ROLEPLAY

[OOC This is a tale told by an unreliable narrator, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.]


Lacuna misses her sister, Marichia, bitterly. Marichia’s role in this is will be the hardest. She stifles a sob in case she wakes Spettra. Today had been hard, and her sister needed her rest, as will she when her turn comes to sleep.  She stirs the glowing embers of the camp fire and glances at the sleeping outline of her blood-sister.  She wonders at this new thing. Often, she had suffered cold while patiently trying to tease out mats from her beloved Prime Roots, and now this… She stands up and kicks the dead Matis male in the head. Idiot. He thought the fire would keep him safe through the night, like the comfort blanket his mother, no doubt, gave him.  The fire kept one warm, and offered protection from things that lurked in the dark places.  But fire also attracted their attention - a double edged blessing, much like Spettra’s axe.  These fires will make them weak. Good!  She would drag the idiot’s corpse out beyond the Ruins of Cryton Farm later.  The gruesome kirosta that had taken to following her and Spettra needed feeding if it was to grow strong. It had stopped trying to kill them a week ago, and now it seemed content to eat the gifts she and Spettra provided.  Lacuna stands and smiles, maliciously.  Soon, if she and Spettra successful, males would die.

    She walks back to the camp fire and extinguishes it by pouring out the beer she found in the male’s bag.  She sits on her haunches and listens to the Song of the Prime Roots as she keeps watch. Lacuna has no memories of divergent histories, as many homines do. But then she cares little if Thesos was burned or not, only that it will soon.  She has no memory of whether parasite kings died well or not.  Inconstancies of cultural memory do not bother Spettra.  Whenever Lacuna asks her about it, Spettra merely shrugs and says, ‘Males.’

    Lacuna’s first memory is of waking in the ranger camp in Silan, and the cruel, ugly, leering Matis face chasing her to consciousness.  A face that haunts her dreams and waking hours to this day… and the lumpers. No one ever believes her about the lumpers.  She scowls. But memories will not hold in her head.  They shift, meld, and at times she wonders if she is not confusing dreams with memories.  Misremembering.  The word hurts.  She does not know it, but, as is so often the case, it is there in her head - a niggling itchy word.  She wonders if Spettra has any sweets hidden in her bag and her thoughts slip away.  Silan.  It was here that Lacuna met Generallee, one of the very few males who deserve to live.  

    Lee taught her the love the hunt, the kill.  She had tried to teach him her love of digging, of splitting one’s mind in two - so as to achieve communion with to the Bark.  How to listen to the rhythm of weather, season and hour, and the harsher discordances in the songs of kitin and other predators. Communion? Discordances?  She snorts at the memory of Lee sticking his pick through his own foot when he tried to follow her lessons. Males. But Lee was gone.  He lied; he promised he would come back.  There was no honour in the Burning Desert now, only greed.  Her thoughts turn to the surface.  She knows others think of her as Fyros, but she feels nothing for the desert, and the cowards and hypocrites who pay lip service to the ideals of an imaginary god.  To her, the desert is as bad as the Forest, where liars, frauds and sycophants crawl on their bellies and abase themselves in front of their worthless nobles.  The Witherings is full of mystics lost in a fog of moss and love of their own cleverness.  To her, the Trykers care for nothing but the debauchery of alcohol and profit.  And the marauder camp appears to be little more than a bordello now.  Hairdressers!  Rather than luring weapon crafters and warriors to camp, they lured hairdressers! Pffft.  I suppose one cannot start a revolution unless one has the perfect dye and cut.  She gives an envious glance at Spettra’s long pink queue, and bites the ends of her own fringe.  She sneers at those who are slinking back into the nations to beg for forgiveness and the scraps from their master’s tables.  As for the Rangers… well at least their meddling has brought back the KP.  She gloats at the thought of how many males must have died, maybe even a few too badly hurt to resurrect.  And now there are fools who proclaim Tryton a saviour, and whisper freedom while they cling even harder to their chains. As usual, thoughts of the surface make her rage.

    She smiles at a memory of Astarth giving her her first axe.  The smile breaks into a grin at the thought of the first time she buried the axe in Eikichi’s back as he slept at Zora stables.  She wonders if Gasket will ever work out what she watered his beer down with.  Gasket.  She cannot remember if she killed him, or not. The jagged memory a Tryker lying face down in the mud, with her spear buried in his back, intrudes.  ‘I’m not evil,’ she mumbles. ‘I told him. I’m lovely!’  A little giggle escapes her lips at the thought of Eruv’s bloody, drunken suicides as he tried to teach her how to dig Prime Roots.  Her thoughts turn to other lost friends… Karrael, Kiela, Leonora, and Ink.  

