sticksandbones | EVENT 023

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EVENT 023

CHAOS IN PARADISE

The more problems get solved, the more others start to pop up. Sure, some heroes saved the children in the manor — who are no longer children — but those siblings are now comatose, and the manor is on permanent lockdown, black briars blocking every possible entrance and Corrupting anyone who tries to get in. Sure, some sneaky hopefuls hid a magic circle to help maintain the fog barrier (and keep the Forest out) in a secret location, but now the magic in the Grove feels off. Your spells come out more powerful as intended while the world is out of balance, and it seems like they will for some time.

Maybe in your haste to fix all the Grove’s issues, you forgot about a certain skeleton spirit who shows up every April in some attempt to help you cheer up. Perhaps you remembered, and were hoping he’d arrive. Either way, Mr. Bone-Jangles clatters into the Grove in broad daylight, waves hello to those of you lingering in the centre of the Grove, and snaps his phalanges.

Immediately, a magenta-coloured, swirling portal opens up underneath your feet, and your friend’s feet, and that friend’s feet, until most of the centre of the Grove is consumed by it. Those of you on the outside, free of the portal’s reach, may witness it: everyone caught in it gets pulled into the rift, Heimr and Ydalir and Mr. Bone-Jangles included. In the next blink, the portal is closed and they’re gone, leaving behind flowers where each of them fell.

For those of you who got caught in the portal, you’ll find yourself at the entrance of a city, where a sign reads: WELCOME TO NEO EDEN.

4 C0LD W3LC0M3

Trying to turn around and walk outside the city causes your nose to crinkle as you slam facefirst into an invisible barrier. You can see other buildings outside this barrier, natural as a landscape could come, and yet you can’t progress. The skies are a somewhat odd purplish-blue, though you can’t tell if that’s because your eyes are straining against the bright neon of the city lights or not. Underneath the arcing city sign, a police car labelled “NEO EDEN P.D.” passes by, the robotic simulacra of human law enforcement inside giving everyone a friendly wave before it keeps driving, seemingly having come from beyond the barrier and thus warping into the space, as far as your eyes can tell anyway.

Mr. Bone-Jangles helpfully guides you further into the city, past the holograms of normal humans in neon-glowing techwear going about their business. They don’t respond to anything you do or say, seemingly on a set path, living their daily lives. The city is packed enough to be claustrophobic, cars and holograms rushing past, a stark change from the small-town vibes of the Grove. Those of you who fish in your pockets as you wander will find that your magic notebooks have been replaced with cellphones, and all prior notebook correspondences are there, as well as any new ones. The cellphone does nothing other than connect to group chat, but this one is clearly cooler — you can send emojis, stickers, and GIFs without drawing them.

…those on the other side, however, are getting each GIF drawn out frame-by-frame in the notebooks. Please don’t spam GIFs at your friends.

Additionally in your pockets is a small plastic card — a debit card, for those of you who are familiar with them — containing 1,000 Credits, the currency here. You didn’t think your shells would be useful, did you? Simply tapping the card at any facility that takes payment will subtract the necessary amount… but 1,000 Credits isn’t much. It’s enough to buy a thousand candy bars, but unless you’re frugal, it won’t last you the month. Luckily, it looks like every store on the nearby shopping strip is hiring! From restaurants to clothing stores, to empty buildings that you can make your own business out of… surely this capitalistic nightmare will be tenable!

The lack of animals is noticeable as you head further into the city, toward what signage says is called “Mania Square”. The birds, instead of being your typical Grove plantanimals, are robotic. There’s a severe lack of any pests despite the garbage in the alleyway dumpsters — no bugs, no rodents, no raccoons. Mania Square itself contains a fountain big enough to swim in, the centre focal point of the public plaza, but Bone-Jangles hooks a sharp left and leads you to the apartments instead. Up three stories are small studio rooms for each of you, your names written on the door placards in your own handwriting, and the insides are customized to your exact preference already. A notice pinned above your kitchenette tells you rent is due by April 30th… you hope you aren’t here for that long.

