Event Log: May, An Inauspicious Arrival

[faileas]

Event Log: May, An Inauspicious Arrival

I. Boaltinn (1st - 3rd) Boaltinn comes around again. A handful of Mirrorbound will remember the holiday from last year, but for others, it will be brand new. In both Residential Districts, bonfires burn in central locations through the night, frequented by the residents celebrating another summer come to Aefenglom. Curiously, while last year the bonfires seemed quite segregated by human or Monster, this year, there is more of a noticeable mix at each, and Mirrorbound are invited to join the games and festivities quite happily. Characters are invited to try and jump through the bonfire's flames to burn away any poor relationship experiences, be it romantic or platonic, past or present; to aid them in this, those at the Eastern Bonfire will give those participating rune-etched accessories to protect them from the fire. The city has quite a bit to offer for this holiday: shared rose baths at public bathhouses and pleasure establishments that increase feelings of friendliness and talkativeness, poles draped in ribbons meant to be danced around, wrapping a ribbon around the pole to bring good luck for the summer, food stalls whose offerings are meant to be shared, and fortune-telling set up by Divination students of the Coven, who can tell your day is going to go. To see last year's Boaltinn prompts, you can take a glance right here! Much of it, including the bonfires, baths, and entertainments will be similar this year, so feel free to use those in your top levels.

II. An Unusual Arrival (3rd on) A full year from the arrival of the first group of Mirrorbound, the 1st passes quietly, with no one showing up in the mirror-lined halls of the Looking-Glass House. Dates and times are important in most kinds of magic, and this is strange enough that some Witches of the Coven get together on the night of the 3rd to try a probing ritual, attempting to gather some kind of clues that could be useful in prying out the cottage's secrets. Boaltinn is the best time for such things, when the boundaries are thinner, and magic is stronger. Those who are awake that night at 3 am might notice a pulse of harmless silvery light that spreads like ripples on water throughout the whole city, originating at the Looking-Glass House, but nothing further happens, and the Coven receives no answers. Well, nothing happens in the Looking-Glass House. Before long, the reports start coming in: people are emerging from mirrors, regular old mundane mirrors, all over the city. Anything with a particularly reflective surface could be an entry point for someone from another world! Inhabited homes, businesses closed and locked for the night, pools of still water in fountains or the river, these unorthodox Mirrorbound pop up anywhere and everywhere, causing chaos for the City Guard (folks aren't happy to find strangers in their bathrooms at 3 in the morning) and the Coven both. Out of nowhere, a glint of light catches your eye; your heart thunders in your ears as your body moves on its own, your mind consumed with inspecting the source. Your reflection stares back at you, just as curious from the surface - a mirror, a pool of water, your most trusted sword, something fleeting that your mind can barely remember - then ripples at your touch. If you are one of these unfortunate arrivals, it's likely a rude awakening for you, to find yourself somewhere inconvenient, somewhere other than where you've been. It only makes sense to be confused. Hopefully someone finds you and explains to you what's happened to you. Resident Mirrorbound will hear a message from Miss Nessie shortly after it begins, a call to arms: "Dears, I'm quite sorry to disturb you, but it seems your fellows are arriving elsewhere than the Looking-Glass House this month! We're trying to track them all down for the usual welcome, but we could use a hand or several! If you could just bring them by the Coven, the usual spot, that would be lovely." She'll give her usual orientation and pass out Watches, but no doubt the Mirrorbound will be more helpful in this regard, with so many arriving.

