2017-10-01: The Man With the Blue Eyes

• Log: The Man with the Blue Eyes
• Cast: Gwen Whitlock, Kahm Yugh
• Where: November City - Downtown
• Date: 10/1/2017
• Summary: As Marcus Rider (Kahm) begins on the case of the nameless blue-eyed illusionist (Isiris), Gwen comes to offer some information. Whether it'll come in handy remains to be seen, but one thing's for certain: the man is dangerous.

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=========================<* November City - Downtown *>=========================

Downtown November City is the wealthiest part. Here, some of the largest corporations in the Seed City make their headquarters. Buildings can reach as high as six stories, with immense stone facades and modern construction that remind onlookers of the technological prowess of the Seed Cities. City Hall dominates the sight, with a beautiful stone facade capped by a large dome.

Outsiders are less common here. The police presence is strong and actually capable; while November welcomes Drifters, it doesn't welcome them here, where the wealthy and priviledged live and work. One can find expensive restaurants, fancy hotels, and top-tier apartment living for the rich merchants and government officials. These well-to-do people would rather not be reminded of the dusty, dangerous Drifters that make their livelihoods popular.

At the heart of the city is a curious building that hasn't finished construction. Massive beams of steel have begun to reach into the sky, at ten stories high and growing. The Bernadelli Insurance Company purchased the land and is constructing the building, which they call a skyscraper.

BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0VLPzQF4tQ

<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

'This is Gwen Whitlock. I would like to meet up with you at some point in time, preferably soon. It is regarding the man with the blue eyes that we talked about.'

The next time Kahm comes by a memory cube, he'll find a message that is addressed to a Mr. Marcus Rider, that being the moniker Gwen knows him by. What follows is a correspondence of possible times and locations, understandably limited to a location in Badlands, preferably someplace where some privacy is allowed, whether due to the noisy, anonymous nature of the place, or due to the lack of people who could possibly overhear. Gwen seemed to have a preference towards the former than the latter, settling on one of the numerous bars and saloons littering November City like bulbs on a string of lights. Coming in during the middle hours of the afternoon has reduced the noise to a manageable level, allowing conversation to be had without the need to shout.

When Kahm arrives, Gwen's signature wagon and the accompanying trusty Gulliver is outside, the horse munching idly from a bag strapped about his mouth. Gwen, it seems, is already inside.

And indeed, inside the establishment, the courier has opted for a table and chairs in a casually secluded part of the tavern, picking a spot she feels wouldn't carry any connotations to any rumormongers lurking around. She's already got a glass of alcohol, her face still beaded with drying sweat from toiling outside.

<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.

Finding a missive from Gwen Whitlock confirmed a suspicion or two Kahm had held about the woman's knowledge about the mysterious blue-eye man, along with saving him the trouble of having to track her down himself. That was the benefit of creating a relationship with select 'lambs' that the higher-ups often undersold: sometimes they would do your work for you. The fact that she wanted discretion suggested that it was something more palpable than he'd gotten out of offhand conversation with Lily Keil, so the Captain was only too willing to oblige her choice of low haunts littered along November City.

Not without taking proper precautions, of course.

Kahm noted the couriers means of livelihood on the way inside, paying particular note to her horse, figuring the beast must have some physical traits he could look for in a horse himself, if it was hardy enough to serve as a courier's means of conveyance. He entered the saloon in the garb of Marcus Rider, from the black, broad-rimmed hat to the polished black boots, carrying his steel on his hip and across his back as was customary. He'll take only glass of water from the bartender to quench his thirst in the heat, quickly spying Gwen out towards the back of the place, seating himself with perfect nonchalance.

"Miss Whitlock." He greeted, eyeing the sweat on her brow. Probably the head. "I understand you had something you'd like to tell me about the blue-eyed man."

<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

Gulliver seems to exhibit traits that are seen in a number of horses that seem to coexist well with the stark environments of the Badlands: a cooperative, but alert disposition, good muscle tone to the body, with strong bones. Gulliver's frame doesn't quite match the fine, structured frame of horses more adpated to being ridden on; the extra muscle makes him able to pull the wagon for prolonged periods of time, but the added weight does mean he is not as fast. He's not as large and well-built as the heavier draft horse breeds more common in other areas.

