Eh-oh and uh-oh. (open RP / ongoing event)

[ugly-old-hat.livejournal.com]

There had been only the most obscure and private of warnings. There were beings who could have predicted the event, with runes or through oracular visions, or by whatever arcane powers they brought with them to Hogwarts -- whatever powers had not fallen prey to the castle's unpredictable field of interference. But how might they have prevented it? And how could they banish it, now that its inevitable advent had begun?

It rose in the sky, bloody and shrieking, three weeks short of All Hallows' Eve. Having risen, it radiated visible rays of unclean light, a light which carried no warmth and lent a cast of jaundice-yellow to the objects thus illumined. Going outdoors was like trying on a new outfit in a fluorescent-lit fitting room. Everything looked subtly wrong.

Mostly its shrieks heralded nothing. They were disconcerting, and raised the hackles on the backs of animals; they caused a mild dyspepsia in some who heard the shrieks, though by no means all. Indeed, some sentient creatures remained unaffected altogether.

But then there were the rarer moments when the shriek of the Baby Sun signified the beginning of something strange. Phenomena that could best be described as Fortean.

The first of these, beginning with the sun's shriek at noon of the day it first rose over Hogwarts, was a rash of spontaneous fires afflicting inanimate and nonsentient objects. This took place not only on the grounds, but also within the castle. Students might reach for their books only to find the book beginning to smolder, then abruptly flaring into a tower of flame. A plate of food in the Great Hall might go to greasy ashes before the first forkful could be taken. The house elves seemed to be spared, at least for now. Pets were safe. But no inanimate object, no matter how cherished or sacred or essential, was immune.

The Baby Sun giggled its loathsome amusement and lolled in the sickly sky. The whole of the grounds lay bathed in its bilious light. Once a student stepped off the grounds, the normal and benevolent sun of Earth was the only sun visible. Yet all of Hogwarts remained under the Baby Sun's mysterious sway, and none could say why or wherefore.

Perhaps some intrepid students might seek to find an answer.



(( OOC: As usual with these kinds of events, you can opt out. Your stuff doesn't need to get burnt; you don't need to get caught outdoors in a rain of fish or blood, or whatever subsequent phenomena take place between now and Halloween. If you want, your character can be unable to detect the Baby Sun or the weird quality of light at all. The mods will banish the Baby Sun through certain mysterious IC means once Halloween has come to pass. ))

Comments

[missprimavera.livejournal.com]

Lezard smiled an unpleasant smile, and disappeared in a shower of golden sparks.

About a minute later, he returned with a spluttering and angry Primavera. She was swathed in a robe made of white towelling, and her hair was wet. "You -- you boy-slime," and she spat green fire at Lezard. Literally. Green fire.

Chuckling, he intercepted it with a gentle current of purple light; the fire died before it could complete its trajectory. "Ah, but should we not count this an emergency, darling? Look above."

She did look. A double-take ensued. "What the fuck?"

"I'm sure I don't know," said Lezard, smoothly.

"You're kidding me, right?" Primavera registered Keenan Caine's presence, then. "Caine? Don't tell me nerdboy here dragged you into this mess, too?"

[weaponized-love.livejournal.com]

He blinked a little at the duel, then snapped out of it at the question. "Actually, more like I dragged him, and you," he said with a nervous chuckle. "I... that THING... seems a hell of a lot like the enemy. The Nightmares."

He looks at you. "You know how I fought. Please. Help me - both of you, if you can - to Pilot again. Love as my weapon, a...n anchor as my armor." He sighs. "Or SOMEthing..."

[missprimavera.livejournal.com]

"If you ever teleport me anywhere again without at least telling me where we're going, I'm ... I'm going to tell your girlfriend," a narrow-eyed Primavera informed Lezard.

"Steff is not --" Lezard stopped himself. More evenly, he started again: "The situation warranted immediate intervention, you must agree." But the smile he gave her was not placatory.

Primavera took a deep breath. "Okay," she said to Keenan. "What do you need me to do, exactly?"

