Quest 270
[Private || Hackable by Friends]
More than a week in, and still nothing's happened the way we've been expecting it to. Or the way I've been expecting it to, at least, the way--not that they ought to happen, certainly, but at least the way we've seen them happen before.
May is always a bad month. My first May had the hair monster, and that was a week of trouble and fear that only ended when Adrastus's mother came to fetch him from under the City. That was the first time I really heard that phrase, "due is due"; the deities had taken our hair from us a few months earlier, and for some reason they'd taken too much, so Adrastus came to give it back. Things had to stay in balance. Due was due, and so he gave us what was due us, just in a horrible, awful way. I do think he meant well, really, even if it didn't turn out the best of ways. And his mother was the closest to kind I think I've ever seen a deity be in all the time I've been here.
Last May was the shepherdess, and it was much the same thing; we were all afraid of the Angel of Death at the end of March, and we were told to kill lambs and use their blood to save ourselves, but then in May the sheep grew on plants and started attacking people. And that shepherdess was behind it, herself, but then they had us round up the sheep and herd them into the carousel, and...and that was the end of the shepherdess and her sheep.
This May, the clock has stopped ticking and the carousel animals are leaping off their posts every day, running around and attacking people wherever they see fit. But they're always back after an hour, or thereabouts, and that's the only time they're allowed to go free. It's easy enough to avoid them by simply staying out of the Square for that period, but still...it's not the first time we've seen the animals jump, have we? They left the carousel when the Architect came, after all that trouble with those horrible boxes. I remember Sam saying a carousel unicorn knocked him down and told him who'd been behind that trap he'd been caught up in. And then they all went and ripped holes in the barrier, and the man who called himself an architect came and tried to persuade us to leave. But it was all a trick, the same as always, and the people ended up in the graveyard instead, trapped inside their own graves.
But this year is different. The deities didn't intervene to fix the problem with the harpies; they left it to us and washed their hands of the whole business. I still think Iacho was behind the falling tower, since I saw him turn a table to sand. But it's hard to say what Iacho's purpose really is, isn't it? He doesn't seem to be a deity like the others. And he's willing to talk to me...or at least he was. But where does he fit in with all this? Or does he fit in at all?
And then there are those two words, "death" and "evidence". They're words that go together, certainly, death and evidence. One finds them both in a mystery. One leads to the other. But why the two of them? Why now?
Death is simple enough to understand. It's always a matter of death here, in one way or another. If the clock stops ticking it'll be the death of everyone at home. Even the dead can come here, and those who die don't remain dead. A long time ago they asked for deaths in exchange for the safety of our worlds, and they do take deaths in exchange for lives as well. Todd and Neil once shared a life for a while, even, as I recall. So death is...death is unmistakably a part of this place.
Evidence, though...well, evidence is proof of something, a sign that something's happened. Is it evidence of death they're after? Evidence of death could be anything, really...a body, blood, a wound. A graveyard. A headstone--they gave us headstones not long ago, didn't they? Evidence of death.
The dead in the City are evidence of death. A wound is evidence of death. Blood...
Donated blood. I once donated blood because Dr. Chase said it was safe, because he said it could help without hurting me. But the City...blood, blood, didn't they take it? And the Square was all covered in papers thanking us for our donation...
Blood is evidence of death and they took it. They took it without permission. Doesn't that mean they have to give it back? Due is due, isn't it, Adrastus? Does this mean you'll come and give back all the blood they took?
If it starts raining blood, I suppose we'll know for certain.
Death and evidence. The dead don't stay dead. Riverrun, the Mother bought these lives for the people who were dead, she paid for them so that those people could keep on living. Peter died and I wanted to ask her to bring him back but I didn't know how to reach her. She came from over the sea, from outside the barrier, where there's nothing but storms and harpies. The barrier is there as much to keep the harpies out as it is to keep us in, and there were harpies before.
Peter died in the graveyard--no, under the graveyard. How long ago was it? It was after Sam left...that's right, it was after he left and all the new headstones appeared in the graveyard, after the visitors came. Headstones are evidence of death, and his was there, and I convinced Cain to come with me to dig his up because I had to see what was there, and I fell in by mistake. There were catacombs beneath the graveyard and that's where I met Peter, and we stayed together until we thought we'd found the exit, and he died saving me. I couldn't remember it for a while, but then it came back, and Edmund and Caspian were so angry and worried...
