𝔄𝔩𝔩 𝔦𝔰 𝔴𝔢𝔩𝔩 𝔦𝔫 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔠𝔬𝔲𝔯𝔱 𝔬𝔣 𝔥𝔢𝔩𝔩 𑁍 [FALL TDM]

[gorelord]

Welcome to the Test Drive!

The TDM is welcome to current players and anyone who wants to play in the setting and is encouraged to be used by prospective players. If you are interested in joining the game, you will need to obtain invite from the mod or through an existing member.

For information on the game premise, setting etc, please utilize the navigation pages below. Questions specific to the TDM prompts or the setting can go to the comment thread. Anything else relating to game mechanics can go in the FAQ.

Threads in this post can be considered game canon as long as both parties agree. This TDM event occurs in between chapters I and II.

Please make sure to identify yourselves in your top levels as either current or new player/characters.

GAME PAGES

premise
setting
faq
rules
glossary

i.
arise:
Hell is empty, and all the deovels are here.

It begins with a nightmare, the details of which have slipped through your fingers. Only the curling echo of its dread lingers in your chest. Something has snapped you out of a catatonic state: the shudder of thunder that claps like the hoofbeat of warhorses, a cold chill running down your spine, the call of your name through an empty hall. Whatever it may be that brings you back to your senses, you find yourself in an old, moldering estate lost to a bygone time. Every chamber empty, leading to more locked and broken doors. Rain pours softly out windows jammed shut, pushing you on a path deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of the fortress. Farther and farther, you descend to darkness, following the sound of revelry murmuring behind closed doors.

You are not alone.

The giggle of a woman leaps over your shoulder and you feel the tightening of a ribbon around your skull and the heaviness of a mask presses flush against the meat of your cheeks. A woman with a mask the shape of a moth spins around you, smelling of the sweetness of roses and rot, as she slips away into the flush crowd.

No longer do you stand in a decaying ruin; you find yourself amidst a dark masquerade. For this one night, the Lonely Fortress has been restored to the state of its former glory— or some echoed version of it. The devils have come to roost for a night in the Martyr's Crucible. It is now up to you and your fellow exiles to make host with them in their celebration of the spirits.

What are you supposed to be? A New Kid on the Block?

(cw:mood alteration, master/servant dynamics, potential elements of dubcon/noncon.)

Do not fret if you were spirited away in your plain clothes; this illusion has graced you with the finest courtly attire of an older time. Gauzy silks, satins, and velvets in dark and brooding colors. Your mask fits snugly to your face, double-knotted to uphold the most raucous of partying (or determined tugging).

If you are lucky, you were assigned a 𑁍 Voyeur's mask. This mask has no discernable decoration beyond disguising your features, allowing you to blend in with the crowd at no cost to yourself. You are allowed to spectate the events of this night, and none expect you to take part of it.

If you are potentially unlucky, the mask you receive plays a role, and with it bequeaths a strange effect upon its wearer and treatment throughout the masque as a whole:

𑁍 The Sacrifice: You represent the maiden, fair and pure. A gift worthy of giving to the gods. Tonight, you are chosen, and this celebration is for you. Your mask takes on the shape of the lamb, deer, dove, or unicorn. Unlike the rest of the unholy court, your pale colored garments leave you feeling targeted throughout every room you enter.

Those in the presence of the Sacrificed will feel an inexplicable attraction and devotion towards the mask wearer. Enamored by their perceived perfection, their presence creates a genuine, yet terrifying, devotion in others.

𑁍 The Justiciar: You represent the lord and master, strength and dominion. This is a celebration for the spirits, and you are here to see devotion is paid. Your mask takes on the shape of a lion, bear, bull, or dragon.

Those in the presence of the Justiciar will feel compelled to serve and obey their every command. Those under another's control are still limited by their physical and intellectual limitations.

𑁍 The Devourer: You represent the vices, unbidden from chasing your desires. Tonight, you are here to consume the revelry and become a true eater of sin. For the glory of the spirits, you will live a life unleashed for the entertainment of our guest. Your mask takes on the shape of a hound, boar, rat, or hare.

Those with the Devourer's mask will find their pleasure in the service of others . They hunt the party, feeding vicariously on the pleasure and pain brought by their hand. Sweeter than any tonic, the more they taste, the more they want.

