lostcarnival | ⇨ THE SUMMERLANDS

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⇨ THE SUMMERLANDS

Who: Everyone!
When: Day 119 - Day 126
Where: The Summerlands
What: Ignatius and Gild portal everyone to the Summerlands, with hopes of appealing to the Summer Maiden for help. Meanwhile, the carnival gets the chance to relax in luxury as only tentatively welcome guests. Here is the location write up from the last time the carnival visited. Since then, of course, some things have changed.
Warnings: Nothing in particular.

THE SUN RISES↴

After taking the time to rest, Ignatius and Gild will be able to pool together their energy to portal the carnival (and the airship) to the Summerlands. Those still in Polaris will be left to their own devices for the moment as Gild intends to ask for the Summerlands aid in relocating them, hopefully as soon as possible. With the effort the carnival put into sorting things out in there, however, they should be fine on their own for a little while, at least.

They will arrive in the flowery fields at the base of the mountains, and soon the Summer Fae will notice their presence. Since the last time they visited, however, the atmosphere has changed.

► YOUR ARRIVAL: As the Summer Fae discover the group's arrival, it will quickly become apparent that there is a tension present that wasn't there any of the other times the carnival has visited. The Summer Maiden comes to greet the group personally, with an entourage of armed Summer Fae. They are not at all aggressive unless provoked, but there is clearly a wariness that is new. They seem uncertain about Ignatius being here, and while Gild will be able to do a lot of the talking and smooth things over, the Summer Maiden will deflect having a serious conversation about affairs until the carnival has taken time to 'rest.' It's more likely that the Maiden needs a moment to think over this new information before dealing with it.

► SUMMER CITY: After the Summer Fae become aware of everyone's presence, and the initial uncertainties are accommodated, they will invite you into their city. There are stairs that lead up the sides of the mountains, but thankfully there are also magical means of getting up there as well. The Summer Fae will be willing to help workers with the injured as needed, offering herbal remedies and healing magic to those that want it. You'll also be invited to join them for dinner, but it feels like more of a formality, and no one is obligated to take them up on it.

► SUMMER PEOPLE: The fae here will do their best to entertain these new visitors - but it doesn't seem that much happens here besides day after day of peaceful meditation and relaxation. It is not uncommon to see Summer Fae spent days doing exactly the same thing, whether that be enjoying the weather, listening to music, or dancing - the day and night periods may be similar to earth, but when you don't need rest it can all blur together just the same. Some of the fae work on feats of agriculture or craftsmanship, and while there is no particularly need to work in this place, they take pride in the fact that they do.

► FAMILIAR FACES: One very different thing about the Summerlands this go around is that there appears to be a small settlement built at the base of the mountains, filled entirely with the former residents of the Manor. Alyss and Reyna will explain that they set up a place to live down there with the Summer Fae's help, and that the fae seems to be trying to remain hands off except when they are needed. The Manor folk overall seem to be doing well, though there is some tension regarding their place in the Summerlands - they are clearly seen as refugees, and while the Summer Fae do their best to help them, the arrival of the carnival and the request for even more help with refugee aid seems to be making things awkward.

► OF THINGS TO COME: The Summer Maiden will remain distant for the first few days, but according to Gild and based on personal observation, it will seem that the news that the Ringmaster has been taken and the idea that even more desperate mortals are requesting to come here are putting her at significant ill ease. She's not rude or dismissive, but she seems reluctant to address the situation head on, though she has said that she will hold a meeting with the carnival later in the week to discuss everything in more detail. None of them seem particularly angry or resentful, but they seem to regard the carnival as an ill portent of things to come.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The Summer Maiden actually looks completely stunned that Lambert knows about the poisoning thing - though that's not exactly how she would have phrased it. She flattens her expression, her brow furrowing slightly.

"It was a drinking contest," she corrects him. Shes till seems caught off guard. "And... this is why those items never should have been brought together in the first place. It was reckless, short-sighted..."

And she hadn't done anything to dissuade her. She steels herself.