    Ink. Lacuna deeply misses Ink. Ink had shown her how to start not being afraid.  But Ink had fed the lumpers and so she had to go away.  Lacuna often goes back to Furtive Waters to see her.  After Ink went away, Lacuna wandered the Prime Roots for a long time. She shunned the company of others and dwelt on her sadness and grief.  It was now that she learned to listen to the Song of Prime Roots.  And it was the Song that stopped the sadness and loneliness from consuming her.  When she finally returned to the surface, she sought out old friends.  She tried, for what felt like an eternity, to teach Binarabi and Ozelott the Song, and how this would let them move through and dig Prime Roots.  For a while, she harboured spiteful little thoughts that they were male, or were being deliberately suicidal just to annoy her.  Later, she realised that it was false consciousness that stopped them from hearing the Song.  GoS was infested with males, the guild, like Atys, needed cleansed.  False consciousness? Her head was starting to hurt again. This always happened when she thought too deeply, or tried to remember too much.

    It was soon after her return to the surface that Lacuna met her sister, Spettra.  Though Lacuna was told she Fyros, and Spettra was obviously Tryker, both she and Spettra recognised each other as kindred souls.  Spettra had only recently arrived from Silan.  As a means of distracting herself from the call of the Song, she volunteered to help Spettra train her combat skills.  She was afraid that she would answer the Song and never be able to return.  Soon they were training together every day.  Lacuna taught Spettra the lessons she had learned from Lee and, in turn, Spettra taught Lacuna that she was not alone.  She helped Lacuna through the terrors in her head, and helped her see that males were not to be feared, they were to be killed!  

    Lacuna stands, kicks the dead male again. I’m not evil!  She drags the corpse to the out-skirts of the abandoned op. She can hear the kirosta; it seems to be impatient for her to leave.  She wonders if Spettra’s decision to name the kirosta, Gaalh [Blood], will be prophetic.  Maybe tomorrow night Gaalh will finally enter their camp to feed.  Soon they will find a way into the Deep Roots, and, hopefully, there they will find a way to kill males beyond the higher powers ability resurrect them.  

 

Some spoke of a dragon…  

[OOC Sadly no males were harmed in the writing of this tale.]

Ny-Lacuna

This is a tale of tenderness and beauty and I am proud to have known such a Warrior and Prime Roots Goddess, much love to you, sister, and may all paths be filled with dead Matis Males (not the ones on the "save" list though)

does more press ups and sits in 11deg for more brown fat.
doesn't mention anything about evil heartbreakers :o}

p.s. outrage we demand to be mentioned :o} (sbx marce)

If I finish the second part of this, you find out the true and honest history of how Marceline learned to walk on the wild side and Lost Girls came to be, and why Ghuiss is in hiding:P

[OOC The true and honest history of how Marceline learned to walk on the Wild Side and Lost Girls came to be.]

As she carefully finished sharpening the point of her spear, her thoughts turned again to blood, and revenge against her mortal enemy, Ghuiss. Hopefully, she would find his hiding hole soon.  She was sure he had hidden himself somewhere in Roots.  In the past months, she had tried all the bars on the surface, and there was no sign of the drunkard.  No one she talked to had seen him.  She had even stalked his partner-in-crime, Gasket, for a month hoping he would lead her to the Zorai’s hiding place.  But all she learned from that was that Gasket had some serious public hygiene issues.  She traces Ghuiss’s name on her spear point with her finger and smiles. Ghuiss will pay dearly for forgetting her birthday!  She places the spear back beside her pack. She worries about Spettra. Her sister has been gone for many days now.  They had decided to separate in an attempt to speed up their search.  She was to search the Wastelands for a entrance into the Deep Roots and Spettra the Lands of Umbra.   They had agreed to meet in the Keepers’ camp, but she has lost track of time and does not know if she is early, or Spettra late.  So she worries.  There is no sign of Gaalh, either. She wonders if the kirosta has followed Spettra.  So she sits and waits, and tries not to let the sadness in.

