isleofavalon | EVENT ✨ Fall Equinot

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EVENT ✨ Fall Equinot

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SUMMARY: In the days leading up to the fall equinox, geese intended for eating escape and cause havoc around town, people share techniques to preserve plants for the winter, and Camelot's citizens compete to make the best light shows with traditional wax candles to draw spirits peacefully into Camelot.

With all the harder preparations gathered for the Fall Equinox, throughout the month people will notice that decorations start going up around town. The colors of fall seem to seep throughout Camelot, but more than that, so do more traditional sights and smells. In the days leading up to the equinox, traditional acts such as the sacrifice and consuming of flesh are performed. Well.. normally they would be. The fattened geese that are normally eaten in preparation for the equinox have escaped and are causing havoc around town. Geese are running around causing trouble for everyone-- stealing glasses, opening gates, putting up toilet seats when people try to sit down so they fall in the bowl... all kinds of madness! Even if you weren't intent on eating geese and were going to settle for the vegetarian option (pumpkin and nut soups are frequently served using the gourd itself as a bowl), you have to agree the general public needs to be rescued from these menaces. If you have the stomach for it, you are welcome to keep one of the geese you capture for your own table... but otherwise, please return the birds to the farm where they can be handled accordingly.

Birds are not the only sacrifice made to the autumnal equinox. As the flowers begin to reach the end of their life, there is a strong tradition of gathering flowers and herbs and preserving them for the upcoming winter, either to protect their beauty, scent, edibility, and sometimes magical properties. The simplest form of preservation is, of course, drying and pressing-- a technique you don't need magic for, but some of the locals will happily teach you. A more advanced technique can be learned to enchant glass bell jars to suspend the lifeforce of any living thing within its grasp for up to a year, if no one opens it. It's a technique used to preserve important or rare plants that may otherwise die out during the winter, such as herbs used in your favorite spell.. or dish. The glass bell jar will protect the plant, but each time it is picked up, a single petal or leaf will fall off of the plant. If all the leaves fall off, the plant becomes unrecoverable, and come spring the caster will find themselves cursed with a touch that wilts any plant they come in contact with. So if you choose to use this, be warned that there are consequences for misuse and a wide number of horror stories from people who have tried to use this spell for anything other than plants. Any type of mage can pour their magic into a bell jar to enchant it, and the type of magic will be reflected in a glass design that forms around the rim and handle. (An elemental mage may have glass flames form, or frosted etchings of your favorite animal may appear if you're an animal mage, and so on. Feel free to get creative.) Green mages may find this magic a little useless, since they can just replenish plants with their own magic, but it's still a good technique to know.. just in case!

Perhaps the most beautiful tradition that takes form leading up to the autumnal equinox is the candle pathway. Every street in Camelot will be lit up with thousands of candles for two nights leading up to the autumnal equinox, as a guiding light to help the spirits find their way to Avalon. The way the streets in Camelot are mapped out, the lights will form a path to the square where the fairy coins are being held until their release on September 22nd, the same area where the guardian egg ceremony had been performed. Some people get very creative with their lighting displays, which can sometimes result in beautifully lit streets and magnificent structures of flames. Accidents are quickly quelled by volunteer elemental mages throughout the city to prevent any structural damage. Some people might be compelled to make their own light display the most outstanding on the block, and it becomes a bit of a game to compete with your neighbors to see whose section of the candle pathway is the most extravagant.

SUMMARY: The autumn equinox ritual is interrupted by a huge earthquake caused by a Stone Giant bursting out of the Ash Mountains, bringing the closest Ash Mountain and Lestari to the ground. The purple dragon erupts from the ruins to attack Celliwig. The survivors of the collapse need help desperately. Characters must choose where they go to determine the fate of Avalon.

Calm and mundane preparations are a nice break from the sometimes stressful lives of Camelot's citizens and otherworlders, who often are asked to embark on life-threatening adventures and tasks. It's probably a good thing most of the month has been relatively peaceful, as things need to go a little bit differently this year on the fall equinox itself... but not as differently as they actually do.

