❪ event ❫ spirited away

[natha]

PRELUDE     I'll get straight to the point, Thesaens. Dranbu is in dire need of assistance. I have received confirmation that the disappearances we were investigating last month have... escalated. Be cautious as you make your way through Josa Forest. Ideally we could go straight through, but it seems the main entrance to Dranbu is overgrown with thorns and vines, and there's a bit of a glitch with the rail system - the train is having trouble recognizing the Dranbu station as a destination. I've uploaded a homing beacon to your devices with this message. Once enough of you have arrived in Dranbu proper, it should communicate with the train and register it as a stop. With any luck, that will make getting back and forth much easier for you all from now on. Best of luck. Entry to the forest is not only overgrown with vegetation, but seems to be growing at an increasingly alarming rate. Any attempts to clear the vines will be met with even larger ones growing in its place, and it only confirms Nurray's findings as true. The only way in is across the sound from Nadril, entering the forest from its snowy back yard. It doesn't stay cold for long; as one ventures further into the forest, the snow will disappear, as though it was completely out of place in the first place. The red sun's warmth will take its place soon after— and before long, you'll feel too warm for the clothes you came with. That's when you know you've entered the heart of Josa Forest. WITHIN THE FOREST     The forest seems to be thick with a profound presence that can’t be ascertained. While venturing through it, one will feel like there are being watched or followed. This feeling will only intensify as metallic-scented drops of rain begin to fall between the clearings in the trees. Unfortunately, what many don’t realize at this point is that this is how the forest itself eats. How it subsists and lives through the minds of those who eventually get lost in it. Wandering this far in is akin to walking into a lion’s jaw, or rather… straight to its stomach. But, the forest has a way of making one stay. While it swallows someone up, it shows them sinfully beautiful and picturesque sights. Even showing them people or things that are familiar to the lost. All of which will urge them to go in deeper and deeper. But, while the forest begins to prey on the mind of their victim— they will suddenly hear an elegant and alluring voice urging them back. This voice promises them comfort and safety. Promises to be kind and open. Promises she has a place for them where they will never feel displaced or unwanted, or lost. Before they can fully accept, they will find that they are whisked away in Barthala’s embrace. Some will be taken, wiped of all their previous memories and inserted new ones. Others will find they have no prior memories at all of themselves, only urged to go on with regular life. What is prevalent is the forest's desire to turn you. Metamorphosis is a phenomenon that occurs only to certain individuals, and there is no rhyme or reason to them. Some adventurers would find themselves changing by the minute, the hour, or the process may even take days and weeks. The forest toys with you, but it only wants to draw you closer to its core — as though there's a story there it wants you to see and understand. Will you go on anyway, knowing the forest has already has its claws on you? I. ALL ROADS LEAD TO — Exploring the forest is not a perilous experience - Barthala's blessing ensures that paths remain clear of any dangerous obstacles, and keeps anyone who enters the woods from losing their way. However, it will not always lead adventurers where they want to go. Stressed? Your path leads to a meadow, grass drifting gently in the breeze. Tired? You'll find your way to a tree with roots perfectly curved for a nap, the shade a peaceful retreat from the sunlight. The hungry will find streams full of fish or bushes laden with berries, and the curious will come upon elder trees, unique and beautiful. Only those who are truly satisfied with their circumstances, with themselves, can forge their own path, and venture to Barthala's Grotto. II. BARTHALA'S GROTTO — The deity's home is host to an abundance of life. Butterflies drift through the air, brilliantly colored and unbothered by any intruders. Foliage blooms in a rainbow of colors, many plants unique to this area alone. With trees arranged to provide a canopy over the path and small clearing, the scene is something out of a fantasy. Any plant life taken from this area will not survive long, though even in its dead, dried state, it retains a curious beauty. Explorers and creatures finding themselves in this area will suddenly find their clothing to be an unnecessary burden - what could be better than feeling the wonders of nature against bare skin? There is nothing unbecoming about such a natural state, any perverse inclinations are an aspect of personal preference. While the presence of Barthala can be felt here - a warm, comfortable sensation emanating from your core - she is nowhere to be found. Only one will have