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livinglot2017-10-31 05:02 pm
whattaprick) wrote in livinglot2017-10-31 05:02 pm
Heartstone Manor: The Story So Far...
Feeling lost in the plot? ME TOO. Here is a non-exhaustive recap of the plot-relevant stuff from past week(!) of game activity. Most of the details of this information is not ICly available, but the bare minimum that characters are probably aware of by now is:
1. The Prince has captured some of the Carnival's people.
2. There's currently some effort towards uncapturing those people.
3. The Ringmaster has opened a portal between the Carnival and the Prince's realm that people can pass freely through to get their things and take a break somewhere else.
4. Strange has delivered an IC rundown on the situation that anyone with a radio could have overhead, and there's a call to help brainstorm ideas.
This post is mainly to serve as a matter of record/reference and also where people can OOCly dump any thoughts or note if they're interested in team-ups or coordinating efforts more directly. There's plenty to do even if you're not involved in dealing with the Prince: there are scared servants to calm down and round up, gargoyles to fight off, new contract-signers to orient, and generally just trying not to cock things up more than they already are.
Current status of various items of interest (up to date as of Day 177):
World Status: The Ringmaster has conjured a sun to banish the darnkess for morale, so the Prince's twilight realm is not so twilight-y.
The Ringmaster: has conjured a portal to the Carnival and is guarding one of the islands. She has stated that she cannot risk leaving the Prince's realm, as to do so may close the door behind her.
The Prince: Has holed himself up in his fortress. No one has seen him since things began to go to shit, save for the prisoners inside. His gargoyle patrols attack anyone approaching the fortress.
The Prince's Servants: Those that have been retrieved (monster-form and otherwise) are currently hanging out on one of the many floating islands. Any collected Prince servants are presently not allowed inside the Carnival grounds. Servants that have been transformed into monsters are being rounded and corralled up by various carnival members and deposited into a loose holding area.
Currently in Rock Jail: Lambert, Joker, Gon, Yugo, Susan, Lauren, Rita
Currently in the Fortress: Sora (brainwashed), Rin (brainwashed), Julien (brainwashed), Foster, Herbert
Currently at the Carnival: Tyki, Reira, ████ (brainwashed, confined in trailer and bound)
A more detailed timeline of events follows:
Day 170
The Ringmaster informs the Carnival she will be stepping out briefly to negotiate with an ally. Hours later, it appears negotiations have not gone well, and the workers learn they will be expected to be guests of the Ringmaster's ally -- another Wyld Fae called the Prince.
Sans, the Warden, and Lambert, the Nightrider, make a radio post asking the Carnival not to fuck it up. (Spoilers, they fuck it up.) Regardless of how they personally take the news that they'll be spending some time in a fae realm, after a last-minute etiquette practice dinner the workers are brought to the manor and assigned rooms in pairs.
Various parties begin their surveillance and patrolling efforts of the Manor, too wary from previous experience with the fae to not expect something might be amiss here. Jonathan Strange and 9S devise a method to create enchanted maps of the manor to be shared between the nightrunners.
Day 171
The daily routine at Heartstone Manor (event log) begins. The servants are reticent to answer questions, and there doesn't seem to be anything hugely amiss about the place, so most people go along with the routine, if uneasily. People observe peculiar aspects of the house -- parts that shut itself off, as though to block their way, and invisible presences where none seem to exist. It doesn’t appear to be an undead presence, though, at least not as far as Tamaki can sense it...
After curfew the Acquisitioner, John Childermass, does a bit of snooping and learns the Prince is deliberately keeping his more beast-like servants out of sight of his guests. Into the early hours of the next morning, Tyki Mykk takes a wrong turn in the halls of the Manor and is lost to The Beneath (event log), a scary hole where he makes new friends(?).
Day 172
After Tyki fails to show up to report, Childermass informs other supervisors of this development. Unfortunately, there's little to be done but carry on. This disappearance is not lost on Reira Akaba, who was expecting to meet Tyki in the morning. Distressed by his no-show, she accepts her roommate Julien Delacroix's offer to stay with his bird body in the stables for the night, away from the Manor's oppressive interior. This goes terribly, horribly wrong and they are caught by the Prince's guards. Like Tyki, they are sent down below, meeting the Prince’s former butler along the way.
