STEAM LONDON: Realms of Aether Game Thread

[Nigel Wetherby]

"Ahhhh, a marvelous thing. Seems to be cold one tech if anything."  He admired the sleek design. "It is very reminescent to...my technology..." He handed Emma the object. "I'd rather not tamper with it, but it appears to house some sort of nozzle designed to transfer more fragments of  George into the object."
He turned to Dreyfuss. "Now Dreyf, have ye had any more visions?"

Cain approached the white-haired girl rather carefully as if she might sprout tentacles at any second.
"Excuse me, little girl? How do you know this song?"

[ShredsnPatches]

Jen pinned a last rebellious snowy lock into place and looked at herself in the mirror. Even now the sight often gave her a shock - and imagine what onlookers must think! Her small frame was very slight now, and her skin unbelievably pale. She slid her favourite pair of smoked glasses on, and padded quietly to the study on soft shoes.

[Stella Gaslight]

The little girl smiled and ir was the closest he had ever seen to one of Angel's smiles on a human.  "I herd the echos of it bouncing my home land, bouncing around Russia.  Echoes can live for a very long time if you know how to listen for them."   

[Nigel Wetherby]

"What is your name?" Cain asked, curious of the nature of this young girl. She was obviously of russian descent, but he had never met any russians that looked like she did. The young woman seemed to have been descended from a bright one rather than have been born in a land once infested with cold ones.
"My name is Cain, this is Angel. We went with Patrick O'Landry on the Boheme."

Patrick beckoned his wife to enter the room with a loving smile, the kind that had lifted Jen from many depressions she had sunk into brought on by sleep deprivation and sheer frustration.
"I do wish ye wouldn't cover yer eyes like that. I don't care what the others say, their beautiful."

[MWBailey]

"Patrick, please, understand that I'm not seeking these things...I've no pretensions to nobility or anything, hell, if they had let me have the St. Elmo at St. Petersburg, I'd have been gone and no one would ever have caught me... But the st. Elmo wasn't there, and the Lafitte was... well, that's neither here nor there now." He stopped, then took off at a run again.

"Patrick, you know about the fellow I used to call the the Ginger Man, and how he finally told me his name, "Mahon,"  No last name, nor how he was related to Jenny, the girl I saved from that gang... and I wrote about that bit about my "old bright one's soul that had never been used before," as he put it. Well... Last night he appeared not in private, but in front of me, the crew, about half of Madame Arachne's Medical Girls, a few of the st. Elmo's new crew...

He said that you knew him,and Emma did, maybe others, I don't know, but that she might not remember him him, but you would, I asked about you, he said you weren't a good comparison (I have no idea how that could be true), and He wanted to see me still around in a century's time, and that he didn't mean I was immortal as long as I stayed alive, but I dont remember, now, something about staying alive til I die, I think, but that might not be it... Anyay he said the two weren't the same, and that's where he said you weren't a good comparison, but could help me if I asked....but thats not all...

Patrick, he said that going around and picking up the pieces of george was a good thing because until we do it and complete it, the mutiverse will unravel, and that it had already begun, in a small way. "two days, or four, every time you come back, " he said, was all the rest we could afford each time, that time was short. And he left me this," Dreyfuss unfastened the dagger and sheath from his sword belt and harness. "nd said 'ts got it's uses, but its up to you (me) to figure out what they are.' and he said that I could Kill Captain Black,but but to 'ware my anger."

"Thats about it, Patrick. That and the premonition that the next pieces of George would be high up in a very old building, and 'someone coming' and at the same time something about Miss Jen beingh 'exhausted.' those two happened together, and pretty much laid me out flat in teh Dock Commissary; I think I scared miss helena witless at the time.

So, What in the Sam Hill does it all mean? What the hell difference does it make what kind of a soul I have, if it doesnt make me impervious to aging or bullets or vulnerable to death by absinthe or whatever?

