World Tree MUSH

    In the year 1050, the dwarven civilization of The Oaken Tomes sent out a team of colonists to found the mining mines of Koganusan in the Smooth Points of Pride, to mine for minerals, especially the fabled cyan-colored adamantine. The nearby elvish settlement, knowing the dwarves' predeliction for environmental negligence, watched warily until the winter of year 1057, when reports arrived that the lush, elephant-inhabited forests outside of Koganusan has been destroyed. They immediately send the elf lord Lema Ceraliceyi to lead a delegation of elves and maybe a few paid mercenaries to pay these dwarves a visit and sternly warn them against such wanton clearcutting.

    It's been several days of otherwise uneventful travel towards the Smooth Peaks from the beautiful, tranquil, green, and spider-filled home of the elves. The fresh-baked bread and cookies that had provisioned the team remains magically delicious. The wine flowed freely, though empty barrels clonked increasingly frequently in the back of two or three of the half-dozen wagons. Most importantly, the final bend in the paths was just ahead. 
    Koganusan sits just out of view to the east, between the twin imposing hills which stand like its gate guardians. The rich jungles here are host to many creatures, but they scarcely notice the elvish group's passage. Such lightness had elvish steps and wheels and hairy goats with giant curved horns that pulled the wagons.
    And a terrible burning smell drifts in on the katabatics.

     Seriously, what was it with dwarves and wanting to mine things from the land? Whether from her world or another, it seemed they shared this desire. After getting word of the job from these elves, Diantha happily joined, in fact, this dryad would have taken this job for free, but these elves insisted on paying for her assistance. 

     Being fleet of foot and more than used to moving through wilderness terrain, Diantha has taken a spot a bit ahead of the front of the wagon train, ready to give these dwarves a talking to about proper forest management, and staff in hand in case they weren't interested in listening. She was tempted to scout ahead a bit, but due to the lack of cover granted by the now clear-cut forest, she decides against it, not wanting to alert these dwarves to their approach prematurely.

Mercenary work isn't exactly the kind of thing that one associates with magical girls, but Anna is also a broke college student, and this seems as much as anything else to be a diplomatic mission. Besides, the elves are closer to that whole "aesthetic" than, say, armored space-soldiers.

So now we have Anna, sitting at the front of the front wagon, dressed in a vaguely formal cobalt blue sundress, with a ribbon around the waist with horizontal stripes in a skyblue-pink-white-pink-skyblue pattern, and black jeans under the dress and hiking boots.

"Yeah, I'm not getting a good feeling about this," says Anna, in her somewhat androgynous voice. "Seems kind of sudden, if you ask me. Something stinks here."

Perched on Anna's shoulder is the golden-furred catlike and vaguely squirrel-like form of Spiral, a Starbringer who has some diplomatic training, and she's offered to help the proceedings as a neutral third party. "Yeah, really," she says. She sniffs the air, and wrinkles her nose. "Literally, as well as figuratively," she adds. She turns to the elf who is currently driving the cart. "Was there anything from before all this? Any hints from beforehand that this might be happening?"

    The final corner! The lush greenery comes to an abrupt end. Ahead there is no more forest. There is an round edge, like an ankle-deep pancake of black stone had just been splatted down evenly over the next few square miles. A sulfrous stench rises from it still, as well as wisps of steam from the cracks along the edges. No trees remain - just the occasional suggestion of where a tree had once been, where the stone had apparently flowed up and around the former location of a stump. Diantha can see from here the actual entrance of what must be the dwarf mines ahead: two massive metal gates, covered in ashes and splattered stone and blood and what looks kind of like vomit. The gates are closed, but burning torches outside insist that the place is not abandoned.

    Lord Lema Ceraliceyi interrupts from his seat next to the driver, "Of course there was. They are dwarves. They defile all woods that they touch. The scouts reported steady cutting since the first year, but this year... no scouts returned. Not a single report. I fear that- I say what IS that horrible stench?" The wagon train slows before they start on the final turn, as the goats become uneasy and the drivers fight to keep them from balking.

    THere are other people moving through the woods too, as it happens. A few ways off, along a seperate path. A figure in a dark-blue, hooded cloak wander along between the trees, with just the occasional peek of shining steel boots shown from underneath the lower edge of the cloak wrapped up around the tall figure's form.

    The figure in question doesn't have any idea of the convoy approaching the Dwarf mine. Or for that matter, of the presence of the mine itself, much less any trouble that might be brewing. But the odd, concerning scent does reach his nose. And because self-preservation instinct is not strong with this one, of course he follows the scent.

    It's probably not quite on the opposite side from where Diantha approaches, but rather more to the side from her-- and consequently the rest of the convoy too. And she'll probably see the figure in the cloak before the cloaked figure sees her, too, while he's ducking between the foliage with bright-green eyes surveying the mine entrance from underneath the shade of the hood.

     Diantha also took note of the smell before she caught sight of what it was coming from, and wrinkled her nose at the acrid stench. She wondered along with everyone else until she rounded that corner and saw the area around the mine, covered in black stone as if the mine had been an erupting volcano, and it smelled about as bad as if it was sulfur rich magma. She tapped the stone with her staff a moment to confirm it was as solid as it looked. "Well, these dwarves officially top the ones where I come from. Clearly they didn't want anything at all growing here, ever again, but why?" She asks rhetorically with a clear tone of disdain in her voice. 

     As she now steps upon the stone and moves toward the mine, careful of her footing as her hooves get poor traction on the smooth surface, she takes note of the fact that the gates at the mine entrance are covered in a mixture of things including what looked like blood, and vomit. "What in the nether happened here? I'm afraid to ask who's blood and vomit that is..." She comments as she resists the urge to vomit herself. Then she notices some movement in the corner of her eye and turns to look at the hooded figure. "Wait, you're not part of the convoy are you? Who are you?" She asks as she turns to face the man fully, still not able to see him well enough to know what exactly he was, but he didn't exactly look like a dwarf.

Anna and Spiral actually tense up at the sight of the ruined landscape. "What in the blazes ...?" sputters Spiral.

"Yeah, looks like 'the blazes' is exactly what's going on here," says Anna. She grins nervously at Lord Ceraliceyi. "I'm pretty sure this is way above Spiral's diplomatic pay grade, Lema." (She's never been one to be deferential towards nobility and the like. She's even on a first name basis with at least one princess.)

But that's when they Diantha draws their attention to the presence of the hooded figure. Spiral's eyes flicker with pearlescent light as she scans for his general level of capability, and she frowns. "... hmm ... I might have seen someone like that before," she murmurs, as Anna, meanwhile, just sits up straighter and waves.

    "That's..." Lord Ceraliceyi is standing now on his seat, rubbing his ears in shock and grief. Most of the elves in the convoy have averted their eyes and/or are covering their nose, as murmurs of disbelief start being infected with tones of anger and horror. "That's well over a hundred trees." 
    Well, yes, it's probably many thousands. 
    "Incredible. Unbelievable. How DARE these ... these MIDGETS." A series of elfish invectives roll out of that angular, grief-twisted face, like verbal silk covered in elegant, pointy thorns. 
    "Is that a dwarf, there!?" A trembling finger suddenly points towards Sieger, who might be a bit too distant to make out properly and in any case might be a bit on the short side.

    Clearly the hooded figure truly had not at all realized Diantha was even there, since when she loudly calls out, he visibly jumps in place before straightening up with enough of a spring-like motion to send the hood on his head flipping backwards.

    And just like that, there's young, vaguely germanic face staring right back at Diantha with widened green eyes.

    "Um... Hi," he offers out, with a thick gunmetal-grey gauntlet with golden trims sliding out from underneath the cloak to give a wave.

    "Just to be clear, I did *not* do this."

     Diantha is rather tense at first, having taken her staff in both hands and was ready to defend herself if it came to that, but when Sieger jumps with shock at her calling him out, and his hood falls to reveal a human face, she visibly relaxes, placing the butt end of her staff down on the hard stone surface. At his statement of innocence, she nods. "I'm glad you're not a dwarf, otherwise it might be a lot harder to believe you." She offers before turning back toward the elves and Anna. 

     "I don't think he has anything to do with this, just in the wrong place at the wrong time. As for the dwarves in this mine, I'm usually the type to avoid violence, but this is making my blood boil. Clearly it needs to be made abundantly apparent to these dwarves, that this is NOT ok." She of course heard their words and could see the looks on their faces, she would feel the same way if this was the land of her people.

