Day 1: Monster Arrival

[wizardseason]

Afternoon: 12:00pm - Onward

[ IRL Timeframe: February 24th - March 10th, 2019 ]

Everything changes when the Wizard wishes it to. In an instant, every non-knight, non-princess person in attendance at the Craydon welcoming party disappears. She knows where they went, she teleported them, but that doesn't mean she's telling the knights. The only indication she gives that she did anything is that she walks towards the door to leave. If anyone moves to get in her way, she'll just teleport to the other side of them. If anyone tries to attack her, their weapon'll just turn to sparkles.

If this were a video game, the stressful music would be playing now. The Princess, Luka, is treated to something to add to the stress. The protector finally makes his appearance but only to him and only in his head. He's the same height as Luka with dark skin and vivid blue eyes that match the color of the sky. He has wicked winged white eyeliner to accent his eyes and curly black hair with white tips piled on top of his head, it's a wonder how it stays up there. Surprisingly, or unsurprisingly, he's wearing a pajama robe that looks either blue or silver depending how it's touched or how it moves. Most importantly is that he's got brass knuckles on both his hands, like he's ready to fight. But he's not here to fight, he's here to give a whisper about what comes next.

"The monster is here." Comes his voice, pointing Luka to just outside the Craydon multipurpose center. The pull towards the monster is persistent and it won't let up until it's defeated.

Outside is, to everyone's surprise (except perhaps Luka), the first monster. It looks like a yellow ball with an eye in the middle, standing four feet high and four feet wide with an eye that's almost that big too. It's standing on two feet and appears to have no arms whatsoever. It blinks curiously at the approaching princess-knight team and then blinks up at the Wizard beside it...

The Wizard is standing beside the first monster, holding her hand out as her massive hammer manifests in her hand. The hammer's handle flickers into existence and ends up beind close to seven feet long before the head of the hammer pops into existence. It's a massive beast of a weapon, easily the size of a refrigerator attached to the end of the pole with slightly bigger ends for where she hits things with it. Just below where the handle connects is a pair of flowing wings that seem to be extended out to support the head of the hammer, the end tip has a single metal feather dangling off of it. The head of the hammer curves slightly inward away from the ends but mostly it's just a giant rectangular block of bashing.

"Fore." The Wizard says with this awful amusement before she swings her hammer like a golf club down at the monster, acting like she's going to send it flying into the princess-knight team like a cannonball. When her hammer impacts the monster, it flickers slightly and pops like fireworks. Within sight but still rather far away, the first monster flickers and blips back into existence on the road, blinks, and then runs off into the woods. Catch this little buddy if you can!

Monster Kill Opportunity: Craydon: Everyone.

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The Weather

• Sunny.
• 70°F / 21°C
• Quite breezy, all the trees are rustling.

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Prompts:

• The monster!! GET IT: Who needs a plan? You run off immediately, sprinting after the monster as it bounds off into the woods. Characters who choose this option are free to catch the monster numerous times and deal attacks to it. However they will be unable to defeat the monster in any of these prompts. The monster's priority in this is to escape and it will not attack back. But what were those sparkles? What's going on? Feel free to do team-threads together in pursuit of the monster.


• The monster!! We need a PLAN!: Since you didn't run off, you and your fellow knights, the princess, and the Wizard are now standing outside of the Craydon multipurpose center. Though the Wizard is just going to go back inside to get crackers with cheese and meat on top. What will you do with your companions? Will you confront the Wizard? What kind of plan will you come up with for what just happened?


• The gear train: Wether you saw the locals posting pictures on social media or you worked with Luka's new ability to find the monster, it's taken up sitting on top of the gear train as it makes its way up and down the mountain town of Craydon. It doesn't move very fast but it is a hazard and, perhaps, even more of one because the Monster is involved. The first monster is contentedly sitting on top of the train car, staring up towards the sky. What will you do about that? The monster can be severely injured in this thread but cannot be killed.


• The showdown: There are trails of, and pools of, yellow ?blood? trailing throughout Craydon from the injuries that the first monster has sustained. The knights have been relentless in pursuing it through the forest and on the train and now it's come to a stop in the center of the train station at the base of Craydon. This train station is home to the last stop on the gear train upstairs and the transfer point for the Harsen Island train station downstairs. The first monster clearly isn't getting on board to go to Bamborough or Far Haven, but it's absolutely standing on the platform waiting for a fight. It's the final showdown!

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Procedure::

Reply to the appropriate toplevel comments for events below. Indicate if a post is a private conversation with "Private" in the subject otherwise all threads should be open to interaction with others. Plan OOCly how you'd like to toss everyone around.

IMPORTANT: When making an attack against the Monster, please add a short summary such as the following to the bottom of your comment in brackets. This will help show at-a-glance what's going on and will show me that I need to reply with the Monster:

• [Rory stabs the Monster in the leg]
• [Seth pours acid on the Monster's face]
• [Web throws a big rock at the Monster from behind]

Comments

[zafika]

Zafika rushes to the main hall of the Multipurpose Centre, having followed behind Garrot. Stay behind? Screw that. They're staying behind for long enough to form a plan with some of the other Knights. So, for once, they just leave their blindfold hanging around their neck, and go look for the Knights that hadn't ran off.

