January Event: Setting Fire to the Sky

[lifeaftr_mods]

JANUARY EVENT: SETTING FIRE TO THE SKY

Who: Everyone!
What: The sun dies, and the creatures of the night emerge from the depths
When: January 21st - January 28th
Where: Everywhere! Ensō, Monsun, Chol, and the Islets
Warnings: Character death, possible body horror and violence. Please mark any additional warnings as needed!

So We Can Take the World Back From the Heart-Attacked

The night of the 21st, the sun begins to dim. It dips in the horizon, sinks to nestle itself in the center of Chol like a star falling in slow motion, where it begins to smolder quietly - massive, smoking, and hot, like a massive egg. The night grows colder, the sky reduced to an inky black. The surface of the surrounding water is still but for the occasional ripple, the odd, strangely subdued wave, with not even the hollow lights of distant stars to glint off its reflective waves.

The Jormun gather around the sunken, dying sun with their scaled hands on their weapons, their expressions grim. They fan out across the island of Chol with arms in hand. Their fortifications have settled around the island's center in a dense ball of bristling weapons. They have been preparing for this. They are ready to fight.

Are you? No island is safe. From the well-trodden mainland of Ensō and its islets to the stark dichotomy of Monsun to the craggy shores of Chol, all manner of strange things have begun to haul themselves, dripping, from the watery dark.

No more preparation. No more running.

From here on out, it is fight or die.

One Maniac At a Time, We Will Take It Back

As the Storyteller has promised, there is sanctuary in their temple on Ensō, which will keep out the worst of the creatures. It will not, however, protect characters from the cold and dark, and so they will have to keep themselves warm some other way.

The Jormun fight fiercely, but they do not fight alone. Aside from the help that the willing of your number have offered, you may glimpse the Storyteller battling alongside the rest in a flurry of strange, shifting animal shapes: a heavy-antlered reindeer, a shrieking owl with outstretched talons, a slavering grizzly bear with the Storyteller's signature tome strapped across a broad, furry back, to name but a few. Those creatures that the Storyteller defeats will burst into a flurry of paper and dark, spattering ink, rather than being felled in the conventional manner. How odd.

As this is an event with a high risk of death, the Storyteller will impose death penalties for one week only. However, deaths succumbed during the event will count towards the character's total.

Then I'll Raise You Like a Phoenix

Come the sunrise on the 28th, the sun will launch itself into the air with a victorious shriek, its wings trailing plumes of fire behind it. The phoenix takes flight, reborn from the ashes. The shores of Chol are littered with corpses, both shadowy and scaled, along with an even smattering of crumpled paper and splotched inkstains. Despite the triumph of the fight, it did not come without its costs. The Jormun gather their dead and prepare to mourn them quietly. Those who perished in the fight will not see the sunrise from this unique perspective, watching the murk of the night tint to soft, milky yellow and pink, and then to a glorious new day.

Munin will greet the survivors with a mixture of solemnity and relief, thanking them profusely for their help. There is not much more that her people can offer you, at this point - they must grieve their dead, and she must return to the sea to prove that she has cemented her worth as a leader in the eyes of the other Jormun - but that does not mean that your stories will part forever.

Event Timeline

[ ♆ ] January 20th: Monthly Storytelling occurs as usual
[ ♆ ] January 21st: The dark arrives, the temperature drops further, and the first hostile creatures begin their assault
[ ♆ ] January 28th: The dark ends and the sun rises
[ ♆ ] January 30th: Those who perished are revived, suffering from a reduced death penalty

Event Specifics

[ ♆ ] If you have any questions, feel free to look over our OOC Info Post.
[ ♆ ] Feel free to make your own logs if necessary!
[ ♆ ] If your character perishes in this event, please let us know!
[ ♆ ] Item trades with the Jormun can be found on the OOC plotting post here! Even if you were only recently accepted, you are free to participate!

LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

Comments

[postictal]

[All he has is a wreck of a shirt - once checkered red flannel, now thoroughly muddied and torn, and looking even a bit scorched at the edges. Maybe he's making it worse, by dumping this on her, but if it were him? He'd want something to do. Something to occupy his time.]

You up to doing a little patch job?

[alittleditty]

Oh absolutely.

[And Tim is dead on the money for what Tataru needs right now. Tataru deals best by throwing herself into work, into some kind of plan. The problems only arise when there isn't much that she can do.

This though? This she can do. She takes the shirt and spreads it out to look at it, clicking her tongue disapprovingly.]

What in the Twelve's name happened to this poor thing? [She pauses, thinks better of that question.] Actually, don't answer that.

[postictal]

It was the only shirt I had for a little bit. That's what.

[He has the good grace to look somewhat sheepish as he crams his hands in the pockets of a jacket that someone mysteriously provided for him by tossing it onto his head in the morning and hastily absconding before he could call them on their little act of generosity.]

