⇨ THE LUNAR SOLSTICE

[ringleaders]

Who: Everyone!
When: Winter Breaks: Day 6 - Day 25
Where: THE MOON
What: The carnival journeys to one of its moons to celebrate the Lunar Solstice. More information here.
Warnings: Winter fun.

MOON WALKING↴ The journey to the moon only takes a blink of an eye, but it leaves the carnival far away beneath you. The second moon can be seen on the peripheral, massive compared to its usual view. At least when the holidays start out, there will be no notable wildlife on the moon, though this is something you can talk to the Ringmaster about if you think it needs a change. It sounds like this is the first time she's used it in quite a while - it probably needs some dusting off! Claim your cabins, and proceed to... well, do whatever you want! There is no rush and little obligation, besides to enjoy yourself. For real, this time. She promises there will be no vampires. Or, at least, none that don't already work for the carnival. ► CABINS: Living arrangements are character choice for this event, and there are a variety of cabins of various sizes, mostly built to house 2-6 people, though you can fit more in if you squish. They are all made of wood and of a rustic design - no fancy modern furniture, here! Each building is housed with a fireplace and the needed amenities. You can pick up materials to cook with the private kitchens if you like. Theoretically, you could spend the whole holiday sequestered away, watching the snow fall. Some of them also have outdoor hot tubs available! ► ACTIVITIES: Activities are mostly going to be character driven, though there will be some large group games like bingo and maybe a poker tournament happening at some point in one of the festival halls. Otherwise, there is a lot to offer: skiing, snowboarding, hiking, ice sculpting, snowball fights - it goes on! If you'd like to run a winter activity, just let the mods know, and we will get the word out there for you. ► FEASTING: Every day isn't a full-out feast because that would get a bit unhealthy, but there will be a number of specific feast events over the holidays where everyone is encouraged to let out their inner hedonist and stuff themselves. There will be one big feast per week, with smaller but also delicious meals offered in between. The feast dates will be B12, B18, and B24. There's also plenty of alcohol available for anyone who wants it. ► SHOPPING: As mentioned in the planning post, there is a massive market being run by the World Walker Caravan! The Ringmaster has given everyone 1250 credits to spend on items, but there is a caveat - must spend at least 500 of those credits on gifts for other people. And it better be a good one, if you only buy one! (She will ask that you do not buy her presents, however. She appreciates the sentiment, but it seems sort of silly buying her things with her own money! If you'd like to gift her, please have it be something more personal or handmade, but you are not obligated to get her anything at all.) ► TREATMENTS: The beginning of the holidays will also be about the time that the emergency Medical Team will have finalized their treatments for the Prince's poisoning. Watch out for further information on that - and make sure to get treated if you are suffering from petrification or poison induced illness! The holidays will be a lot more fun that way.

Comments

[scientificist]

Ok well that didn't work WHOOPS--experiment going wrong, as per usual, variables not accounted for, this is BAD, abort? Abort being right there in the danger zone first and then try and handle it?

The usual.

Herbert backs hurriedly away from Foster and stumbles onto and then sideways around the chair. "Thiiiii-his solves nothing!" he announces with equal speed, holding up a hand, eyes already wild.

[criticallyfucked]

Normally, Herbert would have been in no danger. Normally, Foster is subservient by default--by force of his own will, he remains in his place even despite the foolishness and negligence of those around him. Normally, he never would have dared to touch another person. Or their tie.

But the tie slips between his claws, and he has to catch himself--in more ways than one, because the dizziness and nausea rise swiftly, lurching up in him as he grabs the edge of the bed instead, eyes on Herbert until the last second, when he narrowly avoids throwing up right onto the floor.

Even with disaster (or at least regurgitation) avoided, though, the inside of his head is ringing. No, screaming, a wailing unitone like a siren, growing higher and higher and louder and more distant, and he briefly feels an increased density inside of his skull, which subsides only partway in the next second, leaving him feeling... stranger, but somehow more present.

"You need... you need my brain," he manages, and in speaking, he opens his mouth; in opening his mouth, saliva stretches between his upper teeth and his bottom lip, hanging in a string from that latter same.

"My brain, without me? The brain... the brain is rot, the brain is rot and you want the rot without the rotting?" It's kind of impressive that he hasn't fallen off the bed, because he's looking strangely drawn and pale. He sucks some of that spittle back into his mouth, but it just makes his words... wetter. "I am my disease," he spits. "I am my disease, I am my disease, there is no brain, no brain without disease, no brain without rot--"

Another ragged breath--

"I am the rot!!"

[scientificist]

Herbert is still standing beyond the chair, wary, but his hand slowly lowers. He's feeling abruptly very worked up about this. It may be the adrenaline, certainly, but he wants to put words to what he's thinking all the same.

"Then you will be nothing." He's still a bit breathless but his voice is usually soft anyway, at least, so that comes out low, and shaking. "I will make you nothing and rebuild you into something new, with my science." Stopping to properly catch his breath he gestures forward at Foster, fingers spindling through and clutching at the air. "Better! I...will remake you as my creation!"

