The Seeds of Unrest, Phase Two 🌱

[beleos]

UPROOTED

Time has not been kind thus far, and the future will be no kinder.

The slow passage of days to weeks has seen both cities increasingly ravaged by the untamed growth of the enlarging roots. Their size is enough to uproot buildings by their foundations, if not bisect them entirely where they push through unfettered. In the worst-hit areas, entire blocks are left abandoned - if even standing at all, displacing families and leaving businesses in ruins.

Cetina and Kathova have been in near constant contact with Bearers via Communion, feeding them information about which areas to focus their lifesaving efforts. Yima’s Manor and the Seat of the Tribune - despite their closeness to the Trees - have been fortified by your leaders and act as a base of operations for each respective faction. You will be able to return to either to find sanctuary from the chaos beyond, but the innumerable civilians are not so lucky.

Bearers are tasked with rescue and recovery efforts and requested to assist hands on the ground with taking refugees to temporary shelters. Survivors must be dug out of the debris. Those who are capable of healing will be enlisted to assist at hospitals and triage centers. Supplies must be gathered and harvested from areas that are collapsed and too dangerous for civilians to navigate. If you are feeling generous, you can go on search and rescue missions, as many people are considered missing in both Highstorm and Springstar. Some areas are completely cut off to regular foot traffic by the massive, winding roots bearing countless Blight-blooms. Citizens are succumbing to the Blight flower’s effects persistent from phase one with more and more frequency.

While both cities slowly succumb to a deepening catastrophe, the situation worsens.

STIRRING STORMS

As the days pass, inexplicable and unnatural weather occurrences will randomly plague both cities. They can last as long as a full day or as little as an hour before dissolving entirely.

• Flurries: this snow is tainted by the Blight, making the snowfall look like ash. Any organic matter it touches will be affected by reopening wounds, re-infection of illnesses, or re-experiencing injuries that may have healed over years ago.
• Thunderstorms: these storms carry a frigid rainfall and heavy cloud cover, making already difficult-to-navigate disaster zones harder to clear. As each thunder bellow crashes overhead, you might swear you hear a familiar voice reaching out to you in the fading rumble… one that sends a message - either from the future or past.
• Fog: dense clouds of thick, freezing fog will roll in randomly, making visibility even more precarious. In your search for survivors - or your companions, you may find yourself coming face to face with someone else, instead: a version of yourself (or a companion) from another timeline. You may also hear your own voice calling out to you from within the fog, attempting to beckon you further into the mist.
• General Note: Exposure to any of the above weather patterns will increase your Blight infection.

THE BLIGHT COMES FOR ALL

As if it were not enough to see the cities that have become your salvation at the end of the Timestream falling to collapse and ruin, the Bearers will slowly begin to realize their previous immunity to the Blight is eroding. They will begin to show symptoms of infection that increase into May’s event. ( For more information on the effects of the Blight and purification methods, please see the OOC Summary. )

Now that their last bastion - the Bearers - are just as much in harm’s way as everyone else, the populous’s efforts to formulate a temporary stop-gap solution are being rushed to completion. Time is not on anyone’s side. They will continue to work with those who have been kind enough to volunteer their resources and brilliant minds - collecting materials and attempting to figure out a way to avert their otherwise inevitable destiny.

ORDERS

Orders from your leaders will come as soon as infections among the Bearers have been confirmed.

🌙 YIMA will stress for all Zenite Bearers to prioritize their well-being and to avoid unnecessary exposure, to manage their symptoms as much as possible. They must fight for their own survival to bring in the birth of a new universe - and their lives are too precious to risk. Beyond that, she asks them to save what they can of their people and their most critical structures with the understanding that hard choices may be necessary.

🌞 CYRUS will implore all Meridian Bearers to prioritize the general population's lives and turn their efforts to save as much of Springstar as they can. He will note that Bearers have ways to help keep one another from suffering too much contagion and to coordinate their usages appropriately, to keep one another safe, and watch their backs.

