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

[earthborn]

"Yeah, It's back there, somewhere," She gestures with a thumb, pointing behind her, where the line of her footprints wanders away over the beachsand, "C'mon."

It's not like it's a long walk. The whole of the Horizon is probably only a dozen miles square, and there's a lot in the space. Normandy, for a blessing, doesn't take up much footprint, though it does cast a shadow, even with the docking clamps standing incongruously embedded in a rocky outcrop. It's an ugly kind of perch, blocky and steel-bare, for so graceful and shining a bird.

"...There she is," Shepard says, appreciative of the view, when they come around to it, "The Normandy SR-2. Pretty, huh?"

Well, she certainly thinks so. In any case, no time for messing around; there's only a brief elevator ride between the ground and the airlock. Let's go.

"This way."

[monomachy]

Diana follows Shepard with building excitement, and when she finally sees the ship, she is not disappointed. It is so unlike any vessel she's ever seen, even the airplanes used in the war. Until this moment, Diana had thought those were the pinnacle of man's technological skill. She gasps, head tilting back to look at the ship's belly as they head towards the elevator--which is another piece of technology Diana has never before seen. She's getting in a lot of firsts today.

"She's beautiful." Diana's words are sincere; strange though the Normandy may be, it is beautiful. "You lived on this craft?"

[earthborn]

"That's right. She's been my only home for the last couple of years. Up until about six months ago, anyways. When I realized I could get her back, here on the Horizon..."

The ship's shadow passes over them; it's a short lift ride, all things considered. Then it's airlock, and— the CIC. It's unnaturally empty, every duty station empty, every seat bare. To the left the board glows amber and green, ready to launch, but the pilot is nowhere to be seen

To the right, the holographic projection of the galaxy, Shepard's own command station, stands prominent amidships, shining with stars and nebulas and the delicate traceries of interstellar relays. The command deck of the Normandy. Was it any surprise she had summoned all this back into her life?

"This is the command and information center. In battle, this is where all the action happens. It's usually got about twenty on-duty at a time."

[monomachy]

The lift ride would be more than enough to amaze Diana on its own; she's never heard of an elevator, let alone seen one. They shoot up into the air so fast, it's almost like flying. But she doesn't get a chance to literally press her face against the glass before they're on the ship, passing through empty chambers and finally arriving at the command center.

Diana stares, open-mouthed, at everything around her. She doesn't know where to focus her attention, but finally settles on the hologram of the galaxy. She lopes towards it, reaching out as if to touch it, but lets her fingers hover just barely from doing so.

"You go into battle on this ship?" She doesn't take her eyes away from the hologram, trying to find any familiar star patterns.

[earthborn]

"Well, it is a warship," Shepard says, watching Diana's rush— and abrupt halt, "You can touch it, if you want. You can't hurt anything just by moving the navigation around."

Which was not true; you could cause a lot of grief, if you knew which settings to fuck with. Somehow, Shepard doesn't think that changing the interface language to some obscure sub-dialect is what Diana's after; no harm in just poking a hologram.

"That's the galaxy. Home to more than two hundred billion stars, and plenty of battles to be fought about 'em. Earth too."

[monomachy]

She's grateful that Shepard has picked up on her desire to touch the hologram, and she does just that. When she extends her hands towards a shining planet, she's able to move the map around. Diana gasps, and immediately starts turning the chart this way and that, searching for a familiar solar system. "The... entire universe?" Or Shepard's universe, she assumes. Still, it's amazing.

Her brows crease, and she looks over to the other woman. "What do you fight for?" It's sort of an innocuous question, but she's also genuinely curious. She knows (or thinks she knows) what mortals in her world fight over: land, power, money. But what about the rest of the universe?

[earthborn]

"Here, I'll show you home," Shepard laughs, stepping up beside Diana, where she leans on the railing and reaches out to flick flick— there. The Sol system, with its yellow star and nine familiar rings, from Mercury out to the Charon Relay, "There. Sol system, Earth, local cluster. It's not the whole universe, just our little corner of it."

The galaxy was so large that you could injure yourself thinking about it too much, and even then it was nothing but the speck of a speck in the face of the larger existence. Shepard was content, most of the time, just to have enough coffee to get through the morning. Let eternity go on without her, as if it needed any permission to do so.

"Well, mostly I fight to defend people from... a lot of things. For whatever reason, some people seem deadset on trying to stop me, so I end up fighting against a lot of assholes just trying to make a paycheck in the service of killing me, if they can," Shepard doesn't have a cognitive issue with the idea of being a mercenary. There's nothing wrong with wanting to eat, with having a skillset and expecting to be paid for your work— but so many mercenaries just left it at that and let the numbers determine their loyalties. And that's what led to their deaths, "Mercenaries, Batarian slavers, Geth, husks, Reapers... Mostly Reapers, and the ones who work for them in all cases. But I'm pretty stubborn."

[monomachy]

Diana has seen charts and read theories, but to see the solar system laid out in front of her like this--she stares in awe, reaching out to pass a finger through the little orb representing Earth, briefly wishing that doing so would take her back there. She misses her home, and the new parts of it she'd just begun to discover. This is a new adventure, but that doesn't mean she doesn't feel homesick.

There isn't anything inherently wrong with being a mercenary, no, but to Diana, there isn't any honor in it. Everyone deserves to make a living, but battles shouldn't be fought for profit alone. Diana can't imagine going to war or attacking someone just to make a few coins.

"I'm glad they haven't stopped you. Defending others is one of the most honorable things a person can do." But she frowns, turning away from the hologram briefly to look at Shepard. "What is a Reaper?" Literally, she can picture something ghostly and dead, but she doesn't think that's what she's talking about.

[earthborn]

At her touch, the map enlarges yet further, and the room is lit in the pale blue of Earth itself, a ghostly moon orbiting it, helpfully labeled Luna. Shepard hesitates, the way she usually does— Reapers are never a charming revelation.

"They're uh..." Monsters, is the word she wants to say, which is neither helpful nor illustrative, "They come every fifty thousand years, and wipe out all sentient life in the galaxy, or at least everyone who's made it into space."

Which included humans, as you can see from the spaceship.

"They're enormous, thousands of meters tall, practically immortal machine life forms. So far as we can tell, their only purpose is just... Reduce the population to zero, give it time to rebound, come back and do it again. We've only killed one, so far, but there are thousands of them coming. I'm just one woman, but I've got a lot of good people on my side. Just gotta hope it's enough."

She doesn't hold out much hope, just the same; stubborn will has carried her through the worst of it so far. Maybe it'll win the day.

[monomachy]

Diana's attention is shifted from the hologram map to Shepard herself. The longer her description goes on, the wider her eyes get. She tries to imagine such a creature, such a monster, but it seems too vast and cruel to even picture. She exhales slowly, trying to separate herself from the horror she feels after listening to Shepard's explanation.

"What kind of purpose is that?" She asks it rhetorically, though she still tries to think of any reason at all for such an act. She can't come up with a single thing.

Diana reaches out, intending to place her hand on the other woman's shoulder, but stops just short of doing so. Her hand hovers there instead, a comfort she'd give if not for the potentially disastrous results caused by physical touch right now. "I am sorry that your people are under attack by such creatures." And it isn't just her people--it's everyone in the galaxy. "If there is any way I might help you, I will." It isn't as if there's much she can do from here, but the offer is sincere.