⏳ 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

[sanguinary]

[THERE HE GOES, tossed off and probably tumbling into another mirror...

His armor and gloves will serve him well, at least, since Matsui's doppelganger apparently doesn't care if the target is himself or Dimitri and goes after him with all the tactical prowess of a blade. Fortunately, again, he's just armed with a glass shard... Which means someone's getting cut after all, considering he's just grabbing it with his hand?! But at least that's just the doppelganger.

...Except here comes the first Matsui, now also grasping a shard in his bleeding hands.]

Leave this to me. It's my sin to erase.

[They're really about to knife fight it out...]

[hauntedking]

[ He can feel the bite of glass as it finds gaps. The trouble with not fighting to kill is that he's much more limited how he can respond. His anger spikes, but he holds himself in check, letting out a little hiss of pain as he feels blood start to seep against the cloth of his shirt.

He tries to grab a wrist and then to pin the doppelganger back against one of the mirrors. ]

Stop-

[ And then Matsui comes charging in. ]

Matsui-! No!

[sanguinary]

[Ah, more blood. That's always the way it goes in the end, isn't it? Always more blood, no matter what he path of action he chooses.

It's too late to keep Dimitri's from spilling entirely, but he has a clear thought as he darts forward regardless of the words hurled his way.]

If it's just the blood of my enemy and myself—

[Then that's more than enough, right?

Between Dimitri attempting to pin his doppelganger down and said doppelganger attempting to both free himself and get another strike in, Matsui can slide into the gap space there, driving the piece of mirror into his double's torso. WELL... That's one way to do things.

Of course it's not going to work considering they have to destroy the mirror, but it's the thought that counts!]

[hauntedking]

[ There's so much blood now. It reminds him of the battlefields he's strode across before. But this time there's only three of them. He keeps trying to hold the doppelganger down, glancing between the two with a twisted expression. ]

Matsui, what's going on?

[sanguinary]

[There's a moment's reprieve here, where the doppelganger is too busy trying to get himself unpinned to pay as much mind and Matsui can answer. Not that he has an actual answer.]

I don't know. I set out to explore these halls, and soon enough, my reflection was moving without me...

[Rather than turning to face Dimitri as he speaks, he looks over his pinned reflection's shoulder and up to the reflection of Dimitri himself, a furrow at his brow.]

[hauntedking]

Your reflection-?

[ He glances sidelong at his own as he struggles to hold the doppelganger in place. Fortunately, his own seems to be just that... a mere reflection. He frowns. ]

Well, he - it - certainly doesn't want to talk! How do we get rid of it?

[sanguinary]

I've never had to fight anything like this before—

[And his doppelganger is HELLBENT on making things as hard as possible, apparently, considering it's fastly recovering and aiming to grapple the mirror shard from Matsui's hand. The mirror that he's pinned to cracks, just slightly.]

[hauntedking]

A double of yourself? Yes, that's certainly different-!

[ He grunts as the double tries to get the shard back. He's not going to let that happen! He puts his weight and strength into the doppelganger and shoves him hard back into the mirror. There's another crack. Another splinter. ]

He won't listen - or give in!

[sanguinary]

[There's a light little huff of a laugh.]

There are stranger things in this world, I suppose...

[This world especially, damn. In any case, between the two of them and a third person's weight, the glass behind his doppelganger eventually shatters. Matsui doesn't seem to mind the possibility of falling into glass shards, fully intending on using the moments that his doppelganger is off-balance to try pinning him again.]

--You know, I have heard of a youkai like this before. In order to properly defeat it, the warrior fighting it had to find the mirror that the youkai resided in.

[hauntedking]

...I see.

[ Dimitri grunts - the reflection headbutts him hard in the face and he has to jerk himself back to avoid serious injury. With a grunt and almost a roar he leans back into it, pinning the doppelganger. ]

Where did you first find this... double of yours?

[sanguinary]

Further back, toward the left.

[A nod in that direction. He'll apologize to Dimitri later for all of the hassle his dingdang doppelganger is causing, but for the time being, he's just glad that he doesn't have to worry about trying to wrangle it on his own anymore.]

