⇨ THE PRINCE IS DEAD

[ringleaders]

Who: Everyone!
When: Day 178 - B1: Day 6
Where: The Carnival and sometimes on top of the Heart of Stone.
What: Now that the Prince is dead and gone, there's a lot left to sort out. As the remaining servants are liberated and those captured by the Prince are tended to, it's time for recovery and goodbyes.
Warnings: Nothing in particular.

HOME GROUND↴ At long last, it is over. The Prince is dead, and all of his stolen Names have been restored - all that's left to do is treat the wounds and move on. For the first day or two, the Ringmaster will be arranging passage for the servants that are left, all of which have remembered their names for the first time in years. The earth elemental that had been trapped and forced to serve as the Prince's manor, the Heart of Stone, is happy to help for the moment. It appreciates the Ringmaster's mercy, and is free after untold eons of imprisonment. Yet, there are plenty of aspects that are far from simple. There are still servants left mad and transformed into beasts, with no easy way to change them back. The Prince's spells outlive him, and those bearing his poison and his curses will have a difficult road ahead of them. Though most of the bestial servants have been rounded up, and a large number that had been reduced to unmoving statues returned, even the Ringmaster can't return them to normal so simply. The next week is for rest and for settling remaining affairs. If you want to bid farewell to any particular NPCs, or assure care is given where it's needed, now is the time to do it. ► A CURE: The Ringmaster will tell everyone simply - there is no simple way to undo another fae's magic. The Prince's powers were essentially on par with hers, which means that those who have been transformed to stone and those that were cursed into beasts and driven insane are not something she can trivially fix. It will take the work of the carnival and a couple weeks of treatment to shed the curse of stone, and the maddened servants are an entirely separate matter. She will do what she can, but for the most part she is arranging for the Prince's servants to be cared for elsewhere. At least for now, the Ringmaster will be animating the stone portions of people's bodies with magic, though those portions will still be a bit clumsy and numb feeling. ► THE NEW HEARTSTONE: In the absence of the prince, the Heart of Stone will be taking over the remains of the Prince's realm and preventing it from collapsing into void. As it turns out, the manor had been an earth elemental all along - a form of Wyld Fae almost on par to the Prince and Ringmaster themselves. How the Heart of Stone was enslaved is a long story presumably, but the Ringmaster considers it to be a sign of the Prince's own depravity. The Heart will be allowing visitors for the first couple days of this period through the portal, but keep in mind you are essentially just walking around on its body. At least the realm has a floor, now, instead an endless abyss surrounding it.

Comments

[periphrasing]

For a second, Peridot looks devastated, her ears and tail both drooping miserably. Her whole frame sags, and she lets 9S walk right by her without another word.

Eventually, they'll reach the supervisor's grove. Peridot's trailer is about as weird as they come. There's all kinds of junk scattered around and pieced together to form various abstract art installations on the outside of it, an extremely tiny artificial pond out front... and also there's a mermaid skeleton pinned to the side of the trailer by a huge, nasty looking sword.

Basically it looks like a pair of aliens live there.

Peridot trudges up the front steps and yanks the door open, and she and Lapis's pet pumpkin comes racing up to the door, yapping excitedly and bouncing all over the place.

i feel so bad for peridot ; w; also wtf pumpkin is so cute

[dressedtothe]

Nice decor... And by nice he means tacky. Who keeps a skeleton impaled on their trailer? That's just really gross!

But at the sight of the energetic pet pumpkin, 9S takes a step back from the plant creature. "What the heck is this?"

This thing's weird! His instinct on encountering weird foreign lifeforms would be to kill it, but even his alien racism isn't enough to do something as stupid as getting Pod 153 to shoot his supervisor's... thing.

Pumpkin is the purest character in SU

[periphrasing]

"Ah-- That's our Pumpkin," Peridot says like that should immediately clarify everything. There's sort of an edge to her voice though, like almost like she's warning him: rudeness towards her gourd dog will NOT be tolerated. "Pumpkin, this is 9S. Say hello..."

Pumpkin notices and identifies the NEW FRIEND and scrambles over to him with another excited bark. She looks up at him with her best smile and whines excitedly, putting one of her little nub legs on his ankle in greeting.

[dressedtothe]

It's certainly more energetic than Francis... Uncertain of how to deal with Pumpkin, but having a little experience dealing with pets after living with Rita and her cat, 9S crouched down and tentatively pats Pumpkin somewhere on her... goard?

"Is it some kind of living plant or something?"

Like Syrlya?

