EVENT #8: MÆRE - IC POST (FACTION INTERVENTION)

[abraxasmods]

Event #8 - Mære (Intervention)

go to the OOC event info and plotting post or the main IC event post.

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While it is each Summoned who is the focus of their Entity's ire, they are not the only ones who seem aware of its movements. The factions will soon approach each Summoned with an offer: work with them to help contain the threat and aid the suffering of you and your friends.

Please post your top level under your character's faction heading comment. Players are completely free to organize among themselves how they wish to play these threads out. You may make a traditional top level, join or create a free-for-all thread where anyone can tag in at any time, or whatever you like. Just be sure to communicate with everyone you'll be threading with!

For any questions, please ask on our question thread.

THORNE | FREE CITIES | SOLVUNN

Kingdom of Thorne

In CASTLE THORNE, Ambrose's most promising assistant mage Jolene has been having frightful dreams of late. Though she writes it off at first as regular nightmares, when she catches glimpse of a hulking shadow walking in the Castle's halls that looks exactly like one of the horrors she's witnessed, she instantly knows that something else is at play. She immediately meets with Ambrose who opens up one of the castle's most secluded experimentation rooms, located deep underground.

The Summoned of Thorne will be asked by Jolene to assist with an urgent matter that cannot just be left to the Thornean mages. If they agree, they will be led by Jolene and her assistant mages down to the underground corridor. Guards are posted outside of the rooms for security, but the Summoned and the mages will otherwise have free reign over the rooms. Inside they will find an array of tomes, scrolls, elixirs, and alchemy sets. Though not everyone will know how to use these, they will be told that the castle may be under siege from beings unknown and that the Summoned are their only hope in coming up with a new method to expel them from this realm.

Preparation

The Summoned will skim the scrolls and tomes, consult with the assistant mages on the equipment, and use their own inherent abilities through their connection with the Singularity to inscribe and create a new spell to bind and banish the Entities from Abraxas. Some of the tomes may be a codex that requires solving a puzzle to open while there may be boxes locked by enchantments that might contain special items to aid them in their research. For the less magically inclined who wish to help, items such as scrolls, potion ingredients, and notes will also need to be gathered and organized. It will take some time and once they have what they believe is a workable incantation, they will have to test it.

While you're free to have your character succeed or fail at interpreting certain codex or refining certain spells, within reason, if you'd like to have a mod roll for you, leave a comment here with what you're seeking to accomplish and we will determine both your rate of success and any consequences!

Performing the Spell

To begin the spell, all those involved will be led to a final room at the end of the corridor that is laced with silver inscriptions along the doorway, pulsating with ambient magic. A soft whisper from Jolene will grant them access inside. There, a shallow pool of water no more than a foot deep sits in a circle in the center of the room. The Summoned will be instructed to stand in a circle inside the pool and join hands at the edges. The door will close behind them and the experiment will begin.

The mages will rub an elixir on their hands and begin the incantation. At first, the room is still and silent except for the chanting of the spell. Then candles will flicker out and the water beneath their feet will glow, gurgling and bubbling as though boiling - except the temperature remains surprisingly cool. The Entity of each of the gathered Summoned will take shape in the water, towering above the circle in liquid form. Any Summoned with a connection to it may feel dizzy when it manifests as if the image is being pulled directly out of their subconscious. These liquid forms will lash out at everyone in the circle, but as long as they don't break the line of joined hands, it remains contained.

If someone breaks the circle, the water will begin to hiss and freeze, turning icy cold. Quickly rejoin the circle before the water solidifies the Entity into a living icy statue, or risk being consumed with it.

Eventually, the Entity will explode in a burst of water, soaking those in the circle. Then the incantation begins again to bring another Entity forth. Rinse and repeat.

When each Entity is accounted for, the experiment will end. The doors are opened and the Summoned are bid to return to their chambers for some well-deserved rest. But rest will not find them. For the next 3 days, they will feel exhausted and irritable, but unable to sleep.

The Free Cities

In the FREE CITIES, all is not well in the capitol. Aleksander reports seeing the reflections of several strange beings in his lab equipment. After his prized pigeon Nicola let out a terrified squawk, he turned to Cadens leadership to report the incidents. Try as he might to track down its source, all he was able to discern was a vague resonance not unlike that tracked when close to the Singularity which turns attentions immediately towards the Summoned.

