⇨ HEARTSTONE MANOR

[ringleaders]

Who: Everyone!
When: Day 170 - Day ???
Where: Heartstone Manor
What: The carnival arrives at the Heartstone Manor. Do your best to play along, and try not to get too far ahead of the schedule with threading if you can avoid it, in case something that would affect your character happens early on.
Warnings: Individually marked! Could be a lot of things.

BEAUTIES AND THE BEAST↴ When the carnival arrives at the Manor, everyone will be taken into the Throne Room to greet the Prince for the first time. He will be lounging on his throne, and will take a look at the guests that the Ringmaster has brought before eventually dismissing everyone so that he can talk to her alone. After that, they will be given a brief tour of the Manor by some of the servants, and then brought to their rooms to start picking out clothes for tomorrow. On the first night they will be permitted to wear regular clothes, but starting the next morning the dress code will be enforced. There will be a number of servants helping guests with clothing, and making alterations to suit the non-humanoid features they may have. The tailors work with fabric by hand, but their stitching is impossibly quick and accurate, with changes being made to complex clothing at unbelievable speed. Some guests may note while working with them that one of the seamstresses has wooden mannequin-esque hands instead of human ones, and another has two sets of arms. The arms are one of the most obviously inhuman traits that they'll see while first touring the building. Come the morning of Day 171, the daily routine will begin. ⇨ THE DAILY SCHEDULE ⇦ ► FIVE MEALS A DAY: Between breakfast, lunch, tea, supper, and evening drinks, the meals you are required to attend are frequent and long. Each meal (except drinks and tea) will have multiple rounds, and use all of the fancy cutlery. It will be difficult to keep up for those that are untrained. The food will vary greatly, but will generally to be palatable to those that are into whatever kind of food it might be. Some of them are odd delicacies that are very much an acquired taste, however. People who cannot eat will be given a pass once the Ringmaster explains it, but will be looked down on for it. ► DAILY ACTIVITIES: There are scheduled activities for every morning and afternoon, and everyone is required to attend. Descriptions of each activity are provided on the "Event Descriptions" tab of the spreadsheet linked up above. There is only one hour of free time scheduled per day, after supper, and beyond that the servants will almost constantly have you on the go. The Prince and Ringmaster will not be present for most of the activities, but they will be there for every meal. If you character refuses to follow the schedule or makes a huge mess out of proceedings, make sure to report it here. ► AFTER CURFEW: At 11PM, everyone is expected to return to their quarters and spend the rest of the night there. Wandering after curfew is unacceptable by the Prince's rules, and if you do it there will be the chance of discover. Based on your character's stealth abilities, there will be dice rolling to determine if they are discovered or not, and by whom. Make sure you report any after curfew activity to the mod post here. This can also take place as an investigation if they are actually looking for something instead of just farting around. ► ROOM AND BOARD: The servants will remain upbeat for most of the time the guests are here, unless something is done to provoke them. They will be present at every activity, and there will be a variety of different individuals. One frequently spotted character will be the butler, a man with dark hair and small, sharp horns. He seems to be the main organizer of things. ► ODDITIES: Even beyond the obvious, there is something off about the Manor. Doors, windows, and other household objects will sometimes move seemingly without cause, and other times there will be banging sounds in the walls, or mysterious voices heard at a distance. It feels like you're being haunted. If you have a moment to wander the corridors, then you'll sometimes see open doors abruptly slam shut the moment you lay eyes on them, and wall sconces turn off or on. It's weird, man. ► THE HUNT: The Hunt activity will have its own event post, and some sign ups for those that will participate meaningfully. There will be some dice rolling to determine who hunts the most impressive game, and rewards handed out accordingly. Before that post goes up, however, you can do some investigations for the start of the event, if your character is interested in looking into the specifics of the contest and overall context. MAKE SURE THAT ALL DECORUM VIOLATIONS ARE REPORTED HERE.

