Day 3: Morning

[wizardseason]

Morning: 6:00am - 12:00noon

[ IRL Timeframe: April 22nd - April 29th May 8th, 2019 ]

It's the third day and, in striking comparison to day two, it is not a bright and sunny morning. The day begins for every hero with an unfamiliar room in an unfamiliar place in an unfamiliar time.

When your characters check their phones, clocks, calendars, or any other timekeeping implement they'll find that the year is 00 AW, forty years before the present day. The year before the Wizard's first game was held, the year before it came down to only two knights and the Princess facing off against the Wizard. It was before all of it.

Everywhere your characters go, there are no people. Their devices will not connect to the internet outside of the island, their companions will not appear, the Protector will not answer, but they can text each other without difficulty. If groups in the same city try to find each other, they will find that some kind of mystical plot barrier is keeping them from finding each other. A wrong turn, a locked door, a lost connection. Somehow, they're kept apart. All the support they have is who they woke up with. Oddly, everyone wakes up in their normal day-to-day clothing rather than pajamas.

There have to be answers somewhere, but where?

Third Morning Event: All Cities: The Past.

---

The Weather

• Eerily still.
• 64°F / 18°C
• The trees are unmoving, there is no wind.

---

Prompts:

• 6:30am Spa Hotel, Bamborough: Two sets of heroes wake up in the Spa Hotel in Bamborough. Garrot wakes up in the same room as Olivia. On the far side of the Spa hotel, in one of the waterfront cabins, Haizea and Joanna wake up in the same room. The hotel is empty, but every room is unlocked. Food's still in the dining areas, too. Oddly, things look like they were in use around the Hotel. Carts in the middle of hallways, half-eaten meals on tables, bags halfway up staircases. Odd.


• 6:30am Lodge Cots, Craydon: The Craydon lodge isn't much, but it's a spanning complex of cabins that maximize occupancy by filling them with cots for that "outdoor camping" experience. Rory and Gail will wake up in one of the cabins near the base of the mountain. On the furthest edge of the lodge, Gyre and Seth will wake up in their top-level cots higher up the mountain. There are a few campfires going with meat roasting over them, piles of raw meat to the side ready to cook, and various festivities left laying around. It's almost like everyone up and left all at once, but where did they go?


• 6:30am Cozy Inn, Far Haven: Far Haven's 'Cozy Inn' promises the 'small town feeling' in the middle of the big city. The inside is exactly that, a very cozy little hotel with three floors of rooms and a covered walkway with a glass floor over a garden into another section of the hotel. Zafika and Web will wake up in a room on the first floor nearest the train station exit of the cozy inn. No doors are locked here and it looks as if things were left strewn about like the people just teleported out of here. Terrence, Matilda, and Luka wake up in the glass walkway above, in sleeping bags. They'll find that the only way out goes to the cozy inn's far building, they'll have to go through a spanning cafeteria space with tons of empty tables that, strangely, look like they were just in use. Plates with half-full, or even untouched plates sit around on every table and there are even jackets draped over some chairs, purses on the ground. The city outside is much the same, vehicles just stopped in the middle of the street with no drivers, things dropped on the ground. What happened...?


• 9:30am, Exploration, Bamborough, Craydon, Far Haven: The scene is much the same in all three cities. When the heroes make their way outside, they'll notice that the sky above Harsen Island is a massive vortex centered over the mountain in the middle of the island. Heroes in Craydon will get to see it a little closer, the massive clouds occasionally crackling with blue lightning. All three cities have glowing cracks in the ground in various places, the cracks lead all around, some larger, some smaller, maybe there's something to be found? There are large glowing obelisks that are floating over each city and outside of them, they occasionally float down near the ground enough to touch or look closer at. Once the heroes make their way out into the streets, they might start seeing glimpses of a Wizard hat in the distance but each time it passes behind a wall or into shadow and is gone. Maybe they can catch up? Maybe your hero takes a moment to search through local news, the paper, letters, a television station. What's going on in the city right now?

---

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: 'Exploration' toplevels will unlock additional information as items in their descriptions are explored. If your character explores a feature, write [Character explores ____] at the end of your tag and send a ping on Discord to get a reply with further details regarding that item.

Comments

[roaryrory]

Well, in that case, it's an ungrateful crack! It should know Rory only collects the prettiest, most interesting of rocks.

She blinks at the rock back in her hand, then drops it back in. Have to make sure that wasn't a fluke.

[wizardseason]

Okay fine it'll just have to eat the rock this time.

But even so, a few seconds more pass this time before Rory feels the familiar weight in her hand. Rock's back.

[roaryrory]

Huh. Well, then. At least no rock was lost. Rory stands back up, not feeling any more certain about what's going on. The cracks are magic, alright.

She looks up towards the mountain, and the vortex above it. Is there something going on there? Maybe it's the Wizard's doing. She furrows her brow in determination and [starts hiking up toward the eye of the storm.]

[wizardseason]

Fortunately for Rory, the hike up the mountain is fairly straightforward. But there's a slow-blowing wind towards her that picks up in speed the closer she gets towards the storm. Every time some of the wind wisps by her face, it seems like it's crackling a little more with electricity.

The cracks in the ground seem to have no pattern and they don't get any more or less as she approaches. Hopefully she's fine with dodging cracks in the ground while running in the wind!

Also her hair's definitely frizzing and standing up on end in all this electric fun.

[roaryrory]

She wishes her powers were working, but as it stands, yelling against the wind would only tire her out faster. She has no choice but to persevere against the wind if she wants to find out what's happening up there. And God does she want to. Despite the crackling of electricity intensifying around her, she will go on until it's literally impossible to continue.

[wizardseason]

What if the wind yelled back? Unfortunately for everyone, no one gets to know if that could be real. Instead the wind gets to practically roaring until she stands atop a big boulder.

And then it's total silence.

If she steps off of it, the roaring electric wind will resume, but atop the boulder it's this strange peace. If she looks down, the rock is glowing where she's standing atop it. It's free of the chaos surrounding them, and if she stays long enough she'll hear whispers in the distance. But they're too faint to make out.

[partyhorse]

"ROOOOOOOOORYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!"

If you would look at your right you will see a very distressed horse coming right at you. He probably cried a little considering he's wearing his sunglasses to hide his eyes. Yes, it did take this long for him to get out of that not designed for horses door and to find Rory. He's seen better days.

"Rory are you okay!? You just looked so shocked and you just left me and I was so worried something happened and then I couldn't find you and I thought you died or worse and I'm just so glad you're here and okay and-" Yeah he's rambling. Sorry about that.

[roaryrory]

Rory is still standing on the boulder, looking around her quizzically, when she hears the horse's distress signal. Heck, right, Gail! She just ran out panicked and left him there! She feels awful about that now, but also, she just thought she was hearing something a second ago and now she can't hear anything but the rambling.

"Shh, hold on, I'm really really sorry I just left you like that but I... I think I hear something..."

[wizardseason]

Gail's position off of the rock means he'll be treated to the roaring wind all around him. It's constant, an unwavering rush of air coming straight off the mountain. But he'll clearly see the glowing rock that Rory's standing on.

The closer Rory listens, the more words she'll be able to make out. They come in little whispers, pieces of a whole story.

"...out..."
"hurts... ..."
"... ...please"