Even though helping Spettra’s train her combat skills distracted her, the Song soon started to call Lacuna again.  She began to return to PR for longer and longer periods. Often Spettra would join her.  Together they explored and hunted for days at time before returning to the guild.  Each time they returned, Lacuna felt less and less at home.  It was not that her guild did not welcome, it was just she felt she did not belong.  She was also having serious doubts as to the intentions of the Kami Alliance.  She felt the sadness start to grow in her again, and the gaps between her visits to Zora grew longer. She is sure that is how it was, but remembering is like trying to catch a falling leaf. Yes. It all started with Marceline.

                                                               ~~~

Binarabi was furious. Lacuna could tell.  That vein on her forehead was throbbing. It always did when someone in the guild went too far with a joke.  Lacuna tried to hide behind Spettra, which was not easy as Spettra was half her size.  She hates it when Bina shouts at her.  She loves Bina, but wishes she would stop coddling useless males, like Eikichi.  Now would be a bad time for Bina to find out that Eikichi has had yet another accident.
     ‘He could have DIED!’ she screamed at them.  ‘What were you two thinking? No. No. Don’t answer that! Of course you weren’t thinking, neither of you ever do.’
    Spettra closed her mouth and the explanation died on her lips.
    ‘No. No. Tell me! I need to know what made you both think it was, in any way, acceptable to sneak into his room and.. and.. and…’
    ‘He asked us too,’ Lacuna whispered.
    ‘He was bloody joking!’ Bina scream at them. ‘Ma-Duk, can’t you two tell when someone is joking!’
    ‘If you think about it, it is his own fault. He never told us not to go into his room and cut it off,’ Spettra volunteered.
    Lacuna watched as Bina’s eyes went wide with complete and utter incomprehension. ‘WHAT!’ Things went downhill fast after that.

Spettra found Lacuna hiding in her bedroom.  ‘What was their decision?’
    ‘We’re out.’
    Spettra seemed surprisingly happy. Lacuna felt bad; it had been her idea. OK, Gasket was also to blame; he had gotten her drunk, and that led to… well… Marceline’s little operation.  It was always that yelk-fart Gasket’s fault. I’m not evil. He knew what happened when she drunk even the smallest amount of alcohol.  She still needed to get revenge for the Yrakanis incident.  It had taken months of community service to get her reputation back to the point where she could buy the LA and amp plans she needed.  It was not her fault that the Matis had no sense of humour.  It had only been a small fire, and the graffiti had washed off, eventually.  And all because Gasket got her drunk! The git.
    ‘What will we do now?’
    ‘Spettra smiled, ‘We go Mara and kill all males.’

                                                               ~~~

After after their relocation to the marauder camp, Lacuna felt happier than she could ever remember.  But it was not that until Marichia joined them that she finally felt content, and the sadness left her for a time.  Marichia is the kindest of them.  Lacuna suspects her sister thinks males are simply dumb farting hominoids, rather than vermin, and that she would be satisfied if all males were just to go off somewhere far, far, far away and… well… stink that place up.  She doubts Marichia shares her and Spettra’s longing for extermination.  

                                                               ~~~

    ‘Come back you bloody pervert!’
    Lacuna looked up from sorting out the complete mess that was her bag.  She saw a tall, slim Matis girl, brandishing a rather large mace, chasing a half-naked Zorai through the camp.  She realised that it was Marceline wearing the red shell thingies the Matis thought were appropriate for underwear. Grinning, she nudged Spettra.
    ‘Marceline is up to her old tricks again.’
    ‘Yap. I wonder why he… ummm… I mean she, is so obsessed with Matis undies?’
    They both still found it hard to to think of the tall Zorai as she, but… well… they were responsible, in a way, for her new gender identity, so they thought they should be supportive.  But if the sod tries on any more of my dresses I will gut him like weanling yubo.  As Marceline came racing past them, Spettra stuck out a foot, sending the Zorai sprawling in the dirt.  Marichia came running up to them.
    ‘Thanks.’
    Marichia then proceeded in what appeared to be an extremely enthusiastic attempt to break every bone in Marceline’s body. Lacuna picked up her mace and asked, ‘Want a hand with that?’  Marceline had to learn the hard-way, she guessed.  Spettra screamed, ‘You thieving shit, Marce!’; she had just noticed what looked like her favourite bra in Marceline’s hand.

