NOVEMBER EVENT | THE HARBINGER ORACLE

[beleos]

HEDGING YOUR BETS

Bearers feel it. Similar to when the Scorching Isles was opened, there is the same tug, from somewhere in the distance. Those who are in springstar feel it from closer, like a blossom of warmth in your heart, you feel the Oracle spring to life. Those in Highstorm feel it too, but distant. Far away. You remember Cyrus’s words, that it would come to life in Springstar, and you know, just from the relative distance, from how far away it feels – He was probably right.

So bearers must make their way to the center of Springstar’s residential district. Finding one’s way to Springstar will be difficult, in fact. Preparations have been underway since Cyrus’s announcement, and Springstar leaps into action. The Legionnaires are already marching by the time the first bearers start moving throughout the city. In addition to any of Meridian’s own preparations, the Legionnaires establish choke points and start organizing evacuations. It will be difficult to make your way through Springstar, but the closer bearers make it to the hedge maze, and what seems to be the oracle at the center, the warmer their chests feel. Throughout the city, it feels warm, like small wicks of heat. The closer bearers become, the more it feels like a torrent. It is burning them to their center and igniting them to their cores. Like the fire of drive, is what it feels like. Like the hunger for something more than just food, or anything else, like the anticipation of victory.

The maze itself is where it is the most intense as bearers start to make their way through the hedge maze. Vines and brambles lie within a neat hedge, and it looks like it is safe to jump, or scale, but the moment a bearer tries to jump it, cut through it, or even go beneath it, roots, brambles, and vines lash out to entrap bearers, and start to drag them down and into the hedges. You will have to figure out a way out – lest you be stuck for seemingly the near future.

Of course, when Dimitri’s hand touches the stone statue in the middle, it all goes dark, and wherever you were, whoever you were fighting –

Every bearer collapses at the same time.

YOU'D BETTER BE A-MAZE-ING!

In the dark, there is that fiery impression of the Harbinger. Competition, drive, disdain for even those that best them. It is clear, in the dark, with your eyes closed, that the Harbinger does not see the Bearers as worthy to obtain it. You feel ghostly hands on your mind, into you, as if it is delving for more, trying to pluck and pull out the right memory. It looks for victories, triumphs, defeats, or betrayals. Something that shows the mettle of the bearer, what it is looking for. When it finds what it is looking for – or is this just a dream? – after the bearer experiences the dream, they will get the distinct impression that it is not enough. That the Harbinger wants more. It wants to see what this bearer can do. It wants to see you rise to the challenge, bearer! Will you do as it wishes, and show it the scope of your mettle, or will you capitulate and let the Harbinger know that it was right – you aren’t enough?

The Harbinger wants you to prove them wrong. Can you do that? Will you use spite to convince it that it is wrong? The Harbinger at the center of this labyrinth imparts to bearers, that it will not allow the weak to succeed, that nobody who cannot reach it, would ever be able to protect them. They look down on bearers, and it is up to you, to convince them that you are worth their attention.

When bearers wake, they will be stuck in a foyer. The walls seem blank, and there is a door, leading further into the maze. It is not… fully dark, everything here seems to be lit just enough to move around without trouble, but it is not bright. Bearers can look left, and right, and see others beside them. They are not alone, but nor are they with others of their faction. No, you can feel it, between all of you, gathered here in one space. The humming of your shared aspect fills the room, as if all of you together in one space feels right.

You will not be able to stay. The foyer lasts only until the last person leaves, and if any try to stay behind and stationary, they will find that eventually a door appears, and the room begins to shrink. You had better get moving!

You must move further into the maze. You will find that grouping up for long periods of time becomes impossible, and moving from one door to the next can find foes, allies, or even neutral parties. Every door you open within this maze, leads to new and unusual locations. You may both walk in, from opposite ends, only to find that the doors are gone when you turn your back. Do you end up on a precarious path over spikes, lava, or even water? Do you walk into a room with your greatest desire, a hunger that can now never be sated? Will you do anything to find your way through the corridors? Will bearers help each other, and resist the call of the Harbinger, or will you push over even your treasured ones to win?

