ironhands | Reinvention (open post)

Reinvention (open post)

Being back in Toril made Bel realize how much Caldera had affected him — so many things he had taken for granted living on the surface that had been a result of ‘everyone knowing’ about drow, and Bel’s awareness that he had no idea when he would run into a person who would make it Bel’s problem. He returned for Barcus, and for the slim daydream that he might have more chance at a family reunion beyond finding out Ilphyl was alive and well, and for his old friends… but he’s not going to pretend that he wasn’t also choosing everything that went with it.

At least Baldur’s Gate, especially its human population, seemed to see Bel as a curiosity more than a threat, probably correctly figuring that a lone drow was unlikely to be trafficking in slaves to the Underdark, or at least not without a lot of complicit humans. Bel can work with that.

Bel had chosen to start helping at the Ironhands’ foundry as his first job in Baldur’s Gate. Yes, it was obvious to everyone that Barcus was giving his lover a job, but as near as Bel could tell, no one’s nephew was being put out in favor of him, and he was largely given jobs like ‘sweeping the workshops’ or being an extra set of hands — work they could get a random human off the street for.

It was rather like his first job as a caravan guard, oddly enough. There the attitude was drow merchants resenting a son of a Noble House (though one that only called itself that because Elisund was so small and unimportant that no one outside the town cared) dabbling in their business, and the solution was similar: do your job, volunteer for the jobs you can do especially if no one likes doing them, and put up with any shit that doesn’t affect operations.

As a perk, when Barcus made the coffee or brought in lunch, passive-aggressive behavior about drow poisonings meant that he usually had to take the first sip or bite.

But it did mean that if someone stopped by — that wasn’t Barcus or someone else working, who got immediate attention — Bel might wave from his broom and say ‘give me a moment to finish up’.

—

After work, and on his days off, Bel was making an effort to learn the city. He explored markets and taverns and generally was aiming for a sense of the place — where were the dive bars and the places rich kids could feel daring for visiting but not get mugged. So he could be seen in any place where he wasn’t made unwelcome, trying a drink or street food, and happy to share what he learned.

He also discovered that Baldur’s Gate religious life had shrines to a large number of gods. Someone might catch Bel at Stormshore Tabernacle making an offering to Elistraee, and offering a… prayer? after visiting Ilphyl in Waterdeep on his way to Baldur’s Gate.

“Dark Maiden, I have been informed that you have accepted my bro- sibling into your service. I’m told you are the patron of those of us who turn from the Spider Queen. That may be, but you have my sibling’s allegiance. Treasure it, reward their devotion and do not mistreat them or… well, I’ll have to ask Solas or Loki for help.”

Bel also left a dead wasp for Lolth, of a variety that is known for killing spiders. It was not a living one, because he’s not going to be an asshole to the clergy who run this place, but he hoped the symbolism was clear.

—

But at the end of the day, it was nice to return home, which felt like an expansion of his time with Barcus in Caldera, in a nice house where the main bedroom was becoming as much his as Barcus’s, with a basket of Bel’s current books and his knitting project stowed by the bed so he could spend the extra hours of wakefulness by Barcus’s side, usually with Satchel also sleeping nearby if she wasn’t out on feline errands of her own.

Or he might be just… around the house, doing some of the cooking or just being idle.

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As Bel turns to leave Eilistraee's altar, there's a movement by the Tabernacle door, a tall and somewhat familiar figure of a man entering the building. Vicar Humbletoes gives him a warm nod of welcome, then does a slight double-take, as if he's not quite sure what he's looking at.

Whatever the cleric sees, he chooses not to question it, and in fact he chooses not to speak any further than a gentle welcome to the Stormshore Tabernacle; all who reach for the divine are welcome here, no matter the god. And later on, Loki will decide he absolutely loves that and probably visit here again, but for the moment he's here because he heard his name dropped in a sacred place, and he knows who dropped it.

Bel, of course, is not a worshipper, nor does Loki expect him to be, but hey, if he didn't break rules he wouldn't be Loki. "Finnick sends his love," he tells him, and offers a handclasp. "Are you well here, Bel? Is Ilphyl all right?"