                                                               ~~~

After Marceline’s lesson in what was not acceptable behaviour for a young homine, Marichia, Lacuna and Spettra quickly became inseparable.  It just seemed natural that Marichia would join them. Three was the perfect number.  They all knew they were not a guild, but a sisterhood. And for that, three sisters were needed.  And for a while all was calm.


She sits in the Keepers’ camp and plays with the friendship ring Spettra gave her.  She knows the words engraved inside it by heart.  Tears run down her cheeks whenever she thinks of them.  She misses her sisters.  She worries.  She fights the sadness and tries to listen to the Song.  She is startled back to the present by a commotion outside the camp. But it is just the guards fighting off a another KP.  Maybe tomorrow Spettra will arrive and they can continue their search.  She puts on her amplifiers and goes to help the guards patrol the perimeter of the camp.


[OOC Only the facts have been changed to protect the guilty.]

(OOC that is the funniest and bestest and saddest thing I have ever read - hugs hugs to you, Ghuiss is trembling in his boots!)

[OOC This is a tale told by an unreliable narrator, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.]

Lacuna’s head hurt.  It always hurt when she tries to remember or to concentrate one idea too long.  Images flitted across her mind’s eye.  She sits by the fading campfire  and watches the flames flicker.  The camp is quiet with only a few marauder still awake.  Something is wrong.  She does not know why, but there was something profoundly wrong.  It does not feel like home anymore.  Had it ever been?  Yes. Yes, when her sisters were with her, it had been home.  

She misses her sisters.  They had told her where they were going but she has forgotten.  She forgets so easily.  She knows now it can be put off no longer, she must make a choice - to stay or go.  

The decision is not easy but she will go to the Old Lands; she will seek out Melkiar, maybe he will know where her sisters are or, at the very least, what is wrong with the camp.  She looks around in the fast falling light and the faces seem familiar but they are wrong.  She does not know why, but they are wrong.

She stands up and slings her backpack across her shoulders, picks up her bucklr and spear, and walks out into the night.

[OOC This is a tale told by an unreliable narrator, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.]

