Shienvien

The Prophecy

Who's next on Zerul-side? Yoshua (given he maybe wanted to post before)? Rhaevnn (as the vampire hasn't had a say for a while)? Mercinus (as his character was the one most obviously addressed)?
As for the roadside group, I guess it's all Jack's turn now. (Unless ASTA manages to obtain a functional computer and a net connection; it seems like everyone has their devices and/or providers being done for or failing them these days...)

- Well, if luck tends to eventually run out, then so should bad luck, no? I'd hope they used all their bad luck up with Rilon taking personal interest in them; any more bad luck could probably be used to fold timespace and create small wormholes. (Y'know, put one end next to the fridge and the other within an arm's reach of your computer...)
Aemoten ... will be fine, I think. At least physically, given a bit of sleep and rest (and he'll probably get some of it now - not by far enough, granted, but a sufficient amount to have him not collapse again before their lot can find proper beds). Mentally ... time will tell. Mostly depends on the number of demons taking unhealthy interest in the group and its members, and whether or not his more personal concerns can be resolved. Thaler can help, though! Thaler can always help. She might have to hurry before he's completely out, though, or otherwise wait until they are about to leave and force him to wake up. In between, she probably could poke at him all she wants, or use him as a pillow, and he most likely wouldn't notice...
((It may help to go back and skim-read the older posts when you've been gone for a while, refresh your memory and what not. It's been much less time for your character, after all. - Though, in the given instance, I can perfectly understand why you might not want to spend too much time revisiting some of those posts. I could probably fetch the relevant bits and/or try to give brief summary if there was something specific you were not sure about.))

Mahz's Dev Journal

@Sypherkhode822 Notification bar? Notifications? You mean statuses and the sidebar?

On another note, @Mahz, the logout issue is back...

The Prophecy

Good to see you back, Nessa!

I think were close to wrapping this last stop up (well, as soon as Aemoten is done being sort-of collapsed, which with any luck won't be more than a couple of actual posts). I believe it's Jack's turn now unless you'd rather reply to the Olan-post first (as Jaelnec will probably go looking for them - I assumed Jaelnec would be helping Aemoten a bit before he goes anywhere; correct me Jack if need be and I'll make edits)?

The Prophecy

Domhnall McRaith

They certainly were a curious lot, those people and the beast that traveled with them, perhaps even more so than they themselves. It had pretty much been a spur-of-the-moment decision (that had started to become a bit of a theme with him recently, had it not?), suggesting they stuck together until at least Zerul City, but at least this time it was a decision he had at least somewhat solicited with his companion, unlike his earlier one of intervening Claw and the grey brute's fight. Eh, but at least his intuition still worked. Often enough. Sometimes, at least. (That was a lot of "at leasts.")
In any case, it seemed safer to bet on a single group of stragglers who seemed mostly agreeable than to hope that every random bunch who came across them and their new friend would look upon them kindly. "Safety in numbers," as Iridiel had put it - better two big creatures, four humanoids, a wolf and whoever else these people had in store (it seemed from their talking that there was more of them back somewhere) than just the less than handful of them... Especially since he and Iridiel were not truly soldiers, Claw had refused healing, and it was only ever so often Sulis would lend her more destructive powers to her marked one (or so he had gathered). That dekkun-creature, though... Well, it would take a very specific kind of person to voluntarily pick a fight a fight with that one. Someone with brass balls ... and probably only half a brain.
It was quite concerning, then, that someone or something quite evidently had. But, on a more positive note, whatever it had been, it had apparently also lost said fight.