ANOTHER EN-TREE-TY

The Tree of Life continues to sicken, yet - thankfully - the progression of the Blight is slow. Still, Bearers will find themselves occasionally compelled to take a moment to sit beneath its boughs and vibrant leaves, even as some begin to show signs of discoloration and rot. Any characters who sit with the Tree with the purple leaf they found on their person after phase one will find it warming to the touch, its veins laced with gold. This effect will be even more effective if taken into the cavernous roots beneath the Tree! While this may fill you with a temporary sense of calm, it doesn't seem to have any other effects... yet still, you are compelled, if not curious.

The Tree has offered you this gift for a reason. Perhaps you will find its use before long.

...As long as you - and Kenos - survive long enough to discover it.

CODING

Comments

— john archivist.

[redsoil]

[ The only thing of value, to him, in Highstorm is Greenwood Yards. He attends to it, despite being a Meridian — or, perhaps because he is a Meridian, with the ability to empower the land and increase the health and yield of Highstorm's network of foreign plants. They must be kept, as the Tree is kept, for their use and their innate value — so, he goes. Tirelessly and determined, even if he is to be kept from the deepest greenhouses because of his affiliation ( his argument being, that were he not a Meridian, he could not bring such a power to the Yards — ). And it is because he visits the Yards during the height of the Blight impacting the cities, that he comes across a familiar face.

There remains a sense of slow humiliation, burning still within his chest. An internalized loathing, the reminder of the weakness and fragility that Osiris had made him all-too aware of; false god, god of nothing but what was given to you, compelled as readily as another Shard-bearer to divulge secrets. The other part of him understands and takes a measure of pride in becoming an important enough target to Zenith: he is a war god, tactical and well-informed within Meridian. That, accompanied by the fact that he has 'broken bread' ( read: feasted upon the ghost of that which the Archivist and his eldritch Eye devoured — ) is enough for him to be able to largely set aside personal sentiment.

Which is why, when he spots Jonathan Sims, he recognizes that it is not loathing that fills him. It is a muted delight, the same sort of enjoyment he feels when Zenith's resident demon has done something particularly challenging, enticing him into playing into their strange little game. It feels like that. Like John has crooked a finger at him, and opened himself up as a fun target to toy with. ]

Ohhh, Archivist ♫~!!

[ You know, he'll give him fair warning.

Set, with his hands spread wide. Set, calling to John with the tone of someone so delighted to see; a predator, shrilling its cry upon seeing prey. Set, drawing his hands across the crown of his head to draw forth the dark, sand-and-miasma shape of his divine helm — the piercing density of his divinity growing, as he does so. Set, who cants his head to one side, beaming with far-too-long teeth. ]

Did Zenith make good use of what you took from me, yet?

[eyesite]

( if there is one thing john has learned in the last few years since his being appointed Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, it's that he's about to have a very bad time if someone approaches him calling him "Archivist."

when he is the "Archivist," he is not himself as a person — he is not jonathan sims, who had been raised at arm's-length and brusquely pacified with books of all manner of stories and information until he had grown old enough to pursue it on his own. as "Archivist" he is just one man standing in a very long lineage of instruments to the Eye, faceless and uncharacteristic; to agents of the other Powers, he had just been a piece on a playing board. often a piece they had, with either relief or delight, realized was much less clever, formidable, and incendiary as his predecessor. an obstacle to be either avoided or cleared altogether.

it's what jane prentiss had called him, standing above the trapdoor he and tim had come up from the tunnels through. he'd heard it echoed from jude perry, from nikola orsinov, from breekon and hope, from michael crew, from the boneturner, and from the distortion —

hell, even elias had sung "Archivist" rather than "john" in his own damn birthday song, before all of this had even started.

so when set approaches him in the streets of highstorm in the midst of all the chaos and destruction that the tree roots and the Blight are spreading, calling him "Archivist" and cresting himself with the mantle of his divine helm, something familiar and certain twists in his stomach. understanding. dread. he might not come to john as many avatars and monsters have in the past, eager to remove a particularly dangerous piece from the board, but it's not as though none of them have ever approached him singing — that's why the fierce, palpable glow of set's delight does little to diffuse the taut, wiry tension that winds through him.

because when he looks up at him, a Mark buried so deep that he tries to forget it rouses itself; the most miserably powerless he had ever felt in his life, as daisy tonner had driven him into the woods to execute him. hunter — hunted. )

Set. ( his greeting is perfunctory, as hard and icy as the Archivist himself is. he does not look well. he has not managed his Blight, and he did not heed yima's commands to perpetuate himself at the expense of the others in the city. he is pale as someone who has been lost in the elements of the wilderness for several days, his hair now more gray than it is dark. the lines and angles of his face are sharper, shadows thrown in starker relief; his gaze is just as incising as ever. )

That rather seems like something you will have to find out for yourself.

