abraxasmods: (Default)
ABRAXAS MODS ([personal profile] abraxasmods) wrote in [community profile] abraxaslogs2021-06-12 12:13 pm
Entry tags:

EVENT #1

EVENT #1
Welcome to our very first event! This event will be divided into two parts: one for honored guests, and one for prisoners. There are some opportunities for characters to go to the opposite group's event, so read on below and make sure to check out the accompanying OOC plotting post for extra details!

This event takes place ICly from June 14th to June 19th.

The Summer Festival (Honored Guests)

It's June, and that means the annual Summer Festival in Castle Thorne. The newcomers are causing quite a buzz and, for the first time in ten years, a representative from the increasingly independent city of Nott has agreed to attend. The representative, Lyle Vela, has a lot of political sway in Nott and the impression he takes back with him will affect whether Nott begins to repair relations with the rest of Thorne or moves even further towards independence.

But that's not all there is to do here! The residents of the city surrounding Castle Thorne are intensely curious about the newcomers and several of the events at the Summer Festival have been designed by the mages to show them off. At some point you may begin to feel more like a prized pony than an honored guest, but there are rewards and gifts and good food to be had for all, so what's the harm in showing off a little?

The festival runs all week (June 14th-19th) and the list of events are as follows:
Sparring Contest: Honored guests will be asked to spar in front of an audience. Depending on the time of the week the fight takes place in, some guests may have some or most of their powers back, but the audience is here to see a show and just trampling your opponent in seconds won't do much for them. Try to add some spice to it: a good narrative and a close fight are much more enthralling. You may decide the winner of the fight between yourselves or ask the mods to roll for an outcome below. Prisoners who stay behind can sneak into this event but will not have their powers.

Magic Demonstration: Show everyone what you can do and demonstrate a Thornean magic spell in front of an audience. This should be a simple beginner spell such as a smaller elemental magic spell, some minor healing, a small illusion, and so on. Feel free to decide what spell you'd like your character to perform and post to the header below so the mods can roll for your character's success when performing it in front of the audience! Regardless of success, your character can learn the chosen spell by the end of the event. Unfortunately, prisoners cannot access this event.

The Black Market: Castle Thorne is much less secure during open festivals than it is during the rest of the year, so it's no surprise that some shady characters have managed to sneak in. They're trading potions and magical items, and luckily enough for the penniless newcomers, they're interested in things other than money. They may ask for some blood, saliva, or the chance to perform a spell on the hapless newcomer. Prisoners are welcome in the black market. Please post to the header below to see what item your character gets from the event (and what spell they'll be subjected to if you choose that option).

Visit with the Representative: Near the end of the Festival, three honored guests will be chosen to have one-on-one audiences with Lyle Vela in the hopes of impressing him. Ambrose hasn't had the time to get to know each guest individually yet, so he's asked that they choose the three candidates among themselves. If you wish you have your character volunteer for this position, please make a case for their suitability under the header below! If your character is not running for this position, have them vote for another character. Prisoners who stay behind may vote as well.
At the end of the festival on June 19th, there will be a huge feast available with all manner of fancy food and some alcohol if you wish to get a little drunk. Beware, Thornean alcohol is strong! Prisoners who stayed behind to help out with the festival can easily slip in and take some food and drink for themselves.

If your character has been imprisoned but you want them to attend the Festival, an honored guest may lobby for them to stay behind and help set up. It'll be work, but they can sneak off to have a bit of fun and it won't be as difficult as what's in store for the rest of them. If you wish to have your character stay behind, please post to the OOC plotting post. Because we know that claustrophobic tunnel horror isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, there is no limit to the amount of prisoners who can stay behind.

In the Tunnels (Prisoners)

Good news, prisoners! You get some time away from your cells in the beautiful snow-covered mountains of northern Thorne. A volunteer work opportunity has arisen, and you are all volunteers. If you do well enough at your assigned task, perhaps your prisoner status will be re-evaluated. Or perhaps your supervisor will take all the credit for themselves and throw you right back where you came from. Life's unfair sometimes! You'll at least be given a nice set of boots and heavier clothes to keep you warm.

