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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.)
no subject
Elle doesn't track Virginia at all other than instinctually when she catches movement in her vision. Dan-- and Virginia by extension-- are firmly in the 'not a threat' category, especially when she has a much bigger one to worry about.
Antony watches the way Dan and Virginia interact with a placid expression on his face. He sits perfectly still.
Elle leans back in the armchair and thinks about how to start. Then she realizes that she absolutely fucking hates being confined in the thing, so she slides to the floor and scoots to lean against the chair Dan's sitting on. They're facing the same direction, so she doesn't have to look at him while she talks.
Antony lays down stiffly as she settles. Whenever she looks, his gaze is low and to the side. He isn't showing his throat or belly, but he's clearly submitting to her. (If she were capable of it in the moment, she would find it hilarious that the wolf is using her own tricks against her.)
It takes another minute or so for her to gather up the courage to start talking.
"When we talked that morning after the big group meeting in the Wilderlands, I- uh- I mentioned something that I did. That made other people really fucking mad, even though it wasn't about them, and how it was important to me."
Elle's never had to tell someone about this before. With Bunny, she was already freaking out. He didn't know what was wrong but he knew it was something. Dan can definitely tell that something's wrong, but he wasn't there to see her freak out. He doesn't have enough information to start pinpointing the source, other than her strained tolerance of Antony.
This is all on her.
Elle would never have told him about Adam on her own. She doesn't talk about him. Ever. The only two people here she's mentioned it to are Dan and Cammie. Dan, because he saw that memory, and Cammie because she had just lost a brother of her own. She might've told him after seeing what happened to his siblings, but it wouldn't have been the same. That would've been a careful and calculated offering of genuine empathy-- not true vulnerability.
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He pats her shoulder, watching for if that's welcome, grounding touch or if she doesn't like that. Virginia abandons his hand and goes to curl around Antony's feet.
"You only got to tell me what you feel comfortable telling me, but you know my lips are sealed." Elle's right; Dan would never betray her secrets or her safety. Dan may frequently be dishonest, but he's dependable and he knows how precious privacy can be. Sometimes - often - the power to be known or remain a mystery is the last and most vital power one can retain. It's frequently the very last bit of dirt to dig one's heels into.
He wants to tell her he's proud of making that choice, of doing what's good for her in the face of opprobrium, but he doesn't want to overstep when she hasn't even provided him context. It's not that he thinks whatever she's going to tell him will change his mind, but he doesn't want her to think he's just making assumptions without listening to her all the way through.
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She rolls her eyes with a smile, because she knows she doesn't need to tell him. She wants to.
Her brow furrows as she tries to figure out how to begin.
"My father is a werewolf. My brother was one too." she starts, then takes a deep breath. "Iwas one.
"I didn't know until after- Until Adam," Dan can fill in the blank. He knows what happened. "There was a prophecy, and the wrong person found out about it, so they broke into our house and- and. That's what triggered my first change. Seeing what happened to him, I frenzied, and I fought off the Garou who did it.
"I thought I was losing my mind, afterward, you know? My parents told me it was a trauma-induced hallucination."
She doesn't know why they did it, but it doesn't matter. She doesn't think she'll ever forgive them for it.
"But I had a friend, and she had been having these dreams-- so we snuck out. Followed her dreams, literally, and found a Garou camp. They explained things. And then I, um. There was this person there, I've talked about him before. Isaac. He's a Bastet. He tracked down my parents, my dad, and that's when I found out that he knew. That he knew the truth, and had known the whole time."
Elle shifts a little and leans more of her weight against Dan's chair.
"I was so angry. I didn't understand what was happening, and suddenly I found out that what I saw was real and my parents lied to me about. About everything, my whole life. And I was talking to Isaac about it, about how unfair it was that I had inherited this- this thing and that meant I was signed up for some war and how I didn't have a choice in any of it. How no one was asking what I thought or how I felt about any of it," her voice is rough with emotion, but she gives a huff of laughter before saying the next part.
"And I said to him, 'I wish I was a cat.' And Isaac looked at me and asked if I wanted to be. And I said yes."
He gave her something no one had given her since everything started-- something that no one had given her her whole life: a choice. One to make for herself. A stupid, reckless, uninformed choice, but it was hers.
"He called in some favors, pulled some string, next thing you know I'm in the spirit world with a super powerful mage, and he does it. He rewrites reality so I'm a Bastet, not Garou. Dan... it was amazing. It's still amazing."
It was the singular most painful thing she has ever experienced. She could feel the threads of her existence being torn about. She could feel herself being unmade. All of the gruesome deaths in the Dreaming, the fight for Hope, cutting off her arm-- none if it could compare.
"I didn't regret. I don't regret. I would do the same damn thing, every time. That's why I got so worked up when that shit happened with Miguel. Something about me registered as weird when he scanned me, and then what he said to you-- it was hitting too close. I made the right decision. Even if I didn't, it was my decision."
Dan, more than anyone, understands what that means.
Elle's gaze gets pulled to her daemon. "It was supposed to be a complete change," her voice is small and just a little scared. "Body and Spirit. But then this happens, and he's, he's not-"
She clears her throat. Antony tucks his muzzle closer to his body.
"He's not. And I'm not sure what to do about that, or what it means."
