lostcarnival | ⇨ EDEN

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⇨ 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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Inside the workshop, Rita sits atop the head of her moose companion, 9S. She speaks softly as she tells him this and that about the day she's had, and did you know that Sans is crazy, possibly? The complaining and gossiping continues until there's a knock at the door. Rita tenses at the sound, but since Papyrus calls out immediately, some of that tension fades.

"Come in," she calls back as she hops down from 9S' head. Each of the windows gets one last glance; she's blocked them up with cluttered displays of artwork, then drawn the curtains to obscure them. "We're all set up."

Not that there was much to set up. So long as they can have privacy for a few minutes, all they need is for Rita and 9S to use their abilities. She just hopes she hasn't misjudged the whole situation...

It sure is a good thing 9S invested some time and magic into trying to find some kind of means to resolve something like this. It's almost like he knew something like this was going to happen. Which he did. Because of course. Because the Carnival's track record for this sort of thing has been awful.

Well, they'll see what they can do.

When Rita -- Puri -- hops off his head, 9S approaches the door to let Papyrus the Large Fanged Cat in.

"Hey," he says, peering at both Papyrus and the small beetle in tow before stepping aside to let them pass. He grins, though the effect is probably less friendly than intended given he's a white moose. "Try not to knock anything over while you're here."

Yeah, that grin's a little unsettling. He's had a stressful day, and it's been a while since he's seen a moose monster. They weren't quite so large in comparison to him. Those are some big teeth.

"Trying and succeeding, I am graceful and very accomplished," Papyrus retorts, shaking it off and looking around for some kind of cushion or table to rest his brother on. "See! I got him and nobody got hurt. He didn't even recognize what I was doing..."

Which, really, is another nail in the coffin of proof that something's been done to him. They already did this before, and Sans didn't fall for it the first time.

Rita sighs and shakes her head at the report. She's glad it worked, yeah, but doing it in public was riskier than she would've liked.

But there's no point in saying so now. It worked, and now it's on to Phase 2 of the plan.

There's a worktable with space to put him. Rita hops on top of it and points with her paw to where she'd like Papyrus to put the beetle; a spot where both she and 9S can easily see.

Once he's been put down, she approaches and holds up a paw, conjuring a magical interface with which to examine any enchantments placed upon him. "Now... Let's see what's really going on here."

Upon examining Sans, the evidence of enchantment is immediate and clear. Threads of etheric manipulation extend from his body in all directions, as if linking him to some external source, clearly binding his mental faculties in a dysfunctional way.

The threads are thin but numerous, radiating with significant magical strength.

There's also the presence of Papyrus's sleeping spell glittering around him, of course, putting a blanket of suppression over everything else. Hopefully Rita can tell the difference.

Once Sans is settled on the table, Papyrus steps back to let the experts get to work. The journeymen at least, hopefully. They're experienced, that's the bottom line.

He paces around, looking for a good place to watch from where 9S won't be stepping into him, and tries to settle down. But he keeps glancing towards the blockaded windows and door, ears twitching in anticipation of a knock or a voice that keeps not coming.

"So... What do your lights tell you?" He finally asks, craning his neck to watch the process more closely. "I'm sure it's Sans, but..."

Rita's ears twitch as she examines the data before her.

"It's as I thought... he's been enchanted," Rita announces, her eyes darting as she looks over various points on the display. "But this... it's more complex than I imagined. It's like a series of threads, binding his mind, connecting him to... something." There's a sense of fascination in her tone, as if she's been presented with a delightfully challenging puzzle.

But after a few seconds, she realizes what she's saying doesn't sound that reassuring, so she adds for Papyrus, "Don't worry. We can handle this. Nines? Think you can sever some of these connections?"

9S blatantly looks over Rita's shoulders as she pulls up her magical interface, but he's not nearly as intimately familiar with it as Rita is. Hmm, a series of threads, huh? 9S lets out a thoughtful hum.

"Wait, let's not do that just yet."

He has a reason! It's not that he isn't confident in his skills at hacking, it's... he knows the people they come up against are typically powerful. There's always the chance that he won't be able to successfully sever the strands... then what? They might lose the opportunity to--

"I could try following those threads... see where they lead. If I sever them now, we might not be able to trace them back to their source."

Edited (I FORGOT WORDS) 2018-07-15 06:05 (UTC)

It seems like mind control is more complicated and visual than he'd guessed, and he listens with a curious tilt to his head.

