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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The panthac's eyes are small and deep-set, proportioned like those of a much larger animal. They're a pale blue, almost white, out of place compared to his general warm color scheme, and whether it's a panthac thing or just a Scout's dæmon thing they have a melancholy cast.

"If we don't push ourselves, we'll fall behind. It's taken weeks just to make up for Portland." A month of a haphazard diet and nothing more than occasional tai chi and frequent long walks left Scout sure she was out of shape - and compared to her usual condition, she wasn't wrong.

Tràkata snorts. "That was careless of us, wasn't it? Too many hints. I don't..." He shifts position, stares at Celandine for a moment. The polecat is still a part of Lambert, with or without that question she'd just asked. "I want to tell you, but I need it to not be a joke."

"You train or you die. And sometimes, you still die." The polecat nods, matter-of-fact, like she can accept that as motivation readily enough.

But as for the rest of it ... since she is a part of Lambert, Celandine pauses, turning her head towards the direction the witcher is while her ears and tail flick slowly. Even if he's her other half, she finds him as hard to predict as he does her.

"Just because he jokes about something ... doesn't mean he thinks it's a joke," is what she settles on, finally. If a polecat could frown, she'd be doing so now. "Remember that."

"Exactly." He's not going to explain that thing that's always on Scout's mind, that she's not good enough, she'll never be good enough. Not everything she keeps close to her chest needs to be spread.

Tràkata turns his heavy snout in that direction, raising his vaguely equine ears and watching Lambert as well, though in his case it's more to assure himself that the witcher hasn't figured out where his soul went and is coming to barge into this conversation. No, not yet at least? Good.

Interesting. He dips his head. "Well. You'd know better than me. All right,
I guess..." There's too much to tell. There's just way too much, and thinking about it makes him want to crawl back to Scout. The comfort of human and dæmon sharing space and grief isn't like anything from the past two years, not even hiding out with the fugitive Solace. "I... look... you don't have panthacs on your world. They're pack hunters. They live in big family groups and cooperate and if one is killed, the others will follow the killer until it or all of them die. That's me. That's Scout. That's how we grew up."

Celandine listens, the wave of her tail slowing as she digests that information.

"Is that what happened? They're all dead?" There's surely a more delicate way to ask that question, but Celandine figures there isn't much point in beating around the bush now that the topic's been introduced. After all, there's no telling when one or the other of their people will suddenly decide to come looking.

The panthac-dæmon bristles out his mane, ears pressed back into it. "For the most part. It was." Tràkata licks his nose like an uncomfortable dog and looks away, then back at Celandine.

He can hold it together if he talks about it in the abstract. Tràkata is in a way more trusting than the rest of Scout, but has her reluctance to break down, too. "It was one of the young adults. The biggest and strongest, the one who could just crush bone like that and fight big monsters alone and was incredible. One night he went back to the den where the pack slept, where the pups were, and he killed everyone, and started hunting the ones who escaped, or weren't there."

It's way more complicated than that, but he just can't go on and on about this. "I escaped. Scout did. So now we're here."

Celandine listens to that consideringly, tail lashing. While she can't say she -- or Lambert, more accurately -- has ever experienced a betrayal like that, she understands a bit of what it's like, to lose the people around you. To be the only one left.

She still cares about that kind of thing, even if Lambert's response to it all is to shrug and keep going, accepting it for what it is.

"You survived," she says, firmly. "That's what matters." As long as you're still alive, you can still do something. You can still have your revenge, and that is a concept they're deeply familiar with.

"What happened to him?"

Edited 2017-10-14 21:01 (UTC)

Tràkata closes his heavy jaws and puffs out a breath. Yes, Scout's alive, the least of the Jedi. A lot of the time that doesn't feel like it matters all that much.

"He joined the pack of our enemies and licks the chin of its leader. They scour the countryside for us and bring famine and sickness in their wake. Survivors hide. We're in the den of the beasts they turned against us, hoping he won't smell us out. But that's going to change. Once our contract is done, we'll be able to leave. Things will change." He's talked more in the last few minutes than he has with anyone but Scout period. "No more helplessness."

The dæmon's eyes gleam, his brass claws bite the bark. It's not exactly revenge that lights him. Scout's plans for killing the Chosen One are vague and hypothetical at best. It's freedom and the prospect of not feeling people die from worlds away that she thinks of, really. But of course, it's easier for her people to fight back if they don't have to just run all the time.

Licks the chin of its leader ... but the panthac's probably not talking about that literally, Celandine supposes. Although it's tempting to make that joke -- Lambert certainly would -- she's more circumspect than that. She's quiet for a little longer, tail flicking contemplatively, before she volunteers her thoughts.

"It's a good thing to try and change," she says, simply. "We hate being helpless, too. "

Tràkata's thinking in terms of pack animals, of callow young beasts ducking their heads and licking up at the jaws of their elders to show that they're still young and eager to follow and be taught and protected, but if Celandine had brought up sex he wouldn't have been shocked. Scout has no idea what the relationship is between the traitor and the new Emperor, but she is completely willing to believe the worst of those two, and so is her dæmon.

No part of Scout can see the future. "You're never helpless now. I've seen how you've changed, and your powers are useful and usually work." Dæmon pronouns: still complicated and he's not bothering to be completely consistent. "They're not all tied into emotions like ours. Who taught you?"

Never helpless, huh? Lambert would be pleased to know they're perceived that way, after all the work he puts in, and Celandine won't compromise that -- at least not now (though she won't tell him that's how they see him, either).

"A witcher, of course. Someone who learned from a witcher before him." And on and on and on into antiquity, to a time when the word 'witcher' might not have mean spitting like it was a curse, if such a time ever existed. Celandine and Lambert aren't certain of that.

"It's still nothing compared to what a real magic user can do, but they come in handy sometimes." There's the hint of a laugh in her voice at that, though her expression doesn't betray it. "You'll get better with yours."

Edited 2017-11-08 00:22 (UTC)

He'll get at least an inkling when Celandine fades back into him outside of this reality, but that's for later.

Tràkata's tempted to say that no, they won't get better, no matter how much Scout tries she's running in place, but it seems obvious to the dæmon-panthac. It's probably obvious to the Nightrider; his dæmon is just saying that because that's the kind of thing people say. He's nothing like as obviously giving a route non-answer as Scout would be, but he does look away, long tufted tail stirring. "I'd like that."

Anyway. "So why doesn't he like being called a witch? I don't like it either, but it's different for us. 'Witch', it's like... adjacent to the truth, but sort of insulting." It's hard to imagine Scout being trained or raised as a Force-witch outside of the Temple. She'd have grown into a different person. Tràkata would have settled differently, probably.

Well, the rest of the thought was you get better at yours or youll die, but that's something Lambert would say. Lambert isn't here right now, and Celandine isn't everything he is, even if she's a fair bit. Jedi aren't witchers, she's ascertained that much. The tragedy Trakata described was clearly a horror never meant to happen. Celandine has memories of Lambert being put to bed with stories about how a mob of peasants murdered the children and teachers of the Wolf School and left it a hollow shell of itself. And the few trainees after that were still culled as much as ever.

"It's not just being called a witch." Celandine says, eventually. How Lambert feels about something is usually obvious; the cause of that feeling, usually less so. Even his daemon can only offer so much insight on that. They don't share thought processes or emotions while they're separated like this, so she can only offer a guess based on their shared knowledge of the word. "It's the way they speak to him. Respectful, but afraid. They'll take your protection, but they'll tell stories about you to their children, and whisper behind your back. Because you're different, and they know it."

Edited 2017-11-18 00:24 (UTC)

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⇨ GREYSOL

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