EVENT & TDM 034

[sticksandbonesmods]

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

Comments

[godsfavourite]

Oi, just because you can see things we can't doesn't mean we can't still defend ourselves if something comes bloody charging us. I'm not about to let you take the brunt of an attack, you know.

[ Allen's even already gotten his claws invoked and everything. He'd been idly dragging the blades in the dirt as a sort of "marker" to where they're going. The forest can all look alike sometimes, after all, and Allen doesn't want them to get lost. Or, God forbid, have Suri fuck with their path back. ]

[missinglink]

That isn't what I meant. But it wouldn't do to have either of you slamming face-first into one of the walls trying to fend something off, either.

[And something tells him that whatever is out here isn't going to give them much time to react, either.]

Can you see anything, Allen?

[godsfavourite]

[ Hi Wolfie does Allen see anything with his Special Eye(tm) ]

[sticksandbonesmods]

At first he doesn't see too much as they press on. It's like, fine.

Fifteen minutes up the road are two ghosts who realise that they can be seen and start trying to run away from him.

[godsfavourite]

[ ...Allen clears his throat when the ghosts flee. ]

I'm assuming that neither of you saw those two apparitions?

[missinglink]

[...

Link shakes his head, glancing back at Kanda like ???]

[lotusflower]

Not at all.

[He has not seen a single ghost he's been silently following along LIKE one tho]

[godsfavourite]

...Well, they fled, so... hopefully that means they're uninterested in us?

[ 🤞 ]

[missinglink]

Maybe not, but...should that not be investigated? What if they go for the Grove?

[godsfavourite]

[ Allen nods. ]

Fair point. Alright, then, we'll follow.

[ Which means Allen will be trotting up beside Link to help guide him towards where the ghosts darted off. ]

[sticksandbonesmods]

The boys will be following for quite a while, as the ghosts are not interested in being followed, like what the hell man. Come on.

Eventually, they will both veer to the left and send the boys even deeper out into the forest, and lead them to what looks like a crumbling ruin before they disappear entirely. Stop perceiving us bro!!!

[godsfavourite]

Ah.

They're gone?? [ He didn't realize ghosts could do that,, ]

[missinglink]

Hm...

[Okay now he's on even more high alert than he was previously.]

Seems they've led us to some sort of ruins, purposefully or not. We may as well take a look while we're here.

[godsfavourite]

I doubt I need to tell either of you to be careful, but just be vigilant as usual. And... um, let's see... maybe we can figure out what this was?

[ He isn't turning his eye off. Just in case. But he will try to see if he can find anything that is not just Rubble(tm) or... anything identifying what this could be? ]

[sticksandbonesmods]

The ruins, to be specific, look like that of a home. It's kind of? standing, but mostly just piles upon piles of stones and furniture crushed up underneath rubble. A couple of rooms are still standing, and by standing I mean they have at least two walls and that's as good as you're gonna get.

[missinglink]

Right.

[Link lifts a hand and focuses, and a moment later Atuuda materializes around him, hovering in a circle around his shoulders before settling near his head. Just in case. Only then will he venture forward with Allen and Kanda flanking him, taking in the rubble before them. There's not much to see visually, but given that these are the remains of a home, Link has to wonder if they'll be able to find any remnants of the past here...]

[godsfavourite]

[ How old does it look, roughly? Old enough to be from the way back, aligning with what they know of the past lives, or does it seem to be frozen in time? Do the walls seem stable or is it a "this is a hazard do not approach" situation? Not that that's going to stop Allen. He would like to investigate the rooms, thanks. ]

[sticksandbonesmods]

This place is old, like, hundreds to thousands of years old, but a little bit time fucky wucky because that's just how these woods are. It's definitely a hazard to be here. Someone may die. Hopefully not though, you are three big strong capable men and I believe in you.

Luckily for Link and his glasses, he does start to see some weird glowing objects under the rubble to what was probably maybe a personal study or something at one point. They're glowing in that way video game items glow behind walls.

Allen meanwhile needs to roll a d20 for fun :)

[godsfavourite]

[ we have fun here ]

[sticksandbonesmods]

i

okay

So I was rolling to see if he'd be clumsy and trip but

Allen not only trips over a dislodged metal pipe sticking out of the floor as he goes to check out one of the standing rooms, but he also manages to pull down an entire goddamn fine china cabinet down onto himself as he goes, by some miracle that no one but God could explain.

He is buried in cabinet and broken dishes. The floor tastes like mould.

[missinglink]

Allen-!?

[Hey, what the fuck?

The way Allen suddenly just completely beefs it like that is so startling that Link jumps nearly out of his skin, like how do you even. How did you even manage this?

Given that he's wearing leather gloves, Link doesn't even hesitate to rush over so he can help lift the cabinet off Allen, pieces of broken glass be damned.]

Are you alright??

[godsfavourite]

[ "Wasted" text appears over Allen--

He topples down, but fortunately Crown Clown invokes itself to protect him from any real damage he'd receive. Except his pride, of course. That's very bruised- ]

Hgh... I'm alright. [ He swings his claws around to the cabinet and attempts to hoist it off of him. ] Can you help me with this?

[lotusflower]

[Kanda, who is not wearing gloves but could not give less of a fuck about sharp ceramic and splintered wood, swings over from where he was about to climb up a half-wall to get onto the second story of this house (DANGEROPS) and starts hefting the cabinet off of Allen. Boy...]

How. How do you manage to be so talented at eating shit.

[missinglink]

[Seriously though, like. Boy.

They will help to get the cabinet off of him, though. Hopefully he didn't cut himself on any of the ceramic when it fell and broke all over his back.]

That's what I would like to know.

[godsfavourite]

Oi! Accidents happen, and I'm bloody fine!

[ Grumbles. He pulls himself free, and... like he said, he's fine. Shards of broken ceramics fall off of Crown Clown's cape, so largely it's just his face that got scuffed from hitting the floor. He shakes dust off of himself and wipes a hand over his mouth to get yucky floor out of his mouth. ]

Why are you getting proper pissed with me when you [ Points at Kanda ] are out here about to do something daft???