Fissures of Time: Ongoing

[voidtreckermods]

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FISSURES OF TIME: ONGOING

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... POI 10-12

FOR SOME, THE MISSION HAS BEEN MORE MENTALLY EXHAUSTING THAN PHYSICALLY. Distortions sprout around the domain without rhyme or reason, and the camps must be moved every new day to meet them, as well as stopping a distortion from deciding to form under them from their presence.

While there's bare-bones vegetation, at least they have their own resources to help one another, as well as what can be retrieved from the Ministry base during return trips to take misplaced civilians to safety. It's straight-forward so far...

...but that wouldn't be standard for the Voidtreckers, and some in their ranks don't want straight-forward. Starting during the early hours of Poi 10, there will be occasional rumblings throughout the land. They last for a few seconds and then stop, seemingly for hours; but then they return, and as the days go on, so do the tremors increase.

It seems the distortions too have become affected...

THE UNQUIET CITY. (CW: People unable to die/rising from the dead, body horror)

A city of rubble and ruin stretches far out around them, where once there were hills and vegetation. Much of the rubble is still smoking as fires smoulder. The fighting isn't over, heard before it's seen.

It must be connected to the same skirmishes seen in other distortions, and so most of you are prepared to meet warriors on foot and mount. But what awaits isn't only the horror of bloodshed. No: the reason that the fighting still continues even as the city lies in ruin is because fighters fall and rise again, as if death were nothing but a short rest.

Puncture marks litter skin and armour, holes from weaponry and blessed-magic visible in torsos, even the spaces of where portions of one's skull and brain should be.

Yet they cannot stop fighting. They cannot fall to the ground, rest. Whatever drove them to fight this war still inspires them to continue, screaming as much in pain as in some sort of twisted ecstasy. Perhaps they are too shocked to do anything else. A city locked in eternal war, distorted in time, doomed to repeat itself.

It's hard to set the equalisers here. Not much is stable and fights are likely to break out wherever there are people. The people of this city have their factions, but they will not hesitate to band together to fight intruders.

EYE OF THE STORM. They might feel this distortion before they enter it. A spine-chilling thrill, the feeling one might get at the edge of a storm.

—For a storm it is. The moment they enter it their vision will be obstructed, winds howl around them and rain lashes down furiously making a swamp of the ground below them. It's freezing cold and as they walk they will feel something in the storm. Almost as if there are icy hands, reaching out to grab at them, to pull them further into the worst of the weather.

It's hard to know where to place the equalisers, hard to see where the edges of this distortion are. Easier, not by much, to move further in, to find the epicentre and try and take it down from there.

It's a treacherous journey, but the centre truly is calm, water frozen like crystals. Yet temperatures are dangerously low, so it's in everyone's best interests to set the equalisers quick and get out.

MEAN AND GREEN. As the rumbling continues, there comes a strange and worrying distortion. Worrying, as this distortion can be seen from the outside. A hazy blur that seems to move across the countryside, along the left side of the camp you're stationed at. It gets dangerously close at times, and when it does...

Green tendrils of plant life burst out, entangling people to pull them into the distortion. Or chains of flowers spread from the distortion out across the countryside. Beautiful and colourful in the otherwise sparse environment, but those flowers work as anchors, spreading the distortion, expanding it.

To get rid of it they will need to enter, and inside is a thick jungle of vines and bright colourful flowers awaiting them. The foliage is thick and the air musky and sweet. It's easy to get separated, and getting lost is only a matter of getting turned around. The leaves are sticky and vines move seemingly on their own, curling around unsuspecting limbs, trying to trap people in this colourful paradise forever.

And up in the sky above, a woman's laughter can be heard, the heat of the sun bearing down that becomes uncomfortable quick. But don't look up - you may find a large yellow eye - yellow iris, yellow pupil, golden yellow everything - peering back at you, and find yourself being pulled in by the very ground itself by a powerful force.

