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

[lotusflower]

[He's Learning to be Better about caring. He's doing better this year! And when he inevitably punches Lavi in the stomach again, it'll be "doing better this year, starting tomorrow". And this will probably continue for the rest of their lives.]

No. [He's so mad about this fact, evidenced by the way his brow scrunches behind his bangs as he starts leading the way. The bar isn't too far of a walk, at least, and Ydalir and her book sorting can wait for a bit.] There isn't much here. It's the middle of goddamn nowhere, and I think we're lucky they have restaurants at all.

[He's going to have to learn to make soba... himself. The horrors.]

And you're gonna owe me however many shells this costs later. [Okay, so, maybe he's not doing better this year.]

[inkandhammer]

[Lavi hesitates a moment, book still in hand before putting it on top of one of his many new stacks and following after Kanda. Both of his hands go back in his pockets, mostly to keep himself from tweaking Kanda's hair out of habit. Not looking for new stab marks right now, nope.

Still, he's got a slightly teasing grin on his face at that answer.] If I can get the ingredients together, 'm sure I can try and make some for ya. Not sure how good it'll be since 's been a while since I had to cook for anyone other than me. [Gramps would often make his own food. Self-sufficiency!

Eyebrow raise.] "Shells"? Weird...currency, I guess. 'nd how am I supposed to earn these shells? [He's a jack-of-all-trades by nature! He'll be a millionaire in no time!]

[lotusflower]

[Know that if you do this, Lavi, he will murder for you. He will not voice this though.]

I shit you not: you have to dig them up from the riverbed. This is apparently how the economy works here. No, I don't get it either, but they don't accept normal currency here.

[...]

Also, there's a— [God how does he explain the River Guardian,] giant fucking koi fish that can talk in there.

[...not like that, Kanda.]

[inkandhammer]

[He's now unafraid of death, please be finding new route. He lies, still very scared of mortis. Still, he's taking Kanda skipping over Lavi's offer of cooking as he trusts no food the redhead has had a hand in preparing. Which...fair.

He's snorting somewhere behind Kanda at the first bit and then stops. Wha... Shaking his head to clear it and then catches back up with him.]

'm sorry, did you say somethin about a giant, talking koi fish? [Granted, with their world and the oddities Innocence can produce as equipment types... It's not far off their norm.]

[lotusflower]

[Gee Kanda if only you'd voice opinions, you could avoid misunderstandings!]

Clean your ears out. [He grouses,] Yes, it's the length of a person and it speaks. And it's usually surrounded by these weird octopus looking things that definitely aren't octopi.

[They're called Seaborn, but Kanda does not know this because he hasn't spoken to the Guy That Put Them There In The First Place.

He shoulders open the door to the bar, set in a large watchtower that spirals up almost to the point of reaching through the sky barrier that Lavi had crashed through earlier. The bar portion is on the first floor, so no stairs for a man who is currently struggling to maintain his balance.]

[inkandhammer]

[He will just have to harass the redhead for soba later.]

...I take it they don't uh...keep us from gathering these shells?

[Lavi will learn this information for them later, possibly...probably. Following Kanda into the bar, the stairs do indeed get a wistful glance from the redhead, he do be curious.]

Not octopi in what way? They talk too? Or something worse?

[lotusflower]

No. The little squid octopus whatevers help sometimes. They're... some of them have shells, some of them can fly if you look up. I don't know what they're called.

[Kanda sits somewhere near the back of the bar. Menus are on the table already, and though he doesn't intend to eat, he peruses anyway. He doesn't see the bar's actual owner around, so it looks like it's ghosts for them.

Great. Cool.]

And they sound like— [God, what do they sound like? Kanda pauses and tries to think of the words, coming up short because he's not a words guy. Uh.] Squeaky.

[Yeah, they sound like squeaky, sure, why not. Technically their sounds are more akin to baby crocodiles, but he has not Seen a baby crocodile up close and personal enough to find out that they make sounds. Therefore: squeaky.]

[inkandhammer]

[...You know. He should just stop asking questions. Yeah. Safest option. Are we sure he's not dreaming still? Though, this is really a farfetched dream for him. Busy with the menu or not, Kanda might catch Lavi pinching his arm. Alas, not a dream.

...Do the ghosts give shitty customer service/food?

Lavi sits on the other side and picks up the other menu, looking for anything relatively easy on the stomach yet filling in calories. It's probably not best to gorge himself right now, after all. Unless he wants to see Kanda's hard earned shells again.

Putting down the menu to look at Kanda at the squeaky comment. If it weren't Kanda saying this, he'd think his leg was being pulled. Also, I love baby crocodiles and that made me so happy.]

...Squeaky...

[lotusflower]

[They do not. But Kanda finds the way they operate bit uncanny; they're more like automatons, but without the Komui-brand chaos.]

