EVENT | ALL HALLOWED

[cherrywood]

Characters: Everyone!
Date: Oct 27th - Nov 2nd
Location: The City of Keeliai
Situation: The kedan have decided to participate in an Earth tradition: Hallowe'en! But there are other mysterious things afoot this holiday and when people start disappearing they'll have to find a way to reverse the effect... though all of their selves might not make it back.
Warnings/Rating: Please indicate content warnings in subject headers as applicable.

As the weather turns crisper, the nights and mornings carry with them a hint of chill promising cooler days to come, the month starts drawing to a close. This is a pleasant time, soon to be the season of harvest even on such a nomad as Tu Vishan. Yet the relations with the kedan have been good lately and even the Emperor's latest warning has not dampened the resilience of her people (both willing citizens and not) and so today marks a new tradition to Keeliai and it starts with receiving a simple, handwritten invitation.

"Come and celebrate the Keeliai of ages past..."

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OOC: See the OOC plotting post for event details and this post for assorted subheaders outlining various parts of the plot. Feel free to start your own thread header if none suit, or make your own logs for various threadings... this is just for a central post for the event. Any questions can be directed HERE. Thank you!

NOTE: NPC tagging will be mostly in the Palace Rewards and Touch of Memory threads unless specifically requested elsewhere! Normal rules for players writing NPC interactions remains the same as always.

MID PLOT UPDATE!
Through the course of investigations will be discovered that every Foreigner who went trick or treating has acquired themselves at least one pot of what appears to be iridescent paint, sometimes more than one. Experimenting with these pots (because lbr who doesn't want a few randomly shimmery possessions) oddly enough lets ghosted characters interact with them completely solidly. Which, if you've inadvertently been ignoring someone, might mean you get your new shiny lamp thrown at your head.

Now if people get the smart idea to the paint the paint, that would let ghosted characters get hold of this stuff themselves...

TL;DR - Ghosted characters can paint themselves back into phase. Eating the stuff is also acceptable.

I. GIVE A LITTLE, GET A LITTLE!
Trick or Treating (All Sectors) | Palace Rewards

II. SHADOWS AND SHADES
Tangible: Kedan Museum | Disappearances | Investigations
Ghosted: Sense of Loss | Touch of Memory | Shift of Perception | Poltergeisting

Comments

[shorttempered]

Apparently he remembered how much I liked him and thought that having Science Dog show up at my door would somehow be less conspicuous than a six foot tall mantis person.

[andaway]

That is... weirdly sweet, in a way. I mean, the fact that he remembered as much and used it as a way to get your attention.

[shorttempered]

Yeah, except all it did was scare the crap out of me and my mom.

[andaway]

It got your attention, didn't it?

[And then he tilts his head./small>] What did he sent the emissary for anyway?

[shorttempered]

It definitely got my attention.

[His hands ball into fists.] He needed my help, defending his new home from the Viltrumites.

...My people.

[andaway]

[That makes Kal's brain stumble, considering it's pretty much the first time Mark has ever ever brought the subject of his race himself without any kind of prompting- let alone calling them his people.]

He had to defend his new home... from your people?

[shorttempered]

I'm sorry I lied when I first met you... I always knew how to pronounce my dad's race, but... where I'm from they're super infamous. When you said that you were an alien...

[Okay enough apologizing. He trusts you enough now that he can tell you the truth.] I don't really know all that much, but... The Viltrumites are this crazy, bloodthirsty race that's determined to take over the universe. My... [No, he's going to finish this.] My dad was sent to Earth. To... to take it over. He tried to convince me to help him, and we fought. He could have killed me--I had just gotten my powers, I barely knew how to use them--he was going to kill me, and then... he just... he flew away. Left the solar system.

[Takes a deep breath.] Then, months later, Science Dog showed up... the-the fake one. He said that his people were under attack, and asked me to come help him... It was all a ruse. Sort of. He didn't want me to know that my dad had called for me. The attack, that was all real. Viltrum... didn't like that my dad left his post. They didn't want Thraxa, they wanted Earth. And... and because he left, he committed treason. We-- [He pauses at that, then laughs, a bitter laugh for when things are only funny because otherwise they would be too cruel to handle.] He took care of the three they sent, but they destroyed Thraxa in the process. They killed... a lot of Thraxans. And then they took him.

[andaway]

Invincible...

[Clark sighs as he reaches for his shoulder, unsure on what to say. He had a bit of a hard time making peace with his Kryptonian heritage and the way their emotions were put in the back burner to trust logic instead if he was honest with himself... but this was way beyond his understanding.]

I'd say I'm sorry but I'm not sure that would help any. That you were reunited with your father like that just to have him be taken away- it must have been hard. For you and him both. But at least now you know he valued you enough to defy his race?

[shorttempered]

[Quietly.] Mark, please. I may be in costume but not that one.

And, it's okay. Really. My dad... he's fine. Right before I left, I saw him again. He and Allen, a friend of ours, needed my help to take down the Viltrumites once and for all. I was just about to go help them when... Well I came here instead.