[Nigel Wetherby]

"An interestin' quandary." Patrick said, stroking his chin as one by one, the thoughts compiled.
"Did he say which Me would remember this Mahon chap? Or was he ambiguous about tha whole thing. Perhaps a version of meself from another universe knows 'im. This may require a bit of research. As fer tha nature of yer soul, I've been siftin' through me maker-files fer years now and I beileive they may hold the answers." He had taken to calling the knowledge stored in his deus-mind 'The maker files' Due to his adamant beleif that he was becoming something like a maker.
 "And tha difference between you and me is that I ain't a bright one. I simply fuzed meself with a piece of bright one tech. Jen became a bright one because of the fact that she's essentially pure white magick, or whatever good force in the multiverse creates this stuff. It's alot easier ta call it Magick...Anyways, the idea of immortality may not be about yer body. Perhaps its yer soul. Perhaps ye'll become like George, only existing in white fire rather than Aether."
He took the dagger, examining it carefully and admiring its shape and design.
"Why, this is a dagger used by tha swiss guard!"
Judging by Drefuss' rather confused look, he explained.
"Tha army run by his holiness tha pope! Usually its just a load of military men, but if they were able ta see ye in yer dreams, we might be talkin....no, there's no way..."
Everyone looked at him, as of awaiting his permission to exhale.
"This could be an Ascended."
Once more silence.
"Tha old testament talks about ascended, men so attuned with the forces of light and goodness that they became 'Angels' who could walk through space and time, visitin' folk in their dreams and warnin' them about stuff like comin' plauges and raiders.
A story tells of a man would fall asleep and dream of a man giving him a sword to slay an asp that would bite his son, when the man woke up a sword lay sheathed by his bed. The man would rush out of his house to find his infant son playing in the garden with a snake drawing near from behind, The man would slay the snake and the dreams would have ended.  I've always thought it to be some sort of metaphor. Perhaps Mahon is an Ascended."

[Stella Gaslight]

"My name is Anna. Mr O'Landry has told us much about you.  He is a very good man I think,  he found me hiding after the battle and offered me a place here.  Most of my family had been killed by the invaders but my mother smuggled me out to to a tiny town surrounded by hot springs.  When he came I did not know the battle was over, I though he was sent to destroy me and I fought him."  Anna laughed. "It was a very short battle.  He could not find any of my relatives so he asked me if I would like to come here."  Her eyes were a deep warm blue and her hair was the same white blond as the fuzz angel grew under her wig.

[Nigel Wetherby]

"Patrick never told us about that. I am very sorry about your family though. I wish there was something we could do to make it up to you."
Cain could not help but notice this girl bore a striking resemblence to a bright one, which roused quite alot of curiousness within him. Seeing as how she had very rocky experience with the cold ones, Cain decided it would be best not to introduce her to Sigmund.
Sigmund however, was unaware of this decision, as he had heard the music from Patrick's study and followed it almost like a moth to the flame.

[Stella Gaslight]

Anna looked up and froze, Sigmund was framed in the doorway.  She dived under the piano with all the grace and fear of a startled rabbit.  "Don't kill me please."  She whimpered.

[ClockworkLeprechaun]

Samuel went with them to the school, being a rather new guy, and having recently been informed that he had lab space now, his mind was elsewhere some of the time.  He typically remained silent and stayed near either Dreyfuss or Nadya as they were the two that he knew and had spoken to.

[MWBailey]

So, you think Black might be the asp? But where's the son? I'm completely childless, and yes, I'm sure.No sons, no daughters, Irene's teh only charge I have and she has in her possession a letter that sets her free, so it wouldn'tbe her, would it?

Suddenly the rest of what Patrick had said started to catch up with him. Dreyfuss' mind was like an old, old Locomotive pulling a very long express train. It was all connected, it was all moving very fast, and it would all get to the station eventually, but some bits were always inevitably lagging, some slightly derailed so that it took forever, sometimes, for all the pieces of the puzzle to get to the Yard. "Hm. I honestly though you were a Bright one." Dreyfuss laughed from his belly for a moment.  Certainly brighter'n me, at any rate... "oh-oh...."

His face took on a wary look, llike he was thinking something very distressing. "The whitefire; I thought it was because I keep using it, that if I quit using it so often, it'd go away, back to normal, but its been increasing since the day I blew Brian's head off with it... little good that did...and I certainly don't feel like my soul's thousands of years old, unused or no. Oh! wait a second, Mahon did say somethingthat time he appeared in my stateroom on the Elmo; He had forgotten to tell me his name, he said, and then said something about how "they" said that "we", I assume meaning his kind, didn't get senile. Maybe that means something, maybe not." 

