Laios's Heart Game

[myhungryass]

It's dark, and you are not quite conscious. You have the sense that you are climbing; that you have been climbing for a long time. You can feel the burn in your thighs, the ache in your calves. You're a little too hot, and what you're wearing is a little too heavy. You have the sense of taking a last weary, heaving step onto a plateau.



You find yourself in a dark, blank place, dominated by a huge, dead monster, building sized, as big as a tower. Each of its enormous heads that you can see laid out before you is easily the size of a ballroom. There is blood on its lips and nostrils, blood crusted around its empty eye-sockets, but there is a feeling of hollowness about it. On second thought, you're not quite sure if it's a corpse or a moult.

There is no sign of the stairs you vaguely remember climbing. You are standing on the surface of some opaque black liquid. It feels almost completely solid under your feet, springy, but your footsteps leave ripples spreading out in rings... all around you is a velvety, impenetrable darkness. The only thing you can see is the vast, lifeless beast in front of you, illuminated as if by spotlights, though no actual light-source can be found.

Its orifices are mostly clogged with blood, but somehow, as you stare at it, one vaulted nostril on the wolf's head begins to seem like an archway... the lolling tongue hanging out of the rhinoceros's head like an entry ramp... the exposed, hollow eye-socket on the eagle's head like a portal...

Of course, if you're not quite ready to step inside a monster, you could keep walking around its body and see what you find.

Comments

[nevercaught]

"I thought you might have advice on what I ought to do here," he says, "but if you do not, then that is fine as well. What reason are you here, then?"

[myhungryass]

"I can give you advice, if you're trying to do something in particular? But I'm just here because someone has to do the critical thinking around here."

[nevercaught]

"Ah, you are his Kimmuriel!" Jarlaxle says. "Except that you are not bedding each other, of course."

[myhungryass]

She tilts her head. "I don't think that's quite right, but never mind."

[nevercaught]

"In the sense that you reign him in when he needs to be," Jarlaxle says. "Just as Kimmuriel does with me."

[myhungryass]

A heavy sigh. "I wouldn't say it's exactly possible to rein him in. Sure, of course he cares about his friends and responsibilities, but when an idea runs away with him or he gets over-excited, it really takes someone on the outside smacking him upside the head."

[nevercaught]

"What do you think Kimmuriel does?" But he's smiling at her.

"Still... do you know what he needs done here?"

[myhungryass]

"Um, it's not like I was expecting anyone to show up from outside and help? I'm trying to figure out what's missing, here, or at least measure the spaces between the things he has back, but..."

[nevercaught]

"Ah, is there anything I can do in aid of that?"

[myhungryass]

"There are a couple of memories around here that he hasn't taken yet. Maybe if you find them and bring them to him, that would help...? I think they should all be in this place. I can't imagine they'd be lying around anywhere else."

She'll direct him off to investigate the items (and possibly buildings) scattered around the white void. He can probably pretty easily figure out that the book and lion plushie are what he's after—when touched, both give that nudge in his mind of a potential memory... the way it feels when there's one waiting in his own bracelet.

He does get the sense that, as with his own memories, he could just give in to that mental pressure and let it in… but that would probably just lead to him viewing the memory, rather than returning it to Laios.

Other than that, is there anything else he investigates before he heads into Hen House? The wok, the tombstone, the sword, or Sun or Moon House?

[nevercaught]

You know he investigates all of them. And is very intrigued by his newfound knowledge of demon cloacas.

[myhungryass]

The wok, tombstone and sword all behave as they have in other people's threads, showing a vision of Senshi with an infodump about ecosystems and sustainability; a childhood memory of Falin saving Laios from a ghost, along with concerns about whether Laios will remember having had to kill her; and an infodump of cool monster facts (if pursued and caught) respectively. Sun House is inaccessible. Jarlaxle will have to knock to get into Moon House—he can't just walk in. But the door will open for him when he does, and yeah, he. He can get that infodump too. Sorry Stolas. If he goes right into Moon House, he can also investigate the ball pit, or discover that the trap door that should go to the wine cellar actually goes out back to the snake head at the rear of the giant monster that this heart is comprised of.

[nevercaught]

He will probably detour into the snake head and try to befriend and console the lonely Laioses that he meets there. He will get very Dad at little kid Laios if he meets him.

