Scene #7474: Stone of Storms-3

Owner	Pose
Captain Flint	The moon is high in the sky, the water calm. Around the five boats, there stretches an unnatural ring of ice, unheard of in this tropical part of the Great Ocean. The air, cooled by the ice, begins to generate a fog, which seems ethereal for the presence of the moonlight, interrupted only by the glimmering beams of pale light which stretch across the circle of unfrozen water upon which these vessels float. The Stone of Storms is in the hands of the Concord, with no violence necessary. But there is another prize which might be had here, for just a bit more work: the crews of these ships. Every man and woman, even the Dyrwoodans who aren't known for sailing prowess, is an experienced sailor. Moreover, some of them can beg divine intercession by their respective deities, most numerously the Ondrites. More ships for Nassau's fleet, more sailors for her navy, and the blessing of a few sea gods would do much for the brewing rebellion. There's just one issue: Abbot Hafmacg (pronounced HAV-madge) of Ondra's Grasp, that Dyrwoodan sloop. The other two crews would gladly join with a nation of pirates, having a certain respect for those who live and die by the blessings of the sea. You could turn and leave now, with the stone and two of three ships... or you could stay, attempt to find the reason for the dissenting vote, and return with all three, dropping anchor in a bay with a new protector and setting foot on an island preparing for its own naval academy.
Zero Kiryu	The serpent of vine that had attached to one ship has grown its way between the three ships, just in case rapid transport between them was needed for whatever reason. As it happens, there IS a reason. A flickering awareness that the vines exist simultaneously across each of the ships can be sensed on approaching them, and 'selection' achieved by simply thinking where one wants to go. There is, of course, only really the one relevant place TO go. Zero Kiryu is not an ambassador. He steps through the vines to the Ondra's Grasp and stands aside, behaving himself more like a doorman than anything else. That's inaccurate, too, of course. But he doesn't particularly need to let anybody know that. While waiting for one of the Faces of the Concord present today to come do Face Things, he scans the minds of the surrounding crew in search of some answers.
Yuuki Kuran	"Now, John Silver, would you join me for a walk?" Is Yuuki's question, with the Concord having lept into action not hours before to secure the ships - and the crews - almost to a man. Almost. Yuuki takes John Silver's hand lightly, and drags him towards the large silver tree on the deck of the Walrus, and-- Arriving next to Zero, as he doormans for her. Yuuki smiles brightly in the moonlight and bows, one hand extended back like a fairy godmother for John Silver, and the other lifting the edge of her skirt in a light curtsey. "Good evening! This is... Captain John Silver, of the Walrus, and James Flint's Nassau." Yuuki makes a light presumption, but it sounds good in the moment. "The large one is James' Royal Anne. Now, introductions are all done, I have come to understand that this is... parlay?"
Starbound Flotilla	Moonfin is the one who will act as the Flotilla's diplomat -- in this, as well as really all things. After what happened here, all the things the Flotilla offered, surely there's no objections? But there is, and he suspects it will likely be more spiritual. The others were focused on health and wealth, creation... But what can he offer to a group that prizes loss, forgetting, mourning? Well, he brought some expensive Hylotl alcohol to share. His approach is formal, ceremonial, and as haughty as ever. Disembarking from a higher-tech persona craft the Flotilla deployed to convey from one ship to the next, he boards and walks, having changed out of his armor into the monastic robes of his role -- the fancier variants, used for showing up lesser races with fancy fabrics, not the practical stuff. "I am Moonfin Hylotl of the Concord. We seek to speak with the one who finds our offer displeasing." He declares, in a benevolent tone. "I would like to speak and understand, so that their insights might be shared. Where is Abbot Hafmacg?"
