The Royal Artificery Society - IC II

[DeTess]

"I'm Elin." The woman introduced herself. "I run the fishing boats that keep this restaurant as well as several other places stocked. You worked with Ulrik during that festival competition, right? He talked quite a bit about it."

[WindStruck]

Shandara nods and smiles a bit. "Ah yes. The competition we won too.. along with a few others. It was quite a challenge, and a learning experience. Might be fun doing it again next year, though that is quite a ways off."

"A good team I must say. If we were missing any one person it would have never worked."

[DeTess]

Bluefin's rest
Elin nodded. "That's one of my brother's strengths. He knows how to ensure everyone is pulling their weight." At that moment several men entered the tavern, and Ulrik got up to greet them. They where similar in build to the shipbuilder, large strong men with weathered faces, clearly used to hard work on or near the water.

"Though he has his weaknesses too..." Elin added while her brother was otherwise engaged, and gave Shandara an appraising eye. "Such as not always being able to read the mood in social settings. I might be misreading you, but you seemed a bit wary at the idea of the party. You seem more the type to enjoy a quiet dinner with friends, not the rowdier affairs you can expect from folk of the sea."

the Royal Artificery Society archives
Bolten spend a day digging through the archives, and was rewarded with a wealth of knowledge on the art of teleportation. Quite a few tomes and papers had been written on the subject, as it was still very much an active field of research. Short-range teleportation, covering distances no longer than a few dozen feet was a mostly solved problem, though research was still being done in making the process more energy efficient for easier sue in enchantments. Mid-range teleportation, out to about a mile was a more difficult prospect, but still had a number of solutions that allowed for the feat, though it relied on enchanted objects to aid the caster.

The real holy grail of the field, long-distance teleportation of goods and people over hundreds if not thousands of miles was quite another matter. Based on the books Bolten found on the subject, achieving long distance humanoid teleportation had been consistently considered about 10 years away.... for the past 50 years or so. That's not to say no progress had been made whatsoever. According to a recent paper discussing the state of the art, a total of three sets of 'teleportation gates' had been established, each linking the capital to another major city in the empire, the furthest of which was almost a 1000 miles from the capital. However, operation these gates to allow even the passage of a single person required tremendous amounts of energy, enough that even powerful mages would need a full day recover before they could send another person. According to the paper, the gates where currently only used for experiments or emergencies, and the author suspected it would take at least another decade before the energy use would be optimized enough for more regular use.

During his research Bolten also encountered a book called 'Magical transportation for travellers in a hurry', which discussed a variety of means by which one could employ magic to travel long distances quickly. The book had a chapter on teleportation, but mostly dismissed it as a viable method at the time of writing ('though that could change within the next decade'), but it discussed several other methods as well. By far the quickest of these was a method referred to as 'extraplanar shortcuts', which seemed to involve travelling to a plane of existence close to the material plane, travelling some distance there, then travelling back to cover a far greater distance in the material plane. While moving back and forth between these planes still costs large amounts of magic, it was still a lot more doable to move a group of people and material this way than through teleportation gates, and with far more freedom regarding the start and end point. The main risk involved was that the two planes suitable for this method where both rather dangerous places. The author makes little mention of the exact dangers involved, but refers those interested to a group called the Fernhal courier association.

[WindStruck]

Shandara looks down and says, "Erm.. yes. I think that about sums it up. I don't think I'd fit in with that bunch."

"..and I suppose that's fine. It would not do to force other people into situations they aren't comfortable with."

[DeTess]

Bluefin's rest
"Don't worry, he won't take it badly if you turn down his offer for that reason." Elin gave Shandara a friendly smile, though the dark elf could detect a hint of relief in her bearing when Shandara confirmed she'd rather miss a party like that.

Spoiler: OOC: sense motive

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Shandara does not get any feeling of malice or deceit from Elin, but she does get the sense that the woman had another reason for wanting Shandara to miss out on the party.