Before they lose contact, Julien's human body in his room manages to make a radio post in angelic speech. As one of the few who can actually understand what he’s saying, Sans teleports to the stables, only to be captured by the Prince himself. You can guess what happens next.
Either simultaneously or just before all this happens, Syrlya and 9S discover the Prince's servants may be mutilating themselves and appear to have a way of going into the walls...
Day 173
The Warden has gone very conspicuously missing. With information from Taako and Foster von Denend, Lambert can confirm the Carnival's missing people are being kept somewhere unaccessible to them, but still alive and undestroyed... probably. The Supervisors have a talk to discuss all this information that basically amounts to 'guess we'll die,’ and grimly troop off to breakfast. Childermass asks Lambert to tell Jonathan Strange to scry for whoever ‘LeFlamme’ is.
After some discussion of what they found last night, Syrlya offers to make an illusory Sans just to keep the Carnival from panicking. (Spoilers: this does not keep the Carnival from panicking.)
The Hunt (event log) takes up the whole afternoon, and a cockatrice and a dragon are slain. The Prince declares the cockatrice-slayers the winners of the Hunt. All in all, you could count it as a win, if certain members of the less bloodthirsty would-be hunters didn’t come to the unfortunate realization that the beasts they were set after might have been human, once.
In attempting to defend the Peryton, one of the targets of the hunt, Zangetsu rips off Gongenzaka's arm and eats it because Zangetsu is fucking nuts, or something.
While the hunt is going on, through the power of English magic, witcher bullshit, and luck(?) Strange and Lambert pucker up to break an enchantment on a bicorn, much to the alarm of 9S and Rita Mordio. Said Bicorn turns out to be a former concubine on the Prince punished for trying to escape. Lambert dispatches 9S to call for the other nightrunners, and Childermass shows up on the scene to yell at people, eventually revealing his own investigations have left him with a rabbit girl who's fled the Prince. After some hurried discussion with both servants are shoved into Childermass’s shadow and taken back to the Manor.
After curfew, it’s time to get some questions answered. Childermass also shares the information he's been aware of since their arrival, which is that the Prince is in possession of a Blue Rose, an object of immense magical power that the Prince stole from the faerie Courts and which keeps him hidden somehow. Also, people find out that the Prince may basically coercing the Ringmaster into marrying him, so that's fun.
Through interrogating the servants, the nightrunners receive confirmation that the house is in fact alive and bound to the service of the Prince, and that all his servants have lost their names. Which is all well and good, but doesn’t answer the most important question of all: what the hell are they supposed to do about this?
Spurred into action by the events of the day, Rin and Sora decide to leave their rooms and explore the Manor after curfew. Unfortunately, discovered in their wanderings by a random servant, they meet the same fate as their previous coworkers.
Day 174
The fourth day at the Manor passes as a lot of quiet and non-so-quiet freaking out as more of their number end up missing. Those with a better understanding of what's going on try to find enough private time to discuss what the next steps should be without unnecessarily panicking the others, but it all ends up having to be worked in around ballroom preparations.
Day 175
Said preparations turn out not to matter at all. At breakfast, most of the Carnival is drugged into an enchanted stupor by the Prince, because lacing breakfast wis apparently acceptable in fae hospitality terms. Apparently the Ringmaster punched him for going after Lapis, one of the few workers who avoided being enchanted, though much like Childermass doing something badass at this point, nobody will ever remember because they were too busy being enchanted as shit. While everyone else wanders around in daze, Foster, Taako, Lapis and Childermass remain untouched by the enchantment that's fallen over the rest of the workers.
But who cares, right? It's time for The Grand Ball (event log), with faces new and old, both real and illusory. Under the weight of the enchantment, people can’t seem to worry or care about what’s going on, but some are unfortunately all too aware of the stakes. The lost Carnival members return, only -- in an odd turn of events -- they seem to be wearing the Prince's colors now. Lauren and his brother Susan shapeshift into rats to follow Reira back into the servant quarters, but end up captured by the Prince's security.
