Martin K(nife) Blackwood (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
curriculum_fictae) wrote2020-01-16 06:21 pm
curriculum_fictae) wrote2020-01-16 06:21 pm
[OOC] [Sidereal] EXORCISM STUFF
SO I GUESS we're gonna have ourselves a good ol' exorcism of Martin Blackwood. There's already been an IC meeting as well as a plurk on the subject, but it's time to actually map this thing out.
Normally I would take this time to give everyone multiple weekends to pick from, but given there's only two full weekends left in January annnnd one of them is imminent, we're going to need to center on January 24th - January 26th! That being said, I do have some leeway on exactly which day to start the post off, so that's where the poll comes in.
Regardless of when the event starts, everything will be ICly forward dated to whenever we're done. (Probably about one IC day.) Also, I will be running anchor on all NPC needs, so if none of the dates below work for you, I will be happy to run threads for you whenever available. I'm also planning on continuing threads until forever, so if you're a slow tagger all is well.
(Threads will definitely continue past January 27th, but if I know which days you're available I'll try to prioritize you on those days.)
So what all's going to go down during this post? Well, there will be three primary groups available, with one being locked (main exorcism group) and the other two (guard Martin, fight off Lonely fragments) will be flexible. I am also 100% open to doing something outside of those options, but that's generally where I'm counting on people to slot in. You are welcome to change your mind, do both things, etc.; this is just me trying to generally gauge how to focus my planning energies.
Generally speaking, the flow of events will go like this:
+ Everyone gathers in the exorcism location to mingle/prep/discuss
+ Subaru and Magnus pull the Lonely out of Martin
+ The area temporarily becomes the world's worst beachfront property
+ At some point, Things Go Wrong and the Lonely splits into multiple fragments
+ The biggest chunk goes into Pyxis, as planned
+ The rest splits into monsters for people to fight/kill/get hurt by
+ Eventually all of the pieces are gathered up/destroyed (but consequences/scarring remains)
+ Magnus will either keep or destroy his box of Lonely
+ Martin wakes up ... fine? Probably??? (The ritual will be successful, but he will need recovery time)
How did my character find out about it/what kind of prep is involved? If you didn't get a chance to thread out asking ICly, then you can assume your character got lured into Martin's flat with cake and somehow signed up that way. Everyone who attended that meeting (or signed up) was asked to come to the exorcism with some kind of token made by (or given to them by) a loved one, preferably someone currently in Sidereal. I'll probably start the exorcism post off with a general "make friendship bracelets and mingle" thread, as you do. Or you can thread things out ahead of time - Martin definitely got out the word at least an IC day in advance.
What kind of sweet, sweet consequences will I be able to inflict on my characters? Glad you asked! See this comment for a list of stuff and feel free to ask questions. Note that the deets posted are GUIDELINES that match up with TMA canon. You are welcome to have Something Else More Fun Happening.
Normally I would take this time to give everyone multiple weekends to pick from, but given there's only two full weekends left in January annnnd one of them is imminent, we're going to need to center on January 24th - January 26th! That being said, I do have some leeway on exactly which day to start the post off, so that's where the poll comes in.
Regardless of when the event starts, everything will be ICly forward dated to whenever we're done. (Probably about one IC day.) Also, I will be running anchor on all NPC needs, so if none of the dates below work for you, I will be happy to run threads for you whenever available. I'm also planning on continuing threads until forever, so if you're a slow tagger all is well.
Poll #23277 MARTIN BLACKWOOD'S MAGICAL EXORCISM ADVENTURE
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 14
When would you prefer to have this event start?
View Answers
Thursday, January 23rd
6 (42.9%)
Friday, January 24th
5 (35.7%)
Saturday, January 25th
6 (42.9%)
Sunday, January 26th
4 (28.6%)
Tuesday, January 27th
2 (14.3%)
No Preference
4 (28.6%)
During which dates will you be available to participate?
View Answers
Thursday, January 23rd
9 (75.0%)
Friday, January 24th
7 (58.3%)
Saturday, January 25th
11 (91.7%)
Sunday, January 26th
10 (83.3%)
Tuesday, January 27th
9 (75.0%)
During which dates will you NOT be available to participate?
View Answers
Thursday, January 23rd
3 (30.0%)
Friday, January 24th
4 (40.0%)
Saturday, January 25th
0 (0.0%)
Sunday, January 26th
3 (30.0%)
Tuesday, January 27th
4 (40.0%)
(Threads will definitely continue past January 27th, but if I know which days you're available I'll try to prioritize you on those days.)
