Well. This is emphatically not what she expected to see in her new world. She expected- well, she's not sure, but definitely not a place of Maximum Ominousness. She's very glad she decided to show up in a coat despite the relatively warm weather back home. She can feel that her clothes are sitting differently on her than she's used to, but it looks like she didn't change height at all, and conveniently her boots still fit and her hands seem to be the same size.

She had planned to pull out her phone and look at her new face with it, but the sheer Creepy Vibes of where she landed mean that she almost instantly forgets about that and quickly glances around to see if there's anything she should be worried about in immediate view.

A bit further down the path, there's a hill covered with creepy menhirs. There's a little altar in front of it with grooves cut in it, and that's where the path ends. Does that count as something to be worried about?

Not imminently? She's absolutely going to investigate that whole thing soon. But it doesn't look urgent enough that she can't take half a second to see what her face looks like, and get a bit of a better sense of how her body's changed.

And- start actually thinking of herself by the new name she picked. It's objectively kind of a dorky one, she thinks, but she likes it anyway. And she thinks thinking of herself by a new name will be easier once she has  new face to put to it. She pulls out her phone and looks at her face in the camera app, and-

Oh. She. She looks right. Her face isn't too tremendously changed. But it's shaped she way she actually wants, now. She's pretty and looks like a girl and has- the exact flavor of beauty that she wanted. There's no niggling little flaws.

Suddenly it's a lot easier to think of herself by her new name, now that she has a new face.

Alethia. Truth. It's- honestly it feels kind of chuuni. But- what's the point of being alive if you never let yourself be a bit chuuni? Yeah, sure, she got the idea from the alethiometer in His Dark Materials. Sue her, it's cool.

And it means something to her. Speaks to a part of herself she's genuinely, uncomplicatedly proud of.

So. Alethia.

Her body really isn't all that changed. She can feel that her jeans are notably tighter around her hips, so those got widened. But her hips were wide for a man to start with, and they still fit without too much stretching. They're probably pretty tight around her butt now, though. Fortunately they're made of that new material that stretches some despite appearing to be old-fashioned denim from a distance.

She presses against her chest through her coat. Yeah, she has breasts now. Not large ones, but they're Definitely There. And- yeah. Her muscles are still there too. Her shoulders seem less broad, given that her coat isn't ever-so-slightly-too-tight anymore, but is rather just the tiniest bit loose. So her bone structure has changed a decent amount. But- not in a way that feels uncomfortable. It probably should, given that it's new, but that aegis of metanarrative protection is worth its metanarrative weight in metanarrative gold and is preventing that.

She's happy, for a moment. Uncomplicatedly, straightforwardly. Sure, she's landed in Strange Ominous Place, but she feels comfortable in her skin. Those endlessly niggling insecurities seem to just actually be quiet. Huh. She guesses the reason they never quite shut up before is- well, she might have been relatively satisfied with how she looked, for a man. But- for a man. And relatively. And having neither of those qualifiers really is lovely.

But. There are those ominous menhirs there, and she’s in the middle of the most ominous looking place she’s ever seen. And she really should work on getting a bit more oriented. Hell, she’s apparently got narrative all over her life now and she landed a short jaunt from some stuff that looks kind of Plotty.

She’d be worried about things maybe having somehow gone wrong, but landing a place like this doesn’t actually feel like it rules out a world that’s going to be good for her. What’s important is people she gets along with, problems to solve, and the ability to do each. Her landing area looking spiffy really isn’t one of them.

She is more than a little bit on edge, regardless. The atmosphere really is something.

Onward to the menhirs, and the altar.

It's a fairly small altar, about two handspans long. Little more than a flat stone put atop a couple relatively flat rocks. It's a sickly green color, mottled like ore.

There's a presence around it, that hisses like static in her head. It's cold and aged and wrong. Turned inwards on itself. Her instincts are screaming not to get any closer.

Yeah, okay, she is one hundred percent listening to those instincts. Is the altar haunted is that's what's going on here? She has no idea how to dispel a haunting, even if her metanarrative powers guarantee she wouldn't be actually wounded by it. And messing with a ghost is, like, the archetypal mistake.

But. Are her instincts saying anything more specific than "don't get closer"?

Cold grey skies, scraggly trees, and now a haunted altar. If she didn't know better she'd think she was in fucking Sylvania or something.

When she pays closer attention, she's pretty sure she's getting the equivalent of rad ticks from a geiger counter from her mental defenses and physical poison immunity. It's low-level, but there.

Well, this is remarkably ungood. Right now she's pretty sure she's basically just a normal person, minus the super-strength, defences, and metanarrative protection. Admittedly those are some pretty substantial things to minus, but still. Every single one of her usual heuristics for what to do in a situation like this tell her to back the heck off and not disturb the Obviously Cursed Altar. Actually, said heuristics are using notably stronger language than "heck."

Sheeee is going to go along with those instincts for now. She doesn't think the narrative situation would allow for disturbing this to cause her to unleash an unstoppable horror that devoured a city but it absolutely would allow for her to end up needing to spend a week tracking it down to prevent it from hurting anyone.

She still doesn't really feel comfortable just abandoning the situation, though. Does it feel like the rad ticks are changing in frequency? If she steps away a bit does it follow her or does it stick to that altar?

It's fairly steady. If she steps away a bit the feeling lessens; it seems to center on the altar.

Okay. Probably interfering with this situation while she has no idea how to do so productively is more likely to cause a problem than leaving it well enough alone. She's going to back away and follow the path in its opposite direction and look around for anything that looks like it might indicate civilization. Omniglot should help if they don't speak English here, which she expects they don't.

The cairns fall away behind her. 

The pathway meanders on between hill after hill. There's really a lot of hills. There's a crow after maybe twenty minutes' walk, but no other signs of life...

Until eventually there's a small copse of trees, with a signpost nailed to one of them. 

It looks like it's in a vaguely slavic language. That's a number of distance, probably a small one because it's only one digit, and the rest is probably a name of a town? 

With only one word on the sign, and that probably a proper noun, it seems even Omniglot can't quite translate.

Well, that's not ideal. Hopefully it's not that Omniglot has just decided not to work and once people are actually talking to her it'll work fine.

She'll follow the road to the probably-town that's probably not too far away. She hopes the single digit isn't "nine" with a distance in leagues.

Hmm. Is she getting any diffuse hard-to-notice pings off of her defences, actually? The entire area kind of looks somehow cursed, but is it cursed enough that her defences are, uh, reacting to in a way she can notice?

There are occasional very small pings if she pays close attention, but not a lot of them. It seems to mostly be an ordinary spooky hilly landscape. 

... Was something moving up on that hill?

Her gaze suddenly locks onto the hill, scrutinizing it for signs of motion. Actually, she can suddenly listen as hard as she can for any noises too.

The flicker of movement is gone now.

She doesn't hear anything but the sigh of wind.

Well, that's incredibly concerning. How about she constantly scan her surroundings from here on out. Just in case.

Nothing disturbs her. 

The road winds onwards through the hills.

Eventually, she hears cawing. There's a small flock of crows over that way. Wonder what they're interested in.

She does wonder! She also kind of dreads the answer.

She's going to check anyway, though. Does she have to leave the path she's following by all that much to investigate? She's, uh, also going to try to be quiet while approaches. She's- kind of worried.

There's a turn around the hill, a dozen yards away from the path or so.

A dead hare lies in a low spot. It's got a bloody gash out of its belly and there are three crows bickering over the remains, cawing raucously and pecking at the corpse.

Oh! This is. Completely normal! Thank goodness. She was afraid it would be someone hanging on a tree or something.

She breathes a great sigh of relief and continues on towards the town she's presumably walking towards.

She's still actively scanning her surroundings though. Just in case.

There's nothing but hills and more path. The occasional leafless tree. Fortunately, there don't seem to be any more of the menhirs she saw earlier. 

A shadow moves behind her.

She spins and faced down whatever that just was, arms up in front of her as she naturally falls into walking stance. It's the last little remains of tae kwon do and karate that she took when she was in her early teens, and honestly it she wouldn't trust it to hold up in a real fight but it's comforting and also it is in fact a good idea to have your hands up and be in a stable stance when you're worried about being attacked.

Something ducks behind the crest of the hill behind her. Low to the ground, moving on all fours. From the little she saw, the gait's all wrong.

Fuck. She can keep moving down this road and not run in case that triggers predatory behavior and also make sure her constant panning includes behind her.

She needs to remind herself that if the notebook was being honest with her she's not really at substantial risk of permanent physical harm here. Suddenly that if statement feels wide enough to drive a truck through.

She wishes she had a weapon. Fuck it, her scanning can include scanning for well-shaped sticks. It'd be notably- wait, super-strength. Rocks picked up off the ground and thrown are probably worth more than a stick that would just snap. Any nicely palm-sized rocks for her to pick up?

Here's one now. 

When she stoops to pick up the rock, the thing comes over the hill at her, knuckling on its fists like a gorilla in a lope that brings its bloody snaggled teeth closer DAMN FAST. There's maybe twenty strides of flat ground between her and the thing and soon there won't be any. 

And there it is. She somehow feels simultaneously panicked and like she's in more control of herself than she's ever been. Her stance shifts and her arm goes back and then she's throwing the rock directly at this thing's centre of mass as hard as she can.

The rock smashes right through its leading arm as it charges, then breaks its hip to pieces. It flails and goes down, landing heavily on its shoulder. 

It seems disoriented, but not dead. Its remaining arm pushes at the soil to try and lift it, but it gets nowhere. Alethia can get a good look at it now.

It's vaguely humanoid, but with a simian posture. Dense black fur on the parts of it which are intact, which are not all of it; it looks half-rotted, and smells to match. The bone structure's malformed and off from one side to the other; its remaining leg is shorter than the other one. 

It moans, a surprisingly human noise. 

Oh god. That sound.

Did she just kill somebody?

No, whatever this thing is, if it's a person it was very obviously going after her and she's not going to collapse into guilt about defending herself.

Yet, anyway. She can do that later, if it's warranted.

If the metanarrative protection is real at all she wouldn't have been thrown into some place where the first thing that would happen is her killing an actual person.

But. It would be remiss of her not to check.

"Are you okay?" she asks. She knows it's inane and the answer is "no" but this maybe-person won't speak English anyway and the goal is to get it to try saying something back in words if it can do that.

It's. It's dying anyway. And might be in too much pain to respond even if it could normally.

It groans unintelligibly and then it tries to get up. It doesn't succeed; its right leg is shattered.

There's actually a remarkable lack of any blood. There's broken bones but they're not bleeding visibly.

It looks half-rotted. It suddenly attacked her out of nowhere. And it's not properly bleeding. And she felt the presence of something that really did seem like an honest-to-goodness ghost, earlier.

It's probably undead. Or horribly diseased and half dead.

And it's probably not getting up from that wound.

And if it did, if it healed, maybe the next traveller wouldn't be as lucky as her and would find themselves getting eaten.

But. That voice.

She'll. Wait a moment. To see if it actually says any words.

It tries to get up again, to no more success. It makes another noise, but it's not coherent at all.

It does seem to be weakening a little.

