⇨ EDEN PT. 4 (FINALE)

[ringleaders]

Who: Everyone!
When: Day 89
Where: Eden
What: The Mirror is taken by the carnival, and several people from the carnival have been taken by Lilith. As Eden's Architects take sides, the battle for Eden's future is set to reach its conclusion.
Warnings: Violence.

INFINITE↴ When the Silver Mirror is taken, the war truly begins. Lilith had seen fit to take her time, gloating over the enemies she perceived as being no challenge to her power - only to sense the moment that the Ringmaster claimed the Silver Mirror and took the skies in challenge. The Ringmaster has taken on her half beast form, black scaled, winged, and horned, and wielding the Silver Mirror as some kind of shield. Only moments ago, she used it to blast a whole clear through the cathedral. Lilith, realizing her mistake, has swept up the darkness created by Bezaliel and begun using it as a weapon against the Ringmaster. She has six silver wings that reflect light like mirrors, as well as strange, geometric horns. Ostensibly, part of the Silver Mirror's magic has been taken into herself, which means that even though the Ringmaster has the Mirror, Lilith still has control over it. She scatters the prisms containing her prisoners across Eden while she counters her foe, drawing on their strength to aid her. Two godlike beings clash in the sky above you. On the ground, a war begins. What do you do? ► FAE VS NEPHALEM: While all of this is going on, the Ringmaster and Lilith are essentially fighting over the Silver Mirror in the sky. It is all very cyclical and unending, and just as outrageous looking as it sounds. They both currently have some degree of hold over the Mirror right now, which means the advantage is wildly vacillating between the two of them. You probably don't want to directly interfere with this, but who knows? Maybe you'd got something really cunning up your sleeve. ► EDEN'S ARCHITECTS: In the aftermath of the Silver Mirror being taken, the Architects of Eden are being forced to choose sides. At first glance, it would appear that Saraqael (wolf), Samyaza (hare), Araqiel (stag), Penemue (raven), and Armaros (spider) have chosen to fight with the Furies of Eden in an attempt to cast Lilith out for good. Bezaliel (bear), Shamshel (tiger), Azazel (crocodile), Chazaqiel (eagle), and Baraqel (stingray) have, alternatively, chosen to defend Lilith, and are attempting to convince as many Honorables to follow in their path as possible. Gadreel (dolphin) and Kakabel (axolotl) seem to be uncomfortably remaining neutral for the moment and seeing how things play out. Not all Honorables or Scholars have followed the choice of their Architect. Many have been pulled one way or the other regardless of their kind, and are generally being accepted into the fight on their claimed side. You can NPC conflicts with random Honorables, but not the Architects. To interact with those guys, you need to do an investigation. ► PRISM BREAK: All of the carnival members that attended Samyaza's garden party (except Herbert) have been captured by Lilith after falling prey to a trap set by Bezaliel. Each of them has been trapped inside mirrored prisms that are now scattered around hard to access areas of Eden, defended by both Honorables supporting their maker and by mirror eyed dopplegangers. The infinite reflections of the characters inside the prisms are being fed on by Lilith, and she is tearing out as many of those reflections as necessary to do her bidding in the meantime. Each reflection is functionally a magical clone with no true will of its own, but will be able to fully mimic the emotions and powers of the characters they're taken from. They serve Lilith above all. Each reflection spawned from a prism take a fraction of their host's spiritual energy with them, meaning the more clones that are spawned, the weaker the real version will become. The more powerful a character is, the more energy each reflection takes to make - so if you have a character with lots of powers, they will probably have something like 1-4 dopplegangers spawned, while characters with few or no powers will be going completely quantity over quality and spawn potentially dozens of mirror clones. Clones shatter and vanish when destroyed, though the prisms will keep spawning new ones until the captive is set free. Captives, it's your job to NPC these clones. Captives will have no idea what's going on outside of their prism besides the abstract idea that these reflections are being harvested from them, and that's bad. The mirror clones will be attempting to protect the source prisms from disruption, as well as generally trying to destroy all enemies. NOTE: all captives will have returned to their natural forms by now (IE are no longer animals) and their clones will reflect this. Those missing "darkness shards" from their chest will also have had those returned. ► EDEN'S FURY: The Furies of Eden are striking back against Lilith at last, and it turns out a lot more of them have lingering rebellious ideas than previously though. Those that take up the cause of the Furies will be fighting on the carnival's side, so you are free to NPC some allied Honorables as well. You can also use the Investigations section to interact with named rebels, if you want, or to get an idea of what they are generally doing. Another potential avenue of investigation is trying to get the Serpent out here, as she'd be undoubtedly a powerful ally if cured of her curse. You might need it. Now that they know of the fae, the Honorables and Lilith-supporting Architects have no qualms using iron again you! They will be utilizing iron in all possible weaponry. ► NEW, CONFUSED, OR BOTH: Did you just get here? Did you fall behind and now you're terribly lost? Don't sweat it - let your character be as confused as you are. Take the opportunity to make top levels asking other characters what's going on in-game, or check out the original setting info post to catch up. The short version is this: the carnival wanted to steal a powerful artifact called the Silver Mirror from Lilith, which was stashed in her realm called Eden. They did just that, and now Lilith is back and she's pissed!