He would absolutely undertake Ilphyl's patronage, should it be necessary. They're charming. But he doesn't poach other deities' followers, either.

Ah. He had not expected Loki to arrive in person. While the gods of Toril are active, they don't show up for every worshiper for whatever reason. Which is for the best, as Lolth was exactly the sort of petty that would take every slight personally.

He took Loki's hand. "Well enough. I passed through Waterdeep before coming here, and he-they invited me to stay a few days so we could actually catch up."

Which was progress, after months of acting like a cat who had accepted another cat existed in its presence, but wasn't going to engage. It could be 'lives at the distance where a visit is possible, but must be planned' was where they ahd landed.

And Loki might catch the pronoun shift, and that Bel is clearly still getting used to it. Ilphyl hadn't exactly hidden who they were in Caldera, but also just let people make their own conclusions unless they actually asked them.

In fairness, Loki is always looking for an excuse to stick his nose into other peoples' affairs. Caldera, now that it's at peace, is pleasant but comparatively dull. And Loki knows himself all too well: a bored trickster is a dangerous trickster. He'd rather not be the Visitor that stayed around only to absolutely fuck over the world he helped save. So he'll do his damage in other peoples' backyards. In Faerun they won't even notice the debris; he's a damn sight tidier than the Dead Three.

"I'll see if I can't slip away to Waterdeep at some point, then," he says. "Just to say hello."

Ilphyl should be worried. But that's a problem for everyone's future selves.

"In the meantime, show me around if you have a moment?"

Bel nodded. "I'll be mostly repeating the tour Barcus gave me, but that's fine. And you can let me know how things are for you."

He's a lot more comfortable dealing with Loki as a person, than as a god. Gods and religion are fraught, but people, even the powerful ones, are familiar.

There have been times in his life when Loki would have wanted to drive the point home that he is, in fact, Divine, in all senses of the word. Now is not one of them. He's content, these days, to be alive, with the potentiality to stay that way for a long, long time to come. Dealing with him as a person is completely acceptable. Though he will be trying to get a foothold here. An extra worshiper, or ten, or fifty, will do him no harm. He just needs to be sure not to piss off anyone else enough to start a fight.

Anyway: "Suspiciously peaceful," he says. "That's how things are. We've expanded the Inn. New Visitors aren't staying there so now it's a hostel for travelers, and of course Finnick insists on undercharging but we're turning a small profit anyway."

"I give us less than two months before we have another dog, and less than a year before we end up with children, one way or another."

Bel laughs. "You picked a man who is primed for taking in strays," he noted. "Or he picked you. I'm not quite clear on how it all works." Which probably also explained why Finnick was charging as little as he can get away with, and for the best that he had someone running the account books to make sure he knew 'what he could get away with'.

"'One way or another'?" Look, Loki was a god, and for all Bel knew, Loki could just... magic up a newborn for them, in addition to the obvious adoption. But five years on the surface haven't worn away over a century in a society with very fixed ideas about men and women for Bel's default assumptions about relationships and families.

"He's an extraordinarily tender heart," Loki says, and there's a flicker of something soft behind his eyes. "Complete sucker, really. Good thing he fell in with me, I'll make sure no one takes advantage."

His smile remains warm and a little soppy, in spite of his flippant words. "Frankly I don't think we'll get by much longer without adopting. He keeps looking after lost Calderan children and who am I to object to that? But I might want more, in time."

"...Finnick had a wife, you know, and a child on the way, in the world he died in. I can't replace them and I wouldn't try, but he does want to be a father. I can give him that." He gestures at himself. "Shapeshifter, you know."

Bel nods. "I knew about the wife and child." And raged at the fundamental unfairness of it. Even if Finnick was fortunate enough to have another chance of happiness, it was still a cruel thing for him to have made a life in his own world, and the powers that be smashed it away.

But the last sentence derails him a bit. "What... does it work like that?" Well, when you're a god, probably. No reason you couldn't put together everything you need. "Do you want to do that?"

Belantar Vivalfin is a very cisgender man, I'm afraid.

