thousand dreams, lotus boats upon the waters

[promittere]

NEW MOON ADAGIO

Between the constant requests from the North and the sense of tension that pervades the manor, Sage Tatara makes an executive decision: we're going North, baby.

Of all the things that have happened thus far, let this be the ultimate test of your magic. Even as we near summer, it's frigid. Protect yourselves and your allies from the cold. Protect yourselves while also fighting off monsters (or other territorial wizards, should you make the terrible mistake of wandering into another's territory), flying through the vast wilderness, or protecting the poor humans who need your help to survive. Time to blow off some of your steam. Just be sure to obey Tatara's one rule: don't kill each other.

One particular problem of note is in the Forest of Dreams. Without its guardian, many of these rogue monsters and dangerous predators, displaced from their normal habitats, have found their way into the forest. Many of them, however, are unable to survive against the fatal toxin, and there are plenty of animal corpses and mana stones that litter the forest. It might be best to clean these up before the forest guardian returns...

That said, the toxin is yet another thing you must protect yourself against in addition to the cold. While you can likely keep yourself from dying from the toxins, you may not be immune to its effects. This deadly toxin causes anyone who breathes it in to dream and hallucinate vividly, be it images of the past, imagined futures, thoughts of the present processed and warped...

Strangely enough, those nearby may end up sharing in your dreams... Did you want the darkest recesses of your thoughts, hopes, and fears unearthed for others to see?

Those who decide to venture far past the more populated (in relative terms) parts of the North may find themselves stumbling upon what looks to be an abandoned bandit hideout. It seems it's been abandoned for quite a while—nothing to loot here, sorry!—but there sure are a whole lot of monsters that have decided to make this hidden corner of the North their home.

While you're at it, you may find a nearby cave. Beautiful crystals dot the walls and the floors, and there are small pools of hot spring water free for relaxing. It seems to be relatively free of monsters, too. So maybe this wouldn't be a bad spot to relax, away from everything else?

However, there's one thing that makes this cave truly unique, and it isn't the vistas or the springs—it's the bats. These bats hear echoes of the past and replay them for visitors. Should you stay a while and listen, a bat may pay you a visit. And when it does, it may play for you the voices from the memories of visitors past, whose stories may hold a clue or two to your circumstances...

While the Forest of Dreams is a memory/dreamshare free for all, the aural memories replayed by the bats in the Cave of Time will come from one of the original wizards only. If you'd like an audio replay of a perhaps significant moment either in their personal life or a clue as to what happened to them (it will be randomized), then please reply to this comment!

JOB BOARD

Clean-up and repairs. While thanks to the hard work of your Eastern friends the worst was prevented, the City of Rain emerged from their short ordeal a little worse for wear.

Buildings need repair, blood needs to be cleaned off the streets, the injured need help. This is, perhaps, the only time you will be allowed to use magic openly in the city (you've been given permits and everything!), but you still are not allowed to talk outside of designated zones. Please, please don't get arrested...

As for the scrap that litters the streets? Unfortunately, you'll have to take it back to the scrapyard. But this time, there's a big, roaring bonfire out there. Just chuck all the scrap and debris in the fire. The city isn't taking any second chances—extreme situations call for extreme measures.

Reverence. Several Northern villages are currently outside the protection of a wizard, and have requested the sage's wizards' presence. They're terrified of the monsters and worried the barriers for their villages will fail sooner than later. They don't simply ask for help for free, however, and these smaller villages are steeped in their tradition—they'll pay you their respects, praying to you, offering you gifts, groveling at your feet, in hopes for a modicum of your time and protection. Do their offerings please you? Then assist them with what you deem appropriate for their worship to you: kill a few monsters for them, or a lot if you're pleased. Strengthen the barrier a lot, or not at all if you're displeased. It's up to you! You have the power here. What's it like to be a god for a day?

