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DUST TO DUST ❅ EVENT
It will take them time to discern the cause. After all, all the artifacts brought back from the fight with Project Prometheus were deemed safe or at least contained, only able to have their dangerous power unleashed if people were dumb enough to try it.
The altheiometer is not the real thing. It was created by the belief of a child, after reading a certain book series, and therefore is more of a symbolic object, with none of the real capabilities of the device in fiction. Instead, it had other magical abilities. It was not entirely understood by the Project itself, just kept there to be studied and eventually co-opted for sinister use if possible. But it had remained inert in their company.
At the Pole, it passes the magical scan, since it technically is "safe," then finally activates. It works on a child's logic, after all. A child would think daemons are cool but wouldn't think bad people deserved them. A child would think the device should only activate to let good guys have daemons.
In the study containing the safer artifacts, the altheiometer opens of its own accord. Gears turn. The hands start clicking as they move in circles around its clock-like face, rotating back and forth between different symbols. The hands finally stop, clicking as they meet in the same spot, on the symbol of an apple, with a bite taken out of it.
It's all very metaphorical isn't it. The soul can't exist without free will. In some worlds they think free will only exists because of an apple in a garden.
There is a burst of light and sound that reverberates through the Pole. As the floor shakes, everyone sees a brief glimpse of the wave as it passes through walls - and then passes through each of them. Getting hit by it is like getting hit by a storm wave in the ocean, briefly lifting everyone off their feet.
Alongside the sensation of being briefly levitated, there is also the painful sensation of suddenly being aware of something deep inside, briefly made to feel almost like a splinter in their very core.
Then, with all the subtlety of getting attacked with a giant hole punch, the splinter is removed, excised. It does hurt, but there is also a strange relief. Except...whatever it was, it's still here. Next to each of the Guardians. Still attached, just...an externality now.
The wave crashes to the shore. They're all knocked to the floor again.
If they were alone in a room, they aren't now. If they weren't alone in a room, said room's occupants have now doubled.
Each PC now temporarily has a daemon. Daemons are the soul externalized, sentient and able to talk. Taking the form of animals, they often shapeshift and change forms during someone's childhood, but settle into a permanent shape during someone's teen years as the person's personality becomes more concrete and distinct.
- Form: A daemon takes an animal form that represents the person's personality. They usually have a gender opposite to their respective person's, but there are sometimes exceptions, sometimes for entirely unknown reasons, or if the person is some flavor of queer. Daemons will know that they're their owner's soul and be able to tell them that.
- Daemon Selection: Here is a page with interpretations of a few animals and what types of personalities they can represent, but please don't take it as law. It's just possible inspiration. The daemons can be any animal. For characters not from Earth, their daemons can be animals that are entirely made up or ones in their canons.
- Link: Daemons are connected metaphysically to their person through an invisible link, allowing that person to still be attached to their soul. Moving too far from your daemon can cause physical and spiritual agony. Suddenly being ripped apart by a great distance can kill someone. Killing a daemon - which is only as hardy as the animal they are - also kills their owner.
- Personalities: Daemon personalities are often similar to their owner's, but sometimes daemons are more willing to be honest about feelings or subconscious impulses. For instance, daemons often instinctually show affection to the daemons of people their owner is fond of. Daemons will remember everything their owner remembers, and was basically there the whole time they were alive, just integrated. Despite being externalized, they aren't something separate from each person, they were always a part of them.
- Physical Contact: People can touch their own daemons without effects and cuddling their daemon can be a positive experience of self-love. Someone hurting their own daemon can feel like they've caused the damage to themselves, and hurts on a spiritual or almost self-hating level. Meanwhile, picking up someone else's daemon without permission can cause incredible discomfort and pain. Alternately, touching someone's daemon with permission can cause comfort, a surge of happiness, or even pleasure, depending on the context of the contact and the relationship the two people have.
❅ Event Length: The plot will last an OOC and IC 2 weeks before they can figure out what's causing the change and reverse it, making the daemons internal again. During this time, allies of the Guardians will temporarily take over their duties and fortunately no major crises will happen. Players can set their own opens during this time as well as play out anything that happens over the whole 2 weeks in this post.
❅ New Characters: If your character is introing at this time, assume they arrived just in time for the magical wave to hit them, or walked into a cloud of its residual energy.
❅ Opt-out: Anyone that doesn't want to play in the plot or have a daemon can handwave Vasilisa's magical defenses caught on to the power surge and her glowing charms protected at least some people in the Pole from the transformation. You can ignore this and thread as if there's just a little extra chaos around the Pole.