Loki gives Bel a fond look, more for the reminder that he and Finnick were close than because he's amused by the question. (Although that, too). Of his husband, he says: "That kind of pain doesn't really fade, I don't think, with time. But you grow around it, and become a bigger and stronger and kinder person, if you're a man like Finnick. He'll be happy if I have anything to say of it. You should visit some time."

But no pressure, of course. Bel has plenty going on here.

His smile grows and turns mischievous then, but he's in polite-to-his-friends mode and will spare you too many of the details. "I was born intersex," he explains. "It's common among Jotnar. So I carry all the parts in my birth-form. Mind you, the toll would be easier to bear if I shapeshift into a more feminine form for the duration of the pregnancy, so I would most likely do that."

"Magic would make it possible even without that prerequisite, but I suppose in the end it's my own nature and comfort that makes it a desirable situation. I've always wanted children; I love them. As a Prince of Asgard, I was never going to be able to carry them myself, unless I did it in secret and faced my father's disappointment. Honestly, the fact that it's a possibility now makes me feel freer. I can do as I will with my own body, without the threat of censure or outcast. It's a marvelous thing, isn't it?"

"It is liberating how much Caldera doesn't care about things that confined us in the societies we grew up in." Bel can't call Asgard Loki's birth society, but it was the one he was raised in.

Bel doesn't know much about the culture Loki grew up in, but he can offer his own perspective. "Likely among the drow, you would have been raised as a woman rather than a man if your adopted parents thought you could bear children." Because if they had to hide Loki's nature as 'both', best to give him some power to do so, and a man who could bear children would be considered too much of a upset to Lolth's order to live.

He considers, and offers, "Many of the gods of the surface elves don't have a fixed sex, including the god who created all elves. It's said that all elves were like that, before the Spider Queen talked us into taking fixed forms. The one elf on the surface that I knew well enough to judge... well, I never got into their pants, believe it or not, but when I first met them, I'd swear they were a man, but when we worked together years later, they were a woman. Apparently they change every so often."

"And apparently my sibling has a similar nature, though they aren't any more fluid in their shape than the average druid, and don't usually sit as a man or a woman." Yes, Ilphyl finally came out to Bel. And Bel is supportive, but very confused.

"In this world, too, I'm free to do as I like, though mostly because no one knows me yet," Loki says with a little smile. "I wish the same for everyone. I was told once freedom is life's great lie, and I believed it for a while. Then I remembered I was the god of lies. So, possible or not, true or not, I embrace it."

He's quietly pleased by the thought of being raised as a woman, although he's aware it would have been just as much a yoke and chain, if not more so. "I was taught the same skills other noble houses teach their princesses, because I took to them well. Hosting, dancing, music, diplomacy. Even the type of magic I am most skill with was considered womanly. Seidr denotes the spinning of threads, plucking and braiding the fibers that hold the universe together, and reading along the paths of the strands of Fate. My mother taught me."

"It's difficult to separate gender roles from gender presentation from gender identity," he says reassuringly. "It takes time for all of us, myself and your sibling included. It's all right if you don't fully understand yet, as long as you love and accept them and keep trying."

"But yes. I know my own when I see them." He waves a hand expressively, "Not in the sense that I mean to lay divine claim to everyone like myself, that would be presumptuous, but in the sense that I feel kinship. If they permit me, I will protect them, whether they view me as patron or not."

Bel smiles. "Easier to choose what burdens you accept. Caring for people might make me less free, but it's a burden I choose to accept." Total freedom would mean being willing to abandon people if need be, and that will always be a desperation tactic for Bel.

The magic made sense. Bel wasn't a wizard, but he knew a bit of the theory: the interface between magic and the world was the Weave, and wizards were the ones who manipulated it most directly. Even in a society that discouraged the worship of other gods, drow wizards still had to acknowledge Mystra as the Mistress of the Weave, and Lolth (as far as Bel knew) never tried to claim it for herself -- whether due to a lack of power, or the awareness that she didn't want the responsibility paired with it. And being from a society that venerated spiders, textile metaphors came naturally for magic. Bel would stick to ordinary threads, which were still considered a womanly skill for a drow, but that granted it prestige.

