avalaughs | EVENT ✨ Nightmare on Elph Street

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EVENT ✨ Nightmare on Elph Street

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The ritual-wiping ritual wasn't the best news for Avalon and magic has been wacky for everyone since it was performed. However, if there was a time for it to happen, it happening before the Spring Equinox was just about the best time it could happen. The Spring Equinox, after all, is a time of renewal and rebirth. It's what you'd call a silver lining. As long as enough people participate in the Spring Equinox rituals, it should be fine... right?

CONTENT WARNINGS:

1st Prompt: --
2nd Prompt: --
3rd Prompt: --

This part of the event takes place on March 20th.

Though there is no Spring Masquerade this year as there had bene the last, there is a much smaller token of appreciation from the castle of Camelot to all of those who live within its borders: a gift basket with a salad of edible flowers, eggs, breakfast sausages, and a small bottle of champagne (or sparkling seltzer for those underage) and a bottle of orange juice to make mimosas with. Those of the vegetarian through vegan persuasions will receive vegan white chocolate eggs filled with coconut cream frosting and a mango puree 'yolk' and Avalon's best plant-based sausages. It's not quite a feast, but no one should go hungry on this day of celebration! Brownies will help to deliver these overnight, so you'll find them on your doorstep in the morning with a special spell to keep everything fresh through most of the early afternoon. Since there is no party this time, everyone will have the chance to see Avalon's plants begin to overgrow at a rapid pace within the city.
Those who saw it last year or locals who are normally residents of Avalon will tell you not to fear, this happens every spring. The plants grow around and not through structures, the buildings still safe and sound beneath large vines and leaves and pools and flowers. Most notably, huge beds of vines, open seed pools, and giantic flowers large enough to take a bath in have started cropping up around town, and they all seem to be filled with a vibrant, glowing liquid of some kind. Each of these floral wonders, locals will tell you, is called a vernal soul pool. Upon entering one, you'll enter a lucid sleep state that connects you to everyone else in Avalon and the island itself. Doing so will cause your magic to be amplified and grow and stabilize, but also allow you to be cleansed and refreshed as a person. How much detail the person you're talking to gives is up to you (in case your characters would back off of it if they had the following details but you still want to experience it). Once someone enters, they will immediately feel as if they are at home and the pod will close over them gently, leaving them in a pool of that mysterious glowing substance-- vines grow further to encase, the pool closes, flowers close into buds instead of open blossoms. Under normal circumstances, the pools would remain closed and in this state until the witching hour and slowly and gently awaken those within. However, even the magics of the spring aren't stable right now, and what ends up happening is the pools suddenly spill open before anyone's dream sharing can truly get underway, dumping their passengers out onto the ground into a state of jarring awakeness. With them, they will find they are unable to access their Avalon magics but instead have one of the following: Unstable, uncontrolled access to their canon powers. They may start shooting off random magic, they may be unable to shut down a normally passive ability gone into overdrive, or when they try to use their abilities, it goes outright wrong-- "Accio Excalibur" in an attempt to save the multiverse might result in all figurines of Excaliburs within 10 miles to come hurdling toward you, for example. Access to the beginner, untrained level of canon powers of someone whose shared consciousness you entered. Even if you don't have canon powers of your own, you will be able to access someone else's with this option. This part of the event takes place late night on March 20th through slightly past midnight on March 21st.
	The fairy queen's envoy, Princess Bluebell, sends out a panicked emergency message (complete with the obnoxious alarm that sets off phones even on silent) after a couple of hours of this, and casts a mirror-travel spell to Nicnevin so that any may quickly arrive just outside of its borders, next to the river. The message states that the dream world and reality have melted together due to the majority of magic being funneled into the time freeze spell or the equinox ritual, which uses Queen Mab as a vessel through which the vernal soul pools channel everyone's magic. The Spring Equinox renewal did NOT go as planned, needless to say. Otherworlders must head to Mab's Cavern to locate Queen Mab and absorb some of her energy by touching her to stabilize their magics and drain the spring equinox's out of her before even bigger disaster strikes!
Mab's Cavern is typically a place forbidden to enter under normal circumstances. It is the world of dreams and nightmares takes from our subconscious what we most desire and what we most fear and our memories and turns them into reality. This is what your character will have to face without their Avalonian magic and the above either unstable or beginner-level powers. Mab normally goes into a slumber and connects herself to the whole of Avalon during the Spring Equinox to allow the vernal soul pools to utilize her magic, so she cannot let everyone in or help anyone navigate her realm. Mab's Cavern looks like a normal mountain from the outside, covered from head to toe in pink cherry and plum blossoms trees, shrouded in a fog that's pink itself from reflecting the petals. The entrance to the inside of the cavern is an ancient door, carved from white marble and enchanted to be impassible without an offering and engraved says: "Offer me your most secret dream and enter this forbidden realm. Dream with me for eternity." The offering, in this case, is simple: speak your most secret dream out loud for the door. The open door will allow one person to pass through per offering, and leads into a hall entirely coated in flowers of a variety of colors. These flowers speak, and will ask you how you are, warn you to turn back, tell you and whoever you're walking with that you make a cute couple, sing the national anthem of their people, whatever. They seem to get more and more chatterbox-y as you head inward and the lights grow dimmer until there is no light left. Even if you light one, it seems as if you are in a black space where nothing exists but you and whoever you walk with (if anyone), and voices.

