(no subject)

[69problems]

Who| Signless, Gary, and anyone who needs a distraction!
What| Signless and Gary do what they do best: draw a crowd, so that nobody notices the actual important things going down.
Where| A Capitol park
When| Backdated to the day of the break-in
Warnings/Notes| Nothing in particular; will add if something comes up.

In one of the largest available Capitol parks a stage has been set up. It's festooned with colorful fabric, riddled with microphones and wires and lights, and surrounded on either side by stalls with food and drink (there are, of course, funnel cakes). Most of that was Gary's doing, but Signless deferred to him on the logic that Gary knew better how to do one of these things in public than he did. All of his experience was in keeping these things quiet and secret, which is the exact opposite of what they need to be doing.

Guests are invited to take a seat on the grass before the stage. First on the program is an 'authentic' troll sermon much like one of the ones the Signless would have given back on Alternia. It's billed as a way for those not familiar to participate in a piece of troll culture and history, though the subject is less radical rebellious philosophy (for very obvious reasons) and much more Capitol-appropriate and safe. He speaks for a good while, often inviting his listeners to contribute to the discussion, and after the sermon proper is finished there is a short question and answer session. True to his word it really does follow the same format one of his talks might have back on his native planet.

Of course not everyone is here to listen to a troll ramble in a park. For them there is the debut concert of Gary Epps which takes place after a short intermission so everyone can grab a funnel cake or a corn dog or two. The grass in front of the stage is now a makeshift dance floor and the guests are encouraged to let loose and enjoy the very, very loud and very, very upbeat music. It may be bubblegum for the ears but it's fun and the beat is good -- perfect for drowning out thoughts of why there are so very many parties all going on on this day in particular.

[This is going to be much like a crowning: a party-style post where you can put up top levels and tag around to others at any point during the festivities. Go ahead and mingle, and have some fun before everything crashes and burns! I'll be putting up a transcription of Signless's sermon shortly for characters to react to amongst themselves, and Gary will also of course be joining in!]

Comments

[atouchofka]

Alain nods, with a slightly strained little smile. "He would have, I guess. Though I fear I was never quite so close to him as Bert." There is a part of him that wonders, rather worriedly, why Roland would only have mentioned him once. Did his failure hurt so badly, is he unforgiven? But he reminds himself that Roland seemed genuinely glad to see him. There are years uncounted between them. Maybe it's not so surprising if he was far from Roland's mind.

"And you? You must have been here no short time yourself, I'd guess."

[69problems]

"Two human years." There's a certain tiredness in this way he speaks and holds himself that confirms that, though a little can be attributed to much more current worries.

"Sometimes it feels like less, sometimes it feels like far more. I find it becomes easier with friends at your side. If you're in need of someone who can help you adjust, or need someone to explain things that you may be unfamiliar with, or just want to talk, my room is up in District Twelve. Top floor."

[atouchofka]

Friends. Aye, that's a thing Alain's been missing, even with Roland here. He's been on the move so long, in such close-knit groups, that it's more than a little strange to be alone, without even a mission. Worse, when he comes to remember that his friends are without him, too. Without the warning he carried.

But that isn't Signless' concern, and he won't let it become so. Instead, he pushes the thought away with an effort, and lets himself be grateful for that kindness.

"I'll remember," he confirms, with a firmer smile, tucking his thumbs into his belt. He's still very unused to not having the gun hanging at his hip, and it shows in how, for a moment, his right hand gropes rather awkwardly at a space that ought to be filled. "Thankee. And if ever there's aught I can offer in return..."

[69problems]

"Just company will do. Stories of places that aren't here. Your home, if you'd be willing to tell me about it."

For all that he and Roland are close, they've done precious little exchanging of information about their old homes. Sometimes it comes up, but only ever when it's relevant to something in the here and now -- and with so much going on in the here and now for them to deal with, can they really be blamed?

"But you needn't feel obligated to repay me with anything. If you're one of Roland's friends then you're already to some degree one of mine."

[atouchofka]

Alain nods. He understands that well enough. "And you, one of mine," he agrees, with a smile. "I'm glad to know that he has folk here. He's not a man to do well alone. Few of us are."

Not that he thinks for a moment that Roland wouldn't survive, even thrive, travelling alone. He knows better than that. But since he realised that the Tower was Roland's and Roland's alone... well, it would be a lie to say that he hasn't dwelt on the idea of Roland alone. And he fears it. Roland needs balance, needs someone to ground him and hold him back sometimes. Roland needs help to carry the weight of the world, since there doesn't seem to be a way to stop him taking it on his shoulders. And it's a relief to know that here, at least, he's had that.