"I do," Bel said. "Thankfully meeting River first -- my elf friend -- meant I didn't step in it too badly." And it gave some awareness that Bel's own culpability with how bad Ilphyl's childhood was -- often unintentional or inherited -- was only one factor. Ilphyl had never been going to adapt, and Bel hadn't been aware enough of the world outside drow society to realize the choices weren't 'adapt or die trying'. "And from what I understand, druids can be a bit more flexible about gods than clerics are." Even Silvanus didn't encompass all of nature.

In his interactions with the Ironhands, Bel may notice some characteristics in his lover that were not evident in Caldera. There, he wore his heart on his sleeve and his hands held out in friendship and equanimity, and it made him look tender. Here, he knows every bit of what he's up against and he knows his people like the back of his own hand. With the individual Ironhands he's warm and jocular, and it's clear in conversation he knows everything about their interests, likes and dislikes, and how they interact with their clanmates. If there's a lover's quarrel, a rivalry, a dispute, he's on top of it. And when they're in a group, when he's in the midst of them, he's in charge and he carries it like he was born to it. For all that he complains about it being like herding cats, it's clear he has their full respect.

They are, as he predicted, a little passive-aggressive to the drow when he's not around, bleeding dangerously close to bullying. These are gnomes in their own territory and they want to keep the supremacy they've claimed, not cede it to some other Underdarker. That, and Ironhands in particular are...well, iron-handed. Around Barcus, though, they don't dare.

Bel's calm and conciliatory willingness to help and let them get used to him slowly will take him a long way. Beyond that, there's an effect neither of them anticipated: deep gnome who takes a drow lover into his home without fear or hesitation is an interesting layer to Barcus' mystique among his fellow gnomes. Wulbren would never! But Wulbren had no interest in collaborating or reaching out to anyone he didn't think he could manipulate.

Suddenly Barcus looks braver than ever.

It is a few weeks in when one day, after a lengthy visit to Duke Ravengard (senior; the Blade of Avernus is in, um, Avernus) Barcus returns to the Foundry and collects a handful of senior advisors with a word and a beckoning nod: Bumpnagel the smith, Thulla his second-in-command, Brounce, head of security.

Finally, he goes to Bel and gives him a sober little nod. "I want you to see this. It doesn't get mentioned outside these chambers, not even to others from Caldera. Not until I know what we're doing about it."

Maybe the other Ironhands won't like it, but let's be real, if you can't swear a drow to secrecy, who can you swear?

Bel does pick up how much the idea that 'Barcus is holding his leash' is what is getting him enough forbearance for the Ironhands to decide what they think of him as a person. Also, as far as Bel's concerned, Barcus deserves a reputation of being brave and a badass without needing to be threatening, or even have Bel threaten people for him. Bel has always accepted the reputation of his people as 'if it exists, let me use it' and now he can hand it to Barcus as well.

Bel is also aware enough of social currents to realize that something was going on. Barcus gets called out of the foundry by someone Important -- Bel has been focused on the dynamics within the Ironhands and Gondians, not learning as much about Baldurian politics -- and he immediately starts taking meetings with his own senior people: something is up. And calling Brounce in means it's not just a matter of craftsmanship, though Bel supposes that it could be an order that other parties do not want completed.

(And here Bel makes a note that he does actually need to learn city politics, even if just by asking Barcus -- even being from a settlement that might have had more rothé than people, drow social dynamics means Bel will never be comfortable unless he understands how the people in charge think.)

But calling Bel in has implications that it is something out of the ordinary for the foundry. Because Barcus's obvious affection for Bel is always weighed by his leadership position. If Barcus wants Bel involved over any Ironhands beyond the most senior, it's something that Barcus thinks he needs Bel's skills for over any social factor of 'jumping seniority'.

Bel nods. "It's your call, as always. What is it?"

Had they chosen to present Bel as Barcus' drow bodyguard, that would have cast a different hue on it, and whether that would have been better or worse, Barcus couldn't say. It is what it is now, and he hopes that in time they will welcome Bel as one of them. That might take a while, though, and in the meantime whatever gets him through without being made miserable will do.