[periphrasing]

"Technically all plants are living," Peridot can't resist pointing out. "Unless they're dead, of course But yes, she's a sentient pumpkin. Steven made her for me and Lapis."

Pumpkin pants excitedly, more than pleased to accept the patting. 9S doesn't have to be an expert at petting! She just appreciates being acknowledged.

[dressedtothe]

Well yeah but they're not all mobile. But what Peridot says isn't wrong.

"Sentient? Really?" 9S looks highly dubious about that and just kind of pushes at her face with his palm. But more importantly, "So Steven created this thing? How?"

[periphrasing]

Pumpkin makes a confused noise and pulls back a step, and then retreats back over to Peridot, who picks her up with a frown.

"He has some kind of freaky Rose Quartz powers on account of being half gem," she says with a shrug. "Trust me, I'd elaborate, but even I don't know how to explain the things Steven can do, and I know pretty much everything there is to know about making gems."

She turns to walk into the trailer, waving 9S after her.

[dressedtothe]

Sorry Pumpkin; 9S doesn't know what to do with dogs, nevermind gourd dogs. Besides, what the hell sort of powers does a Rose Quartz have?? But since it seems pointless to ask Peridot, he doesn't.

Really, the main attraction is the tech, not the weird biological construct. So it's actually with a bit of eagerness that he follows after Periodot. "Am I allowed to hack any of your stuff? I won't blow anything up."

This time--

[periphrasing]

"I don't see why not, so long as you don't seriously damage anything," Peridot acquiesces. "I mean, I can fix just about anything, but I'd rather not have to, if you catch my drift..."

[dressedtothe]

9S waves a hand dismissively. "Yeah, yeah, don't break your stuff. I got it."

[periphrasing]

Turns out Lapis really isn't home at the moment. Which is probably for the best, considering things are awkward enough without her particular brand of deadpan being added to the mix.

Being a supervisor's trailer, this one is a lot bigger on the inside than it would appear to be on the outside, and it's full of even more ridiculous artistic pieces than the exterior, too. Peridot leads 9S over to her work bench, which is covered with scattered parts and tools, as well as one of the tiny little remote controlled surveillance robots that she'd brought with her into the manor. It's like a tiny little sphere with four spindly legs and proportionately huge camera affixed to the front of it. There are also a few farming robots here, ones meant to till the earth and water the ground in her garden, others meant for harvesting crops. Off to one side there's a particularly alien looking piece that just looks like a sphere the same color as the surveillance robot, about the size of a bowling ball. It has no other visible features.

"So this is what I have on hand right now," Peridot says, and she's feeling uncharacteristically self-conscious about what little she has to offer.

[dressedtothe]

Alright, what have we here? It's pretty obvious what the camera bot is for, so he skips that (for now). The farming robots, he's not quite certain of their purpose, but it looks like some kind of replacement for manual labour? But his attention is immediately drawn by the sphere, which he can't gain any insight into its purpose just from its outside appearance.

"What's this?"

He doesn't wait for an answer, though; a ring of light appears around 9S' wrist as he fires what appears to be a beam of light at the sphere. The beam doesn't damage the sphere; if the sphere is technological in nature, 9S is attempting to hack it so he can analyse its purpose as well as potentially sieze control of.

[periphrasing]

Peridot yelps in surprise when she sees that, having never witnessed this particular ability of his before. She watches on nervously.

The little bot is actually an attack drone, and one of a hovering variety, to be more precise. It's spherical shape hides a set of rotor blades on top and a tiny gun and scanner on the bottom, all three of which emerge when the thing is actually active and flying. The first, and potentially biggest problem 9S might encounter in hacking it, is that the coding language contained within the drone is written entirely in gem. If he can get around that, though, resistance is fairly minimal. It's protected fairly thoroughly from the most common types of malicious attacks, but it's defenses are hardly fool proof.

[dressedtothe]

The foreign language coding does give him a little trouble initially, but ultimately coding language is what makes it human -- and alien -- readable. Tapping into the 'machine' output of the language is annnoying but it's what he has to work with when he doesn't understand gem.

Though perhaps there may be a way to pull together information and create a translation for gem... there's a thought.

Hacking the bot isn't simple, per se, but different to what he's used to. The defensive patterns are certainly unusual, after being used to the machines' ever evolving defensive systems. But eventually, he makes it through. The attack drone activates, the rotor blades coming out so it can take flight. It doesn't attack, but it does hover ominously. 9S blinks.

"So it's a long range attack unit?" He rubs at his chin. "It has interesting defense systems... I haven't seen anything like it before."