rainkeeper: (Default)
Water Tender ([personal profile] rainkeeper) wrote in [community profile] zanzivata_logs2017-11-14 09:05 pm
Entry tags:

EVENT;

Each character is given an adjustment period. After all, to do otherwise would be gauche. And after they've had a chance to catch their breath and find their feet, a courier arrives for them with an invitation to a beautiful garden party at the top of the Sentinel's Rest the following evening. It's implied that attendance is less than optional, and the letter is signed simply with a stylized letter R.

Each letter will also contain a specialized series of clues that will lead them to several different corresponding areas throughout Avastarya. Each location will lead them to the next, and so on and so forth until they reach their final destination. Said destination is a small token, that can be presented at the party in exchange for a gift. The option to keep them is also possible. Surrendering the token or choosing to keep it will both come with benefits, albeit of a different and not necessarily equal sort.

UTA'S token (a small unbreakable wireglass globe, warm to the touch and very bright that seems to swirl and shift like the surface of a star) will be gifted to him after he completes a series of quests. These quests involve the musical arts. His first quest will lead him to a small, dusty workshop with every conceivable type of instrument. He must play the piano in a certain sequence of keys to unlock a secret compartment in it, which will give him directions to the next quest. This will lead him, with a very complicated poem in iambic pentameter, to an old opera house in the Plaguefire district. There, hidden under the 19th seat (they're numbered) he will find the wireglass globe. On the old, rotten stage of the opera house there is a simple mask that looks rather Grecian in origin and mimics the tragedy/comedy mask styles of the day (half of each emotion). It's not what he came for, but will he take it too, or let it lie?


CLARK'S token (a roughly ostritch-sized suspiciously green (but not actually Kryptonite) egg. It pulsates strangely - is it stone, or is it something alive? It's impenetrable to X-Ray vision) will be given to him after he has performed three acts of unselfish kindness throughout Avastarya. Is someone watching him? Hard to say, but once he has done these three things (of the player's choice) a young man will approach him to give him the egg. The young man will tell him to treat it kindly, even though it doesn't appear to be fragile at all...


BUCKY'S token (a small wolf made of steel) will be given to him after he spends a day in the Plaguefire District. This area is one of the poorest in Avastarya, and he has been tasked with reading stories to the children in the orphanage there. The children get to decide to vote on when and if he will be given his token, so he had better be willing to entertain them! The child that gives him the wolf will also tell him a story she's heard, about a demon terrorizing the streets at night. Children's fable, or honest truth?


STEVE'S token (a small striped badger made of petrified wood) is in the old city on which Avastarya has been built. He has been tasked with cartography of an area that was sealed off some years earlier after a plague decimated the spot. His natural immunity should, theoretically, serve him well. The badger will be found on the lip of an old fountain, next to a child's diary of the plague years.


GENE'S token (a long ribbon that seems to be a darker colour than black, it cannot be cut or torn) will be given to him after he helps escort a young woman through Dahl Ahouran. She is looking for her sister, she will say, and navigating the realm of the dead is no easy thing. Gene's being able to talk to ghosts may come in handy here, and once he locates the girl's sister, she will give him the ribbon from her hair.


ELERA'S token (a box full of bones. One familiar with the composition of living things might notice that the bones belonged to something in the Canis family once upon a time...) is a bit tricky to get to. She is going to have to infiltrate a lavish party, charm the host and find a series of small totems (maybe they represent halla?) to unlock a special door on the premises. The door leads to a hidden antechamber, and the bones - in their elegant carven-wood box - are in the middle of an ornate circle. Getting close to it might remind her a little of the Fade from her homeworld, but nevertheless - if she wants the token, she has to chance it.


NATASHA'S token (an unbreakable hourglass, filled with shifting red sand, but when flipped the sand will mysteriously turn black) will be given to her if she attends the trial and potential execution of a wanted criminal. Traditionally, trials and their judgement are not a matter of deliberation in Avastarya. The facts will be laid out before the crowd, lawyers will argue the case, and depending on the crowd's decision the man will either be executed (in a manner they will also decide) or set free. Natasha will have a role in the proceedings - she will be called on to read the tallies for and against the man's death. Will she read the true answer, or lie to the crowd? Either way, afterwards the executioner will hand her the hourglass.


ILLYANA'S token (a small toy ship, beautifully handcarved, with impossibly ornate details) will be given to her after she does a series of small quests. The first thing? Her invitation will have a drawing on it of a precise skyline. Her job will be to find the place where the paper lines up with a real part of the city. She will find that this will have her standing directly on top of a storm drain. Should she choose to go down into it, she will find the next piece of the skyline mystery carved into a beautiful ice sculpture down in the bowels of the old ruin beneath Avastarya. The next phase will take her to the front door of a soup kitchen, where she will be asked to help serve the city's homeless. Once that is done, one of the workers will tell her to go down to the docks. It is here that she will be given the small ship (not a boat-ship, but a space-ship) by a child playing there. He may tell her about a monster that's been seen threatening the bay, but is there any truth to this or is it simply a child's story?


