A Huge Stack of Papers (Aidan/Clair)

[Clair Feldsky]

OoC: Takes place while Clair and Aidan are searching for papers, on page sixteen, of Even Saints Can Die by the Sword, in Sacae. The font is papyrus to those who are wondering.

IC:

Clair was reading the various records, dragging her eyes across the various pages. She'd been at it for a while.

-one thousand steel bars
-twelve armorers hammers of fine and heavy weights
-one medium anvil
-metal rasps of differing grades of teeth...

She got to the bottom of that page without finding anything useful."Oh... Here's something useful. They were waiting for forty water pales for smith work." She threw the page down in frustration at not having found anything particularly useful to her mind yet, moving on to the next.

"Are you having any luck yet? My eyes feel like they're going to start bleeding soon." Actually they had just made it out of a battle, after an all day march. She was beginning to feel that fatigue that people talked about.

[Aidan Lowell]

((OOC: Papyrus Font? Kraft really is evil!))

IC:

Nothing, nothing, nothing... He sifted through papers, nothing specifically interesting or useful coming to mind. More old orders, a request order for some salt and pepper, and... Seriously? A flyer to a birthday party? What the... "Unless we are planning to starve them of seasonings, nothing over here."

Oh, there it was. There's that headache he knew he'd get. It was frusterating, all of these papers seemed to be about the most inane things. Nothing showing a particular flaw in their defenses, no maps, no recent request orders for anything particularly important. It was a big stack of boring. "Ugh, my eyes hurt..." He groaned. He rubbed his closed eyes with his thumb and index finger.

Picking up another order form he began humming to his self idly, a Bernese battle anthem that he knew since birth... Or well it seemed that way, with it being drilled into his head his whole life.

[Clair Feldsky]

"Well, a lack of seasonings means bland food, so at least we're laying siege to their palates."

She kept reading, now listening to the song he was humming softly under his breath as well. At least it helped break the monotony.

A noise of frustration escaped from her, and she put down the pages she'd been going through. "I have to think backwards...." She closed her eyes for a minute, before reopening them and standing up to pace back and forth slowly. Her chin firmly in her grasp and with a slight downward cant to her head, she spoke her thoughts. "Salt is used as a preservative for food, so that request could mean they don't have enough to last for much longer. The steel bars in the report..., if they don't make it then the smiths won't have that much material to use in repairs and crafting." So maybe there is something useful in this. Oh, but I need concrete, not possible.

"There's got to be a way to find out for sure. What would a fortress on the plains need to survive?" She sat back down and started skimming lines again, trying to find something that could give more solid information, but also trying to answer her own question. Speaking aloud just seemed to help her think clearer sometimes.

[Aidan Lowell]

It would so much easier to have a giant map that says INFILTRATE HERE in red. He stared blankly at the papers in front of him. He turned his head to the blonde Ilian sitting with him. "Good thinking Lady Feldsky... But I'm not exactly sure that's good enough. I guess all we can do for now is keep looking and hope for a lucky break." He muttered to himself. A fort on the plains? What could they need?

Being on the plains, they don't have much natural defenses to help protect them. No mountains, no river, no forests. Just grass and plain. To survive it would need a steady supply of food and water, but then again any kind of fort would need that. Ariston would have arrived by now, and they are likely on high alert. They have a manakete and an Archer captive, probably held in seperate cells and heavily guarded...

He laid out a map in his mind and thought to himself. Clair wasn't talking to him, but he wanted to figure it out all the same. He thought back to his own days of guarding castles, before he even became a knight. High walls and lots of archers and mages seemed likely, Etruria favored this tactic. The first thing Ariston would do is deliver a message of his failure, if only to get more soldiers to crush Abend.

He stared at the paper in front of him before discarding it. It was as useless as everything else in this crate. "Even if they were low on food, it wouldn't be a fact to take advantage of easily unless we want a war of attrition..." He sighed and looked at the ground for a moment before picking up another piece of paper, this one a scouting report from a week ago, stating nothing out of the usual. He began to hum to his self again, thinking of possibilities in his head.

[Clair Feldsky]

"Your right...Attrition won't work for us. The other forts would just come out and smash us from all sides. This has to be something fast and strong." She pounded her fist into her other hand for emphasis.

"If we can't find anything like a shortage to exploit, then maybe we can find something else. Look for papers about repair and maintenance on the fort itself."

Clair headed over to the piles of papers, and arrived just in time to slap her hand down on top as some of them started to blow away. A few even made it over as far as Aidan's feet before getting caught there.

Clair continued looking at the stacks of paper. What's this? Beef and turkey? No.... Grain? Perhaps to find out how many cavalry...Not much by the looks.... "Where did you learn that song?" The question just popped out before she even thought about it. At least skimming pages was easy enough to have a bit of discourse going on at the same time. It helped to distract from her weariness.


