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.

---

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

[tropicalstorm]

Haizea stares after the crew that immediately ran off in frustration. She gets it, she wants to pummel that thing too, but what's the point of there being so many of them if they don't work together properly? As the other knights start to discuss among themselves, Haizea decides they all gotta get on the same page and quick.

Looking around, she finds an empty glass bottle and grabs it, then stalks over to a table and smashes the bottle against it, shattering it into a million pieces and making a high pitched, hard to ignore crashing sound. She then jumps on the table and cups her hands around her mouth before shouting.

"LISTEN UP!" She yells, and then continues in a loud, but less booming voice once she's satisfied she's got everyone's attention. "If we're gonna take that thing down, we gotta get coordinated and fast. We should all got cell phones, and I know for a fact that I at least don't got all y'alls numbers, so let's fix that right quick. Then I think we can take advantage of the crew that's chasing it and try and surround it, maybe pull off some kinda pincer maneuver. How's that sound to everyone?"

[zafika]

Zafika nearly gets a heart attack when they hear the loud, high pitched shattering sound, and their hands nearly fly up to cover their ears, but they catch themselves in the middle of the action. Instead, they turn to look Haizea's way, slightly irritated by the bottle laying in pieces at her feet, but they get it that she needed everyone's attention.

They glance in Gyre's way briefly, before they walk over to the table Haizea is standing on, so they won't have to raise their voice to talk to her, and she won't have to keep yelling much longer. "Sounds good to me. I was talking with Gyre, and one option is to incapacitate it, damage its legs and blind it, and try to herd it to a set location so the ones who are still here can go and set up an ambush. It'll still be able to teleport, but at least it should be less of a threat if it can't move otherwise."

[disguiseself]

[Olivia hisses at the sound of glass breaking, instinctively shifting to stand between the source and Luka.

She glares at the other Knights as she listens to them speak. If she has any opinions in favor or against the plan, she doesn't voice it or show it.]

[silentwords]

Seth had gathered who he could and was now just kind of standing there, he had admittedly kind of freaked out over the sudden loud noise, but in the end was just kind of annoyed.

At the mention that they don't all yet have each others numbers, Seth admittedly kind of got an idea. Maybe his social media skills could come in handy after all.

"I could just make us all a group chat you know, easier than everyone having to give everyone else their number."

[sustainer]

Gyre joins everyone else in jumping at the sound of shattering glass, and he hangs back for a moment even as Zafika leaves his side. It's not until it looks like this is where the planning is going to be that he comes up to Haizea as well.

He scans over the people who stayed behind, his gaze lingering on this kid talking about phones. He uh sounds like he knows what he's talking about, which is better then Gyre by far. He pulls his phone out of a pocket inside his vest, and just holds it out to Seth. The phone is off, and he has no idea how to start any kind of chats or groups or, honestly, even how to find his number. Help.

"If we can decide a place to trap it, I can start heading there. I need a chance to set up, but I can take its eye out once I'm there."

[silentwords]

Seth raises an eyebrow at Gyre just, holding his phone out to him, especially since the phone is actually off, and since Gyre didn't actually say anything it takes him a moment to figure out Gyre might want some help.

Still he takes it in the end, actually multitasking in the sense of working on his own phone to set up the group chat, and getting Gyre's phone set up into the most simplistic one where he'll have easy access to anything essential he might need, those being the group chat he added Gyre to (while sending invites to everyone he could on his own phone which was unfortunately only one or two people), the call and text functions, and the help guide to the various programs on the phone.

And then he's typing on his own phone again while offering the phone back to Gyre. "Everyone who didn't get an invite should search for 'Wizard Free-Zone' on HewwoCentral, send a message of some sort but include 'Lemme Smash, Ben is a Hoe' in it so I'll know it's one of you guys. Though I can't say anything about it actually remaining a wizard free zone."

He quickly pointed to Gyre. "I already added you."

[disguiseself]

[Olivia relaxes her defensive stance, staring at Seth intensely while trying to figure out if he's actually serious.] That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

[She shifts her attention to Gyre instead.] Are you familiar with the town? If you want to set a trap, I can work with you. We should take the Princess with us so we know where the thing is.

[silentwords]

"Too bad, take it or leave it, though if you want us all to cooperate I suggest you take it. Also it's a meme."

Seth deadpans via the text to speech function, his expression pretty much matching the monotone tone of the robotic voice right now.
This is definitely a completely different side of him than what some have seen.

[tropicalstorm]

“Then I pick leave it,” Haizea says, pulling out her shiny new knight phone. “We don’t gotta use no app with some dumb meme, just exchange numbers and we can send texts in a group chat like everyone else who don’t know why Ben is a hoe.”

She jumps off the table at this point and goes around to the assembled knights and Luka, exchanging numbers and introducing herself briefly as she goes, ‘Haizea, dragon knight, you know the deal,’ until she has everyone’s number.

[silentwords]

Seth seems to withdraw in on himself at Haizea's rejection, turning to look away.
When Haizea comes to collect his number he digs the phone given to him by the sponsors and reluctantly turns it on so they can exchange number.
Not his fault his own phone was better.

