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[rou_gui]

musterni-illustrates

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[rou_gui]

I'm never going to graduate, and I'm really just wasting everyone's time?

[ Oh... she's moody today... She can be quite dramatic and mercurial. ]

[verynormalturnipseller]

[He's used to moody.]

It's a temporary pairing anyway. I'm in a much better position to help with things like snacks and socks.

[rou_gui]

I eat people. Which passenger can I snack on?

[ She's not being very serious. Mostly just dramatic, maudlin. ]

Just leave me to rot.

[verynormalturnipseller]

Why people?

[He's much too dead to be precious about these things, but he's always curious when it comes to magical logistics.]

I suppose it's not just meat, or, well, pigs would be easier, wouldn't they?

[rou_gui]

Because the first witch was starving in the winter, she made a pact with the darkness under the mountains.

[ She says this like it should have been obvious. Clearly, there is no reason anyone would have anticipated that. The dramatics continue. ]

And all her ancestors are under the same pact, which involves regular human sacrifice and consumption to keep up our magic powers.

[verynormalturnipseller]

[Almost disappointingly straightforward. At least that makes testing easy! Only so many possible outcomes.]

Well, the admiral manages to keep the vampires in blood, even the ones who have very restricted diets. I don't know why it'd be harder to do something solid. But it might not count as a sacrifice? I can't imagine things like that cost him much... Would the darkness be satisfied with a regular inconvenience?

[He does cool and great experiments on himself all the time. It's hard to imagine other unspeakable abominations wouldn't want to know the parameters of their own fell natures just as well.]

[rou_gui]

No. They really have to be terrified, preferably tortured. You start cutting them up while they're still alive, if you do a really neat job of it.

[ She relays all of this sprawled on her antique bed, staring up at the dark ceiling with angst.]

Aren't you bored yet?

[verynormalturnipseller]

[He has so many logistics questions, but one surfaces above the rest.]

Wait. How is that a sacrifice?

[rou_gui]

Their blood, their suffering, their inevitable death, and my cruelty and trespasses.

[ Sigh. ]

The Hill eats up all kinds of nasty shit, don't think about it too hard.

[verynormalturnipseller]

It's just, sacrifice is giving something up. If you're taking it unwillingly, that's an offering, if you've got that sort of god, but I wouldn't call it a sacrifice.

[rou_gui]

[ She laughs about that for a little while. ]

Sure. An offering it is.

[verynormalturnipseller]

[One has strong feelings about these distinctions after a greedy rogue god takes a bite out of one's soul.]

So what's the consequence if you don't do that?

[rou_gui]

Weakness, mostly. Compulsions that I mostly have under control. Usually. The Hill is a long way away from here to be calling on me.

And do or don't, black magic witches spend an eternity in Hell.

[verynormalturnipseller]

[Well that sounds like a small price to pay for not doing ritual murders.]

Sorry, people here mean a lot of very different things when they say hell. That's bad?

[rou_gui]

Yes. The eternal damnation kind.

[verynormalturnipseller]

[Less informative than it should be! But she doesn't like the idea, that's enough.]

It's only we have... have had demons from hell onboard, and they don't seem to mind much, so I wasn't sure.

[rou_gui]

Generally, the demons do the torturing. So I understand why it wouldn't trouble them.

[verynormalturnipseller]

Well, there are a lot of different worlds.

[He can't imagine it'll be useful arguing with her, since it doesn't sound like she's got firsthand knowledge, just a general idea, of the afterlife situation. Given some of his dearest people on the barge have been hellizens, he suspects he'd get defensive, and that's no good to anybody.]

How much pull does your hill have? Local god, major power?

[rou_gui]

Quite powerful but very localized. That has always been the exchange. We are mighty together in our House on the Hill, but we suffer greatly if we were to try to cross a river or, fuck forbid, the ocean.

I still feel it sometimes, even so far away. We were tossed into the river of death on port, and I...

[ She trails off. She had acted savagely. ]

But no, I can't tell you if it is a god or not. If it's confessed itself to one of us, I've never heard the answer.

[verynormalturnipseller]

[Gods can be emergent phenomena. The name isn't as important as the practical effects.]

More important to know what it can do. Can it enforce its rules outside its area of influence?

[rou_gui]

Important to know?

[ Dubious! ]

[verynormalturnipseller]

[He just considers gods a potentially solvable problem.]

Well, if it could reach you on a port, then it's definitely got reach, but that doesn't mean significant power. Not automatically.

[rou_gui]

I haven't fed it since-- The big concert port.

[ Months ago. She does put everything she has into ignoring it but... yanno... sometimes... ]

[verynormalturnipseller]

[He's not sure what she means, since he spent that port dutifully shopping for mundane supplies. But sure, a while.]

Does that weaken it, or just weaken your connection to it?

[rou_gui]

It won't bestow on me without offering. So I get weaker, and it gets louder. More insistent.