[WindStruck]

Shandara could tell something was amiss, but couldn't put her finger on what. Suspicion flared as she ran through a bunch of petty reasons this woman could want her gone in her mind.. but ultimately they didn't seem that important, and Shandara didn't think she wanted to stay just to spite Elin.

"Well, I suppose I still feel like a meal, but if Ulrik and all his friends are coming here I think I had better find another table... Or would that just be awkward?"

Hm. Maybe if everyone stayed it would just be far too cramped with a bunch of big men sitting at one table. Shandara looked around and thought maybe she'd have to get up and talk to the host at the front again.

[DeTess]

"That shouldn't be an issue at all, I actually had a room in the back reserved to ensure the party doesn't spill over too much in the common room." Elin explained. "We were waiting out front to greet the guests, but will go there once more people arrive." She cast a glance in the direction of Ulrik, who was in the process of welcoming more acquaintances and friends who had arrived. "That would be right around now, I think. I'll let my husband know your meal is on us though, so enjoy your dinner!" Elin got up and joined Ulrik and his friends, gesturing towards a door set further back into the restaurant.

Ulrik and the others started heading there, though Ulrik took a moment to stop by Shandara's table. "Thanks for stopping by. Also my apologies for inviting you without considering it might not be your kind of party. Anyway, regarding the woodwork, how about we meet up here for dinner, four days from now? I'll invite along Feathers or the person from the Escribano workshop. Does that work for you?"

[WindStruck]

"Oh, in four days? Hm," Shandara says. "Well, I was going to try stopping by the Escribano workshop to inquire about who built that boat model. But I suppose I could come back regardless and tell you how it went."

[DeTess]

"Allright, I'll meet you then!" Ulrik hurried off to join his comrades, leaving Shandara to her meal.

[WindStruck]

Although Shandara was reluctant to admit it, when she had seen Aiden's name (albeit seemingly misspelled) on the commission for the boat model, perhaps, she thought, perhaps she might want to reconsider going through him for the work on the spirit wood. Was it a sign? Maybe. Although she doubted any of the gods would want to bother influencing her life, aside from maybe one who might do so for the worst...

One late afternoon, she arrives at the Fiddle and Saw with Xavier and a cloth-wrapped spirit wood in her possession. She raps on the front door of the shop, still thinking maybe she should reconsider. Though if anything, it may at least make Aiden happy to see the effects of the divination spell she had developed.

[MrAbdiel]

There's a pause before an answer, but the hurry of footsteps within forecasts his coming.

"It's okay, it's a storefront, you don't have to knock. You can just-"


The bell on the door's interior jingles merrily as the carpenter pulls it open, presenting him in much the same form as when Shandara has encountered him out and about or on planned visitations, with the exception of an extra seasoning of sawdust on his overalls and sleeves. A flash of confusion on his face is quickly dissolved into predictable glee.

"Shandara and Xavier! An unscheduled pleasure! Come though, come through, I'm just grooving up the flanks of this harp, come through..."

Past the array of display furniture and carved novelties they can see one of his several workbenches with the swooping neck of a harp held gently in a vice near set-town chisels. The pillar - the straight upright element of the harp - stands detached nearby, elaborately gouged along its length with eye catching channels awaiting sanding, staining, and sealing. In the flicker of self-consciousness, he takes a moment to brush some sawdust from his person.

For all this business, he seems to not have noticed the obvious shape of the spiritwood in its shroud; neither does he show any sign of lingering bad feeling about the clash over its fate previously. The man after that conflict is not perceptibly different to the one that existed before.

"To what do I owe the pleasure?"

[WindStruck]

"Ah, right," Shandara says regarding her entry. It seemed she seemed to conflate this place more as Aiden's home, which was more or less true, but also the bottom portion of the building was indeed a shop, and knocking wouldn't be necessary. She steps inside, peering around once more at his handiwork and current project.