"As for home," he says after a little while, "it's been years since I saw it. But if you'd hear tales of it... Ro's the tale-spinner, not me. I'd be glad to try, though."

[69problems]

"It doesn't need to be particularly poetic. There's just a lot I don't know, save for scattered bits and pieces. I know there was a war, but I couldn't tell you what it was fought for."

It had never been important, but he's beginning to think it might be -- not in the sense that it will change his perception of Roland (and now Alain) any but that it might better inform it.

[atouchofka]

"Anything you want to know," Alain says gravely, "you can ask. And I'll do my best to answer. It seems to me that Ro' is halfway to forgetting the war himself, and perhaps it's best that way." With the lines of pain and age he'd seen written in his dinh's face, with the knowledge of how hard the past few years have been on them all, he can't find it in him to be surprised if Roland didn't want to talk about Gilead and Farson.

[69problems]

He considers, briefly, asking for the whole story from start to finish. That might take too long -- he knows how wars are, how they get out of hand and grow so big so quickly -- and so he resolves to only ask after the bits that are truly important to understanding the whole.

"Who, then. Or why -- They usually go hand in hand. A war doesn't happen without cause, whether that cause is a good one or not."

[atouchofka]

Alain considers for a long moment before answering. It's a great deal to condense down, and especially difficult when he has no idea how much the Signless already knows. "The why is... as it ever is. It's the oldest war, and the bloodiest. Chaos strives against order, the Prim against the Tower, the Crimson against the White. As to the who..."

He frowns, pressing his lips together, and his eyes flick briefly to the people around them, then back to the troll. "John Farson, called by some the Good Man. There are others, we think - no, we know. Others stronger and crueller still. But Farson is the man whose name they shouted and whose sigil they painted. He's won others to his side, with lies and fear. His army has grown, even as ours has shrunk."

[69problems]

That sounds familiar in a way the Signless can't immediately place. Not the idea that war is a constant struggle between two almost metaphorical forces, because that's something that doesn't surprise him from a culture that also imagines fate like a wheel (and he can appreciate the poetic quality of the thought). He's thinking more about names and sigils, about the mustering of an army behind a single man...

"And what lies does he tell? What is he trying to accomplish by leading this army against your people?"

[atouchofka]

"Chaos," Alain says simply. He's fidgeting a little, restless at the thought of it. "He speaks of the tyranny of the Affiliation, of how it has abandoned the Outer Baronies." He sighs. "The worst lies have a grain of truth in them, and, to tell truth, the Affiliation had withdrawn from those lands, even before Gilead fell. Mid-World is vast, and gunslingers a dwindling kind. The Outer Baronies have for many years been hives of mutation and of violence, home to all those who no longer found themselves welcome in lands more closely controlled. Reavers, bandits, traitors. And so the people there grew hard, and grew to blame us for their afflictions, and when Farson came in service of the Crimson..." He shrugs. "They felt the White had failed them."

[69problems]

Ah, yes. There it is. Things slot into place with a sickening click, neatly filling in the spaces in a narrative the Signless is all too familiar with. He played a central role in that narrative once, as the treasonous crimson figurehead telling lies about the privileged elite and mustering the disenfranchised dregs into an army for his cause. He wonders if Alain would have given him the same story in the same words if he knew.

"But... it had. If these were people you were tasked with protecting and you left them on their own to rot, you shouldn't find their blame surprising."

[atouchofka]

"I don't," Alain says, truthfully, and rubs his temple, closing his eyes. In all honesty, he doesn't even blame most of the people who joined Farson, although he thinks them misguided at best and will mow them down no less than any others. His deep hate is saved for their leaders; for Farson himself, and for his lieutenants. "But there is blame and there is bitterness, and then there is the frenzy Farson bore out in them. They kill children, rape women, raze towns to the ground. They have brought the weapons of the Old Ones back to life, the machines that broke down the world long ago, and the magics that should have been lost long ago. You sympathise with them. But you have not seen half of what we have."

[69problems]

"I'm not arguing that the violent acts they commit are justified. There are better ways to protest mistreatment than to contribute to the cycle of harm. But I can still sympathize with them, because their grievances are justified."

He crosses his arms, worrying his lip.

"War is never so simple as one side being right and the other being wrong. It's poetic to describe it that way, as some grand struggle between good and evil, but to do so is to do a disservice to both sides of the conflict."

[atouchofka]

Alain sighs, folding his arms and closing his eyes for a moment. He doesn't want to turn this into an argument. That's the last thing he wants. At the same time, though, too many have his friends have died in the war they're talking of, too many wounds that are far too fresh and raw to have healed.