I'm willing to trade for the, uh...labor that might be involved.

[alittleditty]

[Tataru smiles a bit wryly, going to spread the shirt out on the ground and see what can be salvaged. And then go over to her supplies to look for her needle and thread.]

We'll worry about it when we get through this. We have plenty of food stocked up here anyway, and that's usually what I ask for.

[Since it's the primary thing she can't get herself.]

[postictal]

[Thank god it's had its intended effect - she seems sufficiently distracted, and comparatively calmer now that she has something she knows how to work on. He made a good call. For once in his life, he made a good fucking call.]

[Fingers crossed it sticks.]

How you holding up?

[alittleditty]

[She does pause slightly, not meeting his eyes. She's not completely oblivious to what he's probably trying to do.]

I know I probably look quite the mess, don't I?

[She smiles again, bit it's a bit more of that overly-forced brightness.]

I was telling someone earlier, you'd think I'd be more used to waiting while my friends are off saving the world.

[postictal]

You wanna know a secret? [It's not really a secret at all, but no one said it had to be. He is a liar. Liar, the word stitched into bone and skin and neuron.]

[Sometimes that's not as bad as people make it out to be.]

It never really gets easier. You just learn to start working through it.

[alittleditty]

That's sort of what I meant.

[Though in a way, she is kind of working through it now.]

This makes the third... technically fourth time in somewhat recent memory.

[More than that, if you include all the different times that Primals were wreaking havoc, and the Warrior of Light had gone off to face them.]

[postictal]

Yeah, well. Crises are gonna happen. Some of us just gotta fight them in other ways.

[He's not much of a fighter. He's not much of an asset in a crisis - too many liabilities, too many tightly coiled synapses about to go off at the slightest failure. It's less because he wants to, less because he's an ideal player in these circumstances, than it is because he knows there's not much in the way of choice.]

[alittleditty]

So I've been told.

[She remembers the talking-to that Thubyrgeim gave her, after her failed attempt at becoming an Arcanist.]

It's just an adjustment, I suppose. The tasks that I do here are... rather different than the ones back home.

[In some ways, she's not as busy, which gives her more time to think. In other ways, she feels busier than ever.]

[postictal]

Unless you were surviving on a desert island back home, I’d kinda figure as much. Everybody’s gotta adjust in some way or another, even if it feels like you’re the only one who’s still trying to catch up.

[Granted, plenty of people are champions at hiding that lack of direction, couching it in criticism and aggression and picking a direction to strike out upon. The fighters have the illusion of a goal; not necessarily a goal unto itself.]

[alittleditty]

Does that mean you feel like you're still trying to catch up as well, Tim?

[It's a gentle tease, and a grateful one.]

[postictal]

Me?

[It's not exactly surprised, but it does generate a little snort-huff of air, which is the closest he generally gets to an actual laugh.]

Back home, "survival" was sleeping in cars and eating gas station food just to get by. Pretty far cry from fighting in war zones or learning to sow your own crops. So, yeah. I guess you could say that.

[alittleditty]

[She... actually only understood about half of that. The modern references in particular are completely lost.]

Your world sounds so different from my own. I should like to learn about it sometime.

[Though she knows that now would generally be a bad time, at least.]

[postictal]

[It's an innocent question. There's a well of disturbing context he doesn't want to even touch on right now. To grimace and swallow and look away would reveal too much - would bare the possibility of answers being peeled back, flake by flake, like an old scab lifted from a half-healed wound.]

[So he plays it off. Easy.]

Nah. It's pretty boring.

[alittleditty]

I mean, I have no idea about half the things you just referred to, so it seems pretty interesting to me.

[Smiling a bit more cheerfully, mostly oblivious, aside to the fact that he's reluctant, for some reason or another.]

I'm sure all the differences in my own world are probably just as interesting to you!

[postictal]

Maybe.

[Time to never bring this subject up again, ever, in the hopes that she might forget to, uh, pick his brain later. That'd be ideal. Find someone else with an adequately modern world to discuss the minutiae with, so that he never has to mention it.]

Point is, we're always just surviving. Takes different shapes sometimes, is all.

[alittleditty]

[She lets it go, for now.]

Yes, I suppose.

[a beat]

Will you be going out again, soon?

[postictal]

Probably, yeah.

[He manages to turn the shrug into something sheepish, almost apologetic.]

I got all these weapons. Might as well use ‘em, y’know?

[alittleditty]

... be careful, all right?

[She knows better than to try to stop people who've resolved to fight, so long as they're not being careless in the process.]

I'll try to make sure this is ready by the time you get back.

[postictal]

I'll do my best.

[He certainly doesn't plan to die this go around. No idea how that'll play out, but that's what he can hope.]

Stay safe, yeah?

[alittleditty]

We'll do our best, here.

[Take care, Tim.]