etrayalogs | DECEMBER MINGLE

Entry tags:

DECEMBER MINGLE

WHO: Everyone!
WHEN: December 21st - Early January
WHERE: Etraya
WHAT: Newcomers, a surprise gift from Tatianna, and a visitor!
NOTES\WARNINGS:

⏵ arrival ⏴
Welcome to Etraya!

Arrival goes as expected - characters awaken on hospital beds and are offered an explanation of their situation: that they have arrived in the city of Etraya, and they are their world's only hope. They are welcome to wander the hospital if they would like to - the upper floors are mostly empty, full of pristine hallways and numerous rooms filled with supplies, cots, and things one would expect from a relatively average 21st-century hospital.

The lobby is filled to the brim with tables of freshly baked goods. "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" banners are taped to the walls, and several other typical birthday decorations can be found in this area. A few of the baked goods tables are lined with massive cakes covered in unlit candles, just waiting for someone to grab a lighter and sing off-key. Is it anyone's birthday? Who knows! The companion bots seem to believe it's every new arrival's birthday and will greet them as such - with friendly waves and cheers as they make their way to the lobby.

A coat rack is situated by the doors leading out of the hospital, covered in warm clothing that fits the new arrivals just right - whether it's to their preferred style or not is something else entirely. Some of them appear normal enough. Others? Well. They can't all be perfect, now can they?

Outside the windows, the grass is covered in a couple of inches of loosely packed snow.

We hope you enjoy your stay.

⏵ an unexpected gift ⏴

Out by the hospital stands a tall, decorated tree covered in candles and golden pinecones with a handsome, red velveteen tree skirt. In front of it are a few oversized wrapped gifts for show- and atop one of those sits a familiar woman. Or unfamiliar, if this is your first time.

It's Tatianna in a slutty Santa outfit with a big ol’ burlap sack.

“Hey, I got something for you,” she says, digging into the bag and rummaging for a moment.

She produces a painted egg and holds it aloft.

“It’s your Winter Solstice Egg! This is the egg holiday, right? Wait, shit. I’m mixing them up, aren’t I? ...Well. It’s a little late to change it. Here you go!”

How one treats their egg is fully up to themselves. They can choose to ignore it entirely, or destroy it and leave the yolk and innards to rot on the ground. They can hand it over to someone else or care for it as if it were something precious. No one will prevent them from doing whatever they please with it!

⏵ naughty or nice ⏴However, how they treat the egg will define how the egg treats them in return.

Those who keep the egg and tend to it will get the benefit of being able to watch it hatch seven days after they are handed the egg. Eggs that are treated with attention and love may yield a loyal companion, or a weapon of choice that always returns to its owner, while neglected eggs may yield a curious, cursed trinket or an animal who treats its new owner very much the same way its owner had treated it before it was born.

Please submit an egg request below for what items you would like your character's eggs to hatch into! Please note that these cannot be things that would be applicable in the game.

Those whose eggs are destroyed or forgotten will simply get the gift of... nothing!

⏵ free your spirit ⏴

With the winter chill gripping the air, a mysterious figure makes their presence known in Etraya - a towering, horned creature dragging a massive sack behind them.

𝓐 𝖍𝖔𝖚𝖘𝖊 𝖇𝖚𝖎𝖑𝖙 𝖔𝖓 𝖑𝖎𝖊𝖘 𝖍𝖆𝖘 𝖆 𝖜𝖊𝖆𝓴 𝖋𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖉𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓.

Regardless of a character's strengths or weaknesses, they will find that when Krampus raises his massive sack over their head, they are powerless to stop him from catching them. Those capable of great magical feats or other supernatural abilities will sense something... otherworldly about Krampus, but will not be able to place the source of that sensation.

Once within Krampus' sack, they are welcome to fight, but escape is impossible. It will feel as if Krampus is dragging them over every rock possible, dragging the sack in through the rivers to the point it soaks through and drenches them - potentially almost drowning them.

When the sack opens, they will find themselves in an impossibly dark space. Around them are others who have also been captured and dragged here by Krampus, trapped in small cages hanging from a massive, wiry tree.

