hadriel_logs | Event Log: The Beach Episode

Entry tags:

Event Log: The Beach Episode

Who: Everyone!
What: The event log for the transition to our new planet!
Where: The city, which has now been fragmented onto four separate islands.
When: May 27th-June 10th
Warnings: Surf's up! If by 'surf', you mean separation from your friends, weird sea creatures, and cold rainfall.

The sun and the sand and a drink in your hand- well, it all sounded pretty nice when you voted for the island planet, but ultimately what you're getting is a bit less glamorous.

The transition takes place instantaneously, with very little noteworthy shakeup, though those of you who are particularly in-tune with the supernatural may feel a bit dizzied or nauseated by the sudden movement. And that's exactly what it is: for those of you who are outside, the change is fairly noticeable, as in the span of a single blink, what used to be miles of desert is now rocky ocean. The city is simply in one place one moment, and then somewhere entirely new a second later.

And that somewhere new is exciting! The islands have plenty of landscape to explore and weather conditions to adjust to, fish to catch, and- wait, how do you get to the other islands? What if your friends or your home or the bar is on these other islands? Enjoy having to figure out who is where and how you're going to get by with only a small fraction of the city to work off of- hopefully those boats will come sooner rather than later...

► This log covers May 27th-June 10th.
► Feel free to make your own logs as well!
► Please tag headers of threads with content warnings where they apply
► Please put your character's name and open/closed in the subject line of your starters!
► If you drown or get eaten by an alien shark, let us know here.

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North Island: May 27

Caedra is mid-word when the shift happens: a sudden lurch, a bit like a planeshift but somehow not that either. Alarmed, she looks up from her pen and the paper in her lap, from her seat near the edge of the park, to find that where once there was a river, there is now a broad, gray sea. She can just make out an island far to the south, with what looks like one of the temple buildings.

The islands, why did they have to vote for the islands? Why did the vote have to take place in a way she couldn't alter it? A flash of memory clouds her judgment momentarily, with a vision of a gray seaside city she spent far too long in. The city she died in.

Raindrops splatter and dampen the paper. She takes her pen and throws it abruptly at the water in a sudden flare of anger - but it hits a rock with a loud clatter of plastic against stone.

"Did you vote for this?" she asks whoever it might be who happens to walk by.

West Island: May 28

After some time spent exploring, Caedra has the layout of the new place mostly worked out, though there are a few holes in her knowledge still remaining. It's easy enough to fly across the narrowest straits between the islands but it takes time - the city is more spread out now than it used to be. She eventually finds her way back to the house she had claimed as her own.

Her writing is still there. The thorns are gone. Everything else looks untouched. She steps back out onto the porch and pulls up her hood, more to keep her hair dry than to protect from the cold. Temperature doesn't bother her, and in fact her private domain on Abyssal layer 418 is far colder than this anyway, with its black vines icy to the touch and its rivers of liquid nitrogen.

She surveys her altered surroundings, summons her sword, and begins to cast, gesturing over the terrain with the tip of the rapier, and then holds her pose and focus for several minutes. Once again, the illusion of a dense thorny thicket appears across the landscape, radiating out from her house, looking completely impenetrable.

Good, that should keep the strays out again.

Around, your choice of date

Caedra doesn't bother to hide that she can just fly from island to island. She goes to have a look at the colosseum once again as she considers her plans for the fighting arena. She checks up on the Speakeasy once she has found its new location, and will ask whoever is tending the bar if they have coffee liqueur in stock.

At times, she can be seen sitting on a beach at the narrow points between islands, looking out over the water, waiting for people who might want to cross.

"Need a ride?" she will offer - but be wary if you accept, for her prices can be steep.

Edited 2018-05-27 20:58 (UTC)

"I am glad to see we are still on the same island."