[myhungryass]

The kid Laios responds well to any stories about monsters and/or overtures of friendliness. He has many questions to ask about what being an elf is like, too, especially in terms of sensory experiences. (How far can you see? How well can you hear? Etc.) He does seem to be just... a memory, though.

The scruffy adult Laios seems to be more a representation of some part of Laios's actual consciousness, instead. Provided that Jarlaxle pushes through the fog and intrusive thoughts (Who is this guy, anyway? He's nobody important. He's probably more trouble than he's worth. He looks like bad news. He's clearly an anti-social weirdo. Do you really want to waste your time talking to him...?) he can get scruffy Laios to recognize him, and they can have a real conversation.

The weather gets sunny and warm in this area before he steps back out onto the dark water.

[nevercaught]

Kid Laios gets all kinds of Elf Information as well as a child-appropriate monster story or two. But since this is the drow version of child appropriate it's still pretty gorey and violent hahaha.

He will totally push through with Scruffy Laios. He wants this conversation. Laios is his very important human.

[myhungryass]

What overture does he make when Laios's attention slides away from him and the fog creeps in...? Laios has just shrugged his shoulders in response to a question, his gaze dropping...

[nevercaught]

"Laios," he says. "You probably do not know me yet, because you are younger than when I met you, but I should like to know how you are doing. Because you are important to me. You are good company and you try very hard and you are very earnest and steadfast about that which you care about."

[myhungryass]

He stares at Jarlaxle like he's speaking an alien language, although a blush does spread across his face. "...no, I. I know you. I couldn't get your name right at first."

[nevercaught]

"Yes, you do that with a lot of people," Jarlaxle says, frankly but not unkindly. "You know better now. I found a book I think is yours, by the way, and I have another book and a toy lion that I think are memories. Should I give them to you here or do they go elsewhere?"

[myhungryass]

"My book!" He reaches for the one that Jarlaxle found in the wagon, the one that showed him a memory of Laios as a child. "I must have dropped it."

The atmosphere lightens. "Thanks, Jarlaxle. I think... I'm not the right one to take those new memories, though. Like you said... this is just the past."

[nevercaught]

"I will just have to find you in the present, then," Jarlaxle tells him. "I do not mind. You are worth searching for."

[myhungryass]

He huffs, touched and a little bashful. "Jarlaxle..."

He doesn't have the words.

[nevercaught]

"I truly mean it," Jarlaxle promises him, giving him a quick embrace before he goes.

He will backtrack out of the snake and back into Moon House before going to Hen House.

[myhungryass]

That is really supposed to be a one way valve, so he probably has to loop back around the front, and doesn't have to revisit Moon House, but whatever, he can levitate, he's fine. Regardless, he gets to Hen House!

This one is subtly inaccurate as well, just like Sun and Moon House. The swollen chicken feet that hold up the house are perfect down to the last detail, though. It comes complete with the enclosed mud yard and goat house out back, too.

He can walk right in, of course. It feels homey, safe and inviting. He can smell fried rice cooking. As he walks in, he gets a sense of being nurtured. Some of the details inside are wrong, too—clearly Laios has not paid a lot of attention to exactly what the chairs look like—but it's still recognizably Hen House.

Jarlaxle can hear whispering coming from the bedroom Laios shares with Laura and Louis. The door is closed, as are the doors to the other bedroom, the bathroom and the shrine room.

When he gets closer to the bedroom door, he'll hear that the whispering is Laios's voice. He seems to be talking to himself. "You're not a child... you don't need a new father at your age... you can't stay here, anyway... he's not going to stay here... you're being ridiculous. Sure, Falin said he's taken you under his wing... but what does that really mean? But, he wouldn't have taught me about how to have sex with a man if he didn't want to... to teach me things, right?

...but dads probably don't tell their sons about how they had sex with dragons... but maybe it's different if you're adopted as an adult?? Ugh, this is so dumb, why am I even worried about this! Get it together. You're not a child..."

The voice loops. If Jarlaxle knocks or opens the door, the room is empty, though.

[nevercaught]

When he's inside the room he tells the empty room, "I would be his father for now. I have never been allowed to be one and I think this feeling that I have for him is what it is to by a father. I hope it is."