⏳ THE SCORCHING ISLE: Oracle Event One ⏳

[beleos]

ARRIVAL

All Bearers have heard whispers of them - the Oracles. Mysterious and unknown entities of an abstract nature, they serve as the heart of each faction’s cause - both as a means to an end and a very real stepping stone in achieving their objectives. To claim an Oracle means growing ever closer to victory: to see your homes restored as they were, or to herald in a new one of your making.

So you go.

A Cornerstone has been set up for each faction; one for the Zenith and one for the Meridian in Yima’s manor and Heliopolis, respectively. They warn you that upon transportation, your safety cannot be guaranteed and there is no telling what waits for you beyond - to be prepared. To make sure you have whatever you deem necessary with you before you go, as there is no telling when - or how - you will be coming back. CONTINUED HERE...

NOTES

Upon your arrival, you woke up with an HOURGLASS NECKLACE. Please refer to the Time Mechanics on the OOC Summary and bottom of this post for details on its usage.

The COURTYARD is frozen in time. Player Characters and the Great Tree are the only signs of moving, free life in the courtyard. During the intro, time magic does not work.

Characters are free to investigate but cannot move beyond the courtyard if you choose a prompt during the intro. You may mingle among your fellow Bearers or speak with [MR. TIBBS] if you so choose. (Also? LOOK AT HIM HELP)

Iconoclasts and Stargazers will notice Aspect benefits/detriments now.

All characters will be weak for the 24 hours - think like mild flu - and unable to leave until Mr. Tibbs has dispersed them. This is the time in which any threads with the NPC will be carried out.

The INTRO concludes with said dispersal of PC’s once interactions concluded. They will be sent to a location around the castle of your choosing; they are free to move about freely from here. Your prompts can start with you waking alone or in the presence of others - whatever you’d like!

Your character will innately understand how to use time magic from this point forward. It will come naturally to them, like a skill they were born with.

CASTLE: OVERVIEW (p a s t)

The Scorching Isles is home to the Atirat, a people of sea-dwellers who have the ability to walk on land. (Think mermaids with the ability to shift back and forth between human and mermaid forms.) As such, much of the Scorching Isles is covered in large bodies of blue water and glistening pieces of ice to accommodate their lifestyle.

THE CASTLE, however, is what dominates the landscape and it's where the Shard-Bearers will be spending their time. The white castle with colorful glass windows is obscured by a thick layer of clouds and fog. Nearly every location on the island has a thin layer of fog that rolls through it, which gives the entire Island an inescapable chill. The castle has artfully built rooms with a CAVALCADE OF DECORATIVE ICE, lavish mirrors, and white plants accented with blue decorations. Several portions of the castle are submerged due to the aquatic nature of the native residents.

And everywhere you go, you find them - STATUESQUE BODIES FROZEN mid-movement. They are haunting reminders of the power in your Hourglass - the very real power to decide their fates.

The castle has many winding paths to explore, as castles often do. There are sleeping quarters, HALLWAYS, a wine cellar, and a few large rooms presumably for diplomatic affairs. Players can use these rooms at their own leisure for whatever purposes they see fit. (Exploration, combat, or supply gathering.)

However, many of these rooms will require some strategy to access their full potential! Atirat were much more comfortable being underwater than many Kenosians may be. Therefore, rooms of higher importance may be COMPLETELY SUBMERGED or require swimming through an underwater pathway to reach them. Very minimal supplies will be kept out in the open for all to reach. More desirable supplies - such as warm clothing, small weapons, treasure, and the like - will be located past or within one of these flooded areas.

Players may gather supplies within and preserve their Sand or use their Sand to make other rooms accessible and gather whatever lies within! The larger the asset you attempt to unfreeze, the more Sand it costs - and the more drained/vulnerable you will be as a consequence, so choose your path ahead wisely.

Currently, a pervasive fog is preventing you from wandering beyond the Castle's limits. Should you try to venture past it, your Sand will rapidly be stolen and you will find yourself suffering the same fate as the islanders if you don't move back to safety quickly... However, if you ask Mr. Tibbs what lays beyond the mist - he will tell you about the thriving farmland, the once-bustling village surrounding the castle, and the beautiful coral reefs beneath it. Sadly, they're beyond your reach - but maybe if the Bearers decide to unfreeze them when the week is up...

