wilderlands | THE SQUAD GETS BRUGHED [mod event] [free for all] [video]

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THE SQUAD GETS BRUGHED [mod event] [free for all] [video]

[It starts with sparkles because of course there are sparkles. The sparkles surround several people, there's a poof, and then they hear the voices again, the same ones that whispered to everyone when they were brought to this world. The voices tell them they must wait in a waiting place, until it's their time to act. While they're there, the mirrors will let them see.]

[With that, several people find themselves in the fairy realm known as the Brugh.]

[Brainiac 5 is one of them and he is not amused.]

More random teleportation. Superb.

[Brainiac gets his mirror to increase its surface area and sets it to float so people can see what he's seeing over his shoulder.]

[Right now he's in the crystal gardens of the castle, surrounded by delicate flowers and sculptures made of crystal and glass. The crystal seems to have spread all over, growing like vines or weeds, threading its way through the rest of the castle.]

Has anyone else found themselves in new surrounds?

Again.

[ooc: Please read this post for information about the event.]

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No!

[ The world tilts in Simmons's mirror as he gets up from wherever he's sitting. He's definitely still back at Melai Temple. ]

Damn, that doesn't look like anything from around here.

[ They could be anywhere, and maybe even in danger! ]

Shouldn't you be getting zapped back to the rest of us if you're far away?

I heard the voices again, the ones that told us all we had to save the Green. They said I had to wait in a waiting place, until it's my time to act. They said the mirrors would still let me see.

[Brainy starts walking around cautiously examining the plants, trying to find a winding trail out of the gardens. They're rather large.]

This was by design. Whatever brought us to this world may be trying to micromanage our placement in the group to manipulate events in its favor.

[Brainy tilts his head slightly.]

In more casual parlance, I believe some of us may have been "benched," until such a time that it's beneficial to reintroduce us to the group.

...It's pretty bad that the most reassuring thing we have going on here is creepy head voices.

[ This sucks. Simmons may not be best friends with these guys, but they're his team now. He wants to help and has no way to. ]

"Creepy" though they may be, they're obviously an attempt on the part of some sort of sentient being or beings to communicate with us.

[Brainy briefly rolls his eyes skyward.]

I don't know about everyone else but this isn't the first time an alien intelligence has kidnapped me in the hope I'd render some kind of aid and I sincerely doubt it'll be the last.

Oh good, cause this is a first for me?

I mean, there've been aliens. And people asking me to help them. It's just this is a very different combination of things.

Be careful.

[ Robbie is walking through a room that at first can't be really seen properly, just bits of high walls and ceilings around him, because he's holding the mirror like he'd be holding a cellphone to text. He glances up frequently, so as to not walk into anything or anyone, but he watches Brainy in the mirror until he's done speaking without interruption. ]

I have no idea where I am right now. Another statue garden.

[ He flips the mirror over and holds it out in a straight, stiff arm while he does a full pivot to show a good chunk of the room with its eerily frozen crowds. Robbie nearly bumps into one. ]

Whoops, 'scuse me.

[ Robbie is too busy looking at the people to see them through the mirrors lining the room, but there are two Elves within about 10 feet of him that will be seen far more clearly through the mirror than his own eyes. The mirror returns to showing his face.

His mouth is a thin line. Robbie isn't a genius, but he's got a flare for drama. This is tripping his creepysense. ]

Hey, B? [ Super cazh, not at all worried, nope. ] You don't think this is the midstage of the petrification process in the Emerald City, do you? Only cause I don't remember elves.

[The effect of viewing the Elves through the mirror is the same for someone else in the Brugh as it is for someone outside it. The mirrors reveal truth, and because Brainy see the Elves through a mirror that means he gets a glimpse of the true forms of the Elves, underneath the thin glamour spread over them.]

Robbie.

[He breathes in a shaky breath.]

I would highly recommend that you vacate that particular room.

[ You know what's utterly terrifying? When the methodical genius type gets spooked. Robbie's eyebrows tick up, and he looks around the room again. He's missed something, he knows he's missed something, and whatever it is, Brainy didn't miss it, because Brainy doesn't seem driven to leave his own area. Yet he's warning Robbie out of this one.

What is it? It takes far too long for him to notice.

Robbie doesn't start so much as his spine jerks upward to its full extension when his eyes drift over an Elven reflection in the mirror. ]

_Christ. [ He takes a breath to get his voice out of the bottom of his throat and tries again. ] Yeah, yours looks cooler. I'll come find you.

