redshiftrp | Video @Pratt

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Video @Pratt

[The video opens with a idyllic shot of horses grazing in a pasture with a barn in the background. Well idyllic if you discount the fact that they're clearly on the agriculture level of Beacon, one of the horses is glowing and the other is Branwen and that some of the other animals in the paddock are mutated deer. It's about as close to scenic as this place gets.]

Kieran and I have been working on getting a ranch going up here. Cho's been doing tests on the deer and they're good to eat so I'm gonna try and get a little herd going. But then over here...

[The camera pans to some cleared areas nearby with the smoothness of someone who has used their phone to film hundreds of Vine videos back home.]

I thought we could start some sort of farm? I've grown tomatoes before but I don't know anything about farming, I'm more the livestock sort. So if anyone wants to work on this, you're more than welcome.

Actually if anyone wants to help with any of this feel free. But don't try to pet the deer. They're not friendly.

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Oh right. You can use them to mow the grass. Now I'm sad we don't have sheep.

I have one rune infused rock that will make a dome to protect plants from the elements but it's not very big. Maybe ten feet wide? And the weather inside here seems to be fairly stable.

Do you have different ones to encourage plants to grow and stuff? That'd be useful.

[Thank you Carlisle for teaching him this so he just accepts that runes will help plants grow.]

No uh.. the police? I'm a cop.

Maybe we'll find some!

[ Yes, he really is just that optimistic. ]

Oh! You've already got a rune! That's awesome. Who made it? Can I see it? I really want to see it.

[ He wants to compare it to the ones he has learned and invented, to see whether there is possibly another Icelandic mage in this place, which would honestly just be the best right about now. ]

Yeah, I know quite a few to help crops grow and ward off blights and help the soil maintain the right moisture. I'll be sure to add some to protect the plants from any ranch animals that might get ideas about nibbling them.

[ Reynir might have grown up in a world without police procedurals, and be unfamiliar with the rank of deputy, but he at least knows what a cop is. Which... doesn't mean his ideas about it aren't naive: ]

Oh! That's cool. That must be a super exciting job, huh? I bet you have so many exciting stories...

A man named Carlisle made it for me back in Hadriel; where I was before this. He gave it to me so that I could grow some plants because it was cold and icy outside, and this kept it temperate.

I don't have it with me, it's in my room. I haven't turned it on yet because I'm not sure if it'll work here, and I'm a little worried that without him here it might stop working after a while. It has to be recharged and he showed me how, but I'm not.. magical or whatever.

[Wow that is a lot of eager optimism all in one person.]

A little too exciting near the end.

[ He has no idea where Hadriel is but he figures it is probably somewhere out in the Silent World or maybe even the name of an old city. Not really too important at the moment. ]

Hmm. I've never heard of runes that need recharging before, so I have no idea if it would work or not or if I could recharge it. Sorry. Magic's kind of different in different regions.

But I could probably whip you up another rune to help regulate the temperature and growing conditions if you ever need it. That's like... super easy basic stuff.

[ He had wanted to be learning things much more dangerous and complicated than how to make dirt good and plants happy but those are the skills he has now and at least he can get some good from them. ]

Oh! And if any of your deer get sick or injured I can help out with that. I grew up helping with the sheep and also I recently did a couple weeks on animal well-being and care in this course I took, so there's that.

[ Reynir, not wanting to make any assumptions, and not sure he has the context to really guess at what Pratt might be referring to (had things gone badly wrong or maybe he'd just grown too old to deal with the job) and so he prompts: ]

What do you mean, too exciting?

He said that it was working by feeding off my energy, so I had to recharge it every so often. But it's actually turned off now and I don't know how to turn it on. It's probably the same way I recharged it, but I haven't tried.

Oh sweet. I had horses back home, so I'm familiar with some of those things, but I dunno if deer get colic or anything. We hunted them in the woods, no one farmed them before. Probably because they're skittish assholes that keep getting tangled in the fence.

[He likes his herd of deer, but they're idiots and they keep trying to gore him when he has to rescue them from getting stuck.]

We had uh... A problem with a cult. That was killing people and kidnapping them. It was a lot more than a couple of county deputies were prepared to handle.

[ Definitely a different mage tradition this person was working with, because the idea of turning a rune on or off is certainly not the way it works when Reynir does it. As soon as the pattern was complete, that was it. Done. He's intrigued, but he also gets that asking this guy to explain how someone else's magic works probably isn't the most efficient way.

Still he's pretty tempted. ]

You had horses?

[ Oh snap we got a rich guy over here! ]

Hmm. Sheep are idiots, too. Do you have any dogs to help?

[ Reynir honestly can't imagine managing a herd without at least two dogs, it would just be a disaster. If deer are as uncooperative as it sounds, Pratt will definitely need reinforcements.

