pathologic but it's a lost 1920s german expressionist film [id under cut]
[id:
image 1: a digital drawing of a fake poster, using bright colours and rough, painterly brushstrokes. the title, 'pest' (german for 'plague'), is written at the top in spiky black text. in the foreground a man dressed as a tragedian is staring intently at the viewer, his hands raised and splayed as if in horror. in the background, the town is framed against a red sky, with the polyhedron in yellow behind.
images 2 and 3: fake casting sheets for the film, with the names of the actors and the characters they are playing above a black-and-white portrait photograph of them. all the text is in german. in english it reads:
'Pest', a film by Robert Wiene
Alfred Abel as Victor Kain
Ernst Busch as Grief
Lil Dagover as Katerina Saburova
Ernst Deutsch as the Bachelor
Carl de Vogt as Vlad the Younger
Marlene Dietrich as the Inquisitor
Willy Fritsch as Mark Immortell
Alexander Granach as Andrey and Peter Stamatin
Bernhard Goetzke as General Block
Dolly Haas as the Changeling
Ludwig Hartau as the Haruspex
Brigitte Helm as Anna Angel
Brigitte Horney as Maria Kaina
Emil Jannings as Big Vlad
Gerda Maurus as Yulia Lyuricheva
Lothar Menhert as Georgiy Kain
Asta Nielsen as Lara Ravel
Ossi Oswalda as Eva Yan
Fritz Rasp as Stanislas Rubin
Conrad Veidt as Alexander Saburov and Tragedian
Paul Wegener as Oyun
Gertrud Welcker as Aspity
image 4: four digital sketches of set designs for various locations. all are strongly influenced by expressionist imagery, using extreme angles, warped perspective, and dramatic shapes. they are labelled 'street 1' (a street lined with houses), 'street 2' (a square with a lamppost and a set of steps), 'polyhedron exterior' (the polyhedron walkway), and 'cathedral interior' (the dais at the far end of the cathedral).
image 5: four digital drawings in a black-and-white watercolour style, showing fake stills from the film. all are similarly distorted and lit by dramatic lighting. the first shows katerina's bedroom, with katerina standing in the centre of the floor. the second shows the interior of an infected house. the third shows daniil staring out of the frame in horror, one hand on his head and the other raised as if to ward something off. the fourth shows an intertitle with jagged white text reading 'the first day' against a dark background.
end id.]
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Normally, traitors aren’t frog-marched to the Emperors themselves, regardless of what rank of information they had. These aren’t normal circumstances, though, Techno bemoans to himself. For one, the man is refusing to speak anything but French and a tiny amount of broken Bayesh. For another, on being made, he immediately handed over about three folders of classified information then loudly waited for handcuffs to be put on him.
Phil is lounging in his throne; he’d never been one for propriety. This leaves Techno to be, uh, the actually serious one. The one adorned in uniform, sitting and glowering down. It’s lucky that the traitor isn’t a pigman, because Techno isn’t actually great at glowering, but humans are weird about pigman facial expressions so he should be fine?
The traitor stands before them and grins. In perfect Bayesh, he says: “Finally. It took way too long for you to catch me, bitch.”
Techno pauses. He stares. In Piglish, he barks to his guards: “Everyone out. It’s Leader business.”
They file out. They’ll be waiting outside. Phil straightens in his seat and reaches for his own sword.
Techno, laboriously, drags his hand across his face. He switches back to Bayesh. God, does he regret being fluent in multiple languages sometimes. “What are you doing here, Tommy.”
“Showing you your intelligence weak points, fucker. Do you know how easy it is to slip Bayesh spies in here? I was smooth. A smooth customer. I was hearing classified milkitary secrets—”
“You were caught within two hours,” Techno says.
“That’s—that’s just what you think, innit?” Tommy says. Phil laughs. He’s the real traitor here.
“Tommy. I don’t wanna have to cause an international incident, but I’ve had a really long day, so if you just tell me who hired you to run a spy op, and why you decided it was a good idea to run it yourself, instead of sending one of your experts…”
“No one,” Tommy says.
“Hey, don’t lie you little shit. Techno might not want to start an incident but I don’t care,” Phil says. He grins and holds up his sword. “You wanna wake up in a jail cell and reveal some secrets? We may all be Leaders but it won’t stop torture from hurting.”
“What the fuck, Phil,” Tommy says.
“No one’s torturing anyone. We’ll just bomb them later if we must,” Techno says.
“And I wasn’t lying. It’s—can I take the wig off by the way? It fucking itches.”
“I despise you.”
Tommy takes off the black wig, revealing his blonde hair. “Anyway, I don’t want to work with you guys either, so I figured I’d get your attention by like, acting like we’re enemies and stuff. Got hired for espionage enough back in the day to pick up that much.”
“Who the fuck wanted you as a spy?” Phil asks.
“Fuck you,” Tommy says and doesn’t elaborate.
“Please just tell us what you want,” Techno says. “Please. I can’t handle this much you at any given time.”
“This needs to be Leader to Leader,” Tommy says, and something heavy laces his words. The hairs on Techno’s arms stand up.
“You coulda asked,” he says, in one final desperate bid for normality.
“No, I couldn’t have,” Tommy says. “I think Chip’s dead.”
Techno doesn’t notice that he’s standing until he is.
“What?”
“Yeah,” Tommy says. “Yeah. And, uh, I fucking. Need your help to figure out what happened. Before we get blamed. And I know, politically, you’ve got no reason, but if we don’t figure out—”
Techno sits back down, heavy.
“I know you understand Piglish. Let me talk in my native language. Phil.”
“Yeah, mate?”
“Go get the stuff.”
Phil’s eyes darken. “Right. That. Well, I’ll be back.”
Tommy’s voice, for the first time since Techno met him as a newly-minted Leader, standing on a wooden bench and yelling about executions, is small.
“You believe me?” he says.
“Why else would you come here?” Techno asks. “Not like we like you.”
“Good, because I’m shit at infiltrations. Would have been embarrassing if you, like, didn’t know your enemy well enough to know that,” Tommy says. He’s saying something else underneath it. Techno is neither good enough at Bayesh or at Tommy to guess what.
“Let’s work out an excuse to make a treaty. And you tell me everything.”
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