A Spacemas Carol: December's Mod Event Log

[savmods]

Who: Anyone and Everyone
When: December 19 onwards
Where: Avagi... and beyond?
What: Your past, someone's present, and potential futures.
Warnings: Body horror and an associated image in the second part. Otherwise, label your content.

While the Ingress may have been destroyed, the energy powering it remains alive and well. The residents of Avagi know this intimately: from their own arrivals, from the portals that have appeared, and the short-lived changes (as well as longer-lived possessions) that have cluttered the station over the last few months. Recently, whatever force is manipulating this has even gone so far as to revive the dead—demonstrating, perhaps, an unwillingness to relinquish those it has brought to this place. To say this entity is seasonal would probably be a mistake. In the heart of Avagi's storms, there are no stars to mark the seasons, much less connect them to a certain planet's holidays—or the literature thereon. Still, from luck or from intention, the current fluctuations comes with a certain theme...

Past

It starts at the turn of the station clock's midnight. Flickers at the edge of one's vision. Indistinct whispers, ghosting through walls and down corridors. Those who are sleeping will be untroubled, but the wakeful and wary can watch the light build: from flickers to pulses, from pulses to pools. Over several hours, silver mist fills rooms and corridors, varying from a thin veil to dense, obscuring fog. If you step into the mist, you'll feel a sense of displacement; of sound and color, energy and a shift of life. Ingress travel. Except... not quite. Shortly after entering the mist, you'll find yourself free of disorientation and apparently free of physical form, unable to interact with your surroundings. As a quasi-ghost, you've been transported to somewhere and somewhen—a location from the past, back on a world of someone’s origin or from any place you've been since first arriving through the Ingress. While these experiences can vary wildly, some things remain consistent: The past matters: These visits to the past are not repeats of idle afternoons—each has emotional significance to someone currently on Avagi. The past cannot be changed: As real as any given scenario seems, you're fundamentally incapable of altering it. The past event will play out as it did in real life and dissipate when it reaches an ending. Trying has consequences: Attempting too hard to interfere increases the emotional significance, and will consequently draw onlookers further into the scene. You may find yourself anchored to any participant in the scene: first physically (experiencing the scene through their eyes) and then emotionally (experiencing their emotions and thoughts). If drawn in too deeply, you may lose track of your own nature during the experience, drowning in the sense of being someone else.. You are not alone: While immersed in a scene, you'll see nothing but the history playing out. However, at the its conclusion, the fog will once again displace the world around. As it melts away, you'll find themselves back in Avagi's halls—and face to face with whoever else was also viewing that piece of the past.

Present

Whether through one memory or several, eventually, the fog disperses. Only a faint mist remains, gathered in corners of the station's halls. It's simple enough to avoid, and nothing obstructs efforts to return to your rooms, your friends, or any other destination. Nothing, that is, except finding them. The layout of the halls has shifted. The clutter you so painstakingly cleared is back. The GPS on your ACE mistakenly reports that you are floating off in space far outside the station, and any efforts to locate or call your companions results in glitchy static. Something is interfering with your calls—more effectively than the distance between worlds. Inference and intuition are all you have to put together the pieces. The layout has changed, but the construction stayed the same. You're still on the former Ingress station. But not the same area that you called home. This is a different section of Avagi. An inhabited one. Dank, warm air pulses in and out of the vents in odd rhythms. Water damage stains the walls, and some seep dark liquid. There's an odd symphony in the distance: four notes, hummed to a pattern that buzzes in the back of your head. It's possible to wait it out. But if you do explore, you might come across your friends. And together, you might find the source. Further in, a wall of flesh fills the pathways, rising and falling with intermittent, massive draws of air. A fluid wash of features glues it to the bulkheads. Claws and eyes, hands and faces: half-made bodies shifting in and out of recognition with each pulse of breath. And always with the same gold glow beneath the skin. It's a familiar shade, to those who witnessed Thisavrou's destruction. It's the being who destroyed it. Those who flee will escape her notice. Those who wait may watch in secret for a time. Mother's focus seems to be elsewhere...or, perhaps, something else is hiding your presence here from her. Any attack on Mother's flesh shape, or any overt effort to draw her attention, will meet violent, immediate reprisal. You'll experience an immobilizing psychic force before the flesh consumes you. But whether you hide or fight or run, your time on this section of the station will end in the same way: a burst of brilliant, clear light providing transport back home.

