Eternity RPC Board
10-21-2016, 11:09 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-26-2016, 11:32 PM by Seperallis.)
Nevina gave an audible "hmph," crinkling her nose with a scowl and sitting upright with squared shoulders against the back of the chair at Elke's insult. A professor! As if she spent her days regurgitating centuries-old facts with such an air like they were personal discoveries, playing magic like a toy for their "research" into pointless "discoveries" in their political game for prestige and recognition. Nevina wasn't some collegiate blowhard, she gathered real knowledge with real practical value for everyday use, thank you very much. Professor, indeed; certainly, if anything, it was (or would be?) more like a master/apprentice relationship, a venerable practitioner teaching the details of her craft with a wide-eyed journeyman fellow.
"Nevina. Just...Nevina," she resigned with a sigh, ending that particular train of thought. The idea of someone calling her master - or worse, mistress - felt infinitely worse than any annoyance suffered from a mislabeled professor, and she certainly wouldn't be the one to plant that idea in Elke's head.
Resolving that minor emergency, though, meant moving on to the girl's actual question. Truth be told, she'd been mulling over possibilities of what might cause an extranormal disease with very specific traits for transmittal (Elke was mostly right in her assumptions) to suddenly show a completely different character. There was no evidence of another werewolf nearby to introduce it; by all rights, the answer to Name That Disease should not be Lycanthropy, yet the blood on her hands, the flailing of claws, and the gnashing of teeth she witnessed just inches from her own face yesterday morning clearly testified otherwise. How could she explain the implications of a disease doing what it quite clearly shouldn't do?
Nevina sighed again, this time slowly and in thought, her posture slumped slightly. "I do not know," she lied, each syllable deliberately poking its way forth. "This is a recent problem for the town, so the change must be recent as well. We will know exactly what when we come across it, I am sure of it." This entire investigation wa based purely on a hunch, after all, a best guess to explain what happened here in Myerleigh. Just as likely, the poor afflicted man (rest his soul) could have brought the disease into town himself from somewhere else, in which case killing him and curing those attacked ends the threat.
This entire continuing investigation could very well be a wild goose chase, but what if it wasn't? An entire valley filled with bloodthirsty bunnies is no laughing matter!
"Well!" Nevina more expelled the word with finality rather than spoke it as she rose from the table, her hands clasped. "I think we will have plenty of time for discussion while we walk. Please, take your time with your tea; I will stretch my legs and wait for you outside."
* * * * *
Continue the discussion they did. Nevina clearly explained that, yes Elke's internal assumptions were right in that veritably every werewolf story explained the spread of "werewolfism" through some manner of wound inflicted by the monster, but no, this disease was not supposed to transmit like "bloody flux," as Elke called it, and finding the very reason why it suddenly did so (or why Nevina at least felt it so) was the reason for their investigation. As to the magical tincture left behind in the figurative hands of Forlag - who had remained conspicuously absent since his stealthy morning disappearance - the elf was only too happy to go into great detail regarding the intricate and time-consuming process. From the careful selection of the brew's four-herb base ("Only select the valerian when its buds are in bloom at night," she warned, "lest you kill the man") through a step-by-step explanation of the long, slow ritual that must be performed to a literal "T" ("Enunciate clearly, or you will have instead a useless and expensive mud tea, with a bitter hint of floral notes"), no secret was left unexplored as she divulged unbidden what must have been an entire library's worth of detail on this one very specialized, neatrly forgotten and almost useless remedy for an affliction many in Sidgard regarded as a mere bedtime story.
The backdrop of the conversation probably had as much a hand in her glad divulgences as any personal interest in the topic. After an initial warning to not touch the water ("for fear of the disease," despite the woman literally standing barefoot in it not days before, but nevermind that), the pair forewent the well-traveled paths out of town, leaving through one of the many crumbling breaches in the wall to follow the stream up-current, Nevina leading the way.
There at the settlement, the waters lay broad and meandering, likely a natural ford so shallow the pebbles lining the bottom stretched visibly from shore to shore, a turbulent mirror reflecting clearly and simultaneously two conflicting worlds of land and sky as it broke across the rocky clearing. As the pair moved further from the shade of civilization and once more into the wilds, the rock-strewn meadow once more surrendered to the trees, but this time their number remained relatively Spartan when compared to the lush foliage the two would-be travelers witnessed coming from the other side of the town. The trunks gave wide berths to one another atop the thin soils and their sparse canopies provided only a patchwork of shade form the sun's increasingly oppressive stare as it began its track across the heavens. Out here, the stream coalesced as it cut through several feet of sharp limestone dropoffs, nearly making moot the elf's earlier warnings.
The waters ran straighter, faster here, trying to make up for the still morning air with their own redoubled speed. The gentle pulsing of the stream wrapping its way over, around, along its smooth stone embankments competed eagerly with the few songbirds proudly chirping their victory to potential mates as surviving champions of another night's dangers. The two-part orchestra saw itself rhythmically, regularly interrupted by only the percussive crunch of two sets of feet plodding steadily along a thin layer of twigs and leaves, a few premature reminders of the impending change of seasons.
