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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Till lifts his head, sort of watching Mephisto out of the corner of his eye as he offers that little bit of his own history in response. Oripathy…Flamebringer explained it to him, after he (callously, unintentionally mind you) asked him what it was. It sounds like a horrible, awful disease, so he knows of its severity the moment Mephisto mentions it. Not just in the way it shortens your life, but how it affects people so differently…

Mephisto, too. He’s seen it on him, even if it’s been just briefly when he’s had his legs removed.

He curses lowly under his breath as he looks away again, feeling the way Jibang purrs against his neck as if to say “no, no cursing, only brrbrbrbr”.]

Wanting to sing…loving it, but having it so…tainted. Makes me sick.

[He knows exactly how FrostNova must have felt, even in her final moments.]

[ Oh, Till, you have no idea. Mephisto doesn't tell Till how he got Oripathy because he's still very reserved. He's not ready to open himself up at all. Even the stuff about FrostNova is more than he's willing. He wishes he'd stopped her. He wishes he had snapped out of his depressed stupor long enough to at least tell her that he loved her. That she's his family, always. That he's sorry he's this now.

...

Mephisto continues to hide his face. He doesn't sniffle or cry, but it does feel a bit like the air has a heavy weight to it now. ]

...No one will hurt you here. If you want to sing, I mean. Not as a job or anything, just... for you.

[Till is quiet for a long moment while he chews on that sentiment. If only he knew…]

…How do you know that for sure?

'Cause I'll kill them if they do.

[ Mephisto, you can't just SAY that- ]

[Till’s brows shoot past his bangs, his gaze shifting back over to look at Mephisto curled up nearby.

For me?

…

He chuckles, an incredulous sound, and shakes his head before plucking out a few more chords.]

…I don’t like being forced to sing. But I like to sing, if it’s my choice. …but what I really like to do is write music. Lyrics and stuff, yaknow.

...You really are the artist type. Do you have anything you'd show me?

[Does he have anything?

…

He does, thinking on it. It’s not hard to immediately think of one particular song that he spent days slaving over, and while normally that kind of song he’d rather keep to himself…he’s already sung it in front of thousands of people, hasn’t he? It’s not like it makes much of a difference now, especially when it didn’t even garner a single glance from her.

Till exhales slowly, then shifts from strumming something slow, to something a lot faster.]

Yeah. I do.

[And then he starts to sing.]

[ Mephisto cannot sing. If he tried, he would surely breakdown in tears. He knows he would, because he's tried it before, with ~~Faust's~~ Sasha's crossbowmen. But he does sway the tiniest bit at the music, because as much as he does love singing above all, music from others is still nice.

...

It's hard to hear over the music, but Till might hear soft dove-live coos from Mephisto occasionally. ]

[It is a bit hard to hear…but he does hear it. The soft bird cooing…it reminds him that Mephisto is a bird-person. He looks at him occasionally, and…in a weird way, it makes him feel nice to see someone enjoying his music, even if this particular song was borne of frustration and desperation. It’s a cry to be heard that fell on deaf ears, ultimately, but it did win him the round he sung it in…for better or worse.

He doesn’t know, of course, the troubles Mephisto has weathered. So as the song trails off and Till is left playing the ending chords again, he asks:]

Do you sing?

[ Till really is a lot like FrostNova, Mephisto thinks. Not wholly, obviously, as he's not afraid to show how he's feeling unlike her, but... enough so that it stings to hear him ask that. When her last words to him were I would've liked to hear you sing.

He grips his knees tightly, and his brain buzzes loudly. He wants... what does he want? He wants to sing, to show him he can. He wants to cry, because he knows he can't. He wants to slap Till and scream at him for asking. He wants to break something. He wants this whole damn world to burn.

... ]

[ The cooing had abruptly stopped, but after a second or two of tense thoughts, Mephisto picks up his head with that usual unsettling smile of his. ]

I'm hungry~ Do you have any food?

[Till…recognizes deflection when he sees it. He could press Mephisto for a direct answer, but he knows better than that. There’s something there, a little inkling, but he won’t dig it to the surface unwarranted.

He just takes the hint and closes his eyes, still strumming away.]

Yeah…ain’t much though. I don’t got a lot of money, so it’s mostly snacks and instant noodles, if you’re fine with that.