Your task: to harvest as much crystal as you can from the burrow of a Giant Frostwurm. From June to September, the Frostwurm hibernates and is generally non-aggressive. Huge and territorial, Giant Frostwurms are only rarely encountered and are considered endangered by Thornean biologists. All known Frostwurm habitats are marked and harvested once every few years as the crystals that grow on its body are highly valuable for use in medicine and, erm, recreation although the latter is frowned upon by Thornean authorities. Don't worry, you don't have to touch the Frostwurm itself, it sheds every now and then and leaves a healthy supply of crystals in the tunnels of it burrow.

That's not to say it will be an easy task. There's a reason they're using "volunteer" prison labor, after all. The tunnels are deep and labyrinthine, and it's easy enough to get lost down there and wander in circles until you die of thirst or starvation. The crystals themselves also have a certain disorienting effect that turns hallucinogenic after prolonged exposure and, because of the Frostwurm's unique psychic properties, hallucinations can be shared between individuals. Like a contagion, spending time around someone who is hallucinating can cause it to 'catch'. These hallucinations may be pleasant or frightening, but the only cure is to get out of the tunnels and away from the crystals for a while.

Tunnel cave-ins are also a possibility, in which case you best start digging and hope you choose up. Getting too lost can result in an encounter with the Frostwurm, and while it needs to conserve energy and won't give chase, it'll bite or whip at you with its tail if you get too close. Both prisoners and supervisors are instructed not to kill the Frostwurm under any circumstances, even if it means sacrificing someone in their party. They're endangered, after all!

If your character has been welcomed to Thorne but you still wish to go on the Frostwurm excursion, they can volunteer to be a supervisor. There are currently 24 prisoners and they will be divided into groups of 3, so we will accept a maximum of 8 supervisors (potentially less depending on how many prisoners stay behind to help with the festival). Be aware that supervisors will be in danger as well, and they will be punished if they try to help the prisoners escape, but unlike the prisoners they will be paid for their efforts and seen as having initiative by the Thornean authorities. If you wish to be a supervisor, volunteer on our OOC plotting post.

The timeline for this part of the event is as follows:
June 14th: Prisoners will be led from their cells in chains to a Thornean fast-travel portal (a glowing circle of neon light) that will take them about a mile away from the Frostwurm's burrow. It's cold and the air is thin, so they'll be given the rest of the day to rest and acclimate before being sent inside.

June 15th-18th: Down in the tunnels with you! Characters are sent into the tunnels and can experience any of the effects listed above. If your party makes it out after sunset they'll be permitted to sleep in a tent, if they're lost then they will sleep in the tunnels. On the 18th, anyone who comes out alive will not have to go back in and the supply of crystals will be counted.

June 19th: Today would be the day of the Summer Festival, if they were back at Castle Thorne, but their captors aren't completely merciless. The prisoners and supervisors will be marched back to the fast-travel portal, where a small feast has been set up for them. It isn't as glamorous as what's back in Thorne, but it's the best meal the prisoners have been served since they arrived. And, as a bonus, the guards might slip you some alcohol if you did a good job in collecting the crystals.
Please visit the accompanying OOC plotting post to choose your team of three, and a supervisor if your group has one (groups without PC supervisors will be sent off on their own with no NPC supervisor). This event is designed to have some element of risk to it (but no one will die, don't worry!) so while you can plan what happens to your characters out with your group if you like, we also encourage you to post an action or two to our IC Consequences header below and leave it up to chance. Who knows, something awesome might happen.




Questions


Will there be any mod NPCing during this event?
The three visits with Lyle will be NPCed but other than that, no. Feel free to play random townies, guards, or black market sellers on your own!

Can I try to free the prisoners/can my imprisoned character break out?
Ambrose will be willing to hear cases for prisoner freedom after the event has concluded. You can try to smuggle the prisoners out of town during the festival or escape from the mountain, and prisoners can try to escape, but they will be caught and punished at this stage. Please post to the appropriate header below if you wish to have your character try!

Are the prisoners still powerless?
Yep! Don't worry, inmates, there'll be opportunities to be released for good behavior OR do a prison break soon. More details about the status of the prisoners will be released after this event.

Can my prisoner or supervisor character break away from their assigned group?
Yes, the tunnels are disorienting so individuals may wander off, especially if they are hallucinating. Feel free to interact with anyone and everyone.

What can the hallucinations entail?
Anything! They can think they're being chased, imagine a portal to a green oasis or even scenery from their own homeworld, and anything else you can come up with. They won't be real or tangible so nothing will remain of them once the affected characters are recovered (unless a special mod consequence is given...) but as stated above they can be shared between characters so everyone can see the same thing.

