There was a host of cascading legal structures that forced outside events of a certain size to create areas that served people with biological photosensitivity. In theory, this included hemaphages and dyerga and chimoniads and whatever was left of the night elves. In reality, ey was about to walk into a space wall-to-wall with vampires.
And they were just…so weird. As people.
The photosensitive section of the campground was obvious from a distance, huge umbrella-like structures erected above the tops of the tents. Ropy strands dropped from some of the horizontal bars, and a very light current of magic strung between them. Through the energy curtains, the interior of the area beyond looked dimmer.
Lidea passed through a pair of wooden uprights, denoting the shift between inside and outside. It wasn’t twilight so much as the perpetual edge of a total eclipse, the UV tangibly falling off eir skin as ey passed under the tents.
“Good morning!” a woman greeted em from the front of her tent, bouncing a toddler on her knee. When you knew what you were looking for, vampires of different sorts had a variety of small biological tells. Things that made them stand out from the rest of the human and sylvan populations from which they originated. Nothing obvious enough to tell just passing in the street.
Supposedly there were also tiny differences between organically genetic hemaphages and those that transitioned later in life, but Lidea wouldn’t be able to tell even if that was something that mattered to em. Vampires were vampires. Or…phages? Lidea knew there was a semantic difference between “vampire” and “phage.” No one had ever corrected em, though, so ey’d never dug into it.
Having so many in one space created a wave of ambient magic that rippled through eir body. It wasn’t unpleasant by any means, little crumbs of feel-good glamour magic riding the same railings. Ey needed to get in and get out before ey got distracted. Lidea turned vaguely to the woman who had greeted her to find she had been joined by a few more, watching Lidea closely as ey moved farther into the camp. Elves (even half) didn’t taste very good, so ey wasn’t of interest in that regard.
“Sorry. Magic swell got me.” Lidea shook eir head a little, and the confused faces softened into understanding. “I’m trying to find The Duchess of Chandlay. Do any of you know her?”
Of course, they all would. She was a celebrity. Ey was eagerly pointed further into the area and told to look for a bright green tent with sunflower bunting strung between some temporary outdoor lights. It was easy to find, the huge tent paired with a little porch area and a cluster of attendants. Being visibily elven would save eir from some of the formalities of human nobility, but really being native to two different worlds stripped a lot of that weight away. The only human title Lidea really cared about was the Queen of Illuria, and even then barely. Still, politeness would get em farther than not.
“Excuse me!” Ey called from a distance. The little group of people turned sharply. “Is the duchess available?” The day was starting to open up, people in the campgrounds moving to the market and sports fields. Hemaphages ran on different schedules, though.
“What’s this concerning?” A woman approached from a tent off to the side. An engot, another subspecies of human from Azelan that were inherently vampiric. Her hair was a natural bright blonde-red, braided down over her shoulder, all of it low-contrast with her pale skin, bluish in tone from the traces of visible blood vessels. Her mouth moved oddly around two sets of canine teeth, the outer set just a little longer than the rest of her teeth.
“Kýriolykós Eliadea kat Panapole.” Lidea introduced eirself with the full throatfull of words, holding out a hand for a shake that the engot returned. “Lidea.”
“Allegra Xochit. Vampire Affairs Board Chairperson.”
With titles passed between them, some of the tension eased out of the encounter. Lidea forgot, sometimes, that ey was part of an echelon of people that carried some semblance of weight at a titular level. Ey was…important…in a limited way.
“Nice to meet you,” Lidea said. “So I’m acquaintances with Archmage Magnusson — “
“Oh, merde, did they say Magnusson?” The bright, feminine voice came from inside the tent.
“Yes,” Allegra called back.
“Can you entertain them for a moment?”
Allegra made a sardonic face but didn’t answer back.
“You don’t have to entertain me,” Lidea assured.
“I live in her duchy, so I think I might.” Allegra reached for a tin camping carafe on a nearby table. “Unless you like coin tricks, the best I can offer is topping off your coffee.” She tapped it against the edge of Lidea’s thermos. Lidea nodded and opened it to allow a quick infusion.