"A job," he answers, giving Bel a brief, reassuring squeeze of his arm, "and potentially a very delicate one. Come, we'll be in the inner conference chamber."

The conference chamber of the Foundry is clean but ruthlessly unadorned except for the broken pipes and wires and pieces of shrapnel embedded in the walls. That's deliberate; they want to remember the battle that was fought here, and why it happened. The Gondians prefer not to enter this part. When they meet with the Ironhands, it's in gentler, more pleasant locations, but in here there is a table and hard chairs, and light, and nothing else.

Usually. There's something else on the table, today, a hulking metal shape that might be humanoid if it had more of its limbs attached.

Barcus waits until everyone has entered before closing and locking the door. Brounce and Bumpnagel give Bel a slight side-eye, but Thulla seems unsurprised. She's taken to him quicker than the others, because she can read Barcus exceptionally well. His judgment of character is far from flawless, but so is everyone else's. She's concluded Bel is an upgrade from Wulbren, at least, and that will do for now.

"Right," he says, and approaches the table. "So everyone but Bel will have seen one of these before. This is about a third of a Steel Watcher," he says for the drow's benefit. "We've been dismantling pieces of them ever since the battle. There's good metal in there."

"Some infernal iron," Bumpnagel volunteers with a little nod. "Rare stuff."

"This is the largest piece we've found," Barcus goes on. "And it's got more than metal in it. There's flesh in the core."

Thulla swears softly. "So we're going to need to get a priest to bless the remains, at least. Put 'em in a decent grave or pyre. I can ask--"

"You're getting ahead of me. This one's not..." Barcus takes a breath and lets it out again. "This one's still reactive."

There's a pause, and then Thulla speaks again: "I thought Tav and the others destroyed the whole bank of brains. You're saying they missed one."

"Let's hope it's just one." Barcus says, and then looks at Bel to see if he's following.

Bel will take 'an upgrade from Wulbren Bongle'; he doesn't have a high opinion of the man despite never meeting him. (Not just from his esteem for Barcus; the man sounded obsessed with his own grudge over the well-being of his people, or his relationships.)

Bel has heard the basics about the Steel Watch. It's the sort of thing that was filed as 'it is a good thing Enver Gortash is dead, as that is both clever and terrifying'. Bel is not an artificer, but he can understand the psychology of the plan, including not letting anyone know your 'constructs' were animated by a mix of necromancy and fucking mind flayer psionics. (The bit about being confident you have control over an Elder Brain seems full of hubris, but Bel has met priestesses of Lolth who had that level of arrogance, if not the level of magical artifacts.)

He nods, indicating he at least has some of the basics and can get clarifications later. And Barcus is right: if one brain survived, be prepared to find out more did. "Was it being... actively controlled?" As he understands it, with the Netherbrain defeated by Barcus's adventurer friends, the tadpoles weren't a factor. So, if the brain existed, it should just be a zombie... which was not great, but meant random carnage, not an organized plan.

Well, unless it meant a necromancer could direct any intact Watchers, which was worse.

The entire plan, from the Steel Watch to the Elder Brain, was genius in an awful, reckless, immoral way. Barcus has examined it repeatedly since the end, tugged on all the threads and found fewer that were loose than one might imagine, and only two that could have truly unraveled the whole thing: the Astral Prism and the Elder Brain itself. There is something about the cobbling together of infernal, otherworldly, and Gondian techniques that simultaneously impresses him with its scope and innovation and irritates him because of its laziness. Real intellectual discipline would have demanded a longer period of testing and adaptation rather than the direct use of tadpoles. Even engineered tadpoles.

Part of him is fascinated to have the opportunity to pick it all apart some more, but it would be nicer if it didn't come hand in hand with the opportunity to be overrun and murdered by psychotic automatons.

The Ironhands are quiet for the moment, rattled on a few different levels, as this information sinks in. It's to Bel's credit that he's able to move past the oh shit so quickly and lean into what now, and it's almost certainly part of why Barcus brought him in on this. "The mechanisms that drive it are too damaged for any movement beyond turning its head. You'll see some of the joints shudder here and there, but beyond that it's immobile. That said, we have to assume its communication matrix is still active, so if there is anyone at the other end of it, they can hear and see us. We won't be having a long conversation here, we'll move to my office shortly. And I'll move this thing to a vault once we've examined it. Mind what you say, all of you."

