(Skyseas of Gensokyo) Nazrin Quest (Part 4)

[Kilgamayan]

I don't have Naz's inventory in my memory on-hand. Do we have anything large and flat that can be swung around to a degree? Preferably bigger than the sword. Something that can be used to fan the haze away if we need to.

Fake edit: Oho.

> "In honor of those that have fallen, I want a chance to better the lives of those that remain. Leaving you here like this will do the exact opposite of that."
> Swing the sword at the haze close to our head a bit more, being careful not to cut ourselves with it.
> "And don't worry about this thing, I don't intend on slashing at you again...unless you're still so hell-bent on ending me that I need to defend myself."

[Oldmansour]

We did have an umbrealla, before I dropped it hitting that tripwire I couldn't see. It seemed to serve as a windshield well enough at the time, though the sword seems to be doing at least a relatively decent job.

>"I would like to know, though, just why you seem to hate this thing so much."
>Does the haze reform after the sword passes through it?

[DracoOmega]

> "In honor of those that have fallen, I want a chance to better the lives of those that remain. Leaving you here like this will do the exact opposite of that."
> Swing the sword at the haze close to our head a bit more, being careful not to cut ourselves with it.
> "And don't worry about this thing, I don't intend on slashing at you again...unless you're still so hell-bent on ending me that I need to defend myself."

>She gives you a look somewhere between confusion and disgust.
>You continue swinging the sword around your head, carving a path of open air through the foul mists. Your next breath comes appreciably cleaner than the last. Not quite fresh, but you greatly welcome any progress at this point.
>"You're... already gone," she says. You think you can see the faintest hint of a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

>"I would like to know, though, just why you seem to hate this thing so much."
>Does the haze reform after the sword passes through it?

>The disbelief on her face deepens and then twists into a scowl. "Do you... want to hear me say it?" she spits. "One... last victory?"
>Certainly not immediately. You seem to be somehow driving it further away from yourself.

[Hello Purvis]

We're being too nice for someone who, by all rights, should be wanting to spend the next hour strangling her.

>"What victory? This isn't some kind of competition, it's a conversation. So, why do you hate this sword so much?"

[Oldmansour]

>What a sight that must be... Keep the sword on keeping our head clear.
>Where'd our knife end up?

[DracoOmega]

>"What victory? This isn't some kind of competition, it's a conversation. So, why do you hate this sword so much?"

>She frowns silently at you for a few more moments. "Suppose... it doesn't matter now." She fixes you with another glare; there are depths of resentment and pain behind her eyes.
>"It's the reason I'm the last one left," she says. "They're all gone. All of them."

>What a sight that must be... Keep the sword on keeping our head clear.
>Where'd our knife end up?

>You keep swinging the sword around your head, keeping the miasma at bay. Your arm hurts to move now, with all the wounds along it, but then again it hurts to keep it still too. Both your arms are slick with blood and you've never felt it a more apt time to claim that your everything hurts.
>You're inclined to assume it's still embedded in the youkai's torso, though you can't see it clearly at the moment with how her limbs are bent.

[Oldmansour]

>Good thing the knife was a loaner, then.
>Rest our arm when we think we can, but cut more air if the cloud reforms around us. Never know when we might need it again in the near future.
>"There were more like you here, once?"

[DracoOmega]

>Good thing the knife was a loaner, then.
>Rest our arm when we think we can, but cut more air if the cloud reforms around us. Never know when we might need it again in the near future.
>"There were more like you here, once?"

>On the other hand, this might now mean there are two things that farmer isn't likely to get back from you.
>You give your arm a rest for the moment. You're not sure how much it helps, unfortunately. Maybe Minoriko has something for checkerboards carved into one's arms, too...
>"Sorry you... missed your chance?"

[Hello Purvis]

>"You know, you sure are hot to blame me for everything when you were the one that came after our town to start with, and when you attacked me back when I was trying to work things out.  Sad part is there's not even any need for things to end here, but hell if it doesn't sound like you intend to do anything about actually surviving. I'm not sure what bleeding to death for the sake of being stubborn is going to achieve. Want to fill me in on that?"

[Oldmansour]

>Status check.
>How's our breathing since we starting slashing air?
>Assuming she's a spider youkai, do we know of any others like her, personally or by story?
>"The only spider I've had a problem with is you, and that's because you've tried to kill me at every turn. I'm only even here because some of those giant spiders attacked cows belonging to people. Was that your idea? Did you tell them to attack those people and their livelihood, or did they do that on their own?"

[DracoOmega]

>Status check.
>How's our breathing since we starting slashing air?
>Assuming she's a spider youkai, do we know of any others like her, personally or by story?

>You are drier, at least, than the last time you took stock of your injuries, but are otherwise worse in nearly every way. You are exhausted, likely from both the adrenalin and your injuries, and bleeding considerably. There are multiple slices and gouges along both your arms from the youkai's claws, as well as a gridwork of cuts along your right arm where the wire-like threads had dug into it. Plus all the myriad injuries you had already accumulated on your way here. You also feel more than a little nauseous; you're sure the air in here hadn't been helping, on top of everything else.
>The air feels cleaner now, though your lungs still feel... unpleasant, like there was some sort of intangible phlegm clinging to them that you just couldn't clear.
>You don't specifically know of any, although you would not find their existence surprising. As far as you know, essentially any kind of animal can become a youkai, although this is quite a rare occurrence.

