10-14-2013, 02:58 PM
"Where's Desert Oracle at!"
The Uktena stands in his human skin in front of the fire and he has his hair yanked back after his and Cinder-Song's opening act. He wears a blazer over a flannel shirt and his eyes glint like all the metal he has punched into or hung off of his body.
He finds them in the audience and points them out like Erich didn't already do a good enough job of embarrassing half of them earlier.
"Okay, good, they're all here." He claps his hands. "Alright! this is a story about geomids and giant death robots and a bunch of spirit-talkers who didn't take any of Grandfather Spider's guff.
"Now, I wasn't there, and these gals are terrible at bragging about themselves, so there may be a veeeeeery tiny amount of poetic license taken tonight, but this actually happened. They've got the scars to prove it."
Hector holds up a hand like to frame a tall immobile object in the empty space to the side of the circle he's not on and moves towards it slow as he sets the scene.
"So one morning Siren of Persephone's kinsman Georgie comes up to her and tells her there's something weird growing on the trunk of a tree on the property line between her yard and the neighbor's yard. She's got this humble little house in a neighborhood east of here, humans living around her are all law-abiding people. It's quiet. The lawns look pretty happy."
He stops walking when he's come abreast of the imaginary tree.
"She goes out to look at it and she sees it--" An exaggerated expression of confabulation, palms out brief before he points again. "Those of you who've never seen a geomid before don't know how ugly these things are. I'm talking ugly. They don't even follow the laws of nature. They're shapes, but they just do whatever they want. Not like agents of chaos do whatever they want. They do whatever they want but with purpose. It's enough to suck the life out of you.
"So she takes a look at it. Doesn't look like anything more than a green plastic useless thing stuck to the bark but it won't come off. She looks across the Gauntlet and that's when she figures out ah, hell, it's a geomid.
"Concerning this particular geomid: it was a beacon. A flag for the Pattern Spiders to find where they needed to come in and start putting up webs. And it was just sitting there--" His left hand starts opening and closing in a slow pulsing gesture. "--pinging out into the Penumbra that this was the spot, Spider Friends, let's get moving."
He takes a few steps back to transition away from the tree and crosses the circle before the fire, the pulsing hand movement ceasing.
"Treads-the-Ashen-Path and Still-Waters and Over-Sea-Under-Stone all come. They've had the same vision. A big mechanical thing stepping out of a tree and into the yard. Once they're all there they decide they're going in. Nothing they can do on this side. So they step sideways."
Again with the framing of the tree with an outstretched hand.
"And it's just sitting there, like it's waiting for them. Still calling out for reinforcements and they're already coming. Two Hunter Spiders heard the four of them arrive and stopped what they were doing to come investigate. Plenty of us would have just gone for the Spiders, right? Big smelly oil-dripping bucketheads coming at you, one of them's got flamethrowers for arms, the other one's got laser weapons?--you'd go for the thing obviously trying to kill you.
"Siren of Persephone didn't. She told the rest of the pack to focus fire on the beacon, take it out before it could summon any more Spiders. That's all it's meant to do, and it summons them in prime numbers. It's never just one."
A beat. He scoffs.
"'Focus fire.' Wasn't like she was running into battle with a bunch of Full Moons. She had with her: an Ivory Priestess of the second rank, a skinny ahimsa, and a spirit-talker who went her whole life thinking she was going to grow up to be a kinswoman. They're all right there. They're all still alive. They didn't run.
"And this is what they don't brag about. None of them has said anything about how Siren snared the geomid so it couldn't do anything while Treads turned the spiders against each other, or how Under-Stone ran at the geomid and bit it, over and over even though it looked like it nothing was scratching it, and Still-Waters went at it in her war form, with her staff, and it must've felt like hours, but they don't say it felt anything other than necessary. They don't say how the spiders destroyed the geomid and then they turned on each other, how the last one standing took down Siren and Under-Stone because it was standing there with its beacon destroyed all on its own and it just lost it, started shooting lasers at them, it took down both of them one after the other but they didn't stay down. Neither of them. They got back up and this is old news for you unstoppable killing machines who've already got a few under your belt but Siren and Under-Stone, they've never frenzied before. Treads and Still-Waters, they've never frenzied before.
"Doesn't matter. They didn't even flinch. They kept fighting until that last Hunter Spider was nothing but bolts and wisps of smoke." He holds up his hand to where the tree still stood invisible at the edge of the circle. "The tree survived. And now Grandfather Spider knows better than to put down stakes in Desert Oracle's backyard."