There's silence for a few seconds after Pratt explains. While Reynir has heard of cults, the idea of one that was kidnapping and killing people - multiple people! - is extremely shocking to him. He'd grown up in a deeply different cultural context - one in which the human population had been almost completely devastated by disease, and continues to be in constant peril from actual monsters. The idea of humans voluntarily and intentionally killing other humans, uninfected ones, is jarring and horrifying. ]

That's- so awful, why would they... were they being controlled by malevolent spirits?

[ Yep, that really is the first and most rational explanation, according to Reynir's experience of the world. ]

Edited 2019-09-18 17:02 (UTC)

I had a few when I was young, only have the one now. I live in the middle of nowhere so there's plenty of space to ride without running into anyone.

I have a wolf. Who is not much of a herder because she wants to eat them. But she can at least chase them into places. Sort of. It's something anyway.

[He pauses, unsure how to answer that last question as it's something he's never been asked before.]

No? They were just fucking religious zealots. They thought God talked through them which justified everything they did.

To them anyway.

Did you like that? Having so much space?

[ Reynir would hate that, personally, but he can kind of understand the appeal on an abstract level. If you grew up in a town as tiny as his, everyone was in everyone else's business 24/7. He'd definitely had days when he was a teenager when he fantasized about becoming a hermit somewhere, even if he's far too fond of people for it to have ever worked for more than a day, maximum. ]

What country are you from?

[ Reynir is gradually adjusting to the fact that this place is full of foreigners not only from places outside the known world, but from other worlds entirely. It's all so wild and mind-bending but he's doing his best to adjust. And he is ferociously curious. Maybe Pratt came from a place with palm trees. Reynir's still not sure what those are but he really really wants to know.

...although maybe not the most pressing topic at the moment because Pratt's really upset, and Reynir doesn't blame him. There's a silence for a few moments, even though the audio is transmitting, in which Reynir is too stunned even to say anything. Then, with a level of shock that indicates he's genuinely appalled at even the idea of the kind of thing Pratt is talking about: ]

...But that's horrible.

[ What kind of a god would ask their followers to do that? Reynir can't wrap his head around it. ]

I can't believe people would do that.

[ And he really does sound like he's having a hard time adjusting to this information. Truly, this is a boy from a world without true crime shows. Or any sort of education on world history. Who had grown up without even news reports from Reykjavik, where crime rates might be a minuscule amount higher. Even in the context of his own world, Reynir is... extremely sheltered. ]

Edited 2019-09-20 07:38 (UTC)

I've lived there my whole life so I don't really know. I've been to New York once, and LA, but never for long enough to know if I'd like living in a city. Probably not. I'm used to being able to get away from everyone.

America. I'm from Montana.

[He shrugs sadly, even before the cult he's seen enough terrible things in his tenure as a deputy that he's pretty much lost faith in humanity and expects the worst all the time.]

What are people like where you're from?

I don't know whether I'd like living in a city, either. I've only been to Reykjavík for a few days.

[ There are doubtless people in Reynir's world - scholars - who would know some things about New York or LA or America. Reynir is not one of those people. So, with audible embarrassment: ]

I'm sorry. I haven't heard of any of those places.

[ And he really does sound apologetic about it. It's just bringing home to him how limited his scope of the world is, interacting with people here. There might have been a time when he would have answered Pratt's question by saying that the people where he's from are the same as people anywhere. But he's learned that that isn't the case. There are differences. It is just that working out exactly how to describe them is challenging. ]

Provincial.

[ Harsh, but accurate. ]

I grew up in a very small village where nothing much happened. Nothing awful like... that cult, but nothing really exciting, either. Anyone who has ambitions or wants to do anything different at all leaves for the military, if they can, or to get a job in the city.

Reykjavík? Iceland?

[ Well at least he's heard of it. Having people who seemed to be from Earth was a little reassuring. Most of the people he'd met in Hadriel had been from other planes of existence or not human or from different dimensions. There was something familiar and grounding about being from the same world even if different times or places.]

Before the cult, Hope County was like that. I mostly answered calls about noise complaints and drunk drivers. There's not a lot there. Which means not a lot of jobs either so people tend to leave. They usually come back later - but that's because they come to take care of their parents or family, not usually because they want to.

I think once you leave it can be hard to come back to a place where everyone knows you and remembers that time you peed your pants in third grade or drove a car into a fence accidentally.

Yeah, that's it!

[ So Pratt's aware of Iceland - enough to recognize the name of the capital - and Reynir has just absolutely no idea where Montana might have been on Earth. Is it in the south? Are there palm trees? He is honestly going to have to see if he can find any information on Old World Earth in this place because his lack of knowledge is rapidly becoming very embarrassing. It had never really mattered before. Compared to most people in his world he's travelled to he ends of the known world. It's just that the known world is a hell of a lot smaller than it used to be.

