lostcarnival | ⇨ GREYSOL

Entry tags:

⇨ GREYSOL

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.

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It's not something Lambert feels the particular need to intervene in, at the moment, though the context they're missing is frustrating. His tail -- visible to Scout's eyes -- and his daemon's are unconsciously twitching in sync, waving restlessly as the gossip filters over them. Listening pays off, though, in the opportunity to insert himself into the conversation.

"Not everyone," He'll chime in after the last speaker, stepping forward to smirk -- it's not a settling impression. "Some of use weren't here for the trial. Who was he?"

Not the smoothest entrance he could have made, but there wasn't any such thing as a smooth entrance in the cards, anyway.

At the moment people are too agitated by the violation of their most inherent taboo to be all that put off by an unusually irritable witch, but some of the ones closest to him give way.

"What, you never heard of the Greysol Killer? Made headlines as far as Lapland." Someone out of sight mutters a complaint along the lines of not like a witch would care about serial killers if their kids weren't on the line, and someone else, or possibly their dæmon, shushes them.

"And that was before they knew him for a seizer," a noodle-seller says, stirring her bubbling pot of pasta with more force than is really necessary. Draped and coiled around and around her neck and waist and shoulders as if leaching her body heat is her fifteen-foot cobra dæmon, who growls out loud at the word seizer. His voice is rough and, more to his body than anyone else, he says, "The guillotine was too good for him. He shoulda been hanged. Slowly. Not this."

There's a general murmuring, more in agreement than not. Scout shifts on her feet. She doesn't need Jedi senses to tell how upset this crowd is. "He... grabbed other people's dæmons?" she asks, just to clarify.

The noodle woman with the king cobra soul grimaces, her lips pulling back from her teeth. Her eyes and his are hard. "That's right. Makes everything easier, don't it? Do that, and then their bodies can't fight back." Her dæmon growls again.

On his shoulder, Lambert's daemon is bristling as the others speak, fur puffing up in indignation and offense though she doesn't really understand the implications any better than Lambert does. It just feels wrong, instinctively -- the idea of someone else touching her, holding her like that? She can't help rejecting it with everything she has. To anyone else, she just looks like an increasingly puffy bird.

Lambert's more concerned about what that implies for the residents of the Carnival and their daemons, though, and his gaze flicks to Scout before he looks back at the woman.

"Been a few years since the last time I was in a city, so I'm still trying to get caught up," is what Lambert says with a shrug, to the crowd in general. The mistrust is nothing new, and it seems like witches are about as popular as witchers around here. Best to put on the best poker face and get on with things.

"How long did it take before they caught him? And how'd he manage to get close enough to do that to people's daemons anyway?" As king cobra lady is proof enough of, they're not exactly defenseless.

Edited 2017-09-10 18:55 (UTC)

Scout glances at him, still hefting Tràkata, who... his massive teeth are always partially bared anyway, but they're showing more now, under the glamor. To those outsiders he's an ocellated turkey.

"Here, how d'you not know? If we had to think of everyone like they're a seizer... look around! How could we live! Not everyone settles as a bird or something tiny, you know." The woman with the cobra dæmon gestures broadly, emphatically. Everyone here has a dæmon and cannot stand to have someone else touch them, but they're standing almost as close together as dock people in a world with internal souls. The larger and more powerful dæmons which would be a great benefit in a fight against animals or other dæmons are the same ones most vulnerable to other peoples' hands. "This is what makes Greysol what it is!"

Someone else, rather than dwell on dæmon-touching, is talking before she's finished. "Took them too long!"

"If the watch had asked a witch it would've been over by the fifth one!"

"I heard they did, but she just caught a copycat."

"What?? Another seizer?"

"No, just a murderer, they didn't know what he did 'till that girl got a knife in him and went to the watch." And a general murmuring of poor girl and she's a fighter, that one and I couldn't do that. Big tattooed sailors are unafraid to admit that they would be unable to resist if their souls were seized.

Now Scout has another question. "So now that they've, um, they've taken him to the island, what are they doing with him?"

The response there is that he's being taken to live, "if you call that living", at a center or home in the outskirts of Greysol. Mentioning it seems to have a sobering or quieting effect. Lots of people took down, or at their dæmons.

If the idea's not to draw attention to themselves and blend in with the native population, they've evidently not done well at that. Lambert doesn't like the look of the crowd -- too anxious, too keyed up from recent events, and no matter how they felt about the punishment the 'seizer' deserved, still dissatisfied with the outcome.