Tears run unnoticed down Lacuna’s cheeks.  The song fills her head making thoughts hard to form.  She does not want to get lost in it again.  She sits by her campfire and stares into her cup.  Memories come unbidden…

 ~~~~

Lacuna sits in the corner of a bar in Fairhaven brooding over her drink.  She can hear the song again, niggling, calling her back.

She had decided to check out the nations first for her sisters before heading to the Old Lands.  Her longing for the comfort of sisterhood outweighing the need to understand the wrongness of the marauder camp.  Yrkanis had been a complete dead-end.  Even though the trail lead her there, there was no definite sign of her sisters in the city: though there was an unsubstantiated rumour of a homine matching Marikka description getting into a brawl with the city guard.   She had searched the city for any of the sigils that Lost Girls use to pass on messages to no avail.  Searching had been a nightmare due to her undeserved reputation as a Jena hating she-devil.  Seriously, the Matis had a collective stick up their butt, no wonder they run so funnily.  

It was only a few pornographic cartoons of their so-called goddess, and the charge of murder was way over-the-top.  How can the accidental deaths of a few homins be murder.  They were all male!  Surely that counted as a civic service.  But oh no, the holier-than-thou, pasty faced yelk-farts called it ‘an unprovoked brutal assault.’  A minor misdemeanour, of defacing property was all it should have been.  If anything she should have had compensation for her dress being completely ruined.  She never asked them to run up screaming about blasphemy.  And if you are going to attack an innocent, defenceless homine going about her law abiding business, you deserved to get stabbed.  Admittedly, the last guard had technically been running away at the time, but still, it was a simple matter of self-defence.  It was three against one, how could it not be self-defence! Males! 

Anyway, ever since then the Matis had treated her as persona non-grata.  That hurt.  It was not like she was evil, like Mithian or Rykal, or a unsanitary, public nuisance like Revvy. Consequently, she had been forced to sneak about the city after dark trying to find any sign of her sisters, all because the Matis couldn’t take a joke.  As for the charge of intimidation, how could the helpful suggestion of the need to buy fire insurance be considered a crime!  Everyone knew how easy Matis were to set on fire.  She had just tried to be helpful; and this was her reward. 

After a week, she had finally had to admit defeat and travelled south to Heretic’s Hovel and the portal to Aeden Aqueous.

  Fairhaven had proved to be no more productive than Yrkanis, though easier to search.  Lacuna hated Liberty Lakes and had never came here to raid much, so the Trykers knew her mainly by reputation.  Though the Lost Girl Orphan’s Fund scam did mean that her name was mud here too.  Seriously, what as wrong with some homins.  They only said they were collecting money for orphans; they never said they were, actually, going to give the money to them!  It was all Marichia’s fault!  Lacuna had just wanted to suggest to a few merchants that travelling without protection was dangerous, but no, Marchia had to get clever. To be fair, the scheme worked extremely well, especially when they combined it with the feathered amps scam.  It was amazing what you could get a male to believe - add some glitter and feathers, tell them it was boosted and they fell over themselves to give you their dappers.  Idiots!

She wonders where she should go next.  She very much doubts her sisters have gone to any of the desert cities; they all hate the Fyros’ slavish devotion to Ma-Duck, not to mention the average Fyros male’s deplorable hygiene habits.  As for Zora, she hadn’t been back there since she and Spettra were thrown out of GoS.  Saying that, it might be worth checking out the stashes they’d had to leave when they fled the Cities of Intuition for the sanctuary of the marauder camp…

[OOC This is a true and honest tale told by an unreliable narrator, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing*]

 

Lacuna stands near the gates to the Cemetery District staring at Zora Stables, lost in time.  Bitter-Bittersweet memories come unbidden…

 

Zora had once been home.  She remembers being led by Astarth on the terrifying, exhilarating winter trek from the desert through the Knot of Dementia and on to Zora.  Her first sight of a Gibbai.  But she had been happy here. She remembers the hours she spent sat at these stables planning with Spettra about going marauder.  Lost Girls had been born at this very spot.

She remembers travelling between Zora and the Fyros homelands in her drive to master her desert foraging skills.  The long conversations with Hiang Vo-Nuang on her return from the desert to discuss her progress.  Looking back she can recognise if for the obsession it was, and how it would lead to her love of the Prime Roots.  Her old guild master, Binarabi, had even resorted to forcing her to train her melee and magic skills in an attempt to make her less ‘squishy’, as she put it.  But Lacuna mastered foraging long before being even close to mastering anything else.  She even gave up on craft training, selling all the shield and staff materials she foraged so she could spend more time digging.  As soon as she mastered the desert she started her explorations of the Prime Roots.  Her first tentative steps in the Lands of Umbra led her to digging in Under Spring.  She remembers how Binarabi paid Alric to protect them through Trench of Trials while she and Eikichi guided her to Fairhaven.  It was on this trek that she first heard the allure of the song.

The desire to survive in Prime Roots motivated her to train her melee and magic skills.  As the noise of the passing crowd intrudes, she remembers the hours spent training with Ozelott, Cyndalia and Astarth, of slowly becoming more skilled.  Her pride at mastering her healing skills.  The months she spent hunting with Lee and Agan.  Foxy crafting her a set of Shooketh amps.  Karabas crafting her first two-hand mace: the satisfaction of knocking Eikichi out with it.  Nuno teaching her the secret to balancing a weapon to maximise its speed.   Sneaking through the Westgrove gate into Highgrove with Fitis to finish mastering her offensive magic skills. The guild gathering in Min-Cho to present her with a beautiful Kara Klyde blade, crafted by Crafy, after Tao Nai-Da declared she had mastered the one-hand sword.  Nagging Gasket into helping her master defensive afflictions until he gave in just so he could go back to getting drunk at the stables. 

Lacuna remembers the sheer terror and excitement of stumbling round Atys and Prime Roots, more often lost than not, with Binarabi to collect teleport pacts after she passed the Kami rite.  Trying to work out who in the guild had managed to craft a degraded q247 rubbarn weapon tool.  Trying to learn the Crafy ‘shuffle’ to glide through Prime Roots unnoticed.  Swimming with Leonora at the waterfall west of Still Waters.  Training on great kinreys in Demon’s Lap with Neama, Generallee and Puffe.  Trying to explain to Ink why she loved the Roots, and why lumpers were evil.  Her and Spettra plugging their ears with wax to block out Suboxide’s interminable political discussions during guild meetings.  After her first extended sojourn into the Roots, Eruv giving her her first set of maga-amps and a set of boosted focus attuned jewels.  Jewels she still carries to this day. 

Later, when she as well on the way to knowing the Prime Roots, she experienced the euphoria and chaos of killing Jugukoo with only an extremely drunk Gasket and Gaskette.  The frustration of Rollocks ‘helping’ her dig supremes at the change of seasons.  Digging supreme yana node in the Lands of Continuity while Binarabi supposedly guarded her, but in reality read romantic stories about homins who seemed to wear nothing but heavy armour boots.  Trying to teach Ozelott how to hold her nerve and sneak her way through the predators and kitin to dig.  Spending months hunting named with Spettra.  The satisfaction of when the two of them were able to kill the likes of Ryx, Rippa and Bukah wearing nothing but light armour and a medium armour vest.  Looking back she wonders why they both refused to wear heavy armour.  That aversion changed after they started to hunt the apex boss creatures of Atys.   After years of study and exploration finally understanding the weather and the ecology of materials of Prime Roots, when they were available and when they would refill.

The months spent digging in the Void, often with Eruv and Astarth helping her master her jungle foraging skills rises in her mind.

 