𑁍 The Temptation: A representation of the devil themselves, here to pull others into the dance with the macabre. Your mask takes on the shape of a goat, bat, serpent, or vulture.

Those with the Temptation's mask can corrupt others by their touch to feel waves of bliss, catatonia, arousal, or agony. The effects of which only last as long as the temptation is touching them, building and building the longer they remain.

Drop the Act

Removing your mask is possible, but it doesn't come without consequences. The illusion of this night resides in the mask. When it is removed, the uninvited courtiers appear like corpses of moldering flesh and open wounds. Uncovering the truth will not go well for you. Those who are caught going "faceless" will incur dissent against them by the undead courtiers. Either put the mask back on or they will designate you a better one.

Those who dissent but are incapable of running are given a new mask, made to spend the rest of their night at the mercy of monstrous courtiers.

𑁍 The Wretch You now represent the fool, left to the mercy of all other courtiers to entertain through profound humiliation. A metal mask moulded as the face of a gargoyle. A bridle bit fits into your mouth to prevent from speaking. This mask comes with a bell and collar, drawing the attention of others who relish in the wretch's humiliation.

Those with the Wretch's mask will feel compelled to obey any command the other masks give them or incur the heat of the metal mask sear into their flesh when they refuse.

Those who escape are of the lucky few to break away from the echo's thrall. The hellish courtiers will continually hunt for faceless to punish until the festivities subside.

It's a wise time to keep out of sight and keep moving, but escaping the fortress is easier said than done. The corridors have gotten all turned around, windows and doors jammed shut. Some paths, which should inevitably lead away from the festivities, somehow end up looping back into the festivities from another side. Take heed, for every risk you take elevates your chances of being marked a Wretch.

ii.
revel:
Maggoty Malfeasence.

The festivities seem inviting, tempting easily to get swept up into its fray. Those with a strong gut may sense the underlying foulness of deceit and malice that runs under current of it all. Perhaps you let yourself get carried away by the magic of the night, perhaps you play along for your own safety. After all, how often do you find yourself at a ball fit for a court of the damned?

Dance! Dance until you die!

(cw:nsfw, bdsm, potential for cannibalism.)

The celebrations have spread its festivities across the heart of the Lonely Fortress. Each hall feeds a different vice, drenched in a different color. All are welcome to and from hall to hall, dared to delve deeper and deeper into their depravities until the night's final hour. Each hall is full and brimming with laughter and life, men and women who don masks of every shape possible.

𑁍 Great Hall: For dancing and fanfare. The candle's flame bathes all in a merry golden light. Players and singers have been forced onto the tables and the chandeliers to drum up a sleazy tune and a beat to dance to. Stacked flagons and casks wheel out seemingly endless amounts of wine that penetrate even the deepest of inhibitions. The energy in this room is infectious; some who begin to dance may find themselves unable to stop.

𑁍 Banquet Hall: The light in the banquet hall appears almost violet, sucking the color out of most of the food. Everything that can be found on the table tastes decadent: the rich cakes, succulent meats, sweet fruits. Your fellow exiles may be spotted being used as platters and furniture here, trussed up for display and entertainment as the hungry pick cakes and caviar off their bare skin. So long as the food they serve doesn't run out, no forks or knives will be turned against them.

𑁍 Velvet Parlor: For those looking for a place to feed carnal appetites, they will find a large parlor room draped entirely in lush pillows and heavy velvet curtains. Tonight, the room glows under a deep crimson light as courtiers slake their lusts in a garden of intertwined bodies. The heat of arousal is palpable through the diffusion of the egregore, a symphony of moans echoing from one end of the parlor to the other.

𑁍 Long Gallery: If it's a dangerous sport you crave, look no further than the long gallery — a wall of windows on one side let in a dusty blue light of the moon. Up and down the corridor, courtiers race each other riding on the backs of Wretches, swatting their hinds with makeshift crops. Others are made as pedestals to hold apple targets for knives and axes to be thrown at them. A crowd gathers around a game of knives, waiting to see who draws first blood. The iron of blood seethes into the air here, chasing after the play of pain.

Eyes Wide Shut

(cw:human/ritual sacrifice.)

