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Zanthe likes to consider herself a reasonable person. When she kills people, it's for a reason; Alaine's mom needs fed, she needs some cash, she's bored that day. If someone offers criticism, she gives it all due consideration before stabbing them. She's perfectly happy to cooperate with others, even, as long as they follow all of her commands to the letter and don't question her or have an annoying face or something.
(To be fair, by Alternian standards this puts her somewhere just below Troll Mahatma Gandhi.)
At the moment, however, she is feeling decidedly unreasonable. Leo blew off her perfectly good advice to leave the goddamn sliding puzzle alone and kill himself into immortality, and what's worse, Alaine backed him up. She's used to him agreeing with her ruthless play style, but for some reason he felt like the pointless sidequests would be useful, and "it's not like we're in some kind of hurry, right?"
So, like the reasonable person she is, she stormed out of the computer room and went off to explore the meteor and steal people's stuff from the chests. So far she's found Sky's lacy underthings, a handful of boonbucks, Ari's lacy underthings (which she files away for later perusal), and more weapons than anyone could reasonably need, all of which have gone straight into her inventory.
She opens another door. It leads-
to a refreshmentblock?
She draws a heavily alchemized dagger and advances slowly toward the beveragetable. "If Troll Ashton Kutcher shows up, I'm stabbing him in the face," she warns the empty room.
girls-just-wanna
first-loyalty
"I'm a mage," she says, with a gesture to the staff she is wearing on her back. "Stalas and Sefton both prefer daggers, I think."
first-and-final
"Well, I might not say no to a sword, depending on the sword. But I'm still somewhat unclear on what this Game is and whether or not we are in fact playing it. On the other hand, we might need all the help we can get regardless."
miracle-of-miracles
"That's the spirit!"
Ari goes over to a table, which is suddenly covered with swords. Most of the swords look patently ridiculous. Another table gets a pile of equally ridiculous knives. As an afterthought, yet a third table is covered with ridiculous wands.
miracle-of-miracles
"I made them by taking random shit and throwing it into an alchemizer? They're still deadly weapons, though!" He picks up a sword emblazoned with the face of some mildly distressing middle-aged action hero and swings it through the air.
first-and-final
"What's an alchemizer?"
Stalas starts looking through the swords table for the least ridiculous available items.
Stalas starts looking through the swords table for the least ridiculous available items.
miracle-of-miracles
"Alchemizer's this machine that takes things and combines them into other things if you feed it grist - grist comes out of dead monsters, it's a thing. Anyway, it's handy for making random cool shit, but it's really good at weapons. Like, you can toss a weapon in there with pretty much any other object and it'll come out ready to massacre things. It's kind of a hobby of mine. As you might be able to tell."
first-loyalty
"Yes. I'm beginning to wonder if your world even has mages of a kind I would recognize..."
miracle-of-miracles
"Well, we've got a mage. She's the planet-burny one. But that's just her Fated Role. Is it like... a species for you guys?"
first-loyalty
"Not exactly. Some people are mages, and some aren't. The only relationship with species is that dwarves don't produce mages at all. But we three are the only people with fated roles I know of and there are many more mages than that. And mine is not Mage."
first-loyalty
She inspects some more wands, looking for one she would be willing to pick up even if the fate of the world were not at stake.
miracle-of-miracles
There are fewer wands than blades, and they are, fortunately, the least ridiculous of the bunch. Apart from the FROGINATRIX 3000, which may be politely ignored.
Searching eventually turns up a silvery wand with a shining blue stone in its handle. The tip glows faintly cyan.
Searching eventually turns up a silvery wand with a shining blue stone in its handle. The tip glows faintly cyan.
first-loyalty
Acceptable. She picks that one up and looks over to see how Stalas and Sefton are doing.
not-only
Methodically sorting through sharp objects! Why do so many of them have faces. They are watching him. It is no good.
first-and-final
Stalas is being slightly less methodical about his search, but is equally disconcerted by the faces. The face-emblazoned swords are getting piled on a separate table so he doesn't have to look at them.
miracle-of-miracles
Not all of the silly blades have faces! Many are just covered in fur, or made out of razor-sharp teddy bears, or similar. (One notable broadsword is constructed entirely out of pornographic magazines.)
There's still some viable weapons in the stacks, though. Many basically just look like swords (or daggers, as the case may be). One pair of daggers emit a faint haze of caustic red smoke; another dagger glows with what would appear to be the shining light of Hope.
There's no Hope sword, but there is one which, when Stalas touches it, begins to burn a startlingly familiar shade of blue.
There's still some viable weapons in the stacks, though. Many basically just look like swords (or daggers, as the case may be). One pair of daggers emit a faint haze of caustic red smoke; another dagger glows with what would appear to be the shining light of Hope.
There's no Hope sword, but there is one which, when Stalas touches it, begins to burn a startlingly familiar shade of blue.
first-and-final
"...Well, among other things lyrium is technically in my blood... under ordinary circumstances, it's a magical substance which most people are well advised to keep out of their circulatory systems."
first-and-final
"Um, most kinds of magic, really, in our world's terms... I'm an outrageous fluke, most people with this much lyrium in them are either dead or well on their way. There are mostly-safe ways for mages like Katrin to power spells with it, and mostly-safe ways for dwarves or magically deadened non-dwarves to enchant weapons with it, and supposedly-safe ways for humans to use it to get special powers, but apparently the special powers come with an addiction that eventually destroys your mind, and all they seem to be good for is disrupting other magic of the same kind."
miracle-of-miracles
"Cool! Can I have some? I wanna alchemize a lyriumsword so I can stab people with deadly magic poison!"