"Tell me more about the weapon he used. I'm not aware of the details."

Edited 2018-12-11 00:43 (UTC)

"A drinking contest with poison because the Winter Maiden knew she was certain to win it with her immunity." He folds his arms, nodding to Lambert.

"Regardless what should have been done, it has been. We would be fools to assume the Huntsman and Winter Queen won't attempt to claim them from the Ringmaster, and then how much further will she go when she has that power?"

Peridot lets out a derisive snort. "If you want to know what the weapon was, I can help you with that. It was some kind of black snake that could also turn into a spear." She crosses her arms, glancing away as she mutters: "I got a pretty good look at it while it was trying to crush me to death."

Trying and succeeding.

"He said something before he threw it," Lambert says, frowning. Maybe the words are important and maybe they aren't, but at least he'll try to recall, because who fucking knows with magic. Lambert's memories of that time are not as clear as others', perhaps, but at least the Huntsman wasn't in the middle of calling his hunters to run (and he wasn't, unlike other people, being crushed by it, or getting his limbs ripped off, or other fun things).

"Something like... 'Upon the blood of Winter, by the dread of Shadow, I summon your demise. At my foe's heart, I strike.'" It's not the exact wording, but if it's something the Summer Maiden should recognize, hopefully that's enough to jog her memory.

"So it was a direct gift of power..." the Summer Maiden says faintly, looking aside as she considers. "It must have been. It would be the only way I could imagine even the Huntsman felling the Ringmaster with a single blow."

She shakes her head, and then looks to the speakers again.

"The Winter Queen has control of the element of Death itself. Other fae may have an affinity for it, but none with the intimacy of the Queens. The snake could be a construct of Death incarnate." It's only now that the Summer Maiden begins to let herself sound frustrated.

"But why? What cause could she have to go after the Ringmaster so ruthlessly? Revenge? The Ringmaster hardly did a thing to her, and even the worst of it could be easily explained as a misunderstanding..."

"The same reason she won't create a new Winter Maiden, I imagine," Childermass drones on from his own spot in the court. He isn't particularly interested in center stage, so he's off to the side, leaning against something, arms crossed. Unimpressed, as per usual.

"Paranoia. No one else can be allowed to have more power than her, isn't that how it is? So throw away her old Wyld toy before she gets the last Miracle because why not? Who will care? Who would ever bother saving her? You? Of course not. She knows you won't."

Edited 2018-12-11 01:21 (UTC)

Rin pipes up from his seat nearby, looking distraught.

"It's always about power, isn't it? It's pretty clear the Winter Queen doesn't care about Arcadia, or the universe... or anything except herself! She just let us do the hard work to collect the Miracles... and then sent a lackey with a big weapon to steal them away."

Lambert, however, takes some other issue with the particular wording the Maiden's chosen.

"A misunderstanding? You don't think, oh, killing the Winter Queen was a little more than a misunderstanding? What, did the Ringmaster mishear her saying 'actually don't kill the Queen so I can replace her'?"

Edited 2018-12-11 01:27 (UTC)

The Summer Maiden is not one to become angry easily, but this is obviously pressing a few of her buttons. She stands from her seat, her hands resting on the table. She narrows her eyes, but then looks to Rin and Lambert in turn without responding to him directly.

"That's not the misunderstanding I mean. Obviously, she intended on killing the Winter Queen of the time, and she asked the Ringmaster to aid her. There was never any ambiguity about that." She exhales. "But then, when the discord sewn by her actions threatened to prevent her from taking the throne, she made up a new story. One where it wasn't her fault. I tried to speak to her, to tell her how it was affecting the Ringmaster... but she assured me that it was only temporary, and that she wouldn't let anything happen to us."

"I chose to leave before her intentions could be fully determined, and so did the Ringmaster. It was too dangerous for her, there. Yet... I feel that the Winter Maiden took it as us forsaking her to the aftermath of the situation we had helped create, without giving her a chance to make amends." She shakes her head. "If you had known her then, you would know that she never did anything without a purpose. She wanted the throne, yes, but it was so she could enact the justice that the Arcadia was lacking. The previous Queen was cruel and deranged. She wanted to do better."