So what all's going to go down during this post? Well, there will be three primary groups available, with one being locked (main exorcism group) and the other two (guard Martin, fight off Lonely fragments) will be flexible. I am also 100% open to doing something outside of those options, but that's generally where I'm counting on people to slot in. You are welcome to change your mind, do both things, etc.; this is just me trying to generally gauge how to focus my planning energies.
Generally speaking, the flow of events will go like this:
+ Everyone gathers in the exorcism location to mingle/prep/discuss
+ Subaru and Magnus pull the Lonely out of Martin
+ The area temporarily becomes the world's worst beachfront property
+ At some point, Things Go Wrong and the Lonely splits into multiple fragments
+ The biggest chunk goes into Pyxis, as planned
+ The rest splits into monsters for people to fight/kill/get hurt by
+ Eventually all of the pieces are gathered up/destroyed (but consequences/scarring remains)
+ Magnus will either keep or destroy his box of Lonely
+ Martin wakes up ... fine? Probably??? (The ritual will be successful, but he will need recovery time)
How did my character find out about it/what kind of prep is involved? If you didn't get a chance to thread out asking ICly, then you can assume your character got lured into Martin's flat with cake and somehow signed up that way. Everyone who attended that meeting (or signed up) was asked to come to the exorcism with some kind of token made by (or given to them by) a loved one, preferably someone currently in Sidereal. I'll probably start the exorcism post off with a general "make friendship bracelets and mingle" thread, as you do. Or you can thread things out ahead of time - Martin definitely got out the word at least an IC day in advance.
What kind of sweet, sweet consequences will I be able to inflict on my characters? Glad you asked! See this comment for a list of stuff and feel free to ask questions. Note that the deets posted are GUIDELINES that match up with TMA canon. You are welcome to have Something Else More Fun Happening.
ONE MORE THING--
Re: ONE MORE THING--
she's not quite fully vulnerable to the lonely's grip because if she were truly disconnected from them she'd feel it and also her clothes were literally made for her to wear by them, they're a constant ever-present reminder that even if she's temporarily apart she is always loved and when your love is god-punching tier strong-willed it's probably not really possible to be overcome by outside manipulation that way, but she is, still, deeply lonely in at least this sense of no one she loves is here to love her, all the same.
Re: ONE MORE THING--
Maeve's various trauma buttons can be pressed by:
—Treating her as though she isn't real and preying on her issues with identity/self-permanence (People Will Forget I Exist As Soon As They're Done Talking To Me)
—Exacerbating her existing feelings that she doesn't know herself/has no identity besides Making Others' Lives Better For Them
—Insinuating everyone she does get along with will leave her for some reason or another or are only keeping her around to Use Her
—Making any reference to Bugsy, who got Eldritch Sibling Blood Pact Bonded to Maeve for life. unfortunately, for D&D Campaign Reasons, Bugsy has completely fallen out of contact with Maeve and she doesn't know whether they just got tired or her or if something happened or what, but it feels like a part of her is missing
—Implying she's incompetent at her job and that Vesper & Phosphor and the Partners (her bosses) dislike her. the same goes for her coworkers like Pascal, Yves, or Ceciliano
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"Bugsy was the one who found her, rescued her, and took her in somewhere safe. Tried to treat her nice. They were nothing like the people she’d spent all her time around before. Around Bugsy, the screeching, snarled knot of feelings calmed down."
Where it gets complicated is that Maeve hasn't actually seen Bugsy in years, during which time, Bugsy's backstory was that they went and got got by a parasite that uses them as a host, slightly changing Bugsy's personality to more self-serving, more "think with the head, not the heart", and even to view Maeve as an asset more than a sibling. This was all supposed to happen during the campaign with the parasite reveal happening late down the line, but as of right now in the campaign, Maeve hasn't even met Bugsy again (just in case the player can later join us if RL permits). I don't think it's a thing the Lonely could use Bugsy's uhhhh "new" personality against Maeve because she doesn't know it's happened yet.