4R3N’T Y0U H4V1NG FUN?

Despite the standard day and night cycle, some of you may notice this place still doesn’t feel quite right, a bit outside of time. That shouldn’t stop you from having fun! And should you need to go back to the Grove — or if you’re someone looking to get into Neo Eden in the first place — you need only to gaze into a mirror placed in each of your bedrooms or apartments and wish to go home… which may lead you to fall catastrophically through it to the other side. Try not to hit your chin on the ground.

Life goes on regardless. In this city, there’s a lot to do. You could go shopping at the strip mall near Mania Square, where Heimr and Ydalir have set up a temporary shop to continue to provide for everyone’s needs. They’ll still take shells, but there’s nothing much they can do if you run out of Credits — both will gently suggest you find work in Neo Eden. You guys own businesses back at the Grove, it can’t be that bad, can it?

The good news is, Mr. Bone-Jangles and his entourage of skeletons who you swear weren’t originally here 12 hours ago are happy to help you get a job, where the interview process involves simply “showing up and asking your holographic boss if you can be employed”. Starting your own business is more difficult — you’ll need a loan from the bank! — but not impossible. Any hologram humans that come in to buy things will ignore you, get what they want, and leave. The only time you can interact with your fellow neon-coloured humans is when they’re making a purchase, at which point their items will digitize and they’ll leave. All very odd, but at least the customers aren’t rude to you… or your skeletal coworkers who have joined you for back-breaking labour.

After work, perhaps you want to head to the amusement park — Thrill Point is an utterly massive one to the far northeast of the city past the river that cuts through the digital roadways. With drop towers, roller coasters, rides for little babies who hate heights and fun, and tons of food stalls to stop at, you could feasibly spend all night here and almost forget that you have to be at your next shift in the morning! If you seek a different thrill, Arcadia is a nightclub southwest of Mania Square, where the music plays all night, the liquor flows freely, and anyone under 21 who enters gets marked with an X on the back of their hand by a harmless laser beam. Just outside Arcadia is a small photo booth named “The Swap”, and if you enter with a partner, both of you hitting the “TAKE PHOTO” button will bodyswap you for 12 hours. It will also print out a funny photo of you as a keepsake. Enjoy being someone else for a while!

Head to the Rent-a-Ride, where you can rent any vehicle on wheels — electric scooters, cars, motorcycles, hoverbikes — as long as you can pay the expensive fee. Speeding will get you a ticket from your local robopolice; breaking standard civilian laws will get you arrested and thrown into the unmanned city jail. And try not to tailgate or crash your ride — not only will you be on the hook for vehicle damages, but you’ll be shafted with a ludicrous hospital fee. Seriously, people live like this?

But, if a calm walk through nature is more your style, City Park and its digital trees to the north may suit your needs. The fish in the river here can be fished up by hopeful anglers, though all are wiggly, inedible robots. Hm.

WELCOME BACK

By April 30th when your rent is technically due, a text message goes out to everyone’s phones… and consequently the notebooks, too, from two different senders:

REMINDER: YOUR RENT IS DUE TODAY! PLEASE PAY 3,000 CREDITS OR FACE EVICTION.

DONT WORY. I WIL RESKYEW U

The messages from the second sender will get slightly more ominous as the day goes on.

GRAB SUMTHING U WANT 2 TAKE WITH U
I WIL REETORN U HOM

HAS ANY1 SEEN MY WIFE
FOWND MY WIFE :)

R U REDY 2 GO?

By evening, hopefully you’ve grabbed something to take back home — something you can feasibly carry without a struggle — because a portal is yet again opening under your feet. In a split second, you’re back in Aldric’s Grove, holding whatever you came with, your cellphones reverted back to notebooks. Mr. Bone-Jangles is nowhere to be seen, but he reappears a few hours later to hand out personal apology notes to everyone reading: “SORY, TRIYD 2 SAV U :(“ before he and his merry band mope back into the woods. He hopes you had fun while you were away.