Krampus will return often, banging clawed hands and birch rods on the walls of the cages and knocking them into one another.
𝕮𝖔𝖓𝖋𝖊𝖘𝖘𝖘𝖘𝖘𝖘𝖘.
The whisper resonates through the darkened area, regardless of Krampus' presence. Confess your secrets, and be freed. Otherwise? You'd better hope someone figures out where Krampus has set up base; those who refuse to confess may find themselves stuck here forever.

⏵ NOTES ⏴

Krampus' base is under Etraya! Deep within the catacombs, he has set up multiple cages to capture those who inhabit Etraya to punish them for their naughty habits. Fighting him is possible! Defeating him by means of combat is not, however, possible. Think of it like fighting a god: Krampus creates the rules in the space around him, including who can use what ability.

For all questions relating to this log, please refer to the mod queries comment. All other questions can be directed to the FAQ.

⏵FULL NAVIGATION⏴

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[ Gosh, an egg.

She's no Bird User so she isn't quite sure that she's going to be up to snuff for taking care of an egg, but she'll do her best. It's been entrusted to her, anyway, so that means that it should be cared for with love and affection, right? Right.

So, she holds it close in both hands - careful to not have it be too tight - and try to have it feel secure and warm. Is that right? She has no idea!

But it seems like she's not the only one that's unsure of this whole situation. ]

Nope. I don't know anything about it! [ She says that with a bit too much confidence. ] I don't even know if what I'm doing is right!

[ Carver just snickers at that. He could posture and puff himself up, even show off his hidden tools—now tucked away safe in case he needs them again—but insomnia’s been biting him lately, winding him up in the gray hours, and he’s too goddamn tired to get prissy with some motherfucker and his messed up eye. Not when his skull keeps throbbing in time with his pulse like he really is facing down a migraine. Not to mention the fuck who dragged them here in the first place, pausing only briefly for a detour into the goddamn river and it’s downing games.

Then again, there’s something to be said for games.

Carver tilts his head. He has a knife, is the thing. Sheathed openly at his side, ready for the drawing. And he considers the distance between their two cages, remembering the carnival games of his youth and how they morphed into sandbox games that he and the others played between patrols. Always with real knives—it wouldn’t have been fun otherwise. ]

I bet I could hit you from here, [ Carver observes blandly. ] But personally I’m curious just how bad he’s gonna fuck your skinny ass up.

[ The fucker with the sack, he means. ]

Wanna make a bet?

I’ll watch your corners.

[ It’s not the same as loyalty. The commander would understand, Carver tells himself, even as an anxious part of him whispers: are you sure? Are you really fucking sure? Pope’s dead but his mandates live on, and Carver doesn’t know his mission. Not for certain.

You can only maintain a holding pattern for so long before something gives. ]

I’m good with the knife, [ he adds, because maybe that ought to be said. He hasn’t conducted himself well so far, keeps going on and on about sentimental bullshit. Telling her secrets like that doesn’t come at a cost. Pope would’ve demanded a reckoning for that one.

Carver’s fingers twitch. He tries to put that thought away. ]

Kirk nods, still looking at the Daily Planet and the Gotham Clock Tower in the distance.

"There's a few buildings I recognize but they're not normally in one place," he replies.

They picked the wrong person for that, then.

[She says, dropping back onto the floor of her cage.]

I don't do personal, and I don't feel much. I'm drawing from a shallow basin here.

"You recognize them?!"

Letting go of his hand, she takes a few quick steps to stand in front of him. Her hands immediately grabbed onto his shoulders. "For real? That's-- wow!" She isn't sure how she'd feel if she saw something familiar here.

"Sorry." She holds her hands up and lets him go to turn around back to what Kirk was looking at, "Gosh, what could that mean?"

I saw the way you threw it at Sasquatch.

[She approves!]

I'm good with the gun. What about weaponless fighting? You do hand-to-hand okay?

This time he's prepared when Kimie grabs him by the shoulders. He's quick to straighten himself up after she let goes.

"Perhaps it's related to who arrives here," he says. "The buildings I recognize are normally in separate cities."

[His eyes widen almost imperceptibly -- but that they do at at all is evidence enough that he's been caught off guard. He smiles, then; there's something empty about it, like a doll's.]

Perhaps that's our confession, here. I'm the same way.

[The door creaks approvingly in response, but won't quite open just yet. Dazai knows what it wants from him. So he'll drag it out a little longer, just out of spite.]

...Well, we're getting warmer, at least.

Edited 2024-12-26 05:43 (UTC)

You have a personality disorder?

