[EVENT|4TH WALL] MYSTERIOUS INTERLOPERS - THE DREAMING DISCONNECTS | APRIL 22-30

[ironwood]

Characters: ALL and plus ones.
Date: April 23-30 2015 (2016 in-game)
Location: In the city of Keeliai
Situation: Infiltration - fourth wall event, week two!
Warnings/Rating: Add warnings as needed.

The festival initially ends on a vindicated note. The kedan at large are happy, chatting, even being unnecessarily gracious toward the Foreigners -- those they can tell are Foreigners, at least. Even the Woodsmen are pleased, on the whole, though it may occasionally be difficult to tell. It's also the Woodsmen who first get the news, trickled down from Heojin.

By the end of the first day, the rest of the festival-goers will have heard enough from the Woodsmen to be going on: that Lin, Heojin's bodyguard, ran across someone making trouble in a field on the day he was apparently absent. The exact details of what happened are blurred; some say he was kidnapped, some say he fled into the mountains to draw the interlopers off, some say he was just in hiding, watching their movements.

Regardless, it causes curious kedan to go investigate the fields themselves on their way back to the city -- never by encroaching on the Woodsmen's land, thanks to the strings of Woodsmen guarding the fence-lines, but enough to see the evidence for themselves.

Whatever the truth of the rumours, by then it becomes clear: there was more than one group of infiltrators in the festival.

The raiders are back. They've come for their own.

---

LINKS
Festival Grounds & Crop Circles | City Tensions | Outside Yunxu's Mansion | Palace Lands | Water Sector Memorial | OOC Post - Event Week #1 | OOC Post - Event Week #2 | 4th Wall Character Check In

OOC
Some starters have been provided in the comments below to cover the main areas of the event! Anything that doesn't fit into these can be added to the bottom of the post. Please direct any questions to the OOC post, thank you!

Comments

Outside Yunxu's Mansion

[ironwood]

The protest outside Tu Yunxu's mansion can hardly be called organized by any stretch, but it's not without its strength. There's a healthy mix of people attending, but a good many of them are older, and from their constant calls for justice against the Chihuelans, it isn't hard to figure out that many of these kedan are those who lost sons and daughters in the invasion.

Their claims are reasonable, they'll argue. There's no way that these two Chihuelans weren't part of the invading force under Celaunn's command, because how else could there be Chihuelans on Tu Vishan? The name of the former Basswood Commander is spoken with the deepest loathing, and many feel they were betrayed by the woman not once, but twice.

In fact, any who might speak in defense of the two Chihuelan men are very likely to end up on the cold, stony glare of the protesters. The immediate vicinity of the Snakes' headquarters keeps any potential violence in check, but be assured that names and descriptions of any who don't seem to be siding with the kedan will be passed along.

Open

[wolfstrike]

This has certainly caught Yuri's attention, and he can be found at the edge of the crowd, leaning against the wall of a nearby building.

He says and does nothing, at least for now. He's merely an observer, waiting to see if and when Yunxu or any of his lackeys will address the crowd. He's not really sure if these Chihuelans are responsible for the muggings or not. But the crowd of Kedans is obviously seeking blood. From what he's heard people say in the crowd thus far, about losing loved ones, he can certainly sympathize.

Either way he's curious to see what will happen.

[redlightgreenlight]

She had met Celaunn only once, back when she and Skulduggery had gone to speak with Evandau, and the woman had disappeared soon after. She had never had much respect for the former Emperor. He had been weak and foolish, more so because he had never realized the traitor in his midst. However, three hundred was not an invading force and no matter how surprised the kedan had been, three hundred was not even near enough to hold Keeliai should they manage to take it.

No. Celaunn hadn't brought her people here to take over Keeliai, of that Valdis was certain. She was also certain that whatever they had come for had to be in the Water Sector, or at least Celaunn had believed it to be, why else would the dead there number so much more?

It was unfortunate, but she would have to temporarily set aside her grudge against Tu Yunxu. She couldn't risk weakening the political structure now, not when the kedan needed to believe that he would protect them. No one else could lead the Snakes at this moment, so she would have to leave him be. It was irritating, but more important things were going on now. Like the angry mob outside Yunxu's mansion.

