The Undertow: Session Four

CONTENT WARNING
Discussions of rape, abuse and profound despair incoming. Avoid if you want/need to.

Mikansia: The female elf, played by Lena. Mikansia is currently trying to capture her evil father, Krakeru, who had raped her mother Makirta, who had sailed into the Void a long time ago. She had been sent to the surface by her friend Jabez, who had pushed her into a pirate ship to get her to the surface. Last session she was captured by the human fort of Elfwatch, after asking for assistance in destroying dark elves. It's almost like humans who are fighting elves don't want to tell them apart. One of the guards, Pierre, is going to break her out.

 Captain Akseli: Mikansia's captain from The White Tower. Last session Mikansia ducked a flying ship with The White Tower's flag flying from it. Yngvar is on the ship as well.

The Creature from Dream: a huge, green-scaled creature with mulitcolored feathers coming out of its head. It wears a strange iron mask. It's made offers to help Mikansia before, but always at a cost. Mikansia has never agreed. She doesn't know what the thing is, and was quite unsettled by the incident.

Lore: Due to a misunderstanding of elven courtship and marriage practices from Morgoth's Ring I had thought that elves conceived principally by deciding to. It was what I assumed, practically from the beginning, meaning that Mikansia was born from someone's active and conscious choice. Lena, being the far bigger LOTR nerd than I, said that was certainly one way to look at it. We both agreed that would make Mikansia's journey a lot more satisfying. Why on earth had Makirta, Mikansia's mother, choose to conceive a child in the midst of rape??
   

Over the course of the next few days Pierre revealed his plan to Mikansia. A few months ago the fort had begun a series of excavations under The Iron Forest, due to how incredibly dangerous it was to travel through it. The dark elves didn't know anything about them, and Pierre knew enough of the guards to where they could slip past with little trouble. the commander of Elfwatch was in no mood to see Mikansia, and so the chances of her getting a hearing at all were slim to none. So Mikansia agreed.

A few evenings later Pierre came into the cell, with all Mikansia's things, a cloak, and some gloves. As he handed her stuff back his nose wrinkled in disgust; Mikansia needed a bath. No one on the fort smelled as she did and she would get them caught within seconds. After Mikansia dressed snuck outside.

It was dusk. Guards patrolled the walls, off-duty soldiers filled the brothel's bathhouse, and everyone else was either huddled around a fire or in their barracks. They snuck into the soldier's bathhouse. Pierre checked to make sure no one else was in there, and then he stood guard outside while Mikansia cleaned up.. The bathhouses were built on a natural hotspring, so the water wasn't uncomfortable, not by any means! When she got out she and Pierre snuck over to the guardhouse, where the tunnels were, and climbed down.

The earth bore down upon Mikansia the second she was underground. Forcing herself to concentrate, she made herself figure out the layout of the tunnels as they traveled along them. It helped her calm down .

There was not one solitary guard. The whole way.

By the time they had gotten to a tunnel that forked Pierre was beside himself with worry. He pointed to the left passageway and told Mikansia that was the way out, but he couldn't go with her. He had to know why the normally heavily-guarded  tunnels were empty. Mikansia said she'd go with him.

On their way back Mikansia could hear, just barely, a low moaning. And along with it, a scraping. It was the sound of knife on flesh. Pierre couldn't hear it, so Mikansia stopped him and motioned down a passage to their left, indicating there was something that way. They crept towards the steadily increasing sounds. All of a sudden Pierre audibly gasped. He knew who it was that was being tortured!

The knife stopped scraping.

The painful gasps and small cries didn't.

Mikansia could hear foot steps.

Slow.

Unhurried.

But they were coming.

It was another elf. Pierre yelled a blood-curdling war cry and charged. The elf kept coming, unconcerned for the charging man, but began to wave at Mikansia. Mikansia ran up to intercept Pierre, to get him away from the elf.

But once she got closer she stopped; she was so aroused she could barely think straight, just looking at Krakeru, who had her eyes. He stopped, looked at her a moment, and began laughing. Pierre stopped, looked at Krakeru and Mikansia, and it clicked into place in his head.  Mikansia charged Krakeru, but he caught her wrist in a troll-like grip. His grip hurt and thrilled her.

Krakeru stared at Mikansia. he remarked that she looked just like her mother, Makirta. He'd had no idea that Makirta had chosen to conceive, but he was thrilled that she did! Krakeru was grinning like an idiot. His touch was making Mikansia more and more aroused, which made her grimace in her confusion; he understood the grimace and his smile became so large it could have swallowed both their heads. Pierre made a movement toward Krakeru, who spun around, still holding onto a struggling Mikansia, and splattered Pierre's throat acrost the wall directly behind him with one stroke of his sword. Pierre stopped twitching a few minutes later.

They struggled a minute, but Krakeru was far too strong for Mikansia, and so she stopped. Krakeru continued to look at her, drinking in every inch of her with his eyes. She asked him to stop... whatever... it was he was doing to make her react the way she was. Krakeru looked at her, confused. Do what? When Krakeru finally understood what was bothering Mikansia he laughed so hard he almost fell over; he still had a vice grip on her arm. Krakeru asked what on earth Mikansia thought he was doing, dark elf magic or something?? She nodded and he continued laughing even harder, saying that he was like her when he was her age, before he learned the wisdom of the Nameless and their Music.

Mikansia was furious, how dare he compare the two of them! But Krakeru persisted, congratulating her on hiding the truth from herself so effectively. I mean, why accept a deal from a creature from Dream if she could dupe someone into giving her the excuse of literally being shoved? And why break yourself out of a prison if you can get a human guard to do it for you??

