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Event #7 Crowning the Cat & The Celebration of Spring
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| 🜙 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. | |
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| 🜙 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. | |
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"Far and away in just a few hours... Mm, it sounds nice. But they don't have smaller ones, do they? I ain't the kind of girl to know anythin' about engineering, so can they even make 'em that small?"
It'd be lovely, though. Leaving the trouble here.
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Oh. Right. They're there.
"Tch, you're fine," she turns her attention down to them, "I didn't even knock you off!"
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"Nyaha, what crybabies~" They're babies who have placed their trust in a couple drunks, gods help them. But more importantly-- "Rumors? You been keepin' an ear out for something', haven't ya~?"
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Then they were talking about airships, right? And that's something she's quick to jump back into with what's the closest to innocent excitement that someone like her will ever have shining through.
"But yeah, I have. Heard a few when I was in Krimnos. Someone's been ordering smaller parts for the engines to be custom made. I just don't know who or for what exactly yet."
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"Private travel, maybe? Some people would rather ride in style, right~? Or maybe a trading company." Or both. It was only a matter of time before private air travel became a demand.
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One of the many pains of waking up a stranger in a new land. Good intel was damn hard to find, sometimes.
"So you find out. What're doin' next? Even if you snag the thing, it ain't worth much if you can't figure out how to get it up in the air and then back down without crashing it."
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Which sucks but thems the breaks, even Billie knows it. She'll console herself on that by taking another drink.
"But just knowing we might be seeing smaller airships soon is good enough for now. Let them do a big reveal, find out who put it together in the first place, then just tool around the docks in Krimnos or work enough trips on one of the bigger ships to figure out what parts of airships are different from what I'm used to."
Although, that said, she settles back against her chair again and gestures around them with her glass.
"Provided this city thing ever wraps up, anyway."
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"Don't remind me of that!" Like she could really forget, but sometimes it wasn't on her mind! "I knew it was all going to be a trouble, but I wasn't expecting--" Shura goes quiet, thinking hard for the right word to use--
"This." She waves her hand, the last bit of her drink sloshing around as she waves her arm to try and encapsulate the feeling of This. It reminds Shura that she still has something to drink, so she'll down the last bit before thunking the glass down on the table.
"An' that doesn't include any of the other crap goin' on. You'd think we'd get some kinda hint or somethin', but we're stuck tryna guess what we're supposed to be doin' now."
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Billie nurses what's left of her own drink a bit longer than Shura does, though that's gone sooner than later as well. She'll set her own glass down a tiny bit more gently, if only not to disturb the dragonets who've gone back to napping, curled up together on her lap.
"Supposed to be doing? Why are we supposed to be doing anything? I figure if no one wants to explain what the fuck we are, I'm just going to do whatever I damn well please."
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Even this pathetic shred of life is something she wants to try living.
"They're watchin' us--whoever or whatever brought us back." Shura says, almost serious enough to sound sober. "When I bit it a few months ago, I saw them. And I keep seein' them. Never long enough to get a good look, but it's the same guy."
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"He's always on the periphery--it's creepy. A horse an' rider with glowin' blue eyes. Any time I try to look at him he disappears." A convenient and very annoying trick. She hesitates, then continues.
"That's why I've been practicin' projection. I wanna try and track him down."
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"Glowing blue eyes?" Billie wrinkles her nose at that particular description. "That seems to be going around a lot lately..."
The undead, the dragon. She has no idea what it even means if some kind of spirit realm ghost is sporting them now, too. Part of her wonders if Shura might just be... off... somehow, seeing a vanishing guy and his horse all over the place, but she's never really acted erratically before.
"And you're practicing projection," those are words she repeats much more slowly like she can't get her head around what that even means. In her defense, they did drink that entire bottle. "Projecting into... what? A spirit realm?"
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"Astral realm. I can get pretty far projectin' my spirit in this place, but I've been poking around in that place, too." If Shura was a reverent woman, she might have been more in awe of the little part of the astral realm she had explored.
"I'll work on gettin' better at movin' around in that place, then I'll try breaching into the shadow realm. But it's a pain. Go too far or leave your body for too long, then somethin' might try to take your body. Gotta work on some wards for that."
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"I'm pretty sure getting into the shadow realm takes a completely different trick than whatever you've been practicing," Billie can't help but point out. "All other weirdness aside, you're kind of, you know, alive. Are you sure you want to take chances like that? 'cause I've already told Strange, the only way I know how to deal with a possession is killing the host."
Admittedly, other people may have a better idea, Shura included.
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But that was something else entirely, and Shura slumps back in a chair with a sigh.
"It's a pain, but I don't know of any other way." Shura is not the best at plotting or planning things that didn't happen on the battlefield or in the shadows. She knows it and can freely admit it.
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So long as Shura's aware, well, it's not as if Billie hasn't done stupid shit, too. She idly reaches down to the dragons still curled up and napping again, idly running fingers over scales and spines, albeit more careful when it comes to Aconite's.
"How do you prevent possession, then? I can keep an eye on you when you go if you need it. I'd just want to know what to bring along in the event of everything going straight to hell."