Wow, you really suck at taking care of yourself.

[ He uses the wall to hoist himself up and heads into the kitchen to start a pot of water to boil. He might see Mephisto head into the bathroom at some point and come out a few minutes later with a full one…? Weird. It’s fine.

Give him a bit and he will eventually come out with two bowls of ramen for the two of them, complete with vegetables and an egg in each and plenty of spices. He sets Till’s bowl next to him and plops himself down again next to Till to slurp his own. ]

[Oh.

Till kindof watches out of the corner of his eye as Mephisto leaves him in the main living space, still playing his guitar idly. He doesn’t have much to begin with, but he doesn’t mind Mephisto having his fill, he thinks…until the boy returns with food for him, which genuinely surprises him into stopping and setting the guitar aside for now.

Jibang crawls back up onto his shoulders as he takes the bowl off the floor, primed to beg for noodles as he balances the hot dish in his lap between his knees. It’s not just the cheap, shitty package and nothing else either, there’s actual variety here. Not something Till could have pulled off in a million years, being that he doesn’t know the first thing about cooking.

…

He’ll start to eat, then, and find himself pleasantly surprised by how good it is. He would have liked it if it were just the noodles and broth, to be honest, but a step above is appreciated.]

…thanks.

No need, someone needs to make sure you know what you're doing.

[ Pats Till's shoulder like :) ]

Once we're back at the Grove, though, that's where the generosity stops. You have to take care of yourself back there again. I politely refuse, da?

[Till just rolls his eyes at that.]

Ain’t my fault I don’t know how to cook. There’s enough places to by food back in the Grove that I haven’t had to worry about it…and shells are a lot easier to get than these credits are.

Well you should really learn. Especially if you're gonna be on your own, it'll be important if we ever get stranded somewhere. I'm sure there's a ton of idiots who would be able and willing to teach you.

[Till’s lips curl into a smile, just slightly.]

Lemme guess. Like Flamebringer?

Oh? Well, he certainly is an idiot, it's true. I'm sure he would. He's gotten real soft to people in need, I've noticed.

Edited 2025-04-06 23:33 (UTC)

[Till huffs, stirring his noodles idly.]

Yeah…I mind him less than some of the other people here. He’s cool.

As if. He used to be cool. Back when he worked for Reunion. [ Mephisto stuffs his face a moment, waiting for him to swallow before he continues. ] Used to help instigate some of the razing and terrorist attacks, but now he's apparently "too good" for that, or whatever.

[Mephisto is honestly the only person he thinks would say someone is “too good” to take part in a terrorist attack with such a straight face.

Well, maybe except Luka-]

…what?

Mmh. Like I said before, people with Oripathy are treated horribly where I'm from. There's a bunch of us that had enough. So... we made a group and retaliated by making a point. If people are going to treat us like criminals that should be kept away from society because we'll "kill people", why should we act any different than that?

[ Casually slurps another bite of noodles. ]

Flamebringer used to be a part of it, and often took part in city bombings and such.

[Till hears this, and…honestly?

Can he even truly say, with his whole chest, that he would want to do any different?

He has daydreamed- fantasized like one might about traveling the world- about the humans finding the power and coordination to rise up against the alien race and treat them only as well as they’ve always deserved. They’ve pillaged, and abused, and sucked the life from humanity. In Till’s world as he knows it, human culture no longer exists. He actually can’t imagine a better outcome than seeing the alien constructs go up in flames, if he’s honest.

But in his heart, he doesn’t know if that would make him happy. Would it just prolong the suffering? What would humans gain from it, exactly, other than catharsis? Is that what Reunion had been seeking? Catharsis? Revenge?

…

He realizes that he’d been zoning out for a moment too long, then, staring at his reflection in the ramen bowl.]

…and he…doesn’t do that anymore?

[Can you STOP doing that?]

Not as far as I know. He left us behind, and things just got worse from there. Lots of us died, and we left Hell in our wake.

It's why I'm not exactly thrilled to see him again. [ Mephisto twirls a noodle around his spoon. ] ...Maybe I should've probably left, too. A long time ago. I don't think I'd be half as far gone as I am now if I had. But I was also eight at the time, and considered those people my family, and it seems way fucked to put any blame on an eight-year-old.

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