III. The Goblin Market (All Month) Life goes on in Aefenglom, despite the addition of so many new residents. With the City Guard decidedly busy dealing with the sudden flood of break-ins (or, more accurately, break-outs?), the vendors of the Goblin Market find opportunity to set up their stalls more openly than they have since the crack-downs some months ago. They pop up all over the city, but clustered more often in the Residential Districts and the Harbor District, where there are even fewer law enforcement agents out and about to run them off. These sellers, while not as devoid of morals as those major players of the Black Market, still have very few compunctions when it comes to lying, cheating, fencing stolen goods, and misrepresenting their wares to unsuspecting buyers. It's also the place to find those things that are- not quite legal, shall we say. They won't say a word if you don't. If confronted, they are quick to pack up their things and slip away, however; they know this city and its hiding places a lot better than you do. With a brand new batch of what the natives assume are Mirrorbound, many undergoing rapid transformations into their Monster forms, many of the wares on display are potions: supposed cure-alls for aches and itches, calming draughts for the full moon restlessness, some even claim their brews can halt changes entirely! Some concoctions are meant to increase a Witch's magical ability, or decrease it, or provide them a finer control. They offer potions that they say will eliminate the need for a Bond, or temporary Bonding potions of their own that they claim are more pure, stronger, than the ones offered by the Coven. Claims are only claims, though. A few remedies for the pain of changing or some regular temporary Bonding potions can be found here and there, but for every potion that works, there are twenty more that have less than pleasant side effects. A brew that will cause everything you touch to turn to solid gold for up to an hour; a potion that will invert your sense of direction - trying to turn right will make you turn left, trying to go forward will cause you to walk backward; a potion that will remove all traction from your feet, causing you to slide around as if cobblestone are the slickest ice. Worse, some shadier vendors sell things more sinister, including a potion that gives you the appearance of being moderately to heavily infected by the Cwyld. Even if you don't drink any, the vendors are not at all careful where they're sloshing those bottles around, trying to show them off, and they all activate on skin contact.

IV. A Wilde Hunt (7th - 22nd) All Mirrorbound, temporary or not, are likely to feel it. Monsters are always affected by the full moons, but this month, it is more. Stronger. Instincts rise to the surface as the Sisters emerge full and visible in the night sky, and for many Mirrorbound, they are undergoing rapid transformations into whatever type of Monster they are meant to be. Curiously, the natives get along like they usually do, noticing nothing out of the norm, other than the increased agitation and restlessness from Mirrorbound Monsters. Monsters' aggression fades when the Sisters start to wane, but as the new moons approach on the 22nd, Mirrorbound Witches will notice their magical reserves overfilling, and will find themselves stricken with the overwhelming urge to use it, until casting spells, pushing one's magical limits, is almost a compulsion. Those who are not in proper Witch-Monster Bonds will feel it even stronger, with no stabilizing magic to consume (for Monsters) or avenues to expend magic (for Witches) other than casting spells. (For those who are interested, the Coven does offer temporary Bonding potions which can be used to help alleviate the effects somewhat.) The Coven Witches notice the signs, and they take decisive action on the morning of the 6th, the day before the full moons. So many Mirrorbound, likely to be so heavily affected by the lunar cycle this month, many of them coming into new features and abilities at a breakneck pace, only spells danger for the city. They barricade off a massive chunk of Wilde outside Aefenglom, largely free of Cwyld and totally bereft of farms, homes, and Wilder outposts. They invite anyone who feels the effects of the moons too strongly to control to come out for a Hunt. The hunting grounds will be open nightly to anyone who needs to work off restless energy or overflowing magic; all participants will be warned that their safety cannot be guaranteed from others, but they won't be able to harm bystanders out here. The woods are thick, with the river cutting through them, and full of wildlife. There is room to run and chase prey, or room to play with your developing magic. Play cat and mouse with your friends or Bondmates, or stalk a stranger. If playing games isn't your thing, there is something else to hunt out here as well. With the deep Wilde entering into Winter, this patch of land so close to the city is much warmer, and fearsome Shades have emerged to search for prey. These were once living beings, Monsters, Witches, or animals, who have been overtaken by Cwyld infection long ago, leaving them dead but for the infection, white-eyed and seeking out sources of magic to consume and infect. Anything could become a Shade, but the most common out right now are the ferocious remains of bears, wolves, and nomadic Arachne and Turnskins. If not killed, these Shades threaten the people of the Outer City, when they inevitably escape the barricade. Careful to limit your contact, though; anyone infected upon their return to the gates will be escorted straight to the infirmary.