And lately I've been noticing things that can't possibly be where they are. Lines in the air, in the sky; things that look like solidified air, barely there at all, but so solid you could smash a bottle against it, but only if I held it. Actually tried it the othe rday, threw two or three empty beer bottles at such a thing in an alley near the dock. they went right though it like it was smoke, or a rainbow or something. But if I held the bottle, it smashed like I hit it on the hull of the St. Elmo.

"And I could climb it! I ended up over next to the spire of that funny looking little chapel, looking down into the dock. I dont think anybody saw me.  Oh, and last night, I could have sworn I saw such a path up above Madame Arachne's! and there above it, when I looked for the moon to see if it was a trick of the light, I saw two young girls, dressed in sleeping gowns, clutching each other and screaming as they tried not to fall off. dangedest thing I ever saw. One of 'em looked familiar, almost like...

"Oh Lord, no... Poor Rosita if they'd fallen off! Patrick! the one girl, she looked like Esmeralda! by the way, how's she doing, I keep getting anxious feelings when I think about her. Seeing Patrick's sharp look, he added,  "its an old Dreyfuss clan thing, goes back to the old country...what!"

[Stella Gaslight]

Angel crawled under the piano and sat beside Anna who flung her arms around her and shook with fear.  Angel held her very gently while Cain sat Sigmund down to wait for the girls to emerge.  "That is Sigmund and he won't hurt you.  He looks bad but listen to his song.  I know you can hear it." Sigmund was humming a little nervously and as the girls listened he relaxed and the song poured out of him.  He sung with his eyes closed all about being trapped in a hard gray cocoon of a world then finally braking out and seeing colors. Anna played along on the piano the music was far too strong for her to resist they filled the school with bright possibilities.  Helena had followed Sigmund not wanting him to get lost in the vast building and when his song started she found herself crying at the grayness that once filled his life.

[MWBailey]

Patrick told Dreyfuss the rather distressing news of the exploits of his intrepid niece, and the apparently passively intrepid Miss Crabtree. It wasn't that it was such a surprise; the girl (Esme) had chased Comanchero raiders away from Uncle Caractacus' cattle pens with nothing but her Uncle Cracky's  peppermill rifle and five glass grenades, souvenirs from her Mother's Aunt's husband's service in Horatio Nelson's balloon corps; she was absolutely fearless when it came to danger -- well, until she was about to topple off of it, at any rate.

No, what started him was her apparent obsession with sneaking off and joining her "famous" uncle, whom she believed to be absolutely fearless, and thus a good model to imitate. Fortunately, however, she seemed, by Patrick's account, and by Jen's as well, to be learning to fear the two of them, so perhaps she would survive her school years after all. Dreyfuss hoped they wouldn't flay her too much (but just a little) over the "invisible road" incident.

Patrick told him that he didnt think that  Dreyfuss had to worry about burning up like a meteor, and that he probably could, and in his opinion, should go ahead and use the whitefire to its limit if he could handle that much, and develop his skills with it; he suggested several ways to focus it and apply a kind of valve-like mental technique to keep it from all flowing out at once. He also said yes, beware of his anger, but not to the degree that he did not use it to feed the flame if it became needful.

As for the "solid air" phenomenon, Patrick told him that such things were mentioned in the Maker Files, and were all in place for a reason, that past peoples had actually used them for travel, but it was so long ago that no human remembered it, or why they did so, and the Makers seemingly thought the knowledge so basic to life (people have to travel, after all) that they had not recorded it. Apparently there were roads that went as high as the cloud strata in the sky, and maybe even father than that. Dreyfuss became thoughtful, and asked if there were a map of the roads, and Patrick said that yes, there used to be, but it was lost to antiquity; The only one the files mentioned was were in the temple where they found Angel.
--------------------------------
His questions answered, Dreyfuss asked permission to find Esmeralda and give her the candy he had bought for her. That permission granted, he thanked Patrick for all of his kind efforts, invaluable advice, lore, and research, and went in search of his Niece.

