Building the Committee: The Man Who Played With Fire

[channe]

She crosses her arms, then, and picks up a cup of tea. Her eyes lift from Kerrak's cup of tea to Glenn and Renea, and then back to Kerrak. "It's true. We need you. I'm good, but you've been leading armies since before I was born." She seems to have moved on from the issue of the Power.

Another pastry lifted to her lips. "But you do know that if Thessilane makes a move like they did on Amasynia and Derry, you're gonna have to pit yourself against a man I know you still respect. Against your former men an' people you trained. Are you all right with that?"

[Glenn]

Drow-hate. Drow-hate. And they'd have to talk about that, wouldn't they? Perhaps no one, save for Suede Roschen, could understand the strange path of Burnie's last few years better than Kerrak. But then Glenn didn't talk about that. Some of it he didn't even believe or think worth a moment's consideration. Drow-hate. It was enough to almost make him excuse the channeler right there.

"Honestly," and this, then, to Agnieszka. "Both you and Kerrak have ties to Thessaline." His glance fell upon Renea. Hopefully she'd have the good sense to keep her own quiet as Glenn had asked her. "Granted yours are countered somewhat," what with the Trae Kelsan bootlicking, "but it makes for a precarious enough balance." Then though, a wry smile came over his face. "Still, Agnie, Renea, since you've free rein to kill friend Kerrak if he goes mad with his power and becomes dangerous to all he cares about, I suppose we can extend that to him turning traitor as well. I'm flexible. Just on that count, I'd hope both of you would be in agreement first. That only seems fair, no, Kerrak?" Burnie was making light of the entire situation. Laugh or cry, perhaps.

[Vanidor]

"Hah!" Kerrak's laugh was short and loud, though the smile that went along with it remained. He finished his pastry, then wiped his hands against one another, letting the little crumbs fall into the napkin that sat in his lap. "As long as you promise to send my sword to my son when you kill me, then I'm amicable to the whole thing." Another grin and a sip from his cup. He barely made a face anymore, though it made him want to retch now and again still.

"To your question, Agnieszka, I never approved of the plan to strike at the rest of Amasynia, nor Trae Kelsa. I know the reason behind it, of course. Ancient pledges and all that, tales of Royal Indifference and what have you. If you believe the old chroniclers, before there was a Thessilane OR Amasynia, the 'Horse Lords'," and he used his fingers to denote that, "ruled all of the land from the eastern shores to the middle of the Amasynian home territory. I personally do not, but I was not born into THE royal line and all that. We Almarkian's are more pragmatic. Look to the future, not the past. Like the people in Orvere these days." And they should all know what happened there. Gods Above were Channelers a pain in the ass.

"So. Yes, I will be able to fight against him and my former peers. At least at the table, do not expect me to draw my sword against them though. Not unless they strike at the town itself. However. I doubt he will, at least anytime soon. Look how long it's taken to subjugate Derry, and that's a minor province compared to the rest of the territory. And that all depends on New Dauntless remaining neutral, and Heath fractured. Of course, that depends on if the High Command there can reign in the Duke's more emotional side. With the old Thane dead, and me... Well. Semi-dead, I guess. There is little..." He stopped, then rolled his shoulders.

"Listen to me prattle on. You came for a simple question and answer. You have my support, of course. My sword and my skills against whatever terror decides to molest us at present, like my OTHER former pupil." He sighed softly. He'd heard the rumours and the descriptions. "I will gladly use my sword on him, though. I had hoped that the Karolinger Curse had not fallen to him, like it did his father before him. Ah, what blood may tell. Anyway, will there be aught else?"

A glance for Renea next, eyebrows arching slightly. "Do you need assistance training your militia by chance? I was a fearsome drill master at one time, and Darius says I can still scream like a sergeant when he forgets to wash my coats properly."

[Caile]

"If you've skills of note that surpass mine then perhaps. We can discuss that at our leisure." She shrugs idly mostly still listening though the majority of the politics he'd discussed went right over her head. If she'd needed to know about it she'd pay more attention but Kerrak was on the committee now was he not? And Agnie had at least a minor grip on the politics of the day so she'd let them play to that strength and worry more about tactics the more finicky details surrounding keeping men provisioned.

