⇨ GREYSOL

[ringleaders]

Who: Everyone!
When: Day 155 - Day 169
Where: Greysol
What: The carnival resumes its tour, this time heading to Greysol, a city tied deeply into the fabric of the multiverse. Here, everyone has an animal companion from birth that is the second half of their soul - and thanks to the Ringmaster, so do you. (Remember, joysweeper is our guest event runner for this location, and location specific questions should go to them.)
Warnings: Individually marked!

THE CITY OF GREYSOL↴ The carnival arrives in a manicured park in the center of a big city that sprawls out along where the river reaches the ocean. It’s spring, early enough that nights are chilly, warm enough in the days that people and their souls savor the weather, and sometimes shelter together from the rain. Greysol was designed from the bottom up to accommodate the human-dæmon bond. Go out and see! ► THE SHAPE OF YOUR SOUL: The dæmon-forming spell kicks in at about four in the morning. Most characters will wake up with their souls in some small form, curled against them. Even if they were awake, they became dazed and unfocused while their souls were being drawn out of their bodies and have little memory of how it happened. Until that evening every character's dæmon is able to change shapes, and children and some teens will continue to do so. Most will settle on their permanent forms by evening. Characters without dæmons will just look on, and the few who are thousand-pound bears have to handle being really big. ► IT’S GOOD TO SETTLE: Elaine Tavis Aracari, sixteen-year-old daughter of two actors and a moving pictures sensation herself, just ‘settled’ - her dæmon Tavis stopped changing shape - as a stunning blue peacock. Settling is a major coming of age milestone and celebrated as such in different ways all over the world. She and her family are throwing a massive party in the central park and inviting the public to join in! Enjoy easy access to free catering, live music and showings of moving pictures, and displays of mostly trivial magic. There are also form readers from across the country setting up booths, happy to accept a small fee to inspect your dæmon’s settled or most favored forms and tell you what they mean. Is there anything to these analyses? Eh, maybe, but they’re flattering and fun. ► WITCHING HOURS: Characters who are clearly witches for this event will often be assumed to be in town for a lover, and people, witches and not, may want to know who that is. Humans usually regard them with wary respect and interest. Real witches living with their human families or on business quickly suspect that something’s up, but without clear and present danger take a relaxed wait-and-see attitude. Wait for long enough and any possible decision will come around again, they believe. There isn’t time to learn much witch magic, but witches, real and carnival-made, have an inherent power: the ability to fly using branches of “cloudpine”, an attractive soft-needled tree common in the park. Witches usually ride large branches as if they’re steeds but can use even short sprays, and you’ll probably see the few witches in the city coming to the park to do so. Why not try? ► BEAR PUN: Human-panserbjørn relations have historically been troubled, but have warmed in the past century. It’s the 65th anniversary of the breaking of the Siege of Bertin, a much-mythologized time when Spectres flooded Greysol and a company of panserbjørn arrived and directed efforts to get the survivors out of the city. A statue is being erected and many florid accounts of the story are being told. If you’re in a panserbjørn shape for the duration of the visit you will probably get thanked and celebrated by people trying to hide their nervousness of you. Expect someone to ask if your dæmon would be a human - it’s a common supposition. ► KERNER ISLAND: From the harbor you can see a wooded island. Although there are no rocks to speak of it sports a tall lighthouse, and nearly all boat traffic avoids it carefully. On a clear day someone with binoculars or a particularly sharp-eyed soul can see loads of trash, birds and various other animals that don’t seem local, and… children? Adults and settled teenagers will see tall vague shapes moving about too. When asked about it the most important thing adults will tell other adults is don’t go there. They’ll hold their dæmons close and tell you that on that island are things that eat souls. They may also admit with mixed pride and shame that it’s been a source of wealth and innovation for the city. There’s a facility there that can open windows into other worlds, and the children who can reach it can cross through and bring things back. Many of the children are recruited by research and development teams on the lookout for items they can use, but there are also kids out to have adventures or who’ve run away. More on this later.

Comments

Lapis Lazuli OTA

[mirrortide]

[For Peridot:]

Lapis, as usual, is napping peacefully in the hammock, with soft, aggressive snores every now and again.

