sticksandbones | EVENT & TDM 034

Entry tags:

!event,
!tdm

EVENT & TDM 034

WAKE UP

Cleaving across the sky of Aldric’s Grove is a deep black gouge — a rift, an open wound, that blots out the sun and moon in their respective orbits. Looking into the rift so high in the sky yields little; it’s too high up to actually see into it, but on occasion, flashes of the cosmos seem to flit through it.

Then, as the current residents of the Grove might say, people start to fall out of it, tumbling through the skies and painfully through the sky barrier preventing those on the ground from reaching those falling. New arrivals will find themselves careening through the stars and suddenly through a constantly-reforming magic barrier that feels like glass against their skin. Lucky arrivals will be caught on the backs of either a large, rainbow bird, or a golden scaled dragon — Aurora, the Sky Guardian and Sehul, the Sun’s Aide, respectively — before they hit the ground and become a smear in the grass. Unlucky arrivals won’t hit the ground thanks to timely aid from the remaining Guardians, though it’s a tossup which hurts worse: getting caught in a conjured bush made of thorny vines to break the fall thanks to Moder, getting tackled out of the sky by the tiny stone-skinned gargoyle Zahliya and rolling across the grass with him, or being grabbed by a mass of Callan’s tentacles only for him to decide he might deliver to you a “hello” bite.

At least the River Guardian Sinann sees fit to heal your wounds.

The magic here feels thin, everyone notices. New arrivals may find out from the old hats that magic was nigh nonexistent for several months, and the steady trickle of it returning has been akin to running the tap through a snowstorm — a drip, drip, drip, but the pipes still appear to be mostly-frozen regardless.

It’s just as people stop falling from the rift that the pipes finally burst.

PERCEPTION CHECK!

Suddenly, magic in Aldric’s Grove is unfamiliar and foreign. Those of you with existing magic and similar powers may find that your abilities are uncontrollable — that candle you were going to light with your fire magic is suddenly entirely melted and your bedroom is ablaze, or the healing magic you tried to use bursts outward from you so strongly that it saps all of your energy for the rest of the day when all you wanted to do was patch up a scratch. Things like this are a common occurrence, as though you’re a brand-new spellcaster all over again.

In addition to this, the magically-inclined and perfectly benign alike will feel something else brewing beneath the surface: the Grove’s own native magic suddenly becoming your own. This, too, is impossible to control — visions from the Blessing of Foresight plague your mind, the alchemy granted by the Blessing of Life shatters the vials of potions you attempt to make, and the summons from the Blessing of Conjuration do not heed your command. The elemental spells now at your fingertips are far more destructive than you intended them to be. Whether you’re an experienced caster or not, the leylines of the Grove remain wild and untamed, lashing out from months of suppression.

At least when the occasional monster strolls its way into the Grove past the flickering barrier of the fog wall, it’ll be instantly vaporized by you trying to use your abilities on it. Probably. You may just nuke yourself from orbit in the process instead.

-Players should scroll down to the “magic” section on the linked page for the full breadth of their abilities that can be freely played with.
-Magic from each Blessing is available to use up to Tier 3; the Gifts of the Sun & Moon are unavailable.

ROLL FOR INITIATIVE

With the chaos of the Grove being new and different, Ydalir the Trader takes it upon herself to find as many old spellbooks as she possibly can. This native magic has been untapped for eons, and with the sudden influx of random fireballs and ice storms every three and a half seconds, she’s taken it upon herself to dig up the ancient texts.

Unfortunately, they are ancient. Ydalir sits in the centre of the Grove and waves everyone she can see over, you included, before handing out random tomes with discoloured and dusty pages. She’s surrounded by them, towers upon towers of unsorted texts walling her off from most viewing angles. “I think I need help sorting these. And identifying them. And seeing if they’re even in a language that makes sense to people. There are hundreds and I’m stressed.”

She punctuates that with a laugh.

“You can keep any tomes you like or that you think will help you get a handle on things. Ooh, and I’ll give whoever helps sort these dusty old books properly and neatly into the library — no cheating, and don’t lie to me — some candy. I made it yesterday.”