"I usually don't come this way," she commented, leaning against the wall next to the young man, "But angry people tend to give away more information than content ones."

[wolfstrike]

As Valdis made her appearance, Yuri looked over to her as she spoke. He knows he's seen her around, but he's not gotten personally acquainted yet.

"Sounds like we're on the same page," he said casually.

He didn't have nearly the information she likely had, having been here longer and all, but they were obviously both interested in the same thing.

[redlightgreenlight]

She watched the angry crowd for a few moments. It seemed unlikely that anyone would cause trouble so near the Snake's headquarters, but these people were quite upset, so she was on guard nonetheless.

"I am always watching," she replied, "It is almost time for action."

[wolfstrike]

"Yeah...," Yuri agreed thoughtfully while looking back to the mob.

"What kind of action do you have in mind?"

He already had an idea himself but he wondered what this lady was planning.

[redlightgreenlight]

"We let the Snakes get ahead of us," she replied, looking over the crowd again, "We need to know what they know, we need to know more than they know. Which means that we will have to take the offensive instead of just observing."

[wolfstrike]

He liked the way she was thinking already. A lot of the other foreigners seemed to be holding back because of relations with the Kedan. Which was all well and good, until people got hurt. And people had gotten hurt. Yuri wasn't about to stand by and twiddle his thumbs.

"Like catching some muggers?"

His tone implying that he already had a plan.

[redlightgreenlight]

A grin spread across her face, "Exactly like that."

If he had a plan, then she was all ears.

[wolfstrike]

"They're looking for soul gems right?"

His was obvious as it was in the form of a gold choker with a dark purple gem. But then he held up his arm that sported his blastia. Which was a gold bracelet with a red diamond shaped gem.

"I think I could make an easy target."

[redlightgreenlight]

"They wouldn't be foolish enough to try to take mine," she agreed, "So you would be the more likely target."

The second gem was interesting, but it would most definitely confuse the muggers.

[wolfstrike]

"Yeah, so I'm the bait. I'll just need a little back up."

He didn't know what kind of capabilities this lady had but if she was that confident in her abilities, Yuri wasn't going to dispute it. In fact he'd be glad to have her on his side.

[redlightgreenlight]

"Perfect," she laughed, "They will have a hard time escaping from me."

She wasn't going to tell him her abilities, or that she wasn't as confident with them as before. She was healing, she knew that for a fact since the angry crowd wasn't causing enough pain to be a problem.

[bugger_quantum]

The ultimate non-partisan stands tall, dark and motionless in the shade, some distance behind the loudest of the crowd. Death has encountered riots, and overseen protests, often at the same time. But those were business trips, for the most part, on which it was not his job to understand. His interests were and are strictly separate. Now that he has been separated from what he was doing before, he's allowed to take some.

So he watches the ebb and flow of the kedan, somehow less and less ebb as the afternoon wears on, and keeps watching. It's very symbolic, right down to the small takeaway cup and colourful straw he's still clutching in one bony hand; a symbol begins with a familiar shape, and the shape of this crowd is as familiar as they come. The Turtle moves, and history turns. Even when it's the wrong turtle.

Just as a grey-haired kedan steps out before the protesters at the gates and begins to raise her voice for their third impassionate speech in as many minutes, Death turns away - but only to fix the deep blue of his eye sockets on the person who just moved behind him in turn. AH, he says, lifting his scythe and taking an obliging step to the side. PARDON ME.

In the heated crowd, his voice carries with the still, cold air of a waiting morgue.

[peacefullywreathed]

Behind the person who jostled the skeleton, Solomon stood frozen and staring. Most of the kedan had been giving him a wide berth all day; 'the shadow Foreigner' was well enough known by now that he had banked on being left alone while he tried to navigate the city blind. Aside from a few idiots who casts aspersions about his navigating shadows belonging to the vigilante going around, they had.