The mans amusement just slid off her back, she didn't see the humour in the situation though she did nod at the suggestion of putting the man down if he were to prove a danger to the province and peoples. That she would do as matter of duty, as she would regarding anyone if she felt they were a true threat. She'd hope that someone would do much the same for her rather than allow her to run rampage and perhaps kill those she held dear to her.

His question to her about the militia had got her mind running though, and what to train and when and what sort of patrols should be posts for which areas. Wrapped up in these thoughts she paid less attention than was perhaps appropriate for the meeting.

[channe]

First, to Glenn, looking slightly annoyed. "I do not have *ties* to Thessilane. He --" and she lobs her thumb in Kerrak's direction "-- was basically on a mercenary payroll at the time, and the Brotherhood was sworn to Myrken Wood. And as for *countered,* you got me free of my debt to Kostroma."

And she pauses, and her eyes grow flinty -- "And whatever other ties I had with Thessilane I stopped having when *he* started tearing the heads off babies, curse or no curse. Speaking of that. I've had an -- operative locate four of his camps. They're stopping by today to locate them on a map. It sounds like they're tricky to get to, so we might want to lure him out instead to a place where we can control the situation." And everyone in this room knows who *he* is. It sounds like she can't even utter his name.

And then she turns to Renea. "And yeah, you should totally have him out to scream at the militia, he's a holy terror to the new guys."

Oh, look. More pastries. Maybe it's time to stuff her mouth with a new one. And so that's what she does.

[Glenn]

Kerrak apparently liked to hear that sort of thing. He took it with a smile. Laugh or cry, was it? Apparently so. Well, so long as he kept that up, Glenn would keep feeding him. Ha. Ha. We WILL surely kill you dead, Kerrak. Ha. Ahem.

And Renea was getting SUCH a history lesson here, wasn't she? Totally without context, poor girl, but that was Myrken for you. When you were lucky enough to actually get the information, you almost never got enough to actually understa... well, hopefully her daydream was nice, regardless.

Then, there was Agnie, and yes, he freed your god damn soul. Take that Lamai. The soulless governor had freed her soul. Let religions far and wide deal with that spiritual quandary. Perhaps he had done it just to be that dogmatically obstinate. Glenn Burnie did love a good paradox. More than that, though, he HUNGERED for information he didn't have and Kerrak mentioned something VERY distinct, something more important than explaining the idea of 'history' to Agony who seemed to want to make it seem like previous ties weren't important at all.

"Wait. WHAT Karolinger curse? Did you know about this Agnie?" Then, to Renea, suddenly. "You're not cursed too, are you? Obviously we've had enough Marshalls like that." He knew a thing or two about curses, enough to take them seriously. Back to Kerrak to finish up. "Again, what Karolinger curse?"

[Vanidor]

Hah. Yes. Kerrak had a somewhat dark humour. Had always, really, but dying had made it worse. Sharpened it perhaps. It was that fatalistic streak that many warriors had, just taken to another Myken-fueled level. It's what made him smile every day. Well, that and a comely pair of ankles. Maybe some fine pastries. Anyway. He listens to Agnieszka for a moment, nodding with the way she thought (at least about the Aeryn issue), but decided to speak on the issue of the curse first.

"The Karolinger family is old blood. Old. Not quite noble, but close enough for some people, depending on where you are from. The hinterlands of Thessilane, there between where the Meadows of Thesil and the farmlands of Almark meet. Where the OLD Gods were worshiped. Like I said, old blood. And they were prominent there for a good long time, but never tried to become more. Nothing more than priests of their gods, and simple farmers. Which... is probably where we went wrong with that, come to think of it. But then, I was dead then." He paused to sip from his tea, then pursed his lips.

"So, anyway. Old blood. And Old Power, and Old Taint. From what I understand, they sold their souls to their Old Gods, so that their crops would be sustained and their people safe. The Old Horde took care of that, of course. This is centuries ago mind, before the two nations were combined. Things are fuzzy after that, and the records... vague. But supposedly they were cleansed by some sort of ritual. A lot of blood and pain and suffering and all that sort of thing." Kerrak rolled his shoulders, then took a bite of another pastry.

"The long and short of it, is that the family is broken in the mind, more often than not. Though, his father never showed the signs until late in his life, and he asked us to kill him before it got worse. So we did. We thought that was the end of it, because his grandfather was clean, again until late life, and his great grandfather never fell to the madness." But. That is history, yes?

