DUNGEON - BELLMARE ENCLAVE (BELLMARE MOUNTAINS, PT 2)

[phantasmods]

The shadows are starting to grow very long as you crest his particular ridge - it's not night yet, but it will be soon. In the shadows of the afternoon, with a tall mountain already blocking the sun, lies a snow-covered valley that is different from the ones you've come across thus far in your investigation.

This valley is home to a town, and unlike all the settlements you've seen so far - Incendia, the Telovia mining town, and the manor - it's very much active. There are actual people in the streets, visible from above, going through their days on snow-free streets, bundled up against the cold.

Those of you who asked were told of the handful of people who didn't go into the slumber of stasis as the Fissure conditions of the world grew worse and worse, instead isolating themselves and trying to continue living their lives as they could. Now, it seems, you've found exactly such a group.

Welcome to the Bellmare Enclave, and enjoy your stay.

[[OOC: Welcome to part 2 of the dungeon! For the most part, interaction with the town's NPCs can be handwaved as described on the main information post. Worth noting are the following major things: The Bellmare Enclave isn't expecting visitors, though the people are generally friendly to the new arrivals. They don't know about the time dilation effect of their Fissure - to them, it's only been about eighteen years since the Slumber Plan was put in place and they withdrew from the world. And finally, by a similar token, they have no idea how far the Fissures outside of their own have grown - while it's not uncommon for them to find odd objects from time to time, they'll assume that the characters are just arrivals from other places within their own world, rather than outsiders, until told otherwise.]]

Comments

[hardbargain]

[Galahdians as a whole are pretty physical so this is fine by him.]

Didn't know there was one. Not that I couldn't see the Princess kicking ass on the battlefield with us. Maybe not in those heels though.

[founderinglight]

Not that sort of relationship, unfortunately. Their power is for healing as ours is for war - a balanced opposite, or so it's said. Even the Scourge gives way beneath their hands.

[For a long moment, Izunia is quiet.]

...Once, from your perspective very long ago, there was another sort of healer who did battle with that dread illness. Chosen by the gods, but not as a savior - for his power was not healing at all, merely transferral.

And from that power, Ardyn became corrupted - the darkness in his soul grew until the gods themselves rejected him. Unable to die, too foul and twisted to be allowed to live, and so I locked him in Angelgard and threw away the key.

That is the being you knew as the Chancellor of Niflheim - the Starscourge itself, twisted not just into the shape of my brother but around his core until there was no difference between the two.

[hardbargain]

[It was a joke, 'Zunie. He was trying to lighten things up a little.

You Lucians are all so morose.

But this particular story only makes that make all the more sense. The Founder King's own brother a vessel for the corruption of the gods.]

So Ardyn was the test model. Your Astrals fucked it all up and then they villinized the shit out of him to cover their fuck up? Or worse they fucked it up on purpose to give you lot a target.

Crows fucking take me. [Muttered under his breath, shaken and more than a little disgusted.]

[founderinglight]

More the latter. There must be a darkness for gainst the dark the king's battle is fought. And it's not as though they care all that much if a few humans get irreparably damaged in the process of cleaning up the Infernian's tantrum.

[The look Izunia is giving the cavern wall is somewhere between baleful and murderous, filled with a loathing that time will not ease.]

And I was the first of the weapons they used against my brother, because I thought that he was gone, his body just animated by some unsettling form of daemon - even if he's human now and understands that, orr relationship is never going to be right again.

[hardbargain]

[His fingers drift up to skim over the crow's foot on his cheek the skin ever so slightly raised, rubbing over it and sending up a silent prayer of thanks that his people were never really swayed to the Lucian ways of worship.]

So he was an avatar of darkness but now he's just... human again?

How the fuck does that work? [Because if they keep talking about the astrals he's just going to get more pissed off and in the condition he's in he can't really do anything to expel that anger.]

[founderinglight]

A long story that makes barely any sense to experience, much less tell someone else about. The short version is that after Noctis finally put him to rest, a very twisted woman called Nina, in another place like this, snatched up his soul and put it in a new body.

... For reality TV.

[He can't not mention that part.]

[hardbargain]

[Ah.. so Noctis does fulfil their stupid prophecy. Which means Luna escapes and get the ring to him and that is a huge relief for him but...

Wait...]

For... what!?

[founderinglight]

In space.

There's absolutely no part of the whole thing that isn't beyond ridiculous, honestly. The most important things to know are that he found a family there - that's why he's Ardyn Tenmyouji rather than any of the other options - and that the point of the "show" was what lengths people had to be pushed to to commit murder.

[hardbargain]

This Nina chick was a Niff wasn't she?

[What the actual fuck?]

[founderinglight]

No, she was an alien shapeshifting tree.

[There's a hell of a lot more things in the worlds than Niffs and not Niffs, Nyx.]

[hardbargain]

.....

[So about that leaning thing they were doing? Can he just... yeah he's using your shoulder and thunking his forehead down on it for a moment Zuzu.]

What the fuck even.

[founderinglight]

Still not the most ridiculous thing, if you can believe it.

[hardbargain]

Right. Y'know what? I don't want the details. He was evil incarnate, he's not anymore. Maybe later but there's only so much a guy can take and I should be dead, not trying to process all this shit.

[founderinglight]

It's probably a story you should have from someone who was there, if they want to tell it. I only have bits and pieces in some respects.

Just... don't push him. Neither experience is one that someone can come out of undamaged.

[hardbargain]

Sounds like there's plenty of damage to go around.

[He knows when to push and when to let it slide. Just like he'd known he had to let Libertus walk away and come back of his own accord. Not that there'd been time for that.]

I won't push. But I'm... figuring treating him like anyone else I don't know is probably the safest bet I have, honestly. Too many other peoples' baggage tied up in all this.

[founderinglight]

Far too many.

It's a safe policy - there's a reason that I specify 'Ardyn Tenmyouji' when I talk about him, because the Ardyn that exists here now is utterly different from the Chancellor. Still the same person in some fundamental ways, but... Well, without that core of malice, and feeling all the cracks of what he's been broken by.

[hardbargain]

So Tenmyouji is the name he's using now? Instead of... yours. Or his.

If nothing else I suppose that will make it easier to differentiate, like you said.

[founderinglight]

Yes - it's a pity Junpei isn't here, I fear you would have gotten along far too well. He's Ardyn's adopted son and the original owner of the name.

[Ardyn just kind of collects children it's fine.]

[hardbargain]

This is a thing with you two isn't it?

[Lucis Caelum Adpotions, Inc. Regis is going to do it too, isn't he? Serpent curse his luck.]

[founderinglight]

I only adopted one grandchild!

[And Prompto, if you want to count him.]

Just one!

[hardbargain]

uh-huh.... sure

[Look he was out of it but not so out of it that he missed that accusation from Jet.]

[founderinglight]

...And a younger brother but that's hardly the same thing.

[Everything else he just ran with after someone else adopted them. Or smooched them.]

It's not like I had a small family before that, and Ardyn is intent on spreading his branches as far outward as I have downward. I am supposed to not consider his children family?

[hardbargain]

Look I'm just sayin if you've gotta defend it this much then it's a thing, okay.

I've got no room to talk me'n Libertus were 15 when we took Crowe in and just decided she was our sister.