Can my character attend both the Summer Festival and the mission in the tunnels?
Alas, no. Both events will take the whole week, so it's one or the other!



rehandle: (264)

[personal profile] rehandle 2021-06-25 10:20 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Yeah. It must be a relief to have at least one another person to not need to maintain a dual identity for. Stephen can't relate in quite the same way - he's a sorcerer in a magician's world, magic isn't anything that needs hiding - but it is something of a relief to have another person here with some context on who and what he is, and where they came from. The lives differ, but this Peter seems to know him better than he would necessarily expect.

More to the point, he knows a him Stephen doesn't know. And he doesn't know the recent history he's coming from, the life-altering events that are bound to sit in the crevices of any working relationship he might form with Wilson and Barnes.

It's a blank slate sort of an anchoring point. Unexpected but not unwelcome.

It does beg some questions though, every Doc another pull of curiosity toward a life he's never lived. His tone has shed any hesitation when he does an abrupt flip of the subject, put-on doubt colouring the question - ]


— By housesit, you mean the Sanctum?

[ He can imagine letting Peter in, but leaving him unsupervised? That's a harder sell. ]
webshoots: (( face ) who still uses landlines?)

[personal profile] webshoots 2021-06-26 07:38 am (UTC)(link)
[ the question elicits a momentary furrowing of brows, something between surprise and curiosity bookended by a second of hesitation because there it is: the doubt, the at-this-point comfortingly familiar (and peter thinks, deeply innate) sternness of stephen that results in a carefully intoned answer of: ] —Yes.

[ stephen absolutely did not let him housesit. however, peter sees no reason to at this second elaborate on the fact that the chain of events was more akin to: peter let himself in, stephen wasn't there, so he chilled out for a while waiting for the good doctor-slash-sorcerer to return. like, sure, in a manner of speaking, he housesat, but not by any metric that stephen strange would agree to.

(or did agree to, as it turned out. whatever. no harm, no foul. peter's calling it housesitting, so housesitting it will remain up to and until (this) stephen completely, wholly, entirely calls his bluff.)

more to the point, it's a condensed way of saying — we've got history, I tried to help you out this one time when you decided to quit being you for a while, you let me talk to an actual spider and it was terrible, I ask for your help whenever I do anything particularly stupid and reckless and magic's involved, you tell me off for being stupid and reckless but ultimately help me out even when I completely ignore your advice about 'not straying too far' from defined paths in the astral plane etcetera etcetera. and once I maybe helped you stop dormammu from invading new york.

you know, history. ]


Do you have other houses? [ a breath. that's really not overly important right now. ] I'm beginning to think I should have led with something else. [ peter glances around the tent, in spite of the fact that stephen's focus is now entirely not on the contents of the tent. ] Do they have magical x-ray tools too?
rehandle: (pic#12484742)

[personal profile] rehandle 2021-06-26 08:39 am (UTC)(link)
[ It's a yes that sounds an awful lot like a story he's not being told, and he makes absolutely no effort to hide the scepticism in his steadily dipping brow or the deliberate downward curve of his mouth. There's a pointed sure in him somewhere, considering emerging, but Peter doesn't leave time for that before pushing swiftly on, one question then two, and Stephen allows the doubtfulness of his expression to keep the engine running on the abandoned train of conversation as he skips forward to join Peter at the end of the line.

Dryly: ]


Not in my tent in a labour camp somewhere high on a Thornean mountain, but maybe.

[ That was the most impressively transparent change of subject he's heard in a while and he's about to remark as much when it occurs to him that it— might not have been. He's not seen any evidence of potential serious injury during Peter's admittedly brief time in the tent, but... ]

Have you been hurt?

[ His tonal shift is abrupt and absolute, this question offering no room to squirm too far in any one direction without the promise of being followed. It's a broad question, one to which the answer is an inevitable yes, but he doesn't narrow it. If there's something that needs tending to now he can tend it, and if there are further reports of abuse of limited power - those he can sort later. Stephen's attention ups in its intensity, gone swiftly from curious onlooker to field doctor in process of diagnosis, looking for any little tells in stance or motion that might speak to harm. He doesn't move from where he's sat on the edge of his cot but if Peter was hoping to distract, he'll now find himself very much under the microscope. ]
Edited 2021-06-26 08:41 (UTC)
webshoots: (( face ) family business was just so)

[personal profile] webshoots 2021-07-01 06:54 pm (UTC)(link)
[ peter skips past acknowledging the doubt and scepticism in stephen's face up to and until he asks a question of his own. it stops peter's own train of thought quite abruptly, and his features scrunch together in a cringe before he answers. ]

No, but I can see why you'd ask that.

