EVENT ★ OSKA BURNING

[futurologists]

The scene that greets you after the mist of world hopping fades isn’t a pretty one. You may remember Oska from your first, brief trip here — it was a stately, serene place, a grand castle usually wreathed in low lying clouds or gently sunny. Not so today. The damage done to Chantes by the demons and chimeras pales in comparison to what has been done to Oska. Only one tower of the formerly impressive castle stands upright, the others have been knocked down and torn to rubble, some of which is still smoldering or in flickering flames. Most of the castle has been flattened, entire rooms torn apart and laid to waste. No exterior wall is without gaping holes, as if some army and their immense battering ram had needed a whole collection of entrances to storm this castle. Nothing is untouched, and worst of all, the underground larder seems to have been completely buried in a fall of rocks from the kitchen’s exterior wall. Even if you were able to dig it up, it’s dubious much of the food is unspoiled or intact. If there is any up side to all of this destruction, it’s that no bodies can be found amid the mess, human or otherwise. Even the livestock are missing. Personal effects can be dug out of the ruins, and it seems very clear that this castle was populated until recently. There remains not one soul to tell what happened, though. Well, almost not one soul. The network that usually connects the jewelry is completely nonfunctional. Attempting to access it only brings up one static message, repeating for as long as you care to listen to it: Something [ SHHKT ] --rrible has happ-- [ The message cuts out frequently, replaced with static. ] The-- [ shhhhhhkt ] came, they destroyed everything and n-- [ The static fades slightly. ] We’re trapped. You’re on your own. But please, we ne-- [ shhkt ] your help. They’re still here. There’s worse to come. But when you [ SHKT ] --ind them, you can’t kill them. They need to be questioned. We mus-- [ shhhhkt ] know their motivations. Some of the new recruits… they’re in the dungeons. You need to he-- [ shkt ] them, please. They can still be saved. SURVIVAL The dungeons are, of course, the only part of the castle left intact enough to present a challenge to escape. Some newcomers will find themselves lost in a labyrinth of cell-lined corridors, able to wander for hours before stumbling across any hint of daylight. How that’s even possible with most of the castle destroyed is anyone’s guess. Other newcomers might even be locked into the cells, with keys left nearby but just out of reach — or not. Better hope some sort of escape artist happens across you, if you’re one of those unlucky arrivals. Food isn’t going to be easy to come across. You might try digging out the larder, but not much food can be salvaged from it. Are you going to put in the work to dig up a single shelf of intact loaves of bread, a cold roast chicken locked in a wood stove, and one barrel of apples? Maybe you try scavenging in the small, abandoned village outside the castle. This will uncover some food, but not much. Most of the food out there is either rotted through or missing entirely. You might find enough to last one person two days on your own, but who knows how long you’ll need it to last? Wherever you find your food, if you find your food, rationing is highly recommended. Water isn’t so simple to find, either. There is a lake not far outside the castle walls, but the water in it tastes rancid, a sign to any right-thinking person that it’s no good to drink. Anyone brave or stupid enough to push through the taste and drink it anyway will find there aren’t actually any adverse effects, but is it worth the risk? Water can otherwise be found in very small amounts, collected by rainfall in buckets, on indented stones, in mislaid pots. It won’t be much, but if you search diligently it’s enough to keep you going. Shelter will be a little easier to find… at least, at first. No one is using any of the beds in the village, they’re free to pick from as long as you don’t mind the eerie silence. If your character is particularly awful at scavenging, please see the end of this post. HELL WEEK Survival aside, that still leaves the question: just what did happen here? Characters are welcome to dig through the ruins for hints at what fate may have befallen Oska. We have provided a thread here to sign up to find belongings or other little signs of life, and try to piece together the picture. But what about that culprit, mentioned in the broadcast? Some characters will be able to stumble across very, very specific clues — riddles and puzzles, purposefully laid to guide the finders toward… something. Who knows what lies at the end of this oddly deliberate trail? You can sign up to find and solve the puzzles here. Day one in Oska is easy enough to survive, an almost peaceful acclimation to the dismal scene. Things get a little bit tougher from there, though. On day two the ground begins to shake. It’s just little tremors at first, easy to miss if you’re not standing still. But by mid morning they’re large quakes, enough to break some structures further. The quakes continue through the night and into day three, when they are large and severe enough to throw someone off their feet, tear apart a house, and even open wide chasms in the ground. They come with unpredictable frequency, anything between five minutes to three hours, but they definitely come more closely together as time passes. The village is safer at this point, without quite so many stones to shift and crush you, although those chasms are still a concern. Come the evening of day three, the quakes stop entirely. A soft rainfall begins to patter down instead — still thirsty? Now is your chance to find some battered coffee tin and gather your drink. The rainfall continues steadily overnight, and by the morning of the fourth day it is a torrential downpour. It never lets up, not even once, and soon the water is more than the ground can handle. Flooding begins at this point, just a few inches deep in some places, more formidable in others. This also lasts for two days, and by the end of the fifth day in Oska most of the village is washed out. You’ll have better luck among the sturdy stones of the castle. Remember that still-standing castle tower? It’s not exactly the most structurally sound thing, but it is definitely out of the water. The water stops very suddenly at sundown on the fifth day, affording a pretty peaceful, clear night. Come dawn of the sixth day, however, heavy clouds move to obscure the sunrise. They seem to flame around the edges in the light of it, and then in the middles. That’s clearly not sunlight lighting up those clouds by this point. The clouds flash from within as they build more and more heavily, but no lightning has ever been that flickering golden color. At midmorning the first drops begin to fall: not rain this time, but liquid fire. By noon the firestorm is at full strength. It swings between sheets of fire pelting down, and clearing up only to pelt down great fireballs. The rain-drenched village and castle can only fend off the rain for so long. Eventually the water evaporates and anything that can burn will burn. Time your ventures out into the weather very carefully, because the firefall never lets up for long, and that’s the kind of downpour you don’t want to be caught in. OOC INFO Is your character awful at survival? Can’t scavenge to save their life, completely out of food and water and about to expire? Wherever they fall asleep, they’ll wake up with a small, inexplicable wrapped bundle left next to their head. Within will be a half an apple, a single leg of chicken, and a very small canteen of water. This log will last for one week, and there will be new information available on the 17th. As per our informal poll, this log will last ICly for one week, and OOCly for two. There will be new information available on the 24th. What the setting will be from here will depend on characters' ability to work together to catch whoever is responsible for these events. You can sign up to find hints about the people who lived here and what may have happened to them here, and puzzles left by the perpetrator leading to the discovery of them on this post. Please direct any questions here.

