lostcarnival | ⇨ EDEN PT. 4 (FINALE)

Entry tags:

⇨ EDEN PT. 4 (FINALE)

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!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Rita's flying around the city, looking for a certain someone, when she spots something that stands out almost as much as a magic rabbit: a relatively normal-looking human. Someone clearly not from the carnival, at that.

She's already flying fairly low, so it's easy enough to swing into a neat landing on her feet, just a few steps away from the unfamiliar woman.

"What's with you?" she asks, completely out of the blue.

"Whoa!" Beau drops into a ready stance as Rita lands, a second or two's delay before she takes in the fact that this is not an animal. Not purely. Those wings - and is that a tail, back there? - are more additions to a human body than anything.

"Uh, what's with you?" she returns, scowling. "Don't just... land next to somebody, you could startle them, into something they'll regret! Give a little warning."

Rita narrows her eyes, sizing up the woman with a frown.

"You don't look like you're on Lilith's side," she opts to say, rather than arguing. Her choice of words, startle them into something they'll regret, suggests she doesn't see Rita as an enemy. "Who are you?"

"Beau," she says simply, and gestures down at herself. Very not an animal, here. "Yeah, uh, escaped prisoner, y'know. Lilith's that head honcho who hates humans, right? Definitely not on her side. What about you, though, you look..."

Her jaw shifts, as she finishes taking in Rita's appearance. "You look mostly human. Are you with that Strange guy?"

So Lilith did have other humans here... That makes sense, with the information she's gathered.

A hint of sourness crosses Rita's face at Strange's name, but she nods. "Yeah... more or less. We're both with the carnival. My name's Rita. Rita Mordio." Did Strange tell her about the carnival? The guy's a blabbermouth, so she figures he might have. "If you're an enemy of Lilith's, you might as well help us. Then we can all get the heck out of this realm."

"I mean, I'd love to get out of this place, and he already invited me along with. Basically," Beau gives a shrug. It's not like it was clear how much authority the guy scrying from the glorified puddle really had. Especially given that reaction to his name - but it's not like people working together always get along. Whatever. "So if you don't mind telling me how I can help... Rita, right?"

In all honesty, Rita looks kinda like a kid. Not a kid-kid, but still. Good on her for running off to join a carnival and flip off her old life on the way out.

"...All right," Rita agrees with a nod. "I'm looking for a rabbit. I could use a hand finding her."

She lets that sit for a moment, then clarifies, since tracking down a rabbit probably doesn't sound all that interesting or useful. "Not just any rabbit, I mean. She's bigger than normal rabbits, and has... greenish feathers, I guess. She might be able to help us with something important."

"A rabbit with... green feathers..." Beau mulls that over for a minute, before giving another yeah okay shrug. Maybe the rabbit's from their carnival. The people she's seen from it so far, Strange and now Rita, have random bits of other animals to them. Why not a rabbit? "Well, that stands out. Good thing, too, there's like... a lot of rabbits around here."

She stretches her arms over her head, shifts around a little to make sure nothing's tensed up from talking, and glances around their surroundings. "You got any idea where she's at, or do you just... wander around looking? I can do that, I was already doing that, but I hate walking the same paths if I can help it."

"She was last seen hosting a garden party at the edge of town, but enemies attacked, and everyone scattered. We've been asking around, but no one seems to know where she went after that." Frowning, Rita offers a half-shrug. "So... 'wandering around looking' is about where we're at right now."

Were you hoping they'd have a real plan, here? Too bad.

She could dwell on the part where there's no plan and they're just wandering, but after the group she's used to? It's just another Grissen. Or whatever day of the week they're at.

Instead, she circles back to that first point. "A... garden party? How does a garden party help you guys steal anything?" Beau raises her hands for quotes, and adds, "I mean, 'acquire' something."

"It wasn't our party," Rita retorts, as if that should be obvious.

Then, realizing that perhaps it wasn't, she elaborates. "Samyaza - that's the rabbit's name - isn't one of us. She's one of the Architects, the leaders of this place. She hosted that party and invited our group so that... I don't know, I guess she was going to help us, but Lilith's followers had to come and screw everything up."

"I don't know what an Architect is," Beau says, a little annoyed because it wasn't obvious, secret infiltrating carnies might throw garden parties all the time, it seems plausible.

But she does know, since Strange mentioned it in their poolside chat, "Lilith rules the whole realm. But this Samyaza's one of the leaders... And Lilith's followers aren't her followers... Oh, man, is this some rebellion, and that's why everything's gone to hell up here?"