[redsoil]

Oh, come now. I am asking fairly. I prefer to trade things of value, when not directly engaged in acts of war.

[ He adores that John allowed him that look into what he carries with him, that all-seeing, all-seeking hungry thing that perches within his soul and pursues what it wants. Even still, he reduces the man to his title in the way one might reduce an opponent to their core archetype in that moment. Set wears the mask of his own divinity, the embodiment of the endless, callous desert and the equally complex domain of war; in Highstorm, it is dark and cool, and Set radiates a feverish heat that is two parts innate, and one part the thrum of Meridian's light pulling into his fingertips. ]

Had you just asked me, I would have given you some of what you wanted. Instead, you — took something of value from Meridian.

[ From the ground, near his bare feet that begin to perch upon the rubble and decaying roots that twist and twine throughout the city, threatening it with the time-haunting quality of the Blight, a fine mist begins to coil from the vicinity of his ankles. As if he, himself, is both the weapon and the manifestation of its structure ( and is he not? he is seasoned veteran AND archetype, after all ), pooling across his palms in the form of a great, dark bow. A set of equally dark arrows in a quiver that sits low upon his outer thigh. ]

To redress the grievance you chose to inflict, I must take something of value from Zenith. It's not personal, really. We of Egypt do love to balance our scales, and yours is the handsome heart I have in my sights tonight.

[ He looks terrible, Set notes. A man who has not taken care of himself and who may fall over the edge at any time, if only given a push. It might be merciful to reset him, to free him from his affliction rather than force a man as prickly as Jonathan Sims to seek out the attentive care of others. This is the mercy of a cruel god, one wicked and born for evil acts. He does not, however, nock an arrow just yet. ]

[eyesite]

I'm not omniscient. Maybe they have, or maybe they haven't. But if you are asking if I have given the information that I took from you to Zenith at large, then the answer is yes, I have.

( john, of course, feels as though he was perfectly justified in what he had done. he believes that if set wishes to embody war as perfectly as he claims, he should understand that — because war is not a construct comprised solely of violence and military action recorded and glorified through history, but is just as often an assemblage of what many might consider far more boring elements: materiel, supply routes, morale, disease, successes and failures in small- and grand-scale leadership, terrain, weather, transportation, subterfuge, machines, and information. yes, it is a complex theater composed of multiple overlapping games, and in order to even approach victory, one must take sizable risks — risks that would either be repaid with crucial advantage or punished for all that they were worth.

he believes set had committed a tactical error when he had confronted himself and marc spector in alenroux. it's not as though the god is ignorant of his own abilities; he had been arrogant, swathed in the mantle of what was invested in him as a god of war, and he had paid for it. that was the exchange. that is where it should have ended. john had risked everything that he had to bait him out and force that information out of him, and he had managed to make it pay off for himself and his side. men may take it upon themselves, with their fickle and capricious hearts always being victim to the tides of their emotions, to try to seek vengeance for such perceived sleights, but the groaning, inexorable machine of war doesn't have a place for such things. to it, there is only that which it could consume, ground up within the fires of its engines, and that which it could trample underfoot as it moved ever onward.

so set might think that he embodies divine retribution in this moment, a warlike interpretation of karmic scales, but as he speaks and john slowly begins to get a sense of what his intentions are, he would strongly disagree. not personal, he says? well, fuck that. every part of this is not only personal but bizarrely human in its pettiness. take something from Meridian? as if their occupation in alenroux doesn't take from Zenith every single day? it's a bloody farce, and it's so ridiculously obvious that it strikes a spark to ignite the dry indignation held within his chest. he is just upset that john had managed to take something from him, and he wanted to strike back in order to assuage his wounded pride.

it makes him so angry he can barely see straight. )

Oh, fuck off, Set. I needed something from you, and I had the ability to take it. You provided me with the opportunity. That is an equation of war I believe should be well within your ability to understand. You made a mistake, and I don't owe you a damn thing.

