Kaworu Nagisa | 渚 カヲル | ᴛʜᴇ ғɪғᴛʜ ᴄʜɪʟᴅ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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deercountry2023-04-02 09:03 pm
peripheries) wrote in deercountry2023-04-02 09:03 pm
As above, so below - the Fated Leviathan returns
Who: Everyone in the Leviathan player plot. The plot is open! See the ooc post here
What: A mysterious call makes those return to the beach...
When: Early April.
Where: Throughout the trench but mostly the beach.
Content Warnings: Possession, hallucinations, being consumed by another, lack of control.
A Call From a Lost Beloved
Sleepers will start to hear the voice of someone they left behind urging them to come back. The voice (or voices, depending on the Sleeper and their connections) all repeat words along the same refrain, altered to fit however the Sleeper remembers those they left behind in their worlds:
They are missed. They are needed back home. The promise of freedom from time in the Trench is a lie. Return to the sea.
At first, the call is subtle. Sleepers can ignore it as a manifestation of their own subconscious regrets or anxieties, or treat it as another strange phenomenon of the sea. Over the course of a week or so, however, those being called will begin to suffer from inexplicable malaise, sapping their physical and mental strength to resist the call. At the same time, life in the Trench seems increasingly meaningless: nothing but a stop gap, purgatory.
Return Home
Sleepers will find themselves at the edge of the beach with no memory of walking there. Instinctual fear conflicts with a strange familiarity. They’re happier at the beach than anywhere else in the Trench.
It’s safe there. A place where they feel understood and accepted for any wrongdoings of their past.
If a Sleeper is pulled away from the beach, thoughts of returning will consume them. The more time they spend away from the beach the more exhausted they become, building on the first stage of compulsion. They hear the ocean and the call of their lost loved one beyond the sound of crashing waves. They dream of the ocean. Sometimes they even spit up seawater, the ocean forcing itself onto their lives on dry land.
Do you fight this alien feeling taking over? Or is it comforting? Does it soothe a secret ache that’s been buried? Or is it even alien? Is some of it… could most of it… just be… you?
Part 1: Quick Summary
A Welcoming
As the call intensifies, those afflicted by it will start to not only hear their lost loved one, but to see them in crowded places. The lost loved will smile, frown, look confused, or otherwise express whatever the Sleeper would be most affected by before turning their backs and heading towards the Farther Shores.
But no one else seems to see them.
If a Sleeper resists the beckoning of their beloved, they will suffer an intensified version of the call’s strength sapping power. Those who succumb to the call will find their well-being returning to them with every step they come closer to the sea, and total relief will suffuse them if they step into the water. Every woe and worry that afflicted them, supernatural or not, fades away, leaving only a sense of peace and completeness.
This is the trap of the call sprung. Sleepers who surrender to the call of the Leviathan will be subsumed by it, turning into puppets for the Leviathan’s insistent compulsion to return to the shore.
Those who become puppets will cluster by the water’s edge and with each other. Contact between the afflicted comforts them, and these waylaid Sleepers will often be found huddled together, holding hands, or otherwise making contact. They will also attempt to lure any as yet unpossessed Sleepers closer, even going so far as to ambush and seize lone Sleepers to drag them into the water in an attempt to force them to give into the Leviathan’s call.
Unheimlich
Finally, the Leviathan’s ghost rises. In the Waking World, the borders between life, death, and other states of being can become blurred, and the remnants of the Leviathan carried in the memories and souls of those it affected boil back to the surface.
This manifestation is a pale shadow of the mighty Beast, but a pale shadow of such a monstrosity is still a terrible thing. Mutated, rotten echoes of the Leviathan’s amorphous form bubble up in the surf, writhing masses of tentacles, carapaces, teeth, and the seabed itself lashing out at any who approach them.
The possessed Sleepers join in its attacks on the living, now seeking to force Sleepers into one of the Leviathan’s many maws. Some may use violence to do this, while others will try persuasion of a less physical kind - but the majority will do both, if capable of it, beseeching their fellow Sleepers to give into the Leviathan’s pull even as they wrestle them towards their dire fate.
Further complicating the fight are the hallucinatory projections the Leviathan’s remnants force on to anyone who comes close. These projections take many forms: some appear as visions of the Sleepers’ lost homes as they left them, while others take the form of their worlds distorted and ruined by their absence, their plans laid to waste, disasters unaverted, and their loved ones suffering without them.
Other projections are smaller, once more appearing as their lost loved ones, but this time, as corpses or monsters - corpses that can be resurrected and monsters that can be restored if only the Sleeper gives in, or so they claim. The increased power of the Fated Beast means that the illusions are now visible to everyone.
Worse yet, some of these illusions are made of flesh, no less an extension of the Leviathan than its teeth and claws, and no less capable of doing real harm. A false friend may have the very real power to attack a Sleeper, or pull them into a cold but loving embrace, and the crumbled walls of a forgotten home may hem a Sleeper in and impede their progress.
Those who fall victim to the Leviathan (or those brave and foolish enough to seek to communicate with it) will be drawn into communion with the restless dead mind of the creature. They may catch glimpses of their own pasts and imagined futures while entombed in a digestive polyp or linked to a biting tendril at the base of their neck, and stranger still, they might catch glimpses of the Leviathan’s memories and feelings. There is no rhyme or reason in these visions, which are shaped by the Sleeper’s own mind as much as the Beast itself.
The Sleepers who resist the Leviathan will struggle with some or all of these aspects as they fight to return the Beast to its grave and retrieve the Sleepers it has already captured. Segments of the Beast can be destroyed with sufficient force, making it a battle of gradually whittling away parts of the Beast’s corpse. Concerted attacks, like in the original fight, will be more effective than individuals working alone.
Rescuing the taken Sleepers will take more than mere violence. The possessed Sleepers must be reminded of their ties to themselves and others within Trench by someone known to them, someone willing to reveal a vulnerability of their own - the depths of their feelings for the possessed Sleeper, a confession about other Sleeper no longer with them that they miss, or some other anchoring truth stronger than the Leviathan’s draw.
The strategy of revealing emotional truths will also help combat the Leviathan’s illusions in the rest of the fight, something Sleepers may discover when their words not only remind their possessed companions who they are, but dispel parts of the Leviathan’s power along with its control. Clever Sleepers can leverage this outside of freeing their fellows from possession, rebuking the Leviathan’s projections with affirmations of their selfhood and the things they care for in Trench.
Part 2 Summary
What: A mysterious call makes those return to the beach...
When: Early April.
Where: Throughout the trench but mostly the beach.
Content Warnings: Possession, hallucinations, being consumed by another, lack of control.
A Call From a Lost Beloved
Sleepers will start to hear the voice of someone they left behind urging them to come back. The voice (or voices, depending on the Sleeper and their connections) all repeat words along the same refrain, altered to fit however the Sleeper remembers those they left behind in their worlds:
They are missed. They are needed back home. The promise of freedom from time in the Trench is a lie. Return to the sea.
At first, the call is subtle. Sleepers can ignore it as a manifestation of their own subconscious regrets or anxieties, or treat it as another strange phenomenon of the sea. Over the course of a week or so, however, those being called will begin to suffer from inexplicable malaise, sapping their physical and mental strength to resist the call. At the same time, life in the Trench seems increasingly meaningless: nothing but a stop gap, purgatory.
Return Home
Sleepers will find themselves at the edge of the beach with no memory of walking there. Instinctual fear conflicts with a strange familiarity. They’re happier at the beach than anywhere else in the Trench.
It’s safe there. A place where they feel understood and accepted for any wrongdoings of their past.
If a Sleeper is pulled away from the beach, thoughts of returning will consume them. The more time they spend away from the beach the more exhausted they become, building on the first stage of compulsion. They hear the ocean and the call of their lost loved one beyond the sound of crashing waves. They dream of the ocean. Sometimes they even spit up seawater, the ocean forcing itself onto their lives on dry land.
Do you fight this alien feeling taking over? Or is it comforting? Does it soothe a secret ache that’s been buried? Or is it even alien? Is some of it… could most of it… just be… you?
Part 1: Quick Summary
- Sleepers hear the call of their lost beloved which eventually grows to hallucinations
- Life in the Trench feels increasingly meaningless. It keeps them from their loved ones
- Sleepers may fight the feeling or find it comforting. They might even not feel it is alien, but a manifestation of their true feelings.
A Welcoming
As the call intensifies, those afflicted by it will start to not only hear their lost loved one, but to see them in crowded places. The lost loved will smile, frown, look confused, or otherwise express whatever the Sleeper would be most affected by before turning their backs and heading towards the Farther Shores.
But no one else seems to see them.
If a Sleeper resists the beckoning of their beloved, they will suffer an intensified version of the call’s strength sapping power. Those who succumb to the call will find their well-being returning to them with every step they come closer to the sea, and total relief will suffuse them if they step into the water. Every woe and worry that afflicted them, supernatural or not, fades away, leaving only a sense of peace and completeness.
This is the trap of the call sprung. Sleepers who surrender to the call of the Leviathan will be subsumed by it, turning into puppets for the Leviathan’s insistent compulsion to return to the shore.
Those who become puppets will cluster by the water’s edge and with each other. Contact between the afflicted comforts them, and these waylaid Sleepers will often be found huddled together, holding hands, or otherwise making contact. They will also attempt to lure any as yet unpossessed Sleepers closer, even going so far as to ambush and seize lone Sleepers to drag them into the water in an attempt to force them to give into the Leviathan’s call.
Unheimlich
Finally, the Leviathan’s ghost rises. In the Waking World, the borders between life, death, and other states of being can become blurred, and the remnants of the Leviathan carried in the memories and souls of those it affected boil back to the surface.
This manifestation is a pale shadow of the mighty Beast, but a pale shadow of such a monstrosity is still a terrible thing. Mutated, rotten echoes of the Leviathan’s amorphous form bubble up in the surf, writhing masses of tentacles, carapaces, teeth, and the seabed itself lashing out at any who approach them.
The possessed Sleepers join in its attacks on the living, now seeking to force Sleepers into one of the Leviathan’s many maws. Some may use violence to do this, while others will try persuasion of a less physical kind - but the majority will do both, if capable of it, beseeching their fellow Sleepers to give into the Leviathan’s pull even as they wrestle them towards their dire fate.
Further complicating the fight are the hallucinatory projections the Leviathan’s remnants force on to anyone who comes close. These projections take many forms: some appear as visions of the Sleepers’ lost homes as they left them, while others take the form of their worlds distorted and ruined by their absence, their plans laid to waste, disasters unaverted, and their loved ones suffering without them.
Other projections are smaller, once more appearing as their lost loved ones, but this time, as corpses or monsters - corpses that can be resurrected and monsters that can be restored if only the Sleeper gives in, or so they claim. The increased power of the Fated Beast means that the illusions are now visible to everyone.
Worse yet, some of these illusions are made of flesh, no less an extension of the Leviathan than its teeth and claws, and no less capable of doing real harm. A false friend may have the very real power to attack a Sleeper, or pull them into a cold but loving embrace, and the crumbled walls of a forgotten home may hem a Sleeper in and impede their progress.
Those who fall victim to the Leviathan (or those brave and foolish enough to seek to communicate with it) will be drawn into communion with the restless dead mind of the creature. They may catch glimpses of their own pasts and imagined futures while entombed in a digestive polyp or linked to a biting tendril at the base of their neck, and stranger still, they might catch glimpses of the Leviathan’s memories and feelings. There is no rhyme or reason in these visions, which are shaped by the Sleeper’s own mind as much as the Beast itself.
The Sleepers who resist the Leviathan will struggle with some or all of these aspects as they fight to return the Beast to its grave and retrieve the Sleepers it has already captured. Segments of the Beast can be destroyed with sufficient force, making it a battle of gradually whittling away parts of the Beast’s corpse. Concerted attacks, like in the original fight, will be more effective than individuals working alone.
Rescuing the taken Sleepers will take more than mere violence. The possessed Sleepers must be reminded of their ties to themselves and others within Trench by someone known to them, someone willing to reveal a vulnerability of their own - the depths of their feelings for the possessed Sleeper, a confession about other Sleeper no longer with them that they miss, or some other anchoring truth stronger than the Leviathan’s draw.
The strategy of revealing emotional truths will also help combat the Leviathan’s illusions in the rest of the fight, something Sleepers may discover when their words not only remind their possessed companions who they are, but dispel parts of the Leviathan’s power along with its control. Clever Sleepers can leverage this outside of freeing their fellows from possession, rebuking the Leviathan’s projections with affirmations of their selfhood and the things they care for in Trench.
Part 2 Summary
- Those who have submitted to the Leviathan’s will are called to the beach. It is comforting to hold hands and be with others that are possessed. They will also attempt to drag non-possessed sleepers into the sea.
- The corpse of the beast is resurrected. Its powers cause the walls of reality to start to break. Pockets of Sleepers homeworlds, as they are or destroyed in the Sleepers absence, start to appear as do corpses of loved ones (alive or dead).
- Those eaten will have similar hallucinations or even see some of the Leviathan’s own memories
- It is possible to fight off the corpse with coordinated attacks.
- Rescuing a Sleeper from possession requires said Sleeper to be reminded of their ties to the Trench. Revealing emotional truths to a possessed Sleeper will weaken the Leviathan’s hold and confessing their own emotional truth will break them free and weaken the Leviathan’s power.
no subject
[Oscar eased his stance and looked up, as if uncertain about how to explain himself or his observations. ]
It's the Paleblood. I can sense it more than actually hear it, and it reminds me of... A swarm of bees. Or, a whale.
Something that's hard for people to understand.
no subject
[ The hitch of hesitation, the substitution for one turn of phrase for another, are the sort of thing Paul tries to avoid. They need clarity of communication if they lack clarity of information. ]
All observations are useful. [ He means that. ] I want to understand. Would you keep explaining it to me?
no subject
[Oscar paused and shifted, his body language suggesting his nervousness at explaining this in more detail. It was common knowledge that he was from a landlocked valley in Mistral, and that even in Solitas he had rarely ventured out from the city walls of Mantle and Atlas.]
The last thing I remember of Remnant was being held captive inside a flying whale. It's cries and songs were something I could feel more than I could actually hear.
[He shook his head. That had not been a pleasant experience across the board, and it still set his nerves on a jittery edge if he wasn't careful about how he recollected those memories.]
Otherwise... it's like last year. I can do the telepathy thing, but it's feelings are so big that it drowns everything else out... and it gives me a headache unless I actively block it.
[Blocking the stimulus instead of retreating always had a way of wearing him down faster than anything else. But, he suspected that running wouldn't be an option.]
no subject
What does the headache feel like?
[ There's almost always a good reason for Paul's odd questions. There surely must be one here. ]
no subject
Have you ever been near an overcharged electrical machine? Or a Coldblood that's getting ready to zap someone?
[Oscar described Coldblood, but his thoughts were on an absent friend-- someone who was like a brother, with a mouth that knew no limits with words and whose impulsivity was as much of a live wire as his powers.]
It makes a weird buzzing sound that drowns out everything else. You... You take that, but put it inside your head.
[It was his primary reason for hesitating about doing too much with his Paleblood abilities. If crowds and monsters made it too hard to focus, then he didn't want to deal with visions or dream walking.]
no subject
He catches the knives in his hands up with a flick of his fingers, spinning them around his palms in a flash of glancing light before he slips them into their sheaths. Hands freed, he sweeps stray hair out of his eyes and sinks his weight back into his heels. ]
All right. [ Some criteria evidently satisfied. ] So. Why are you here? I mean, what do you plan to do to help?
[ He seems buoyed up, less brittle. It's likely a good sign. ]
no subject
Fighting them last year obviously didn't fix the bigger problem, [Oscar said quietly, recalling the battle that had taken over the shores.]
You and your partners were all hurt pretty badly, Johnny-sensei died, and I was with Captain Anna when she rammed the ship.
Nothing helped.
... But, I've been helping that Druid in town work on the farm for the last several months, And we've talked. A lot.
I think I have a few ideas.
no subject
[ Paul says it so mildly that Oscar might be forgiven for a moment of thinking he must have said something else. He shifts his weight to his left foot, lifting his right heel off the sand. ]
Vyng, right? That's the druid.
So. You want to talk to it?
[ The question is neutral, curious. ]
no subject
That's right,
[He said softly, thinking over everything he had learned from Vyng so far since they had met in Deerington.]
I don't have magic like he does, but there's a certain magic in... meeting someone where they're at.
They have feelings and understanding, right? They have a sense of who they are underneath all of their pain?
no subject
[ They can be such an ambiguous pronoun. Paul takes it by both meanings. ]
This one does. Or it can mimic them. I never was able to tell the difference.
It's not a good idea, Oscar.
[ Still, there's no judgment. There's just the slow roll of the sea, the gulls calling overhead. Paul lets his heel sink back down. ]
I won't tell you not to do it. But the last time we tried, it went... [ Paul exhales. ] It was inside me, and it was - it was so much, and everywhere. And it was loud.
I just want you to understand the risks. But then again, who knows? Maybe your - situation - will help.
no subject
[As monstrous as the creature seemed on all levels of awareness, many of which Oscar couldn't even begin to comprehend, he could see the threads of something he could recognize: a being in pain that was so great that relief was unfathomable. He sighed and rubbed at his arms, gaze flicking out towards the sea as he listened to Paul's warnings.]
... You're right. I do have more experience than most in taking back my body.
[Enough so that Anna Amarande, in her trials with Apollonia, had sought him out personally for advice. It was strange, being the one with more experience than many despite still being a teenager. He could reach lifetimes of wisdom-- but he was still just Himself. ]
I know what I'm getting into. I can feel their anger in my bones. It's...
[He sighed, and arched a brow as he attempted to crack a joke. ]
It's probably not a good thing that this isn't the first time I've met an ancient, all powerful being that's fumed by rage.
no subject
[ The first real trace of darkness dims Paul's expression. He takes a slow breath in, lets it out, and the shadow passes. Personal. Not useful. He has to think in terms of usefulness. ]
No. It's probably not a good thing.
[ Paul is flatly serious - or perhaps it's a fumbled attempt at deadpan humour. Either way, he ekes a smile out afterwards, and with it, the tracery of worry around his strained eyes. ]
...I can't help you, this time. [ He confesses, with a loose, one-shouldered shrug. ] The rituals aren't meant for Darkblood.
1/2
[Oscar said quickly, not fully processing the words immediately while he spoke.]
I know I don't have visions and I'm not good with the Spice, but even if the rituals aren't--
[--
The record skip behind his eyes was visible in the way Oscar's manner shifted.]
2/2
What did you do this time?
no subject
[ The protest could have been made resentfully, or hurt, but instead, there's a genuine spark of amusement that threatens to make Paul's thinned smile break into something wider and more honest. ]
When I came back from the Shedding Ceremony, my blood didn't change back with the rest of me, as far as I can tell.
Trust me. I'm not thrilled about the timing either.
1/2
[Despite the long suffering sigh, it was easy to see that Oscar wasn't even surprised that the situation had changed. ]
2/2
[Oscar added quickly, and offered Paul a reassuring smile despite the situation. ]
... I've been learning from Uncle Break that it's possible to be both the Wizard that Remnant wants me to be, but still be myself.
If you're worried, I can try to link you in. Any useful info you have will help, too
no subject
[ Which is better than saying he's not certain if he's even still capable of being linked in, and has the advantage of being definitively true. ]
But I can monitor from the outside. Be ready to pull you out, if I have to. They can kick me out of the Disciples, but they couldn't take away what I know.
[ And he's been spending more time around the Blood Ministers properly, these days. ]