He found her at the piano, listening to Angel and Anna play a duet along with Sigmund's song, a particularly beautiful melody full of sadness at the beginning, but bursting with color and joy at the other end; it didn't sound as if it were finished, though; superb, a masterpiece, even, but not yet complete, like the life that it portrayed. Dreyfuss felt that the final verse (for now) was coming around, and decided well, now or never, boyo, and took out the fife and played along, just adding color and texture where it seemed to need it, not trying to play the solo; that was Sigmund's place, not his. When they finished, the crowd was silent for a moment, and then the cacophonous applause thundered through the study and out into the rest of the school...

Esmeralda, along with many of teh girls, had turned in surprise when he started playing, adn then when the song was over she came running over and threw her arms around his shoulder and chest and squeezed fit to burst a wrought-brass boiler.
"Uncle JAISEN! it's so good to see you! What have you been doing these past weeks?! When can I come with you on a mission? Can we go hunt Air Kraken? oh, I dont care if its yes or no, I just am so happy you're here!"

Dreyfuss answered, "Putting down an out-of-control, *ahem* sanguiphagic individual, rescuing an old comrade, flying escort for teh Boheme on the rescue mission, and building a crew since the unproclaimed departure of your third great aunt-in-law.the two ladies, there, Miss Nadya, and the more mature of the two, Madame Arachne, are two of them. Samuel, here, is another. Oh, and When you prove that you are both trustworthy as well as intrepid, and Perhaps, if there are any in the area  we go to, and if the mission requirements allow it. All of the above are dependent, of course, upon your mother's approval.

As a consolation, however, I picked this up for you just before we all rode down here," he said, and handed here the little bag with the maple sugarplums inside. She went "OOOOO!!! My favorite," and immediately seized one and popped it into her mouth.

"Eat 'em sparingly, and share some with your close friends," Dreyfuss said. Madame? Nadya?" he brought Esmeralda over to them and introduced them. "Esmeralda, this is Madame Arachne; without her medical expertise, we merry crew would likely be in dire straits! Madame, this is my Niece, Miss Esmeralda Litton-Van Huiyck. And, this young lady who seems, remarkably, to be nearly your twin, Esme, is Miss Nadya Catrina Zarate, who shows great promise as a fighter, scout, and all-around operative. Miss Nadya, this is my Niece, Miss Esmeralda Litton-Van Huiyck."
oh, yes, and this, Esme, is mr. Samuel Warder, our on-board alchemist and explosives expert; Samuel, this is my Niece, Miss Esmeralda Litton-Van Huiyck...

[Stella Gaslight]

Sigmund opened his eyes and turned a pink when he realised that all eyes were on him.  Helena smiled "That was lovely.  I had no idea you had that inside of you."

"Neither did I."  Sigmund said with surprise.  "Do I still scare you Anna?" He asked not daring to step closer to Angel.

"No not a bit."  She smiled and he was glad.  Anna looked back at the crowd that had gathered.  "Who was playing the pipes?" She could feel the power that leaked from those notes and was rather shocked someone could play like her.

[MWBailey]

"Oh...Pardon me, Esme, Miss Nadya, Madame Arachne, Sam..." HE stepped over to teh piano and said, "that'd be me, Miss Anna, Dreyfuss said, offering his hand. "Commodore Sir Jaisen Santiago Dreyfuss, at your service, Miss."

[Stella Gaslight]

"You play like me. Where did you learn that?" Anna was beginning to wonder if he wasn't somehow related to her.  All of her relatives had the same strong gift of music that the school was just beginning to put a name to.  She was the first human practitioner of Meladomancy the school had found and she hoped they would find others because she was a bit lonely.

[Nigel Wetherby]

Sigmund couldnt help but be fascinated at Anna's magical abilities. Her magic pulled a song out of him, each tune seeming to resonate with the very nature of who he was as a person. Every memory was a note, and every sensation and emotion was a chord.
"You know, I always hummed that tune when I wasn't really thinking about anything, but I never really knew how beautiful it sounded outside of my head."
Sigmund couldnt help but feel an unusual sort of happiness as he realized the sound of his song.

Madame Arachne bowed to the young woman, causing her insecitle legs to bow her cherry-colored dress widened as glimpses of shimmering metal legs peeked from beneath.
"I hope you haven't been causing mister O'Landry too much trouble."