[Caile]

Now this was of interest to her and her attention was pulled from her planning to listen to the story of the Karolinger curse. Not that it would likely make much of a difference in the long run but it could possibly prove useful. She'd met the....man face to face and was able to survive so they had a chance, especially if there were enough of them to keep him occupied, attacking from all sides. Tainted blood, it made sense really, as did old gods.

So this time she listened, legs crossed and her chin resting idly in the palm of one hand propped up by her elbow sitting on the arm of the chair. She knew she wouldn't have much of a place in this meeting, here mostly to show solidarity and for purposes of introduction but the meat of it would come down to the other three. At least it would give her a chance to gauge their relationship to each other, they way they interacted.

And of course she'd told Glenn she wouldn't bring up her Thessilanean ties and she saw no reason to go back on that statement. There would undoubtably be a time when it became known and she certainly wasn't going to ignore Lamai so at some point it was sure to become common knowledge but until that point she'd keep it under her hat. It was better for her to become known as her own person anyway, and not as someone who was just a connection to others. She reached forward with her free hand to take one of the pastries from the plate. Idly she picked at it while she listened to the conversation around her, every now and then popping a flaking piece into her mouth.

[channe]

"Hah," Agnie says, shaking her head. "Ain't nobody mentioned to me about a curse, if I knew he was gonna go bumfuck I woulda been all, 'hey, eat your pie yourself.' At any rate, it's too fucking late now, isn't it?" Her face is dark and angry. Another pastry goes down the hole and as she chews it, she talks through the crumbs.

"Old Gods. Huh. The One God would never pull bullshit like that, ruining someone who's perfectly okay."

[Glenn]

Glenn was suddenly all business. Aleksei was a proponent of scientific research, of experimentation. Glenn, however, knew how things worked in Myrken. It was a place of great oral history. If you could just find the person who knew the right bit of knowledge about the right thing, everything would fall into place. In Myrken, everything was shrouded in secrecy and knowledge truly was power, sometimes the only power that mattered.

"I wish you would have come forward with this information a little sooner, Kerrak." All business because this WAS Burnie's business, more than mapmaking, more than fencing, more than governing. "Any information you have on these old gods and the rituals having to do with them would be useful. Both the truth of them," for Burnie knew well enough to believe in creatures who claimed to be gods. "And more importantly, what Aeryn might believe. We need to get into his broken mind if we're going to stop him and i'd much prefer to do that figuratively than literally."

[Vanidor]

"You did not ask about this information sooner, Glenn. And remember. I have been dead for some time. By the Hels, I bet everyone thought Aeryn was too, from what I can surmise of my time beneath the soil. If my memory of the stories is true, it is quite possible that he HAD died, or come close too. The boy is willful enough to have decided on selling his soul in order to remain alive."

He drains his cup of tea here, setting the cup down on its plate with a soft chime. His hand raises to place overtop of it when Marion comes to refill. "In anycase. I did not put much study into the old religions of Thessilane. I was a soldier, Glenn. My religion was war. I barely pay lip service to the Gods that I WAS raised to bow my head too. My son. He is different, if you want more than the myths I was raised with, I would ask him. Or send to someone from the area." Lips purse slightly, and Kerrak eyes Glenn here.

"As to what he believes.... Well. What I do know, there it would depend on which of his old gods he decided to call upon. From the fury of his attacks, and the number of bodies he's started to pile up, I would guess it to be their God of Murder and War. If so, then I would not recommend trying to get into his head, and instead focus on taking it from his shoulders and burning it. The more he kills, especially if it IS this God, then the more he will change."

[Caile]

"The Fae" At these words her lip curls a little in displeasure, Zilliah had very quickly made his way onto her dislike list, which was quite a feat since Renea was generally a live and let live sort of person, she seldom went so far as to actively dislike someone. "believes he derives his power from the axe he has chained to his arm. I can attest to the fact he doesn't seem to feel pain, or if he does feel it he disregards it." Dislike the fae though she might, she did trust his instinct in this particular case and the information might be able to help them narrow down the cause of his affliction.

"Catch calls him 'The Eight'." And the sooner they could take care of this particular issue the happier the swordswoman would be. This Aeryn had proved himself to be far more than a nuisance. "I know that there are some...connections with the man and I'm sorry for the hurt this causes but it might be best if we consider the man himself to have already died and to think of the shell left behind and something else. I've done battle with this thing and I saw no sign of any humanity." She didn't want to upset Agnie if she could avoid it but sometimes it was best to be detached in these matters, especially when there had been an emotional connection in the past.