~~~~~

 

She woke up lying in her bed in GoS guild house.  For a moment she does not know where she is, and she has no idea how she got here.  The last thing she remembers is… She groans as the memory comes back of the explosion.  She had been talking to Spettra about her growing frustration with the Kami Alliance, and had not been paying enough attention to the node of dung resin she was digging.  She realises that Binarabi is sitting at the end of the bed, shaking her head at her.  Lacuna groans, Oh No!  This is going to be another I told you so lecture. 

‘Spettra brought you back.  You were at the epicentre of your little explosion, but, luckily, nearby diggers were able to revive Spettra in time.  Your mektoubs are dead, by the way.  Even Rollocks would struggle to take out three packers and one mount in one go.  So well done!’  The speech dripped with sarcasm. 

Lacuna lay back down and groaned.  What was worse, it was all her own fault.  She had been warned, and knew, that digging right next to her packers was stupid and far too risky, but the time saved walking to them to unload her bag seemed worth the risk. She smells the first sign of food burning, and malicious smile forms as Binarabi runs from her room. She’s not the only one who can make mistakes…

 

~~~~~

 

For a while she had been happy here.  She mastered amp and light armour crafts.  Her first tentative steps towards understanding how to balance an amplifier recipe and teasing out the secret of max dodge black light armour brought a sense of accomplishment.  But her growing dissatisfaction with the greed of Kami alliance, who would stab each other in the back as readily as fight the Karavan, meant it could not last.  Nothing ever does.  

Lacuna came back to herself. There was no sign of her sisters in Zora, nothing that was not years old or less substantial than rumour.  No one had touched the stashes she and Spettra secretly hid in Zora.  It was time to move on; the guards were starting to take note of her.  The song was getting louder; she needed to find her sisters soon.  She needed to decide: the Old Lands or the desert.  She had been putting off this decision for too long.  The Burning Desert it was: she mounted her mektoub and trotted out the city gates for the last time.

  

[OOC One male was hurt in the telling of this tale; sadly he made a full recovery.]

*Some details have been changed to maintain RP continuity.

[OOC This is a tale told by an unreliable narrator, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing]

She puts more eyota wood onto the dying campfire.  As sparks back into life and the the flames rise again, she picks up her cup and contemplates its contents.  As the song starts to fill her head…

She rode out of Zora to avoid letting anyone catch sight of her using her zun crystal, especially, now that it glows purple.  She wonders if this recent change portents.   She waited until she was out of sight of the Karavan teleporter before activating it to take her to the Savage Dunes.  She hates the desert but this must been done.  
    She ambushes and kills a lone digger, taking his mektoub and supplies so to make the journey to Thesos across the Kipucka Plain less arduous.  
    Thesos had been home once, just before she joined GoS.  She had spent weeks digging just outside Thesos before moving to the Flaming Forest.  She had bought an apartment here, and kept it until she turned marauder.  Too lazy to move her belongings to Zora, she all but abandoned the apartment.  She wonders who took possession of it, and what they made of her discarded odds and ends.  Did the try and work out what these discarded objects signified of their former owner?  She scouted the settlement out for a few nights, but there was no sign of her sisters.  She kept to the shadows and avoided the Fyros patriots; religious fanatics, little better than the Matis in their delusions and abasement before a ‘higher’ power.  Lacuna feels nothing but contempt for them.  When it became obvious nothing was to be learned of her sisters, she moved on.
    She’s not sure why she travelled to the border between Oflovak’s Oasis and the Imperial Dunes at Fourways.  It was here she first met Eruv and Rowwena, not long after leaving Silan, when the desert, never mind Atys, was still very much an unknown .  She and Rowwena quickly became friends even though they were so different.  Rowena wanting so badly to be a warrior and while Lacuna just wanted to explore and learn the weather and ecology of the land - to dig.  They trained together and ran missions to raise their fame with the Kami: killing bandits in the Imperial Dunes and Oflovak’s Oasis.   It is was her friendship with Rowenna that influenced her to accept the invitation to join GoS.  Her sisters are not here, nor is there any answer to the strangeness of the camp, so she travels further into the Oasis, to Clopper Hill.

