The Seeds of Unrest: the Iconoclast Oracle

[beleos]

RUNNING OUT THE CLOCK

The situation is bleak.

The Blight - and the massive labyrinth of roots tearing both cities asunder, spreading deadly flowers wherever they penetrate - have progressed to a point beyond catastrophe. People are dying in rapid numbers. Bearers are having difficulty keeping up with the spread of infection - even among one another. The collapse of Kenos seems inevitable; a cure will not come in time. You can do nothing but watch as each new day brings further disaster, ticking down the seconds until it all falls apart.

And then, you feel something seize your Shard. As if physical fingers have wrapped around it, as if it is being clutched through you by invisible hands, you feel invaded. You feel wronged. But before you can panic, a voice enters your mind through Communion.

“Excuse the dramatics, but there isn’t much time for pleasantries. The Trees are about to hit the point of no return. But there's still work to be done. The Tree of Life will take you where you can find it: the Oracle and the creature causing all this mess. Fix this when you find them. However you'd like.”

Have you heard Aetos’ voice before? Perhaps it is the first time; perhaps it is familiar to you. Either way, the last thing you will remember is a confusing jumble: a spell of immense and incredible power, one utilizing the Tree’s strength to shelter you. The sensation of every cell in your body coming alive, yet seeming to break apart and render you into billions and billions of tiny pieces, all hovering in different times and places across all the different iterations, timelines, and realities in which you have ever existed. A voice that speaks not through words asking your forgiveness, unspeakably sad.

And then, there is nothing.

AWAKENING

Your eyes open, gritty with the feeling of a long, deep slumber.

Perhaps it takes a moment to shake off the heavy veil of exhaustion, to recollect what you were doing before you fell into this state of hibernation - but as soon as you do, you feel an immediate sense of foreboding around you. It is thick in the air, oppressive and pervasive, and you aren’t left long to wonder at its source. You lay beneath the branches of the Tree of Life, but as your bleary eyes focus… you see it. The Tree is all but bereft of life. Its bark has withered down to gnarled wood, the soft lichen dried up, and the grass that should be alive beneath you is long dead and gone. There is not so much as a single leaf on its decaying branches.

It has been this way for a long, long time... you realize this with a feeling of intense dread as you see it - the beautiful expanse of stars, of the cosmos, of universes scattered like starlight above the tree's boughs, gone. In its place hangs a sickly, ominously low-hanging, and dying sun ready to sing the end of everything.

You can't help but wonder how long Kenos has been in this state, but a sense of gratitude fills you as you realize that the Tree expended the last of its energies to protect you, the Bearers, during your state of rest. Had Aetos worked with the tree to see you sent here?

The next question comes quickly: how much time do you have left…? And can you find the Oracle before that time expires?

ABANDON HOPE (DAYS 1 & 2)

The cornerstones are still active and will take you to whichever city you wish to see.

Highstorm and Springstar sit like empty monuments to the cities that were once filled with life - yet the first thing you will notice is they are strangely absent the signs of the Tree’s overgrown roots, the Blight, the catastrophic damage that you can recall all too easily. Instead, each city sits as those they were summarily abandoned overnight, leaving nothing but their shells behind. There is a stillness in the air that is unnatural and unsettling. Despite the lack of any sign of the citizens of either city, you cannot help but feel… watched.

Something terrible happened here. Best you find the Oracle before something terrible finds you, instead.

The burning of a dying sun beats down on you wherever you go, unbearable heat sending waves off the aged cobblestone streets. Perhaps it is your instinct to seek refuge in the shade - but linger too long about the shadows and that feeling of eyes on your back, of being unable to breathe, of your world closing in around you will grow untenable and drive you back into the light. If you hope to explore the ghostly shell of your city in search of the Oracle - or to sate your curiosity, some problem-solving might be in order.