"...But nothing she's done since that point has made any sense at all. There is no future to combatting the Summer Court like this. Us of royal blood know that more than anyone. So how, then, did she go from, if anything, ruthlessly logical to mindlessly irrational?" She pulls back from the table, putting a hand to her head.

"You wouldn't understand. You can't possibly know what you haven't seen..."

"Have you ever even tried to explain what you've seen? Maybe we'd surprise you," Lambert grumbles, crossing his arms.

"Look, all I know is that two Maidens weren't above coming to the Wyld Lands to find a Beast whose power they could use. And you did." The consequences, well, they're living with it all around them now. The previous Queen being insane, though ... that has him frowning, gears churning in his mind.

"But fine, let's say you're right and the Maiden you knew wouldn't have done this. If the old Queen was crazy, is there any chance that's," he gestures, uselessly, trying to find words around what he's trying to say. "Something that comes with being Winter Queen's power? Can that happen?"

"Or it's just the nature of Winter. They're all nothing but monsters," Childermass mutters, though that's all he seems to have to add right now. No, he doesn't like the Winter Court. Amazing, right?

"Huh...." Rin says, remembering a pithy phrase. "Something like... 'absolute power corrupts absolutely'?"

Holy shit he actually remembered it right.

"Most of the Winter Maiden's followers, the ones that shared my ideals... went missing or were outright killed not long after the insurrection ended," the Summer Maiden says, seemingly as an explanation for Childermass. "There are still good Winter Fae out there, but... in order to survive, they've had to hide themselves. To keep their aspirations to themselves. They didn't have anywhere to shelter them, like my followers had the Summerlands..."

"To think that she would execute her own followers... I would sooner believe she was corrupted by her power. To take the throne by force is not the natural way of things."

She falls quiet for a moment, and then looks at Lambert.

"I never used her," she says. "I approached the Ringmaster as an ally and a friend. And that's what she became."

“So what? Friends can use each other too. Even — or especially — when they don’t mean to.” Lambert keeps his gaze focused on the Maiden, isn’t looking at certain people in the room this is applicable, but well... it’s broadly applicable to more than one person in this room. “You had to tame her first, didn’t you? Teach her to think like you. I saw what she was like in Portland. Just a Beast who never dreamed of a life beyond the next fight. You changed her. Made her want to change.”

Lambert sounds more quiet than accusatory when he says that, but he rouses, shaking his own thoughts off in favor of adopting a brisker, less personal tone. If anyone has a comment on the cruelty of the Winter Queen, he won’t be the one to be outraged over it. It’s the sensible thing for any ruler consolidating their power to do.

"...You said it's not the natural way of things. Has a Maiden ever done this before? The Ringmaster said something about how the power passes from Queen and Crone, but I don't think she ever got too many history lessons."

You know, being a Wyld Fae and all.

Edited (okay this is the last edit IM SORRY) 2018-12-11 06:52 (UTC)

"Obviously, we're not looking at this with however-fuckin-many years of knowing her," Beau butts in. "We haven't seen what you've seen, we're just looking at a couple of pieces of what we've heard."

"So far, I'm hearing she rallied people under your ideals, got some allies and power together, and killed the queen to take her place. And I bet she said, the whole time, she wanted to do it to make things more like how you want them to be, right? But then some shit happened, and by the time it all blew over, she was queen... and she didn't put in any of the improvements she told you she wanted, and she'd killed or chased off all the people who followed her into it. You ask me, that sounds like somebody who used you to get power."

She lets that sit a second, and pointedly shrugs, minimalizing the impact of what she's saying. It's a big implication to bring to somebody offering them refuge, that everything this Summer Maiden had known about the once-Winter Maiden might have been a lie... But somebody has to say it.