[weaponized-love.livejournal.com]

He thinks. "You're good with dream symbols, dream interpretation. That sort of thing. Right? So I've seen. I want you, when I go into the dream to smack that thing around - tell me what the hell what I'm seeing, and what it means, and slap me awake if I need it. Anchor me to the waking."

[missprimavera.livejournal.com]

The doll blinked. "But how am I going to know what you're seeing in your dream?"

[weaponized-love.livejournal.com]

"The... ANIMa and I will tell you." He sighs. "I don't know... I THINK I can make one that runs on hocus pocus and mumbo jumbo."

[missprimavera.livejournal.com]

"This ought to be good," murmured Lezard.

Primavera tried to elbow him in the ribs, an attempt whose potential for success was dampened greatly by the mage's voluminous robes and cloak. "Just because I can't do the weird on you doesn't mean you're immune to everything," she hissed. "If you can't be helpful, then just, I don't know, hush."

The mage smoothed a tangled strand of damp bleached-blonde hair away from the doll's face. "I'll be good," he promised.

"So what I have to do," Primavera tried to summarize, "is make sure Caine doesn't get lost in the dream. Is that right? Keep it from ... getting out of hand?" She looked to Keenan for confirmation.

[weaponized-love.livejournal.com]

"Essen'shly," he says. "But there's one other risk."

He looks her in the eye. "Metastable Resonance ain't gonna be the problem - we had this li'l chat before, you remember what that means? Spect after that heart to heart it's at 3. When I said my Anchor was my armor, I wasn't kiddin. Our P sycho S tructural I ntegrity forms the armor. And armor can be damaged."

He lets his gaze drop. "There are ways around that. But they don't always work." He looks up again. "Savvy?"

[arrogantmage.livejournal.com]

Lezard raised an eyebrow. "She would be difficult to damage. Primavera, how much have you neglected to tell your new friend? Your skeletal composition would not come up in casual conversation, I expect. What of the allure --"

Primavera scowled. "I haven't dirtied up anyone's genes here for, like, years. That's not even an issue. And I'm not going to bite the baby sun, so how does that --"

"Full disclosure?" suggested Lezard, grinning.

"You promised you'd be good." She stuck out her tongue. "Anyway it doesn't have to do with physical damage. This PSI thing, it's psychic-astral, something like that. And it has to do with integrity. Trust."

Lezard sighed. "Then I should say the gambit must be doomed. No one sane would trust you."

[weaponized-love.livejournal.com]

Keenan grinned. "Did anyone, at any point, say that I was sane?" He flipped his Gryffindor scarf from his back to his front. "I mean, check out the colors I'm wearing here."

"And you - well, heh. Wonder what YOU'LL turn out to be if I Manifest ya."

[arrogantmage.livejournal.com]

"You have no physical reason to fail this challenge," Lezard noted to Primavera. "You should now be much recovered --"

"After marinating in a vat, of course. Practically a week at the spa. Yes, I'm ever so grateful for that."

Lezard weathered the sarcasm and ingratitude, seemingly more amused than anything -- the quirk of his lips gave it away. "Perhaps not quite up to your full powers, but improved from the sad condition in which you first came to my notice, certainly. Integrity, in that sense, should be no issue. Psychic integrity is a different matter altogether. I might caution you against, mmm, overextending yourself. Unless you have found a donor ...?"

"Fine. Fine, I bite people. Are you happy now? Just because it didn't work on you." Primavera crossed her arms. "Go away or I'm not going to play anymore. Caine, tell Lezard to go away --"

But Lezard had dematerialized before she could finish her sentence. Deprived of an object for further raillery, Primavera was perfectly willing to vent her spleen upon the unfortunate Baby Sun.

"Let's do this thing," she said, determined.

[weaponized-love.livejournal.com]

He takes her hand, and points his wand at it.

"Mes gladius amor est," he incants. "Et tu mes scuutum!"

The image of a golden band on each arm appears briefly.