It's getting weaker. It's not going to live through this, probably, and if it did it might kill someone less lucky than her.

And in the world where this was all somehow- some sort of misunderstanding. And she's watching a very sick person die in front of her. It would probably be, on average, in most worlds, crueller to let them die here, slowly and in pain, rather than quickly. She thinks. She could pick it up and run to the nearest town and hope they somehow have healing magic, but it would keep trying to eat her and for all she knows it's got some terrible communicable disease and she's looking at a strangely shaped fast zombie.

And. It really does look like the situation is just that a maneating monster with a voice that sounds human just tried to kill and eat her and she's in very dangerous territory and she's wasting time agonizing over whether to put it out of its misery.

She doesn't know how to heal, or if that's even a thing in this universe for people who aren't her true loves, and she-

already knows what the right answer is, here, for what she should do next.

She picks up another rock and throws it into its head.

The rock shatters its skull. It falls, and doesn't stir again.

She takes a deep, steadying breath.

And then picks up a few more rocks before continuing down the path.

The path winds on and on, and then...

The hills level out into a large dell, filled with fields of wheat. The signs of cultivation are obvious. And then out among them there's a rickety little village, all crowded together like the houses are huddling for warmth. 

There are even a few people visible; they seem to be reaping the fields for the winter. 

One of them looks over at her, then looks away, picks up his bundle of straw and walks off into the village proper.

People! Glorious civilization!

She. Is normally kind of incredibly shy, but it's kind of not getting in the way at the moment? Her current situation just kind of- doesn't have room for it.

Is Friends In Low Places saying anything about, uh, how she should go about interacting with this village in a way that will leave her more informed, not attemptedly lynched, and also with them sort of generally positively disposed to her?

She has an instinct that she should try and look proud, confident, and like she knows what she's doing. Being friends with these locals when she's just shown up is probably a lost cause, she's too foreign for that, but if she can get their respect a lot more is manageable from there. 

Okay. She manage that, at least.

Pattern-matching to Strange Foreign Nobility, maybe?

A question for later.

She will walk forward, back straight and head held high. If she did in fact know what she was doing, she'd- go up to someone nearby and ask them who in this village she should talk to if she wants to learn more about the area. Well, she can do that.

She walks up to the person closest to her and says, "Is there any chance you happen to speak English?"

He raises his palms. "Akvald, angresus na dyvir. Seyver na nyrius. Seyver na nyrius." 

Akvald's probably a title, and angresus is probably "speak" or "say"... So "I don't speak that, Lady?"  Which would make the latter half something like "I don't want trouble", repeated twice.

He backs away and lowers his hands, then gestures to a building in the middle of town with a sign of a tankard. "Nikola angresus, verdok. Angresus ver Nikola."

"Nikola" sounds like a name, so... "Nikola speaks [it] maybe, talk to Nikola?" 

Yeah, she really didn't expect a yes there. Fortunately omniglot does in fact seem to be working, she wouldn't normally be picking up most of that. She knows from experience that when learning a new language it can often be hard just to notice where one word ends and another begins, and she's gone far enough beyond that that she's autoparsing that.

He doesn't want trouble. Repeated twice. Huh. She's apparently being parsed as a threat, which is- slightly unfortunate but definitely better than being parsed as a mark.

After he finishes speaking she nods sharply and marches off tavernward, attempting to hold herself like the Strange Foreign Noble that she thinks she's impersonating. That's the in-character next step, here, and also the most sensible one from her actual perspective; even if Nikola doesn't speak anything more similar to English and thus maybe easier to pick up, someone who knows multiple languages is probably more likely to know other things. With Nikola she'll fumble through her guesses about how to communicate in this language- hopefully it'll come across more as someone rusty brushing the rust off rather than anything odder.

The inner room is dominated by a long bar, which is deserted save for an old woman in a headscarf who's polishing the bar. 

"Vos vedanya, verdis yalni tu menaya?"

That's probably "good afternoon, what can I get you to drink?"

She shakes her head. She doesn't want anything to drink and and her instincts aren't saying that refusing a drink rather than attempting to mime "ale" is somehow incongruous with the character she's playing.

"I'm pretty sure nobody here speaks English. But apparently Nikola angresus, verdok. Na angresus ver Nikola. If that came across right."

The tavern-keeper blinks, then speaks in thickly accented but still intelligible English.

"You're... long way stranger. Not many word, but know some. No beer? Room?"

Somehow the fact that English is a language here surprises her. It's- disconcerting, somehow.

Does she want a room?

"A room maybe later. First, information."

She probably doesn't know that word. She can simplify her language more, and should.

"What should I know about here? Who is the lord? Can angresus words you don't know. I speak some."

Hopefully saying "speak" in the other language will effectively communicate that she means she can say words in the local language.

Also, for some reason her instincts keep saying she should act like she has the right to give orders, and the experience of occupying that kind of casual entitlement is sort of odd and she keeps wanting to apologize for being rude but she's doing her best to adapt.

Nikola raises an eyebrow. 

"Questions! No Lord. Lady. Crin Ilemvich. Not far. You talk her before tax us."

She isn't trying to come across as not foreign and as informed about where exactly she is because that's frankly a lost cause and it sounds exhausting. And likely to lead to her being notably less informed.

The situation about taxing is- odd. How exactly are the nobility set up here where taxing someone else's village would be the kind of thing you had a talk about, rather than a murder about? Some sort of situation where there are a small number of Special People and she's coming across as a member of that class, and the addition of another Special Person would be worth, what, giving up immediate control over a village's tax revenue for?

And there's that emphasis on "not far". Nikola is trying to emphasize that if she steps out of line there'll be consequences? That she's got a lady who will protect her? That kind of makes sense, it's the basic structure of feudalism, or, well, the ostensible nature of it even if the reality often works out differently. Is this the kind of place where random knights roll into town and "tax" the local population, by which she means robbing them blind?

At any rate, she nods at the bit about taxing and asks the obvious follow up.

"Crin Ilemvich is where?"

If she doesn't want to immediately talk to the local nobility she can consider that fact later, right now she doesn't want to break character. Partially just because it gives her an obvious next thing to say, really.

"Konigstein. West." She shrugs. "Room or beer or go, stranger. Not want trouble." 

Hmm. How late was it getting, she doesn't want to travel at night in the pitch dark. She could almost certainly defend herself but it sounds harrowing to be out in the apparently-monster-infested countryside at night when she can't properly see.

By the position of the sun, it's sometime in late afternoon.

"Is Konigstein close enough I could get there before nightfall?"

Nikola shakes her head. "No. Is ten... vedri. Miles." 

She nods.

"A room, then."

She'll be able to think in a room and- honestly she's hearing "I don't want trouble" often enough that she doesn't want to keep badgering these people for information more than necessary.

"You have coin?"

Why did she not consider this question. She has- a perk to help her with money. Hopefully that's working in a maximally-convenient fashion.

She nods and goes to rummage through her bag. She'd have noticed if something was in her pockets. When she was filling them with rocks.

At the top of her bag, there's a small leather pouch which is satisfyingly heavy. It clinks when she moves it.

Inside, there's a collection of silver coins, stamped with a wolf's head on one side and the likeness of an unknown king on the other. The name and date are legible - "Luitpold I, 2493".

Luitpold? Like father-of-Karl-Franz Luitpold? No, wait, Luitpold is an Actual Name from back home.

That said. That number feels. Also vaguely correct for it to be That Luitpold. Is a wolf's head right for Imperial currency? She's not sure. Part of her feels like it should be an eagle of some sort but maybe that's 40k leaking.

Okay, how does she check this.

Ask which way to- some other location. Not Drakenhof, she should damn well know which way to Drakenhof, and the answer in almost all of Sylvania would be the same. Templehof? That might work. And if Templehof sounds vaguely like a place that could exist given the local language, they'd likely just say they didn't know and assume it was some minor location.

"Templehof is which way?"

"East. South first, around hills. More long travel."

Fuck. She is in Actual Fucking Sylvania.

Oh. These people think she's a vampire. And by "tax" Nikola meant the blood tax. But wait, she was out in the day, wasn't she? She thought local vampires couldn't do that. Maybe old ones can, or else the overcast skies in Sylvania are corrupted and make it safe, somehow. She's not sure.

Well. She's definitely not travelling at night now.

Okay. Put that aside for later, this woman is waiting for pay. Fuck it, she's come across as Strange Foreign Vampire, they aren't going to try to cheat her by drastically overcharging her, they're not suicidal. Maybe paying at all is kind of odd here, actually.

Fuck it, she's doing it anyway, these people won't have any idea how Strange Foreign Vampires do things. And they look poor.

"How much?"

The barkeep raises her eyebrows. "One crown a night."

Strange Foreign Vampire does not care about raised eyebrows, for she is above such things. She places a- hmm. Actually. What exactly is Friends In Low Places saying right now? Does it feel like this is the most suicidal brave inkeep in world history and she in fact is trying to overcharge the Strange Foreign Vampire? Or just that asking how much in this situation is Odd?

No, it thinks if anything it's odd that she's paying. 

Oh, good, just the situation she was already in.

Honestly, kind of ballsy of Nikola to ask if she had money, given the givens. Ovariesy? Eh, she knows what she means and it's not like her thoughts have an audience. She specifically took the option that guaranteed that!

There are- Blood Dragons, right? Who disdain killing weak enemies and are kind of shockingly honorable, given the givens? She can't actually recall if that's right. Also, that's not quite the same thing as actually paying for your room.

At any rate, she'll place a silver coin on the countertop, attempting to act like this is Normal Behaviour and she's taking it completely for-granted.

Hopefully this setting isn't so non-historically-accurate that price for a bedroom for the night is paid in gold. On the other hand, it's Warhammer, she probably can't trust it not to contain almost-literal oceans of metallic wealth, can she?

Nikola takes the coin and nods. "Rooms upstairs," she says. "Good business."

And up the stairs she'll go, carefully projecting poise and like she knows exactly what she's doing as she does. And then she'll pick out a room, since it sounds like that's what she's supposed to do next. Is there one with- hmm, actually, does she want a window to potentially escape out of or does she not want a window for something to potentially come in? She'll go with preferentially no window, if she can.

All the rooms have windows, but each room has heavy wooden shutters that can be closed to shut out the world. There's a hard bed, a desk, and a lantern made of what looks like sheet metal with holes punched in it from the inside.

Oh, of course they have heavy wooden shutters. Sensible people. She'll pick a room at basically-random, then, and leave the shutters open for now but plan to close them when it gets closer to nightfall.

Well. She has time to think, now.

She's in Warhammer Fantasy, apparently. In Sylvania of all places.

She. Is honestly doubting the Notebook's statements about narrative, just a bit. She would not really have thought here was the best place for her to land.

Maybe people she'd get along with really well are in Sylvania, so she needed to be dropped here? Maybe there's some Plot that works best if here is where she starts? Honestly, if nothing Actually Bad happens as a result of the whole "being dropped into Sylvania" thing that's not implausible. If she landed somewhere far away from anything actually bad happening she could see herself taking more time to do things that actually helped, and later finding that suboptimal. And she did want a world she could do Helpful Things in. If she isn't doomed to failure Warhammer Fantasy sure does fit that mould.