Welcome to May's Fourth Wall event, An Inauspicious Arrival! The comms are now open to comments from all registered users and will be until June 1st. Current players, if you don't want fourth wall characters tagging your posts, just say so in your text. Fourth wall characters can use this post for their own network top-levels, or this post for log top levels. This event is game canon; threads from this fourth wall can be used as application samples later and current players may use these threads for AC. As always, be courteous to each other! Let the mod team know if there are any problems and we will handle things.

As always, please direct your questions to this thread!

Comments

[supersoldier]

[And then she’s upon him, like a spring unloaded, fists at ready, all fury and fire. The heat of her emotion makes her quick, lines her spine with steeled courage, but Sephiroth has been on the receiving end of such charges before. Enemies have rushed at him with anger blinding their better reason more times than he can recall; in the end, all they did was make it easier for him to predict their intent.

Tifa is no different — her telegraphing is blatant, one fist pulled back to strike first, her footwork quick to betray her intended follow-up. Sephiroth steps back, then twists his torso to miss the first strike. From his new angle, he reaches out to intercept the second by making a grab for her wrist. If successful, his grip is like iron, and the momentum is helpful in trying to twist her arm back behind her.

His other hand grips Masamune, glinting in the light but out of the way — purposefully. There’s no need to rely on it.]

Calm down. [It’s as good as an order coldly given. Shinra, SOLDIER, all the hot blame upon them and him as a result. What had happened? Is that the reason for all the discontent he spies in the others, that which they never truly speak of?]

You won’t hurt anyone other than yourself.

[meteodrives]

[ He's so fast. It isn't that she's forgotten, really, so much as she realizes now how foolish she'd been to challenge him without any real plan, without materia, without any backup. And when he grabs her second fist and twists her arm behind her back, the pain shocks itself through her arm enough to wake her up to the reality of the situation, and to the cold glint of the Masamune in the darkness.

Tifa strikes out with her foot aimed for his knee, trying to get him to let her go. If he does, she'll be quick to spring just out of reach of him and the Masamune. Another attack doesn't come. Instead, she waits there for a strike that doesn't seem to come.

How is he so calm? ]

Why? Why are you here?

[ First Aerith, now him? Is this a piece of the Lifestream and they've all died? Or... ]

[supersoldier]

[Her kick knocks against his knee, but it might as well be the same as striking a heel against a brick wall. Even so, Sephiroth lets go, quick to watch if she’ll make another attempt at an attack, but none comes.

He straightens, eyes roving across her frame, once again noting how time has made her appear a little older, her face less rounded by youth. It threatens to stir frustration in him again — how often will this happen, this time discrepancy between himself and the rest? — but he tamps it down. Returns to a casual stance with his sword at his side, almost surreal in his stillness as he regards her.]

For the same reason as you. Taken from Gaia with no way to return, for reasons unclear.

[Sephiroth allows that to settle, the silence hanging heavy.]

...The last I saw you, we had our picture taken. Do you recall that?

[meteodrives]

That's not...

[ Not what she meant. It answers her question, at least, unless he's trying to put something over on her. The truth is that Tifa doesn't know Sephiroth. Removed, cold, competent, he'd been someone she had admired in the way that many admired him once upon a time. But for years now, it's only been the simmering hatred. She's never tried to know or understand him. If she had it her way, he would be dead again and gone. It won't fix what he's done, won't bring back the people he's harmed...but it'd be a start.

Seeing him again is just reopening an old wound.

But they've never had a real conversation like this, either. And that, at least, makes her pause. ]

Of course I do. That was just before...

[ Wait. Wait. The last time he saw her? So he doesn't remember...? ]

Is that the last thing you recall from back then?

[supersoldier]

What I just told you. My last recollection on Gaia and my last remembrance of you are both the same.

[Stolen from his planet before his mission could even start in earnest. Though time has dulled that particular offense against him, he continues to suspect that their visit to Nibelheim had been more affecting than what most let on. And being severed just before that day could continue sews further agitation in him, if he thinks on it overlong.