Unfortunately, Ydalir imbues her candy with magic, too, and with it being haywire… you can expect effects, depending on what you eat. Have fun! Or don’t! She’s not your mom!

Chocolate Hearts	You turn invisible for 10 minutes, but your invisible form is surrounded by floating pops of heart-shaped fireworks.
Rootbeer Bottle Candies	You are completely immune to the effects of alcohol for 4 hours. When the immunity wears off, you immediately experience a type of drunkness that can only be described as "4 hours of drinking at the New Year's Eve party".
Cat-Shaped Sugar Candies	Wherever you go for the next 15 minutes, you do so by sprinting, leaping, and swatting at things uncontrollably. AKA: you have the zoomies.
Spiral Jawbreakers	You are instantly teleported to a different location in the Grove, forest, or beach. Anyone next to you is also teleported to that same location.
Gummy Pasta	Your hair grows uncontrollably long for 1 hour. Chopping it off only makes it regrow. After 1 hour, it will automatically return to the length it was previously.
Spicy Cinnamon Candies	Every time you exhale for 30 minutes, a small burst of flame comes from your throat. A harder exhale will let you breathe fire that smells like cinnamon.

SHORT REST

The month drags on and on. Every morning someone casts Fireball. Every night, someone’s summon bursts through a window, steals your food, and runs. Luckily, the chaos starts to slow as the magic flowing through the leylines is finally used up, and the Grove’s natural magic — and your own native abilities — start to listen to you again. It makes resting easier, at the very least. No longer do you have to wait for your window to automatically repair itself after something smashes it.

You know, unless someone wants to start throwing completely mundane stones at it.

With everything settling back into a sense of normalcy again, Ydalir is… still doing things. She never apologised for her candies setting off a chain reaction of chaos, but this time, she’s not feeding you. Kind of. “If you want to stay connected to the leylines here and maintain some of the magic native to this place, here’s a spellbook for you to write your spells in, and—” she slams a leather-bound journal into your lap, a quill on top of it next to a small crystal that looks like it’s made of quartz. “A star shard! You’ll need to eat that to anchor yourself to the magic here. It’ll taste like sugar, uh… and it won’t do anything weird to you this time, I’m so sorry. Anyway, you should go out and practice with your peers! It’ll make all of this easier.”

If you head out, it looks like you aren’t the only person who’s been snagged for a bit of a magic lesson. It might be worth asking the more experienced spellcasters to help you with whatever new school of magic you picked up, or you could grab a study-buddy that’s on your tier… or you could just rawdog it and see what happens. Surely it won’t be as catastrophic as when you tried to do that throughout the month.

-New characters that app while this TDM is good (March + April) & existing characters already in the game will be grandfathered into the magic system, automatically gaining one Tier One Blessing of their choice without the initial 10-thread buy-in. The rules on the page must still be followed.
-Existing characters with ties to Beiwe & Ourania are free to pick up Gifts of the Sun & Moon at this point, instead of a Blessing.

Spark Notes (Click to Expand)

summary

WAKE UP: New arrivals to the Grove are falling out of the sky! They will be caught by the Guardians, but they'll be injured. Please help them.
PERCEPTION CHECK!: Everyone's magic goes out of control, and new magic starts to spring up and be freely used. No one asked for this but you sure do have it!
ROLL FOR INITIATIVE: Ydalir needs your help sorting through these magic tomes. You're free to read them and try to make sense of anything in them as well as claim one for yourself if you find it useful. When you help her, you will receive candy that has Effects™ in it. Whoops!
SHORT REST: Magic levels start to equalize, and no longer is life a struggle magic-wise. Ydalir will give you a star shard if you'd like to anchor yourself to the Grove's magic and keep some of what you've learnt.

out of character

It's March! Reminder that TDMs are game canon. Don't mind my notes on the prompts this time (but do mind them because I need you to follow the rules also). Questions about the magic system should ideally be directed on the magic page itself. Also does someone know how to get anchor/jump links to work on my magic page because no matter what I did it wasn't registering my div id tags and I'm starting to go insane... please let me know thanks-

updates

Any potential updates, such as characters damaging something important or whatever else, will be put here.

submissions

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

code

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Many, but I laid my rules.

