Boat Trolls planning thread! (full of spoilers, non-players enter at your own risk)

btw erskin has achieved his goal of getting completely wasted. he is 100% down to fuck and would be if he was sober also, so to me i don't think there are consent issues, but it might be some additional thing for bel to get upset about. did erskin take advantage of murfey because murfey was in the same room as him when he got drunk enough to pounce on anything, or did murfey take advantage of erskin, who was too wobbly to escape? sulk sulk fret.

 

erskin: i can make bad decisions while sober too

 

counterproposal: humans as roving opportunists, too individualistic and decentralized for anyone to actually conquer. someone was dumb enough to crashland on earth and a century later they're everywhere, like seagulls at an amusement park. they're considered to be huge nuisances: liars, cheats, thieves, tricksters, instigators of mayhem that hang around crossroads. surprisingly cunning. no group of humans honors the agreements made by any other group of humans if it doesn't suit them, because there's no centralized power structure, but they can mob up in a flash. killing one human ship is easy— killing the three hundred human ships who show up immediately for revenge is a lot harder.

 

eh, i always meant to get around to writing this sort of scheme. anyway the trolls might very well have been wiping out human planets— the earth might be a total ruin. but how are you going to coordinate the extermination of a flexible and resiliant species busy scattering across all of known space? as long as the humans had FTL drives and a handful of their plants and animals they'd be fucking set. humans certainly like colonizing, but it isn't really necessary. i think if human planetary colonies got stamped out, some humans would wage war, some humans would build lots more colonies a lot faster, some humans would give up on the idea of colonies entirely, and some would get really sneaky and start up colonies in asteroid belts.

ETA: the more i think about this tho the more i'm unsure if this would be any fun to play.

 

yeah let's go with your verse then. they're pretty evenly matched, but hardly a priority, and trolls are probably basically fuckboys if they can't conquer another species. like 'whatever, who'd want you anyway, bitch, we have better places to conquer, fuck you'.

 

Okay, what next? I'm gonna be honest if there's a scene where Murfey comes by to pick Bel up from sickbay, all chewed-up and fucked-out, I would love to see it.

 

"like a triple helping of 2 tbh" ? don't understand the phrase sorry.

as for erskin having a pale jam with arguus, i think they keep things pretty light and minimal between them— protection, cuddling, low-key hangouts. erskin prefers to chew over and then bury anything painful, and arguus and lainey are the primary pale couple. things were probably much more volatile when erskin was still wild and half-crazed with terror and needed to be taught everything, but he closed back up as soon as he could. it might really bother lainey, actually, that erskin loves them but is still so separate. even after sweeps of affection he still considers what he has with lainey and arguus to be just a friendly arrangement... but hey, spending so much of his adolescence alone should probably leave more emotional damage and social handicaps than bad startle reflexes and a short temper.

poor kid. and poor bel, for having to deal with all that. maybe jethro will do better, whenever it is he shows up? he's already got his claws full trying to deal with erskin in the regular rp.

i might write, like, a failed palejam or pale-intervention or whatever. not tonight though! i'm sleepy.

 

oh dang, and jethro would be spending a lot of time with erskin due to how much more fucked up his leg is in this au. maybe they get to chatting over the sessions. maybe jethro's good at digging around in people's life problems too.

 

ok u asked for it u got it here's some ridiculous sadstuck

Days in the Future ( but not Many)


Arguus chews on the knobbly bit of his wrist, an old bad habit. You pet his hair, trying to soothe.

"Worried," he mumbles finally. This pricks your fins up.

"About what, love?"

He gestures at you.

"Me? But I'm quite alright, dear," you say.

"You're not," he says. He grimaces, opens his mouth, closes it, tries again, forcing the words out one at a time. "But you never say."

"Well, I'm hardly a slobbering feral wiggler, anymore, I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself," you say, surprised. "I'm a Captain."

Arguus actually growls at you. He cups your face, peers at you like he could make you understand just with his powers— he's even flickering a little, he's trying so hard. "Your lusus," he says. "And Kadros. And your leg. And new trolls. And the helmsmen. And Wavebane. You drink. You cry alone. You won't talk."

"And you're not my moirail," you snap. You pull back from him. "Those aren't your problems, they're mine, they're my own damn private business."

"Erskin," he says. He reaches for you again, distressed, but the closeness is unbearable, the warmth in the block and the lived-in smell is choking. You slide away, get your shirt back on— your hands tremble with something like anger, or revulsion.

"Please," Arguus says. "Stay."

You shake your head sharply. If you speak you will scream. Is everything wrong with you so hideously apparent? Do you go around with every last contemptible little detail written across your back, do you shamble and stink like, like a madman, like a sick wounded animal thing, whining? Gibbering and moaning. Are you still that wild lost boy to everyone, even your dearest friends?

You shoulder past Lainey as you leave. She looks at you and she's so— she's disappointed, and it cuts into you but you can't stay. It's too much, being seen right now, by trolls. By real people.

You curl up in your desert under a stone, in a scratched-out burrow, like a beast, a dirty, stupid beast. You want a sky, a real sky, and to run without pain, hate without political complications, and only your own life to waste. But you were hatched for everything you've been given and more. Riches, power, command of fleets, of whole armadas, a billion lives at your clawtips to move about in vast millennial games. The galaxy like a spray of blood and guts before you, ripped open to devour.

You cry alone.