In the town square, elaborate celtic-similar symbols are carved out into the ground and filled with mysterious glowing liquids. All of those who gained guardian tattoos and their attendants were asked to attend a ritual to release them on the night of the 22nd, along with anyone else who would like to witness. Everything is ready and as the witching hour approaches, several individuals dressed in flowing robes with their faces painted like skeletons approach. As the leader raises his voice to explain why they've come and what to do to make this night a success, a sudden shock-- Avalon itself shakes with the might of an earthquake... or at least, that's what it seems like for the first few minutes as everyone gathers themselves until they hear mass screaming in the distance. Though it's hard to see what's going on... there are still some very, very obvious problems.

A stone giant rises from the first of the Ash Mountains, crumbling the mountain around it as if the ancient being were holding the very mountain itself up... and it was. Those who visited Lestari will have seen its giant feet within the underground city. The former city. Lestari is now buried beneath the mountain, along with many of the other creatures living on and around the mountain. A huge storm of mixed weather forms above the giant's head, blizzard and lightning raging around it to no avail. As the people of Camelot watch what's only visible at a macro distance, they may not be as quick to notice that all of the fairy coins have begun glowing vibrantly, then suddenly burst out of the jars they've been held in, shattering right through them to fly off en-masse toward the stone giant. They embed themselves in it, fueling the giant with enough power to both begin to walk away from the rubble and for the spirits that have begun gathering in Avalon to head toward it, rather than where they had been intended.

As if that were not enough, after the Stone Giant takes two large steps through the Land of Rot, the gargantuan cloud of dust covering the ruins of the first of the Ash Mountain range rather suddenly lights up with a vibrant, ultra-violet burst of flames that illuminates the smoke. The gargantuan purple dragon that once took up residence in the mountain clambors out of the dust and shoots straight into the sky, enraged and furious, and able to sense where the magic came from that raised the stone giant. The reason it immediately begins flying toward Celliwig with the intent to raze it to the ground is likely not immediately apparent, but it is quite odd that it bypasses the much closer target of Camelot with its rage. As does the Stone Giant, though it does not head toward Celliwig and instead seems to absorb the souls of the dead that were intended to be guided by the fall equinox's rituals as it lumbers through the land. If someone does not stop it, it is headed for the Forest of the Felled.

King Arthur is immediately on the emergency broadcast system to implore people to join one of three groups:

Investigate and stop the Stone Giant

Slay the dragon and save Celliwig

Rescue survivors of Lestari and the Ash Mountain

The success of each of these missions is dependent on character participation. See the poll for details about how certain character types may affect the outcome of the missions.

~~Please refer to Event Poll Notes for information about aftermath of this event and additional event info~~ > Event Outcomes.

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Untitled Goose Mischief

The candlelight pathway of the autumnal equinox gives Camelot an unearthly beauty. The city is quiet and peaceful as lovers enjoy a stroll down the illuminated streets...until the inevitable disruption.

"HEY! COME BACK HERE THIS INSTANT YOU FEATHERBRAIN!"

The lovers' peace and quiet is broken as a goose runs by, wings flapping in a tizzy, a red gem set into a metal talisman clutched tightly in its beak. It rounds a corner just in time to be barely missed by a series of razor-sharp flower petals embedding themselves into the stonework of a nearby house. Following quickly behind is Lina Inverse, missing one of the Demon's Blood Amulets she bought off a reticent Trickster Priest a few years back and pissed off about it.

Tossing the now petal-less flower she'd been carrying aside, Lina reaches into the satchel she wears for something else; best investment she ever made now that she needs material components on hand to cast most of her spells. She withdraws a small gourd, closes her hand around it to charge it with magic and then lobs it as hard as she can towards the fleeing goose. The glowing gourd glows brightly as it arcs through the night air, towards the pavement...just as the goose passes underneath it before it his the ground and emits a small explosion. Enough to leave a small smoking crater in the road where the gourd bomb had landed, but alas, not big enough to catch the goose in its radius.

"Oh, come ON! I need that amulet back!" Lina whines in frustration, continuing to run. "AS SOON AS I CATCH UP TO YOU I AM TAKING MY AMULET BACK, THEN YOU ARE REALLY GOING TO BE COOKED, GOOSE!"

She means that literally. She is going to cook and eat the goose. Her final revenge. In the meantime, she's going to keep destroying small sections of Camelot until the goose is caught so maybe someone should help her before the damage gets...out of hand.

Triage-Stone Giant

That is...a very big giant. Of course Lina knew that, given they could see it all the way from Camelot but up close it is...wow. Yeah. It's very big. Probably bigger than anything else Lina has ever faced.