Future

You flash back to reality amidst a burst of light—but this time, you recognize your surroundings. You have returned to the Avagi you know, and the silver mist that filled the halls has cleared. Over the next few days, most of Avagi will settle back into a state of normalcy. The ACEs are working properly, and station residents will have all the time they need to compare notes on their experiences—and, perhaps, on any plans to act on what they've learned. Avagi is not as empty as it seemed. And one place in particular will remain changed in the wake of the event. The Ingress Memorial, once inactive, has come to life, emitting a swirl of silver light that shifts and flickers, like the light of the portal it once contained. For the next five days, it will offer a vision to anyone approaching it: a single, brief scene from their potential future. Players have the following options: Canon future: Your character catches a glimpse of their future if they were to return from Avagi to their own world. This consists of a canon event. Avagi future: Your character catches a glimpse of their own future on Avagi. This can be a short-term future (i.e. an actual vision of a future scene you plan to play out), or a potential longer-term one in which they stayed on Avagi for months or years. Storm future: Your character catches a glimpse of themselves as a Mirtos—a desiccated husk and incarnation of the storm's hunger. As seen in Thisavrou's destruction, these creatures are carried by the storms and destroy all they come across. The visions can observed by any present when the Memorial is approached. And while the past is fixed, the future is always capable of being altered. What will you do regarding yours?

---

[OOC: Check out the OOC post for more information!]

Comments

Lavellan | OTA

[lavelly]

[ 1. thanks i hate it ]

[There's a castle, or maybe a fortress. Lavellan stands on a rampart next to two womem; one, dressed modestly in cloth and mail, holds an ornate sword. The other is severe and imposing, with short hair and in a full suit of armor. Below them, a crowd gathers.

The woman in armor speaks: "The Inquisition requires a leader. The one who has already been leading it. You."

Lavellan stiffens, looks between the two of them, then down to the people below. They look back up at him, expectantly, even adoringly. He can't meet their gaze for long, and he turns back to the women with a mix of accusation and panic in his eyes. "What if I don't want this?"

Cassandra purses her lips, displeased. "There would be no Inquisition without you. How it will serve, how you lead, must be yours to decide."

Lavellan turns from her to Leliana, but his back remains to the crowd; even now, he balks at showing the people who follow them his uncertainty. He says nothing for long moments, his face impassive. Then, he reaches out and takes the sword.]

[ 2. jsyk lavellan sees a giant spider ]

[Three people stand in a void. No--not a void; there is land, or something like it, pieces of world that twist below them and around them with no regard to logic or order. Before them lies--well. Whatever your deepest, most primal fear, whatever might represent an acute and visceral revulvsion--it's that. Except really, really big. Suffice to say, what they're staring down is very unpleasant. And, most certainly, it cannot be fought.

One of the people, for those who might recognize her, is Marian Hawke. Another is a large brown-haired man in armor, and the two of them are arguing about who should stay and distract the thing so the other two can escape, like fools.

They can't agree, because of course they can't. So they turn to Lavellan to choose for them. Lavellan, who is not truly divine or chosen by anything, who only has prestige and authority because of the arbitrary agreement of a religion he doesn't believe in. And all he can do is gape at them.

Eventually, his gaze swings to the left like the arm of a judge. "Alistair." He can't finish the sentence.

And that's enough. All it takes is Lavellan's own decree and Alistair's fate is sealed. There's no further time to discuss. Alistair stays; Hawke and Lavellan run. They run and Alistair dies.]

[ 3. i've already been to orlais and after five minutes i was like let's go ]

[It's a ball, or a party. Everywhere people are overdressed, gilded to excess, and to a one wearing a mask like it can hide the shame of their own transparent overindulgence, if they had any. In the middle of them all, two people--Lavellan and a handsome blond man--speak in hushed tones.

Lavellan says, "Wait for for her to strike, then grab her."

Cullen, bless him, hesitates only a split-second before he responds, "As you command."

Empress Celene speaks to her congregation of guests. It's a pretty speech, mostly empty, meant to reassure her constituents while promising nothing in particular. Through the crowd, Duchess Florianne weaves her way through, a knife hidden up her sleeve. From below, Lavellan's eyes track her, his entire body tense, scarcely daring to breathe.

Florianne reaches her goal, and the knife goes straight into Celene's back. Only then does Lavellan move, as if he'd just noticed the coup at the same time as everyone else. But of course he is too late. And so Celene dies, the way Lavellan had wanted, and with no suspicion falling on the Inquisition at all--and nobody will ever know it had happened that way exactly on purpose.

That's fine. It's for the greater good, after all.]

