The Fifteen Strangers Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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15strangers2017-06-24 04:26 pm
strangerpeople) wrote in 15strangers2017-06-24 04:26 pm
...THE BEGINNING
[Fifteen strangers were brought into the Depths to end the world, and they survived, with extra strangers along for the ride. Though the old world ended, creation itself has been preserved, and a new world has been born, shaped by the survivors. Portals to new worlds have been opened, and memories are slowly, but surely, returning.
And what better way is there to celebrate the beginning of a world, but with a spaghetti dinner?
Well, there was plenty of spaghetti, but some people thought that maybe there should be more than spaghetti. The Dragonborn did their best to make non-spaghetti food based on their memories of Tamrielic cuisine - being a cook themselves and cooking their own meals, even as an Emperor.
Spiced coffee with moon sugar and sweetmeat pasties in the shape of the moons, from Elweyr.
Imperial-style spiced sausage, braised in wine, and a tomato-flavored rye bread.
From Iliac Bay, a paprika-spiced rice dish with chicken and roasted peppers and a spiced banana mash in the style of Hammerfell.
From the Alik'r Deserts of Hammerfell, scorpion braised with venom sauce - which Alexis seems to like. It doesn't seem to be poisoned.
From Daggerfall, beet hummus, and stuffed dormice wrapped in bread like sandwiches.
From High Rock, Potage le Magnifique, with Alexis' special, not-lethal secret ingredient, and rock trout, along with fruit dumplings.
Lamb's bone broth with potato dumplings and vegetables, just like in the strongholds of the Orcs - with a dash of rice - and a dessert of carmelized beetroot.
Saltrice flatbreads and Telvanni-style mushroom medley with frost salts, from Morrowind.
Black Marsh King Yellow slug, served raw with some seasoning and wrapped in nut leaf. They are delicious, really.
Of course there is Skyrim's honey mead and blue cheese with honeyed oatcakes, along with horker and ash yam stew from Solstheim.
For now, it's time to relax, and celebrate the end - and beginning. Work can be done tomorrow. Questions can be answered later, if any are left. For now, eat, and enjoy. Bring your friends from home. Be happy, and remember.
There were 15 strangers.
But they are not strangers anymore.]
((OOC: Congratulations on ending Round 1 with the Golden End! For this feast, characters may bring people from their own canons to mingle with other players! Assume that portals have been opened for everyone by this time to go back and forth from their home worlds.
While you're here, please feel free to hit up the HMD, and we'll see you all when Round 2 happens!))
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(The skin-on-bones look, unfortunately, is one he's seen on elves, but it doesn't make him feel any better. Memories of the Helcaraxe, or of the prisoners of Angband, rarely do.)
His mind's whirling as Maglor explains. Maedhros would have written if his favorite brother went missing, of course, and there would have been encryptions and coordinated patrols to change, and seriously, why hadn't Maedhros written if his brother had been kidnapped, this sort of thing was important?
"Three weeks? But you could hardly go missing for-what?" The haunted look in Maglor's eyes is enough to snap him out of indignant High Kinging, and Fingon pulls his cousin closer in comfort.
"Shh, Kano, it's alright now, I have you. Tell me what's going on, and where we are, and what I can do to help."
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"It's been so long. You... you're all dead, Finno. So many battles. It got so bad. There's only me and Galadriel left now."
And she doesn't talk to him, for. er. reasons he'd rather not get into.
"And then they brought me here, and I can't hear Finno, they took my music. Made me something else. Tried to make me kill again."
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He knows better than to think it will work very well- it didn't after Elenwe or Argon, both gone now for so long- but it's the comfort that he can give right now. (And it distracts him too, from the news his cousin carries with him, that nearly all those he loves are dead.)
"But how can-" And then he shuts up and listens to this strange place, it's Song faint to his unaccustomed ears but punctuated with notes that sound almost familiar. It's there...but how can Maglor, a better singer on his worst days than Fingon is on his best, be cut off from the Song of the world?