LIBRARY (s a f e z o n e)

The ROYAL LIBRARY - A treasure trove of knowledge, history, and glimpses of a fractured past scattered throughout. The lower floor of the Library is void of much reading material and contains several intricate-looking art pieces on decorative pedestals.

A spiral staircase dominates the center of the room, with its once delicate structure overtaken by sheets of formidable ice; it leads you toward the upper levels where a sea of books awaits. There are isles and isles of books, most perched on intricately carved shelves. Many books lay in piles or are discarded onto the floor, and scattered papers are common throughout.

Curious Kenosians may pick out books from the shelves and read on various topics, but players may also pass through this room on their way elsewhere. This area will function as a safe haven where violence and the taking of others' Sand is not allowed; do not disturb the books or Mr. Tibbs won’t be happy!

NOTES

Characters who wish to receive a book with lore specific to the island may comment [HERE]. You will be RNGed a book from a pre-written list of topics. The books may give you a deeper look into the island, its inhabitants, and its history! (Only 1 book per player! Please assume all other books they read are about commonly-available topics.)

THE EATING PARLOR (p a s t)

There are no basic amenities on the island. No hot water, no warm beds, and no salacious magazines (that you know of. heh heh). That would make the Eating Parlour a wise stop for anyone. After all, this could be the perfect chance to procure some provisions!

The EATING PARLOUR has all the equipment one would need for meal preparation. Dried plants hang from the ceiling, and the walls are lined with mason jars filled with every strange manner of presumably edible thing (Is that a head over there? Hmm… maybe you should check).

The parlour also comes with a garden under a massive windowed dome so that the inhabitants could have fresh produce at hand. Many plants have withered, but there are some salvageable plants if you know how to look for them. But beware… Some of the plants have a strange blue glow. These plants can spell potential disaster.

If someone should make contact with these glowing plants, they will crumble into glass shards - glass that will quickly burrow its way under the skin and curse that person with Blight. Blight will make all resources within that person's vicinity slowly age and eventually crumble to dust. (Which I relate to on a personal level tbh.) Iconoclasts will be immune to its effects.

NOTES

Please see the "Blight" section below for more information on its effects.

TREASURE ROOM (f u t u r e)

Faint singing can be heard coming from this room. Once you hear the song, it dulls your senses and leaves you in a haze. There is no stopping your feet from guiding you to it through the doors and into the Treasure room. The door slams shut at your back, sealed with a wall of ice and magic.

Players will find themselves lured to an icy chamber bordered by a ring of cold blue fire. There is a deep pond that surrounds the platform you’ve found yourself standing on. Beyond its glassy surface and crystal clear water, one can glimpse all manner of treasures - from crowns, jewels, ornate statues in various statues of repair, scepters, spears, and books that seem impervious to the water's cold chill.

As you come to your senses, you will find yourself frozen in place and at the mercy of a large statuesque being before you. This beautiful and horrifying figure in a perpetual song is the SIREN, the only Atirat you’ve seen in person. She measures nearly 20 feet (6 meters) from her head to the tip of her long-finned tail. She cradles an icy shard in her arms, singing to it as if it were a child.

She sits serenely in front of a large hourglass filled with white sand, which is bordered by a spear and a lance. Emblazoned in faint text at the base of where she sits reads: “The future lies in our hands.”

NOTES

Welcome to the Siren’s Chamber! Players must use their wit, charisma, or some good ol' fashioned elbow grease to escape the room or break the Siren’s magic. The Shard that the Siren holds contains dormant time magic that players may activate by using the Sand within their necklace. Players can access the future in 5-second intervals and use whatever they find in that time period to escape their predicament.

For example, if they activate the shard by using their time magic, that shard will begin to glow blue. The room around them will shift, and it could change to a point in the future where there is a sword nearby. If you can grab it, now you have a weapon! When the 5 seconds are up and time returns to the present, you will still have that weapon on your person. You may also try verbal communication if you’d like. If your character is someone who would try and talk their way out of a situation diplomatically, they may give it a try!

It is up to player discretion/creativity to think of a scenario you’d like. Each “future" does not have to be the same across player encounters! What one group experiences may be tailored to the player wants (because branching timelines exist). Let your imagination run free!

