sixthiterationlogs | [ MINGLE ] MINING EXPEDITION

WHO: Tony Stark & Co.
WHERE: North West Mountain Range
WHEN: November 5th - 8th
OPEN TO: Open to all
WARNINGS: Language, canon typical violence

The Hike Up/Down

After sending a message out the day before to meet him in the fountain park at dawn (daylight is important) Tony packs up. Supplies secured and a path found mostly by working himself up (not that difficult) and following the blue path only he can see (still weird) Tony guides his modest expedition up a winding way over rivers and to a promising stony outcropping at the base of the mountains before needing a moment to 're-calibrate'. AkA get stressed out as to where to head next for optimal ore extraction. It takes a minute but- again, he's got a lot of anxieties to kick into gear and it should be easy enough to nudge their rag tag little group further up until they find the right spot. Making an easy walk down- well. That's also a trick. Finding a quick path back to the village before they lose the light- marking the way they've come so they can find it the next day? Kind of important.

Digging a Hole

Breaking ground is a matter of staring, trying to think back to what little he knows of geology (not fucking much), and waiting for the anxiety to get to the point where it'll hand him something specific. They need ore, they need a good starting location, and once they manage to pinpoint it? Pickaxes are handed out, a nearby cave explored, and Tony strips down to get to work. Crack stone, haul it out, rinse, repeat. Anything usable gets put in sacks made from stolen sheets to be hauled down- not the best system he's got but they're just getting started. Regular breaks are A thing, canteens of water passed around- he's pretty sure there's a stream somewhere that should help with the 'not dying of thirst' issue in the future.

Encounters With Natives

Somewhere on the hike up, during the dig, or taking a rest on one of the craggy boulders surrounding the cave where they're chipping away at stone, signs of native fauna linger. There's a patchy nest looking thing where one can hear the mewling of peakittens, blue eyed, tiny, and abandoned by the looks of it. Loping about the slopes a few curious mountain elk that bound in at the sign of food, keeping a cautious distance but wandering close should anyone appear friendly. Near the woods, though, just as they wind their way up- or make their way back down at the end of the day? Dust Moths have taken to the air, shimmering wings leaving powder in the air.

Environmental Effects

During the hike up in the predawn there's lying mist clinging to the sides of the mountain in thin curls, swirling in the air as they hike through it. Careful not to inhale too deeply, otherwise you might find yourself a little more honest than you'd like for most of the morning, and that could make the rest of the hike pretty damn awkward. In the caves proper there's stone and ore enough- and a dark, black powder that tastes of licorice and ash. Shadow dust. Maybe the next few swings don't do as much damage- or do any at all. Maybe they picking up stone becomes impossible till you're in the light.

In Too Deep

On the second, maybe the third day all their activity and digging catches some aggressive attention. A pickaxe sunk too deep, cracking through a cave wall and finding a den of snarling, hungry cave wolves that spill through the hole all snapping teeth and snarling claws, bursting out of the tunnels to scatter whoever's dared to come close to their home. A tree felled to mark their path startles a giant boar into charging, bellowing in the night, turning tusk and muscle to clear it's own way through their weary line.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Thankfully, his hands still had their calluses from years of fighting. Here, now, they were serving him well. He both mined and climbed without difficulty except for the aches of muscles that were underused slowly coming to life.

What he had noticed was that his energy had returned to what it had been when his body matched his mind. As others slept, he woke, and he came to join the current watch, looking at the growing mist with unease and making a deliberate amount of sound so as not to startle. "Has it been quiet so far?"

"Mhmm, a little more quiet than I'm used to," Alex finds himself almost compelled to share. But he writes this off as just the effect of being in a place where his last name doesn't mean someone, somewhere, intends to kill him.

"It's funny. The weather, the plants- everything here is so much like home for me. But it's missing just enough of the right details to sell the lie enough for me to relax." He can smell the pine needles on the ground, and the smell of coastal air- but the constant chirping of the frickens in the trees is gone, not to mention the absence of the hymns of the mice.

