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morningdewsvalley2024-03-17 10:26 pm
mayorityvote) wrote in morningdewsvalley2024-03-17 10:26 pm
WEEK THREE
WEEK THREE
19 Villagers
They say nothing is healthier for the mind and body than physical labor - especially if you can hold the fruits of it in your hands and store it in your kitchen. Whatever cruelties you have witnessed or endured in the past week, your fields need tending to and they reward you with as quick as harvest as always.
If drowning your grief in work is not enough for you, there are new spots to explore in Puffin Town. Allow the novelty to distract you from your dwindling numbers!
Always remember, the value of a community is not measured by it's size.
(( OOC: Murder proposals are due by Tuesday at 4 PM EST / 1 PM PST for this final week! Get your bloodthirst in or forever hold your peace! Gift submission is still open as well!
If your character has been planting Astera, here's a reminder to report it at the Astera tracker - this does not need to have been threaded, we're just taking stock on an OOC level.))
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[And that is all he is going to say on that front because ha ha ha we don't talk about last week.
He'll bring up the rear, muscles tensed just in case he needs to strike or dodge something (or, you know, pull WWX out of the way because of said lack of self-preservation).]
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it seems the music is coming from the basement; it's louder now that they're inside, but unchanged.
...don't mind the door slamming shut behind you (and it won't yield to force or any other type of prying, if they do decide to try to back out now). ]
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down into the basement
dungeonthey go! are they heading towards the rune circle, or somewhere else?anyway he's starting to get the hang of the music on loop and is humming along to it. sorry Baldr. ]
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... mainly because his attention is focused on keeping an eye (ha ha) on their surroundings just in case.
Surely it was just the wind.]
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it's pretty clear they are heading towards the rune circle, which looks normal as they approach, as far as rune circles go at least (no ominous glowing or anything like that). the source of the music is also easy to pinpoint, a gramophone playing in the corner.
overall, the atmosphere is still cheery, if not a bit odd.
...except for the small puddle of blood on one of the corners of the circle, only visible now, at close distance. ]
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Wait. Just in case it's a summoning circle or something like that. I don't know what these... incantations [ he means runes ] can do.
[ he's holding out a hand to stop Baldr from approaching the blood puddle, which he is like. warily staring at for a moment. how. how big is this blood puddle???? and how much of the rune circle is it touching???
(also, he is absolutely Not Caring about the gramophone rn) ]
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I would say it could be a transfer gate, but I somehow doubt that. Leaving one that could potentially be opened or accessed by others would be foolish.
[There's, like... no sign of what exactly might have caused that blood puddle, right...]
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there are no immediate signs of what might have caused the blood puddle. the music continues to cheerfully play.
and now i need to ask:
were either wwx or baldr looking up? ]
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[ this is NOT the time for this discussion, wwx!!! and obviously he was not looking up before but now he will... slowly... look up........
is something going to crush him from the ceiling give me early death!!!! /hj ]
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[He trails off as WWX looks up and proceeds to do the same...
it it time for Son of Maxeta, are we doing this]1/2
okay no he doesn't, but something else does... ]
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TRACE THE PATH OF THE STARS TO UNVEIL MY SECRETS
with it falls another scroll of paper with a curious pattern. ]
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anyway! the first scroll misses wwx but the second scroll absolutely bonks him on the head because of Rule of Funny. ]
Ow! Stupid scroll, wait-- path of stars...? [ help, astrology or constellations?? what ARE those, they're not a Thing for him. scratches his head. ] Also, you can teleport?! That is so cool.
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[He's picking up the second scroll even as he says this to unfurl it and see what's written on it. Or drawn, in this case.]
"Path of stars"... a constellation?
[Baldr is at least vaguely familiar with them, if only because Woden always enjoyed looking at the stars.]
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and since they're trapped in the tower, i'll mention that there's various writing utensils strewn about
magic is messy ok. ]no subject
[ genuinely. he is asking this question unironically. anyway he'll give the paper to Baldr if asked but now he's just kinda rotating the paper and squinting at it to see if there are any shapes he recognises.
