⏳ 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

[baltimores]

[ He lifts his head again, turns to look back up at her. Meet her eye. ]

All we got is to keep moving forward. So we do that.

[ Drop it, but also, real words of advice. For him. For her. She gets him on a level more than most probably will here, so that's his parting gift for her now, because if anyone's going to understand him, it'll probably be her. ]

cw: more child sa stuff

[warmare]

[Time passes, and Hayame makes no motion and gives no word to hurry it along. She won't, or can't. There is something lodged deep in her throat that is heavy and unpleasant. Something that she shamefully knew had never been enough in her world to make her act against the very same treatment he had suffered. And even if she had mercy enough to acknowledge that she had been but a child struggling to avoid that very same fate, the threat of life as an armless broodmare, mount, or "companion" constantly held over her head to ward off failure or betrayal...

She can not say anything further until he speaks. His doppelgänger's blood is still smeared on her lips like a beast's attempt at a woman's beauty. And she hates it, hates that every time she feels that rare, strange desire to reach out, to- to connect, or... comfort...

She fails. She fears she sees in his face and eyes that she has done more harm than good. Perhaps she should just have kept her mouth shut, let him believe that she believed what he'd told her that day at the restaurant, that he'd only been used for thug shit. From her own experiences... She was supposed to know better. She was supposed to have been taught better. Like how when the stable master had flensed Toshifuji's arms from her shoulders. Like when she'd seen what happened to Kohibari every time the lord waiting to buy him visited, little tricks and tastes to keep the man interested long enough to raise the boy to his sale date.

It happened. It's over with. Can't do anything about it now.]

I know.

[She knows. She just- She simply wanted him to know something, and yet the words don't come out the way she wanted them to. Her lips twist with frustration, her fingers curl into impotent fists, forcing a hiss of pain as the broken digit moves with it, but she has to finish it despite.]

I simply meant that-

[What? (What did "friends" do? If she were even going to half believe that-)]

... That is all I will say. I fought my own clone from the ice. It is the only thing that happened.

[She repeats it, but in a far different tone, with far different meaning. ... No one else needed to know what she had seen. Let alone someone who wouldn't understand.]

[baltimores]

[ All he sees is his equal.

He comes from a different time, a different world. The engineer he had once followed, protected, tried to emulate had been a Belter, considered low class, expendable, nothing by higher powers; a woman, and that had never been held against her by any society he was aware of. She was highly competent, fiercely intelligent, and only ever wanted to do what was right, and so Amos had followed her without question.

Hayame is not Naomi. Naomi would not kill; Naomi wasn't physically capable of fighting like that, anyway. She didn't like blood. She didn't like violence. She did what she could to avoid it, and so Amos would take up that mantle for her.

Hayame is his equal. It's why he can look at her so evenly now, speak to her so frankly. Everything else gets stuffed back in its box, buried back underneath his consciousness but for the little part of him that will always be aware, and brush the rest of it off.

And he thinks she gets that, because she doesn't fight it. She simply accepts it, because there's nothing else she can do when it comes to this. They're walking an awkward truce here, something deeper than the fight that surrounds this world, and he doesn't want to have to think about it any more than he already is. ]

Alright.

[ That's it. The emotion is gone from his voice, from his face, from his everything. I accept your offer. And then they're good.

... Except. A little spark of something showing through, a brief opening where he can pay attention to something else. The light catches his eyes; he tilts his head just barely in question. ]

You okay?

[ With a nod towards her hand, because that hiss of pain wasn't lost on him. There's being sore all over, battered and bruised and breathing might hurt for a little bit there, and then there's the minor discomfort of an injured digit which you use without even thinking about it, and it's easier to focus on the physical over literally anything else that could come up here, so he will. ]

[warmare]

[Hayame has fought all her life. But there are thing that cannot be fought. You cannot fight things that have already happened, only carry chips on shoulders into the future. You cannot fight against an entire system stacked against you, only struggle to be sure that you succeeded as much as was possible within it. So even though it's not alright... What happened to him, what happened to her-

Neither of them can do anything about it now but swallow it down deep and lock it away.

She didn't expect him to do anything but accept her offer and go. But he asks about her finger. For a moment, she does not respond, just staring at him over the soft glow of the ice... before she reaches up to use the back of that hand to wipe at the blood on her lips, careful not to move the broken digit this time.]

- It's not my draw hand. I'll make do.

[She could still hold her bow with four fingers if need be. And if it wouldn't mend properly... There were healers she could go to, if she just stomached her distaste for feeling other people's magic and energy flowing into her body, forcing it to move to their whims. ... She's sure Zenith has them, too, those sorts of people. Even so...]

... And you?

[baltimores]

I'm fine.

[ He can reciprocate tone, sentiment. He doesn't know if he'd call himself okay, but that's hardly what matters here. He just is. And he can walk, and he can still throw a punch, and he's still alive, so he can make do, same as her.

It's not like there's anything they can really do for each other anyway.

Amos hesitates a moment longer before tilting his head over his shoulder, indicating behind him. ]

I'm gonna head back out there. [ He'd been scouting, is all — but he also feels a little fractured now. A little too exposed to be making any big life decisions, which is what will be waiting for him at the end of the hall. ] If that works for you.

[ If their business here is settled.

... And fuck, he hopes it is. ]

[warmare]

[She isn’t foolish enough to take him at his word. He is fine, surely, in the way that she is fine. In the way that warriors who do not wish to reveal their actual injuries are fine. They can still fight, kick, and struggle, and so…

They are fine. Neither of them are healers anyway. … It wouldn’t matter anyway if they weren’t.

But the moment is there… and then it passes. He says he is going… and she nods, understanding.]

Very well.

[It worked for her. As long as he served that woman Yima, she could not wish him good luck, or even particularly well, but. She’d still done what she had. Saved him. Because… of things and similarities not worth dwelling on. So now… she will wait for him to leave, collect herself… and then continue onwards.

There is one last,]

Goodbye, Amos.

[But their business is settled.]

wraps this up...!

[baltimores]

[ It might be gratitude. For her help, for her... understanding. Maybe. If that's what it's called. She knows enough to drop things, to let things be, to let him go after this. No shock or apologies or demands for him to stay or any of that bullshit. She just lets him go.

So he nods in thanks. They're all good here, in a way he wouldn't have expected. Squared with one another. Even. Accepting of it.

It's the best possible outcome he could have hoped for.

Something on his skin still crawls at the thought of it, and he does his best to tamp that feeling down. Does enough to look her in the eye, at least, knowing meeting knowing. ]

I'll see you around.

[ And he trusts her enough to turn his back to her as he takes his leave. ]