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WHO

General Information

Młynar Nearl is a tall (six foot three) blond man with golden eyes and, on most days, a resting expression that’s on the “disapproving” side of neutral. He nearly always has a longsword hanging from his belt, regardless of whether it seems appropriate for the situation or the outfit. He genuinely always wear a gold-plated gauntlet on his right forearm, again regardless of the present context. He tends to layer, with the topmost layer being a long, dramatic coat. Also, he has horse ears on the top of his head and an improbably fluffy horse tail, which match the coloring of his hair. There’s also that.

The second son of a storied noble family of knights, he trained and was taken along on his father's missions in the countryside from a young age, developing many thoughts on chivalry, justice, leadership, responsibility, compassion, and all that. As a result, he is...deeply opposed to class distinctions and has categorically refused to be officially knighted by any formal institution. He is a perfectly ordinary wanderer, thank you very much. He's often quiet, if he engages in conversation at all, but once he's comfortable around someone or if you get him started on the right topic he won't hold back.

“Knights should stand with those in distress, those with nothing but the clothes on their backs. This alone I will always believe in.”

Option 1
[Młynar in his early 20s keeps his hair long, appropriately tied back in a ponytail. He is serious-minded, attentive, infuriated by injustice, eager to help, and very protective of his friends. He has a tendency to see the best in people, and wants others to see that too. Although he’s not particularly expressive and is hardly outgoing, he's happy to spend time around people and can be open about himself or join in the fun if it's appropriate for the occasion. He is cynical, but too determined to do something about the state of the world to be pessimistic most of the time.]

Option 2
[Młynar in his mid-40s has cut his hair to just above his shoulders, though his bangs have grown out to match the rest of it. He is at most times operating on multiple levels of pessimism, anger, idealism, realism, concern, and self-hatred, which has a history of manifesting in behavior that can be best summed up with the phrase "stone-faced hypocritical asshole." That being said, he's a perfectly polite, even considerate, coworker, and is actually fairly easily swayed into helping others. He prefers to keep himself at a distance socially, but if he has the slightest reason to care about your wellbeing he has your back. Just, from far enough away that he has plausible deniability. Is probably carrying a newspaper at any given time.]

WHERE

Option A - generic magic 1940s jamjar

[It's my open post and I'll make a film noir option if I want to. A city that is roughly equivalent to the 1940s in technology, but the main power source is magic, derived from little cracks in the universe that also sometimes throw player characters into the place. Magic is mostly gathered and then housed in devices (like cars) or implements (like magic wands) that can be used by anybody. The government has recently righted itself under new leadership but its position is precarious due to all the corrupt guys from the old regime still hanging around, not to mention the organized crime that said old regime had deals with. Perhaps you're helping a dogged newspaper reporter uncover a smuggling ring. Maybe you've temporarily agreed to become a government agent to help steal a bomb back from the mob. Did you open your own private detective agency? Or maybe you just really need coffee from this 24-hour diner.]

Option B - Collab Event

[Have you ever wondered "how would my character deal with being suddenly dropped into a world that's regularly riven by natural disasters on a nearly apocalyptic scale, where nearly every government is dystopian in some way, people keep getting incurable magic rock cancer, and nearly everyone is some kind of furry?" Wonder no more. Thanks to magic rock nonsense, we can justify whatever we want!

Whatever you were doing, it's interrupted by the sound of a nearby explosion. Yet, the next thing you know you're waking up, lying on your back in the middle of a dirt road through a forest.

There are footsteps approaching.]

Option C - Uno Reverse Collab

[A horse is loose in your canon.]

Option D - It's just Deer Country

[Look I liked the setting for him.]

Option E - Wildcard

[Hit me with what you've got, or hit me up and I'll work out a different starter!]

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Młynar is far from being any sort of formal instructor. It's been years since he taught anyone, and even then no one would have mistaken it for a calling, or an area he was gifted in. And yet, one person asked him to spar, and then another requested pointers on using a sword, and over time it reached a point where half the time he wandered into the practice hall, he tutored somebody. Młynar wasn't certain how he felt about this. But...as long as it was kept to weapons training, and only when he visited here, he didn't mind it.

"You've put too much weight on your right."

Sarah grimaced at the criticism--not out of irritation, but acknowledgement that Młynar was right. It had been a while since she fought properly against another person--and he was considerably taller than her, while her other male comrades had not quite finished their final growth spurt. Fighting against a man over six foot tall was something she had to relearn.

She shifted her weight, resettling her grip on the Excalibur--Gawain had gone through so much with this sword, and she was going to use it properly. "All right. Again."

Młynar does not so much as nod before beginning the drill again from the top, but Sarah is likely used to that by now. He changes nothing about his own form, to replicate the situation as closely as possible.

He hears a clatter in the hallway, which the ears on top of his head swivel towards to make out better. But he doesn't pause to pay attention until the scream starts.