There's a difference between a seizer and a murderer, and the former's clearly considered much worse than the latter. The reactions are interesting, even if he normally doesn't give a rat's ass about that sort of thing. He's watching the humans, but his daemon's watching the other souls on display, watching their various ways of expressing bodily discomfort as their humans continue to talk. Eventually, Lambert's gaze drifts away over the harbor, eyes picking out the shape of the island in the distance.

"I thought I saw people moving around there, earlier." From what he could gauge at this distance, the figures were obviously too small to be adults, but he's looking at how they respond. "Doesn't seem like anyone's taking them anywhere."

Some people are going and returning to their tasks, or trying. Discussion remains, mostly in smaller groups, and so does the general unease. The noodle-seller has a cart to tend and busies herself with it. Her dæmon gives Lambert and his polecat a sideeye for her, black tongue flicking.

"A witch should know about children and Spectres," the woman says, her helpfulness at an end. Greysol is a big city and full of new people, but the pacification boat frays nerves, and the strange questions aren't making anything better.

Scout's been feeling an increasing urge to leave well enough alone and doesn't want to wait for Lambert to lose his temper. She flicks her tail against the back of his leg. "Well, I found out where the victims go. Do you want to come? I'm curious about how often this happens."

Lambert doesn't jump, but it's as good a reason to turn away as any, using the excuse to hide the instinctive scowl at being called a witch, but ... enough of that.

"Might as well," Lambert murmurs back. He nods to Scout, and his daemon Hwinks at the snake, sharp little teeth flashing bright for a second before she launches herself off his shoulder -- though she doesn't go far, hovering just within the edge of what their connection can tolerate as she scans the crowed.

Thing is, a pair of witches walking down the street is something that draws a bit of attention. Curious children that aren't afraid to gawp at them do so unabashed. Lambert doesn't seem to notice, but his daemon isn't afraid to mock-swoop at people and spook them off like the little shitbird she is.

"So what'd you make of it?" Lambert asks eventually, out of the blue, when they're halfway there. "That whole mess at the harbor?"

Edited 2017-09-18 13:46 (UTC)

Scout lets Tràkata drop to the ground. He's not a very large dæmon but too heavy to carry comfortably for long. For a while he stays close, looking up at her with the alien crocodile-cat-pig version of that hurt bewildered expression she never allows herself. She glances at him, and he lowers his gaze and trots on ahead, ears up and wary, barely engaging with those bold children's souls that approach him.

The glamour makes Lambert seem slender and faintly otherworldly, and dressed in black silk garb too light for the weather; he's old enough that if he were a native witch he'd be starting to show the physical traits. Scout has the black silk going on but is still young enough to pass as a normal human. Some of the looks are attempts to figure her out; is she a witch? Is she this other one's child, even if they don't look related? Witches grow throughout their lives, if she's this tall now what's she going to look like in five hundred years, or a thousand?

Scout's tail flicks and she grimaces. "I don't have a comeback here. That was bad. It's like a vampire had been at him - a real vampire, I mean, not a blood-drinker." 'Vampires' to Scout will always mean Anzati. "Or like when someone removes a brain but leaves enough in there that it keeps breathing."

"And they let the things on that island do it to him." Lambert concludes. His tone isn't angry, exactly. Just flat and matter of fact. Witchers don't really take care of things like serial killers unless they're of a supernatural bent, and it's hard to get invested in the desire for justice in a community he'll never be a part of.

What he does care about is what that means for the Carnival being here. "Does anyone come back from that, where you're from? Losing your mind that way."

"Yup. People do some harsh things in the name of justice," Scout says, shrugging to show she totally has first hand experience with those. She doesn't. Lots of second hand accounts though, and of course, back in the galaxy far away from here she's extremely illegal and really doesn't want to be discovered by authority. "They're so bothered about, uh, 'seizing', I have to wonder if accidental contact even ever happens."

She slows a moment, her hooved toes tapping on the ground under the glamor. "It... depends. Partly on how much damage there was. We've got better technology, on some worlds. Especially compared to here. You can make a new brain, one way or another - you know, cloning, or putting little machines in the skull."

"But that's not really the same person," she concludes, her tail swishing again. "Brains are complicated and even really good rebuilding can't just put everything back like it was."

Edited 2017-09-24 05:39 (UTC)

Look at Lambert's expression. Look how incredibly excited he looks to hear all this information.

"As interesting as it would be to find out if Zecora can make a new brain with magic, I'd rather not test that theory the hard way," he says, dryly. "Guess we'd better stay away from the island."

Though he is curious about that island, an earlier attempt to get closer had proven remarkably unpleasant. Lambert isn't eager to repeat the experience, but he would like to understand what's causing it, and if there's a way to circumvent it ... but between the two of them and the swiftness of their movement, it won't be long before they reach their destination, and that musing will have to wait another time.