Comments

DREAM QUEST | Nights of Day 171 & 172

[starseedling]

Steven has no practiced control over his dreams. His dreamwalking skills are not something he earned through experience, nor something he can use productively. Sometimes... he just gets scared. Or stressed. Or, most often, he gets worried.

Suffice to say, while in the Manor, Steven is all three of these things, nigh constantly. The first night in Heartstone he barely sleeps at all, too shallow and fitful to dream.

The next night, only sheer exhaustion makes it possible. Curled up in his bed with Bud and Lil (and Lapis?!), he passes out more than he falls asleep. Paranoia has been haunting his thoughts every moment since they arrived, so having it finally just shut off for a while is a relief. Of course, his dreams don't exactly offer much respite.

Which is most of what makes Steven half-lucidly decide to make a break for it. In some nebulous tall grass outside of a vaguely familiar building, he finds himself having stepped in a now-smushed Watermelon Steven, its juicy watermelon insides exposed to the afternoon sun.

"Oh geez..."

Giving it a baffled and disapproving look, he abruptly floats up into the air and begins flying away. It's really just that simple.

"Nuh uh. No way. Not interested!"

Solidly dismissing the potential of a smashed watermelon focused stress-dream, he finds himself sailing off into dreamscapes uncertain. He has a lot on his mind, and a lot to think about, and he's only vaguely controlling his destinations.

Sometimes you'd just rather be anywhere else.

[OOC: Steven can enter the 'dreamscape' of anyone in any kind of state of non-awakeness, whether that be sleeping, meditating, being blacked out, etc. As long as your character isn't fully conscious, he can make it happen.]

NIGHT 171

[fortuneglass]

Carly's days, despite the occasional reprieve in the form of actually enjoying whatever they could have been doing, have been fraught with stress. Meals have been an ordeal of silence, doing her best to focus on being 'proper' to at least hope something of a good impression will help the Ringmaster to get what she needs. And after those talks with Lambert, and Strange, and others still, her thoughts swirl with what she's doing as a supervisor, what she intends to do there.

She told herself, and told Jack, that they would fill their contracts out of sight of the other. But would staying another year, and then another, and another...

...Would it push him away, or would it bring him back regardless, despite the original wishes and desires? The music of the day swims through her mind. It fills the air as cupid's arrows shoot across the sky, and she dreams of a dance, one hand at a man's shoulder, the other in his own, just as she'd always seen in those fancy, older films. The dream Jack is perhaps a little more draconic than he was when he left, but Carly pays it no mind-she merely rests her head against the other's front in a slow dance, the music swaying with them, carrying them across clouds...

"I wish you were here," she finds herself whispering. 'I am here,' she wants him to claim, but instead of that, the dance stops. It stops and Carly finds herself looking across to a misting figure, Jack Atlas slowly disolving away.

'If you cannot uphold your own word, then it would be better for me to never return at all!'

The words feel so much like him-but the words sting, like an arrow to the chest, an arrow that appears for real as she chokes. It passes through her harmlessly, but she still holds her hand over her front, eyes welling with tears. "J...Jack..."

'Did you not hear me!?'

"Jack...I..."

It seems this could get rough. Painful, even, in the emotional sense. Except rather suddenly, Dream Carly gets an entirely different idea. Actually, Dream Carly is now on fire-and for some reason has a bow all of a sudden.

Where did it come from? Who knows. It's a bow. "I.... ....DO YOU EVEN REALIZE..!! HOW MUCH I'VE DONE TO TRY AND BE WITH YOU!! I-!" Carly takes aim-

...But chokes, loosing the arrow in her shock. Jack's form is so ghostly and faded now that he might as well be dust, parting away for the arrow-but in the clear of it, Carly makes out someone else.

"S...Steven?!" Wait-

"AAAA-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!!! NO, I DON'T WANT CUPID TO HIT STEVEN!!!"

[starseedling]

Steven is just floating there looking kind of dazzled, so whens he shoots the arrow he doesn't quite realize that it'a headed for him instead of Jack? He was kind of waiting to see where this was going!