"Well, I thought you might want to see the results of the spell I have developed, just so you can see how intricate all the crystal veins are," she says. She unfurls the object wrapped in cloth, revealing the chunk of spirit wood.

"Um, also. I did forget you may be quite busy with other projects. The harp was so that you might still have a chance at that major project to disassemble an entire tundra oak and bring it here? Were you still interested in making cuts into the spirit wood? Of course, I would pay you for your work, but I'd like the pieces cut as directed.."

[MrAbdiel]

Aiden seems pleased that Shandara has remembered his other project - he's still going to need help with preserving the disassembled tree if, when, his proposal is accepted. But he's also excited to be working with spirit wood again, the moment it comes up. Any more gaiety in his steps, and he'd be dancing as he crosses the floor in a hurry to clear one of his benches for the sample timber.

"Oh, certainly, certainly. Happy to help. But honestly, it's just a bit of cutting; unless it somehow turns into a long and hairy sort of job, I'm happy to help without a charge. Oh - that reminds me! I have something for you, here..."

He crosses the floor again to one bench, then another around the corner when that doesn't pan out. He calls out conversationally around the bend as he searches.

"Your transparency spell paid off, then? Good, good. I've been thinking..." A pause as something around the corner almost falls and is saved by a flurry of improvisational restacking... "...That cutting the spirit wood might be the wrong approach, in the first place. Since the crystal as far as I can tell grows along the grain, we might have more luck carefully splitting pieces off from a round instead of cutting them from a block. Let the natural wood fibres parrallel to the major veins do the hard work. The wands blanks will have a more organic shape, but that was going to happen anyway with the crystal..."

[WindStruck]

"Yes, it did," Shandara responds. "Well, I suppose you're the wood expert and all, and if you think trying to split the wood along the grain works, we could try it. But there's no telling how fragile the crystal veins are. Or if the small ones reinforce the wood somehow and make it more difficult to split. Perhaps you had better try an edge of the wood that isn't near a large vein..."

"Um, what did you want to show me?" she asks.

[MrAbdiel]

"Well, I think we have some reason to believe the Crystal is reasonably durable. Even uncommonly flexible, even. After all, a wood saw - the kind of saw used to cut up the tree in the first place - isn't a remarkably delicate instrument. If you'd, say, braced some glass with wood and cut them with a saw, the glass would crack and splinter even braced. And a tree, just as a part of the world, has a certain amount of sway and flex to it, what with the wind beating on it and wobbling it about. Given that the crystal in your piece here isn't cracked up to splinters just from the act of harvest, I'd say you've got good reason to expect it's got a the toughness of something more organic. Like the wood itself. Maybe bone. Ahah! Yes, here..."

Around he comes again, his quarry held in proud presentation in his palms, for Shandara to take - a smooth little cherrywood box about half the length of her forearm, with a simple brass clasp and hinge on the long edge. "Here. I made these for you."

Spoiler: Within...

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...are a pair of spectacles nestled in a red velvet case. The frame for the circular lenses, and the arms that fold out on tiny concealed hinges, are light, and silvery. The lenses themselves are 'smoked' to a dark tint.

"I'd thought to make a set for you ever since I noticed you squinting in the sunlight by the job postings. I heard once of a fellow who suffered in the sun - born pale, and weak of eyes - who had smoked lenses. You're not of a condition, of course, but I figure they might make it a little easier to go about when it's clear and bright out. There's no magic to them - not yet, anyway. But that's just a fine silver-leaf set over a wooden frame I put together from the twigs and scraps of spirit wood good ol' Dunfen had left over when I went back looking for them. Just fragments, none big enough to make a wand or an arrow or anything much useful, but enough to work delicately together into a set of frames, I thought."