[ He has no idea where Brainy is or how, but he's suddenly afraid that the two-faced Elves are not only pretending to be Elves but pretending to be frozen. Anywhere is preferable. ]

Keep talking to me. [ Robbie disappears from the mirror, which swings with his steps. Holding it up isn't helping him exit quickly. ] Maybe I'll hear you for real when I get close.

[ It will also make him feel less alone in this nightmarish tableau. ]

Edited 2018-04-07 03:39 (UTC)

[He reigns his voice back in again to its usual sturdy - and sometimes comforting - near-monotone.]

These gardens are sprawling but I'm not seeing an exit - ah, never mind, there's one.

I'll try to relocate myself to the nearest hallway so you don't have to wander through this labyrinth to find me.

[ Monotones are good at the moment. Brainy sounds reliable and calm, which is what Robbie needs as he tries to balance easing his way out of the throne room with getting the hell out of Dodge. ]

Aw, I don't get to play in the hedge maze? But I brought my croquet mallet and everything.

[ ... doh. Yeah, The Shining is exactly what he needs to be thinking about right now. Walking through a ghostly party, trying to not look too hard in the mirror, where half the crowd is ferocious, haughty, and alien. And not alien in the delicate green dude way, but alien in sense that he can almost see how they'd cock their heads to the side to survey him through slanted eyes, lips curled back into a smile so sharply toothy that it's a threat to his jugular.

The pattern of the floor changes as he steps into a hallway. Robbie leans his back against a wall and waits, half expecting to be followed out. Nothing comes. Five, ten, twenty seconds, and his heart is only pounding more. His head is not in the game. It's in four inches of space in front of the doorway beside him, that he can no longer see through. There's a long slender hand coming through any second. Any second. Any second.

Should he talk? He hasn't woken them yet. Any second. No, don't be an idiot. It's only an illusion. They're probably not even real. They're probably Arcade's murderbots.

That's actually comforting. ]

I ditched the party. You better be worth it. Should I go right or left?

It doesn't matter which you start with, but keep alternating directions on turns. [Left, right, left right.] It'll put distance between you and that room.

I'll stay put. There's a better chance we'll find one another if one of us is staying still.

[He pulls out a small metal tool from his toolbelt and starts tapping it on a wall. Unwise, perhaps, potentially drawing attention to himself, but he's not going to let Robbie undertake all the risk, wandering alone through the hallways where he might run head first into some unknown threat.]

Every so often, stifle your mirror somehow and see if you can hear the tapping to follow it.

Sounds good.

[ At a near run, he follows the advice as best he can. Sometimes, right or left is room, and Robbie is trying to stick to hallways. He can smell the steam off savory, hot food that wafts out of one such intersection and clamps his hand tightly over the mirror to stifle it, backing away as quietly as he can. They don’t call them sneakers for nothing.

His hand loosens on the mirror after he’s made two more turns, but Robbie doesn’t dare say anything now. Someone is having dinner. This particular corridor is almost pitch black with greyish light at either end. The halls it connects both have windows, but it’s still unnerving to walk through the darkness in between. He can just make out where more torches should be – empty rings on the walls, with no sign where the torches have gone.

For that matter, who lit the rest of the torches?

When he reaches the turn, he can hear the echo, or stereo whatever, of Brainy’s tapping. A confused right, and a surer left, and Robbie can see the Coluan twenty yards down the hall. He whispers at the mirror, but it carries too well in the open, stone hallway as he jogs up to Brainy. ]

Stop that, they’ll hear you.

[Brainy stops tapping the tool immediately and sighs a visible sigh of relief to see that Robbie made it to him safely. After putting it away, there is a brief - very brief - touch to Robbie's arm, a subtle gesture of reassurance. He's not one for physical gestures but Robbie's obviously very shaken and he's used to being the not-shaken one. Sometimes his friends need a steadying hand.]

[He leaves his mirror to hover so everyone else can still see what's going on and speaks in a whisper.]

we need to locate Monika. And we need to find the door Phos is near and either let them in - if it seems more dangerous for them to be outside than inside - or use it to vacate the premises.

[ The touch is barely noticed, but the effect it has is clear. That's all Robbie needed - something to ground him back in "reality", a real hand to replace the stringy, grasping imagined ones. Just a quiet check of no, the Overlook Hotel didn't swallow him whole.

And instructions, excellent. He can work with being told what to do. Robbie has never been much of a leader; he makes a far better second banana. Brainy has a plan, and it sounds good enough to get on with.

Something clicks into place like a curtain dropping on Act I, and the fear and doubt is tucked behind something smooth, bright, and certain. ]

If you're listening, Monika, Phos, we're sending out the search posse because, inside or out, you do not want to be alone here.