“Certainly need it,” Lidea said. “Made the mistake of smoking with goblins last night.”
“That’s a terrible idea,” Allegra muttered.
“Yeah, not doing that again.”
“Alright. I’m here. What does that asshole want?”
Jean-Marie was a short, plump woman with rich, dark skin and a deceptively cute face with bronze eyes and a perfect cupid’s bow. In professional appearances, she wore deep purple lipstick and intricate scalp braids with rings tucked into the plaits. Now, her face was clear-skinned, and she’d picked out her curls into a voluminous halo. She tapped her white lacquered nails against her khaki slacks.
Lidea gave a little half bow and spread eir hands in uncertainty.
“Your grace, I’m not going to waste your time with details. I need something from Ivan Magnusson. He says he’ll help me if I can convince you to pay up on some bet by tonight.”
Jean-Marie snorted.
“Alright. And you believe him?”
“He’s a dick, but he’s not a liar.”
“That’s certainly a point.” Jean-Marie looked eir up and down. She turned to call into her tent. “Lucas, come here a moment.” An ariesian emerged from the tent, tight spiraling horns deep black. His shirt was open, fresh bite marks startlingly obvious on his golden skin. He pulled up next to her, four-fingered hand touching the outside of her fingers much the same way Lidea found emself touching Sunny’s.
“Ivan’s rushing a bit for me to make good on that bet from last week, but it’s still really up to you.”
Lucas clucked.
“So I’m the one cashing the checks that you write.”
“You knew what this was,” Jean-Marie replied, the edge of a snap in her voice. Lidea turned eir gaze away subtly. Ey didn’t know much about how vampires conducted themselves on a personal romantic basis, but ey knew when to stay out of an awkward dynamic.
“Okay,” Lucas decided aloud after a string of silent communication. He turned on Lidea. “What I’m hearing is you need a favor from Ivan. And he’ll help you out,if I let him put his teeth (and other various parts) in me. So really, I’m the one doing you a favor. And I don’t know you.”
“That’s fair,” Lidea said. “I just got put into a real shit situation that I’m trying to figure my way out of. Obviously, I’m not here to make anyone do anything they don’t want to do. Just covering basis. Thank you for even talking to me.” Lidea turned to leave.
“Wait,” Lucas reached out a hand vaguely. “I can be convinced for caramel liqueur candies.”
“I…what?”
“There’s a sylvan confectioner called SugarCream that brings a storefront to every Stone Moon Tourney. I hate waiting in line for them, though.”
“I can do that,” Lidea nodded. “Okay.” Ey hovered there for a moment longer, unsure how such a weird interaction was supposed to end. With a half-hearted shrug, ey turned and moved back out the way ey had come.
"If you're looking for Lidea, ey's already been here and gone." Paul was in front of his tent, near the entrance of the area the greenwitches had set up. He was noodling with his prosthetic with a tiny screwdriver.
"Can we look at the magical pressure machine?" Sunny anticipated the elf would need the star-shaped driver next, saw that it was on a table a foot away, and retrieved it for him. He was right, and Paul exchanged the drivers.
"Do you need a hand?" Paul's arm was a particularly clever design from a dyerga artificer who famously hadn’t pursued an official Mastery despite his talent. Magically enhanced and enabled prosthetics were common, but double-dipping as a focus was such a bold choice. Most magicians needed a regular break from having their focus on their person. Paul couldn’t do that without losing basic functionality.
Except again, the design was particularly clever.
Paul could turn the magical elements of his arm off, leaving just mechanics behind. It was super fucking cool, and Sunny would love the ability to sit down with it and see exactly how it worked.
"I always need a hand," Paul muttered. "But no. I'm good." He snapped down whatever it was he was adjusting, set the arm to the side, and stood. "It's in Ajax's tent. Come on."
"You're just going to show us?" Phyll asked. “Takes ten layers of non-disclosure agreements to see a prototype device where I’m from.”
