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?

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

Comments

[lavelly]

[For better or worse, Lavellan has never been one to talk down to children. When he was First, his Keeper had stressed that younger minds are for them to nurture, not stifle; and he'd had his own struggles with wanting to know more than people were willing to give him.

It's just this particular story is very long and complicated.]

Where I'm from, people like me tend to be treated very badly by... people like you. [Meaning humans. Eddie isn't an adult, of course, but one day he would be, and Lavellan often finds it difficult not to fall back into those old patterns even when no human here has wronged him in that way. Habits like those are hard to shake.] She was no exception. She had an elven lover, but she still destroyed an alienage because her subjects thought she was too lenient on elves.

[The disgust in his voice is palpable.]

I could tell you that it was revenge for that. But in truth, I simply wanted to put someone on the throne that I liked better. Someone who would protect elves and not exploit them.

[There's so much he's leaving out. The audacity of the ball being held on ground historically given to the elves that they were forced out of anyway. The indignity of constantly being mistaken for a servant despite his own standing. The anger that the only other elves there were servants. Example after example of wealthy humans flaunting their power over people like him that by the end of the night he was just sick of it, sick of being expected to stand by and accept it all, and here was an opportunity to stick a knife in the back of the whole bloody circus, not just Celene.

If he's honest, he's still not sorry. But he is guilty. Celene was not a good person by any account--but neither is Briala. Neither is he. If someone stuck a knife in his back, who is to say he wouldn't deserve it just as much?]

It isn't something I'm proud of.

[clussy]

(In some way, Eddie understands what he's being told. If his world was run by Henry Bowers and people just like Henry Bowers, he thinks that maybe he would want to kill Henry too.

The main difference was that he wasn't so sure he'd ever be able to. Eddie just wasn't someone who wanted to see death. Even if he hated Henry enough to want him dead, it would never be so simple though as to let someone do that for him. Or to even watch it.

It feels beyond Eddie though, because politics were confusing and something only adults ever seemed to talk about.)

What does 'destroying an alienage' mean?

(The thing is he didn't fully understand why death was the only option. It all sounded bad, sure, but weren't adults always going on about how things should be resolved? How kids needed to learn to talk about their problems?)

Why couldn't - I don't know. Was killing someone the only real option?

(It doesn't matter if it was something Lavellan was proud of or not. It had happened and that was something Lavellan would never be able to change for as long as he lived.)

[lavelly]

[His voice is dull and toneless, like he's reciting something.] Alienages are slums where elves live in human cities. The only way we can escape them is by avoiding humans altogether. [But the Dalish are a story for another time. He isn't here to distract Eddie from the truth.]

The alienage in Val Royeaux had... grown restless, from what I understand. Rebellious. So Celene set her knights on it.

[And that's all there is to say about that.]

The assassination wasn't my idea. I simply--used it to my advantage.

I could have prevented it. But I didn't.

[clussy]

Oh. (It reminds him a little bit of the ghettos in the cities. Eddie has never been into the city though, so he doesn't quite know how bad that sort of thing could be.

It isn't quite as shocking to him as it could be. Having been born after the second world war, it wasn't shocking to Eddie to hear that humans were cruel. That they would be racist against an entire race or species.)

Did it change anything? Her death?

[lavelly]

I don't know.

[And that's the problem with playing the long game. These things take years, even decades, even longer to make an effect. If they do at all. If they even have the effect you wanted in the first place.

It's all a guessing game, involving yourself in politics the way he did.]

It hadn't been long enough to see a difference, before I came here. But I--well, I hope it did. I did it to give Orlais to Briala, and I like to think she would do things differently.

[He tries not to think of Sera, accusing Briala of being the exact kind of schemer that Celene and Gaspard were, demanding to know how long it would take before she threw her own people under the bus too.

Lavellan rubs the heel of his hand into his eyes. He'd run himself ragged over this a long time ago, and the last thing he'd wanted to do is revisit it now.]

All I can really do is hope.

[clussy]

(Eddie has his doubts. Not because he understands Lavellan's world, or that he even knows these people, but Eddie has a significant distrust of adults. Most that he has encountered throughout his life have been awful in some way. There were very few honorable adults in this universe, and all of them seemed to be on Avagi.)

Grown-ups don't use their power responsibly.

(That's all Eddie says, his voice tight and a little too quiet. While he got along well enough with Lavellan, that isn't to say he was trusted. Eddie liked plenty of adults here, but he had an innate fear that made it difficult to genuinely trust any of them in full. It wasn't anything against them, not really, but something Eddie's spent twelve years fostering at the core of his being.

This sort of thing made Eddie feel a little shakily towards Lavellan. If only because Lavellan had to be naive, didn't he, to think one adult would be make such big changes.)

I guess so.

(Eddie isn't a complex thinker enough quite yet to be able to address this properly, but...Well.

He might not like what he just saw, but Eddie wasn't quite so black and white that he didn't understand Lavellan at least thought he did what was best.)

I hope for your sake that it was the right thing to do. I guess heroes have to make hard choices too sometimes.

[lavelly]

[He almost laughs at the comment, for what a truth of life it is--can anyone truly be said to wield power responsibly? Those who might would rather not at all, and maybe that's the trick--no power can be used responsibly. The idea is hardly comforting.

But Eddie continues--he says heroes have to make hard choices too and Lavellan's voice catches in his throat, a wince like Eddie has brushed an open wound.]

I'm not--I'm not a hero, Eddie. You just saw why.

[clussy]

(Eddie stares up at Lavellan. It's true enough that he wouldn't fully define him as a hero...But according to what Lavellan had said.)

You did it for the good of a bunch of people though, didn't you? (Eddie doesn't even blink. Did Lavellan doubt his decision? In a weird way, Eddie felt like if he did, maybe it'd redeem him to some extent.)

[lavelly]

[A long, slow breath.

In and out.

Then another.]

At the time, yes.

I don't think I'll ever know for sure it was the right decision.

[clussy]

(To have to remind oneself to breathe was a feat Eddie was all too familiar with.)

Then I guess maybe it wasn't so right.

(Eddie isn't trying to be mean. And maybe he is simplifying.)

I think if you feel right about something, then you did the right thing. But if you're confused about it, you probably messed up. But if you admit you messed up, it's okay, because you can make sure you don't mess up the same way again.

[lavelly]

[There's a small, humorless laugh again. Only children could make it sound so simple.]

I'll try not to let anyone else be murdered while I'm able to stop it, then.

[...He really doesn't mean to tease. But he's already retread this path more times than he can count. He knows there are no answers; it only ever ends in circles.]

[clussy]

(Children were very good at making things cut and dry.

Eddie crosses his arms over his chest because he certainly know when he's being teased. Thankfully, he also knows when he's being teased kindly rather than cruelly. He's experienced enough of both to tell the difference.)

You shouldn't joke about that.

(Eddie doesn't know about that, of course, so this seems rather important for him to stress on. Though there was something to be said about not changing the past.)

Next time, you should just really think about how it feels in here. (He points to his gut.) And trust it more.

[lavelly]

[Lavellan smiles sadly. He's reminded powerfully of Cole, that rigid, black-and-white surety of what is right and what is wrong, and that what is right should always be done, and why would anyone do otherwise? Lavellan understands the confusion that comes from that kind of innocence, and a part of him envies it.]

I wish it were that simple, Eddie. But there were more things at stake than my integrity.

[A shrug, incongruously careless considering the tone of his voice.]

If it were up to me, I wouldn't have been the one making the decisions at all. But it wasn't.