Reynir's answer to Pratt's description of his home is a bright and delighted laugh. ]

Well, Hope County may not be in Iceland but it sounds like there's a lot in common. I guess small towns are the same everywhere, huh?

[ He hasn't met many people here who he can relate to, much. They're all from such very different worlds. So it's nice, to find this one thing in common with someone else. ]

In Brúardalur everyone still thinks I'm this totally clueless, helpless, naive kid that has to be sheltered from the world.

[ Definitely... none of that's still true... not one bit... ]

I thought I'd be more homesick when I first arrived, but - it's actually been sort of cool. Like, an adventure. Just a lot less dangerous than the other adventures I've been on since I left home.

[ Then, because he wants to know more about Pratt and his life but he's not exactly sure how to ask: ]

Did you actually drive your car into a fence or was that just a random example?

They really are. I dunno what it is about small towns that make people all kind of.. set in their ways and weird about stuff.

[ He felt like he was pretty open minded, though that was probably just in comparison to people who had never even left the valley before. Hadriel had reminded him that he's still just a country boy who has no idea how cities work or anything about technology beyond his xbox and cell phone. ]

Worse, I drove someone else's car into a fence. And then I had to work all summer to pay for the repairs instead of having the summer off.

I guess this is kind of an adventure, but it'd have been nice to know about it in advance. I would have brought different things than a shovel and an empty canteen.

[He also wouldn't have agreed to go on this particular adventure, but that's beside the point. ]

Maybe it's all the boredom. Rots people's brains.

[ He's kidding. Well, mostly. But it's really nice, actually, talking to someone else who feels a disconnect from the way people think in the place he'd grown up. It isn't that the people in his village are evil, or stupid, or anything like that. They just... valued safety above everything else. And they had lost their curiosity, about the world. Reynir had lived amongst them and loved them and made friends easily, but one day it just... wasn't enough. ]

That's awful. So, are cars really expensive?

[ Look... it's not like he's never seen a car! There were LOADS of them in the Silent World, littered all over the place. And he's been behind the wheel of a military transport! But cars aren't in civilian use anymore, so he's got no clue how hard paying off the repairs for that and a fence would be. ]

Yeah, I can see how that reputation wouldn't exactly be fun.

[ He also wonders what kind of joyride Pratt was taking but he feels like he's already asking so many questions that it might be rude to heap another on the pile... ]

That's the thing about adventures. In my... okay, limited... experience, they're pretty much always a surprise in one way or another.

[ Okay maybe just ONE more question because he really is curious: ]

What would you have brought?

That's probably it. Something about being safe all the time and not having to do anything or experience new things makes them stagnant. Or like... stale. I dunno. It was starting to get kinda hard to live with.

Not that I wanted to move because I'd be out of place anywhere else, but I was kind of silently wishing people would change.

Guess they have now.

[This is some sort of monkey paw wish. They changed alright. Into monsters willing to kill each other for a religious fanatic, and ready to destroy their community for the Collapse that no one could prove was happening.]

They can be expensive. It wasn't that much but I was a kid and I didn't have a bunch of money sitting around. My parents paid it and then I had to pay them back. It sucked. And every time I did anything even kinda wrong they'd bring it up. If I ever scuff the squad car it'll come back up. It was over a decade ago.

Food. More clothes. Supplies for farming. Guns. I dunno, I feel kinda unprepared to start a whole society from scratch.

[ Reynir knows that feeling, too - of not quite fitting at home, and not fitting anywhere else, too. The closest he had felt to having a place he belongs had been... on the expedition. With his friends. Gods, he misses them.

And then when Pratt mentions how people changed in Hope County, Reynir remembers about the murder-y cult all over again and says, voice sorrowful: ]

I'm sorry about the cult. As suffocating as my village felt sometimes... I would never want something like that to be the thing that stirs it up.

[ He winces in sympathy when Pratt explains that his parents had had to pay and he'd had to pay them back. If they're anything like his own parents, he can just imagine the lectures. So many lectures. ]

Well, for what it's worth, I promise to never to bring it up ever again.

[ He means that, too. ]

[Aw Reynir, he likes you.]

It's fine, chances are I'm not crashing any cars here. I'm actually a pilot, but I don't think there's a whole lot of helicopters in this place. Would be nice though, we could explore more of what's outside without actually having to walk through it.

There might be huge ravines and stuff out there.

Aren't there any cars or tanks or anything?

[ Then, after a beat, completely credulously: ]

What's a helicopter?

[ In his defense, he at least knows what airplanes used to be! But Pratt can explain it to him; catching up is going to be a long process and it's good to have met someone new, who has a little in common with him, to help him with some of it. ]

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Video @Pratt

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