NO SANCTUARY. Protecting the camps hasn't been difficult, despite it being a Purple task. Other than rowdy refugees breaking out into fights, little else has appeared to disturb them.

'Eiiiiliiifii.... Siiiiliiifiii...
Merios? Herios?
Don't hide... don't hide...

Everything will be so perfect soon...'

People are woken abruptly in the early hours of Poi 11. If by some special sense, or by a grab at their throat, by a body falling on top of where they sleep, someone else stopping the refugee who was about to take a knife to them.

The refugees have become uncontrollable, raving about wanting 'their Gods back'. The ground rumbles as the woman's voice from the hazy jungle - ethereal, so divine - speaks from below. Grass rises and the sky above burns with a brightness like an approaching sun.

Setting an equaliser will calm the refugees, but only those in the camps. Starting from lunchtime, more warriors and civilians will be found appearing from the distance and from thin air, seemingly knowing where to find the Voidtreckers' camps - and after some very specific people.

Those with divinity, control over weather, nature, and death will be especially targeted, along with anyone who received blessings from the Gods.

OOC NOTES

OOC post. Ask questions here. Let us know about shenanigans here. NPC requests here, set up a thread here. Rewards go here.

TL;DR: Starting on Poi 10, there will be odd tremors around the domain, and more aggressive time distortions. From Poi 11 refugees will lose control of themselves and start attacking Voidtreckers, in and out of the camp.

It will happen abruptly to begin with, but some keen to reading energy will find that it is shifting; like something is breaking in from somewhere else (similar to the time distortions).

Extra equalisers can be picked up from the Ministry base and they will be there to help, but there are also more distortions happening around the domain, so they'll be dealing with those. The Ministry will advise that any non-combatants should stick to the base, and even use the scouting drones to help from afar, if they really need to help.

Undead warriors can be found outside of time distortions, and not all of the people outside of distortions will be 'permanent' people. Equalisers can be kept going for a few hours to keep these people away, but will also need go into recharge/cooling mode.

Don't worry if you're still busy with the Starting log! Or if you've been meaning to tag, jump in here!

Comments

[light_of_willpower]

He expected her to take those opportunities if presented. But she'd already made her chosen role of distraction and target clear, so it was his job to keep them safe. Everyone. Even the people currently trying to hurt them.

Hopefully it won't take too long to subdue this group.

[nutkrusher]

Cassie and Trunks have this down almost to the level of a geometry problem. Cassie finds the angles for Trunks to draw the line. All they need to do is make sure they always apply just the right amount of force.

This time they're all lined up in a straight line. Cassie won't pass this one up - a light shadow kick to one of the people in the front sends them hurtling into the one behind them, who topples the one behind them.

"I hope we don't have to do this again when they wake up."

[light_of_willpower]

"Well, if we do, then we do." Trunks said decisively, checking around them to see if there were anymore. "We could also try tying this group up before we look for more." Because there were more--he could hear shouts.

[nutkrusher]

"Might be a good idea," Cassie says. "Do we have enough rope with us?"

[eternalinquiry]

Between Moments
Sometimes, it's all you can do to take a moment. For Wangji, it's staring into the worrying camp food that comes out a shade of brown no matter what goes into it. Now is the time if anyone wants to chat or try and take a breather between the distortions that are only getting worse.

Eye of the storm
Wangji doesn't feel the cold like everyone else, powerful cultivation acting like a large thick coat that stops the worst of everything until others are essentially freezing. He isn't going to go that far in, he's trying to check who has gone in and has yet to come out. He will show you the list;
"Do you think the first wave has been in there too long?"

mean and green
Somehow, he is reminded of a movie with a singing plant trying to take over the world. He's mostly moving stuff out of effected areas that is too heavy for normal humans, herding people away from the vines, or fighting them off with any large and sharp implement he can find. You will come across him with the latter, hacking at a large vine that twined around a civilian and pulling it apart with bare hands when that is too ineffective.
"Do you have a better method for dealing with these? I am missing my sword."

