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sticksandbones2024-02-01 10:46 am
sticksandbonesmods) wrote in sticksandbones2024-02-01 10:46 am
Entry tags:
EVENT 009
RULER OF MY HEART
HOW SWEET IT IS
As time ticks on in that strange, wobbly way it does in this place — where the nights feel like they last days, and the days feel like they’re only a few hours long — the fog, ever so gradually, rolls back in, until it’s that oppressive black wall it normally is. It means no more trips into the greater forest for the time being, though the surrounding ring of treeline around the Grove and the burned town to the north remains readily accessible.
The woods, now awake and alert, sends its regards with the occasional roar of a beast in the far distance, and the occasional biblically-accurate deer wandering into the Grove proper to nibble on grasses starting to spring up through the snow. Speaking of things springing up through the snow, there are some new trees near the riverbank, sporting perfectly normal lemons that are growing perfectly normal eyeballs. It’s fine, they’re edible, although they don’t seem to be native. Hmm.
All is peaceful thus far, until you open your dresser drawer. Suddenly, a little creature flies out at you, or cries out angrily because you woke it up. Perhaps, that creature climbs on you instead, shuffling into your pocket to snuggle up. Or, maybe you lay down for a nap, and your pillow feels just a touch lumpier than normal, and when you move your head, something squeals at you. No matter where you find them, even if they’re being a nuisance and eating your shoelaces, these creatures are harmless: they’re merely cold, and you, a Warm Thing, will now be their space heater.
The woods, now awake and alert, sends its regards with the occasional roar of a beast in the far distance, and the occasional biblically-accurate deer wandering into the Grove proper to nibble on grasses starting to spring up through the snow. Speaking of things springing up through the snow, there are some new trees near the riverbank, sporting perfectly normal lemons that are growing perfectly normal eyeballs. It’s fine, they’re edible, although they don’t seem to be native. Hmm.
All is peaceful thus far, until you open your dresser drawer. Suddenly, a little creature flies out at you, or cries out angrily because you woke it up. Perhaps, that creature climbs on you instead, shuffling into your pocket to snuggle up. Or, maybe you lay down for a nap, and your pillow feels just a touch lumpier than normal, and when you move your head, something squeals at you. No matter where you find them, even if they’re being a nuisance and eating your shoelaces, these creatures are harmless: they’re merely cold, and you, a Warm Thing, will now be their space heater.
I REALLY LIKE YOU
One of Ydalir’s secret passions is cooking. You would not know this, because she doesn’t have the ability to eat, but that doesn’t mean she lost the ability to cook. A holiday is coming, you see, and it’s tradition for everyone to partake in cute chocolates and have candlelit dinners! (She will not be providing the dinners, that’s on you.)
What feels like early on in the month, Ydalir will approach everybody with a box of chocolates customized for each person with their favourite flavours. For those of you who don’t eat human food, don’t worry: These are safe for consumption for vampires and robots alike.
Like with most things here, though, things are not as they seem. Eating one of these chocolates suddenly makes you feel very, very cuddly, like suddenly you wouldn’t care who you snuggled up to right now so long as you were comfortable. With the candy in your system, you feel affectionate to anyone who you come across, even if you may not have liked them previously.
As it turns out, mixing magic with cooking makes a potion. Ydalir swears up and down she didn’t mean it, but enjoy your cuddle-chocolates anyway!
What feels like early on in the month, Ydalir will approach everybody with a box of chocolates customized for each person with their favourite flavours. For those of you who don’t eat human food, don’t worry: These are safe for consumption for vampires and robots alike.
Like with most things here, though, things are not as they seem. Eating one of these chocolates suddenly makes you feel very, very cuddly, like suddenly you wouldn’t care who you snuggled up to right now so long as you were comfortable. With the candy in your system, you feel affectionate to anyone who you come across, even if you may not have liked them previously.
As it turns out, mixing magic with cooking makes a potion. Ydalir swears up and down she didn’t mean it, but enjoy your cuddle-chocolates anyway!
LET’S STAY TOGETHER
Sometimes, when you touch another person, your mind goes elsewhere. This isn’t a result of the chocolates, but rather some other force at work. If you see two people asleep somewhere — the ground, the couch, the kitchen counter — it’s best to leave them where they are, unless you want to risk passing out with them and seeing what they see. They’ll wake up in a little while.
