Logs:Adepts of the Zenith

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Cast

Lif Loracks, Alice Jordan, Peter Wood, Devon the Black

Setting

Summer Hollow

Log

Lif asked for a meeting with Devon, and she gets a meeting with Devon... with bonuses. At the appointed time, the hall in the Summer Hollow has been cleared out save for those waiting to meet with Lif, specifically. At the head of the table sits the Summer Crown himself, mahogany branches and emerald leaves braided together on his brow. The ivy leaves wrap down to the magnificent breastplate which the Summer Crown manifests on him. He has his dirty boots propped up on the table's corner, and is cleaning under his nails with the point of a short dagger.

To his immediate left sits Alice Jordan: short of stature, with dark curls and solid-black eyes. She wears a comfortable crimson blouse and jeans, work boots, and has brought an impressive spread of meats, cheeses and vegetables that bougie folx would call charcuterie, and less-affluent folx would call a plougman's lunch. Two large crows sit with her -- one on her left shoulder, one on the back of her chair, and she carefully plucks choice slices of prosciutto from the wooden board and feeds each in turn. The trio cluck and chatter to one another amiably as they wait.

Lif arrives wearing the armored duster Lucia had made for her over a pair of dark-wash jeans and a button-down shirt. Her hair's in a braid, and there's her usual black cowboy hat on her head, at least until she removes it as she makes her approach to the table. While confidence is something she's not strongly possessed of, she has a success or several under her belt, and that allows her to square her shoulders and walk in with her head held high tonight.

Opposite Alice is a pile of granite. A pile of granite in a Redsox Hat and a Dropkick Murphy's t-shirt, but a pile of granite just the same. It's only when Lif arrives that the rubble animates and fissures appear in his stony flesh as a massive stony head slowly turns to regard them. Two pits in the thing's face begin to glow with coal fire, smoke curling up the ogre's brow. How such a face can appear friendly is anyone's guess, but he manages it. "Hey, kid." Peter whacks Devon's boots with the back of a big stone hand, "Act like you had a mom, fuck. Lif's here."

"I am the Scottish play's missing piece," Devon answers in that sort of weird flat-effect speech he has, but all the same, the Summer King kicks his boots off the table, dropping them to the floor with a thud. He absently wipes his blade off on the arm of his t-shirt and leans forward to spear a chunk of cheese with it, holding it out toward one of Alice's crows.

"As if," the Left-Hand Victor sighs, taking the cheese off of the blade point and holding it up to her right-hand crow, who churrrrs and then reaches down to take the cheese, tossing it up in the air to catch it again and swallow it. "Hello, Lif. Have a seat."

Lif walks over and accepts the offered seat. "If I'd known this was going to be a tribunal, I think I would have been even more nervous than I am, heh."

"Enh. Don't be nervous. I shit the same as you. Just bigger and it's on fire." Peter gives Devon a slightly dubious look. He may not be the sharpest tack on the ground, but he'll stab your foot just the same. "I'll untimely rip a fart, you." Peter hooks a thumb over at Devon. Get a load of this guy, right? He shakes his head over at Lif, as though seeking their support on this point.

"Anyways. Don't be nervous. Just tell us your grand idea."

A little wave of his left hand, and Devon picks up a piece of cheese for himself. "Sometimes I let them do their jobs," he deadpans. "Advising and all that." He gives Peter a one-eyed Look, and snorts, popping the cheese in his mouth. "Mm." And a small gesture with one hand. Go ahead, Lif.

They take a deep breath before they speak, water burbling at the crack in their neck as they do so. "The situation involving the Tree at the Crossroads is one that could have ended up going a lot worse than it did. It was people making creative, interesting choices to try and find solutions that opened up possibility space beyond 'a war involving all the local freeholds'. I was one of those people, and I'm not here to sing my praises. I'm here to say there may be room for a role within the Summer Court that is explicitly dedicated to coming up with creative solutions to problems. People who bring their knowledge to the table and try to apply it to ongoing situations, instead of reaching for the nearest weapon. People who know something about sabotage and outdoorsmanship and oneiromancing and chemistry--probably plenty of other fields I've left off my list, because what I know comes to mind first."

The Crown considers this for a moment, and as he reaches for a piece of thinly-sliced meat, rolling it up between his fingers, it's Alice who speaks first. "What makes this different from a Sentinel of Flame?" Alice queries, her talon-tipped fingers scritching the underneath of the chin of the crow perched on her shoulder. "We expect all of our Sentinels to come up with creative solutions to problems, to be able to hedgespin, to be able to lead any kind of mission or expedition. It isn't just about who can stab first and hardest."

Devon jabs a finger toward Alice, as if to say 'that's why she's here.'

Peter drums his fingers on the table for a moment or two, then glances between Alice and Devon. Peter has a habit of always sticking up for the little guys in the ranks. Now is no exception. So he volunteers, "We look for it, but we don't require it, do we. And we look to Sentinels to lead in the field, not just think on their feet. Correct me if I'm wrong, here, Lif, but you're talking about... like. Specialists. Subject matter experts, right? You were never in command out there, but you were clever and innovative and made the people what was in charge aware of your idea, and they ran with it. You wanna formalize being a clever smartypants so that, like. Convincing the in charge guys that youse got a good idea isn't as hard the next time. A 'listen to me, I'm professionally clever' button." Peter looks back to Alice and shrugs his shoulders, "I got rocks for brains. Lord knows I could use a smartypants in my back pocket."