He also seems to peg Kahm as a sympathetic soul, his dark eyes begging him for a treat as the man passes. .... Not that Kahm could really offer one, due to the feedbag over Gulliver's mouth.

A calm temperament sometimes comes with some drawbacks, it seems.

Nodding with a genial smile as Kahm sits down at the table, Gwen says, "Glad you could make it. Wanted to talk to you separate from them all, especially when you mentioned you were lookin' into that man."

Which is a notable quality: no one has ever mentioned Isiris's name. Not even Gwen.

With Kahm straight to the point on top of being punctual, Gwen follows suit, to a degree. "A few things. Not sure if they'll be helpful, but if you're tryin' to look into him, any info's gotta be worth a listen." The redhead leans her cheek against one upturned gloved hand, a thoughtful frown spreading her mouth slightly. "I'm assumin' you figured I didn't really think the desert'd take care of a guy like that; I just didn't want to encourage Fei to go after him. I know I can be pretty optimistic, but I ain't to that degree." Her eyes flick back from the table to Kahm as she speaks, a silent indicator of her noting the fact that, despite him meeting Fei, Kahm let him be.

It's also a silent acknowledgement of the main reason *why* Gwen didn't want Fei to go after Isiris, which happens to coincide with the reason Kahm went after him in the first place.

"You might've also figured out that me n' Ms. Keil share somethin' in common: we both met that guy. Difference is, he let me go, but with the promise of comin' in to 'see if I'm Real' yet. Somethin' like that. Which, from what I figured out, is a... thing, with him. Seein' if a person is 'real' or not. What qualifies as 'real' is somethin' I'd have trouble puttin' words to without riskin' just puttin' words in his mouth."

<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.

Kahm remains measured and composed while Gwen talks, nodding his head at all the appropriate moments, punctuated with the occasional sip of his water. It's true that he did not try to arrest Fei on the night Gwen recalls, but perhaps not for the reasons she suspects. Taking care of him was now less of a priority, and the Captain was confident Lieutenant van Houten had the situation well in hand. Still, it had taken some willpower to ignore the foolish man...more than he would have preferred, frankly.

That she had met the man as well was no surprise, and this expectation is reflected in the cool way Kahm's eyes glimmer at Gwen as she recited her encounter, assessing every word and phrase like a Baskar shaman might decipher ritual bones after they'd been casted. She answers the most pertinent question he had before he could ask it: What the man meant by 'real', and how it could apply to his victims.

"Given Miss Keil's state, I imagine it's a fairly unpleasant experience to have him make that determination." He said, lips pursing at the suggestions therein. Illusions, reality, the nature of dreams....but as Gwen herself suspected, his ideas were little more than placing words in the mouth of a man he hadn't even met. "In any case, it was wise to prevent Fei from going after him. I'm wondering if it's coincidence that both you and Miss Keil are women, or this is part of a pattern from him. I recently heard that he may have also attacked a woman, or women, in Lacour, but it's hard to say if it was the same person or not."

The Captain's gaze briefly dipped down towards the undisturbed surface of the water in his glass, and he leaned forward. "How did you come by him? Did he do anything else, say anything else?"

<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

When Kahm references Lily's state, Gwen gives him a grim nod, then pauses to take in some of the amber liquid in the glass next to her. "He made it pretty clear that it wasn't gonna be pleasant when he met me next. So right now, I'm just calculatin' what things I could do if and when he comes after me. I have some advantages, but he's still got everythin' else. I mean, well." A nervous chuckle escapes under her breath. "Can't even give you a proper description beyond basic attributes. He came t'me as a child. But he had those blue eyes. Dark hair. I think the reason I survived is because I pretty much humored him from the start."

When Kahm brings up the fact that his victims seem to be women, Gwen thinks on this, seeming to roll the idea around her mind before taking another sip of her beer. "Nah. There were other victims. Ones that died. The rumors in Lacour say as much. But they died, so we don't even know who the killer was. But the rumors of a space that ain't supposed t'be there, n' the hallucinations? That's him, and that was the location where I got attacked. It seems to be we're just the ones that escaped, or survived for other reasons." That... or-

"Maybe the fact that we're women does change some things, but I ain't sure how. If that was him holdin' back on Ms. Keil, that's a pretty small distinction between that n' 'death'."