What those who get dragged into their own minds see depends on the person, and what lies within their heart. These “heartspaces” are made up of core memories to the participants — important locations, emotional states given form, meaningful items, or anything else, really. When in contact with another person, these heartspaces will combine into one, perfectly interactable and wanderable at your leisure. Touching objects within these spaces will play a core memory before your eyes, or even change the scenery a bit, depending on whose heart it is you’re messing with.
Perhaps now is a good time for bonding and learning about one another, in the comfort and privacy of your own minds. After all, you won’t exit the heartspaces for quite a bit.
What those who get dragged into their own minds see depends on the person, and what lies within their heart. These “heartspaces” are made up of core memories to the participants — important locations, emotional states given form, meaningful items, or anything else, really. When in contact with another person, these heartspaces will combine into one, perfectly interactable and wanderable at your leisure. Touching objects within these spaces will play a core memory before your eyes, or even change the scenery a bit, depending on whose heart it is you’re messing with.
Perhaps now is a good time for bonding and learning about one another, in the comfort and privacy of your own minds. After all, you won’t exit the heartspaces for quite a bit.
PAIN IN MY HEART
…just try not to break anything while you're there.
It might be an accident. Maybe you walk backwards into a table containing a framed photograph, and that photo falls and the glass breaks, the picture inside the frame ruined. Maybe you broke that cheaply-made but still-important toy while fiddling with it. Or, perhaps, it wasn’t an accident at all: You broke that thing on purpose, you punched through that wall, you set that fire.
Whatever broke the thing in question doesn’t matter in the end. What matters is that the memory associated with it begins to fade away like smoke on the wind. Fixing the broken object will bring that memory back, but failing to fix it before you wake up from the dream will have that memory gone forever.
Although, there are some pretty bad memories out there… if the memory broken was terrible, or if the item in question showed someone a dark secret you didn’t want them to know… shouldn’t it stay gone?
It might be an accident. Maybe you walk backwards into a table containing a framed photograph, and that photo falls and the glass breaks, the picture inside the frame ruined. Maybe you broke that cheaply-made but still-important toy while fiddling with it. Or, perhaps, it wasn’t an accident at all: You broke that thing on purpose, you punched through that wall, you set that fire.
Whatever broke the thing in question doesn’t matter in the end. What matters is that the memory associated with it begins to fade away like smoke on the wind. Fixing the broken object will bring that memory back, but failing to fix it before you wake up from the dream will have that memory gone forever.
Although, there are some pretty bad memories out there… if the memory broken was terrible, or if the item in question showed someone a dark secret you didn’t want them to know… shouldn’t it stay gone?
SPARK NOTES
CLICK TO EXPAND!
HOW SWEET IT IS
The fog is back. The creatures are clinging to you because they're cold. The eyeball lemons are, uh... lemon...y. Enjoy your completely normal slice of nature.
I REALLY LIKE YOU
Ydalir has made everybody chocolates! They're delicious and induce feelings of affection and a deep need to cuddle others. Surely this won't go terribly awry. Also, she's very sorry.
LET’S STAY TOGETHER
Sometimes, touching someone else takes you to a combined mental space made up of the important things to you and the person you touched. You can touch things within the space to play memories, or explore the environment together. Outside, you're just asleep on the floor somewhere probably, so hopefully no one trips over you.
PAIN IN MY HEART
Be careful in the heartspaces. Anything you break will take a relevant memory with it. If you can find a way to repair it, the memory will come back. Although, sometimes memories need to stay gone, don't they? Maybe leaving it broken is okay?
OOC
Happy February! The mod team will not apologise for the amount of pink in this event log. If you'd like to plot with people for this event, head over to OOC plotting. We will allow you to make up various plantanimal creatures for this event, they don't have to be like the images linked as examples. Have fun, enjoy creatures, they're here to stay. Reminder this month will have Heimrquest, so if you want to sign up, please do so on the OOC plotting post.
UPDATES
❖ None yet!
SUBMISSIONS
no subject
Sesa has picked through burned out rubble before, so he knows that he has to step lightly through here, lest he wants to destroy something that could be considered a clue to the past. The fact that it’s well preserved is both a blessing and a curse as he winds his way towards the back of the house, doing a quick once-over without actually touching anything first. Seeing the corpses, not just random skeletons outside, stops Sesa in his tracks as he lingers a few feet away from them, looking on at the bodies with a distinct building dread in the middle of his chest. He wonders, vaguely, if it would be wise to give the people here a proper burial sometime. Would the Forest object in some way?
He moves on after paying his respects, and goes to look through the aforementioned shelves. And what he finds…well.
