2nd Event: Choices We Make

[upcyclingmod]

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Arrival


Not all characters (known as Wickie, singular or Wickies, plural) arrive at the same time, surprisingly enough! That’s life for you. Some Wickies find their way to the island at a pivotal (or very mundane) point in their life, or even after or during their death.

Wickies who were standing or walking often find themselves entering the town South Sister, located on Lighthouse Isle, through an open doorway. Those that were laying down, or sleeping, tend to be found lying prone in beds, bathtubs, showers, couches, and similar places within the cottages on Cottage Row. There’s no rhyme or reason to it all! To Wickies familiar with the era, they will realize that everything looks as if it’s come from the ‘90s.

The house which a Wickie finds themselves within could already be occupied. This includes walking into a fellow Wicke, waking up in the same location, or accidentally scaring a room full of people with their sudden appearance.

Oops.

C-C-Changes

Thankfully the fog has gone down to what it was before, a slow creeping crawl over the ground. And too, the monsters of before are gone, leaving the town much like it was before. Well...close to what it was before.

For now the season's have changed, from a lingering summer to a cooler fall.

There’s new foods to try, even if some things like lattes cause people to slip into warm boots and tie up their hair, and soups make people curl up under blankets on the couch. And it also means decorations of all sorts, made of the leaves from the forest, orange, yellow and red things and...we can not forget...

Pumpkin overflow

Pumpkins! They're everywhere. Wickies will find pumpkins infused into all sorts of things, like coffee, ice cream, even spaghetti options! It's wild.

There’s also many jack o'lanterns. They have been placed everywhere in town, outside homes, and even small ones have been made into table decorations. The Jack o lanterns have very cheerful faces, and seem to watch Wickies every single move.

That is, until a Wickie bashes or otherwise abuses a pumpkin. That's when it changes- there seem to be more of them. Their expressions change to that of anger, sadness and disgust. None of them attack- yet. But their faces become more and more horrifying, as they follow the Wickie more and more- outside of the bathroom perhaps, or found on top of them as the Wickie wakes up in the middle of the night.

It shouldn't matter right? They're only pumpkins.

What a ride

Funny enough, with the pumpkin invasion, there also comes a dull colored horse wandering about the island. Its head is drooped, and it looks depressed and lonely. The horse is tame on approach and will accept pats and treats, even from those who are obviously not human.

But it also wants something, for all that it seems to be begging for attention. It wants someone to ride them, seems to even be begging for it with its big eyes. The horse will help Wickies to figure out how to mount; it will even stand beside the Town Center benches, rocks, or even go down in order to make it possible for the Wickie to get onto the horse’s back.

That’s when it changes. The Wickie is immediately wrapped in chains from their barrel to the Wickie’s waist. The horse turns a coal black and the Wickie’s clothing changes into that of a soldier's uniform, with a hand either holding a whip modeled after a human spine, or a jack o'lantern.

The Wickie cannot get off the horse on their own, no matter how much they struggle. As the horse moves throughout the town, they will go anywhere from a walk to a full canter, seemingly impervious to any magic or physical attacks. The same cannot be said for their unfortunate rider.

If the rider is hit, or simply in pain, the Wickie will feel an impulse that grows and grows until they scream a name of someone in town, someone they know.

And the named will drop, paralyzed. Paralyzed wickie are likely to die within minutes, more so if they are too close to horse and rider. The horse will happily trample anyone on the ground to death.

Even without the impulse, should the Wickie rider use anyone’s name, that person will drop, paralyzed, and unable to breathe.

There is only one way to possibly save the rider: scatter golden objects in their path. The horse will shriek, and promptly buck the rider off, before running away. Just make sure to catch the rider, or at least cushion their fall: they have no way of saving themselves until they hit the ground.

Heart game: confession

Current residents of the island may remember this particular beeping alert, and how it doesn’t go away, no matter what they do! That is, unless they open up the Heart Game, and answer the question.