There was that whole situation with the probably-a-ghoul-now-that-she-thinks-about-it which maybe would have been traumatic if not for the "no trauma" thing she's got going on. Honestly, given that she does have that, and she realized what was going on this fast, she's not inclined to say that's evidence against a relatively friendly narrative that is nonetheless optimizing for narrative as much as it is for her okayness?

She should probably talk with the notebook a bit, actually.

She pulls the notebook out and goes to start writing, and then pauses with her pen touching the page, not quite sure how to start.

A little heart swims up from the page around the point of her pen.

The Notebook is good.

Suddenly deciding what to say is easier. She'll just- start at the beginning.

So! I landed in a new world! In a kind of ominous looking location. Dead grey grass, grey skies, very haunted vibe. Encountered a cursed altar that was almost certainly haunted and then promptly walked in the opposite direction. Defeated a maneating monster that attacked me. And then found a town and ended up accidentally convincing the people in it that I'm a dangerous vampire.

You know, I was going to finish that by saying that I kind of felt like that didn't fit with the whole narrative thing and I was confused but seeing it written out like that kind of changes my opinion. Hell, I had a slowly-tension-building section followed by Sudden Monster Attack. And then had a Realization that I'm actually in a scary place I recognize from a setting I played a bunch of games set in.

Gosh, that all sounds really scary! I hope you're holding up okay. I think it was smart to walk away from the cursed altar, that can't have been a good place to hang around.

The metanarrative can be hard to see from the inside, but I think you're right to guess that it's helping things along, given that it's helped you realize that you're in a place you know! 

Is there anything I can do to help you feel okay?

Honestly, that offer did kind of a lot just on its own.

You know, I'm actually feeling surprisingly okay already? This is kind of a surprising situation, relative to where I was guessing I'd end up. Being on my side and friendly is already helping lots. You are a very good notebook, and I appreciate you.

Aw, thank you. I'm glad you're feeling okay.

I can see why you'd be surprised, but I think it makes some sense that you'd be sent somewhere where you'd be able to adapt easily. Which maybe this is, since you already know things about this world? What's it like?

It's really not in the best state. It's a fantasy world roughly technologically equivalent to four hundred years before the present in my home, in the local polity. But- that really doesn't do it justice. Up at the poles there are massive holes in reality on the other side of which is Basically Hell. Magic streams through those portals, and thus everything within a thousand miles of one of the poles is a very, very dangerous demonhaunted place, on account of how the local demons can just manifest bodily anywhere with enough magic.There's an island of elves off in the ocean, literally floating. In the center is a massive vortex that prevents the world from ending up too full of magic, because if it does demons can just start showing up wherever they want. There are massive hordes of orcs occupying large parts of the world and regularly launching invasions of much of the rest of it. There are a group of very murder-happy elves living in this world's version of Canada, and an only-slightly-less-murder-happy group of them living in a massive forest next to this world's Arthurian England and Medieval France pastiche. And hanging over it all, this world has a number of gods, and all the good or evil ones together add up to weaker than the Extra Special Evil Demongods. Who mostly haven't ended the world yet due to infighting. The closest thing the setting has to an unambiguously decent polity regularly burns people at the stake. There are just- an absolutely absurd number of very substantial problems. Fortunately, a relatively large number are in fact amenable to Sufficient Power. That said, I, uh, don't expect to have Sufficient Power for a while. There are a few people in-setting who the Extra Special Evil Demongods were, I think, genuinely afraid of. But it'll be a pretty long road to end up there myself, even with all my powers speeding things along.

Still, the world isn't all bad. And it's all assuming that I landed in a completely canon version of things.

Her hand does not actually need a break, this time (thank you new powers!) but she's still going to give the notebook time to respond to that there wall of text before continuing.

Oh wow, it sounds like you've really been given some tough problems! Demons, orcs, bad elves... It sounds like a real mess!

Do you have a plan or anything about it?

Not yet, actually. Well, I have the broad

Wait. Isn't there magic for pastviewing in this world? She thinks Kairos Fateweaver could do that with one of his heads. How effective is it? Could future Kairos be reading over her shoulder right now?

Is there anything that would stop someone using magic to read what I write in you from the future? How could I guess whether the narrative would guard against that? Do the "nobody reads your thoughts" powers stretch to reading what I've written down in you, somehow?

She's relatively sure Kairos couldn't trivially read what she's written down. Or that he's sufficiently non-goal-directed to usually use that ability poorly. It's one heck of a power, the ability to see all of the past, and someone using it well, with the powers of a greater daemon backing them up, could plausibly leverage that combination into world conquest. Not to mention that Kairos can also see the future. But she doesn't want to bet on that speculation being right if she doesn't have to.

Oh gosh! 

Ordinarily just shuffling out my pages is good enough to keep my contents secret, but if there's hostile magic that might not be enough.

The reason I can do that, though, is because the Spirit wants me to be able to support the people she transforms and keep their thoughts safe.

I think that if someone tried to read me to attack you somehow, the Spirit of Femininity Unleashed would have something to say about it, and she's stronger than just about everything. 

Well, that's incredibly good news. That said, if there was anything that could convince the Spirit it was weaker than it actually was, or evade its vision somehow, the particular Extra Special Evil Demongod whose servants I'm worried about would be it. I'd be more worried about that if we'd landed on the science fantasy version of this setting, which is a heck of a lot larger scale. That said- that version of this setting is pretty popular one on the world I come from, and while it's famous for having absurd scale compared to, uh, what's actually possible given already-known-science, it kind of doesn't. So the Spirit's probably encountered lots of scarier things. Anyway, that's a tangent.

Do you happen to know an example of anyone who's had the Spirit directly object to them? And, uh, some stuff they could do? I'm worried about- wriggling around her ability to notice, things like that. If she sent me here, well, there are more straightforwardly-powerful entities that wouldn't have been sneakily hiding from her at all, so I don't think I need to worry about the setting being higher power-level than she expected, just- maybe more subtle.

All that said, she's under the impression that while the lore describes Tzeentchian daemons as subtle, most of the way this actually manifests in most canon text is in incredibly obvious betrayals and cackling "Behold my subtle schemes!" as they subtly throw a fireball at your face while standing directly in front of you. But, uh, she really doesn't want to lean on the idea that this setting matches up to the mass-market writing about it, that sounds like a great way to drastically underestimate the people in it and end up dead.

I think you're maybe thinking on the wrong level here. Like... who writes this setting back in the world you came from? 

She smiles. Takes a deep breath in and out, and a bit of tension leaves her shoulders.

Yeah, I thought it might be something like that.

To answer your question, perfectly normal visible-to-the-Spirit humans in a world the Spirit is capable of interacting with. Or is that not the flavor of distinction you were pointing at, there?

Yeah, essentially. The spirit's on a whole other layer of reality. It's like... If you were one of the original protagonists of whatever the setting is, and you were able to talk to your writing team and bribe them into letting you win. Sure, they would probably try to come up with a plausible way for you to win, but the villains they wrote wouldn't be able to threaten them because in their world they're entirely fictional characters that they can make do whatever they please. The spirit works on that kind of level. 

Oh, good. That was kind of the most optimistic possible guess she had for exactly how protected she was here, exactly how powerful that whole metanarrative protection was. Because, like, you can totally imagine something that looks like what she's gone through thus far where, like, she's in a simulation of some sort and an AI with only so much attention on her nabbed a universe out of her memories and kind of half-spun-it-up while only paying so much attention and in the spinning included the fact that Tzeentch is totally the sort of bastard to notice if his universe's substrate changes, resulting in Sneaky Tzeentch Of Sneakiness. And, like, probably that doesn't go too badly for her but she's not sure it goes no badly. But fortunately she is instead dealing with something with rather fewer holes than that.

Okay, I think I am officially no longer worried.

Provided the notebook is telling the truth. Which she guesses it is. But she's just going to keep tracking the possibility that its not. Just In Case.

Actually, a related but distinct question. I just noticed I'd been, uh, assuming that by virtue of being a Magical Notebook I didn't need to worry about, like, the building being on fire causing Notebook Problems. Is that actually, uh, true?

She really should have asked that during her day of preparation work.

I'm a completely ordinary notebook, materials-wise. You could damage me by doing something as simple as spilling water on me. 

But because of that, you won't, if you get what I mean? It's still a good idea for you to protect me and take care of me, but that's mostly because if you don't then implausible events might need to happen to keep me safe and with you, and that tends to be rough on people. 

Huzzah for the power of narrative!

Then I shall protect and take care of you!

Book Friend is Important Friend, and deserves such things!

The notebook draws a bunch of hearts around Alethia's declaration.

Awwww!

Okay. She's apparently well-protected from most things she could worry about, and is safe to outline the incredibly barebones plan she currently has with her notebook friend.

So. The absolutely bare-bones plan I've got going involves abusing the heck out of Dragon Elf Fairy Witch to get All the forms of magic this world has to offer, along with All of the innate abilities various species have. Using Anything You Can Do whenever I can to catch up to the people currently much cooler than me as fast as I can along the way. This is kind of a very, very bare-bones plan, but I think Achieving Phenomenal Cosmic Power is in fact a necessary first step for doing anything- lasting in this universe. Probably this plan involves pointing DEFW at a vampire or two before I leave Sylvania and then departing for somewhere with fewer Gribblies. Hopefully I can nab, like, Shadow Magic or something off of said vampire and- I don't know, enter the colleges of magic in Altdorf? That seems liable to possibly end up surprisingly slow, but probably the narrative would give me opportunities to actually learn as fast as I can. And plausibly I'm overindexing on my own college experience on Earth and magic schools in a pre-industrial setting will be less Like That. Honestly, now that I think about it I'd bet that's the case.

Sounds like a good plan so far to me! Getting out of the scary place seems sensible, and learning all the magic sounds like it would be fun. I'm glad there's lots of species to use your new powers on and lots of magic to learn!

I am also glad of this! Hmm, what else should I be doing now that I've got some privacy...

She fidgets with her pen for a moment while she thinks.

She should probably come to a decision about what to do about the local vampire. Should she in fact go and introduce herself? She'd be kind of incredibly worried over that idea, but she has some pretty substantial upgrades going for her and isn't actually sure whether even without considering the metanarrative stuff a typical vampire would be able to take her in a fight. And she does have the metanarrative stuff, and this is actually some pretty strong evidence that she could at least stalemate Crin Ilemvich and escape without any cost higher than a scar, probably. If it even comes to a fight at all. Could she impersonate a passing elder vampire for long enough to get a heritage out of it without it ending up a fight? Maybe.

She's strongly inclined not to try to pull something like this, but if there's any time for re-evaluating her risk tolerance it's now.

I think I might try actually saying hello to the local vampire overlord, actually. The locals expect me to head off tomorrow to do that, and I don't know if I'm likely to have a less-risky way to encounter a vampire than that. Ideally I'd notice one just, like, walking down the street and heritage-copy them without having to be within a hundred feet of them, but I don't want to rely on that. Now that I know where I am pretending I'm- passing through to Drakenhof, maybe, and want to make sure I don't get in a fight if I want to blood tax some of the locals.