BUT! This means that the Lonely can basically superimpose any kind of slightly-kind/nurturing personality onto its approximation of Bugsy and warp it from there, and Maeve will do all kinds of mental gymnastics to convince herself that yep, that's her sibling! Maeve's previous life before Bugsy was living in a shitty flat and prowling the streets with fairweather mugger friends who would use her as the muscle/knife gal, and they weren't particularly kind to her, mostly just used her as a tool, and even threw her to the cops when they all got busted for mugging people. So, like, if Maeve can reason that they were her friends... then even a warped Bugsy is still going to Have To Be Bugsy to her, or else it means none of it was
real?? :')));;;;
I REALIZE THIS ISN'T SUPER HELPFUL i just can't make the calls about someone else's oc afhsdfsdjf
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I can tell you a bit about Maeve's other coworkers, though, since they're NPCs actively in the campaign!!
Yves is a lawyer with a buzzy, insectoid voice and white hair and skin. They use kaomoji in all their business slack communications. They have a bad history of their lunch getting stolen from the breakroom and being very despondent about it (it's our party's rogue who keeps stealing it). We all want to protect them from ourselves. They tend to refer to themselves not with pronouns but "Yves thinks..." or "It is to be pleased..." instead of "I think/I am pleased". They're extremely helpful but the party kind of overwhelms them with their chaos, and they're not aggressive at all. They're always as helpful as they can be: "No... killing the journalists... would be bad. It is not to be a good idea." When it comes to conflict, they tend to like turn invisible or hide sadly in a corner, but they are very competent.
Pascal is here in Sidereal and he's a charmer who desperately wants everyone to like him!! And he really amps up the charisma to hide that insecurity. He's a bit sarcastic, tends to be very big and grand with his gestures. In tabletop, he tends to refer to the party as "beautiful people" and he can get really stressed out. He likes Maeve's rat photos/videos and they're kinda buds. They go to lunch together and know a bit about each other's We Did Street Crime histories. He tries to encourage Maeve to work on her self-affirmation, while simultaneously downplaying his own accomplishments: "Oh, me? I'm all flash, no substance." At one point in campaign while he, Yves, and the party were being held captive by some... coworkers... he brought out an icebreaker book and asked everyone what a difficult moment in their life was. "Oh, this is easy!" he said. "I'm having it RIGHT NOW!"
Ceciliano is a soft-spoken aasimar who's like really gentle and kind and within moments of meeting Maeve and realizing she was fucking stressed the fuck out, he tried to like touch her cheek gently and reassure her, but we all know how Maeve takes physical contact. He's easily stressed and tends to molt his feathers under duress. All his slack text tends to include a ":o" somewhere, and he's capable of gentle joking. He seems to get surprised when basic kindnesses are extended to him—such as when Maeve brought him coffee to his liking. Despite the fact that she does it pretty regularly now, he's always equally surprised and gracious about it. Maeve lowkey has a crush on him because he's so pretty and shiny and nice.
Vesper and Phosphor are her bosses. They're never seen separate from one another because they physically cannot separate. Vesper is a quiet, exhausted man. He's usually literally asleep at his desk when they go to see them, or else he's falling asleep. He speaks in a measured manner, but can make the occasional dry joke. Phosphor, on the other hand, is super peppy. Like, super peppy. She's older, grey-haired but chic, and she's the kind of person who says "Great! :)" and you can feel that it's not great at all and it's deeply threatening but in a relentlessly cheerful way. When she gets very angry, things tend to glow red. At one point, a party member started shaking a globe that contained the souls of ... ex-employees. Phosphor thought it was very funny and she told the party member to shake it again.
THAT'S ABOUT ALL I GOT, RHO. Thanks!!!! This post has been incredible so far!!
Re: ONE MORE THING--
- he is dead, he will never return to the people he knows
- he died before, and remembers nothing of the person he was before that death, there's a deep seated part of him that's worried that person might resurface, overtaking who he is now, or that now that he's died a second time he'll revert back to the empty husk he was when he first crawled out of his grave.
The second one is more the angle I'd like to go here, as I do want him to at least temporarily wind up as an empty husk by the end of this.
Re: ONE MORE THING--
He will set up the Magnus Bane Spa and Recovery Center in his bar for people to chill at and recover and have company. Magnus himself will be drained and sick for a few days but put up a front like a winner.
Re: ONE MORE THING--
A very tiny number of survivors landed on Thusia with her, and she's spent centuries cultivating seeds from her home she brought in with her but like. Her whole planet. Is dead. And she likes to shove that knowledge deep deep down and kinda half pretend that only the life that happened post-Sabra is what Really Counts which also she knows is a Deep Betrayal of home.