Sephiroth watches her a moment more, silent, as if trying to unearth an answer for her anger. For that acrid blame. Now, it seems like it’s abated, leaving her looking lost in its wake.]

You’re older now. And your frustration against Shinra and those associated with it aren’t unique.

[So many seem to share it. Sephiroth has begun to, as well, though he would not tell a stranger as much.]

I take it the mission did not go as you expected.

[Hard as he is to read, now he’s just fishing.]

[meteodrives]

[ In most other circumstances, she'd think this really was some kind of trick. Something to make her doubt her sanity or her memories of what happened in Nibelheim. He wouldn't be the first, after all. But this seems oddly genuine and if he's to be believed, if his memories really stop after that picture--

What happened? Did the force of the Lifestream strip him of his memories? She doesn't understand.

The conflict is clear on her face as she weighs the unspoken question hanging between them. She hears it without him giving voice to it. Now she has to measure how much of the flood gates she can open and still keep herself from drowning in the grief, the guilt, the blame. ]

Most of the town... It's gone. They're dead.

[ She can't begin to count the numbers and knows if she tries now, the agony will come back, and she won't be weak in front of him, no matter how distant he seems from the monster she's encountered. ]

[supersoldier]

[In retrospect, perhaps, this is the kind of revelation that matches the anger she greeted him with. That blind rage. They're dead. But in the moment, it is the furthest thing that he would've expected to hear, and proof that even now, with all of his disillusionment, maybe he still gives Shinra too much credit than they deserve.

It shows on his face, a shadow flickering through otherwise still water. The future Tifa's relaying to him represents more than a critical mission failure; for the town to be mostly gone, everyone dead— That's a needless tragedy that happened during a mission that he charged with overseeing. Why? How?

Suddenly, a pall is cast over everything. His mind flits to Cloud (why had he not told him? He had been there, it was his hometown), as though trying to fill in the empty holes of their past conversations with a more troublesome context. But nothing takes shape. There's still far too much missing.

And then, sharply—]

What happened?

[meteodrives]

I don't know.

[ No, she does know. At least, Tifa has well-known the context of what happened that day. The great General Sephiroth lost his mind, slaughtered the people, killed her father... Until she'd seen it through Cloud's eyes and known more, that was all she'd known. And even Cloud, he'd known just the same. Sephiroth had come to Nibelheim, had gone to the reactor, and had come out to kill anyone who stood in his way.

Because of Jenova, because of some obsession with her. And because of Shinra, in a way, she guessed. ]

I didn't know you. We barely spoke. But you went into the reactor and that was the last I'd seen of you until you came back to the town. I don't know what you found or what you saw before then--

[ Her fists tighten at her sides. ]

But it was you.

[supersoldier]

[But it was you.

It's the kind of clarification that leaves no room for doubt, no leeway for the rhetoric to muddy its meaning. But even then, it is so unimaginable that it still takes a lingering moment for the meaning to entirely strike him.

And of course, Sephiroth's reaction is to consider it so far beyond belief that it's easiest to meet her blame with a sharp offense. It makes no sense. That is not something that he would do — it is simply beyond the pale. He has killed many in the past, all necessity wrought from war, but they had been enemies on the battlefield. He had never taken it upon himself to steal away the life of innocents with his blade for no purpose other than— what? She cannot even give him a reason why.]

You're lying.

[Perhaps not unintentionally, perhaps unknowingly, but he cannot happily swallow this bitter pill without questioning its validity.]

You're telling me that a straightforward mission to clear the area of monsters, and to investigate a reactor leak, led me to slaughter the townsfolk of Nibelheim? Even if the orders had come from above, that isn't something I would do. I'm not a monster.

[He isn’t.]

had to go review to confirm

[meteodrives]

[ She bristles, mirroring the same kind of defensiveness, the disbelief. Her jaw tightens visibly. ]

Why would I lie? What do I have to gain for it, to tarnish the memory of the people I love? Why would I lie about losing them? I didn't tell you a story to spite you.

