EVENT #7: THE SIGHT

[abraxasmods]

Event #7 - The Sight

go to the OOC event info and plotting post

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The night before APRIL 18, your dreams are disrupted by a vivid image of the same eclipse that occurred last month. The black sun seems to be an endless void in the sky, growing ever darker - until it suddenly opens into an eye that stares straight at you.

When you wake up, much of your night seems a blur except for the vivid dream of that eye. Whether you find it unsettling or try to ignore it, the image is something you cannot get out of your mind. If you ask, you will discover that none of the locals of your faction saw another eclipse. Speak with your fellow Summoned, however, and you may learn that while there was no eclipse that formed over the world, you were not the only one who had this dream.

Of course, dreams don't need to mean anything. You can't feel or see any immediate effects, and nearly everyone around you is going about their day as usual. Maybe you should do the same.

The Awakening

It might happen that very morning or a day or two later. You could be discussing the dream with a fellow Summoned or perhaps you simply brush shoulders with them as you walk by. Whatever it is, as soon as you make brief physical contact, one of you is struck with a sharp pain in your temple that grows into a terrible headache. It's disorienting and painful as the world around you shifts to someplace you may or may not recognize. Like an old film reel, you watch the events of the past play out before you: the past of the other Summmoned. It might be something they would rather hide, a moment of failure or despair, or something they are immensely proud of and brings them great joy - or even a jumble of several images over the course of a person's life. But you see it as if it were real and right in front of you all the same. When you come to, you'll likely find yourself on the ground or bent over, possibly with one or more people around you to see if you're okay. It'll take you a bit to gather your bearings, and the subsequent pounding in your head could last from minutes to hours.

Or, maybe you aren't the one who receives the vision. Instead, as you watch, another Summoned might grasp their head and crumble in front of you. They may go silent or groan in pain. They'll be impossible to shake out of their stupor until it's over. If you ask what happened, they may be inclined to tell you the truth - that you, you were what happened to them.

Or, if your Arcana signs happen to line up in a specific way, you'll see each other in the shared memory itself. You may also find that for certain Summoned, you can help soothe the effects, calm their emotions, or help draw them out of the memory before it consumes them for too long. It's not entirely clear what determines which effect, but one thing is for certain - within each memory, every Summoned as they appear in the past seems to wear the mark of their Arcana somewhere on their person.

For some, they might experience this only once. For others, they might experience it multiple times: with the same person, with several other Summoned, or with a different memory each time. Over the next 7 days, you'll find the Summoned around you are all receiving a glimpse into each other's past, as if the Singularity has awoken an eye within each of you.

Flee for the safety of the Horizon if you want, but you'll find that in there, it's much the same. In fact, inside the Horizon, the other Summoned don't even need to be anywhere near you - just existing in the Horizon space itself together will be enough to possibly set off a headache-inducing vision.

The Factions

What has occurred between the Summoned will not go unnoticed within the factions. While it's difficult to say how faction officials have picked up what's happening, it'll be obvious they do know.

In THORNE, characters will be asked to remain in the castle walls until further notice. Characters will not be allowed to leave the castle grounds, not even to go into the surrounding city, and anyone who is already outside will be requested to not leave again as soon as they return. If asked, they will be told it's for their own safety, given the Singularity is behaving unpredictably and the Summoned have a unique connection to it. Soothing potions and healers are on hand to offer assistance, if anyone is particularly suffering from ill effects.

In the FREE CITIES, characters will find the army by the outposts show more activity than usual. A higher number of guards will patrol the streets throughout the event, particularly in areas frequented by the Summoned. Anyone who publicly and visibly experiences the effects of the memory share (pain, doubling over, etc.) will be offered assistance by the guards. They are generally there to help, but they are also there to maintain order and ensure anyone behaving erratically due to this incident is properly contained. This might include confinement for a day or two if anyone is especially posing a risk, but no one will be punished except in the most extreme cases, as the locals are aware this is not within the control of the Summoned.

In SOLVUNN, the locals will be watching what's happening with a mixture of trepidation and curiosity. Host families and neighbors will be on hand to help with charms meant to offer protection, as well as general care and assistance (soup, blankets, and so on) if your character seems to be especially under the weather or afflicted by the event. Towards the end of the event, more elders and mages will be out and about to check up on the Summoned to make sure they're doing okay. If asked, the mages will say they aren't sure what's going on, but that they are currently divining with the gods and hope to have a definitive answer soon in the upcoming days.