[ 4. never ever getting back together ]

[This one is in a clearing, populated mostly by stone statues, all of horned giants in various states of battle. In the middle of them all are two men and a mirror. Lavellan kneels, clutching his left arm, doubled over in pain. Solas stands before him and simply looks endlessly sad.

"I would treasure the chance to be wrong once again, my friend," he says.

He takes Lavellan's hand in his, and an eerie green energy spreads up to Lavellan's elbow. Then Solas steps through the mirror and disappears, and Lavellan can only stare at the space where he just stood, desperate, stricken; he's bent forward like he can try to drag Solas backwards if only he can find the right words. But he can't.

Instead he faints. When he comes to again, his arm is gone.]

[ 5. probable cw for brainwashing mention in this one ]

[Two people, at night, in front of a strange machine--anything with the knowlege might recognize it as the Ingress, before its destruction by Mother. There's evidence of some spectacular fight around them: craters and burn marks, sparking and electrical fires where the exchange of magical blows damaged the wiring. Lavellan braces himself against a panel with the casing hanging off, bruised and panting. The woman near him is Hawke, again, looking only slightly better for wear.

Lavellan struggles upright, an ethereal blade in his free hand, his body angled toward where the Ingress has already been damaged. His expression, oddly, is confident, even haughty. It's obvious from the layout of the scene what's going on: Lavellan is trying to break the Ingress, and Hawke is trying to stop him. And Lavellan doesn't seem to fee any shame about it.

In fact, as soon as it seems like Hawke might be subdued, he returns his attention to the task at hand--with a single-minded purpose. He knows exactly what it is he's doing--whatever that is.]

4

[shiro2hero]

--Lavellan!

[Because, of course, he hasn't learned his lesson. Hasn't learned these are just visions. That nothing can be changed by charging in. By trying to stop or save or protect anyone. He doesn't run into a wall, this time. He skids to a stop, instead, near empty air where there had been a mirror.]

[What even had he intended to do here? Drag the bald guy back by the ears? Would that have even helped?]

[He turns, quickly enough, toward the elf, looking at him a little wide-eyed and worried.]

Are you hurt?

[lavelly]

[Lavellan doesn't respond, because in the events of his memory there is no one there to respond to. Instead he stares, dumbly, at his own arm alight with energy and already in the process of disintegrating, like he doesn't understand what he's seeing.

Emotions flicker throughout the fabric of the scene the more that Shiro lingers: disbelief, anger, something very close to heartbreak. But most pervasive is the numb despair.

When the memory ends, the real Lavellan doesn't look much different.]

[shiro2hero]

Are you hurt!

[He's raising his voice a fraction, because the lack of answer is concerning. More than just concerning. The warring emotions don't do much to help, either. They compound and confuse and make something ache in his chest for this person --]

[-- Say that to the dead and I wish I could.]

Lavellan! Come on!

[lavelly]

[He'd told himself that everything he did, every decision he made, served a purpose. That it was part of a great scheme, something greater and more important than individual people and their individual morals. That he'd eroded his self-respect by inches for a reason.

But now he knows the truth, doesn't he, that he and the Inquisition and everything he'd done had part of some game of Solas's. He'd been a pawn all along. Nothing he'd done had really mattered or could really be justified.

When the memory resolves, Lavellan kneels in the same place and position as his past image. He knows, immediately, that someone else has witnessed this, that he isn't left to his shame alone. But he can't bring himself to be the one to break the spell.

So he waits for the other person to speak.]

3

[aka_pistachio]

[ Kelly Ann is looking at her A.C.E., updating her to-do list, and so doesn't notice when she crosses the barrier from the station to Lavellan's past. She looks up and freezes. But doesn't. Because her body isn't really there.

It is weirdly comforting. She feels the way she does when she is totally absorbed in filming or photographing something. Like she's not really there. Just a faceless consciousness bearing witness to something way more significant than her.

It takes her a moment to get up to speed on what she's seeing. The ball is dazzling in a way that she's only ever seen in movies. Real high-budget ones, too. The kind she'd never be able to make even if she wanted to. And there's Lavellan, involved in some kind of intrigue with a man so handsome it makes Kelly Ann's heart skip a beat every time she gets too close to him.

The scene comes to its bloody, inevitable conclusion. Kelly Ann looks to her friend, and can't understand his performance of remorse. Assassinations are bad, right?

Right?

And then it's gone. She gasps as the artificial gravity grabs her and her feet find the solid, now-familiar floor of the station. The beautiful people in fantastic clothes in the incredible ballroom are gone. But Lavellan is still here, at least.

She stares at him, wide blue eyes blinking. ]

Holy... fuck. What was that?