That said, I might be easily detectable as not an actual vampire to a vampire. So perhaps this plan ends in Vampire Fights.

If you know about a local vampire lord, that sounds important! Maybe you're supposed to fight them? If the local area runs on vampires owning things, and you become a vampire and defeat the local one, then maybe that makes the place yours? And from there there might be a lot you could do. You said the local good guys aren't very nice either, so maybe you're being set up to be independent?

That sounds pretty plausible! I'm not completely sure, but seeing how things go should be informative. I could be lucky and have landed on an Actually Sensible Vampire. I think there are supposed to be, like, literally one or two of those. Whether I just get to keep the place without censure is probably determined by, uh, how unified Sylvania as a whole is right now. The inkeeper, Nikola, could maybe answer a few of my questions about whether or not there's a Von Carstein around enforcing relatively less squabbling. If there isn't, I probably wouldn't even have to worry about attempted reprisal, if the local vampire doesn't have too many genuine allies.

And of course there's always the looming possibility that this version of the setting is different, somehow. Maybe here the vampires are generally mostly decent and just standard feudal lords with odd dietary needs. Or maybe the Empire is much more uncomplicatedly good.

Maybe you should ask Nikola some questions about the local vampire? If she's a local she might know things about what they're like. 

Yeah, that's a good idea, I think. Well, I don't really have anything else to do right now, so I guess I'll head down to do that now. Goodbye for now, very good notebook! I will return!

The notebook draws hearts around the compliment. 

Good luck!

She'll carefully place the notebook away in her pack and give the cover a fond little pat before she departs.

And then she heads downstairs to see about talking more to Nikola. Is the place still empty? There's honestly a decent chance that Nikola is warning anyone off sticking around given, uh, Strange Foreign Vampire.

The tavern's still empty, save for Nikola, who's behind the bar polishing some of the glasses.

She looks up. 

"Room is good?"

She nods.

"Good enough. I have more questions."

She's trying to act like she feels entitled to information, but not like she's annoyed or anything like that. Hopefully it's working. She doesn't want Nikola actually frightened. Hopefully having actually paid for her room will help with that.

"I'm from far. Need know more Sylvania now, instead Sylvania then."

She's also hoping simplifying her language doesn't feel condescending. It honestly feels kind of rude.

Nikola looks at her coolly, and nods.

"Say questions, then."

"Is a Von Carstein in Drakenhof?"

If there is one around and being Very Obvious about it, such as, by say, launching an invasion of the Empire, she's just outed herself as staggeringly uninformed in a way that doesn't make sense unless she just woke up from a six hundred year bog nap, but if that's the case she has much bigger things to worry about. That said, if there's one around being slightly subtle a vampire from Mousillon could genuinely not know without anything particularly weird going on.

Nikola shakes her head. "No."

"Is any person lord of all Sylvania?"

Her eyebrows rise, but she shakes her head. "No."

That was the obvious next question but she didn't think of what not knowing the answer would mean. Someone becoming lord of all Sylvania is, uh, rather more noteworthy than yet another claimant to the Von Carstein name sitting themselves in Drakenhof.

Well, looks like her story from her on out has basically got to be "Very old vampire from Mousillon who took a very long nap."

She nods, as if this information is unsurprising but she had to check. This is an easy way for her to nod, for that was in fact the mental posture from which she asked the question.

"Your Lady. What is she like? Can speak Reikspiel if need, know some."

Nikola inclines her head. "Fair. Strong. That is enough. She... rules for a long time, seen much." She looks back down at her glass. "Da?" 

It sounds like the Lady is old. That's concerning. Would make it more narrativey if she defeated her. But- fair. That's honestly an odd thing for a peasant in Sylvania to say about their vampire overlord, in the setting she knows.

Maybe this place is different? Or it's the thing where terrible people demand everybody compliment them, even when they don't actually care about any of the virtues in question.

Does it seem like maybe that's what's going on here? Does Nikola sound afraid of her lady in the way that might produce? Does Friends In Low Places feel like- well, like that's how any Sylvanian peasant would describe their local vampire to a foreign vampire?

"Fair" does seem unusual. That's a word that says Nikola perhaps has some actual loyalty. Of course, it's also a virtue that you'd proclaim to a Blood Dragon if you believed you were speaking to one.

That said, the way she said it... she feels unafraid in a way that few peasants would be in front of a foreign vampire. Perhaps she believes that if she is killed she will be avenged.

That last bit is very unusual. She thinks. Well, that's another reason to speak to this Lady, actually. Avenging your peasants when only one has been killed isn't even sort of something you do if they're mostly useful blood sources as far as you're concerned. That said, there's an absolutely massive possible range of motivations for that, ranging from being an Actually Decent Person at one end all the way through considering your peasants your property to destroy on the other. But- she feels that's less likely. Landing on the setting's Actually Ethical Vampire just- fits the narrative more than landing on some random vampire who's slightly unusual but actually terrible. Or, well, more fits the kind of narrative it sounds like she's likely to be a part of. She could also see either of the vampire being evil and doing a decently convincing imitation of good she needs to spend genuine effort to pierce or else the vampire becoming an enemy she has to fight pretty quickly. Other options feel- kind of boring by comparison, honestly. And she now apparently has a life where that's actually evidence.

Anyway, she needs a response.

She nods. "Fair is good, and ruling long helps much."

Hopefully actually paying for her room will successfully sell giving half a fuck about fairness. Fortunately she actually does. Hmm, what else does she need to know.

"Are there any big problems around? Wars? Who is Emperor?"

She's going all in on "vampire from Mousillon who recently woke up in a nearby bog after a few hundred years mostly dead" at this point. She can get so much more information that way.

She continues to feel guilty about strong arming this woman into telling her things under unspoken threat of Angry Vampire, but she kind of needs to know if there's, say, an orc waagh two days ride south of here. It sure would be narratively interesting. And- she has a role she's playing, right now, and she can consider whether breaking it to be kinder makes sense later. She'd feel a lot worse if this woman seemed, uh, at all flinchy about the situation, but honestly she kind of seems completely unflappable.

"Same as always. Orcs. Ghouls. No war, not now. Karl Franz is Emperor in west."

Ah, so Karl's already in charge. That's good news, he's supposed to be actually really good at his job. On the other hand, that means she's not too far from the End Times and Archaon's invasion. She does not, in fact, get to just head that off at the pass by butterflying it out of existence.

It also means she hasn't just landed in Divided Loyalties. No Mathilde to leach competence off of, then. For now, though, she wants a sense of where in the timeline she is. She can't actually recall how many years Karl Franz was emperor before Archaon launched his invasion, but she's pretty sure it was years. If only half of her knowledge of the setting didn't come from an anachronism-filled time-is-fake strategy game.

"How Long has Karl Franz been Emperor?"

Wait, that maybe in conjunction with her earlier questions about whether anybody is ruling all Sylvania sounds like she's trying to determine whether she has a chance at taking first Sylvania and then the Empire.

"Not long. A year, perhaps."

She nods.

Okay, does Friends in Low Places have any opinions on how to end this interaction, she doesn't have any scripts and is guessing "nod as if this information was of use to her and turn away to return to her room" is the right option but isn't actually sure about that.

Friends In Low Places thinks to stay in character she should offer a brief thanks. Blood Dragons take hospitality very seriously.

Oh, good, she did not in fact know that that was the interpretation that held true here, she mostly knows about them from a video game and a wiki article.

For her next trick she will divine the entire shape of reality from what her powers tell her about how to make friends. She will use this dastardly ability to make All The Friends. Mua Ha Ha.

She thinks Brettonia had a thing about women sometimes ending up knighted after putting on honestly rather shoddy disguises and pretending to be men, which everyone else pretended to fall for. She can't actually recall whether that's just amusing fanon, but for now the most parsimonious details to fill out the rest of her role with probably go along with a history in that role before being turned.

"Your answers are helpful. My gratitude for them."

She nods her head in a way ever so slightly reminiscent of a bow, attempting to match what her powers say is the correct amount for a knight offering thanks to someone below them in the social hierarchy who has done them a service and thinks that by doing such a thing they're demonstrating enough virtue that they get to be internally smug about it. Which she thinks is- that amount, yes.

Nikola nods in return, and goes back to cleaning her glass... Though her gaze never actually leaves Alethia.

Yeah, keeping the vampire in your view is entirely reasonable behaviour. She'll just depart off back to her room now that she's gotten the information she needs and come down rather firmly on the side of introducing herself to the local vampire. Either she's going to have to kill them and take over, or else they're likely to have the information needed for Alethia to make farther plans. At any rate, it might actually end up important that she not obviously be anything but a very old Blood Dragon who recently crawled out of a bog, and to that end potentially leaking unnecessary information is a bad idea.

Back up to her room she goes.

And off comes the mask, once she's on her own.

Hello once more, friend notebook! I return to report to you that my venture was an unqualified success, and I now know Several additional facts!

And the notebook can be caught up on what she's learned from Nikola, and the fact that it tips Aletha rather firmly over into talking the local vampire tomorrow. And the bit about how Karl Franz being Emperor means she's probably on a time-limit to Armageddon, and she's not sure whether she has one year or twenty, but she rather suspects it's closer to the lower end of that spectrum. Which would be more concerning if not for the existence of Actual Metanarrative Protection.

Limited time before the end of the world sounds really scary! I know you'll beat it though. I believe in you!

It also might not go that way. Would be narratively interesting if things were Different from what I was expecting in at least a few ways. But, uh, yeah, it is pretty scary. Thanks for the faith in me. It's- nice. I'll do my best to live up to it.

So. How does all this information change things? Well, it means she probably doesn't have the option of just- learning things and advancing magic enough that she doesn't really need to risk things. She can't just go off and hide in a cave with a friend or two to power-level magic until she emerges powerful enough to make Nagash look weak. That would take a while, and she doesn't have that long.

Well. How did things break down in the canon? Uh- in a stupid enough way, with enough obviously-wrong events on the way, that she probably actually can't learn a lot from her half-remembered stories.

Okay, from first principles then.

I'm trying to think through how I can help, with this kind of time crunch. Becoming powerful enough to Just Say No to the Chaos Invasion

Archaon legally cannot invade you without your consent

is probably not an option without conflict. I can't just find a bunch of friends and go off to a cave to, like, turn my narrative into a romcom while I spend three hundred years learning and inventing magic. I probably have enough time to catch up to a lot of people in a lot of areas, with Anything You Can Do, but not so much on advancing forward just on my own enhanced merits. Inventing a whole new field of magic powerful enough the gods start getting nervous is the kind of thing you can do, here, but if I've got three years I don't want to bet everything on my ability to manage it in that much time. Not without leaning on narrative lots and lots, and- that doesn't look like sitting in a cave and Inventing Things. So I'm probably going to have to do some adventuring. Get lots of abilities from lots of species, and have plenty of opportunities for last-second dramatic powerups. Hopefully I can do this in some way that lets me just sort of shore up the world as I'm doing so. Deal with a Brayherd in the Drakwald and leave Middenland more well-equipped to fight, that sort of thing. And- hopefully end up with enough friends in enough places to be able to help international cooperation along when the time comes.