This portion of the event contains a FOURTH WALL EVENT element and takes place on March 21st.

That is, until you hear a new voice and the chatterbox flowers hush. Anyone from any canon can appear and team up with you within Mab's Cavern as this is a fourth wall event. Guest characters will have access to their canon abilities, but cannot leave Mab's Cavern or affect the environment outside of it.

Your new party member can accompany you through Mab's Cavern, which takes the form of a location from in-game characters' memories. Within it, their darkest fear will turn into a physical enemy and attempt to hunt them down. (How you interpret this is up to you as a player-- please create your own monsters based on your character's fears, even if they are more conceptual than physical.) Within it, their deepest desires may find fulfillment (we leave this to player

glowy cave water

interpretation again, but be sure to ask permission if it involves another character who is in the game or a part of the fourth wall) and their new party member may need to convince them to leave instead of staying in the dream world forever.

Characters who are able to get past both desires and fears will find themselves able to see a door that wasn't within their memory before. Upon going through it, they will be able to find Queen Mab, asleep in the center of what appears to be a glowing, underwater pond with stones that raise above the surface that lead to her bed some hundred feet in. Beneath the surface, more of the talking flowers start to cry about their woes-- unveiling that they failed against their fears and desires, and those who do will find themselves turned into flowers within Queen Mab's cavern, only able to escape if they are able to touch another living person!

If you've trusted the flowers, you'll find yourself in trouble. These are actually souls who crossed Queen Mab and attempted to steal their desires away from her cavern and bring them into reality. Their curse? They can escape if they trade another soul for theirs. Now would be a good time for a partner to help pull you out because as soon as you touch one of the flowers, they will turn into vines and attempt to wrap around you to pull you under the water and drown you! The "water" itself is the same liquid used within the vernal soul pools, so you'll find your life literally flashing before your eyes as this happens, making it very difficult to escape without someone else's help. If you die in the water, the flowers who did it will transform back into their original selves and flee, and you will be transformed into a talking flower yourself.

If you make it to Queen Mab, you'll need to place a hand on her and all dreams and reality will sort themselves out within you-- that is, your broken powers will disappear and your Avalonian magics will return. As you head out again, the guest character brought in to help you will begin to fade away slowly enough that you can say your goodbye before they are gone. There is no way to stop this. All memories of fourth wall visitors will be retained as part of game canon.

After enough people have come to take Mab's powers enough to deplete the effects of the Vernal Pools, the Fairy Queen herself will come to Mab and run a strange-looking dagger through her heart. All of the Spring Equinox magic that was being filtered through her will be released into the land and stabilize magic for everyone, and a flower will blossom out of Mab's heart around the dagger. Within the center of the bud glows a small child version of Mab, and anyone still in the cavern will find themself just wandering around in a dark cave. The Fairy Queen glows in the dark and will lead them out with little magic glow bubbles that try to make them follow if they get separated from her vicinity, but is still not speaking to anyone. She will also transport anyone who has been turned into a talking flower out of the cave via some kind of levitation spell and give them to someone they know-- whether they know them in a positive or negative light is up to you, she can only register connection on sight with magic, not emotion.

