tushanshu_logs | [EVENT|4TH WALL] THE NEWCOMERS’ ARRIVAL

[EVENT|4TH WALL] THE NEWCOMERS’ ARRIVAL | APRIL 15-22

Characters: ALL and plus ones.
Date: April 15-22 2015 (2016 in-game)
Location: Farmlands outside the city walls, but this log can also be used for locations within the city.
Situation: Spring planting - fourth wall event, week one!
Warnings/Rating: Add warnings as needed.

The days for the festival dawn sunny if a bit chilly, but the air is clear and the soggy ground has dried enough that there isn’t too much mud in the lanes between fields and homesteads. The broad dirt path to the Woodsmen’s land leads past the tram-line construction, lined with waving ribbons on sticks along the sides. The Woodsmen’s territory circles the city, separated from the city’s walls by five hundred yards of neutral land.

The festival’s central area is Liangken’s Clearing, and this is where the festival will begin and end each day. Liangken is an ancient tree, among the oldest on the turtle’s back. Though it doesn’t flower or bear much in the way of leaves anymore, the kedan have cultivated it carefully and now it’s an excellent representation for the revitalisation of old wisdom.

The lanes between the fields and homesteads will house the stalls, contests and walking areas. The Woodsmen will be keeping an eye on these to prevent anyone from walking off the marked paths. The homesteads provide ‘hotspots’ in among the lanes and fields, with Woodsmen families lending their yards to the comfort and entertainment of their guests.

In general, the Woodsmen are a taciturn, soft-spoken lot who nevertheless take great pride in their work. Their lands are all but sacred -- they accept no attitude, no trespassing, no attempts to thwart their authority. This causes some noticeable tension with the Snakes, who are accustomed to being the sole enforcers within the city; but though there may be some ill tempers and raised voices, at no point will anyone come to blows. It’s hard to argue with someone built like a brick wall and carrying sharp farm implements.

The Woodsmen are a touch anxious about having strangers on their land and this shows in them being overly officious or bossy, but at the same time their pride shows clearly and they are eager to show off the state of their lands, their greenhouses, and their farming processes -- practically without being asked. The residents of Keeliai tend to think of the Woodsmen as ‘cowards’, and the Woodsmen are taking this opportunity to prove themselves otherwise with feats of strength and tall tales.

Due to the farmers’ hours of “early to bed and early to rise”, the festival ends in the early evening at sundown, but begins again before dawn -- usually by greeting the sun with a song.

LINKS
Heojin, Ran and Lin | Liangken’s Clearing | Stalls and Lanes | OOC Information post | 4th Wall Character Check In

OOC
While Heojin and his bodyguards are open to everyone (including fourth-wall characters!), they are not available for small talk and general directionless CR. For the integrity of the mod’s inbox, please only request a thread with him if you already have an idea of what you’d like your character to ask/do. Other NPCs can be requested by sending a PM to the appropriate journals directly, with the same guidelines.

The top-level comments are for the festival, but fourth-wall characters should feel free to use the rest of the post for anything within the city of Keeliai itself! Just remember to label the top-level comment for location and date.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Another day, another circuit of the festival, and this time Tony's checking out a row of food stalls that he'd missed the first few times around. The farming attractions don't hold a lot of interest for him, but the huge variety of food is definitely something he's happy to spend his time and money on.

He's pondering a basket of delicious-looking fruit-laden pastries when he sees a flash of white through the stalls— a button-up shirt— a familiar face—

"Dad?"

It comes out as an incredulous whisper at first, and for a moment, Tony's too stunned to move. Then Howard disappears into the crowd, and Tony snaps out of his trance, dashing in between the stalls (much to the chagrin of the stalls' owners) and dodging through the crowd at a breakneck pace (much to the chagrin of pretty much everyone else).

"Dad! Dad!" And yes, there he is, just up ahead; Tony's not crazy, he's not imagining things, that's Howard, that's his dad, and he's here—!

Tony barrels into Howard and hugs him as hard as he dares (which is to say: with not enough force to crack a rib, but probably enough to knock the wind out of him). If he'd had time to think about it, he might have opted for a... slightly less enthusiastic greeting, but all his thought processes are currently occupied by the fact that his dad is here and this is the best day of his life.

He is very briefly shocked to discover that he's as tall as his dad now - when did that happen? - but the observation barely registers; all he cares about is Howard Stark, being here, in Keeliai.

"I can't believe you're here," he mumbles into Howard's shoulder, starting to choke up.

"Dad!"

Couldn't be. Impossible. He's hearing things. He turns away, keeps walking. At least, he does, until he hears the shout again, and again--

Howard turns around just in time for Tony to barrel into him, and he's startled and astonished and it's all he can do to hug his son back, laughing. Or at least as much as he can laugh, given that his son is enthusiastically squeezing the breath out of him.