No sanctuary
Wangji startles awake a split second before someone he had to shove back into a distortion attacks him by trying to choke him. He bolts upright and sends them crashing out through the side of his tent, tearing a hole and revealing the chaos outside it. He's panting and sweating, the most dishevelled he has appeared in company for some time. He staggers outside and does his best to slap restraining talismans on every irrational refugee, rendering them immobile at least temporarily, or knocking them unconscious with a few well placed blows.
"Has anyone found an equaliser?" He calls as he knocks out another one.

Xue Yang | Red

[xue_yang]

The Unquiet City
Now this is the kind of fun that Xue Yang can really sink his teeth into. What makes this even better is the fact that there are plenty of corpses around that he could use to make corpse poison if he really wanted to. He just has to convince someone to let him drag one back to camp. But that is a thought for another time as he enjoys hacking through the undead warriors.

A sword in each hand, Xue Yang is surrounded by a fair amount of the dead who refuse to stay down. He isn't at all bothered by it. This is the kind of excitement that really gets his blood flowing. The whole point of this is to kill and it has been a long time since he has been able to simply let loose. He has behaved himself on the train for nearly a year at this point.

As he cuts a couple more of the enemies down he laughs and turns to the next set. "Is that all you have? You better find more friends because you aren't going to win at this rate."

Can I keep him?
Is he trying to drag a couple of the dismembered corpses home? yes...yes he is. Certainly no one would miss a couple of bodies from the distortion. They are far more useful to him then they are to this world. So he has a body in each hand and is dragging them in the direction he knows that they came from in his efforts to get them back to camp.

Wildcard

Eye of the storm

[lucklessgege]

This has been a difficult mission, but nothing about their time on the train is completely easy. But he also doesn't want to accept help unless he is sure that everyone else involved has received it first. He quickly ushers others to Jingyi's side so that they can take space on the dragon's back first. Once he is sure everyone is ready he climbs on as well.

"I think everyone is accounted for."

unquiet city

[weisexual]

Lan Wangji was in the process of setting up an equalizer when Wei Ying goes streaking past. It makes his hands fumble slightly as he becomes momentarily distracted. He doesn't understand a lot of technology but he doesn't understand missions and magic. He knows that this is important for getting this world back on track.

But he also is very aware of the fact that there is a lot of dead here and his abilities would be better spent elsewhere. Especially considering that someone important to him just went running past with a far too familiar symbol on his body in a strange sort of deja vu.

He finishes what he is doing quickly so that he can trail after the other man. "Wei Ying..." Be careful...

Wangji appears in his hands and he sends a chord in the direction of some of the dead before they can gather up and become too much for his soulmate to handle.

Kitty Pryde | Purple Team | OTA

[goingthroughaphase]

No Sanctuary

Kitty is awoken because she suddenly isn't able to breathe, and all traces of sleep are gone when she finds someone looming over her, their hands wrapped around her throat. With a strangled gasp she becomes intangible, and the person falls forward as she passes through them.

She's barely able to jump to her feet when someone else stands to the entrance of her tent, and she's only able to catch the glint of a knife before she phases through them as well, heading out and seeing the refugees fighting and attacking the others.

She sees another refugee coming for her, but she disappears through the ground. The refugee is surprised and confused for a moment, which she uses to reach up and phase their legs through the ground, leaving them partly stuck and unable to pull themselves out.

Then she rises out of the ground and heads further into the worst of the fighting, looking for the others to make sure they were all right.

[ranoutofbuts]

Great... Though entirely expected.

Unsure on what abilities Nozumi has, Faux gives her a clear out. "We could manually eyeball it..." which comes with its own risks as he mentioned, "I don't want to put ourselves in more danger than needed." He says as he chops a flower trying to climb up his foot, noticing the surrounding flowers are bending towards them.