Right up until the glamour takes hold, and there's a loud sound of something large hitting the trailer floor with some force, followed by a mix of a snarl, a surprised noise and Lapis' voice yelling.

[Movie Night]

There's a small comfort of familiarity to watching movies when you've suddenly become a thousand pound bear. Even if it's in open air, it's not like she can shift off the glamour, and it's too much to shapeshift off in the first place. So Lapis sits to the best of her ability, head in one massive paw as she watches the moving screens. Thankfully with all the fur, the nights aren't even remotely chilly, and she's more or less disinclined to move from her now favoured spot. She also has zero problems with making loud commentary as she watches.

"Seriously? She could have moved over on the that raft. There's more than enough space for both of them. At the very least she could have held onto him, or they could have taken turns." She snorts indignantly, clearly offended by Greysol's rendition of The Titanic. "And who keeps playing music as a ships going down? Great idea there."

[Harbour Docks]

Lapis sits on the edge of the docks eyeing Kerner Island. It's a clear day, and she can see some trash littered about the island. From what she can tell, most of it is junk, but some of it she's sure might be useful in making new Morp pieces. It wouldn't be hard to get there, it looks like a short enough swim. An even shorter swim if she decides to use her water powers to manipulate it and just push her down there.

On the other hand, should she really be going down there without someone like Peridot? Surely the other gem would want some of the things scattered about too. Besides, it seems like only humans are affected by whatever it is on the island? And less so human children. So clearly her, as a bear, should be able to go grab some junk and bring it back, right? Right.

She turns to whoever it is who happens to be next to her. "Hey, do you know if there are any boats that go there?" She points with her entire arm.

[Wildcard]
lets face it im not great at top levels

Harbour Docks!

[soft_focus]

Reira at this point has yet to successfully locate 'Seagull Kid' to take her across right now-she has plenty of change ready to offer anyone (That She Stole), and even a fancy amber telescope of some kind, but a ticket to the island? Nooooope.

The fact that her daemon changes shape every thirty or so seconds might just have something to do with that however. Just a few of the forms Lapis might catch are-tiny white lion cub, black rat, multi-'horned' sea slug, and.... It's questionable what the last one is, but like anything, it moves on while Reira focuses on answering the comparatively gargantuan polar bear.

She may just be as big as Lapis' head. Maybe a little bigger-exaggerations could be happening. "....There's a lot of boats, but they all said they don't go all the way there. ...They said they couldn't do that, or something bad would happen..."

Y'know, like. Death. Mostly death. Bad stuff.

[mirrortide]

She squints a little at the answer she receives, and then at the daemon constantly changing shape, and gives a little bit of a huff, and waves a gigantic paw around dismissively. "What's the point of telling everyone about the island if they don't even have a way there?" Swimming is beginning to seem like the only course of action. Only because she doesn't know exactly how well flying would work in her current form.

[soft_focus]

"They said they can take people close enough to swim... ...but that's all they said before they told me they can't bring me, I guess." 'I guess' meaning that they told her she couldn't come, and that was that. But she'll find a work around, probably.

"...Do you think the things that are supposed to be there won't see you since you're a bear?" she asks as well, staring a little curiously. She knew already that just being a giant bear could APPARENTLY happen, but. Well.

She's a little unclear on the details when it comes to what that actually means. "The people on the boats said I couldn't go, since my daemon keeps changing... ...I tried to say it means they can change to what's important, but they didn't listen..." She doesn't sound especially upset about that, so much as upset with the people manning the ships. What kind of people don't trust little kids with these things! BAH!

[mirrortide]

"How should I know? It's not like I'm from here." And she's not normally a polar bear either. "And I have no idea what any of that means." Said with a tone that clearly says she's not interested in it either. "I don't see how that thing is supposed to be able to protect you, so they're probably right." She jabs a claw at the currently black rat.

Yes, she'll absolutely physically jab it if she can. Does she know it's rude to touch someones apparent soul? Probably. Does she care? Not in the least.