MADE IN THE SHADE

And even further in, as you start to catch sight of them, patches of darkness seep into the corners, into everything. They may be hidden, at first. They may lurk underneath patches of leaves, or in shadowed corners. But the longer bearers are within this labyrinth, the longer the shadows seem. They start to reach out, to pull bearers into their shadowy depths. You may feel malaise, or an unwillingness to continue, once you first step within these patches. The longer you are there, the harder it is to get out. You will need help from your friends or dear ones, or sheer strength of will – but can you fight on, as you start to lose the things that motivate you?

And then there are the visions. People you know, love, or trust, they round corners, just ahead. They seem just out of range, and at first, it is difficult to tell if they are there or not. But they happen to reappear, and then disappear around a corner. Try and chase them, if you dare. When your fingers touch their arm, or grab their clothing, or heaven forbid, if you pull them into a hug – it seems impossible to pull away. They were treasured, weren’t they? There is a reason they appear here, to you. Why would you want to pull them away? Why would you –

They reach out, their fingers seem long, as they reach toward your shard – they will not be deterred by clothing or armor, their fingers seem to bend and twist around the junctions – before they find purchase on your shard. They rip it from you, and it feels like you are being separated from something. It’s painful, it hurts, but the last thing you see, as they hold your shard in your hand, is someone you care very deeply for, placing the shard in the same place on their own body, and your own face smiles back at you, and it all goes black. You are gone. Into… nothing.

NOTES

Here are some prompts to set the scene and foundation of the Exalt Oracle! Please refer to the ooc post for more details about what’s happening in the labyrinth! Feel free to direct questions here.

If your character gets killed by a shadow-copy, please let us know in the reporting post that goes up on November 20th if they touch the effigy. If they do not, please let us know on the deaths page! Don't forget to report any dissipations as a whole! Please also let us know if your character is saved by another bearer, or if your character’s shard is taken by the shadow copy for the entire duration of the event. This will not result in any permadeath, but you might get some cool lore! Teehee! If your character defeats a shadow creature, please let us know [HERE]

Comments

02

[furibund]

[ She's already learned to hate this place and its need to drag you wherever it wanted. Annoyance seeps through a shared bond that can be mistaken for anger - somehow too much becomes that particular feeling. Especially when a younger Exalt decides your warning to stay away is a need for aggression. ]

[ She does not care. It's easier to handle others with shouting and anger than it is other ways. It's practically how the Guardians had developed (it's certainly how she had, with those same emotions being all that were fostered in her childhood home). ]

[ But neither does it make her unaware of her surroundings. Of the others in the room who could so easily step in or take advantage of things... Though she wonders about one in particular and it's cause for pause eventually. Frowning, troubled. The form is close enough to one she knows that it definitely is enough reason to consider. Will it be all right? She does not allow herself to think and half glares at the tanuki from the corner of her eye: ]

What's a goddamn raccoon doing down here anyway? They want kids and animals fighting in their stupid war?

[ Mumbled. Half to herself, half to to the others - Half to the "raccoon," though she doesn't necessarily expect an answer... not that an answer would be at all surprising, given her own family's abundance of talking animals. One, of course, being a raccoon. ]

[tattooism]

[Sharing an Aspect with others is... an interesting sensation, for a woman who tended to keep most of her true goals and feelings carefully out of sight. It had taken her some time to figure out how best to conceal such things even from her fellow Exalts- as best as she could, at least, but. It helped to be in this shape. Like this... people did not often expect sentience, and so they were more likely to dismiss the vague sense of camaraderie or mistake it for something else.

She had not planned on it, but. It seemed the Oracle's mode of transport had... "reset" her, so to speak. So she deals with it, and she observes... the rather interesting interactions between her fellows. While they squabble and size each other up she uses a back foot to scratch along her jaw line, she trots around the boundary of the room to investigate, sniffing here and there, she curls up on any lap she can find, as if it truly was just a mistake. Maybe the Oracle had accidentally brought an animal from the garden maze along with the shard-bearers?

