lucetilogs | Possession Event

Entry tags:

Possession Event

Who: People in Luceti
What: Spiritual possession
When: The 26th to the 1st
Where: Luceti!
Summary: Check out the previous mod post.
Rating: If it gets smutty, move it somewhere private.

Starting at midnight on the 26th, Luceti and its inhabitants will find itself the focus of the Filial spirits, usually quiet and reclusive, now stepping out to deal with one of their own.

As promised, here is some additional information to help figure out how to play around with the spirits and interacting with similarly possessed people.

First off, each spirit has a certain time or place when they are at their most powerful. Consequently, characters possessed by them will enjoy these boosts and this in itself can be a deciding factor in what would otherwise be a stalemate. Here’s a quick run down:

Sona - She’s most powerful around lakes, rivers, and the ocean. Mostly this is concentrated at the southern lake.

Kipinn - He’s most powerful in high places, like mountain tops and the roofs of community buildings.

Faeren - She’s most powerful in the farmlands alongside things that grow.

Tsinku - He’s most powerful in the village itself, where technology thrives.

Eferin - He’s most powerful in the center of the forest where his heat may cause trees to burn. In fact, the upcoming forest fire may cause some trouble if his followers get too rowdy.

Hyt - It’s most powerful during the daytime under a bright sky.

Twila - It’s most powerful during the night time.

Nala- She has no domain and is generally welcome wherever she goes.

How possessed characters will deal with other possessed characters will depend on the interactions of the spirits themselves. A useful spreadsheet sums up these relationships. Those that have a friendly attitude to one another will generally allow ‘trespassers’ into their domain, but those they are not so friendly with may cause conflict.

Finally, to elaborate on Twila-possessed characters. Those with a natural affinity for darkness are likely to be possessed first. Once they have, they can try to recruit others less-compatible candidates to ‘join the cause’. Their goal is numbers. The more who are working with Twila, the better. Once they do, they’ll be inclined to act in their own self interest and if necessary, deal with others who try to get in their way. In the long term, the spirit Twila wants to stay this way, bonded to the Lucetians as hybrids, that way it cannot be imprisoned again. Think of it as pure survival instinct of an animal that’s spent way too long in a cage.

All isn’t lost. The other spirits may not be able to cage it again, but they won’t accept Twila reacting in this manner. Though it’s hard to tell what their beef with Twila is, they have an instinctive familiarity with the dark spirit and seem to act as its jail keepers.

They have the power to free people from Twila, but given their poor communication skills, figuring that out might just be a challenge. After all, the spirits can only communicate in shades of feeling and intentions, but not actually verbalize directions or marching orders. However, there will be a Malnosso post mid-event that will give everyone, possessed or otherwise, the info they need to turn things around.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

When he'd landed on the beach, he'd let his feet do the walking, and so Adele found him close to where he'd shown her the one spot planned for the house. He'd found a large boulder nearby, half in and half out of the water line, and it was on this boulder he'd perched, simply watching the ocean move.

At first, the only response he gave was a flick of those wings. They had yet to stop with the crackling and static, and with the movement, the patterned blue and grey made it look like there were storm clouds dancing over the feathers.

Still, he does eventually look, a faint sort of surprise crossing his expression as he realized who was speaking to him.

"Adele."

She'd taken the moment between the flick and the turn to just. Admire. Though the urges and selfish desires were set aside for the moment the core of them lingers still. She did want some manner of physical companionship. Derek was attractive. The sky was grey, she can smell a storm on the wind, and none of this matters now that she had a question that needed asking.

"The village has gone half mad. Loki is acting far more himself than normal and the only indicator I have of this odd behavior is the wings. Obviously it's done something to you and I as well but I do not know what. Have you heard or seen...anything out of the ordinary since the Malnosso visited?" Business. Curt and clipped and focused. She had to be, or she would get lost in distractions. And now was not a time to be selfish.

...She'd come out here just to ask him this? He frowns slightly. But he does note her own grey and blue wings, and makes the connection. Another one marked like he was, that was probably feeling the same push. From an entity that, now that he'd had time to think about it, had been the source of the scolding he didn't remember. Maybe her presence made sense after all.

He stands, all of his restlessness funneling into the twitch and shift of wings and electrical discharge. He doesn't meet her eyes, though.

"I've been told this has happened before, that the end result was that the people who were being affected had to be killed."

He can see some lightening off over the water. Faint, and the grey of the storm clouds blended in with the grey of the sea. His own wings echoed that flash for a second.

