vatheon | (no subject)

Who: Dirk and Open
When: the afternoon
Where: Near the Library
Style: Starting prose, but I'll follow.
Status: Open

Today has been a day of training for Dirk.

Not his usual style of training, with a sword or even the puppets he occasionally uses to fight. Nor has he gone somewhere like the forest or the island which have plenty of open spaces appropriate for sparring. Instead, he's spent the day sitting by the front steps of the library. He isn't wearing the shirt emblazoned with an orange hat that is his usual choice, either. Instead, he's wearing a maroon shirt with a pink heart emblazoned on it.

He's also got a stack of books beside him that he appears to be making his way through. By the afternoon, he's been working all day to no effect, so he sets the most recent tome aside and leans back against the steps to get the crick out of his neck. "How the fuck do you even define a soul, anyway." He apparently isn't paying attention to where he is, because the comment is more than loud enough to be heard by anyone passing by.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"So even if you manage to win in your game, it's still gonna be messed up?" None of the pieces of what he knows about this game so far really makes a lot of sense. But he's not entirely sure knowing everything would make a ton of sense either.

"If we even win it. Our game's fucked up in general, we can't do shit without a bunch of other people coming in and taking a crack at things." It's a long story, but if Leo asks more, he'll tell the whole thing.

"What's the point of even playing it then? I mean, it sounds kind of like the outcome is gonna suck anyway. So why bother trying?" Leo doesn't think Dirk and them should give up. He's just trying to figure out why they haven't.

"Because you can't avoid it. That's just how it works." Dirk adjusts his sunglasses, then continues talking. "For me and Roxy, it was just about the only way we'd do shit in the world, thanks to hostile alien bitch takeover. We did it despite Roxy's doubts about it because there was nothing else to do. It was the batterwitch's trap, but we couldn't accomplish anything by not walking into it. You know what I mean?"

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Leo says with a solemn nod. So much of the big quest that was to do with the prophecy of seven fit into the category of walking into unavoidable traps. It was annoying as hell, but that just seemed to be how quests worked.

"Anyway, who's the batterwitch?"

“You’ve met plenty of trolls already. I’m guessing you’ve learned a bit about how shit works for them, but I’ll give the summary anyway because they’re condescending as hell about it.” Dirk traces out a pyramid in the air. “You know about caste systems, right? A whole pyramid where the most power goes to the few people on top. Anyway, trolls have an especially bullshit one based around their blood color. It’s muddled as shit on most of the levels, but there’s always one person at the top. The Empress.”

The way he says the word is sharp as daggers. “She’s the batterwitch. In my universe, she fucked up and lost her empire of trolls. So she decided to come to Earth and make humanity her bitches instead. Only she killed off all the humans, too.”

"Yeah. I've heard a bit about troll things here and there." He listens to the rest of what Dirk says with interest. He totally gets caste systems. They're everywhere if you look close enough. There's definitely one going on with the gods, demigods and monsters. And even in normal day to day life, he's aware of class structures. It was hard not to be when you spent 7 years in the system and trying to get out of it.

"Wow, what a bitch. Anyway, how'd she go from being called The Empress to being called the batterwitch? I mean, that's a pretty big change in titles."

"Because of Betty Crocker." Whatever Leo was expecting, it probably wasn't this. "First few decades she was on our planet, she worked under the guise of a baking company, of all things. But there were rumors about her, and she was called the batterwitch. Or the batterbitch, if you especially hated her."

Yeah, he definitely wasn't expecting Betty Crocker. He hoped that the Betty Crocker in his world wasn't evil.

"So the Betty Crocker in your world was always an evil troll?"

"Just about. What makes it awkward is having a friend who's an heir to the company." He leans forward, laces his fingers together. "It took a while for me and Roxy to convince her we knew our shit, but we got through to her eventually."