[soft_focus]

"I just thought someone would explain how being a bear works if you turned into one. ...Is it weird?" she asks, not paying any attention to the jabbing 'attack'. The daemon is very quickly avoiding that claw on their own, suffice to say-easy to do when it can just scoot down into a beetle shape-but rather than wait out the thirty seconds to hold form, it quickly scoots back around into a much...larger 'juvenile' of some kind, some sort of dragon.

"...They just have to turn into something that's good at it, it's not that hard," she grumbles. The form shifts into yet another 'young' but large thing, seeing fit to use appearances as their defense.

[mirrortide]

Reira's first mistake is thinking that Lapis would stick around long enough to let anyone other than Peridot or Steven lecture her on how to be a bear. And Reira's question is quickly ignored in favour of trying to continue jabbing at the daemon. If it had stayed a beetle it might not have earned her more focused attention, but now it's something interesting.

"I have no clue if it'd be good at defending, but it looks stupid, that's for sure." Nice, Lapis. Just insult someones soul. It's fine.

[soft_focus]

She's probably heard worst. Former galactic thorn thing is briefly a floating monstermouth gnashing its teeth, followed by something with an axe for a head...

"...We don't have to look good to fight. We just have to fight," Reira decides plainly. "...It's about fighting, not looking good." She shrugs.

"...I can feel when things are coming closer anyway."

[mirrortide]

With the daemon shifting again and again, her attempts at prodding slowly turn into outright trying to smack the thing, before she realizes that Steven probably wouldn't approve of her trying to slap someone's soul like it's a piñata. Not because she's aware that it's rude or could probably really hurt to get soul slapped by a giant bear.

"If it can change shape it might as well change into something that doesn't look stupid."

Docks

[criticallyfucked]

Foster... is not the bear to ask. He'd actually settled down by Lapis specifically because she was a bear, and he'd very quickly determined that these bears were..... easy to exist around. They were quiet, stoic to the point of being blatantly dispassionate. It was... kind of unreal, to Foster, that something like that should be allowed.

So he's a little startled by Lapis' sudden question--then it makes him laugh.

"You're from the carnival, too."

[mirrortide]

Hey now, Lapis is absolutely dispassionate about most things. Just not when it comes to junk that she can salvage for Morps.

"And so are you, I take it." Because being called out like that might be a moment of Oh No My Cover Is Blown for some people, but for Lapis.... well, she just really doesn't care. It'll come back to bite her in the ass. Eventually.

[criticallyfucked]

Well, if her cover is blown, then so is his. But maybe it takes someone more actively emotive than... well, than the kind of person who becomes a panserbjorn to be bothered, because he doesn't care either.

"Anyway, why do you need a boat?" He looks out over the water, raising one paw in the most noncommital gesture possible. "You could just swim."

[mirrortide]

"It'd be hard to get all that stuff back here while swimming." Lapis answers with the bear equivalent of a shrug. Sure, she could literally stuff everything in a pocket of water and drag it back, but that also might break some things. "The boat is more or less to hold all the stuff I want to bring back."

[criticallyfucked]

Foster... thinks about that. He thinks probably a little harder than is specifically necessary, but Lapis' very presence makes it even harder to put things in order. Still, it doesn't sound right--like there's something about this that should have an answer.

If Lapis is willing to be patient for a moment long, he finally gets it.

"Why can't you just tow one with your teeth?"

[mirrortide]

Unfortunately, therein lies the problem, Foster. "I still need a boat to begin with." The problem is that to get a boat she either needs to borrow one (steal it) or menace someone into letting her borrow one. Both are probably options that would make both Peridot and Steven upset. Especially seeing as how no one really wants to go to the island in the first place.

You didn't TELL me I made a typo!!!! Also oh god Foster.

[criticallyfucked]

Here's the thing. Foster has... approximately no reason to care about his own choices or their consequences--who's going to hold a bear with brain damage responsible for his actions? Who's going to hold him responsible in a way that matters?

So Lapis is going to need to tell Foster why she can't just take a boat... or he's just going to get up, the way he is right now, and shake the salt spray out of his pelt.

"I can fix that."

Movie Night

[prazerbutterfly]

It's horrible. This is the first movie he's ever seen.

While he's a little enchanted by the notion of a picture show actually moving more than just a slide show the current bear half ruining his experience is making decent points. It makes him wonder if all of them are like this. Predictable, somewhat enjoyable and yet antagonistically simple.