Preparation

With Marlo's blessing, Aleksander travels with a group of Summoned volunteers, his own laboratory assistants, and a small brigade of the Cadens Military to escort them all to an outpost in the eastern deserts. Flanked by soldiers, the Summoned will be instructed they are to retrieve crystals located in the mines below the outpost. The soldiers are only there to make sure nothing untoward happens to these outstanding volunteers, of course.

Those who are familiar with the different types of crystals from the science academies will recognize these are not quite the same as those carefully mined and cultivated in Cadens for hefty experiments. Instead, these are duller, and more brittle. Gathering them will take effort, and the mines are slippery and dangerous in some parts. Watch your step or risk the ground crumbling beneath you.

While you're free to have your character succeed or fail at gathering crystals at your discretion, if you'd like to have a mod roll for you for whether they will slip and fall, if any of the crystals will break, or even conflict involving another character, etc., leave a comment here with what you're seeking to accomplish and we will determine both your rate of success and any consequences!

Performing the Experiment

The Summoned will have a moment to rest as their bounty is cleaned and set up in a claustrophobic laboratory room located underground. The rest will be important as Aleksander explains that it is only their energy and connection to the Singularity that can power these crystals. What are they for, exactly? His only response is "you will see soon enough".

They will be provided these special gloves and the Summoned can take turns laying their hands on a large glass structure reinforced with steel that contains these crystals. Even those without a magical inclination will find that their life energy is enough, causing the crystals within the glass to vibrate with their touch. Hours will be spent in this small room and as time passes on, the reflections that Aleksander had glimpsed in his laboratory begin to show themselves inside the crystals. What's more, while Aleksander could not identify what they were, the collected Summoned in the room will recognize them immediately as their own Entities. Their Entities that now, upon seeing their progenitors, will try to break free.

Aleksander nor his assistants can explain how this is possible, but the Summoned will find that channeling their energy through the gloved devices may cause small bursts inside the crystals as if they themselves have some control over that environment. Phantom bindings or hands created inside the crystals will keep the Entities at bay...if they try hard enough. Should anyone falter, the surface of the crystals will begin to crack. These cracks will grow larger and larger, and characters will either need to gather their strength or find aid in those around them before the Entity bursts free altogether. The gloved devices themselves may also prove to be an issue if they break during the process - and may need to be quickly repaired on the spot, however possible.

The effort will be exhausting, but they will be rewarded in the end as the crystals grow heated, splintering the glass container but retaining the Entities within the crystals themselves, trapped inside. Researchers will hurry into the room to make sure everyone is all right and to move the crystals into a more secure container. The Summoned volunteers will be thanked for their efforts and escorted back to Cadens by the soldiers. Aleskander and his assistants stay behind at the outpost to perform further research and appropriately contain the crystals. The Summoned will experience grogginess, headaches, and some weakness in the 3 days that follow.

Solvunn Commune

In the SOLVUNN COMMUNE, those on the Council are considered close to the Gods. When Rowan is given an ominous vision of mysterious beings found nowhere known in Abraxas, it falls to reason that the Gods are bidding those they brought to this world to deal with them. He can be seen early in the morning making his way across the town in the Primary Settlement to speak with Winifred and the Council itself is inaccessible for several hours. Later that day, Rowan emerges once again accompanied by several of the Commune's mages, usually seen leading ceremonies and other religious practices throughout the year.

Preparation

The mages and Rowan will beseech the Summoned of Solvunn, that the time has come for them to perform the acts with which the Gods had brought them hither. With their special connection to the magics of this world, they can help save the Commune and restore natural order to the world by ridding the land of unwelcome phantoms. That the Summoned agree to this is of utmost importance as their devotion and willpower plays a large part in their effectiveness against such threats. The Gods will know their intent, the mages say. And it is the Gods who need their aid.

Those who agree will accompany Rowan and the mages out of the Primary Settlement into the hills around Solvunn into a small wooded area. There, they will come upon an old unsettling ritual site. Before they have time to question the statues, they will be told to seek out specific herbs and plants in the surrounding brush as well as any animal bones they can find. The woods this far out are a little more dangerous. Watch out for some smaller but still dangerous beasts, and be careful of hornets nests and mildly toxic blooms that lurk among the herbs you are meant to gather.