[MWBailey]

"I've always had sort of a 'knack' for music," Dreyfuss said, "and if you mean how the fire gets in my music, well, I've pretty much always had some of me flow into whatever I was playing or singing. I can will it and increase the degree of fire, but I've seldom been able to turn it off completely; never actually saw a reason to, in fact; its the reason Uncle Caractacus didnt give up on me when he first tested me for the Spark. HE could sense the whitefire in my music, even if I couldnt call it forth for his tests. Aw, Heck, now they're gonna ask you sing! oh well, had to happen soone ror later, he thought.

"I learned the fife when I joined General Sam's (Beg your pardon, miss, thats Sam Houston's) Texian Army; I was a fifer for two years, playin' the duty calls and the battlefield signals, and the long-distance comm-uniques when the weather was foggy, before I grabbed up the rifle and kit of a fallen comrade. Then I became an infantryman. Where did you learn yours, Miss Anna?
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Esmeralda was a bit overawed by the beautiful and intriguing Madame Arachne, but she managed to keep from stammering or mumbling, and answered, "Well, I don't really go looking for trouble, but, I must admit. I do tend to be a bit more adventurous than My Mother, or Uncle Jaisen, or Headmaster O'Landry would prefer," she said. I just can't see why we need to learn to build a fire, for instance, if we can just throw it out from within ourselves! I mean, sure, of course, build a fire set so that teh flames will continue to burn, but why learn flint and steel? Or carry lucifers, or vulcans, or whichever ones other folk prefer? We're our own matches!

[Stella Gaslight]

Helena couldn't help smiling, boldly she took his hand.  "I hope you will sing like that for me again someday."  Helena was wondering what her own song would sound like and what it was about Anna's deep blue eyes and beautiful playing that pulled songs from people's souls.

Anna looked fragile and dwarfed by the piano but he knew she had full mastery over the instrument.  "I was raised singing.  I knew notes and cords before I knew words.  My mother always said it was the Demidova clan's gift to the world.  Music frees the soul after all.  I am glad their are more like me." 

[MWBailey]

"As am I, miss Anna. What songs do you like to sing?" Dreyfuss asked, always glad to have another person with whom to play a few tunes. He resolved to try a little impromptu experiment and see if, perhaps, he could reach in and pull his banjo out of the possibles bag, if Miss Anna decided to let him accompany her on it...

[Nigel Wetherby]

Cain pondered the notes within Sigmun'd song, as if searching for clues of his life. Perhaps what his life was before being transported to this world was like. He sensed himself being forced form gentle ideals into ideas of war. A round sphere of a peaceful mind forced into a triangular hole made for war.

"Maybe I will. Perhaps I should put it to lyrics, though i was never really good at the whole...rhyming thing." Sigmund blushed with embarassment at the idea of his softer side being laid bare for all to see. He had spent so much time being feared as a towering figure of absolute destruction, and yet here was a young girl playing a song of a butterlfy which seemed to be biographical.

"Because," Patrick said appearing as if from nowhere, he looked much like a victorian Merlin, complete with a wisened look in his bright golden eyes. "If you were to simply place all faith in magic to make everything for you, you'd have wasted your skill! Technomancy does not assemble for you, it takes your ideas and designs and places them together, mixing in all your emotion and hope into your machine. Before you can use technomancy, you must become more attuned to your human nature of construction and invention."

[Stella Gaslight]

"I can sing almost one hundred songs from memory but my favorite is always my own soul's song.   Everyone has one you know." She started to play a song that reminded him of a tree in winter with snow draped heavy over its branches as it dreams of spring.

"The right words will come to you.  I know they will. You really must have been strong to stay alive in that world.  I'm glad you are here now."  There was just something about him that made all Helena's normal calmness and objectivity melt away leaven her to blush and stumble over her words.
 