And then three things mostly happen at the same time:
- Lambert starts a fight with the brainwashed Warden. Gongenzaka and Yugo assist him in keeping Sans restrained, and Peridot disarms them both. The fight ends up in an all-out brawl in the courtyard between Warden and Nightrider in their animal forms, shattering a balcony off the manor in the process. The Prince shows up to gloat over things obviously going according to his plans, and Gon and Yugo are taken away by the guards while Sans and Lambert seem to be consumed by the dirt itself.
- Scout, one of the nightrunners, has managed to clear her head enough to recognize a distraction when she sees one, and comes up with a plan to try to talk with the living manor without anyone overhearing. With Carly and Papyrus as lookouts below, and the skeleton providing a quick boost with his magic, Rita, Joker, and Scout make their way up to the roof. Unfortunately, due to poor luck and the wind and rain, this attempt does not go at all according to plan. Rita and Joker are captured by the gargoyles and taken to the Prince's prison. Scout and Papyrus manage to break into the Prince's tower from above, where they see the Blue Rose in a crystal enclosure below...
- Childermass, who asked for the distraction in the first place, leads his own infiltration effort from within the manor, consisting of everyone who wasn't poisoned and Syrlya. With the assistance of the rescued servants, they manage to open a path to the butler, LeFlamme, and gain his assistance in entering the Prince's quarters. After some minor mishaps with the Prince's personal possessions (including a pressurized box filled with poison spiders, why does he even have that box?) they locate the mirror the Prince uses basically as his room control switch. By casting an illusion that mimics the Prince's face and voice, Taako uses it to open a path to the Blue Rose. The gang manages to get to the Blue Rose -- letting in Scout and Papyrus in the process -- and triumphantly presents it to the Ringmaster.
Unfortunately, such a tresspass doesn't go unnoticed. With half an hour to midnight, the Prince does not take this well. In fact, you could say he freaks out a little. In a quick brawl, he knocks the Ringmaster unconscious and flees from the scene, the landscape changing behind him as the Manor bends to his will. The illusory guests conjured for the ball dissipate slowly, but not all of the guests are merely the product of the Prince's magic -- there are real, confused people left in its wake, and scattered servants besides...
Day 176
The Manor continues to break and reshape itself to the will of the Prince (event log). With the strategic application of a greasy burger, the Ringmaster recovers from her enforced naptime. It appears the Prince has stored some of the power of the Blue Rose into a crystal he's drawing from. The presence of that (and the now-impregnable stone fortress that has formed, which the captured prisoners are trapped in) is making simply smashing him like the nerd he is a wee bit more complex than the Ringmaster (or anyone else, really) would like.
Carnival members try to make sense of what's going on while rounding up the Prince's servants caught outside, as well as any of his transformed servants. The Ringmaster opens a portal back to the Carnival, allowing people to claim some of their possessions and rest, but cannot risk leaving the Prince's realm herself. Stranded ball guests are given the chance to sign a contract with the Ringmaster to overwrite the Prince's hold on them, but for now, they're waiting on the rest of the Carnival to make their move.
Tyki and Reira are returned to the Carnival and the Prince's brainwashing is broken... for the most part. People find out about what a shitty time they've been through -- the Prince's poison not only petrifies people, it also weakens their minds and spirits, making them more susceptible to his influence. He's stolen all of his servant's names, robbing them of their identity, and they're currently on one of the many floating islands outside the Carnival, kind of just hanging out to see what happens next.
In the meantime, everyone who was caught during the altercation at the ball or otherwise not scooped up by the Carnival is returned to the Prince's new fortress, and they get to bitch a lot in rock jail (event log). Later in the evening, the Prince comes down to his prison and a bad thing happens.
The skeleton once known as ████ belongs to the Prince, now, his True Name taken and withheld from the minds of all who once knew him. In the Carnival, his brother senses something amiss, but they're not fully aware of the ramifications.
Day 177
In the wee hours of the morning, an intruder is reported on Carnival premises. Mari Makinami Illustrious, former Nightrider, is on the case, followed swiftly by Tyki, Syrlya, Zangetsu, and a whole bunch of other people. After some scuffling (involving turning that nasty scorpion stinger into a tentacle, no less) the former Warden is captured and taken to the Ringmaster.
The Ringmaster convenes with her remaining supervisors and Strange to begin trying to determine their next course of action.
