MISSION: THE SLEEPER

[ximilian]

● ● ● M I S S I O N   3 . 1

INTRO • MAY ALL YOUR BACON BURN • IF YOU HAVE A DREAM DON'T WAIT • FYI

// INTRO. beam us down!  

It’ll be during the early hours in the morning when the communications device pings the Orbers in the midst of whatever you may be doing: whether it’s sleeping in, having a leisurely breakfast, or being deep into whatever task it is you’ve planned for the day. Viveca’s familiar voice filters through, a cheerful interruption.

// VIVECA.AI

Hi everyone. We’ve got your next mission ready, but I was asked to give you the file a little bit in advance so you could prepare better… so here it is. I don’t think I can delay the teleportation machine more than a day, so early tomorrow morning it’ll be time to go. The situation in Kilnan is a little strange, so I’ve prepared an antidote for you just in case. Pick yours up from the infirmary before you get going. It’ll only work once, so be careful. The orb is somewhere in the castle… I trust you’ll find it. Good luck.

Without any further fanfare, the comms go silent and you’re left with a new mission file and some rather concerning information within the report about a sleeping sickness. But instead of the immediate departure like you might be used to, you’ve been given the day to rest up and prepare for the trip down. So pack your things, grab the antidote, maybe enjoy a hot shower and a good night’s sleep … or if you’re not the sleeping kind, find a good song to jam to and get you motivated for what’s to come.

The next morning before most of your alarms will go off, the teleportation machine will hum to life, crackling with stored energy. Those who have been here for longer might notice this difference and what Viveca had meant when she said she didn’t think she “could delay it for more than a day”. As soon as you’ve been gathered together, you’ll feel the pull — and a tug that removes you from the station.

For what might seem like an agonizingly long moment, you simply hang there in stasis, white light surrounding you accompanied by a strange, ethereal chorus that whispers in your ear, informing you of the goal currently set before you and the cost to achieve it, as well as the exchange for its power —

But before you can venture to open your mouth and respond, the light around you materializes into a fog of cool, damp cloud cover. The moment your feet touch solid ground and the fog parts as you move through it, you’ll see a marble road ahead.

Welcome to the country of Kilnan, Orbers.

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// PART I.MAY ALL YOUR BACON BURN  

Around you, the courtyard of the Crystalline Palace opens up — white marble pavement, extravagant sculptures half-covered in moss, and fountains that have long since dried up — its splendor abandoned and left for time to neglect like a long forgotten secret.

If you look behind you, you’ll see nothing but clouds; and underneath you is mostly open sky. Faintly (if you really squint), you might be able to make out the grassy earth somewhere below the clouds but the distance seems a little treacherous to even consider taking your chance to get there. As such, the only way is forward — up the wide steps and through the imposing, but majestic, double doors of the castle.

1.0   Once inside, a seemingly empty castle greets you. There are no servants rushing to greet you, no hustle and bustle that you'd expect from a castle this size... just silence.

You’ll find yourself standing in the middle of a grand foyer. Daylight filters in through tall windows framed with long flowing curtains that seem to sway just a little, even though the casements are clearly shut. Further in, you’ll notice multiple staircases leading you to the upper floors, some of them straight, and some of them curved, while others wind upwards in a seemingly endless direction towards one of the towers. Most of these stairways will appear to be your regular run-of-the-mill means of egress, but the moment you turn away and look back to where you’d just come from, you might notice that the stairs have disappeared … only to be right in front of you when you glance back. Another set of stairs may take you in one direction, but try and retread your path and you’ll find the very same staircase you’d just used will take you somewhere completely different.

These stairs might be playing tricks on you, or maybe you need to get your eyes checked.

From the foyer, hallways appear to sprawl in all directions of the wind, some of them lined with paintings from a very deft hand (or hands). Walk along and peer at one of these incredibly detailed depictions of vibrant rich cities, lush idyllic countrysides, alluring, well-manicured gardens and find that all of them seem so incredibly lifelike — almost uncannily so. If you study one for too long, you’ll find yourself losing focus of the world around you, only seeing the painting that beckons you forward … and helpless to resist, you take a step forward and wind up within the world of the painting. Is it as beautiful as it seemed from its frame? Of course it is. Just look at that colour! Feel that breeze! Take a deep breath of the air around you. But remember that you probably can’t stay here forever; you have to get back. And the way to the castle is … somewhere here. You just have to find it.

