lostcarnival | ⇨ EDEN

Entry tags:

⇨ EDEN

Who: Everyone!
When: Day 79 - Day 85
Where: Eden
What: Everyone arrives in Eden with their new animals forms - unfortunately, the welcoming party is a bit more intense than expected, with a ritual called 'The Anointment.' Better get this place figured out before anything gets any crazier.
Warnings: Hopefully no ritual sacrifice!

FLAME OF INSPIRATION↴

So it begins. After everyone has been given their new animal form and have had about an hour to readjust to it, the Ringmaster begins the infiltration. You don't see a lot of the specifics of the magic - all you know is that Pru's sword, the Hand of God, is somehow involved. It alone can tear through the wardings of Eden's realm, and once that entrance is made, the teleportation is instant. Everyone will find themselves in an open grassland overlooking a dense forest, with buildings and lights poking up out of the leaves. Behind you, there is a darker place - the barrens, the Ringmaster has explained. It's were the Outcasts are sent after they're banished.

You are scattered across the area as if you've been dropped in with nothing. You've been given specific instructions - act as if you have no memory besides the vague life of being an animal. None of you know each other. You don't know how you got here, you've just been suddenly found yourself enlightened. Hopefully feigning ignorance will be what the residents are expecting, as what information the Ringmaster could find suggests it should be.

Before the beasts of Eden come to claim you, you'll see the Ringmaster once last time, in the form of a giant serpent. With a nod of her head, she slithers away towards the barrens - she'll be in touch.

► THE WELCOMING: It's not long until you're discovered. The first to find you is a pigeon, who seems rather surprised. She'll ask the first few new arrivals she sees a couple questions - 'did you just get here?' 'did you meet the great Lilith?' Regardless of your answers, she'll hurriedly say she's going to go get help, and will fly away back into the forest. A short while later, an entire welcoming party of different animals will have come to greet you, sweeping out to find every straggler and explaining that you are the newest of the chosen. After they are sure that nobody is being left behind, they will invite you into Eden.

► THE GARDEN: Eden is a beautiful place. Every street, every structure, is surrounded by flowers and vibrant plant life - every bit as idyllic as its mythos would imply. The architecture is ambitious and creative, as if the residents have been perfecting the art for thousands of years, which they almost certainly have. There is the sweet smell of perfumes and incense on the other animals are you are led into the city. This is your home now, the locals will explain. You have been chosen by the Creator to serve Her cause. You will become one of the Honorable, one of Her artisans working towards the Divine Clarity. But first, of course, you must be sanctified.

► THE ANOINTMENT: On that first night, everyone is brought to a vast cathedral, covered in unknowable writings in a shining script. You are brought in through several gorgeous hallways lit with shining crystals and blue flame torches, only to emerge in a great hall built around a circular, sparkling pool of water. There are several braziers around its circumference blazing with fire, with sets of tools hanging out of them, like iron pokers. All of the new arrivals are gathered into the grand hall, and scriptures are read in the background that you can't really make out the specifics of.

You will all be made to stand around the outside of the pool, and the local animals will gently explain to you what needs to be done. To become a new Honorable, you must be Anointed with the Flame of Inspiration - that is, they are going to brand you with the metal pokers they have heating up. If you go along with it, they will burn the mark into a highly visible part of your person (they have smaller brands for smaller animals), and then cool it off in the pool of water, where you are encouraged to bask until you are comfortable again.

There are obviously a couple concerns with this. The biggest one is that it's sketchy as hell. The second one is that the brand is definitely made of medium grade iron. While the painful difference it makes won't be super obvious from the outside, long-term veterans and those with superlative fae qualities will find it very uncomfortable, and it will blister for a fair while afterward, which is seen as unusual. If your character refuses, or tries to get around it somehow, please explain in reply to the post down below.

► THE DAYS AFTER: After everyone is branded (or isn't, as the case may be), you'll be given the opportunity to dry off and head back into town. All of the fancy structures here are communal, they will explain, and you can choose wherever you'd like to sleep. There are a few buildings that are mostly empty that newbies seem welcome to hole up in, though the locals assure everyone they will be nearby in case they need help.