Next time anyone heads out into the woods, all seems normal… minus the amount of fungi that have started to sprout in absolute droves across the forest floor, unwilling to be torn up from their roots or killed in a way that matters.

Spark Notes

summary

Chaos in Paradise: Mr. Bone-Jangles is back and here to kidnap you to a new location. This is a cyberpunk-esque city known as Neo Eden. No, he does not ask if he can do this first.
4 C0LD W3LC0M3: Further in Neo Eden are your apartments at Mania Square, where rent is due by the 30th. Your notebooks have been turned into cellphones, and you have a debit card with 1,000 credits on it for your shopping expenses. Seems like you'll be here a while.
4R3N’T Y0U H4V1NG FUN?: If you need to move to and from the Grove, there's a portal accessible in everyone's bedrooms via a mirror. Here, you have the freedom to do whatever you want: Rent a car, ride a roller coaster, get a job, start a business - the city is your oyster!
WELCOME BACK: And then all of a sudden, the neon paradise is ripped away from you as you're transported home. You can take back an item with you to remember your time here, if you want. The forest itself has started to grow mushrooms in droves, ones that can't be pulled up or killed. Hm!

out of character

It's already April! What the heck! We hope everyone enjoys this event; please feel free to make up businesses/buildings/things to do, you aren't constrained to what's been written in the post.

updates

- A small shrine close to the inn has appeared in the Grove. Affogato's spirit is tied there, to a black raven figure carved from smooth stone.
- The spell strengthening the Grove's fog wall is buffed.
- Sinann has been powered up, and therefore can enter its human form and go on land. It will largely still be by the river.
- Suri's creations are now and forever weak to poison.
- Pearl has made a terrible rainstorm back in the Grove.
- In Neo Eden, Add has enhanced the jail and made Jail2, which has far more security measures and functions as an escape room of sorts. Please see Add's toplevel below for further details.
- Jail2 has partly collapsed due to White Lily Cookie.

submissions

❖ Questions
❖ April Plotting
❖ Past Life Plotting (Closed to Game Members)
❖ Investigations

code

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[ She didn't exactly expect him to be cheerful. She glances between the cast and the crutches. ]

...Like maybe a bike was a bad choice.

More or less.

[That’s definitely not ALL that happened, but…it was basically the worst decision he could have made, yeah.

He plucks out a few more chords with his nails.]

Needed to get out.

[ She gets it more than she'd like to. Considering how fast he disappeared and how things ended up, he must have been in a panic. Nobody makes great decisions in a panic.

She leans back against the door, just as she did the first time they met. ]

... What about now?

[Well…that’s an easy enough answer.]

I don’t want to be here. [He says, his voice low but still audible over the music.] …but I don’t know that I want to go back there, either.

[The Grove, he means. Sure, it’s better than THIS, but he can’t say he’s exactly in a place he feels comfortable. And then from there, the only alternative is home.]

[ That's pretty much what she expected, yeah. She's quiet for a moment before pushing herself off the door and making her way to where he's sitting. ]

Do you want to hear about Earth? I haven't been a lot of places myself, but I could tell you about it.

[He glances over as she enters without moving his head, tracking her movements out of the corner of his eye. He exhales slowly, his shoulders slumping.]

…yeah, okay. Sure.

Hmm...

[ She pulls over a seat, turning it so they're facing almost the same direction, and weighs her options. Talking about Gotham would probably be pretty depressing right now, even if the people ARE real.

She stares at the wall as she speaks, a distant smile on her face. ]

So, there's a kind of place called a "savanna". They're usually pretty hot and dry. Sometimes they have trees, and sometimes they don't, but there aren't a lot of forests. Mostly it's just tall grass, as far as you can see.

And savannas are where you find some of the biggest animals on the planet. There's elephants, rhinos, giraffes... There's a lot of grazing animals too, different kinds of deer, mostly, and some really big cats.

We were travelling between small villages, around the size of the Grove I guess? But they're spread out so wide that it took most of the day to get from one to another. I'd never seen so many animals out in the wild before.