Finally, Strange makes a radio post summarizing the current state of affairs and bringing up the idea of challenging the Prince to a game or attempting to break out the prisoners through a stealth operation. Now all that remains is to actually put a plan together.
---
1. The Prince has captured some of the Carnival's people.
2. There's currently some effort towards uncapturing those people.
3. The Ringmaster has opened a portal between the Carnival and the Prince's realm that people can pass freely through to get their things and take a break somewhere else.
4. Strange has delivered an IC rundown on the situation that anyone with a radio could have overhead, and there's a call to help brainstorm ideas.
This post is mainly to serve as a matter of record/reference and also where people can OOCly dump any thoughts or note if they're interested in team-ups or coordinating efforts more directly. There's plenty to do even if you're not involved in dealing with the Prince: there are scared servants to calm down and round up, gargoyles to fight off, new contract-signers to orient, and generally just trying not to cock things up more than they already are.
Current status of various items of interest (up to date as of Day 177):
World Status: The Ringmaster has conjured a sun to banish the darnkess for morale, so the Prince's twilight realm is not so twilight-y.
The Ringmaster: has conjured a portal to the Carnival and is guarding one of the islands. She has stated that she cannot risk leaving the Prince's realm, as to do so may close the door behind her.
The Prince: Has holed himself up in his fortress. No one has seen him since things began to go to shit, save for the prisoners inside. His gargoyle patrols attack anyone approaching the fortress.
The Prince's Servants: Those that have been retrieved (monster-form and otherwise) are currently hanging out on one of the many floating islands. Any collected Prince servants are presently not allowed inside the Carnival grounds. Servants that have been transformed into monsters are being rounded and corralled up by various carnival members and deposited into a loose holding area.
Currently in Rock Jail: Lambert, Joker, Gon, Yugo, Susan, Lauren, Rita
Currently in the Fortress: Sora (brainwashed), Rin (brainwashed), Julien (brainwashed), Foster, Herbert
Currently at the Carnival: Tyki, Reira, ████ (brainwashed, confined in trailer and bound)
A more detailed timeline of events follows:
Day 170
The Ringmaster informs the Carnival she will be stepping out briefly to negotiate with an ally. Hours later, it appears negotiations have not gone well, and the workers learn they will be expected to be guests of the Ringmaster's ally -- another Wyld Fae called the Prince.
Sans, the Warden, and Lambert, the Nightrider, make a radio post asking the Carnival not to fuck it up. (Spoilers, they fuck it up.) Regardless of how they personally take the news that they'll be spending some time in a fae realm, after a last-minute etiquette practice dinner the workers are brought to the manor and assigned rooms in pairs.
Various parties begin their surveillance and patrolling efforts of the Manor, too wary from previous experience with the fae to not expect something might be amiss here. Jonathan Strange and 9S devise a method to create enchanted maps of the manor to be shared between the nightrunners.
Day 171
The daily routine at Heartstone Manor (event log) begins. The servants are reticent to answer questions, and there doesn't seem to be anything hugely amiss about the place, so most people go along with the routine, if uneasily. People observe peculiar aspects of the house -- parts that shut itself off, as though to block their way, and invisible presences where none seem to exist. It doesn’t appear to be an undead presence, though, at least not as far as Tamaki can sense it...
After curfew the Acquisitioner, John Childermass, does a bit of snooping and learns the Prince is deliberately keeping his more beast-like servants out of sight of his guests. Into the early hours of the next morning, Tyki Mykk takes a wrong turn in the halls of the Manor and is lost to The Beneath (event log), a scary hole where he makes new friends(?).
Day 172
After Tyki fails to show up to report, Childermass informs other supervisors of this development. Unfortunately, there's little to be done but carry on. This disappearance is not lost on Reira Akaba, who was expecting to meet Tyki in the morning. Distressed by his no-show, she accepts her roommate Julien Delacroix's offer to stay with his bird body in the stables for the night, away from the Manor's oppressive interior. This goes terribly, horribly wrong and they are caught by the Prince's guards. Like Tyki, they are sent down below, meeting the Prince’s former butler along the way.
Before they lose contact, Julien's human body in his room manages to make a radio post in angelic speech. As one of the few who can actually understand what he’s saying, Sans teleports to the stables, only to be captured by the Prince himself. You can guess what happens next.