The worn-looking man atop the white horse rather laconically - in no small part probably due to his current physical condition - introduced himself as Aemoten, and the younger one, still looking concerned despite doing his best to smile at them, soon followed suit and offered a brief introduction accompanied by a rather elaborate bow. He identified himself as his squire Jaelnec - of "the Will", apparently, whatever organization this was supposed to be. In any case, the male éireannach had not heard of them before, so they probably were not quite as prominent as those thrice-damned Crusader-folks or those monster-hunter fellows they had come across in a couple of places.
While Domhnall was definitely not offended by being bowed to - he knew what general meaning bowing held in this region all right -, he was not entirely certain how to react to that kind of grand gestures, either. He was just a hunter (and out of necessity also trader of the wares he had acquired in this manner), after all. People typically did not tend to bow down to him, let alone with that level of animation. Iridiel at least had the relative comfort of sitting up a tree rather than standing right there before Jaelnec and Aemoten...
"You're welcome," he replied with the first somewhat appropriate-seeming expression that came to his mind in order to avoid any awkward pauses, even as his one hand was absentmindedly lifted to his chin to scratch a spot on his cheek. Abruptly, he then turned to Iridiel, and roughly repeated the message to the woman. "These are Aemoten and Jaelnec -" the same hand he had earlier lifted to scratch his cheek was now used to refer to the people he was naming "- they are thanking us for our aid and ... welcoming-ness, I guess?" His Rodorian was significantly better than Iridiel's, but even his skill with the language was on the level of "mostly functional" rather than "good".
Iridiel responded with little more than a brief nod to them all in acknowledgment of the information.

Behind his back, he could hear Jaelnec addressing the other man, asking whether he should tell the others they would be staying for a while. The other sighed weakly - resignedly, perhaps -, and finally admitted, "I figure you'd have to. Just help me down here first." Probably a good idea; people who were barely capable of remaining seated generally did even worse at standing, let alone walking.
Provided that Jaelnec complied, Aemoten managed to clumsily slide down from the horse, and indeed had to resort to heavily leaning onto the other for support. It did not seem he even cared much where he was lead at this point, as long as it was far enough from the horses for the animals to not be able to accidentally step on him and he could reasonably comfortably assume a mostly-horizontal position.
Domhnall absentmindedly wiped the back of his hand over his bearded cheek (the same one he had scratched earlier; looked like an automatic effort to straighten it out than anything), and hesitantly followed along, unsure on whether he should offer any further aid or just stay back. (He did, though, if asked to.) He also sent a sideways glance at the horses, idly wondering whether or not they would actually stick around riderless... Not that he had any particular desire to approach them and see whether he could tie them to a branch by their reigns or something. (With his luck, these would either try to bite him or at least purposefully step on his foot.)
Once the foreign-looking man ad settled down, the forestfolk took seat nearby, casually pulling his shin atop of his opposite knee, leaving his hands resting on the side of his leg, and leaning back.
"Hope whatever you ran into this morning at least makes a good story for later," the male éireannach idly remarked.
Aemoten, for one, did not even bother replying to this, either because he was too exhausted or did not want to respond. Only the corner of the man's mouth twitched a bit, though it remained unclear whether it was a random muscle-twitch or an actual reaction to words he heard. His eyes were closed, and for all intents and purposes it was briefly impossible to tell whether he was even conscious anymore. He was still breathing, though, if shallowly, so at least the was not dead.
"Try not to worry them too much," the man eventually managed to mutter, however - hopefully before the younger fellow had taken off. Apparently, he had not quite passed out yet, after all. "I'll be fine. Just ... rest. And wake me up ... in time for us to reach Zerul City before nightfall. And thank you." He lifted his one hand partway for a gesture of some description, but evidently gave up midway through and just let it limply drop to ground again.
Unless the younger guy had something else to ask, Domhnall just opted to leave them to their own devices for the time being. It was not like the evident leader of the lot was capable of holding much of a conversation at the time being, the younger one did not have other errands to take care of and Etakar ... he was not entirely sure how to even begin to approach that one. Probably could go back to fletching. Or offer to make tea once the rest of those people showed up, even though their original temporary fire pit was some ways off and the fire had been doused already. Sometimes it did not pay to be too proper, it turned out...

The Prophecy

Oh there was another page in the OoC ^^'

Mercinus3

Don't worry, I've done that too...