~~~~~

Lacuna sits and wonders if she is dreaming.  There is a large metallic-blue clopper sitting on the top of the hill, surrounded by smaller normal cloppers.  It is not this that makes her doubt her senses, though she is curious as to what this creature is.  It is the half-dozen homins from The Soul running around like headless yubos, pursued by extremely irate cloppers.  She recognises Lee and Agan as being amongst  the most enthusiastic of them.  They are all laughing and taking turns to run up the hill, and then irritate as many cloppers as they can before running back to the water’s edge.  Where they then try as kill as many as possible before seeking the safety of the water, and starting the whole process over again.  So that there is constant stream of homins and cloppers running up and down the hill.  She calls out, asking what they are doing.  Lee laughingly explains that they are trying to kill Clopperketh, which she takes is the large blue clopper on top of the hill.  She is not sure that their strategy is in anyway effective, but they are certainly enjoying themselves.  She finds if hard not to be caught up in the communal mirth.

~~~~~

    She sits at the top of the dune at the Kami teleporter in Oflovak’s Oasis and the memories of training here with Catalonia and Rowwena plays across her mind.  Though her obsession with digging would mean that Rowwena’s martial skills would soon outstrip her own.  It is quiet here now, with only a few homins digging.  But she remembers that just after she arrived from Silan that this oasis was crowded with packers and homins.  A hive of activity, with homins feverishly digging or training their martial prowess on cloppers.  It was on these the very dunes that her journey to understand the relationship between weather and material extraction began.  
    In the last few months before mastering her desert dig she would travel down to the Flaming Forest from the teleporter here. It was at the border between the oasis and forest that she met Fyrosfreddy for the first time.  She wonders still at the truth behind the banter between Freddy and Binarabi.  Were they really once married, and what is the truth behind Binarabi’s formidable aunties? Later, she would come close to joining the Fluffy Bunnies, but then she lost track of the time in the Roots, and when she came back she had changed.  She was harder, more cynical.  Atys had moved on and so had she.
    After she gained her desert master, she spent months exploring Scorched Corridor to map all the excellent foraging sites.  She remembers the frustration and eventual triumph of trying to dig excellent grade Zun amber.  Later she would proudly show Heta around, pointing out all the dig spots and explaining what season and time they could be extracted.
    Finally, she visited Aen, the Desert Blade, who patiently reminds Lacuna that Melkiar is long dead, and Akilia Ash Storm now rules.  Promise me, Lacuna, that you will remember this, and, please, no spreading tales about lumpers again!  You need to be taken seriously!  The news you carry has many potential ramifications for the clans and you cannot afford to alienate Akilia, nor to be laughed out of camp.  Lacuna tries to make this sink in, but her head hurts, focussing on one thing is hard for her.   The sadness takes her and she misses her sisters.  She had been sure the Black Varinx still lived.  Aen has not seen her sisters, nor has she had word of them for years.  She did see Marikka a few years back when she brought warning of another raid by Chanchey.  Chanchey is a thorn in the side of the marauders, leading rampaging bands of rangers, Kami and Karavan cultists, and unaligned misfits against the marauder leaders in the New Lands.  Something needs to done about this avatar of evil.  They discuss a possible solution, a series of assassinations against the high officers of the Free Soul, culminating in making Chanchey a living example of what happens to those who defy the clans - a testament to their power writ large on his body.  By the time they finish their discussion Melkiar lives again in Lacuna’s mind.  She has made up her mind to leave on the morning.


[OOC: In the interest of fairness, a link to the blatant lies that is Marceline’s side of the story to entry 5]


Link:  My side of the story