usir | Event #7 Crowning the Cat & The Celebration of Spring


🜙 Crowning the Cat: Deception of Aegas

	The Celebration of Spring is being held across Idan, and normally the City of the Free Peoples is at its heart. This year due to the fearful farmers suffering losses in their families and herds to werewolves and the broken city torn between its fears and loyalties, the first sprouts of crops planted during the thaw are significantly less impressive than past years and the hunters bring their hauls back to the cities find themselves facing even more dangerous odds in the wilderness, outwitted and outmatched more often than not. Feasting, dancing, music, staged entertainers of illusion and elemental magic, and heavy drinking still overtake the cities and small outlying villages, putting a temporary halt to any work or other priorities, but there is an air of uncertainty that can't fully be shaken, and an uneasy and unspoken fear of a famine year lies just beneath the lighter festivities. Among the celebrating, people go out of their way to honor the feline constellation deity called Aegas. The youngest of the Constellation Deities, he is known for many things. Aegas' stars are fainter in the skies than most, seen just off the left from the Great Golden Dragon Atromo. In April, Aegas is not honored so much as tributed to keep the fickle feline's wiles and tricks at bay. Children and younger citizens of the cities or those with playful or devious minds play tricks on one another, some harmless pranks and others far more dangerous or deceptive. Despite this uptick of shenanigans, however, for most Aegas' day is a day spent ensuring the secretive trickster cat deity that he has not been forgotten, as well as a celebration of Spring. Openly jealous of Atromo's status and reverence, and long overlooked in favor of the other star gods, the people of Idan learned to show their reverence for Aegas in a ritual known as the Crowning of Aegas. Cat sculptures, paintings, figurines, or idols can be found all across Idan for those who can't make it to one of Aegas' shrines, and offerings of fish, sheep or goat's milk, silver or gold bells, silk, or saucers of water are left out for the many wild, stray, or tame felines of Idan to take at their leisure. Known for being a deity over secrets, pleasure, trickery, and charm, Aegas is a favored god of rogues, assassins, bards, bandits, thieves, and charmers. An enchanted spring illness common in Idan has long been attributed to Aegas not feeling that his charms have earned him the favor of the people. The illness is known as The Aegas Affliction and is actually caused by the pollen of a flower that blooms in April after particularly harsh winters (the Golden Bellflower) Aegas' Affliction causes those who have caught the illness to be easily charmed. Their complexion is often flushed and they give in to their whims with very little self-restraint. The main symptoms are: Susceptibility to personal suggestion (Their own whims, thoughts, and desires), susceptibility to charm-based magic, a tendency to be secretive or deceptive, and a heightened sense of hunger. The illness usually goes away on its own within 1-3 days and has no known cure. It's possible to get infected by Golden Bellflower pollen from April 5th to April 30th anywhere in Idan. Only exposure to a nearby flower is necessary. During the Crowning of Aegas and for the rest of April flocks of lesser winged cats can be seen migrating from their winter homes in the Wavecrest Isles back to the unclaimed lands. Occasionally these flocks of small, canary to bobcat-sized winged cats are accompanied by fiercely protective and dangerous greater winged cat guardians while other flocks travel on their own. The playful smaller felines can be seen frolicking in fields and playing over the rooftops all across Idan while the greater winged cats stay far from the highly populated areas, hunting the wild forests, cliffs, and open lands to stock up food for them and their small flocks of fur and feathered friends.