Anna raises her eyebrows, but says nothing. She thought Lord Ceraliceyi would be the type who was prone to these sorts of over-the-top histrionics. "I know, right?" she says. "This is just plain ridiculous!" Maybe if he gets his ranting out, he'll have catharsis, and he totally won't go in squaring up for a total war against the dwarves ...

At the sound of Sieger's voice, she immediately settles down. "Oh! I've met him," she says. "No, he's not a dwarf, he's a human." She just manages to stop herself from saying 'like us' to an elf. "His name's Sieger, he's, uh, he's from a bud world." Now she's looking somewhat worried.

    "... hmm. Well met, then." Clearly less immediately murderous, Lord Ceraliceyi points at the gate ahead. "We must forward, and meet these cretins in their dirty little hovel. I will hear them grovel for their miserable, alcoholic lives before they are snuft." 
    The wagons have some difficulty making the kerb of rock and afterwards bounce uncomfortably along the blasted landscape because nobody's yet bothered to invent suspension springs. All the elves are in foul moods, and many are checking and re-checking their bows and knives and making guesses as to how many dwarves they'll stab for each tree lost. The elf lord himself fixes his eyes forward, largely ignoring Sieger because, well, he's not a dwarf and therefore not a target for environmental protective murder. 
    As the convoy approaches within half a mile, the right side of the great gates swing inwards to darkness, and a pale, bearded face peers out from within. 
    "DWARF!" Lord Ceraliceyi grates out.
    "ELEPHANT!" A completely different elf in the back of the caravan shouts out. The thumping of great feet against the hard stone can be felt as much as heard, suddenly, and an towering elephant - its eyes wide with with madness, its tusks dark with blood, its gray skin scorched with recent fires - charges the back of the caravan after having apparently appeared out of thin air, or maybe it was invisible a moment ago.

     Diantha quickly regrets in hindsight saying what she had just said. As much as this made her angry, and she could understand how angry the elves were, she didn't want to see both sides engaging in a blood bath as the elves try to murder every dwarf in sight and the dwarves do their best to defend themselves. Noticing what the elves all checking their weapons, she fears she may have just added more fuel to the fire. She actually gasps as she sees a dwarven face peek out of the mine entrance, but then a call of 'Elephant!' draws her attention as she turns to see the large beast, which reminded her of the elekks which the draenei from her world used as mounts. 

     She knew this animal was probably as strong as it was large, and it was barreling toward the rear of the wagon caravan with alarming speed. Reacting quickly, she digs her rear hooves into an imperfection in the stone floor that now covered the field, and used that to leap to it's edge, and finally began to run toward the rear of the caravan. As she approached the rear of the caravan, she raised her staff as it began to glow with a soothing bluish white aura, with a similar aura beginning to surround the elephant as she attempted to use her magic to calm the raging elephant and hopefully stop it from charging before it rammed into the rear wagon full of elves who by now were probably scrambling to get out of said wagon.

Anna tenses up as Lord Ceraliceyi raises his voice, but then immediately whirls around as the other elf calls out. She quickly leaps off the carriage to land in a three-point crouch, then takes a deep breath, and her entire body begins to glow with a pale blue light as she draws power into herself. And then it shatters, and Anna has pink hair, and she's dressed in a sky-blue and white magical girl costume with pink and white accents! And sky-blue slacks, apparently.

And then she breaks into a grin as she realizes what she must do. Or at least, what she must do if Diantha's spell doesn't work. She does not want to get caught in the effect either way. So she just holds back, and puts up her dukes as she waits to see the result.

>> SUMMARY[Heart Mage Anna] >> Transform, but not roll out just yet.

    The thing about wounded, raging, legendary, ultra-mighty elephants is that they are really very suggestible. Calm down. Don't hit the bunch of wood with the squishy elves. It's reasonable to the clouded, confused mind, and Diantha's magic does an excellent job of getting the elephant to use his mighty tusks to smash the wagon into smithereens. 
    It's still a running elephant, though, so it tips the wagon over on impact because there is no braking an elephant so quickly. Elves and a load of trade goods (mostly alcohol) went tumbling along the black stone. Nothing seriously important cracked open, though there is distinctly the fruity smell of really quite excellent wine soon mixes in with the general sulfrous stench. 
    The scarred elephant stands there shaking its head, eyes full of untargeted rage, barely calmed, as it looks to and from to try to remember what it's supposed to be doing. It looks at Anna, then the pointing Lord Ceraliceyi, then Diantha, slowly. That gaze said, 'I'll remember you.' Then it turned away, as the elves finally recovered from their surprise and managed to form a line.
    "LOOSE!" 
    The thundering, echoing twang of a dozen bows mixes in with the singing of exquisitely crafted arrows and the dull thud of impacts turning a surprisingly small area of the elephant's side into a pincushion. It trumpets once and falls over to its knees, breathing heavily and dripping dark red blood.