"I have found in the past that people enjoy a more dramatic ending to any story instead of one that is more logical. Given his love for her and her need for survival it played out as best as I would have expected. Then again, I have never seen one of... these." He's not sure what to call it. He had heard of a 'moving picture' when someone filmed a horse galloping on screen but nothing like this.

hey there stranger

[mirrortide]

Said bear gives a snort. "It's a movie. Humans have made a bunch of them. Some are significantly better than others." This being definitely not the case. "Besides there being more than enough room, they're apparently trying to tell me that there was nothing else on the boat that was sinking that could float." This time, Lapis scoffs. Which is probably more like a growl, considering she's a bear.

sup figured I'd squeeze my way in here somehow

[prazerbutterfly]

The way she says human makes him feel she is not. He says nothing to it but nods his head as he settles in a sit nearby. Don't mind if he gets up and personal and invades a bit of space. He's quite invasive in nature. "If one was human and in that sort of water one would freeze in a matter of minutes to the point of disrepair. As pampered as she seemed to be I doubt she could find the strength to look for something else. Then again, you're right. There were lots of paddles and broken pieces they could've snared other float-able objects with."

not allowed go away!!!

[mirrortide]

Lapis does eye him carefully, and if he moves anywhere within her considerably large personal bubble, she'll be the first to move away. She likes her space, and that's about the only nonverbal warning he'll get about it.

"And another thing, shouldn't the life boats have been close by? I get that some humans can't swim," And none of them can survive being under water for very long, "but seriously? There weren't any around for what, at least a half hour after that?"

tooo late. you're infected now

[prazerbutterfly]

It's a very good thing then that Tyki does well at reading body language and when the large bear moves he won't follow. He'll give her the space she desires as if to further please her.

"I can't say I've had the luxury of boarding such a vessel. The best I've ever seen is a river boat." He leans forward as his hat is set aside and he'll tuck his cheek into his hand as he leans against it. "That's the thing, m'lady. Humans are self serving. Most of them won't hesitate to save themselves first over others. Fear likely drove them quite a distance. " While he's not human he himself wouldn't lend a hand to help unless it was someone important to him.

Morticia, the large panther at his side, settles into his back and gives a huff at his wording, It takes a special soul to do otherwise.

m'lady holy shit

[mirrortide]

"I was on a fishing boat once." And that sums up all of her extensive boating knowledge. "If you say so. I don't know too much about humans." So she'll take his word for it. She knows three humans back home, and she's closest to the one who's only half human. Naturally.

She really doesn't mind Greg so much, though. Andy was definitely iffy at first.

She leans on her elbow, face into a paw, looking rather bored for a bear. "It's Lapis, by the way." What even is a 'M'lady'?

manners. he has them.

[prazerbutterfly]

Ah, fishing. He could talk all day about fishing but he won't. "They are fascinating creatures but a lot of them are the same. The way that man tried to drag one of the others underwater is quite accurate."

He pities them in a way yet enjoys their lifelong struggle. He's almost sympathetic but not enough not to kill them in the end.

"Like the precious stone? A pleasure to meet you, Miss Lapis. I am Tyki Mikk." There, he corrected himself.

[periphrasing]

For starters, Peridot just about lost her own damn mind when she came to and found an equally groggy looking badger sprawled across her chest. Then the badger had turned into some kind of gecko without warning, and then Lapis had started shouting from the other room--

When Peridot emerges she looks frazzled, concerned about her own situation but also worried about the sounds of distress coming from her friend. Her daemon is now a chameleon that is perched on her shoulder, as she pokes her head out to the living room where Lapis can be usually found in her hammock.

"Lapis!? LAPIS, what happened, are you--"

Freeze. She stares. What the hell is that.

[mirrortide]

It's huge. It's white (and slightly cyan). It's bear shaped.

It definitely hit its head off of one of the more solid morps on the way down, and is currently nursing what would probably be a concussion for any normal human. Thankfully polar bears have significantly thicker skulls.

"It's fine. The hammock just snapped for some reason." And it's Lapis. Who doesn't seem to have clued in exactly what's happened yet.