"What sort of fiend would do that, even if he could?" Fingon hisses. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
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"I think its my fault you're here." He says miserably.
"I missed you all so badly...and then when this place ended we were told we had been given powers to aid the next cycle of it. They asked us to help them dream a new world but I missed you all..."
"Sing for me? I can't hear it."
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Fingon groans at that admission, "Hush, you. Is missing the ones you love now a crime? And even if it were, is it the same as choosing to bring me here?"
"I can do that," he nods, and with one hand begins to tap out an underlying rhythm- one that mimics the beating of the human heart.
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Maglor admits, still tucked in close.
"They... did it to one of their own, too. Several, I think. It looked like they'd been ... trying to end their world."
Viciously, darkly pleased, with a bloodthirst that might have seemed unfitting on the gentle bard to those who did not know him.
"They're dead now. But the survivors of their earlier experiments are still here."
His voice trembles again. "But I... should not have brought you... what if I have done some harm to our world by doing so? Evil ends we were told - have I done it again?"
He relaxes, as Fingon taps out the rhythm, sighing in relief to finally hear voiced what he knows must sound around him but he cannot hear.
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"And you are not responsible, even if your wish did bring me here. You did not know." And then he pauses, thinking. "And while I might like to think otherwise, I am hardly so important to Arda that it will break in my absence."
The Song Fingon hears is very very strange. It starts, maybe, with a murder among the Powers- or is it a suicide? A sacrifice? The variations blend together, though, in a sentiment of joy and grief, triumph and threat: this heart is the heart of the world, for one was made to satisfy the other.
And he sings this world's long story, coming ever closer in time and distance. He sings of star-loving elves with their high tower and their slaves, and the human uprising which forged an empire on their hated masters' bones. He sings of gods worldly and unworldly, living and dead, sane and mad, and the mortals who mantled them and been changed and had changed them in turn.
He hesitates as he comes to the valley they sit in, where the Songs sounds almost familiar and just out of reach. "This place sounds almost like Middle Earth...."
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"Never doubt your worth. We needed you, then. I need you, now. To bring you here... I do not know. I hope I have not wrought anything too terrible."
He curls into the song and follows it, seeing the world truly through his cousin's eyes.
And he flushes, looks down.
"That... would be my fault. They... I love this Valley. I... brought it here, I think."
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It's a beautiful world, if often a strange or horrifying one (what kind of continent needs two assassin's guilds, anyway?)and Fingon will sing of it for as long as Maglor wishes. And his heart breaks for Maglor, who it seems has bled for this world's rebirth, and cannot hear its full symphony.
"Makalaure, we must really cure you of this habit of calling everything you have been involved with a fault. If we do not know what happened, perhaps they simply made a replica."
The thought makes him a little uneasy, but he shakes his head and moves on. "Where is this place at home? It looks like no part of Beleriand I've ever seen."
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"I do." He says softly. "I ...we needed Fingon the Valiant. Without you..."
Without Fingon, he remembers, the alliance cracked and splintered, Turgon withdrawing from them all, the Oath rousing and Maedhros too sick of grief to control his wilder brothers, the curse coming to terrible fulfilment by his own brothers hands.
"Well this time I am fairly sure it was me?" He nibbles on his lip. "And that's because this isn't in Beleriand at all, but on the other side of the mountains in Eriador. I...someone ...important to me lives here, or did. They're gone now but I...used to come here sometimes.
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"....But I can guess at what you mean. Turno becomes High King- which means there is no High King, outside his Hidden City." He goes quiet for a moment. "Should I know the details?"
"Eriador?" Fingon takes another look around, "It is a very beautiful place, I'll give your that. Is...your friend well?"
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"They would only distress you, and I... suppose we cannot change them, now."
"It is." That is unmistakable fondness in his eyes as he looks around as well.
"You will meet him, I think - the lord of this Valley is your...grand...nephew, I think. Lord Elrond. As of the last time I saw him, he was Sailing, as is Artanis."