lostcarnival | ⇨ The Tourist Trap: WEEK 3

Entry tags:

⇨ The Tourist Trap: WEEK 3

Who: Anyone, anywhere in Portland.
When: October 15st - 22th, 2017
Where: Still in Portland
What: As all sides of the struggle gradually become informed, and the awareness of outsiders begins to spread, Portland faces a critical question - what should be done with them? And who gets to decide?
Warnings: Individually marked!

THE WOLVES AMONG US↴

► WHEN SEPTEMBER ENDS: It's fairly common knowledge that October is a special month - Halloween has always been an excitable time in the supernatural community, because its during this month that the magical energies of Earth seem to disproportionately swell in power. This peeks on the 31st, and has every year for as long as anyone can remember. The holiday of Halloween is a byproduct of this, because the magical phenomenon has gone on for ages past. It's also a pretty common time for wizards to attempt bullshit shenanigans, and also when the Severing first came into effect.

► TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL: Towards the end of the week, Prudence Jaeger will be asking her angelic contacts for a pretty huge favour - she wants them to help her and some of her associates break into the Circle stronghold that the visiting Council members are staying at. It seems that they have some kind of macguffin item that will be needed to crack the barrier cutting off the Earth from the cosmos - and, to that end, allow the angels and mysterious outsiders to return to wherever they call home.

► THE PATH TO HELL: Perhaps unsurprisingly, Team Heaven isn't the only group to clue into the fact that the Circle has what they need. On the same night that the angels go in, so will Anath's army, as the arch demon finally arrives in the city just in time to join the party. Whether the angels and demons fight each other all the way or cooperate to achieve a mutual goal is up to them.

► WITH GOOD INTENTIONS: The Circle and Torchlight aren't all bad, okay? It's entirely possible that they are just acting in the best interest of humanity - unfortunately, that has resulted in them being pretty massive pricks recently, and now the payback for that is arriving on their doorstep. If you're a member of the Circle, you may or may not realize that anything is coming in time for you to prepare. (That will depend on your threads up to the end of the week.) However, once the fight starts, you'll be charge with defending the Councillors whether you like it or not, and Torchlight is getting pulled in as an unexpected ally to ensure their safety as well. Are you going to heed their call? Or is it time to split from the pack?

► BLOOD OF ICE AND FIRE: It's been made no secret that the Rose Queen isn't the only fae trying to pull back her lost changelings - now the Winter Court appears to be doing it, as well. More than a handful of changelings have gone missing over the last couple weeks, lost to both the thorns and agents of the Count. Whatever they're doing, it's also in competition with each other - Winter and Summer will be biting at each other's heels far more than normal, to the degree that it becomes clear they must have some competing objective in mind. Unfortunately for everyone else, that objective happens to conflict with the desires of just about everyone else. Fae are, by nature, opportunists.

- ✪ -
These are the major conflicts that will be coming to a head towards the end of Week 3. In the meantime, your actions will decide how certain elements are set up, and what the likelihood of success is for each group.

Dice rolling handily won the opinion poll where we asked for the preferred method of conflict resolution, so that will be coming into effect a bit later on to determine who actually wins and loses, with advantages based on the choices made.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

"For glory," Peridot repeats flatly, clearly unimpressed. "Not even for resources, or anything like that? They just do it because it's fun or something?" Chalk this topic under the THIS IS SOUNDING UPSETTINGLY FAMILIAR IN A WAY I CAN'T FIGURE OUT category.

Multiple universes, huh? Lambert can't say he's ever paid much attention to theories like that. He is less interested in a lecture on faerie court culture as he is in other practical matters, though.

"You said they'd be forgotten -- is that part of how the spell works? Twenty-five years is a long time to forget about a whole world of people..." Though to the immortal fae, that's probably not even a breath.

"Where do the--" He is making the most unbelievably pained expression saying this, like it hurts to have these words pass his lips. "--angels and demons fit into all this? Are they trying to take over too?"

So apparently, throwing fire around in the Sanctuary is generally frowned upon, especially in the highly-flammable library. While Rita was able to convince the protectors of the Sanctuary that she had good cause to do so, they gently, then firmly, urged her to at least help clean up the mess she made. So here she is, a day after encountering Childermass in this library, salvaging damaged books and cleaning the floors.

It's a pain in the ass... but it's not as bad as the entry hall, where her scuffle with Strange left an even bigger mess.