2.0   Inside the castle, your task is clear: find the orb.. and for some of you, perhaps try and look for the people sent to the castle before you. To do that, you’ll need to search through the different rooms and accompanying towers… but the moment that you try to, it becomes apparent that this is no ordinary castle and the rooms are not exactly just rooms either. Some have stark differences in scale: in one room you enter, all the furniture within appears to be made for giants; while in another room, everything has been shrunk down to its miniature.

Further still, another room will appear to be deceptively normal… but the moment you step past the threshold, the door will lock shut behind you and then fade into the wall like it’d never been there at all. You only have one clear objective then: search through the room for a way to get out… or make yourself a way out.

3.0   When you enter this next room, you find yourself having to pause to take it all in, it’s so incredible that you can barely believe your eyes: whatever this room holds within seems to cater specifically to your individual interests and desires like it sees into your soul. It might offer rare books to those interested in knowledge, the best entertainment for those who seek self-indulgence, decadent foods you’ve always wanted to try for those with a discerning palate. What a wonderful time! So wonderful, in fact, that it’s too easy for you to forget the passing of time … what was it you were doing before? Nothing important, surely. Right?

4.0   There are rooms that don’t even seem like rooms at all once you’ve entered them: you open a green painted door and instead of the marble floors, you step right into a hedge maze. When you turn to glance over your shoulder, you’ll find that the door has vanished, and your hand lingering on the door knob is now clutching at a cluster of prickly foliage. With nowhere else to go but to brave the labyrinth, you move forward. The path you take will twist and wind until you realize that the best-case scenario here is coming face-to-face with a deadend rather than the other delights that the maze holds in store. One end greets you with a particularly angry tree, hell-bent on wiping you off the face of this plane; at another turn, a creature that looks suspiciously like a Sphinx, sitting on her hind legs and blocking the way, might ask you a riddle in exchange for passage; and there is always a chance that the right-hook you take will pull you through a cloud of deceptively beautiful fluttering dots of lights that whisper to you with the voices of people long-dead before you.

5.0   Another room will pull you — quite literally — into the eye of a storm. Hail and rain pours down, drenching you immediately, while lightning flashes in the open sky — it almost looks like the countryside you saw beneath the castle, but that couldn’t be, right? You don’t remember leaving the castle… And more importantly — the rain really is coming down, and that lightning is striking dangerously close. It might be wise to find some temporary shelter, perhaps a little cottage to hide in, or at the very least, get to that overturned hay cart and hide beneath it — and wait for a chance to find your way back to the exit door … wherever (or whenever) it may appear.

6.0   Not all of the castle will be entirely strange, however; there, too, are regular, non-eventful rooms scattered within. A large dining room with the table set for one, a thin layer of dust collecting over the silverware, for instance; a library filled with old tomes and scrolls that don’t appear to have been touched in years; a storage room full of strange items; and, if you make it into the cellar, you’ll find the kitchen, its food storage still robust despite the fact that some of the meat has begun to gather mold, and some of the vegetables have darkened and gone a little mushy. On the layer of dust settled over the floor, there is exactly one set of footprints, perhaps smaller than you’d think, but even those seem at least a number of weeks old.

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// PART II.IF YOU HAVE A DREAM DON'T WAIT  

It’s almost too easy to become distracted by all of the strange happenings within the castle, easy enough to forget about the sickness you’ve been warned about — and perhaps, with so far there having been no sight of anyone actually affected by it, it’s easy enough to think that there might have been a mistake or a misunderstanding. But the longer you spend within these beautiful white stone walls, you become aware of a whisper: quiet at first, the barely-there breath of a language you know you understand and yet you still can’t quite grasp it, the meaning frustratingly close to the edge of your consciousness. And the more you try to touch those not-words and too-light-whispers, you feel a little dizzy before the world around you suddenly changes.

7.0   At first you think you’ve simply fallen into another room, just another hidden trap-door or painting you’d stepped into. So perhaps you don’t even realize that you’ve fallen under a spell at all when everything around you is just … dark. Beneath your feet, if you focus your gaze, is a still surface of a black lake glinting — and yet you are not sinking. Every step that you take forward creates a little ripple across the glassy surface. As your eyes adjust, so do your surroundings begin to take shape. It will be different for everyone, this dreamscape morphing and melding into a scene (an island, a meadow, a small patch of forest, or will it remain the lake?) or setting that reflects you — it’s where your soul feels most at ease … for now.