He hadn't meant to come here, but he'd been following ... something. It wasn't exactly a sense of power. It was more like power distilled to a point. If Skulduggery's undead presence was like a cold star, this one was a black hole.

It just wasn't until Solomon laid eyes on the ... thing that he realised he could lay eyes, that where he could only feel everything else in shades of hot life or cold crystalline death, the shape of this skeleton stood out to his eyes as a reverse silhouette. And so Solomon stared with naked terror combined with a kind of intense fascination as someone grunted and, from the rustle of fabric, brushed past the figure.

How, Solomon wondered, did they not drop dead where they walked, after touching that?

He reached out and blindly caught the sleeve of someone hurrying by. "Excuse me," he said, levelly in spite of his expression, and then wondered if he'd really spoken. His voice sounded practically reedy in comparison to the figure's, almost ... unreal. Everyone's voices sounded unreal, compared to that. "Can you describe the person about three feet in front of me, please?"

"Uh ..." said whoever he'd waylaid. "What?"

[bugger_quantum]

Somewhere inside Death's skull, eternity flickered. It's naturally a little nonsensical, for a being defined by unceasing presence, to try and apply the label "shy". But only a little. Atoms and forests and mayflies don't tend to point or ask awkward questions.

Before the crowd, the kedan raised two of her fists high over her head, casting a dappled shadow over her tears. Their daughters, she beseeched her listeners, their children -

Keeping quiet in case he upset the poor man any further, Death looked down to inspect his drink. Against all physiological probability, the existence of the straw demanded that he stick it between his teeth and issue a small, hollow sucking noise while probing at the edges, where once there were hopes and dreams.

[peacefullywreathed]

"Well, he's kind of ... you know ... and--like that?" The kedan's arm moved under Solomon's hand as he gestured and Solomon felt a pang of doubt. He could obviously see the apparition, but ... not actually see it. Was that deliberate, or a side-effect of the sheer density of the magic around it?

The figure's hand lifted and Solomon tensed, and then he heard the unmistakeable sound of a slurping straw. Disbelief warred with incredulity warred with amusement, and the last won and washed the paralysing terror away with it. Solomon laughed and felt the confused kedan pull away, and let him in favour of stepping forward toward the apparition. It wasn't the fact it was a skeleton. Solomon was quite used to skeletons, given Skulduggery.

It was the sensation; if death, general, was like cold crystal--and it was, at least to Solomon's senses now--then the apparition was the pressure that turned graphite into diamond. The closer Solomon moved, the more he felt as though just being near it took his breath away.

But it was rather impossible to be paralysed by that with the sound of gurgling liquid ringing in his ears.

"Does that have any effect?" Solomon asked, this time directly.

[bugger_quantum]

YES, said Death - each phoneme dropping into place like a line of gravestones, unimpeded by the straw still clamped in his teeth. THE EFFECT IS TO PREVENT ACCESS TO THE BOTTOM OF THE CUP. IN THE NAME OF EFFICIENCY, I SUPPOSE.

With that and its faint note of something far too professionally detached to be called disapproval, he fell silent again. Up ahead, a huddle of protesters cheered, if "cheer" were an appropriate description next to such grim faces.

[peacefullywreathed]

If the figure's simple presence made Solomon's breath catch, the sound of that voice was a series of hammer blows to the core of Solomon's being. Was it because he was alive, or because he was a necromancer? Solomon couldn't tell.

"I meant the drink," he explained. "When you drink it, does it have any effect?"

Was he really asking a death-being about the health benefits of liquid consumables just because he happened to be a skeleton? Solomon had spoken to skeletons before. This one was different.

[bugger_quantum]

IT WAS SWEETER THAN I EXPECTED, Death said after a moment's consideration. He lowered the cup, sans its straw. In the depths of his eye sockets, two points of blue light twinkled like an impossibly distant inferno. ARE YOU A WIZARD BY ANY CHANCE, YOUNG MAN?