She needs to start over. Tell Kahm the full story, as well as the nuggets of information she heard from Cassidy, if veiled in anonymity for Cassidy's own sake. "I admit, I was bein' real stupid. My meetin' with him was near the pathway, along some brush n' sparse forest where I camped. The strangeness started when I saw a weird crow with blue eyes. Young crows do actually have dark blue eyes, but this ain't like that." She shifts to one side in her chair, its legs dragging quietly against the wood floor. "The area was... distorted. Weird. Should've ran, but I'd seen a lot of weird things in the past few months. I was..." Her gaze falls guiltily to the side. "... curious."

Then, in the typical pattern Gwen seems to have, she flips the notion in her head to bare a positive edge. "... But maybe that curiosity might've helped me. Or, it'll help you, since he seemed to humor me because of it." She hesitates again, waiting for any questions before moving on. "Maybe that's the lure. He might hunt that way: usin' somethin' as bait to lure someone in, rather than comin' out n' just striking like some bandit lookin' for a quick kill. You gotta come to him, rather than the other way around. I do recall that it's when I interacted with the crow that the environment's weirdness expanded even more, to a degree where I *knew* things were off. Any courier worth their salt don't get 'lost' in the same way most people do. There, every path held no logic, even if they all looked like the right one. Which I *know* is not a thing, but I couldn't go backwards once the trap was sprung."

<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.

Once again, Gwen talks at length while Kahm is happy to leave her largely uninterrupted absent the occasional nod or 'hm'. Yet he could hardly be seen as uninterested, his eyes never departing their rapt attention to the courier as she provided further details of her encounter. So this man didn't necessarily seek out women specifically, but women were the only victims he'd left alive....at least, as far as they know. "Came to you as a child?" He asked in one of his few interruptions, brow furrowed before it relaxed with comprehension-it followed if the man could use illusions, than he could also mask his appearance. The man Lily had seen may not have even been his true face-he could walk in and out among the local populace without fear of a recognition.

The brief education on the nature of crows and their eyes are noted, but it's a different part of the conversation that Kahm seized on, becoming notedly fixed in his attention when Gwen mentions a 'distortion', but not speaking up just yet. He allows the woman to finish and wrap up with speculation on how the man may or may not select his victims, baiting them with something only the observant would notice. That suggested...what, an interest in those with a keener intellect? But moreover..

Kahm frowned visibly now, though as far as Gwen was concerned it was perhaps just about the implications. To a man interested in the preservation of law and order on the frontier, none of these were good things to hear. But to a soldier of Solaris, the phenomenon the courier described was even more odious-a rough sketch of something very, very bad. Something the Captain was not entirely sure could-or should-exist.

"Pardon me, Miss Whitlock." Kahm said, lifting his glass for another drink, though he's hardly spoken of himself. "You spoke of a distortion of some sort, a strangeness in the environment. I know it's difficult, but could you try to be more specific about how it was strange, and how far aware you perceived this distortion to be? Such details can be important."

<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

Many ideas Gwen presents seem to be coming to her for the first time, a side effect of recollecting past events. For better or worse, Kahm's redirection may be the main way to get his questions answered. And, judging by Gwen's willingness to go back to where she started, it's not an unwelcome redirection. "Right, right. Okay." She closes her eyes, a pensive frown curving her mouth as she massages the left temple of her head with one hand. "It was cold. Colder than was natural for that time of year at dusk." She blinks. "Oh, yeah, forgot to mention- I was gettin' firewood. That's why I was separated from my campsite. But anyway."

