⇨ 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

[kingsroads]

"Of course it matters," Strange responds, with a little shrug. "With one of those forms, it's easier to open jars." Of course, there's much more to the difference between bears and people and there's just as much more difference between a change leftover from Portland and a change granted by the Ringmaster. But if Foster doesn't want to talk about Portland, then Strange will happily oblige and straight up ignore that part of his question.

"I used to be able to change," the seal adds in, with a little nod. "Daemons do that when they're younger, you know. I was a horse for a bit--that was fun! But I've decided what I want to be so I'm going to stay put and Jonathan can't do anything about it!" That last sentence is said in a very familiar smug tone of voice: the same smugness that Strange gets whenever he's showing off magic.

Yep. This is 100% his daemon.

[criticallyfucked]

If Foster were not exactly the person that fate made him, he would already be lost in this conversation.

But Foster is... well, himself. And he has, for a large number of reasons, spent a lot of time thinking about the nature of souls.

So it makes perfect sense to him. Souls are malleable, subject to outside influences and their own natures. But you can't manipulate your own soul, or--the idea is honestly borderline hilarious--change it yourself.

".... no, he can't." Foster lifts his gaze from the seal to stare rather... pointedly at Strange, making uncomfortably long, intense eye contact. It's a little less uncanny coming from a bear, at least.

"Anyway, even if I could influence something like this, I'd probably result in turning you into a leech or worm or something even more revolting...!" A cockroach, maybe. A tapeworm.

[kingsroads]

"I doubt it," Strange remarks, with a sigh either ignoring or simply being oblivious to Foster's entire everything. "It seems most daemons here turn into something people weren't expecting." His seal. Lambert's polecat. Carly's snake. So many daemons didn't fit their other half at first glance--it's only when you started digging further that the similarities started to show.

And now it's his turn to stare pointedly at Foster, with a frown on his face. Foster expected a daemon influenced by him to be a leech, so naturally it wouldn't be a leech. What's the most un-Foster like animal he can think of?

"If you influenced her, I think she'd become a rabbit. Or perhaps a chinchilla!"

[criticallyfucked]

If Strange hadn't prefaced that claim with a statement about becoming the unexpected, Foster would have become swiftly upset about it. Instead, he... thinks about it. Rabbits. He has some experience with them, but it's almost entirely necromantic.

Thinking past that... past the pet bunny idea....

Rabbits are associated with madness... and reproduction. Sex. Rabbits are insatiable procreators. They scream. And they're raised--farmed for their flesh and fur. Meat. Useful only when dead. Valuable for their deaths, their postmortem. He's starting to see it: the possibility, the meaning....!

Except.

"A chilla... what?"

He's drooling slightly, though, bear saliva thicker than human spittle and hanging in a long wet string from his black ursine lip.

[kingsroads]

"A chinchilla!" Strange brightly responds before he starts to yammer on again. "I've never actually seen a live one myself, though I believe there's a stuffed one at the British museum. They're small, rodent like animals that live in the Andes Mountains. Their fur is apparently exquisitely soft."

Which is the reason why he suggested it as an un-Foster like animal to begin with. Something small, fuzzy, cute, and famous for it's softness? A perfect antithesis to Foster, a person that seemed to be composed entirely of rough edges.

"Oh damn," his daemon complains, letting out a small sigh from Strange's side. "You should have mentioned that earlier, when I was still changing! I could have at least TRIED the form to see if it fits."

Dear Foster: Rabbits aren't rodents. No love, your creator.

[criticallyfucked]

So even at his most generous, Strange still thinks of him as a rodent.

But not a worthless rodent, no. One valuable for the byproduct of its mortality, birthed and raised specifically to profit from its demise.

It makes perfect sense. So much so that Foster misses the seal's whinging entirely, so caught up is he in how transparently, how absolutely Strange gets him.

But he figures it out after a few seconds.

"Why would you want that," he laughs, equal parts excited and embittered--again addressing Strange and daemon simultaneously, as though the clear division in knowledge and temperament hadn't just been demonstrated.

"Uplifted to captivity! An elevated vermin! Mere farmed commodity, at its most desirable when already dead."

[kingsroads]

"I'd want to see what the fur feels like," Strange answers, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world. "She'd probably settle on a seal shape anyway."

If his daemon's already decided to stay a seal, this soon into their stay here, Strange has a feeling that adding one more rodent shape to the mix wouldn't change much.

"Besides, it's something new! Everyone enjoys trying new things, whether it's magic or shapes."

[criticallyfucked]

Foster stares at Strange benignly, letting the intended impact of 'everyone enjoys trying new things' sink in.

It's... a longer moment than is entirely appropriate, but he's trying to think of something, anything that he enjoyed trying for the first time. Does necromancy count? He was so excited for that first success.... he doesn't remember what it felt like, but he remembered that it happened. Then again, he never pursued magic out of interest in magic itself. The fact that it's been consistently available to him when he needs it is completely divorced from his original motive.

So does it count?

Probably not, he decides.

But it's not Strange's fault that he can't relate. 'Everyone' is a category that has basically never applied to Foster in any way, which has made him fairly confident in his designation as 'no one.'

Finally he turns to look at the seal, and what he says at the end of that awkward silence is just, "is that so?"

[kingsroads]

Strange pauses for a moment, as if waiting for Foster to answer. After a few seconds have passed and no response from Foster, he frowns...then just kind of rudely starts up a whispered conversation with Siobhan. The two manage to get a bit of a back and forth about her shape and really, she shouldn't be a seal, she should be something else—

But then Foster says something. And the awkward situation just becomes a bit more awkward because Strange has kind of forgotten about what they're talking about in the first place. "Is what so?"

Siobhan, thankfully, picks up the slack. "Oh! Trying new things! Of course everybody enjoys doing that, doing the same thing over and over again is boring."

[criticallyfucked]

"If you live long enough," Foster amends. From anyone else that'd probably be pretty dire sounding, and really, it isn't not dire, it's just... congenially so.

"Spontaneity is predicated on the assumption of freedom, right? It's the same thing."

Foster, that probably only made sense to you and.... literally no one else. But hey, at least he's not comparing himself to leeches or livestock any more.

[kingsroads]

"Perhaps?" That doesn't really make sense but alright, Strange can work with this! Besides, this is Foster. Not making sense seems to be a logical point that conversations with him turn.

"Personally, I think it's predicted on the assumption of choices. After all, how can one be spontaneous when there's nothing to be spontaneous against? Some paths can be damn hard to deviate from."

Sorry, the plot BLEW UP.

[criticallyfucked]

What Strange seems to be proposing is that freedom and choice are not the same thing. Which... sounds almost counterintuitive, but it's not. Foster grasps that much instantly. Imminent death, for example. It frees you from a lot of things, but it also entirely removes the possibility of choice.

Well. It might leave you one choice.

The most important choice you can have--but only if you don't have any others.

"How do you know it's deviation?" He ruminates. "Not seeing the connection doesn't mean it wasn't the same path." Then, suddenly, he laughs.

"--all roads lead to the same destination!"

[kingsroads]

One can have multiple options to choose from but what if they all lead to the same result? Choices, yes, but not freedom. Though it seems Foster is thinking along slightly the same track.

"At least in my hypothetical, they do," Strange responds with an idle shrug. "Obviously this isn't true for reality."

After all, the road to learning magic would take you on a vastly different journey than the road to damning magic.