Baby's First (Trauma) Game

[baddecisiondzur]

"That is, I might be afraid and, being afraid, I would feel shame, and no one wishes to feel shame."
"So then, one might nearly say that you fear fear."
"What else is there to fear?"
      -- Ibronka and Kytraan, The Lord of Castle Black, page 273

First off, I'd like to thank Selendis for running a truly excellent nightmare, and for asking me to participate. Not only did it trauma a character I thought would be darn hard to shake, but it also let Honor discover she really likes Selendis. (Granted, despite her rampant bloodlust and craving for adrenaline rushes, Honor/Tazendra likes people who don't piss her off. She even didn't mind Molotov on their few interactions (Lucky she's not sure about, since she's convinced Lucky is insulting her).)


So, there are maybe two times in canon that Tazendra would consider Awful. Three if you count Adron's Disaster, though that may be caught up in the 'run before you get eaten by the forces of raw chaos'. The first is when she was but a girl of thirty, and lost her parents -- moreover, lost them in a way she thought was dishonorable, so she was confronted with the conflicting of 'Mommy and Daddy are the most awesome people ever' and 'you don't run away from an enemy because you're scared'*.

The second is what I want to address here, and is her own death. Not that Tazendra regrets dying, but the circumstances around it. She was kidnapped and immobilized and had to watch her personal retainer/friend be killed in front of her when he tried to take advantage of the fact no noble expects a serf with a peg leg to attack you with a bar stool. Furthermore, when her friend's son and his friends/bandit gang came to investigate, they were slaughtered effortlessly. And her own friend/True Love** was getting the shit kicked out of him (though he didn't die while Tazendra was still conscious). And Tazendra's enemies had the/a Jenoine (aka 'Do not let them into our world EVER') backing them to make them invulnerable.

Her enemies, Grita and Illista, even note that the best way to truly hurt a Dzur is not to maim or kill them -- originally, they were concerned that Tazendra was being bad bait and no one had noticed they had her, so they wanted to do the 'body part in a box' thing -- but to make sure she was the last to die as they killed her friends in front of her while she was conscious, but bound by magic. The text even notes that once she was free to attack, Tazendra passed beyond 'yay, a fight!' into sheer fury where she could easily be a danger to her allies if they got in her way.

Now, a lot of the Dzur traits Tazendra has, Honor retains, with a lot less civilized polish on them. She was able to restrain things around her team because there wasn't obviously anything she needed to kill in the dorm, but the game set off several things: first off, Lucky clearly giving her permission to go off on her own while most of the rest of her team would probably be more 'no, bad Dzur -- let them come to us'; second, clear signs of an enemy in the traces of the Zerg attack; and third, the mentality of a 'game', which Honor interpreted as 'kill all the doodz***'.

This is what Selendis and I were joking about: that Honor in Selendis's nightmare would respond to a Zerg rush by rushing back, despite the fact Honor doesn't have Tazendra's combat memories, magic or big-ass sword. Which, under ordinary circumstances, would get her killed on her first game, and probably lead to everyone else thinking she was nuts as she revived for thinking that dying under a horde of alien bugs was glorious.

So, when Bones suggested one of us could be infested, I jumped at it mostly to keep Honor in play longer than the first appearance of things to kill. What I also realized was that it would scare the crap out of Honor in a way that dying in battle wouldn't. For such a physical, emotionally volatile character, her losing her freedom of movement and a lot of her free will is a lot worse than death. Hence, her advice to Lucky and Molotov to try to go down fighting rather than run, and definitely do not let yourselves be captured (but also partially because she could see the invasion).

The worst part, though, was when Kerrigan pointed out that if Selendis wasn't a coward, she'd be on the Protoss mothership and then shot it down, and Honor couldn't stop her. No, wait, I take that back. The worst part was when Kerrigan told her that if Honor had any sort of ranged weapon/ability that could take down a starship, she would be helping, and Honor couldn't deny that Kerrigan was right. It was something worse than being helpless to protect your friends and allies and that was being enslaved to their enemies, with your own abilities used to take them down. So, that may make it worse than anything that happened to her in canon. Good job!

So, after effects. As I mentioned Tazendra/Honor both deal with fear by anger, usually. The whole 'shock, trauma' thing post-game was unusual and more because she was a bit out of it from the sudden release of not being afraid any more. And Selendis won serious brownie points for helping her deal with it, though the mention that 'normally people don't heal from Zerg infestation' will add a niggling doubt to Honor's mind. But taking her seriously in the 'if you ever even suspect I'm compromised, kill me' helped a lot, especially with Selendis's comment that their other teammates wouldn't get that. (Which Honor can accept, since she might not have taken it as seriously if she hadn't been through it. She'd assume it was just another fight.)