Ladies' night. The monthly lady officers' gathering is coming up in the City of Affluence—it's an exclusive meetup for the women involved in and related to Western military and bureaucratic affairs. Anyone is welcome, so long as they meet two requirements: they are outwardly presenting feminine, and they have an invitation to the gathering. Here's your chance to flex your transformation and glamour spells! Infiltrate the meetup with a disguise and a fake invitation, mingle, enjoy the drinks, the jazz, the entertainment, and find out what you can... What's the Western army up to? Be careful, though—don't get caught and kicked out!

The attendees seem to be excited about the new phantasmagoria technology and the upcoming display, and many whisper about the upcoming Venator meteor shower...

G'RAHA TASKS

Greetings, new friends! I am G'raha Tia, and while I hesitate to call myself a mentor or a replacement for the one you had, I am eternally grateful for the assistance I received and will do my best to help your cause in any way I can. To that end, I feel I may need to be caught up to speed on the events and get to know all of you.

We can have some tea and sandwiches and have a discussion! That's the best way to learn, sometimes.

TATARA ACTIVITIES

Even if we're not here for very long, I think we should leave our mark (not literally! Don't paint on the walls!). I got paint and big paper in the dining hall, but no brushes... Do you know what that means? Finger paint! Finger paint a portrait of yourself with your name and I'll hang it up in the library when they're all done!

Thanks to Cid and Khun, my camcorder works now. The thing is, what's the point of filming anything if we have no way to watch the film?! Could you guys work together to make some kind of projector? Or like...VHS player? We could have a movie night together!

OOC NOTES

🌙 Welcome to your fourth event! It's your dreamshare and memshare event! Ready to open up with your deepest and darkest secrets?
🌙 We're halfway through the game. How do you feel?
🌙 Back at the manor, Kurapika and Maya have set up a bulletin board! Leave comments, argue with your neighbors, have fun. Be nice. Don't set it on fire.
🌙 On the admin side of things, Lav has swapped out Wanderer for G'raha! Please say hello to your new mentor NPC.
🌙 Your OOC plotting post is here! Remember to keep all wider plotting to the post, and remember to check back frequently, since not everyone checks plurk or discord all the time.
🌙 The next country to go on their mission is North. Do you think a PVP-enabled mission will go well?

» NAVIGATION

Comments

Cw: brief mentions of blood

[impacter]

Ah. You're a new face...

[His smile is tired, slightly pained, scuffed slightly along the forehead and jawline and skin kissed raw and red from the cold.]

I'm sorry this is your introduction. But I hope you can make peace with our circumstances...

[Faintly, distantly, there's the flickering smell of smoke. Of dust and debris. Of blood. Of distant, mourning screams. Graha's body will feel like a phantom of itself for a brief moment. Pained. Exhausted. Powerful. Powerful. It's both very right, and very wrong.

Solomon seems to flinch as the sensation settles, as though bracing.]

...It can be a little unkind. Just be wary of where your eyes sit.

[erythropoiesis]

I keep hearing that.

[It's said lightly, with a wry smile, as G'raha looks around the forest. His ears flick at the sound of screaming, instincts wanting to see if he can find the source, but his body feeling odd is a sensation easier to ignore, some how.]

Both that I'm new and that this place can be very dangerous. That danger is why it falls to us to handle things, though, isn't it?

[He notices the flinch, but he keeps his questions to himself. In time, things will be more clear. He's sure of it.]

[impacter]

It is. So long as we don't fall to those dangers ourselves.

[The sensations just increase in a sickening amount, a trickle turning to a stream to a river to a flood, flood, flood--

It radiates like the heat of the sun in waves off his body. But he feels distress, not his own, but of a phantom, stumbling and bleeding and desperately trying to will something, something in him, something innate, to stop.

The picture grows clearer, in bits and shades, with the sky coated orange and thickly coated with ash from roaring fires. Buildings have been completely flattened. The cliffsides that face the distant sea are crumbling, clean holes carved straight through them by an unnatural force. The bodies are still fresh, still bleeding. But not moving. All blown outward from a single point.

Where you now stand.]

[erythropoiesis]

[An ominous statement, paired with the way the world changes around them. G'raha looks around at all the devestation—the flattened buildings, the motionless body, the ash and flames. It looks like something exploded, or erupted, an uncontrollable force that brought so many lives to an end in an instant.