Welcome back everyone! It’s so good to see you again! Now let’s play that game, Confession! And the question isssssss…

How do you celebrate the changing seasons! Don't be shy!

Comments

[paperpusher]

[Natori's smile is courteous, and practiced, and very fake. He never bothers to put as much effort into it around most exorcists, and Matoba Seiji most of all, but it stays even and politely amused with all the jabs he's come to expect. The important information is there: time isn't moving the same way, and so the small pieces of his mostly-empty life aren't effected by his absence just yet. No worried shiki, no angry calls from his manager. No Natsume left vulnerable to needling from the less savory members of the exorcist community.

And at least Natori knows more about what they're up against than Matoba does, for once.] Mm, well, it is a little more advanced than the Miharu house, isn't it? To think there are humans out there capable of setting up a trap like this. [read: it's humans, Seij.] The earliest batch of people have been here for almost two months.

[worldbent]

[Humans are all well and fine, but Matoba would be pressed to believe it was the doing of humans without help. He ponders this information at face-value, though.]

I see.

Have you met them? Our supposed hosts.

[This place drips with the dust-like coating of disaster everywhere you turn. It feels like an abandoned house which has become filled with malice, host to all manner of illness-inducing ayakashi. It needs purification.]

[But that would be easier done, were his clansmen present to assist.... Power in numbers fared much better. As it was, simply himself and Natori was....]

Are they so powerful?

[paperpusher]

Not in person. They don't seem to be present on the island with us. [Or if they are, they're capable of suppressing their spiritual presence to an absurd degree while also avoiding a population that has been looking for them for two months. It's unlikely enough that he's comfortable saying that they're not physically here.] But they've given some gifts out to some of the residents. They're strong enough to leave incidental traces of their power behind on the objects they make. I've never seen an aura that powerful. The ones I've seen have all been more powerful than you.

[More powerful than Natsume, too. It's not said in a particularly snide way, just matter-of-fact. It's just that with their history, that matter-of-factness leaves all sorts of room to be read into.]

At least one of them-- the one known as the 'Admin'-- is human.

[worldbent]

[A craftsman aura is nothing new- makers of exorcist tools often imbued their objects with traces of their own power- however, for it to be so potent was certainly unusual. Matoba's eyes lid thinly at Natori's presumptuous remark, but then again... He wasn't one to make such an accusation lightly.]

Well. I suppose he must be, to have brought us here. [Matoba's thin smile returns, hands folding in the sleeves of his kimono.] I had expected this to be the madness of some powerful ayakashi, but if it is human, then perhaps it can be reasoned with. That should be a positive, for us.

And where would this power come from? The boundaries of this world feel quite similar to an ayakashi path, do they not?

[Especially the mist. Filled to the brim with malice, like an ayakashi's miasma, it felt as if it was carrying a consciousness of some sort, but... Matoba can't quite put his finger on it. Every time he tried to sharpen his senses over it, it seemed to become nothing but noise.]

...Of course, I don't expect that dispelling something this enormous would be any easy task. However, with some time and resources, perhaps.

[paperpusher]

[Leave it to Matoba Seiji to assume he can reason with the person organizing grand-scale interdimensional kidnappings, purely on the strength of his own presence and the fact that he's dealing with a human. Whatever; it's just a shame Natori won't be able to see Matoba's attempts to interact with the Admin.

(And even that prospect is less funny than potentially alarming. The difficulty with the Admin wasn't the flippancy, it was their skill at picking their moments to turn it off.)]

Mm, well. So far they seem more inclined to express false concern for our welfare instead of any actual meaningful conversation. [Again, the tone of voice is civil, like any two colleagues who aren't on close terms; it's just that they aren't that.] I think it's the island itself, at least to some degree. It feels like... more than just a pocket of the ayakashi realm; sometimes it's as though the land itself is an ayakashi. Especially with... you'll hear people refer to it as the "desire system"; something seizes on the things the residents want or fear and manifests them, typically in distorted ways. From what we can tell, it's the island itself doing it, or else the people in charge are very invested in maintaining that idea.