"A Sentinel of Flame is someone you trust to lead a group. This role would be more suited to someone who a Sentinel of Flame would point to and go 'okay, I need someone to figure out what is going on with these hedgebeasts going crazy', and this person would have some knowledge of ecology or animal behavior or the local hedgescape and how it's changing. I know I'm not a leader myself, I'm nowhere near ready to be a Sentinel of Flame, but--again, I have to cite Dover. I took a level of initiative in what I worked on to bring that problem to a close that most of the Pages of High Noon did not."

She nods at Peter. "Specialists is right. I hate that this is my example, because Card's a fucker, but if you've read Ender's Game, the role Bean had in Dragon Army is close to what I'm thinking about. Or...the role the player character has in Skyrim within the Imperial Legion, the auxilliary that Legate Rikke asks to find levers and solve puzzles while she has her band of grunts ready to run in when the fighting starts."

Devon was sort of following the thread of the conversation until Lif started trying to give examples. He reaches for another piece of meat, rolls it up between his fingers, and says, in his blunt and unaffected way, "I have literally no idea what you're talking about."

"How would you suggest we qualify people for this? Is this something that someone should volunteer for, or be selected for by a Victor, or possibly both?"

"You might have to dumb this one down a tetch, kid," Peter asides to Lif, "Devon still plays with GI Joes and eats sugar cereal." Peter says this with a straight face, too.

They think about the question for a moment before speaking. "Volunteering by itself might lead to someone trying to puff up their resume, which might leave people high and dry in the field with a bullshitter. Perhaps volunteers, followed by a test of the skills they're claiming to have--though Victors calling out people who demonstrate something special should also be a valid path to this role."

"I'll tell Doll where you hid your porn," Devon deadpans at Peter, and Alice shakes her head. It's not possible to see her roll her eyes, on account of them being all-black, but the feeling is there.

The Summer King focuses his single good eye back on Lif. "We don't let anyone take a job they haven't proven they can do. Slows down the process a little, but. We can take it on the pitch-and-be-assigned-a-job method we do for most of the higher spots, I suppose." He slowly scratches his cheek with one hand. "Hmm."

They don't interrupt while Devon is thinking, making eye contact. See, now that the talking is actually happening, Lif's not as nervous as before the meeting. They've got the eloquent word thing down.(edited)

Alice, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have any compunction about interrupting Devon's train of thought. "There's almost two months left of Summer," she points out, reaching up to feed a bit of cheese to the other crow. "Plenty of time left for a test run."

And that, it seems, is enough to break Devon out of his reverie and let his opinion fall down one way or the other. In this case, toward Lif. His singular gaze focuses in on her again, and he grunts agreement, leaning back in his chair such that the chair creaks and the breastplate moves. "Sure. Let's go with that. You can have your shiny hat through Summer, give you a chance to prove it's good for more than one-shot benefit." A beat. "What do you want to call your maybe-temporary shiny hat?"

Lif considers that for a moment. "Adepts of the Zenith. Indicating that we're reaching for the peak within our field, while also referencing high noon. How does that sound to you?"

A shared glance, traded one to the other, between the trio, and then Devon says: "For now, at least, that'll do. Might come up with something I like better, but for now." He absently tosses his knife into the air; it flips twice and the handle lands back in his palm easily.

"Ooh, that even sounds stupid and pretentious. It's perfect." Peter grins a grin that isn't really as reassuring as he thinks it is, no doubt. "You've got this making bullshit sound important thing down, kid. You could do my job, easy. Just never share your spank bank with this fuck-knuckle over here. That was my mistake." Peter hooks a thumb over at Devon with another shake of his head.

She watches Devon's knife, head bobbing with the motion in the air, before she glances at Peter. "I don't think I had any intention to at any point. That would be sort of weird, no?"

"That's what I told him, the sick fuck," Peter agrees easily.

"People have done stranger," Alice answers with a weary sigh, and without much more to say than that, her body twists and spins upward, inhaling into nothingness and exhaling into a black-winged form which flutters and flaps toward an open window set high into one of the hall's heavily-decorated walls. Apparently, as far as she's concerned, the audience is over.

"Go on, kid. Show off your shiny hat. We'll talk before the nutty owl takes the crown, and either -- " And then Devon cuts off, staring at Peter for a moment. "And make a decision one way or the other. Now if you'll excuse me, I have plans to practice my knife-throwing with Peter's ears."

Lif stands and pushes their chair in. "Thank you for your time and attention. I will try not to let you down." Their grin spreads across their face slowly.

"You want to dull your pretty prop, Devon, throw away. Just remember who's gonna come lookin' for me if I'm not home for dinner." Peter chuckles like a tumble of boulders, his mirth a genuinely warm thing. On account of all the lava inside of him. "You did good, kid," Peter then asides to Lif, "we can talk later about your good ideas, aright? For now, go grab yourself a beer or whatever and toss one back. Ya earned it."