"I...don't think it's necessary this time. We're being...borrowed, I guess? By the filial spirits. If you look at the wings, and what the people who are wearing them tend to get drawn to, you can figure out which one is which."

Now he looks at her, "But there's no known entity that matches the black wings. Not until now, it seems."

"Everything has a cause, Derek. The wings, the spirits, they are symptoms of a greater illness, for lack of a better term." Something had come to light in the enclosure that should not have, and the other spirits were reacting much like an immune system, perhaps. The most violent altercations and thoughts seemed to reflect against those with the black wings. Black, selfish thoughts and desires with no care for the consequence.

Thunder rumbled, her wings twitched and shifted and she loathed every moment of it. The one part of her she couldn't will into stillness. Normally she would be able to cover them- but at this size? Her tells were blatant. She was grateful Derek did not know how to read them.

"It had to start somewhere. Do you think Davis planted something?"

Derek shook his head.

"He didn't need to," he pauses, considering his words carefully. The roll of thunder could be heard now. Faint, more a vibration at the moment than anything, but there non-the-less.

"He might have started the situation, though. There was a group of people that went into the tunnels a few days ago, after Davis and Carol had been in the village. The group had keys for the parts of the tunnels that no one could get into before. I followed them in, found the doors, and the elevator that leads deeper down. They were all functioning."

Another restless flick of his wings that was more of a stretch and a shift before they settled again, along with his calm demeanor. He looked back out over the water.

"There were tunnels down there, some of them cloaked in darkness. I couldn't see anything, but I'm pretty sure I was lead anyway. There was a small chest that I tripped over. And a lock that was all but defunct. I'd thought to take it up to the lab, find someone to look at it with me."

"...When I woke up, the lock was off, and the shadows gone."

Another disturbed rustle of wings.

"I made my way to the apartment, and when I woke up, this--" he gestured to her wings and his both, "--had started. I've been watching ever since to try and figure out what happened."

"...the second key." The deeper portion of the tunnels. With so few answers and only more questions provided by the first she'd wondered and studied as much as was available on her more sleepless nights, questioning what could be beyond. Caves and darkness and this, whatever this was, let loose and he'd.

Her wings went stiff along her back, feathers sliding but once before going stock still. The air was heady with electricity- a storm about to break in the distance that was rapidly approaching. And he'd done this.

Slow, low, and as carefully calm as she could possibly manage, she murmured. "At what part of that particular venture did opening a strange chest in tunnels shrouded in darkness seem like a particularly wise decision? Before or after the head trauma?"

This. This was what he didn't need right now, and it was so very like Adele to just assume the worst of him. She always had, and although he'd done his best to accept that out of her in the past, with as weary and upset and wrung out as he is right now, he's no shape to hold his tongue and let her steamroll him.

He was already angry enough at himself for not being able to keep out whatever had led him down there, and had managed to push him, without much of a fight, to do something so completely stupid and out of character. He'd failed in a spectacular way; he didn't need some judgmental, self righteous...fool, adding their own outrage to the choir.

"I told you; It didn't. That hadn't been my choice. Or are you just that eager to put the blame on someone that you didn't hear that part?" His own wings are still, and crackling, but the set of his jaw was one not normally seen.

Not unless he was on the hunt.

"Do you have any idea what this has done? What's been set loose? You've heard, I assume, of pandora's box. I'd have preferred you to have tripped over that than this." All the evils of the world in one little box, and all that was left trapped inside was hope. Except this hadn't been hope. This had been...chaos. Selfish, senseless, boundless chaos. It hadn't occurred to her to fear it until after she'd had a small taste of it herself.

She, being she, but a simple woman with extraordinary irreverence, had caused precious little damage. But the rest that she'd seen- the fact that Loki happily had the large black wings, that he so persuasively talked her into a state of mind to accept it and likely hadn't thought a single thing wrong with it- that had her teeth grit and her back straight.

"Even if you had not wanted to open it simply finding the damn thing has done this- Look at yourself! Look at me!" She snapped a hand back to her wings then to his. Almost everyone in the village had similar sized wings, if the color and temperament was different. "Do you know who else has wings of this particular shape and size? The Third Party."

"And funny that, Pandora's box is exactly what I was thinking of when I blacked out. But yes, let's just put it all on my wonderful, soft brained head. And when we all go insane just like the Third party, which is what I am assuming you're getting at, then please by all means, go back to the village and tell them who fucked up. Hell, lead them here with the fucking pitchforks and torches and I'll gladly let them behead me, figurative or otherwise!"