On one table, a little over a dozen books have been stacked and separated with undamaged ones in one pile, and scorched ones in the other. Fortunately, the bulk of the damage seems to have been done to the covers and edges of the books; the contents are mostly safe. The same doesn't apply to the many loose papers that have been collected in all manner of states between lightly singed and mostly ash, but it shouldn't be a problem for the Sanctuary. Those were all Rita's personal notes, anyway.

Having moved everything off the floor, Rita now has a broom out, and is working at sweeping up the remaining ash and debris. Her jacket is left draped over a nearby chair, her arms covered instead by red-black feathers. No point in using a glamour in here.

It's absolutely not a comfortable sensation, on Lambert's end, like someone jockeying you aside in the driver's seat and shoving you up against the door. Instinctively, he pushes back, before he remembers why that's probably a terrible idea, and tries to mentally adjust, squeezing away from Tamaki's solid presence in his mind.

Through his eyes, if Tamaki cares to look back, he'll benefit from his ability to see the supernatural as well. If he was unable to perceive the demons' true appearance behind their respective human likenesses, both of them struggling to get to their feet after their inglorious and unlikely defeat at the hands of a man and his ghost.

Once Tamaki finally gets Lambert's body to cooperate, he'll find it responds easily enough. Lambert's fit, so he won't even be slightly winded by the time he gets to the gates ... however, in his skin, Tamaki will also notice something that Lambert was hiding pretty well: he's been injured, and recently. His left forearm aches, and under his coat and hoodie he can feel the skin pinched taut with stitches and covered with a bandage.

Taking a back seat, Lambert isn't sure he wants to know what might happen if he tries to wrest control from Tamaki right now... so he'll prompt him with directions, instead.

Go left, straight for five blocks. Can Tamaki actually understand him? They might be sharing a head right now, but Lambert isn't psychich. In any case, he tries to impress the idea of the place he's thinking of: the cat cafe he works at is downtown, about fifteen or twenty minutes' walk from here -- faster, if Tamaki runs.

They'll be safe there. Probably.

Edited 2017-07-20 03:06 (UTC)

"Enough to know you're in over your head," Lambert retorts, evenly. True, Strange may have more years of experience with magic and overall just more knowledge than Lambert does, but in this case? It's obvious that Strange is on uncertain footing as well. It would help if Strange could even complete full thoughts in his notes, but as it is...

"They're your notes. If they're ridiculous, you've only got yourself to blame." He's surprisingly nonchalant about Strange being here right now to reclaim his notes, but he's also regarding him speculatively. Seriously, what has he been doing to himself? Being turned into a cat wasn't that traumatic, surely.

"I meant your filing system is ridiculous, not my notes." Taking the stack, Strange starts to peel off Lambert's post-it notes and sort out his original text from all of Lambert's additional commentary.

"And I'm not in over my head. I've never been more sure of the course of my actions as I am now." And then, because he's tempting fate, Strange just sort of doubles over, leaning against the couch as he launches into a coughing fit.

At the sudden hacking noise, Lambert grimaces, reaching out quickly in an effort to take the notes from Strange before he does something super gross like cough all over them.

"Yeah, that totally convinces me you know what you're up to," Lambert says, dryly. "You look like puke warmed over, Strange."

Pearl smirks, mostly because she doesn't believe Strange in the least. If it was a stomach bug why on earth was he even out and about in the first place. Or perhaps she just didn't trust him at all and this was just another aspect of it. Still, he was correct about the alcohol thing. She couldn't deny that.

As he continues though the smirk begins to fade. Why would he possibly be glad to see her? They hadn't exactly parted on friendly terms, even recently. Wait...the Circle, specifically the Council, had been rather active against those in other magical communities lately. More than one of her Renegades had been harassed and she had gotten into a few altercations herself.

She crossed her arms, "Why? You haven't been looking for me, have you?"

The problem with coughing is that it's easy for people to take things from you due to the fact that you're trying not to friggen cough everywhere. Case in point, Lambert has the notes now.

"Stomach bug," lies the man who knows that Lambert saw the carefully labeled jars of poisonous plants hanging out in his kitchen. "It'll pass over soon. Besides, we're not here to talk about my health."

He's here to get his notes back so don't mind Strange as he just attempts to grab the paper back from Lambert's hands.

