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4th Ashan, 719

4th of Ashan 719

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Pharan
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Posts: 103
Joined: Sun Jan 20, 2019 11:41 am
Race: Avriel
Profession: Diplomatic Aide
Renown: 15
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Master and Student

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4th Ashan, 719
... continued from: here



“…and that’s Aurelian, Tulis‘ husband. He runs the smithy.”

From his position on the other side of the street, Pharan watched a dark skinned Ithecal sharpen a heavy, two-edged sword. A ram fur rode the broad line of his shoulders, his only concession to the early Ashan cold as he worked a massive grindstone in the courtyard of his workshop.

“And Tulis was Praxes only child?”

“No… he has two other children, Gaulas and Danius. They both serve with the military.” By his side, Jaene adjusted the clasp of her fur-trimmed cloak. “They don’t have—”

“—why are we here?”, Pharan interrupted softly. He had kept his voice low, so it wouldn’t carry across the street, but he sensed people’s attention. Someone in the half-dark of the smithy was watching them.

When his mentor had set out from the tavern, he had thought they would take another walk across the city. Two, three breaks in the cold, interrupted only by Jaene’s occasional lecture of this or that point of interest. Instead, they had wound up in Lattarsh, beside a smithy that filled him with a vague sense of dread. Or maybe, it was only its inhabitants.

“I thought you might want to see her. Tulis and her family.”

Pharan looked towards the courtyard again. Three Ithecal, a head shorter than Aurelian, busied themselves around the workplace, laying out or cleaning tools, watching their father work. Tulis’ children. Praxes grandchildren. Jaene had given him the name for all three of them, but already he had trouble telling the three apart. That, too, added to his irritation.

“I wouldn’t know what to tell them.” He turned half around, away from the smithy, towards Jaene. Overhead, the sun was a sallow smudge among gray clouds.

“Tell her you knew her father. What you remember of him. People want to hear that those they lost are not forgotten,” Jaene said, casting him a sidelong glance. “What would you say at home?”

“Nothing. We don’t mourn the dead.”

There would be a funeral pyre. There would be a procession—of sorts. More a gathering of family. There would be no tears. None of the grim, heartfelt, sorrow-stricken displays he had observed outside Athart. And for those who didn’t return, there wouldn’t even be that.

Sensing Jaene’s attention he looked up to meet her eyes. “What?”, he questioned indignantly.

“I don’t know”, his mentor said. “I am just curious. It’s not like you take strongly after your brethren after all.”

And whose fault is that, pray tell?, Pharan thought and searched for her eyes. Unlike her full-blooded brothers and sisters, his mentor’s eyes were a deep, bottomless brown. They were also void of discernable emotion.

He looked back towards the smithy again. A small figure arranged knives and daggers for display on a small table. Although a child, it was already taller than him.

“Maybe another time.”

Jaene lifted one hand. A slender Ithecal woman who had just stepped outside returned the gesture. She was shorter than Aurelian, her scales the pale green-brown of mud. Tulis. Pharan hesitated. He searched her features for a semblance to the old hunter he had known for so many arcs and found he couldn’t. They were similar, but only in the way most Ithecal resembled each other. The woman took a step forward and Pharan turned, briskly heading after his mentor. He caught up with her at the corner.

For a time, they walked in silence. Around them, houses grew stunted and alleys crooked as they rounded Yrithal’s summit and descended towards the harbor districts. In a false display of equality, Pharan had fallen in step with the Half-Eídisi.

“Inya”, he started, his eyes on the street ahead. “You said she hated me… how would you know? I could tell because she was all too eager to let me know of her spite, but you looked at her, and you knew.”

Jaene had set her eyes on a stall selling herbs, but at his words, she passed it. She cast him a momentary glance. “You can determine the provenance of any emotional thread with a little skill and focus. My mentor used to call the technique tapestry—a too grand name for what it does if you ask me. It won’t give you what you seek with such clarity, but it will give you a vague shape of a person, an object, a connection to whatever led the emotion to develop.”

His mentor looked around, then motioned towards a potbellied man down the street. “Try it.”

Pharan pursed his lips.

“Mortal law. Immortal law—magic is a violation in an of itself", she said as if she sensed his hesitation. "And if it’s only a violation of the laws of nature,” she added, casting him an expectant look. “No one here, no one watches us, and we are only going to take a short peek.”
word count: 845
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Pharan
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Re: Master and Student

A
window.”

“A door.” Jaene was lounging in her chair, the heels of her boots gracelessly on the table between them. Long, nimble fingers cradled an earthenware cup with tea. Pharan wasn’t sure where she would find it. Somehow, he doubted it was what they usually served in the small tavern his mentor had picked for the evening, but he didn’t protest when the same unlikely stash yielded a bottle of Vithella for himself. A service boy cast her a frustrated look as he hurried past but knew better than to draw her attention.

“Why a door?”, Pharan questioned.

“You tell me.”

“I am telling you it’s a window.”

For a moment only, Pharan believed to see his mentor’s lips twitch amused behind the haze rising from her cup. The Half-Eídisi shook her head. “Think about it. The image was ambiguous, but it was not nearly square enough for a window. Have you seen the houses here? No high rooms. Or windows. Tall windows you might find in the estate of a noble, not here, so close to the harbor. Where would she have taken the inspiration from?”

Pharan lifted a shoulder. “It could have been the window of a local temple,” he proposed.

“Maybe.” Jaene considered the dregs in her tea. “But why would she be afraid of the window in a temple?”

