wilderlogs | We are the people that you'll never get the best of (Open)

Who: Anita, and all comers
What: Arriving, exploring, catching up and preparing for what looks like is gonna be a long roadtrip.
Where: Camp 1: Melai Temple
When: About a day and a half after the original crew encamps, until departure.
Warnings/Notes: Violence against animals/animal death. Nothing else I can think of at this point, if it changes I'll edit this. While everything up here's been written in prose, I'll switch to bracket/action spam too.

Cut to now, holy wow (Anita + Kon)

Anita's followed the subtle, barely unconscious pull through the forest until she can hear the sound of music without straining, all the time doing her best to be careful of her footing and the path she takes. There's something unearthly about being here, beyond normal mortal moments. Closer to when she would perform rituals with her grandmere and others, before Anita's grandmother died.

Soon enough though, the sight of a large and ornate building peeks through the trees, and she sighs in relief.

And once she hits a clearing near what seems to be an entrance, she comes into view of a familiar looking person who looks older than she last saw them, only a few hours ago. "Kon?"

Can somebody come and take this off my chest? (Open)
Going out past the immediate temple grounds to forage seemed like a good idea, at the time.

It's in the middle of said foraging (after successfully having found a variety of root vegetables that she's reasonably certain are good for eating) that she hears the gruntling and squealing coming from the trees behind her, and she freezes, slowly turning around.

Wild boar.

Several of them.

Anita has just enough time to pull one of her blades out and dive to the right as an immense boar comes down on where she was a few seconds ago, the only sign that it was that close the flash of steel and splatter of hot blood, with angry squealing.

While she might not want to kill all of them, and would certainly prefer not to, if it comes down to herself versus thinning down the local population, it isn't that much of a hard choice if she can't stave enough of them off or get away.

Some help could come in handy right about now.

If your shit is not together it'll never be (Open)

In the downtime at night, once it's become slightly too cold, and fires have been started up to stave off the bite of the chill, Anita can be caught staring into the fire, thinking, or finishing up tying up a braid done from her hair, now whiptight and temporarily tamed.

And, if your hair is long enough for the same treatment: "Want me to do yours, too?"

Plant the seed open up and let it be (Open)

Anita scavenges from the remaining supplies a bag of her own from an old sack, and is able to fashion a strap for it to make for easier carrying. Flint, a small set of needles embedded in a pincushion along with thread, and a whetstone all soon find their way into the bag.

There are good odds on finding her examining the remaining cloaks and blankets, trying to sort out the ones with less holes and still with a chance of being able to hold out the weather compared to the rest.

That is all the time you got to make your point (Open)

None of these fit? Feel free to go with something of your own.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Entire legions of us. Twe... eighteen, to be exact." His face falls, "Some of us turned traitor, however."

He pauses, "Oh, I should clarify what I mean by a legion. About one hundred thousand to three hundred Astartes, depending on how many were inducted and other factors."

"There had to be a lot of us. We were the tip of humanity's sphere to bring light into a galaxy overrun by the superstitions and alien terrors of Old Night."

That is simultaneously a big explanation and not one at the same time. "Uh, okay."

There's a momentary pause. "Do I want to know what 'alien terrors of the Old Night' are, or am I better off just not knowing?"

"If you never see them, you shall be happier for it. But we warred against everything from the brutal orks, massive green-skinned primitive warriors with a mishmash of barely functioning technology to the strange eldar, who were as liable to enslave and murder entire human colonies as to ignore them entirely."

He smiles a little "The eldar were worthy foes, though a lot of them were strange and mystic, or in some kind of single-minded warrior cult."

He looks a bit sheepish, then says, "Garviel Loken. Sorry I didn't give my name earlier. I don't speak with many people outside of my warrior brotherhood too often."

He grimaces, "At least, I didn't until I came here."

She's starting to get the feeling that where ever he came from, this place might actually have a leg up on it. Even if it does sound vaguely fantasy-novel for space, but with all the superheroes and space aliens that end up on earth she can't really talk, there.