She clears her throat. "The sounds of birds felt weird n' muffled. There were black feathers around. Weird black... specks? I can't figure out how to describe it. Saw the crow then, and one of the feathers was floatin' around, with smoke comin' off it. The crow didn't have feathers like a normal crow. Maybe the specks are parts of the illusion, like sand thrown together t'make somethin, like that crow? ... Anyway." She drinks from her glass. "I, uh, talked. To the crow. Tryin' to coax it. I was thinkin' everythin' was due to that Malevolence happenin' around, and if that crow was infected with it, I needed to somehow collect it n' get it to that Shepherd guy. Except, the crow looked and me and cawed, but instead of a caw, it was more feathers n' crows comin' out. Everythin' got black, like it was swallowin' the world around me. But I wasn't hurt." She sighs. "Yeah, this is why I have trouble talkin' about it. It's like recountin' an annoyin' dream. But that's when the entire world changed. The world lacked... color? N' the sky was black. I felt like if I stepped backward, there'd be a chasm beneath me. So I went forward. But the grounds were all mixed up. They made no sense in the way they should to me. I guess, maybe to someone else, they'd look fine, but it felt wrong to me. When I got to the campsite, that's where he was. The boy he, anyway."

A waitress comes over to check on Gwen's glass, which Gwen offers up with a few words, waiting for the waitress to be out of earshot before she continues. "It was just this boy, with blue eyes and black hair, tendin' to a campfire with a stick. And everywhere around, there were crows. The kid was wearin' this knit form-fittin' turtleneck. Had a tan tone. Seemed to be in his early teens... maybe twelve? Fourteen? Really sour. When I apologized for tresspassin', he said I couldn't trespass if I wanted to, n' that it's not like I could do anythin' important. Tried to get his name, but he said his name wasn't important. He told I could stay as long as I liked, but that he wouldn't recommend it. That it wouldn't turn out well. The crows were real interestin', tryin' to steal things off me. One got a, er, handkerchief." A note that would be insignificant in any other context.

"He got interested when he thought he saw me tryin' to hide something. That I was afraid of somethin' happening because of it." Her eyes begin to lid. "So I was frank about what I was tryin' to hide. Maybe that saved me. I dunno. I didn't tell him anythin' about my ARM. Just somethin' I could... afford to talk about." She clears her throat again. "I talked about the scars I got, when I lost my real arm. I'm... sensitive about those. He got real interested then, askin' if that day was the day I found out I was really alive."

Her lips press together. "... Which is the only reason I'm mentionin' this to you. Not that I figure you'd care if I had a horn growin' out of my head or whatever, but it's context. That's maybe why he let me go. He said a lot of people wandered the woods forever, never knowin' who they could've become, since they hid the thing that made them real. That's when he said there was no point in meetin' 'it' yet, if I hadn't had the chance to become 'real'."

The drink arrives, and Gwen takes a long moment to empty the glass halfway, setting it back on the table with a sigh. "Got some info from another victim too, if I hadn't talked yer damn ear off already. Y'get the fact that I want you to survive, right? You're an interestin' guy."

<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.

He said I couldn't trespass if I wanted to.

That particular part of Gwen's recounting seems to get Kahm's attention, but he didn't do anything other than nod and indicate for the courier to go on. It suggested it wasn't possible to enter his field of influence unless he allowed it. Based on what she was telling him, the Captain estimated the limit of his manifestations to be somewhere around 25 to 30 sharls...fairly potent for a wild user.

Assuming they were wild, that is.

Gwen finishes her story, and the man leans forward in silent, burdened thought. The woman's past-how she lost her arm, how it was replaced-would have been of much more interest to him some six months ago than it was now. The simple fact was that he had bigger fish to fry, and couldn't entertain the luxury of tracking down ever lamb who'd managed to come across something valuable. Perhaps that in itself was a terrifying symptom of how endemic the problem had become on the surface, but it was a problem for higher ranks than his to solve.

"I appreciate your concern." He finally says after enough time his past. "It's well-founded. Based on what you've told me, I can say with some degree of confidence that this man is extremely dangerous."

Kahm's brow furrowed slightly. More victims? "Who are they, and what did they tell you?" He asked.

<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

"I appreciate you sittin' through all that," Gwen says with a nod of her chin as Kahm mentally sorts through her recounting. "I ain't quite sure which parts of my experience are gonna be useful to you. He's a weird one."

