Tortoise

The Blackwood

@POOHEAD189

Could you work with this?

Dyla

Dyla Roots

Burrowfolk | 30 | Female

Appearance

Dyla stands proud and imposing at 3 feet and 8 inches- tall, by Burrowfolk standards. She's also young by their standards. Her brown, curly hair and brown, warm eyes don't do much to change that impression.

Personality

Like most Burrowfolk, Dyla is inclined towards comforts, kindnesses and curiosity. That last trait, however, is a bit stronger in her than in your average, socially-accepted Burrowfolk. She's not just curious, but aggressively curious. She asks too many questions, and wants to know too much about everyone she meets. But luckily, that's made her quick to read people- not to mention good at making friends fast.

Background

• Ex-trader
• Middle-Class
• Father is a pumpkin gardener, of course, and Mother is a local historian who specializes in family histories.

History
Life in Pumpkinhollow is pleasant. And comfortable. And nice. And safe. And... boring. Life in Pumpkinhollow is boring.

Dyla spent about 7 years running a stall on the road into her home town, where she got to meet travelers from all parts of the world. She made friends from all over: Norgardians, Thaegars, Wood Elves and Silver Elves, Banians and Half-Elves.

But in the end, Pumpkinhollow is an Andredian province, and so Andredians were the most common travelers. And a few of them, at least, came from the most interesting province: Blackwood. Everytime Dyla heard stories about the country to the north of her own, it excited her in a way her home never could. The more she heard about it, the more it seemed to Dyla that her own land was dull by comparison. The people in Pumpkinhollow may as well be asleep. But Blackwood, dangerous and uncomfortable as it was, is awake. And if only her friends and family could be so awake, too!

So that's how the young, naive Burrowhob finds herself on the road into Blackwood, hoping to find something worth bringing back home and showing to her people: Look, there's more out here than pumpkins and tea!

Motivation
To find something valuable, rare and preferably magical, and bring it back to her people to reinvigorate their sense of adventure.

Capabilities

Attributes

Combat [1]

• Daggers [1]

Intelligence [1]

• Literacy [1]
• Appraisal [1]

Charisma [1]

• Diplomacy [1]
• Charm [3]

Health [1]

Faculties [1]

• Perception [2]
• Intuition [1]

Agility [1]

• Stealth [3]

Mysticism [0]

---

Equipment

• A "dagger" that is, honestly, just a very long skinning knife.
• Armor stitched and buckled together from various pieces of leather
• A warm cloak

Money
7 Royals
14 Lordlings
6 Crowns

Languages

Northern

I just want to add, for the record, that it took 100% of my willpower not to include "A magical ring that turns the wearer invisible" in the Equipment section.

The Blackwood

Not too late to join?

Aboard the I.S.S. Prize : An Episodic Sci-Fi Adventure

@Tortoise Just wanted to mention started a new job so gonna take some time for my brain power to recharge.

@IceHeart

No problem. I've been working a new job for a while now too, but it's slow enough sometimes that I can write stuff during work

Aboard the I.S.S. Prize : An Episodic Sci-Fi Adventure

@Eviledd1984

Small Issue: Vei is an individual person, but your post makes it sound more like that's the name of the species- "the Vei"

Aboard the I.S.S. Prize : An Episodic Sci-Fi Adventure

Would it be a good idea to suggest something at their meeting about the stowaway?

@Eviledd1984

You mean T'ri? Yeah, D'Artagan could suggest something about what to do with him. That's mainly the Situation Room meeting is about

Aboard the I.S.S. Prize : An Episodic Sci-Fi Adventure

Clearly Korax should do the first contact stuff next time. Considering the current track record of talking to new aliens, it can't go worse

@Flamelord

Pfft, we'll send you when we need to make contact with a talking rock

Aboard the I.S.S. Prize : An Episodic Sci-Fi Adventure

Looking forward to that. Mason will be in the med bay at still watching our tree friend. Sorry, I mean T’ri.

@Randomness

Tree is close enough. Maybe our botanists can take a look at him

If you want to give him any dialogue or let Mason have a convo with him, go ahead. I could tell you anything you want to know, but I have zero problem with folks winging it and worldbuilding on their own, like Raylah did when she made the trees of the planet "hostile."

Aboard the I.S.S. Prize : An Episodic Sci-Fi Adventure

He was halfway to the Med Bay, walking fast, when his trusty datapad beeped to signal another message. It was an annoying, hourly sound, which Nick almost always ignored. But now was a unique situation, so he glanced at it quickly, and saw a note from Lt. Astrid waiting for him:

To: CAPT Carabello
From: LT Faust
Captain, are we going to attempt recovery of our guest’s ship, or do we not bother because of the risks?

Ouch. That was a tough enough question to make the Captain stop in his tracks.

On the one hand, the ISA crew might learn a lot from their first look at technology this side of the wormhole. Alien tech always surprises. And if Havi engineering is anywhere around standard for their region, it would give the Prize crew an informational edge going forward.

But then there's Vei to think about. She might be new to English, but she hadn't left much room for interpretation when she told the delegation to get out. It would be easy to explain away picking up the passenger: he was injured, he requested aid, etc., etc. But it's a lot harder to explain capturing a Havi ship and trying to figure out how it worked. If the ship is armed, it's practically an act of war.

But having met Vei once, Nick decides she wasn't going to listen to anything he said either way. They'll just have to hope that first contact with the Havi won't end in a shootout.

To: LT Faust
From: CAPT Carabello
Go ahead. Try to leave it functional. Don't spill anything on the seats.