Captain Flint	John Silver smiles and nods, taking the Director's hand and approaching the tree. The metal of his prosthetic raps against the deck in an uneven yet confident stride. There's a Walrus crew member who's simply ready to take Silver's crutch, as he and Yuuki cross into that tree. He grins as he's introduced, shaking hands with Hafmacg. "I suppose it is, at that," says Hafmacg. He's got, in stark contrast to the Babylonians and Africans who make up the other two thirds of the flotilla, an accent that sounds weirdly similar to the Southern United States. He's got a somewhat ruddy complexion, with medium length blonde hair and a full beard. It's not hard to imagine that, years ago, he might have been some farmer's mischievous son, but there's a sense of stern purpose about him, now that he's standing in the doorway of middle age. "You're lookin' at him," says the captain of the Grasp, bowing to Moonfin. "Well, that is, you're looking at the Abbot. Allow me to explain." Hafmacg wears an amulet of a crescent moon nestled in a cresting wave, carved from some manner of shell. He leans upon a staff with a glimmering opal at the top, a symbol of his station as surely as the amulet is. "I, speaking personally, quite like what Captains Flint and Silver want to do. If it's insight into my answer that you want, I invite you to observe a ceremony few outsiders ever see." He gestures to the sloop's quarterdeck, the raised section at the rear of the ship. Up from belowdecks, a procession of Ondrites come, four in number. They carry an ornate chest with several locks. The chest is painted from top to bottom, with depictions of tides which appear to swallow a city whole at their uppermost level. Each level corresponds with a lock, which only opens after the proper verse of a whispered prayer is uttered. The chest is brought to the starboard side just as the last lock is opened. Such an elaborate, ornate chest might give the idea that it's a reliquary--but when the Giftbearers, as they're called, begin producing items from within, it's very rare that anything they grasp is of actual, material value. It's mostly trinkets, items of personal value to someone, letters, and so on. Moonfin would recognize this from his research as the calling of the Giftbearers: helping troubled souls forget their pain, by casting memories like these to the seas where no one will find them. It is an immense show of respect and trust to be allowed to know the location of these memories' consignment to the sea. Quiet splashes slap against the hull of the sloop for perhaps a minute, before the chest is closed, the same prayers uttered in reverse of the previous order. Hafmacg, who had kept silent for the ceremony, now speaks up again. "We call Ondra the Lady of Lament for good reason," he soberly drawls. "Hers is the world of the forgotten, of loss and mourning. What the tides give, they may one day swallow--and they are relentless. We may never know the extent of all those peoples and places which the sea has washed away, but wash away she does, especially those things which are given unto her." Hafmacg turns and fixes Moonfin, in particular, with a wistful gaze. "Do you understand?"
Zero Kiryu	"People come and people go. That is true of 'peoples' as well as 'people', but..." Zero leans back against his tree, stopping it from teleporting him away. "It is also true of this ship. Eventually, it will 'go' as well, as will Nassau. Should that mean this ship should never have been? Its crew? Also..." He gestures in the direction of the chest, "Even things that are lost or thrown away can be returned to you, by this sea or another. Erosion is the nature of the tides, but so is change as a whole." He holds his hand up, generating a sphere of plant matter that gives itself the appearance of a planet, "The shape of the land and the container in which the water resides..." Water is teleported from elsewhere-- probably a fountain, or a river that he has some plant life in. It's not salt water, at the very least. It fills the 'oceans' arranged in the sphere, which warps and changes as if in fast-forward. The world of 'today' disappears, replaced by something familiar to Zero and Yuuki but to practically nobody else. "I don't believe in absolute impermanence. But it seems to me as if the opportunity you have is either to prosper... or for your descendants to have the opportunity to perform such a rite as that one for Rome," he says. The selection of terminology seems to be selected to be locally familiar-ish.
Yuuki Kuran	Taken through the somber procession and the showing of trust and respect, Yuuki remains professionally silent, and personally struck by a consistent wonderment. Prompted in her understanding, she nods slowly. "James has... a favorite saying of his. About a man travelling with an oar so deeply into land, that their oar will be mistaken for a shovel. That, he says, would be the place untouched by the sea." Yuuki gives a soft sigh, and a following smile. "I think that information travels farther and faster now than it did when that thought was made. As knowledge grows, so too does understandings. Now, the sea can reach those who could before only dream of it, like me. This reverance, and importance, as the sea accepts that which you cast into it, is very touching. This is where men go to cast aside who they were and become some other, some else, as capable as he is able and as strong as those beside him." Yuuki looks to Moonfin, and then settles. She said her piece. She'll allow the most diplomatic of captains to take the layup for the dunk.
Starbound Flotilla	Moonfin regards the Director, nodding, each of the three eyes blinking independently. "My people are aware, more than most, of the ruthlessness of the tides." Moonfin says, nodding somberly. "It is a harsh, unforgiving influence. It gives and takes, certainly, and such a cyclical process may make one think it is not worth it to indulge the gifts that wash ashore, to begin with." He paces a bit, to look over the edge at the patch of ocean where the ritual was completed. "There is a bargain struck with the waters of any planet. They will take without hesitation, and they expect you will receive without hesitation yourself. They will not wait for the indecisive -- just as one must move to swim without delays, so to do the seas expect decisive action to take its gifts." "I believe our friend Zero here is right. That loss is transformative, a transformation that can be embraced or denied. As the other ships part, your shores are eroded. You may choose to continue as you were, and face the ocean's next harshness how you like, but do you not see value in this being part of your cycle? Loss is a form of transformation, and the things cast away shall be the silt that fertilizes other shores." He pours a cup of his special Hylotl drink, offering it to the man. "I would ask that you take freely and decisively. Embrace the moment. Surely, tying yourself to an island may make attachments, but you need not stay. One way or another, this Flotilla has been eroded by the seas -- it is up to you where the silt shall drift and where new life will spring from it, but it need not simply drift to one place and settle." "Or, in less poetic terms," Moonfin says, pouring his own and partaking briefly. "If it is the loss you are attached to, is not the change of the loss just as important? If it is the cycle you are attached to, is not the decisive action to reclaim opportunity just as important? If it is the forgetting and detachment that is important, is not the motion, change, and rearrangement just as important in making sure the mountainous permanent fixtures of memory can be moved?"