And while you acclimate yourself to your circumstances, you cannot help but note you feel wrong inside, somehow…

EXPLORATION

• If your characters choose to explore previously unreachable areas, please use THIS TOPLEVEL to report when they get there in the thread! We will get back to you with what is discoverable in that location.
• The following areas are off limits for exploration: below Yima’s Manor; below the Church of Heliopolis; Alenroux; Kowloon.
• The Great Trees of both Highstorm and Springstar are in a similar state to the Tree of Life and will not respond to Communion.
• Generally speaking, items will be of poor quality. Most will look as though they’ve aged thousands of years. Others will be in half-decent shape, but sparingly so. Oddly enough, it doesn’t seem like the whole city has aged at the same rate, so especially diligent rummagers can find worthwhile supplies. Please consider this should be rare and don’t go overboard!

NOTES

Here are some prompt reminders - see the full thing at the OOC Summary!

• Characters will have a diluted connection to the Zenith or Meridian.
• There will be periods powers are weakened or non-functional during days 1-2 (up to player discretion).
• The sunlight results in scorching; the shadows cause claustrophobia and fear while outdoors.

THE RITUAL (DAYS 2+)

The place you started your journey to Kenos is also where it seems it will end. As soon as the first Bearer makes contact with the Iconoclast effigy, you are collectively drawn to the roots beneath the Tree - like a pang sent through your Shard. Your objective has been found. The Oracle awaits.

Trusting Aetos seems like a fool's errand, but you must put your hope in the Tree. What choice do you have left? It's time to find what lies at the end of this.

Bearers descend, your steps echoing in the dark, cavernous space. Once brimming with life and vitality, the roots are now dried and brittle like the bones of some ancient leviathan that died long ago. As you make their way deeper into the earth, the deadened roots twist, leading you to a vast chamber deep within it; the air here is thick with the smell of decay, and the faint glow of luminescent fungi and mosses barely illuminates the space.

To your left, the Bearers will notice what has drawn them here - and the object of their search.

An effigy sits on the ground between two darkened tunnels. The effigy is made of gnarled, dead branches woven together in a humanoid shape; its hollow, empty eyes are sightless, yet you cannot help but feel it is watching your every move. Branded on its forehead is the Iconoclast symbol carved into the rough wood.

Once all Bearers are present, the Ritual will begin. Your means of exit have been sealed off, and you are trapped, slowly deteriorating together…

NOTES

• Bearers will have access to the Ritual Chamber which is a very wide, open space with the effigy situated against the far wall from the entrance. Several smaller tunnels off-shoot from the Ritual Chamber. They all run to dead ends; some are very small or narrow. This may afford you meager privacy away from the group.
• Once a Bearer steps into the Chamber, they can no longer head back out the way they came. They’ll find themselves automatically walking back into the Chamber as if of their own volition.
• For brevity’s sake we won’t list them out again here, but the complete description of effects Bearers will experience days 2+ is available in the OOC Summary.
• The effigy is impervious to damage.
• It Is Watching You.
• In a dead-end root tunnel attached to the Iconoclast’s Chamber is the Blighted statue of an Otter that may be familiar to some… Please see THIS TOPLEVEL for more information!

THE PURGE (DAYS 5+)

The sap has festered in your veins for what feels like days. It’s impossible to tell how much time has passed; this place has no sunlight. The effigy watches as you remain trapped, huddled together around it, unable to leave as you find yourself sick with the affliction of the Meridian, Zenith - or both.

And then… something finally gives.

Though it does not move and speaks no words, you feel the effigy offering you guidance. Knowledge. Much like the Tree speaks to you in impressions and feelings, you are conveyed wisdom you did not have before: a way to take what you want and rid yourself of what you do not. A way to make your convictions known to all who would hear them. A way to be known. To write your path in blood, be it yours… or theirs.

When all is said and done, only one force - Zenith or Meridian - will gain its favor.

Show it who you are. Show it what resolve looks like to you - and what you are willing to do to attain it.

NOTES

Here are some prompt reminders - see the full thing at the OOC Summary!

• You can Purge your alignment through various methods: Trading, Corrupting, or using the Effigy itself.
• All characters will understand the end goal is for everyone to Harmonize; the alignment with the higher rate of Harmonized Bearers alive when time’s up wins the Oracle’s favor.

