WEEK ZERO MINGLE (overflow)

[grigori]

cittàgazze: week 0 mingle the city of magpies

40 Remain

Looks like that storm's cleared up this morning! Places that were barred before are now available for exploration—you might want to check that out. In the distance, beyond the city, is the promise of great, rolling green hills and a thick treeline. Further still are looming cliffsides, just barely and fleetingly lit up at night by the beacon of the lighthouse. Attempts to traverse this treeline to reach the hills results in explorers getting turned around, before being spat back out facing the city. It's possible to lose a large chunk of time if one isn't careful with their exploration. Let the mods know if you keep trying, or stick around for longer than a couple of hours.



The city is still as vacant as it was during your arrival, with the only hint of life being those children that you've likely now encountered. There are still no adults to be seen—no one older than sixteen or so, if you're observant enough to keep watch for them—and they're all just as skittish (at best) or hostile (at worst) of anyone that happens to have a daemon with a feline form. They'll also throw small rocks and sticks at people that were responsible for breaking windows and busting down doors on Saturday and Sunday, though they'll run and scatter if you try to retaliate.

Whatever you plan on doing in the morning, it's all up to you. Enjoy yourselves, have some fun, break and enter some more. Whatever tickles your fancy, who are we to tell you what to do? There's more places for you to go, now, since the foreboding feeling has faded with the storm gone, and there is an entire city at your disposal. Go wild—surely there'll be no repercussions?

Come the afternoon, though, the locked door of the tower in the center of town opens up. Three figures emerge, cloaked and masked, accompanied by daemons of their own. For a moment or two, they speak with one another, voices low, before they turn, heading out from the tower and into Cigazze proper.

Any attempts to open the door after they leave—despite the fact that they obviously made no move to lock it—will show that it's gone back to not budging. Weird.



Each of the three hooded figures have a distinctly colored cloak with one being a shimmering gold that resembles the sun, the second with a glittering cloak the color of moonlight, and the last in one of blue with starlight like the night sky. Two of the three of them seemingly stand at the same height with the last one looming over the other two, and it's the one in the gold cloak that speaks up first—their hands laced together before them.

"H, hello, it's good to see everyone; I hope you've been well. Umm...I'm Shamsiel."

Despite their words trailing towards the end, their words are spoken gently as a small, nervous smile can be seen from under their mask. Around them a small bird circles above their head before landing on their shoulder to chirp a few times before taking off to the skies again.

Following Shamsiel's introduction, the one in silver lifts a hand to wave. They show none of the same shyness of their peer, a friendly smile showing under their hood as a small fox pads out to peer more closely at those they've come to greet. "You can call me Suriel. It's nice to finally meet you all!"

The final of the trio is the tallest and the one in the cloak of night, who stands with arms crossed under their layered cloak. Their daemon appears to actually be observing from a nearby rooftop rather than coming closer initially, head tilting to get a proper eagle's eye view on everyone. "Baraqiel. I see you've been just as busy as we've been."

Even with the obvious distance between them and their daemon, they don't seem to be in any of the discomfort that any of you have experienced with testing your own daemon bonds. They just stand behind their companions, apparently keeping an eye on things.

... well, since Baraqiel didn't say it. "We're the Celestial Watchers. You can talk to the Temporals, too, if you want - just ask for Satariel, Rameel, or Yomiel when you send a bottle and they'll come to you. But for now, it's just us. Ask us anything you want and we'll do our best to answer!"

Baraqiel shrugs and spreads their hands a little from under their cloak. Have at them.


With the start of a new week, travelers may find something... interesting happening around them. While this doesn't seem to have any effect on the local population, given that they don't have daemons to call their own, it does hit each and every one of you. At random, there appear to be hiccups of golden dust afflicting your daemons briefly. It doesn't cause them any pain, but they do appear to be abruptly shifting between their three forms at times. This can either just be a series of hiccups—changing between all three forms in a flicker, before returning to the one they had been in originally—or just a blip from one to another until either the next time they naturally change forms, or the next hiccup. This effect lasts all week.

And, no, you still don't have your things from home. Stay tuned.

