Re: The Vivacious Deadlock: S3G6: Round One: Genreshift
10-06-2011, 11:49 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.
As a being so thoroughly steeped in and focused on magic, the rapid shifts between high-fantasy and heavy-science genres and back and back again had proven more jarring for Cascala than it had been for most. After Contessa, she'd abandoned bothering to try to maintain her genre-independent identifty and just gone with the flow, which had made the transitions much easier for the most part; still, flickering back and forth between a great wielder of the arcane and a genius madwoman with a jetpack (with a brief stop as a vindictive femme fatale who wielded money like a knife) had taken its toll. Following the final shift, Cascala took a few moments to lean against a dungeon wall and collect her thoughts and her identity.
Fantasy as a genre suited her well; even under the influence of the Tome's idea of fantasy, very little about her differed from her non-genred form. Her robes were slightly less ostentatious and had a few glyphs and runes stitched into the flowing patterns just to keep up with the expectations implicit in the ideas of "wizard", but overall there wasn't much visual change past the addition of a small, cylindrical hat. Internally though, Cascala could... it was hard to put words to it, but it was like she could feel magic more. It was as though every possible spell or ritual was essentially one application of the same skill, just expressed differently. In her own world, Cascala has little time for or training in disciplines beyond water and weather control; in this one, mana swirled around her, whispering secrets in her ears and urging her to burn the city or bury it or break it.
With a grin that was surprisingly less malicious than could be expected given the thought processes behind it, Cascala swallowed the urge to cackle and made to oblige.
A column of ice rose violently formed the floor next to her (because old habits die hard) and punched a corridor to the surface level before splintering away. Cascala rose though it, smiling as the torrential downpour parted around her. As she climbed the air, Archdoctor Matic plummeted through it; she reached hovering height enough to see over Castle Matic's ramparts about when he fatally reached floor-level. As Nalzaki escaped its mental shackles and confusedly descended to the courtyard, Cascala looked up to the sky. What she saw, and even more what she felt, shook her to the core.
---
"Are you sure you want to go through with this?"
"Yeah. Why wouldn't I be?"
"Well, I mean... You're always pretty opposed to just blowing up everything."
Samuel Orange sniffed haughtily and pursed his lips. "No, I'm "pretty opposed" to blowing up everything just for the sake of blowing it up. When it makes sense and is in-character, I'm all for it. I just don't subscribe to the Michael Bay school of authorship."
"Oh." Gerald paused for a few seconds. "So, what, Cascala just wants to show off or something? Is she supposed to be acting like a typical fantasy wizard?"
"Nah, see... This is basically the same thing as when she started the hurricane spell at the beginning of the round. She doesn't know everyone's in the castle, so as far as she's concerned, the best way to make sure someone dies is to destroy the whole city. This just gives her a way to make it happen faster and better."
"It still kinda feels forced."
Samuel shrugged. "I think you're just looking at it the wrong way. I mean, if you spent your whole life being told "You have to kill these people or your entire civilization will collapse", and then you were handed a big button that said "Carpet-bomb the city they're in", you'd press it. It wouldn't make sense for her not to take advantage of this."
"I guess."
"Trust me, Botterson, I've thought this through. Besides, large-scale destruction like this gives a reasonable narrative explanation for any given person to die when the time comes."
---
Above and below and through Cascala's hurricane, streaks of blackness wove their way across the sky and exerted their influence on the land below. She gaped at the corruption that had suffused her spell, gawked at the fractured quilt of clashing genres that had spread itself across the city. With the exception of one small cluster of buildings that seemed pristine (and oddly as though they weren't really there at all), much of the place was already succumbing to the storm: an elegant white tower, bristling with sensor arrays and surrounded by hovering spacecraft gave in and toppled; as it fell, it crossed a dark border, transforming into a greyscale skyscraper and crushing what looked like a cluster of brick buildings. All around it, as far as Cascala could see, people and architecture were buffeted and broken by her work. It was excellent, but it wasn't enough.