[lavelly]

[Lavellan looks stricken to see she's there, to realize that she must have witnessed the same thing he's just relived. He'd almost prefer it had been a stranger instead; then at least he wouldn't feel as if he has to explain himself, as if he's been caught out in a lie.

And he has never been good at lying. So he answers the only way he can: truthfully, but with as little explanation as possible.]

It was exactly what it looked like.

[aka_pistachio]

[ Lavellan's explanation is so thin it's pretty clear he doesn't want to talk about it. In that "I really should talk about it" kind of way. Which Kelly Ann recognizes better than she probably should but this isn't about her, it's about him. ]

Oh so the competition for prom queen was pretty intense at your high school, huh?

[lavelly]

[Whatever he was expecting her response to be, it apparently wasn't that.]

The... [He blinks as he reviews her previous statement.] I'm sorry, the what?

2.

[inconsequence]

[They run and Alistair dies.]

[He settles on someone else's life instead of his own. When the memory slip-fades out of existence with a gentle watercolor of graying fog, some distant part of them, some part not muzzled with the incipient boiling pot of panic bubbling in their gut, can note that this comes as a surprise, to them. They would have predicted that he would choose himself.]

[Maybe that is simply their own biases speaking.]

[The memory goes from cloying dark to the linear streaks of the Avagi hallways. The child stands, stiff and silent, swaying on the spot.]

[So.]

[That is the Fade.]

[lavelly]

[All things considered, he'd expected to encounter Chara in the midst of this phenomena eventually. It was almost as if the universe conspired to throw them together in the most unflattering ways possible. And of course Chara has to witness one of the things he's most ashamed of.

It's almost funny. Maybe that's why he's smiling, albeit bitterly, when he says:]

Not exactly what you expected?

[After all, the Fade can be a trying experience even for those ready and prepared.]

[inconsequence]

You did mention the spiders.

[The sight itself is not what alarmed them. It was the finality of his judgment - his selection in the process. Was his own self not an option? Did that not fly in the face of his every action here and now?]

[Or are those actions what he considers penance for such an act?]

I would have expected you to select yourself.

[lavelly]

[He looks down and goes very quiet. It takes him long moments to respond, but when he does, it's maybe the most forthright he's ever been when speaking with Chara.

Don't you feel lucky.]

I could tell you that I knew what I had to do was too important. That staying behind myself would have been irresponsible, and meant putting countless other lives in danger.

[He doesn't finish the thought. It's implied just as well the way it is: and that would be bullshit.]

A better person might have.

3

[clussy]

(Eddie doesn't understand.

He doesn't understand maybe because the idea of killing someone stretches beyond the morality of a twelve year old's capability. Death is inherently wrong to him. It's why the Losers had made a promise to come back to stop It if It ever wound up coming back. The adults in Derry weren't going to do anything about it; they couldn't do anything about it. Someone had to.

So Eddie watches, he lets Lavellan's emotions flicker through him, but unlike with other memories, Eddie just doesn't understand. It makes his heart leap when the woman is killed, and he watches, watches as she dies. Then the feeling of Lavellan slipping unknown away- without suspicion. It wasn't just a brutal killing, Eddie realizes. It was an intentional murder. Craftily planned out like in a mystery novel.

When his eyes open and he's facing Lavellan, Eddie stares, stares for a long silent while because this man was someone he'd come to know as very gentle. Eddie takes a small step away, but it's subtle, something Eddie himself might not even realize he was doing.)

...I don't....Understand. You let her die? (No, that wasn't quite right.) You wanted her to die?

[lavelly]

[He doesn't know how to even begin to explain this.

There are things he could say. It was part of a larger plan, more important than Celene herself, or even Lavellan. She wasn't an innocent: she'd purged an alienage purely to maintain face. She wasn't a competent leader and there were many arguments to be made that someone else was more capable of the role.

But did those things mean she deserved to die? Did the fact that Lavellan had a reason mean that he was qualified to pass that judgment? How could he convince a child he was justified when he can barely convince himself?

Perhaps the fact that he can't meet Eddie's eyes says all it needs to.]

It served a purpose.

[clussy]

(Eddie's mouth pinches hard into a rather thin line, because it sounded like one of those things that adults often would 'you wouldn't understand'. That because he was a kid, that because he was young, he somehow didn't know the difference between right and wrong. A lot of people, both back home, and here, didn't always seem to understand that he knew more than they thought. Or that maybe he could figure out moral complications. Even if he was still developing, Eddie wasn't stupid.