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Comments

Location Changes

[grigori]

MONDAY
★ On the boulevard, the welcome message from your initial arrival has been replaced with a series of scrolls containing your likenesses. Take a closer look?
★ All of the kitchen knives in the biggest cafe on the boulevard are gone, as are a set of cutlery (spoon, fork, butter knife) and a lone butter knife. There are no brooms in the storage closet. Many kitchens actually seem to be missing knives, including the hotel's.
★ One of the smaller cafes is also in a great deal of disarray. At some point, someone tossed and generally wrecked the seating area. The kitchen is untouched, thankfully - apparently the person responsible at least respected the sanctity of the kitchen.
★ Numerous clothing stores and homes have been broken into to a variety of extremes, and articles of clothing have been stolen. We're pretty sure you all know where those went.
★ Various stores have seen a lot of pilfering of writing utensils, journals/notebooks/paper, tapes, books, and maps. Someone also decided to hit up the jeweler, but didn't steal the entire store - there's just some blank spots in the display.
★ Someone made a small bonfire and burnt their nun outfit. Wow, rude?
★ The operahouse door has a dent in the wood, but is unlocked now, so you shouldn't have to assault it anymore?
★ Some homes have broken windows and kicked in doors. Alright, I guess.
★ The butcher and the general store have no salt in them.
★ Some of the outer "walls" have been pushed into greater disrepair, due to people climbing on them or just. Outright stealing chunks and rubble from buildings.
★ There's just a random, heeled boot on the city limits. The boot is now gone. Mystery.
★ More buildings, both homes and shops, have broken windows and doors. Inside are an assortment of bricks and rocks. What do you guys have against windows, damn.

Of important note is that someone decided to leave traps around the city. With the storm clearing up, there are some tripwires and alarms that are older and clearly from the residents of Cittàgazze. They don't appear to have had much use? But there are some newer ones -


- A net in a tree within the courtyard that is triggered by tripwire to drop
- Various lines of wire/rope with cans to make alerts in alleyways and on the outskirts of accessible town
- Four pitfalls, also on the edges of the accessible town
... these are going to catch other PCs more than it will spectres, both new and old, so. Good luck, everybody.

TUESDAY
★ The body found in the woods has been cremated as of late Tuesday.

WEDNESDAY
★ Other, various houses are missing their curtains for some reason, too.
★ The body found at the lighthouse has been buried with a marker over the grave.
★ There are gouges on top of the opera house roof.

THURSDAY
★ You guys were doing so good? You stopped for a whole two days, no big property destruction. But in a nicer home near the boulevard, for some reason, one of those clunky box TVs has been cut clean in half. How? Why? What is wrong with all of you?
★ A small bulletin board from has gone missing. Mystery.
★ There are no more knives available in the city. You guys, and whoever else took knives before you, have really done a number on the city's cutlery.

FRIDAY
★ The cafe door's lock is broken.
★ More shop windows around the courtyard have been broken.
★ The hotel kitchen is an absolute disaster, with about half of the plates and cups shattered near the door. Everywhere you look is a mess, like someone tried to cook and failed. Did they burn something? They definitely burned something. Maybe the water all over the place was a botched attempt to clean up? A prime example of why we can't have nice things.

SATURDAY
★ The hotel kitchen has been cleaned up! Thank god.

Local NPC Interactions

[grigori]

[ comment here if you wish to have an interaction with an npc from the world. please note, however, that they will not be as involved as they were on the intro mingle. feel free to comment with a list of things your characters might be wanting to do to interact with the npcs, and we'll give you a summary in answer. you can have a short back-and-forth thread in this fashion! ]

[stinky]

[qi rong is going to go looking for the kids after the announcement! what's their status



and also xie lian is coming with him]

[cranelike]

(After announcements on Friday, Tsurumaru will go check on the children! He'll want to know how they were the night before.

Just general little questions with no real explanation like did they sleep well? Was everything okay? No one was afraid last night right.)

SLEEP TIGHT...

[grigori]

good night
a long, long sleep, a famous sleep

 

 

Come 11 PM, wherever you are this fine evening, you'll find that something has... happened. If you attempt to leave the place you've found yourself in—even if you had every intention of going somewhere else to sleep—you'll discover that the way is barred. The doors are locked, the windows are unbreakable, or there's some sort of force preventing you from crossing over an unmarked boundary that you were able to cross maybe even a minute ago.

Your daemons aren't able to travel, either, so it's not just you. Any attempts to get a flying or swimming daemon through by alternative means will also fail to much the same results. Even beating on doors and windows and walls and barriers will do nothing but bring pain.

Whatever is happening, you're locked down for the night. Better get comfortable, and hope that it's not too crowded wherever you are. Any attempts to make contact with others in neighboring locations will go unheard, though maybe you can see one another..? It might make the night interesting, playing some charades.



But then, time still passes. Strangely, in a city so devoid of animal life, the next hour is filled with soft birdsong outside of wherever you've holed up for the night against your will. No matter where you look, you aren't able to find them.

As midnight arrives, you'll find yourselves hearing a song, no matter where you are. It's something hummed by a chorus of beautiful, possibly feminine voices—hard to say, with the distant quality of it—that resonates with each and every one of you.