Captain Flint	Does impermanence mean things should never have been to begin with? "No," says the abbot, shaking his head. "Of course not." The boards of the hull give a gentle, relaxed creak as the ship rests in the placid grasp of the sea. Hafmacg peers at the opal atop his staff, holding it up so that it catches the moonlight. The mention of Rome draws his attention, but not recognition. "A dead place," says John Silver, clarifying, "But one that even very modern Earths still remember, that nations upon them still try to emulate." Put in such a way, there's a certain gleam in the abbot's eye as a thougtful frown takes him. Was it the moonlight, or something else? "A place that not only changes the people who go there," says Hafmacg, lowering the staff and looking Yuuki's way, "But a place that changes the whole world just by existing. The kind of place that might one day be spoken of in hushed tones, by scholars desperate to piece together any kind of knowledge they can." He mulls it over, nodding towards Zero. The water in Zero's remade planet burbles sonorously. "Ondra favors such things." A new procession emerges from belowdecks. Again, four monks. This time, each has a very long brass pole with a hook at the end, from which there hangs a tiny silver vessel. Each monk moves to a different part of the ship. Port, starboard, bow, stern. The rods are dipped into the sea, and a prayer is whispered. They are lifted up, the pails gently deposited onto the deck, removed from their rods, and brought before the abbot, who blesses them: "Sing, O body of Ondra, who wept for the unattainable moon." His hand passes over the proffered pails, north, east, south, west, and he gives Moonfin a measuring look before continuing. "Let this, your offering unto us, be as the tears you once wept, and will weep again, washing away the memory of we upon the Wheel." His staff raps authoritatively upon the deck, and the four bearers kneel, heads bowed. "Moeith ixi anath." There isw a feeling as though Something is here. Just for a moment, there's a sensation like being watched, where not even the water or the ship makes a sound. The moonlight reflected from the opal in his staff becomes as a lance of light, sweeping between the vessels and consecrating the water within. Silver stoppers, each resembling a phase of the moon, are placed into the vessels by the monks, who then rise and disappear back belowdecks. "All of those things are important to us, Moonfin. It's said that Ondra was the first to know lament, for her ancient unrequited love. As she pursues the unattainable," he smiles, "Her advances stir the seas, changing the course of ships and history alike." "Sooo..." says John Silver, very much not a philosopher or religious type. "Is that your way of saying you'll join us?" Hafmacg chuckles, leaning once more on his staff as cracks slowly begin spreading through the ice. "I think so," he says, with an air of certainty. "The pursuit of Nassau is just as important as attaining it. And whether it lasts or not, the fact that we tried will undoubtedly effect what comes after, and all of us will be changed for the experience." Silver grins. "If there's one thing Captain Flint wants, it's change."
Zero Kiryu	Zero leaves the crafted globe of twisted vine sitting on a small pedestal on deck, to be disposed of or kept as desired. He keeps it in the shape of his own Earth, thousands of years past a good two centuries from now, when even places like Rome have become increasingly obscure. A belt of what can only be described as destruction divides what was Europe into pieces, and the coast line isn't quite the same anywhere either. He steps to the side of his "doorway" again, surveying Hafmacg and Silver. Truthfully, the idea of impermanence troubles him now. Not because of anything that will happen to him; he is, at this point, quite permanent with even the slightest modicum of effort to take care. That anyone would strive for impermanence is strange, and alien. It reminds him of arguments long gone, on the subject of mortality and immortality, as argued in circles by powers now quite deceased themselves. And if all things are impermanent before this God, what of the God itself? They're not questions he's inclined to ask. That runs counter to Silver and Flint's, and thus the Concord's, goals here.