...I've heard the stew here is good. [He ventures almost as an afterthought.] Yeah, squeaky.

[I TOO love baby crocodiles and baby lizards and and and (insert creature here)]

We can do a tour later. I have a feeling if the town tailor finds you walking around like that, [read: in street kid chic] that you're going to be kidnapped.

[And then nothing will get done because they'll have to endure the tailor.]

[inkandhammer]

[Lavi'll take automatons that aren't like Komui's constructions any ol' day. Then the stew will do! As will some freshly baked bread if they have it, all nice and warm with butter. Mmm!

I have a little fidget toy one and I like to imagine it makes those noises when I play with it. ;o;]

...I think I can do without another kidnapping. Between the last one and this one, I'm kidnapped out, yeah? [Looks down at himself.] Though 's not terrible, shoes'll probably help sell it more.

[This is slowly setting up to be a horror story and he doesn't like it.]

[lotusflower]

[YESSSSSSSS

You know, a smart man would have been like "hmm hey, before we go get lunch at an establishment we should perhaps shoe your feet", but Kanda is not a smart man and was — fairly, one would say! — focused on the fact that Lavi couldn't stand up for long without toppling over. It's the sunken cheeks and the way he looks almost skeletal, alright.

...Eh, it's probably fine. Shoes can be next. Heimr probably won't allow Lavi to walk around in this state for very long, and so Kanda makes a mental note to walk back the other direction to the General Store and go see the old shopkeeper before his companion steps on glass or a really sharp stick or something.]

And I'm guessing you didn't think about trying to find shoes in the first place the second you saw a tower of books.

[It's not a question. Kanda knows that has to be the case.]

[inkandhammer]

[Yeah, Lavi's state of being was a little more pressing than his outer form. Worse comes to worse, they can grab some napkins from the bar and knot them around his feet? Besides, while he's been living the cushy life with wearing boots, pretty sure he'd be the type as a kid to run around barefoot at every chance. Fuck shoes.

Sheepish sort of look.] It didn't help that it was an unfamiliar language. [While primarily history driven, Lavi's personal interest lies in languages.]

'll probably go back later on. [Once Kanda lets him wander away, anyway... Lavi feels like if he tried to leave right now, he'd be bodily stopped.]

[lotusflower]

[Lavi will surely have fun with the various languages here. So many polyglots. And yeah, he'll be stopped, but at least food is on its way to distract for the time being. Thank you, ghost waiters, you work so hard.]

Sure.

[...he should tell Lavi about so many fucking things, but he has no idea where to start, and with limited knowledge himself... he doesn't imagine it's going to go that well. So.]

Did you find anything interesting in the books? [because Kanda's not helpful ever and Ydalir can't win him over with candy.]

[inkandhammer]

[Even more so eventually finding out he can still use them to keep secret conversations. Lavi perks up at the food being brought over. Although...uh...]

Uh...Yu...? [Pointing at the ghost.] What... [Why...?

Let's start with the whole ghost thing? But! Language talk! Enough to distract him, somewhat...]

Other than it looks like a combination of languages from our home. Couldn't really pick out any dialects or full words. Just enough differences to maybe point to multiple different languages.

[lotusflower]

I don't fucking know, that's just— [flipping his wrist,] another weird thing about this place.

[The ghosts are out here managing things when People Aren't, and the people aka the other player who owns this building I didn't go grab aren't here.]

So, what, they were all jumbled together? Just nonsense? [Kanda isn't good at the literary stuff, so he doesn't quite have the vocabulary to ask for specifics, like if it's root words crammed into one or some kind of code or what.]

lmao let me know if this is okay to assume about the language, if not we can say it's Lavi having...

[inkandhammer]

[[ooc: ...hallucinated out of hunger.]]

[Sigh. Adding another mystery to investigate about this place. Forget shoes, he needs a deerstalker hat and a magnifying glass. Just call him Sherlock. But so far...the ghosts are the least concerning thing he's encountered.

At least Lavi's magic hasn't started to manifest.

No buttered bread, but the bread supplied is hearty enough to go well with stew and dipping it into. And in the face of this—considering as well, that Kanda trusts this place enough that the ghost-delivered (and probably cooked) food is safe to eat (or he's just that kind of sadist)—Lavi is abandoning the topic to eat a few bites of food. It's taking a lot of self-restraint to not just...shovel it in his mouth.

A bit of nodding.] Like runes mixed with normal lettering and abugida in the same word. [So one would have to have knowledge of all those languages in order to even begin to parse things out. And Lavi definitely has no idea where to start with translation right now. There's no base.]

you understood the assignment :) i also make ppl make shit up about my game so writes this down-

[lotusflower]

[This place is, surprisingly, safe. Right now. Kanda's been told it isn't oftentimes, obviously he regurgitated that to Lavi already, but they're used to danger. Food-wise, people-wise, it's fine. For the most part. Kanda has been outright hostile to most people, yet a great deal of them took his temper on the nose and met it with kindness, and that's always been somewhat disarming to him. So weird.

