PORT: THE SKY-CITY OF BHUJERBA

[returnjourney]

PORT: THE SKY-CITY OF BHUJERBA

May 4th, 2022 – May 11th, 2022
Welcome, bhadra, to the city-state of Bhujerba! The Peregrine touches down on May 4th, in a proper port — airships are the only way on and off the city, so the Aerodrome is a busy and bustling place. As a sky-city built on a mountainous structure floating ten thousand feet above the ground, it has little in the way of wilderness, but it has a sprawling city with deep mines stretching down beneath it. Look down past the railings when the thick clouds part and you'll see the world below; look up and you'll see great blue crystalline structures, a mark of the deep magicks that keep the city in the sky.

The full OOC write-up for the port is here. If you have any questions about the event, please ask here.

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1. Disembarking

It's been months since the ship made port, but whether it's been days or months, it's always exciting to see somewhere new. The Aerodrome is thriving with people, passenger ships and merchant ships and military ships alike making berth in the docks, all contributing to the rivers of people pouring in and out of the building. The sounds of the crowd bounce around the vaulted ceilings, humid tropical air hotter still for the press of bodies everywhere. Navigating the crowds takes a certain confidence, lest you get knocked aside by a burly creature carrying a crate on his back, or separated from your companions by a throng of chattering flight stewardesses.

Of course, not everyone will disembark. Inmates cannot leave the ship without a warden as escort, and wardens are responsible for inmates in port — they don't have to be glued to each others' sides, of course, but it's harder to make trouble under a watchful eye.

2. The Cloudborne Tavern

Thanks to the Navarch, there are rooms booked in the Cloudborne for passengers who do not want to trek back and forth from the Peregrine. Staying above a busy and bustling tavern isn't always the most restful affair, of course, given there isn't really a closing hour, but it certainly makes for a life experience.

The tavern below is full of colourful characters, drawn by the ludicrously cheap pints. It isn't uncommon for people to get soundly drunk, but a watchful Seeq keeps an eye out on the place: get too rowdy or violent and you might find yourself thrown out on your ass.

3. The Lhusu Mines

Though the mines are closed, there's plenty to do in the labyrinthine tunnels winding deep into the mountain.

The Paling — Talk with the locals in the taverns and on the streets and you might notice a frequent topic of conversation: the paling's fall. The paling was a Crystal used to create a magick barrier that kept fiends at bay in the mines, so that the miners could work safely. However, something — or someone — has stripped the paling of its magickal energy, and now the fiends have overrun the abandoned tunnels. Sometimes they even make their way out and attack the locals. It is imperative that some brave hero makes their way deep into the tunnels, finds the paling, and recharges its magick power. But so far no one has been up to the task...

Hunting Marks — A bulletin board in the Cloudborne has posters for bounties, seeking hunters willing to deal with the fiends that spill out of the mines. Many are for looking for materials, such as bat fangs fresh from the jaws of the massive, four-winged bats, or bone fragments from the undead skeletons. Or, for the particularly ambitious: the mighty Nidhogg, a colossal snake with a highly venomous tail spike. A prize awaits the first to return with its skin!

Filthy Pirates! — Not everyone ventures in to mop up trouble for the locals: the mines are a considerable draw to those who are happy to risk the fiends for the chance to loot the goods left behind. Many people have fallen in these attempts, leaving gil, armor, weaponry and other goods strewn through the depths. Be careful, though: not all treasure is as it seems.

4. Shopping!

The marketplace is as busy as the Aerodrome, with massive crowds clustered around covered tents, wooden booths, and humble cloths laid out on the stone floor, all bearing incredible wares. The atmosphere is raucous: people haggling boisterously, children scampering between adults' legs, people hollering for others to move, move, as they shove their way through with carts of purchases or goods for sale.

Food is plentiful: turnips and onions are particularly popular, given the season, and tomatoes fetch a high price. Street food vendors sell stewed cockatrice (chicken-esque!), chunks of moist cactus, flank steaks on sticks, and something aptly called "bacon bread".

And, given the war going on and fiends loose in the world, there is no short supply of weaponry and armor. Swords, pikes, bows, axes, daggers, even a small number of rudimentary firearms, all available to those with ample coin. Armor is popular too, with artisans prepared to make it custom within a day or two — leather is affordable, but the price of metal could feed a laborer for a year.

Beware of pickpockets. Happy shopping!

Comments

[shadowsran]

More money, more leverage. Though it makes perfect sense in his previous predicament, Misty, more often than not penniless, can only smile uncertainly.

"I don't disagree," she says, after a pause proportional to the amount she's processing, fighting to be sure she internalizes. Whether they return to this or not, the insights are valuable. (And should he disappear, God forbid, she'll feel a little better knowing she bothered to listen.)

That said: "I don't know. I think your world ki—" and as they begin their way up an incline, the bolts in the cart digging into her back, the vowel drags, "—inda sucks. Hardly any winning options when you were locked up, but I guess I'm coming at it more from...as it applies to people who are out. You won't get dumped back in there when you're done, right? Some downtime to imagine enough."

[doppleman]

"Pffft, 'kay, come on now, like your world's any bett—wait, what?"

Not for the first time—not for the first time today, even—Tim turns a look on her that tries for earnest curiosity but ends up more than a little pitiful for its undercurrent of confused hope. His pace falters, causing him to briefly abandon the cart entirely until it threatens to backslide.

"Ohshitcrapsorry, right, okay, but—" a grunt of effort as they wrestle the thing ever closer to the summit, "hang on a hot second, is that true? You're not just yankin' me, are you, you–you're saying they... don't just dump us back in the same hellhole we started out in?"

[shadowsran]

Her world is nothing. Her world is nothing, and this body is not the one she'd worked so hard to restore. The thought is instantaneous, unbidden. Suppressing a shiver is easier for the sudden increase in weight she's left to support. The exertion feels good. She neither scolds nor thanks him, his role in the hiccup all but immediately forgotten.

"Grain of salt," she says, not daring to spare a hand to raise in caution. "I don't know how different all the ships are, what's built in automatically. But where I was before, yeah, graduates and wardens could both pick where they were dropped off when they were done. Different corners of their own world, someone else's, roll the dice on something random, all that."

[doppleman]

"And 'kay, m-make—no mistake here, I wanna believe you! Just, you know, my track record for things not going from bad to horrifically bad is pretty weak at this point." A beat of consideration. "Huh, y'know, you're basically totally right? My world does suck."

Which is not news, per se, but it's weird to think there might be something better out there to compare it to. Something real, that is, not just some naïve hypothetical dreamed up by a poor dumbass undergrad who can't even begin to fathom the ways life is eventually gonna screw him.

But he passes up the chance to ruminate on that piece, drawn instead to consider the subtle shift in Misty's demeanor over the last couple of minutes. Tim is not and has never been what he'd categorize as a people person or anything, but he's got a certain intuition, maybe. Some kind of invisible sensor finely tuned via the epochs of his life: his mother's occasional hair-trigger; his talent for and interest in human expression through art; the too-many years he spent beside a dangerously unpredictable man.

"Hey, uh, how're you... doing, by the way?"

[shadowsran]

For his sake, she'll readily accept surprise ad potential disbelief over immediate hope. It's too much to promise someone in his position without having independently confirmed it. To raise and dash that — she'd feel miserable.

She nods to that wariness, and in decisive agreement: his world blows. In his position, she'd be desperate for an out.

The question throws her. There's a cock of her head, a hm? as it registers.

"Good. Fine. Just, you know, focused." Her head tips back, indicating the cart. "All this, and whether or not you've got to get dumped directly back into all of that. We're good."