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... )

[weifinder]

( ... )

[weifinder]

( ... pation. )

Exactly! Which... wait, can you feel your own qi? What about energies around you?

( the guy who can literally only gather resentful energies to use if he wants to suffuse himself cannot really say if this too is impacted here. )

[downswing]

Present.

[weifinder]

Good, good, so it's external, not internal... then what in the world is causing this divide here, by eliminating any sense of one? Lan Zhan, this is deeply disturbing.

( to him, at least, Ave he knows it's partly irrational, but how does he defend against death when he can't feel it's touch? )

[downswing]

The cycle disrupted.

( Lend him another moment. )

What weapons left to you?

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]

Everything trained, you know that. And while I could play to force a point and see what if anything happens, I don't judge it wise on our first day here.

[downswing]

You mean to speak you have made attempt and found resistance.

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??

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?

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]

Meaning I made attempt and did not force a response, which is not the usual state of things. Resentful energies are not by their nature quiet, you know that.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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?

[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?

[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. )

[downswing]

Wei Ying has been known to stir them to conversation.

[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...