How does a person reveal that they have a weird metal ARM? Just avoid mentioning it until they need to bring it out, and then, they have the advantage of looking good while using it. How does a person reveal how they got that weird metal ARM? Avoid saying anything until it's overshadowed by something else. Gwen would like to think she had that moment planned out, but, in reality, she would have prefered to never speak of it at all.

That it could have had consequences is not something she's thought of.

Kahm's assessment proves to produce a strange reaction in Gwen- namely, she chokes back a laugh, specifically after Kahm proclaims his confidence in Isiris's nature. "Sorry, uh, yeah, that he is. Was just surprised y'didn't think that already due to what happened to Ms. Keil." Was Kahm that certain that he could handle an encounter with the blue-eyed man?
Maybe it's pride.

Gwen interlaces the fingers of her heads together, continuing on. "One's Ms. Keil, as you saw. The other... I ain't sure I can say. She may have some reasons she'd want to keep her identity private." Cassidy seemed like that sort of person, even as Gwen was singing praises of her seeing generosity in tending to her after she assumedly tried to steal a kiss from her. Or tried to hurt her. Something.

What Kahm would see as a weird slanting of Gwen's mouth as she recounts the... muddy memories of that night. "She told me the man's human. He bleeds. Therefore, he can be killed. She had met 'im, but she got luckily away." Her eyes adopt a sobering look, even if her next words, as they come out of her mouth, feel as foolish as saying the man was from stars beyond. "She mentioned that, 'for a guy that fell from the sky, he sure gets around'. Maybe it was a joke, but maybe he's one of the people who got warped from that planet?"

She pauses, her blue-grey eyes considering the ring of water left by her empty glass. "If you come across him, she said to not believe what you see, and to run. He'll make y'think you're not gettin' anywhere, but don't believe anything you see. And if all else fails, and you can't escape, the only way to be free of him is to destroy the source of the illusion."

There's many implications of that, one of which causes Gwen to go quiet for a moment. "So. If it comes down to it, the only option for anybody else he visits is to fight back. But even then, how'd you know the person you're hurtin' is the one you intend to hurt? If his intention's to make someone hurt, then him making you kill someone wearin' his face seems like somethin' he'd do."

<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.

Gwen might laugh, but Kahm was not sharing in the guffaws with her, coolly sipping his water while the courier got it out of her system. "Enough people could put Miss Keil into such a state if they were skilled or she unlucky, I suspect." He said, his eyes flashing with sheen of something unknown. "That is not what makes him dangerous."

The unknown identity of the third victim gives Kahm something to think about or two, but he doesn't press Gwen on that matter. That the killer is human doesn't surprised him-he would have to be, for Captain's theory to start making any sense at all. It's when the woman mentions that he 'fell from the sky' that the black-dressed man again seems distinctly uncomfortable with their conversation, though he has ample opportunity to mask his reasons when she brings up the Lunarians in the same sentence. "If you're one to believe that story, yes." He concedes, and everything about his tone suggest that he does not.

The other things that unknown woman had to say through Gwen's testimony logically followed with what Kahm had already been considering himself. Taking this fighter on would require consider discipline, a willingness to distrust one's own senses, and the resolve to act immediately on instrinct. A tall order, even for the average Gebler commando. But for one who nearly became an Element...?

Kahm had to admit that a part of him was curious.

"It'd be unwise to engaged him anywhere that people are." He said in agreement with Gwen's last statement, "Cities and villages would provide him everything he needed to make you look like an unhinged murderer, but I'm guessing such subterfuge isn't really his style anyways or i'd have heard about it by now. As for the source of illusion..."

Well, that would be the man himself. The only way to stop it was to kill him, in other words.

Kahm decides to trail off from that line of thought, and next asks the one thing he hadn't mentioned at all, "So then, has anybody managed to get this man's name?"

<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

The humor in Gwen's voice abruptly dies when something vague passes Kahm's eyes. The point he makes, however, causes Gwen to nod with a soft 'mm'. She shifts back in her chair. "Didn't think of it that way. Yeah, if it was some random violent wanderer with a powerful ARM, I don't think I'd be makin' the same amount of fuss. Ignorance of a person's own capacity for power can be a pretty deadly weapon in itself, but it's also too damn common to really of note." Auntie Frea probably would have appreciated Gwen stealing one of her favorite phrases.

