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

[blitzcheer]

Can Tidus see anything, maybe once he's not flustered about being picked up, which his brain might be adjusting to. The poor (or not so poor) refugee-turned-assailant has now been planted to the floor, their knife knocked out of their hand. That's not going to be pleasant to get up from, if they can, but if Tidus can see from this contorted, curled position -

"Lemme make sure they're out!"

Tidus has one useful technique right now, and it's knocking people out. (But then, so does Jingyi, along with being a very misused body of scales that can't be easily penetrated by the few weapons in camp.)

[jingyeets]

Jingyi lowers his head again, bringing Tidus back to the ground with more tender grace than might have been evident in him picking his friend up in the first place. (Don't doubt it'd taken deft tenderness at minimum, his teeth are predator's teeth, and his strength needs moderating, but he's also the one picking people up by mouth and not shoving them airborne using air or telekinetic shields he has imperfect control over.)

His tail keeps the refugee-gone-wild pinned in place, though the strings of saliva connecting Tidus to his mouth after he brings his jaws away is unfortunate, to say the least. As is Jingyi's lip-curling scrape of his tongue against his teeth, his eyes locked on the refugee and ears akimbo, tracking sounds around them. For all the world looking like a dog who's just licked peanut butter, only to learn that stuff sticks so incredibly, it's supremely difficult to swallow.

"Oh, you're all in my mouth," he says, not intending to be heard, but he is mumbling right by Tidus, and his head is two metres tall.

[blitzcheer]

You have hot breath on your back and a baffling battle around you, and the drooling of a pal is the last thing you're going to pay attention to in the midst of trouble. Later though, Tidus is sure to question why his shirt clings way too closely to his skin; but for now he's glad for his feet to find ground, and any complaint he could voice in complaint to Jingyi's complaining is more of an urge than anything concrete.

He's busy, rounding around Jingyi, past limbs and to the struggling refugee undertail, inhaling deep as he calls forward the spell into his hand. (The one spell he can handle like this, where his palm becomes the contact, and he might've had a few accidents before in knocking himself out, but we don't talk about those.)

"Night-night for you," he says, dropping to his knees, the refugee wanting to get away but capable of nothing but squirming, hand rising to bat at Tidus, but he gets his hand just as gracelessly into the person's face -- and after some more wiggling, they slowly, finally settle.

(Does he have to touch a person's face? Yes. Look, he doesn't make the rules of how his subconscious allows magic to work.)

Now, just the rest of the camp to go.

[jingyeets]

Jingyi watches the whole process while surreptitiously swiping a paw across his mouth: drool, be banished. It's not unusual to see magics here which work by touch, and he knows some himself, but he's still interested. Enough so his massive head hovers over Tidus by about a metre so he can better watch.

"I might be able to do a sort of net technique, if you can follow up with making them slumber." For a large bodied creature, handling the deft tasks was less efficient than the slightly more forgiving ones.

" Wouldn't hurt anyone."

[blitzcheer]

"Net? Like a real net?" Was this a magic of his own, or just a place he was hiding an abundance of actual netting? Unless his mop of a tail counted as such - either way, Tidus isn't against a less painful tactic.

"If you can pull out something I can touch, I'll try and make the spell work!"

He's not sure if they're on the same wavelength, but relying on an object is always safer than his own hand.

(Is he going to end up accidentally knocking himself out just once today? Absolutely.)

[jingyeets]

"Let me just show you," he says, rearing up to catch himself in the air--or at least his chest and forelegs, since he needs his talons to form the seal he knows, and then there's a space before the both of them and away from their passed out refugee-gone-wild where the whole of it is encased in thin blue qi ropes, woven together into a generous sort of net. Arms could reach through, maybe a small leg, certainly feet, but no head, and it could theoretically be made to note allow anyone to reach in either direction, though he wasn't thinking of it in that way. More attempting to keep things in, which reversed the usual way of it, where one could reach out but not in.

Now one could reach in, but find it difficult to reach out.

"I can constrict it down to one person or expand it to hold several at once. I just can't move it around once it's up without letting it disappear first."

[blitzcheer]

Well, that was clever. Where can he get one of those?

(By training? pah, nevermind.)

"Yeah-" He's looking at it, he's seeing it, brows raised between being impressed and intrigued. "Yeah," he repeats, this time with more vigour as he looks at Jingyi, and there's a better idea formulating.

"Can you make them flying in the air? I'll track you from ground, and I'll find the people you catch!"

It'd be easier not to mess around with Jingyi moving heights or Tidus hopping on and off. He can protect himself - and Jingyi might be able to see better for the both of them.

"Let's do it!"

[jingyeets]

All cultivator things are through training, Tidus, keep up, bro!

"I... can, I think?" Sounding questioning because when the hell has he ever needed to, except... no, no, now he remembers that time where they were trying to net each other from the air and then that other time with the rabbits, and just like that, he's lifting higher into the air.

"Shout at me if you need something specific! I'll hear you!"

Shortly after, he's high enough to get a better view of the camp as a whole, and starts forming those seals. The problem, as Tidus might immediately notice, is Jingyi has a great perspective... and it tells Tidus nothing about where the people he's qi-net encasing are.

[blitzcheer]

This is surely a plan that can't be goofed. If Jingyi's taking to the skies, then Tidus will keep to his feet, dashing with the call from above. He won't question Jingyi's sensitive ears (he's met a guy like that already--miss you, Piccolo), but start to navigate around the dome-shaped tents. He's at least got some of a direction to follow, the sun hovering in the sky like an early morning, and Jingyi a hard sight to miss in his dragon form even in the night.

It's just, if Jingyi's in the middle of netting ahead while Tidus happens upon a couple of people along his way-

"Hey, hey! You! Stop!"

He might hear, as Tidus goes in for the grab, not really sure if they're out of their mind or not, but now in a struggle regardless:

"JINGYI!"

Jingyiiii over here!!

[jingyeets]

Jingyi turns, the serpentine of his body doubling back in a flowing, graceful manner that has little to do with his response, as he quite suddenly brings himself into looming high and large over Tidus and his struggling partner.

The problem, of course, being:

"Let go! Or else I'm going to net the both of you!"

Or he could send them both to sleep, which would not be terribly helpful, instead of trying to net anyone at all.