"Anita Fite," she says, by way of introduction. He introduced himself, it's doesn't make sense to do anything but the same. "I get what you mean, this is definitely a mixed bunch, and if it's only the people in your legions who're that big, on top of everything else you do... well, I can see why you might not mix too much with everyone else."

At least, she assumes he's basically an active soldier, because of being the 'tip of the spear', as he put it.

"You are correct. I spoke mostly to Iterators, the occasional unmodified army commander, or tec-priests who maintained my wargear. Or more recently my personal remembrancer. Your appearance reminded me of her a bit. She was rather older, though."

He grins. "Anita Fite. A name or an invitation?"

Anita grins back up at him. As awful of a pun as it is, inflicted on her by her parent...

"In my case, it's both." The baton fastened to her back backs this up, even if her Empress outfit doesn't compare to armor that he might be used to.

"Then you and I shall get along well."

He nods his head if only slightly.

"I used to fight with bolter and blade, grenade or artillery. It seems all but the blade are precluded here. And I am without my war-plate."

He doesn't mention the fight he's most proud of winning was one where he strangled a space elf with a single piece of rusty wire. That might give her the wrong impression about him as a person.

"While it seems pretty low-tech here, if we got hold of the right stuff and had time to make it, it doesn't rule out some kinds of explosives, I think. You're probably out of luck with the rest." The idea of someone that big with a sword in a fight is almost intimidating on its own.

She can't really judge on space elf strangling, she nearly killed her own grandfather due to the man being evil and twisting the magical and spiritual laws of nature for his own purposes.

"So I've gathered. Most of the explosives I know how to improvise require heavily processed chemicals, so I may be at something of a loss there." He looks around, "Fortunately, this place is peaceful, if eerie. It reminds me a little of a garden I tried to maintain once."

"It's... what's the word..." Anita looks thoughtful, trying to dredge up a piece of high school English vocabulary. "I think... liminal? That's it. A place like this. It's spiritual. We might not know who or what it's dedicated to, but it's made its impact here. Like it's pulled slightly away from the waking world we're used to. And a garden, huh?"

"Yes. It was on Luna. It was formerly maintained by a sister of silence before she was slain, and after that by me. I fought a little war there keeping ants and other insects from harming the vegetation, and was eventually visited by a specter of my past."

Loken looks around again. "I suppose the garden was a liminal space in its own way, though I didn't realize it at the time. I just saw it as a refuge from my past, and a place to wait for my future."

"Luna? Do you mean the moon?" She pauses, before, "Earth's moon, I mean."

In this dusty, now disturbed space, the conversation almost takes on a different tone. "It sounds like it was nice while it lasted.'

"It was peaceful. But duty and debts of honor called me back into active duty once more."

He nods when she asks if he meant the moon.

"Yes, I meant the moon of Terra, homeworld of humanity."

"Where I'm from, it's our only planet, at least so far. There're other species out there that look like us, though."

And in one case, an entire planet that's modeled after old-fashioned New York City, accent and all.

"I kind of wonder how this is going to turn out for us, since we're starting off scavenging things." Even the bag she's using isn't that great, and she probably should switch it out for something more rugged.

"I've fought battles with less. They weren't easy though. I haven't seen many swords, or even a spear or an axe, so if we're here to fight we're going to probably accept that our enemy will e better farmed than us.?

He folds his arms, looking somewhat pugnacious as if to provoke the world into taking a swing at him.

"It just means we have to fight harder than them." Both for obvious reasons and the practical. Anita might have a weapon, but unless they can disarm anyone they face who might be armed, it doesn't leave much good for them.

"Fighting harder is one way of winning, but the best battles are the sort you win without drawing a blade in the first place. We should concentrate on evading out foes if we can't best them with main force."

Loken shrugs. While normally Astartes can just crush any problem they come across, the idea of subtlety isn't lost on all of them. Well, at least not the smarter among them.

We are the people that you'll never get the best of (Open)

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