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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gideonpepys" data-source="post: 7285274" data-attributes="member: 79141">Session 32, Part Two - You Can't Go Home AgainResal, Kasvarina’s old home town, was gone now – erased and replaced by the clergy town of Airone Azzurro: a dreary, noisome strip of feeble mango orchards. An elderly eladrin man, who looked very similar to Kieran Sentacore, save for his more rustic attire, waved to them politely as they passed by.  A lot of elder eladrin had given up resisting the colonists, it seemed, and now worked alongside them in the fields.With a heavy heart, Kasvarina led them to a memory event:Vertigo grips her, and she begins to step in a light, dancing ring as the memory-event sweeps across the area, revealing a massed crowd of weary and bitter eladrin men. Just weeks after the Great Malice, the retreat of the surviving eladrin reached Resal, Kasvarina’s home town. At the time she was the only woman left in the whole army, and she had assumed the only one of her whole race. But in Resal she found her daughter Launga, who had already located a half-dozen other women and brought them with her to Resal. Launga is taller than her mother, and dressed in the garb of a jungle ranger. The group also includes Latika (who a century later betrayed Kasvarina), and Athrylla (who went on to lead the enclave Sentosa). As the memory-event begins, the crowd of soldiers listen to a mass funeral service. At the edge of the crowd, Kasvarina, Launga, and the other women are speaking softly with Sor Daeron about how they each survived. Launga was gathering resources in the Dreaming; Athrylla was shape-changed into a dragon attacking Sid Minos; Kasvarina was teleporting across the world. Sor looks completely bereft of any enthusiasm as he states that he sees no possible way for the nation to survive if so few women are left. He asks if he was a coward to retreat rather than redouble the assault and die seeking vengeance. Launga says that they all need time to grieve, and that there may be a way to survive. Latika responds that there is no use for grief. Grief is so the survivors can keep on living. The women start to argue about what course to take, while Kasvarina remains silent, feeling wracked with guilt.Then Kasvarina looks up as the priest finishes his rites and introduces the poet Vekesh, who will deliver the eulogy in song. Beside him, a musician strums a simple guitar. What follows is one of the most stirring performances ever delivered in the world’s history, though much of it is lost on those who don’t speak elven or who are unfamiliar with Elfaivaran culture. Laden with mourning and tragedy, the song weaves metaphors from other old Elfaivaran myths and history, and Vekesh draws heavily upon the three aspects of Srasama – maiden, mother, and crone. He seems to follow the traditional three-verse rhythm of eladrin elegies, singing of the maiden’s joy and wonder, of the mother’s comfort and strife; but when he should sing of the crone’s burden of loss and death, he says nothing while the guitarist plays. Then Vekesh repeats the first two verses, adjusting his tone to show that he is mourning not his nation’s death, but Srasama’s. In his fifth verse he comes to his point: this is only a mourning song if it ends with death. The eladrin people are not defeated as long as they refuse to go with the crone to the afterlife. Vekesh pleads for the listeners to seek retribution, yes, but not to throw themselves to their deaths. They should grieve and endure and grow strong and rebuild from weakeness to prosper with strength. This is the first time since the Great Malice anyone in the army has had the strength to sing, providing a hope that the soldiers here were desperately yearning for. It probably doesn’t hurt that Vekesh’s refrain is memorable and life-affirming to sing along with. By the time he completes the song, most of the crowd has joined in and men are openly weeping.Kasvarina doesn’t cry, but she tells the other women to follow her. She walks into the center of the ring, thanks Vekesh, and addresses the crowd. She proclaims that many of her sisters have perished – one of her own daughters included – but she still lives, and others like her. No man here, she declares, will give his life for revenge, not until the last woman of their people is found and safely returned home. The crone, she says, would grow old with grief until she joined those who had died before her. So Kasvarina forsakes grief, and asks that those here follow her and her sisters, so that their people may never die. She tells Vekesh to sing again and this time she and the other women join in a traditional mourning dance. But like Vekesh’s song, they avoid the part of the dance that would signal grief. The memory-event slowly fades with Vekesh’s song, until Kasvarina finishes her dance alone.This performance had attracted a crowd of colonists, who watched with awe and started to ask the unit what was going on.  