He snarls.

"I'm well fucking aware that whether I wanted to do that or not, if it goes that badly it's going to be my fucking fault, that I'm the god damned plaything that let it loose, and that if people die and suffer, I'm the one to blame, thank you. But if that's all you've come to say, then either beat the shit put of me to make yourself feel better and then go get your friends to help you solve it, or just get the fuck out of my face."

"If you'd fucking THINK before wandering around maybe this wouldn't have happened! If anyone here took five fucking seconds to consider the possibility that just because death isn't permanent it doesn't make us immortal or invulnerable to every twisted bit of insanity this place likes to throw at us- maybe we'd have found a way out by now! Maybe if everyone quit playing house and focused on finding answers instead of playing along with our minders we'd get something done! But no- something strange happens and we wander around and some idiot trips over the goddamn sealed chaos in a chest and looses it over the whole fucking village."

He's out of patience, and the thunder that was so distant suddenly seems overhead and she'd never turned Tsinku on anyone aside from Apep. But she's strained and furious with herself and with him and it shows in the harsh line of her jaw and the trembling clench of her wings behind her. "Fuck you. Fuck you for never fucking thinking before you fucking act. Fuck you and every fucking person in this village like you that is so certain they're the protagonist of their own little drama and cannot be touched by this place or the Malnosso. Fuck you, fuck the horse you rode in on, and fuck every goddamn day I spent thinking that maybe you wouldn't be a fucking waste of my time!"

He pushed she cut, and she snapped a hand out, fingers extended, and the rush of electricity from her felt half like bleeding and half like unknotting a particularly painful cramp. It was release and relief and violent intent, all aimed at his fucking, irresponsible, irritating face.

He's used to slinging lightening. Even without the add advantage of housing the spirit, he'd been spending time learning to control it, direct it, to the point of having fine enough control to make it dance along his sword if he wanted.

When the bolt comes for him, he instinctively shunts it aside, driving it into the sand. Several discharges of his own go off, thundering into the ground around them both, arching out from his wings.

"And I suppose you're just goddamn perfect in that, Adele?" His own voice is cold. "So convinced that you're the only one with any sort of fucking sense that you would never make a mistake actually attempting to figure out what happened? What might be found and could help with all those 'non-domestic' things? Good to know I'm talking to Jesus, Ghandi, Rambo, and Buddah rolled into one."

His own bolts erupt and then bury themselves along the sand, showering her with it.

"At least I was trying something, lady. Instead of sitting on my high horse and letting everyone else know just what stupid, ignorant, usueless fools they were every time they so much as dared to be fucking human."

Tsinku had ever been a tool for her. Something in conjunction with Nala. Something to mend. To defend. To keep herself and her patients safe. To simply lash out shocks some small part of her, the rest? Was thoroughly gratified to reach out and finally do violence to something she knew she would not be able to break. Something real. Something that fought back with power and words and she was spending far too much time with Loki if this was gratifying.

Her wings snapped up to shield her from the sand, electricity crackling along every pinon and curve, arcing outward in a temporary barrier before she sent another bolt his way with something low and vile and twisted in French.

"I wouldn't have loosed a spirit bent on Chaos on a village stuck with a fucking CHAOS GOD in the middle of it! You don't know what he could do if he really felt like lashing out. You don't know what darkness and chaos and pain is capable of, what he is capable of, what he might do now that he is thus influenced. He's not one of your leeches, Derek- he is a god. And you've made him WORSE."

He shunts that one aside too, his lips creasing into a thin line.

"No, Adele, I didn't. Twila did. That's the name of the chaos you're looking for. And that's what's in him. But again, go ahead and blame me for the short comings that make him such a perfect vessel for her anyway. That seems to be a talent of yours. Make me the bad guy. Make me the villain. Fry the ever loving fuck out of me for ruining him, and then go home and cry on the one you actually care about. Maybe he'll even appreciate it for a few seconds. You have your answer, and I'm done with this."

And with that, he closes he wings and just stands.

"You stubborn, self righteous son of-" She cut herself off and dropped her hands, stalking over, ignoring every crackle of electricity sparking from her wings because her hands were still, her hands were free and that she could control and she hated this, hated that she enjoyed the power that was far more than she should ever be responsible for, hated how goddamn reasonable Derek was, hated that she was still stuck here and this was just yet another fucking problem on the long list of things she simply could never fix.

