lostcarnival | ⇨ 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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[A. Wake up, now you're in half]

Sora liked to sleep. In fact, it would probably be accurate to say that, after his friends and also possibly food, sleeping was his favorite thing ever. He would probably sleep twenty hours a day if he were allowed, and if he wasn't out saving the world or helping with carnival stuff and whatnot.

So being forced to wake up at the crack of dawn is not Sora's idea of a good time, despite the furry creature batting at his nose. Assuming it's merely Sparky the Shinx, Sora tries to shove him away and roll over. Maybe if he's lucky, he can grab a few more hours of sleep...

"Hey! Don't ignore me! Wake up, you lazy bum!"

Now that got Sora to open his eyes. For one thing, Sparky didn't talk. And for another, Sparky was currently across the room, sitting in the sink and grooming his paws, rather than shouting in his ear. He flips back over, only to be faced with a cat with blue eyes that matched his own, who looked like he wanted to eat Sora's face for ignoring him.

"So are you alive or what?"

"Wah!" Sora responds, promptly falling out of the bed. It's a good job he's on the bottom bunk, really.

Once he is properly awake, though, he'll wander outside with not one, but two animals following him around as he tries to figure out what's going on. Sparky and Rohan seem to get along like two peas in a pod, at least, though Rohan continuously flits about from shape to shape...

[B. And now your other half has a mind of its own]

It quickly becomes apparent to Sora that he's one of the few carnival members whose animal companion (daemon?) refuses to settle into one shape. In fact, he's the eldest of the 'kids' that this seems to be happening to. Heck, some of the kids younger than him have even had their daemons settle! Does the universe not think he's mature enough or something?

...Well, they'd probably be right, actually. Besides, it's kind of interesting having Rohan constantly shifting. It keeps him on his toes or something.

Still, settling seems like it's a big deal here, and Sora feels a little bit out of place attending a settling party when Rohan hasn't settled. He'll be making a beeline to any familiar faces and trying to strike up a conversation.

[C. Wildcard]

Sora'll be wandering around the city, not really doing much of anything for the first few days. After a bit of goading, he'll start looking into Kerner Island, and might even be willing to go check it out...

Edited 2017-09-09 03:28 (UTC)

Hinawa is sort of getting the hang of this daemon business. She's an adult, so Mortimer has stopped changing shape. The carnival's youngsters, however, have daemons that keep shifting. Of course, it doesn't occur to her that some of them might be a little insecure about their unsettled companions, especially at the party.

"Hello~!" She greets Sora cheerfully, Mortimer's huge frame towering over them. "Has your little friend turned into anything interesting today?"

"Hi, Hinawa," Sora replies, mimicking her cheerfulness. "Um, I dunno about interesting. He has a few different things he sticks to."

Rohan, currently a wolf, bounds up behind Sora and nudges his hand gently. "I just know what I like, is all."

"Yeah."

"Ah!" The massive elephant behind Hinawa chimes in. "The majestic wolf! There's a lot to be said for the canine family. Why, I remember the time I was a bloodhound..."

"Mortimer, that was yesterday," Hinawa reminds him before turning back to Sora. "Don't mind him."

Sora laughs, scratching Rohan behind the ears. And elephant is not what he would have expected for someone as quiet as Hinawa, especially one so boisterous, but then, he doesn't know her well enough to judge.

"It's fine," he replies. "This must be a really big change for all of us, I guess."

"It is!" Hinawa nods. "But I'm glad that everyone looks like they're getting used to it. What do you two think you'll end up as, do you wonder?"

"Have you considered a grand and distinguished elephant, perhaps?" Mortimer boasts, flapping his ears. Hinawa just rolls her eyes.

Rohan makes a face as best he can in cat form, and Sora giggles again.

"Not an elephant, that's for sure!"

"It seems like Rohan likes fuzzy things more," Sora adds quickly. "He's mostly been cats and wolves and stuff so far."

⇨ GREYSOL

Sora | ota

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