A few of the Crisillyiri soldiers asked one another if they should report this, but they seemed too amazed to be worried.  Korrigan turned to these people and asked them to respect the memories they had witnessed.  He told them they had nothing to fear and suggested they disperse.  They did so, such was his calm authority.Having once again failed to maintain control of herself, Kasvarina sighed and said she now understood how she became this other woman, after a loss so great. That was all she said, as already she was drawn toward another site in the town. “My home,” she said, with some trepidation.Kieran Sentacore kept muttering to himself in disbelief as they made their way through the town.  This was a dream come true for a historian such as he! The second memory event in Resal caused a house to rise up around them while they stood on the banks of a polluted river:In this memory, Kasvarina talks with her daughters Launga and Dala while she packs her bags for a long journey. The younger, Dala, is rounder of face and is using cantrips to alter her hair’s color, trying to inject levity to keep the parting from being sad. Around her neck hangs a three-faceted amber pendant, carved with icons of Srasama’s three forms. Launga can’t believe her mother plans to go back to Alais Primos after she nearly died there. She offers to go with her, but Kasvarina tells her not to abandon her assignments. “If the ranamandala rejects our request, I might be branded a traitor and so you both need to show you are loyal.”  Dala jokes that a good start would be to tell the army that they’re hiding a human in their house. Kasvarina gives her a very motherly glare. At that moment, Nicodemus walks in from another room, but it’s the elderly eladrin who Nicodemus is wearing. He’s smoking, and his features shift back and forth from eladrin to Nicodemus’ own salt-and-pepper human face. Nicodemus has managed to resist being swept up in things, so he watches with amusement as Kasvarina’s daughters thank him for saving their mother’s life. Nicodemus – out of character; clearly in control of himself and acting in the present moment – touches their faces and apologizes for not having been able to save them. (They do not respond, figments that they are.) Then he addresses Kasvarina and causes her to snap out of the memory and regain control of herself.He tells Kasvarina that he wants to help her and asks her to come with him. When she refuses, Nicodemus clarifies that if she wants to learn her past, her options are come with him willingly, come with him as a prisoner, or be killed. As for the party, he’d prefer not to have to kill them, so he asks them to surrender now. Nicodemus was in no rush to end the memory; he confessed to being a bit nostalgic about the whole thing and even hopped back into character, encouraging the daughters to remember what he told them about the history behind the war, and why the everyday people weren’t to blame. The memory event played out, the house faded away. Then Nicodemus cupped his hands and whispered a code word. Instantly, purple light flooded the area and six Ob golems appeared from the Bleak Gate, surrounded by a mass of undead.  Each golem bore a wayfarer lantern in its chest and between them they had rendered the area coterminous – though in the Bleak Gate there was no river and the unit was surrounded by zombies on all sides.Matunaaga reacted at once, by trying to take out two of the lanterns with his rifle.  Instead, he simply shattered the protective glass in front of them.  Uriel muttered a command, and used the sanctuary spell he had learned from Ingatan to ward the weary Gupta from harm. Korrigan ordered Matunaaga to keep firing and he did so – taking out two of the lanterns before the golems could even move. In between them a wedge of zombies vanished. Kasvarina burned a path towards that empty space, while Uru took out another golem with a single shot.  The golem in the middle vanished into the Bleak Gate and a path was opened up, just as the other golems prepared to open fire with their integrated cannon.Leon raised his own wayfarer lantern.  He had chosen the rarefied oil of menagerie, an experimental pocket plane where sentient creature could change shape at will and all undead were dazed. In this fashion did the unit escape Nicodemus’ trap, while the Obscurati leader lit up a cigarette and shook his head in disbelief.  As a final insult, Matunaaga and Uru took out the remaining wayfarer lanterns as they went. Suddenly, the zombies and the golems all vanished, leaving only the elderly eladrin, who took the cigarette out of his mouth, grimaced, spat in disgust, then looked around in confusion, wondering how he had got here. Nicodemus was gone.Elsewhere, Gupta discovered that the priests of Sarasvati no longer lived here. But rumour had it they had travelled to the ‘Crucible’ – that strip of land between Elfaivar and Crisillyir where eladrin guerrillas waged an ongoing (and largely symbolic) war of resistance. There the priests practised their healing arts in defiance of the clergy.</blockquote>

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