And without a skeletal perma-smile, there's nothing to hide Papyrus' feelings from his expression. He briefly perks up at her confidence, goes flat with bared teeth at the suggestion they intentionally delay saving his brother. He talks with his usual way of trying to be positive, anyway.

"Invisible webs of intangible cables... You can see those threads, and follow them?" Who knows where they lead. Somebody whose talent is stuff like this, or maybe the most powerful and important people, or maybe even... the mirror itself? Maybe it could be useful. But...

"...Does that go both ways?"

Rita shakes her head at Papyrus' question. "I don't know," she says simply. Could there be a risk involved? Maybe. If it was someone else, that might lead Rita to reject the idea, but she's willing to trust in his capabilities. "I don't mind trying, but..."

But something about his wording just now gives her pause. "A network of threads... a web..." She squints at the display, mulls that over for a moment, then turns her head to look at 9S, eyes wide with realization. "One of the Twelve Architects is a spider... right?"

9S doesn't miss the look Rita gives him, but... he's not sure why she's staring at him like that? What sort of animal is a spider, anyway? Yes, he'd heard one was a spider, but... The look he gives her is of mild bewilderment, her realisation going completely over his head. He's not quite sure what threads and a web has to do with a spider.

"Uh... yeah, that's what I heard."

Instead, he focuses on the bit he actually knows something about. That is, diving into peoples' minds. Admittedly, he's not entirely sure if he can do it; his capabilities when dealing with living beings and magic is much less than what he can do when dealing with machines, but in theory he should be able to follow the thread...

"If we sever the threads, chances are they're going to know what we did, anyway."

So... yes, it could go both ways, but if they do anything with Sans, they're likely going to get compromised anyway. But if they could potentially learn more about who or what they're dealing with...

She gets a little more nodding recognition from Papyrus, as he at least knows spiders make webs; there's plenty of spiders underground. So many that they're practically a micro-nation unto themselves, with a queen of their own, and didn't really come to him for help with anything. There's not much he can offer for guessing at the abilities or motives of the Architects.

"I don't care if they know," Papyrus grumbles, hunching up defensively. "Somebody already knows something, they did this to him."

Though what they know now is a lot less than what they could know. One beetle from a suspicious group of newcomers, doing whatever he did to get singled out, is different from people having the ability to counteract what was done to him.

As Papyrus keeps talking, complaining and rambling to himself, he loses conviction in what he's saying. "Sans is small! He can hide! As long as there aren't any strings... And... he'd be the first one to follow those strings and see what he can find out."

He sighs and looks away. "...I don't know what's best."

Come on, Nines, don't leave her hanging like that!

The more she thinks about it, the stronger Rita feels about her hunch. But 9S is right; if anything they do here can draw attention to them, it might just happen when they sever that connection, anyway.

"Do it," she says decisively. "Give it a try, and then we can both tackle these threads. We'd better act quickly."

No time like the present, then!

It's kind of awkward to do this as a moose, and therefore a quadruped, but he'll work with what he's got. Rearing up and placing a front hoof on the table to steady himself, 9S raises his right forehoof, a ring of light appearing around the ankle. Firing what appears to be a ball of energy -- travelling fast enough to appear beam-like -- there will be no physical pain at the intrusion as 9S hacks in and throws his consciousness inside of Sans mind.

He expects this will be easier with Sans asleep; usually someone who is taken unawares has less ability to put up their defences. Typically memories -- either those deeply rooted in their being, or ones that are currently on their mind -- float to the surface when he hacks someone. Echoes of words, more than images, tend to be more powerfully rooted in the psyche, so thus that's the form memories usually take.

9S honestly isn't sure if he can 'follow the thread'; it's something he'd be able to do on a machine, but on a biological (? He's still not entirely sure what the deal is with these skeletons) being? But he's definitely searching for the threads tangled in Sans as described by Rita, and will attempt to trace them back to their source when he finds them.

The threads extend off into the ether, and there's no path that 9S can follow. Instead he's just stuck looking at Sans's brain, which is currently echoing words... exactly the same as what he's been scrawling all over paper, today.

Damn. Well it was worth a try. There's no port for him to open, unfortunately.

There's no reason for him to dig into Sans' memories to figure out what happened to him at the present moment; if he can sever the threads controlling Sans, then they can just ask.