One thing that Sarah was coming to appreciate about Młynar was how businesslike he was--she knew some of her friends might not appreciate how parsimonious he was with words, but it didn't bother her. That would be somewhat hypocritical, in any case.

If the scream had just been a scream, she might not have paid it much importance. People did sometimes get their knuckles banged or a painful jab with practice weapons--but when one scream is followed by a second voice yelling at someone or something to get back! and the sound of heavy furniture falling, she straightened up sharply, stepping back from Młynar's blade.

"Something's wrong." She hurried to the door and gasped. Green, sagging flesh, rolled-back eyes, shuffling and jerking movements as though the body and the brain had forgotten how to speak... which was all true. Because there were undead invading the building. "We're under attack!"

The adjacent corridor was being piled up with a barricade by the other group that had been using the training hall. A good idea, but they could use more time to build it. Sarah strode forward, thankful that she had a paladin's sword and not a wooden practice blade.

[This is more than a little alarming! Explosions generally should not happen in the forest-

This isn't even in the right forest? This is some other forest. It may or may not also be haunted, but it doesn't really matter, because Suga has a duty to guard that specific forest and he can't do that if he's somewhere else!

Suga sits up and feels around for his sword (made of magic rocks but not those ones), which thankfully is lying on the ground next to him. That's something. Enough that maybe he can bluff his way out of a fight if it comes down to that.]

[It's not common to see someone left in the middle of the road in these parts, but it's not remarkable either. Bandits come and go like other pests, following their own seasonal routes and leaving their victims to deal with the aftermath. So Młynar is not surprised to see the other man as he comes around the bend in the road. He is, though, surprised to see the sword. Wouldn't bandits have taken that first?

He stops a few yards away from the other man, trying to get a read on him.]

...Are you hurt?

[Suga looks up at the stranger - and then looks further up, at the ears, before bringing his gaze back down to the person's face. He's not in a position to be judging people on their cosplay choices.

He shakes his head 'no, I'm fine' before he actually assesses the real answer to that question. There was an explosion, wasn't there? So he probably should have taken some damage? But he feels physically fine.

He roots around in his pockets and finds his stack of memo cards and his pen. That's good, too. He jots down a note and holds it up, gesturing with his other hand around his throat 'no voice'.]

Where am I?

[He can't speak? But he's prepared for it, so that must not be the result of anything recent.]

Outside Bukielka. [The town, or really village, is only a mile or so up the road.

The sword, Młynar notes, is in a style from Higashi. He's never seen one of those outside of a collection. A family heirloom, perhaps? But who would bring an heirloom out to the woods?]

[The blade is also not made of metal, which is probably the stranger thing - it's some pale blue stone, lightly glowing.

Well, that's an answer, but...]

I don't know where that is. Or how I got here.

[Maybe it's an Arts unit. Unusual to combine housing it in a weapon and using a stone as a conduit, but then, maybe it's a traditional technique in parts of Higashi - it's not as if Młynar would know.

He frowns slightly at the notecard. It's easy to get lost out here in the hinterlands, but if that's what happened, why not say it?]

...What do you last remember?

[Scritch scritch.]

I was in a different forest than this one, the one near my home in Azakawa Village. There was an explosion. Then I was on the ground here. I have no idea what could have happened.

[That's not in Kazimierz. Well, Młynar supposes there is a chance that someone established a village by that name recently, but it's certainly nowhere near here if that's the case. His frown deepens, and one of the ears on top of his head lowers. What on Terra...

After a pause long enough for some to consider awkward, he appears to reach a decision.]

Let's find someplace better to discuss this.

[Whatever's going on, the middle of the road is not the safest place to try to work it out.]

[That's entirely reasonable. The middle of the road is not a good place to hold a conversation.

Suga picks himself up off the ground. He inclines his head a little to the stranger - Suga doesn't know where they are, so he'll follow where he leads.

He needs to return home soon - the longer he's here, wherever here is, the longer his village is in danger. The anxiety is quick to set in, but he can't do anything about it at the moment besides try to get information.]

[Młynar waits a moment to be sure the other man is steady on his feet before nodding in turn and turning to continue down the road in the direction he had been going. He looks over his shoulder occasionally to check that the fellow is still following, but otherwise does little to acknowledge his companion. No point in adding to the confusion yet.

Młynar's tail does twitch anxiously side-to-side, though, as he continues to consider the situation. An explosion? There are mines in this area, but none so near the road, and Młynar hadn’t heard or felt anything. There had been no panic from the local beasts. Surely an explosion in possibly-Higashi couldn't send an individual all the way to Kazimierz? Though perhaps if the sword is an Arts unit...

As they walk, the trees give way to small patches of cleared land, containing farms that are more like oversized vegetable plots than anything else. In one of them, a woman with flame-red hair and an equally red pair of squirrel ears and tail looks up at them briefly before returning to digging up potatoes.

