A City Falls: Start

[voidtreckermods]

Preparation

Just after light on the seventh day of the month of Bassoon everyone’s SCA glows with the colour of the void before showing a message. A briefing for the mission to come.

Anyone who goes to investigate the dressing carriage will find all the cupboards and drawers open. They may need to battle through spider webs but soon will find an array of clothes. Trousers, skirts, dresses, shirts, robes, cloaks. Everything they will need and plenty of choice. All the clothes have accents of team colours in more muted hues than the normal bold hoodies they wear.

A few hours later there is an announcement over the speakers. "Arrival to Planet #25768 imminent. Prepare for exit from Void. Drop order: Purple, Orange, Red, Blue. All passengers are to wear their Safety Control Apparatus and are reminded that emergency evacuation protocol is three short taps."

The train shudders and jerks. It is time.

Purple

"Purple Team to doors. Drop in two minutes. Purple team to doors."

The train flies down through the air before coming to a stop between two rocky outcrops. The doors hiss open, it’s a bit of a jump down to the ground and anyone who looks back will find the train hard to see. Not invisible but definitely cloaked, shifting to blend in with the rock.

They can hear the sound of many footsteps and the high sound of young voices. It is easy to hear where they need to be.

As they move down the rocky slope they will see the main pass. A large group of children are walking. Spirits are high even if it is clear they are on their guard. Older teens are wearing weapons, swords, the odd axe, a few daggers. Nothing expertly crafted but they all wear them with ease. Slightly younger children carry the very young, toddlers and those too young to walk and keep pace.

There’s a sound from in front of the group. From around the corner a girl, about thirteen years old, runs towards them. Her braids bounce against her shoulders, her eyes are wide with fear and she waves her hands at the others. “Run! Run!”

A shadow looms behind her, a winged wolf, gaining speed towards her. Sat on the wolf is a spear wielding goblin.

From all around them a growling of many more wolves, in the hills, close and ready to pounce.

Orange

Once Purple Team are gone the train flies again. "Orange Team to doors. Drop in two minutes. Orange Team to doors."

The train seems to be still concealed as it hovers at the city walls. There’s a bit of a jump onto the walls but at least they are near one of the staircases down into the city.

Also luckily no one seems to have seen them appearing out of no where though that has more to do with the general chaos rather than anything else!

There is a lot of chaos! People evacuating, animals everywhere, people looking lost and bewildered. Get herding or helping and encourage people up that cliff path!

Red

The train flies onward. "Red team to doors. Drop in two minutes. Red team to doors."

The train makes a slightly bumpy landing on a rocky slope. Scrambling up the slope red team will see a group of fighters, perhaps eighty in total. There are some supplies to the side, not yet allotted. Some horses and weapons. All the fighters are currently focused on a tall woman who is on horseback, facing them from the front.

“… Say those that stand here, as few as we may be were the ones who end the goblin menace on our lands for good. For our children and our families. We fight!”

The end of what was clearly a rousing speech, the fighters cheer. They begin to move over the slope, towards the goblin camp below. If you are joining this battle the time is now!

Blue

The train flies low, skimming over the lake. "Blue Team to doors. Drop in one minute. Blue Team to doors."

Jumping down off the train they will land in the shallows of the lake. It’s not deep enough to go over their boots and now too far to wade to shore. The shore is rocky, loose rocks and pools of water to avoid. The tower stands before them. Three goblins, riding wolves perch on the walls high above them. The sky above crackles with lightning that is not at all natural.

The doorway to the tower is open, there are a lot of stairs to get up. The howls of the wolves fill the air as the wizards fight them off above. Time to climb!

Comments

[knifewithnoname]

Yes. She had. But she had assumed his talking would stop once he was in an actual battle. How did he even have air to make all those words?

She rolled away from another goblin, lashing out with her dagger. This is not how she imagined her first time in battle would go, she's mostly rolling around in mud and trying not to get eaten by wolves.

So as it is she doesn't argue when he suggests retreating and only tenses, barely noticeable in the emptiness as he scoops her up and moves her.

"I can be walking, Peter."

[hashtagparkerluck]

Yeah, like he's gonna let her walk with her leg in that condition. Tony would probably kill him on the spot. Not that he wanted her to walk with a wound like that. Again, he really needs to learn first aid. Maybe he could ask Mr Stark when they got back to the train.

"Sure, but I can run a lot faster than you can walk. Plus I can jump really high." He tightens his hold on her a little before leaping up to jump over a few more goblins and heading back to the start up.

"Okay, so there are way too many goblins and we need some kind of strategy. Also maybe some bandages for your leg."

[knifewithnoname]

"Be going there then." She pointed at a tall rock, standing jagged like it was pointing at the sky. It was up the hill a bit but definitely a good place to shelter behind.

"I do be having bandages in my bag." She had one of the leather bags on her back, "I did be nabbing them from the box on the train."

She had figured bandages would be useful for going into battle. She had been right.

[hashtagparkerluck]

"Oh, that's helpful." Peter says, looking up at the tall rock she'd indicating to. Should they go up there? Or stay with the group? Which is safest and makes the most sense?

"Uh... I would, because I think we'd be mostly out of harms way but all I know about first aid is what I've learned from medical dramas and movies-which is to say pretty much next to nothing."