In the days that follow, everyone will be welcome to explore Eden and find their bearings, and begin to discover what gifts the Anointment has bestowed on them. Whether or not you were good at a creative pursuit before, you will find yourself filled with inspiration for something - any artistic talent will do. It's like a creative talent will have been born in you overnight, or like an existing talent of yours has been boosted to near perfection. This effect will last as long as the characters are in Eden unless you are told otherwise.

You won't feel the need to eat, but there is breakfast available, if you'd like it. The locals are very courteous, though they seem a bit confused. Something about your entry seems to strike them as different than usual.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Shura expected him to notice the brand. She had also hoped he wouldn't comment on it, but she really should have known better. If that kid could poke at a open wound, he would.

"They did, didn't they~?" Shura wasn't as sly as some of the others who could bullshit their way out of being branded in an obvious spot, especially not when so many others had cause a scene before her. In another world, she could have tried for sex appeal, but how was she supposed to be sexy as a lion?? Her tail is lashing out behind her, something Shura still hasn't quite figured out how to control. It's his fair warning. Even if she's tolerating how close he is now, she won't let him pry and sniff her at the same time.

Shiemi listens eagerly, feathers fluttering as she once more looks over the dedicated pile of assorted objects and then back. "Oh, wow! I never thought of something like that but I'm sure it'll be amazing to see once you've finished."

The question toward her work gets a happy, chirp-filled laugh as she nods happily. "I didn't think it was possible but they listen to me. It's amazing!"

"Mnh-!! Thank you!!" she quickly answers- she's rather impressed with herself as well, after all.

She's successfully been distracted by the idea of plants listening to anything now however, and proceeds to give Shiemi most of the attention. "You mean.... ....You tell them what to do, and they do it? You don't have to do the work with the plants, like with building other things?"

They do have places people can sleep... though given her transformation ability, they'll say it's up to her whether she wants to risk trying to re-enter the city. They just don't want to lose the only people who know where they are.

She tries so very, very hard. If anything Shiemi is grateful for the fact that being a bird means that her expressions are better hidden behind a beak and ruffled feathers. There is a quiet little noise as she hops along, ignoring for now the little springs of grass and herbs that erupt underfoot with her frazzled emotions.

"Really? I'm glad I can help," she says with a happier chirp and a hard resist to fly off in embarrassment.

Peridot goes down for a nap at the first opportunity that's available to her. It's not at all difficult for her to fall asleep; her group went through an arduous journey getting here, trekking through the Barrens and the tunnels in order to find this place. To top that off, she's in an organic meat body that has basic organic meat body needs. In other words: Once she puts her little raccoon head down, she's out cold in a matter of minutes.

Rest isn't the only goal though. She needs to talk to Steven, and with his dream-walking abilities, it shouldn't be too hard to reach him. The difficult part is in staying focused on her task once she's asleep.

The dream space he'll find her in is that of a replica of the carnival's game corner. Nothing seems especially out of the ordinary at the moment, but she looks pretty distressed for some reason!

"What an unfortunate bird you are," he says with a careful speech as not to say 'man' on accident. "Mine aren't but it's been a good while since I've had a 'dream' like that. A city full of sparkling lights." Wismuth to be exact. Early Wismuth. Every other stop after that pretty much came with non existent changes.

Whether he is or isn't privy to any information about babysitting a skink, he certainly saw the way Strange practically worried over him at the branding ceremony. It's still odd to see it even if Strange was putting on a front. To him, this was the enemy and while he wasn't going to treat him with any real disrespect, he didn't really have any set opinion on him, not yet anyway. This was war. This is how things went. At least Strange was getting something out of this.

Steven's dreams have been a bit of a rollercoaster tonight - one that seemed to abruptly drop off right at the end. After having a surprising amount of success with the Serpent, his attempt to contact the Furies directly had been a mess. He lost his grip on the dream too quickly, and got shoved out... somewhere else.