"Sort of?" Strange hasn't been looking for Pearl, per se, but it'll make things a lot easier now that he's actually found her. One less thing he has to do, one less person he has to worry about explaining all this nonsense to.

Still, he's back upright now as he clasps his hands behind his back and just tries his hardest to seem like someone who definitely has his life in order.

"I've formed an alliance with the Summer Court. As such, I've given up my position in the Circle." It's said so casually, as if this isn't a life changing decision that Strange isn't entirely sure if he regrets or not. He's trying his hardest to downplay this while also seem like he knows what he was doing. Of course this was a calculated decision and not a gamble he's starting to think these odd memories caused! Why would you think that? "It seems we're working together again."

Lambert's tired too, from everything else he's had to deal with so far. Luckily for him, he does have a great, renewable alternative source of energy: spite.

"Bullshit," he says flatly. Don't even try that with him, Strange, he has two younger sisters and he can smell trouble. (Perhaps even smell other things, in this case. Just how far gone is Strange, anyway?) What he lacks on height with Strange, he makes up for in strength, so while it's easy for Strange to reach for the notes, it's also easy for Lambert to hold them in one hand while he shoves Strange in the chest with the other, intending to force him to sit on the couch.

"Is poisoning yourself supposed to be part of this important context you were talking about?" Like some kind of avenging reference section angel, he taps the stack of notes with the back of his hand as he makes no secret of visibly judging Strange's life choices. "Because I really don't think that's going to help you break the spell keeping every angel, demon, and faerie stranded here."

The shove works and Strange lands back on the couch as he listens to Lambert rail on about his choices. "I'm not poisoning myself," Strange snaps, glaring up at Lambert from the couch. Well, he technically is, but that's not the end goal here. The end goal...god, he'll sound like a lunatic just by saying it!

But maybe that's the point. Maybe he needs to tell someone this. After all, Lambert's opinion of him is already pretty terrible, especially now that he knows the full extent of Childermass's binding. So fuck it! Let's tell him the truth! What's the worst that can happen? Lambert thinks he's crazy, well guess what buddy, Strange is already halfway there.

"I wish to make myself mad. The Jonathan Strange of my memories was able to accomplish so much under madness. Transfiguration, spells of travel, summoning faeries stronger than the one I summoned! If I even had half of that man's power, I'd easily be able to break the Severing. And what better way to gain his power than to repeat his actions?"

Strange is only operating on half-baked memories here. After all, he only has snippets of the English magician's life and what he could do. But even those snippets are enough to make him insanely jealous.

"You have so many questions!" she remarks. Thankfully, her patience doesn't seem to be quite running out, but it's always a possibility. "But the Court's goals are a way to pass the time, I suppose..."

"And you're thinking like a mortal. If you send your human mate to fetch something from the store, there would be some time before you become concerned about their absence. As for the angels and demons, they care mostly about the economy of mortal souls. I don't think outright ruling the universe is a requirement, though they do come from outside of it."

"Hardly a sniff compared to the real thing, though. Neither are them are the original source of their breed. They're both derivatives at the end of the day."

"So, just to ascertain that my facts are lined up correctly: This court," Peridot says like the word is unfamiliar to her, "shows up from across the multiverse one day with some grand plan to take over this realm because... glory. And you're both saying that the Severing was an effort made-- presumably by a mortal-- to neuter that plan, and cut this invasion force off from your... Homeworld or whatever. Am I on the right track here so far?"

"Yes," the Beast says, watching her with amusement.

"And where do you fit into this, exactly?" she asks bluntly. "You're just some random unaffiliated fae trapped here by circumstance?"

At the very least, Lambert has the sense to do the shoving with the arm that isn't injured -- even now, under the sleeves of his hoodie and mostly dry, it aches whenever he gets a little too worked up.

When Lambert had first begun to get an inkling of what Strange was up to, looking through his notes, he'd told Childermass he assumed it was power that Strange was after. He wasn't far off, it seems like, at least not about the core of his driving motivation. However, as far as the means to achieve it and to what purpose he'd apply that power to, apparently Lambert was dead fucking wrong.

"Let me get this straight. You want to make yourself crazy so you can get the power to break the Severing," Lambert summarizes Strange's rambling. He's getting pretty good at that now, after so much time reading the man's horrific excuse for writing.

Forget 'halfway' there, Strange is clearly already licking paint off the walls, and Lambert's calm lasts all of two seconds before he explodes.