"Maybe we're wrong. Maybe we'd love to be wrong, because if you're wrong, you could try just... talking to her, your old friend and ally and whatever, and ask her what's going on. Maybe there's some other faction pulling the strings, maybe she wanted this all along... Or maybe it's because of how she took power. I don't know. But you should be asking these questions, and trying to get at the base of them, because you're a ruler. You owe it to your people to know everything you can about the people who might bring danger here."

And maybe that includes knowing too much about the carnival folks, but honestly, everything they bring with them is small potatoes compared to somebody whose weaker ally could take out the Ringmaster that quickly.

For Gon, this sort of feels a lot like where Yuuya's friends in Academia fell. Sure, Sora turned out fine. But Dennis? Not as far as he recalls.

"Regardless of what we do, or do not know- the fact remains that her actions at this time do not speak of someone who we can expect peace from. It is not necessarily a matter of how she acted the last you met with her now. It is a matter of addressing the reality of how she has acted in recent times."

He continues, tone as calm as he can manage. "The ultimate decision is certainly yours, as such- but if simply pursuing the Ringmaster is out of the question, why is it then, that the alternative is to simply remain here without ever touching the matter again? The Huntsman is allied with the Winter Queen- if you feel she can be reasoned with, why then can you not reason with her over this?"

A moment of pause- and then, "I, the man Gongenzaka, must apologize for what I say...but if you have doubt for what can be done regarding the Winter Queen- for what you remember of her, compared to what we know now...If you have doubt regarding the Winter Queen herself, should that not be a sign that something must be done, beyond waiting to see what occurs next?"

"I have not said that I believe she can be reasoned with. Not now," she says, looking away. She understands what all of them are saying, and she even agrees, but...

"But no other Maiden has ascended to power this way, not that I have learned of. Power is meant to be turned over at the right time, and often in unison with the other Court. I had thought, all these years, that she was merely being cruel as necessitated by her politics... but the things I have learned now have no purpose. No end in sight."

She looks at Ignatius, and then away again. She falls quiet for a few moments, staring at the table ahead of her.

"...I would need the cooperation of the Summerlands to move forward," she says. "I led them here, and I continue to shelter them, but I am not their commander. I will not order them to fight."

Lambert quashes the overwhelming urge to dig his own claws into his eyeballs, tempting as it is. It’d be less frustrating than trying to find words around all this.

“I get that we’re not popular. We keep bringing refugees to your doorstep, getting them to fight is the last thing they probably want to do. But this isn’t ... living. It’s playing house while the rest of the city is ... is freezing itself to death.” He’d been about to reach for a fire metaphor, but not exactly appropriate here. “Believe me, there’s nothing I’d love more than an army of immortals to watch my back ... but what’s pretty obvious is that there are things here even the Courts might not understand going on here. If we’re deciding what to do next, I say we go after the Ringmaster.”

He holds out his hand, palm up. “Maybe there’s something going on with the Winter Queen that needs to be fixed — a curse to break, a ghost to exorcise, an ass to kick — but I don’t know how long that’s going to take to figure out. I know you’re not used to thinking of time as a luxury, but it is. Every minute we spend twiddling our thumbs is just more time for the Huntsman to do whatever the fuck he’s planning to the Ringmaster, closer to helping Winter do whatever it wants — and then everyone loses.” He pauses. “I ran with the Hunt, before he turned us over to the Mother of Invention. Just a few hours, but long enough to know it’s a shit deal. If he’s trying to make her one of his...”

He pauses, grimacing, then goes for a more direct question again: “Are you telling us we need to go out there ourselves if we want to convince people to go along with this?”

Edited 2018-12-12 16:51 (UTC)

Beau chews her lip as the Summer Maiden finally concedes that she might want to, but doesn't feel she has the authority to make it happen. That's a problem.

"If this keeps up, war's coming to you all either way. It might be comforting to think if you just don't make trouble nobody'll do anything, nobody wants to believe they're in danger, but that's not guaranteed. We can tell people that, they'll be less powerless if they start preparing now, and try taking it on your terms, instead of waiting for it. But, uh."