While you're free to have your character disturb hornets or take a tumble at your discretion, if you'd like to have a mod roll for you for whether they will accidentally brush against flowers that leave behind a rash, upset the wildlife, or so forth, leave a comment here with what you're seeking to accomplish and we will determine both your rate of success and any consequences!

Performing the Ritual

Once they have returned to the ritual site, they will be instructed to weave together baskets with their fellow Summoned by intertwining the bones and plants, after the bones have been carved and blessed by the mages. As they work, the mages will close off the area in a line of salt and painted runes. The hour grows dark and the statues themselves begin to take on the appearances of the Entities, raising an alarm among Summoned and mages alike. They bid the Summon to complete the baskets as quickly as possible. Once they are completed, the mages will take the herbs and mix them with curious liquids inside the bowls, magically watertight no matter how well they were woven. The mages then bid the Summoned to repeat a stated prayer of protection to the Gods and drink concoction, which will imbue them with the ability to face the phantoms of their own realm.

Each Summoned will take a drink and find that the statues before them seem to move. The mages hand the Summoned chalk and ask them to write the name of their adversaries on their stone flesh so that the Gods can identify them and send them away. One by one, each possessed statue must be identified and marked as the mages chant, and one by one, they seem to turn to ash. The possessed statues do not wait idly to be caught, some will fight back and need to be tricked or captured so they can be marked. Yet in the end, all will be gone by sunrise.

Those who fail to drink the liquid adequately will find their limbs growing stiff and faltering, as if they, too, are beginning to form into a statue...and that their Entity occupying a statue grows more limber in return, like it means to exchange places. Consuming more of the liquid will cure the afflicted Summoned of these ails.

In the morning the statues that were once possessed have returned to their normal state, but they have moved across the site and are caked in ash. The Summoned will find that they are starving and that their hunger will not abate. The mages will supply them with potions to help deal with the hunger and Rowan will offer cheeses and milk from his farm, though the Summoned will remain ravenous for a 3 days after the ritual.

Comments

wilhelm | ota

[ordinar]

As it turns out, banishing evil and saving the day is a lot more boring than he anticipated. When Wilhelm volunteered — less with the righteousness of someone who strives to do the right thing, and more with the desperation of someone whose sanity hangs by a thread — he worried that he wouldn't be able to contribute anything. But within an hour, he realizes that half the work comprises the mundane and menial. Like scouring bookshelves for volumes on a certain subject, sorting scrolls, delivering notes, fetching little vials of ingredients. Running for coffee, tea, snacks when teammates edge into crabbiness or sag into exhaustion.

Really, it's just a group project, the stakes of which are much higher than any homework assignment. And while he wouldn't describe it as thrilling or even fun, it's better than doing nothing. Better than waiting for night to fall like a guillotine.

As he hands a requested item to a teammate — a stack of notes from another room, a particular tome or vial, a mug of fresh coffee — he can't help but ask:

"So, do you think we're close to figuring this thing out?"

[a_better_man]

"Absolutely no idea."

Mat's honestly feeling a bit useless at this point. Magic is not his area of expertise, he knows less than even an apprentice mage here at the castle. And what he knows...doesn't exactly help with Thornean magic.

"But my eyes are about to begin bleeding. Between exhaustion and reading the same damned paragraph three times in a row..." He sighs and rubs his face and sits back.

"I hope better minds than mine are having better luck."

[ordinar]

A sideways glance at the page spread open on the table reveals to Wilhelm just about the densest paragraph he's ever seen. Half the words he skims over are unfamiliar. He shakes his head in sympathy.

"Your poor eyes." He scratches at the back of his head. "They say you're supposed to take breaks when you're studying. It helps you, like, absorb the information better or something. And this is sort of like studying, so..."

As a hint, he nudges closer the plate of cheese and crackers he'd nabbed from the dining hall. All-nighter fuel.

[a_better_man]

"I think a break is most certainly called for." It's not as though he's doing any good at the moment, and his poor brain is overworking itself.

"I am not an intellectual man. Blood and ashes, I'm lucky I can read at all, plenty of fellows like me never learn. This is like trying to read something written backwards in a language I barely know."