"You are a vector I cannot cure- a persistent wound I cannot set right-" Broken and she cannot fix him because, honestly, there was nothing that needed to be fixed. "I'm his physician. I'm his- morality chain. I am under no illusions that I can do a damn thing whenever he decides he's finished playing nice. All I can do is delay that and you are not."

She swore, scrubbed her hands through her hair, wings clenched tightly along either side of her spine. "A villain. If you were this would be a good deal simpler. I could write you off as an idiot, as a waste of time and be satisfied but you are not. You're a good man- a stubborn, irritating, infuriatingly good man and I would so much rather you weren't."

He tenses as she approaches, expecting violence since it had apparently been headed in that direction. He'd already decided that if she did, indeed, decide bolting the fuck out of him was the answer, he wasn't going to stop her. Hell, maybe the week or so out of commission would somehow dull some of his own sharp edges. Maybe he'd be lucky and they'd take away his ability to feel. Who knew.

But when she stopped, talked, that made him stay quiet for several minutes more, with only the uncomfortable rustling of his own wings the only motion.

"Then do me a favor and don't start a conversation like this assuming I didn't think it through--or at least give me credit that I made the attempt to do so before things went to shit. I have no problem with admitting I made a mistake; I just don't appreciate someone preemptively making that judgment for me, all right? Just talk to me."

"So you thoroughly thought through every possibility of what is lurking in a dark cave, after having made your living hunting things that live in the dark. You're not an idiot, you're just insane. I cannot honestly say that is the better option." And yet it was what he had. What he would do, at least from what she knew of him.

"You fucked up. But I cannot help but feel, as you said, that you were led into it. If not you some other random idiot wandering in the dark might have opened it." She muttered, crossing her arms and trying very hard to focus on a point just over his shoulder rather than looking at him properly. "I don't appreciate the implication that I'd kill you over a disagreement."

"...According to the state of California, I am criminally insane. Most hunters are to some degree. Can't do the job if you fit the common qualifiers for a 'sane' person. You'd just end up insane in a different way, if not dead."

He sighs, shaking his head.

"Normally, worst I'd expect out of you is a slap. But we're not exactly ourselves right now, and control is not exactly perfect for anyone."

A slight flap of his own wings sent the static racing along his pinions again as if to punctuate that statement.

"As for the mind control thing, someone would have gotten snagged. She's insidious enough that I didn't catch on until it was far too late and I was waking up. We might have been lucky, really. Imagine what would have happened if someone she could bond with easily had been the first one to find the box."

She held up a hand, electricity crackling along her fingertips. "Not. Not helping Derek. Not helping at all."

With a glare more to her sparking fingers than to him she shoved her hand back against her side, arms wrapped tight around her, wings pressing close as the wind kicked up for a proper storm. Soon, now, it would roll over the beach. Might last a few seconds. Might last a few hours. There was never an easy way to tell.

"For all that you make me loose my temper on my best and worst days this is not something I could forgive myself losing control over." Yes, Derek, it would bother her to know she killed you. Fried you like an egg. The very idea was disconcerting on several levels.

"Better the madman we know and can predict than the one that gets along with the chaotic, overly hormonal bitch."

"Well, at least he gets along with someone. That's probably going to be his breaking point though, if something happens to the few he cares about here. At that point, he won't have a reason to care about behaving. And, like you said, he's a god."

Derek's under no illusions; he's fully aware of what Loki is and what he could do...probably would do if he was here long enough and he lost his reasons for 'behaving'. It's why he'd prefer to be as far away from the man as possible. He was a vampire hunter, not a god killer. And if he were around when it happened, he'd still try to stop Loki anyway. Even though it would probably kill him.

But at least it would win other people some time, no matter how slight.

The wind was getting a distinct chill to it now. Derek gave the sea another glance, one great wing instinctively flaring out, and, without thought, cupping around Adele to shield her from the spray that was getting kicked up.

"You should probably head home. I think it's going to get messy."

"Is there a particular reason you tend to assume I am speaking of Loki specifically rather than a generalized comment on the inherent madness of the village? Did that last argument make such an impression on you? He is but one of my associates, one of many- and I still don't quite understand how it was that happened as I am far from the most pleasant person on the best of days. I truly want an answer for this. Why assume I'm speaking of him. We spoke of him. We argued, we swore, we threw lightening like frustrated little demigods, and the conversation containing him ended. We have moved beyond that part of the conversation. Why loop back around to it?" There were a few things she could think of that might explain that, but she'd rather have the truth of it.