[criticallyfucked]

Foster already is nothing--the roiling, sucking nothing of a vaccum; the crushing, absolute black nothing of oceanic depths; the vast, utter nothing of the Void itself. He was nothing when he was born and he will be nothing when he expires. In between, he is contagion, infectious affliction of the mind, a waste of his body--an insult to the very act of being alive.

And from this, from the defiling of hope, Herbert plans to make anew? To make his--?

The idea of being a construct, a product of one's achievement, the culmination of design, the firmament on which something is to be created anew inspires a terrible excitement in Foster. In this way, he's finally starting to feel that intoxication. In more ways than one.

"You will unmake me," Foster responds--not an exultation, but an accusation. "You will destroy the purpose of my only fate."

When Foster spits the words, he does so... pretty literally.

So, good thing Herbert put space between them.

He sounds increasingly desperate--not a lament, not a plea.

Hope is antithetical to him, belief being a form of certainty beyond mere aspiration or dreams. And he knows what is and isn't meant to be.

"And how will you have me, then--!?"

[scientificist]

Not having actually thought that far, Herbert pauses a moment, blinking.

"Weh-hell, being a triumph of science is purpose enough in itself," he says, and he believes that but he can tell it won't be enough.

"I require assistance in my work," he says abruptly, "and you...are a necromancer--unreliable now, in your...rot, as you say." Control is nothing. He has to ferry Dan along constantly as he listens to his damned girlfriend and other limited, simple obstacles to scientific progress. He steps closer again, hand on the chair's back as he moves around it.

"My usual...collaborator did not accompany me here, my work progresses faster with. Assistance. Your knowledge of death made more effective by my reconstructed serum would make you a valuable colleague--if. You allow yourself to be remade."

[criticallyfucked]

Foster is starting to feel his intoxication. In more ways than one, actually. What Herbert means, he realises with the kind of hazy, thick-fought feeling of brilliance that comes from alcohol, is that he wants to craft Foster into a tool, an opportunity, a resource. This is all he's waited for--no, all he is. A lower being whose feelings, wants, needs, and thoughts do not matter. His sole purpose is to suffer and die, and to be of use. Is it any surprise that when it finally appeared, it took the form of that which he most abhors--?

He regards Herbert in a way that's almost animal, his eyes glistening, his head tilted just so.

[scientificist]

"Yeees," says Herbert, on a roll now. He didn't come into this thinking of this at all, but he knows he's right, now, he doesn't even need Foster's input. It's irrelevant right now, before he's been made into what Herbert requires through his own science, still unfinished.

"The serum will not only, in its new form, rejuvenate your brain, but in addition will sharpen your mind like my own diluted formula." An ideal assistant: one raised forcibly to be closer to his own level. "With you at a level you could never have achieved on your own: what advancements in necromantic science might we make? What new discoveries?--I will shape you, your course." It's strange, he realises, he'd thought before that to work with someone properly he'd need to respect them. It turns out all he needs is an assurance they can be controlled enough to trust.

If he manages this correctly, he'll have an colleague he never needs to worry about.

[criticallyfucked]

Foster doesn't look away from Herbert, doesn't dare break his gaze, but he feels inside of him an energy or nausea, barely notices his own shiver. A shiver, yes--of what, he doesn't know. It doesn't matter.

Good feelings. Bad feelings. It's feeling. And there it is, that feeling, that craving and cure he missed so deeply that he betrayed himself and his god(?) searching for it in all the wrong places, taking the raw flesh, the bared meat of his rotten purpose and sculpting it over and over, only for it to turn to ash in his hands claws. Again and again, by himself, trying to force the blood to the surface, but no stone large enough, no fragment of earth thrown uselessly into the ocean, rock after pebble after boulder after ruin. Alone on the precipice, screaming pointlessly back into the waves and wind as it crumbles beneath him, and ever but taking up the pieces of its ledge and casting them out ever further--

What a fool!

Because of course his design was never meant to succeed itself, but was meant to serve--

Even (or perhaps especially) in his compromised state, Foster is aware that he may never get another chance. Probably will never get this chance. He's waited--searched, tried to create this chance his whole wretched, pathetic, desperate life.

And now in this man, in this form, anathema--

He laughs, and briefly shudders in laughing, as though shaking out a chill of cold, or euphoria, or something--a feeling of visceral intensity so bordering on the obscene that it forces a physical response.

"You'll only ever get one chance," he slurs it a bit, but it's also not really clear if he's addressing himself or Herbert. It probably doesn't matter.

"Who--who am I to deny? That design... the deepest of devotions to your God, to my purpose, pour it out of me, into me. Fill me with your serum! Do it! Do it. I don't exist yet, but I can! I don't exist yet--" He makes another effort to rise off the bed, like an idiot-by all appearances, he might be trying to walk to Herbert. He hangs onto the bed post instead, staring into Herbert's eyes with what is either the intensity of a threat or the excitement of a promise.

"But I can."