Starbound Flotilla	"It is my conjecture that this Earth is to suffer, one day. That the seas shall rise, and that even if Nassau as we know it should live to see that day, it will one day rest upon the ocean floor, in its own way. Your understanding of it is right -- that it will not be forever, but that, in some way, I hope its changes shall persist, and ripple through the world." Another sip. "Unless Hylotl architecture gets developed, anyway. That would keep everything preserved just fine." Har har. "We will never promise more than what the world allows. The chance for an easier life for at least a generation or two, for so long as our collaboration allows it, and a path to walk to create a new type of change." He says, finishing his drink and putting everything away. "But I am glad to see that even humans possess the wisdom required to appreciate the humble promises offered by men and not nature." A chuckle rumbles out of his chest as he turns to watch the cracks spread in the ice as well, leaning over to watch in a meditative way.
Yuuki Kuran	"The wingbeat of the butterfly causes hurricanes across the world, I hear. I'd rather not flutter overmuch, but it's fun to find people to spend time with. Gathering together is my favorite hobby. I turned it into a career!" Yuuki observes with cheer, though Zero's departure brings her a concenred look. Still - this is good. This is better than good! "And it's thanks to everyone..." The thought finishes quietly upon her lips, before her red-brown eyes trace up to Moonfin. "That's right. But in a generation or two, it will be easier. To take more steps, and continue. There's a kind of forever that we can create, by not letting sleep take us." Yuuki elbows Moonfin in his meditation. "Are you going to be teaching architecture at the Academy, then?" She teases. "Still. I think that'd be nice. It's suited for the beaches. Perhaps Albert will help for the jungle, and Seft the plains and fort." And George will be in the room with Hornigold, teaching bright young eyes how to slit kings. Real, useful education.
Captain Flint	Zero's concerns about Ondra's love of impermanence may be more well founded than he realizes. Maybe. If that's to be, however, it won't be this night. Indeed, Hafmacg's next words are an affirmation of his vow to join the pirate nation. "Lift the anchor," he says to those monks still abovedecks. They nod and hurry to a turnstile around which there is wrapped a thick chain. Putting their not insignificant strength to the task, they slowly push the wooden handles along their circular axle, until there is a cry: "Anchor's aweigh, abbot!" The abbot nods, and raises his staff high. Again there's that feeling of being watched. "Craeft afyllath thyr lim." His voice seems somehow more than it normally is, as moonlight bathes the deck of Ondra's Grasp. Across the walled-off portion of the Atlantic, the other ships in the fleet, and even the Walrus and the Anne, are likewise blessed, if not by Ondra, then perhaps by Olokun or by Sirsir. It's hard to tell. But what isn't hard to discern is the effect. Those who were beginning to flag owing to the late hour find themselves possessed of a newfound vigor and alertness. "Sister Alesca, prepare to get underway, and pass along our decision to the Eye and the Blessing. We're for Nassau." At the sound of this, the ice ring creaks loud enough to be heard by every ship present, splitting open and allowing passage south back to the island soon-to-be a nation. Hafmacg smiles at Moonfin. "Don't go calling me wise just yet," he says jokingly. "Humans, especially Dyrwoodans like me, tend to get big heads when you talk that way." The aforementioned sister makes use of Zero's vines without hesitation to travel between the fleet and coordinate with each of the navigators. "Still," drawls Hafmacg with a thumb stroking his scratchy blonde beard, "I appreciate it," and with a nod to Yuuki, "And I'll look forward to causing those ripples with you all. Make use of our confessional or the amenities of the Flotilla at your leisure, Heralds of Nassau. I'll be in the chapel if you need me." That's a weather altering stone and three ships' worth of sailors to do battle and priests to raise spirits (possibly literally, who knows). The sail back to Nassau shall be blisfully uneventful, as if it were so ordained.
Zero Kiryu	"Adaptable," Zero murmurs, in response to the sister making use of his vines immediately. It hasn't been unheard of at all for the sailors to figure that out, but they've usually taken a little while longer to get used to it. He supposes this lot are just more used to... He glances towards the Abbot. Powers, as it was. Inclining his head a little in response to the conclusion of business, he steps backwards through the vines and is gone.
Yuuki Kuran	"Big heads are fine too. As long as you use that big brain to remember the important things, shape is just what you've decided to be today. I look forward to working with you!" Yuuki waggles both hands goodbye, leaning forward as the ice melts and cracks, backstepping after Zero. Away from the moonlight boats and towards another adventure.
Starbound Flotilla	Moonfin emits a short "hah". "Do not worry, I never make a habit of calling humans 'wise'." He assures the man, smugly. But there's a grateful nod. "Still, there is good you will do, making this choice. And so making it is appreciated. There will be much lost, but I believe you will find what is important remaining." He turns to head to his own craft again, giving a self-assured nod to the two leaving vineward. "A pleasure, as always, to work with you, Director, Hand." He says, finding, somehow, an elegant and noble-looking way to clamber down back onto his little personal craft -- it's a blink-teleport onto the hover-vessel, because there's almost no other option.