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

[voktys]

⟪ the name gives her pause, but it is hardly enough to be conclusive, and the thought alone is absurd. if she were pushed and pressed, melisandre may well be willing to wager that there could, perhaps, be a valyrian influence to it, would risk far more high-pitching theories were they in the known world –– but this far from all she knows, the odds are in favour of a strange coincidence.

she does not stall on her answer. ⟫

A priestess. ⟪ more defining than any name. ⟫ I am called Melisandre. ⟪ her smile is warm, and genuine, and her teeth are sharper than they need be. ⟫ What is it that you seek, Daenerys Stormborn?

[freeing]

[ The introduction, she believes was simple enough. Respectful, even – teetering on pleasantries and formalities. It was the way she asks such a follow-up question... as if she wanted Daenerys to answer with every bit of truth in her body.

She was a girl, she feels, standing before a woman who could see right through her. Or perhaps there were precious little opportunities in her life where a woman commanded her attention in such a way. It's confusing and her lips answer – ]

You ask that as if it was a riddle. [ Almost in disbelief, she feels astonished she nearly fell for such a romanticized thought. Being honest to a complete stranger. ] I seek to return home, but that is sought by many people here.

[voktys]

⟪ it is a riddle to her. days ago, she could use any flame to trace a person's path and back and forth, now she looks into the strange eyes of a young woman whose manner is all but commanding attention – and she is reduced to guessing and questions.

that is not to say that she loathes to have her curiosity engaged. with this part, she has quite a pleasant time. ⟫

Home. ⟪ she repeats that part like a mystery onto itself. she, too, seeks to return to her world, of course – her mission has not reached its end yet. she has lost sight of azor ahai reborn in her flames, but she tells herself it means nothing, so nothing it means for a little while longer, and she certainly cannot be here. not for long. ⟫ Perhaps it is a riddle. Fates are rarely easy things.

your mel is PERFECT. im screaming

[freeing]

[ There's a slight tilt of her head, childish as if trying to unravel a woman who drips in enigmatic aura. There were very few women in her life, that had not seen their ends prematurely... yet this one? She feels compelled to answer her, to seek more questions. ]

If they were easy to understand, they would be easy to avoid as well. Such would turn the world upon its head.

[ She believes her fate had always been written by her own hand, arrogantly as any dragon or Targaryen would. ]

Do you not wish for the same?

[ The answer was so simple, but she feels coldness when Melisandre speaks of it. ]

aaaa I'M GLAD YOU LIKE HER i L O V E your dany

[voktys]

⟪ she inclines her head with a smile at the first part, all agreement – this is rather why there are, at the end of the day, only so many priests. to read the flames is to be shown glimpses of fate, falling apart and intertwining and ever-changing. to make something of the revelation is an art few master. ⟫

I belong to God, mind and body and soul. How could this be true if I would tie myself to a place, call it mine, and long for it?

⟪ even the concept of a 'self' that is not an instrument of his will is near-absurd. there are many things she has been granted: pleasures, safety, a life and comforts far, far from what a slave girl would have dared dream of, if only she would have hardly lived to see adulthood without his intervention. ⟫

I must return to the world I hail from, but that is hardly the same as a home, is it?

[freeing]

[ A truly religious woman? The way she speaks, devout and confident. Unyielding. Daenerys feels a bit uncomfortable with it, about how Gods spread misfortune to seemingly humble humanity. By the ways of the older Gods, they condoned slavery, they condoned children with empty bellies and parents with no means to feed them. It pained her to leave something in the hands of something otherworldly... so she instead nods. ]

...Some of my people believed in being reunited with the Horse God in the Night Lands, to ride in a single khalasar with their brothers and sisters beyond. Perhaps that's home? Where we all return to, I mean. Whatever we believe in, in the end.

[ God, fate, beliefs, people waiting for them – they will all return home to them. ]

I suppose... there is a difference. You seem to have tied my tongue on that matter.

[voktys]

⟪ under ordinary circumstances, she would argue the faith, but these are not ordinary circumstances, and she holds her tongue in accordance.

still: 'horse god' piques her interest, 'night lands' has her questioning, and 'khalasar' is the confirmation she was seeking. it is not her expression that shifts as much as it is the air around them when she reaches out to take daenerys' taloned hands into her own. ⟫

It has been long since I last met one who has crossed the Dothraki Sea.

⟪ how else would she know of the horse god? how else could she call the people who hold their faith with it her own? ⟫

[freeing]

[ It was never her God to worship. It was Drogo's. The most she did was honor his beliefs, the ones that saw no harm to innocents at the very least... The remembrance was long ago, the pyre lost in her haze of the night – when dragons were brought to the world once more.