In the dark before the dawn, the festivities slowly begin to turn sour. Activities grow more violent and vicious. The illusions start to fade on their own as the courtiers become gradually more and more bedraggled. The sweetness of rot grows stronger, attracting the buzzing of flies. Their façade slips away to reveal the legion of undead carousing among the living.

One masked lord rises above all in a toast to announce the culmination of the night's celebrations.

"Now cometh our rise," drones the gold devil's mask. "Our tribute to the Sleeping One, our venerable host, shall be paid in blood."

The deovels roar, their frenzy rising with the heat of the room. If you possess the Sacrificed mask, the blood tribute is...well you. After a long night of salivating, it's now the deovels' turn to come for you. You are hunted to be thrust atop a makeshift palanquin, jeering as you are carried to the fortress's lonely chapel as a living sacrifice.

Those under the spell of other masks may be urged to lend your aid in fetching, tormenting, and processing of these sacrifices. With any luck, you can free your compatriots, or perhaps bloodlust urges you to participate in their dark rituals. Dissenters will face the risk of being sacrificed themselves or placed in the mask of the wretch to do as they're told. In the chaos, escape is possible, but not all will be fortunate enough to make their bid for freedom.

Courtiers drone in their infernal chanting. Fresh blood is used to carve runes and sigils into the stone. An opening in the floor unfurls into a giant pit lined with jagged edges like a lamprey's mouth. One by one, each remaining sacrifice is urged to jump into the maw and down the throat of the hell itself.

For most, this is the end.

For the few, surviving your fall into the stomach will land you in the Undercroft; corrupted by vines of blood and sinew that run along the stone walls. The tunnels under the fortress is a labyrinth of its own, may you wander the dark until the exit can be found. You are not alone down here, for the lost servitors of the keep meander in the dark for their next meal, but hunted by the deovels no more until you can find your way out.

iii.
respite:
It's just a bunch of hocus pocus!

With the breaking of the dawn, the terror of the night is swept away as light fills in the shadows. The hellish court and its massacre are gone within the blink of an eye, leaving the Lonely Fortress back in its regressive state of damp and dark solitude. No trace of dark ritual or aggressor remains. The echo has come and gone, leaving the fortress in a dead and uneasy silence compared to the raucous frenzy that had possessed it a blink before.

The spirits have come and filled their bellies. Where did you end up?

Another Glorious Morning

If you survived the night: Wherever you are, whatever you had been doing by the end of the night, it matters not. Just like that, you jolt awake from a long and restless sleep. The morning light pierces through old, musty curtains in another hazy day in the Crucible. No traces of your courtly garments or mask remain; the events of the night echo in your body, groaning like a hangover. You may find you are tucked away perfectly into bed, fully dressed and in dirtied boots...or you may have woken to missing clothes altogether. Any injuries accrued at the hand of other exiles remain, lending to some part of the night being grounded in truth.

If you are lucky, you have awoken in a room assigned to you, but that may not always be the case. Sleepwalking is a common affliction to exiles old and new, so lets hope any unanticipated bedpartners are forgiving of the company— they too are in need of recuperation. Relish in this moment. You survived.

Deep asleep in thy wormy bed

If you had died at any part of the night: You will not have woken in any bed (unless you were slain in one), but instead rise in the part of the castle where you fell; not a trace of injuries left, only the discomforting memory of death the strangeness of your awakening.

You may be questioning if the night's events were real at all. The sourness of death, blood and bile, lingers as a bitter taste in your mouth. Additionally, you are missing memory. A cut on your palm, but no memory of its accrual, suggests something was bargained for your return. Any trace of such a devil's deal escapes your memory.

Breakfast is served for those who still hold an appetite, but the dining table remains uncomfortably quiet beyond the scraping of forks. The food tastes dull compared to the decadence of the masque, even duller for those who made their brush with death.

Rest now, relish in your continued survival, for who knows what awaits at the next turning of a moon.

Comments

[wenche]

( brienne rears back from the touch, the memories from the previous night still too fresh in her mind, but heart yet still too soft to lash out against unwanted touch.

still leant away, still aghast, she freezes in place, wide eyes blinking in disbelief. she had thought of him so often last night, hoped he would appear and— )

Jaime?