Mat does, indeed, help himself to a bit of food. It certainly can't hurt any, and perhaps the fuel will aide his mind in working a bit better. Why couldn't this be something simple, like catching something? He's damned good at that.

"I can't believe I went from never studying a thing to all of a sudden it's almost all I do."

[ordinar]

Although he's already pegged Mat as coming from somewhere old-fashioned and technologically unfortunate, the comment about reading surprises him. Insulated by enormous amounts of privilege, there's a lot Wilhelm takes for granted. Sighing, he slumps into an empty chair on the adjacent side of the table.

"Yeah, I thought I'd get a break from books here since I don't have to go to school. But..." Rather than finish the sentence, he thrusts a vague gesture toward the nearest stack of books. He rubs at his eyes, hands dragging down his face. "This sucks worse than cramming for any test I've ever taken."

He cared about his grades the requisite amount, but no test ever had such dramatic stakes. He tries not to think about what will happen if they can't pull this off.

"I just want things to go back to normal. Or as normal as they get around here."

[a_better_man]

"It's nice, when things are normal. I know I've said it before, but I like it here. Just not very much at the moment. I've had dark forces fuck with my nightmares before, but it wasn't anything like this."

The Dark One's dreams had at least been brief, and mostly stayed in the realm of dreams. He'd never woken up injured from one.

"I suppose it's more reason to apply myself properly to my magical education. I knew more, I'd be more useful. And it still beats working as a barmaid for tips. I made a terrible barmaid."

At least he can still joke.

[ordinar]

It gets him to crack a smile at least.

"I bet you made terrible tips, too," he teases. The mirth is fleeting, though, as his exhausted mind runs back through what Mat had said. Blowing a strand of hair off his forehead and helping himself to a cracker, he eyes him curiously. "You've had something like this happen before?"

Nearly a month has passed since that well spat him out and he still manages to be surprised by what passes as normal, or at least familiar, to other people. He swears, the most insane disaster could strike, and someone would pipe up to say Oh, I've seen this before. I know what to do.

[a_better_man]

"I did not make very good ones, no. I do better busking."

Which Mat thinks he's not half-bad at. He has a nice little stash of coins, thanks to his playing and juggling in public houses in town.

"Mmm. Sort of. I just meant...I've had my dreams messed with before. Not in this way, it didn't linger in the waking world and it was intentional. A targeted act of dark magic." As far as he knows, there's nothing like the Dark One in this world. And it's affecting near all of them.

"Unpleasant, but not physically dangerous."

[ordinar]

Mat downplays the experience as disturbing rather than outright dangerous, but the fact that he was apparently targeted has Wilhelm raising his eyebrows. It was already clear that they've led very different lives, which seem to diverge further the more he learns about him.

"So what evil sorcerer did you piss off?" he asks, idly toeing the table leg. His tone hovers uncertainly between facetious quip and serious question. Add this to the list of sentences he never expected to utter.

[a_better_man]

Mat shakes his head.

"No, wasn't like that. It's hard to explain. Mmmm..." He ponders the simplest way to explain as much as he wants to explain.

"The brief version is there's a terrible and powerful evil force that exists and has existed since before the Creator created mankind. He's sealed away, but he can still touch the world when he tries. Influence people's dreams. He was fucking with my village."

It's not as though Mat has been the only one with a dark visitor in his dreams. Rand and Perrin dreamed of the same. He's sure the girls did, too.

[ordinar]

What can he even say to that? It sounds like something straight out of legend — forces of good and evil, a village in need of saving. Never mind out of water, he's a fish trying to navigate the stratosphere. It shows in his countenance, shades of uncertainty and concern.

"Hope he stays sealed away. Or that somebody can find a way to seal him up better."

How any of that works is Wilhelm's best guess. He continues to scuff up the table leg with the toe of his boot — a subconscious act, the result of his overwhelmed nerves needing somewhere to spill. Hopefully the mages aren't too fussy with the furniture in these chambers.

"I guess that's sort of like what we're trying to do here."

[a_better_man]

"I hope so, too."

And maybe he will, with Mat removed from that world. No-one else could let him out. But none of that is anything Wilhelm needs be burdened with.

"I guess you're right. I think some things...they can't be destroyed, so sealing them up and locking them away is the next best thing. But whatever we end up doing, I damn well hope it works."