But the clock still isn't running. Time running out...that's a way of saying someone's died, too, isn't it? A clock that ticked its last, that's evidence of death as well, isn't it?
Whatever it is, I think it's clear the deities aren't going to intervene this time. They're going to leave it to us to fix. We'd thought they might mean for us to fix the tower, and we didn't, and so it collapsed. The barrier fell and they left it to us to clear away the harpies and fix it. And now the clock's gone quiet, and has stayed that way this long--longer, I think, than it's ever been quiet before--and there haven't been any signs that they might be starting it again.
A clock goes dead when it winds down. And you only know it's dead when it stops ticking--that's the evidence of its death.
Maybe I'm only grasping at straws, looking for patterns that aren't there. But things keep adding up, and it always comes back to that clock in the end.
[/Private]
[Filtered AWAY from the Deities | Attempted Unhackable]
I'm sure most everyone has noticed by now the carousel animals' recent habit of jumping off their posts and stampeding throughout the City. It's an unexpected occurrence, I think, but hardly a surprising one at this point. It's May, after all, and strange things always seem to happen in the month of May, just as October tends to be a particularly horrifying month when it comes to the curses.
Still, I think this May is turning out to be much different than the ones I've seen before it. It isn't the first time I've ever heard the clock wind down into silence, and it's not the first time I've seen the animals leave the carousel and attack the passerby. What is different, though, is how long things have gone on--and how quiet the deities have been in response to it. Horrible things have happened before, but it's strange that the deities have been so silent. Moreover, they haven't stepped in to intervene this time, as they sometimes have in the past. Last year they fairly finished off the shepherdess for us, and spent a certain amount of time talking amongst themselves about her, as well. But this year there's nothing, and there haven't been any unusual invaders the way there have been in previous years; on the contrary, it almost seems as though this year the City itself is acting to cause the mischief.
It seems clear, though, that the deities aren't willing to step in this time. They left us to manage the problem of the barrier for ourselves, and it seems as though they plan to do the same for the clock and whatever else might be tied to it.
Two words have shown up now, since this trouble seemed to begin--"death", and "IECENVDE", which we think might unscramble into the word "evidence". Death and evidence could point to any number of things, really: to blood, to wounds, to the graveyard, or to the dead in the City themselves. Blood and wounds, of course, are evidence of death on their own; a graveyard is evidence of death because it's where the dead are laid to rest, and where those places are marked with headstones. And it doesn't seem to make much sense, having a graveyard at all in a place where the dead are made to live again, but it's played a role in a few times of trouble before this--once when people that tried to escape the City were put into graves instead, and another time when it filled with all new gravestones, ones that bore the names of visitors that had come to see us, and digging down into the graves only led to a set of catacombs beneath the graveyard itself.
And then there are the dead in the City, who can't help but be evidence of death just by existing here. Adrastus's mother once suggested that she was the one who paid for the dead in the City, who gave them the chance and ability to live again here. And the first time I met her was just around two years ago this month, when she came to collect Adrastus in the beginning of May.
It's hard to say, with all this in mind, what might be going on. Whatever it is, it's certainly not a series of events we've seen before, though bits and pieces of it have shown up in other places here and there--the clock stopping, the harpies, the carousel animals. And all in the early days of May.
But I think what's becoming clearest of all is that things can't go on like this, and something will have to be done because the deities certainly don't seem inclined to do it for us. There was a second way of restoring the barrier, after the first came down; what's to say there isn't a similar way of restarting the clock, if we can only find it? That seems to be the problem most at hand; if the City revolves around the clock and it's the City that's against us at the moment, then perhaps mending the clock will also mend the City. Perhaps that's the thorn in the lion's paw that only needs to come out for things to resolve themselves again. But I can't face that clock, I can't--
Which I suppose, at the risk of mixing my fables, leaves just one question: who, then, will bell the cat?
[OOC: Bzns has officially become srs. Anybody with information about the Omens Plot who wants to get together and chat it out, consider this an open forum to do so! Threadjack, talk amongst yourselves, whatever. Rosella, for her part, is still suffering from phantom pains and is fixin' to get that clock fixed; if she answers you in voice or video, feel free to notice she sounds rather strained and tense. o/]
More than a week in, and still nothing's happened the way we've been expecting it to. Or the way I've been expecting it to, at least, the way--not that they ought to happen, certainly, but at least the way we've seen them happen before.