None of the factions appear to be doing much more than keep a watchful eye on the situation - but as the week comes to a close, officials will start making a decision as to what they want to do and how to handle the Summoned who have demonstrated this unforeseen connection to the Singularity.

Comments

[princessvegas]

[ Julie doesn't respond to that. It's not that she doesn't appreciate the offer. She does appreciate it. But she doesn't think that talking about it can solve anything. It's not something other people can relate to, can actually wrap their minds around. They shouldn't be able to, it's not human nature to understand. Most of what happened after Captain Trips was human nature at its basest, people clinging to each other to survive as they gave into other, more dangerous instincts. Stripped themselves of the society they'd all been forced into at birth. But at least in the death pits, they could hear other voices. Trust that they weren't hallucinating. Know for sure when they were the last one standing.

In that store, Julie lost the whole world. In fact, until Nick Andros and his feeb came along, she had very much begun to believe she was the only human left. She would take fire and lightning and bullets before she took loneliness again. ]

You only survived with him if you had a purpose, a real job. Harold already served his purpose. You finish that, you finish the only leverage you got. He needed Lloyd, and I made Lloyd need me. That's all it is, a game of who needs who.

[nadine_he_loves]

Yeah. I'd argue that Harold barely even had a use, and...I'm pretty sure there were other ways to get him to do what Flagg wanted, but...

[Nadine shakes her head. It's one thing she's never been able to excuse or dismiss or turn and twist until it made some sort of acceptable sense. She'd been given to a teenager as some sort of treat to inspire a job well done. Like a thing.]

There were things I could say no to, and things I couldn't. Harold was something I couldn't. I just sort of thought of it as an unpleasant job at the time. It's um...it's kind of funny, almost. The way things look different with a clear recollection.

[Or maybe without certain influences on her mind. A part of her wonders if it's the same for Julie. Do things look different now, looking back?]

[princessvegas]

[ Julie snorts derisively, rolls her eyes, then opens the bottle Nadine brought her and tosses the potion back like a shot. Yeah, Julie knows how that feels, to be just an object with a use, instead of a person. She's pretty sure most women understand it to a degree. But it doesn't really answer her primary question. She closes her eyes as she speaks. ]

What I don't understand is why you did it. He wasn't with you, and you knew he needed you. That it wasn't even his choice. So why not just say no? You had leverage.

[ Everything looks different now. Obvious. But she still can't say she'd do it differently, if only because she wasn't really ever given a chance to choose otherwise -- the witch didn't think she was worthy or something, because she never had those cornfield dreams. Still, there had been a sort of haze over Vegas, in her mind. Things felt different there. ]

[nadine_he_loves]

[Nadine is quiet a time, her face drawn and eyes somewhere far away. It's a fair question, she understands why Julie asked. Some of it is hard to put into words. The rest of it...]

Just because he couldn't kill me doesn't mean he couldn't do terrible things to me. Or to the very few people that mattered to me then. I, uh, I told you about Joe. The little boy I found. I never told you what happened with him, but...I was his family, Julie. I was his mom, after the world ended, and he stayed with me in Boulder.

[And he had been under no protection whatsoever. Just because her life was safe, relatively, that didn't mean anything for Joe.]

I would have taken a dozen Harolds to keep him safe. And anyway, I think...I think he did something to me. Flagg.

[It's rare that Nadine calls him anything besides Randall, but as she'd said. Some things look different, now.]

Magic or...something. And as fucked up as it is, I really did love him. And I wanted the things he promised me.

[princessvegas]

[ Julie sighs and flings her arm over her eyes. She understands what Nadine is saying. Really, she does. But she also spent months in Flagg's orbit, watching, listening. While people rarely said no to him, he also wasn't someone who refused to listen to objections. He could be pragmatic. Wanted to keep his inner circle content. And he forgave transgressions. Sometimes.

The whole thing still doesn't make sense. It feels like pieces are missing. But neither does it matter, at this point. What's done is done, and it was done long ago.

She blinks into her elbow. Yeah, she knows there was something that he did to people. She knows because she saw Lloyd break free from it. Heard about Nadine doing the same. It was like flipping a switch, going from full faith and belief to doubt and guilt, rebellion. And Julie doesn't know what it says about her that she never felt that flip. Not like they did. ]

It ain't fucked up. We all did.

[nadine_he_loves]

Like so many other philosophies for a society, theoretically it sounded good. He had a solid pitch. And he was charming. He had this magnetism... A lot of people wanted what he was offering. I do still agree that the way we were living before Captain Trips...it didn't work. But I don't think his way would have worked, either.