Should you be somewhere that you can see outside, into the world that you've found yourselves in, you'll see the whorling and glittering lights of an aurora far above. And, as the song seems to come to a close...

You fall asleep to the sound of alarms across the city. Happy dreams, travelers.

RISE AND SHINE

[grigori]

good morning
a contradiction of terms

 

 

Come 9 AM, the morning greets you with a song, hummed by that same chorus you heard the night before. It begins as a soft, distant humming, leaving an unsettled feeling in you and your souls, and soon the echoes of their song reach your ears.

What more is there to do? What more is there to see?
Nothing more than impossibility.

Red - a lamb to the slaughter.
Black - shadows that hide the stalker.
Red - the soul has lost its fire.
Black - hunger and desire.

The barricade has never won
So now he, too, is dead and gone.
Now the final stage is set
Filled with nothing but regret.
Awaken, travelers, for one of your number has been lost. Surely you'll have questions, but perhaps it's best to save your messages in bottles for another day, as none of the Watchers will answer.

[linearcrash]

[ On the first floor of the inn, scratching his head ]

Uh. Did anyone else hear that song? That was creepy as hell, yo.

[perceivedrevalry]

[Guess who threw like a dozen bottles that will have no answer: this guy He's pretty dang upset.

Just ignore him while he throws them all into the sea]

HEAD COUNT HEAD COUNT

[winebar]

[As everyone is awoken by the creepy song about how someone is probably dead, and see fit to filter down from their rooms or wherever they fell asleep to the hotel lobby, van Zieks is there, looking slightly disheveled as if he fell asleep in the clothes he is wearing (because he did.)]

We need to gather as a group again. If that song has any level of meaning behind it, we may have a body on our hands, and need to work out if anyone is missing.
[He is ALL BUSINESS today, as he is every day. Take him as seriously as you like.]

[perfectdistance]

[Nero's walking into the hotel from elsewhere. Immediately frowning at the state of the kitchen.]

Can I clean that up, or is it part of the crime?

[senjinrouha]

[ he just spreads his arms. sup zieksy. ]

[bloodyromance]

[Spike doesn't seem too horribly bothered, more annoyed that he was trapped in his room even after he went to go take a midnight stroll.]

Empty Chairs at Empty Tables does feel a bit pointed, yeah.

[booksleeves]

[Once she wakes up, she's finally wandering down from the top floor of the opera house, looking uncharacteristically disheveled.]

. . . Do you really think so?

I can account for those of us who were upstairs at the opera house. Miss Yelena, Mr. Sholmes, and Mr. Rosenkrantz.

[escardos]

Mister van Zieks! I’m glad to see you’re okay!

[ to everyone’s misfortune, here is flat. ]

[linearcrash]

[ Oh it's this dude. ]

Is there a point? We'll find the body when we find it.

[perceivedrevalry]

[Well it sure is a certainty Revali is unmistakable. Once someone sees his feathery form moving around, they know he's fine and unharmed.

He's coming from outside, though, entering the lobby instead of descending from the rooms]

It was obvious since last night something was deeply wrong. Looks like whoever said there were alarm mechanisms all over town was right.

[sponsoredby]

We've had a few bodies on our hands already. But whatever this is, feels different.

[ He air is much more oppressive and he's pretty somber right now. ]

[third_alternative]

[ could rex make fun of van zieks here? yeah. but he's not. ]

Might wanna start counting, make sure it's not multiple bodies while we're at it.

[burnstrike]

[ also walking in from elsewhere and looking a little disoriented because wtf is sleeping in this late ]

Seriously? Are we thinking the spectres did something, or...

[veraltwin]

[Alisaie, meanwhile, is just giving van Zieks an unimpressed look.]

And you are who, precisely?

[who died and made you leader]

[taptap]

[ a-qing seems a little damp? damn, wonder where she ended up last night.

but she's curled up somewhere in the hotel lobby, watching quietly ]

[bloodread]

This is how we're doing this? Preseeeent. [ He's alert though despite his attitude, and coming in from the outside. ]

[magichammer]

[ she's going to wander in like

2 hours after the headcount got started, hope you all didn't declare her dead or eat her pizza ]

Huh? What's going on?

[aono]

I think you're takin' a song a bit too seriously.

[He yawns and stretches, and at the exact same moment Rinkou (in cat form) yawns and stretches too.]

'Sides, isn't it the adults who have to worry about the spectators?

[spectres, Rin.]

[reflash]

The theatricality of everything last night and this morning seems to point to someone wanting us to believe there's been a death among the people who were brought here.