[ There was no way he wasn't using the word posse. Robbie points back in the direction that he came. ]

I don't know how good your inner dungeon map is, but if you take a right, a left, and two rights, you come to a... sideways T. If you go straight - I don't know what's down there, but you can smell the food from the hallway. It's dead quiet though.

[ Beat. ]

Check that, it's quiet.

[Phos looks thoroughly bewildered, holding the mirror at arm's length. Hell, the mirror itself is still kind of novel and bizarre, so the sudden wild shift in scenery is definitely beyond them. The background of the shot is filled with dead trees, a heavy layer of snow covering everything.]

It's winter here! How does that even work?!

[At least they don't seem cold or anything despite their extremely seasonally inappropriate short shorts.]

[ Tim is quite obviously still at the Temple, and he's frowning into the mirror, turning his head as if it will help him see more of Phos' surroundings. ]

I think the easy answer is magic. The problem is that it's also the hard answer. Are you all right?

[Well, they aren't damaged or anything. That's something. But as strange as the group is and as out of place as they feel, they didn't want to be alone out...wherever they are.]

I'll be tired in a few hours, probably, but I guess I'm fine.

[They frown, frustrated, but after a moment they just spin the mirror around, sweeping it over the area. The others can see whatever the mirror is pointed at, right? They move it a little too quickly to let viewers really get a good look, not used to this kind of "tech" or anything or the sort, but it at least communicates the setting of a snowy forest before they pause it on a castle looming a ways away.]

It's all just trees and then that.

[ He assumes Phos means when night comes and nods - too late to be seen, because the mirror moves.

Tim blinks several times at the castle. It has an idyllic look, in a way. If he was told to picture a castle, it would end up very similar to this. It's not like a real castle, which were generally squat and square and utilitarian for siege. ]

Hm. I don't know what I would do if I were you. On one hand, it's going to get even colder when night falls, and you don't want to fall asleep outside with snow on the ground. But on the other, if I was the person behind all of this? That castle is where I live.

Sleeping in snow isn't that bad.

[They definitely dozed off once or twice while out working over the winter. It's not really soft, not ike blankets and pillows or falling asleep out in the long grass, but it's better than solid stone.

At that last suggestion, though, they spin the mirror back around to make a perplexed face at it.]

But if that's where whoever did this might be, isn't that just more reason to go check it out?

Okay, I stand corrected. Sleeping in the snow is bad if you're a humanoid who is affected by temperature on relatively the same scale as a homo sapiens.

[ Tim sounds amused, but the tone isn't sarcastic at all. He's simply amending his original assumption, and filing it away as useful that Phos can handle prolonged exposure to freezing temperatures. You never know what might come in handy. ]

With a group or a plan, yes. I'd say preferably both. I don't know if walking up to the front door and inviting yourself in is a good idea.

[ It's not. ]

[The humans can't handle cold? Is that why they all cuddle around the fire at night? Weird. That's lame. Phos frowns at the mirror.]

But whoever did all this was asking for our help. And if they really are bad news for some reason, then it's better if you people don't get close. You're all squishy.

[They're fragile, sure, but the rest of the squad probably doesn't know that yet. And they're confident in their ability to handle things alone these days.]]

You shouldn't trust whoever did this, Phos. On a basic level, they're kidnappers. It doesn't really matter what their reasoning is. They didn't ask for help; they demanded it and denied any chance of saying no. We can't even walk away.

[ Tim is not a fan of the person or persons who brought them here. It remains to be seen if he is equally not a fan of whoever may or may not be threatening the Green. ]

It's possible that castle is where Robbie and I are currently located. The stonework I'm seeing inside matches the outside.

[It's the same color stone.]

That said, it would perhaps be unwise to knock or otherwise try to open the doors by force from the outside. There's no telling what kind of alarms might be in place and it would be for the best that the beings that Robbie saw frozen in place, er, stay frozen.

But there may be a way for us to safely open the door from within.

I saw them too.

[ Tim looks slightly irritated, but it's not directed at Brainy. It's this hnh, magic put-upon expression because he can't quite parse the situation from a distance through magic mirrors. He wants to be there, where there are things to examine, pick apart, and understand. He feels like the answer is there, and Brainiac 5 will work it out without him.

Your answer is in another castle. ]

Do you think that what I saw in the mirror was real, or is it part of the mirror's enchantment to make anything we focus on too hard seem unappealing? It could be a way to keep us in line...

