MINI-EVENT: RETURN FROM THE MOUNTAINS

[sticksandbonesmods]

You are tired.

Without the truck to come get you — where did those people go? Were they even real? — you have to walk, hike up to the mountain peak, only to go back down. Did no one tell you that just the base of the mountains to the Grove itself is a seven-day walk? Perhaps someone would have, if they were here to tell you.

As all of you escape Roseroot, leaving behind the horrors slaughtered en masse, poor Astrid is suddenly blinded, his eyes turning completely black as something whispers in his mind. “Please. Please, you have to help them. You have to help them. Please, please, you have to—” As quick as it came, he regains his vision, his eyes clearing back up, and the message cuts off. Whether he shares this information or not with the rest of you… that’s up to him.

Either way, to get over the mountains, you have to hike. The winged, the flighted ones, those who can float, they might be able to take people up to the peak faster, but the blizzards rage atop it. Is flying really safe? You have only a few supplies between all of you — do you look for firewood and rest along the path? Do you traverse the mazelike caverns and hope one of you spits you out at a higher peak? Do you take shelter underneath the crystals growing on the mountainside?

If you look at those crystals for too long, they seem to reflect your nightmares back at you, but sleeping beneath them gives an incredible sense of calm.

At the mountain peak is the scene of something nightmarish itself — a group of people, some humanoid, one shadowy, a few monstrous, all collapsed. Each of them sleeps beneath the bulk of a golden dragon, tucked up underneath their bulk for warmth, while the unconscious dragon itself is mostly-buried under the snow. In the air float three charms, one of the sun, one of the moon, and one of half a sun. And just under those, maintaining some sort of magic — though even the magically-inclined may struggle to tell what exactly it is — is a leucistic deer-centaur holding a staff with a dreamcatcher head, wearing furs and leathers and braving the blizzard in his unconscious state solely to keep whatever this magic field around the peak is running.

As soon as you step further into this field, your memories come back en masse. These people are yours. They are your Guardians, your friends, your almost-family, and they disappeared one day, and you did not remember them. When you go to wake one of them up, your mind is pulled into theirs, a fragmented web of memories spanning before you.

Do you fix them? Or do you leave them here forever to suffer with a fragmented mind?

Spark Notes

out of character

Per the plotting, please remember that it is ONE character per player for the NPCs minus the Lord of the Mountains — meaning for example that Amity cannot have White Lily fix Ydalir, Sidney fix Callan, and Mafuyu fix Heimr. However, players are free to select what NPC they want to help, even if multiple players are currently helping that NPC. Guess comments will be screened and replied to as they come in to avoid cheating when someone gets one right, and all will be unscreened at the end of the event. :)

If everyone lumps into a few NPCs and others don't have interaction, I will lift the rule saying one character per player in the Discord and make an announcement.

Participation in an NPC thread will be good for Bonus AC regardless of length. Please do not use these for main AC. You can get main AC off your toplevels on this event if you choose to do so.

Please refrain from general threading with the NPCs on this post; bar Lord of the Mountains, other NPCs should be threaded with on NPC Contact if it's irrelevant to the event proper. In the case of LotM, he is the exception to every rule — everyone is free to try solving his memories regardless of if you have another character solving another NPC's memory puzzle, and general threading with him is allowed.

I maintain the right to cut a threading-thread short at any time; this is to avoid overwhelm and flooding the post with irrelevant details to the event. Guess threads will not be cut until all guesses are correct at minimum. (This is more in defense of my wordiness than a slight at you guys, I know how I get so this is a rule that exists to protect Me lmao.)

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Comments

[unheiring]

That is true, but...

[Luca's brows furrow. He remembers talking about this, but the details feel wrong somehow. There are gaps here and there, what feels like names and sensations all but erased. The feeling that had crept into his heart upon arriving in Roseroot returns, a terribly bitter sensation that he had done the worst possible thing and forgotten someone important to him.]

Who were they, Astrid? I can't -

[He shakes his head a few times.]

I should know this.

[astralprojection]

[He frowns, expression scrunched in attempted recollection.]

I was attributing my forgetting the names of people we discussed to the late hour of it all and the amount of information at once to digest, though my memory isn't normally quite so shoddy. But if you've forgotten, then something is seriously wrong.

[unheiring]

I've felt it since we arrived in Roseroot. There's someone -

[He grimaces.]

I felt like I had hurt someone I loved. And when I think about it, I have felt like this for a long time. But when I try to put my finger on it, I cannot remember them.

[astralprojection]

[Astrid frowns.]

I'm sorry, Luca. That sounds incredibly difficult.

[Especially if he feels like he'd hurt this person he'd forgotten... like a wound that can't close.]

For what reason would someone possibly be hiding this loved one from you...?

[unheiring]

Would that I could tell you.

[He sifts through his mind, searching for anything. Yet again, he largely comes up empty handed.]

I... do not think it's personal, though. There are other, smaller gaps here and there. Shadows within my memory that should be something more.

[astralprojection]

Do you think that whoever brought us here, altered our memories in some capacity as well...? I did notice my head got kind of foggy once we went through the mountains.

[It felt like a logical conclusion, right?]

[unheiring]

It would not surprise me. It's almost effortless on that thing's behalf, to twist our minds to its will.

[Luca practically spits this much out.]

But I cannot say for certain. And I would rather not alarm anyone else before we can be sure.

[astralprojection]

[Astrid grimaces, crossing his arms across his chest.]

Yes, best not to upset anyone unduly. But meanwhile, I suppose we'll have to just continue our arduous trek — if we'll find any answers, I bet it'll be somewhere around here.

[unheiring]

I hope you are right.

[If nothing else, his sense of trepidation has grown substantially as they've traveled further upward.]

Regardless, I am still at your side, no matter what.