JIN'S token (a beautiful moon pendant, lovingly carved and hung on a chain of something that's almost more like mithril in its nature than anything found on earth) is something she will have to find on her own. She will be given a poem that speaks of fair forests and the rising moon and little else. However: at some point in her travels throughout the city, she will encounter an old man telling a story to a group of enraptured youngsters, and he will repeat the poem. Her IIMP's translation of the local tongue won't be exact, but it will sound like they're talking about a fairy or... spirit? If she chooses to inquire about the story, he will give her details, of how on a full moon in a forest glen outside the city, a magical creature will appear to grant someone's truest wish. Should she attempt to seek out this place, however, she will find that it has been burned down. However, at the centre of the clearing, nestled in an old tree stump, she will find the necklace. If Jin ever happens to use foxfire around it, she will find that her name has been inscribed on its back...


Sentinel's Rest will be decked out beautifully for the evening's festivities. There is an area strung with lights obviously intended for dancing, a table of beautiful canapes that contain myriad delicacies from each character's own world (and in some cases, their own life and experiences), there is an area blocked off for tournament fighting and also one for poetry readings where a young member of the Idyl Eben is reciting while her partner plays the lute.

Otherwise, choose your own adventure! After all, you're practically on top of the world. You are also free to have your character run into another one while doing their scavenger hunt. Team up, help with clues? Also possible!
enshields: (pic#10294407)

scavenger hunt: the motorcyclening

[personal profile] enshields 2017-11-20 04:23 am (UTC)(link)
[Jogging past her isn't on purpose. He's been exploring the city, and the best way to memorize every seedy back-alley, every laneway, every street is to run it. He's got plenty of time - he spends almost none of it with his Handler. He doesn't like the Architect's estate. It's too close to the bay. He hears the crash of the waves and the call of ocean birds, the air is salted like a fallow field.

The ocean was never an enemy, but he's damn tired of being a drowning man.

He wishes he could say he didn't still wake in a cold sweat, imagining water filling his lungs. Sometimes the dream ends when Bucky pulls him up. Sometimes it's Sam. Peggy.

Natasha, a few times. Discernible by her blood red hair and her smile - he's also had dreams she held him down. He's not a believer of prophecy, and what symbolism is inherent in dreams is just the work of the subconscious brain working through its bruises.

But they're miles away from the shoreline, and Steve slows to a walk. They had dinner together a few nights ago, but fractures are still tender when pressed.]


Nat.

[There are a million meanings latticed in the way he says her name. It's a greeting, it's a question, it's a warning, it's the way he misses her. They can't go back to how things were, but he likes to think their friendship is strong enough to survive the fission.]
lie: (pic#11057978)

[personal profile] lie 2017-11-22 08:23 pm (UTC)(link)
Hey.

[ They had dinner a few nights ago. Natasha's given him a wide berth. She doesn't tell herself it's for Steve's benefit — lying is her trade, but she's not an idiot. Everything about her is still, but it's a cultivated stillness, the moment before she understands what the terrain is trying to tell her.

Then, she slurps her drink through her straw. Noisily. Natasha blinks up at him and silently quirks her brow.

Steve knows better than to block her line of sight. She cuts her gaze to the front door, where there's the shadow of movement, somebody stepping away from the window.

She's working. But multi-tasking is old hat by now, and it's an invitation to stay.
]
enshields: (pic#8704625)

[personal profile] enshields 2017-11-23 04:08 am (UTC)(link)
[Steve gestures for her drink, because he is absolutely going to sample it, thanks. It's a little token of camaraderie, something amicable, between friends.

(He and Buck shared Cokes all the time. Five cents per, and the two of them finding some out-of-the-way place to savour it between them.)

But he keeps well free of her sight lines, and he doesn't go out of his way to insert himself into her space. Just because you can't see a spider's web doesn't mean it isn't there, and he hasn't forgotten that brief, momentary flash of something very like fear when he pinned her against a hospital room wall. He didn't feel guilty for it then, and doesn't now-- but one makes changes to one's behaviour for the people they love.

In a dry aside,]


I feel like we're about to start critiquin' somebody's shoes.
lie: (pic#11839437)

[personal profile] lie 2017-11-26 09:27 pm (UTC)(link)
[ She hands it over without much fuss, even if he's met with a quirk of her brow. ]

Well, [ she starts dryly. ] I could start with yours.

[ Pointedly, Natasha glances down at his shoes. But she's not serious -- her eyes quickly track back to the door, where there's no more movement but clearly still someone inside. ]

I'm giving him ten more minutes.

[ Before she-- does something. Break in? Natasha's own shoes, simple heeled boots, lightly nudge the side of Steve's own feet. ]

How's it going?
enshields: (pic#9093088)

[personal profile] enshields 2017-11-28 03:50 pm (UTC)(link)
Hey, my shoes are fly.

[Look at him, using that modern slang with an expression that can only be described as the very Pinnacle of Innocence while he very definitely slurps noisily on her drink.

He nods to the time limit, though (more seriously) and immediately starts up a count in the back of his head. He has a good intuition for its passing.]


It's-- going. Have you seen Buck?