the opportunity to pass under a veil of willow branches and emerge to the cool air of a clear-as-glass spring. Another nearby grotto is home to a plant with intoxicating effects. Just smelling the leaves is enough to entice most animals, and consuming them has effects on both mind and body. More easily amused, with thoughts that weave deep and distant, along with increased sensory perception can bring the user on a pleasant trip lasting up to five hours. III. INFLUENCES — (18+) Every five days, a weed scattered in patches among the forest underbrush blooms. The flowers are small and white, unremarkable except for how clustered they grow. When their petals fall, after only hours of blossoming, pollen drifts through the air. It clings to clothing, to hair, in the throats of the sensitive animals dwelling in the forest. Even those unaltered by Barthala's magic can be affected. The locals of Dranbu claim the pollen enhances fertility, but in practice, it simply serves as a poignant aphrodisiac. Those affected won't differentiate between the warmth of another or their own, a simple need to experience sexual ecstasy overwhelmingly pervaded. The pollen loses its potency after about three hours, leaving behind only a sweet smell. YOUR NEW (NEW) LIFE    Adapting to an entirely new setting isn’t always so simple. People often say that assimilating oneself to the environment happens fluidly, and before you know it, you’re a part of it. In Dranbu, these words hold an uncanny sense of truth. When you awake, your day begins like it always has. Your daily routine meets largely unchanged, except a few tinier details. Perhaps, you’ve realized your true calling is an occupation within the villages itself. Maybe in farming up strange medical herbs, maybe in acting as a witch doctor for the people, or maybe you find yourself drawn to the arts and you really enjoy sculpting fellow villagers in the nude. Once you commit these tasks, you realize, it feels like what you’ve always done. As if it were natural, as if you’ve done them for years, and maybe you have? At least that’s what your gut is telling you, and slowly your memories will too. At the end of the day, when you return home, you realize you’re not alone. You have a partner who shares the same values and whom you love deeply. Or maybe a spouse whom you’re always arguing with. But, even that will feel as commonplace as the rest of your day. All you know is that the day that might have started off not being yours is entirely yours and yours alone. IV. THE HUNT — Those taken by the forest, animal features adorning their bodies, will find that their palates have changed as well. Carnivores crave raw meat, while herbivores don't mind snacking on a patch of grass or pulling leaves from branches. For most, there's no reason to cook a meal; once prey is captured, instinct says dig right in! It can be a gruesome sight, mangled bodies gorged upon leaving bloodstained faces, but it's natural. As is the hunt itself - any size of game can be found in the forest, and no one will go hungry for long. The magic that dwells here ensures a catch even for the clumsiest predator. Just take care not to stalk one of your own. For a hungry predator, there's no difference between a deer and a deer-like human. THE BOUNDARIES BEYOND     For some, placated is synonymous with bored. While there is a sense of wonder in the beauties of nature that adorn the woods, serene forest life isn't for everyone. Those seeking more adventure can explore the challenging slopes of Waco Mountain. Barthala's influence is weaker on those bluffs than in Josa Forest itself, so thrill chasers won't be disappointed. Lose the path, slip on loose rocks, fall into a stream and spend a night wet and cold, there are many perils that come with traveling a mountain-side. Scattered ruins offer some shelter, their walls carved with images resembling Barthala, a dragon, and three other stranger creatures. While the deity's pacification does not flow as deeply through this region, all are still save from mortal wounds, and the veil cast over their memories will not lessen. If you have made it this far, however, there is no reason to try to return to the main city of Dranbu. Accommodations are always available in the neighboring villages: Phares in the north, and Stroln in the south. These villages are in friendly competition with one another, and will tempt travelers with women and men of their kind in order to draw in business to their hotels. FINAL OOC NOTES     No REP is available for this log. REP will now be primarily available through achieving NPC quests, which will be available on the 19th! Please keep an eye out for that! Dranbu is entirely available for exploration! You may find that most of Wyver and Olympia Flora/Fauna may be found in the forest as well. For more information on your characters' (opt-in) Metamorphosis, please refer to the November Outline! QUICK NAV premise ● faq ● lore ● map ● npcs ● bestiary taken ● atp/emp ● application ● rep/acp ● quest bulletin calendar ● hiatus/drops ● modbox [ FULL NAVIGATION ] elnysa nysalogs nysaisles nysaooc elnyan

