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

[wizardseason]

"I'm me!" The child's voice comes immediately, laughter fading into the distance as the child seems to leave Gyre alone now. Bye, Gyre!

But that only lasts for a few moments before they're back in his ear, suddenly up close despite seemingly moving away.

"Are you going to find me? You're getting closer!" The child asks, curious as Gyre gets closer and closer to the floating Obelisk. If he gets close enough to look, and close enough to peek within, he'll see the same child he saw before except now they're floating suspended inside of the crystal. They're without the tattered rags this time, instead without clothing but oddly without any features? It's like they were manufactured, a perfect body inside the crystal.

Wack.

[sustainer]

He does get close enough to see, and panic snaps through him when he realizes it's a child in there.

"I-is this you? How do I get you out?" he asks, alarm clear in his voice as he bangs his fist on the side of the crystal.

[wizardseason]

Gyre's fists take 2 HP of damage as he strikes an indestructible object.

The child inside the crystal seems to be asleep, entirely unresponsive with their eyes closed. What's even more unsettling now, though, is that the child's voice that was in his ear again and again until now... is silent.

He's all alone with a child in a crystal and he has no weapons of any kind to help him pull off some kind of crystal prison heist.

And his hands hurt a bit.

[sustainer]

"Hello??" he shouts at the fuckin air. He hates talking to someone that's invisible! He feels like an idiot shouting at the wind, but he also needs this magic kid to talk to him and tell him what magic bullshit he needs to do to help them.

"Fuck, fuck-- fuck," he mutters when the banging doesn't seem to do much of anything. It takes him a second of thought, and a few more murmured fucks, before he dashes suddenly ahead of the crystal.

He scrambles through the brush and the trees, jumping up to the largest branch he can reach. He grabs it and yanks down with all his weight, breaking it off with this low grunt and turning to smash the branch against the crystal as it floats past him.

[wizardseason]

Of all the things Gyre could've chosen to do, smashing the crystal was probably not one of the default options. The branch strikes it and splinters in every direction and, at the same time, electricity shoots through it and through Gyre. He's immediately lifted off of the ground and sent flying. It doesn't hurt, but it's like he's been hit with a sack of potatoes and catapulted away.

When he eventually gets up and recovers, he'll find that the obelisk is gone and the same child, now back in tatters, is standing in the middle of the woods right where the obelisk had been.

Except now they're crackling with electricity.

[sustainer]

Well. The actual lightning doesn't hurt, but slamming into the ground on his back does, the force of it rolling him over a couple times. Which is to say, he's just going to lay here for a good few minutes, groaning low in his throat.

It's only the thought of a trapped kid that gets him to move again. He rolls over, sits up, and uh adjusts his head so it's back on his shoulders correctly. Right about the moment he snaps his neck together again, he sees the electrified child over there.

Immediately, he's on his feet and running over to them, crouching down so he's on their level. His hands come up to... touch them and check them over, but something about the electricity makes him hesitate.

"What were you doing in that crystal? Are you okay?"

[wizardseason]

It's a good thing that Gyre doesn't try to touch the child, because that electricity is whipping out from their body like wisps of fire trying to catch him. The electricity has a mind of it's own, arcing towards Gyre again and again.

Their eyes stay locked on Gyre, boring into him even as he asks. It isn't until a minute later that they shake their head.

And when Gyre blinks, he's laying on his back on the floor of the train station. He's alone, abandoned, and far away from the lodge in Craydon. He's at least an hour down the mountain unless he catches the train, but it's not at the station right now.

Looks like he's not going to make it back before other events take place.