Kahm's discomfort seems to be noted by Gwen, but the source of it is attributed already to his next statement: he's just uncomfortable dealing with rumors that seem flat out ridiculous. "He didn't mention it t'me, but maybe he used it as a way to enhance his, uh, story? If he cared to mention one at all. Either way, I'd prefer t'think the sky's not full of scary illusion-makin' killers. The ground's deadly enough as it is to worry about the sky."

The sky shouldn't become another manacle.

"Yeah. Ms. Keil's survival depended on it, but that would be something I'd be afraid of, for obvious reasons." 'It's bad for business' would be the thing she wanted to say. One look at Kahm's serious aura gives Gwen a number of reasons of why such humor would be unappreciated.

"... Yeah." A grimace pulls at one side of her mouth, feeding up into the narrowing of her eyes. "I'm still decidin' if it's worth even tryin', for me. There's lines a person like me can't cross lightly, even if it means possibly death."

There's more she could say. Instead, she moves on. "Nope. I even asked him point blank when I met em'. He pretty much refused."

<Pose Tracker> Kahm Yugh has posed.

Kahm Yugh, or Marcus Rider, was not a man to entertain much humor in general, but he seemed particularly predisposed against it surrounding the discussion of this illusion-using man. Perhaps it was his choice of target, or the increasingly strange abilities ascribed to him, or maybe the man simply had enough to deal with already and this enigma was the cherry on top of the most unappealing sundae he'd ever had to eat.

"I see." He answered when Gwen revealed she did not, in fact, know the man's name. Convenient for him. Beyond knowing all this, Kahm wasn't sure any of it gave him any solid information how to find the man other than to keep his ears peeled to the ground, and perhaps investigate the one vague lead Cassidy provided him. Going all the way back to Lacour wasn't terribly appealing, but it was easier for him than it was for many others.

The other option, of course, was to keep a close vigil on Gwen's future activities. If the man had taken interest in her, it was likely he'd make good on his threat.

"You may want to consider hiring the Smith & Luio Agency for your own protection, or as much within your means. I'll do my best to check in when I can, but i'm afraid I can't be everywhere at once." Kahm said, gathering his hat and things. The woman had managed to survive this long, at least.

"I think that answers all my questions for now. I appreciate your willingness to cooperate." He says, standing up to take his leave. "Have a good day, and take care on the road. It's only going to get unkinder."

<Pose Tracker> Gwen Whitlock has posed.

Kahm's professional, as always, but that's part of the Mr. Rider package that Gwen appreciates. If he continues on Isiris's trail, maybe he'll stand a chance?

Gwen chuckles and gives the man in black a firm nod. "I'll take hirin' your Agency into account, 'specially if I get some inkling of an advance warning. Which I don't expect, but.." Her expression grows loose and carefree, something that seems to have only been enabled by her abundant unloading on Kahm's ears. "... sometimes it does, in fact, rain in the desert."

She still won't count on it.

"I appreciate the thought all the same, Mr. Rider. I imagine ain't the only case you're wranglin' with." With Kahm beginning to gather his things, Gwen does the same, reaching into her vest for the approximate amount of gella needed to pay for the drink, plus a good tip. "With luck, you might've gotten somethin' out of this, other than spendin' an hour in the company of one of the Badlands's best couriers." It's tempting to wink, if to let in Kahm in on the joke.

If someone can get past the barrier of 'it's a damn wasteland' and 'there's better pay elsewhere', the courier field really doesn't have much competition.

"Besides, you're pretty much doin' it already, Mr. Rider. And for that, you have my thanks. Might convince me to let go of some info you're lookin' for in the future, if the stars align again." She straightens, pulling on her hat and adjusting it over the red curls of her hair. "The same to you." She then hesitates, the words of a clever phrase on the tip of her tongue, but she waves it away with a chuckle. "You're a decent guy, Mr. Rider. If I hear anything, I'll throw you a message by the Memory Cube."