A little research will reveal the following solutions to restoring your character:

Siphoners and countercurse potions can remove the curse to get them back to 100% normal.
Animal mages can transform them back into their original species (but they will still smell like flowers for the rest of their life).
Green mages can use their magic to cultivate them into flower people-- who look like themselves, but now require sunlight and water to survive instead of food and occasionally sprout a flower or two in their hair.

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[Nodding, they can together approach the door and Zidane will take a moment to inspect. Definitely not any door he'd seen around Alexandria before... or any of the kingdoms really.]

[Humming, he almost knocks... but it is on a shop door so he decides to open it instead. And on the other side, it's what he expects, but he doesn't know if Vivi's anticipating what appears to almost be a bedchamber with a pond in the center. That person (?) sleeping at the center would be Queen Mab then...]

That's not....?

[Not the shop. Not the owner they were anticipating. Vivi pauses, glancing and tilting his head to the Queen, the bed and the pond, before glancing back to Zidane. This is not the one that owns the store at least that he is aware. And he isn't sure if Zidane might recognize them. This.....sure is some renovating though? No wonder the door had seemed different. The whole space was, now.]

... Let's have a look around, but be careful. Something's off.

[And that's aside from the woman seemingly asleep at the center. Though, looking at the water again, maybe he's just paranoid of plants these days. Those were flowers, but how normal were they? Or were they normal at all?]

Okay.

[Vivi can't....disagree there. Given this is. Decidedly not the shop they thought, even if it had been renovated. That much is obvious. So Vivi does stick close, at Zidane's cautioning to be careful. Even as he glances around, he doesn't stray too far. He does note the water though.]

I wonder how deep it is? Do you think she is okay?

[Zidane keeps close. Maybe this was all a strange dream, but that didn't mean he wanted putting Vivi in too much danger.]

No idea... and it looks like she's asleep so I'm not sure. Still, pretty deep sleep if we haven't woken her up by now.

You don't think something is wrong?

[If she is in some sort of unnatural sleep or something? Vivi isn't sure what to make of it exactly. He sticks close to Zidane though, for all that his instinct is to go check on her. Dream or not. But then. Vivi is rather used to helping out. That's not so much a surprise.]

Should we go check or get help?

... Let's try checking on her.

[Neither of them have White Magic, but there must be something they could do between them, right? Besides, it was better they make sure she's okay then maybe have one of them get help - or both.]

Alright. We should at least make sure she is okay. If something seems wrong, we can ask Dagger or Quina to have a look?

[Or try something like a potion or other item they might have on them themselves. Vivi has magic but not the kind that heals. More the offensive sort that he uses in battle. To fight. He is cautious, still keeping close to Zidane but he does slowlyapproach.]

Yeah. Stay close...

[He sees the water, notes the flowers... and just doesn't trust plants. But for everything they've been through, could he be blamed for that? Vines especially, screw them; but focusing on the task, he'll approach slowly so they can start the descent.]

I am. I will.

[Vivi sticks close, mindful of the plants that at least some might be poisonous or something. He may or may not be impacted if it was, but Zidane may be more susceptible, so he does keep an eye on him too, as they walk, as they approach the woman. As they get closer and get a better look. He just hopes she is alright. That they can maybe help somehow.]

[Poison would probably be better than what happens once they get closer. Since, as they get closer, the plants being to talk. They go on and on about failing their desires, being trapped, and so forth, but Zidane's... not sure about believing them. Given Queen Mab's current state, it doesn't seem like she'd trap anyone - more like she was trapped here.]

[They should focus on the stones.]

Doesn't look slippery... somehow.

[Vivi isn't sure whether to believe the plants. Plants....don't usually talk, after all. But at the same time. It isn't like he isn't unnerved by it. He tries to ignore it, to keep following Zidane. He keeps close, glancing between Zidane, the floor and the plants.]

That's good. But um. What's with the plants? I'm not sure if we can or should help or not.

I wouldn't. We don't have a good track record with plants...