     Diantha winces as the elephant, though growing calm, couldn't stop in time and still manages to knock over a wagon or two, spilling supplies onto the awful black stone covering what used to be the forest floor, but thankfully no one was hurt. She could now see that the elephant was injured, and empathized with it's pain induced rage. She was about to attempt to heal the poor beast when she hears 'LOOSE' followed by the twang of bowstrings and can only watch in abject horror as all those arrows strike true, and the elephant gives one last cry of pain as it falls to the ground, a bloody pincushion. Diantha was a pretty accomplished healer, but she never mastered the magic required to bring life back from past the brink of death. 

     She promptly turns around, facing the elves, her gaze a mix of anger and sorrow as tears stream down her face. "Why!? I stopped it before it hurt anyone, it was injured, I could have healed it and besides some spilt wine everything would have been fine, but now it's dead. Wasn't the forest that used to be here the habitat of elephants? Doubtless there are few left, do you wish to drive them all the way to extinction?"

Anna winces at both the counterattack and Diantha's outburst. She a step back and starts looking around uncertainly. "Where did that elephant even come from, anyway?" she says. "They're, like, really big. That's kind of their whole thing. They can't just ... hide."

Spiral frowns. "Good question," she says. She rises up above the convoy and starts peering around, trying to see if there's any visible hiding spot it might have come form.

    The elephant's 'hiding' spot was visible soon after some searching the landscape for 'elephant-sized hole in which an elephant-sized creature might conceivably hide'. There's a crater in the stone a short distance away, mostly hidden behind a fold in the terrain. The crater is elephant-sized and even somewhat elephant-shaped, and most importantly was surrounded by more elephants. Or, rather, charred skeletons and burnt bits of elephants. There was an entire herd here, and that was the last of them, hanging on to life by a bare thread in order to carry out revenge on... what? 
    The dwarf doors are fully open now, both of them, and a steady stream of bearded faces are walking in and out, carrying crates and chairs and tables and other assorted things out onto the flattish stone in front of the gates. The gates themselves are oddly placed, apparently starting a foot below where the black 'new' stone surface is, like the gates existed and then the new stuff was added later. All the dwarves are wearing mostly tattered clothes, with a few in partial suits of iron or bronze armor. All of them hurry inside rapidly after a moment spent beyond the doors, trying to minimize 'outside' time as possible. All of them seem to be filthy and dirty, covered in stains of various... nasty things. 
    "Hrmph." Lord Ceraliceyi sits down and directs the wagons onwards, leaving the sixth crew to right and repack their own, "I care not for the lives of the enemies of elves. You saw very well what happened. The beast attacked. It must be slayed. Now let's find out what these midgets will bargain to avoid the same fate."

     Diantha frowns at Lord Ceraliceyi's cold answer to her question, even in the face of it now being clear that all the elephants were gone. Clearly they cared not for the balance of life as the elves she knew did, and were not interested in diplomacy, only what they can gain out of this. By now it's clear to her that neither side of this dispute is 'right' at least by her standards, and if she can prevent them from killing each other, without ending up like that elephant herself, that will in itself be a miracle. She quietly moves to walk up beside Anna, and looks over at her with a rather hopeless expression on her face, her cheeks still moist from tears. "What now? This is probably going to be a bloodbath, and I'm not sure who's side I'm on anymore..." She speaks to Anna while trying to keep her voice down.

Spiral's eyes widen. "What in the world ..." she murmurs. She flits back over to Anna.

Anna looks up at Lord Ceraliceyi, eyebrows raised. "Sounds good to me, Lema," she says, and there's only the slightest strain in her voice.

As casually as she can, she saunters over to Diantha. "Yeah, I have absolutely no idea at this point," she says. "I'm basically in the same boat as you."