"Whoa, hey, slow down, Tony," Howard says with a chuckle, though he can tell something's up, and doesn't release his son. "When'd you have time to get so tall, huh?"

"I've been here for more than a year and a half," Tony says, laughing through definitely not tears, he's not crying, you're crying, shut up.

"This place— it's a different universe. We - the foreigners - we're from all over. Sometimes people get pulled from the same universe, but I never thought I'd find you here. It's just been me and—" ...Shit.

Shit.

Oh wow, this is so not good. It's great, because Howard's here and that's amazing, but it's also so, so, so not good, because Howard is here, and Gene is here, and Tony is... dating Gene. And pretty much everyone in the city knows it.

Oh no. This is not going to go well.

Tony recovers quickly from the slip; maybe if he's lucky, Howard won't notice it. Maybe they can avoid that issue for as long as possible. Anyway, Howard just got here, and they have a lot of catching up to do. He doesn't want to worry about the situation with Gene just yet.

"I really missed you," he says, and that's not just a cover-up for his almost-mention of Gene. He has missed his dad, so much. He hadn't really realized how much until seeing him now, and he's both overjoyed and overwhelmed by homesickness. He misses Rhodey and Pepper and Roberta, too, and even Whitney and Happy, and he misses his lab and his room and real New York pizza... But his dad is here, and even if that's not quite the same as being home, it's a damn good consolation prize.

When finally pulls back (since Howard might need to, you know, breathe), he's grinning so wide his face hurts. And if his eyes are a little damp, it's only because, uh, the sun's shining in them.

"When did you get pulled from? What's the last thing you remember from home?"

Edited 2015-04-18 05:39 (UTC)

Howard doesn't catch the slip, though it's mostly because it seems like Tony's too caught up in emotion to finish his sentence. He hasn't exactly been speaking in full sentences anyway.

"A year and a half? How is that possible?" Howard asks, frowning a little. "I just saw you a few hours ago, we were cleaning up the Makluan debris. How could..."

A year and a half had been about the same amount of time he'd been kept apart from Tony.

He's missed three years of his son's life.

~~and all of it is gene's fault tbh~~

His smile falters a little. "I wish I could say I missed you, but I just saw you. How've you been here so long? What is this place? You said it's a different universe, but I don't understand. Tell me everything."

"Oh, good, that's when I came from too. That makes things a little less complicated." Tony laughs. Like it won't be complicated enough anyway.

He realizes they're standing right in the middle of the pathway and starting to get dirty looks from kedan, so he leads Howard over to a nearby picnic bench as he starts to explain (explain as much as he can, anyway).

"This place," he gestures out across the landscape, "is Keeliai. That's the city. We're on a planet called Konryu." He'll save the 'giant turtle' bit for later. One shock at a time. "The person who used to run the city had some kind of ability or advanced technology - they called it magic - that let them... basically, open portals to other universes. Different universes, and universes that are alternate versions of each other. They used that to pull people in from all over the multiverse to fight this... big evil chaos monster. We beat it, but that person who set up the universal shunting magic died, and apparently they never shut it off. So people keep coming in. Everybody gets sent back home eventually, we think, but it's totally random. Some people only stay a month or two, and some people have been here for years. Every now and then somebody even comes back. But the system was set up to send us home to right when we left, and that seems to mess with the timestream. So people who come in from the same time in the same universe might appear here at different times. That's how I've been here for a year and a half.

"That's really all I know, though." He shrugs. Tony knows it's not a very satisfying explanation, because he hasn't been very satisfied with it, but further answers remain frustratingly elusive. "Nobody knows the details because everybody who knew how all this worked is dead."

Small mercies. The entire Keeliai-Asti-Konryu situation's complex enough already without accounting for two people from the same world not even coming from the same frame of reference.

'They called it magic.' Howard smiles a little at that. "Clarke's third law," he mutters under his breath. But then there's talk of the big evil chaos monster, and he suddenly looks wary, guarded. "A chaos monster? It wasn't Yogthulu, was it?"

He tries to keep his close encounter with the eldritch being of dark and terrible power out of his mind. "People disappear? At random?" He looks alarmed. "How do I know you won't just...disappear? Or that I won't?"

"Not Yogthulu. Something much worse," Tony says grimly. A soul-collecting centipede has nothing on the horrors that they'd found in the palace and in the tunnels underneath the shell. "But we kicked its ass," he assures his father. "It's gone now."