>"You know, you sure are hot to blame me for everything when you were the one that came after our town to start with, and when you attacked me back when I was trying to work things out.  Sad part is there's not even any need for things to end here, but hell if it doesn't sound like you intend to do anything about actually surviving. I'm not sure what bleeding to death for the sake of being stubborn is going to achieve. Want to fill me in on that?"

>"You think... I want your help?" she says darkly. "Really?"

>"The only spider I've had a problem with is you, and that's because you've tried to kill me at every turn. I'm only even here because some of those giant spiders attacked cows belonging to people. Was that your idea? Did you tell them to attack those people and their livelihood, or did they do that on their own?"

>"They... were... hungry," she says. "And that's your fault too."

[Oldmansour]

>"My fault? What in the hells did I ever do to their food source? Other than cows, and apparantly mice-people, I don't even know what giant spiders eat!"
>Take a moment. Calm ourselves. This is the wrong place to start shouting.
>Hawk and spit, see if that clears the crud from our lungs any.
>"So what made them that hungry?"

[Hello Purvis]

>"Moveover, why didn't you try to get the people who owned them to give them to you? How'd you like it if I came up in your nest and stole all your webs and eggs and bullshit, huh? Would you accept that if I said 'I'm hungry' as an excuse?"

[DracoOmega]

>"My fault? What in the hells did I ever do to their food source? Other than cows, and apparantly mice-people, I don't even know what giant spiders eat!"
>Take a moment. Calm ourselves. This is the wrong place to start shouting.
>Hawk and spit, see if that clears the crud from our lungs any.
>"So what made them that hungry?"

>"Probably not," she says. "Doesn't matter."
>You take a moment and try to calm yourself.
>Then you hawk and spit. You... don't feel like that helped very much, though the saliva was somewhat brackish.
>"How about 'no food'? You get... that bit?" She groans again.

>"Moveover, why didn't you try to get the people who owned them to give them to you? How'd you like it if I came up in your nest and stole all your webs and eggs and bullshit, huh? Would you accept that if I said 'I'm hungry' as an excuse?"

>"Not the same thing," she says.

[Oldmansour]

>Spit again, just because.
>"Yes. I do indeed get that bit. Where did it go?"

[DracoOmega]

>Spit again, just because.
>"Yes. I do indeed get that bit. Where did it go?"

>You spit again. Just because. There's a certain strange satisfaction to it.
>"Ate it," she says. "All of it."

[Hello Purvis]

>"And then you try to steal ours, and you wonder why things went wrong. And it didn't have to be that way. You could have tried to work with those people, been a good neighbor. Maybe even have made some good friends. But instead you just went and took whatever you please, and then you get mad at me because I came to investigate. And now you're bleeding on the floor like a damn idiot, and you're still too proud to try to fix all this and make it so we can all live together. You don't give a shit about those spiders up there, you'd rather have every last one of them die along with you, wouldn't you?"

[Oldmansour]

>Scowl.
>"I'm no expert, but a food source doesn't just dry up like that. Not without something else happening as well."

[DracoOmega]

>"And then you try to steal ours, and you wonder why things went wrong. And it didn't have to be that way. You could have tried to work with those people, been a good neighbor. Maybe even have made some good friends. But instead you just went and took whatever you please, and then you get mad at me because I came to investigate. And now you're bleeding on the floor like a damn idiot, and you're still too proud to try to fix all this and make it so we can all live together. You don't give a shit about those spiders up there, you'd rather have every last one of them die along with you, wouldn't you?"

>The youkai's eyes flare open at your last remark and she pull herself back to her feet, her injured leg trembling beneath her and her face grimaced tightly against the pain. Blood streams down her leg onto the stone. "Don't. You. Dare!"

>Scowl.
>"I'm no expert, but a food source doesn't just dry up like that. Not without something else happening as well."

>"I don't want to hear you say it!" she cries. "There's nothing more you can do to them. They'll live and be free again and that sword can stay buried here with you!"

[Hello Purvis]

>"Don't I dare what? Tell you the truth? You've just like I said before. You think people are going to just sit aside after I fail to come back home? The hell they are. And you know it won't even be that hard. And you don't want to turn back. You'd rather kill me, yourself, and every last one of them. You've not even started to think about finding some kind of way out of this, have you? Have you? What're you going to do for them, spider girl? Just abandon them for your damn stupid pride? You going to keep pretending you're the only person on this damn continent til your dying breath, or are we we going to get them out of this mess you got them into?"

[Oldmansour]

>"You're in no position to threaten me anymore. I already hacked off a part of one of your arms, I don't want to do any more. Don't force me to."
>"And you still never answered my first question. Why do you hate this sword so much? What did it do to you before I found it? ... Who wielded it before me?"