Spoiler: OOC:

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OOC: Mechanically they're just a set of glasses that do nothing right now. I was looking over Lenses of Darkness but they're insanely expensive for what they do... but if you ever decide to enchant them that way, they're made of spiritwood and I passed the roll to preserve the effectiveness of the discount to components Spiritwood grants. :)



Maybe like that, I figure.

Aiden seems rather proud of them indeed. "I had to consult with Bolten to get hinges that small, for the arms. I can work in wood, glass, stone, leather, cloth and metal, but for tiny moving parts like that, he can't be beat."

[WindStruck]

"I'm.. not sure how flexible a live spirit wood tree is.. Perhaps you are right, but I still don't think we can be certain about all its properties," Shandara says.

Accepting the box, Shandara peers down at it curiously then opens it.

...

It took a moment to register what lied within, and to appreciate the thoughtfulness of the gift. "You.. you made this for me?" She didn't know what else to say. She was flabbergasted, even as Aiden kept letting loose more details, like how the frames were actually made of spirit wood underneath the silver, and how Bolten even helped. The amount of kindness displayed seemed unprecedented and undeserved. She didn't understand why Aiden would do this, especially after the whole incident of her "sharking" "his" spirit wood. Here she was thinking their relation had become awkward again, and then he went and did this. Did he want something? Did he intend to try to curry favor with her or manipulate her? Shandara blinked and dismissed such thoughts. Aiden, whether that be considered a positive or a negative, was simply incapable of doing such.

"I.. I... Thank you..." she says. There was something in the glint of the lenses that reminded her of something. Or maybe it wasn't the material object itself, but the epitome of an experience. She closes the box and gazes pensively at Aiden for a moment. She didn't deserve this. She didn't deserve any of this. She was ruthless and methodical. Cowardly and paranoid. Weak and sickly. Speaking of weak, as Shandara's eyes briefly began to tear up, she felt her vision going dark as, for whatever reason, overwhelmed with emotions and killed by kindness, she faints and hopefully falls back onto a nice couch. But this was mostly a display area or workshop. Maybe instead, Xavier might catch her...

[DeTess]

"Miss!" Xavier was at Shandara's side in the blink of an eye, catching her. He quickly checked her condition, then addressed the carpenter. "Mr. Sorveaux, do you have a couch or something for her to rest on?"

[MrAbdiel]

Oblivious as he is to many things, the difficulty Shandara seems to encounter with the gift. A degree of worry colours the warmth in his expression he watches the drowess content with something unseen. "Well, it's my pleasure, certainly..." comes the reply, almost apologetic in its reassurance ... but then she is slackening in front of him, bound for sawdusted floor. The carpenter's heart leaps into his throat as the adrenal shock demand he do some impossible feat and get behind the woman to catch her before she hit the ground - but Xavier is there, and Aiden is more than glad of it.

"Mr. Sorveaux, do you have a couch or something for her to rest on?"

Aiden looked at Xavier's face for a moment longer than was sensible to understand the plain words, then looked to the showroom. There was all sorts of furniture there; but it tended to range from the affordable to the sturdy for those in the district that could afford them. Padded and plush things did not move quickly in the Stormdrains. Not to mention it seemed disrespectful to the enchantress to lay her out on a couch in the middle of his store. The carpenter's eyes turn up to scan the ceiling as he considers the upper floor of the house, given over to living instead of working. There was Maria's bedroom, but that would be an imposition. There was his own bedroom, but that would be inappropriate. But there was...

"The prayer room; yes, it's just up here."

With Xavier doing the carrying, Aiden led the way two steps at a time up the corner stairs to the home above the store. A modest but comfortable place, whose wooden panelling and floors were fresh and clean and accented with framed art purchased from local artists of the stormdrains - much of it, frankly, rather amateur. The quality art is that he has mostly made himself - feature panels in wooden corner beams depicting heroic and fanciful scenes from legend and lore, and wooden instruments - most of them broken - set to the walls like conversation pieces. What there isn't is a room set aside for recreation, with couches and rugs and comfort as its function; but Aiden directs Xavier to a room unlike any other he has likely been in.