"Astarion found it in some passages between the Undercity and the Tourmaline depths. Bless that bloodsucking bastard for recognizing the significance so quickly; he's the one that notified Ulder about it."

"We'll have to do further testing to determine how, mmm, cognizent the mind controlling it might be. It's hard to tell whether the activity is purposeful or mere stimulus and response. Unfortunately, we can't sit back and do a proper job of it, because if there are more, even a few, that's a big problem."

"In the meantime, this does not get mentioned to the Gondian contingent. I hate keeping them in the dark but I also don't want to scrape open healing wounds unnecessarily. When we know something for sure, I'll bring it to our closest allies. Bump, any thoughts?"

The smith is circling the table already, like he's inspecting a wild animal. "Gimme a few, Boss. Not sure if all the components are the same as the others we dismantled."

Bel was taking it all in; everyone knew the technical aspects were beyond him, and he was fine with that. The Ironhands were trained artificers and Bel isn't going to belittle their skills by saying he could pick up anything useful in weeks.

He was making a list of questions to ask once they were out of earshot, but he wasn't sure that he wanted to ask more while being overheard. "Was the damage done by trying to subdue it or did Astarion find it like this?" He figures trying to reconstruct what happened was safe. And it would help the smiths to know what caused any damage, even if imprecise.

He flags Bump's answer, because 'not the same' could mean prototype, or it could mean someone else had found the remains and was trying to repair them, but the questions Bel would need to ask were not the ones he wanted overheard if anyone was listening.

The technical aspects are pretty well handled, between the Ironhands and the Gondians. The perspective of an experienced adventurer is what they don't have, between them, and Bel does. Sure they could hire someone, there are plenty of mercenaries around, but you can't just trust random people. Best to start close to home.

Barcus isn't sure whether he hopes to bring the rest of his friends in on this or not. It would be nice not to have to. Just a work story to tell over the dinner table later. Still, he has a nagging feeling he might need them.

"Like this," he answers. "He said there weren't even any remnants nearby, which is curious and a little ominous, because that means it either got there by itself and then lost limbs, or someone dragged this part of it there and left it, which is...creepy?" He shakes his head.

"Astarion will be investigating further on his own. He has...some resources." Seven thousand freed spawn has quickly become about 1500 freed spawn as they slew one another and were killed in the Underdark, but it's still a huge number of potential contacts. And Barcus won't betray that information just now. Best not to put the spawn in greater danger.

"Do you need a notebook?" he asks Bumpnagel, patting the pockets of his own work smock.

"Hgnn," the other gnome answers, which is unhelpful, but after a moment he shakes his head. "Sketchbook. I wanna draw it and take some notes, and I don't want to say out loud what I'm seeing. Let's move to the office and talk, and then I'll come back out on my own and work on it, yeah?"

"I want it watched," Brounce says. "Permission to get Fulgaro and Nimble in here?"

Barcus takes a moment to consider this request, then nods slowly. "Yes, but you have to make them swear on Gaerdal's blood not to speak of it to the others. Not until we know what we're dealing with. You know the proverb: three gnomes can only keep a secret if two of them are dead."

"Which means, between the lot of us, the secret's days are numbered anyway, but control and timing is the point. Anyway, you handle that and meet us in the office." He gestures to the others, and Thulla jogs ahead of him to open up the locked door at the other end of the chamber.

Bel is keeping silent until he is in the office, and out of earshot. He nods to Thulla, but lets the others enter first. Bel knows he is important, but this is Barcus's office and Barcus's show. And he's right about the control, which includes bringing in the adventurer who lives with Barcus rather than anyone else. (It might help that Bel is also familiar with the Underdark.)

He'll wait for the others to enter and the door to be closed, to look to Barcus. It's still your show.

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Reinvention (open post)

speak of the devil - but not Raphael

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casually flings potential plot around

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