Howard's second question isn't exactly cheerful either. "We don't know. We haven't found a way to control it. And we haven't found a way... to keep our memories, either." If he doesn't sound thrilled about that, it's because he's really, really not. Who would be? Losing months or years of your life like that?

"When we go home, we forget Keeliai. Here, we remember home just fine, and they say if we leave and come back to Keeliai again, we get back our memories from the first time, but no matter what, when we go home... I think there has to be a way around it." He hopes there's a way around it. "I just haven't found it yet."

Howard is hard pressed to think of any monster worse than Yogthulu. ~~Okay, well, he can think of one monster, and that monster is frequently banging his only son like a screen door in a hurricane. But he doesn't know that, and let's keep it that way.~~

And the memory loss is definitely alarming. "You've spent a year and a half here...but if you go home, it'll all be like it never happened? Just like that?" Tony would lose the height he'd gained and all of the memories and everything?

That feels like a peculiar kind of violation, of being used. Brought to fight and then cast aside? Howard's suddenly filled with emotion and regret. "I'm sorry, Tony, I'm sorry you had to be here on your own for so long. I wish I could have...I wish I could have been here for you. We've been apart for too long already."

Edited 2015-04-18 07:22 (UTC)

"Yeah. Just like that." He shrugs. He hates it, but he's had a lot of time to get used to the idea. And he's still determined to figure out a way around it.

He smiles at his dad again and says, "Hey, it's not your fault. And I haven't been on my own." I've had Gene. But he can't say that. "I've made some friends," he says instead, his grin returning. "One of them is a robot, but she's actually sentient." And therefore counts as an actual friend, not an imaginary one, like the one Howard built for him when he was a kid. "But it's really... really great to have you here."

Howard suddenly grins, because...well, because robots. "A sentient robot? And hey, I didn't think you remembered that." What, Tony, you didn't like DJ Roomba?

"I can't say for sure if I'm glad to be here - I'm still confused - but I'm glad that I'm here for you now," he says, and smiles warmly at his son.

"I still have it in my room." He'd loved that dumb little robot. After the plane crash, he'd pulled it out of storage and taken it to the Rhodes' with him.

"It's not so bad, once you get used to it. There's just some... pretty big things to get used to." Are you ready to hear about giant turtles and magic bullshit, Howard?

"Oh yeah?" Howard says with a laugh. "Like what?"

Are you sure you wanna ask that, Howard? Are you really sure?

"I mean, suddenly showing up here is a pretty big thing to get used to. So's the idea of not remembering this place. So what could be bigger and weirder than that?"

"Well..." Tony clears his throat and folds his hands on the table in front of him. Shit's about to get real, Howard.

"For starters, we're actually riding on a giant turtle. A huge, continent-sized turtle. And before you say you don't believe me, I can take you up to the head to show you. Two: magic is real, here. Actual magic, not just advanced technology like the rings. It's sort of like mutant powers, except the rules and limits and techniques that work like... well, fantasy magic. And there's a ton of different kinds, because there's so many people from different universes. There's one woman who can transform into a huge wolf, and there's a guy who's a skeleton. All the time. A walking skeleton in a suit. There's a few people who control elements - the water, fire, air and earth kind of elements. That sort of stuff. So... You're probably going to see a lot of weirdness going on." Long story short. "It's normal. Ish." Normal has lost a lot of its meaning for Tony, at this point.

Howard blinks. Once.

Yeah, okay, that's a lot to take in. He has questions. He has so many questions. And he has no idea where to start.

Okay, he has one. "She transforms into a large wolf? Larger than her human form? Where does the extra mass come from?"

Dammit, Howard.

Tony laughs. "I'd love to know. A pocket dimension? The magic users aren't great at explaining their magic in scientific terms. The only ones I've gotten anything useful out of are China and Anton. They do magic by drawing symbols - they call them sigils. It's pretty unique because anyone can do it, as long as they know how to draw the sigils properly, so I've been able to do some experimenting. Here, check this out—"

He pulls a pencil stub out of his pocket and carefully scratches the simplest sigil for 'light' onto the table. When he draws the last line, the sigil starts to glow. Not dramatically, since he hadn't put any enhancing modifiers on it, but enough to be noticeable, even in the bright sunlight.

Edited 2015-04-23 02:47 (UTC)

Okay.

Well.

That's not something you see every day.

Howard stares at the sigil, practically unable to comprehend what he's seeing. He's speechless for only a moment, though, and launches into questions. "Is the order of the strokes important or just the final shape? Show me again, slowly, I want to see. It looks like circuitry."

"How the components relate to each other is more important than the final shape." Howard's reaction is almost identical to what Tony's had been. Tony grins, thrilled to have something like this to share with his dad; to discuss what he's learned with someone who will get it in the same way he does. "It's all about the dynamics of the structure. See?" He draws the sigil again, more slowly, then follows it with a similar one. This one is looser and sketchier than the first two, but lights up just the same.