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"You reckon this magic knows you better than your own damn self?" He gives her shoulder another squeeze and pets her hair. "Because I don't."
Lord, but he doesn't know how to help her navigate the anger, and he's glad that she's found a way to mostly move beyond it. He remembers finding out just how deep his parents' bargaining with dark magic went; he remembers not knowing about magic until he found his mother murdered by it, and then having to adapt so quickly that anger never stopped feeling like an abstract luxury. He remembers - still, currently, every day - the feeling of being enlisted into duties he never asked for and would have never chosen, of his life being someone else's toy to play with and destroy.
He doesn't know how she managed to push through the immediate anger and powerlessness. He's just glad she did, that she's taken so many obstacles in stride and alchemized them into that peculiar and precious Elle wisdom.
"You made a decision. That decision and the fact that you stand by it is who you are. Antony's form is just a shape. It don't have to mean anything at all."
no subject
The way she pushed through the anger and impotence was by clawing at every ounce of control she could get and not taking no for an answer. Every time she had the chance to forgo tradition and make her own path, she took it. She watched the people around her, learned how they ticked, and made plans. And she carved away pieces of herself in the process, the things she didn't want or need left behind so she could shape herself into the person she is today. It was violent in the way all birth is violent-- raw and primal and only to herself and, in the end, bearing new life.
"Fuck," she mutters. She tips her head back as if that's going to keep the tears from falling.
The moment her eyes move away from Antony, he curls in on himself. If he happens to wrap himself around Virginia in the process, of course that's just a coincidence.
Elle takes a few shuddering breaths. "I don't know if I can believe that. It's be easier if this felt right. I'd like it to be true, but it- he feels wrong. Like my skin's too tight or something."
It's not a perfect metaphor, but it's close enough that it gets the point across.
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"Yeah." He hears her. With the errant tears cleaned up, he folds the handkerchief and places it in her hands. "But we are who we choose to be. That's all we ever are."
Dan believes that. It's part of his ethos, his belief in the dignity of life. Nothing defines someone besides the actions they choose to take, and that means everyone is capable of being better than what they already are. It means no one is tainted for life. No one is ever locked into what others expect of them or what they've done, but the decisions they make going forward, willingly.
no subject
Antony raises his head and speaks for the first time since introducing himself. "'We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.'"
Elle startles a little, not expecting to hear those words. "Vonnegut," she recalls.
Adam had a Vonnegut phase and he had been very fond of that quote. It stuck with Elle after all these years-- he gave her the perfect way to describe how she feels about her own identity. A little piece of him that she can keep close to her heart.
She hasn't thought about it in a while.
It could be taken as a refutation of what Dan is saying, but Elle doesn't think so. She thinks it's complementary, in a way. Both can be true at once.
no subject
"I ain't read Vonnegut but I done heard of him." Dan's literary knowledge is very scattershot, but it's more than what most would expect of an illiterate. He loves audiobooks and, until recently, was caged by his inability to select works by anything more telling than the pictures on the cover. It's only recently that he's been able to listen to things he's interested in, rather than working up interest with what he's already hearing. "Sounds like he knew what's up."
He keeps gently kneading Elle's shoulder in a comforting gesture, and like a mirror, Virginia grooms Antony's muzzle, the parts that are hard to reach without hands. Caretaking has always come so easily to Dan, easy to the point of unconscious. He's only somewhat aware of what Virginia's doing.
"You ain't planning on isolating yourself until this all blows over, are you?"
no subject
She brings up her hand to places on top of Dan's and leans into his touch. Antony stays still for Virginia's grooming with the occasional twitch of his back legs or his tail.
The question makes Elle huff out a laugh. "No, not this time. I've learned my lesson." For now.
"I might get strange looks or comments, but the only person who's really going to question it is Stacia. I'm going to give myself until tomorrow to get my head on straight, then I'll talk to her. If I try to isolate, she'll just track me down anyway. I'd rather start that conversation on my own terms."
no subject
And so there are some O'Connor and Rilke quotes rattling around in Dan's head, too, lingering like someone's perfume in a room they've just left, like a Vonnegut quote lives in Elle's.
He smiles. "I reckon most folks are too busy trying to make sense of their own daemons to try and scrutinize yours too closely."
He raises his eyebrows. "Well, and you know already what I had to learn the hard way: avoiding Stacia don't work for shit."
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She snorts at Dan's statement. "No kidding. This is what I get for hanging out with pursuit predators."
Her slowly growing smile drops when she remembers Antony and the whole-- situation. The wolf pretends not to notice. He seems to be trying to turn the pampering back on Virginia by cleaning her fur with his tongue.
Elle knows, distantly, that it's an adorable sight. She wished that looking at him didn't make her almost nauseous. Some sort of sour feeling in the pit of her stomach and the back of her throat.
She squeezes Dan's hand again.
no subject
"Anything I can do?" he asks gently, moving from kneading Elle's shoulder to petting her hair, changing tack from helping about daemons to just helping generally. "Any jars you need opened, packaging you need ripped open, whatever's easier to do with two sets of fingers and opposable thumbs?"
Since she lost her arm, he's popped by every once in a while to offer to do useful things, things that seem too small to ask for but are plenty difficult one-handed.