"I've felt them," he says at last, quietly. "Not Farson, for I've never been close enough to him. But his captains and his lieutenants, I've felt their minds, and they're like broken glass. There's no pity in them. That's not poetry. That's truth."

And he'll forget, for the moment, that Roland's mind can feel the same at times. Or that he and Roland and every other gunslinger had pity trained out of them when they were still toddling.

[69problems]

Signless, perhaps sensing they aren't going to get anywhere with this, shakes his head. He doesn't want to argue either, not with someone he hopes to form a lasting friendship with.

"That still doesn't make the needs of the people who march under them any less real," he says finally. "But I haven't seen them as you have, and I haven't lived your war. All I have is my own war and my own experience as a mutant abandoned and exiled by the Empire that should have protected him, and perhaps it's unfair of me to project my own experiences onto someone else's world."

Privately, he doesn't really think it is. He just also knows when to pick his battles and right now it's time to step back.

"You can feel the minds of others?" Hopefully that's a safer topic. "You're a psionic?"

[atouchofka]

Alain isn't stupid, and he knows quite well that Signless isn't saying what he thinks, but what will stop this from turning into a full-blown fight. He doesn't mind; in fact, he's grateful. This isn't how he wants the day to go. He's still too exhausted. And if the troll is the one to back down, that makes it so much easier.

He nods, offering a small smile. "If that's what you'd call it. I've not heard the word. We call it the Touch."

[69problems]

"That's the general word, though it encompasses a lot of things. Many trolls are psionic; no two psionics are exactly the same in specialty or skill. Is your Touch the same?"

Yet another thing that Roland never mentioned to him, though this can be entirely forgiven. When would it have ever come up? Mainly he's just glad for the chance to learn more about a culture not his own, especially in the context of a topic that won't start a fight. He's under enough stress right now. He needs a distraction, not something else to throw him off balance.

[atouchofka]

Alain hesitates before answering, not out of doubt but merely out of consideration for how best to phrase his answer. There is some variation in the Touch, but he doubts the differences in strength or type are even close to what Signless is thinking of.

"No," he decides, at last. "It's... a sense, more than anything. Like standing in a river and feeling the currents. The flow of k... fate, or of people around you. The shape of things. Does that make sense?"

[69problems]

"I think so. I know someone who has a similar sense, though that isn't as a result of powers she was hatched with. She can see the way the timeline branches, see choices that will lead to the outcomes she wants -- something similar to seeing the flow of fate, it sounds like."

It doesn't surprise him to hear fate described like a river. Roland described it in terms of water as well: as a wheel, like the one Signless wears on the chain around his neck.

[atouchofka]

"I've never seen branches." Truth be told, the idea takes him a little by surprise. He's always been taught, and believed, that ka does as it wills. The idea that there are varying timelines, varying possibilities... it hasn't really occurred to him. There's only ka, and the possibilities ka shows you, to bring the right course about. "But aye, it sounds close enough."

And then there's that word hatched, which only serves to remind him that the person he's talking to is decidedly inhuman. He does his best not to dwell on it. Even so, it's an uneasy thought.

[69problems]

"Rivers branch, don't they?" he points out. "And the branch you choose to follow often determines where you end up. It's the same way with fate. It all flows in one direction toward a singular end point like rivers flow toward the sea, but only one or two branches will actually get there and the rest are dead ends. At least that's my understanding of it," he amends, because who can really say how fate works? Some guesses may just hit a little closer than others.

[atouchofka]

Alain considers this for a moment. He's never seen the sea, and his understanding of how rivers flow to it is purely theoretical, but it's enough to understand the metaphor, at least. Some branches trickle out into creeks or dry up in the desert, some become stronger, faster-flowing rivers as they go. It makes a kind of sense.

"But you can't tell which it is from the current," he says, finishing the thought out loud. "Mayhap that's all the difference is. That your friend sees what I only feel."

[69problems]

"Something like that. She sees the eventual outcomes of choosing each branch, which is very different from knowing if that is the right outcome according to whatever fate has decided is correct."

Is he a little unimpressed with the concepts of fate and predestination and how they tend to cause far more pain in the pursuit of the 'right' timeline than they actually help anyone? Well, maybe. His relationship with fate is a complicated one, is the best way of putting it.

[atouchofka]

Alain is quiet for a long moment, mulling that over. To know what will come of your choices... that isn't something he's ever had, not to the extent the troll is describing, and frankly, he's glad of it. Roland had that knowledge back in Hambry, and it's brought him nothing but pain and suffering since. A heavy burden to bear, to say the least. Even Alain's fractured visions are heavy enough for him.

"It must be hard for her," he says quietly, at last. "To know what rides on every choice."