Comments

[atouts]

Sure he can, assuming he can catch him. With the Honorables scattering, however, that leaves a lack of shadows to immediately vanish into, which means he's waiting for Bezaliel to charge up close enough to him aaaand... disappearing into that shadow.

[npcarnival]

For the first time since the Athenaeum, Childermass will feel resistance. It's not on the same level as the Count of Crows, but Bezaliel's shadow seems to have a life of it own, and the second he tries to disappear into it, it's actively trying to bind him, closing in like a prison.

[atouts]

For a split second, Childermass almost panics. The shadow not bending to his will, it reminds him of the Count, but the Count can't possibly be here. No, it's Bezaliel. The bear was a creature of shadows, same as himself, and so he counteracts by giving it far more to bind than expected.

Small crow suddenly bursts into an absolute monster of a crow, a trick he'd been hoping to keep up his sleeve until later. With new size and strength, he'll try to rip himself back out of the bear's shadow and bowl him over while launching into the sky.

[npcarnival]

That does, in fact, catch Bezaliel off guard. While expecting to snuff out a tiny bird in his shadow, instead a great monster flies out, tearing free of the shadow's grasp.

Of course, Bezaliel isn't going to be so quick to let Childermass go.

Spears of darkness form in the bear's shadow and shoot after Childermass, making the fight much more literal.

[atouts]

To which Childermass responds with a bit of wind magic instead of shadow this time, taking what's being generated from his wings and boosting it, snapping off a vicious blast of wind at the spears to knock them off course. Immediately after that, he'll drop, trying to take a dive at the bear, although whether that's with or without spears in his wings is yet to be seen.

[npcarnival]

The wind magic is actually a total success, and Childermass will feel the spears whiz through the edges of his feathers as he makes his dive. Of course, as soon as Childermass gets himself close, Bezaliel is going to focus on grappling him with his arms and wrestling it out instead of letting him get away again, ideally with his shadows supporting him.

He's gunna try to dig in those claws, still coated with iron. Which Childermass might not know about until he gets close.

[atouts]

Iron is going to suck, a lot, which means once Childermass closes the distance between the two of them, he needs to try and end this fast. Iron will, unfortunately, be a surprise, although in retrospect it shouldn't really have been. Coming in he leaves his wings spread, casting a shadow and trying to dig talons and the teeth of his serrated beak into Bezaliel just as much as the bear himself is trying to get iron-clad claws into him.

It'll be a struggle of shadows in the end, Childermass equally calling on the shadows to try and sink Bezaliel down into his own version of a shadowy prison.

[npcarnival]

As Childermass gets close, he'll be touched by an aspect of shadow that he's not as familiar with: not physical shadow, but metaphysical darkness. He's encountered it one before. It may not be identical, but as Bezaliel summons an aura of Darkness, it feels ever so similar to how it felt being in the hold of the Void.

It starts to bring out everything in his soul that is self destructive, all the inner obstacles that get in his way. He's only exposed for a few moments, but it's there.

And then Bezaliel executes his best effort at tearing Childermass's head off, with a swipe of his iron claws that starts beneath Childermass's wing and ends across his beak and face. Six inch long claws, each coated and sharpened with iron, only barely miss completely slicing open Childermass's neck. Even so, the force of the strike against his head will be enough to knock him straight to the ground, and to probably give him a nasty concussion.

The fact that Childermass gets knocked away instead of grappled is probably what saves him from being finished off.

[atouts]

That... is not even remotely shadows. The Darkness doesn't inspire the same panic that the first encounter with Bezaliel's shadows did but the similarity to the Void is still disturbing. He won't get time to dwell on it, though, not when the darkness is lanced by through by red — if only in his own vision — as iron tears through feathers and flesh.

Childermass screams or, more aptly, caws wildly in pain, seeing how he's still a giant bird at this point. This is worse than the brand by far and it's a kindness that the blow to his head throws him to the ground and away from the iron. Down there, he grasps for the only exit he can thing of.

He can't vanish through his own shadow but he can madly snatch up every bit of shadow around him, all but Bezaliel's, and explode them out into dozens of escaping shadow crows. It's in those that he tries to escape the same way, forcing his form back down into a normal crow's and taking off for the treeline. It isn't something he'll be able to hold for long, though, not with how much blood he's going to be losing.

[npcarnival]

Bezaliel doesn't chase after the crows, still tired from multiple fights and unsure which crow is the real one. Besides, he knows how badly he wounded Childermass, just now. The bird will probably just fly away to die elsewhere.

Also, he's succeeded in scaring the Honorables he was recruiting back into line. Having very obviously exerted his authority, he declares his orders to the crowd again, and sends them on their way.