At the back of the room is a low altar of white granite draped in a cloth of green silk with gold embroidery in celestial lettering around its hem. The altar is topped with an idle incense bowl, oil flasks, a bare silver plate, a small clear vial of holy water - standard fare for shrines of the middle and upper classes. A well work leather cushion before the altar speaks of a habit of kneeling, and in the centre of the room is a low set, simple, padded recamier with a mildest suggestion of a headrest. This is far less worn than the kneeling cushion, but seems to have been placed with the purpose of meditative repose. But where the furnishings were rather simple, the walls were cluttered, swarming with points of attention.

Celestial figures - hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, carved from wood into likenesses about the size of a hand and fixed to the wall each by a single screw hidden behind an ankle, or an arm, so that they seem to be leaping gaily toward the interior of the room from beyond the wall's surface. Some are sweeping abstractions in loose evocative shapes, others are rendered in dazzling detail within the medium. Some are dark ebonies and mahoganies, others lighter and sweeter birch or cherrywood. All of them are excellent quality. No two are alike. Each seems to have been conjoured from imagination and placed with regard to the crowd of its fellows around it. There are Agathions of Elysium with animal features blended into their humanoid forms; Azatae of Nirvana with fey grace in their bodies and postures; Archons of Heaven in splendid purpose and panoply. Most of all, more than all the others combined, there are angels - devas, planetars, and solars - whose wings are leafed in fine foil of copper, silver, and gold.

All of these divine figures are posed as if drawn from the wall toward the altar, so the 'momentum' of the room is weighed there heavilly; but keen eyes can seen the anomaly in the heavenly host crowding the back wall. One of the angels is inverted - he is not leaping out from the wall upright, but descending head first, arms gently to his sides, head tilted back as if to see the ground rushing up. Inversion in a divine scene is typically ghastly or eerie, suggesting some wickedness in the subject of the scene; but this seems to be an especially tender descent. The figures around the 'falling' angel soften the departure with hands and fingertips. To either side, confederates of the departing one seem to bear away his possessions with reverence - one with a harp, one with a spear, and a pair each holding a wing that strikes the observer as less lost and more yielded for safe keeping. The ceiling features an inclined skylight with a closed exterior shutter, so the room is lit only by the lamp in the hallway behind. The metallic wings of the angels glister in with even this glow; they must shine indeed, when the skylight is opened for the noonday sun.

"There, now; softest bed in the house, there, Xavier. I'll get some tea going, for when this, ah.. dizzy spell passes."

Around the corner, he confers quickly with Maria to arrange two more plates for dinner later, but a pot of tea for now. The former he wasn't sure would be needed. The latter, he expected, would not go to waste.

[WindStruck]

Shandara's limp body is carried up the stairs, though by the time Xavier has cleared the landing and has begun making his way to this prayer room, Shandara has already begun stirring in his arms. He sets her down on the recamier as she begins to come to. Her eyes pop open and she takes a sharp inhale of breath, almost as if having awakened from a nightmare. Slowly managing to sit up, she takes in her new surroundings, and briefly wonders if she was dead.

Her head swivels around as she notices the countless carved celestial figures. She had never been in a modern day, typical prayer room used by those of the empire before. And frankly, her first experience felt awfully creepy and surreal. However, she notices Xavier hovering around her, come to check on her condition again. "Wha.. what happened? Where am I?"

Xavier explains that it seemed she had fainted for some reason. They are still at the fiddle and saw. He just carried her to a room upstairs.

"Are you alright, Miss?"

Shandara weakly nodded, her head slowly clearing, though she still felt awfully gloomy. "I suppose so.."

[MrAbdiel]

"You just... fainted dead away, there..." Aiden adds, returning to the conversation with a tray in his hands with a teapot and cups, carrying the collection with the unpractised over-caution of a recent adopter. "It was quite abrupt indeed - I'm no doctor, but I think you should have an extra spoonful of sugar in your tea for a while."