@Jack: That glasses thing seems a bit odd to me. When I try to envision it in any kind of functional manner, anyway. It's pretty damn hard to actually transfer fluid between cups (or glasses) this way, or at least to do so in a way that won't end up with most of it on floor or looking very questionable, to think of - maybe if your cups just happened to be perfectly square and still filled almost to the brink...
The meanings of customs have transformed quite significantly over time, though... And to an extent the form and time of the customs, too (such as how I've - I think maybe never - shook hands as a greeting, but always as a more congratulatory thing ... and toasting also being generally between people you've known for a while, and for celebratory reasons). The only thing that would still make sense in the (presumed) original context is raising a hand with fingers stretched out and showing our palms, even when we now tend to do it as both greeting and goodbye. Though now when I think of it, the latter is easily explainable, too. ("See, I didn't steal anything while I was here, either.")
...There was this one guy who always used to give me the soldiers' salute as a greeting/goodbye. And only me; everyone else - regardless of sex - he either bowed (he often wore a hat, so he took that off for it, too) or just waved. Not sure what was up with that; but it was mildly amusing. Maybe I look like an officer or something.

But yeah... Sekalyns don't bow ... or toast, salute or shake hands, for the matter - the latter three would most likely just confuse them a bit (assuming we've Sekalyns who are not too familiar with foreign customs - which, to be fair, many of them are not), but bowing in particular is very likely to be interpreted as severe mockery, and may even result in a blade drawn against you. (And in a hypothetical situation where Aemoten would have to give a brief overview on what to do or not do before meeting with any subgroup of his people, it would probably be one of the first things he'd mention, especially if it was the Northeasterners.)
Then again, many of those customs wouldn't really make too much sense in their culture space from the standpoint of the supposed origins of the - beginning from the fact that checking a person you can plainly see carrying at least a knife anyway for weapons is a bit superfluous, that they do not submit to our typical western concepts of nobility, typically do not wear helmets with visors (except for maybe the Northeasterners), and so on and so forth. They do have holding a hand up for greeting, though (which I've read is, however, still an insult in some regions of Africa, so it's not like even that is universal).
There were more differences, obviously - such as in regards to making direct eye contact or what clothes are acceptable or expected to be worn (such as it being perfectly normal for Sekalynic women to be completely topless or the fact that skirts and dresses aren't even a thing there, or that places where you're not supposed to take weapons along practically do not exist and you're pretty much expected to at least carry a knife even when you're a "regular", non-warrior person (you generally only wouldn't have one if you were a kyolonth, which are the only ones borderline not allowed to open-carry blades, and are basically the closest to a slave you can be in that society)), or what parts of a person you are generally allowed to touch without explicit permission and which ones you shouldn't, et cetera, et cetera...

Hmm... And I'll see whether I can post tonight or tomorrow morning; I'm feeling mostly coherent again. (Poor Aemoten. Everyone seems to assume he'll be instantly fine after he's killed...)

The Prophecy

I believe it was actually I who pointed out the bones hardening from being subjected to repeated-but-not-severely-damaging impacts and strain over time (in relation to controlled combat and the cost-benefit relations of some actions - and yes, it was one of our more recent PM-conversations). (Why do I use the expression "I believe when I recall quite accurately where and what I wrote?)
I had also heard the bit about Vikings before... And quite a lot of it actually applied to my own culture, too (which isn't perhaps all that surprising given the relative regional placement of our countries ... our west-islanders were Vikings, too, after all ... or at least something close enough for other foreigners to not always clearly distinguish the two in their writings). Including the bit about women - such as for until Christians invaded and even slightly past that, there have been women found buried with battleaxes almost as frequently as men, and the jewelry buried with them is typically the exact same for both sexes. Same, women were often cited (though this in much later times, for obvious reasons) to be in charge of the house and finances whereas men were tasked with everything else. Both men and women also used to have long hair, and a person's hair was only cut short to mark them as slave (though some regions also did it for newly-married women ... not sure whether this was pre- or post-Crusade thing, however, not off the top of my head at this moment).
Storytelling was almost exclusively women's thing to do... I wonder whether it has anything to do with the disproportionately large amount of rather violent tales of manslaying women we seem to have, even preserved to this day. And other, more weirder stuff. (Meanwhile, we regrettably do not have actual epics of any kind, just tales and myths... The piece of fiction sometimes toted as such was written fairly recently by two random guys who were convinced Russia will very soon eat our culture for good, and contains next to nothing of the actual Estonian folklore. It's basically just one name, some technical elements and limited symbolics they took (and the one name, in actual folklore, belonged pretty much to the irredeemable enemy-and-destroyer-of-all-land archetype-villain), while lending influences from Finnish and Christian themes instead.)
Hrn, yeah, a whole lot of random, perhaps, but sometimes random things are interesting, and why not. (Aside of the fact that I'm tired and three fourths of what I'm typing might be fairly incoherent.)