Mikansia's jaw dropped. Krakeru laughed again. She was definitely his daughter! No doubt about it. Mikansia asked how he knew so much about what had happened. She wanted to know how he did what he did.  Krakeru told her that there was a stench upon those who had gone to dream. But the rest?

Nothing more would be shared until Mikansia told Krakeru her name. Mikansia flushed. Krakeru sat down, pulling her down with him, and then let go of her wrist. It ached. She gave him the name Miekonnen, but Krakeru saw right through that; stroking her eyes and nose, he told her that Makirta's eyes and nose wrinkled when she lied, even if it was only a second's twitch. Just like hers. Mikansia asked why he wanted to know her name. Krakeru told her she was his only child and that meant something to him. Mikansia asked why he couldn't just find out the way he had found out everything else. Krakeru told her he could, that the Music that he always heard, which let him see through the lies the Khen-Zai had programmed into their race, would let him know, but he didn't want to know that way; he wanted to hear her say her own name. Then he would teach her everything he knew about the Music. Repulsed, but curious, Mikansia stood back up. Krakeru stood up with her, but made no other movement toward her. Mikansia said her name, aloud, to him.

Her face was slammed into the bloody wall. She struggled, but still could not throw him off. Grabbing her by the arms, Krakeru pulled her back and whispered into her ear the first lesson: the Music was not something you heard audibly, not at first; you needed to hear it in your heart, first and foremost.

When he was done he could see how ashamed she was. And he smiled paternally, like a father seeing his daughter taking her first steps.

Mikansia wasn't present. Not anymore. He had pulled her pants back up, patted her rump reassuringly. She found her eyes couldn't focus, try as she might. Nor could she move. He grabbed her by the scruff of her shirt and began to pull her back. Toward Elfwatch. Up the ladder he pulled her, into the chaos.

Elfwatch was locked in battle. Humans were running away, fighting dark elves, and dying. The ship from the White Tower flew in low, dropping Elfhell atop the invading dark elves, lighting up the night in an eerie blue glow. Krakeru laughed aloud when he saw the ship. Sitting Mikansia down against a wall, he told "Mikki" that he was going to show her some real dark elf magic.

Nothing with a throat could have ever made the noise that came roaring out of Krakeru's soul.

Mikansia found she was back. Not all the way, but enough. She could try to get even, to embrace that awful... whatever it was... that Krakeru was channeling.  She could reach out, channel it into her soul, give her strength.

The flag of The White Tower, atop the crashing elven ship, which was rendered unflyable by Krakeru's scream, went through her vision. Mikansia rallied. Using every last vestige of that strength, she rejected that call. She would not be her father.

The ship of The White Tower crashed into the soldier's bathhouse.

The dark elves began their retreat, as the humans had rallied, using their superior numbers to their advantage. Krakeru ran off with the rest of the dark elves, back into the tunnels telling "Mikki" that he'd see her soon. Mikansia couldn't move. She couldn't focus.

Someone picked her up, someone elven was holding her. And then she heard Captain Akselli, comforting her, trying to get her to to sing the Lament of Mourning. And she tried (oh she tried!) to sing along; the song caught in her throat. It would not come. She shook, curled up in his arms as he sat down in a more secluded area. He asked her what Krakeru was to her, and she finally told him. Akselli was startled. He then realized what Krakeru had just done. And he swore that he would help her find justice. He had known Makirta, a long time ago, but had not realized that she was that Mikansia. But, regardless, Krakeru would die. Akselli laughed; Yngvar was going to be pissed. He liked hunting Nameless. And they weren't going home anytime soon.  Not to mention their wrecked ship. Yngvar loved that ship.

The cries of the wounded from the soldier's bathhouse could be heard. Akselli, along with Yngvar, went out to help. Mikansia, after some prodding, said she would catch up in a minute.

Mikansia sat alone, by herself, for a moment.

It didn't help.

She went out to rescue whoever she could.

Hi.

We're going to take a breather here. And talk.

So, when I asked Lena for what she thought would be interesting, she responded that she wanted the character to be the daughter of a rape victim. Given my own history, this engendered a very long conversation about what this would entail. And I do mean a long one. Hell, it's still happening now. We talked about what she wanted, what I wanted, and then we made a decision to tell the best story we could out of the desire we both had to explore something a good deal darker than normal.

If there was a goal to this campaign it was to explore the arc of abuse and its effects upon the secondary parties. How do people who are connected to these horrific incidents cope with the ripples such events undoubtedly create?  Having met more than a few female rape victims, several of which bore children from those unions, that's always been an issue on my heart. The issues of what is evil and good go into sharp contrast when one starts talking about rape, and I've spent a very long time considering this sort of stuff. This interested Lena as well, and so we resolved to make a narrative where the themes of abuse, friendship, and genuine grieving were explored. 

The actual scene when played out came as a bit of a surprise to both of us. While we had talked about the possibility of rape we had never really flesh it out more fully than that. This is one of those moments where play can take you by surprise.  but it felt like a genuine thing to happen, given the what we both knew about the characters, and so we let it evolve. There was a lot of "Are you OK? Are you sure this is OK with you?", from both sides. We knew the incident happened, and we needed to get a few facts set down, and that was as far as we wanted to take it.

And you better damn believe we cut to black as fast as we could. 

I will not pretend it is not vile. It is. Rape is vile. But rape is a symptom for something far worse, something far more universal, which is the weaponizing of pain. And that's something Lena and I are interested in exploring. Mikansia passed the test, as well as any of us can.