Semiyon, bundled in a heavy sand colored blanket, stands a few paces off. His hair is too short to be much affected by the rain, but having been snatched to Hadriel from the desert, he has few warm clothes to speak of, so for now the blanket draped neatly around his shoulders will suffice. He trusts he shall readapt to cold quickly, after all he is still Russian even if he's spent the last two decades in the Israeli sun.

Lance is not super thrilled with the whole island thing himself; he'd been out to get a little exercise exploring when the shift happened, and suddenly found himself near an ocean. Awesome. This isn't going to be a problem at all.

And of course he happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time--or the right place at the right time?--to encounter someone else, and not just someone else, but someone he knows by description and from the network but has never met. Aaaand she's asking a question, so he can't just pretend to have never been here.

At least he can answer honestly--

"No. I definitely did not vote for this." And it's probably obvious by his tone that he's not too impressed they ended up here. That said, he might as well go ahead and ask, "It's Caedra, right?

Edited 2018-05-27 21:26 (UTC)

"I'm on every island," she replies, perhaps a little smug, from her spot on the porch. Even so, she feels more trapped than ever. The endless ocean that spreads out from these islands is so much harder for her to travel over than that broad desert that had surrounded them before.

The porch extends from a side door above ground. The house, being mostly upside-down, is entered from a door that would otherwise have been the loft window. So from her location above, she waves him closer. "Come inside, out of the cold," she says, as she heads inside herself to go and let him in.

"That's right," she replies with a sigh, still frustrated by everything else and not really caring who she takes it out on.

She looks him over, though, and frowns. "And you are?" she asks. He looks vaguely familiar, but so do most here. It's not that big a city.

He'll just ignore that look over, more concerned with keeping the conversation on a neutral tone. "Lance. Good to meet you."

Or something. 'Good' works; it's polite.

Lance glances out past her toward the water, noticing the temple in the distance, and frowns. Great, that's... Pretty damn far, and the water looks about as dangerous--if not more so--than he'd been concerned it might. "Are you one of the fortunate people who doesn't need boats to get around?" He's pretty sure he knows the answer, but it's more about her response itself than the yes or no.

He does as directed moving to the door.

"Then how do the other islands compare to this one? Because from what I've seen this one does not impress." If he had wanted gray and dismal weather he would have stayed in Moscow. Except in actuality that would not have been possible given the fact that he had been run out of his home country.

"Of course. It doesn't look very far." She hasn't had time to try it out and the distance looks like it could make teleportation hard, but flight would be no trouble, just a little more time-consuming.

Plus, it has the added benefit of being something she can easily grant others as well, for a time - and that gives her a potential tactical advantage, should a situation arise where it would be useful. Her own allies might become more able to cross the water than the others. These are the questions she considers most important, right now - more than finding out where said allies are at the moment.

She shuts the door as he comes in, and with a few words in her native tongue and a simple gesture she evaporates the water off of him and his blanket. That's probably better.

"At a glance, they're the same. Cold, wet, and rocky, and seemingly isolated from any large landmass, though I can't say I tried to go out to sea very far. It's terrible. We're essentially trapped in this miserable place."

Edited 2018-05-27 22:07 (UTC)

Okay, well, that was less helpful than he'd hoped, but then again unlike most of the shady people here Caedra doesn't seem like a complete idiot.

"Flying, teleporting, or something else cool?" He asks genuinely, not just trying to find out for a practical reason but genuinely curious. Despite being able to do some magic now himself, he's still pretty amazed by it.

May 27th-29th

The bakery is gone. Many of the buildings he recognizes are gone. He cannot locate a good number of his friends. The only small relief is that he was moved with his home and that, being someone who hates wearing less than two layers at any given moment, Delmar is well supplied for such weather when it comes to wardrobe. He's bundled up in his heavy overcoat and green felt hat as he fretfully searches the island looking for familiar people and places.

