EVENT ✨ Wolf's Moon

[avalonmods]

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The Fairy Queen sends out an invitation for all otherworlders to an eccentric party with ulterior motives that aren't necessarily bad.. after all, they're protecting players from a ritualistic curse cast by escaped convicts from the Elphame prison. But that doesn't mean it's the party's entirely safe either.

CONTENT WARNINGS:

• 1st Prompt: Mild elements of body horror in the fairy queen's description (paragraph starting with "Opening the message"); this paragraph is description only and may be skipped without loss of content.
• 2nd Prompt: Ball prompts include reference to drugs, alcohol, smooching, and fake murder.
  
• 3rd Prompt: May have potential for mild body horror depending on player preference, as it features cynanthropy/lycanthropy.

The night before the full moon, a message is sent out to all the otherworlders in the land. In each person's inbox, the message sender reads simply "ELPHAME" and appears to have a verified account, despite that looking into it doesn't seem to reveal much content. The profile pic is simply a picture of a mushroom. Opening the message will reveal a video recording. For the first full minute, a woman simply stares into the video through one pure white eye and one wholly black eye. Her hair is white and fair and longer than can be seen in the video of her torso. Her skin is sallow, gray more than any other color, and her décolleté is peppered with what seems to be shells of mushrooms growing out of her flesh like they would on a tree, patches of bleeding tooth mushroom creeping down the side of her neck.
Atop her head, a headpiece made of platinum formed into the tiniest branches, filled with leaves of precious stones- diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and moldavite trailing down in long chains that keep her hair out of her face. Her lips are just slightly parted, painted in what seems to be an enchanted design that shifts patterns as she moves, as if they were a green screened galaxy in real life. There is a stud in the bow of her lips, and the top of her clothing appears to be colorful, but is only visible toward the top of her frame, as her top is low-cut to account for the fungi. A number of small stitched scars are visible, but largely healed. She tilts her head slightly. Even though it's only a video recording, it feels as though she is looking directly at your character. "You are busy bees..." A soft voice speaks, almost as if the wind itself is whispering in your ear and not from a recorded video. "Busy bees could barely bother, but bother is basically all you do. I bequeath you busy bees a bidding. Bother blithely, busy bees, in Elphame as bristling beauties are bound to do. A ball before you, beneath the Wolf's Moon big and bright, betwixt burgeoning fae blooms. Do not baa, do not bray, bruin nor boar will keep big bad wolf at bay. Bop and bounce, ballet you may, or brawl your basest behaviors in my ballroom before break of day. Broadcast not your boorish bumf, though, or busy bees will be broken brisker than bats banished from Beelzebub's borders and bound. Bless my bestowal and with bated breath I shall bade you betokened truth, if truth be told." Whether or not your character understood what was actually said or their brain shut down in the middle of those barely benign instructions, they may additionally notice fairy circles made of tiny mushrooms start to crop up regardless of where they are in Avalon.
	Once night falls, if a character dances in them they will be transported to a costume party within the ballroom of the fairy queen in Nicnevin. Costumes will be magically applied upon arrival, based on a favorite childhood fantasy. (Did they want to be an astronaut? A dinosaur? A cowboy? A cat? That's what they'll appear as.) You can choose from any age of childhood for your character, depending on whether you want to go funny or more serious about their later childhood dreams. Whatever your character chooses to do as part of the party, the following party happenings should be noted:
1. If your character or anyone they know uses your character's name or reveals enough information about themself, they will become unable to disobey the fairy queen in future events. They've technically been warned about this in the fairy queen's message, even if it wasn't easy to understand. B. Alternately, you can have your character's name be captured by a more mischievous party guest fae and play with that as you will. You can be released either by someone else killing your captured fae for you, or the fae saying your name backward. So if your character's name is Stevie, they would have to trick the fairy into saying Eivets. This option to NPC your own fae captor is endable on your own terms, but 1a will be on the fae queen's terms down the line. 2. The party itself is a protected area; refusal to attend or leaving the party before sunset will subject characters to the Wolf's Moon, which has been put under a ritual by a prisoner group released from the fae prison during the previous dark web quest, Banyanished. This ball is being held as a gift to otherworlders to protect them from the second part of this event. (See below for details.) Characters will be told that they are in a protective area if they try to leave and to trust the fairy queen, but will not be forced to stay against their will by the fae. The only people who may try to stop your character from leaving beyond telling them this information are other player characters. 3. Dancing, food (fairy food*), psychedelics and drink will be provided to those of age who want them throughout the night. If the partygoers don't seem to be having a good time or the party grows dull, the fairy queen (dressed in the award-winning submission to the Elphame Trader's contest some time ago) will make a demand participation in a party game. If your character is standing around and not participating in the general activities, they may be coerced to participate. Anyone may join willingly as well, of course. The following party games will be played throughout the night:

Spin the Bottle, Elphame Rules: Fairies are quite randy creatures at times, and the first game played is none other than spin the bottle. The rules are as such: when it is your turn, you are blinded by fairy magic and must spin the bottle. Once the bottle stops spinning, the person the bottle lands on will kiss them. The person who is kissed must guess who from the circle kissed them; a correct guess will mean they stay in and the blindness spell will be lifted. An incorrect guess will eject them from the circle and they will wander around blind for the duration of the game until a winner is declared. Feel free to play out gameplay or your character needing assistance after being ejected from the game circle.

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Truth or Dare: The standard game of truth or dare. Don't forget to be very careful, as certain truths may have dire consequences. (See point 1, be very careful.) You can play issuing and completing dares or asking and answering truths with other player characters or receive dares from NPC'd fairies, which may escalate to dangerous and magical lengths. The only solid rule is that no dares are permitted to require exiting the party to complete, and lying during a truth gives permission to fairies to steal your tongue from you if they discover your lie at any point, even after the party is over.

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Balloon Game: Everyone loves a good murder game! Everyone is outfitted with a single balloon. You may secure the balloon to yourself for 2 minutes before the start of the game. In the center of the game circle is a pile of close-range weapons varying in usefulness from binoculars and pots to knives, slingshots, axes and more. Magic is also permitted. If your balloon "pops" you are "dead" and will float to the ceiling to fly around until the end of the game, out of harm's way. Do not commit any actual murder or the balloon of the deceased will immediately wrap around you in a full rubber bodysuit and imprison you until the fairy queen can deal judgment. (If this happens, notify a mod so we can discuss Queen Elphame's judgment with you OOC.)

Helping to empower otherworlders to improve their chances of saving the world is the kind of task that can be a little.. subjective. A little questionable when it comes to consent, at times. After all, no one is here with their consent and no one was bonded with their familiar or given magic with their consent. What's a little more empowerment? Certainly, a group of imprisoned lycanthrope wizards seem to think they have something of a solution to increasing other worlders' potentials: a ritual using the Wolf Moon of January's full moon cycle to transform unprotected otherworlders into fellow cynanthropes or, in layman's terms, werewolves and other types of weredogs. Anyone not protected (at the party) will be affected by the curse ritual.
Cynanthropes in Avalon have the following characteristics: Character is now able to transform into a humanoid dog or wolf form to the extent the player chooses (go ears/tail or full-furry) Experiences enhanced strength, enhanced sense of smell, night vision, blood lust, and characteristics similar to the character's dog or wolf breed. These effects are only applicable the day before, the day of, and the day after the full moon from sundown to sunrise on each day. Note that new weredogs/wolves do not have control over their instincts for the first few months of transformations and will behave aggressively. If in an emotional state, they can lose control of their transformed form regardless of how long they have been cursed. Though characters can be killed by normal means throughout the month, they can only be killed by silver bullets during the 3-day full moon cycle Full-time side effects include cravings for meat, animal mages having mild influence over them, being able to eat food from Elphame without being bound to the land, and the occasional hair ball. It is up to players how painful they want the transformation to be/not to be; you can play this how you want and chalk it up to ritual reaction variation. Cynanthrope ritual curses are particularly strong and require at least two siphoners working together to break the curse, a counter-curse potion (only available through events), or a deal with a powerful being such as the fairy queen or Morganna. If your character did not attend the party, left the fairy queen's party, or wasn't at the Red Springs (protected by the mysterious crystals that turn it red during the full moon-- conveniently for your excuse not to participate in either prompt if you want to opt out!) they will become a werewolf or weredog.

Comments

OH thank goodness!

[impostorsyndrome]

[It takes a lot to bolster Kadoc's rock bottom, gutter-level self-esteem, but this is doing it for him a little bit. Maybe his retelling is actually good . . . it's at least making her happy, and that warms him. It's so easy to lose sight of what storytelling is all about, and that's engaging with an audience who cares.]