He uses the tray to nudge some space on the altar for the platter of tea and proceeds to pour three cups out with predictably amateurish focus on the task.

"Have you... been sleeping alright? Eating alright..?"

[WindStruck]

"Yes, it seems so..." Shandara says. She began recollecting what had happened before and why had she fainted. Oh yes, the glasses. And now Aiden was bringing tea and furthermore asking about her welfare.

Spoiler: OOC

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Did someone say they were working on a harp?



Also, interesting prayer room...

Shandara sighed and looked down. "Aiden, that was most kind of you. Even for one so.. shall we say, hospitable, I never would have expected this..." It didn't seem she was going to answer about her food for sleeping habits.

"I don't know why I fainted just then. Perhaps it had something to do with what I was researching earlier. It dealt heavily with emotions. And I certainly felt a lot just then.. too many all at once I suppose..."

She continued to stare down at the floor, not wanting to look Aiden in the eyes, or at all the wooden figurines. "Aiden.. I'm sorry I've been such a terrible friend. After our disagreement with the spirit wood, I don't think I have any right to accept such a gift."

But what was she saying? After all the work he did, what else would he do with it? "But I suppose I'll have to, otherwise it will only insult you and disappoint you further."

"That's all I have done to you, haven't I?"

[MrAbdiel]

The carpenter is silent for a moment. A smile of sympathetic pain for Shandara's self deprecation goes unseen as the drowess fixes her eyes on the floor. Aiden kneels to pour the tea using the altar as a table - and as a pretext to lower himself to nearer the seated elf's eye level without condescending to her.

"Shandara... I'd been thinking about making those spectacles for you as soon as I noticed you might benefit from them. And I thought I'd used the spirit wood for them the moment we'd purchased the piece, and it looked like I'd be cutting it up for use with suitable offcuts to spare. Why, once we'd moved on to using the tundra oak for the ranger's violin, the reason I was anxious to get my hands on any spirit wood at all was to make them. But after we clashed about it, I put the rush on that project because I wanted to show you there were no hard feelings about it - none, not at all."

The whisper of a porcelain cup rocking gently in its saucer fills the quiet for a moment as he sets a presumptuous serving of tea on the recamier beside her.

"I was upset for a little, yes, but it was just a misunderstanding. We're from different worlds, you and I-", the statement pregnant with possible interpretations is quickly found to be meaning only its mildest, "- I'm country, and you're city. We come to things like that transaction with different assumptions and then there's misunderstandings. That's all it is. You're not a bad friend or a disappointment or anything like it. I'm glad to know you."

Spoiler: OOC:

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Ooh, classic Zelda harpery! Good scene music, too.

And it's a perfectly normal prayer room idontknowwhatyouretalkingabout

[WindStruck]

"To think that was your motivation.. I thought you just wanted to make instruments out of it," Shandara says with an almost sad, wry smile. "I suppose I should have asked."

She glances over at the tea at her side and says, "Two different worlds. It's more than simply country and city. I don't know if I can ever impress that enough upon you. But at the same time, I don't want to go into all the details."

"It's not that trying to explain to you would be a waste of time. Just that.. where I grew up, things were truly terrifying. You could never trust anyone. And most everyone worshiped a dark goddess, or at least, acted like it I imagine. Because to dissent from that was to be put to death."

A silence lingered in the air and Shandara glanced over at the cup of tea again. She didn't think she wanted to pick it up though. If she kept going how she thought she might keep going, she might not be welcome to finish it.

"Perhaps I could tell you a secret, Aiden. Something I've told no one since I arrived at the surface. Maybe then you might reconsider if you want to be my friend. If you really want to know me."