But then Jack's form fades away, and Steven's reaction time feels too foggy and slow for him to really consider moving.

So... the arrow just kind of harmlessly thwips straight into his chest, sticking out of him like he's made of styrofoam. It doesn't hurt or anything, which makes it even weirder. He lets out a useless yelp, and then pokes at the feathered shaft of the arrow in bewilderment.

"Uh oh..." he says. "That's never happened before..."

[insidescoop]

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!!!!" Suffice to say, Carly-however much of a dream haze she may be in-panics immediately. The woman hurries over in such a flurry of motion that the ballroom tiles beneath her feet scatter into dust behind her, her hands only barely holding the edge of her dress up. "AAAHHHH-HHAAAAAHHHHSTEVEN!!! What does this even mean!! That was for Jack! For Jack, not-"

Oh hold on. She stands there, staring at the arrow that's sort of...stuck in him. "....Mnnnh...though....if it's only sort of stuck, maybe it's alright..? It didn't go right through, so it can't be that bad....right???"

That's how arrows work right? It's probably how arrows work.

[starseedling]

"It doesn't hurt, so... it's probably okay," Steven says, shrugging his shoulder helplessly. "Look, I can probably just pull it out."

He wraps his hand around the shaft and gives it a tug. It pops out easily - along with a heart shaped block of goreless flesh, still speared on the end. It's like popping a block out of a children's puzzle toy. Steven looks at that, puzzled.

"Hmm. That's probably worse."

[criticallyfucked]

It's pretty common for dreams to feature places you've been a lot. Previous homes, schools, places of work. That kind of thing.

Foster dreams about doctor's offices.

This is probably the start to a nightmare, really--wandering the blue and beige halls with their ugly off-white tiles. He's trying to find the room where his lab results are, but he's simultaneously trying not to find that room. He knows, as inexorably and indisputably and intangibly as one ever knows anything in a dream, that he doesn't want to know the results of that exam. He doesn't want to know what his labwork contains. What's in his blood. What's inside his head. As long as he doesn't know, it's fine. But he has to find the room.

[starseedling]

Steven has only ever been to a hospital once in his life, and that was when he and Connie were trying to steal back his sword from her mom. Also, there had been gem mutant and stuff around, but really... he'd never experienced the parts of a hospital that most people were familiar with. When most of his family could heal just by reforming their bodies, it didn't come up.

So, he's a little bemused to find himself there now. It's mostly empty, like it was that night he visited, and he doesn't really know hospital any other way. Well, except for the stuff in Under the Knife with the sexy doctors and cutting-edge medical techniques.

Eventually, he finds himself wondering if Mrs Maheswaran is around for some reason. She'd probably be mad if he messed around with the gurneys...

Not too long after, Steven is pushing a gurney down the hall like a shopping cart, riding the momentum after getting it going. Abruptly, he's forced to stop it to avoid running into Foster head on.

If you run over a person in their dream, do you run them over in real life?

[criticallyfucked]

He can't find it. This is the wrong floor. The right floor? He can't find it. He knows something bad is about to happen. Unless he finds the room. If he finds the room? He doesn't know what it is, but something bad is going to happen--or maybe he's close, maybe he's almost at the room he does(n't) want to find.

Maybe h--OLY SHIT.

Foster plasters his back against the wall, eyes wide with the fleeting experience of confusion and something like momentary terror. Or anger? He actually looks a little betrayed--like this wasn't the terrible thing he was expecting to happen.

But once he realises what it is....

"............."

He looks at Steven for a long, long moment, visibly trying to figure out what Steven Universe is doing in this medical building.

He finally speaks, his brows knitting. "....... what.... are you doing?"

[starseedling]

Steven stares at Foster from on top of the gurney, folding back his wings uncertainly. He hesitates for a moment, and then scratched at his cheeks.

"Uh... riding this bed, I guess?" he answers, uncertainly. He looks around, and remembers they're in a hospital. "Have you seen Connie's mom?"