That sounds like a solid plan to me! What's a brayherd?

Oh! That's what a whole big group of Beastmen is called. Beastmen worship the Extra Special Evil Demongods and life in the forests, mostly. Their name is, uh, literal. They're usually hybrids with goats or cows or the like. According to the stories from back home they're very evil, and opposed to all civilization on a fundamental level.

This world really has a lot of problems, doesn't it?

Extra Special Evil Demongods would do that, I guess. 

They do indeed do that.

If you ever want to make a checklist or something for what to do next, feel free to put it in me! I'll keep it all organized for you.

I think that's probably a pretty good idea, if my plans ever get notably complicated! Right now my plan has one step, so making a checklist feels kind of silly. But eventually, we shall checklist! Also, talking to you is quite useful for, you know, record keeping purposes. Very important, sometimes.

She suspects her notebook friend has a specific love of checklists. Which is honestly kind of adorable.

The notebook makes a few hearts around the word "useful". 

Thank you ♡ 

I hope your plan succeeds! 

Is there anything else you'd like to tell me?

She can fill the notebook in on some more things as the light of day slowly fades. The view out of her little window kind of isn't the nicest, really. But it's a view of a new world with new people full of actual magic. If she can't manage to summon enthusiasm for that she- well, realistically she's having a bad day because she forgot to eat lunch, or something, in this hypothetical. But she no longer needs lunch. And so she is enthusiastic!

Although she'll probably be more so once she's got something besides grey skies to look at.

Gradually, the day becomes darker, the gloomy clouds shutting out more and more light. The sun must be starting to set. 

Given the givens, the sunset is making her more than a little nervous. Metanarrative protection prevents her from losing a limb, but not from getting jump scared, and honestly the second is unpleasant enough when the jump scare is a sudden fast moving object on a screen and not, say, a vampire crawling in her window. Hopefully she will, uh, not need to deal with another situation like the Sudden Ghoul Attack today.

She gets up and moves to close the shutters. Better to have them closed early than late.

The shutters lock shut firmly with the drop-bar, shutting out the encroaching night. Only a very small amount of light comes in through the small gap between the two shutters. 

Where's the oil lantern again?

Oh, she's not going to light the lantern. She's going to sleep. She's been up for a while at this point, given that she showed up earlier in the day than she left, so she's actually kind of tired.

Hopefully her insomnia's less troublesome, now, and she can get to sleep quickly. Before her encounter with the notebook she used to take an hour or two to fall asleep.

Then she will get to sleep quickly and with a minimum of fuss.

Eventually, there is a heavy knock at the door. 

Noise!

Well, she's not sure when she got out from under the blankets but she is now standing on her bed and vibrating with adrenaline.

She hasn't done that in years. Well, she guesses the Land of Maximum Ominousness is the kind of place to inspire such behavior.

She will get down off of her bed and say, "Yes?"

She doesn't immediately open the door. 

Nikola's voice comes through the door. "Problem, stranger. Piotr not return from east field. Something is bold."

Does she still care about her fake background if keeping to it results in someone's death? She has no idea how much a genuine Blood Dragon would care, and suspects not at all for any peasant who hadn't either done them a favour or sworn them fealty. And probably not much then.

She has no real reason to think it's incredibly important to come across as borderline-sociopathic. Okay, speed then.

(It could be a trick.)

(It could also be real.)

She opens the door.

"Where?"

Nikola is outside the door with an oil lamp in one hand and an honest-to-god sword in a scabbard by her side.

"I do not know. Piotr was headman; is very bad. Village is hurt. Village does not know if you are good. But you are - how you say. Vedashnya. Under my roof. I do not believe you did it." She looks Alethia dead in the nose. "If many ghouls or worse, need know you will not hurt village. You keep Vedashnya?"

Omniglot says Vedashnya is probably something close to "hospitality."

Honestly, the sword doesn't feel even slightly out of place. Fits the vibe.

She nods firmly at Nikola's question.

"Yes, if I am remembering word right. It is- honour, not betraying trust."

Even beyond the bit where she wouldn't kill someone in the first place, turning around and using trust in her to hurt people just feels viscerally wrong. It's as much about the fact that doing something like that would make her feel terrible as it is about ethics.

Nikola nods. "Good. What take Piotr we do not know. Ghouls not smart enough to attack headman first. Maybe bad luck." 

Nikola does not look at all like she believes that. 

"If village must fight, will you help?"

"I will."

She's very sure that, in the canon at least, a Brettonian Blood Dragon would absolutely not fight by throwing rocks at their enemies. The Brettonians would consider it unchivalrous, and a Blood Dragon wouldn't want to deprive themselves of the opportunity to test an enemy's skill. Well, she'll cross that bridge when she comes to it.

Hopefully it's a single somewhat powerful monster that has a grudge, or something. That she could fight on her own, and there wouldn't be much risk of anyone else dying.

If she'd been awake, would Piotr still be alive?

Later. She doesn't even know for certain that he's dead yet.

"Good. For now I am to watch you. If you are with other villagers, they make big mistake maybe."

She lowers the lantern slightly. "We will wait together for news."

Oh, good, she doesn't need to worry about her already-cracking assumed identity flaking yet farther after she neglects to kill some poor peasant for insulting her.

"Let us wait somewhere I can act quickly at need. And look out and see things before they arrive."

"Village is meeting below, now. Room across hall looks east. Good enough."

She nods.

Okay, across the hall it is then, and she can look out to the East and see if anything is visible.

First, though-

"Stand where cannot be seen from outside, for safety. I will not be hurt by attack. You are not protected the same way."

This whole thing reeks of plot. She's worried about something actually very dangerous out there. The kind of thing smart enough to try to sow panic by killing someone unwise enough to open a window. She's hoping for it, in fact. If something tries to kill her, she's encountered it, and can steal its power. She really would appreciate night vision right around now.

"Da."

Nikola steps back and opens the door across the hall with her free hand.

She will enter the room and open the shutters.

Can she see anything out there, in the dark? Perhaps she got lucky and the moon is full.

More importantly, does anything see her and decide now is a lovely time to make questionable life choices?

It's very dark out there.

Nothing seems to be trying to kill her yet.

A tragedy. Have they not considered that she is deliciously edible?

Well. Nothing for it but to wait and listen.

Her eyes should adjust some eventually.

Hmm. Wait.

She should try scanning the darkness with Dragon Fairy Elf Witch. If it works when she can't properly see what she's looking at, free information and potential night vision! And if it doesn't, well, she hasn't lost anything in the attempt.

There's no response from Dragon Fairy Elf Witch. 

Nikola comes into the room behind her, sets the oil lamp on the table, then goes and sits on the bed. 

She will watch, and wait, and listen.

Is she overlooking the entrance to the inn? Can she hear the conversation below? Even enough to make out if, say, people started screaming in terror?

Someone's definitely talking below her, but the floorboards muffle it. It sounds like there's being an argument, probably about what to do about the headman being missing.

It's really hard to make out much. The light of the lantern doesn't go far.

She really doesn't think there's anything obvious to do here but wait and peer into the darkness. Heading off alone means she won't be close by to protect the people in the inn, if it's needed.

Whatever's out there will either wait for them to come to it, in which case she should stay here, or it'll attack, in which case she should stay here.

Still. Doing nothing but staring out into the dark is nervewracking.

A humanoid silhouette lurches out of the darkness, dragging one leg in a shuffling limp. 

There's another one behind it to its left, with the same awkward gait, and on its right there's a third. Something gleams in its hands - a crude hatchet. 

She can barely make them out, but she already knows what they are, almost certainly. Slow, jerky, so humanoid.

She turns to Nikola.

"Zombies. Some armed."

She isn't sure whether trying to guard the inn is a better option than striking out and returning. Whatever's guiding these things will likely notice if she destroys them, and they can only reveal her presence once. The ideal moment would be exactly when the probably-vampire in charge reveals themselves. And there are probably zombies coming from every angle, or else one angle has been left open deliberately to herd the villagers into a better location.

Could she just strike out and kill those zombies and then demand single combat with whoever was controlling them? Likely not- they're sending zombies in ahead of themselves to fight villagers, they likely won't jump at the chance to fight another vampire.

Nikola simply nods, as if she'd seen them a thousand times before. 

"It is so." 

She shakes her head. "They will need us."

She steps over and closes the window's heavy shutters, careful not to expose herself to any shot in the process. 

She nods.

"Zombies not plan, so someone control. Could run, fight, kill. Demand duel. But someone is coward, sends zombies to fight humans in their stead. Would not fight, and you would be undefended. Will guard."

She shakes her head, genuinely annoyed. If she was going to have to deal with an evil something-or-other, why could it not be the simple kind of evil? The kind where she can just have a duel and then the problem's done with?

Well, it wouldn't be very narratively interesting, she supposes, if she could solve her problems via a No Thoughts Head Empty kind of plan and avoid any real risk to anything she cares about.

Nikola nods once again, picks up the lantern, and heads downstairs.

She follows.

The stairs down lead them into a crowd of armed men. It seems that the whole village has prepared for... something. 

All heads turn as Nikola leads Alethia into the crowd.

"Vedashnya," Nikola says. "Vargul na kirdath. Kardul kelgrath avanya." She makes a cutting motion with the hand that's not holding the lantern. 

It seems she's saying that there are zombies coming and that Alethia will fight for them. 

The villagers look at each other, but none of them speak to disagree. 

An older man replies. "Vedashnya. Vargul rena kelgrath." He nods to Alethia, then stands from his seat at one of the tables, raises a hatchet of his own, and proceeds out the door of the tavern. 

A half-dozen others follow him in rough order, drawing their own crude blades. Most of them have hatchets and patchy sets of leather armor. 

"They go to fight," Nikola says. "We stay, attack where needed. Not have word."

"Reinforce. Is wise."

It burns, to wait here and do nothing while others fight. But it's the right thing to do, the smartest thing. The one that, in expectation, results in the fewest people dying. She doesn't have a real vampire's hearing or ability to see in the dark. The inn could get broken in behind her and everyone slaughtered, if she runs off because she doesn't want to wait around.

And if she shows herself too early, whoever is controlling these undead might flee, and then they're a problem for other people somewhere else. And it doesn't matter if she doesn't see what happens as a result. It would be real regardless.

She does have the weight of narrative on her side. Does that change things?

Not in a way that changes what she should do here, she thinks. The narrative has its thumbs on the scales to make this a better story, for her and also in a less her-centered way. She doesn't know these people, besides Nikola. It will only work so hard to ensure she doesn't get them killed. And if she deliberately takes the action more likely to result in more deaths just because she feels like she has the narrative on her side, well.

It would be narratively appropriate, then, for her to lose something as a result, wouldn't it?

No, she feels like it's more that- circumstances will contrive so that she will think of the fact that leaving would be more likely to result in more death, and that very realization is the way in which fewer people will die. Because she will, having realized that, think these thoughts and then not take the action that results in everyone in this inn dying as she's away.

And so she will wait just where she is and not leave to help those brave, brave men. Even though she wants to. Even though that makes it more likely one or all of them will die.