Comments

[priorly]

[Someone's looking at Richie.

He doesn't know why he should be so distracted by somebody so ordinary. Albeit this does seem to be one of the travellers who's stumbled in lately, most of them half turned about by the forest, lacking the sharp ears or sharper teeth or fleet feet to properly navigate wild places. Not quite ordinary for the villages round here, maybe, but plain enough.

Although he does have nice eyes. Or Prior thinks he would, for some reason, underneath the glasses reflecting back the lights above the bar. Prior's watching from the opposite side, shadowed almost as much as the stranger's lit.

Well, who knows what it could be that has him flustered by a glimpse of a weary stranger, but it's undeniable something does. He may be known for being somewhat flighty by nature, but it generally takes a little more than this.

He watches the barman slide a tall glass of water forward and lean in after it, and takes a couple of careful steps backwards. Light footed, all but undetectable - save the mighty clang one antler sends ringing out as it connects with a light fitting. It's embarrassing, really. A regular here long enough, he should have learned where and when to duck years ago. As it is he startles himself at the same time as pulling the attention of half the patrons in the bar.

Though there's only one he's really aware of. He stares a long moment more at the new perspective offered when the stranger lifts his head up - then finds himself trotting as swiftly as dignity (and other low-hanging obstacles) will allow, toward the back door.]

[summertimeblues]

[Extrasensory powers were only granted to him when threats of considerably greater danger came skulking around. His baby hairs don't tickle or prick with the feel of eyes on his back. Moreover, he's distracted. Richie takes his gulp of the water and feels no magic tingles. He remembers his name, his address. As long as neither slips from him over the next hour he ought to be fine. Cosmic forces have kept him afloat this long, what's this town got on Derry?

Such a clatter behind him. Someone clocked themselves on the iron-wrought lights. Richie turns back to look.

What's this town got on Derry?]

Prior!

[He leaps up. (What the devil is on his head?) The glass and barman are abandoned, the whole room tracks his mad dash after the exit. Strange folk, these outsiders. What's he want with Jack's husband?

The blur of a man disappears with a bang, the door swinging bamboozled in his wake. Richie can see the shadow against lamplights. It looks near satanic. Remember that bit in Pinnochio? It had been hilarious as a kid, watch the cartoon boys turn to asses, hee-hawing and shrieking in technicolor. He's not finding it funny now.

Richie gives chase, one hand out to snag at his arm, his shoulder. Whatever he can hold.]

Prior, wait!

[priorly]

[Now, is it better to be chased down the street by an unsettling stranger, or by an unsettling stranger who knows your name? It's quite the conundrum, and Prior's on the verge of deciding to break full tilt into a run rather than mull it over when there's a hand dragging at the back of his shirt and both ideas are skewered at once.

He clips neatly to a stop (it's the name, that's what makes it worse) and the back view might afford Richie the chance to watch the measured breath he takes lift his shoulders and drop them again. Steady. There's no sense in flipping out over a strange, lost man.

He half turns (by now Richie might have noticed the few extra inches in height he's put on somehow, as if he's been stretched and honed into something more delicate, spindly by design rather than the slow wasting of sickness). As he looks back the dappled patterns across the side of his face are more evident, less easy to mistake for shadow.

He smiles, a narrow, deliberate thing.]

Why, I always hoped my reputation would precede me, but I never expected it to make it this far. [He looks Richie over, a quick, uncertain - unfamiliar - glance] How do you know my name?

[summertimeblues]

[He's living in a fairy tale. That's what this is.

Richie takes in the spots first, patterned over what should be a hairless cheek. The height is known before it's comprehended. His fingers splay in shock, losing the grip on his shirt (don't let him go—) as Richie steps back, mortified.

The creature is Prior. But it's not his Prior. He remembers what Beverly said about Mrs. Kersh, fine features trickling into old witch's decay, pulling handfuls of fudge into her wretched mouth from a table that should have been wood. The house had turned into Hansel and Gretel's hell before her eyes. Which story was this? Which one chewed up a man you loved and spat them out as an animal?]

You...well Jesus, Prior, I didn't think I was that forgettable. [His jaw locks. Eyes dart to the antlers. His horror reads plain.] New haircut?

[priorly]

[Prior's hand lifts of its own accord. Before Richie's asked the question he's drifting fingers through his hair, brushing up against the velveted base of an antler. All in order. So what the fuck's this all about.

He steps in place, himself, shifting foot to foot. One's a more careful tread than the other, but his lameness is more easily incorporated into a lighter gait. If he ran, he wouldn't be caught.]

That's not an answer, really. And I don't think we're friends from the old days, are we? If I knew something that looked like you, I'd recall it.

[There's a bite there. Well, these strangers are different, and not just in looks. Who's to say they're safe? By all accounts all the human cities tend to do is try to burn each other to the ground - there's a reason Dranbu keeps its distance.]

[summertimeblues]

Something. I'm a thing now? [Between the two of them who's got the antlers?

Lucky he's wise enough to bite that one back. The creature that Prior's become already lit the fuse on his patience, and Richie's not sure how to snuff it out. What time can he buy under circumstances like this?]

You should recall me. It's Richie. Look— [The glasses are ripped free, baring his eyes. Desperate eyes. Pleading ones.] C'mon, Pry, do I gotta do the song and dance for you? Snap out of it.