And that just makes her want to be part of the group that takes it down all the more. A guy made of that much stone must be hiding all manner of rare minerals and valuable gems inside. Time to crack them open and find out.

"YO, ROCKY!" She yells confidently, reaching into her satchel. "YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR PROBLEM IS? TOO MUCH IRON, NOT ENOUGH GREEN IN YOUR DIET! LEMME HELP YOU WITH THAT!"

She takes out another gourd bomb and tosses it as hard as she can at the Stone Giant's passing feet. It doesn't even clear the ankle, and the dent the explosion makes is...overall minimal.

"Damn it. We're gonna get nowhere fast as this rate. Hey, you!" She pulls the nearest other outworlder over by the arm, and shoves another glowing gourd into your hand.

"I got an idea. Take this and hurl it at Rocky as hard as you can." It has joints, right? Knees. Lina can't toss the bomb that high, but if someone else threw it for her, she could use Kinetic Magic to zoom it the rest of the distance. "Aim for its knee will ya? We gotta get this thing closer to our level if we're gonna fight it."

Triage-Aftermath

Well, that royally sucked. No defeated Stone Giant, no precious minerals or gems to be looted, just...one blown up city. Oh no wait, two. Two blown up cities. Needless to say, Lina is feeling her inadequacy pretty hard right now. And she doesn't like that. She needs something to do, some win she can score both to make herself feel better and to make sure that...that some good comes of all this.

One of the other beasties was a dragon, right? And it apparently flew off too. But dragons have treasure hoards, and this one left the one it guarded all alone. It's buried under a lot of rubble, but that won't stop determined looters, and Lina is determined to have first crack at it.

Well, at least the night is young.

She makes her way to where the dragon's cave was located. It's all pretty caved in now thanks to the Stone Giant. Using her Kinetic magic, Lina begins pulling the boulders and rubble away to make a passage. It takes hours, the rest of the night and well into the next day, since Lina has to stop for breaks to recharge, but in the end she creates a small enough passage for one person to get through into the now quite abandoned and quite abundant treasure hoard.

She doesn't take any pride in this, or her usual joy at finding such untapped riches. Instead she merely staggers forward, half sits down, half collapses at the edge of the pile, and starts sorting.

"Donate...donate...donate...donate...keep...donate...donate...donate...donate...keep...donate...donate..." The "donate" pile grows larger, much, much more quickly than the "keep" pile.

If you come investigating later, and find the tunnel Lina carved out, she looks up over her shoulder. "Yeah, figured someone else would be by before too long. This is my area, but go ahead and take another spot if you want. Not like there's not enough to go around.

There are two piles of treasure next to her. One is relatively small, tiny jewelry items, precious gems that can be easily stored. The other is larger and Lina hasn't quite...worked out how she's getting this all back to Camelot yet, but she will. She's Lina Inverse!

"Donate...donate...donate...donate...keep...donate...donate...donate..." There's gonna be a lot less treasure by the time she has a chance to get back here. She needs to get as much as she can now.

Geddoe looks at the vegetable unceremoniously thrust into his free hand, then at her, then at the gourd, then at her...

He saw the other one fail. Pressing X to Doubt.

"Are you sure this is going to be any use?" His usual gruff growl is tempered very slightly by the confusion, for the moment. It'll be back, he's urgent and frustrated and has a sword in hand, there's no time for foolishness. "I have much better firepower."

"Yeah maybe, but lemme ask you, can your firepower get all the way up there?" She points to the giant's knee. "Now I've taken down a few big fellas in my time, and rock or not, joints are always weaker targets. Gotta be more flexible for movement, right? So I'm betting it won't take as much to blow apart, or at least knock him down on one knee." She points to the gourd. "Look, we don't have a lot of time here. Throw that, and I can get it the rest of the way up there with my kinetic magic, then *boom* goes the gourd, and Rocky here comes down. Okay?"

As much as he wants to prove that his lightning is actually quite useful actually, Geddoe sighs and decides to do it her way first. "All right, but don't say I didn't warn you."

Shifting sword and gourd from hand to hand, he winds up and lobs it pretty damn hard. Lots of practice throwing toys for dogs at Budehuc.

"Oh ye of little faith, you ain't seen nothin' yet!" Lina chides him as Geddoe pulls his arm back. Man, hope he doesn't take that the wrong way because of the eyepatch.

