⇨ 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

[atouts]

And to that, the crow, unfortunately, has to admit, "I... I can't. That isn't how the spell works."

Meaning she can't get them out of here, not the way the polecat assumes she can. It also earns the polecat a scathing look of disapproval from Childermass, who sets the lens down on the nearest table and reaches over to put a hand on Lambert's shoulder. He mutters something under his breath, words to a spell that isn't necessarily needed when he does his shadow magic since rather than being faerie magic, it's English magic. It creates the faintest trace of snow and pine regardless of origin, yet another odd reminder of Portland that he can't personally pick up on, lacking the sharper senses of the daemons and the witcher.

What settles over all four of them — including Lambert's daemon, as an extension of himself, it would seem — feels like an invisible blanket, dulling the colors and sounds of the world around them. That done, no one looks at them, nor does anyone who walks nearby run into them, something telling them to step around at the last second without them even realizing it.

"As she said," he mutters at the polecat, "That isn't how the spell works. I cannot drag people off into the shadows where no shadows exist."

[whattaprick]

Distracted as she is by the disappointment of failing to see the crow perform a bit of magic herself, and being spoken to by Childermass, the only reason the polecat isn't getting grabbed out of air is the hand on Lambert's shoulder. He remembers this spell -- vaguely -- though he's not had a reason to have it used on him since they were at the Celebration.

The chastisement doesn't work on her, though. She remains hovering in the air, cocking her head at them both, then looks down at their feet. "What d'you call those, then?" She asks pointedly. "You pulled Lambert through the shadows under a buck before, what's the difference?"

Dull as the world is for human senses, for a witcher it's like being stuck in a cloud. Frowning, Lambert glances around. "There's probably a better place to talk about this, you know."

[atouts]

"I cannot go through my own shadow," Childermass tells her exactly what the difference is. He could probably use Lambert's. A buck's, too, as well as all those shadows being cast about the forest by the trees. He knows the other Childermass could do it, but that only reminds him how irked he is by his daemon and nearly everything there is that has to do with that. If there's a trick to it, he hasn't worked it out himself yet...

But Lambert's right. There are better places to talk about this.

Like a completely different shadow, which is why when he moves to walk past Lambert, he'll be grabbing the witcher by the sleeve to drag him along to the nearest one thrown by the nearest building. It doesn't take terribly long to reach.

"Hang on to him if you don't want to be left behind, you ridiculous weasel."

Yes, he knows that isn't a weasel, but close enough. They know what's coming next, as soon as they hit the border of a proper shadow. Where they'll end up is away from the park and the party, coming out by the docks of Greysol instead, with Kerner Island lurking out on the horizon.

[whattaprick]

"If I'm a weasel, you might as well start calling her a raven!" the daemon calls indignantly.

It's possible, as a part of Lambert's soul, that the polecat would be pulled through anyway, but she doesn't seem inclined to take the chance. She swoops back onto Lambert's shoulder, clinging on as instructed, before they're pulled through shadows again, Lambert recognizing where they are by the smell of salt-spray. Today isn't like that awful day at the docks, when they first arrived and a man severed from his soul was being brought in -- just the sound of the water lapping against the dock and the boats rocking in the harbor.

"This is your idea of better?" Lambert asks, looking at Childermass with a raised brow.

[atouts]

"It's better than where we were before," Childermass points out stiffly. If Lambert had somewhere else in mind, chances are he wouldn't have taken that preference into account anyway, and so here they are, the first spot to come to the magician's mind. "If you're picky, specify next time."

He's clearly still annoyed, but the one silver lining is he lets the crow be, still perched on his shoulder and now huddling against the side of his neck while she can. It won't last, so she'll enjoy the closeness while she can.