NOTES

• A reminder that the Harmonization tally will take place on Friday, the 19th and be open through Monday, the 29th. The results will be released on Wednesday, the 31st OOCly.
• Don’t forget to submit any deaths to the Death Tracker, with a gentle reminder characters will remain dead until the event conclusion!
• Reminder to fill out the SETTING POLL ASAP if you haven't already!
• Have some MUSIC if you'd like. LYRICS here!
• HAVE FUN!!

CODING

Comments

[vallt]

[that's — surprising, enough so, at least, that it gets jyn's attention; hardly anything she'd expect from someone who, for all intents and purposes, seems to be all about this bantha shit. her gaze is fixed on him, barely blinking, brows furrowed with eyes slightly narrowed, as if by staring she could somehow put pieces together.

in any case, though, she doesn't get the time; he passes her knife back to her as she holds her shard out his way, and —

she blinks, looking toward his shard instead, making sure that when she stretches her bleeding palm over, the blood-sap will hit the target that it needs.

one drop, then two — and a connection opens between them.

what first settles over it is a feeling not unlike the one that every shard-bearer is experiencing now, trapped in this place; uncertainty, dread, suffocation from walls closing in. the space of the last place she'd ever want to stand in is dark and cold.

you can stand, a voice, weak, a shadow of its former self, says, to see the imperial flag reign across the galaxy?

anger sparks over the connection and burns all too easily, open air on an already-kindled fire. because what other response could there be for saw gerrera, one of many who's betrayed and abandoned her? that anger burns, and it burns, until it eventually forms the point of weapon in the form of jyn's own voice, aimed to hit where it hurts most:

it's not a problem if you don't look up.

only — it's shaky, isn't it? like the ground under her feet, like walls crumbling and crashing as she runs for an escape, like the core of jedha as it's destroyed, fundamentally, by an empire capable of even far worse horrors than anyone could imagine.

still, the anger is a crutch. something to cling to, desperately, as she's torn away from her father's body in the rain, as the rain continues to pound against the walls of the stolen imperial shuttle outside as she forms the words for another weapon to throw: orders? when you know they're wrong? you might as well be a stormtrooper.

only to get its equal, its mirror, thrown back at her, in cassian andor's voice: we don't all have the luxury of deciding when and where we want to care about something.

but maybe a fire doesn't only have to burn in anger, to be cast as a weapon; maybe it can be directed. maybe it carries her past a rebel alliance that doesn't want to fight, past mon mothma's paltry i'm sorry, jyn, past anyone who would stop her from doing what she knows is right, with unquestioning purpose: to finish what her father had started, to go to scarif and expose the weakness embedded inside a planet-killer.

and maybe it can die on its own embers in peace when the mission is done, with the sands and the water stretched before her, with fingers laced in hers and the knowledge that she won't have to die alone, after all.

it can die on its own embers as the warmth of meridian's energy leaves her, transferred to claude.]

[leicesters]

[Claude is thrown by the deluge of people, places, memories that seem to open before him. Jyn had struggled in her world, she had suffered, she had found a mission she believed in, and now, at the end of it all, she was done. Natural, perhaps, that she would want to leave all of that behind and turn instead to the promises of Zenith.

Or maybe it was just pragmatism, given how much she seems to have been bent towards survival. The lesser, or more appealing, of two evils.

But he doesn't know her. He can only assume. As he drops blood-sap onto her shard, she will be greeted by images of his own, triggered by his own experiences of battling empire: a battlefield, with the banner of the resistance army, held high by his standard-bearer. On the other side of the field, the two-headed eagle on a blood red banner of the Empire. The acrid smell of burning flesh as the Empire unleash a burning, volley, striking down his men around him, the anger he felt at the Emperor he had once considered a schoolmate now turned to his enemy.

I will destroy both the Kingdom and the Alliance, Edelgard had proclaimed, proud, her skeletal axe in hand. Now, in one fell swoop.

