⇨ The Tourist Trap: WEEK 3

[ringleaders]

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.

Comments

[control_freak]

Well, between Foster and Peridot, we have both a mage and a warlock.

Peridot is apparently going to be sceptical/put off by this guy's ramblings, but Foster is a lot more generous with this kind of shit, which is probably because he's a walking conspiracy theory anyway.

Assuming that they are able to commune with this Earth Spirit as intended, would they be able to tell if the spell in question was demonic or mage in origin? I.E. could they either identify or rule out those possibilities specifically?

[ringleaders]

Yeah, that's possible. Bull Guy will claim that it was definitely mages but that's just because a lot of older werebeasts have a hate on for mages in general. He says that his attempt to do the same was inconclusive, but HE'S ON TO THEM.

[periphrasing]

Peridot isn't super convinced of the mage angle (personally she's blaming the demons, because she knows nothing about them and. They're evil, right? Must be them), but she and foster are going to obtain this book, read it, and attempt to commune with the earth spirit themselves, hoping they can come up with something a bit more conclusive. If they can't figure out the spell's origins, Peridot at least wants to see if she can identify what the purpose or the function of the spell is.

Before they depart the bull man's company, she's also going to ask him if, to his knowledge, the Earth Spirit potentially has to do anything with planes and multiverses, or if it's tied to just this one world.

[ringleaders]

The Earth Spirit is specifically tied to this planet, he'll say, with great confidence. It's nothing to do with heaven or hell or anything like that. It belongs to Earth, and they all need to respect it.

Good luck with learning how to commune, Peridot. It's essentially like learning how to have an out of body experience via meditation.

[periphrasing]

Yeah neither of them are going to be particularly good at this... but both of them are too damn stubborn to give in right there, so they're definitely still trying. Miko has been called in to assist as well. Three heads are better than two?

Following her conversation with The Beast, and the NUMEROUS questions it left Peridot with, she's absolutely determined to make this work, even willing to entertain spiritual trains of thought that she would outright scoff at otherwise. It takes a lot of idiotic animal shenanigans to get more in touch with their beastly sides (for Peridot specifically that means: eating fig newtons out of the trash, making tents out of leaves, hanging upside down... you know. BAT STUFF), but Peridot, at the very least, will eventually manage to induce a tentative trance.