Nevermind that Foster has no idea who Connie or her mom is.

night of day 171!

[kingsroads]

Darkness swirls around Strange's dream. He's in a grand library, though the library itself is in a state of disarray and devoid of any books. Instead, it's full of birds: twenty or so ravens perch on the bookshelves, scattered throughout the library. Occasionally they caw, flitting from shelf to shelf. Broken shards of mirrors litter the floor—which is odd as there aren't any empty mirror frames to be seen.

And, as stated before, it's dark. Outside of the windows is blackness. The darkness writhes, almost like a living thing as it moves throughout the room, staying on the edges. It covers a bookshelf but withdraws shortly afterwards. It reaches up to try and swallow one of the birds, but it flies away just in time. Despite the fact that it is immensely dark, all the details of the room are still visible (because dreams are dumb that way). Occasionally, muffled voices come from the darkness. Most of them are unfamiliar: a pleading and sad woman's voice, the authoritarian voice of a man used to command, a middle-aged man who just sounds so tired. But one of those muffled voices is familiar to Steven: it's Childermass's.

In the middle of it all is Strange, without his carnival changes and looking more like his pre-castle scruffy, unshaven hobo self. In his hands, he's holding a candle, the only source of light in the room. He's holding it far too close to himself, cupping the flame with his other hand to keep it burning. And, as he hears someone enter, in true Strange fashion, he starts complaining.

"It took you long enough! Honestly, Norrell, I cannot keep this lit under my own—" Hang on a second, that tiny person is not Gilbert Norrell. Strange pauses, looks at Steven, and then comes to the conclusion that huh, this is weird! Perhaps Norrell sent him? But Norrell doesn't know Steven, does he? Dream logic smooths all that out as Strange looks at Steven with a frown. "Well? Do you have another candle?"

[starseedling]

Oh, well, this is weird. Honestly, large amounts of blackness isn't totally unfamiliar territory when it comes to astral projecting, or whatever it is that he's doing. He just needs to wait for it to fade into another scene.

Which, it sort of does. Steven feels vaguely like he's in some kind of spooky movie set when he enters the library, and Strange's behaviour doesn't really disprove that theory. Steven is dressed in normal clothes, at some mid-point between his carnival self and his regular self. His wings are still there, but more pink and fluffy like clouds rather than rose petals.

"No..." Steven admits, adapting to this scenario more easily than he would while waking. "But my thumb is a lighter! Does that work?"

As promised, Steven raises his thumb and makes a clicking noise, which causes its tip to set alight.

[kingsroads]

His thumb's a lighter, that is a perfectly normal thing that Strange is not questioning. Except it isn't helpful in the slightest, as Strange just groans slightly, before shaking his head.

"I'm afraid it doesn't. We need more light and we need it to continuously burn. I'm not going to let you keep your thumb lit for the next who knows how long. We need candles," he repeats, insistently, trying to get Steven to understand this much.

Though Steven doesn't realize it, this is Norrell's library in Norrell's house. Ergo, Norrell would know where the candles are so he was send off to find them while Strange kept the candle from being snuffed out by the darkness. And the darkness in question moves towards Steven, covering some of the broken mirror shards as it inches closer towards him.

[starseedling]

Steven hasn't totally noticed the darkness closing in on them yet. Mostly, he's focused on this lighting problem. He looks at his thumb lighter, trying to think of what could replace candles.

"Well, I don't have any of those..." he starts, mulling it over. "But... We could try burning something else instead, right?"

There's gotta be all kinds of stuff they could burn in this place! That will totally burn for a long time! Perfect.

Night 171

[chronosynthesis]

Navigating himself Syrlya's way is going to find Steven first at a fork in the road. The path up to it is beaten sand and rock with the grass growing between it, and patches of swamp surround it.

To one side, the swamp begins to turn to lush forest. The sun is shining brightly and the soft sounds of wild animals can be heard in the distance. The road winds and curves, disappearing into the foliage with whimsy. In the horizon, a great tree stands over everything--faint in the atmosphere but tall, thick oak with large, swirling-patterned pink leaves coming off its branches.