The Kingdom fell: Dimitri skewered alive in his vicious desperation to claim Edelgard's head, his blue cape stained red around his broken body. But Claude survived the horrors of that fight, and his forces in the yellow-gold armour of the Leicester Alliance or the red and white of the Knights of Seiros forced the Empire to retreat. Time and again he pressed the attack, the Great Bridge, Fort Merceus, the streets of Enbarr. He drove back the Empire that had brought war and ruin to the continent.

By his side through it all was Byleth. Not the Byleth here in Kenos, but a Byleth of his own world, who smiled more readily, who was more at ease with him, who matched Claude's tactical brilliance with his own strategic genius. You and me, Claude had told him. We can go anywhere. Do anything. I hope you'll always walk in step with me... At least until the day comes when we can look out at the peaceful world we've built together.

That day did come. The war ended, and Byleth was crowned King of the United Kingdom of Fódlan, a symbol of peace and new beginnings. Claude crossed the border east to his homeland, to the prairies and deserts of Almyra, to set his sights on his wider ambitions. To bring peace, too, to reconcile two nations with a long and bitter enmity.

Memories of him kneeling at dawn in Almyra's grand palace, as his father passed onto him the golden diadem of kingship, proof of the lasting peace he had achieved with their once seemingly eternal enemies in Fódlan. Hail Khalid, the King of Unification.

He had laughed. Almyra always had loved its boastful titles.

That had been the new dawn he had wanted, the start of another new journey. It began with diplomatic summits with Fódlan, peace treaties, trade agreements, camels laden with silk and spices, while Fódlan ended its millennium-long isolation and opened up to the people it once hated and feared. Little by little, he hoped the two nations would see each other not as enemies, or lesser, or heretics for their different gods and their different ways. But simply: people.

Now he's here in Kenos, and that dream might still burn up yet as it almost did in the crimson flames of the Empire. He can't give up on it, can't abandon his people or the world he had devoted himself to creating. He doesn't need Zenith, or Yima's promises -- he just needs to go home, to that bright dawn he had chased for so long.

His place was always in Meridian's suns. And so the Zenith leaves him, and instead goes to Jyn's shard, concluding the exchange.]

[vallt]

[of all that jyn doesn't know coming in over the connection, there is, oddly, quite a bit that she does. among the strange places and people, there's a familiar face — byleth, who she understands now, much more than she has or ever thought to. even if it doesn't quite look the same, an empire is an empire, and it's something to be defeated.

but more than that, there's familiarity in a longing — for home. it's a concept that's been firmly locked inside the cave in her mind, a fragment of a memory haunting her since she was a child, but something she could find an echo of, maybe, in the arms of another.

there's a big difference between them, though; his home is an actual place, real and present.

she doesn't resent him for that as much as she could, not with the understanding that comes from what's just been shared (and not, in part, from the cool energy of zenith settling in her veins). if anything, there's a pang of sadness in her gut for him — that he believes, genuinely, anyone here cares to help him return to that home, or sees him as anything but a means to an end.

that this isn't all just a bunch of fucking rancor shit. meridian and zenith, both.

i hope you find what you're looking for, she doesn't say, because she can't; platitudes aren't a kindness, and she doesn't bother to waste her time on them, anyway. instead, as the connection between them begins to recede, she asks, softly:]

Did you get what you needed?

[leicesters]

I did. Thank you.

[That weighty feeling of Zenith, gnawing away at his doubts and insecurities, is gone, Meridian's light assuring him that -- or so he hopes -- all is not lost. Perhaps she sees it as delusion when she had now harmonised to Zenith, but it's a delusion he'll willingly and knowingly cling to if so. If he refuses it... What was the point of any of it? He'd be a failure of a king.

He meets her gaze, an apology in his look even before he speaks.]

Sorry that you probably saw more than you bargained for. If you prefer I forget what I saw, I'd understand.

[There's nothing there he intends to use against her. They have some shared struggles, and some very different life experiences, but nothing he wants to weaponise even as someone on an opposing side.]