He doesn’t want to go on assumptions or hunches, but it’s more than just familiarity that he sees in the young boy in that photograph, and suddenly he feels…sick. He has to quickly put the photo back before he drops it, and. Uh.
Yeah he is immediately rushing back to those bodies no matter how awful it makes him feel to be near them. He needs to take a closer look.]
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They are skeletal bodies, so there isn't much on them. Sesa can assume based on the size of what's sticking out underneath the rubble that these corpses are adults, so the young man in the photo seems to have grown up between back then and whenever this tragedy occurred.
Unless Sesa is a forensic analyst, he might have a difficult time determining ages beyond "yeah that's probably an adult person". There doesn't appear to be blunt force trauma on the skulls, however, though the two larger skeletons seem to have taken the brunt of the upper floor collapsing on them, resulting in multiple fractures and what Sesa would imagine are broken ribs and maybe even a broken spine, if he were able to move that rubble out of the way. Scorch marks on the bones say that these people likely burned to death.
When he looks closely at the tattered remains of their clothing, he obviously won't find much that remains, though each skeleton has some sort of ring on. Metal is a little harder to burn, after all. The larger two seem to have matching rings — one a plain silver band with ornate engravings, the other what was probably a diamond ring before it got terribly tarnished — and the smaller one has a silver ring set with a ruby gemstone, looking very similar to a wedding ring that Sesa might've seen on a certain Liberi's finger at one point.
Surely that doesn't mean anything!
no subject
But then he sees the rings glinting on the fingers of the burned-out corpses, and the Vouivre ends up stumbling back away from them, unable to keep his balance any longer. He trips over a fallen beam, falling hard on his ass in a pile of dust and ashes, sending a thick cloud of it up into the air. Fire, destruction, and death.
He scoots away as far as he can get until he's blocked off by something else, reflexively bringing his claws up to shield his face.]
This can't be...this can't be...
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Congratulations, though! You've stumbled upon the former house of the Edelweisses! As Sesa scoots back and covers his face, he bumps into a nearby wall, and ashes fall from the suspended remains of a beam and directly onto his head.
no subject
Sesa hurries to his feet, struggling to catch his breath as the ash and soot settles into his hair, prompting him to shake his head quickly. Every instinct is screaming at him to flee this wretched place, yet...he does feel like he might be doing his dear friends a disservice by simply abandoning the place without first looking it over more thoroughly.
They will have to forgive him if he avoids their corpses, however. No amount of wanting those rings back would convince him to get near them again. He's going to check the kitchen while trying not to hyperventilate.]
cw: food rot/gross
Sesa checks the kitchen. In the kitchen are glass bottles of milk that is... not... milk any longer, very finely aged wine (delicious!), and other various foodstuffs that not even Gordon Ramsay on Kitchen Nightmares would be able to distinguish because they're so rotted. I can say with great confidence that he would swipe his fingers through this mess and say "oh my god" though.
In terms of not-rotten stuff though, Sesa will find a dead plant that might have been basil or mint or some other cooking herb at one point sitting in the windowsill, alongside things stuck to the fridge with magnets like: childish drawings of contraptions a smol Gnosis probably wanted to invent, less-childish schematics for an actual invention that looks kinda cool, & coupons for the general store (expired). There are spices in the cabinet that I recommend throwing in the trash because god knows how old those are, alongside your typical cookware/dishes/silverware/etc... those might be salvageable if you really wanted them.
no subject
Though. He does approach the fridge and examines the drawings a bit more closely and, well. It's not hard to tell who drew them.
Can he take the drawings? Or will they disintegrate if he tries? If they seem burnt and fragile at a glance, he may leave them alone.]
no subject
Sesa will be able to take the drawings. They feel like old parchment in his fingertips, but they won't crumble unless he tries very hard.
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He's going to at least be thorough, just in case there is something that might be worth bringing back to the Grove. Since I assume the bathrooms are on the ground floor, he'll wander that way once he's out of the kitchen.]
no subject
The bathrooms are indeed on the ground floor but what if they weren't? How fucked up would that be. Anyway Sesa proceeds into the bathrooms.
They are bathrooms. There is a bathtub, a sink, a toilet... it looks like the family had normal supplies such as toothbrushes and other toiletries. That said, if Sesa tries to run the sink, it won't work, and a black sludge will come from the tap instead. Lovely!
There's a dried up bottle of cologne in the cabinets. It would smell like something Gnosis would wear, if it didn't smell like dust.
no subject
Anyway! To the bathroom!