HALL OF MIRRORS (p r e s e n t)

Should you reach the rightmost wing of the massive castle Library, you will find a door hidden in the very back of one aisle against a wall; it looks as though the door used to be concealed by magicks that have since dissolved.

The stairwell leads down and into darkness. Once you reach the bottom, shimmering light cast from an unknown source beneath sheets of glistening ice will illuminate your new surroundings; you are in a maze of mirror-like ice. This labyrinth is silent save for the quiet creaking of shifting ice that may disquiet you and leave you uneasy regarding the stability of this area… but it holds beneath your feet.

Mr. Tibbs had told you that the “Kaleidoscope” - where your Sand is counted - rests through here, so eventually, you must brave the journey. Is it a trick of the light? Maybe the product of an especially active imagination…?

Did you just see one of your reflections move without you?

NOTES

Please refer to the OOC Summary for details on the Hall of Mirrors!

THE BLIGHT and TIME MECHANICS

BLIGHT

Blight is an infliction that will age supplies and infect people with a creeping disease that steals their Sand. For objects, this includes weapons, food, and items like cloth. It will take a few days to deteriorate things beyond use - so watching your supplies and acting accordingly is in your best interest. Generally, it will make it more difficult for PC's to get by given that their already scarce resources will dwindle and deteriorate - especially since it's 'contagious' through touch.

The Blight will not act quickly enough to severely hamper infected persons, but repeated exposure will cause effects to a person's body - notedly protruding VEINS in the face and extremities, a lower body temperature, and increased agitation. These effects start out mild and grow more severe with each 'dose.'

Characters must touch an object/person that is Blighted to become inflicted with Blight themselves. When that happens, it will become easily identifiable as Blighted from the faint blue, shimmering outline around the infected subject, as well as the WITHERED, FROSTBITTEN or ashy appearance it takes as it progresses.

However, there is one single perk with Blight. (Or is it a perk?) Players will feel reduced impact by the cold surroundings, making the climate around them somewhat more hospitable. Beware of falling victim to a chill you can't feel...

TIME

To use your Sand, each character is granted access to and innate knowledge of a spell they channel from their Shard that automatically manipulates their Hourglass. This allows the remote control of Sand (aka gathering and dispersing), as well as the ability to pull Fragments of time from Shards.

Fragments are literal pieces of you taken from your Shard. They manifest as memories or images displayed on little shards of broken glass (think of the memory being played out in real-time on the mirror's surface), and can be crushed to convert into Sand automatically, either voluntarily or by force. The only stipulation is that the parties must be close to one another, and the Fragment must be exchanged while both Bearers are still. This means someone has to give it to you, or you need to immobilize them before you take it - one way or another.

Once the Fragment is crushed, the memory and associated time of that person's life is lost and your character will suffer amnesia until the Oracle is claimed. How deep this goes is up to you; they could lose a large chunk of time - even all their memories surrounding a person or place for a big payload of Sand, or they could lose very little for a meager net gain.

Sand is automatically gathered or distributed by your Hourglass and added/subtracted to your running total. No need to micromanage. Convenient!

Please note that using Sand to unfreeze anything (resources, a door which can be then opened, etc) is an unpleasant experience. Each time you use Sand in this way, your character will be left feeling weakened and flu-like for an hour or two, which will leave them vulnerable. This effect stacks and scales up to outright KO-ing them for a few hours if they go crazy, so unfreezing too large of an area is off the table!

NOTES

• An OOC POST will be coming shortly explaining how Sand is going to be tallied and the Oracle claimed.
• Should your character attempt to unfreeze any NPC's, please respond [HERE]. NOTE: unfreezing NPC's may result in physical violence with CW's for severe mental instability/illness and a potential reference to self-harm.
• HAVE FUN!!!

CODING

Comments

04-ish (cw: violence)

[sterngaze]

[When Liem enters the hall of mirrors, it is with the intention of familiarizing himself with it now, early in the week. It seems a likely place for ambushes when shard-bearers begin to traverse it to deposit their own supplies of sand, so he intends to get the lay of the place now, while the others are occupied with their explorations of the castle.

Whether he intends to use that familiarity just to navigate it safely or to launch ambushes of his own remains to be seen.

