audio | un: yiling patriarch | early on during the summit

[weifinder]

I've been whistling while I work, and I have yet to find any response whatsoever. Which is to say, ( he continues, almost at a laconic drawl: ) to any and all of my fellow ragtag members of the eastward bound Merchant's caravan with a gift for detecting life, death, or anything of the spirit: have you felt anything?

( he freely admits to how unnerving it is to him to have no reaction, no response whatsoever, when he reaches out to find the resentful energies that have been throughout all of this world they've wandered since his arrival, well over a year before. )

Because I, for one, can't find a damn thing.

Comments

un: absterge

[downswing]

Spirits absent, or hold silent?


( Sometimes a spirit merely wishes to ignore you...! )

[weifinder]

Play, Lan Zhan. There's nothing responding. It's impossible that there's nothing there, not in a city divided, struck by disease, and embroiled in war not so long ago.

1/2

[downswing]

( PLEASE HOLD, a man makes attempt to reach out — )

[downswing]

No ripple. No echo. No voice.

[weifinder]

( holds onto his pendant, waiting breathless with antici... )

un : deft hand of little deaths (voice)

[scrapgege]

There are no ghosts here. That's not...

It's not good to have too many ghosts in one place, but it's not normal to not have any at all. There should always be a few benign spirits around, and maybe a few human ghosts but there's nothing.

It's not natural.

[weifinder]

Ah, yes, I don't know that the spirits I'm familiar with are more or less familiar than the ghosts you know back home, but here? Both should be present, to whatever degree. Not silent. Not missing.

[scrapgege]

Exactly.

So... how can you tell if people are alive or dead when there doesn't appear to be anyone dead around? What can we compare to?

un: sect leader jiang / audio

[consignation]

[ this man has never met a fight he couldn't pick. ]

And why are you looking so hard for trouble? Again??

[weifinder]

( usually he'd be more jokey about this, but: )

Unhalad, Anurr, the Beastmaster, the Huntress, these times at sea—knowing where resources are I can call on when needed isn't as tempting as the righteous world would like to presume of me, but it's been prudent.

[consignation]

Or, and stop me if you think I've finally taken leave of my good sense, you could use this as an opportunity to cultivate literally any other skill.

There was a time you were as strong and talented as anyone our age never having touched anything corrupt or vile. Now you're reliant on it to the point you don't even know what to do with yourself without.

[ jiang cheng's lips thin, his voice tightens, and he hesitates as he debates whether or not to speak the next words.

but jiang cheng can never stop himself from saying one thing too many, now can he? ]

What would a-jie say?

[downswing]

( That moment when you're far too close to agreement with a member of the Yunmeng household and should drink to your declining faculties. )

[consignation]

[ we're not thrilled about it either, buddy. ]

un: headless ragdoll (audio)

[matermali]

[ Vanessa couldn't place it until someone said something, because she hadn't tried to reach out. That should have been suspicious enough; usually there's always something in-between trying to call out. Her voice is low with a grating whisper, and she doesn't bother to hide the concern that makes her words waver. At first it's just a mutter under her breath. ] Absent whispers. Quiet prayer. Strangely silent beneath the chatter.

[ Louder now, more controlled: ]

...So that is where the unease stems. Has this happened before?

[weifinder]

( the strangely silent beneath the chatter is an apt thing to say for the situation; he appreciates the poetry of it all, even while he appreciates nothing of this reality. )

No. Not in my experience, not even when the most powerful of the bodied dead pulled all haunting spirits and bodied dead out of Taravast in the wake of their confrontations.

[matermali]

[ It sounds like a grotesque fairy tale. That hits awfully close to home, but she isn't used to others sharing the burden of sensing such things.

She wants to ask more about Taravast, but perhaps later. ]

Is it the people, then, or the city? City-wide wards are not something I would have thought possible before now, but it could stifle our senses. [ A curt sigh; frustrated with herself for not knowing more. ] Perhaps, too grand a theory...

un: daozhang | audio;

[binghua]

[Oh. This...this is quite a question. Xingchen does not reach out immediately, instead focusing inward toward his own questionable body and comparing it to how he's felt these past few months, ever since their fight inside the volcano.]

My own abilities have not been as steady recently, owing to the spirits I took upon myself inside Ke-Sanwon. They seemed to negate my cultivation, but their hold has lessened as of late. Such lingering effects could owe to me not sensing anything here, though I will note that Shuanghua has been still the entire time.

[weifinder]

( really the fact he remains not the wilding one will forever have him mildly amazed, not because he tries to be, but because he had been once, in pursuit of answers for the questions he posed himself, or the world presented in so many words.

the spiritual oddities post... near eruption? have been their own interesting question. not exactly solved while on the ships either, and now they here. )

How has it been elsewhere, and how swiftly did it announce itself?

[binghua]

[You're just saving some of the fun for the rest of us. "Fun."]

Shuanghua? It has alerted me to the presence of undead on every leg of our journey thus far. It can detect corpse energy from about half a li away and alerts me instantly.

un: nah | audio

[growlies]

There were spirits in the Mouse House - saw a bunch at the fuckin' party, but they were mostly celebrating the dead guy or mad at the guy throwing it cause he was responsible for killing them. Weird party. Celebrating a murder.

Anyway, I've seen exactly 0 of them since stepping into the Neutral Zone and Eidris. ( It's unsettling especially given most of her existence, she's been surrounded by only spirits. There's a lot of living people around. )

[weifinder]

That is... a very strange party. They didn't attempt to take action against their murderer?

( sorry, man who has set spirits to rest allowing them to follow through on the resentments that they carried from their lives and deaths into their lingering nature is curious about the fact it sounds like none of them did, or maybe weren't capable of it. )

Then it's limited to the limits of the neutral region and each half of the citadel. Thank you, I haven't yet had time to spend in the Mouse House in the manner of those of you who were arrived here ahead of those on the ships.

I'll have to ask if any of the spirits have noticed the effect of the citadels, or are possibly related to it in some way... depending on how much awareness those I find have.

[growlies]

Not to mention all the fake seances because the guy hired a bunch of necromancers to do party tricks. ...Didn't seem like they could really do anything, but I wouldn't say they were bent on vengeance or anything.

Do they do that here?

( Spirits have always seemed weak to her, but that was in the Underworld and she did have much more power at the time and they had a regular amount. They avoided her because they were aware of what she could do and what she had to do. )

No problem. Want some company when you go down there? I know my way around.

text, un: starburst

[valeas]

I have no gift for detecting death, but I was gifted a pendant for my aid with the volcano. It is meant to make me more susceptible to spirits around me, and yet it is as though it no longer works.

( there's nothing there, except the silence is unnerving. Unnatural.

... ) There might be more, as well.

[weifinder]

A lovely name you have there!

What is this more? The pendant is... a horrible idea I won't lie, but it being rendered useless is of course interesting now. Particularly since it isn't what this citadel was like, ages past.

What is this more you suspect?

[valeas]

( the hint of a rueful smile on her lips: ) I cannot take credit for the name. It was all Wrench.

( he'd thought it amusing at the time, with emilia's ancestry of star witches and their having met when her temper was at its most explosive. ... and also, something about some star candy from his world, a reference she never quite grasped. she still thinks of him, from time to time. him and lily.

regrouping, she sobers at his actual question. )

As I said, I've no talent for necromancy. But I do know plants. The house I moved into has a small garden, and some of the plants are wilted, yet ( pause ) they feel strange, as well. As though their cycle is incomplete.

( wilted, to be sure, but they don't feel dead, either. )