[ or rather: not recently, and not to any quantifiable degree that peter would admit to, anyway. the dungeons aren't pleasant, that's a definite, and though he's had periods of time without his spider-sense, it has been a while since peter has been utterly, totally devoid of all his abilities. the spider-sense he can and has learnt to live without, not just now, but before; the lack of strength and healing and the somewhat subpar eyesight that actually does require glasses? yeah, he's dealt with those sort of-somewhat-kinda recently, but it had been — brief.

anything else — anything injuries that ran the gamut of 'mundane' — aching, bruising, slight twinges that may be a side-effect of his lifestyle or may just be Things That Happen Past 30 — those are all just things he's grown accustomed to over the last fifteen or so years. or: life in spandex, y'know?

a remark echoing the sentiment is on the tip of his tongue, and whilst he doesn't get as far as verbalising it — for better or worse, he decides the better of it — it's mirrored in his expression. for all other differences though, that — the brusque stubbornness and questionable bedside manner in the face of harm — leaves him with absolutely no doubt that this is a stephen strange. ]
—But if you're offering me a memory foam mattress, I'm not going to say no. [ it's punctuated by a pause, one in which peter does take a moment to (re)consider. it's not so much for himself, but more with regards to the situation at large, and he glances back towards the entrance of the tent.

he inhales. ]
I'm not trying to be coy. I know— [ he waves a hand. it's an imprecise gesture, one that does a terrible job of conveying the intended sentiment of 'I know I'm a prisoner; I know I'm not spider-man'. he's aware, too, that he's prone to being impulsive and reckless, but after conversation with other prisoners, he thinks that he's both more aware of his own limitations and that now is not the time to do anything rash.

(yeah, okay, that'd probably-absolutely-definitely be different if he weren't just (JUST) peter parker, but hypocrisy is basically his middle name, so what? ]
I think you're going to have other people to worry about, Doc. [ escape had entered his thoughts, had been a fantasy he'd entertained, but—

not now. ]
rehandle: (pic#12484580)

[personal profile] rehandle 2021-07-05 11:19 pm (UTC)(link)
It's a little too late to tell me that.

[ He's already got other people to worry about: past, present, future. One determined escape attempt leading to a young man wandering lost in the tunnels, one who knows what ending in a sprain that put him at very recent odds with the guards on duty, and the inevitability of further bolts for the frozen hills on the part of the three currently under his direct supervision. Not to mention his determination to treat anyone who does not treat themselves, the lingering promise of more than just his wayward trio making their breaks for it, and the whole hallucinogenic worm residue collection situation that binds them all together.

None of it's a particularly decent recipe for having nobody but Peter Parker to worry about. And none of it is going to make him any less likely to keep a sharp eye on him all the same.

Especially given that little display of self-deprecating reassurance.

Stephen's time without his magic was exceptionally brief and never total. He's not sure what he'd have done if it had lasted longer than it did. Peter finds himself in the position not only of being a prisoner in a foreign universe, but stripped of so many of the things he knows full well they all have a horrible habit of building their identities around. The situation isn't comparable, but Stephen knows what it is to find yourself devoid of the thing you define yourself by. His sense of self-worth really hadn't done so well - and he hadn't had multiversal abduction and immediate human rights infringing imprisonment to contend with.

So, hurt or not hurt, other people to worry about or not, he makes a mental note to keep an eye out. It's not that he doesn't believe him when he implies he's not going to be the one Stephen needs to be aware of. It's just that he doesn't necessarily agree.

His focus is briefly absolute, gaze intent... then he huffs out a sigh, attention dropping down to the bandage in his hands and the satchel and little selection of supplies at his feet. Coming to a decision, he holds the still mostly unravelled bandage out to be taken.

Peter looks like he could do with something to focus his hands. ]


Anyone in particular I should be concerned about, or was that a general prophecy?