One thing has been made abundantly clear, however. He is not prepared to live in this world. While his own has similar magic, his village had been so far removed from it all. Channeling was just something he heard stories about. And the magic here....

"And I can tell you this, I'm going to start taking my magic education a lot more seriously from here. Feels shitty to not understand what's happening or how to help or anything."

[ordinar]

Sealing them up and locking them away. It's a little bit like repressing bad memories or feelings you don't want to feel anymore. And that's sort of what that nightmarish shadowy entity is to Wilhelm: an outgrowth of those crushing feelings.

"That's admirable of you," he says without a trace of sarcasm. He feels a share of that guilt, for not being able to help more. But he's not sure if he feels the same drive to improve. The thought of dedicating himself to too much of anything is a little overwhelming.

"Hey, if that book is making you go cross-eyed," he says, fishing a scrap of paper out of his pocket and waving it a bit to draw Mat's attention, "you could help me find all these weird ingredients. They're for...something to do with the spell."

That's as detailed of an explanation as he's equipped to provide. Somebody had scribbled down the list of spell components and passed it to him, and that was all. It's not in his job description to understand what's happening.

[londonbound]

Rhy takes the book with an exaggerated shrug, letting it fall with a thump and an accompanying puff of dust on the table. He wrinkles his nose at it, and the whole pile of old and equally dusty tomes he's collected, looking for some symbols Kell had drawn on a piece of parchment pinned under a bottle of wine nearby.

"Why ask me? I'm just here to look pretty -- for moral support, you see."

He quips, but he does seem to be working. Or trying to. Rhy stifles a sigh, leaning back in his chair to look up at the young man standing by the table. One of the more recent arrivals, to whom Rhy has introduced himself in passing during Kylo's usual 'gather the newcomers and teach them about the Horizon' get-together.

"Wilhelm, was it? Sit. If you haven't anything else to do. I could use a break."

[ordinar]

Having only a negligible idea of what's going on — and a very fragmented one at that, thanks to all his coming and going — Wilhelm assumes that everyone else in the room must have a better sense of the group's progress. He's just the kid in the back of the car asking Are we there yet? While he's frustrated to have no clearer answer, he's also strangely relieved to know that he isn't the only clueless one here.

At Rhy's invitation, he sags into an open chair. His eyes wander over the symbols sketched onto the parchment Rhy seems to have been consulting, but it's a cursory excursion. His brain is spinning from all this magic script and he's not even trying to decipher any of it.

"Sorry, but I don't think the moral support thing is working out too well," he says, puffing his cheeks with a sigh.

[londonbound]

Rhy's eyebrows shoot up, in an exaggeratedly put-upon expression.

"Whaat? That's rude! I suppose I'll just have to try harder."

He picks up the bottle, pouring some into a glass and sliding it across the tabletop at his new companion.

"This should help."

No, he has not considered that not everyone is a lush who uses alcohol as a crutch. That's normal, right.

[ordinar]

The cool thing about living in an archaic fantasy realm is that nobody even pauses to wonder how old you are before thrusting alcohol your way. Wilhelm isn't a habitual drinker — it's something to do at parties, because everyone else is doing it and it magically dismantles the minefield of socializing. All the same, he needs no encouragement to scoop up the glass of wine when it's offered.

"Thanks."

He raises his glass to Rhy in a half-hearted toast, as if exhaustion has made his limbs more receptive to gravity, and tips back a gulp. None of that sommelier, swirl-and-sniff-the-bouquet stuff.

"So, this is awesome." Sarcasm shadows this declaration.

[londonbound]

Rhy takes a drink straight from the bottle. Comes back up with a grunt and a shrug.

"It's all right. I've had better."

He is aware Wilhelm didn't mean the wine, but what else is there to say? They've agreed to help. At least, he has. If the other young man finds it so tedious, no one's forcing him to stay.

"I imagine you didn't wander in here by accident and get stuck fetching books and parchment for someone. You volunteered like the rest of us, didn't you?"

Rhy's tone is mild, curious more than accusatory. Wilhelm had looked a little lost, but maybe he just needs direction. Rhy understands that all too well. Without Kell and Stephen, he would feel even more useless than he already does.