( gods his name, so undressed in her mouth, feels raw and too open. for all that has transpired between them she should feel shame and remorse and agony. but she has never been clever enough to speak well, nor hide the truth from her face. the relief is plain, as is the affection she bears him in the exhale of his naked name from her mouth and the violent pink in her cheeks. anyone watching must see it: this is a young girl with a terrible devotion she cannot hide even as her desperation to be invisible is clear as day.

her chair scrapes loud and awkward through the hall as she shoves it back to stand.

struck dumb, she can only stutter and nearly reaches out for him, hand hung between them in the air. )

Ser— you are— I had not— but how?

[whitecloak]

Brienne.

[ obvious to everyone but the clueless lion that stands before her, brow furrowed in open, unabashed concern as his green eyes sweep over her hulking form. ]

When did you— [ he starts, but quickly cuts himself off with narrowing of his eyes, moving from concern to fury as smoothly as one might turn the pages of a book. ] How dare they. You don't belong here. You shouldn't be here.

[ she's too good. she's undeserving of the horrors that haunt these corridors, of the torment they've had to endure.

he loathes their unseen keepers, whomever or whatever they may be, even more. ]

I'm sorry, my lady. You are unworthy of all this.

[wenche]

( oh, his concern is unbearable. what she is unworthy of is jaime's forgiveness, his worry after her plucking at raw nerves that she isn't sure will ever settle down again. automatically her head shakes in response.

to her, it isn't so impossible. she is worthy of very little. )

No, please—

( her eyes wheel about them, worried about the display jaime is making over her. she tries not to look directly at him, gaze brushing over the edges of him, and whatever she was going to say falls away from her mind and her mouth.

she stares, frozen stock-still, at the end of his stumped arm. something tickles at the back of her mind, but all she can think is that someone took his false hand from him. her own hands twitch to fetch it so that she might inspect its condition, but instead she grasps the hilt of oathkeeper tightly. there are too many eyes and she has been too exposed of late. )

Ser Jaime. Your hand...?

[whitecloak]

My hand?

[ dumbly, but also because he is not as self-conscious hyperaware of his missing hand as he is with others while in the presence of the woman who was with him throughout that traumatizing ordeal, jaime brings his left hand up into view. the one that is whole and not his own personal phantom, haunting him with the past and the what-ifs of his uncertain future.

he looks at the back of it, then flips it to examine the palm. he flexes his fingers, looking for some sign of affliction or ruin, a remnant of the horrors from the night before.

he finds none and holds it up in question. ]

It's fine. See? Still intact.

[wenche]

( she is immediately bewildered. agog, even. her brow pinches up in confusion and worry, her head twists this way and that, knowing full well the display jaime has made has brought attention she does not wish to bear. nor does she wish to foist it back upon him.

brienne swallows, closing her own hand with its mysterious cut into a fist at her side. the frustration she feels at his potential willful obtu— oh. of course. he is too clever for her by yards, isn't he? of course he wouldn't want to speak of it, if this place took his dignity, ripped it again away from him. )

Of course, yes.

( her eyes skate past him to the others milling about. fewer are paying them mind than she'd expect, though some linger on jaime the way eyes always linger on jaime. like he is a refuge from having to look at her. she tries to whisper, leaning down even further than she's already hunched in a comical sort of conspiracy: )

Might we speak? Elsewhere?

[whitecloak]

[ it's almost comical how they manage to misunderstand one another in this instance when they are so effortlessly able to gleam so much about the other in little more than a quick glance. here, however, he feels a bit off-kilter; weighted down by his newfound allegiance to a branch of the targaryen dynasty that perished over a century before he was born while still feeling the familiar, taught pull of the invisible tether that keeps him bound to her and the vow they made to see catelyn stark's daughters to safety. ]

This way, [ jaime says in answer, taking hold of her hand and guiding her towards a door at the back of the room. he leads her down a hallway to a mostly empty storage closet that had been rummaged through by someone at some point, clearing out a bulk of the furniture that ought to be stored alongside what's managed to remain. ]

[wenche]

( her face invents firetrucks in westeros as it reddens to a shade previously impossible to conjure naturally. but follow she does, and whatever piece of her is mortified on his behalf for touching her and connecting them so directly so easily is quietened by the one that wants answers. if there is a girl still alive inside to flutter and blush over such casual touch she is buried deep underneath all else that brienne must wield to press on.

her mind reels as they go. relief at finding someone familiar and trustworthy. agony at the way he refuses to hate her for what she's done. despair that he is not in westeros where he is needed and where his own duty lies, even though it pulls him in two directions and threatens to tear him apart.

she means to say something, but when she finds herself alone with him she realizes this is worse. brienne presses her mouth in a line, mulish jaw jutting out as she stares down at him but cannot make words leave her mouth. if she apologizes again it will only start another row, and she is so very tired. she realizes she is afraid to know what happened to his hand and yet her mind is sharp and she has a theory. it must sound so foolish when she blurts: )

I lost my shield.