Wandering the maze makes Liem feel uneasy. He is constantly catching motion out of the corner of his eye, as the countless mirrors around reflect his own image back at him. Reflections startling him are the least of what he has to contend with; all too often he spies images from his past instead, always staring directly at him as though confronting him with his own actions.

He sees himself in an alley, wearing travelling clothes and long hair pinned back in a tail. There is a woman with her skirts hiked up around her waist, struggling frantically against a man with his fingers around her neck. Liem's eyes stare unflinching from the depths of the mirror as he wraps an arm around the man's throat and sheathes his dagger between his ribs. In the periphery, the woman stumbles and flees to rally the townsfolk against a monster.

He sees himself as a young man, slim and awkward with the clinging reminders of boyhood, pale and waxen in a training yard in full view of the sun. When he finishes shooting a round of arrows into a hay target, an older man stops him from retreating to where others rest with water at the yard's shaded edge, instead pointing at the arrow-riddled target. The other youths in the yard pause at an unheard command, and Liem watches himself bite out an objection under the man's regard. Whatever is said in reply makes his tired eyes burn with fury — but rather than at his instructor, they are aimed straight out of the mirror, back at himself.

He wanders further, and sees himself in a wide, open room of pale stone, surrounded by boys who look years older than him. They are leaning on brooms and on each other, watching him slowly scrub the floor by himself. When one of them kicks over the bucket at his side, Liem scrambles up from the tide of soapy water, then launches himself on the boy in a hail of flailing limbs. He sinks his teeth into one boy and yanks out a tuft of hair from another before the knot of fighting youths drags him to the floor, but even when one of them blackens his eye, his gaze doesn't waver from Liem.

And Liem's gaze remains on the mirror, even as the echoing sound of familiar hoofbeats approaches from behind. He turns from it only when the view fades back into his reflection, looking back at Hayame with an unreadable expression.

But he does not look the right way to see the pale man slide around a corner on silent feet and fit an arrow to his bow, aiming it just below Liem's ribs.]

[warmare]

[Hayame does not realize that someone has entered the Hall of Mirrors before her. Not at first.

She had been prepared for the idea that she might find someone down there. Supposedly it was the place they must all pass through, and so, unwittingly sharing the same opinion as a certain fellow, of course she assumes that it may be somewhere people set up ambushes or traps. If they are of Zenith... she can eliminate them right now, and take their [TIME], even if she would rather just kill them the normal way instead of relying on some strange, otter-begotten magic. If there are traps, she will clear them-

Something. She simply needs to do something, her first attempts at usefulness stymied by the mystical inability to leave the castle grounds and the lack of any actual prey to hunt and secure supplies.

At first, she is alone, her bow at the ready and her senses on guard... but the sharp scent of the cold spoils her nose, the strange echoes confuse her ears, and the splintered reflections distract her eyes. It leaves her growing more paranoid and on edge by the minute, and as her longer equine stride begins to catch up with the one who has entered before... the mirrors gradually cease to reflect her. Instead, they are occupied with the remaining ripples of another past. Who is that, in the alleyway, turning to hear the sounds of villagers? Why does that young man look so familiar, the sight of chastising on the shooting range even more so? That child taking a beating, does she not know--

She does know who it is.

Suddenly she rounds a corner in the labyrinth and can see him, there in front a mirrorlike shard of glass, looking back at her as if just as confused as she is to see the other. The bow she had instinctively pulled up to bring to bear almost lowers, her mouth almost opens to ask what he is doing there... Until she sees behind him that someone else has notched an arrow, the glint of the metal arrowhead reflecting in ten different icy sheets around them. The six foot longbow is back up, the string is drawn back to her cheek, her dark eyes sight down the bamboo shaft as she shouts out the warning of-]

Liem- !

[But the second before her fingers release the arrow... she recognizes his attacker, too. Not one, but two Liem Talbotts stand before her, one in the glow of the ice and one in the shadow and suddenly... a debilitating surge of doubt forces her hand to hesitate. Which was the real one?

Except she'd already loosened her hold on the fletching. She jerks the bow downwards at the last minute to try and aim towards the legs instead of instinctively targeting the heart, but... she cannot stop her arrow from flying off the sharp snap of her bowstring.]

[sterngaze]

[The labyrinth of ice tosses echoes all around the hall, filling Liem’s ears with ghostly creaks and sharp, clattering hoofbeats before he catches sight of Hayame. He pulls his gaze from the sobering memory in the mirror and finds her approaching from the way he’d come — but his eyes do not spot the flicker of movement from another icy corridor, and his ears do not hear the soft whisper of arrow against bow amidst the murmurous cacophony filling the maze.

But he does heed the urgency in Hayame’s shout, and he lunges forward, away from the mirror at his back, at the sight of her swinging her longbow back up at — something.

The arrow smashes into the ice behind him, even as Hayame looses hers. He twists as he moves, turning to follow the arrow’s path, to find what rival shard-bearer sought his blood. His own hand reaches for his quiver so he can fit an arrow to the string, a motion that doesn’t even take the blink of an eye after so many years of practice.

But he halts it in confusion when he sees himself looking back at him: not a mirror’s reflection, harried and reaching for an arrow, but a double with a cruel grin on its face and a gaping hole in its leg from where Hayame’s arrow simply punched all the way through. He watches the man turn his head to look further into the maze — and then vanish as the air swallows him up completely, spiriting him away to an unseen destination.

It’s clear even before Liem hastens to the spot where he’d been standing that the doppelganger has vanished into the labyrinth. Its voice floats back from the maze depths, echoing off the icy walls in a perfect, pitiless copy of Liem’s accented tenor:

“It’s fortunate that Hayame was watching out for you, since you were too busy indulging your self-pity to do it yourself.”]

[warmare]

[Her arrow punches clean through a Liem's leg... and yet he does not stagger or even grit his teeth. Blood doesn't spray onto the icy floor following in the shaft's wake, her arrow quivering where it sticks in the ice behind him. The other Liem had successfully dodged, brought his own weapon to bear, but- If Hayame had doubts seconds ago about which was the real one, they dissolve when the icy copy does, disappearing and leaving only a faint mist behind much like what happened when warm breath hit cold air.

It is just gone, like it had never been... but its arrow had been far too real. The mirror it had hit shattered, and Hayame...

She gallops forward, heedless of the slick footing beneath her hooves and how she has to scramble not to just keep sliding down the ice past him. Already she has another arrow at the ready, on the lookout for any sign of movement or reconstruction of the threat but instead... they have only a voice that accuses and mocks.

Looking over (down) at the real one, the not-copy, Hayame checks quickly to make sure she'd been right in thinking he'd avoided injury, he didn't seem compromised, but-]

Liem, what the hell is this- ?

[As if he would know, when she did not.]

[sterngaze]

[Liem is still staring around the labyrinth, brows crumpled into a deep furrow, when Hayame looks over at him. His pulse is hammering in the wake of the sudden attack, but although he was able to avoid outright injury, he feels far more on-edge about being here than he did a few moments ago. He glances back at the mirror where the duplicate's arrow still juts from the ice, and after a moment moves over to it. Its shaft glistens, slippery and cold to the touch.]

I don't know.

[He doesn't know what magic or trickery could produce a duplicate so perfect it even has its own icy arrows and its own means of teleportation. Even a doppelganger could not copy his magic and gear.

"Perhaps it's a test," suggests the echoing voice from within the maze. "One meant to weed you out. Though you are an especially determined weed."

His expression remains still.]

Perhaps our gracious host [lol] could explain more about the hall's particulars. I only know that we must traverse it to reach the other side.

[That prospect is suddenly looking considerably more difficult than he'd initially supposed.]

[warmare]

[For the thousandth, no two-thousandth time since the eye had been ripped from her skull, Hayame curses herself and the one who took it. Herself, for being bested, and the one who took it for being a demon, a being so much supernaturally stronger than her that it had been laughable to think she could best him. Though she had trained and trained and trained since it's loss to try and regain her abilities, to reclaim her depth perception and her ability to aim and fire, she cannot trust in the single eye that now darts across their icy battleground.

Is that the ice-borne doppelganger there, that shadow darting across the mirrors? Is that it, the hint of a crunch and crackle in the frozen floor behind them? Her hooves seek to dig in for purchase but find no proper footing, slipping slightly, the next arrow now notched and ready on her string and the arrowhead wavering for want of target.

A test?]

Or our host might shed his cowardice and come out and face us like a man!

[Her own call is far less polite, more a snarl than an invitation, her breath misting in the air.]

And put down the face that does not belong to him, while he is at it! Show yourself!