May is always a bad month. My first May had the hair monster, and that was a week of trouble and fear that only ended when Adrastus's mother came to fetch him from under the City. That was the first time I really heard that phrase, "due is due"; the deities had taken our hair from us a few months earlier, and for some reason they'd taken too much, so Adrastus came to give it back. Things had to stay in balance. Due was due, and so he gave us what was due us, just in a horrible, awful way. I do think he meant well, really, even if it didn't turn out the best of ways. And his mother was the closest to kind I think I've ever seen a deity be in all the time I've been here.
Last May was the shepherdess, and it was much the same thing; we were all afraid of the Angel of Death at the end of March, and we were told to kill lambs and use their blood to save ourselves, but then in May the sheep grew on plants and started attacking people. And that shepherdess was behind it, herself, but then they had us round up the sheep and herd them into the carousel, and...and that was the end of the shepherdess and her sheep.
This May, the clock has stopped ticking and the carousel animals are leaping off their posts every day, running around and attacking people wherever they see fit. But they're always back after an hour, or thereabouts, and that's the only time they're allowed to go free. It's easy enough to avoid them by simply staying out of the Square for that period, but still...it's not the first time we've seen the animals jump, have we? They left the carousel when the Architect came, after all that trouble with those horrible boxes. I remember Sam saying a carousel unicorn knocked him down and told him who'd been behind that trap he'd been caught up in. And then they all went and ripped holes in the barrier, and the man who called himself an architect came and tried to persuade us to leave. But it was all a trick, the same as always, and the people ended up in the graveyard instead, trapped inside their own graves.
But this year is different. The deities didn't intervene to fix the problem with the harpies; they left it to us and washed their hands of the whole business. I still think Iacho was behind the falling tower, since I saw him turn a table to sand. But it's hard to say what Iacho's purpose really is, isn't it? He doesn't seem to be a deity like the others. And he's willing to talk to me...or at least he was. But where does he fit in with all this? Or does he fit in at all?
And then there are those two words, "death" and "evidence". They're words that go together, certainly, death and evidence. One finds them both in a mystery. One leads to the other. But why the two of them? Why now?
Death is simple enough to understand. It's always a matter of death here, in one way or another. If the clock stops ticking it'll be the death of everyone at home. Even the dead can come here, and those who die don't remain dead. A long time ago they asked for deaths in exchange for the safety of our worlds, and they do take deaths in exchange for lives as well. Todd and Neil once shared a life for a while, even, as I recall. So death is...death is unmistakably a part of this place.
Evidence, though...well, evidence is proof of something, a sign that something's happened. Is it evidence of death they're after? Evidence of death could be anything, really...a body, blood, a wound. A graveyard. A headstone--they gave us headstones not long ago, didn't they? Evidence of death.
The dead in the City are evidence of death. A wound is evidence of death. Blood...
Donated blood. I once donated blood because Dr. Chase said it was safe, because he said it could help without hurting me. But the City...blood, blood, didn't they take it? And the Square was all covered in papers thanking us for our donation...
Blood is evidence of death and they took it. They took it without permission. Doesn't that mean they have to give it back? Due is due, isn't it, Adrastus? Does this mean you'll come and give back all the blood they took?
If it starts raining blood, I suppose we'll know for certain.
Death and evidence. The dead don't stay dead. Riverrun, the Mother bought these lives for the people who were dead, she paid for them so that those people could keep on living. Peter died and I wanted to ask her to bring him back but I didn't know how to reach her. She came from over the sea, from outside the barrier, where there's nothing but storms and harpies. The barrier is there as much to keep the harpies out as it is to keep us in, and there were harpies before.
Peter died in the graveyard--no, under the graveyard. How long ago was it? It was after Sam left...that's right, it was after he left and all the new headstones appeared in the graveyard, after the visitors came. Headstones are evidence of death, and his was there, and I convinced Cain to come with me to dig his up because I had to see what was there, and I fell in by mistake. There were catacombs beneath the graveyard and that's where I met Peter, and we stayed together until we thought we'd found the exit, and he died saving me. I couldn't remember it for a while, but then it came back, and Edmund and Caspian were so angry and worried...