[ Tim trails off. He doesn't have enough data. ]

Once you've let Phos in - if you can - the three of you should barricade yourselves away from those Elves. If they really are frozen, there's no telling what the rules of the spell is. Maybe they wake up at night, or when the sun hits them, on days that start with S, when blood is spilled - I'll stop coming up with ideas.

The mirrors seem to have no issue when we're focusing on each other, so I think the most likely prospect is that those beings have some kind of psychicly-projected illusion abilities that are still active despite whatever methods were used to freeze them. For psionic illusions, indirect means of viewing the subject can sometimes bypass the intended effect. Mirrors have no mind to alter, after all. Perhaps the same can be said of magic ones.

As for letting Phos in...

[He sighs.]

We really should simply vacate the premises.

But I'm not sure we're adequately supplied for travel through a winter climate. Phos seems unaffected by cold and my clothes are made of synthetics designed for a wide range of temperature extremes but Robbie and Monika lack adequately cold weather clothing.

Also, we haven't the faintest idea where we are. Also, we haven't the faintest idea where the rest of you are...

[So barricading themselves somewhere might be the best they can do.]

[ He's considering this in step, or near enough, with Brainy. ]

They don't have a mind to alter, but they could still be the source of the illusion. I wonder how much it would complicate the enchantment to have it represent anyone but the bearer as a demon. You're probably right, though. There's a purpose to enchanting them if that's their true shape. Occam's razor.

[ Tim nods at Brainy's conclusion, and again as Brainy talks himself out of it. ]

Which means you can't test to see if you can leave the castle, or if you're bound to it the way we were to Emerald City. I wouldn't risk splitting up to see if the teleportation mechanism is still binding you together.

[ Brainiac 5 is brilliant, but he's physically only one person. Tim doesn't know the others well. Monika goes to high school. Robbie makes bad jokes and passed out for everyone to see. Phos is too trusting and more of an unknown quantity. There's no two that Tim would pick to wander away (which half of them aren't dressed for) or to leave behind in an unnerving castle. ]

I've been thinking about that. Obviously, any sort of astral navigation is out of the question, unless you happen to have the right sector memorized. [ Don't tell Batman, but infinite star charts were overlooked in his training program. ] I wish I had a compass or a watch. Something.

[They're frowning slightly, a little perplexed over what kind of trouble could come of just opening a door. They don't exactly have alarms where they come from. Hell, they don't even have doors.]

I could just try a window if you're that worried about the doors. I can see a ton of those even from there.

[They pauses, a thoughtful look crossing their face as they do actually consider it. It's not that they wanted to be snatched away from home like this. And they'd have helped if they were asked. But...ugh. They don't know. It feels wrong to write their mysterious "host" off so quickly after the plea they'd heard.]

Maybe they didn't have a choice. Maybe this was all they could do and we're their only hope.

[ His words are being heard, and that's all Tim can really ask for at the moment. They have no reason to trust him anymore than they should trust whatever nebulous them is responsible for everyone being here. ]

Maybe. I'm only saying be very careful, okay? I want you to keep it in mind that, yes, maybe this is the best they can do, and maybe it's the worst.

It's like crossing a frozen river. You take every precaution to make sure that each step is on solid ice, but eventually you have to make the decision to really put your weight on it.

[That's probably a poor choice of metaphor given they just ran out on and subsequently fell through the ice on a frozen pond like a few hours before waking up here.]

Jeeze, you worry a lot. It's fine, alright? I'm not gonna rush headfirst into something dangerous without thinking about it first.

[ ... there's only so much even Tim can know about in advance. Whether or not his metaphors are that applicable is, unfortunately, something that will have to wait until he knows everyone better. ]

I'm not worried. I'm just... [ Worried. Dammit. Tim sighs. ] Anxious over this teleportation magic dividing us up. There don't seem to be that many of you gone wherever there is.

[ It looks like you're being picked off, and he's worried those frozen Elves have somehow brought you there for dinner. ]

[ hey at least if they're dinner then some elf is gonna have a real bad time trying to bite into a rock]

"Worried" and "anxious" mean the same thing.

I was brought in, too.

[Why.]

At least we're all used to this by now.

[Hiccup's mirror is set up a bit further from himself than some others, primarily so Toothless can see what's going on too.]

What else can you see besides the creepy mockery of Alfheim?

I'm happy to say that I've remained unaffected.

[ All that Brainy gets from Alacruun's mirror is a close-up of some scales.

Womp, womp. ]

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THE SQUAD GETS BRUGHED [mod event] [free for all] [video]

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