. These gifts, they do serve us well in war. And sometimes war is inevitable. But a line of rulers with gifts that seem to assume war in every generation thereafter... I know it's not what I'd want for my kids. I can't imagine it's what our parents wanted for us either.

[ Okay, he's fibbing a little. Both of his parents are proud combatants of their own right, so steadfast in their skills that they can't imagine a reality in which Claude can prove himself with a gifted tongue rather than his skill with the bow and arrow. But Almyra is a warrior culture, through and through.

But his grandfather didn't think like them. He wanted peace for Claude. Peace, and the chance to learn, the chance to grow. He had been embraced with alarming warmth, though for too short a time -- perhaps because his grandfather knew that his end was near and had the clarity of mind to realize what he wanted to bestow upon his grandson. ]

Is that what Jugdral has been like too? One war after the next?

[baldrshand]

...I've never looked at it that way.

[Yet now that Claude voices his discomfort with having inherited gifts only for war, she's forced to think about how much of a burden it could be. She's always been proud of being Baldr's descendent, sometimes even a little jealous that Sigurd got to be his scion. But what does that honor come with? Scrutiny... Sigurd has always been able to let it roll off his shoulders. But then there's Brigid, struggling with a legacy of honor and integrity she had no idea of for most of her life. And poor Eldigan...

But what she wants for her children is no hypothetical, and doesn't think there is any hope that they will live a peaceful life. She has to turn away from that thought quickly.]

My own country is constantly menaced by its southern neighbor. [That is still too close to home.] And there are always tensions between Grannvale--my birthplace--and its neighbors to the north, east, and west. We've had... three wars in three years.

[Her voice is somber as she recounts that. Because when she thinks about it, it all happened one after the other... Isaach, then Verdane, then Agustria. And while she knows some of it was helped along by the Loptrian cultists, it doesn't seem to have taken them much effort to convince various kings and lords to burst out in warfare.

Maybe he has a point. Maybe the Crusaders' legacy and their holy weapons are hard to make peace with.]

[feintofhart]

So you're flanked on all sides by enemies.

[ It sounds like Ethlyn's world, even moreso than his own, is in need of change. All of that war, all of that bloodshed, and for what? For being born in a different land? Petty disputes? Differences in culture? Claude knows now that it's hopelessly naive to think everyone could just talk it out...

But he really wishes that they could. A life of such constant conflict just seems so unnecessary. ]

No wonder you never considered what other gifts could be given to you... with a lot like that, you guys must not even have any time to breathe, let alone try to plan for anything other than the immediate future.

[ He grabs a smooth stone beside him, warmed by the late summer sun, and skips it across the river. ]

I don't expect you to be able to describe it all in one go, but... what reason is there for them all to target your people?

[baldrshand]

[Ethlyn watches the stone skipping. He's not bad at that. She could never get the knack of it herself--usually it results in it sinking like, well, a stone.]

It started over a hundred years ago... after a great war to overthrow the dark powers that once subjugated the continent. [The founders of the two nations that once peacefully coexisted on the peninsula did not get to enjoy their hard-won peace for very long.] My husband's ancestor Njörun founded a kingdom, and her brother Dáinn founded a neighboring one. He fought with her husband one day--when she intervened, she mistakenly killed her love.

[Killed him with the Gáe Bolg that had been given to her by the gods.]

She took her life. And her brother died mysteriously not long after. [It's a sordid tale, one that echoes into Ethlyn's life now... she was the one who gave that lance to her husband, praying that the tales of its curse were superstition but never able to shake the notion.] Ever since, there has been bitterness between Munster, our land, and Thracia, the land of our ancestor's brother.

[There is more to it than that, much more--the feud might not be so bitter were it not for Munster's fertile fields and Thracia's barren slopes. But as far as Ethlyn is concerned, the bitterness wells from Thracia--they are the aggressors, sending their dracoknights across the seas as mercenaries, constantly testing Munster's southern borders for any sign of weakness... and finally destroying its royal family.

That's too much to get into on such a lovely day.]

[feintofhart]

[ Claude winces at the tale. There's nothing like the stories of history, told at a stark remove from the people at the time, that throws into sharp relief the sheer tragedy of it all. A history, filled with people who would much rather live in peace, devolving into horrible bloodshed, one thing after the other. For commoners, family disputes die when they do.

For people like him and Ethlyn, folk of noble blood, their feuds last for much, much longer. ]

That's a damn tragedy if I've ever heard one, [ Claude says, sighing. ] And I can imagine if the dead could talk, they'd ask for everyone to cut it all out. Nobody wants something like this to end in decades, if not centuries, of bloodshed. [ He turns to her, raising a brow, trying to lighten the mood. ] Kind of funny. Our bloody history has an awful lot of fighting between family members too. Enough to make you think that all royal brats should be only children, huh?