Test Drive #7 - Ten Forward and Captain's Yacht

[ten_fwd_mods]

Option 01. Ten Forward: The first thing you see is a bar. A large, lively bar filled with many different faces and many different smells, sights and sounds. This is Ten Forward, the Enterprise's off-duty lounge; feel free to get acquainted with your fellow travelers and try to find somebody who's in charge: this is your new home now, after all...





Option 02. The Captain's Yacht: Oooh, you sneaky stowaway! You've found yourself in a very exclusive part of the ship: Captain Picard's personal craft, used for short jaunts when a shuttle just won't do. (One must retain some decorum, after all.) It may not be as large as the Enterprise itself, but there are sure to be some surprises aboard once people start snooping.


[OOC: The Captain's Yacht is located at the very base of the Enterprise's saucer portion, so if you put someone in there you can also play them trying to get back to somewhere they know!]

Comments

[the_blood]

*It sounds like you have experience with the sort of female temper we are discussing, yes," he said, nodding. *Of course a blood female in cold temper is very VERY hard to knock out...*

[deadmanbusiness]

*I'm not saying it was easy to do it, but we managed it.* He tilts his head briefly. *But why would this prevent a woman - not of the blood- from serving in her circle as a protector? Say like Adrienne, who would be much better at it than me.*

[the_blood]

*Mostly two-fold; for one, my own instincts, and that of any other Blood male that might arrive will drive us to protect her as well as the Queen, a distraction that could lead to distrust among the circle. For two, if females serve as escorts, protocol could come into question, and if it falls apart, even if there are only the two of us here... if protocol ever breaks down, I hope I can trust you to kill me* He sent, quite serious.

[deadmanbusiness]

"I'm sorry?" The request is surprising enough that Theo has to respond out loud.

[the_blood]

"If protocol ever breaks down," he replied in kind, "I need you to kill me. immediately," he said. "Protocol is what keeps Warlord Princes from being monsters. It is the leash that holds us, it is needed, or I would destroy everything I might have ever held dear."

[deadmanbusiness]

Now Theo looks extremely uncomfortable. It's not the idea of killing someone for being a monster. He's helped taken monsters down before, human and not. The problem is in his own blood, so to speak.

"First of all, let me preface this by I understand what you're saying. Completely," he begins carefully, picking out his words. "But... I ... there's things that come with being a god in my world, restrictions. And while I'm not a full god yet, I'm inching my way over there. One of those things is that I can't make binding promises. And I won't make a binding promise here, in this place, where there's so much unknown. There might be something here that neither of us know about that could pull you back from that, but if you were to make me promise that, I wouldn't be able to let them do that.

"The second of those things is that gods in my world can't directly take a life. They have to use intermediaries, champions, mortals to do things like that. I'm not really sure what happens if a god were to directly kill someone, but that restriction has been in place for thousands upon thousands of years, so I'm assuming it's for a good reason."

[the_blood]

He nodded. "Then let us hope it never comes to that... and if it does... let us hope the Darkness gives me the strength to walk into the sun," he said softly.

[deadmanbusiness]

"What exactly causes it?" Theo asks, curiously. He's trying to figure out how a breakdown in Protocol would cause such a thing. Was Protocol magical in some way? Perhaps not actively so, but maybe a form of society based enchantment.

Out of his pocket, since he's coffeeless and a bit fidgety, he absently pulls out an ancient gold coin and starts flipping it through his fingers.

[the_blood]

"Causes what? The rise to the killing edge?" he asked.

[deadmanbusiness]

"Yes, what causes that?"

[the_blood]

He stared at him, trying to figure out how to explain it. it was like trying to explain how his heart beat, or how he had become demon dead. How do you explain your own breath?

Yet he had to try.

"Warlord Princes are born to be warriors, protectors, predators..." he said. Was that the best place to start? He had no clue. Certainly someone else could have explained this better, the High Lord, perhaps. But no one else was here, and somehow he doubted Aiylshia's description would be terribly flattering. If she were playing attention.

Which she was... what had caught her her focus had long since resolved, but she was giving the males some time to talk, while she pursued other inward tasks, wove other webs. She was aware of most of the conversation, but kept herself out of it. It was rare for males to speak so freely when females that were not close as family were present. Perhaps even then. Her experiences, close experiences, with males were few, and far from all of them were pleasant. None were close.

"Aggression," Theiorn said, still considering his words carefully, "that cold violence... it is what we are." That wasn't a bad way to put it, he supposed. "We are temper given flesh, the protective urges inherent in all the Blood, amplified and cast as human."

Or Kindred, she thought with an internal sniff, insulted at the slight on behalf of the Kindred.

"Without females to hold our leash, without Protocol to show them how, that would be all we were ever capable of," he said, still thinking. "They are what give us the ability to think and reason, to see things in real time, rather than at the pace of heart beats... that we can love, that we can cherish, that we can find joys in things other than the killing, that we can look to a woman's softness and find welcome... that is why Warlord Princes are so drawn to protect, I suppose." That wasn't all of it, he knew, but he had no clue how to explain that primal pull. "We need them, we need their softness, their steel under silk, their..." he simply could not find words to encompass all that a woman meant, to a Warlord Prince. And a Queen... a good Queen....

"We protect women, but Queens... We hand to them out lives, our very wills. Queens spend their whole lives from birth until they establish a court of their own, and often beyond, to the study of protocol, to learning how to handle male aggression, Warlord Princes especially. To channel our anger into service, to pull us back from the killing edge. To tell you a secret," he said softly, and would not have said at all if he knew she were listening, else he'd have sent spear to spear. "For all we say we serve them, we need them far more than they need us."

[deadmanbusiness]

That's a lot of information for Theo to take in and try to relate to. In the end he comes up with a very necromancery way of seeing it. The Princes are a kind of undead that require the Queens - who act as necromancers - to the princes. Blood necromancers, as he would call them, who were trained since birth to control these particular kind of undead. They're savage unthinking undead given thought by the Queens.

Which makes him wonder if he could take control of the poor man.

"That... actually gives me an idea that might be helpful in case you do go ... berserk," he says, "But, I'd have to try something before hand to see."

[the_blood]

"Try what?" he asked, cautiously.

[deadmanbusiness]

"You are a kind of undead. Admittedly not one I've ever seen before, but still a kind of undead. I can control undead. I can take control of undead from other necromancers. It sounds like the Queens control you somewhat like a necromancer does. Not full out control like you're a puppet, but still..." Theo says.

"I think, if that's true, I might be able to take control of you as well. If that's true, then I could possibly shut you down in the event that things go ... bad."

[the_blood]

"But this is something inherent to being a Warlord Prince, not to being Demon Dead," he pointed out.

[deadmanbusiness]

"You're still undead. I won't say that no undead can resist my control, because I've learned that one is not true, but if I could get into your head, even for a moment, and command you to stop... it might work. It might at least give some breathing room or time to set things right." He thinks for a moment. "What about stunning a Warlord Prince?"

[the_blood]

"Would only be seen as more of a threat, If there were others to protect the Queen, I would say it could be an interesting experiment, but I am her on ly protector here, I cannot risk myself..."