Millimax (ᴀᴋᴀ “Kettle Hooves”) @millimax@high.cat

alright this gets meta but hear me out

[dc] means 'destiny crusade' because that's the title
[ooc] means 'out of character' because it's complicated

i'm still gonna be lovable old me but i'm getting the chance to show up in a game @orrery is running for my friends @mawr and @kelseyhusky and @IceWeasel and @kobunny

if you see [dc] but not [ooc] then it's my game-me's journal

if you don't see those it's just me being stoned

i feel i should explain the look of my legs in my user photo here because i'm not a "robot" pony or a "cyborg" or any sort of machine or portion of

i am a living sculpture and i will resculpt myself in copper and porcelain until i am whole even if i have to get there one piece at a time

the big difference here is that the first is a mind-meltingly complicated system of logic circuits and actuators and code

the second is just me haunting a pony-shaped teapot

i don't think i've ever felt so scared and vulnerable as i do in this place

nothing works the way i expect and we have some distance to go before we can do the thing and head back so we're not even at the halfway point and it feels like the grey outside is trying to seep into our hearts and siphon off all hope

this seems like an good time to tap into what i brought of our limited glitterreed supply

and after we get back i have some serious questions for house cannith

this fight didn't make much sense

i tried to rig a sort of lightning rod to channel the magic into the ground but the spells ignored it and kept fighting each other around us

somehow attacking them physically worked just fine so i got more use out of my crossbows than my horn

bell had to actively repair the cart while in motion to keep the rogue magic from tearing it apart

but we survived and once those spells were gone it was quiet again

almost too quiet

friends, it gets worse

apparently any spells cast that were still active at moment of the calamity just sort of kept going

seeing as there was a war happening this includes bolts of lightning and raw magical energy that were being used as weapons but no longer have targets to hit so they wander as angry danger clouds

of course i mention this because our path took us right through some and we had to fight to dispel them

the conductor stones don't work inside the mournland and it's more than a little terrifying to push oneself into a place that resists magic like that

also terrifying are the mana reservoirs – crystals infused with impractical amounts of magical energy – that have to be fed into the cart just to keep it moving

i couldn't stop imagining what would happen if one broke so i examined a spent one to see what safeguards were on it

i'm extra terrified now

it wasn't until dawn that we saw the mist

it started as a line of grey on the horizon and then it was a band and then it was a wall and then we were in it

the mournland is a place without sound or color or scent or magic or life and it pretty much completely spooked the sense out of me

medya kept me together long enough to dash back to our cabin but we were in there until i could calm down and be rational

it took a while and it took some dreamlily

being caught in the act would have been inconvenient so we had to be clever about it and fortunately we're full to the brim wth cleverness

medya intended to distract the guards inside the railhouse but her magic seems even more potent here and she actually lulled them to sleep

have i mentioned that she is the best ever? because she is

after a couple well-placed distractions and something zer' did to make us hard to spot we were on our way with the cart

we had arranged with house orien to swap to an "inspector cart" in vathirond so we could travel further up the rail line

instead a bunch of thranian military types had set up there and were directly obstructing this arrangement for no legitimate reason

my opinion of thrane keeps dropping

rather than pursue any number of alternate paths that would have left some aspect of our goals unfulfilled we decided to sneak the cart out of there

it's not theft

that's where the really nice stuff ends for now

next stop vatherond and then on to the happiest place in eberron

on our way back to the inn medya found for us we met up with bell and – surprise! – siege seventeen

they found work helping assemble the new town hall in starilaskur and while they were at it they found an close friend in another forged named "ballista four" so they've really turned their life around from when we met in sharn and i couldn't be happier for them!

also siege gifted bell with a tailspade they made as a thank-you which was a really sweet gesture

relic found a jade dragon figure that he liked and when he purchased it nebik threw in a bonus in the form of a flame carved from crystal that they said was for his sister

it was pretty obvious to me by that point that the gnome had some serious magical insight going and i really want to visit again on our way back to sharn if they're still set up in that spot

anyhow relic gave that to spark as intended

it reminds me of their mane of flame

anyhow nebik gave me back the coins and asked me to keep the quartz and they said "thelanis minds their own"

this pretty much confirms my theory that the everglow is a co-terminus – the intersection of two different "planes" of existence – and the hedge is the border between them

thelanis turned up in my research here and it's known as "the fae realm" so that explains the different feel of the magic here

good to know

when i paid i passed the coins to them with horngrip like i usually do but that seemed to surprise them and they asked me to take their hand

well the closest i have is a hoof so i offered that

they were very still for a couple seconds and then said "you're very far from home aren't you"

yes

yes i am

· · ·

every time i think about how they said it i feel like i'm going to start crying

they seemed to have very limited sight but the whole time we browsed they were carving a figurine going entirely by the feel of it in their hands which is impressive

i really liked a lot of what i saw there but i didn't want to buy anything too fragile because i knew we were headed for some rough travelling and i can't go collecting loads of souvenirs to haul back home

so i found some quartz slivers that would be perfect for medya's wings

of course the most important thing to do in a new town is head to market and soak up the local arts-and-crafts culture and this is how we found a tent with a shingle reading "nebik del davandi: prospecting and carvery" which contained:

lots of stones (in bags marked "pretty" and "interesting" which as a method of classification is pretty interesting)

lots of small and very skilled stone-carvings

and an especially rare treat, a biped who didn't tower over me

we spent two days in starilaskur which is also known as "breland's watchtower for the world" to hear them tell it

it's basically a military fort that grew into a city which isn't that different from what medya grew up in so she said it all seemed weirdly familiar

it just seemed weirdly weird to me because they go kind of overboard on the recruitment posters

but it felt like a safe enough place in kind of the same way rakela feels safe