"It is nothing like my home," Altaïr answered, "but the mountain, the stones - that puts me in mind of all the years I spent there and all the years I missed." Odd how it seemed to simply... leave him, those words. Those pieces of his life. But they were nigh inconsequential. He thought little of it, deciding it was the vulnerability of night, where conversations often turned serious, even between acquaintances.

And that made him realise: "I believe we've yet to be introduced. I am Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad."

"Alex Price," he says, without any hesitation at all.

Huh. That's different. Maybe living somewhere he doesn't have to lie to nearly every other human being (and some non-human beings) about his name is finally sinking in. He tries not to think about it.

"Where is it you're from? I'd love to hear about it." Hearing stories of other peoples homes, it's a nice reminder that he's not the only one ripped away from familiarity. Of course, that's only part of it. The genuine, ravenous curiosity that filled his boyhood bedroom with terrariums and tanks to better understand the world around him might not make him the best conversationalist, but he's a damn good listener.

"The area of the world - the Europeans call it the Levant. I have always known it as the Ash-Shaam. I was born in the citadel of Masyaf, high in the mountains, at the end of a canyon. We were an independent state called the Nizari Ismaili. With all of the stone of the mountain and the canyon, we had very little land to grow foods near to the citadel itself, but our stoneworkers were the best outside of Alep," he answered. They were answers he would normally give, but more... in-depth, he noted, wondering what it was that brought this about. Not that he minded answering these things, but he knew he would need to be cautious about the Brotherhood. He'd cautioned himself about it since his arrival. Why was he growing loose-tongued now?

Alex's eyebrows raise in surprise as he follows what the other man says. There's a bit of a journey in his facial features as the mental math starts adding up. "Do- do you know what year it was the last you remember?" he asks, and then quickly specifies. "By the Roman calendar, I mean."

He had no compunctions against answering that. "If the Roman calendar echoes the Christian calendar, I do. It was my ninety-second year: the year 1257. We emptied Masyaf in the face of the Mongol invasion. I sent my son away."

Alex makes no attempt to hide his shock and amazement- since he can't. "That's- wow, that's long, long before my time," he says, stumbling over his words a bit. "It was 2015 where they took me from. Or when.

And then he starts matching up what he knows of the history of his world- more specifically, the cryptid part of it. He thinks back to the Covenant purges he knows about around the time of the Crusades- which, honestly, it's hard to tell because they overlapped a lot in those days.

"Unless you had a bit of a chimera overpopulation that was summarily wiped out by fanatics within a decade or two of your last memory of home, I doubt I'm from your world's future."

"So I have seen. I've spoken with Tony who claimed it as 2018 and I first grew hopeful, but I've since seen that what I was shown did not match with what he told me." But after he said it, his brows drew down. What he was shown. He should have thought before phrasing it that way. He shouldn't have said that at all, though he supposed it was safe enough with this man being from a different reality.

Still, he didn't like what this meant. How was it the words had slipped past before he could think?

"You were shown visions of your world's future?" Alex's interest is piqued, that's for certain. He's familiar with the concept of prophesies, and has some basic understanding of how ambulamancers read someone's future in the roads and paths they're about to take- or at least that seems to be what they're doing. The ephemeral side of cryptozoology has never been his strong suit.

"How sure are you that they're accurate?"

Maybe, subconsciously, he's finding it easier to keep asking questions with honest curiosity than to risk saying anything about his family members that he might regret.

That... That was an interesting question. And it was one he made himself think about before he said a single word. It was already a line that he was walking, that he had almost stepped across. He was noticing--

Well. He would test the theory, he decided, on this answer.

"I am sure that they are accurate to what was wished of me." That, Altaïr thought, was passable. "I am aware that, to a point, I was manipulated by them. But to that point, I cannot regret what was done, as it was done to save the world."

Still, he decided, not ill. It was honest. True. He hadn't tried to lie, and he hadn't really hedged the truth. Now. To try one more thing.

"As Tony said the sun did not attempt to burn the earth in 2012, I must assume Juno was being at least partially truthful."

And there it was. More than he had strictly wanted to say. His brows drew down once more as he considered the situation. What was it that influenced him to say as much as he did? It felt too natural. Too simple. Which meant it was against all he had been taught. "Something odd is happening here."

[ MINGLE ] MINING EXPEDITION

Environmental Effects

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