The village arises abruptly out of the farms, a huddle of houses and not much more clustered on either side of the road. The architecture has a very medieval European look to it. There are a few larger buildings, including one with a sign proclaiming "Inn," outside of which a few people (also with horse ears and tails) stand talking.

Młynar slows and turns back to the other man.]

Are you feeling alright?

[There's no way he wouldn't follow Mlynar at this point. What would his other option be, staying alone in an unfamiliar place?

Suga takes note of their surroundings as they walk, trying to glean anything he can from what he sees. Animal ears seem to be a normal thing? The architecture isn't Japanese, and they're either somewhere very rural or... he doesn't want to consider time travel, this is confusing enough.

At the question, he nods without hesitation. He's not hurt, nor sick.]

[Again, Młynar nods in turn and continues forward, heading directly towards the inn. The people standing outside take no notice at first, continuing their conversation.

"-said it's not safe mining that deep with the equipment they have."

"The company has to help, right? Otherwise they'll have to..." They trail off as Młynar and Suga approach, watching the two curiously. If Młynar was listening (he was), he shows no sign of it. He simply opens the door and steps into the inn.

The light inside is electric, and there's a small t.v. over the bar, currently tuned to a weather forecast (expect rain). There's no one behind the counter at the moment. In fact, there's no one else in the room at all. Młynar still heads for a table that's out of the way, with a good view of the rest of the room. He gestures for the other man to sit before doing so himself.]

I'm Młynar. [He pronounces it "Mwinar."] Your name?

[They should probably establish that before anything else.]

[The word 'mining' catches Suga's ear, and he turns his head to look at them before they quiet down. ...It's rude to eavesdrop, but he couldn't help it.

He takes a seat, relieved to at least see a TV. For a moment he was really considering the possibility of being transported back in time.]

Suga. Is your name spelled like it sounds?

[Młynar blinks, surprised by the question. He'd expected...well, any question about the current situation, rather than one about his name. But it must be terribly embarrassing, if you communicate through writing, to misspell someone's name. And although, as far as Młynar can tell, Suga writes in perfect Kazimierzan, that doesn't mean it's his first language.

Still...it strikes Młynar as quite courteous.

He doesn't have pen or paper on hand himself, though, so he holds a hand out for Suga's.] May I?

[To be honest, Suga needs the additional moment to try and figure out where to even begin with asking about the current situation - but it is embarrassing to misspell someone's name, especially when that person is being polite to you. And it really doesn't sound like a Japanese name.

Suga hands over his pen and paper, and waits patiently.]

[Beneath the question, in an even hand, he writes Młynar followed, after a brief moment of hesitation, by Nearl. The name likely won't mean anything to Suga, but there's the possibility that it could mean enough to another Kazimierzan looking to cause trouble to get Suga out of it.

He passes the pen and notecard back over.]

Your home is Azakawa Village? I'm afraid I haven't heard of it.

[That definitely isn’t the spelling he would have guessed, it’s good he asked.]

It’s a very small village up in the mountains of Japan. I have to get back as soon as possible.

[Młynar frowns slightly at the note. "Japan"? Is that the name of a region or a province? It's certainly not one in Kazimierz (or, he's fairly certain, Leithanien or Ursus).]

Where is Japan?

[...blink.]

The Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Asia. Where are we?

[Młynar reads the note multiple times. It does not start making any more sense. Off the coast? As in, an island out in the ocean? True, Młynar had been assuming that Suga is Aegir (if simply because he doesn't look like he could be anything else), but Aegir live in or are descended from the inhabitants of underwater cities. Even they don't have knowledge of any other habitable land masses, let alone two. It's not that it's impossible, given how much of Terra remains unexplored. But why would someone from there turn up in the middle of Kazimierz, and not a nation with coastline like Iberia or Yan?

He flips the note over to its blank side and holds out a hand for the pen again. It may be more efficient to simply draw a map.]

[The long pause doesn't fill Suga with a lot of hope that this will be easily resolved... But then, not knowing where Japan was was already a bad sign.

He hands the pen back, preparing himself to not recognize a thing.]

[The ears on top of Młynar's head lean forward as he concentrates, drawing the outline of a continent that looks something like someone smashed Africa, Europe, and Asia all together. A bit northwest of center, he draws another, modestly-sized shape and labels it Kazimierz. Then, for clarity, he fills in the rest: Ursus to the north, Leithanien to the southeast, Victoria to the south, its former colony Columbia to the west, then Bolivar west of that...until, eventually, he's outlined every major nation and put labels on the northern icefield and southern hotlands for good measure. Finally, he draws a little star in the northeastern part of Kazimierz, and taps it with the pen while flipping the map around to face Suga. You are here.