She reached up towards the roiling, spinning, crackling clouds. She could feel the churning forces above her, primal Gate magic that she had no name for but could watch the workings of as though she'd known them all her life. With a mad laugh escaping her lips she waved her staff, sending a swathe of clouds tumbling counter to the spirals they'd been forming and causing the web of blackness to writhe portentously.
Across the city, in a small section that had rather appropriately settled into Disaster Fiction, there was a cacophonous screech of stone and soil being torn apart molecule by molecule. The Disaster Fiction slums, comprising about four square blocks, began to rise into the air; it formed a crumbling floating island, shedding water from the storm and its sundered sewers, and drifted across the sky. The ground beneath where it had been couldn't even rightly be called ground anymore: it was just a shimmering pit of the same blackness that blanketed the sky and separated the genres.
Succumbing completely to the evil wizard archetype, Cascala shrieked with sadistic glee and pulled her other hand up. With it came a cozy little Fairy Tale village, about twice the size the Disaster area had been; she made throwing motions, muttering dark syllables that were much harsher and guttural than her usual elegant magespeak, and the pair of genre islands careened across the sky before crashing into other sections of the already-battered city. Another swing of her staff brought three more chunks of landscape rising above the rest, and another dismissive gesture sent them too hurtling lethally into other districts. The blackness that separated the genres widened as the city tore itself apart; individual sections began drifting away from each other, and as Cascala turned the scenery itself into a weapon of the setting's destruction, the gulfs of nothingness crackled darkly.
---
In a building that wasn't entirely where it appeared to be, the raging storm and ballistic buildings outside were raising some eyebrows. Macy Farah leaned against a windowsill, watching several rude huts transform into condominiums before meeting the ground with a cacophonous thundering; it was far enough away that she couldn't hear the screams, but it was still an unsettling sight. She turned back to the room, frowning slightly as she picked her laptop back up and joined the others.
She drummed her fingers pensively across the keyboard as she opened MSPaint to occupy herself. "This just really doesn't seem safe."
Alexis shrugged across the table, not looking up. "It's not like we have a lot of choice. What are we going to do, leave? Might as well just make the best of it."
Edgar Voysen nodded. "I get that this is the first time for both of you, but Alexis is right. This is pretty typical stuff, really. Nothing ever happens to us; we're pretty much outside events."
There was a brief pause in the clicking of keys, and Samuel looked up. "I dunno if I'd really say that. Not this time, at least. The Tome's messing with the metafictional metaphysics."
Macy scowled, clearly worried, but Samuel waved a hand before returning to his typing. "It still shouldn't matter; the storm's not touching us, so I don't see a reason to worry. I was just saying this isn't quite usual. I trust Jennie to run this thing right."
Gerald crossed his arms, half in annoyance and half in triumph. "You just love to disagree, Sam."
"Oh, come on, don't start in on this." Jake Skalavre threw his hands up. "It's been so long since you two have been at each other's throats. We've already got potential problems, can we not have surly backbiting be one of them?"
Gerald and Samuel both harrumphed under their breaths; Samuel didn't break his typing stride, and Gerald muttered something about "journalism work anyway". There were a few minutes of quiet, broken only by the click of keys and the pock of mouses (as well as the omnipresent howling of the hurricane); that quiet was eventually dispelled again by Samuel.
"Hey, Norm?"
One of the two men talking quietly in the corner looked up. "Mmm?"
"What about Nalzaki?"
---
Nalzaki and their passenger had been pretty understandably focused on Cedric; it wasn't a surprise that none of them had spotted the dark figure of Cascala against the dark sky or heard her laughter above the storm. She'd missed them too, on the far side of the tower as they were and focused on her magic as she'd been. Cedric had no time for floating women; he had distressed (if abusive) princesses to save from conniving dragons.
Horsegark's hooves kicked sparks up from the cobblestones as Cedric rounded the tower, Sigrar blazing bright and casting the knight's determined features into snarling relief. Princess Melissa dismounted, struggling to balance in the rain and ice and her ridiculous flouncy outfit; Kanpeki gently nudged her in the chest.
"You should get higher in the tower. We wouldn't want you hurt by this man's foolishness."