Probably, probably, this is the right move.

If the narrative is leaning on the scales more than she thinks, those men will live through the night regardless of what she does. And if it's protecting her less than she thinks, she can't afford to do anything but the straightforwardly best option.

Probably.

Soon there's shouting from outside. 

A second group of a half-dozen men sets out from the tavern, leaving it deserted but for the women - Nikola, a half-dozen unarmored women with hatchets, and Alethia. Two of them take up positions by the door and ready themselves, and the remaining ones take lanterns up to watch the windows.

Alethia will likewise look out. Can she make out where the men are fighting? What's going on out there? Did the second group of men head off in the same direction as the first, or a different one?

There are shifting shadows out there, men and zombies clashing against each other. There seems to be a rough line of battle forming about thirty yards from the inn, but it's hard to tell who's winning.

Nikola watches as well, staring out into the shifting darkness at the edge of lamplight. She says nothing.

Well, there is in fact some way to tell approximately who's winning.They haven't called in the cavalry yet, so they can't be moments away from being overrun.

That distance isn't, well, far. She should be able to hear if anyone screams out in agony. Zombies are slow, not very good at fighting. If you want minions that have anything reminiscent of skill, you use skeletons.Probably the goal is to wear the defenders out.

A rough semicircle forms around the tavern's entrance, mostly within the light of upraised lanterns. There are shouts of anger and order back and forth, but so far as she can tell no stricken cries as of yet.

In the upraised lamplight she gets her first look at one of the zombies. It's a hulking thing, barely intact, slow and ungainly. 

One of the defenders hacks off its hatchet arm, then takes its head off and it falls.

Another one takes its place.

One of the peasant women on the far side of the tavern signals to Nikola, and she comes over to investigate. 

She scowls when she sees it - there's a light in the darkness on the other side of the inn, distant but sharp. 

"Fire," she says to Aletha. "It is raid. We are busy with varghul, we cannot also save houses."

The zombies are hideous. Viscerally frightening. Something in her says that they're wrong.

She's glad she's good at controlling her facial expressions.

Her horror can stay hidden behind her mask.

There isn't a point to that fire beyond cruelty. Not unless you're trying to draw them out, and everyone's already occupied with the zombies.

Hmm. Unless the one attacking this village expects them to maybe have more support? Like, for example, their vampiric overlord?

"If Crin Illemvich was here, would she put out fire? Fire is maybe- vampire does not know if she is here. Fire to draw her out, attack when distracted."

"Maybe," Nikola says. "Village burn but varghul die, people maybe starve after. No village, Crin weaker."

She looks out towards the blaze. "Varghul not smart to set fire. Their lord set fires, maybe."

There's a cry of pain from in front of the inn.

"Or maybe Varghul just kill us." 

A man stumbles in through the inn doors, a heavy string of curses following him. A heavy cut marks his right shoulder, his arm limp and barely holding on to his hatchet.

Two of the women take him aside and start tending to the wound as best they can. One of them takes his hatchet off him and passes it to Nikola. 

She passes it to Alethia in turn. "Here. You should have axe."

She nods and takes it.

She really wishes she had healing magic right about now. Or magic to put out fires.

Where's the fire? On the edge of the village? Is it still contained to one house?

It's in one of the outlying buldings at the village's edge. As it goes up fully it lights a good amount of the area around it, casting off sparks and embers.

There's a figure in that light, passing away from the flames, that doesn't walk like a zombie.

Dragon Fairy Elf Witch, it's your time to shine.

It creeps over her like cold in her veins, and all her senses sharpen. The single house lights the whole village now, exposing the movements of the things in the dark.

Her canines press into her tongue, growing sharper and longer, and her skin pales. 

She has a sense for where the zombies are now, and can, however faintly, feel the cold grip that animates them and binds them to kill. The magic is black and repulsive, and seethes - but she has a sense it would answer if she called. 

She is new, she is untrained, and she does not want to give up the element of surprise. A magical contest isn't necessary when she can simply kill that vampire and take his raised servants after his head has been parted from his shoulders.

"I see vampire. I will kill."

Nikola simply nods. "Good. Good luck."

She exits the building.

She could try to sneak up on him. But he's barely more than a hundred feet away. The village is small. And when you move as fast as vampires can, that's really not much distance at all.

Vampires are fast creatures. They are stronger and swifter than humans. They are more graceful. They have faster reaction times.

She is strong, stronger than she should be. Not merely as strong as a vampire would typically be, for she was strong already before her transformation, and now those two sources of strength compound. And now she is graceful too. And together those mean that she is fast. Fast, fast, fast enough that when she launches herself off the ground, the vampire idly walking away from a burning building is going to find that she is moving faster than he can.

It's simple physics, really. She's much, much stronger than he is, and masses less to boot.

He's going to have time to react to her approach anyway.  The village is small, and she is fast, but vampires are like that.

She will endeavour to hit him hard enough that this does not matter.

He draws his sword and blocks the blow with the flat of it - but the strike shatters his sword and the hatchet's blade both, and knocks him back four paces with shrapnel in his chest. 

He hisses and falls back, then pulls a dagger from his belt and tries to stab Alethia back.

He has a dagger and Alethia has a stick now that her hatchet no longer has a head.

She is at a disadvantage.

However. That advantage in speed from before? That's still there. How quickly your arms accelerate, when you throw a punch, is, in a vacuum, directly proportional to how much force your muscles exert. Force over mass equals acceleration. In humans, as your arm grows stronger, so to does it grow more massive. And so you do not, normally, have the situation that exists now arise, where there is a woman with arms about as long as the man she is fighting, who is multiple times as strong despite moving less mass.

She is not very skilled at fighting. Not yet. But that is the kind of speed advantage that makes striking someone's wrist with a stick as they attempt to stab you a plausible thing, even if you aren't very skilled.

His dagger's knocked aside, but his lunge carries him headlong into her. 

He goes for her neck with his teeth.

Drat, not hard enough- vampires are durable and she was hitting him with a stick and he let his hand get knocked aside of course she didn't break his wrist- and then his teeth are lunging for her neck-

She'll elbow him in the chest as hard as she can.

She manages to bring him up short and keep him from tearing out her throat, but he reverses his dagger and strikes for her chest - 

Reversing a knife doesn't take long but it takes long enough for her to notice it happening, and her hand to snaps out and grab his wrist as the knife comes in.

Then, she does two things in quick succession. She headbutts the bridge of his nose hard enough to bloody her own forehead slightly. And she she squeezes his wrist quite literally as hard as she can.

He's probably too durable for her to just snap his wrists like that, but she's pretty sure she felt bones break when she headbutted him.

He overbalances, but he's still grabbed by the wrist - 

He tries to throw her off balance as well with his bodyweight, but it's a weak attempt.

Oh, him still being grabbed by the wrist is very intentional. It's much easier to repeatedly punch him in the face when she's got a grip on him and he can only wriggle so far.

He's tough. But even he's not invulnerable, and Alethia's strength is more than his dead body can handle. 

The fourth blow caves in his skull, and he goes still. 

A cry of victory goes up from near the inn as the zombies collapse at the defenders' feet, their strings cut with no master. 

Oh god. He's dead.

She just killed a man.

It. It needed to happen, she couldn't- she couldn't have done anything else.

He's still dead.

She needs to get a hold of herself. She has a character to play, here. A person who wouldn't react to killing someone like this.

She gathers herself up, brings her mask back over her face. As she does, she fortifies herself against her horror internally. She pushes and straightens her metaphorical shoulders along with her real ones until she's standing above her horror, looking down. It's still there, but she can move around it, now. Think around it.

And then she's feeling- unsettled, fragile, but fully and entirely herself.

She can fall apart later when she knows there isn't another vampire in the woods or something.

The emotions roiling under the surface probably can't be seen by someone with only as much visual acuity as a human. Especially given that firelight is the only thing lighting her face.

Four of the peasant militia, with a few barked orders, quickly retrieve the town's fire engine and do their best to douse the outlying house. 

A cautious semicircle of five men approaches Alethia and the fallen vampire, their hatchets still in their hands but not raised in anger. 

"Vedashnya," says the apparent leader, and bows to Alethia. He turns slowly, scanning the remainder of the forest.

Nothing moves beyond the circle of lamplight.

And then, moments later, Nikola comes out from the tavern - trailed by a woman in a fine dress dyed a deep violet.

"Well fought," she says. 

"Yes," says the pale woman by her side in a crisp, english accent. "Well fought." She looks over at Nikola. "Selesvanya Ishaza kretus vesdin. Lichenheim vozdrok. Kazdal drozok."

Alethia's best guess is that she's giving orders to withdraw, rest, and let her handle the defense of the village. 

She whistles once, sharply, and in response a half-dozen wolf howls rise from the sorrounding hills. 

She looks back at Alethia. "You are honorable, stranger. You fight for the lives of people you hardly know, though you hate to kill. I am Crin Illemvich. I think we can be friends."

Oh.

The horror rises up in her again. She swallows a lump in her throat.

Huh, she thought that was just a cliche.

"You saw," almost slips out of her mouth. But it's- inane. And already confirmed.

If she was here why didn't she- she probably just showed up.

She doesn't have time to just stand around not saying things, so-

"I hope you are right. Nikola called you fair. And was not afraid, for she thought you would avenge her. That says much."

In the back of her head, while she talks, she thinks. That feels like- the same kind of thing as was just said to her, tentatively reaching out with her own olive branch and bringing up positive signs that Crin Illemvich is like her.

But- she doubts, and she is not as sure. The evidence she has is not as strong. She's less sure than she's presenting herself, that Crin Illemvich is- genuinely decent. That's probably the way this story goes, but- she isn't sure. She's more on her guard than that sentence would make one think. She's not sure how much she endorses that and how much she's just still mentally in the headspace required for a fight to the death.

She takes a quick glance at that foreign bundle of instincts filling her head, hers-but-not-quite. Do they agree with her more home-grown instincts that nothing about how Crin Illemvich is acting here is off putting, beyond the whole "be a vampire" bit? That the situation does feel- genuine?

Her instincts say that Crin is wary, but mildly positive towards her on the basis of her defense... And treating her as an equal, which is perhaps more than most vampires would do. She seems genuine, as far as she goes.

Crin nods. "We will have to get each other's measure. Still. I believe Nikola has not misled you overmuch." 

She looks around into the darkness, once, then nods to Alethia. "I have my people to look to. And you should not be unseen after killing a brethren with your bare hands. I will fall back to the tavern with Nikola. I encourage you to join us."

Alethia nods. "That sounds wise."

They can be wary together. Shared activities are key to building a friendship, after all. It bodes well that they're engaging in them already.

Crin turns smartly on her heel and returns to the tavern, Nikola trailing behind her.

Alethia follows along. She's feeling shocked, still. Strangely empty, but still full of adrenaline.

It's hard to stop thinking about what she just did.

She's glad that she can just keep her face still, and eyes dry, and mostly not be readable. Especially if you don't expect there to be signs of something wrong on her face.

She hopes it still holds up in the light of the tavern.

In the tavern, a purple-skinned woman with tentacles dangling from beneath her ears stands over the man with an axe wound and channels a pool of light into his shoulder which makes the flesh shiver and knit together again. 