[She asks, squinting over at him through the gloom of the cavernous room.]

What's it like for you? Beyond the basics.

If you asked my coworkers, they'd probably say I'm nothing but a walking series of personality disorders!

[Which is to say, he doesn't exactly have any kind of formal diagnosis. Mori wasn't that kind of doctor, after all, and once he was taken into the fold of the Mafia, it's not as though there were psychiatrists available.

But then Shaw asks him that, and it's the second time he's caught wrong-footed. He hadn't expected her to ask; most people don't bother to try to understand him, and it's the way he prefers it, typically. He could get away with not answering, could find a glib quip to brush her off and deflect, but the truth is -- the answer ties into the confession he's certain is the one this creature wants. There's no real point in avoiding it, unless he really does want to be trapped in here indefinitely -- and dying isn't an option on the table anymore.]

Have you ever walked by the window of a shop after hours, and looked inside? Everything's arranged as it should be, unable to be disturbed until the following morning when new customers arrive. But the shop never seems to be open. Even when you see people inside, you must have just missed closing. So all you can do is watch, really.

[Another minor groan from the door. He can move the bars a couple centimeters by now, but not enough to get out.]

[Ugh, metaphors. Shaw slips her finger between the bars near the door latch, giving it an impotent tug.]

I'm like a big, empty canyon. Sometimes I echo.

Are you the window-shopper here, or the store?

Sevika will take satisfactory care of the egg and jury-rig a little heated enclosure to keep it warm from stuff from the apartment and places she can lift parts from.

It'll hatch into a Poro with a habit of biting, inevitably to be named Bitey.

Mm, it varies, I'd say. The shopper moreso, though. Nobody spends all day looking through the window, after all. It'd be excruciatingly boring.

[There'd be no point, no meaning, to visiting the window repeatedly. You'd get tired of seeing the same things over and over, never having the situation change in a way that matters. The only reason to keep coming back is in the irrational, unreasonable hope that the door might have been left unlocked, at one point or another.]

I'm only just going through the motions, honestly. I decided to follow some advice my friend gave me before he died and change the way I lived, to be on the side that saves lives rather than taking them... that it would make my world a little more beautiful. He was right, it did. But that only really matters if you want to keep living in it, you know? I never really do.

[Pop. The door of the cage gives way, just like that.]

Edited 2024-12-26 11:05 (UTC)

[Vander knew Silco would come. He knew where the deepest festering wound was, a blackened pustule of layered hatred for Piltover, for their situation and for themselves. It ran deeper for Silco than him.

That was the problem between them when the passivity on his side ran shallow. They knew how to hurt each other, knew the exact words to say to cut deeply, to provoke a response. Their history was long, twisted, bitter and tainted with that day on the bridge, the grief and the fall-out of both of them going too far, too fast and living to regret it. Then their reunion and the cannery...

The dead bodies of Mylo and Claggor continually swam in his vision even now, the vivid nightmares of their final moments haunting him, how powerless he had been. A speck of hope at escape turning to horror with the explosion. Benzo's broken blooded body next to Grayson and Vi's horrified frightened face swam next, taunting him with their failures.

When did you get so comfortable living in someone else's shadow?

You can't protect them forever. They have to go out and write their own stories...

Beneath the bottomless gnawing emptiness left behind by Shimmer's recession from his body, there was only a sense of self loathing. The beast that was his temper overrode, trying to fill that void, trying to let him blame someone else for his own failures and hesitancies. They had once been such a power house team; now he wanted to smash that graying head into a wall. It wouldn't make him feel better, but it would allow him to feel something other than his losses drowning out his seemingly endless will to have hope.

Vander stood leaning on the wall, knowing the one object that could take as good as dish out would come on. He rolled his egg in his hand, eyes no longer seeing it but deciding to protect it all the same. Why? It would make this confrontation harder, and he deserved harder, deserved to fight at a further disadvantage. There was no other way this would be anywhere close to 'fair', as it were.

His head turned as Silco came out swinging from around the corner. He had enough distance to push off of the wall, tuck the hand with the egg behind his back and face the other man. He stepped backwards to avoid the swing of the knife, noting the type that it was. Kitchen. One sharp edge, good point on it. They were both older now, fighting was slower for them both he imagined. The bone-wary exhaustion slowed him further, made focus a bit more difficult. He needed the adrenaline kick.]