As he tosses the gourd, Lina outstretches her hand and then makes a sweeping motion with it. In the air, the gourd suddenly accelerates, it's trajectory continuing to rise as it zooms diagonally through the air, up and up towards the back of the Stone Giant's knee. It connects, and instead of smooshing, the magic Lina charged it with goes off and it explodes, raining some bits of stone and, yes, gourd matter down on the ground. There's no visible reaction from the giant, but the impact site does smoke, giving a visual indicator the gourd did some damage.

Lina looks up, and frowns. "Damn it. Not quite as much as I was hoping for. Okay, guess we need something a little bigger, then. Here." She reaches into her pouch and produces a coconut this time, taking just a moment to charge it. Glowing cracks appear over the shell, pulse, and then fade away, leaving a normal-seeming coconut, which she tosses to Geddoe. "Okay, time for the shrapnel bomb." She tosses it to Geddoe. "Toss it, and this time you might wanna duck!"

He barely catches it without dropping it, bobbling it a bit, and sighs hard. Right, might as well let her get it out of her system before he takes his own tactic. No sassback this time, Geddoe hefts it and gives it a fairly good lob.

Out of the corner of his good eye he catches movement, and glances to see whether it's someone else coming to help. Unfortunately, it might not be, but animated skeletons are not something worth concerning himself with at a distance. After all, bones don't conduct electricity as nicely as stone and the giant is a much bigger problem at the moment.

Once again, as Geddoe lets loose the coconut, Lina speeds it on its way, accelerating and controlling its trajectory to aim it towards the giant's knee. Once it's close enough, she releases the control of her Kinetic magic in one smooth motion to let the coconut's forward motion do the rest of the work, and then shifts effortlessly back to her Green magic, to detonate her little bomb. The coconut glows for a brief second as it sails towards its target, before exploding, this time outwards into any tiny glowing shards of shell that strike the stone at multiple points, causing explosions of their own.

Now that the giant seems to feel, rocking unsteadily for a moment, its leg wobbling a little as bits of stone and rubble fall from the sky. It still keeps going, but it's a sign that some damage has been done.

Unfortunately, that was Lina's only coconut. They are not easy to come by. Still, she doesn't let that deter her. "Yeah, there, see! We're getting someplace! Stick with me old man, we'll get this done." She glances back over at Geddoe. "Lemme guess, another potential complication?" She asks.

Homura was hardly taking things well either. A good talk with friends though, along with much needed rest, finally snapped her back into action. Though finding a way to help, that took some deep thought. Seemed like everyone had cooking covered, and she just lost her room at the inn. Hearing about the treasure the dragon hoarded though, an idea soon came to her.

And when she arrived, she spotted Lina. Right, she was using plants or something; hard to recall given her own assault on the stone giant and desperately using the familiar fusion to do some damage. Hearing her words and seeing the pile, the ninja crossed her arms.

"Yeah, no. You might need some help with all that. And I wanna find some weapons in there, so let's make a deal."

Lina responds by scooting around to face Homura, and folding her arms over what passed for her CEIPHEED'S HOLY DRAGON SHIT WHAT THE HELL HOMURA. How are those...things not smacking you in the face every time you run?!

Not that Lina's jealous or anything. Looks like way more trouble than they're worth, honestly. Backache city, amirite?

A-Anyway...

Slapping her face a little so she doesn't look like she got too bug-eyed there (she's also tired, so that helps), Lina's back straightens and she adopts a cocky grin. "A deal, huh? All right, I'm game. Lemme guess, you'll help me carry all this treasure down in exchange for any weapons I might have dug up already?" There does look to be like a sword or dagger poking out of the large "donate" pile.

"Problem is, this still looks like a bit much for just the two of us. You got a solution for that?"

Zelgadis is less interested in the treasure than Lina is, but he has a good feeling that it would be the best place to find the sorcerous after everything has settled down a bit. Naturally he was right, and he found Lina sorting through a mountain of treasure, though clearly not with her usual enthusiasm. He's concerned but not overly worried. This is, after all, Lina Inverse. If anyone can bounce back from something this devastating, it's her, and though he wouldn't admit it, that's part of why he'd decided to seek her out.

"Well, that certainly could have gone better," he says, ignoring the bit about this being her area and just plunking his ass down on top of a pile of treasure, "you doing okay?"