May 30 - June 10th

Once his friends and his bakery are accounted for, Delmar finds himself drawn to long walks along the shoreline, something from his routine back home that he's missed desperately. True, this is no Rockaway Beach with its dazzling sunset and unbroken horizon but with the gray skies and chilly weather its not too far off the mark of New York in the fall and winter. So he can be found trudging up and down near the water, occasionally reading from a book as he walks, at other times simply carrying it under his arm and staring off into the distance.

He'd be more than glad for company if you'd care to join him.

"All of the above, depending on what's called for," she replies, perhaps a little hesitantly. It's just odd to be approached by someone she doesn't know and suddenly be asked these sorts of questions. Especially when the whole thing has put her in more of a sour mood than usual.

"Why, are you hoping for a free ride or something?"

"No, just curious. Magic doesn't exist in my world." As far as he knows, anyway. But he catches the tone, and decides to back off a little; no reason to test his luck, or just upset her in general even without considering her reputation.

"I didn't mean to pry, though, sorry."

Him and so many others. At this point she just assumes most of these people are nonmagical - it seems like the ones who are tend to be the exceptions, not the rule. It's always good news, now that she has accepted that it seems to be the way of so many material planes. It only means advantages for her and her kind.

She seems to relax, though, whether due to the comment or his apology or both. The cause isn't clear but she looks out at the water again, then folds the paper she was writing on into quarters and slips it into her coat to keep it dry. "Lance. I've heard your name before, come to think of it. You work at the clinic, is that right? One of the healers there?" Or doctors, whatever it is they call themselves. She's not sure the distinction matters.

He's glad she seems to relax a bit, and doesn't think much of her question; it's not really secret or anything, and it's only fair to answer since he's been asking her some things.

"I do work at the clinic on occasion, but I'm not a medical doctor." He can do enough first aid to be useful and has a new healing spell, but dealing with physical injuries is definitely not his area of expertise and that's part of why he took a step back from the clinic in general. "I'm a psychologist."

That's not a word that the system the gods have put in place seems able to translate for her, at least not in a way she finds satisfying. But that's fine, new words are interesting and this place continues to provide them.

"Psychologist," she repeats, sounding it out. "What does that mean?"

The question is one he hears often, and he vastly prefers to it some of the other responses his profession gets, so he definitely doesn't mind explaining. "A psychologist studies how people think, and how the mind works. I'm specifically a clinical psychologist, so I work in helping people resolve mental or emotional issues; basically, where a medical doctor would treat physical injuries or illnesses, a clinical psychologist treats mental ones."

Edited 2018-05-27 23:12 (UTC)

Despite his fairly thorough explanation, Caedra is left puzzled. Mental illness? Can a mind be sick? She genuinely has no context for this sort of thing, especially if his world isn't magical - because she certainly is familiar with mind-altering spells such as Geas or Feeblemind, and presumably a strong enough individual could train to remove those sorts of curses but that doesn't fit with what he seems to be suggesting.

"I don't think I understand," she admits. "People think differently all the time, right? How can you possibly claim to know how someone should think?"

It's something that's always interesting to him; something like magic which is completely new for Lance, but his profession--which, of course, he considers pretty mundane--is just as unusual to them as magic is for him.

"You're right; people do think differently, and have different experiences, and I definitely don't claim to know how or what someone is thinking or should thing. But there are some patterns and generalities, and many mental health issues have tested and effective treatments because of those general similarities."

He's quiet a moment, trying to think of a simple example. "Take a phobia, for example. A true phobia results in extreme fear when faced with whatever the subject of the phobia is, because the brain is associating it with an immediate and very real danger even if the object is actually completely harmless. Understanding that mechanism allows for developing a treatment plan, such as exposure therapy, where the individual confronts their phobia in a very controlled environment. Over time, the link between the object and danger diminishes due to multiple safe interactions with it, and so the individual often has a much less serious reaction when encountering their phobia in everyday life."

Sorry for all that, Caedra; he gets a little talkative about his field.

"Well, fuck."