Harmon scowled. "No, I'm staying here. That idiot won't attack as long as he thinks he might endanger me."
Kanpeki nudged her again more forcefully, still taking care with her horns. "No, I think this has to be done. It's clear he will not listen to reason and seeks only to destroy. He will endanger us all so long as his myopia lasts."
There was reason to it of sorts, and it wasn't as though Harmon had much love for the pigheaded brute in any case. She gathered her extraneous skirts and tottered upwards as Nalzaki thundered down. Razaran let lose an enthusiastic gout of flame, roaring out loud and mentally hissing now this is more like it. Kanpeki's good eye narrowed as the triarch lunged for the mounted knight. Steel met fang and scale and fire met lightning and rain as hydra met warrior. Each expected it to be their last meeting.
---
"Feels a little overdramatic."
"It's the climax! Besides, what are they gonna do, just fly away?"
"I guess it is. I'm not arguing the events anyway, more the tone. I think you're breaking out the big guns too early."
"Well, I like it, and it's my funeral if it's too much anyway."
Norm shrugged. "Yeah, it is. I'm alright with the rest of it, although I assumed Nalzaki was closer to Cascala when you started the scene."
"Nah, courtyards are big, and wizards are small. I think the mention of Matic's fall as she was rising was what got you thinking they were close by. She's gonna notice them soon, especially if Nalzaki and Cedric keep at it, but it makes more sense and is more convenient if they're doing their own thing for now. It also gives Harmon a chance to do some work on her sensor, too."
The man next to Norm nodded. "Yeah, good, thanks."
"Anyway," finished Samuel, "I think that's about it for now. I like the idea of Ivan being the only one who sees Cascala for now; maybe he tries some kind of rune magic to stop or distract her, or even just brings her to Nalzaki's attention, but that's all up to Alexis. Overall, I think–"
A tremulous female voice cut in. "What… What's that?"
All eyes turned to the window. "You said we'd be safe here!"
Moments later, masonry and earth met steel and glass in a deafening crescendo of destruction.
"Oh, God, no, no. Macy. Macy!"
fluxus Wrote:
![[Image: vdcopy.jpg]](https://i587.photobucket.com/albums/ss315/spocktastic/vdcopy.jpg)
As a being so thoroughly steeped in and focused on magic, the rapid shifts between high-fantasy and heavy-science genres and back and back again had proven more jarring for Cascala than it had been for most. After Contessa, she'd abandoned bothering to try to maintain her genre-independent identifty and just gone with the flow, which had made the transitions much easier for the most part; still, flickering back and forth between a great wielder of the arcane and a genius madwoman with a jetpack (with a brief stop as a vindictive femme fatale who wielded money like a knife) had taken its toll. Following the final shift, Cascala took a few moments to lean against a dungeon wall and collect her thoughts and her identity.
Fantasy as a genre suited her well; even under the influence of the Tome's idea of fantasy, very little about her differed from her non-genred form. Her robes were slightly less ostentatious and had a few glyphs and runes stitched into the flowing patterns just to keep up with the expectations implicit in the ideas of "wizard", but overall there wasn't much visual change past the addition of a small, cylindrical hat. Internally though, Cascala could... it was hard to put words to it, but it was like she could feel magic more. It was as though every possible spell or ritual was essentially one application of the same skill, just expressed differently. In her own world, Cascala has little time for or training in disciplines beyond water and weather control; in this one, mana swirled around her, whispering secrets in her ears and urging her to burn the city or bury it or break it.
With a grin that was surprisingly less malicious than could be expected given the thought processes behind it, Cascala swallowed the urge to cackle and made to oblige.
A column of ice rose violently formed the floor next to her (because old habits die hard) and punched a corridor to the surface level before splintering away. Cascala rose though it, smiling as the torrential downpour parted around her. As she climbed the air, Archdoctor Matic plummeted through it; she reached hovering height enough to see over Castle Matic's ramparts about when he fatally reached floor-level. As Nalzaki escaped its mental shackles and confusedly descended to the courtyard, Cascala looked up to the sky. What she saw, and even more what she felt, shook her to the core.
---
"Are you sure you want to go through with this?"