She was lost for a moment, enough for Melisandre's hand to take her clawed embrace. She tenses up – it's clear she still has not grown use to such casual and tender moments. Her heart nearly found itself to the floor when the word Dothraki eloquently spills past her lips. ]

How – [ How? That wasn't what she wanted to know. She knew how – the mirrors, but – ] Who are you, really?

[ Her hand tugs, not defensive as much as she is in a state of shock. Her eyes plead and she wants to reach back out to the woman despite her own closed off move seconds before. Before her was a tether, something only Jorah Mormont knew of in this world. A tether back home. ]

Are you from Essos?

[voktys]

Yes.

⟪ her smile is faint, yet unwavering, even as she lets go so that it may be up to the younger woman to touch, should she wish to do so, or withdraw further if it offers more comfort. she strikes her as torn, there's a plea in her eyes and then shock, and she wonders at once how little the girl beneath must have had in this life, to be so rattled by the hint of a kinship.

at any rate, the questions seem to inspire some degree of open honesty in her – not that she habitually conceals these things. ⟫

Born a slave and raised beyond by R'hllor, He who reigns over Light and Shadow. ⟪ this is, to her, a personal explanation of 'who' she is – what more can one expect of god's own instrument? now, she has mentioned her priesthood before, and she cannot name the place she was born. there are red temples aplenty in essos, the most famous one in volantis, so she seeks to give some shape of a precise answer here: ⟫ The Red Temple in Asshai is the one I hail from.

⟪ and then: ⟫ What of you?

⟪ she does not look dothraki by birth, daenerys, and if anything, the name is valyrian by nature. there's a nagging thought at the back of her mind, but she silences it – too ostentatious. ⟫

[freeing]

[ Her gaze was strong, her lips clamped together to keep any fumbling words from spilling out. If this woman was from her world, was from a place she holds dear to her... there would be no girl. She has to be a woman – a Queen, a khaleesi, a breaker of chains... and so much more that it tires her to slip the mask back on. ]

Asshai. I was begged to escape there once, when Khal Drogo was set aflame. [ Had word of the khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, bride of Drogo reached to Melisandre's ears? The thought was insulting at the time, a bride mourning and Ser Jorah pleaded with her to escape East. She, just as perhaps Melisandre was, was dancing with fire. Baiting words to garner some reaction.

But, a dragon does not play games. Her shoulders stiffen visibly and her hands clasp tightly in front of her. ]

You are one of the Red Priestess, then? The ones they speak of in whispers, where the light has yet to consume the shadows.

[ Many of Essos did not quite follow the lord of light, after all. At least, her people didn't. ]

My birthplace is of Dragonstone, my claim is in King's Landing in Westeros. However, Essos... I spent my life there, serving no lord but instead serving the people who cannot rely on mere faith or stay blind to their own power.

[ She clears her throat. ]

My lady, one of yours visited me in Meereen to help spread word of a young Queen breaking shackles. Tell me – has word of Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen never reached you?

[ dun, dun, duuuuun. ]

[voktys]

⟪ asshai seems a dire choice for safety, but the explanation that follows all but explains it. wise she would not call it, but then, it may be wise enough for a traveller, one who does not intend to stay until the city by the shadow has made leaving harder and harder.

birthplaces and claims and a queenly title, and the slim suspicion she has had and suppressed time and time again over the course of their talk for it's absurdly low chance now fully proven, it is, finally, the mention of another priest that nearly breaks her serene expression. of course the temples would seek to press influence. now, if they could use their god-granted sight and turn it to beyond the wall, where the long night is edging nearer and nearer –– ⟫

No one born into shackles who has not listened with bated breath.

⟪ surprised, there, she is by her own honesty. it was a change she had not thought she would see in essos. there were other rumours, too, of dragons, and she had seen their shadows in her flames, but as all old magic rises –– 

no matter now. dragons are no use to her in essos. a fledgling queen will not ease her tasks unless she joins the one war that matters. if azor ahai loses his life before, then all is for naught to begin with –– and why do her flames betray her sight? why is it snow she sees, not stannis? what use were years and years of showing her the same face when it now falters? ⟫

I have come to know Dragonstone well. ⟪ better still the man who took it. how strange all of this is, to a woman who is so rarely surprised by any turn. ⟫

[freeing]

[ Daenerys is silent, her eyes cast downwards as the swallows the woman's words. She tries to not be prideful, to not be proud – for she was taught at a young age that such was unfitting of a girl. Her gospel was forged with flames, spread like a wildfire, so of course Dany wonders if it had engulfed the world.