“Why would she be afraid of a door?”, he countered.

“Ah.” Jaene leaned forward, triumph evident in her dark eyes but for a moment. “She might not be afraid of the door, but what she associates with it. A memory. A day in her childhood. Something that lies behind a door and scared her.”

Pharan considered. “Like an attic?”

“Or a cellar,” his mentor offered.

“Or a dungeon,” he said slowly.

“Or a dungeon,” Jaene echoed, her voice solemn.

About to defend his point one last time, Pharan instead sunk back into his chair. Unbidden, silence spread between. In the quiet of their shared table, the odd flutter in his chest returned he had first felt before the smithy. Pharan rubbed his chest and poured himself another cup of Athart wine.

“Do you remember the lake at the coast, south-east of the Hotlands?” He asked as he sat up again. “You had brought me—”

“—I remember it,” Jaene said. She watched him over the rim of her cup. “I also remember that I told you that you better not have any second thoughts later on, because while I could cut the thread, I wouldn’t be able to patch it back together quite as easily.”

“No… I mean, yes. I know. That’s not it.” Pharan rested his arms on the table. “The other day, when I met Orik… I suddenly had to think about it again. At first, I thought it was because of the sea breeze, the sun, it was so similar… but it was more than that.”

“Orik is your sister’s contact in the city?”

“Yes, he is. But he had nothing to do with it. It just felt so real. It was strange.”

Jaene hummed, then leaned forward to reach for his bottle. “Verbal communication isn’t a spark’s forte. It might have sought another way to tell you something. Empathy sparks are best with emotions… and I think we both agree you were a little through the wind back then.”

Pharan’s gaze was cool. “So, what do you suggested?”

“Meditation might help to… come to a consent. Of sorts,” Jaene offered, still watching him. “Although it shouldn’t be possible, you look more sourly than on most days.”

Which you knew would happen, when you dragged me out to Praxes’ people, he thought. “I didn’t think the spark would grow quite as quickly.”

“It has been a few arcs already.”

“Maybe I thought I would have a little more time than that, still.”
word count: 653
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Pharan
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T
he bottle clanked in protest as Pharan put it onto the table with too much force. The memory of the past, two, three breaks was a vague haze coagulating in the back of his mind. Faintly, he recalled the ruckus he had created plucking the bottle from the shelf, an argument with a serving wench or other. Jaene had been there, too. The Half-Eídisi had eased people’s tempers with her usual, uncompromising candor and a few coins in the right hands. In the end, they had released him out into the chill of the night with collective frowns—and his wine bottle.

With an undignified grunt, he dropped onto the backless chair before his room’s fireplace. Stray amber gleamed in the ashes of the hearth and he leaned forward to throw a log into the dying flames and then another. It was only after a moment he bent down to rearrange the wood more properly, to clean out the ashes. By the time he was satisfied with the display, his fingers were black. He wiped his hands against the side of his trousers and set up, to pour himself a mug of his illicitly pilfered vintage.

He lifted his drink towards the growing fire.

I know you always thought I wouldn’t listen when you gave me an advice, Prax, and I didn’t do it as often as I should have—but I still learned the one or other things from you, I wouldn’t have learned from others. It are the things you didn't tell me though, I wished I had paid attention too.

You were always weary of her.


Pharan raised his cup, the red’s herbaceous undercurrent light across his palate. He didn’t know when he had started to slip. Sometime between talking about the lake, and Jaene’s favorite meditation techniques, the abyss had opened to his feet and swallowed him whole.

The Avriel flicked his wrist. His tangle ebbed into view around him, the twines of his emotions coiling as he watched. Pharan spread his fingers. The orange-and-green threads his intoxications had given rise to unwound to reveal the roiling mass of darker strands beneath. Dark blue, with a tinge of red; not enough to call it violet. Indigo. Again, Pharan’s fingers twitched. It was a poor habit, a tell he had picked up in the early days of his experimentations, but in the solitude of his room, he couldn’t have cared less.

Amidst the waft and warp of his tangle, a figure rose against the blue. It was humanoid and even in the surreal landscape of his emotions, it appeared tall. A long tail, cut off at the end, was the only hint as to the shape's identity—but it was all Pharan needed.

With another twist of his hand, the tangle faded from view.
word count: 483
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Strange
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Re: Master and Student


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Thread Review

Pharan

Pharan
Skill Points: +10 (5 of which can be used for Empathy)
Magic XP: Yes, +5 (Empathy)

Renown: +5 for causing a ruckus and arguing with a serving wench.

Injuries/Overstepping: None.
Wealth Points: None.
Loot: None.

Skill Knowledge:
  • Empathy: Tapestry: Can be used to give an emotion context
  • Empathy: Tapestry: Manifests the root of an emotion as vague shape in the tangle
  • Empathy: Tapestry: May need further investigation to make sense
  • Empathy: Identifying Grief
  • Meditation: Can be used to communicate with your spark
  • Socialize: Things you might say to the relatives of dead friends
Non-Skill Knowledge:
  • Praxes: Has family in Yrithal
Notes: n/a.

This was a nice thread that revealed more of Pharan's character and his relation toward Empathy. It's bittersweet to see him in grief over Praxes. The way you wrote about how he was feeling through use of behavior and dialogue, rather than simply stating "he felt..." added a level of depth to Pharan as a character.

Great job and enjoy your rewards!

PM me if you have any questions, issues or concerns.

Total Word Count: 2016 words.
Review Request Link: viewtopic.php?p=118136#p118136
stampcodehere

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