There's also that she decided to be a monster instead of human. She is a dangerous forest hag that people fear for really good reason!! She's done a lot of murders of people who didn't deserve it, and is fully incapable of reintegrating herself with society at large whether she wanted to or not.
I think we have talked about Nico's Lonely Buttons but I'll probably be back to supply Ideas
Re: ONE MORE THING--
What if Sidereal is just a dream? Or what if Subaru gets ripped away from Sidereal and sent back to his own world, to Empty Tokyo. He hasn't accepted it fully yet, but he wants to be in Sidereal where there can be Something Else with all these people.
I wouldn't mind an opportunity to use the sakura tree (eta: and eye) as an anchor/token too since it's tied to Seishirou, plus the tree doesn't like the Lonely encroaching on its guardian. What if Sakurazukamori Subaru...
Available for full offense if convenient, since they're in the maboroshi the sakura powers.
Re: ONE MORE THING--
In fact the explanation ends up being that Tikoloshe, alone among every devil since the beginning of time, has gained actual, real free will through the influence of his husband and son, and withheld the information out of the desire to protect his child from something very dangerous. oops.)
do note that masego is not likely to fall for this for long, and he will be epically furious once he snaps out of it. which I for one encourage.
Re: ONE MORE THING--
Re: ONE MORE THING--
She misses her cat and she does actually miss all her assistants, regardless of the fact that she would never admit it. She misses Adelard Dekker, and her relationship with Gerry, and she is more than keenly aware that a lot of the connections she doesn't have anymore are the result of her conscious choices.
Re: ONE MORE THING--
They're reasonably well-adjusted about not needing anybody, not having friends or people around them, etc, but it's starting to become more of a sticking point for them as they start making friends. They have no idea how to balance that desire for softness and closeness with the careful self-protecting independence they've cultivated for years. They're a Lonely that's very much starting to stray into "what if having people is... more fun..."
They thrive off attention and would greatly fear not being noticed or losing someone's attention that they care about. Or just losing their audience generally speaking.
They're actively starting to fall for Martin Blackwood (obviously) and have some insecurities there, especially about Martin choosing other people over them, or deciding that they're just no good and he could do better.
Re: ONE MORE THING--
Yeah so, uh, Van dies in a self-sacrifice move that he sends Stef away for; Stef thinks at the time he's being sent to get backup and doesn't realize until he literally feels Vanyel explode. As well as the loneliness of a broken lifebond—which feels like his heart is literally bleeding out of an open wound in his chest basically, a big echoing space where you should feel someone else and they're not there—he's upset with himself for not realizing, angry at Van for not letting Stef choose whether to stay or go, trying just to get out one last work of art—to tell the world what really happened to Vanyel before anyone who wasn't there or didn't know him could romanticize it—before planning to go off and die. The book doesn't actually have THIS fucking miserable an ending but Stef doesn't know it yet.
He also like. Grew up on the streets with an abusive caretaker who he knew was planning on selling him into prostitution when he got too old to be useful to her as a sympathy ploy when begging, but he is comparatively over that one.
Re: ONE MORE THING--
He also was rejected from his clan because he got kind of tired of murder. Made the mistake of seeing humans as people just once, talked to a guy, and well, fuck me, right? He is not by nature solitary but he's been turned away from his herd and living as a solitary faerie since.
He will (try to or successfully) act disaffected as the lonely throws things at him for some time but they will still hit home, but he's that type; literally when taking a shortcut through hell he pretends he's not feeling the literal emotional assault of that landscape, but you know, he's actually pretty vulnerable.
Re: ONE MORE THING--
- deeply afraid he will never see his brother or son Dante & Nero again
- was in total isolation for so long that he's afraid he won't know how to sustain his new connections with others that he has deeply wanted
Re: ONE MORE THING--
So yeah. Self-isolation for the sake of the world is a thing.
Re: ONE MORE THING--
Fen spent 200-ish years alone, during which time the rest of his druid circle just disappeared, and he has no idea what happened to them. He tries not to think about it, but sometimes he wonders if they left him behind on purpose and that he maybe did something wrong.
He's also becoming afraid of the possibility that as sidereal alters his history bit by bit (age ups/downs + elf memory conflicts), he'll go back to Faerun to find his other lover, Griel, is no longer waiting for him. Died in his absence, just written out of his life... you name it.
He also has absolutely killed innocent people before (usually accidentally), including like a 6 y/o girl, and he thinks some people might turn on him for it if they find out.
And he's lowkey terrified of ending up alone, but that hasn't actually really registered even with him yet.