[peacefullywreathed]

That definitely wasn't like Skulduggery. Skulduggery was a man who'd lost his flesh; this was a skeleton inhabited by something else. For a moment Solomon stared into the light of the apparition's eyes, and then felt his heart pounding loud in his ears and the pressure in his chest, and the shadows at his feet start to rise up over his shoulders, and looked away.

Just looking was making his magic react. Not a good idea to meet the apparition's gaze, then. What sort of apparition could make necromancy react just because the necromancer looked into his eyes? An identity lurked in the back of Solomon's head, but he didn't particularly want to look at it.

"I'm a sorcerer," he said. "Wizards in my world are generally frauds." The shadows settled back down, some of them reforming back into the shape of his, and some of the kedan nearest sidled away from them both.

[bugger_quantum]

AH, said Death, with a small nod of acknowledgement. ACADEMIA. Semantic quibbles were such a living thing, he'd found, and subsequently learnt not to contest - particularly when it came to wizardish types, always so full of questions.

After a moment, he added, I ASSURE YOU, I'M NOT HERE ON BUSINESS. Given the scythe, people did sometimes panic when he neglected to make that clear. It was a tendency they didn't share with, for instance, cats.

(If only because most cats already assumed the entire multiverse was present on their business.)

[peacefullywreathed]

The suspicion nudged a little harder. Not here on business. Not here on business? Apparently it was relatively commonplace for the apparition to be seen. By wizards, maybe, since it had bothered to ask.

"I didn't know you could go anywhere and not be on business," Solomon admitted, glancing toward the front of the crowd. It wasn't exactly comforting to know that ... the apparition ...could go to places just because it wanted to. It didn't tell Solomon at all whether he ought to be expecting anything.

So about the same as if the apparition wasn't there at all, then.

"I didn't think you were here for me," he added after a moment, because it occurred to him that the fact the apparition felt the need to clarify that fact might have been because it thought Solomon was expecting to be under the blade, as it were. "I'm just not used to seeing, uh, you. Like this. In this form. Do you service many worlds?"

Surely centuries of necromancers couldn't have missed a personification of death stalking the world, given it ran so counter to the Temple's teachings?

[bugger_quantum]

I SERVICE ALL THINGS IN TIME, SORCERER. Death grinned like a skull, for lack of any other expression, but now the glow in his eye sockets seemed sternly solid. YOU ARE ASKING, INSTEAD, WHETHER YOU OUGHT TO HAVE SEEN ME BEFORE. TO WHICH MY ANSWER IS: I CAN'T SAY. I DO NOT DEAL IN OUGHTS. UNCERTAINTIES, YES - OCCASIONALLY.

Finally, with care, he removed the sad-looking straw from his teeth.

IF IT HELPS, I DON'T BELIEVE WE HAVE BEEN INTRODUCED. BUT THIS SITUATION IS VERY OFF-PUTTING, YOU KNOW, he added, a shade regretful. THERE ARE RULES.

[peacefullywreathed]

The shift in brightness was enough to catch Solomon's eye, though he still avoided looking directly at it. He was a Death Bringer. According to the teachings of the Temple, he shouldn't feel small, shouldn't feel chastened, shouldn't feel threatened. Not by death.

... The necromancers of the Temple were idiots. They'd never felt death before, let alone stood in its presence. Let alone had it be the only thing they could see.

"You find it off-putting," Solomon said, rather bemused in spite of the weight of the apparition's words. "Sometimes rules are more fluid than they look. All it takes is a different perspective." So the apparition claimed to service all things, and that was true. But that didn't mean the apparition itself serviced Solomon's world, and therefore he shouldn't have to expect to run into it if he went home. There; perspective.

(He ignored, sternly, the fact that just knowing it was possible for death to become Death was equally off-putting.)

"How did you come to be?" he asked. What would happen if Solomon summoned shadows? The apparition hadn't seemed to react before. Should he try? Just to see what happened? "As you are, I mean. Death exists, obviously, everywhere, but as a walking, talking apparition?"

Did it have a link with the death-plane? Was it the death-plane? A facet of it, drawn to a point? Too many questions to ask, and Solomon didn't know how much graciousness in the face of pestering he would be given.