[MWBailey]

I ...think I understand what you mean, HEadmaster O'Landry, adn I want to  become better and all, but I see someone like Uncle Jaisen..." Esmeralda protested, "He's so powerful and full of the white flame, it practically seeps out of his nose and ears, and yet I've never seen him build anything...
-----------------------
"Oh, I've built things, Esmeralda; I just haven't gone around proclaiming the fact. I improved the design of and built the guncarriages for Miss Emma's big Heat Cannons, so they'd be able to be used much longer than they would have been, and so the alt/azimuth mounts could handle the recoil that happens when one fires a supra-powered energy weapon; I had help, sure, but it was my part of the job." he paused, considering whether to continue or not, but then pressed onward," I've designed, built, and am now using in the St. Elmo a device that allows us to navigate with the steering room shutters closed, or in fact in any part of the ship where we can hook up with the directional controls and control surfaces. "

"It operates in synch with and via the energies in the aura produced by the ship's aether-motive reciprocation analog engine;  I would never have thought about such things if I hadn't been around Trip, or Emma, or Mr. Patrick, here, and heard 'em talk, and worked alongside Miss Emma. And I wasn't always "so full of the white flame," as you put it; there was a time when Uncle Caractacus said that I had "about as much of a Spark as a milksop." he thought of something, and added, "And Esme: I'm still learning how to control what I have."
------------------------
Dreyfuss fairly shivered at the implied cold, but then felt a thread of warmth; the tree's dream of the springtime under the warm sun, and the flowers, birds, and life returning to the world...

[Stella Gaslight]

Emma had been quietly enjoying the music but when she heard Dreyfuss speak of the necessity of invention.  "He is completly right you know.  You can only get out what you put in to inventing.  I am underpowered as far as the white fire goes but I have still made a difference with nothing more the the sweat of my brow and a refusal to give up.  Never underestimate what un-gifted human hands can create."

Anna watched the Texan as her song crept over him growing warmer with each refrain.  She was swaying slightly fingers dancing over the keys. Anna used small gentle fingers of her power to try and coax a song out of Dreyfuss like she was doing to the piano.

[MWBailey]

The singing of the heat on the prairie. The kind of heat that one gets in late summer, and burns the ground til all is fit to burn. Then comes teh deep, basso thunder. deep, Native-flute and tin  sheet rumbles, the thunder walks in the garden of the prairie.Then the wind comes sweeping down from the Llano Estacado, the Staked Plain, high-voiced, airy,. a rich tenor, where Coronado's arrows were all that marked the trail.

Then, a sudden strike, everykey, a near-scream of creation and invention, struck downfrom treble to bass in one towering bolt as the first of the storm hits, adn a nation is born. And the lightning and the thunder both walk the prairie together. the white fire of the heavens and the thunder of the air, the rain mixig with the dirt of the earth, building the spellsong of the trillling, upwardly-jumping fifes and whistles and piccolos, as the grass and th wild paintbrush and blue bonnet and stipply purple phlox explode into color and light. Spring has come to the prairie, and this war is over, the next not yet begun...

And then, distant on the horizon, a shape, not a bird, but it flies. Not a storm, but it thunders. Not a Mountain or a an oak tree, but it spreads and towers. The Guardian of this Prairie, a lone cloud made by man of canvas from the cotton fields , iron from the bogs, and rubber from a foreign tree, and foetid air that floats but does not mix with the wind that sings in the cables and rushes along the sides and makes hollow roarings in the gunports as the Guardian's canvas cloud, with its Grey Iron Thunder slung under it, patrols the Border between one land and the next.

Then The soft, subversive treachery of the minor keys as another cloud comes sneaking trebly in, this without it's thunder under-slung, but contained within it, as is the treachery that lashes out, with the laughter of a white captain who is also black, and the solid slashing bass black keys of bar and flexible chain thunder slashes the cables from under teh Guardian's cloud as the two drift out over the bay, and  one report, two,  sounds in the higher cointralto as the guardian gives a last parting shot before the slashing thunder murders the righteous Guardian and she, (for all the true clouds of justice are female) crashes into the bay, never to rise again.

But one lone figure remains, one crippled but alive, who heals and prospers, and continues on to build a new cloud but ride another to honor regained and guardianship restored, and by the grace of One above, is granted to avenge, and then guard, in the cloud that he made, but not above the the same land as before...and the song fades into a future of white fire...

Dreyfuss sat amid the silence, and took out his bandanna from his coat's inside breast pocket, and wiped the tears from his cheeks, as the final notes of the piano faded, and the applause rang out.