"...do you assume that he and I are...? Involved? Somehow? Or is this the prototypical measuring of one's potential foes. Or simple alpha male posturing?" The storm she paid little mind to. This needed answering. Even if she twitched a bit at the sudden gust of wind and the way he blocked it without thinking.

"Honestly, I hadn't realized we'd moved on. You mock yourself too often, and unless you know more men than Loki like that, it's an easy assumption to make, especially since I don't know your long list of associates. And yes, it did make an impression. Because the last two fights we've had have been on his behalf."

And this is probably going to be a third if they keep going. He furls his wing again.

"You're a grown woman, Adele. And I have no business telling you who to associate with. My only concern about him is that if he breaks before you're gone, that you're close enough to him that you might become a casualty of it. Hopefully, I'm as wrong as I can be, and, believe it or not, that's one plate of crow I'll happily eat if it means you don't become a target. But just like you wouldn't forgive yourself if you fried me, I won't deal well at all with you getting hurt or worse. And it'll just eat at me more if it was someone you'd trusted who did it. There's few people I give that much of a shit about; I can't afford it. Not with who and what I am. If you want to call that posturing, then yeah, I guess I'm posturing."

"I wouldn't say it's too often- and I was referring to Twila as the overly chaotic and hormonal bitch. Not myself. I am not hormonal." She was almost fucking forty and far beyond that, or at the least truly ought to be. "And I know an abundance of men like that. I'd count you as part of them on occasion-"

Wait. Two? She only recalled the one rather long argument, then again she was quite often terrible at keeping track of conversational fuckups until the chance to smooth things over had long since passed. "If he kills me it won't last. Unless, of course, it does and I might be glad to be rid of this place."

A black, bitter thought, one she'd set aside time and time again and locked up somewhere she wouldn't think of it; Twila's lovely little mucking about dragged it to the front. After all, what was more selfish than just. Ending everything so you wouldn't have to bother? It wasn't a pleasant thing to hear and she didn't know if it would counteract anything for her to reach out and curl a hand around his. "Not posturing. Just. Being frustratingly decent."

He was counting today as well, since it was her concern over the god and what might happen that had really gotten her going, from what he could tell.

Derek's wings shift uncomfortably as she finishes the last statement.

"I'm being worried, Adele. Don't put me on a pedestal that I'm going to fall off of, probably sooner rather than later. Please. I'm just me, and I care about you." Another flick of those wings, crackling again.

"As for the rest..." he shakes his head. "You'd be missed if you left. If you're going home to die...you'd be mourned. And I'm not too thrilled with the idea of you waking up here missing something, either. I don't care if it can be put back."

Close as they were a crackle from his wings arced to hers, causing them to twitch and snap back along her spine from where they'd drifted out. Almost brushing his. She hated that she couldn't keep her wings as she wanted them- hidden.

"There have only ever been two men in my life I put on pedestals. My father, and Ben. Neither worked out terribly well for me." Both left. Hell. All the men in her life left or disappointed her after awhile. She'd stopped expecting anything years ago.

"I'd be forgotten when everyone returns to where they ought to be. And that is how it should be. Whenever you go back to your world, you'll forget me as well." She shrugged, the motion continuing along her wings, flowing and fluid and arcing little tendrils of electricity. "You would forget, and be better for it."

His own wings rustle when the arc goes between them, but instead of pulling his in, he just flexes them, as if to shake off any remaining discharge, and lets them settle naturally. He'd never been too concerned with what they did--it tended to foul shit up worse when he tried to control them, and that went doubly for their current size.

They knew when to stay still when he needed them to be still anyway.

"Yeah, well that's when I go home. I'm not there right now, now am I? And neither are you. And considering your talent for making friends despite yourself, I'm pretty sure there's someone back home who'd miss you too if you were there, whether you think so or not. As for being better for it, why don't you let me decide that for myself? Considering you're one of my better memories, I resent I'll forget them before I'd forget other things."

He pauses, realizing he's saying a lot--far more than he normally would. Far more than he would ever be comfortable saying at any other time. He hated making speeches. Yet, here he was, and after all this time of trying to keep his damn mouth shut. Dammit, Tsinku. Is nothing sacred?

Still...in for a pound...bastard.

"And good. I suck at pedestals. I'd rather be the asshole you know, then the saint that will eventually fuck up."

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