⇨ 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

[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."

8) now its there forever and ever....

[mirrortide]

He gets up... and Lapis fixes him with a raised bear eyebrow. Thankfully if someone steals for her, it's clearly not her doing. So she can't be at fault for it. It makes perfect and logical sense.

"What are you doing?"

You FIEND

[criticallyfucked]

Foster doesn't answer, in large part because he doesn't hear her. Or he does, but listening to someone and responding to them while thinking about and actively doing something else entirely is a pretty ambitious request, and frankly, Lapis is uncommonly lucky that he took it upon himself to do anything at all.

'Helpful' is not a word commonly associated with Foster van Denend, and 'charitable' is about as close to an antonym with his name as you can get without being outright rude.

So it's not exactly surprising when he effectively outright ditches her, stepping off the harbour pier as soon as he's over water shallow enough to wade in and heading off along the short with an obvious sense of purpose.

[mirrortide]

"Uh." Where is he going??? Lapis sort of squints after him for a long moment before getting up herself. Not to follow him, mind you. A ditched conversation is as good as an ended conversation, ergo, they are absolutely done here.

Besides, Lapis can get into more trouble on her own. There's a few things she hasn't looked into yet.

Hopefully he doesn't plan on coming back, because Lapis is going to be Gone.