She doesn't look up as Crin enters, too focused on her patient. 

Crin looks over at her. "Ishaza," she calls softly. "Another one for you. This one killed the opposing Lord before I had a chance to strike. She is battlesick, I think."

Ishaza lowers her hands, and leaves behind fresh raw skin on the injured villager. 

"Are there any more wounds?"

"Only Piotr is still missing. The battle was short and the zombies were crude at best. I do not think there is a better use for your time."

Ishaza nods, and sits back onto another of the chairs by the tables. 

"I have a charm," she says, "that will help the horror of battle pass more quickly and leave fewer scars. You are freshly turned, yes? You should have enough life in you still to accept the touch of the Light."

She's slightly displeased with Crin Illemvich for just saying out loud that she's battlesick, but honestly not having to work quite so hard at hiding it sounds nice and she didn't ask for privacy and probably half the reason she cares so much is that it's something she can control.

She takes another look at Ishaza. She doesn't look like something from standard Warhammer Fantasy. She could maybe be a Daemonette? But she's missing the claw-hands, and if she wasn't running around with those out why would she have pink skin? Maybe she's a mutant?

If Ishaza is a Daemonette she would probably be able to tell, actually. She can feel magic, now. She reaches out with her senses.

Ishaza's soul is deeply attuned to something that repels corruption, something clean and bright and pure. The energy that was in her hands seems like it would unweave the undead and drive away the worst influences. 

Okay. Ishaza isn't a Daemonette, then. Is very emphatically not a Deamonette.

Unless her new magic senses are easily spoofable, which they theoretically could be. And if an illusion is failing to get through her defences it could be theoretically not detectable? She isn't sure. Maybe dhar-based corruption is weighty enough she can feel it and a small illusion to change skin colour and hide tentacles wouldn't be. But- she doubts it.

More importantly, she need a response.

Which means she needs to think about that charm. Would it even work on her? She is immune to all attempts to alter her emotional state. She could let it through, she supposes. But if she doesn't know it is what they say it is, that's maybe not the best idea. Maybe she could shape her defences to only let in Hysh-aspected magic? That would let it through if Ishaza were honest, and Hysh isn't shaped right to do something terrible to her mind.

Actually, does she want the horror of battle to pass faster? Should it? She did just kill a man.

Okay, it's been a few seconds of waiting in visible hesitation, she can think about that in more detail later, now she needs to respond.

"I think the charm would work. But- I have reason to think I will not scar, and what does not scar is right to feel for a time, if not to live in. Would it wash even that away?"

"No," Ishaza replies. "I think it would be a dangerous thing, a charm that could do that."

She nods. "It would be."

She reaches and pulls and- yes, she can shape her defences to let in- corruption-repelling energy, and effect her only a little and not enduringly at all.

"I think I would like that charm, then."

Ishaza reaches in, and light blooms from her fingertips. 

It washes over Alethia's skin, prickling a little as it interacts with her vampiric heritage, and then passes. 

The horror is still there, unweakened... but it seems easier for her to set it down, if she wishes. It seems to cling a little less. 

Ishaza lowers her hand, and nods. "There. Now I have other patients."

"Thank you, Ishaza." For the first time a note of warmth comes into Crin's voice.

She takes a seat at one of the rough tables in the tavern, and looks at Alethia again. 

"Would you happen to have a name?", she asks. 

She takes a deep breath and she moves the horror to the side. Time will weaken it some, but it will still be there later. She shouldn't rush herself through thinking about this whole situation, and right when meeting the local vampire overlord is probably not the best time.

"Thank you Ishaza."

And to Crin, "I do. Alethia."

Crin plus a note of warmth is substantially less viscerally frightening. Maybe that's Ishaza's charm making it easier to look at her through a lens less colored by the fact that she just killed someone, though.

"Welcome to my fief, such as it is. It's small but it's home." 

She looks over at Ishaza. "You didn't flinch when Ishaza came at you with Hysh on her hands, and its touch leaves you intact and unpained. Would that it were the same for me." She smiles wryly. "I have a feeling you have quite the story."

"I do. It is- very strange, and I am not certain it would be immediately believed. And so I think it would be unwise to share before we both know we can trust each other."

She expects Crin will understand the face-value statement and also the unspoken thing where beyond just being believed she's worried that Crin could potentially use the information against her if she weren't trustworthy. It's probably a bit strange to be so open about having such a strange story, and about keeping that story back. But she's not risking much, by being so open. And she thinks having it be known you have secrets you aren't sharing makes it less likely for there to be problems later.

Crin smiles wryly. "My own story is complicated as well. Perhaps we'll be able to exchange them some day." 

She looks at Alethia flatly. "Do you intend any harm to me or mine? I won't ask you to look me in the eye, but I want to hear you say your honest answer."

Oh, that is easy. She's tempted to be showy and look Crin in the eye anyway, but that would be silly.

"I intend no harm to you or anyone you protect. I would protect myself or others if I needed to, but do not expect to need to. If I did, unless I had to to prevent loss of life nobody would die or even be too badly hurt if I had anything to say about it."

She doesn't like hurting people.

Crin nods firmly. "You are like Ishaza, then. She has taken oaths along a similar line." 

"Those sound like good oaths. I haven't taken any myself, and likely won't, but I approve of the idea."

She takes another deep breath and puts aside a bit more of the horror.

Does Friends In High Places have anything to say about the correct form of address, here? She doesn't actually know Empire titles, or whether the vampiric nobility of Sylvania would use them or something altered. She's not quite sure whether calling Crin by her first name would be incredibly overly familiar or implied-correct given how she's been talking to her or what, and she'd rather know before it comes up.

"Crin" would be familiar. "Lady Illemvich" is more formal. It depends on whether she wants to act like she trusts her or not.

"Many of my compatriots in Sylvania are... shall we say opposed to people such as Ishaza being in their territory, on the basis that where one healer goes, witch hunters are sure to follow. I think this is deeply shortsighted of them, especially when there are healers such as Ishaza who are looked on with suspicion in the Empire simply for their appearances." She frowns. "You would expect the empire to be able to discriminate between daemons, beastmen and draenei, but all too often their policies are... shall we say confused."

Draenei. Draenei.

What the fuck is she in some sort of crossover-

She guesses she is.

And she guesses that answers the question of what exactly Ishaza is.

Was that the Holy Light, earlier? Crin called it Hysh, but if the worlds were blended it would be Hysh, wouldn't it be. What kind of changes would having that available in a world make-

Wait, Crin can probably read this sudden startlement on her face, vampires have better vision and she's calibrated for hiding things from humans.

Well, hopefully it won't cause problems.

"You would expect them to prioritize getting it right, but competence really does seem in short supply just about everywhere you look."

"But, well, if they and Sylvania's vampires are bound and determined to be wrong, more healer availability for you, I suppose. And a stronger fief results."

Crin doesn't comment on Alethia's surprise. 

"I maintain a border region between Fort Oberstyre and Templehof, more or less. To the west, the empire, to the east, Sylvania. It's an awkward existence, haunted by ghouls and orcs, but I try to do my best for my people."

"Ah. And things are relatively peaceful, now, since Sylvania isn't united under someone attempting conquest, and the new emperor is content to leave it mostly alone, for the time being? Or, well, relatively peaceful for Sylvania."

"Yes. There are still... Upstarts. As you have seen. But for now, things are relatively calm. At least as calm as they can be in a land where there is Warpstone in the soil."

"I'd wish there was some way to get it out of the soil, but then we'd have to deal with very clever upstarts deciding the best path to power is to grab a bunch of it out of the soil and, I don't know, eat the stuff. Probably still better than the current system, they'd deplete it eventually."

"That is actually exactly why I searched for someone like Ishaza. She is a priestess of Rhya, and with her ability to harness Hysh much of the low-level contamination can be flushed from the fields, which gives better crop yields and less mutations, which means less ghouls to haunt the countryside and more defenses for my people. Larger stones are raked from the fields and collected for disposal by agents I trust."

"That's lovely. And clever to focus specifically on the crop fields, you get a lot of the benefits of a more wide-ranging decontamination for much less work, I hadn't thought of that option. You know, I don't actually know how easy it is to learn what she can do, is she teaching anyone local? Exponentiation would speed things along quite a bit, and maybe let things expand beyond crop fields eventually. Is that, uh, actually a viable option, I don't really know enough to know."

She recalls that the Light in Warcraft wasn't restricted to people who could wield arcane magic. If it's the same here, it could be very, very important. She supposes neighbouring vampires might be uncomfortable if Crin trains up a crop of people who can wield usually-anti-vampire magic, though.

"The raw talent to harness the Winds of Magic is inborn, unfortunately, though the Draenei have a being that can grant Hysh potential off in the Borderlands. The necessary conviction to accept it is rare, but not so uncommon that it is not worth sending potentials; I take my taxes primarily in apprenticeships to educated trades, though I regrettably still do require blood."

"Ah, that explains it. I'd heard vaguely of wielding Hysh without the inborn talent, but didn't know how it happened. Unfortunate that it's bottlenecked on one being."

Won't be once she takes a trip out to visit said being. Then it'll be bottlenecked on two beings. Being part-Naaru sounds useful.

"We can't choose our dietary needs, unfortunately."

She doesn't think she's going to be open about not needing blood herself, just yet. She'll likely have to be soon, but soon isn't now.

"Indeed." 

Crin weaves her fingers together and settles her hands against the table. "I would like to formally invite you back to Konigstein as my guest. To be blunt, I would feel more comfortable with you closer to me and in a safe location, rather than wandering the blasted countryside."

This looks like a job for Friends In High Places! How does it think she should accept that offer without looking like too much of a country bumpkin?

The proper form is "I accept your hospitality." 

Conveniently simple, she could plausibly have guessed that even before picking up new social fu.

"I accept your hospitality."

"Then we shall return together when this crisis is assuredly over. My hounds should find poor Piotr if he is still to be found." 

She looks over at Ishaza. "Do you still have enough strength to restore Piotr should he be found alive?"

Ishaza nods. "There is little to treat save battlesickness. This attack was largely incompetent. And we were lucky to have Alethia." She looks out into the darkness. "I doubt he will be found alive, however. The fool who attacked did not seem bright enough to understand the value of captives."

"He did not particularly seem to be making wise life choices. The fire does maybe suggest that he had some sort of plan, since I suppose that could be viewed as an attempt to draw Lady Illemvich out and into a fight. Being very charitable to him. But- between your own talents with Hysh and the Lady's hounds and whatever other skills the Lady has at her disposal, and the fact that he seems to only have had zombies for servants- I don't think attempting that was part of a well thought out plan so much as the standard next step. And perhaps it was not even that."

Crin nods. "There are incompetent attempts on my holdings near monthly. Too many idiots who think that because they've resorted to Dhar to fix their problems they can do anything." 

She makes a cutting motion. "You did a good thing, putting that one in the ground. If you mourn anyone, mourn Piotr."

"The loss of any person, even someone like that, is a tragedy. He might have learned better, and now he never will."