Either simultaneously or just before all this happens, Syrlya and 9S discover the Prince's servants may be mutilating themselves and appear to have a way of going into the walls...
Day 173
The Warden has gone very conspicuously missing. With information from Taako and Foster von Denend, Lambert can confirm the Carnival's missing people are being kept somewhere unaccessible to them, but still alive and undestroyed... probably. The Supervisors have a talk to discuss all this information that basically amounts to 'guess we'll die,’ and grimly troop off to breakfast. Childermass asks Lambert to tell Jonathan Strange to scry for whoever ‘LeFlamme’ is.
After some discussion of what they found last night, Syrlya offers to make an illusory Sans just to keep the Carnival from panicking. (Spoilers: this does not keep the Carnival from panicking.)
The Hunt (event log) takes up the whole afternoon, and a cockatrice and a dragon are slain. The Prince declares the cockatrice-slayers the winners of the Hunt. All in all, you could count it as a win, if certain members of the less bloodthirsty would-be hunters didn’t come to the unfortunate realization that the beasts they were set after might have been human, once.
In attempting to defend the Peryton, one of the targets of the hunt, Zangetsu rips off Gongenzaka's arm and eats it because Zangetsu is fucking nuts, or something.
While the hunt is going on, through the power of English magic, witcher bullshit, and luck(?) Strange and Lambert pucker up to break an enchantment on a bicorn, much to the alarm of 9S and Rita Mordio. Said Bicorn turns out to be a former concubine on the Prince punished for trying to escape. Lambert dispatches 9S to call for the other nightrunners, and Childermass shows up on the scene to yell at people, eventually revealing his own investigations have left him with a rabbit girl who's fled the Prince. After some hurried discussion with both servants are shoved into Childermass’s shadow and taken back to the Manor.
After curfew, it’s time to get some questions answered. Childermass also shares the information he's been aware of since their arrival, which is that the Prince is in possession of a Blue Rose, an object of immense magical power that the Prince stole from the faerie Courts and which keeps him hidden somehow. Also, people find out that the Prince may basically coercing the Ringmaster into marrying him, so that's fun.
Through interrogating the servants, the nightrunners receive confirmation that the house is in fact alive and bound to the service of the Prince, and that all his servants have lost their names. Which is all well and good, but doesn’t answer the most important question of all: what the hell are they supposed to do about this?
Spurred into action by the events of the day, Rin and Sora decide to leave their rooms and explore the Manor after curfew. Unfortunately, discovered in their wanderings by a random servant, they meet the same fate as their previous coworkers.
Day 174
The fourth day at the Manor passes as a lot of quiet and non-so-quiet freaking out as more of their number end up missing. Those with a better understanding of what's going on try to find enough private time to discuss what the next steps should be without unnecessarily panicking the others, but it all ends up having to be worked in around ballroom preparations.
Day 175
Said preparations turn out not to matter at all. At breakfast, most of the Carnival is drugged into an enchanted stupor by the Prince, because lacing breakfast wis apparently acceptable in fae hospitality terms. Apparently the Ringmaster punched him for going after Lapis, one of the few workers who avoided being enchanted, though much like Childermass doing something badass at this point, nobody will ever remember because they were too busy being enchanted as shit. While everyone else wanders around in daze, Foster, Taako, Lapis and Childermass remain untouched by the enchantment that's fallen over the rest of the workers.
But who cares, right? It's time for The Grand Ball (event log), with faces new and old, both real and illusory. Under the weight of the enchantment, people can’t seem to worry or care about what’s going on, but some are unfortunately all too aware of the stakes. The lost Carnival members return, only -- in an odd turn of events -- they seem to be wearing the Prince's colors now. Lauren and his brother Susan shapeshift into rats to follow Reira back into the servant quarters, but end up captured by the Prince's security.
And then three things mostly happen at the same time:
- Lambert starts a fight with the brainwashed Warden. Gongenzaka and Yugo assist him in keeping Sans restrained, and Peridot disarms them both. The fight ends up in an all-out brawl in the courtyard between Warden and Nightrider in their animal forms, shattering a balcony off the manor in the process. The Prince shows up to gloat over things obviously going according to his plans, and Gon and Yugo are taken away by the guards while Sans and Lambert seem to be consumed by the dirt itself.
