⇨ 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

[fortuneglass]

Divot it is. Carly dedicates a bit of time to doing that- she'd rather the smoke not build after all, so she hurriedly but carefully makes herself a good tent within the mass of plants. Once she's done though?

"Ok...let's try this!" she hisses, coating her beak in flames. She doesn't quite...drill but she does poke it against the glass and focus on slowly pushing in pretty hard. She does it until she receives a 'crack'-

And then repeats, making a circle of points.

[fourthscribe]

The good news: with the time she's taken to burn that divot, the bubble keeping the clones from Carly has grown even more.

The bad news: that crack is not subtle at all.

"She's inside!!"

What follows is a rapid and rather violent eruption of breaking branches and tearing vines as all the clones turn to tearing the bushes apart. The magic won't help them here, but they aren't wasting time worrying about torn sleeves and cut hands to tear their way inside. Carly's got some time, but only so much.

Inside the prism, Tanyuu rouses and stares at the cracks before pushing over to them and slamming her elbow against the glass frantically in an attempt to break the glass even farther.

[fortuneglass]

"HIHH!!" Is the sudden shouting and tearing helping her mood? NO.

But she is nothing if not determined, and frantic. "FFF- Faster faster..!!" she shouts to herself, picking up the pace with the heat and pecking. It may get a bit toasty in there, but it's at least going to mean things go quicker. It may even get easier for Tanyuu to punch at the glass...eventually after all, a hole has to appear right???

Rather, a hole Tanyuu's side. "Hurry hurry hurry..!!" she wails, largely to herself.

[fourthscribe]

"I'm trying!" Tanyuu shouts back regardless, flipping around when her elbow starts to truly hurt and starts slamming her tail against the spot instead. The cracks are expanding, and each hole Carly puts in gives Tanyuu that much more to work with. Her tail is starting to wilt, but if it's between that and remaining trapped inside...!

One of the clones with knives has gotten close enough to see the flames through the vines and calls out "Over here!" before attempting to stab the knife through. It catches in the woodier parts, not quite able to reach in but probably still too close for comfort.

Finally, a larger chunk of glass shatters and breaks away, too long and narrow for Tanyuu to get out. But it's still a hole, and the fractures from it can easily be capitalized. Tanyuu winces back for a moment, startled, but quickly starts butt-punching against a fractured area again. "Hurry!!"

[fortuneglass]

There are a good many things going on, and Carly for her part, can only take so much. First, she's getting slammed back now. Not Tanyuu's fault, it's the only way out, but it's still jarring. Then, a knife glints behind the bird, and boy! She doesn't want to get hit with that!!

So Carly does the first thing she thinks of...and turns human.

While screaming.

And possibly while trying to dart into the hole at the same time.

considering the forward motion combined with the necessary expansion of the hole, a lot is probably going to continue to happen.

[fourthscribe]

Well, this is going about as well as could be expected.

Carly's shrieking startles Tanyuu yet again, and thankfully stops before Carly starts attempting to crawl inside through the sharp edged hole what is she thinking?!

"You can't fit--bird again, bird!" Tanyuu reaches forward at the same time to try and help Carly inside, operating on panicked instinct rather than any reason.

[fortuneglass]

Carly is Still Screaming.

Somehow she's also not actually getting stabbed- half melted and fractured glass is weirdly flexible!

Or, well, it is when it's been spiderwebbed to heck and back.

She does at least quickly turn back into a bird when ow, her leg DOES get a nice nick on it with that iron, and she's sure not about that

"Hihh!" Well.

This is awkward. "Ahe..." Peering out the hole now. Hello...Mirror ladies, you're not coming after her still right??

[fourthscribe]

Well, that all just happened.

Tanyuu is something of an awkward ball on the opposite end of the prism, staring out the now her-sized hole at a group of three reflections. For a moment the scene remains at a standstill, both sides unsure of how to proceed.

The clones move first, starting to regrow the briars in an attempt to clog up the hole Carly's made and keep Tanyuu inside, but Tanyuu curses under her breath and dives to get out the hole before the plants get too thick again. "No, no, no--!"

[fortuneglass]

"Eh?" Oh, plants. "...Oh, that won't be hard to fix..." Honestly what are they going to do, shove vines IN the hole? That wouldn't really work in their favor.

"Listen- the glass isn't iron right? ...I can probably heal any cuts we get...we just need to pull the fragments in, until the hole's bigger!" She's being remarkably pragmatic, now that she's not being stabbed or almost stabbed.

[fourthscribe]

"We can?" Tanyuu turns back to Carly and blinks in confusion, before looking down at the warped and peeling glass. Grimacing, she takes hold of one that isn't quite as jagged around the edges and pulls on it, not making much headway but still managing to make it wider.

Learn something new every day!!

[insidescoop]

"Well we have to try at least..!!" she whines, though she's fortunately on the mark- and the more the prism is broken away, the more the clones outside are going to falter.

After all, they just needed to break the thing enough to escape, in order to stop these guys.