Dragonstone leaves the woman's lips and she nearly shivers like a cold overtook her. Her boats had only arrived on the dull, wet sands. The halls of her keep barely explored, the sounds of Targaryens generations before her were deaf upon her ears. Part of it had been bitter sweet – pulled through the Mirrors so shortly after arriving at Westeros... ]

...Were you with the Baratheons? [ They informed her of their war for the crown – brothers who squabbled like children while she built her army in Essos. ] I heard one of them claimed my birthplace but since, the halls have been empty.

[voktys]

⟪ was she with the baratheons? she had waited for one to die, had done her part in slaying the other, and had spent all her waking time with the remaining brother, until there were whispers of a crownless queen atop the wall, the kind of whispers that persisted even when he had left to take deepwood motte and her bed remained as vacant as her fires. ⟫

Stannis Baratheon may be His chosen champion, but I am a priestess, and I serve R'hllor first.

⟪ there is no aspiration beyond that. when the temple had bought her, they had saved her from a cruel, dark fate, but her life had been in equal measure given into the hands of god, and was therefore never her own. ⟫

Dragonstone is only one of the many things he had left to lose. ⟪ if he takes deepwood motte, eventually winterfell, the nightfort has already been ceded to him –– it does not matter. none of these things matter in the war that is yet to come. but how easy it is to get caught up in the minutia of the westerosi lords and their squabble. ⟫ It has not come to pass yet – I wonder if our times quite align, my lady.

[freeing]

[ Tyrion and Varys had done well to council her – she thinks. Even if there are things she grows tired of, the secrecy and the whispers, but that was far more their games than hers. If she grew tired of it, they would know. Her time in Dragonstone was to be the lead they needed to plan their next moves, far away from Red Priestesses who would spread the tale of Daenerys Stormborn. Greeted upon empty, dead halls... it was as if nothing had transpired. The war table was vast, like Westeros itself, but she felt nothing walking through its halls. Not sure of who last claimed Dragonstone itself – Stannis, Renly, or Robert. Fueding men was hardly her interest. ]

I see. And your Lord whispered his name to you? [ She tenses up, almost as if her words had judgment behind them. It was a biting response, but there was hardly any time for that. The question wasn't who whispered what, it was about the way everything aligned. Her lips visibly twitch at the passage of time, of thinking that she was somehow... offering a glimpse of the woman's future. Of what her Lord had planned. The color in her face draws away, and she looks down, tongue to her cheek. ] He still squabbles for the throne, then?

[voktys]

⟪ faces, clear faces in the flames, are so rare a thing. the fire shows symbols, approximations, a god's attempts to make his followers understand a language that cannot be spoken in the natural sense by any mortal. it takes years to distinguish between past, present, and future – it takes decades more to understand what one is seeing. they are mays and maynots, those visions, malleable in some ways and unshakeable in others.

and faces are rare. why would r'hllor have shown her stannis, over and over for years, only to confront her with doubts now? it's a stretched now, too, a worry nagging with increasing desperation since stannis and his men rode for deepwood motte and her flames, suddenly, left her to see everything and all but him, no matter how far beyond her limits she pushed, now matter how much her eyes burnt and she bled. ⟫

It was no whisper.

⟪ but if stannis is dead, has died, will die – what was it? what was the point in leading thousands astray? what does it mean for the blood on her own hands? she cannot afford to have been so wrong – and she reminds herself that the girl has offered her no proof beyond her own hunger for the throne.

melisandre's expression remains calm and pleasant, her voice even. if the warmth is gone, it could be anything. maybe it was never there at all. ⟫

Is this was you seek in Westeros? The throne? Your birthright?

[freeing]

[ There is a tension between them. Not malicious, not welcoming. Daenerys has had little experience in any Westerosi politics, preparing for years for the moment she would seemingly cross paths with a Baratheon or two – and perhaps a Lannister usurper.

However, Melisandre was neither and she spoke of a Lord she can't quite imagine, not a King. There's one thing Daenerys could pinpoint about the guarded woman – her faith. The way her eyes scream belief when mystery and circumstance may deceive her. She had faith in whatever was told to her.

And it was the question that nearly knocks the wind out of her. ]

No. [ She says quickly before the words were held on her tongue – as if she had always been advised to hold such emotions and honesty to herself. ] I seek home, but not just for myself. My people – for the ones who follow me and know no other life than chains. It is my fate to claim the Iron Throne, but that is what I seek.