"If we do choose to go after it, it's not that far away, its just in an awkward spot over there," He points high up from where he came with a dense outcropping of noxious vegetation, "It's hanging at the top of that cluster of vines."

Zelgadis | Slayers | Purple Team

[gathersnomoss]

THE UNQUIET CITY.

Zelgadis had seen the dead rise. In addition to the standard necromancy, he’d seen Hellmaster Phibrizzo resurrect the city of Sairaag and its residents.

“At least the dead here don’t seem to retain much personality.”

As messed up as seeing corpses rise, at least the fact they look like corpses makes it psychologically easier to fight them.

Physically, he’s tiring, and running low on both strength and magical reserves, and realizing if he takes a hit, he could well go down from it. Hence trying to fight towards the boundary of the distortion, or at least some reinforcements.

NO SANCTUARY.

Which explains why when he was in camp, he just fell asleep without even undressing or bothering to get into his bedroll. And stayed asleep, until a bewitched refugee tried to make a grab for his neck. Zelgadis scrambled for a knife, or his sword, or something, head still too full of fuzz to pull off a spell.

Hopefully, someone else was noticing his distress or that they have a hell of a security breach.

No Sanctuary

[gathersnomoss]

Zelgadis is... not doing great. There was only so long he could compensate for 'not fully adapted to having a normal human body and limits', and the wind spell he used to give himself some room was also meant to signal any people nearby that he was here and could use some assistance.

[yondu]

Yondu's 5'10'', but 7'5'' is a lot taller, taller than even Siebren had been, and he hadn't come across him yet. So he blinks a couple of times when Thrawn speaks and he really notices him. Alright, well. Real big, he guesses. He's seen plenty of other blue people besides himself- being raised by the Kree and all. And if it weren't for the particularly red eyes, Yondu'd almost buy the guy for a hoss-sized Kree.

The plant manipulation abilities were something he'd picked up in a previous 'mission' (though more like an abduction, that situation had been), and when he used them to produce the vines to bind the woman they'd aggravated her. That in particular, it seemed, had set off her aggression.

They'd told them not to use their abilities, but he hadn't had much choice in that moment. With the guy Thrawn is holding he can tear off a piece of blanket from a nearby triage station and use that.

"That was a hell of a goddamn alarm clock," he mutters after doing up the knots, cringing at the noise going on outside the tent. He looks at the SCA on his wrist, but no one is saying anything quite yet. And there's no time for him to say anything either, because he can hear someone yelling about honoring their gods in the middle of their camp.

[light_of_willpower]

"Not sure. But I don't know that there's a better idea." Trunks reached up to rake a hand through his bangs.

[theverymodel]

"Fighting inevitable." They'd been trying to find another way, but they were no longer dealing with enemies that were reasoning. The target was so driven, especially against specific members of their team.

"May be able to fall back to Ministry facility. Problem will persist." BUt that will get young civilians out the crosshairs, at least. "Train based evacuation also possible as last resort."

[weifinder]

"Ah, but I have a busy mind, it won't quiet. You know, you know!" A mou of his lips, and he clasps Jiang Cheng by the shoulder, leaning in and offering the pretense of a pout that's barely there, compared to how he was in the years that spanned their mutual coming of age.

"Thank the Ministry for their kind contribution. Don't tell anyone, but I think half of it is to hopefully discourage us from roughly running off into any trouble. They, ah, they seem to be catching on to the fact we're not trained."

He smiles at that, with the wry edge of a man well aware that the lack of training they all share is because none of them came here by choice, informed. Their stumbling makes sense with no framework for being caught in the first place.

[weifinder]

Time to get his niece incense sticks so she can measure the time to know what the heck he's talking about...!

"... Great, very great! When I have their arms pinned here, can you wind it around each wrist and between them?"

No, he doesn't have another set of hands to bind the guy, but he can shift to make it so all she has to do is thread things around while they engage in nonconsensual surprise bondage with a violent offender currently spouting propaganda at their faces. In fact, spraying... spittle... as they shout.