The road to the other side is straight. The air is murky and it stinks of long-dried blood, and the sunlight looks pinpoint harsh and cold in the distance as it shines over rotting wood and crumbling architecture. There's strange corals starting to wither, as if the soil was once underwater--but between all the decay there's signs of new life beginning to form. A vibrant red flower growing between the rocks, or a fern trying to overtake the dead stump of a once great tree.

In the middle is what appears to be a sword stuck in the ground--from a distance it looks like it should be tall, but as Steven comes closer it seems to shrink to his side. The blade is stuck straight into the ground--and on the hilt a grey owl with purple-tipped feathers is perched.

As soon as Steven approaches, the owl opens one eye to peer at him. "Ah. You're an unexpected guest."

[starseedling]

Honestly, Steven's first instinct is to just grab the sword, so really the owl is the only thing stopping him from doing so. He gives it a surprised look - but not too surprised.

"Oh... am I?" he asks, genuinely unsure. "I guess I've never been here before... that I can remember, anyway..."

[chronosynthesis]

"I should think not." The owl ruffles its feathers briefly. "You're not being very subtle, coming into my dreams so brazenly."

And with that the owl lifts off to try and land on Steven's shoulder, apparently less offended than its tone suggests. If it succeeds, it will feel soft and feather light.

"What are you doing here, Steven?"

night 171

[atouts]

The fact that it's dreary, overcast, and has snow falling from the sky is likely enough to quickly identify who's dream this might be and the way the world fidgets and blurs in places — especially the sky — makes it clear that, yes, it is very much a dream. Northern England looks bleak enough at the start of winter and the part they're in is rocky, empty save for a lone black-barked tree twisting its way up out of the ground, already bare for the oncoming season.

All in all, it has about as much color as Childermass himself has, which is to say very little at all. That, of course, makes the red and still-bleeding cut along one side of his face stand out wildly, though he doesn't really seem to notice it himself. He's further away from the tree, down on one knee in the gathering snow by what appears to be piles and piles of haphazardly spread out pieces of paper. If Steven cares to walk close enough, it'll be apparent that faded blue lettering — of some unknown, unreadable language — is scrawled across them, wildly and in a dozen different angles yet never quite in a straight line. An even closer inspection would reveal those same scattered papers aren't haphazard at all but spread out roughly in the shape of a body, though, thankfully, not actually a body.

It's at those that Childermass is frowning at, the focus point for himself in this particular dream.

[starseedling]

Steven floats in the background of the dream for a while, watching the scene carefully as if he's expecting something to happen. When it doesn't really, he carefully descends closer to the magician in question, squinting over his shoulder to get a better look at the magic scrawling.

"What's that?" he asks, having offered no previous indication of his presence. He's just here now, and he's curious about the papers, and he hasn't thought about it long enough to realize that this could be disturbing.

[atouts]

His dreams aren't particularly action-packed, which, quite honestly, is something Childermass would be glad to know if he ever actually retained what he dreamt about. At best, he has a vague idea of this one, as it repeats on occasion, but in the dream, well, that doesn't really matter right now. He carries on watching the papers up until Steven lands and walks over.

The question gets the magician to move, glancing back briefly over his shoulder at Steven, although he doesn't seem surprised at all to see him there. He gives his head a shake at first as the answer and turns back to eye the papers one last time before pushing himself up to stand.

"A book," he offers a better answer than a headshake once he's up. "Though for all I cannot read it, it may as well be rubbish."

night 172 just to be different

[anti_nonsense]

At first, it might look as though Steven is back in Heartstone Manor... but some parts are distinctly off.

The sounds of yelling, chanting, and crashing can be heard from a courtyard, which is the most clearly-defined area in the dream, as traversing away from it would bring him only to increasingly warped, twisting corridors that end in darkness.