OoC: Feel free to find something. Troops or Blueprints I'd guess.

[Aidan Lowell]

"Hrm?" He asked suddenly. He wasn't expecting her to ask about it, it was just something he was doing absentmindedly in boredom. "I can stop if it bothers you." He said, hesitant to answer. "It... It's a Bernese battle anthem. They would play it everyday while I was training." He smiled to his self, looking down at a piece of paper while doing so. "I remember it well, mostly because I've heard it more times then the average person hears any kind of song ever." He laughed quietly to his self. "But this was a long time ago, back before I was knight and when... when I still had a Wyvern."

He didn't know why he let that little tidbit slip, maybe he felt comfortable? Maybe he was just so bored of this he wanted to talk about something at all? Whatever the reason it was out there, but it was such an inane comment that it probably wouldn't even invoke a response from her.

He picked up another sheet of paper and looked over it with lazy eyes, only to come across something... interesting. It wasn't anything incredibly new, but it would be useful none the less. It was a slightly dated troop manifest, given as a response to a set of orders along with a request for new weapons. It had a list of different types of soldiers, their ranks, and specializations. While it wouldn't give them a great advantage, it would help give them a better idea of what they were up against. The weapons would of been delivered by now, but the troop manifest was still good.

"Here, I think I found something Lady Feldsky." He held out the paper for her to see.

[Clair Feldsky]

The song was forgotten as the bit about the wyvern caught her attention. "You were a wyvern rider?"

She turned to look at him, trying to imagine what it was like to ride on such a fearsome beast, then went back to the search. She was always on the lookout for others who had roamed the skies. Perhaps because of the isolation from other flyers this army enforced, or perhaps because she was always looking for advice on how to better fight from the air. It wasn't something she got a great deal of advice on, here.

She walked over and stood next to him when he spoke, taking the paper gently from his outstretched hand, and looking it over. "This... should help a great deal. It might not be the whole garrison, but with this, we'll at least be prepared for some of what they can field.... Our tactician will appreciate this. Nice find."

She went back to looking, folding and tucking the paper in her pocket securely, so it could be delivered to the tactician later. "After you found that, it makes me want to keep looking a bit longer.... "

She wondered what had stopped him from still riding a wyvern. She'd heard some of her classmates make fun of the "flying lizards", and even joined in on some of the jokes at times, but that still didn't diminish the impressive strength of the great beasts. She tried to keep their conversation going, now from interest, instead of merely trying to stay awake.

She stifled a yawn. "What was it like to be around wyverns? Were they aggressive?"

[Aidan Lowell]

"Yeah. A long time ago, back before even the Bandit King war." He smiled to his self, remembering about it. As a Bernese soldier, it wasn't surprising for him to have been a wyvern rider... But... He decided to become a knight for another reason. "His name was Arix, he was a gift from my father back when I was sent off to become a soldier. Just about the highest breed of wyvern you could get, but it was more than that. He was my friend." Reminiscing of the past, this could only end badly.

He shuffled through more papers, little memories of the past floating to the surface of his mind. He wasn't too acquainted with the pegasus riders of Ilia, but the fact she rode a flying mount must of brought this little nugget of personal information out of him. "I hope we can find a... a map, or some blueprints or something. Hopefully there's a repair order somewhere amongst all of this..." He muttered, bringing the subject of the huge stack of papers back up.

"It was scary, at first." He said, looking down at the papers with an almost calm look in his eye. "Though as I grew closer to them, I lost that fear. Wyverns aren't the giant viscous beasts they seem, atleast in my experience they never were that way. I guess... I could try to compare them to your horses, but that would be a really bad comparison since I don't know a thing about them. Being a Bern kid, I was always around Wyvern, I find horses as odd as you might find flying reptiles." He smiled to his self then looked at Clair.

"This one is an order for cloth, perhaps to mend or replace their mages' robes? I don't know how useful it will be, but it's a bit better then some of the other stuff I found." He held it out for her to see, a bit unsure of just how useful it would be. Still, it couldn't hurt, could it?

[Clair Feldsky]

"If I can find that page on spell books, then we could add them to that troop manifest you found, for better estimations."

She moved over some sheets having to do with pots, and pans, and kitchen utensils before finally locating the page she had set aside earlier. She removed the papers from her pocket and put the new additions in them, setting them down under a heavy object for security.,. "Looks like there may be more things to find."

She started shifting some of the stacks they'd been through already, to the side, before laughing as she remembered his comment. "It's true. My friends and I at the training grounds in Illia often had some fun at the expense of the wyvern riders, as I imagine Bern's riders do with us.... I guess it makes sense to compare pegasi to wyverns. All creatures seem to have their own attitudes about them." She looked over and gave him a humorless look. "You should be warned though, that some pegasus knights would throw a fit if you referred to their steeds as horses. They can be rather protective of their steeds." And prideful too, she added to herself.