Also the group chat in said app? Seems to have mysteriously dissappeared.

[eutychia]

"Efficient, I like it," Luka says in reference to Haizea's quick solution.

"But how are we getting the others in on this? As in, the ones who went in guns blazing so to speak? Who hopefully aren't already Wizard fodder?"

[disguiseself]

Well, it's good to know that not all the Knights are weirdos. [Olivia introduces herself as the Ox Knight to Haizea as they exchange Knight phone numbers.

She then turns to Luka,] Did you get blondie's number when you met her? Hopefully she's with the rest of them...

[eutychia]

Luka produces his phone from his breast pocket and unlocks it.

"I'm not typing that. Besides, who the hell else would it be?" He nagivates to the app and manages to find the chat, typing only 'It's me.' in the field, along with a princess emoji.

"Anyway," he continues. "How are we getting the ones who ran away in on this? It would be nice to get in touch with them as soon as possible."

[silentwords]

Luka was definitely getting on his nerves now, even more so than earlier today.
And right now he's absolutely in a petty mood and right now Seth is the main admin so...
Luka does get added...
But his nickname in the chat is immediately change into 'McDoucheface (Ignore this rando)' for everyone viewing it, including Luka.
And he's only given the authority to view what's being written in there.

"Oh I don't know, how about every eager wizard season fanboy ever without even getting into personal fans."

Seth had done a bit of research on his fellow Knights and the Princess too while he was browsing social media.

[eutychia]

Luka emits a quiet scoff when his screen reader announces the name change.

"Rando? Have you forgotten exactly who I am then?" he says, closing the app in disgust.

[silentwords]

"Oh, not at all. In fact after doing some research I now know exactly who you are. Another celebrity who has let their fame get to their head and thinks the world revolves around them."

Having been up for so long and having had to deal with major anxiety for many hours and on top of that two mental breakdowns in the span of his time in Craydon alone...

Wasn't really a good look an Seth.

[eutychia]

"Oh, let's not go there-- I've earned everything I have. It's not like all of this just fell into my lap out of dumb luck, you know!" Luka gestures at Seth with an accusatory point.

"But more importantly, I'm the Princess. The world kind of does revolve around me, right now."

[silentwords]

"Funny how your message changes after a bit of criticism. After all, only earlier today it was and I quote you, 'But the Princess isn't much without the Knights, are they? Certainly I couldn't take on the Wizard all alone'."

Seth fires back. Luka had rubbed him the wrong way since the beginning with maybe the slight exception of being genuinely interested when he told of his hobby and being a bit impressed that he was self-taught.

[fop_lop]

A short time after Haizea rallies the troops, her phone will ring. It's Terrence! Good thing they met earlier.

[tropicalstorm]

She raises her eyebrows when her phone goes off. How convenient!

“Hey Terrence, y’all still alive?”

[fop_lop]

"Somehow!" he offers, though the sounds of [Muffled crashing foliage in the distance.] aren't exactly convincing. Best not to mention his current situation atop Garrot.

"It doesn't seem terribly aggressive, at any rate, but it is quite adept at absconding... Ah, is everyone else still back at the rec center?" He doesn't vocalize it, but Terrence is awash with a sense of shame that he is part of Team Leeroy while Haizea is not.

[tropicalstorm]

If she notices the sounds of chaos in the background, she doesn’t mention it.

“Some folks have taken off to try and snipe it, I’m hanging back with a small team right now. Y’know Matilda? Turns out she can teleport, so we figured we’d coordinate with you all to herd the monster somewhere, then teleport right on top of it and kick it’s head in. You called right before we were gonna!”

[fop_lop]

"Ooh, excellent!" At least they had a plan. Coordinating like this makes Terrence feel slightly less foolish about charging ahead alongside the vanguard since at least he has a more immediate fix on the situation.

"We've taken a quick pause to make sure everyone is okay. I believe we have myself, Garrot, and two others I've not had the pleasure of speaking with just yet - a rural-looking type and a faun. I... Think I saw a centaur run past..?" He'd watched all of the interviews and should remember names, but the rabbit knight is in a bit of panic despite remaining verbose as ever. There's A Lot happening, all very quickly.

"At any rate, it seems the monster is content to continue avoiding us for now... Last I saw it was heading towards that train up the mountain, so I suppose we'll continue to try and push it in that direction! You should be able to see the station even from the rec center."

[tropicalstorm]

“A centaur? That must be Gail, I’ll keep an eyeout for him, hope he’s alright.” She hasn’t forgotten how skittish he was at breakfast.

“But alright, sounds good. Keep on it, we’ll try and hit on it’s way there, and I’ll plan to get Matilda to teleport some of us to the train station when it gets there. Stay safe ‘til then and keep me posted!”

[fop_lop]

"R-Right..! We're just now back on the trail. I believe we have this! I'll call back if there's any deviation!" Terrence calms down slightly as he hangs up. It was still just the first monster, after all, and all it's doing is running... The plan makes sense. This should be fine!