She faces Lambert, tilts her head inquisitively. "You think the Ringmaster can get turned like that, quick enough to be a problem...?" Beau jerks her thumb back towards Ignatius. "How long did it take her to bring that guy around?"

"It's a different situation," Childermass shakes himself out of glowering at the court in general for a moment, glancing over in Beau's direction. "The Ringmaster is alive but in a very dangerous spot right now, with someone who is an enemy and has a way of influencing minds. With Ignatius, she never truly considered him an enemy. Aside from keeping him from burning us all to death, his decisions were all his own."

For better or worse and, uh, save for the weird Creation thing. That's a trickier discussion and not one he's going to bring up.

"It's also possible that it may already be done," the Summer Maiden says, grimly. "The Huntsman had little trouble enslaving so many other Wyld Fae to his cause... some of you have even felt his pull first hand. If that's the case, then the Ringmaster herself may be part of the opposition."

She shakes her head, slowly.

"There is no way that the Ringmaster would choose to serve him on her own, but it's possible that she could be tricked, or corrupted when she was in the process of being reborn. I don't know much of the Huntsman's power, but it was enough to make him the Wyldland's ruler until the Ringmaster's arrival."

Steven has been sitting quietly for most of the discussion, trying to make sense of it all. Peridot, sitting beside him, has been comparatively disruptive, and he just listens along, waiting for the right time to speak. Apparently, he's decided that time is right now.

"I think we should ask the Summer Court for help," he says, as assertively as he can manage in front of everyone else and a council of Summer Fae. "If... If we just make their problems go away for them, then they'll just be able to pretend none of this ever happened! But if we can convince the Queen that the Maiden and the Summerlands are needed, and that the Summer Court is under immediate threat..."

He averts his eyes. He's obviously a little nervous about the concept, but he means it wholeheartedly.

"It took this long to even think about making it happen. What if something this bad is the only chance we have to make the Queen realize?"

Rita, who's been sitting with her arms crossed and a slight frown on her face for most of this time, suddenly looks to Steven with her eyes wide. "Wait, Steven... you're serious?"

This isn't the first time the idea of involving the Summer Court's been brought up, but she sure didn't expect to hear it from this kid of all people.

She shifts in her seat, cupping her chin in her hand. "I'm not saying it's a bad idea, exactly... The Summer Court might want to know about the Huntsman's change in loyalties, and how a Winter fae so brazenly captured and tortured one of their own. The enemy of our enemy could be... maybe not a friend, but something to help even the odds here." Because right now, everything is firmly stacked against them. And maybe a common enemy is just the thing to get the Summer Court and the Summerlands talking...

"The last thing we'd want is to deal with the Rose Queen again, though..." Rita goes on to add, then looks to Ignatius. "Do you know of a way we can contact the Queen directly? Or at least in a way that won't be easily intercepted?"

Now it's Strange's turn to pipe up, as he looks over at Rita. "I could always attempt to magically summon her."

And because he knows that he's about to be 'well actually-ed' into oblivion, Strange continues talking, explaining himself before other people can point out the various problems in his theory.

"Which presents problems of it's own: summoning is simply offering an invitation to talk. Whether she chooses to show up or not is her choice—and there's no way of telling if her not showing up is a refusal of the invitation or the magic simply not working. Likewise, I doubt the Summer Queen could just leave her post to show up at a moment's notice. We might have to wait around a while, to see if she gets a moment. But if nobody else has any methods of direct contact, it might work."

"There are ways for fae to contact each other," Ignatius says, "which are not entirely dissimilar from a summoning invitation. Strange is right that the Summer Queen wouldn't be able to simply leave Arcadia, even if she wanted to."

He looks at the Summer Maiden.

"But the Maiden of all people could absolutely send a message directly to the Queen. They share the same lifeblood. It'd simply be a matter of offering a meeting and seeing if the Queen will take her up on it." He folds his arms. "I can guarantee you that the Summer Queen will refuse to meet anywhere besides her own Court. She isn't a fool."

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