[ One toe out of line and Akaza was mince meat. Kyojuro and Akaza himself even expressed it was fine, so he would stay his hand. So far he hasn't been given any reason to act. ]

And yes, probably. I've been reaching out slowly.

[Good kid. He gets an approving little nod before Tengen lets the topic swerve to less fraught issues.

Like the fact that Muichiro is actually reaching out! Even if that's within their own circle, that's something.

(Hell, even this could be seen as him reaching out.)]

Have you? It's going well?

[Spill the tea.]

You remember Shinazugawa's younger brother? I'm friends with both him and Senjuro Rengoku.

[ Him having actual friends at all is an improvement. ]

I also am going to be sparring with someone once things with our powers settle back to normal.

[More nodding! A little more enthusiastically this time! He could do so much worse than a Shinazugawa and a Rengoku, honestly-

Especially for, like, the new Muichiro development of "having friends".]

Hah, I have to tell you to go easy on them.

[It's his job as a responsible(?) adult, but the laugh in his tone says the opposite. No mercy.]

They said they were a grandmaster whatever world they came from. He apparently also has some kind of wind powers, so he should be an interesting opponent.

[ Assuming he's not scared off by the fact he's a kid which is always a possibility.

But Muichiro is not fighting some beginner, he wants a challenge. ]

[Woe be to anyone who discounts Muichiro because of his age-]

Oh, in that case, show him what you're made of.

[Kick! His! Ass! Or, like, make a friend, that's how it works, right?]

I will. If I can handle upper one I can handle anything.

[ Yes he had help, but the sentiment is the same. He played a big part in that. ]

How... was everything after that? Until now I was the furthest along in the timeline.

That's right.

[Good kid. So what if he'd had help? That's what they were a team for.]

After that...

[There's a thought to be succinct, just give him the slightest of details, not let on how truly devastating the losses were, but that wouldn't be respecting him as a slayer, a Hashira, as someone who gave his own life to the cause. So.]

We lost too many of us to get to dawn, but... those Kamado kids put an end to it all, finally. Kibutsuji's done for.

[ It's unfortunate, but he expected as much, really. If upper one took four of them to take down and he had to die just to hold him still, there was no way Muzan was going quietly. And it stings to think about, but they'd done what they set out to do in the end.

Uzui says they lost too many, but a great many of those lost would probably argue their loss spared thousands of lives going forward. ]

Good... I knew you all could do it. It's a relief to know it's really over, though.

[ He's scared to ask about Genya, so he leaves that alone. His tone is a little quieter as he asks the next part. ]

You were safe, right? You didn't get involved?

[He knows every single one of those lost would argue that no matter their regrets for would-have-beens left behind, the preservation of so many thousands of lives and the final end to their ultimate mission was worth the cost.

They weren't the ones left behind.

But that's far too much grief to put on the shoulders of a child who had sacrificed everything, so he lets it be.]

Someone had to look after Nezuko and the Ubuyashikis, in case the worst happened in the castle.

[Just what that meant - and what it could have meant - also goes unsaid.]

You really think I'd just sit back and do nothing? [He taps that bamboo sword against his shoulder, because honestly... he could have. He was retired. But so were Urokodaki and Shinjuro. He couldn't let them show him up.] Was surprising they left any of us outside the castle, though.

I asked because I know under most circumstances you'd jump in last minute to be flashy.

[ He didn't want Uzuki to be one of those lost when he was retired and shouldn't have to lay his life down. ]

Keeping you out of the main fight was probably a mercy for your wives.

[Clocked... but that does get a laugh from him because, yeah, Muichiro was right, but it also shows Muichiro had paid more attention to all of them than he'd let on.]

Should be thanking you for that one.