She got her wish for the oceanic setting, apparently. There was just one hang-up; the shift happened when she was on the other side of Hadriel, away from home. The city had arrived intact before, so she had no reason to think that would change. But now, she's staring across the water at the island which contains her home and no way to reach it.

At least she's not alone. Glancing over at Barkspawn, who whines, she pats him. "Eh, it could be worse. We have the orchard and hot springs with us, after all. Besides, we can check on the others...."

Pulling out her phone, she paces back and forth while making a call that, while technically private to housemates, can still be overheard to anyone nearby.

Later on, the dwarf and her dog can be spotted under a tree in the orchard while they have an unexpected picnic. Or perhaps they're found while Aren is sliding into the warm waters of a spring, sighing in contentment and taking a moment of pleasure in this upheaval. Either way, she doesn't seem too stressed about the circumstances.

Edited 2018-05-27 23:35 (UTC)

Yep, sorry in return, Lance - she starts to zone out halfway through his description. It's a whole lot of words about something she has no real interest in. Fear is a tool she uses to intimidate her victims - if they're afraid of unreasonable things otherwise, she doesn't particularly care. Mortals are already usually afraid of a lot of things they most definitely should worry about.

"Sounds like a lot of work for something that isn't very important," she scoffs. "Your people must lead easy lives if that's the sort of thing they worry about. Are you from that place - something States?" Everyone from there that she's met so far is tedious at best.

Okay, well, that's more the response he's used to. Oh well.

"It was a basic example." Lance offers in return, not interested in trying to actually argue with her, but he has to say something. "And yes, the United States, although that's definitely not the only place where psychology is a field."

"No, but it's so far the most boring of all the places I've heard about," she retorts. "And yet somehow there are so many of you here. What do you make of this city and its people, being from a place like that?"

May 27, West island

[Law is in the clinic when it happens, so he doesn't notice the instant change, but very shortly after it happens he can tell there's something different - a change in the light, a sensation of moisture where there was only dryness before, and a scent in the air that goes straight to his cold, shriveled heart. He abandons what he's doing and runs out to see that it's happened, his choice won the poll...

If you'll excuse him, he's going to be standing there on the rocks at the edge of the island, watching the sea pound the shore and the softer sun glimmer on the distant waves for the rest of the day. Anyone can approach him there, he won't push anyone away, particularly if they want to ask him why he's so entranced. After all, Law doesn't just stand around staring into space most days, this behavior is weird for him.]

Anytime, West or East islands

[the one thing Law will not be mentioning openly is that he can easily hop from island to island, but chances are good people are going to find out eventually. Anyone who knows him well enough can probably guess. Anyone who has seen him use Shambles should know full well what he can do. Everyone else might catch a glimpse of him in the process: walking to the tip of one island, creating a Room that encompasses the land on both sides of the strait, and then a twist of his wrist to blink himself from one island to the next. Whether you know he can do it or witness him doing it, if you want a ride, you'll have to ask nicely.

And even if you ask nicely he might say no. But you won't know until you try, right?]

East Island, inside shore, any day

[Despite having subsisted on those tiny, weak fish in the pools for the first month or so on desert-world, Law will never get tired of fish. That's why he can be found as close to the water as he can safely get, on some of those weird rock-pillars, fishing up a storm. Nothing tastes quite like ocean fish, dwelling in salt water, swimming against the powerful waves and currents. But there's not a lot of time in the day to waste waiting for a tug on the line, he's either working by net or by Ope-Ope Fruit, telekinetically flinging fish up out of the water and onto the rocks. Look at the bounty of the sea! Come on, this is more than one man alone can eat, help him haul some in and take some home for yourself...]

Wildcard

[legit anything, clinic stuff or pirate stuff come at me bro. Law can be on any island though he will be sticking to West and East because the clinic and his house are in those locations]

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Event Log: The Beach Episode

Caedra | OTA

West Island Buddies!

North Island

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Delmar | West Island | OTA

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Aren | East Island | OTA

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May 27

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Trafalgar Law - OPEN