Spiral, if allowed, settles on Diantha's shoulder. "The elephants were in these sort of craters," she says. "As if whatever put down this asphalt just paved over them."

Anna frowns. "... I'm not about to ask Captain Self-Righteous over there if that's something the dwarves in this world could actually do, cuz I know exactly how he'll answer," she says. She glances around. "I guess all we can do is hope really hard that there's some kind of third party causing all of this, and that we can unite the elves and dwarves against them."

She sighs. In a swirl of pale blue light, she reverts to the outfit and hair-color she had before. "This situation is just surreal," she says. "I feel like I've just wandered into a Blossom where the laws of the universe are just different enough that you don't notice it at first, but they still trip you up without warning ..."

>> SUMMARY[Anna Freeman] >> Anna talks to Diantha, and reverts transformation.

    The meeting set up rapidly, amidst a mixture of the stench of vomit and blood and sulfur and what smells like dead bodies coming from somewhere within the gates. The dwarves are shaking and wincing, clearly forcing themselves to not flee back into their mines away from the harsh light of the sky. The elves are trying and completely failing not to gag and fall sick at the horrible fashion sense and smell of those on the other side of the EXTREMELY well-crafted and intricately engraved negotiating table. Really, it leaves Anna and Diantha as the two people NOT desperately trying to get away from the meeting at all. 
    What might be the dwarf foreman (he had the biggest helmet), wobbling on his feet and stinking of stale beer, walks towards Anna and lifts up a piece of paper, "All thish. Gifh, fer Treefu- Elfsh! Go 'way..." 
    The paper is a manifest, apparently of actually quite a lot of priceless stone and wood goods and lots of gems - not a single gold thing, though - and probably all accounted for in the crates. Of course, giving the fanatically tree-protective elves gifts made of /wood/ is probably... not going to go over well. 
    Diantha gets waved over by Lord Ceraliceyi, who's busy holding every possible perfumed cloth he could find in his travel case to his face and trying to not look at the pool of sticky, burnt stuff decorating the ground nearby. "Oh... just..." He gags - dry, for he has nothing left to give - "Limit the... cutting... hundred trees. ANYTHING. I can't... this much longer. MAKE. A. DEAL." And then he waves Diantha off, pointing her towards the table and pointing his own face towards the ground.

     Diantha is shocked that both parties are meeting at a table and not killing each other, yet. When Lord Ceraliceyi calls her over, she puts on her best fake smile since her opinion of the man couldn't get much worse by this point, and listens to his demands of the dwarves, between nearly choking on the smell, which she had to admit, was pretty terrible, but she'd been up just a moment ago, perhaps she was starting to get used to it. 

     She nods and makes her way back toward the dwarf with the biggest helmet as he speaks his offer. "The elves seem to really, really care for the trees. So I believe they will leave you alone if you stop cutting them all down and covering the ground with stone. If you have to cut some down, maybe plant a few new ones for each one you cut down?" She suggests as politely as she can, looking back to Anna to see if she or Spiral had anything to add.

Anna is equally good at putting up a smile which is completely devoid of any kind of emotion. (She's gotten practice from hiding the fact that she's a magical girl, so to speak.) "Oh, definitely," she says. "What do you think, Spiral?"

"That makes sense," says Spiral, who has also gotten more used to subterfuge than she expected when she originally came to Earth for the first time. "Nature is fairly robust, and as long as you don't actively try to destroy it, it'll recover just fine."

Anna nods. "Oh, yeah," she says, maintaining her chipper tone of voice. "Speaking of which, how did that ... layer of rock happen? I don't think I've seen anything quite like that!"

    Really proudly, the foreman, who has yet to give his name as anything other than Urist <indecipherable long dwarfish>, jerks his thumb back, "Fuck Th' World Devish!! We shhh-showed them elephantsh what." 
    The helmet slips down, and he lifts it back up on the second try. "Am no... am no cut treesh. *HIC* MAGMA! All burnsh. 'Shpeshally elf-efelantsh. If they ... come baksh." He closes his gloved hands around an imaginary lever and mimes hugging it, which is sort of like pulling it, "- Fuck 'Em! HahahahahaHAHA!"