8.0   As expected, the dreamscape does not stay still for long. The more time you spend here, the more it seems to draw inspiration from your memories. Suddenly you find everything around you materializing into solid form, the experience being dragged from the depths of your mind into manifesting a vivid study in touch and sight and smell and sound. It’s something you’ve already been through before, but whether you like it or not, this memory is being replayed around you and now you’re the observer … you and the lucky (or unlucky) person who has entered this memory with you.

Do you stay, or do you try to run from it?

9.0   The stronger the memory, the stronger its effect on you: the heaviest memories, whether they’re happy ones or sad ones, may latch onto your subconscious so tightly that it pulls you right into the memory itself.

Just as these dreams often do, it’s hard to tell whether this is made up or reality itself — perhaps you remember that this has happened before and you’ll try to change the course of events. Or perhaps you think you’re living this memory for the first time. Whatever it might be, you find yourself fully convinced of its authenticity … but the power of belief is a dangerous thing. Beware that the injuries sustained in this state will become real, visible to those who might be observing this — and observing you — from the outside. (You know the line: if you die in the game, you die in real life.)

NOTE: These strong memories might also draw you into them as yourself from that time, so someone wandering into this re-lived memory might find you there as a child, a teenager, a young adult, or perhaps someone with the same or a different face — whatever you were at the time of the memory.

10.0   Once you become aware of these memories, you may push them away or will them to stop. The moment that you do, the dreamscape will immediately shift to become its unaltered state once more. The other way to escape these memories is to leave. At the edge of your dreamscape, you will find that the air shifts and shimmers just a little differently than the rest of this space … and once you get close enough, the doorway will open to let you out of your dreamscape and into someone else’s like a chain of several small links. If your dreams are more akin to nightmares, perhaps you enter the door willingly. But just as likely, you might simply get too close and are sucked into the passageway.

And you never know just whose dream you end up in next …

The only way to leave the dreamscape is by being woken up by someone administering the antidote to you, and it will only work once. So if you fall back asleep, remember — if it takes you in again, you will remain under this sleeping spell, unable to wake … at least until the cause of the sickness has been found.

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F Y I

• The events in this log take place during the month of November.

• If you have questions about any of the prompts or the mission in general, please direct them HERE.

• To submit a search request regarding exploring a specific place during any of the prompts, please do so HERE.

• Voting for how the characters will get the orb will go up November 22. Though voting will be done in an OOC post, it is an IC vote in the sense that you should pick a choice your character would ICly make. What the characters choose to do will determine the conclusion of the mission.

• And finally, have a soundtrack for this log! ♪ ♪ ♪

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Comments

[ximilianpc]

The corner of Remi's mouth twists upwards into a faint smile — impressed with Drift's honesty, he nods.

"Right then, Drift. I'm Remi d'Arbes, but clearly you already knew that. You claim that I've made you fall asleep... but I fear the cause is elsewhere. I told something to make sure we are not disturbed while I rest... it seems to have taken my order to a new extreme."

He turns around, his steps echoing on the marble floors.

"I just need to tell Phyllie to stop it. I just need to wake, and..."

He trails off — and then spins around to look up at Drift.

"Wait, you said you were forced to sleep? Can you wake yourself?"

[aurable]

"What order," Drift stands firm as he debates how he should deal with a dreaming human. "What 'extreme?'"

Drift stands and follows the echoes as they fan out, like a moth to a flame. He puts his foot down as his EM field ripples out with frustration. If this wizard could pick up on electromagnetic fields, he would get a wave of frustrated white noise.

"No one in your kingdom is even alive. Either you did this or this Phyllie pulled the wool over your eyes."

[ximilianpc]

"Not alive? Then how the Hell has my sister been sending her soldiers here?" Remi snarls, eyes blazing. "I have half the mind to throw you back to your own dream. But... I do want to know what's happened."

It would be child's play, to send a dreaming consciousness away — but he wants to get to the bottom of this. And as such —

"Perhaps it's easier if I just show you."

With those words, the dreamscape around them blurs once more... this time shaping into a memory.

