Dilandau Albatou (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
burnburnburn) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
kore_logs2013-07-01 12:44 am
burnburnburn) wrote in kore_logs2013-07-01 12:44 am
Entry tags:
Cultural Misunderstandings
Who: Dilandau Albatou, Wallie Smith
Where: The beach
When: One early morning in the dream event.
Summary: Wallie's dream left Dilandau with a lot of misunderstandings. Wallie sets out to clear them up and hopefully find some common ground.
Though Dilandau had always known Wallie had woken up on The World in another body, for the man had told him early on in their first encounters, he'd never given much thought to the implications of that information. It wasn't until he found himself trapped in Wallie's dream that it had really hit home that the man who he'd come the closest to considering an ally was, and had always been, a Sorcerer parasitising on someone else's frame.
It was a disturbing thought, to say the least.
Still, he'd aided Wallie rather than his victim in the dream. A friendly Sorcerer was a valuable ally, even if Dilandau would prefer to pull his own nails out rather than socialise with any of that kind. He'd sickened himself by deciding to play his hand that way, but he knew full well that noble gestures meant nothing if you found yourself on the losing side. Shonshu had lost long before Dilandau had ever appeared.
It was with these thoughts in mind that Dilandau set out in the morning to his rendezvous with Wallie, clutching the branch he'd dried and prepared to be used as a fishing rod. He had to make friendly with the man for at least long enough to get their fishing gear built, but he was no longer looking forward to the activity as he once had. He wasn't sure if he'd be able to look the man in the eye without feeling dirty for knowing what was lurking behind that warrior's mask.
Where: The beach
When: One early morning in the dream event.
Summary: Wallie's dream left Dilandau with a lot of misunderstandings. Wallie sets out to clear them up and hopefully find some common ground.
Though Dilandau had always known Wallie had woken up on The World in another body, for the man had told him early on in their first encounters, he'd never given much thought to the implications of that information. It wasn't until he found himself trapped in Wallie's dream that it had really hit home that the man who he'd come the closest to considering an ally was, and had always been, a Sorcerer parasitising on someone else's frame.
It was a disturbing thought, to say the least.
Still, he'd aided Wallie rather than his victim in the dream. A friendly Sorcerer was a valuable ally, even if Dilandau would prefer to pull his own nails out rather than socialise with any of that kind. He'd sickened himself by deciding to play his hand that way, but he knew full well that noble gestures meant nothing if you found yourself on the losing side. Shonshu had lost long before Dilandau had ever appeared.
It was with these thoughts in mind that Dilandau set out in the morning to his rendezvous with Wallie, clutching the branch he'd dried and prepared to be used as a fishing rod. He had to make friendly with the man for at least long enough to get their fishing gear built, but he was no longer looking forward to the activity as he once had. He wasn't sure if he'd be able to look the man in the eye without feeling dirty for knowing what was lurking behind that warrior's mask.
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... well, he doubted it went over well.
Still, no one had actually called up and cancelled, and he certainly wasn't going to be the one to do so (his conscience was clean, anyway), so he was sitting on the beach, winding up some cord he'd found.
When Dilandau came down to the beach, he was honestly a little relieved. Wallied raised his hand in greeting.
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But for all his looking, Wallie appeared just as he had the last time they'd met in life. There was nothing apparent to give him away as a bodysnatcher, which meant Dilandau would be ignorant if any other Sorcerers appeared in the same way. He didn't like it one bit.
He crouched down once he reached Wallie and lay down his rod.
"I only managed to get one branch before one of those monsters decided to chase me out of the woods. It's been drying for the last few days."
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Wallie picked up the rod, twitched it gently to test the flexibility. It seemed as good as anything they could hope for, anyway. "Oh, this'll do nicely."
From beside him, he picked up the cord he was working on winding. He had made himself a little spool, part of the end of a chair leg with some minor adjustments made with his knife and a hole in one end. That was simple enough, but attaching it was the key. Fortunately, he'd found himself a long screw to hang the spool off of, and he's already checked that the size of the bore he'd made in the spool would work.
He laid the rod across his lap, makes a nick in the thick end to start the screw off, and starts working the screw into the handle, perpendicular to the rod.
"This is just a prototype, of course, but we should manage a pretty decent flyrod, doing this."
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"Was that the type of Sorcerer you were? An inventor?"
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Well, here they went, for better or for worse.
"My degree is in geochemical engineering," Wallie said, as casually as possible. "Put plainly, I know about what things are made of, and how to use those parts to make other things."
A vast oversimplification, but it would have to do, as an explanation.
"For the record, I had nothing to do with the sorcerers Shonsu was talking about. Nor were they the ones who "set" me on him, but that isn't accurate either. I'm sure it seemed like that to him, though."