In said courtyard, a fully human-looking Rita hurls a fireball at what looks like a bear-monster standing on two feet and swinging with thick arms tipped with long claws, though the blast of the spell sends it flying back mid-lunge, where it falls to the ground and disintegrates into mist. It's not the only monster around, though; several more creatures, looking like large, flightless birds, charge at Rita from the dark, obscured edges of the courtyard. In the place of normal beaks, they have axes or drills, and one particularly odd-looking one has what looks like a toy hammer - the kind that squeaks when you hit something with it.

"Damn it... you're all in my way!" she cries before starting to chant another spell. But before she finishes it, she catches a glimpse of Steven. "Hey, watch out!" Those monsters won't hesitate to attack him, using their wings to lift themselves up, then crashing down face-first at their targets with their weaponized beaks.

[starseedling]

"Rita? What are you..."

Steven doesn't feel as concerned about it as he really should be. In fact, most of what the monsters feel like at the moment is an inconvenience getting in the way of asking rita what she's trying to do - it sounds like they are an interruption to her plans, too. Steven puffs out his cheeks, and lifts himself up into the air, doing a flip.

"Hey, you guys are being really rude!" he shouts. His legs suddenly pop off at the knees, apparently spring loaded, launching up into the air to hit one of the drill birds in the face. It gets KO'd in a cartoonish manner, its eyes turning to spirals as it collapses down to the ground.

"Rita, are you okay?!"

[anti_nonsense]

Rita didn't expect anyone to come to her aid, but she supposes any help is welcome if it'll help her get through this faster. "I'm fine!" she calls back. "But there's no end to these things! At this rate, I'll never reach her..." Her head turns upward, gazing at the uppermost window of a nearby tower.

While most of their surroundings generally resemble the Prince's manor, this version has a conspicuously tall tower with a spire like an enormous sword. An impossibly large full moon shines in the sky behind it. In the highest window of that tower, the silhouette of a woman can be seen, someone with short hair and an elegant dress. There's a princess in the tower.

But Rita's still holding on to a half-prepared spell, so she finishes casting it and points to one of the axe-beaked birds. "Aqua Laser!" Water shoots up from the ground in a linear arrangement, launching the monster into the air and juggling it a few times before letting it crash down to the ground.

night 172

[puddingemote]

The dream Steven enters now features what looks at first glance like a pool, surrounded by several King's Pudding mascots, some of them dancing and some of them waving around pond fronds. They don't bother Steven as he approaches the water, which on closer examination os like a liquid Milky Way, with hundreds of stars twinkling in dark. In the middle of it floats a large pool tube, and in the tube is Tamaki, in trunks and sunglasses, looking like he might be dozing even though he's in a dream already. But he still manages to spot Steven, and waves an arm.

"Stevicchi! Come in!"

Another tube is suddenly floating near Steven, and the puddings gesture for him to get in. This is, overall, a pretty chill dream so far.

[starseedling]

Steven blinks, taking in the scene, before getting called over by Tamaki. Feeling a little bit stunned and confused after entering, he nods his head, and floats over to the tube by wing, before gently lowering himself into it.

He's not actually wearing a swimsuit, he's wearing his normal clothes, but stars and stuff aren't actually wet so that should be fine...?

"Hey Tamaki," he says, peering over the edge into the Milky Way. "Where did you get this pool? It seems really... different."

He bets his dad would like it.

[puddingemote]

As Steven suspects, the "water" isn't really wet at all; it doesn't seem to have any discernible texture. Still, it holds them up as though they're both in water, bobbing the tubes softly and allowing them to glide alone the surface.

As for where he got the pool... Tamaki seems to ponder this for a moment. Up until now, the pool simply was. But now Steven has put a reason to wonder where the pool came from into Tamaki's head, so the dream provides one.

"It was a gift." He lazily swishes the stars below, watching them glimmer in response. "Because I wanted to watch the stars with everyone."

Normally one wouldn't go stargazing quite like this, but dream logic is formidable.