She picked up yet another stack and found some of what she was looking for under it. Her eyes played over the words, words like sweet relief to the weary. She'd found what they needed.

Etrurian Guard HQ Repair and Maintenance

Even forts needed routine work now and then, after all. This would be enough to give them a decent picture of the fort and possibly some weaknesses to exploit. Now she just had to sort it out into something usable.

"Here's some of the maintenance reports."

[Aidan Lowell]

"Ah, I'm sorry Lady Feldsky." He apologized while looking through some of the papers that "I'll keep that in mind for the future." I suppose calling them horses would be like calling a Wyvern a giant flying lizard. While it describes what they look like well enough... it's still kinda rude. He chuckled to his self over that thought.

He sorted through the papers with a dull gaze, it was really boring. Most of them was about superfluous things, or things that happened so long ago that it was pointless to note. Even trying to think about each individual thing proved fruitless, as they all seemed straight forward enough. "Nothing here." He muttered. You know, I'm surprised how much pointless paperwork a fort like this has to go through. Very rarely is there anything interesting, most of it is just... blah.

"Wyvern Rider jokes?" He asked, a bit curious. He talked without looking up from his papers, trying to figure out if what he had meant anything. It didn't. "I guess it's only natural..." He thought for a moment, trying to think of any particular Pegasus rider jokes, but none came to mind. He never really engaged in that sort of thing, he spent most of his time training. Even his free time, it was all he was good for basically...

"Each thing, whether it's Wyvern, Pegasus, Dragon, or human is different. Not that that stops stereotyping or anything, it's just something I always like to keep in mind. I've met a lot of good wyverns and bad wyverns. Good people and bad people." He smiled to himself. He didn't feel so pressured to keep up a stoic facade as usual. Maybe it was because there was only one soldier around, or maybe it was because he was just enjoying himself.

[Clair Feldsky]

"Not exactly jokes, I guess. More like the type of bantering that goes on about a rival. As the only other aerial force, bern's riders get alot of attention from the pegasus knights of Illia."

"Each thing, whether it's Wyvern, Pegasus, Dragon, or human is different. Not that that stops stereotyping or anything, it's just something I always like to keep in mind. I've met a lot of good wyverns and bad wyverns. Good people and bad people."

She heard the bernese knight say this, and nodded in agreement. She believed that too, but did she really, really accept it? Ever since the first savage attack on Salvation Point, by the sacaens, she'd judged them harshly. She was beginning to realize this. She'd likely distrust Etrurians in the same way if she hadn't come to know some of them as loyal and stalwart allies. Was it fair to judge a people off of a single action? Perhaps not, but the savage battles she'd fought in still warned her of what a people were capable of. She could try to keep an open mind, but it would be unwise to forget.

"I've met plenty of bad people since leaving Illia, but I'm glad there are some around who will fight to protect the weak." She was referring to followers of her Commander, and of Sir Rayl, specifically. The Paladin seemed like a nice enough guy, and if he was hated by the Prophet that much, then he certainly got some points with her. Also, he and her Commander were old friends it seemed. More points.

There had to be something in the papers that was useful. She looked them up and down...and back up. "Is that a wall, or, maybe, a hallway?" The Illian girl looked up at him. "I should learn how to read this stuff.... I think Mavick will have to take over from here. Thanks for helping with all this. Another pair of eyes was exactly what I needed."

She really did appreciate his help, and his company during the less than enjoyable task. She'd gotten to know something interesting about him too. He'd ridden the skies in the past. Maybe she could get some advice from him some time.

[Aidan Lowell]

"Ah I get it." It was still a bit lost on him, but he was getting the point of what she was saying. Still, he wished he knew a good pegasus rider joke right about now. The rival point made sense in theory, he's seen it more then enough time, even if he himself never really experienced it. He never had a rival, even in school.

He saw the woman nod, but saw on her face a bit of confusion. He smiled and shook his head, remembering that she did not have quite the life he did. It was an easy enough thing to agree with, it sounded hopeful and optimistic, but not an easy thing to follow. Even he had struggles with preconceptions at times, and he's the one who said it. Earlier he was wary of the dragon for no reason but being a dragon, but later he proved to be a good person who without whom they may of lost the battle.

He looked at the paper pushed into his face, squinting his eyes. "That's a wall." He said, remembering back in the days he had to look at blueprints. Back when he helped with repairs on forts, and when he himself helped guard them. "You're welcome Lady Feldsky, I was happy to help." He said to the Ilian Pegasus rider. Ilia...

"Farewell, may the wings of victory carry you higher." He said with a smile, repeating the same words of farewell that she had said to him earlier that day.