He puts a hand to his chest, closing his eyes as he tries to reconcile what he sees to what he feels, and he wonders...]

And do those dangers include ourselves?

[He remembers how he arrived, the fragmented bits of his memories on display for everyone to see, and so he wonders if this is a memory of the man he's only just met?]

Or our pasts?

[impacter]

...Perhaps both, if we're not careful.

[It's said with a smile that does not reach his eyes.

You can hear more screaming in the distance. Your distress climbs. No. No, no, you tried so hard. You were trying so hard. And yet your magic bubbles ferociously in your limbs, in your throat, no matter how you keep trying to press it down like you've tried for years. But it hurts. It hurts, and you feel what little grip you have over your own power slipping.

They have all died because of you. And you want to scream until your throat goes hoarse. There has to be something you can do, something, something something.

G'raha will feel the urge to double over, like his magic is trying to burst from his skin if he doesn't pull himself together.]

[erythropoiesis]

[Ah, this is a familiar sensation. The feeling off too much power for your body, consuming you entirely. G'raha's first thought is that he's turning into a sin eater, that the Light is going to force him into a mindless beast, because he's seen that happen so many times, he nearly saw the Warrior himself fall to that surplus of aether— or perhaps it's dynamis, turning his emotions against him, weighing him down heavily.

He gasps, hand to his chest. It's through sheer willpower that he doesn't collapse to his knees, knowing that panic won't help him and logic telling him that no, both of those are impossibility, this man is not from a world he knows, things do not work that way. He is not being transformed, he will not completely lose control of himself. But the fear lingers, the visions of the destroyed buildings linger in his mind.]

This is...

[He can't finish the sentence, could barely string those two words together, his eyes screwing shut as his ears pin back against his skull.]

[impacter]

[Solomon notes the distress, the way those inhuman ears tilt back, even as the man himself starts to flinch from the effects of the space. But he'll at least make his way to their new mentor, a careful hand to his shoulder.

For G'raha, in his ears, like it's him and yet not, he hears the dry and pained gasps of a phantom; a young man, a pained man, a desperate man, not him and not exactly his fellow wizard, but of a fledgling sorcerer hardly in his twenties. Yelling. Mourning. Gasping for pain against the ground, the ache of utter tragedy. The magic exists regardless.

It hurts, and from how Solomon physically shudders along with G'raha voluntarily at the waves of power, it's affecting both of them.]

Careful. Gather yourself, or it's not going to stop.

[The death. The destruction. A radiating danger that courses through your limbs without your control, despite what you try.

"Please------- Please, let me take it back!!!!!"

Hoarse words to the dead from the phantom in G'raha's ears. Pointless crying from the wolf among the slaughtered lambs. Heaven won't hear you.

So call for help. Make them come from elsewhere. The mind rushes in desperation. To make a circle, a spell, a pleading. Drawing from phantom memories, phantom theories, the mystical and dark and forbidden.

Instinct says a circle is possible. Logic says you will die. Fear smells the blood in the air and feels the burn of your magic like bile in your throat.

All G'raha needs to do is choose.]

[erythropoiesis]

[Gather yourself. It's such a simple statement, and for a brief moment it feels like an impossible ask. How can he compose himself in the face of such anguish? How can he stare down visions and memories that aren't his own but still resonate so deeply?

(Centuries of sleep and one hundred years of waiting, planning, preparing to die for the sake of the man who could save the world from its destruction. So little of his life has been spent as G'raha Tia, and so little of G'raha Tia's life was under his own control with the legacy that hung around his neck.)

G'raha takes one last, shuddering breath and grabs his staff, using it to brace himself upright.]

Do not worry. It'll take a lot more than this to kill me—

[He hisses, feeling, reaching, chasing that instinct. A circle. A summoning? He's not sure, but if a tragedy can be undone then shouldn't he undo it?

(That's why he was woken, after all, that's the only reason he had to exist for so, so long. Sometimes you must needs turn back the clock and do the impossible...)

Slowly, the sky gets bleached with a bright, endless light, harshly illuminating the devastation.]