Also, they have like, one other Catholic guy and he's not even with the Black Order, and this is still throwing Kanda for a loop. Like what do you mean you worship the Good Lord Above and you're not fucking weird about it. Anyway, that's all lore to tell Lavi later.]

So unintelligible garbage. Great.

[Kanda is markedly less interested in language; if he can't make heads or tails of it, it's going in the bin. His brain does not compute. He barely knows what "abugida" means as it is.]

whoo!! am here to supply all the ideas!!

[inkandhammer]

[Operative term: right now. And while Lavi can definitely hold his own upon the norm even without Tettsui, right now he's feeling a little squish. And honestly, it's probably why there's souls in the Order that continue to throw off Kanda with their genuine kindness. (ie Johnny)

Ew. Proper, organized religion. Get it away.

Continuing to nom, giving a shrug.] For now, anyway. I can probably get a real rough sort of translation in a few days. [Giving Kanda a grin from under his bangs.] 's hard to keep things from a Bookman, yeah?

[Especially one as stalwart as Lavi. Yeah..."abugida" was kind of a big word that's rarely used for him to throw out there.] 'm sure that magic stuff aside, there's gotta be somethin more in those books. History, information, and the like.

:))) slorps your ideas like a fine pasta salad

[lotusflower]

The bookworms are going to love you.

[A historian! A guy with a photographic memory! A nerd! They will eat him up, and at least Kanda won't have to worry about the rabbit getting himself into any trouble with a gaggle of geniuses, he... thinks. That's probably true.

...who is he kidding, this is a recipe for the lab blowing up somehow.]

Probably. There's a library north of here, too. [He was doing his own research. It felt weird and wrong to have his nose in books when he's much more combat-oriented.] Not that I looked into the history section too deeply.

two words to consider: hallucinogenic moss

[inkandhammer]

[A pout from him. Don't you dare think to keep him locked up inside. At least past recovery. He'll go stir-crazy in no time at all. He's an indoor-outdoor cat, as much as one would like to keep them inside. Besides, Lavi's not one for experiments, they can blow up this "lab" by themselves.

Was gonna have him volcano blessed, but conjuration because of bonds was just too good to pass up. He could've been a fire extinguisher...]

If they're gonna be as chaotic as those books, 'll pass for now. [Despite his best efforts, that bowl is empty now and the bread is long gone. And as much as Lavi would love to have seconds, it's probably not good for him.]

hilarious. added to the setting automatically because i love cursing my players' lives

[lotusflower]

The ones I briefly got into seemed normal enough.

[Weird that Kanda's reading all of a sudden! Don't worry about that, it's not important, he's going to attempt to quickly flip the subject around.]

You ate that about as fast as Beansprout eats anything. [An observation and nothing more, though Kanda's at least entertained by it, judging by the glint in his eye.] Feeling better?

i've been dying to try and work it into a game/muse box premise but alas

[inkandhammer]

[Raising...an eyebrow.] Yu picked up a book for somethin other than to throw it at me? [Or whatever nearest equivalent would be without Lavi present. Which...was probably Allen. Maybe Link.

Huffing now as he sits up straight, arms crossed over his chest.] It was just good. 's been a while [Months.] since I had anythin substantial, yeah? ...But yeah. More steady.

ALAS...... been there

[lotusflower]

[ROLLING his eyes. At least Lavi doesn't look like he's about to pitch to the side and perish, though!]

I promised Beansprout something. That's all. Don't make a big deal out of it, you know I keep promises, and that's all it is.

[inkandhammer]

[He wasn't going to in the first place! So long as Kanda didn't try and treat him as normal. Which he hasn't. Which is...slowly getting more concerning, not gonna lie. This isn't very Kanda.]

So what now? Think the tailor is back in their shop? [Lavi should be free to roam the streets as he is, yes?]

[lotusflower]

[Kanda has gone through, checks notes, a few things since they last met. He knows he's being a bit awkward, but imagine admitting that he heard from Allen that Lavi was fucking suffering and was, shock and awe, moderately concerned! It'll be like pulling teeth with him. He may opt to keep said teeth for as long as possible.]

Probably. I don't keep track of that guy's schedule. [Or anyone's schedules, really. He expected the bartender to be here, after all, and instead they got ghosts.] If not, I know Heimr sells clothing.

[Just not, y'know, stuff that's tailored to the person and custom-sized and all that. Heimr is a busy man!]

I guess I'll let you hop to it. Try not to get in trouble again so I don't have to hear Beansprout bitch and moan, yeah?