Comments

day six

[keystaff]

[Sakura's thinking and use of her Clow Cards isn't too far off Merlin's own, evidently. She's trying to use the Windy and Watery to help with the more serious and larger fires that start to spread once she herself becomes aware of the situation after another fitful night of attempted rest.

It's instinctive. Also instinctive that she initially wants to protest at his suggestion to leave.]

But--

[Okay. Perhaps her attempt to use the Watery card in putting out the worst of the fires isn't. Quite going so well as she might have hoped, given the continuous 'rain' that is still ongoing at the moment. It still just feels....wrong though. To not be able to help and stop this somehow.]

[servant]

[Merlin starts to call something more out to her, right as there's a strike to the ground between them. The sorcerer focuses on it, and even if he's successful one fire, two more have struck down on either side of them.]

Be careful! [Merlin fears what would happen if either of them took a direct hit.] We need to find some of the others, maybe we can do more as a team!

[ALASTAIR is filled with gifted people.]

[keystaff]

H-hoeeeee! [There's a pause as her eyes widen and she watches the fire rain down, but luckily it misses them both. She has Shield at the ready just in case though.] Okay, but where is everyone? Back at the castle?

[Sakura is aware that some if not most all of the recruits from ALASTAIR have been holing up there where there's relative shelter and higher ground at least. It'll be difficult to get anywhere in all this though. As powerful as Windy and Watery might be, this is a bit much. And Sakura's already tired, used to only using one or two Cards at most within a shorter time span.]

[servant]

I hope so.

[Merlin makes his way to her side, always keeping an eye to the sky for its next strike.]

I wish we could talk to the others. [But his ring has been useless these past few days, and he knows that the other devices have been too.] There might be injured, we could tell them to bring them there. [Merlin pauses, looking at her in concern.] How are you feeling?

[keystaff]

I wish we could too. But the jewelry ALASTAIR gave us, it doesn't seem to be working....

[Of course, she could send Mirror off on some errands for her, but it's dangerous and even then, not as effective at contacting everyone all at once. Still, there's a nod in response. If they gather the injured all to one place at least, everyone together, they could figure something from there, surely. Hopefully.]

I'm....I'm tired, but I'll be okay.

[She has to be. They all have to just keep pushing on, here.]

[servant]

Do you think it can be fixed?

[He doesn't really understand if they work through magic or science, but surely someone can figure it out. It's funny how used to the network he's gotten, when there wasn't such a thing in Camelot. Maybe he should be thankful for that - he would be even more at Arthur's beck and call.

Merlin smiles at her, because he can see how tired she is. So is he, for that matter. But he knows that neither of them will do less than their best.]

All storms pass, no matter how strange. Hopefully we'll be able to rest soon.

[keystaff]

I'm not sure. Back home there wasn't really anything like this. Not with magic anyway. There were phones, but that still wasn't quite the same thing. I know I couldn't figure how to fix them myself, even with my Clow cards.