[andaway]

[He nods at that. It's weird, to call him Mark when he's talking about his alien heritage... but he will respect it.]

My whole race- my whole planet was destroyed before I was even truly born, Mark. It's not- I really can't compare, I know I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like for you.

I'm sorry I asked so many questions.

[shorttempered]

[He knows that's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't in this situation, but he's banking on people seeing them and not hearing them.]

It's fine. I trust you. And to be honest, they're just these group of assholes who keep showing up, beating the crap out of me, and trying to tell me what to do. It's hard to feel like a Viltrumite, you know?

[And then the rest of what Superman says clicks.] ...Uh, what happened to your planet? If you don't mind me asking.

[andaway]

[He glances at Mark, hesitating. He's opened up to Mark and there isn't much he would try to hide from people who know the secret to begin with. But while he's had time to process, mourn and accept the lost of his planet after all these years... but the discovery of what really brought Krypton's demise is still recent, and the pain of Johnathan's death all too recent.

He still blames Brainiac for it.

But Mark has shared a lot about his past, his father, his people. He can only return the favor.]

A villain from my world, Brainiac, was obsessed with getting all the information possible of everything in the universe. Planets are constantly changing, its species evolving- so he understood he needed to destroy them if he wanted absolute knowledge. So he... [A face as he looks away] he absorbed all the knowledge he needed from my home planet. Froze and miniaturized a city to keep some database, and then caused the planet to implode.

My father- Jor-El, he's on the turtle now- saw what was happening but only his brother believed him. He only had time to send me away. For decades I thought I was the only survivor.

[shorttempered]

[Stares at the ground. He really shouldn't have asked; he could hear thw hole thing was still raw in Superman's voice.]

...That's awful. I'm sorry.

[andaway]

The fact that you're able to empathize with me after all you have told me you went through says a lot about you. Thank you, son.

[shorttempered]

How could I not? I mean just because my people suck doesn't mean yours did...

[andaway]

Your people were warriors, Mark. Soldiers, conquerors. ['Slavers' comes to mind, but that would hardly help his point.]

Their customs might be strange to us but that doesn't mean all of their culture 'sucked', or that every one of them did. You're part of them, after all, and I see so much good in you.

[shorttempered]

According to my dad there's about 50 of them left, and of the 5 or so I actually have met, they all sucked. So at least 1/10th of my people suck. Better?

I'm only I would up being... well, me because my dad raised me as a human and not a Viltrumite. He said it himself.

[andaway]

And I am who I am because of the way I was raised. But I am still a Kryptonian through and through, and it would break my father's heart to hear me say otherwise.

Aren't you curious about your heritage, even if it truly is all bad?

[shorttempered]

I know all about my heritage. There was the story my dad's told me since I was 8 about how Viltrum was this great utopia with no war or illness, and the Viltrumites began offering their aide through the World Betterment Committee so they could help other planets the way they'd helped themselves. They'd set up this huge humanitarian effort for various planets before moving on. Then, after discovering Earth and realizing the planet wasn't yet advanced enough for aide, my dad had offered to stay behind and protect Earth anyway...

Or there was the truth my dad told me after I watched him punch the Immortal in two where I learned that previous story was all bull, and they were really this crazy warrior race that took survival of the fittest to an extreme so severe they killed each other to prove their strength, and only after killing half the population, were they satisfied that they were left with only the crazy and the strong. They then did the next logical crazy step of deciding to take over the rest of the universe. They started taking over pretty much every planet they came across in the name of the great Viltrum Empire, and those that didn't submit got obliterated. As a reward for his good work, my dad was put in charge of taking over Earth single-handedly.

Or there's they're messed up rule that you can only brutally execute someone after they've fully healed from the beating you gave them, and everyone has to be there to get a punch in, or the rule where they just randomly force people to take over other worlds whether they want to or not.

Yeah, I'm okay with believing I'm only human.

[andaway]

['But you aren't', he wants to say. He doesn't, not after what the kid's told him. It's not the most horrible civilization he's encountered, but not one he can honestly say he'd like to be related to.

But denying who you are never ends well, and he doesn't know how to make the kid understand that.]

Do you know my clone? Superboy?

[shorttempered]

Sort of? I spoke with him once over the network, but I can't say our paths ever crossed again... I, uh, didn't know he was your clone, though.

[andaway]

He is my half-clone, actually. And the other half- I won't say names, because it's not my business to share, but I can tell you they belong to a horrible man. A man beyond redemption, a man I have been tempted to kill in the past. [If Mark was from his world, he wouldn't really need the name. As it is he's glad his world's Lex was never in the turtle.]

Yet it was only when he actually accepted both parts of who he was that he managed to grow up to his full potential. [The S stands for Soapbox]

[shorttempered]

[Mark was tempted to make a comment about how if it's "half" does it still count as "clone," but manages to keep his mouth shut, listening to the moral of the story instead.]

...Yeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah my dad, Allen, and I--and apparently my brother Oliver came too--were on our way to go help the coalition destroy Viltrum when I showed up here. I guess we're not big on accepting?