[weifinder]

He pats Tidus on the back, the sort of reassuring, I feel you sort of thing he's likely done before, and doubtlessly will do again in the future.

"It does. The drink won't help with that, exactly, but it can still be nice, gentle the edges some." A pause, and he smiles, wry. "Only the one for you, unless you want me hauling you to your friends and depositing you in their care. Which I can! Just direct me to the preferred arms for resting in."

Not insinuating anything with the arms comment, more indicating does he need to find that Inigo person or is there another person or group you would like to be deposited with while drunk. Worse, he even looks serious.

[weifinder]

With Lan Zhan having finished setting up the equaliser in this area, more of the present time asserted itself; the temporal anomaly, such as it was, turning into flickers of less-tangible persons chasing after Wei Wuxian, to the point that Lan Zhan's strike on the chords of his instrument are like ripples across a pond.

Not that Wei Wuxian slows down, and the one thing he can admit is his physical endurance has gone up over the last year, what being fed more regularly on the train when others are in charge of meals and having no largess of resentful energies to rely on most the time. It is, in fact, inevitable, but it's still good that he feels no strain as the world continues to right itself, stabilised.

Only in this section, true, but the bleedover from the others where equalisers are still being put in place amidst the fighting factions of the deathless minimises once it's in place. For a moment, the both of them are standing on barren, arid land, surrounded on three sides by the flickering glimpses of the city at siege with death.

"This is all kinds of the wrong exciting, isn't it?" Asked with a half grin when he trots toward Lan Zhan, settling into a walk not long after.

Re: Eye of the Storm

[myblueskies]

He did hang on! Because the wind was so strong and it was trying its best to throw him off his feet. But she was close now. Just a bit further!

He took another careful and heavy step, then another.

"Mina!" He reached out for her.

[myblueskies]

He can hear the voice, it's a bit closer and it sounds like a grown up rather than another kid.

That's good. He would hate for Ken or even Madoka to be stuck in this storm!

"I'm here! This is so windy! Can you hear me?"

His head turns this way and that, looking for whoever is shouting.

Re: Eye of the Storm

[mystic_mongoose]

Once she got closer, she held out a hand as she held on to her sword.

“I can just…!” She grunted. A little more…!

And her fingers brushed against Romeo’s, fighting to lace them together so she can grab him.

“I got you!”

[myblueskies]

The cut isn't so bad, it had just bled a bit and it had been a shock. He let Ryo take his hand and watched as the cut healed. It vanished just as Madoka's had but was gone forever rather than moving on to Ryo.

When his hand wasn't let go of he looked up to meet Ryo's eyes. Ryo sounded very serious and Romeo wondered if he had done a bad thing. Healing couldn't be bad right? He had made Madoka and Idia better.

But Ryo wanted to teach him, to know if a wound was fatal or not. If it was fatal then surely he would need to help even more! Because he doesn't want his friends to die.

But he nodded slowly. "I'll try sir. But I don't really know how I did it. I didn't try to do it it just happened."

So a promise like that was difficult to keep.

[nutkrusher]

Cassie looks briefly at her ARMS band before shaking her head.

"Definitely not enough. I'll have to order some zip ties for next month."

Then her attention turns back toward the camp.

"In the meantime I think we should focus on getting the other team members out."

[myblueskies]

"That's a great idea!" He told him with a quick now but then fell silent as someone moved past and Esteban pulled him close. He stayed very quiet and still, not wanting them to be found.

He is good at hiding and he is good at running so he follows Esteban out as more people start shouting and screaming and a voice sounds, calm like music.

"I'll do this side you do that side!"

That would be quicker and they would be still close enough to keep each other safe. That would be good teamwork and they could get everyone awake before they got attacked!

Then they could figure out what to do next. Calling everyone on the SCA might be a good idea, to see if anyone knew what to do.