"What were you studying?" The sudden change of topic didn't exactly flow straight from the previous conversation (such as it was), a pregnant pause invaded by waterborne birdsong. The change in tempo did not trip Nevina, who kept to her short stride, eyes scanning the grounds ahead for hazards. "Your university, I mean. I understand that such students devote their study to a particular discipline. What was yours?"
"Nevina. Just...Nevina," she resigned with a sigh, ending that particular train of thought. The idea of someone calling her master - or worse, mistress - felt infinitely worse than any annoyance suffered from a mislabeled professor, and she certainly wouldn't be the one to plant that idea in Elke's head.
Resolving that minor emergency, though, meant moving on to the girl's actual question. Truth be told, she'd been mulling over possibilities of what might cause an extranormal disease with very specific traits for transmittal (Elke was mostly right in her assumptions) to suddenly show a completely different character. There was no evidence of another werewolf nearby to introduce it; by all rights, the answer to Name That Disease should not be Lycanthropy, yet the blood on her hands, the flailing of claws, and the gnashing of teeth she witnessed just inches from her own face yesterday morning clearly testified otherwise. How could she explain the implications of a disease doing what it quite clearly shouldn't do?
Nevina sighed again, this time slowly and in thought, her posture slumped slightly. "I do not know," she lied, each syllable deliberately poking its way forth. "This is a recent problem for the town, so the change must be recent as well. We will know exactly what when we come across it, I am sure of it." This entire investigation wa based purely on a hunch, after all, a best guess to explain what happened here in Myerleigh. Just as likely, the poor afflicted man (rest his soul) could have brought the disease into town himself from somewhere else, in which case killing him and curing those attacked ends the threat.
This entire continuing investigation could very well be a wild goose chase, but what if it wasn't? An entire valley filled with bloodthirsty bunnies is no laughing matter!
"Well!" Nevina more expelled the word with finality rather than spoke it as she rose from the table, her hands clasped. "I think we will have plenty of time for discussion while we walk. Please, take your time with your tea; I will stretch my legs and wait for you outside."
* * * * *
Continue the discussion they did. Nevina clearly explained that, yes Elke's internal assumptions were right in that veritably every werewolf story explained the spread of "werewolfism" through some manner of wound inflicted by the monster, but no, this disease was not supposed to transmit like "bloody flux," as Elke called it, and finding the very reason why it suddenly did so (or why Nevina at least felt it so) was the reason for their investigation. As to the magical tincture left behind in the figurative hands of Forlag - who had remained conspicuously absent since his stealthy morning disappearance - the elf was only too happy to go into great detail regarding the intricate and time-consuming process. From the careful selection of the brew's four-herb base ("Only select the valerian when its buds are in bloom at night," she warned, "lest you kill the man") through a step-by-step explanation of the long, slow ritual that must be performed to a literal "T" ("Enunciate clearly, or you will have instead a useless and expensive mud tea, with a bitter hint of floral notes"), no secret was left unexplored as she divulged unbidden what must have been an entire library's worth of detail on this one very specialized, neatrly forgotten and almost useless remedy for an affliction many in Sidgard regarded as a mere bedtime story.
The backdrop of the conversation probably had as much a hand in her glad divulgences as any personal interest in the topic. After an initial warning to not touch the water ("for fear of the disease," despite the woman literally standing barefoot in it not days before, but nevermind that), the pair forewent the well-traveled paths out of town, leaving through one of the many crumbling breaches in the wall to follow the stream up-current, Nevina leading the way.
There at the settlement, the waters lay broad and meandering, likely a natural ford so shallow the pebbles lining the bottom stretched visibly from shore to shore, a turbulent mirror reflecting clearly and simultaneously two conflicting worlds of land and sky as it broke across the rocky clearing. As the pair moved further from the shade of civilization and once more into the wilds, the rock-strewn meadow once more surrendered to the trees, but this time their number remained relatively Spartan when compared to the lush foliage the two would-be travelers witnessed coming from the other side of the town. The trunks gave wide berths to one another atop the thin soils and their sparse canopies provided only a patchwork of shade form the sun's increasingly oppressive stare as it began its track across the heavens. Out here, the stream coalesced as it cut through several feet of sharp limestone dropoffs, nearly making moot the elf's earlier warnings.
The waters ran straighter, faster here, trying to make up for the still morning air with their own redoubled speed. The gentle pulsing of the stream wrapping its way over, around, along its smooth stone embankments competed eagerly with the few songbirds proudly chirping their victory to potential mates as surviving champions of another night's dangers. The two-part orchestra saw itself rhythmically, regularly interrupted by only the percussive crunch of two sets of feet plodding steadily along a thin layer of twigs and leaves, a few premature reminders of the impending change of seasons.
"What were you studying?" The sudden change of topic didn't exactly flow straight from the previous conversation (such as it was), a pregnant pause invaded by waterborne birdsong. The change in tempo did not trip Nevina, who kept to her short stride, eyes scanning the grounds ahead for hazards. "Your university, I mean. I understand that such students devote their study to a particular discipline. What was yours?"