( fury carries him to this point, but as the night-black bow materializes in the war god's hands and the quiver of arrows manifests at his side, he falters. it's slight but perceptible — a hair-line fault in the foundation of his composure, the wild spark of something in his dark eyes that's far too human in how it fears. yes, how could he forget the pain of hayame's arrow that she had pitilessly sunk into his shoulder beneath the Tree of Life, and the horrible helplessness that had accompanied it? he's stared death often enough in the eye to recognize it, to feel the slow seep of Terminus' existential dread begin to move down his spine. he had stood on that terrible threshold once for six months, too afraid to make the decision until oliver banks had laid it out to him in plain terms. he hadn't wanted to die then. he doesn't want to die now.

what can he even do? try to run? this isn't the Archives — he's out in the open, and there's only so much one could do to outrun an arrow, and that wasn't even taking into account the toll the Blight has taken on him. is there any point in calling for help when he knows this could be over in the blink of an eye? fighting back doesn't even occur to him. what could he do?

really, he only ever has one recourse when it comes to defending himself. )

If you're going to kill me, then you should have the decency of not lying about why. ( something dark twists in his expression, roiling in the bottomless depths of his eyes; it seethes and warbles as an imperceptible wrongness in his voice as he continues, the pressure of the words seeming to disrupt the air they travel through, ) Is that really what you want to do, Set? Up until this point, I have been very conscientious in keeping my curiosity controlled when speaking with you — I have gone through this effort out of respect for you. Are you willing to throw that away so easily?

( he knows that the fears that he had borne to him in their first meeting were true, but he also knows they are little more than a patina over that which was buried far deeper, down at his very core. those tantalizing truths are, of course, what he is preternaturally disposed to hunger for; he has Compelled set twice now, and both times he has wanted to plunge deeper and grasp for more, but he has denied himself. he wants this to be very clear to set; this is the risk that he now has to take to follow through with his violent whims. jonathan sims is not above threats. )

[redsoil]

[ There is a long moment, wherein Jonathan Sims directs a storm of words upon him. Claims about opportunity and motive, about where the line was drawn for equity between them, the equations of war — as if a mortal mind has any actual idea what war is, what it involves. The depth of thought that Set directs towards the entire Kenosian battlefield, far beyond the end goals, far beyond the push-and-pull of Meridian and Zenith. As if he expects more of Set, without already realizing that Set has already considered every fathomable avenue, every element — each and every one that Jonathan Sims expects him to interrogate.

With the dark bow held light in one hand, he brings his empty one to his chin and presses a finger there. Thoughtful. ]

— did you really expect me to come up with the same answer as you, Jonathan Sims?

[ It's almost laughable. That the thing that John comes to is that this is at all based in humanity. That Set is lying to his face and not standing before him having rationalized his decision out to the tiniest iota of the concept, that the way he wishes to balance the scales is also informed by the dangers of war: that Jonathan Sims had been the one to choose to enter the field, to choose to target the war god, to choose to acquire something of value from him and decide that was where it ended. It was a fair trade. Zenith was concerned with Meridian. Meridian had entered Alenroux with a cause in mind, but had not taken anything from the people of the land — instead, they had simply fortified their presence and continued to work to defend, militantly.

Certainly, he would not say it was a good luck, but the benefits were quantifiable. The threat would linger, as well. Zenith was right to focus upon their opponents. Invade, interrogate. That was the trade that was made. ]

So. You assessed our exchange and determined it was paid for in full, as if your answer is the only correct one in the room. I simply must inform you that your answer may sound correct to you, but mine is correct to me. You thought that your summation of equity in war was the only route this would go, but I am here now. And you were mistaken.

[ He tips his head, mouth curling into an indulgent smile when he begins to be threatened. When Jonathan Sims claims he respected him ( I know, he adds, I was deeply pleased you chose me. That is one of the smartest moves I have seen any of the vapid minds from Zenith make. But the fact remains. ) ]

Do not be so upset. You are fantastic to me! You took something of value from Meridian, like I said. As I do not have the same power as you, I will balance the scales by taking something of value from Zenith. And it will not even be permanent. I will safeguard you to the Tree, and we will be back at a zero count. I make that decision, as the party you chose to wield yourself against.