Aside from the shape of the continent, the names of the nations, the absence of any other land, all of which will probably stand out to Suga first, there's one more thing of note. An awful lot of land is outside the borders of these countries. Nations don't always border each other - some countries have no direct neighbors at all, as if they're islands and the land is sea.]

Edited 2025-05-05 20:48 (UTC)

[What an incredibly detailed map. Obviously he doesn't know how accurate it is, but Suga doesn't think he could draw a decent map of Japan offhand. Then again, he doesn't travel literally at all, so it's not like it's information he uses often...

Unfortunately.]

I've never heard of any of these places.

[Once more, Młynar stares at the reply for a moment before responding. He takes the pen again for a moment, just long enough to write Aegir in some spot in the ocean south of Iberia (whether there's actually city anywhere near there, who can say?). Setting the pen back down, he points in several directions across the vast, unnamed ocean.]

Could Asia and Japan be across the sea?

[Forgive him, Suga, he's still 20 years away from being anywhere near a collab event so alternate universes won't immediately strike him as a possibility.]

They could?

[Suga's geography is not the best. He could be looking at a map of... South America? That's plausible.]

But you would have to be very, very isolated to not know an entire continent.

No one has crossed the ocean and returned. [With the possible exception of Aegir, but if they have they certainly never informed anyone on land.

So...yes, he supposes, they are rather isolated.]

I don't know much geography, but I know that's not right. People cross oceans all the time in planes and ships.

[Mostly planes these days, but even if he were somehow earlier - and he couldn't be that far back, with the TV here - there'd still be intercontinental trade.]

This doesn't seem like it's just a problem of distance.

[Katherine Regnard has a million reasons not to be out in public. Not even nursing a coffee in a little hole-in-the-wall diner at this ridiculous hour, when most of the other patrons present probably shouldn't be out in public, either. She's easy to identify, is the thing. The Regnards were never quiet about their assorted political ambitions back in the day, and the family has been terribly visible in the background of things for generations — which made their fall all the more spectacular when the wayward youngest daughter of the current brood went and ran off with a crime boss the better part of a year ago.

She had good intentions. Really, she did. Her problem was that she believed him when Albus said he did, too, filling her head with notions of a sort of Robin Hood existence, outlaws fighting against the corruption her own family had their fingerprints all over.

Not so much.

Albus has now been rather explosively murdered, which solves one problem. A hydra of others has risen in his place, many of which have been in the newspapers recently, or will be soon. And Kitty, who contains within herself all the potential to rise from this as a cunning femme fatale moving effortlessly through an underworld of strings ripe for the pulling, is mostly just sitting here thinking about how stupid she is. How awful, how wretched a person. It'd be one thing if she'd just been naive, arrogant enough to get caught up in things much too big for her to handle, that sort of business. A silly girl who never once thought the older man saying such wonderful things to draw her to his side may be lying. And she had been all of that, certainly. But the truth is that she'd been lying to herself about her motivations the whole time, too, hadn't she? Was any of it really about changing the world for the better, or deep down, had she really just been searching for any way to get away from her family...?

She stares blindly down into her untouched black coffee, the disheveled white hair that proclaims her name nearly glowing in the dark corner she lurks in. She doesn't bother to look up at anyone who walks by. Truthfully, if she were to be arrested or assassinated or the like now, it would save her the trouble of trying to figure out which shattered piece to pick up first.]

[Of course Młynar reads the papers. He has one in front of him now, as a matter of fact, held up high enough that most people glancing his way won't see his ears. Młynar is not the most obvious of the people who have fallen into this one from dozens of others - that would be the two giant robots. But he's obvious enough for it to be annoying. Which, he supposes, isn't dissimilar to what Ms. Regnard two tables down over there must deal with. If she wants the privacy of a dark corner, let her have it. He may read the papers, but he's not some naive fool who believes everything in them, or who thinks a few articles gives them the knowledge to render judgement upon another human being.

The skinny, nervous fellow who came in shortly after Ms. Regnard, though, doesn't seem inclined to respect her privacy. In the ten minutes since he ordered his own coffee, he's been scooting his way closer along the bar, giving her what he probably thinks are furtive looks over a book he's clearly not reading. When the man artlessly drops his book, practically tossing it at Ms. Regnard's table in a transparent ploy to get closer to her, Młynar decides that's enough. It's annoying to be noticed, but less annoying than watching this idiocy.

He stands up and picks up the book before the man can reach it. If that happens to also put him between the man and his target...well, it happened to work out that way.]

You should be more careful, sir.

[Młynar's entirely neutral tone and expression do nothing to stop the man from staring incredulously at him and intoning-] What the fuck?

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Open Post

for @burtgang

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B

we'll pretend I have 20s Młynar icons

you totally do

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expired icons woo...

the suffering...

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/handwaves magic rock babelfish powers

thanks magic rock!

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A

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