[ And while she can see exactly why it'd seem so far-fetched, for a man so composed and cold to suddenly run wild with madness and brutality, she knows the truth as well as she remembers being struck down herself. Her hand moves on instinct, lifting just a few inches towards her body, and then falling back to her side. It's a foolish argument; he can accept it or not. She knows the truth. So does Cloud.

With a hiss of a breath, she shakes her head. ]

I didn't see what was inside the reactor myself...but I was told there were monsters in there. You left that place after I took you there and holed yourself away in the Shinra Mansion.

[ She knows what he found there, more or less. Cloud's memories of that time weren't fully his, not from what she can understand, but she knows Sephiroth discovered information on Jenova and moved to take her from the reactor after finding monstrous creations there.

Is that really what she wants to tell him, though? ]

Whatever you found in the mansion changed everything.

c: you're good!!

[supersoldier]

[Though Sephiroth bristles, and every facet of every word she says is easily thrown into doubt, his rational side — something he cannot banish, it sticks in his bones — is already pulling apart this logic thread by thread, to examine each woven fiber. And it tells him, with that same level of detachment, that she’s right about one thing: she has no reason to lie. What purpose would it serve to spin a tale so absurd that he would immediately question it? What would she have to gain from a deception of this magnitude?

(There are fragmented pieces, if he allowed them to flood his mentality right now, that could slowly come together. His time gone “missing” after the Nibelheim mission. The way everyone from Gaia looks at him, frozen in place for a precious few seconds when they meet. The pieces of a larger story ever missing, that constant feeling like the curtain’s only been pulled back partway, and that he would dislike what he saw behind the rest.

What of the others? If this is true, have they been the ones misleading, spinning lies of omission around every conversation, every encounter with him?)

Frustration bites at him a second time.]

There is nothing I would have seen or learned that would be enough to make me turn my blade against the whole town.

[you thought No revelation would run that deep, would make him blame the village itself for— What? It makes no sense. Monsters? The Shinra mansion, burrowing away secrets? Even now, the lack of context is a void, looming larger than ever before, laughing at him.

His eyes have gone cold. The part of him trying to unravel this knot into workable answers falters on one thing—]

Cloud was there, just as he’s here now. You don’t think he would have mentioned this to me before? Before he even suggested a Bond between us?

[meteodrives]

[ She doesn't know what else to say and, frankly, at this point...to say more would likely just do more damage. When Cloud had searched his memories, she had needed to walk with him slowly, piece by piece, letting him take his time. To supply everything would put him on a slippery slope to a break, and if Sephiroth truly does not remember and does not know, if he hasn't experienced this...

Could they change the future by allowing this? Or is it already set in stone? The promise of saving Aerith and helping Cloud is a tantalizing one, a naive hope, but Tifa wants to cling to it anyway even when she knows it's far more likely that these pieces can't be changed. ]

I hope that's true. I hope I'm wrong.

[ She knows she isn't. There's a mark on her body that says otherwise, and though her memories of the aftermath of that day are painful and piecemeal, she knows what happened before the moment he struck her down.

Tifa doesn't have time to linger on the rest because Sephiroth's gone cold and distant, and what he says has her going rigid. ]

He-- What?

[ A Bond? But hadn't Cloud just told her... ]

[supersoldier]

[Cold and distant, and her accedence to him (I hope I'm wrong.) does very little to abate it. This is not something he can simply shrug off and move on from. It isn't a revelation that he can categorize as misinformed or otherwise misleading; he can see the affectation of just speaking about it churn beneath her eyes, and he hates that as much as he wants to dismiss it—

He can't.

It's easier, though, to latch onto her own uncertainty, as though it were the one singular fissure in her argument that could shatter it all to pieces. Or maybe it's just easier to process it, this way, marking him as cruel and unwilling.]

We're Bonded. It was he who suggested that we do so, a long while ago. What sense does it make to bond to a man who you know slaughtered the people of your hometown?

[He offers it as inanity, as a refute. But— It is something to ask him. Later. He needs clarity in all this.]