Suffice to say, he hadn't experienced anything quite so disturbing since he first connected minds with the Cluster. Even worse, this story didn't have a happy ending, yet. When his will to go somewhere else finally responds, he and he finds himself somewhere familiar... it's incredibly familiar.

He immediately starts hunting around for someone familiar. This dream could belong to a lot of people, but it has to be someone from the carnival. When he finally emerges in the same spot as Peridot, he's in his regular carnival form, except pale in the face and covered with faint scratches, as if from animal claws. And that's besides the bite mark, still present on his arm, with tiny bits of diamond crystallizing and floating out of the wound.

"Peridot!" he says, urgently. "Are you real?"

He really hopes she's real.

He ducks, paw over his nose much like he'd normally slap a hand over his mouth--he knows he said too much, but sometimes he just can't help himself.

"Er ah.. well hopefully it ain't causing ya too much grief there, haha. I can't feel anything except my ear on that side of my head..."

It really is too bad one of Shura's go-to weapons is completely useless here though. The animals of Eden seem to have a taboo on sex in general which--y'know given how like half of art is about sex normally, it kind of stands out even to a novice. Which is weird enough to notice when also everyone is animals. Shima's just gonna not think about it too hard (for once).

Peridot whirls around to face him at once, a hunted expression on her face. "Steven?" she says, like she was expecting someone else. Her demeanor softens at once, but the question he asks only registers on a delay. She squints thoughtfully for a second before the meaning clicks.

"Oh thank the stars this is just a dream isn't it," she blurts out all at once, relief crashing over her like a wave. She puts a hand up to her gem and rubs it, staring at the ground with widened eyes. "I was having most hideous dream-- I got into this HUGE fight with Strange, and I've been trying all day to chase him down to keep him from--"

Abruptly, he cuts herself off upon the unpleasant realization that, hey, what she's describing definitely happened in real life, albeit a bit differently from how she's been experiencing it in this dream. Immediately, she resolves not to go into it right now though. Not the time. Not the place.

She looks back up at Steven again, assessing his condition properly for the first time. "...What the heck happened to you?"

"Huh? You what?" is all Steven can say to the first part, but he's pursuing it seriously, ostensibly not just brushing this off as a dream thing. But then he's distracted by Peridot asking about his own situation.

He looks down at himself, not having fully realized the physical effects any of this has had on his dream self. It looks like he got roughed up by a bunch of angry animals which... more or less is what happened.

"Oh, I dunno. Just some dream stuff," he says, trying to brush it off. "After talking to the Serpent, I tried to reach out to the Furies, but instead I just got bounced into all these... other guys."

He rubs his forehead, frowning.

When has he ever let not having an excuse stop him from anything?

The preening posture is so perfect, both in disguise and example, that Tanyuu can barely keep from laughing--she actually has to stop herself from lifting a hoof to cover her mouth. Habits die hard...

"This isn't the sort of painting that suffers from a break in the making of it, it should be perfectly fine." Tanyuu turns to look at a cloth draped on the corner of a table nearby, her magic lifting it up and over her canvas to protect the artwork from any accidental damage or dust. "There we go. Now, if you could lead the way, sir...?"

Honestly, she could've ridden him still and it wouldn't have made a difference. From his observation there were tons of smaller animals often perched on top of larger ones, being carted around or lost in conversation, and he never minded carrying her. It was also conflictingly nice to see her so independent as a young girl.

He won't admit out loud how much he misses taking to the skies as she can. Even with his power to choose available he kept it on the down low, only using it for his glass and not to actually skirt through walls or the ground. He'd only use that when he needed to. Yet Tyki was no stranger to a good climb and when the slope starts to incline, he follows without complaint. Not that he really has much of a choice with a mouthful as it is. Look at that. Something manages to shut Tyki up.

"I don't know if I'm unfortunate or not. What might be limiting to one creature, another might find it as a blessing. After all, I know what I am to do and know that though I want to, I cannot help out in other ways."

A round-about way of saying sorry Tyki, Strange expects he won't be much help with regards to the Mirror. He knows that it would probably be dangerous should Ignatius get anywhere near the thing, so he's resolving to keep that skink as far away from the Mirror as humanly possible.