"That makes no fucking sense!" he yells, voice echoing loudly enough off the walls of the living room to make their ears ring. That's not even how going crazy works, Strange!

Edited 2017-07-20 03:04 (UTC)

Okay, now she's a bit annoyed. She takes a step towards Peridot and flicks her finger at her.

"I already told you - I'm a Wyld Fae, and Wyld Fae don't care about colonization unless they've been forced into it by the Courts. I-" She stars strong, but then pauses. Why did she come here, again? Presumably it was for fun, at least initially...

"I was here for unrelated reasons."

Taking a step towards Peridot means taking a step towards Lambert, and he instinctively straightens, snapping out of racking his brains to frown hard at her. He'll never forget the circumstances of their first uneasy meeting, and even with the ache of his winter-inflicted injury on his arm, he's not about to let anyone flick his sister. Fae or no fae.

'Unrelated reasons,' huh? Well, he's mortal, so he probably has no frame of reference for what those reasons might be. He doesn't care about a fae's reasoning for anything, only the actions it takes.

"Are you still planning on taking out Portland's fae?" he asks her, directly, lifting his chin ever so slightly. "I know you've killed True Fae before." It doesn't really matter why -- if they decide it's fun, that's all the reason they need to decide on a course of action. Hard to imagine her doing anything of the sort like taking out a Court faerie, though, when all he's seen her do is frolic naked in the woods and spook the shit out of some cats. What is she really capable of?

"I would like to destroy the Rose Queen, yes," she says, apparently already beginning to relax from her flash of temper. Really, you should feel lucky that all she's been doing in naked frolicking. "It would make a nice feather in my cap... the only challenging part is that she has refused to leave her domain ever since the Severing, presumably out of cowardice."

Most people deal with their midlife crisis by buying a car. Jonathan Strange is dealing with his midlife crisis by going nuts.

Of course Lambert wouldn't understand--when did Lambert ever understand?! Not about the memories, not about his actions, not about the Raven King. Hell, that idiot probably didn't even know half of what was going on to begin with. Of course driving himself mad was...a bit less than ideal, but who's going to break the Severing if the Rose Queen fails? In Strange's mind, it's got to be him and if it's going to be him, he needs the power to do so.

"Honestly, considering all the crap I've had to put up for in the past month, I'm halfway there already!" Strange snaps, getting up to his feet as he just downright glares at Lambert. The ranting and raving continues as Strange just gets louder and louder. "My asshole servant's dating my wife, I've got memories of an Englishman in my head, I was a cat for twenty-four hours last week, I can't find any useful information about the Severing, said asshole servant also stole my tarot cards, I've thrown away everything I've ever worked for, and oh, if that wasn't bad enough, apparently my soul's from a different fucking universe!"

It's obvious that Strange has been wanting to get this off his chest for so long and Lambert's just the unfortunate person who's the recipient of it. Two grown men, about to get into a screaming match. Strange just glares at Lambert, a glint of madness and fervor in his eyes, as he gets in Lambert's face, pointing a finger at the man as Strange's voice rises in anger.

"So you have no right to judge me or my actions!"

[Her first instinct is to frown, and frown heavily. Her fingers clutch the straps of her bag, and she can feel some sort of shout bubbling up in her throat.

But this is one too many people approaching her, and so-] ...Make it quick.

Peridot leans back with a squeak when she steps forward, wrinkling her nose up a bit. It was just an innocent question, geez.

"The Rose Queen?" she asks, interrupting once more, having learned nothing. "I'm guessing she's the one responsible for this ill-fated invasion business... Why are you so keen on taking her out?"

Lambert?! [Her immediate thought of course is what Lambert saw recently. That horrific aftermath of a ritual-and the fact that he COULD have shared that with others.

...But it can't be about that. It can't, she assures herself, and she holds herself together, if at least to keep from seeming guilty.] ...What for?

Mmmm, you'd be surprised what SOME are calling themselves right now...it IS refreshing to hear something familiar though...

..I'll keep it in mind, [he murmurs.] As for the girl...she tends to follow drama-if you smell trouble, she'll no doubt be close behind...

Along with myself.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 21 of 40

⇨ The Tourist Trap: WEEK 3

no subject

no subject

closed to steven | sanctuary library

SORRY i forgot to add one last detail

no subject

no subject

no subject

<3

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

why is dw being weird about letting me post this.....

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject