⏳ 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

[halsband]

I'm doing jack shit with it.

[He says that like it should be obvious.]

If you're here to convince me to help with something, you can fuck off.

[baltimores]

[ For what it's worth, Amos isn't phased by the reaction he's getting. He just leans further back in his seat, makes himself comfortable. He's resting, he's just making conversation while he does it. ]

Not planning on it. [ Convincing him. Or fucking off. ] You're not even planning on using any of it on yourself? Just gonna let it all go to waste?

[halsband]

[It looks like he's not getting his preferred wide net of personal space back any time soon, but Heine makes sure to look like he's very annoyed, despite Amos really being a minor inconvenience at present.]

It's part of our souls or whatever, right? It's not going to waste if you keep it. I'll use it only if I have to.

[baltimores]

[ He glances over, a casual loll of his head in the movement, half a shrug with one shoulder lazily moving up, then down at his answer. He knows Heine is annoyed; he just doesn't care. ]

Sure. I hear ya. It makes sense. [ He can't argue with that course of action. It's not too far off from what he's doing right now; the difference will be when this is over — but that's because Amos has a purpose here, in this world, where it seems like Heine doesn't. ] What about after? I don't mean with the sand. What's the plan when we're all out of here?

[halsband]

[It's a question that irritates him, because Heine always did have a purpose, a reason to keep going, even if he'd been nearly as apathetic then too. He had something driving him, as single-mindedly focused on it as he was. Only now, it's been achieved, even if he hadn't done it himself. This place, there's very little that holds his interest and what does has been coloured by his attachment to the familiarity of it.]

Got shit I'm gonna look into in the Below.

[It comes with a shrug, as it's not likely the kind of 'plan' Amos might have been referring to.]

[baltimores]

[ He perks up at that answer.

Amos sits up that much straighter, much more interested now that he's gotten some kind of direction out of Heine— no, not just that, a direction he might actually be able to do something with. His eyes are that much sharper, brighter — intrigued. ]

Anything in particular? I've been down there a fair bit. Might be able to help.

[halsband]

[Amos's interest is clear, and Heine's a little less annoyed at the intrusion now, simply because he might get more information or a different perspective then the people he'd been talking to about it.]

The experiments, enhancements. What they're doing to people... and why.

[Some of them are volunteers, he knows, but sometimes that just means they were offered something they couldn't say no to.]

I want to check out some places, like Draumahol.

[And the Church of Helios, but he's not yet ready to break Kaeya's confidence and talk about that part and how it might tie into what's going on in the Below.]

You got anything on a woman named Birdie?

[baltimores]

[ There's a flash of something in Amos' eyes at the talk of experiments, but he keeps his mouth shut there. He was asked to find volunteers for a medical trial to help pay for a gun he's been looking for; he's already done that. The less actually said about it, the better, even if he couldn't exactly maintain a poker face there.

(He also doesn't care that much about the why. Not when it can get him something, at least.)

But he settles back in afterwards, relaxed and at ease, like absolutely nothing's the matter. All they're doing now is talking shop, right? Right. ]

Nothing that isn't already common knowledge; drugs ain't exactly my scene, so I haven't really had any reason to run into her. Think that's more up the alley of a guy named Silco. [ Amos glances over his shoulder, around the library; nope, nothing, so he looks back at Heine. ] He's probably around here somewhere.

[ Said without any concern whatsoever; he is, but it doesn't really matter. Guy's been a bit on edge lately, so Amos can only wonder what he's been getting up to in his time here. In the meantime takes a moment to spread out, really fill the chair he's occupying. Get perfectly comfortable in it. ]

Tech's more my speed; there're some things down there it doesn't seem like the wider world above is ready for just yet. Dunno how useful that is to you, but hey, if it ever comes up, feel free to hit me up. Otherwise, shit, I dunno, I'm not a bad pair of extra eyes to have about if you want to go in a place like Draumahol.

[ Probably for a price, if Heine isn't Zenith — but that's neither here nor now. Hopefully won't be an issue at all later, ideally, but one step at a time. ]

[halsband]

Yeah, heard it from him...

[Silco's how he first learned about it all, vaguely, but he doesn't go into details there.]

I didn't get around to looking into Birdie's place yet... As for tech? I was looking for guns down there, something decent.

[That he can't afford at present.]

Silco told me to find a guy named Amos for that.

[There's a pointed look, because after that comment on technology that people above aren't ready for, he's 75% percent sure this guy is Amos.]

[baltimores]

[ Amos raises his eyebrows at the sound of his name, inclines his chin slightly at that look. ]

That'd be me.

[ Is he that obvious now, huh? Developing a reputation already? ]

Guns're a bit of a tough sell. There are some around Highstorm and Springstar, but they ain't decent, if your standards are anything like mine. Might be able to help you out one day, though.

[ A prolonged beat, as if for emphasis, while Amos looks Heine up and down. ]

Might have to do something for me first, but I'm reasonable.

[ This is good — he's already able to circle back around to what he was hoping to do. ]

[halsband]

[After confirmation that this is the guy, Heine studies him a bit more closely again.]

As long as you got something semi-automatic or better, it'll do.

[His standards are probably pretty low at present, until he actually sees something futuristic or impressive in person.]

What do you want?

[baltimores]

[ He almost smiles, sharp and attentive and borderline happy. They're speaking the same language. Not a lot of people here do; there's a certain camaraderie that comes with that that's particularly easy to talk to. ]

Semi-auto should be doable one way or another. Even if they ain't in Kowloon, I've been poking around on building my own. It's slow going though, but hey, should happen one day.

[ Which is hardly a source of comfort, but after all the bullshit he's been through it's been coming up on a year now since he's actually held a gun in his hands. As soon as they get back...

His expression softens to address the actual question. ]

You're not with anybody right now, right? Unharmonized? [ Otherwise he'd be doing something with his sand. Have some kind of plan for after. ] Think about helping Zenith out here. Or if not here, then when we get back. I know what it is to not give a fuck about things that don't involve you, but this is probably gonna end up involving you one way or another, and Zenites, I look out for. You're with my people, and I'm that much more inclined to help you out. You're not, and I'm not.

[ He sticks a hand out; shake on it? ]

That seem fair to you?

[halsband]

[Heine has itchy trigger fingers too, and so much that even the vague timeline of 'one day' sounds good enough right now. Knives aren't as practical, or he's simply not as used to them. Amos's price, however, isn't something he's going to agree to so easily even though he'd already been considering Zenith. He makes no move to shake that hand, glancing at it dismissively.]

Sure as fuck doesn't. I would have joined one of the cults already if you could convince me that quickly.

[Done here, Heine starts flipping open the journal he'd been ready to read.]

I got shit to do, fuck off.