That's a big if.

He's still new to the realm of hacking non-mechanical beings, but he's been pouring over The Psychic Machine since he got it. Mentally reaching out, he attempts sever the threads.

Edited (i shouldn't tag while watching voltron lmao) 2018-07-16 01:56 (UTC)

It takes some fiddling. Maybe 9S just gets lucky, or maybe he's really onto something here - either way, the threads will snap. The moment they do, Sans wakes up.

He jumps, his wings half opening - and then, abruptly, he disappears, only to reappear a moment later several feet away, and to fly straight into the wall. He smacks into it, and falls to the floor, his wings flailing.

"Shit," he says.

Whatever Rita and 9S is doing, Papyrus doesn't really feel it - not until the sleep dust abruptly gives.

Then it's all too fast, with Sans suddenly jumping into the air and disappearing before Papyrus even clambers to his feet and his heart plummets.

"Oh my god--!" But before he even finishes, the buzz returns with a thud and a tired swear on the far side of the room. Papyrus wheels around to the sound, rushing over to see.

"Sans!? Are you... still panicking? And still you?"

When Sans suddenly disappears, Rita's magic display goes blank. She jumps, her fur bristling in surprise.

Before it cut out, it looked like 9S was succeeding... but it went a bit faster than her eyes could properly follow.

When the beetle reappears, she too whirls around to see him, jumping down from the table and running to his side. She's tense; this reaction wasn't entirely what she expected, and she's not sure if everything worked the way it's supposed to.

When Sans wakes, 9S is abruptly thrown out of Sans' head and he stumbles back. Or he would, if he wasn't a hoofed beast standing on his hind legs with his front hoofs on a table. So instead, his hoofs slip off the table and he narrowly avoids hitting his head on it.

It takes a while for him to return to himself, mumbling the same stream of words that he'd picked up from Sans' head before he slowly blinks and shakes his head. "I... Did it work?"

Sans is getting back onto his feet on the ground in a rush, as if he needs to run the moment he has his bearings again. Of course, what he's seeing here isn't what he was expecting to see.

"Papyrus," he says, voice choked as if he is still very much panicking. At least he isn't running away, though. "I... fuck. Fuck."

He takes a few little skitters backward, and then Rita will see a flash of magic. A second scarab of nearly identical appearance appears next to him, who immediately responds to appearing with a feminine gasp.

"Sans!" Helvetica, his daemon, says, rushing over to the other beetle and half crawling on top of him. "You're free!"

Edited 2018-07-16 03:26 (UTC)

"He remembers me!" Papyrus bounces in place, grinning a fangy grin at 9S. "It worked!"

Probably. There's still a chance it only partly worked, that he remembers but something else wrong... But summoning Hel for a self-comforting hugs, instead of risking teleporting into walls, is a good sign.

He approaches the beetles, crouching down and settling a couple feet away, because it's too strange and awkward to talk to his brother at such a height difference.

"9S and Rita fixed your head, so you should be okay now," he tells them.

Rita shoots 9S a concerned look, loosely recognizing that jumble of nonsense he was just mumbling. Is that what he saw inside Sans' mind...?

Maybe she shouldn't be too surprised. He looks like he's still freaking out. But that flash of magic, and that other beetle... There's a glimmer of hope here. They did it, didn't they?

"You're a daemon, right?" Rita asks the female beetle, then glancing between the two of them, continues with, "Can either of you tell us what happened?"

Well, that answers his question.

9S is just here, trying to get the quadruple beetles in his vision to line up. Rita's already asked the question he wants answers to, so he stays silent.

"Yes," Helvetica says eagerly, finding it much easier to articulate at the moment than Sans. "I think he's going to be alright... He's just afraid, based on past experiences."

Sans just lets her talk, slowly allowing himself to come down from the height of his panic. He feels dizzy, and all of this is still a bit unreal.

"We were searching the Cathedral for information, and Sans was caught by the Architect Armaros! She has magical webs guarding her spaces in the temple, and once Sans was caught in them he couldn't escape."

"Armaros couldn't read our mind like she wanted, so she sent us back out like a puppet to gather information... On which note, I'm concerned that Papyrus at the very least may be incriminated, based on him bringing Sans here."

"Shit," Sans finally says. "This is my bad. I screwed up and now..." He can't make himself finish.

Edited 2018-07-16 04:57 (UTC)

⇨ EDEN

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