[The main fight was far from won when it left the castle, but if any of the upper moons had come with Muzan, he knows he would have had to step in, and would have probably joined the ranks of the deceased, given the state of him.

He'd do it in a heartbeat.]

They miss you, by the way.

They do?

[ He can't... remember that much about them. What he learned during the hashira training was it. If they met him prior, he didn't recall it at all.

His memories were pretty finicky. He remembers enough about the other hashira but its a bit of a blur. Names, faces, general personalities, a few tidbits and trivia. Not nearly as much as he'd like for knowing these people for four years... ]

They seemed nice...

Yeah.

[To be entirely fair... it's probably more of a nebulous thing, a comment here or there that, since he's so young, they should probably look after him, that after everything is over...

Well. That's another Should-Have-Been.

He thinks Muichiro would have fit in well with the other idiot teens they've decided to lowkey (highkey) look after, though, so it harms nothing to put the sentiment that he's missed out there.]

I sure don't deserve them. But what about you? Is there anyone here?

[You're fourteen, that's prime Life Partner Picking Age, stop dwelling on sad things and give him the tea-]

What?

[ He looks. Almost startled by the question. Mostly because he understands he means romantic-partner wise and he has never once considered that ]

I... don't know. I wouldn't know the first thing about that.

[ His life has been driven by rage and the notion that dying like a martyr would likely be the end result. Love... was a Mitsuri thing, something she and Obanai should get to pursue, but there had just been no room for it in his mind until now. ]

[So he isn't entirely unflappable...! He really should have been able to live a normal life, especially after his memories had begun to return.

Instead he's... here.

It could be worse, but it could be better, too.]

Nobody does until it happens.

[Yes they do, Tengen.]

[ Admittedly his walls are somewhat down at the moment because there's no immediate danger.

Muichiro just kind of tilts his head. ]

I never really considered it before. How do you even tell?

[ He's asked Mitsuri but uh... her explanation was incomprehensible at best. ]

[...Yeah, the patented Mitsuri Explanations were... something.]

How do we tell, or how do normal people tell?

[He has experience with one of those.]

I don't think either of us can be considered normal. Knowing that probably wouldn't be useful.

[ Saying it like it is, as always. Did you miss him Tengen? ]

[He did miss him. He missed him so much.]

You're right~ [L a u g h s.] For us, it's someone you'd choose to protect more than any other normal, unflashy person, even if you're pretty sure they can handle themselves.

["First priority: you." etc.]

Like Genya or Senjuro?

[ He says it so innocently, clearly not processing the implication he just gave. ]

[Like... O h. He'd been expecting a flat refutation of the sentiment - it's their job to protect those ordinary, unflashy people, after all - or, if he mentioned anyone, that it would be Tanjiro.

The fact that it isn't, and that two names come to mind for him immediately tells Tengen far more than Muichiro intended.

He has to wonder if Muichiro even realizes it himself.]

Like Genya and Senjuro.

[Just gonna. Affirm that. See where it goes. No big deal.]

[ It is their duty, but what Tengen never really got the chance to discover was just how fiercely Muichiro feels things despite his learned deadpan.

Yes he would protect anyone with his life, but if it came down to it, he doesn't think he could let those two get hurt. Not again, in Genya's case. His guilt gnawed at him over what could have happened, but they just didn't have time. And Genya wouldn't want to be underestimated. ]

Huh.

[ Pause. Processing. He blushes just a little bit. ]

Wait- what?

[He'd hoped, idly, distantly, that the youngest hashira would remember how to feel things again. It's a regret he never got to see it firsthand before it was too late. Here, though, there's plenty of time to learn. To observe.

To tease about growing crushes, apparently, if that blush is any indication.

He tries so hard to not let a grin split his face entirely with... only some success.]

You have feelings for them, don't you?

[RIGHT TO THE POINT.]

[ Aaaa??? ]

I.. don't know? I guess?

[ If the shoe fits??? But he certainly doesn't know what to do with this information. It's not like he can verify that at all. ]

How am I supposed to know?

EVENT & TDM 034

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