She wasn't even surprised when he took the cloak off. Maybe a little surprised that he decided to actually be honest. See, she knew it'd be easy for him to turn his back on all of it, keep hiding all night, tell the king in the morning what had gone down, and get his reward. Revealing himself like that? That was what she'd hoped for, but she wasn't about to let herself believe it. But then it happened. The princesses greeted him like a friend, and he spent all night dancing with the eldest princess.

[reloves]

[ Minako squeals. ]

How romantic!

[ Especially since you need a romantic dancing together scene in every fairytale, right? .. or rather, at least Minako seems to think so. She seems very content with it, even as the two of them are still dancing too. ]

It must have been so much fun for them to dance together...

[impostorsyndrome]

Heh. Obviously, after all that crazy dancing they'd been doing all night long for all that time, the princesses were pretty much the best dancers in the kingdom. They knew how to have a good time. But that night was still special. For a while, they all forgot about anything complicated involving the king finding out the whole deal, or any rewards, and they just enjoyed the best night of their lives. . . . It was enough that by the end of the night, the eldest princess had decided what she wanted to do. Since she was the oldest, she had to be picky about what kinda guy she wanted to marry. He was gonna be the future king and everything. But after all that had happened, she knew she'd met someone she could trust, who had a good head on his shoulders.

[Ah, if only real romance, not to mention politics, were so straightforward. But that's why it's a fairy tale. It's nice even, maybe especially, for a realist like Kadoc to forget harsh reality and indulge in a fairy tale romance for once.]

[reloves]

Really, so she could just marry him?

[ Minako does know a thing or two about how difficult romance is among royalty. After all, she used to be the main royal retainer for a princess who was rather stubborn about her choice of a man to love..

Even if that's in the far past now, the memories are still pretty vivid to her.

But she doesn't just sound surprised. No, there's something faintly hopeful in her tone too as she asks him this. After all, Minako would like to see a happy end when it comes to love. ]

Did the king let her do that..?

[impostorsyndrome]

If she'd just asked, he probably wouldn't have. But he'd promised the kingdom and the hand of one of his daughters to whatever guy could solve the mystery of the dancing shoes, right? So after that third night, when they headed back to the castle through the forest, the soldier didn't bother hiding himself. He grabbed a branch of diamond leaves to take back as evidence. And as they were going up the stairs together to the princesses' room, all the sisters agreed to give the soldier their blessing to report back to the king and win the right to marry their sister. He'd proven that he cared more about her than any reward.

[Honestly, the story should have gone this way. It probably would, in some sort of sanitized modern retelling, he thinks. But he can't help but be a little proud of himself anyway for coming up with a Disney Version that really was mostly still accurate, just a little less soulless about marrying off your daughters to random guys.

The real test is whether Minako likes it, though. Deep down, Kadoc's as hopeful as she is, for different reasons.]

[reloves]

[ It doesn't take too much to please Minako.

.. no, scrap that. Sometimes it takes quite a lot to please a girl like Minako, after all, as huffy and dramatic as she can be. But there are things - like love stories - that she's a whole lot less picky about. As long as things have a happy ending, then it's fine with her, no matter the exact shape said ending takes on.

And that's entirely the reason she's smiling brightly and excitedly at him. ]

Oh, that's so sweet! I love that all her sisters approve too..!

[ Look, Minako comes from exactly the sort of friend group where any potential love interest needs to get permission from everyone else first, okay. She gets it. It's important! ]

I hope that they'll also be able to find beautiful love like that too in the future..! It'd be kind of sad if the oldest sister was the only one ever getting married, you know?

[impostorsyndrome]

Heh. Well, once the soldier presented the evidence to the king and proved his worth to the king too, he got to marry his love and take over the kingdom as the new king. And the first thing he did was give the princesses permission to marry the princes they'd been dancing with all those nights in the secret ballroom. What was he gonna do, judge them for it? He owed them for giving him their blessing to reveal their secret, so the least he could do was help everyone live happily ever after.

. . . The end.

[What other way is there to end a fairy tale? Happily ever after, the end. A satisfying conclusion. Even if the old ones mostly aren't that way. This kind has its place, too.]

. . . Thanks for listening to all that I just made you sit through.

[reloves]

Hey, why wouldn't I have?

[ Minako says it's like it's a natural thing. He's the one who bothered to think up that whole story - or well, at least tell her about it, including the parts he himself tacked onto it - so of course Minako isn't going to act like he's the one who has to be grateful here.

Instead she just smiles at him. Very genuinely so. ]

Thanks, I had fun! So.. let's do this again sometime, alright?

[ Sometime when they don't have to hide their identities. ]