[He reaches —unwisely, yes, he knows it well — for the dangling hand that brushed his thick hair. Touch. Human touch. Could there be merit in that?]

You left your coat on the floor. No note. What are you doing out here?

[priorly]

Don't call me Pry.

[He jerks his head back as Richie reaches out, but somehow his hand doesn't get caught in the recoil. Fingertips touch. There's no Freaky-Friday jolt of primal magic shoving his senses back where they should be, just a moment held too long before he snaps his hand away too, splaying it palm out across his collarbone.]

What am I doing here? Oh, the can-can every night at Mme Le Roux. [This is an insanity he shouldn't be indulging, and yet he stares at Richie anyway, just in case there is some detail to his features that might click and explain this behavior. In case it clicks and explains the unsettled feeling in his stomach.] I live here. I have a job. A husband, and a coat. If we screwed sometime in the dim and distant past and I left in a hurry then I'm sorry but -

[Left his coat on the floor. There have been faceless people whose floors probably retained one item of clothing or another, but he'd remember, surely he'd remember -

Look, he's been instructed, so he looks long and hard. And shakes his head.]

There's nothing.

[summertimeblues]

[The snatched hand was expected. Diatribe too, in halves. He can't pretend a few words don't slice at him like cleavers through a ribeye.

His shock gets its about-face quick.]

Oh really? They got the can-can down in ole Dranbu? [You'll have to dismiss his derision, but speaking frankly my dear:] That's a load of horse shit if I ever saw a fresh pile pushed out. That's French, Pry, from the Moulin Rouge in gay old Par-ee. On Earth, which is where you're from.

[His fingers switch to pointing. His glasses mash back onto his face. He needs to see clear, hear clear, before his blood boils to bubbling and the steam jets out of him like a burning hurricane. Something has to work, anything, please—]

Your name is Prior Walter. One of several in a line of WASPs longer than your dick. You lived in New York. You met a man named Lou and you fell in love and he snapped your damn heart in two because you got sick. Sick with the worst bug of all, kid, and you're lucky they've got the spells to quell it here because it's going to eat you alive.

And you were never married. [It wasn't legal. That's beside the point. Richie holds for a cold moment.]

Who is he?

[priorly]

[It's a rapidfire list to try to follow and there's more than enough he doesn't understand. Something about bugs? Wasps. And then more bugs of a different kind. It's that, more than the list of names of people and places that should comprise about two thirds of his heart that keeps Prior rooted into the sidewalk instead of about-facing to flounce away along it.


He's kept a mask of indifference as cold as he can make it, but the cracks have begun to show.]

How do you–

[A pause to try and shake the tremulous quality from his voice, and he pulls the old trick of dipping his chin so its harder to see his face fall.]

How do you know I'm sick?

[They don't have a name for it here, just a healthy fear of it, and he's waiting for the day Jack turns bushy-red tail and leaves him over it, too. All this is just a little too on the nerve. Prior pushes back against the fear with a fresh defensive spark.]

No. No. This is all nonsense. This is what I do: fates and fortunes, the real thing. Not some... cheap trick. So forgive me for not showing you my wedding photos so you can pull the same stunt on Jack. Whoever fed you these lines claiming they knew me, it sounds like they barely passed me in the street.

[summertimeblues]

[Of all things, he expected dropping Lou's name to help. Even New York and her wicked ways draw no flicker of recognition.

It turns out he should have dropped the history and gone for the physical here and now. Richie's jaw is rigid tight. Cheap tricks, nonsense, force-fed lines. He knows Prior's misaligned right now, head screwed on at a bad angle and he's stripping the hatched top trying to work it loose, but damn if that doesn't hit his gut like a rusty blade.

It's not for nothing. It isn't. He's got an angle now, one taken advantage of with a terse blow.]

There's a lesion on the inside of your arm. The left. [His lips twitch. He steps closer by four inches. Nothing invasive, but all too intimate with his voice gone hush-hush and the accusations drawing a map of Prior's skin.] A big purple splotcher in between your shoulder blades. Some dotty specks healing up on your thigh.

[Near where he'd taken a lascivious nibble before the marks even showed. He'd been afraid his teeth were the cause and Prior had swatted that hound dog guilt away, literally and orally. A slap to the shoulder and a hostage threat on his Led Zeppelin collection if he swore off fellatio over something so stupid.

He can't list those facts off. He doesn't want them dismissed, he needs them to stay close and precious or he'll lose it.

Richie raises a defiant chin. His stare is unwavering and hard.]

I don't care about Jack. Or your pictures. Two can play that game if you want, kid. How's your leg doing? [He shakes his head, wry and bitter.] AIDS is a real bitch, innit guvnor?