"I don't give a shit," Paul said. "Not my ass on the line." He led them across the group of tents to a small one in the corner. Unzipping revealed a tent that had barely been used. The air mattress, sleeping sack, and pillow were still made up neatly. If there had been a bag of clothes, it was gone, but a small box of supplies was left behind. A section of the tent door had ripped, and a rock pressed sharply up through the tarpaulin floor. A dark spot across the top had been missed on the cleanup. Sunny could follow the narrative of drunkenly tripping over the lip of the tent, falling, and busting a head.
The machine was in two parts against the tent wall, manual next to it, everything neatly arranged.
Phyll squatted down next to the bottom part of the machine and ran hir fingers over the buttons. "Can we take this outside and put it together?"
"Do whatever," Paul shrugged and moved away from the door of the tent.
"They really don't want to actually help with this," Phyll said, leveraging hir hands under the top part of the machine to drag it out in the open space in front of the tent.
"Because this project is mostly Constantine’s baby, from what I understand," Sunny replied, following out with the bottom half of the machine.
"Yeah, but it's extremely cool," Phyll argued. "A machine that can auto-adjust frequency would be huge on Miraalan."
"That's where she's from." Sunny let out a series of grunts as he set down his part of the machine. "It's neat, but it also could fill in lower complexity tasks. Makes people nervous."
"So mages who were doing the bare minimum might lose their jobs, possibly several iterations from now.” Phyll rolled hir eyes.
"Yeah, basically."
"That's stupid," Phyll said, lifting the top of the machine onto the bottom, making sure the contacts snapped into place.
"Because you're thinking like a goblin." Sunny locked down the connections on his side. This was one of the things that stood between them, that always kept him at arm's length from the goblin. The same thing that made it weird to return to his mother in the sylvan enclave. The same thing that made those two disparate groups get along so well.
"You lose your current job, what happens?” Sunny asked. “What do you do?"
"N-nothing?" Phyll replied. "I'd just be assigned a temporary position until I found a new one. I don't understand the question."
"Yeah, exactly." The functional socialist utopia of goblindom would cover hir in any and all times of need. The Universal Basic Income he collected as a resident of Tomar covered a lot of gaps, but it wasn't the same.
Phyll huffed at him, then focused on studying the machine some more.
The thing wasn't pretty, lacking the sleek casing that would typically accompany a machine like this in regular use. It was intricate though, tendrils of metal and ceramic filigree reaching up from a solid base. When Phyll flicked a switch, millions of threads of gemdust inlays pulsed through the uprights before the light settled down into the base.
It hurt to be this close to it. It desperately needed additional shielding. Another reason, maybe, no one else wanted to do this outside the creator. Phyll was dripping with excitement, though, hopping between hir feet and rubbing hir hands together.
"Let's get it away from everyone,” ze said. “I want to see what this thing can actually do."
Sunny sighed.
"Alright. Shut it down and let's find a place where we won't accidentally hurt anyone."
It was easy to find SugarCream in the section of the marketplace where all the specialty food stalls had been installed. It had the longest line, zig-zagging between some stone benches. Lidea considered eir options.
There was no point standing in line if ey couldn’t get the specific thing ey was there for.
Ey moved a little closer to where the candies were displayed, looking for evidence of their stock. Several varieties were already sold out. Cherry, hot cinnamon, and, low and behold, an “out of stock” sign across where the caramel had once been.
“Shit,” ey muttered to emself and paused to think.
“Those go quickly,” said the sylvan behind the counter, chestnut hair plastered to their peach skin with sweat.
“Will you have any more?” Lidea hedged, already feeling the answer.
“Oh, dear no. We sold a large preorder to a group of trenglates. They might sell some back to you.”
“At twice the price.”
“I can still point you in the right direction,” the sylvan said before needing to hop away to attend to the business.
Lidea stared at the glass case of candy. At the line of people. At the sylvan who had offered the next clue in the thread. Looked at the possibility of having to track down a group of cranky people covered in scales with sharp claws and teeth.
“This is too fucking stupid. I’m not doing this.”
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