(also, he 1000% would have been okay with connecting the dots with his blood instead of using a pencil, but. thank goodness it doesn't have to come down to that, right???? ]
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[When handed the paper, he'll take it, and then grab one of the pencils lying on the floor to begin connecting the dots. He's got this!
A couple of minutes later...]
... I'm not sure this is correct.
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[ anyway he is submitting: birb even though there is like a 99% chance this is wrong??? ]
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He's got a couple more attempts, though!]
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as soon as they draw the second bird however, a flurry of glitter rains down on them, an image of a puffin briefly appearing in the air, along with two handwritten scrolls:
Chronicle 599
The discovery of radon prompted a flurry of scientific inquiry and innovation, and yet – it still wasn’t quite enough. There are always more questions to be answered, more mysteries to be unlocked, and more dangers still as of yet unknown; a prospect both exciting and intimidating, especially when it comes to applying the same spirit of exploration to magic. The Junimo are magical, but they are also sentient, and that may be the greatest mystery of all.
For countless fortnights, I’ve dedicated all my time to locale transference – or, in laymen’s terms, teleportation.
What does teleportation have to do with the spirits, you ask? Well, everything, even though a human may not be a spirit for the majority of their existence. It's a simple feat for me to transport myself between locations in town, or from my laboratory to the basement – this is where the Junimo are concentrated, and their magic and the magic of the soil support just about anything I want to try on home grounds. But to travel long distances in the blink of an eye (outside of the town, or even outside of the country or further) is nigh impossible, given the geographical, metaphysical, and magical energy requirements. But only nigh impossible is still a problem with a solution. Without getting into the finer details (see Chronicle XXIII), the magic the junimos utilize is one that can catalyze a self-sustaining reaction under the right conditions – magic, after all, differs from science in its ability to occasionally grant miracles, the ability to seemingly create something from something entirely different, or from nothing at all.
Getting the Junimo’s cooperation is normally as simple as planting seeds and producing a harvest. The difficulty at present comes from the runic circle needed for the spell. There are countless runic languages and an infinite array of theories for runic array structures, configurations and optimization; it makes it incredibly difficult to find the best combination to use for something so specific as ‘resonating with the Junimo in Puffin Town on Puffin Town soil and with Puffin Town energy, in such a way as to awaken their hidden potential’. This is especially difficult when even I do not know the extent of that hidden potential. Still, I’ve found something stable, and that is already a lifetime accomplishment. Long distance teleportation, universal transference is within my grasp at last.
I don’t plan to use it, of course. At least, not for anything big; I am a mere small town wizard, in the end.
the second scroll is comically shorter than the first:
Chronicle 607
The only limiting factor now is getting the junimo to stay in place long enough to initiate the spell. They're skittish creatures, prone to fleeing at the first sign of danger, or even boredom.
((on an ooc note, i'll say that i can totally see an upside down bird with a top hat on in this one.)) ]
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he's taking the time to read through the chronicles, and when he's done... ]
What are junimos, do you know? And guess you were right about being a teleportation... transfer gate? Is that what you called it?
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Somewhere, Ars Arcana!Baldr sneezes as another version of him receives the well-deserved revenge for his glitter cannonBut he'll take the time to read over the scrolls as well to see what he can glean from them.]
I don't know, no. But I thought the circle resembled an inactive transfer gate. From the sound of things, it's meant to work the same way... the only issue is getting it to work in the first place.
investigation end!
Chronicle 607.8k(iii)
I did not expect that the Junimo would be so fond of birds. As nature spirits, it was expected that they would be close to the flora and even the fauna – it’s the specificity of it, seemingly the arbitrariness of it compared to their love for the Astera. But it may be that we just haven’t found out what makes them and the birds tick. I intend to investigate this a great deal more in coming days.
What I do know now, thanks to a happy accident during festival preparations, is that birdcalls will attract a ridiculous number of Junimo compared to just about any other method not involving their favorite fruit. And so: I’ve created a straw oboe to mimic the various local bird life. I am but a humble wizard, but even I must occasionally contribute to the festive atmosphere – or so they say. It comes with the territory.
NOTE: This solves for the boredom aspect of the junimo variable, but measures must still be taken to ensure their safety, or they will flee. ]