Until the blue one says that, anyway, and after a long moment of the "raccoon" looking at her, blinking pitch black eyes-]

"Racoon dog".

[- and answers in Communion where all of them could hear.]

[furibund]

[ Nebula pauses. The sensation that comes from the shared mental space isn't confusion or surprise so much as an, "I should have known". She can't say animals are free of cruelty - especially now - but it didn't feel appropriate for them to force a shared connection on something that didn't have sentience. ]

[ And the irony of that statements just earns her another look. Rocket is a raccoon, an anthropomorphic raccoon now but still a raccoon. And Cosmo is a dog. This looks more like a raccoon than a dog to her. The skepticism is heavy, but she asks anyway: ]

What's the difference?

[tattooism]

[Sigh... sigh...

Well, tanuki cannot quite sigh, but this one does manage to look almost as if it releasing a heavy breath of exasperation, thick white fur fluffing up and then deflating as it moved.]

There are so many... We are more closely related to foxes, if that is helpful for you.

[Don't ask her about the name! ... Or the bitter rivalry between tanuki and kitsune. It's complicated. (It's not complicated: Tanuki are bitter that kitsune are more known for their shapeshifting, even though tanuki are way batter at it.)]

Canidae versus Procyonidae.

[For the Latin speaking or academic folks.]

Also, we do not steal cat food off people's porches.

[She's seen the viral videos!!!]

[furibund]

[ Kiritsubo comparing tanukis to foxes oddly does not help her point given how long Nebula called Rocket a fox. ]

[ The problem that is so often run into in the galaxy is that different planets had different species of animals. Some more closely related to then others. The fact she knows what a raccoon or a fox is are small miracles in itself. ]

[ She shakes her head. ]

It doesn't.

[ Because foxes look a lot like raccoons! ]

[ She doesn't see a point in saying she's not too versed in Terran animal species - which is what this is sounding more like... But the follow-up does earn a snort. ]

The raccoon I know wouldn't be either. He's too busy stealing expensive batteries and people's prosthetics.

[ No, there's not something fond there in the least it's entirely imagined if there is. ]

[tattooism]

[This is what happens when you aren’t dealing with people interested in animals or hailing from a certain region of a certain version of Earth… Sigh…

Still, the tanuki doesn’t feel much need to get into a prolonged argument over something so passingly trivial. A front paw moves to smooth down some of the thick, pale fur on its cheeks.]

Well, I have no interest in stealing your prosthetics.

[That’s a good enough word, she thinks, for all those parts of this woman’s metal woven skin she could not “read” as she could read flesh.]

Or your batteries, if you have those, too. So surely we will get along just fine.

[furibund]

[ At least to that they're in agreement. Nebula still doesn't see how something can be a raccoon dog, but at least this one seems to be more aware of what it is than her friend was. Maybe that's enough, in its own way, since she scoffs something that can be called a laugh. ]

Surely we won't. If you choose to get in my way.

[ She doesn't even know if this animal is Meridian or Zenith, but it doesn't matter. She can feel the quick pulse of competition running through her veins. It's a familiar eagerness of proving oneself - she thought she had discarded it. But this so called oracle calls it forth and in some ways it's unnecessary. She has her own reasons to stop at nothing. ]

Try not to die out there.

[ Because she doesn't want to have to feel it and that's all :/ ]

[tattooism]

[The black, black eyes of this racoon dog can「see」much. Even if they could not, it has traversed much now of Springstar, Kowloon, Alenroux, and Highstorm... even a bit of the Beyond with a wanderlust that could never be fully sated. This one... if the tanuki were to devote itself to Zenith properly, she thinks they might actually need to clash.

But. She does not plan on doing that any time soon, so. The creature "smiles", baring its white teeth and pink tongue.]

You, too.

[They can wish each other luck. Soon enough, the tanuki will go sniff around Amos' pockets and then trot out of the room following the other man when he leaves.]