It is a bathroom. It's one of the few places in the house that didn't collapse, and yes he does try the sink because he's kindof running on autopilot at this point...makes a face at the sludge and immediately takes a little step back from it. Let's maybe not touch that.
Everything here feels weirdly nostalgic on top of being terribly sad at the same time. Objects that were once of personal use, both lost to and frozen in time. He looks everything over carefully to make sure nothing goes missed, but otherwise chooses not to linger before he heads back into the main space of the house. He's still pointedly avoiding where he found the bodies, though.
Is there anything else to see, or would it be wise for him to skedaddle before the house decides to collapse?]
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But okay, fine. He will never ever ever want to come back here, so he may as well be thorough. To the upstairs!
Carefully!]
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Sesa walks upstairs and doesn't die or fall through the floor. Upstairs, there isn't much remaining. It looks like the only rooms that aren't collapsed in on themselves, or haven't fallen through to the ground floor, are a master bedroom and a regular bedroom. The master bedroom has an attached bathroom, as they do. The regular bedroom... is missing a wall, and a lot of the furniture is slid to the side because that side of the floor collapsed before getting lodged on a pipe and a few wooden beams that are struggling to support the weight, but Sesa won't immediately fall through the floor if he goes in unless he starts doing jumping jacks.
no subject
Thank god he doesn't die here. Not that he loves coming up here, especially with how dilapidated the building is, but he may as well. Everything is so eerily quiet. So dusty. So ashen and forgotten. He has to step lightly, particularly when he makes it to the bedroom, so he'll make sure to hug its other side so he isn't at risk of falling through that big hole there.
Otherwise it's time to do a little more sleuthing. He's going to try looking through what furniture is actually left here. Anything noteworthy to be found?]
no subject
These depict mostly Gnosis while he's growing up, so Sesa gets to see the most awkward teenager of his life. There are many birthday photos hidden away in drawers. Age 10, age 12, age 15... there are several polaroids of Gnosis and a boy that looks like Enciodes, and people who can be assumed to be Gnosis' parents, mostly his father. If Sesa had to guess, Gnosis' mom really liked to take photos. There are even some of him in there, and Elliot, and Mizuki, a little boy that looks like his memories of Elsword and an older girl who looks like him, and the twins and Wolfwood and...
Point being, there are a lot of photos in here next to that camera. It's a polaroid, there's nothing "on" it as would be with a traditional film reel, but Sesa is welcome to take the camera if he wants. It seems like it'll still work??
Otherwise in the master bedroom, there are old clothes — dresses and button-downs and the sort, covered in dust — and broken decorations from where the floor caved in and they fell off of the dresser or shelves. Not much more unless Sesa wants to see old bills and letters that say fun things like "hey, the Glovers are trying to install electricity in your home soon," from when Elliot and his family clearly made part of the infrastructure here. This house already had electricity considering they had a fridge, so this notice is old.
Anyway, the other bedroom clearly belonged to Gnosis at some point. There are books all over the floor, likely fallen off the shelves. They're about various subjects — mathematics, history, botany, he might've honestly stole these from the school library because some of them have library cards in the front cover oooops. In his drawers are also clothes because yeah, and in the desk drawer specifically are letters...
They are love letters. To one (1) Enciodes Silverash. They're very cringey and look like they were never sent.
no subject
He decides to place the camera carefully into his bag, as well as stack up any photos that he can and place them alongside the drawing he found. He's not going to attempt to take any of the clothing, it doesn't really seem all that useful...not that he's even planning on keeping these things himself. They're, by all rights, Gnosis'. He will be delivering them to him as soon as he's able.
As for the books...he's not sure he could carry them all, given that he had a near library's worth stashed in here. He'll pick up one or two that might seem of interest. Botany, history...
It isn't long after that he finds the letters, and feels a twinge in his heart (as well as guilt for having snooped, unintentionally).]
...at least in the present, you found your fated beloved in a far happier ending.
[He'll carefully take the letters as well before he heads back to the bottom floor.]
no subject
With his arms full, Sesa walks back to the bottom floor, and it's a damn miracle the floor up there doesn't go "hey actually you're now too heavy" and drop him. He makes it safely, though.
Is he done here? Are we letting Sesa free into the wilds with his loot?
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Yeah no, he's done here. He's had his fill of old memories and burnt out buildings and dead bodies. He's going to bring these things home and go marinate for a while before he figures out what to do with...all of this.
Let him be wild, let him be free, let him go the fuck back to the lab and die pls]