"Oh, I could go on," she says, immediately starting to perk up. Her dæmon snorts. "All the places you need to take a tissue sample from if you want to clone a human. The way you clean the samples of nontarget DNA, the ongoing debate on why making a brain grow too fast gets it all crazy later, the nine million different brands of nutrient solution. So compelling."

She really doesn't know all that much. Are there nine million brands? Scout has no idea.

In one way it's pretty easy to see which roads the cart took. There's a higher percentage of people standing around talking and looking uneasy. At least that also means it's easier to get through crowds, even ones with a bunch of dæmons. The dæmons, at least, seem very aware of where other people are at any time and pull out of the way.

The destination, in any case, is a manor house that has seen better days. Paint is peeling. Cobblestones are missing in the street. The grass beyond the wrought iron fence has needed a trim for about a week, though a very regular path has been trampled out from the porch to a gazebo where several people are sitting very, very still, clearly not noticing or caring that the wagon has come and the staff have come out to smoke and talk around it.

A placard at the gate proclaims that this is the SANITORIUM FOR THE SURVIVORS OF SPECTRE ATTACKS, and under that in similar lettering MAY GOD CHERISH THEIR SOULS. A box set besides the gate says DONATIONS WELCOME.

"Well, that's depressing," Scout comments. The fence is making her uneasy. With a note of dismay she realizes she's probably too changed now to be able to hold iron and be untouched by it.

"Good to know people are creative enough to fuck themselves up in any universe," is what Lambert answers, shrugging. From the sound of Scout's world, there are probably things worse than witchers.

Once they arrive at the ever-so-cheery manor, Lambert frowns. It's surprising that there's a place like this at all (not a place that lets village idiots wander around in the street, then) and he isn't sure what to make of it; he breathes in, trying to pick up on what scent can tell him about the place besides mildew and sweat. A touch of his fingers to the medallion his neck focuses his attention as he searches for any trace of magic on the premises, but he isn't expecting to pick up much. Greysol has been remarkably disappointing in that regard.

The fence, though -- Celandine's fur puffs up, and Lambert grimaces. He can feel that, even standing away from it. So much time at the Carnival, which is assuredly iron-free, has almost made him forget, but ... after how much change he's undergone in such a short amount of time, he can immediately guess the unpleasant consequences for coming into contact with it.

"Come on," he murmurs. "Let's keep going." He steps past the open gate, schooling his expression against showing the shiver of revulsion.

A few of the staff, gathered around the wagon now, have dæmons in water bubbles, one of them a narwhal, awkwardly huge overhead, long spiral tusk poking out into open air. That's the biggest and most obvious magic on the premises, though there are smaller traces here and there.

The manor is scrupulously clean. Cheap soap and equally cheap flowers. Even dæmons in the forms of particularly smelly animals don't smell like animals, but scent adheres to their fur or scales or feathers like it would to anything, so they tend to smell like the places they've been and what they've been doing.

Scout scowls passing by the gate. Back when she'd signed back on she'd still been able to touch and hold iron, even if it had been unpleasant. She's not getting a sense of impending doom, though. Extending her senses, the staff reads as people, like normal. The ones on the lawn don't. They don't have presences like even animals do, but the sense of a very bad thing happened here clings to each and every one of them. Tràkata's mane starts bristling out and he presses close to Scout again. She makes herself head closer to them.

Coming from worlds without dæmons the fact that each and every one of the people on the gazebo is alone isn't as jarringly apparent to Scout or Lambert as it would be to the locals. But there's very clearly something wrong with them. They're not staring at nothing, their gazes sometimes wander a bit, but they are utterly, completely passive. Slack.

The closest is a woman with a kind of odd face. Her tied back hair is gray and becoming sparse, her skin is thin and dry nad has gathered under her chin, she's got the enlarged nose and ears that elderly people get sometimes, but she has no wrinkles at all. Like all the others her neck and arms are stick-thin, as much as can be seen through the threadbare outfit she's been put in.

At Scout's nudge Tràkata ranges ahead again, visibly unhappy, and jumps up into the gazebo. The click of his claws on the wood in this quiet place makes one of the people move, enough to look slowly at him without any curiosity. Their eyes track movement without interest or comprehension. Tràkata flinches and moves at a skulk, avoiding them while sniffing around.

"I regret coming here," Scout mutters, rubbing one arm with her other hand.

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⇨ GREYSOL

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chalk one up for 'tags i didn't hit post comment on'

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