Come on then, dirty little street rat. Hit me. [He quirked a lip in a smirk specifically to provoke Silco.] How's the ribs?

He shakes his head. "I was not built to have weapons, or to defend myself."

As if to demonstrate, he spreads his arms wide, holding his staff loosely in one hand, before he returns to his usual posture.

"My creators would have considered it...antiquated. However, it is logical that every world and species develops at its own pace...so their weaponry will differ.

What do you use it for?"

The Phetyr had used their finely-honed bodies and weaponry mostly to entertain and fight one another...or to put down rebellions from the lower castes. But that was on a world-ship, with nobody to see but other Drzyr. Presumably it is different for the person in front of him.

[ He considers this. ]

I understand your reasoning. [ He peers down, searching for the creature; he can feel the vibrations of its sounds more easily than hearing or seeing it, as it bangs away and hisses at the cages. ]

I will confess. The simplest way to free myself is to do as this creature wishes. I have no secrets worth keeping. [ What use is there for secrets for him, the inheritor of a world empty of the bright center of his universe? ]

However. [ He reaches out with his staff, hooking it around Silco's cage bars so he can pull them close together and start tugging at the lock. ] Since you are currently distraught, I will try to help you escape.

[ If only he had some Drzyr equipment. Sadly, however, there is little to be found here. He kept nothing on him. ]

Edited 2024-12-26 12:49 (UTC)

"That's wild!" She can't help but say before turning around to look toward the buildings.

"Related to who arrives here, huh." Putting her hand over her eyes, she starts to scan the area before her arms lower and head tilts to the side defeated. "Hm, I don't see anything that I recognize."

But the only memorable building that she can think of is her detective agency office. Holding her face, she squishes her cheeks in confusion. "Wild!"

I was a doorkicker before.

[ First into the fray. It's a role he still plays. ]

I'm good, [ he adds, with a flat sort of honesty that goes beyond bragging or modesty. ]

Would they be asking Tatianna directly, or someone else?

The animals that hatch from the eggs are attuned to their owners; as if they were born and created just to be their companions (or enemies, distant friends, etc, depending on how the egg was treated and who they are interacting with). Otherwise, they behave normally.

The eggs are meant specifically for the person they were handed to. If that egg is handed off to someone else, and ignored by its original owner, it won't hatch.

[Accelerator regards Silco calmly, unphased by his insults, his attention focusing more on the guy's eye now that he can get a better look at it. What the hell is going on there? It looks gnarly, like it's rotting out of his skull. There's no way he can see our of it, so why even keep the eyeball? Stubbornness? Maybe, he seems stubborn. He certainly isn't keeping it for the health benefits....

He clicks his tongue at the kick, finally deciding to respond.]

You want me to do something? Fine.

[He reaches up, hitting the switch on his choker, the light on it changing from green to red. Then he reaches over and taps a bar.

Nothing happens. He hits the switch on his choker again. The epitome of laziness, though he immediately starts rattling off an analysis like it's no big deal.]

The bars are comprised of cast iron and magic. The iron is a pretty typical alloy, 2.5% carbon, 1% silicon, and the rest iron. I can give you the molecular structure down to the subatoms, but there's honestly nothing special about it.

But the magic that uses laws I'm not familiar with. I can calculate them up to a point, but then it's like imaginary numbers get haphazardly thrown into the mix and screwing everything up. I know there's some fucking folklore about iron and fairies or whatever, but I thought it hurt them. Whatever the hell this thing is, it's able to work with the iron and make completely resistant to being broken by conventional means.

[He sits back, his tone dry.]

So all kicking is gonna do is break your toe.

Gotcha, thanks!

Editing to ask another question — Since Cas can detect life, would he be able to tell if the eggs are fertilized or not? Or sense anything else in particular about them?

Edited 2024-12-28 01:54 (UTC)

[ Sevika won't say anything about that until she's cracked open that pack and lit a cigarette. She'll take a long drag off of it before pointing the cigarette at Silco. ]

It's even more convenient since they don't use money here. You can just take anything, Silco. You didn't need to wait for them to look away.

[ Just saying. My man. ]

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DECEMBER MINGLE

EGGS

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cw brief reference to SI

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SI cw continues actually

cue "well, that escalated quickly" cw: mention of child death

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