❅ Jack Frost: There will also be a network post with Jack explaining what Vasilisa has magically discerned has happened. It will take time to find the source, as the altheiometer is very good at cloaking its readings and registered as "safe." (Technically, it is safe, it's just...inconvenient.)
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Acacia hums her approval as she pats Antony's flank, glad that they've reached some state of equilibrium.
"You want us to head Stacia off at the pass?" Bunny offers. "She and Benedict will probably be looking for us. She's seen this happen before." He gestures briefly at his depleted self, his own frustration leaking in.
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"No," Elle sighs. "I know better than to try and avoid the local Ragabash. I should talk to her myself."
The offer is a very sweet one, even if Elle has some doubts about Bunny's ability to truly redirect Stacia when she's caught a scent.
"And Dan," Antony adds. His leg twitches when Acacia hits just the right spot on his hips. "We should be the ones to tell him, too."
Elle nods. "And Dan. If you see him, you can let him know that I'm okay but don't please don't mention..." she struggles to put a word to the situation.
"Me," the daemon finishes.
"Are you okay?" Elle's been wrapped up in her own shit, but not so much so that she hasn't noticed that Bunny's struggling. It's a genuine offer to talk about what's going on even is she doesn't expect him to actually take her up on it. She's still firmly in the 'child' category in his eyes.
She wonders what Bunny's reaction was when he learned she cut off her own arm on Halloween. It can't have been good.
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He doesn't avoid looking at her cut off hand now, though, any more than he makes an effort to look directly at it. It's done, it's being undone, at least as far as it can be grown back. Elle will always carry having done it, and that's the scar that he's still sad over.
Anyway, he's confident in his rapport with Stacia enough to assume he can just ask her nicely and she'll do what he asks because she likes him. Perhaps that isn't enough, but he doesn't yet know otherwise.
But Elle's asked him not to, and so he won't. "I'll get to Dan first," he assures her. "We've got enough to talk about without getting into your specifics." He looks at her with a flat, grim expression of absolutely not being okay. "I'd tell you I'm fine, but that'd just be disrespectful."
Elle's a child, and there's a limit to what he'll unload on her emotionally, but she has better than basic powers of observation. Merely basic ones would do in this situation. "You may have noticed I'm a little more vulnerable than usual," he sugarcoats it.
"I hate this so much," Acacia pipes up, sugarcoating nothing. "It's so much easier to defend ourselves when I'm all armored up inside him. Imagine having to rip some person's throat out yourself to defend your person, and you've got to touch them to do it." She shudders with revulsion.
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At "I'd tell you I'm fine..." Elle very carefully doesn't react except for a twitch at the corner of her mouth. Antony snorts loudly.
"Is touching a problem?" Elle asks as her daemon shudders in horror.
There's something strange about the two of them-- a distance that goes beyond the emotional. They don't seem to be all that connected, like some of the 'link' that should be there just... isn't. Not severed, but blocked or tangled.
Elle doesn't seem to notice. If Antony does he isn't showing it.
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This isn't their first rodeo being distinct, but despite their bickering, they're in sync so completely that Elle and Antony are only making them now realize how much about daemons they took for granted being automatically conferred. The minute Acacia manifested Bunny knew her having to endure physical contact with anyone he didn't love and trust implicitly would be an abominable violation.
He takes a good breath before responding. "It's an . . . intimate thing, touching a person's soul." That's about all the depth he feels the need to spell out, thinking about the times that Acacia has had to glove up and defend him anyway. "From a stranger, even from a friend it's . . . disorienting. It feels wrong to the point of being painful."
Unless it's Dan, but Bunny feels no need to walk Elle through that layer of intimacy.
"Most of the time, any pain she feels, I feel too," Bunny adds, moving the conversation on. "So - try not to let him get injured, if you can. You should find out how much of your power you've retained, if any."
"Hey, so should we," Acacia points out. She slaps the ground beside her, and nothing happens. Bunny taps the ground with his foot experimentally, and a tunnel opens up. Hey! It's a good surprise for once. He lifts his tiny fists in victory as Acacia punches the air and they both cackle at still having some measure of split power.
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After Bunny and Acacia test their powers, Antony speaks up. "We can't shift."
Elle freezes.
"What?" this is the first time she's addressed him directly since telling him to shut up.
"You can't change forms. I'm your spirit and right now we're separate entities."
Elle stares at him in horror, because what the fuck? That's not- that shouldn't even be possible!
She's starting to feel nauseous. She's beginning to panic again.