Roleplay Recap: Week 18
Katja
This week was started off with our friendly, neighborhood firecatte as she continued to delve into the records in Ul’dah, still searching for clues as to the identity of the mysterious Litany. This time, she was assisted by her two best friend, Valeria Camena and T’Shira Rihll. The trio found a fair few leads; one being some ties that led back to the Gladiator’s Guild, as well as ties to an apartment in the Sultana’s Breath in the Goblet. Katja herself found census documentation for Litany, though his name was still redacted, there were links to a marriage, even a child. If she could track down the marriage license or the birth certificate, perhaps one of those had escaped the purge of Litany’s name unscathed.
Before they could get much further, though, it became clearly evident that they were being watched. A young miqo’te girl, who later proclaimed herself as Robin had been observing them for some time, it seemed. She knew who they were and what they were after. She also made mention of killing their friends, presumably the Vanguard Company, which marked her a clear agent of Rihad. Before any of them could react to her provocative statements, the miqo’te vanished from their midst, leaving the trio concerned all the more. The jig was up and Rihad was onto them. The question now was would they find Litany’s identity before Rihad got fed up with their antics? Was this Robin some manner of warning? She seemed genuinely curious about who Litany used to be — or was it just a ruse to try and get in good with the trio as they made their discoveries? Regardless of her reasons, Katja didn’t trust her any farther than she could kick her.
In the days that followed, Katja joined a smattering of the Vanguard Company as they went to the Trial of One Vincere Acadian. Katja had been expecting a normal, courtroom affair with lawyers and judges and what-not. What she hadn’t banked on was a trial-by-combat at sea on a rickety ship named “Ship” captained by a crazed goblin and his army of mechanoid void-touched spiders. She hadn’t expected to be of much use in a battle at-sea; ships were things she bought tickets for and serenely rode across the waves. It was and had never been a raucous battleground for her, so going into this she already felt like she was on the back foot.
Still, she was here to help Vincere. The stolid hare-maiden had saved her life more than once, so it was an opportunity for Katja to pay back some of that debt. While battle at-sea was not something Katja was familiar with, what she was familiar with were ship weight distribution, ballast, and even keels. The Last Breath was a large ship, well-armored, but made entirely unwieldy by the enormous Magitek Cannon that had been haphazardly anchored by a trio of chains to the ship’s main deck. A plan formulated quickly in the miqo’te’s mind, having seen the effect some large-scale cargo had enacted upon a ship when their lash lines had been severed by accident. The weighty cargo had caused the ship’s balance to shift, nearly pitching half the crew overboard as it capsized. It hadn’t been quite enough weight to overturn the ship completely, but they’d had to cut the cargo loose and lose it into the bay or risk losing the ship altogether.
With that information in her mind, Katja had set about using her fire magicks to attach each of the anchors holding the cannon in place. Fellow Vanguardian, Garra Rhali took up Katja’s idea, attacking another of the cannon’s moorings all while Vincere Northfield and Brill Wiley took the fight from ship-to-ship combat to hand-to-hand as they boarded the Last Breath after a series of broadside bombardments. Katja had seen enough ships come limping into Limsa half-scuttled, so she was familiar with the way a ship looked when it was on its last legs. The goblin-captained tub they were on was on its last legs, while the Last Breath still looked at least hale enough to finish them off. A situation that was further compromised when the crew on the Breath managed to still fire the beleaguered Magitek Cannon, blasting a hole in both ships. Their ship was doomed unless someone did something decisive — and soon.
Garnering all the power she could, Katja wove a combination of Earth-Aspected aether borrowed from the sands beneath the sea and Fire-Aspected aether from Bitters — her carbuncle — and spun them out into a massive Meteor spell above the Last Breath. She could not allow them to fire that cannon again. She barked orders out to Brill and Vincere, recalling them back to their own ship as the Meteor spell built. Behind her, she could feel Adalind Halnova and Garra doing something that she couldn’t see — as it happened they were building a shield wall of ice to separate them from the soon-to-be dying Last Breath and put some space between them and the impending blast. Ka-BOOM!
It was more than enough to sink the Last Breath, ensuring that Vincere “won” her trial, such as it was. Katja didn’t even know what the so-called charges were, what Vincere was guilty or not guilty of, all that mattered to her was that her friends were safe. Her last thought as she collapsed in an exhausted heap, the spell taking far more out of her than the little firecatte had accounted for.
Lafiel
Drifting through Ul’dah like the last leaves of autumn, Lafiel spent some time in the company of Khona’tol Awandah and his friends as they filtered through, one Khunbish Orl and Taya Dracht and Tacitus Pollux, in turn. As they sat, Lafiel recited The Blizzard Will End: Litia’s Elegy for them, still in its drafted state. They approved of the song as it was written, though it seemed to upset Khunbish greatly, so much so that he felt the need to leave because it made him so sad he needed to go and hug a friend. For his own part, however, Khona’tol was so moved by Lafiel’s piece that he asked her then and there if she would compose a song to perform at his wedding to Taya.
It was such an enormous honor to even be asked for such a precious task that Lafiel was momentarily dumbfounded. However, after a moment, she recovered and accepted, on the condition that she sit down with them to hear their love story in full. They arranged a date to meet and would proceed from there.
♫
Lafiel met with Khona’tol a few nights later and took copious notes on how the young miqo’te viewed his relationship with his fiancee. They were a charming little couple, built on their duality, their differences, more than their commonalities. She learned much about Khona’tol, the way he viewed himself, valued himself, and how much of it tied back to his beloved Taya. It surprised her, though, to hear of such deeply abiding love and infatuation given that the pair had only known one another a moon. A moon… and already prepared to be married, bonded together eternally if they followed the path of the Twelve.
As she walked home, it made her appreciate the time she’d taken with Koh’li Nbolo thusfar. Such a rushed, whirlwind affair likely would have scared off the recalcitrant nomad. Even now, though they’d been together as bodyguard and ward for well over six moons now, there was still much to Koh’li that she felt she didn’t know, though it wasn’t as if he was secretive or hid anything from her. She knew anything she wanted to know was hers for the asking, but there was something in her that wanted him to volunteer those pieces of himself, too. So much of his culture demanded that he capitulate to the whims of the women in his life, that he give of himself whatever they wanted, regardless of how he himself might feel about it. She wanted to show him that he was just as valued in their relationship, just as important for him to have a voice of his own. But she knew that doing that took time, time and trust and patience, all of which she had for the stoic Keeper in spades.
For now, though, Koh’li was ailing from some manner of Twelveswood-borne fever that had left him bed-bound for days. So the elezen dutifully tended to him, fetching him medicines from the Alchemist’s Guild in Ul’dah, ensuring that he had healthy, nourishing meals several times a day, and was generally left wanting for nothing as he recovered. She chalked it up to the endless work he did for the Order of the Twin Adders, working so hard so often was bound to lower the body’s defenses and make illness more likely. She’d simply have to remind him in the future to take more time to himself so that such things were less likely to happen. For now, though, she took care of him as well as any nurse, carefully nurturing him back to health one day at a time.