[Even if it was only Avalon, but their world, it was the Evil Forest with all the plant creatures and cages, and then the Iifa Tree too. Both of them were also kind of... hazards to any plant life... then their other chance encounters - yeah, he's not about to bite. He'll focus on walking further down towards Queen Mab.]

Not really. No. But still.

[Vivi has always had more of a 'bleeding heart' as some might call it. Being more inclined to trust and accept others. Probably simply because most were scared and unsure of Vivi himself, especially once the Black Waltz mages were running around. But Zidane and the others had accepted him. He'd want to do the same for others, accepting and helping them if he can. But Vivi does keep following, keeping an eye on the plants as they move past.]

... Do you want to try?

[He's not sure about this. His gut says this is a terrible idea, but Vivi was hesitant. Eh, if something bad happened, Zidane was confident in getting them out so he'd put the offer out there.]

I don't know. Part of me wants to, but. I'm not sure if they are telling the truth or messing with us.

[Vivi always wants to help though. That's nothing new. It's how he got roped in with Zidane and the others in the first place, really. He glances from the plants to Zidane, cautious, but trusting as ever.]

It might be worth a try though? Together we can probably figure it. If it is some sort of trap or something?

... If you think so. I'm right here if something goes wrong.

[Because honestly, he's still not sure about trusting those plants. He'll just do what he does best by keeping Vivi safe.]

Alright.

[Vivi gives a nod of agreement. Trusting in Zidane as he turns to one of the plants, listening to their story, what they want him and Zidane to do. Vivi may not be the best option depending on what is needed, or that he is more likely to fall for tricks and lies in comparison to others of their party, given how trusting he is.]

[Standing by, Zidane's still not sure. Failing their fears and desires? But, he was pretty sure that failing those trials didn't result in becoming a flower. Keep them, maybe, but...]

... So, at which point did following any of that did you get turned into a flower?

[Might as well humor them a bit.]

They weren't always flowers? I wonder if that means if we aren't careful, we might be like them too.

[Not that Vivi or Zidane are exactly human themselves. But even so. At the least, Vivi has more abilities as a Black Mage than he would as some flower or plant. And that is on the chance that he does actually believe them. He usually tries to reserve judgement for the most part in giving people a chance at least. He glances between the flowers and Zidane as if checking with Zidane and waiting on the plants to explain, to answer.]

Doesn't sound like it. And yeah, we should be good as long as we're careful.

[He has no idea what the flowers had done, but to lose their forms and become flowers? Yeah, sounds like they could've ticked off a faerie around Avalon. The flowers seem... hesitant to answer, choosing instead to try diverting tactics to garner sympathy. Was it so bad they just wanted something they dreamed about? But Zidane's not sure what to make of that answer. Something they dreamed about before or after becoming flowers? Either way, he's not really moved.]

As long as we're careful. I just don't want to be a flower.

[Being a black mage doesn't mean he has the best life expectancy either but still longer than a flower. Well. A non magical flower anyway. Vivi isn't so sure on how risky it might be for something to happen to them if they try to help the flowers. But Zidane is there too. So it's probably fine. If anything were to happen, he trusts Zidane could help him out.]

A dream?

[The flowers all chirped at the word 'dream'. Murmurs of it being 'right there' and 'they had to try', and between all of those 'they had to take it'.]

Ooooh, so you guys tried to steal and got busted.

[Pot calling the kettle black... kind of. Well, that's the breaks at failing their stealth check.]

That's kind of your fault. I guess it also depends on what was stolen? Some things are worth more. That might get a more harsher punishment.

[Like stealing from royalty. Or uh. Well....kidnapping the princess in 'stealing' her away - which she had asked them to do. That maybe wasn't the brightest idea but it was all happening so fast and she really wanted help and it was kind of impulsive. Vivi is well aware it is not exactly like they can talk, least of all Zidane, but still. He's wary, yellow eyes narrowing before he glances back up to Zidane.]

[If she hadn't asked, it was kind of Cid behind that whole thing anyway. This sounded completely different and a bit more selfish to Zidane. Noticing Vivi look his way, he shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head.]

Not like we can do anything anyway. Neither of us knows any magic to reverse this. And even if we do, we already have someone else to check on first.

[That being the sleeping lady in the center of this place.]

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ornitiers - 2022-05-19 08:29 (UTC) - Expand

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