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

[jingyeets]

Jingyi lands with that, his talons pressing against the earth in a literal grounding. He strains his hearing through the camp, but it's overwhelming, too many sounds collectively, too much to hear and not at first enough to pick out as one specific. The sound of an equaliser being set up is covered by so many others, and centimetre by centimetre, his talons press down into the earth.

Inigo did say hold on. He's holding.

His qi nets are likewise holding, but those he doesn't need to concentrate on, not now that they've been established. Even the silence wards working to keep their captured refugees from overwhelming them with sound doesn't help for anywhere beyond their arc of netting, for better and worse.

Then he hears it, the humming sound that doesn't quite ring and definitely itches his inner ear without doing that at all. Jingyi's head whips around, facing the direction his ear had picked out as the one responsible for the noise.

"There." His whiskers lifted, not wafting in wind, but frozen in an upward lift now. The tip of his tail twitches with nerves coursing through him, and he reminds himself, this is not possession as the refugees try shaking the bars of the qi netting, and then...

... well, it's not fully instant, but the ones closest to the direction he's looking stop struggling and mouthing off in their enforced quiet so violently, start to slump, to look confused, to look frightened as they come to terms with their present situation. Jingyi drops the silence ward, and while some are still shouting about gods, or almost being right or fixed or whatever it is, more are starting to look confused.

[flatteries]

".. Thank Naga."

That's definitely an expression of relief in this case, because Inigo truly wouldn't have known what to do if that hadn't worked. Just keep the people that way the entire time, regardless of how humane or inhumane that sort of treatment is? He doesn't like to even really think about it.

But it worked. It's working! Just look at it. Even if the effect is kicking in slowly, it is working. It ought to only be a matter of time before all the displaced people have been calmed, and Inigo releases a breath he didn't even realise he was holding.

"Jingyi, you're a genius."

Hey, he's not above giving a pal some credit where it's deserved. Jingyi helped them cope up with this idea, even if Inigo helped in executing it.

[jingyeets]

Jingyi whines, in a pathetic, carrying way, and flicks a talon to let the qi nets go all at once. While it is nice, to enthusiastically hear he comes up with good ideas (and reaffirming, considering how most his good ideas came up at home, a very different set of rules and logic being what he grew up with there), he's mostly glad this means the compulsions-that-totally-aren't-possessions appear to have stopped.

"I'm so glad that worked," he says, head dropping down low to be held more on level with Inigo. "Because if it didn't, and they still acted possessed, I was going to have to shift to play Clarity..."

Which would have meant a naked guy playing qin while freaked out, which was a recipe for disaster delightfully avoided.

The refugees, freed from netting, have started standing, more and more of them appearing to be back in control of themselves and frightened at how they ended up here, hazy headed, holding an assortment of makeshift weapons, some injured, some wearing blood that isn't from any wound they can find.

Some very freaked out at the sight of a large creature with visible canines and large claws digging into the dirt.