[MrAbdiel]

Aiden smiled faintly - he did that a lot - at the suggestion that he might have intended to make instruments of the spiritwood. "...Well. I might well have done that, too; there's a certain enchanted lyre I've been dreaming of crafting for a while, now. But I wouldn't have told you, if you had asked, about the glasses. Not to spoil the surprise, you see."

But when she speaks of the place she came from, the nadir of violence and suffering in the dark places where the sun's warmth has never touched down, he has no flippant commentary. He merely glances up as she speaks of secrets to Xavier's figure just outside the door professionally out of earshot, at these conspiratorial tones. He heard the weight of her words, the burden of the loneliness in them, and finally stopped fiddling with the tea tray, orphaning his own cup to refine his focus on the drowess.

"Well... I do want those things. Let me make it fair - if you trust me enough to share something so private, I'll tell you a secret of my own."

Simple and honorbound as he is, intuition would suggest he is definitely the kind that could keep a secret - though it may be hard to imagine he possesses any organic ones.

"What's your secret, Shandara?"

[WindStruck]

Shandara slowly turns and eyes her body guard at the door. "Xavier, could you give us some more distance for a moment?" She was asking the half-orc to not do his job, and he must have looked concerned about it. "Just.. two minutes. Or three. Rap on the wall when you are about to return."

She turns back, but only to gaze at the ground again. Or perhaps, the alter and the cushion before it.

"My mother was a slave trader, and I often had to help with some of her.. more menial duties." Finally she looks up at the sympathetic man before her and asks, "Do you have any idea what that entails?"

Spoiler: ooc

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Surely Aiden isn't as clueless as he seems all the time. Especially with that bardic knowledge.

[MrAbdiel]

When Shandara looks up, having made such a bleak confession of participation in such an enterprise, into the trade of thinking and feeling beings, Aiden's expression is so open, neutral, and free of the moral disgust such things typically bring involuntarily to the eyes that it is difficult to believe he heard her at all. But he did; and he answers her question.

"...You had to... hurt them? The slaves? Break their spirits..?"

[WindStruck]

Shandara almost lies when she says, "Not.. not always..."

"Think of it like .. maintaining animals. Trapped in cages, locked in chains. People like you, your mother, your neighbors, Bolten, all fair game. So many were already broken. Oh, but the hopeful look in their eyes, sometimes..."

She murmurs on, musing to herself. "It feels like I hardly spoke a word.. at least at first. It went on long enough, somehow I picked up a number of languages. But I had to stop talking to them. So many yearned for freedom, for sweet release from their nightmare. But of course, I could do nothing. I could barely even leave that place myself."

[MrAbdiel]

Aiden listens. He can hardly do more. To be saddled with such a duty over such desperate souls sounds to him like a remarkable torture all of its own.

He listens; and discharges some weight of misery from the imagining with a soft sigh.

"...And now you see them all around, I suppose; people like me, and Bolten, and other kinds you were once responsible to treat in such a way. But you did leave, after all. Is... Xavier on your payroll for fear of those who would... try to take you back?"

[WindStruck]

Shandara nods slowly. "I .. still catch myself thinking things like that sometimes. Not as often as before. But of course, I know I mussn't. This is not.. 'our society'. It is 'yours'..."

"And I think I should add: it's a lot more favorable living here in most circumstances..."

When Aiden brings up Xavier, Shandara's face grimaces, almost a grim grin and she nods again. "Oh, they'd do worse than take me back.. perhaps if I was lucky, they'd merely kill me in my sleep, or broad daylight even."

[MrAbdiel]

He frowns at the implications, a tightness in his face as if holding his face in a non-smiling position was a considerably unnatural effort.

"That's... an unbelievable amount of threat and guilt to walk around under. Around other people, reminded of how things used to be; alone, afraid of how they might still be. I can't imagine it. How... How common is it, for a woman in a position like yours to risk so much to escape to the surface? There must be many thousands of drow, in the Underdark; but I've only ever seen you walking in the sun."