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"And do you use those things to do things, too?" He asked with a sneer. The man had the arrogance of a Sorcerer, to think he needed to be talked to so simply.
"That's vague enough to be useless, but there are Sorcerers on Gaia who deal with chemicals and engineering. Who set you on Shonshu if it wasn't Sorcerers"
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Wallie sighs. He's obviously not going about this the right way, but he's not sure there is a good way to have this conversation, either.
"It was a god, actually." He still thinks it sounds ridiculous. "Shonsu was given a task by the Goddess, and he failed. So I was taken, from Earth, to this other world of his, and put in Shonsu's body, and told to take over."
For a moment, Wallie just works silently at the fishing rod, frowning.
"To be honest, I can't rule out the possibility that those same gods had something to do with my death. There's never been a case of mosquito-transmitted encephalitis in -- well, never mind, where I lived."
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"Petrochemical... so you'd make vinyl cloth and gas, those sorts of things? Why would a warrior need to know that too?"
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"Gods don't explain themselves. But, I think..." Wallie pulled a face, thoughtful. "The sorcerers they wanted Shonsu to deal with, originally, were the ones who held pretty much all the technology past the stone age. The society as a whole didn't even have writing, but the sorcerers -- they had writing, they had books, they had gunpowder, they had basic electrical generators, they had telescopes -- I'm not even sure, yet, of everything they have. Meanwhile, they were spreading out, dominating the rest of the World who couldn't compete and couldn't even fathom what they were dealing with."
He looked over at Dildandau, smiling crookedly. "A wise man in my world once said that any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic. These sorcerers were distilling liquor and selling it as 'enchanted wine,' and no one had the experience or knowledge to to identify it as anything else. I... I think the gods wanted me because I could recognise what the sorcerers were doing, and I could recreate it. I could actually meet the sorcerers as an equal, and could stop their advance."
He shook his head. "I forced a peace. I thought it better to let the 'magic' of the sorcerers serve everyone, rather than a select few, or no one. It seems that's what the gods wanted."
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"That doesn't sound too unbelievable. Sorcerers take any chance they get to lord it over others with their knowledge." He shot a pointed little look at Wallie.
"So you're the king of the Sorcerers and the warrior tribes?"
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Wallie took that barb with a bit of a laugh. He wouldn't argue with Dilandau's assessment. He'd never meant to, but he probably had at some point.
"No," he said. "I'm not. I probably could have, but... I'm not the ruling type. I gave the power to Nnanji, my oath brother. He has the mentality to rule. I was just there to help."
He gave a wistful sort of sigh. "The Goddess rewards those who serve Her, but I chose love, not power."
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"What sort of woman was so out of reach that you needed a miracle to get her?" He didn't ask if she was worth it. Saps always thought it was worth it, even if the woman was obviously a drain on time or purse.
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Dilandau could think whatever he liked. Wallie regretted nothing, and would make the same choice over.
"Her name is Jja." And she was beautiful and kind, but even if Wallie is a sap, he'll spare Dilandau hearing all about that. "She was a slave. I couldn't free her, couldn't marry her. And I didn't want to own her."
He was funny like that.
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"Is she human or beastkin?" Slavery was generally frowned upon through most of his continent, but it was known that there were places that would pay a good price for particularly beautiful beastgirls. That sort of perversion wouldn't be too shocking from a Sorcerer.
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"Human," Wallie replied dryly. "Very human."
Not that he was at all sure what a beastkin was, but he was pretty sure Jja wasn't it.
"In the World, if you're born a slave, they tattoo you at birth. A line, like this." He gestured with his hand, miming a stripe down his face, from brow to chin. "Irrevocable, unless you're a god."
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"So the man you're in was born to be a warrior?" Another thought occurred to him.
"How much do you think that girl of yours would have liked you if you were in your own body and not his?"
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"She might not have been as attracted to me as she was to Shonsu, but... I believe she loves me, not merely Shonsu's face." He remembered losing ground to Shonsu's temper, and the horrifying way she'd... submitted to him, closing herself off. He remembers, too, the joy in her face when he'd promised not to separate her and her son, something she'd never expected. "Shonsu was a cruel, corrupt, selfish man. Though I admit he is handsome."
He fully expected to be mocked for that. He couldn't bring himself to care; he felt sure that Jja loved him precisely because he wasn't Shonsu.
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Yep, Wallie was a sap, but it left Dilandau satisfied that there probably wasn't anything too sinister going on with Wallie. He mentally filed away those remarks about Shonshu's personality for just in case Wallie was ever swayed by less savoury Sorcerers.
"How's that rod coming on?"
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"A half-decent homemade flyrod, if nothing else. I hope." Wallie gave a grin. If this worked, he would be pretty pleased with himself.
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"There's only one way to find out. Let's see if we can catch some lunch."
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