Most importantly, they need to find Haizea and Gyre, they know Haizea can fight, and they have a feeling that Gyre can too, despite not having talked about those things with him. He's a wild elf for fuck's sake. Aside from those two, they'll honestly round up any of the other Knights that can fight.

"Muraj, I'm going to need that dagger soon."

[silentwords]

Seth had actually been trying to find Zafika, they were the one they had gotten the best along with so far and so were the best option of who to stick to as far as Seth's tired, exhausted mind was concerned.

Having had no less than 2 mental breakdown's in the span of the past a little over an hour or so...he was done.
His energy to be anxious was gone.

So when he spotted Zafika he quickly made his way over to them, expression eerily blank, phone already out.

[zafika]

Zafika notices Seth approach them, and since their blindfold is off for once, they notice his expression, but right now they don't have any time to ask him if he's alright, the monster is their first priority. But they also know that Seth can't fight, so they have to do something about that.

"Seth, good timing. Can you round up some Knights who can't fight and have them look for the people who disappeared in here? I'm going to look for Haizea and Gyre, and anyone else who stayed behind and knows how to fight, and plan with them on what to do about the monster."

[silentwords]

Seth's quick to start typing.

"The people who disappeared are fine. They're already eagerly tweeting about the first monster's appearance and Garrot is actually streaming the chase, don't ask me how, probably has his animal companion on it. I can still help you round up the Knights who have stayed here though."

Seth fills Zafika in. Oh yeah, he really is the social media master, already up to speed thanks to it...not like he'd been doing much else after his latest breakdown due to the wizard bullying him.

[zafika]

"Okay, that's good... at least they're safe. But... huh, I'm not surprised that he'd ask his animal companion for help with that..." Zafika is surprised that Garrot would stream the entire thing but, alright then. He sure was doing that.

"If you can send the Knights who can fight my way, I'd appreciate that. We need to form a plan for taking the monster down, and I already have some ideas for how to weaken it at least."

[silentwords]

Seth nodded, typing a quick response as he left to do just that.

"Sure, I'll send them your way."

[sustainer]

Gyre won't be hard to find. All the people have up and vanished, and now the fourteen of them are all starkly revealed to each other. He had followed the wizard out when she decided to make her move, and he hasn't figured out what to do just yet. He seems to be taking in details, noting who runs off and who stays, working through his thoughts.

As Zafika approaches him, his eyes focus and drop to them, a grim expression settling on his face.

"At least a couple of us stayed," he mutters, glancing pointedly towards the trees where at least two of their good fighters have just run the fuck off. "What're you thinking?"

[zafika]

Zafika stops next to Gyre and sighs, running a hand through their hair as they look in the direction the monster disappeared to. "The loudest ones seem to have gone after it.. I think I saw Rory run after it, as well as Garrot..."

"The ones who stayed behind should form a plan, the ones chasing it can keep an eye on it and inform us on its location. But most importantly, they can try to incapacitate it and blind it, so its mobility is cut down. That huge eye is an easy enough target, the legs less so, but even if we can just blind it, it should be of some help."

Their behaviour has changed, they seem much more serious, and it's clear that they're used to making plans for how to take something, or someone, down. "Its ability to teleport is annoying, but if the Knights chasing it can herd it to a specific location, the rest of the Knights here who can fight can go there, maybe set a trap, or just prepare to take it down."

[sustainer]

"We should've made a plan before this," he mutters, clearly grumpy that they were all caught so off-guard. He should've known a full day of partying would get some of them too relaxed, ugh.

That's the only thing he'll say to complain though, clearly listening intently to Zafika despite his wandering eyes. He wants to know as much as he can before they make a move, but he nods to their plan after a moment.

"I can take out its eye if they don't, but..." He pauses a moment to chew his lip, trying to figure out how they're going to get messages between each other? While he has a phone, he uses it so little, it doesn't even occur to him that it's an option, and he turns a curious eye onto them. "Can you contact them somehow?

[zafika]

Zafika definitely agrees on that, but for now, all they can do is form a plan right now. They can still do this, the first monster seems more passive and intent on running away from the Knights.

At Gyre's suggestion that he can take out the monster's eye, they nod to him briefly. "I can help with that... I, don't have full control of it yet, but I think, I can use my Knight power to make myself ivisible, for a little bit at least.." As they explain that, they raise their hand up in front of them, and focus. It's a bit of a struggle to use their new power suddenly, but they can make their hand invisible, and their forearm too actually.

"As for contacting them... Garrot is apparently, streaming... the chase... and I can call him, we exchanged numbers, so I can call him for updates on where the monster is."

[sustainer]

His eyes widen enormously when Zafika makes their arm disappear. Sure, it's only a little bit of them, and it clearly took them a lot of concentration, but his mind is immediately swimming with possibility. Invisibility seems insanely useful! Maybe not for this monster, who's just running, but in the future...

"Wow." He grins, brightening up at their words. He doesn't know what streaming is, but they say they can contact Garrot and that's enough for him.

"You should--" His thoughts and his voice are interrupted by the shattering of glass, and his attention snaps to Haizea on the table. He meets Zafika's eyes when they glance his way, but he'll hang back for now as they leave his side.