     Diantha is having a hard time making out the foreman's broken, slang infused speech, but she can't believe what she thinks she just heard is actually what the dwarf said. "Magma... So the mine is a volcano? That explains what happened to the trees, incinerated by molten rock, not to mention the smell." She says feeling a bit sheepish, should have known from the smell. But that wasn't the most unbelievable thing, it was the next part. "Am I crazy, or did you say the elephants are shapeshifting elves?" She asks as she looks back at Anna and Spiral. "Is that what you think he said too? But then, why would the elves kill one of their own?"

Anna's expression goes blank. Then she asides to Spiral, "... did he say 'magma'?"

"Yes," says Spiral. "Yes, he did."

"Okay," says Anna. "Yeah. That is ... the exact opposite of what I hoped you'd say. Okay. Cool." She is absolutely NOT gonna even touch the fact that they apparently can control it with their machinery.

She looks at Diantha. "I ... don't think he said they were elves," she says. "I think he's just drunk and it came out wrong." Well, whatever else is wrong with this Blossom they're in, it seems it still couldn't turn dwarves away from alcohol ...

    "DWARF Volcano!" Urist McForeman declares proudly and thumps his beard, which sets off a loose shower of old dried bits of the filth in the strands. "Am no cut treesh... err... no MANY treesh. So treefu- elfs can go shove it. Or-" 
    He reaches up and grabs an imaginary lever again.
    "CLACK! Heeeheeheheee!"

     Diantha blinks, mouth hanging open in disbelief and horror as she stares at the foreman as he clarifies what he had been saying before about the volcano and the gesturing with the lever. "Wait, you made a volcano? And you used it to kill the elephants!?" Diantha says with a tone of shock, feeling faint and at this point she actually wouldn't mind seeing these two parties wipe each other out, they're both terrible. She shakes her head and frowns, imagining how horrible it must have been for all those poor elephants to be burned alive, the elves killing that last one could almost be considered a mercy in this light. 

     She turns to Lord Ceraliceyi and gives her thoughts. "It appears the dwarves have the power to set off their own volcano, so if you don't want to be burned alive like the trees and elephants, I'd recommend leaving them alone. Turning back to the foreman. "Do you think you could take it easy with your dwarven volcano so you don't cover everything with magma even further out than you already have?"

Anna grins nervously. "Ahaha ... um ..." She's clearly of much the same mind as Diantha. This world has just gone completely nuts.

Spiral manages to retain some sense of propriety. "Uh, that is a very ... masterful summation, I think, Ms. Windsong ..."

    "The boughs above..." Lord Ceraliceyi chokes out, muffled, "We... no. We shall leave. Everyone. AWAY! There is... it is meaningless to attack." 
    The elvish delegation, like they had just received a great reprieve, turn and start running away like swift, silent shadows that retch now and again from the memory of the stenches. Soon they were but indistinct greenish cloaks fluttering on the road, having left their goats and wagons behind. 
    "BUT KNOW THIS!" the Elf-lord's voice carries against the wind, "IF THEY DESTROY MORE TREES, THERE SHALL BE A RECKONIIIIINNNNG!" 

    "PFAH." Urist McForeman dismisses the entire threat, "Am no afeared. Burned all mighty rampaging elephants. Elf come. Burn elf. More come. More magma. World's problem, am no mine." 
    He leans in and appears to grin behind his beard, lowering his voice, "Am dig deep. Treasures. Gold. Jewels. _Adamantine_. World wants? PFAH. World gets magma. Am no afeared."

     Diantha watches the elves leave, not even bothering to take their goats and wagons, then turns back to the foreman, giving an exasperated sigh as she accepts it's futile to try and reason with him, but if they aren't threatened they shouldn't have a reason to use their dwarven volcano. "Um, do you have need for those goats or the wagons?" She asks the dwarves, though also looks to Anna. "I mean, the goats, well, I suppose we could just let them go. They'll find water and whatever they want to eat at this point..."

Anna grins helplessly back at Diantha. "That ... sounds ... reasonable, really!" she says, gesturing for Spiral to sit on her shoulder.

Once Spiral has done so, Anna then she leans in and very quietly says, "If you were smaller, I'd offer to use my Windrunner power to get us the hell out of here and back to sensible civilization really quickly."

Diantha Windsong nods to Anna. "I can turn into a bird, would that be small enough?"

Anna blinks, and nods. "Yeah, definitely," she says. She's already just begun inching her way back towards the exit ...