[Not anymore. It had been a beautiful dream. A place free from judgement, from rampant consumerism, from shame. A place where anyone could be themselves and be someone. A mecca for every outcast and stranger who lived on the edges.

Of course it had appealed to them both.]

And I do think...whatever lives we can make here, they're better than what we would have had. If nothing else...we have people who really care about us. That we're important to. Not because of what we can do for them, but just because. And you know...you know you're important to me, right?

[princessvegas]

[ There's only silence in response to that. Julie has a lot of conflicting feelings about it all now. She'd never had a real choice -- it was either Flagg or the store. But she'd liked it, still does. Maybe there was stuff she had to look the other way on, but her life in Vegas had been good, as good as she could have hoped for in that world. And it probably would have lasted much longer if not for some fucking old woman who didn't have the decency to just die when everyone else did.

It wasn't real. It was a lie, a lie that she was special, a lie that he cared, a lie that it was what she deserved, but she'd had it, and what was the alternative, exactly? Why were so many people punished for taking the only opportunity they had? It had to have all meant something, but Julie can't figure out what.

She chews the inside of her cheek for a moment, turning that over in her head too. It's hard for Julie to believe that people care about her just because of who she is, instead of what she can provide for them. It's always been her survival mechanism, becoming whatever it is that people need in a bid to make them take care of her. She can't understand why it's different here, why she had to die and be brought to a different world to have that. ]

I know. [ She says it quietly, maybe a bit uncomfortably. The way it comes out when someone was not really raised in an openly affectionate environment. ] It's just... I can handle it all when I don't have to think about it. I can pretend we've always been here, that this place makes sense. It's easier. But when I have to remember it...

[nadine_he_loves]

Yeah. I get it. Some days it's so far away and it's easy to just stay in the present. That's half the reason I'm taking so many classes and working. All of that fills up my head. And then at night...

[Nadine sighs. Nights are the worst, particularly those where she's alone in her empty bed. It all comes back in the night. She can imagine it's the same for Julie.]

But we really haven't been here that long. Time...it doesn't heal all wounds, but it helps. And I think the more we build our lives here, the further away all that stuff from before is going to seem. It's never going to go away, we're never going to forget it or leave it behind completely, but we can sure as hell get further away from it.

[Easier said than done, especially with so many memories brought freshly back like this. There's no distance now, that thin veneer of time stripped away brutally.]

[princessvegas]

[ Julie doesn't take classes, and she also hasn't figured out a job yet (Geralt insinuated that Mag might hire her in the tavern, but that's not a door Julie's chomping at the bit to open just yet, not while she still has a small bit of gold from Nott and enough support around to keep her temporarily afloat), but she has figured out that dumping huge amounts of effort into figuring out how to do various spells from scratch does absorb a lot of brainpower. She also still stays in the Horizon frequently, if only because she does seem to have a preternatural connection to it, and she worries that she might lose that if she stays away.

But if she slows down, if she doesn't constantly distract herself, then she can't stop it all from seeping back in. Already it floods her subconscious most nights, makes her whimper and jerk in her sleep. When she remembers the dreams, she starts drinking as soon as she wakes up.

It's too fresh now, refuses to be ignored or shut back in its box. She didn't have to see it two of the times, and Wanda did something to ease it the third time, but now it wants her to think about it all, to crumble because she can't possibly deal with it.

The potion she took is beginning to kick in, and her eyelids are heavy. ]

Will you sleep in here with me? [ It's quiet, tired. Julie is not someone who has a problem voicing her needs, but she does have an issue doing it in a way that makes her sound weak. But she doesn't think Nadine can really stand to be alone right now either. ] I don't think it happens again, or at least not soon. Geralt was here for a while earlier and it only happened once.

[nadine_he_loves]

Yeah, of course. Any time.

[Nadine doesn't hesitate to agree. She isn't keen on lying alone in bed tonight herself. Too much is all stirred up, too many unpleasant things on the mind. She likely would have made the offer, if Julie hadn't asked.]

I'm just gonna grab a potion for myself.

[Neither of them need bad dreams tonight, and both need a good deep sleep.

Maybe tomorrow, all of this will be over.]

[princessvegas]

'kay.

[ The response is little more than a mumble, and even as she watches Nadine leave the room for just that minute, she's already quickly falling into that hazy, floaty-feeling space between consciousness and sleep. By the time Nadine gets back, Julie is asleep, despite the lanterns still being lit. In Nadine's momentary absence, Julie has scooted toward the wall to make space, thrown the lightweight quilt back from the other side of the bed for her. ]