The room around them is clearly one of the castle, marble and stone, a round room at the top of a tower. In front of a desk, Remi sits, holding a glowing stone that's set into a chain around his neck in his palm.

"Is it time, again? You're hungry? Phyllie, I keep telling you, you'll get fat at this rate."

Still, dream-Remi closes his eyes, lets go of the stone and calls forth his arcane energy, a burst of blue light filling the room... before the light is slowly absorbed into the stone, its glow intensifying at the same rate the blue light dissipates.

As soon as it's all gone, Remi's shoulders slump and he exhales, clearly exhausted.

"Ugh, I wish I could sleep for a couple of months. To not have anything to worry about... my stupid sister, all the people's problems, any of that. But I guess a few days will do." Glancing down at the stone, Remi gives it a firm look.

"Phyllie, you know the deal. Make sure no one bothers us while I sleep."

He seems to get an affirmative answer, as he then lays his head on his arms on the desk and... promptly goes to sleep.

The memory fades, and the real Remi turns to look at Drift.

"See what I mean?"

[aurable]

Drift knows his temper had gotten the better of him and could have endangered his chances of finding the orb. It was hard to stamp it back down, but he gritted his teeth and swallowed his pride. Positive thoughts here, Drift he tells himself before bowing his head.

"We both want answers. I understand that."

Steadying himself, Drift gathers his bearings as the memory plays out. Not allowing his emotions to betray him as he fixes his attention on the green stone pulsing with something also...alive? Finn had said the castle itself was alive, not he wasn't so sure that had been an exaggeration.

"Well, I can certainly tell you it's been more than a few days," Drift intoned before adding, "What can you tell me about Phyllie?"

[ximilianpc]

"Clearly," Remi responds dryly — it seems unbelievable, that, but Drift doesn't seem to be lying. He wouldn't be this on edge about the whole thing otherwise.

"Phyllie must have taken my words about wishing to sleep for longer as an order, and to avoid anyone in the country coming to visit us, it's been making them sleep as well."

He sighs, running a hand through his hair. What a mess.

"It's a stone, as you can see. I found it sixteen years ago and it's been with me since. It has its own magic, and its own personality." He says, watching Drift carefully as he narrows his eyes. "Why are you interested in it?"

[aurable]

"So it's sentient?"

If he had a nickel for every time he wound up on a world that probed his thoughts and memories back out at him, he'd have two nickels by now. Which wasn't much, but it seemed too many at this point. Experience taught him that, if nothing else- trying to B.S. your way out of something with that kind of power was never a good idea.

"There's no point in lying to you- you're clearly the one holding most of the cards here and I imagine my time speaking to you is finite." Drift shits his weight and decides how best to choose his words.

"Myself and the people I came here with need it."

[ximilianpc]

"Very."

The word sounds rather exasperated — clearly Remi's been dealing with Phyllie a lot, and has got used to its... well. Its nature.

Hearing what Drift says, and why him and the others he's here with have come, Remi sighs.

"I suppose you need it for the same reason I got it, in the first place... for what it can do. I'd happily hand it over to you, but I'm afraid it's not that easy."

Remi turns and motions Drift to follow him — this time, the dreamscape shifts so that it turns into the lake surface that so many start with... only for the surface to reflect Remi's memories, showing them happening as he narrates them.

"Sixteen years ago, I used its power to help cure my sister's curse and save my niece's life. But something with it went wrong... or not, I've long suspected Phyllie always meant to fulfill our deal that way. In any case, it took the magic I fed it, amplified it to supply my niece with the life force she was lacking, and transferred my magic over to her. Since then, I've been supplying it with magic every month to cover the cost of what it did. With half of my magic in Aureliah, I can't feed it enough at once to fulfill the bargain... and if she feeds it anything, there's no telling what'll happen to her."

The scenes of Remi using the green stone and his magic transferring to baby Aureliah fades away, leaving the two standing on the still lake.

"So you see, I can't just hand it to you. If I do, my niece's life could be in danger... and she is worth more than a bunch of strangers invading my castle."

[aurable]

Drifts finials flip up in alert as he realizes the breadth and depth of such an arrangement.

"Tell me how to fix this," Drift grabbed Remi by the shoulders and shakes him.

"Remi, Aureliah, it's killing you but Phyllie isn't helping. Tell me what it feeds on, what it wants. I'll take whatever it wants just let everyone else go."