[Till, not having a good frame of reference to visualize an elephant, or a rhino, or a giraffe, ends up imagining some pretty wild things. They’re pretty alien, unsurprisingly, but he can think big. Big creatures are common, after all. Just, you know…Elephants don’t have massive sharp fangs, probably. But the tusks are kindof like fangs…?

He looks over at Steph out of the corner of his eye as she paints the picture, trying to imagine any place so wide and open. He’s so used to things being so packed together…buildings like sardines in a can, much less the denizens inside of them.]

That wide, huh…

Yep. And our vans were as fast as any of the cars they rent here. It's like a whole different world from the city. Still dangerous, but in different ways. The kind of place you could disappear in, if you wanted you.

[ Her smile is both fond and sad as she looks back on those days. It was beautiful, peaceful, and comforting, but also a part of the most miserable time in her life. ]

You know, you can see the stars so much more clearly in places like that. It's like you're not even looking at the same sky anymore.

[Stars…Till’s thoughts are brought back to an equally stressful time, the day he and Ivan tried to escape. The skyline filled with burning stars, what felt like the start of a new and beautiful life…

Except it wasn’t. Till couldn’t just leave…not when it meant leaving Mizi behind.

Would he be here, right now, if he’d decided to do differently? He can’t say he knows for sure.]

Wish I could see that.

[ She wishes she could show it to him. Maybe someday, when they escape the Grove, they'll be able to go wherever they want, and she can bring the Justice League to his planet. ]

...Have you ever been out to the lake after dark? I bet it's almost as good there.

I haven’t. I don’t really go out much at night.

[Like he COULD, could do so easily, but he doesn’t trust that something isn’t going to emerge from the forest and Get Him.]

You think…?

[ She turns and smiles at him. The lake, at least, is pretty safe, she's told. ]

I bet. It's all the bright lights that make it hard to see stars in the city.

Where’s the lake? I don’t think I’ve…ever been there, actually.

It's west of town. I heard it takes a couple of days to get there.

[A couple days huh…does that mean a couple days for the people traveling, or those who don’t go? Because he’s aware now how time passes differently both in and outside of the forest.]

Maybe…I’ll go when we get back.

If we get back.

[ She doesn't really know either. She came that way when she first got to town, but she wasn't exactly measuring the distance. ]

We probably will.

[ If Bonejangles could bring them here, going back seems like an easier task. ]

Do you want to go back?

[Till has to think about that a moment, but the answer is on his tongue before he even says it aloud.]

I’d rather be there, than here. This place feels…too much like home.

[The lights, the sprawling city, the buildings…the only thing they’re missing are the aliens.]

At least in the Grove it’s easier to believe I’m somewhere far away.

[ She hums her understanding, gaze slipping to the window again. It's hard to keep her eyes on him when she knows he's going through so much, and she's pretty emotional about it herself. ]

I get that. I mean, I went halfway around the planet just to get away.

...You are, you know. Really far away.

Really far.

[He agrees quietly, his shoulders relaxing ever so slightly.]

I never really imagined I could get this sort of chance. And here I am, freaking out about everything instead of…I dunno. At least trying to enjoy it.

I mean... you were trapped your whole life. You've only been free, what, a month? Of course you're not used to it yet.

I guess.

It just feels like I’m going to wake up and all of this won’t actually be real.

[Like…he’s had an extended dream, this entire time. With every strange thing he’s been through, it wouldn’t be that far fetched to imagine.]

[ She nods and hums again. She's not actually sure if he's looking at her either. Probably not. ]

I know the feeling.

[ God, she must sound like such a know-it-all. ]

I mean... I went through something pretty different. It was just a couple of days. But... for a long time I was scared of that too.

I wish I could tell you there's a solution. Distraction helped. But mostly, it just took time.

[Time...]

It's...okay that you don't have a solution. I'm not sure I'm looking for answers anyway. Just ways to cope, I guess. Knowing I'm not the only one who's felt this way helps. Everyone else already seems so...I dunno. Settled in here.

They really do... Maybe it's because they've been in the Grove for so long? I heard some of them have been there for years.

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