Other things. Any attempt at mind-mongoling (hi, Mirror!) will probably send Honor into a rage. Her bracer wards might be tricky, because she has Selendis on Lynx, but will probably freak out if anyone else tries anything. She'll probably also assume any of her teammates would desire the same thing she did (that is, death and, when someone reminds her that the Judges do revivifications****, a revive without the effects). Certain things -- insects, especially large ones, or being trapped in anything cocoon-ish -- will make her more prone to violence. She'll also probably be a bit more sensitive to physical transformation in general -- injury she won't mind, but suddenly growing new/strange body parts she will.

Honor will also be, not cowardly, but a bit more willing to listen to other people in dangerous situations, as Tazendra does in canon with her friends, her superior officers and Sethra. I think logically Honor probably figures that if she were with Lucky and Molotov, she probably would still have picked a fight and gotten killed/infested, but the fact remains that they made it out with free will intact and she didn't. Honor can't help her nature, but she can temper it by working with others who have different natures. So she'll still probably suggest direct approaches, but will be amenable for 'let's pick a spot where we have the tactical advantage'.

She also will insist on learning how to defend herself better, like, yesterday, and may seek out an Ophiuchus once she remembers which weapons she is familiar with. And she desperately wants a bath and was probably only dissuaded if Selendis realized how close to curfew the end of the game was. Her sleep may be strained a bit as she winds down, but she is the kind of person who lives in the moment, so I don't see her developing perpetual insomnia.

--
* Later, she finds out that her parents weren't running away from an army, they were running towards the son of the duke being attacked by the army in order to protect him, because they were loyal vassals and had sworn to do so. Tazendra gets that sometimes you have to defer what you want to do for what you have to do.

** Inferences from the text seem to show that Tazendra had lovers, but nothing long-term. Dragaeran taboo is pretty strong against marrying outside your house, though it seems a bit more relaxed about liaisons/friends-with-benefits. Since Aerich was a Lyorn (who are the most traditional of traditionalists), and both were born at a time where people took this seriously, there was no chance of getting him to agree to anything that scandalous, so Tazendra never brought it up to him.

*** She is the equivalent of the person who thinks they are playing D&D when the GM is running Call of Cthulhu.

**** She was a bit busy to notice during the game that Scowl and Trixie were being rebuilt from nothing. So, Tazendra was prepared to ask for Selendis to kill her without knowing that Lyvus could petition for a revive.

Comments

[curebyfire.insanejournal.com]

For Selendis' part, she's mostly assuming their human teammates wouldn't understand based on past events where they had an extra trip into Lelouch's heart to fix some mongoling, and when the units bound, hid and cared for Dean when there was something majorly wrong with him. Also, she remembers James Raynor and his men fighting tooth and nail to protect colonists doomed to infestation simply because they hoped they could be cured.

Also, +10 approval points for the "playing D&D when the GM is running Call of Cthulhu" line. XD

[baddecisiondzur]

Well, Honor already figures there's something different about her teammates after they tried to talk her down from going after raptors with a knife and no combat skills. So she's willing to take Selendis's word for it.

Also, +10 approval points for the "playing D&D when the GM is running Call of Cthulhu" line. XD

Well, she kind of is. Tazendra's internal world is a lot more based on spotting problems and kicking them in the head until they are no longer problems. And, to a degree, that works since she's one of her world's badasses -- there are stunts she wouldn't survive (like fighting a whole army of Easterners, and what killed her, and if she really had tried to go toe-to-toe with Sethra Lavode and Sethra was serious*), but she doesn't really consider the whole 'horrors and insanity and things that can eat you without blinking and things who don't want to kill you but want to break you'. While Sabra, the usual approach to problem solving is a mix of 'running' and 'thinking' and generally 'survive until the Judges let you out'.

* Basically either sheer numbers or people/things who are even more badass than she is.

[darkboot2thehd.insanejournal.com]

COME TRAIN WITH ME AND NIGHT WHEN I GET BACK FROM HIATUS!

Also I really regret hiatus keeping me from this game, Lenalee may be a bit more reasonable and cautious but her basic strategies are still kick things until they stop moving AND she has this thing about standing by her teammates, so if Honour really insisted we could have made terrible decisions and killed things together!! idk if you know DGM but what with Lenalee's recent canon actions, it would have been so interesting to play out her and infested!Honour. SO MANY FEELINGS.

Oh well I guess we can just deal with your trauma by learning to punch each other instead.

[baddecisiondzur]

That totally works! I am all about bonding by learning how to punch things!