[ximilianpc]

Clearly not on board with being shaked like this, Remi grabs Drift's arm in return, surprising strength (though perhaps magically enhanced, perhaps aided by his dream, it's hard to know) stopping the shaking.

"Didn't I just say it feeds on magic? I just don't have enough to give it anymore!" His voice raises into a shout, before he heaves a breath and forcibly breaks away from Drift, taking a step back.

"Seems like my vacation's over. If you want to help, the best thing you can do is leave me while I try and figure out how to wake up, so I can tell Phyllie to stop whatever it's doing that's making people sleep. It's contractually obligated to listen to me."

So if Phyllie is behind the sleeping thing like he suspects... it'll stop as soon as Remi's there to tell it to stop.

He raises an eyebrow at Drift.

"Unless you can somehow wake me up, or supply Phyllie with more magic than I can so I can give it to you, your usefulness here seems to have run out."

[aurable]

Drift weather's Remi outburst stolidly even though it rattled him somewhat to be manhandled by an organic. This place was...interesting if the wizard was capable of that.

"Does it have to be 'magic,' specifically? Surely, the whole concept of magic is itself a fairly loose one maybe..."

Unconsciously, Drift let a hand hover over the handle of his greatsword strapped to his back. Powered by his Spark, his own soul, the energy the sword produced was tremendous and not well understood even by the Circle of Light that discovered them. Drift dropped his hand when he realized how the gesture could be misinterpreted.

"I have an idea, but I assume we would need to find your body."

[ximilianpc]

"Perhaps your world has something else that is not called magic that would work," Remi responds, shrugging. "Here, sorcerers possess different forms of magic, so that is what I have to give."

And as he's not from a different world... it's hard to say what might work similarly to his magic without trying.

"My body? Right, yes. It's in my tower. I switch its entrance regularly, but right now, it should be in the maze."

[aurable]

"If you asked a friend of mine, he'd tell you magic was just science he didn't understand," Drift replied, "We don't need to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks, but my greatsword draws from my spark, and the energy output is incredible. Not for nothing, but it wouldn't hurt to try."

What he fails to mention is that it would hurt Drift himself immensely. Only he wasn't all too concerned with that caveat, so no point in telling Remi.

"Of course, it's a maze," Drift mutters to himself. "First things first- I need to tell the others, whoever is awake at least, and then find your body. Easy, right?"

[ximilianpc]

"I've heard some worlds refer to everything as science, so I suppose you're right. But if you're determined to try — I can't say I'm not pleased to hear I might get rid of this deal... I've managed to push it off by feeding Phyllie a little bit at a time, but it's not forever. But even if you don't succeed... the trade-off is still worth it, for Li-li."

Nothing and no one matters as much as Aureliah, after all. Not his magic, not his anything.

Then, for the first time in that entire conversation... Remi's mouth quirks up slightly.

"Easy, hah, yes. The Sphinx might give you some trouble, so bring your brightest minds. But Drift — I wish you luck. Maybe if I can't figure out how to wake up, you'll do that for me. I'll see you in the land of reality next."

[aurable]

"Phyllie certainly sounds voracious, and I can't promise this would be a solution, let alone one we'd all be happy with, but I'm willing to try. You've seemed to have put your own life at risk for far too long."

Drift's own returning smile is wane.

"With this brain trust running around the place? I'm sure someone has figured something out. One thing I learned about the people I'm with no one's quiet about their bright ideas. Thank you, Remi. I'm sorry we didn't meet when I was at my best, but - I will try to help."

[ximilianpc]

"It's like a snake," Remi says with faint amusement, "You can be fond of a snake, but you're stupid if you don't expect it when it bites."

Phyllie has been useful to him, that's undeniable... but its cost is high.

"Some might say I'm never at my best," he returns with that faint smile shifting into a smirk. "Here, for your trouble."

He twists his hand, and a bright, blue energy wave ripples through the dreamscape, opening the door that Drift came there through. Remi leaves Drift to walk through it, instead walking on the lake's surface to a small island that has appeared on it.

And as Drift exits the dreamscape back to his own, he'll find that the blue energy wave follows him — and eventually, when he wakes, he'll find that next to him is a blue crystal that seems to house a fraction of Remi's magic. When carrying it, the castle will obey Drift's commands, and not play any tricks on him whatsoever.