"It is a lot like a circuit - you can shift the parts around a lot, and as long as things still connect up in the right way, in the right direction and order, it'll still work. The tough thing to wrap your head around is that the sigils are a language. They're all about concepts. Writing them is sort of like wiring a circuit, but putting them together to actually do anything useful is more like... telling a story, almost. It's weird. I'm not great at it yet, but Anton runs his whole interdimensional hotel on them."

Howard watches his son demonstrate, and can't help but grin. It's remarkable, just how much Tony has to teach him, and how much he's learned here already.

"I think I see," he says, nodding. "It's like you're programming. Only instead of on a computer, it's the world. You're telling the world what to do, and it...does it."

His hand goes to his mouth, thinking. If he knew more, he's sure he could put them together, chain them to tell a story like Tony had said. After all, what's programming but telling a story, telling the system what you want it to do, and how and when and why? These sigils seem to work the same way, for the world. The world!

Oh, the possibilities.

"Pretty much. It gets complicated, especially since the sigils correspond to concepts and not physical phenomena," see: the light versus electrical current issue, "but there's so much potential. Especially because it can interface so easily with technology, compared to other kinds of magic. Most of the appliances in the Hotel are magic-tech hybrids."

There is, of course, a caveat. Tony sighs. "They won't do anything back home, though. Keeliai is a magic free-for-all: any magical system from any universe will work here. It's really unlikely that non-native systems will work in our home universes." He winces. "And there's still the problem, of, you know, forgetting everything that happens here."

Edited 2015-04-23 19:48 (UTC)

"A symbolic language," Howard muses. It's a whole different paradigm than what he's used to, but he could work with it if he was taught the basics, tease out the rules of the system and immediately go about learning how to break them.

But then reality hits, and he looks disappointed. "If we could bring this home...and have it work...Tony, we could solve the energy crisis, or at least mitigate it, if we could teach everyone how to make light whenever they need it..."

"Maybe— if we knew where the energy was coming from. It's some kind of renewable source, I guess, but China and Anton haven't been able to tell me anything really useful. If we use the source of the magic like an electrical grid... we don't know what load the grid could bear. I have no idea how it regenerates, how fast, anything like that. For all we know, exhausting it might disrupt it permanently."

He's seen enough magical backlash (mostly thanks to Solomon - and recently, Valdis) to be very leery of fucking around with magic on a larger scale.

"If we had the right equipment, I'm sure we could trace it back to its source," Howard says, looking at the sigil. "It has to come from somewhere; magic or not, you can't just create something from nothing."

He shakes his head. "I'd need to talk to Anton about this, you said he runs an...interdimensional hotel?"

Words he never thought he'd say.

"I could do a lot if I had the right equipment," Tony says dryly. "Decent equipment is pretty hard to come by around here. The level of tech is definitely not what we're used to." It's practically medieval here, Howard. It's such a struggle.

"Yeah, it's where a lot of the foreigners are staying. There's an entrance in every sector of the city. I can take you there and get you a room. Anton's a good guy." But good luck getting anything out of him. It's not that Anton isn't trying to be helpful - Tony just doesn't think he has the information that Tony wants to know. If only one of those magic-scientists that China had mentioned would show up...!

But bringing up the Hotel reminds Tony that if he's going to take Howard into the city... he's going to have to tell him about Gene. It would not be good if they ran into each other unexpectedly. God— he's going to have to warn Gene, too. That's not a conversation he's looking forward to.

"Um... there's something else you should know, too," he says, looking away. "About this place. We're not... the only ones from our world." There's a long, uncomfortable pause. "...Gene's here too."

Howard's about to respond to the offer of taking him to the hotel when Tony goes quiet and looks uncomfortable. Howard knows better than to say anything to try and coax information out of his son when he's all squirmy like this, so he just waits him out. Tony'll crack eventually.

And then he does.

"What?!" he says, getting to his feet in surprise. "He's in jail, I hope!"

Not so much, Howard, no.

"No, he's—" Tony grimaces, and rubs a hand over his face and through his hair. "It's... things are different here. He's not like what he used to be. He's been here even longer than I have, and... he's trying really hard to be a better person. He's a good guy, now, Dad."

IM GONNA DIE

yes. now we are a family again.

that gif im dying

i am a clearinghouse of rubbish gifs. also im not taking him from the beginning of the show sorry :V

someday. someday I want to play out that horrible trauma

I'll always do the trauma conga line tbh

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i need to be stopped

never stop

can't stop won't stop

good

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