- Scout, one of the nightrunners, has managed to clear her head enough to recognize a distraction when she sees one, and comes up with a plan to try to talk with the living manor without anyone overhearing. With Carly and Papyrus as lookouts below, and the skeleton providing a quick boost with his magic, Rita, Joker, and Scout make their way up to the roof. Unfortunately, due to poor luck and the wind and rain, this attempt does not go at all according to plan. Rita and Joker are captured by the gargoyles and taken to the Prince's prison. Scout and Papyrus manage to break into the Prince's tower from above, where they see the Blue Rose in a crystal enclosure below...
- Childermass, who asked for the distraction in the first place, leads his own infiltration effort from within the manor, consisting of everyone who wasn't poisoned and Syrlya. With the assistance of the rescued servants, they manage to open a path to the butler, LeFlamme, and gain his assistance in entering the Prince's quarters. After some minor mishaps with the Prince's personal possessions (including a pressurized box filled with poison spiders, why does he even have that box?) they locate the mirror the Prince uses basically as his room control switch. By casting an illusion that mimics the Prince's face and voice, Taako uses it to open a path to the Blue Rose. The gang manages to get to the Blue Rose -- letting in Scout and Papyrus in the process -- and triumphantly presents it to the Ringmaster.
Unfortunately, such a tresspass doesn't go unnoticed. With half an hour to midnight, the Prince does not take this well. In fact, you could say he freaks out a little. In a quick brawl, he knocks the Ringmaster unconscious and flees from the scene, the landscape changing behind him as the Manor bends to his will. The illusory guests conjured for the ball dissipate slowly, but not all of the guests are merely the product of the Prince's magic -- there are real, confused people left in its wake, and scattered servants besides...
Day 176
The Manor continues to break and reshape itself to the will of the Prince (event log). With the strategic application of a greasy burger, the Ringmaster recovers from her enforced naptime. It appears the Prince has stored some of the power of the Blue Rose into a crystal he's drawing from. The presence of that (and the now-impregnable stone fortress that has formed, which the captured prisoners are trapped in) is making simply smashing him like the nerd he is a wee bit more complex than the Ringmaster (or anyone else, really) would like.
Carnival members try to make sense of what's going on while rounding up the Prince's servants caught outside, as well as any of his transformed servants. The Ringmaster opens a portal back to the Carnival, allowing people to claim some of their possessions and rest, but cannot risk leaving the Prince's realm herself. Stranded ball guests are given the chance to sign a contract with the Ringmaster to overwrite the Prince's hold on them, but for now, they're waiting on the rest of the Carnival to make their move.
Tyki and Reira are returned to the Carnival and the Prince's brainwashing is broken... for the most part. People find out about what a shitty time they've been through -- the Prince's poison not only petrifies people, it also weakens their minds and spirits, making them more susceptible to his influence. He's stolen all of his servant's names, robbing them of their identity, and they're currently on one of the many floating islands outside the Carnival, kind of just hanging out to see what happens next.
In the meantime, everyone who was caught during the altercation at the ball or otherwise not scooped up by the Carnival is returned to the Prince's new fortress, and they get to bitch a lot in rock jail (event log). Later in the evening, the Prince comes down to his prison and a bad thing happens.
The skeleton once known as ████ belongs to the Prince, now, his True Name taken and withheld from the minds of all who once knew him. In the Carnival, his brother senses something amiss, but they're not fully aware of the ramifications.
Day 177
In the wee hours of the morning, an intruder is reported on Carnival premises. Mari Makinami Illustrious, former Nightrider, is on the case, followed swiftly by Tyki, Syrlya, Zangetsu, and a whole bunch of other people. After some scuffling (involving turning that nasty scorpion stinger into a tentacle, no less) the former Warden is captured and taken to the Ringmaster.
The Ringmaster convenes with her remaining supervisors and Strange to begin trying to determine their next course of action.
Finally, Strange makes a radio post summarizing the current state of affairs and bringing up the idea of challenging the Prince to a game or attempting to break out the prisoners through a stealth operation. Now all that remains is to actually put a plan together.
---
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