-----

Nick didn't regret listening to Korax and Gue'rach's suggestion to put the ship on Yellow Alert. When the Universal Translator finally got set up for their guest in sickbay, nothing he had to say was good.

His name was pronounced in a way the human tongue couldn't quite imitate. At least, Nick's tongue sure couldn't. A spelling with Latin letters might be "T'ri," if you use the apostrophe as a stand-in for that same freaky growl that Vei kept making. Apparently, it's a natural part of how the Havi people speak.

And it looks like the attitude is too. When Nick introduced himself as the leader of the "travelers," the alien told him that he was too short to be a leader. Also, the room was too cold, the lights were too dark, and the doorways were too small. Entering the second hour of this conversation, it was getting really tempting to turn off the Universal Translator.

"Fine, whatever, everything is wrong," Nick admitted. He had ran out of diplomatic decorum. "Are you happy now?"

"No," T'ri replied.

The captain sighed. "Alright, why aren't you happy now?" These simple, direct questions had proven to be the best at getting a real answer out of him.

"Because you are not being true."

"How am I not being true?"

"You do not really think that everything is wrong." The alien took another breath, and Nick was sure he was going to add Even though it is, but he seemed to catch himself. Is that progress?

Slowly but surely, it was. They settled into a slow but steady question-and-answer pattern, and the verbal barbs subsided. For a long time, T'ri still didn't volunteer any information that Nick didn't explicitly ask for, and it was still like pulling teeth to get a clear answer, but now it felt like their guest was cooperating.

Somewhere along the way, he seemed to decide that Nick wasn't very bright. Maybe it was because of all the questions. But at least that made him more patient. T'ri took on a lecturing tone that reminded Nick of a professor he used to learn from. His answers were longer, then, and easier to understand.

He taught Nick about the Havi deity, the "God Named Truth", which T'ri and Vei both technically worshiped. But according to T'ri, Vei was a heretic. He said that she was a usurper who had deceived the nations of Havi into giving her power, then betrayed and destroyed them. T'ri was obviously a bit biased, but with some careful questioning, Nick was eventually able to put together a picture of what must have really happened.

Vei was a new ruler. At most, she'd been in command of Havi for about 5 Earth years. She came into power as the head of an international diplomatic organization- something like the U.N. of Old Earth. According to T'ri, their shared faith in the God Named Truth had been the only thing that the various nations of Havi could agree on, so this organization used their religion as a way of conducting diplomacy. There didn't seem to be any difference between high-ranking priests and diplomats.

When some kind of political infighting threatened to trigger catastrophe on Havi, possibly coupled with environmental pollution, Vei's organization used it as on opportunity to seize power. To the national leaders, they claimed that they would restore order and political cohesion. On the side, they secretly funded religious fundamentalist sects to assassinate or terrorize their opponents. Eventually, the public lost faith completely in their governments, and Vei was there to fill the power gap. It was a coup.

But just when Nick was about to bring up the dangerous subject of why T'ri was being shot at, the Holy one herself interrupted him. The Prize was receiving a hail from her compound. Was that foresight? Probably not.

-----

They were in the Situation Room again. It was starting to become more familiar to Nick than his own bedroom.

"So," he began, "we have a decision to make, and it's too big for even a Captain to make on his own."

The Captain explained Vei's message to his crew. She had told them that T'ri was a dissident priest and a wanted criminal, who escaped a high-security prison and stole the vessel he arrived in. "That explains why he's been shot," Nick adds, "and why he was worried about being pursued."

Of course, Nick also communicates everything that T'ri told him, and the theories about Vei that he was able to put together from T'ri's simplified answers. "If he really is a dissident priest, that would explain why he knows so much about Vei and her organization. He may have worked for her in the past."

Which makes the whole thing more complex. If Vei really rules Havi, and T'ri really is former follower, than that makes this a deeply internal affair to the Havi people. There's a real question as to whether ISA even has the right to be involved.

Or, there would be, except that Vei just brought them into it. "Vei has asked us to return T'ri into her custody, where- and she was clear about this- he will be executed for treason." Carabello lets that settle across the room. "Normally, I wouldn't even consider it, except..."

He pressed a button on the datapad, and a recording of Vei's voice filled the room. "If you return the criminal T'ri to us, then we will consider..." even through a recording, the growl-snort was unmistakable "...reopening negotiations with ISA." As if it wasn't obvious enough, Vei had added: "I may allow your ships to pass through this system."

So now the Prize crew was facing a moral dilemma. "If we turn T'ri over," Nick said, pronouncing his name more like Tree, "other ISA ships can explore this side of the wormhole, and we might be able to really get a diplomatic foothold here." He sighed. "But we'd be condemning a man who, as far as I can tell, hasn't done anything but refuse to accept Vei as all-knowing and holy. You know, I don't think I blame him for that one." This was not something that Carabello wanted to decide on his own.

He looked to his crew for support. "I need opinions, ideas, other alternatives- anything."

Aboard the I.S.S. Prize : An Episodic Sci-Fi Adventure

Big ole' info dump.

(Is anyone even a little surprised that Vei was a villain all along? )

I left it vague as to who is in the Situation Room right now, so that each of you can decide whether you want your character to be there or not. So like, @Raylah, you could have Elm still studying the plant sample she took instead. Or @Starlance, you could have Astrid stay to study the alien ship, or so on. It's up to y'all.

Aboard the I.S.S. Prize : An Episodic Sci-Fi Adventure

Sorry for not posting anything. I think I might of messed up having D'Artgnan be at the medical bay.

@Eviledd1984

It's no problem. The situation will be moving forward probably in about 24 hours now anyway, so you don't need to feel pressured to post anything right now.