The evening's Embarrass The Theurges quota: reached.
The Uktena stands in his human skin in front of the fire and he has his hair yanked back after his and Cinder-Song's opening act. He wears a blazer over a flannel shirt and his eyes glint like all the metal he has punched into or hung off of his body.
He finds them in the audience and points them out like Erich didn't already do a good enough job of embarrassing half of them earlier.
"Okay, good, they're all here." He claps his hands. "Alright! this is a story about geomids and giant death robots and a bunch of spirit-talkers who didn't take any of Grandfather Spider's guff.
"Now, I wasn't there, and these gals are terrible at bragging about themselves, so there may be a veeeeeery tiny amount of poetic license taken tonight, but this actually happened. They've got the scars to prove it."
Hector holds up a hand like to frame a tall immobile object in the empty space to the side of the circle he's not on and moves towards it slow as he sets the scene.
"So one morning Siren of Persephone's kinsman Georgie comes up to her and tells her there's something weird growing on the trunk of a tree on the property line between her yard and the neighbor's yard. She's got this humble little house in a neighborhood east of here, humans living around her are all law-abiding people. It's quiet. The lawns look pretty happy."
He stops walking when he's come abreast of the imaginary tree.
"She goes out to look at it and she sees it--" An exaggerated expression of confabulation, palms out brief before he points again. "Those of you who've never seen a geomid before don't know how ugly these things are. I'm talking ugly. They don't even follow the laws of nature. They're shapes, but they just do whatever they want. Not like agents of chaos do whatever they want. They do whatever they want but with purpose. It's enough to suck the life out of you.
"So she takes a look at it. Doesn't look like anything more than a green plastic useless thing stuck to the bark but it won't come off. She looks across the Gauntlet and that's when she figures out ah, hell, it's a geomid.
"Concerning this particular geomid: it was a beacon. A flag for the Pattern Spiders to find where they needed to come in and start putting up webs. And it was just sitting there--" His left hand starts opening and closing in a slow pulsing gesture. "--pinging out into the Penumbra that this was the spot, Spider Friends, let's get moving."
He takes a few steps back to transition away from the tree and crosses the circle before the fire, the pulsing hand movement ceasing.
"Treads-the-Ashen-Path and Still-Waters and Over-Sea-Under-Stone all come. They've had the same vision. A big mechanical thing stepping out of a tree and into the yard. Once they're all there they decide they're going in. Nothing they can do on this side. So they step sideways."
Again with the framing of the tree with an outstretched hand.
"And it's just sitting there, like it's waiting for them. Still calling out for reinforcements and they're already coming. Two Hunter Spiders heard the four of them arrive and stopped what they were doing to come investigate. Plenty of us would have just gone for the Spiders, right? Big smelly oil-dripping bucketheads coming at you, one of them's got flamethrowers for arms, the other one's got laser weapons?--you'd go for the thing obviously trying to kill you.
"Siren of Persephone didn't. She told the rest of the pack to focus fire on the beacon, take it out before it could summon any more Spiders. That's all it's meant to do, and it summons them in prime numbers. It's never just one."
A beat. He scoffs.
"'Focus fire.' Wasn't like she was running into battle with a bunch of Full Moons. She had with her: an Ivory Priestess of the second rank, a skinny ahimsa, and a spirit-talker who went her whole life thinking she was going to grow up to be a kinswoman. They're all right there. They're all still alive. They didn't run.
"And this is what they don't brag about. None of them has said anything about how Siren snared the geomid so it couldn't do anything while Treads turned the spiders against each other, or how Under-Stone ran at the geomid and bit it, over and over even though it looked like it nothing was scratching it, and Still-Waters went at it in her war form, with her staff, and it must've felt like hours, but they don't say it felt anything other than necessary. They don't say how the spiders destroyed the geomid and then they turned on each other, how the last one standing took down Siren and Under-Stone because it was standing there with its beacon destroyed all on its own and it just lost it, started shooting lasers at them, it took down both of them one after the other but they didn't stay down. Neither of them. They got back up and this is old news for you unstoppable killing machines who've already got a few under your belt but Siren and Under-Stone, they've never frenzied before. Treads and Still-Waters, they've never frenzied before.
"Doesn't matter. They didn't even flinch. They kept fighting until that last Hunter Spider was nothing but bolts and wisps of smoke." He holds up his hand to where the tree still stood invisible at the edge of the circle. "The tree survived. And now Grandfather Spider knows better than to put down stakes in Desert Oracle's backyard."
The evening's Embarrass The Theurges quota: reached.