After the terribly peaceful quiet of the garden prison, she assumes their city isn't usually like this, with animals and partially-animals fighting each other through the streets.

"That's about the sum of it, yeah. Lilith hasn't exactly been kind to the animals living here. Some of them had enough, and our infiltration created an opportunity for the rebels to make their move." Rita looks out at chaos of the city. She feels kind of bad, having had a part in causing all this... but that's all the more reason to see it through and make sure the Honorables get their freedom.

"The original leader of the rebels, a serpent... she's lost her mind. But Samyaza has the power to communicate feelings to others through song, in some magical way." She makes a vague hand gesture, indicating that she doesn't really know how it works. "We're hoping that if we get those two together, we can get through to the serpent so she can finally finish what she started."

"Who wouldn't go crazy, locked up in a place like this," Beau helpfully contributes, as she mulls over these fragments of understanding and follows along. "So, magic music to heal her, and then... she's gonna challenge Lilith for ruling this place?"

A flash of green feathers off to the side grabs her attention, and Beau turns to look at it. "Hey, is that...? Nope, no, that's a bird, never mind."

"Where--" Rita cries, moving to also look, but as soon as it's clear that it's nothing, she sighs and glowers a bit, seemingly annoyed at how eager she just looked.

"...Anyway, what the Serpent does will be up to her." Assuming she can regain some of her sense of self. "Could be a long shot, but if it works, it could put things in our favor. So what do you say? Think you can help us cover some more ground?"

"Sure, I can pitch in. Not like I had anything else to be doing," Beau adds with a shrug.

If anything, she thought they were already doing that. And the only obvious thing to change would be... "What are you thinking, we split up? Stay in yelling distance, if we find anything, or if we get jumped and need a hand."

"I was planning on signalling with something like this," Rita explains, holding up one hand with the palm facing up. In the space over it, she conjures a small fireball.

"But if that's not an option for you, I guess you can try yelling... or get up to a high place and use one of these to reflect light in a pattern of flashes." From one of her tunic pockets, Rita retrieves a compact mirror, decorated with colored glass in an elaborate, geometric pattern. She holds it out to Beau.

Beau goes ah at the sight of the small fireball, and shakes her head at the question of her doing the same. Magic's a thing for her world, but not for her personally. Not yet, anyway, though who knows what'll happen with soaking in fae magic.

"Hey! Mirror!" She eagerly accepts the offered compact mirror, and gently runs a finger across the glass. "Can't that uh, that strange guy look through one of these?"

"Theoretically, yes," Rita answers, giving it another glance. "I'm going to try and get that idiot to help us with the search too, but... he might be preoccupied." Her gaze drifts upward, to the Ringmaster and Lilith, clashing in battle. "That shield up there... that's the Mirror he was trapped in."

"That... what?" Beau follows her upward gaze, squinting at the distant form of a shield-wielding dragon in battle with some many-winged shape, and coughs to buy herself a moment of thought. "I mean. What do you mean, trapped in the mirror?"

Rita gives her a confused look. "What, you mean he didn't..." And her eyes narrow. "Right. Of course he didn't mention that part. Figures."

He was probably trying to look cool and in control. What a dolt.

"He went inside the Mirror... the one we were trying to steal. And apparently, he can't get back out. I could probably figure it out, if I could get a look at the damn thing, but..." She simply ends that thought with an exasperated gesture in the Ringmaster's direction. Why did all of this have to happen now?

"How do you get trapped in a mirror," Beau wonders rhetorically, squinting up at the flashing reflections and various magic tossed back and forth. It looks more like a shiny silver shield from her, but what does she know, that's a dragon with a shield openly fighting in the sky, exchanging spells with what's presumably Lilith.

"So not only didn't he steal the thing... but he got caught trying and, if anything, he got stolen by it?" It's impressive...ly bad. "Wonder what else he didn't mention."

"Anything that wasn't flattering to himself, no doubt," Rita mutters, then rubs a hand over her face. "Well, whatever. You know what to do, right? Use the signal if you see any sign of that rabbit." If she let Strange's obnoxious antics distract her every time she was confronted with them, she'd never get anything done.

And so, with all of that made clear, she opens her wings and kicks off, flying up toward the rooftops so she can continue the search from above.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

⇨ EDEN PT. 4 (FINALE)

wildcard!

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

no subject

no subject

no subject