[knifewithnoname]

"I do no be knowing what a medical drama or movie do be being." She looked up at him with a nose wrinkle. "But I do be knowing how to be bandaging a wound. If we do be going up there I can be doing it. And I can be showing you."

And how does he not know already? He knows about gravity magic and all sorts of things but he can't use a bandage?

[hashtagparkerluck]

"Oh-I mean. It's not super important-especially since they get things like wrong like 98% of the time. But they're stories, basically. Just stories that center around a medical emergency but the focus is more on the drama of the situation." He gets them up to the rock she requested and sets her back down.

"Yeah, I can handle a bandage-that's easy-but if you're cuts deep? the best I can really do about that is tell you to apply pressure and try not to pass out while I panic because I don't know anything about stitching up wounds. Besides, we're gonna have to sterilize it later. And I can do that in theory but speaking from experience, it stings. A lot."

cw: blood, injury

[knifewithnoname]

She tunes out most of his words, letting them bounce off the emptiness. They aren't important though it is good that he knows how to handle a bandage.

Panic is less useful. "I do be knowing how." Technically. Sort of. She had watched Sami stitch up Taiwin's arm when he got sliced a few months ago. Sami had talked her through it but she'd not gotten any further lessons yet.

"I do no be being scared of pain, Peter." Her voice was still blank, she still had the emptiness up. It wouldn't last much longer. She shrugged her bag off her back and set it to the side for now before carefully inching up her trouser leg.

It's a mess of blood and she frowns before reaching in the bag for one of the bottles of water she had brought.

[hashtagparkerluck]

He'd feel much better about this if a train medical professional doing this and he really hopes that's not as bad as it looks.

"Uh... I don't wanna be uh... that guy, but you really, really need to clean it with alcohol or peroxide or something so it doesn't get infected, you know?" Not that they have either of those things on hand, but that was the reason Peter had wanted to retreat to camp. Possibly decent medical supplies. Or just medical supplies. He's not so sure a band aid all on its lonesome really counts.

"I feel weird letting you do this but I'm not really much help in this situation either so you do you and neither of us will mention this to Mr Stark, kay?"

[knifewithnoname]

"And do you be having alcohol Peter?" She looked up at him, face blank. But honestly she had never known you were supposed to put alcohol on wounds and she had grown up in a tavern. She couldn't imagine putting mead on an injured leg.

She nodded at his promise to not tell Tony. That was good. She didn't want Tony to know she was injured, he would get scrunch faced and probably stop her from fighting any more.

She unscrewed the top from the water and began pouring it over the leg. After a moment her bod went rigid with pain as the emptiness shattered into pieces around her. She had held on to it as long as she could but no the pain flooded her and she gritted her teeth, trying to force her hands steady as she poured over the rest of the water.

[hashtagparkerluck]

"Well... no." Peter admits, rubbing at his forehead and trying to think of a better option than just water but there's no soap and no way to turn H₂O into H₂O₂. He lets out a sigh and rubs at his face some more.

He snaps back to full attention when he feels a sudden change and scoots over to sit with her.

"It's okay, it's okay if it hurts, that's just the water washing away the bad germs." How do you handle children that have been injured? The most he's done is give a kid a band aid because of a scraped knee.

[knifewithnoname]

Of course it was okay if it hurt. It was supposed to hurt but she said nothing, just gritted her teeth harder and let Peter keep speaking.

"What do bad germs be being?" It was washing away blood and mud that was for sure. When it was clean enough she would be able to bandage it, she would worry about whether it was deep enough to need stitches later. She hoped not.

Clean it, bandage it, hope she can get back into the emptiness soon.

[hashtagparkerluck]

He'd argue that point if he knew she'd thought about the fact it was supposed to hurt. Maybe sorta, in a way. Pain was the body's way of alerting the brain that something isn't right, after all.

"Germs are uh... really, really tiny little organisms that you can't see without something called a microscope. Good germs help fight bacteria and help prevent you from getting sick. Bad germs are the opposite-they make you sick and when you get a cut it's good idea to clean it with something to kill the germs so you don't get an infection and get sick-but since we can't do that... uh... just let me know if it gets red around the edges or if you start to feel weak or woozy. I don't want you to catch a fever, okay?"

[knifewithnoname]

She blinked at him in confusion. He didn't believe in gods despite their clear power, despite having those with magic on the train with them and yet he believed in tiny little beings that you couldn't see but fought for you and stopped you getting sick? And enemy tiny little germs that make you sick?

Peter is indeed strange. She stared at him for a long moment before continuing to wash the wound. "I will be telling you if it does be going bad."

A bad wound she understood, even if she was pretty sure she didn't believe in germs.

[hashtagparkerluck]

Germs are real things, Little One! He'd show you if he had a microscope! But alas, he does not and he's not even aware she's doubting the existence of something that can be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt.

"Awesome." Peter nods when she agrees to tell him if she starts to feel bad. "Here's to hoping your white blood cells will kick that bacteria's ass if they have to." He pats her her head twice before getting up and moving to look around the the land.

[knifewithnoname]

Her blood was red, not white. Silly Peter. But she's not going to argue with him over the existance of tiny warriors playing out a war of illness and health on her skin. Not in the middle of a battle anyways.

She finishes washing it and pulls a bandage out of her bag to start wrapping it up as Peter looks around. She grits her teeth as the pressure of the bandage hurts her cut.