(I wonder how much Jaelnec wondering whether bowing is acceptable was by coincidence, and how much from - OoC - remembering that Sekalyns do not bow? (And Aemoten earlier mulling over still associating it with decapitations rather than anything else.))

The Prophecy

Why no one (myself included) mentioned it ... I guess it is a combination of people being somewhat reluctant to point things like that out (be it for the sake of not being annoying or something else), some of them being too used to those from seeing it in computer games to realize those are nonsense "terms", or didn't consciously register those... I know I tend to mostly ignore random errors unless my brain starts to spot them as reoccurring (excluding cases where I'm specifically looking for errors).

The accumulating damage thing is a bit of a many-sided thing actually, and to a great extent the body's regenerative - and other - abilities tend to adapt (unless it's the actual ability to repair stuff that's broken). In many cases, you actually can become adjusted to all sorts of additional drain and/or damage. Depends heavily on type of drain/damage, though... Some things will be compensated for, some won't, and some will only do so to an extent. (And in cases, the initial problem will be fixed, but something other undesirable will happen while the body is at it.)
...Damage- or otherwise conditional adjust can occur to the point where the lack of damage can cause things to break due to overcompensation - such as in cases of suddenly stopping alcohol consumption actually being lethal for long-time severe alcoholics or, perhaps even more relevantly, how the lack of the usual Earthly background-radiation will cause weird side-effects and even quite severe illness. The latter is common for modern nuclear plant workers, I've read - in our attempts to shield them from the harmful effects of radiation, we ended up with places which actually contain only a marginal amount of the amount of radiation human bodies expect to take. Thus, being-not-radiated-sickness...

I'll add the entries once I'm home, then... Post I'll be discussing with Legion a bit before I write it up. (ASTA is still out of computer, so Claw will have to slumber some more.)

The Prophecy

Hmm... The Deo'iel of the Sixth Circle article goes under notable individuals (and be perhaps referenced at the bottom of the deo'iel article?) and the Waking Dreamer's Disorder article goes under miscellaneous?
(You have written "platemail" twice in the sixth circle article - and wrote "chainmail" in one of the Kaedan-collab posts - might want to fix it. It has been made rather abundantly clear to me that those all are nonsense terms, and should be plate armor and simply mail respectively (there is no "scalemail," either, it's scale armor; there is plated mail, tough, which is mail with platelets linked between mail, like this).)

- Why would health still quickly degrade when the amount of magical energy never drops too far below the body's norm with the waking dreamer's disorder? (One'd assume they'd, at worst, be slightly sickly as long as they managed to vent the excess magical energy from birth somehow ... sheer accumulation of slight damage?)

The Prophecy

@Loud Angry Dead: Hmm. That can happen.
(Reflexes, you see. As a former net-/infotech and current programmer/computer scientist/general "does something with computers" person I'm pretty much obliged to ask whenever computers are mentioned.)

The Prophecy

@Loud Angry Dead: No worries; I'm just checking back every now and then to make sure people are still out and about. There is no actual hurry at this stage, and even if you got caught up in something after entering the IC with a character, we could probably easily work around it, too, as long as you just let us know.
(...New computer?)