[channe]

Agnieszka snorts at this; she moves her shoulders ramrod-straight from where she'd been languishing in the chair, and puts down the half-eaten pastry. "What the hell, Kerrak, do you think this is a guessing game? Are you like -- like a djinn now, only answering questions that you're asked and never speakin' others-wise? We've known he didn't die for months now. Speak the hell up." It's obvious she's not pleased with him; her hands shake a little where she's sitting and her voice wavers.

And then she looks at Renea, her eyes going a little quieter -- "I want to save him, I really do," she whispers, "and then I think of the Ashfiend, and my brother's wife, and my nephew... and I remember what monsters can do. I knew some of those people what he killed. So let's plan how we're going to drag him out. I know enough that he ain't gonna come when *I* call; I'm an object of some hate. So, Kerrak. He's your student."

She fixes him with a stare. "Are we gonna have to play a *guessing game* now, or are you actually going to help?"

[Glenn]

It was ever so tempting to let Renea and, more acutely, Agnie bully Kerrak into providing more information, or whatever else he had to give. It was tempting to just step back and say GO. Unfortunately, sweet Agony didn't know much in the way of restraint, especially when it was personal. "Kerrak HAS helped today. And he will help us more in the future now that he's agreed and agreed to allow the use of his domicile. The three of you will have routine meetings here, and he will continue to provide his knowledge and experience for the good of Myrken." But no, Chairwoman, he would not be striking down Aeryn Karolinger with dread power. So do not even begin to think that.

"Agnie, if you would be kind enough to write Cristoph requesting more information about these gods. It's probably best that I'm not sending too many official letters to Thessaline right now, after all. Your writing, however, possesses something of its own, brilliant code. I can't imagine many in Razasan can pierce it." And even if Cristoph couldn't decipher her scribblings, he rather imagined Lamai could. Plus, Cristoph was an ass and Glenn didn't want to write him. The Governor would then turn to Renea. "Marshall, I suggest liaising with a Detective Constable Lentham. Karolinger killed his partner years ago. He's a bit obsessed. Spent all winter chasing him through the woods a few years back."

Finally, back to Kerrak. "IS there anything you think might help?"

[Vanidor]

He -HAD- been on the verge of rebuking Agnieszka when Glenn spoke up, so he held his tongue, and instead smiled as if nothing untoward was going on in that brain of his. The bare facts were that he hadn't even known of Aeryn's little murderous spree. Kerrak had not bothered to resurrect his spy network since his death, and without it he was woefully under informed on many subjects. Especially since he generally spent most of his time in the environs of his home. Perhaps it was time to change that. It was hard to hear of things when you were, generally, a recluse. Still. He listened to what she said, and then what Renea spoke up with next. It made things a little clearer, but not enough. Again. Kerrak had not been keen on studying the old religions. He just knew the myths, to a lesser degree.

In anycase. Glenn made his peace, and Kerrak nodded his agreement on using his home for a place of meeting. It was a rather nice place for it, after all. It suited them so far this day. It may mean he'd need to increase his staff by a person or two. Maybe hire an actual cook or something along those lines.

"What may help? Is make your plans for him swiftly. The old stories say that once a soul is given over to one of these dark gods, then you start to change. Your... ach, how do you say. Your basest urges and darkest desires become prominent. And while you are in control, you really are not at the same time. I apologise for not being more forth coming, but I truly did not know he was this much of an... An issue. A deluded child that has fallen from grace, yes. A murderer, certainly. But not a daemonic threat to everything we would hold dear. Make sure you include this naming of Catch's. This may spark a memory or something that my son may have read of. Aedon knows that he exhausted the library at the Keep before his majority." A roll of his shoulders with this, then a flick of his eyes towards the two ladies.

"The two of you are, of course, welcome to my home whenever you wish. I will let Darius and Marion know that you are to be admitted with all haste if you come calling." A glance for Glenn. "And of course, you as well, Glenn. Just... No one else, if we can manage. I DO try to keep a quiet life these days." And here was a smile. He did, but at the same time, it was quite fun to be able to utilise his skills again. And he SO did love maneuvering on the political stage, even if it was behind the scenes.