But the clock still isn't running. Time running out...that's a way of saying someone's died, too, isn't it? A clock that ticked its last, that's evidence of death as well, isn't it?
Whatever it is, I think it's clear the deities aren't going to intervene this time. They're going to leave it to us to fix. We'd thought they might mean for us to fix the tower, and we didn't, and so it collapsed. The barrier fell and they left it to us to clear away the harpies and fix it. And now the clock's gone quiet, and has stayed that way this long--longer, I think, than it's ever been quiet before--and there haven't been any signs that they might be starting it again.
A clock goes dead when it winds down. And you only know it's dead when it stops ticking--that's the evidence of its death.
Maybe I'm only grasping at straws, looking for patterns that aren't there. But things keep adding up, and it always comes back to that clock in the end.
[/Private]
[Filtered AWAY from the Deities | Attempted Unhackable]
I'm sure most everyone has noticed by now the carousel animals' recent habit of jumping off their posts and stampeding throughout the City. It's an unexpected occurrence, I think, but hardly a surprising one at this point. It's May, after all, and strange things always seem to happen in the month of May, just as October tends to be a particularly horrifying month when it comes to the curses.
Still, I think this May is turning out to be much different than the ones I've seen before it. It isn't the first time I've ever heard the clock wind down into silence, and it's not the first time I've seen the animals leave the carousel and attack the passerby. What is different, though, is how long things have gone on--and how quiet the deities have been in response to it. Horrible things have happened before, but it's strange that the deities have been so silent. Moreover, they haven't stepped in to intervene this time, as they sometimes have in the past. Last year they fairly finished off the shepherdess for us, and spent a certain amount of time talking amongst themselves about her, as well. But this year there's nothing, and there haven't been any unusual invaders the way there have been in previous years; on the contrary, it almost seems as though this year the City itself is acting to cause the mischief.
It seems clear, though, that the deities aren't willing to step in this time. They left us to manage the problem of the barrier for ourselves, and it seems as though they plan to do the same for the clock and whatever else might be tied to it.
Two words have shown up now, since this trouble seemed to begin--"death", and "IECENVDE", which we think might unscramble into the word "evidence". Death and evidence could point to any number of things, really: to blood, to wounds, to the graveyard, or to the dead in the City themselves. Blood and wounds, of course, are evidence of death on their own; a graveyard is evidence of death because it's where the dead are laid to rest, and where those places are marked with headstones. And it doesn't seem to make much sense, having a graveyard at all in a place where the dead are made to live again, but it's played a role in a few times of trouble before this--once when people that tried to escape the City were put into graves instead, and another time when it filled with all new gravestones, ones that bore the names of visitors that had come to see us, and digging down into the graves only led to a set of catacombs beneath the graveyard itself.
And then there are the dead in the City, who can't help but be evidence of death just by existing here. Adrastus's mother once suggested that she was the one who paid for the dead in the City, who gave them the chance and ability to live again here. And the first time I met her was just around two years ago this month, when she came to collect Adrastus in the beginning of May.
It's hard to say, with all this in mind, what might be going on. Whatever it is, it's certainly not a series of events we've seen before, though bits and pieces of it have shown up in other places here and there--the clock stopping, the harpies, the carousel animals. And all in the early days of May.
But I think what's becoming clearest of all is that things can't go on like this, and something will have to be done because the deities certainly don't seem inclined to do it for us. There was a second way of restoring the barrier, after the first came down; what's to say there isn't a similar way of restarting the clock, if we can only find it? That seems to be the problem most at hand; if the City revolves around the clock and it's the City that's against us at the moment, then perhaps mending the clock will also mend the City. Perhaps that's the thorn in the lion's paw that only needs to come out for things to resolve themselves again. But I can't face that clock, I can't--
Which I suppose, at the risk of mixing my fables, leaves just one question: who, then, will bell the cat?
[OOC: Bzns has officially become srs. Anybody with information about the Omens Plot who wants to get together and chat it out, consider this an open forum to do so! Threadjack, talk amongst yourselves, whatever. Rosella, for her part, is still suffering from phantom pains and is fixin' to get that clock fixed; if she answers you in voice or video, feel free to notice she sounds rather strained and tense. o/]