[ With that, he nocks an arrow. A single, powerful draw upon a dark, writhing-shadow string that he tears forth from the body of the bow itself. Something cold builds between them, the crackling-frost of the Blight that has cascaded upon Set as well; lighter than John's complications, but still awaiting purge. Awakening as he calls it down to the point of the arrow. ]

Rejoice. I do this because I respect you deeply and hold no grudge. Make good on your threat, though, and you will be the one making this personal. The rope you brought to this battlefield is long, honored Archivist, but you will hang yourself with it quickly should you decide that. That is the truth. I have never lied to you, and I never will.

[ And it is. For unfathomable and alien as his rationale is, it is true. ]

[eyesite]

( they understand war from two vastly different perspectives. set is its embodiment, its personification — the fire and fear and pain and confusion and strife and triumph of war are the breaths he takes into his lungs, each of the myriad individual aspects of armed conflict abstracted out as fundamental to his piecemeal construction as cells might be to any organic creature. set understands the width and breadth of war as it exists in a moment because he is it, and he does so in a way that john would never comprehend, but he is by no means perfectly ignorant. set is the storm that shatters a coastline and moves on into the horizon, and john, as the Archivist, is the one that picks through the wreckage. how many of the statements of war grafted onto his metaphysical corpus would set still count within his purview, given how many deal with the aftermath rather than the theater? perhaps he would well know the Piper, whose three faces play its pipes of bone, scream its dying battle cry, and open its mouth to spew forth blood and sodden soil, but how well does he know the deserters in the Italian mountains that had felled their pursuers with lone gunshots only to be dead by firing squad before they were found by those who survived? or the prisoner of war who had drug in his wake a long train of determinedly pursuing and ravenous ghosts as he combed through the hell that men could make of their own world in the midst of violent revolt? or the mass of fused dead flesh and guns that melanie had described finding — the last remnant of a thousand unarmed civilians massacred and thoughtlessly left behind to fester in their pain and fear?

wars, like storms, eventually run their course and end. it is those that are left behind in the wreckage and the rubble, those who record their experiences upon such things like the Archivist, that perpetuate them through history.

his words were bids made in desperation; a man would do nearly anything, upon the precipice of death, to further cling to life. he doesn't answer. he merely makes a crypt of his expression, clenches his jaw, and tries to steel himself for what is imminent and inevitable.

he faces it with no more and no less grace or steel than he had when he had slowly wound through the cycle of his nightmares for months, trapped both to his mind and a hospital bed. contrary to what some might believe, john doesn't want to die. he never has. if he had, he would have made the choice that oliver banks hadn't when rising from the remote wreckage of a research ship and fallen satellite sinking to the depths of the ocean. he would have died as a human rather than live on as a monster, and jonah magnus would have had to attempt his theory with another hapless fool. but, no — he wants to live, and for that sin he has damned his world and continues to stand before set now. adrenaline pounding through his veins causes him to occasionally twitch in a way that's entirely involuntary; animal instinct screams at him to run, to fight, to try to do something or anything, but he logically knows there's no point. as the avatar of death itself would one day tell him: all things end, and every step you take, whatever direction you may choose, only brings you closer to it.

continuing to argue would not only be in vain but it would also be vain — the brash and purposeless impulse of foolish humanity to try to impress itself despite its ephemerality, a shout attempting to write itself into the wind. he knows he's not much of a loss to Zenith — it has had thousands of Shard-Bearers before him, and it well might have many more after, and it's especially not much of a loss if it's temporary. he still feels as though this has far more to do with set righting the personal scales, of getting comeuppance for what he perceives as either a betrayal or an offense (or both) rather than anything that had to do with factional conflict.

he stares at the bolt drawn taut in the arrowstring, grimacing further as the Blight crawls through his veins; another pulse of adrenaline causes his shoulders to quake, twinging particularly towards the phantom pain of where hayame's arrow had pierced him through. he wants to run, but he can't. fear is real and alive and riotous in his dark eyes, and the Eye, short-sighted and foolish, feasts on it with no comprehension of why it should do anything else. )

Just do it, Set.

( it's not acceptance. if there was anything he could do, he would. it's simply an acknowledgement that there is nothing to be done, and he wants it bloody well over with. )