If you consider it amenable, I would rather stay here and keep this from causing more damage...

[A gentle request for Dimitri to go Find That Mirror, though he's amenable enough to take either task.]

[hauntedking]

I-

[ Dimitri frowns. ]

...will you be alright by yourself?

[ He's reluctant to just leave him. ]

[sanguinary]

[Perhaps reflecting his emotions, perhaps not, the mirrored version of himself laughs high and bright, showing his sharp cuspids.

Matsui, meanwhile, offers little more than a pale, sharp smile.]

Something like this will not be what ends this life.

[Surely a reassurance!]

[hauntedking]

See to it it doesn't-

[ And he releases the doppelganger so he can dart back into the hallways of mirrors. He's looking for one that's missing its reflection. Simple, isn't it? He just needs to find it in time. ]

[sanguinary]

[Matsui's probably going to be fine! As Dimitri runs off, there's just a rudeass back-and-forward banter between the two Matsuis who now have nothing to distract them, even as the doppelganger briefly attempts to follow. Lots of accusations of guilt, a let's see how much blood you have left to give! from one of them for good measure. You know, just a day in the life.

The sounds of fighting and the occasional crackle of glass from said fighting will fade behind him soon enough, and as he's weaving his way through the maze, he'll find a trail of broken glass. They've caused quite a bit of destruction along the way, spattering blood on mirrors, leaving cracks, just wholeass breaking a few. It's not too hard to follow the trail that Matsui(s) took to get to where he found them...]

[hauntedking]

[ Dimitri hears the noise fade behind him - but he still worries. And why shouldn't he? But his focus is ahead, on the trail of blood and glass and destruction that the pair have left. He continues, footsteps echoing as he tries to find his way through the shattered maze, acutely aware that he likely only has so much time. He can't afford to be turned around. He has to keep going.

Another corner. He has to be getting close now, surely. ]

[sanguinary]

[Soon enough, there it is - a mirror without a reflection as Dimitri passes it by. It, unlike others, is still in pristine condition, reflecting nothing but the empty floors and walls of the ice maze itself.

That said, after a few seconds, he might pick up on the faint sound of someone running? Hm. That's probably fine!]

[hauntedking]

[ Ha. Well. There it is. He hears the footsteps and he cocks his head, listening for a moment. Then he draws his lance back, preparing to shatter the mirror once and for all... ]

[sanguinary]

[I LOST THIS NOTIF HELP

Anyway, the sound of running seems to be coming in two different directions? Hm. Well - the source is clear soon enough, at least, as one Matsui tears around the corner, looking a little bloodier than before.]

Step away from that—!

[Why?? Because Matsui Two wholeass hurdle jumps over the mirror set a second later, murderous intent clear. Hopefully Dimitri's lance is faster than this doppelganger.]

[hauntedking]

[ Dimitri strikes quick and hard. Even as Matsui comes hurtling at him, his lance hits the mirror and it cracks - and shatters. ]

[sanguinary]

[And right along with it, the doppelganger's face - Matsui's, really - splits and shatters all the same.

The Matsui left standing comes to a stop nearby, paying it little attention, tuning out any half-garbled final words it might have and focusing on Dimitri instead.]

Are you unharmed?

[hauntedking]

I - yes. A little winded, but none the worse for wear. Are you...?

[ He examines Matsui with a worried expression. ]

[sanguinary]

[WELL. He looks worse for wear, but not like he's dying, at least.]

I am, yes... I - apologize. I didn't realize that this would happen.

[As if any normal person would have been able to predict an ice mirror hall full of evil reflections...]

[hauntedking]

No, no... it's - well. Unlike anything I've seen.

[ He manages a smile. ]

...you're alive. That's the important part.

[sanguinary]

[It's just a fleeting, barely-there thing, but he manages a smile in return.]

...Perhaps we should find some way of warning anyone else who may try to enter this room. There's no telling if it was a one-time occurrence or not...