( it was jaime's, once, that heavy thing he carried from harrenhal to the capital. and despite the ill omens that clung to it brienne could not bring herself to find a new one. she had cherished that shield, enough to have it repainted. it had protected her and strengthened her arm. she felt exposed without it.

but he seems to be doing just fine without his false hand. )

[whitecloak]

I don't care about the shield.

[ in truth, he doesn't care about the sword (much), either, yet his eyes still dart to her waist and he breathes an almost involuntary sigh of relief upon seeing oathkeeper still affixed to her hip. it fills him with pride and affection fondness to see that she's still carrying it. that they didn't take it from her. ultimately, her safety and wellbeing matters more than the blade, but he'd be lying if he said it didn't please him to have her still be in possession of it.

he gave it to her.

that sword was hers, and no one else's.

always would be.

she'd tried to return it to him after the whole messy ordeal with stoneheart, but he'd refused. ]

We're— [ jaime starts, but hesitates, unsure of how explain. and he with brienne, he wants to give her an explanation. the truth. as close as he can get to it without fully understanding their presence here himself. ] We're not in Westeros. This manse is... somewhere else. In a world not our own. A world that has no regard for what we were doing in our realms or who is supposed to be our contemporaries.

[ he runs a hand through his hair, fingers catching on tangled, unruly golden curls. ]

Brienne, do you remember learning about the Dance of the Dragons?

[wenche]

( she flinches at the dismissal, shoulders hunching toward her ears as she blinks rapidly in surprise. it stings, but it was a stupid thing to say. why would he care about a silly shield? there are more important things to worry about.

or perhaps he has come to his senses. she should muster her worries, then. she must marshal her fear.

hesitantly, uncertain and careful: )

I don't understand.

( what has this got to do with succession wars of old? )

[whitecloak]

[ it's a bit heartwrenching unsettling how suddenly out of sync they are when last he saw her, she was the person he felt most at home in his own skin around. the one who saw him for all that he was (for all that he could be) instead of the vile person the world had decided he should be. ]

King Aegon the Second is here. [ there's no gentler way to break the time-breaking reality of it all to her than to just say it. ] As is his brother, Prince Aemond, and their mother, Alicent Hightower. Along with Jacaerys Velaryon, the Half-Year Queen's eldest son.

[wenche]

( it's so absurd that it must be some fresh mockery.

no. this is ser jaime. he might hate her for her betrayal (no, no, they'd been over this) or never want to see her again (those nightmares are only ever waking and a product of her own sticky guilt) or even think she is the lowest creature he's ever set eyes on (his hands, so warm, as he'd inspected her shoulder when she'd slid from her horse) but he would not mock her.

something else, then. maybe not mockery but a jape? )

Ser?

( some sort of code? brienne looks about them, and then back to jaime once more. her eyes linger on his, draw up his forehead. if not a code, perhaps injury. )

Your words make little sense to me. Mayhaps you are... ( not addled, seven, she couldn't fathom it. ) The Dance was long ago. You speak the names of long-dead figures.

[whitecloak]

It was, [ he confirms, rising up to his full height as he steps closer to better match her own — as much as he can, anyway. she's always been taller than him. he likes that about her. it suits her. ]

Brienne, look at me. [ jaime's lone hand comes up as he meets her gaze, fingers brushing against the jagged lines marring her ruined cheek. ] What reason would I have for making such a claim if it weren't the truth? I am not ill, injured, or cursed, my lady. They are here and I have found myself in service of the Targaryens once again.