"Yeah. Why wouldn't I be?"
"Well, I mean... You're always pretty opposed to just blowing up everything."
Samuel Orange sniffed haughtily and pursed his lips. "No, I'm "pretty opposed" to blowing up everything just for the sake of blowing it up. When it makes sense and is in-character, I'm all for it. I just don't subscribe to the Michael Bay school of authorship."
"Oh." Gerald paused for a few seconds. "So, what, Cascala just wants to show off or something? Is she supposed to be acting like a typical fantasy wizard?"
"Nah, see... This is basically the same thing as when she started the hurricane spell at the beginning of the round. She doesn't know everyone's in the castle, so as far as she's concerned, the best way to make sure someone dies is to destroy the whole city. This just gives her a way to make it happen faster and better."
"It still kinda feels forced."
Samuel shrugged. "I think you're just looking at it the wrong way. I mean, if you spent your whole life being told "You have to kill these people or your entire civilization will collapse", and then you were handed a big button that said "Carpet-bomb the city they're in", you'd press it. It wouldn't make sense for her not to take advantage of this."
"I guess."
"Trust me, Botterson, I've thought this through. Besides, large-scale destruction like this gives a reasonable narrative explanation for any given person to die when the time comes."
---
Above and below and through Cascala's hurricane, streaks of blackness wove their way across the sky and exerted their influence on the land below. She gaped at the corruption that had suffused her spell, gawked at the fractured quilt of clashing genres that had spread itself across the city. With the exception of one small cluster of buildings that seemed pristine (and oddly as though they weren't really there at all), much of the place was already succumbing to the storm: an elegant white tower, bristling with sensor arrays and surrounded by hovering spacecraft gave in and toppled; as it fell, it crossed a dark border, transforming into a greyscale skyscraper and crushing what looked like a cluster of brick buildings. All around it, as far as Cascala could see, people and architecture were buffeted and broken by her work. It was excellent, but it wasn't enough.
She reached up towards the roiling, spinning, crackling clouds. She could feel the churning forces above her, primal Gate magic that she had no name for but could watch the workings of as though she'd known them all her life. With a mad laugh escaping her lips she waved her staff, sending a swathe of clouds tumbling counter to the spirals they'd been forming and causing the web of blackness to writhe portentously.
Across the city, in a small section that had rather appropriately settled into Disaster Fiction, there was a cacophonous screech of stone and soil being torn apart molecule by molecule. The Disaster Fiction slums, comprising about four square blocks, began to rise into the air; it formed a crumbling floating island, shedding water from the storm and its sundered sewers, and drifted across the sky. The ground beneath where it had been couldn't even rightly be called ground anymore: it was just a shimmering pit of the same blackness that blanketed the sky and separated the genres.
Succumbing completely to the evil wizard archetype, Cascala shrieked with sadistic glee and pulled her other hand up. With it came a cozy little Fairy Tale village, about twice the size the Disaster area had been; she made throwing motions, muttering dark syllables that were much harsher and guttural than her usual elegant magespeak, and the pair of genre islands careened across the sky before crashing into other sections of the already-battered city. Another swing of her staff brought three more chunks of landscape rising above the rest, and another dismissive gesture sent them too hurtling lethally into other districts. The blackness that separated the genres widened as the city tore itself apart; individual sections began drifting away from each other, and as Cascala turned the scenery itself into a weapon of the setting's destruction, the gulfs of nothingness crackled darkly.
---
In a building that wasn't entirely where it appeared to be, the raging storm and ballistic buildings outside were raising some eyebrows. Macy Farah leaned against a windowsill, watching several rude huts transform into condominiums before meeting the ground with a cacophonous thundering; it was far enough away that she couldn't hear the screams, but it was still an unsettling sight. She turned back to the room, frowning slightly as she picked her laptop back up and joined the others.
She drummed her fingers pensively across the keyboard as she opened MSPaint to occupy herself. "This just really doesn't seem safe."
Alexis shrugged across the table, not looking up. "It's not like we have a lot of choice. What are we going to do, leave? Might as well just make the best of it."