[Still. That doesn't potentially mean someone else might not have a better understanding of how this sort of thing works. But these really aren't ideal conditions to be working on much of anything in. Still, at least here they have some better indication of night and day, unlike Chantes. And no war potentially brewing, even if they still need answers all the same.]

I hope so. I thought we'd just be back here to rest and hear about our next mission, but....

[servant]

Yeah. So did I.

[There's plenty to do before they start worrying too much about the network. Merlin will be more than happy if and when that becomes their largest problem.]

When we first came back, I thought there'd been an attack or something. But then where did the attackers go? And the earthquakes and this. [Merlin casts a nervous glance to the sky.] They're more like acts of nature gone wrong.

[keystaff]

Acts of nature....maybe.

[But this isn't as straightforward as dealing with the Clow Cards. This isn't one. Sakura has collected them all and this is an entirely different world. Surely, even with Clow's magic he probably wasn't going around leaving other cards in various worlds as well as Earth.]

I'm not sure even my Cards are powerful enough to stop all this.

[servant]

I think it might take all of us working together again.

[Which is once again hindered by the defunct network. Maybe that was more deliberate than anything after all.]

Your cards...they never run out of magic?

[keystaff]

Mm, I think so too. I don't know if this is anything any one of us could manage alone.

[At least, as far as she could potentially guess, anyway. It's not like Sakura is aware of every single recruit's powers and abilities and limits. But the network is a concern, for sure.]

Run out? No. At least, not that I've had happen before. It's more like they mostly draw on their own magic before tapping into mine. If that makes sense?

[servant]

Yeah. Yeah, it does.

[Merlin only needs to think about it for a moment before nodding. So the cards don't store the magic, it's more like they channel it.]

Where did you get them?

[keystaff]

Where? Oh. I er....I sensed them. Or, I mean, the book. I found it in my dad's study downstairs in the basement. Only, when I opened it and picked up Winry, when I read that card, it sort of....activated and scattered the rest.

[And thus she had the responsibility of gathering the rest back. Sakura herself still isn't quite sure just how or when her father got the book itself either. But he had never commented on it missing from the shelf.]

[servant]

You have a magic book too? ALASTAIR gifted me with mine not too long ago.

[There's no cards to it though, not unless you count those trick playing cards that they gave him around Yule.

Which he ironically never mastered.]

[keystaff]

Ah, really? It's probably different to Clow-san's magic though, isn't it?

[Still. That could definitely be interesting to compare them sometime. Sakura's only magic at the moment is with the cards, and her occasional prophetic dreams that she doesn't always remember.]

[servant]

Clowsan? [And naturally, he doesn't get the word quite right.] Your book has a name?

[That's one interesting difference right there.]

And yeah, my book is full of spells, but not necessarily magic itself. [He looks at Sakura curiously.] Why do you think your father had a magic book? He never told you about it?

[keystaff]

Ah, yes. It's the book of Clow. The book with Clow-san's magic cards in, that Kero-chan was guarding. Or....he was supposed to be.

[A book of spells. That could be potentially all the more useful in comparison to her cards. Be more versatile. Still, she gives a shrug. She's not sure, doesn't yet know of the connection between her father and Clow the magician just yet.]

No. I'm not sure if he even really knew much about it. He probably just came across it with his work or something. He's an archaeologist so he has a lot of old books from all sorts of countries.

[servant]

It all sounds quite complicated. [Merlin smiles at her as he says it though.] But then someone could say the same about the spells in my book if they weren't familiar.

Your father sounds interesting. You must miss him.

[keystaff]

I guess that's true. A lot of things initially seem complicated, if they are new ideas you're just learning about.

[Talk of her family is still something sort of bittersweet. Of her friends. Because she does miss them, and most are unaware of her duties and dangers as the Cardcaptor. Sakura no wanting to worry her father or brother, even if Toya has definitely picked up that she is up to something.]

Mm. I do. Him and Toya, nii-san. But as long as I'm sure they have to be okay back home....I'll do what I can from here!

[servant]

You'll see him again.

[He smiles gently at her. Even if he so recently lost his own father, Merlin still has family that he misses. He knows the feeling of thinking about them often, but also doing what he can for the people he's come to know and call his friends. Doing the best for both worlds, for other worlds, the settling into the idea of that has taken time.]

I do the same. Ask myself what Arthur would do if he were here instead. And for what it's worth, I'm glad that I've gotten to meet you, Sakura.

[keystaff]

I will! And Tomoyo-chan and Syaoran-kun and everyone!

[She has to believe that. Eventually, they'll get back home. She'll see all of them again. Kero and everyone.]

What Arthur-san would do? I guess....that could help! Asking what our friends or family might do if they were here. But I'm glad I met you too! I'm glad for everyone I've met and talked to with ALASTAIR.