[wenche]

( obstinate and off-kilter, brienne doesn't recoil at his touch until he tells her to look at him. she hates when he does that— he must know what it feels like to look at him. he must know, because he has had the proof of it looking back at him since he was born. and yet, he cannot know what it is like for a creature like her to look at him. painful and wonderful, and impossible to do it without flinching of late.

so even as he speaks, she resolutely does not look at him. he's speaking nonsense, and besides: what matter does it make? they're separated from everything that made them who they are. he says he is not ill, and yet here he lays this confusion at her feet even as she's struggling to gain purchase beneath them.

as ever, she feels too stupid and slow to make sense of any of this. so she does finally look at him, face splotched with uncomfortable red as she pulls it away from his hand. a fear she has been unable to reach through the guilt and the shame and the agony of her betrayal sets her heart at a hare's pace in her breast. enough that she can only obstinately repeat herself: )

I don't understand.

( who is this man wearing jaime's face and not his hand, saying half of one thing and little of much else? she'd been so relieved to find a familiar face, and one she... trusts. now, it's as if they are yet again in the capital and he is a stranger to her.

if this is truly jaime, what has been done to him? )

[whitecloak]

[ the incongruence of it all is uncomfortable. it makes him want to fidget in his discomfort, this feeling of unwelcome misalignment with the person who knows him best; the holder of all his secrets and inconvenient truths. they’ve been through too much together to be this out of step with one another, and it only serves to add to his growing list of reasons to loathe this place. ]

Stop, [ he tells her, holding up the hand she moved away from. ] Don’t— There’s nothing wrong with me, so you can stop examining me with those eyes for yours.

[ big blue eyes that are as striking as they are piercing, effortlessly peering through his otherwise impenetrable barriers to see that something is amiss with him, just nothing she assumes. old hang ups he had no reason to touch brought back to the surface by the presence of long dead kin and a prince, queen, and children he still feels responsible for failing to save. ]

There’s no injury, no illness. We are in a world that does not care for sense or reason or what should and shouldn’t be. Tell me you believe me, Brienne.

[ don’t lose faith in him now. he refuses to admit how much he won’t be able to handle it if she did. ]

[wenche]

( when they were captured, and she still hated him so unfairly, they were still together. when he ran his mouth and lost his hand for his stupid great-house-bred arrogance, they were still together. how could she leave him, maimed and dying, and fail lady catelyn through so foolish a happenstance?

even when he left her at harrenhal, he had taken their duty with him. apart, and yet together enough that he came back for her. in the pit, against the tide of her overwhelming grief; as she sat in the cold of the dungeons; they were yet together. often enough it has been that jaime acts without explaining himself, and though she rarely follows with anything approaching ease, follow in his wake she does. ( kingslayer's whore. )

and hasn't jaime repaid her for it, more than she could ask? her hand wraps around oathkeeper's hilt now like jaime is far away and yet still with her. hasn't she repaid him with her own treachery besides?

last night, amid the humiliation and the chaos and the need and failure to help someone, anyone, only to find herself unable to protect her own life, she'd thought of him. rarely is she grateful for the flush in her cheeks excepting she feels the heat anew now as the shame of it engulfs her. he had taught her how to disconnect, and against all her better judgment she'd done so last night. ( kingslayer's whore... )

indeed. perhaps this is her penance. the power that drew her in for its purpose must have already known her unworthiness. but jaime had been worthy all along. they had only ever been blinded by the stories brienne once loved so dearly.

she swallows down her confusion and fear, closes her fist around the strange cut in her palm, sets aside the memories plaguing her, the comfort he gave her which she never deserved. her own stupid heart wants too much, foolish and soft— why couldn't ser goodwin cure her of this?

her voice is quiet, then, as she looks to jaime. )

I believe you.

( and she must, so she will. if what he says is true, what else must be true? he has abandoned their duty for something else. her heart breaks to think of it. what will he ask of her? what can she give? )

It is only that I don't understand. What— how is it— you support their claim to rule here?

[whitecloak]

[ jaime lets out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding when she speaks her assurance, her steadfast confidence in him like a soothing balm he's oh so undeserving of to quell the sharp sting of doubt. he is telling her things he's not sure he would believe himself were their roles reversed, but if it were coming from her, he'd at least try to believe. the wench had lied to him to lure him to stoneheart, yes, and there was a part of him that still felt wounded bitterly betrayed by that, but he understood why she'd done it. that she wouldn't fib to him again.