"Ah, you know me, Zel." Lina says with a bravado that the chimaera can tell is almost certainly forced. "You win some, you lose some, right? And now here we are with dibs on this enormous dragon horde to boot! First come first serve and I'm at the head of the line." She starts to laugh, but it...quickly begins to peter out into nothing.

"Besides, it's only fair after what that dragon did. Take its gold to pay for the damage it caused. Reinvesting in the local economy, makes way more sense than hoarding." Says Lina Inverse, sorcery genius and master economist.

"...What about you, Zel?"

"Hm."

He doesn't answer right away, seemingly distracted by a gold coin he's picked up and started fiddling with. 'Are you doing okay' shouldn't be too complicated a question to come up with an answer for, but everything's complicated lately so why not this too?

"I feel a little numb about all this, mostly. Kind of irritated with myself as well, but that's not really important next to everything else."

Deciding that he's said plenty about that topic, he takes his cloak off and lays it out on the ground. He'll help drag gold back, Lina's aright that the people could certainly use all this.

Lina chuckles humourlessly. Kind of irritated. Count on Mister Greywords to say a lot without actually saying a lot. "Yeah. Yeah, think that's going around lately." She does nod appreciatively as he lays his cloak out. Her own is already laid out next to her.

She goes picking at the treasures in front of her for a bit more before speaking up again. "It just kind of burns me is all. If I was at the top of my game, you know? That giant wouldn't have gotten anywhere near the forest. Hell, I probably wouldn't have even had to resort to Dragon Slave-ing it. My repertoire is pretty darn vast." A pause, before sighing in frustration. "Was vast. Damn it." She rubs her hair angrily. "I hate this being kicked back to the start, you know? Having to start from scratch. I did my time at the Atlas City Sorcerer's Guild, I would be quite happy not to set foot in a classroom again, thank you!"

She picks up a gold coin between two fingers, examines it glumly, and then tosses it back in the pile. "And we wouldn't have another two Sairaags on our hands." At least Copy Rezo stuck around for a fight afterwards. But the giant was inert and the dragon high-tailed it outta Avalon, near as anyone could tell.

"Just burns me, is all."

Oh yeah, those feelings of inadequacy. Zelgadis is all too familiar with it, especially here and for the same reasons as Lina. Well, mostly the same reasons.

"No, I understand. We were capable of quite a lot back home, but now..." he sighs, looking down at his hands for a moment before turning his attention to inspecting a few coins. "I keep catching myself wishing that I was stronger, so that I could actually make some sort of difference around here in situations like this. The last time I thought that way though, I ended up looking like this."

Which just leaves him even more frustrated, because he knows better. Mostly he's still just bitter that this place took his abilities but he's still stuck looking like a chimera, but then he feels bad that he's concerned about that at all while there are people out there suffering because of something he hadn't been able to prevent.

Just bad feelings all around, man.

"It is what it is, I guess. All we can really do is help clean up the mess."

Lina looks over at Zelgadis as he stares at his hands, and her expression softens. She knows how much he despises his condition. Dick move, Rezo. Dick. Move. "Yeah, this place seems oddly specific about what abilities it takes away." She offers. She knows, buddy, she knows. "Frustrating as hell." She can guess what Zelgadis is thinking, and is it probably petty to think that way? Yeah, but so what? The man's entitled to being annoyed that Avalon took the powers he actually wanted but left him the enhancements he didn't. Zel's free to vent all that to her if he wants.

"We do have a talent for that sort of thing, you gotta admit." She replies, turning back. "...I dunno, just for once it might be nice to stop a mess from happening before we have to clean it up. You ever notice how we never seem to do that?" Rezo got Shabranigo'd, Copy Rezo got Zanffar'd, Hellmaster pulled off his entire plan (he wanted Lina to summon the Lord of Nightmares, and to be fair, that is exactly what he got), Valgaav, Dark Star, Duclis, Rezo getting Shabranigdo'd again...and those were just the big ones.

"We're not good at prevention."

Every time they'd saved the world and shit, it had only been just barely. Prevention definitely wasn't their strong point. Had they ever actually prevented anything?

"No. No, we really aren't. Considering the fact that we don't really know much about this world compared to our own, we'll probably be even less effective here. I'm not really sure how we can gain an upper hand here, assuming it's even possible to begin with."

Don't mind him, he's just having an emo moment.

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EVENT ✨ Fall Equinot

Lina Inverse | The Slayers | Green, Kinetic

Stone giant

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