[ordinar]

Whether Rhy intended it as a reprimand or not, Wilhelm looks chastised with his gaze dropping to his wine. He spills a sigh. Rubs at his eyebrow, drags his hand down his face.

"I know, I know, I wanted to help," he explains with the singular defensiveness of youth. "The way things have been, I can hardly relax anyway. So I might as well be here..."

With not nearly enough diversions to occupy his hours, he ends up spending most of the day startling at shadows that, in the peripherals of his vision, morph into the menacing figure of his nightmares. Dreading nightfall. Slowly going insane. Productive tedium is a fair alternative.

"That doesn't mean I can't complain."

[londonbound]

"Certainly, you can. And you may as well do it alongside making yourself useful."

Saints, he's starting to sound like Kell. Soon, he's going to start developing a little wrinkle between his brows like him too.

Rhy runs a hand over his own face, muffling a sigh and taking a few moments to stare up at the ceiling. Then, back at Wilhelm.

He takes the parchment with the drawn-on symbols and turns it to face his companion, sliding it across the table for Wilhelm to get a better look.

"I'm looking through this stack of books for symbols that match up with any of these. Stay and lend a hand. We can be bored together, but at least it counts as doing something that's not staring out the window waiting for nightfall again."

[ordinar]

Wilhelm concedes with a nod, shoving a hand through his hair. Now that he's sat down, standing up again seems an onerous prospect, so he reaches across Rhy to pull the topmost book from the stack. Cracking it open, he tries not to be daunted by all the diagrams and sigils and indecipherable jargon his eyes glide over. All he has to do is look for symbols that match the set on the parchment. It shouldn't be that hard.

As if to prepare himself for the work, he downs another swig of wine. He's never paired drinking with something so unequivocally not fun before, and maybe now isn't the best time to experiment, but...well, his record for making sound decisions isn't the best either.

Despite the state of things, a grin tugs at his lips as he jabs a glance Rhy's way.

"What happened to just being here to look pretty?"

[londonbound]

Life lesson number one: Drinking makes non-fun things tolerable. You're on the right track, kid.

Rhy grins back, flashing his dimples and adding his most disarming wink for good measure.

"I'm doing both. A man must know how to look charming even doing the most mundane and tedious of tasks. What if a handsome young stranger happened to walk by, complain about the state of things, and wish to share a drink?"

[ordinar]

It hits him like a brick to the face that, oh, Rhy is flirting with him. And he takes it with about as much grace as he would a brick to the face. His grin stutters, an awkward laugh popping out as he shakes his head.

Of course he thinks of Simon — he thinks about him all the damn time. Tangled up in Wilhelm's sheets, laughing up at him, calling him an idiot because that was their version of flirting. He thinks of how nobody here has seen that damn video or has any idea who he is. The heady feeling of freedom, the chance to shape himself as he wants away from the confines of the royal family.

All of this crashes through his head in the span of about five seconds. His eyes dip to the book spread open before him, but without actually discerning anything on the page, as he realizes he has to say something.

"I guess if nothing else, that's working out all right," he finally lands on. Nailed it.

Immediately, he busies himself with more wine. But before his attention returns to the task at hand, he spares a surreptitious glance at Rhy.

[londonbound]

"Is it? Well, that's a relief!"

If Rhy noticed Wilhelm being awkward, he makes no sign of it. Just smiles innocently, then reaches over to pour some more wine into the young man's glass.

"Here. To fortify you as you work."

When he's done, he follows his own advice and takes a drink from whatever is left in the bottle.

Then, when he comes up for air, he is a little more serious. Reassuring.

"It won't last, you know. There are learned magicians working on this. They'll figure it out."

[ordinar]

Oh, is he grateful that Rhy at least politely pretends that his response passed muster. In the shadow of this casual exchange lingers a quiet ache of guilt — even though it was over between them, even though he might not ever see Simon again at all — but the salve for that surely lies somewhere at the bottom of this glass.

As Rhy tops him off again, replenishing the inch or so he'd already drained, Wilhelm worries he might be burning through it too fast. But then...Rhy is drinking straight from the bottle, so he's probably doing all right.

"I hope so. I can't keep doing this. Not this," he clarifies, tapping the page he's only begun to study. "But, you know...the nightmares."