And he doesn't think that there's much that could excuse a death at all. He stares at Lavellan for a long moment.)

Was she a war criminal or something?

1

[alan_1]

[Alan has some idea what’s going on by the time he reaches this memory. He doesn’t try to interfere—and he wouldn’t know how even if he had wanted to. Even discounting his own broken arm in a sling, the scene takes place in a world so different from his own that he'd have no idea how to interact with it, knights and castles instead of cars and city lights. The only person he recognizes is Lavellan, being handed a responsibility he clearly doesn’t want. Alan isn’t sure whether the sympathy he feels is his own or a side-effect of the memory.

The scene fades away just as Lavellan takes the sword. Alan blinks as his vision clears on a far more familiar version of the young man. Out of all the past lives Alan had imagined for Lavellan, “leader of the Inquisition” was not one of them. After a brief silence, he speaks.]

I can’t imagine that was easy.

[lavelly]

[This, at least, is something he has practice deflecting, even if he hates that he needs to be fielding this at all. If there is a god out there, Lavellan supposes its sense of humor is particularly grim.]

No? I had command of one of the largest political powers in Thedas handed to me through no accomplishment of my own. The means to shape the world to my liking on a silver platter. Quite an ordeal, let me tell you.

[alan_1]

[The deflection gets a slight smile.] I was once given the reins of a single company. By the end of the first few months, all I could think about was how badly I wanted to give them back. [A shrug.] Though maybe that says more about me than leadership itself. [Or perhaps it says more about the person who had led before him.]

If you don’t mind me asking, what exactly was the Inquisition?

[neverheardofhim]

[Varric wasn't sure how he'd gotten back here. There had been light, then nothing, then the sickly green of the Fade. It had haunted his memories for years after he had seen it. In his dreams, he watched it wrap his sickening tentacles around her, drawing her kicking and screaming into the Abyss.

Only there she was, arguing soundlessly with Alistair, hero of the Blight. Varric was gone, left her behind, believing that for some reason things might actually work out.

He waited for that moment, when Hawke would turn her back on them and become the hero the world had forced her to be. Only it didn't happen. The hand that swung out wasn't the woman he remembered, but the elf he'd butted heads with for months.

And rather than condemning Hawke, the finger pointed to Alistair. Hawke and Neriel ran, and the Warden faced her.

All at once, the world faded, green giving way to black, and black giving way to Avagi. His throat felt tight, breath shallow as he struggled to right himself.]

Hawke... [His voice was hoarse, and he spoke as if he was certain he was alone.]

[lavelly]

[By now, Lavellan is well familiar with retreading his past guilts, so his only reaction to hearing Varric's voice after this one in particular is resignation.

Well, this is a conversation long overdue anyway.]

I did tell you the way it happened.

[neverheardofhim]

[Varric showed no sign of having heard Lavellan's words. He stared forward, to the space he had once seen Hawke and Alistair in, as if expecting it to change somehow. For what reason, he didn't know. It was as the elf had said -- he already knew how things played out in Neriel's time.]

Why? [He couldn't recall if he'd ever asked that. Alistair was of royal blood and a damn fine warden. Varric wouldn't have ever chosen Hawke over him, but surely the Inquisitor would have seen the value in allowing such a powerful ally to live.]

Why did you save her?

2

[notglitching]

[Hawke, Rinzler knows, if only through observation. Neriel_Lavellan is likewise impossible to mistake. But the third user is unknown to Rinzler. Not one who ever made it through the Ingress.

As Lavellan makes his choice and leaves, it's not difficult to infer why.

Users are always disloyal. Always ready to abandon others to suffer in their stead. Except—not always—not all of them. Not in Rinzler's time here. He isn't sure if it surprises him that this one fits the mold after all.

Rinzler doesn't move to intervene. And soon enough, the ghost-data dissolves, leaving an empty hall.... and one member of his system. Rinzler stares, noise ticking out just slightly louder than default, before silently tilting his mask to one side.]

[lavelly]

[By now he's learned to read some of Rinzler's subtler movements. Not clearly, but enough to tell when he's hostile and when he isn't.

Now, well... it doesn't really matter to him what kind of mood Rinzler is in. He's too tired of this to care, or even to be ashamed of his own guilts laid bare.

The most he does is turn dully to Rinzler, his voice flat.]

I don't suppose this has improved your opinion of me.

[notglitching]

[It's not obvious, at least. No bristling this time, and if Rinzler is glaring, it's not in any way that broadcasts past the mask. Even his sound is only a little louder than default.

Still.]

...left him.

[What does the user think?]