[Kilgamayan]

So what were the circumstances under which Nazrin killed a whole bunch of spiders again? Were they actually invading some civilized location, or was Nazrin exploring at the time?

[Hello Purvis]

She was exploring and trying to find the source of the cow disappearances. She encountered a spider about the size of a dog, followed it (possibly chased), got attacked by a larger spider. Several more attacks followed throughout the day. Efforts were made to communicate and such, and generally not fight (there's one I am reasonably sure we've seen several times), but the spiders weren't into that. Then we went into their house and things got nasty in short order, but we generally left those alone that haven't bothered us even then. By and large, we did all we could not to fight, but spiders have a way of being insistent.

[Kilgamayan]

Well, yeah, most unevolved creatures tend to operate on instincts. And even some evolved creatures still operate that way to a degree, if Yammers here is any indication. Was there a reason to believe these spiders were different?

[Hello Purvis]

Some. The main giveaway was wildly different species working together, but given we boss around the meeses from time to time, the more natural assumption was someone doing a similar thing with spider youkai. Aside from that, we had no giant spider experience to really tell.

[Kilgamayan]

It seems a decent bet that Yammers has been playing master and commander, yeah. The problem is that she's still fairly simple herself despite having reached youkaidom.

I'm going to speculate a couple of things here that may be relevant to not getting angry at the bleeding pile of flesh, bone and legs after cutting one of her limbs off and killing eleven of her friends. I can't check immediately on this phone, but I seem to recall Yamame either producing the term 'war' in the context of the past, or reacting to it if Naz brought it up. I would guess that (a) said war is why she's here in the first place, (b) the other party in that war was "our" people, the civil-types, (c) lots of spiders (and quite possibly all evolved spider youkai aside from her) died in this war, (d) that sword was a civil-type weapon in the war, and (e) either this war or harassment in the years that followed from the civil-types negatively influenced the spider food supply to the point that it's now run out. This would go a very long way in explaining why she despises the thing and why she blames Naz for the food drought.

[Hello Purvis]

Possibly, but at the same time, she also mentioned the sword was buried here, and would be again once we drop. So she doesn't have a real reason to associate us with the weapon. As well, we didn't recall anything involving giant spiders when we pondered the issue, and you imagine a spider war would leave a pretty lasting impact on the local history. It's entirely plausible, though, it was something that predates our civilization's presence here and she is just saying us topside dwelling fucks in general. She also made a passing reference to not going back, but this was never really elaborated on.

[Kilgamayan]

Yeah, I think she means topside in general. We just happen to be the one standing in front of her.

[Kilgamayan]

Double post because I'm just that fly.

I really don't think a shouting match is the solution to this, no matter how angry we think we deserve to be. Both sides are coming at the issue with a good amount of knowledge that the other doesn't have; it's pretty easy to imagine there are misconceptions at work all over the place here. Howeve, it's not going to be Yamame that tries to break the feedback loop, half because her vengeful rage has her borderline (if not outright) irrational, and half because she's just plain not wise enough to see what must be done for everyone to come out ahead. That means the onus is on us to work with her, however much she'll try to work against us. If there's one thing that will drive someone in a righteous, vengeful fury further into thinking they're right, it's stringing emotions even higher than they already are, especially when that person is pretty simple to begin with.

EDIT: This is not in criticism of anyone individually, so please don't take it as such. I just can't write everything I want to on breaks due to time.

EDIT 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO: I say all this because I think the right way to go has already been pointed out. Our death means further bloodshed, more of her friends killed. She needs to realize this. The problem is that she's not wise enough to get past the homicidal rage to realize it if she remains riled up. If we can get her to calm down, even just a little bit, I think that approach has a much better chance of working than bludgeoning her over the head with it will. It would probably be even better if we could do it using her own mode of thinking: she knows how angry and vicious she was because her friends died, she can imagine what our friends will be like if we go missing for a while, and it won't take them too long to figure out what parties are responsible.

[DracoOmega]

>"Don't I dare what? Tell you the truth? You've just like I said before. You think people are going to just sit aside after I fail to come back home? The hell they are. And you know it won't even be that hard. And you don't want to turn back. You'd rather kill me, yourself, and every last one of them. You've not even started to think about finding some kind of way out of this, have you? Have you? What're you going to do for them, spider girl? Just abandon them for your damn stupid pride? You going to keep pretending you're the only person on this damn continent til your dying breath, or are we we going to get them out of this mess you got them into?"

>Her eyes lock gaze with yours, unblinking, her breathing labored and seething with rising fury. Then as you speak of abandoning her kin, she cuts you off with a growl and swipes a hand across the air. Another batch of wire-like threads shoot forth from it towards you.

>"You're in no position to threaten me anymore. I already hacked off a part of one of your arms, I don't want to do any more. Don't force me to."
>"And you still never answered my first question. Why do you hate this sword so much? What did it do to you before I found it? ... Who wielded it before me?"

>"You have no right!" she cries.
>You might want to do something about those threads first...