Edgar Voysen nodded. "I get that this is the first time for both of you, but Alexis is right. This is pretty typical stuff, really. Nothing ever happens to us; we're pretty much outside events."
There was a brief pause in the clicking of keys, and Samuel looked up. "I dunno if I'd really say that. Not this time, at least. The Tome's messing with the metafictional metaphysics."
Macy scowled, clearly worried, but Samuel waved a hand before returning to his typing. "It still shouldn't matter; the storm's not touching us, so I don't see a reason to worry. I was just saying this isn't quite usual. I trust Jennie to run this thing right."
Gerald crossed his arms, half in annoyance and half in triumph. "You just love to disagree, Sam."
"Oh, come on, don't start in on this." Jake Skalavre threw his hands up. "It's been so long since you two have been at each other's throats. We've already got potential problems, can we not have surly backbiting be one of them?"
Gerald and Samuel both harrumphed under their breaths; Samuel didn't break his typing stride, and Gerald muttered something about "journalism work anyway". There were a few minutes of quiet, broken only by the click of keys and the pock of mouses (as well as the omnipresent howling of the hurricane); that quiet was eventually dispelled again by Samuel.
"Hey, Norm?"
One of the two men talking quietly in the corner looked up. "Mmm?"
"What about Nalzaki?"
---
Nalzaki and their passenger had been pretty understandably focused on Cedric; it wasn't a surprise that none of them had spotted the dark figure of Cascala against the dark sky or heard her laughter above the storm. She'd missed them too, on the far side of the tower as they were and focused on her magic as she'd been. Cedric had no time for floating women; he had distressed (if abusive) princesses to save from conniving dragons.
Horsegark's hooves kicked sparks up from the cobblestones as Cedric rounded the tower, Sigrar blazing bright and casting the knight's determined features into snarling relief. Princess Melissa dismounted, struggling to balance in the rain and ice and her ridiculous flouncy outfit; Kanpeki gently nudged her in the chest.
"You should get higher in the tower. We wouldn't want you hurt by this man's foolishness."
Harmon scowled. "No, I'm staying here. That idiot won't attack as long as he thinks he might endanger me."
Kanpeki nudged her again more forcefully, still taking care with her horns. "No, I think this has to be done. It's clear he will not listen to reason and seeks only to destroy. He will endanger us all so long as his myopia lasts."
There was reason to it of sorts, and it wasn't as though Harmon had much love for the pigheaded brute in any case. She gathered her extraneous skirts and tottered upwards as Nalzaki thundered down. Razaran let lose an enthusiastic gout of flame, roaring out loud and mentally hissing now this is more like it. Kanpeki's good eye narrowed as the triarch lunged for the mounted knight. Steel met fang and scale and fire met lightning and rain as hydra met warrior. Each expected it to be their last meeting.
---
"Feels a little overdramatic."
"It's the climax! Besides, what are they gonna do, just fly away?"
"I guess it is. I'm not arguing the events anyway, more the tone. I think you're breaking out the big guns too early."
"Well, I like it, and it's my funeral if it's too much anyway."
Norm shrugged. "Yeah, it is. I'm alright with the rest of it, although I assumed Nalzaki was closer to Cascala when you started the scene."
"Nah, courtyards are big, and wizards are small. I think the mention of Matic's fall as she was rising was what got you thinking they were close by. She's gonna notice them soon, especially if Nalzaki and Cedric keep at it, but it makes more sense and is more convenient if they're doing their own thing for now. It also gives Harmon a chance to do some work on her sensor, too."
The man next to Norm nodded. "Yeah, good, thanks."
"Anyway," finished Samuel, "I think that's about it for now. I like the idea of Ivan being the only one who sees Cascala for now; maybe he tries some kind of rune magic to stop or distract her, or even just brings her to Nalzaki's attention, but that's all up to Alexis. Overall, I think–"
A tremulous female voice cut in. "What… What's that?"
All eyes turned to the window. "You said we'd be safe here!"
Moments later, masonry and earth met steel and glass in a deafening crescendo of destruction.
"Oh, God, no, no. Macy. Macy!"