Zangetsu will ask to have the pinkening enchantment removed so he can sneak back to Eden. He'll also ask the other Carnival folks who he should tell all this info to in order to get it disseminated properly.

"Y-Yeah," Sans says to Rita, obviously unnerved. "I think it was one of those things where... she could see pretty much everything I was seeing. She thought she could catch dissenters by tossing me out there and going off of how people reacted."

He's not sure if anyone gave enough information to be a risk, that way.

"After this... I dunno if she's going to be looking for everyone who came to me about mailing stuff or not."

Sans is perplexed at first, until the light tilts and he notices the message. He's been in a pretty bad mood today, but he can't help but snort with laughter at seeing the words.

of course, he tries to contain himself a moment later, since it's unclear what he's laughing at.

"Oh hey, looks like you've been inspired," he says, appreciating the sentiment. That's pretty cool, even if Tyki isn't that jazzed about it, apparently. "Wish I could say the same..."

Is making puns about your species okay here? He hopes so, because he's not going to stop any time soon.

"Eh... I feel like I'm in the wrong field, maybe," he says. "What have you been working on?"

"Just some of this kinda stuff," he says, and then writes:

Magic objects that transfer information at a touch. I'll tell her the deets.

"Sounds about right," Sans admits. Strange isn't really renowned for his self control. "But the real question is if the risk is worth it, to get said birdbrain out of his cage."

Sans isn't sure. He'd like to believe this will all go off without a hitch, but... well. That's not how things have historically gone, in the carnival.

Syrlya immediately suggests Lambert, of course, and whoever is during the informational rounds--but to be careful because they can't let anyone from Eden overhear what they discovered.

He's also pretty sure a bunch of them going missing is going to put huge suspicion on them anyway, but since they saw Sans was compromised it's probably better they don't risk capture between it. But they need to let everyone in Eden know that they're probably going to be under even more scrutiny if most of them don't make it back.

He's confident in his ability to evade capture, but it's probably a good idea for one of them to stay with the Furies anyway, as a point of contact, so he can stay here.

Once the deal is done, Ignatius will think for a moment, recalling important information.

He'll say that when he woke up in the cavern, a few members of the Twelve were nearby. Or, at least, he's pretty sure that's who they were. They were talking about him, and how they wanted to know what was wrong with him, that caused his body to react like that. One of them suggested that they had called for him to be brought there so that they could use 'the Mirror' to look at his soul and see if anything was wrong with it.

The other seemed uneasy, as the Mirror is only used for very important things, and bringing a random Honorable before it would be inappropriate and would contaminate the data.

They were also briefly mentioning that they might want to keep Ignatius locked away down there until they can sort out of the cause. Of course, Ignatius took their distraction as an opportunity to turn to smoke and escape into the tunnels.

He didn't have a solid direction, so he basically just slipped through some piles of collapsed tunnel rock to try to get as part away from that group as possible. He kept moving upward, slipping between broken stone, before eventually he encountered a flooded area. He passed through that water, too, and eventually made it to the surface.

He found some kind of ruin with a glowing crystal inside and water pouring out the front entrance. Then he cheesed it into the woods, so he's not totally sure where that was.

That they don't just use the mirror on people willy nilly is kind of a relief, and it sounds like he was right that this is something almost entirely in the hands of the Twelve.

Yuya listens patiently, and when Ignatius finishes the story he'll thank him and mention he's going to repeat it to Strange and Rita so that what he said can get to people who are more equipped to scout out a cave than he is.

He'll also ask if Ignatius has been hiding this whole time? He wonders if the Twelve are still looking for him.

Oh, they are definitely still looking for him. But he's small and turn into smoke/ash, so he's been making that difficult.

Yuya doesn't need to tell Ignatius to stay safe... but still, he really hopes he stays safe.

He starts to get up so he can go tell Rita and Strange the news, but pauses first to ask if there's anything else Iggy wants to mention or ask while they're alone.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 62 of 75

⇨ EDEN

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Closed to Steven

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject