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.
bloody beach!
the closer he gets, the more he could feel the bridge of his nose crunch with questioning curiosity, but seeing paul’s eyes shut in a focused, meditating cross of the legs . . . he comes to a slowing, careful stop and slinks to the sand.
falco knows better than to interrupt people, much less his brother. ]
no subject
In the dark wanderings of his awareness, Paul feels the stir of wings.
Sophia is the first to rouse herself. She's hidden in Paul's collar, as insensate as her Sleeper, and slow to shake off the trance they're in. Her head pops over the cloth rim of her enclosure with her ears askew, her eyes unusually bleary for a creature that doesn't need sleep. ]
Falco? [ She 'says', muzzily, and then again, clearer and more sure: ] Falco?
[ Paul shivers. He blinks hard, brings his hand up to rub at his grainy eyes, and pivots to look at his little brother. ]
Hey. [ There's a croak in his voice, a small one, no more than a little tree frog. ] Falco. Wh...
[ Unexpectedly, Paul yawns. ]
...what're you doin' here?
no subject
falco ends up leaning forward by the time paul does more, greets him, but fails tremendously at stifling the suspicious yawn. the begotten bond between these two boys meant that, at one point or another, there would be a sense of intimacy to the point that falco is comfortable enough, to ask on his hands and knees in front of the elder boy: ]
. . . Were you sleeping?
[ here? didn't have to be said. the tone might be close to incredulous, and may that not be a misstep! he's 👌 this close to scolding him about his comfort and self-care, despite it having a ring of playfulness to it rather than a completely serious reprimand (ok, maybe just a little serious). it's what brothers do. ]
no subject
[ Paul drags his shoulders back in a constrained stretch, mouth thinned with the effort of keeping his next incipient yawn contained. The first one can surely be passed off as a coincidence if he maintains his cover.
Sophia wrinkles her nose and clambers over Paul's shirt collar, dropping lightly to the sand below. She covers the distance between her and Falco in a few hops, ducking her head down to nuzzle the back of his hand. Her whiskers still tickle like Falco imagined. ]
Only half. [ She admits, treacherously. ] I would have warned him if anything dangerous was coming.
Sophia... [ Paul wrinkles his nose, embarrassment helping him wake up completely. ] It's not half-sleeping. It's a meditative trance.
Call it what you like, Paul.
[ Paul gives Falco an incredulous look - back him up here, little brother. ]
no subject
perle joins the exchange with a swift glide to the elder boy's shoulder to use as a perch, and she comments: ]
I'm sure you're doing your very best, dear. [ does that even help . . . well, either way— ] What's it for?
[ half the "meditative trance", half the swirling contraption before them. ]
no subject
[ Paul does manage to make his muttering sound at least moderately grateful, reaching up to gently stroke the back of Perle's head. Sophia, meanwhile, folds her ears back and arches up luxuriantly into Falco's petting. ]
...and this is... [ Paul sighs, and this time not with exasperation, but bone deep weariness. ] Don't be worried, all right? It's - going to sound worse than it is.
[ It looks bad enough. It is bad enough, but he won't let it be as bad as it could be. ]
I think that there's part of the Beast from last year coming back, or...wanting to. Trying to. Like a ghost, but like...something else, too.
But it's not going to be like then.
[ The tent pole. The falling star that was a boy. Paul doesn't have to say it. He does have to reach out and put his hand on Falco's shoulder, opposite of where Perle is perched on his. ]
And nothing is going to happen to you.
no subject
perle uses the branch of paul's arm to climb down to her boy, and if anything, whilst cupping sophia, falco's own fingers are loose enough to move about them freely. but, he will still pet her! ]
This thing . . . Is to stop it?
no subject
[ Sophia butts her head into Falco's touch, firm and insistent to match her Sleeper's voice. Paul runs his thumb over the muscle of Falco's shoulder, and is struck by its subtle growth since the memory lying between them. He's still a little brother, but he's not as little as he used to be.
A person might think that would make them worry less. ]
Catch it, stop it. See if this is even anything we need to worry about. I just need to...focus.
So that's why I'm out here.
no subject
Can I bring you some food while you focus?
[ because he certainly won’t try and drag paul away from his duties or what he feels is important— and it was a way falco felt he could be useful to the elder boy. he was no spiritual meditator after all, and he’s long forgotten what it was like to have the visions of a paleblood.
oh, yes. and he’s going to fix that button’s pin on paul’s clothes. ]
no subject
When his green eyes flick back up to Falco, there's a sheen on them that can't be explained by the salt-wind. His shoulders hitch up, and then, without warning, he pulls Falco into a tight, close hug, careful only of their respective Omens and nothing else. ]
I don't deserve you. [ He says, throat tight, words breathed next to Falco's ear. ] The world doesn't deserve you.
[ Pride and love could crack his chest open. The malaise of the sea that lingers over him feels, for this instant, lifted away and banished back out to the far horizon. When he sits back from Falco again, he's blinking hard, but he's smiling. ]
I'd like that. I'd like it a lot. Thank you.
no subject
Of course you deserve it. [ the last hug before he's off for some food, is another short embrace, prepped with the press of lips into paul's head as only a brief farewell. ] And I promise I'll wake you up just by the smell.
[ he's been getting better at cooking, and he's certain some pasta will reanimate paul from his slumber in no time. ]
no subject
Sophia lets out a rare and tiny squeak from Falco's pocket, almost more of a chirp. It's a bright, soft note of happiness, as close to a bird's call as a mouse can come. ]
You're spoiling me. And her. [ His smile is crooked and easy, his pretend chiding toothless. ] Make a double portion? I feel like I could eat the damn thing if it were to show up now.
You got used to being spoiled fast, Paul.
You're the one who's always telling me to let other people take care of me sometimes, mouse.
no subject
[ a tease born from a tease, but falco has his legs ready to take him back home with his arms and fingers just itching to mix and make.
when he returns, he’s truthful to his word: he brings the scent of something warm and spiced with him, doubled in plate size to feed a hungry man on a mission. it’s pasta with sauce that is not too acidic and not too sweet— savory, delicious, and after so many failed attempts over the years: just right.
there are even two crispy fish baked toa wonderful crunch that may be missing some salt, mutated bred rolls meant to look like birds but still just look like little monsters— but they’re all made with too much love. ]