🜙 The Bloom

	Among the celebrating the dangers of spring are temporarily forgotten. Not all threats come with fangs, talons, and claws. Creeping vines and sprouting plants lurk in the tall grasses of the plains and the dense forests. Some of the more dangerous varieties bloom and thrive in the earliest month of spring. Viperlily. A small free-roaming flowering vine with two thorns that protrude from the middle of its flower. The vine slithers along the ground in the grass toward sources of movement or sound and sinks its thorns into the feet or lower limbs of any living thing it encounters. The vine subsists on blood rather than water and uses the gathered blood to provide itself with the nutrients it needs to keep moving. It injects its victim with a venom that causes them to become weak, sluggish, and unable to use their magic so it can continue to drain blood. Most Viperlilys are too small to cause much permanent damage to their victim, but being left vulnerable in the wilderness does lead to many post-bite deaths, especially with the smell of blood in the air. Bloodthorn. A dying Viperlily that has gone dormant and taken root. Small Viperlily seeds grow all over its vines, each one prepared to drop off and grow into a new Viperlily. A thorn protrudes from the bloody sap-filled bulb of this vine. It points up toward the sun with a thorn as sharp and dangerous as a needle dagger. Those unfortunate enough to be stabbed by its thorn are injected with a modified Viperlily poison that causes victims to become feverish and reckless, encouraging them to remain nearby and engage anything near the Bloodthorn aggressively. The bloodshed caused by its victims or the Bloodthorn's own destruction causes the dozens of Viperlily seeds to sprout and take off to find their first meals. Creeping Dragontrap. A member of the carnivorous plant family, the Creeping Dragontrap is a fully mobile creeping vine with one to four heads that each have thorn-filled 'mouths' they snap down on the prey they find. The acidic toxins inside their mouths prevent their prey from being able to fight free on their own. An antitoxin is produced by the sap within their vines, but a victim captured by one of these plants will need help getting free and provided with the antitoxin before the vine escapes in a speedy retreat into the wilderness or ground. Rogue's Blush. The dense cover of this flowering ground vine is a network of sensitive thin vines can sense vibrations in the ground. The night-flowering vine is covered in dormant flowers that open in the darkness. They release pollen into the air when vibrations are sensed nearby. This pollen is collected and used in a common rogue tool: Flash Dust because eye contact with the pollen results in a blinding white flash that causes temporary blindness for 24 hours. Bramble Mimic can shape its vines into any form it has collected a template of. The thorny brambles rest in the form of a dense bush, usually settling itself partially into worn paths made by creatures or people. It uses the blood it collects from creatures or people that bump into it as a template to rearrange itself into their form, though its size is dependent on how large the original mimic has grown. It then uses its new form to hunt for food to sustain itself, holding a natural preference for predators, carnivores, and herbivores. The most common forms are those of predatory forest or swamp creatures such as jaguars, bears, wolves, and alligators.

🜙 A Mod Note

	A "Network log" will be going up the week of the 19th that will be paired with the next event log. The network log will contain courier messages from Queen Adira, King Ardis, King Sitka, Self-Crowned King Koroc, Resistance and Rebel Leader Lorna, Former Defenders Captain Lykos, and Former Defenders Lieutenant Alice. Player characters will be able to ask these leaders questions and attempt to communicate with them personally if they wish.

🜙 Top

⤛ Navigation

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Is this a joke? Strange honestly isn't sure if this is Daud trying to make a joke or if the tiefling's being serious. He can't help but raise an eyebrow as he responds.

"Most people smile when they tell a joke. I'm not going to write a book about something we've all decided to keep secret."

For...some reason. Come to think of it, why had everyone decided to keep their awakened status a secret?

No comment on the smile thing, but when Strange asserts he has no intention of novelizing their current experiences, Daud can only shrug.

"I think you're inclined to write a book about whatever you find interesting, whether it's meant to be a secret or not." He says instead, calmly. "Though at present, I doubt the cities would look favorably on any aspect of what we know about us."

"Then you obviously don't know how books work." The more Strange talks, the more it's obvious that he's talking from his own experiences in the publishing process.

"You can write articles on theories, but not an entire book. I'd need more proof, something solid that confirms my theories, before I'd have enough of a foundation to make a solid defense. Otherwise, I'm just giving my opponents enough rope to hang myself."

Does he even have opponents here? Strange isn't sure. But the moment he goes public about his various theories on the dragons and the awakened, he'll end up having opponents of some kind. That's just how things happened.

"And I suspect that looking favorably part depends on the city. Krimnos is backwater and the City of Free People's is a constant power struggle, but Didymos? They might not look favorably but they'll at least be interested."

"I can't say I've ever had the experience of writing one." Just the idea of it is laughable, really. What would the Knife of Thalassa ever have to say that people would be interested in reading? No, he doesn't have any knowledge that needs to be preserved and set down that way. If he lived like a ghost in life, he may as well remain a ghost in death.

"Seems books are a more bloodthirsty business than I thought."

Interested in them though... that's the last thing he wants, more poking and prying out secrets from him that he may not even belong to himself. That's the most irking thing about it all.

Yeah, it doesn't surprise him in the slightest that Daud hasn't ever written a book. It's a miracle if the man says more than five words in a sentence, Strange isn't entirely sure Daud's capable of expressing what he feels in a way where others can understand.

Still, he can't help but give the other man a wry smile as he continues talking. There are moments like this where Strange misses academia. It isn't everyone's cup of tea, but discussing theories? Talking with fellow magicians and discovering new magic together? Some days he'd give up the world to have that back.

"The world of academic books is bloodthirsty—I doubt friendships have been ended over children's literature." Gods, he hopes friendships haven't been ended over children's literature. "But when one produces regular content that, more often than not, ends up explaining why they think another person's work is wrong, it makes dinner conversations and tea time unbearably awkward."

Event #7 Crowning the Cat & The Celebration of Spring

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject