[ Open ] This is What I Brought You

[portolan]

Who: Balthier portolan and you
What: Tarot Reading, return from off-world, open post
When: Mid to late November
Where: Excelsior, his shop, around town
Content Warnings: None so far



OOC: As always, will match prose or brackets.

I. Sign of the Times

[ Business has been...odd...since the near world-ending, since everyone started leaving town, since the guilds have cracked down. It's all the more important he keep the shop safe, but he's that much more wary of people wandering in. So far, the normal folk don't seem to suspect the shop is anything more than a beautiful man with beautiful objects.

But he's been getting restless. So he puts a message out on Our Powers; stop by, guild discounts (either side) and also he's reading tarot.

There's an antique table and two comfortable antique chairs. There are a few decks to choose from. ]

You have a question in mind? You don't have to tell me, but you should think about it while you shuffle.

II. No Place Like Home

[ It's not like Balthier to be low or keep to himself. But between the world almost ending, and then his friends slowly moving our of Excelsior, the anti-meta sentiment threatening the safety of he and his loved ones. He honestly hadn't noticed it eroding his energy.

But after two weeks home, both relieved that his loved ones there are safe and buffeted by the pain of being away from them, he's trying to make a better effort.

So he's reached out, invited people over for tea or dinner, trying to keep this house full and warm as the need to just jump on a ship and go steadily increases. ]

You know this is the longest I've spent tied to one location. There's something enchanting about watching the weather change.

[ He sets out a tray of tea and snacks, all in beautiful antiques. Honestly, eleven months ago, he'd never have expected to get this much comfort out of being so domestic, but here he is. ]

III. Wildcard / Catch-All

[ All your Balthier needs ]

Comments

[portolan]

No, I fear there isn't. A good thing he has me to be stubborn and reasonable.

[ He'd missed that while he was away. ]

And now I'm going to be nosy. When we were in the image of your world -- your magic is the closest to how mine works, well worked, that I've seen. Does your world have Mist?

[unkindled_madness]

[Sephiroth frowns faintly, and shakes his head.]

There's nothing that we call by that name. How would you define it?

[portolan]

It's a -- mostly omnipresent energy generated by the planet itself. It naturally collects in some materials, like sky stone, but mostly we can be taught to channel it for specific spells, assuming we've been trained in them. [ He'll leave out the complicated licensing system for now. ] My partner was more in tune with it and could do more organic usage.

[unkindled_madness]

[Good, Sephiroth might have some questions about why a pirate would bother with licenses.]

That sounds like the Lifestream. Humans aren't capable of channeling it directly, but it can be condensed to form Materia--a kind of stone, I suppose, which acts as a conduit to the Planet, allowing the use of specific spells.

[portolan]

[ Yes, well, a complicit god-controlled magickal system made them somewhat obligatory. Not that Fran hadn't been teaching him the basics of illicit, more traditional magick. ]

Mm similar, I think. We can't channel it directly and need an intermediary structure to do so. The Viera can channel it directly, but are also more sensitive to its impact.

People were creating artificial stones to channel it. They were -- much too powerful.

[unkindled_madness]

Ours were commonplace. Shinra developed a way to manufacture them.

[Not really in the realm of "much too powerful."]

Who are the Viera?

[portolan]

Shinra? Were they an arm of the government? And it was a recent development?

[ He's fascinated by the ways different worlds overlap and diverge. ]

The Viera are another race -- my world had multiple non-hume groups. They are tall, with the ears and feet of a, ah, hare, I think this world calls it. Long white hair like yours. Excellent hunters. Normally they keep to themselves in the Wood, but my partner was ... atypical.

[unkindled_madness]

Shinra is the dominant power on my world. A corporation with its own military. Materia production increased in the past decade, during the war.

[At "hair like yours," he unthinkingly lifts a hand to it, then drops it back to cup his teacup.]

And they are... more attuned to this "Mist" of yours?

[portolan]

[ He nods even as he stares into the distance, lips pressed tight as he forces himself to take a drink. ]

Not so different. The Archadian Empire was in lock step with our major laboratories. Their research changed drastically the last decade, though Mist usage for magick is much older. Started a war too.

[ He notices the hand drift to Sephiroth's hair and refrains from asking if its uncommon, then. Appearance can be its own delicate wound. ]

Yes. There are theories hume children could be if they were raised with it, but hume life spans are so much shorter, and our constitutions are weaker. I don't think we'd ever reach parity.

[unkindled_madness]

I suppose that's not surprising. [That the research led to war, rather than the other way around.]

Hm.

It's lost knowledge, on my world. There was a race known as the Cetra which was capable of calling up magic from the Planet itself, but their civilization ended millennia ago. Difficult to say how different they were from humans.

[portolan]

We've older ones that were lost. One of those involved -- well, it was believed to be legend. I doubt anyone would believe me that one existed, let alone interfered.

[ Still an odd thing to hold in his mind, that they claimed to have created the other races. He's not sure he believes it. ]

Interesting that our worlds both have older histories. This one's records are comparatively young.

[unkindled_madness]

You think so?

There seems to be no record of anything but humans here, but they've been here for some time.

[portolan]

They do, but written records are only about five thousand years here. Ours a good deal older.

Prior to that seem to be mostly material remains, and fragmented ones, but I believe you're right that bone structure is only human. The various earths seem to be more or less human only.

[ Barring mutants, but he knows enough to not offer that. Aliens, too, which he doesn't entirely understand, but all seem fairly recent. ]

[unkindled_madness]

Ah. Our history is not so old as that. Much was lost with the Cetra, it seems.

Tell me, do you have dragons on your world? I thought perhaps they had gone extinct here, but they seem to have been entirely mythical.

[portolan]

Yes, we have them -- quite a few species. And dinosaurs. Which are not extinct. And chocobos. No horses, not the soft kind they ride here anyway. We don't have hares or rabbits, though have a similar larger species that's a good deal more...fluffed.

[unkindled_madness]

You have chocobos?

[This is clearly the most important one on the list.]

[portolan]

Ah, do you also?

[ Thus far no one has heard of them. His pleasure at the shared piece of information is clear. ]

[unkindled_madness]

[Sephiroth is also clearly pleased by this. Finally!]

Yes. No horses, they're entirely mythical.

I expect chocobos aren't as commonplace as they once were, but even in the city, it's not unusual to see one.

[portolan]

I thought someone was playing a trick on me asking about horses and made an ass of myself. But really, what is the stranger animal? Not chocobos.

Our military uses them. They're extremely plentiful.

[unkindled_madness]

Agreed.

Our military has a preference for vehicles, but chocobos are better suited to mountainous terrain, so we used them more during the war.

[portolan]

Vehicles are a fairly new change for us with sky stone, though they're expensive. Chocobos are still preferred for land travel, yes.

[unkindled_madness]

It sounds as though most of your vehicles fly.

["Sky" stone and all.]

[portolan]

Mm they do. The cars here confused me.

[unkindled_madness]

There are quite a lot of them here.

[portolan]

They're noisy too.