(right?)

his gaze drops to oathkeeper, emerald eyes lingering on the rubies and the familiar gild of lannister gold. a wave of something akin to homesickness for a world and era he has not been a part of for some time washes over him and he can't help but reach across her form to place his hand upon the pommel, fingertips brushing against her hand. the gold and metal are cool and she's warm and real and— ]

I don't, [ he says a little too sharply, head snapping up to regard her once more. ] Not in the sense that they rule here so much as supporting them in the role I know how to play. [ which, now that he's said it aloud, makes little to no fucking sense outside his own head. ] They don't have any claim to this world, but they are still who they are and I am who I am. [ his grip on the pommel tightens, fingers pressing against her hand. ] What sort of Kingsguard would I be if I didn't step up and do my duty?

[wenche]

( brienne releases oathkeeper with a jolt, eyes darting around them with worry of who might see. she is off-kilter as ever, and takes a step back from him as he speaks words more confusing than his last. a little propriety might be in order.

perhaps it is as she overheard: she is yet dazed. her head is not yet about her in this strange and ephemeral place. she repeats his words like a dullard, trying to understand. trying to sort through things she can not hope to understand. )

Supporting them.

( not in a claim. but yet as... kingsguard. she had followed renly on very little, but she had loved renly. he had been very good to her. perhaps that's all it is? what she knows of the dance doesn't really square, here, but hasn't she learned not to trust other people's judgments on someone's character? )

And they have been... good to you?

[whitecloak]

[ she releases her grip, but his remains as she takes a step back, oathkeeper sliding slightly out of its sheath with the sort of dulcet ring that only valyrian steel can make. a quick glance down has his eyes catching on the red ripples mottled throughout the blackened steel, and a new sort of concern fills his head that he doesn't immediately give voice to. his touch lingers on the pommel for a moment longer before his fingers fall away and the sword clicks back into place at her hip. ]

Yes. [ the truth. at most, he'd been frustrated with aemond's recklessness and annoyed by aegon's immaturity, but they were otherwise unexpectedly decent people he did not mind serving. and for the first time in a very long time, he's felt earnest pride in wearing the white cloak.

ironic, given that he arrived without it. he'd been on his way back to pennytree to see if his army was still there or if addam had given upon him and moved on, and the white cloak had been left behind in king's landing when he'd departed for the riverlands. ]

They are... [ a laugh, one full of bitter yet not as bitter as it could be mirth and a touch of disbelief. ] Astonishingly unremarkable.

[ in the sense that the madness he'd seen in aerys was nowhere to be found in the children of viserys ii (or rhaenyra's son, as far as he knew) and they behaved as any other high seated noble would. perhaps it was the lack of dragons or the setting shift, but there was something about they way they existed, even here, that made him wonder what it would have been like to have served in a proper court. one that wasn't plagued by a maniacal king or one more interested in debauchery, food, and ale. or his demented eldest son ]

[wenche]

Unremarkable.

( excuse her while she recovers from being privy to that laugh. she is familiar with mocking, and bitter, and taunting. the thread of actual mirth possibly has made her black out for a millisecond, so she only repeats him again.

hopefully he will just take it as an excuse to say more. jaime has never been wanting for words with which he might fill her awkward silence. )

[whitecloak]

[ excuse to say more he does indeed take it, willfully? oblivious to her affections and the way in which she is affected by him. ]

Does that shock, my lady? That they are no more than people? I suppose they would be more if they had their dragons, but Sunfyre and Vhagar did not accompany them to this place.

[ else this place would likely not still be standing. jaime knew aemond well enough at this point to know that he likely would have commanded the queen of all dragons to raze this accursed keep to the ground.

also the velaryon boy's dragon. vermin? vertax? something like that. ]

[wenche]

( for a moment, he draws her ire. one shining moment, in the flash of her eyes, the instinct to take everything jaime says as personal insult to her own self leaps up in her chest.

and the next it's gone. no more than people. a lesson she has learned the hard way a few times now. a new jolt of a new something pulls the anger out of her chest and curls like shame in her gut.

brienne shakes her head at the kingslayer: for is jaime not the first legend who proved himself only a man to her? )

I only meant—

( gods be good but the mention of dragons is distracting. is she a little disappointed on the side of her relief? probably only jaime will ever be able to tell with the scowl that's creased itself into her disfigured face. )

No dragons?