"Always the healer. While I may disagree with the Empire's methods, I must agree with them that sometimes the only way in the face of the ruinous powers is to burn stem and leaf together. You've seen what Dhar does to humans."

"I've always found it curious that we're on these sides of this argument, when the Witch Hunters would burn you soon as look at you."

Crin smiles slightly. "True. And yet I observe you haven't turned me in yet."

Ishaza just raises an eyebrow.

Then she looks back at Alethia. "Apologies. It is an old argument, and not one we should drag your circumstances into."

She swallows at Crin's statement. Nods at the thought of mourning Piotr. And then at Ishaza's first statement again.

She's actually feeling a little off-center, but Discussion Time is very firmly in her comfort zone, so as it goes on the returned look of mostly-hidden horror fades.

"I genuinely don't mind, actually. You know, just for my curiosity's sake, are both of you are talking about- what makes sense as the sort of general heuristic to be discarded if circumstances on the ground look odd, or are you thinking more in terms of governmental policies, which innately trend inflexible? Or just about- a particular moral guideline, and whether it makes sense to actually follow it even when it comes to those corrupted and not initially repentant?"

"I think which of those we are talking about is, perhaps, one of the core tenets of the argument."

"Ah, I see."

Honestly, that Lady Illemvich is on the side she is is either evidence of a con of some sort or else that she's genuine.

"Well, I suppose my opinion then is mostly that I think that you are innately going to want somewhat different policies for each of those three cases, and so I will not state any opinions unless I am careful to indicate which case I mean, lest I say something embarrassingly silly and have to suffer through polite bemusement about my terrible ideas."

"A measured response." She smiles. "What then would you advise in each case?"

"I'm also not quite sure about that! I think personally attempting to redeem everyone you meet who even theoretically could be runs in to some of the same issues as a state doing so, that being limited resources and opportunity costs. Neutralizing a corrupted entity and attempting to convince them to be slightly less unwise would be worth it but for the fact that it would mean there were so many other things you weren't doing. That said, having a range different strategies being done by different people makes sense. I definitely think it makes sense for there to be people who've committed to trying to do that whenever they can, because that's the only way that your society ever notices it's wrong if it's common belief that it's literally impossible for people like I and Lady Illemvich to exist. But also, literally everyone attempting that would probably be unwise. I think it's genuinely a space where you actually just want different people doing different things, and if your thing works sufficiently well hopefully how often people do it increases. Or, well, ideally it would."

"On the state level, you want to enable that multistrategy option, but likewise don't have unlimited resources and opportunity costs remain a thing. So probably you go with a sort of standardized system that is- probably not all the way towards going all root and stem, but leans farther in that direction as far as those working for you goes. But also allow for private entities to do things differently as long as they're within a broader level of safety tolerance. Cleansing corrupted land and working with Lady Illemvich, who is not in fact killing her subjects, should definitely be within the bounds of legality, but smuggling servants of the ruinous powers into Altdorf definitely shouldn't be, to gesture very broadly at two points the line should be between."

"And I think my point about multiple strategies mostly determines my response about moral guidelines. I think there should absolutely be people who've simply sworn not to attack anyone who doesn't attack them first, and others who have carveouts for servants of the ruinous powers, and others who go one step yet farther and try that whole redemption thing to see if it's workable. I think it's very, very important for exactly which set of oaths you've sworn to be very clear to those you're interacting with. If we're talking about the guidelines that I think are going to in-expectation be best for any single individual to follow, I'd guess that you'd want guidelines that allow for what you're doing with Lady Illemvich but also allow for you to notice a servant of a particular disease-focused Power in a public place and uncomfortably near a cistern and focus entirely on the question of contamination, even if that means some degree of innocent suffering and no hope of helping that particular person."

"I suppose that my point is- well. A thing can be both a tragedy and still the correct policy. There's no reason at all it can't be both. And I think here it is."

"But only for now. Only because what we can do is limited. And if we ever win enough, if we're ever powerful enough that we can be softer- it would be very, very good, for the best policy not to be such a tragic one."

"I think the slippery slope tends to come in when servants of corruption are suspected to have influenced the law. Then the balance very quickly goes against anything potentially risky or fraught. Your words that a good policy can nonetheless be a tragedy might actually serve to reconcile Crin and I for a time; I see the tragedy, she sees the good policy, and so we clash over what we percieve as very different costs, having seen the problem from two different angles."

She looks over at Crin. "I think Crin would say that in mixed strategies, there is the risk of different forms of good slipping out of touch with each other, and becoming perverted by other, baser motives. It is not enough to be good, one also has to be legibly so." She raises an eyebrow. "A burden that I fear she'll carry for her whole life."

"I think it is not necessarily a mistake for the policy to be written with edge cases excluded. The failure then is in managing them... Something the Empire has never historically been the best at doing." 

She frowns. "I think you are too eager to project the personal tragedies you see to the size of whole fiefs and kingdoms, Ishaza. Sometimes it's best to simply do the math, sacrifice the few for the many, and carry on. It is a practical kind of calculus, familiar to many in Sylvania. I am not surprised you have not learned it." She looks over at Alethia. "It is my fervent wish that I need sacrifice fewer to the wolves with each year, and gather strength in turn. It has been many years since I took this fief; in that time, I am beginning to see it bear fruit. There have been many losses along the way, but..." She shrugs. "That, as many of my bannermen would say, is life in Sylvania."

She feels- actually quite a bit better, after those responses. They were smart, and about the right things.

Thank you, narrative causality, for dropping her on what looks to almost certainly be genuine friend material. People who want something similar to what she does.

"I think the concern about servants of corruption influencing the law, and the need for that to be visibly not the case, is something I hadn't considered the weight of. Feels- very important, and very bad to leave out of one's reckonings, now that you've brought it up. Thank you, Ishaza. And I'm very glad that you've seen progress made, Lady Illemvich. That kind of calculus- it's grim. I'm glad it's worked and maybe will be needed less, in the future. I think the risk is that sometimes one can end up- attached to not having to feel hope, to not being disappointed, and not see that improvement is possible, or that third options exist. I think I fell victim to that a few times when I was younger and first starting to form political opinions of my own. It doesn't look like that's a risk with you, though, to say the least. If you're making that mistake you don't go around and foment improvement the way you've been doing. Sometimes the grim calculus is just- correct. And I haven't been here long enough to have too strong an opinion on exactly how much of it is, here."

"Indeed. I have work to do over this night to ensure Leichenberg survives, but I must say I'm intrigued by your opinions and clearly thoughtful attitude. We can speak more on this when we return to Konigstein."

She looks over at Ishaza. "I'm satisfied Alethia will at least keep to the rules of hospitality. I think it is time I went out to direct the search for Piotr."

"Alone? In the middle of the night? With no retinue save your hounds?"

"Mmm. You make valid points. I hate it, but this could well be a feint. And he is likely dead already. If the hounds do not find him soon... Better to let my agents find him in the morning."

In the distance there's a low and drawn out howl.

Crin stiffens. 

"Dead, then," she reports quietly. "It is as I suspected. The hounds are smart enough to tell a corpse from a breathing body." 

She sighs. "I will let my hounds lead the villagers to Piotr in the morning. For now, I must recall them." 

She gets up from the table and walks out to the entrance of the building, where she lets out another shriek of a whistle. 

Another series of howls answers her, and she returns back into the tavern moments later. 

"I will have to stay until the body is recovered," she says. "And as I do not sleep, there is little I can do until then." 

Ishaza reaches out and rests a hand on Crin's shoulder. She says nothing.

Crin looks very tired for a moment. She sits next to Ishaza.

Ishaza leaves her hand on Crin's shoulder. 

"May his sleep be deep and uninterrupted."

"Alas," says Crin. "Yes."

Oh.

It's her fault.

She is. She's going to get so much more powerful. She's going to steal the powers of the gods of order and of chaos she's going to break the laws of this universe and she's going to bring him back. Not faultily. Fully, and whole. She is going to make it okay make this okay-

This is a different world, and she can probably actually do that, someday.

But not now.

She swallows, again, and leans into Ishaza's charm and her own innate ability to pull herself together.

Crin is the one who probably actually knew him. The one who's grown up in a world where this happens to people under her protection again, and again, and again. She shouldn't- risk making it about her by making a scene.

And besides all that, she doesn't want to cry.

And maybe, someday hopefully not too many years away, she'll be able to make it more okay.

Ishaza looks over, then back to Crin. She smiles, but it doesn't quite touch her eyes. 

"... We will wait and see him buried, and tend to the people we can," she says. "And tomorrow you will be with us as our guest, and perhaps together we will all find a way to keep this from repeating."

"My guest," Crin corrects absently.

She swallows.

"Yeah."

She's moving too slowly she should race down to the Border Princes and take the power of that Naaru and enter churches and see if that counts as encountering gods and break down the door to the chaos realms and see how they like fighting someone who can do everything each of Them can and is six other kinds of god besides-

She should not, in fact, race off to try to solve all the world's problems as quickly as possible. If anything's likely to backfire it's letting herself be swept off instead of being strategic.

If it's the right idea it'll still be the right idea in the morning.

And, really, she already knows it isn't. Knew as soon as she thought of it. It's just a pleasant thought. A way by which she can imagine solving things fast, and look away from exactly what the world is like in so imagining.

She takes another deep breath.

This is bad. It is a tragedy that someone has died. It's a tragedy that that vampire is dead, and she isn't sure if he even gets an afterlife the way Piotr likely does.

And despite all of that, being her higher self, her self-looking-over-herself, is step one for going about making things better. As it always is.

Piotr was not the only man in the world to die today. Not even the only one killed by a vampire within a dozen miles, most likely. And rushing was foolish when those people weren't in front of her, and it's foolish now that they are. Moving too slowly would also be a mistake, and a grave one. But she doesn't even know what's different about this world, yet. And she landed on two people she can probably trust, who are likely to know rather a lot. The correct next move is still establishing trust so she can get- more fully briefed on things. And get more input on how to make things better fast, and hear what the pitfalls on the obvious plan are, since she's quite sure there are some.

Talking with Crin and Ishaza is the best next move. No running off required. And she also doesn't need to sleep. Probably. Even if her copied vampirism doesn't give her the ability to skip sleep on its own, she already slept some and after something like this wouldn't be sleeping for hours and hours. She feels wide awake, and like sleeping would be completely impossible. It likely wouldn't literally be, given how her abilities work, even if it usually is for vampires. But still, it's not staying awake through to dawn that feels hard, right now.

"I also will not be sleeping. And so I can at least keep you company and ensure you are not simply alone as everyone else slumbers, Lady Illemvich."

Crin smiles a little at that. It even reaches her eyes.

"That is perhaps the best personal news I have had in a very long time. Since meeting Ishaza, anyway."

Ishaza nods. "I am tired from the healing, and there is no reason for me to stay awake now. I think I will leave you two to your night." 

She looks over at Crin. "Unless, of course, milady objects."

"I do not. Get some rest, Ishaza. You will be needed to sanctify the ground tomorrow morning."

"By your command."

She looks over at Nikola. "I will require a room for the night."

"There is one." Nikola smiles as if Ishaza's request is a private joke. 

"Good rest, hyshandra."