"Which way ought I go from here?" [Open and one Closed]

[blindwatchersees]

Who: The Daedric Prince of Madness and YOU!
What: Who knows? Could be anything!
When: Mid to late September
Where: Various
Warnings: Body horror, general existential dread, transformation horror, other warnings to come


 "You must be mad, or you wouldn't have come here" [Atrium]

There's a new gentleman about the Serena Eterna. Or perhaps he's something other than a gentleman. Perhaps he's a cat, or a cloud, or a bad idea. The face he wears is different for whoever he meets.

Currently, he's leaning against a balcony railing, looking down into the atrium of the Serena Eterna, whistling like a mockingbird. Do you approach, coaxed or driven by fear and fancy?


"Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast" [Closed for strangearchitecture]

"Helen!" he slides up beside her, holding a plate as if it's a steering wheel. He, of course, does not actually have a vehicle; that would be against the rules. His appearing next to her is inexplicably accompanied by the sound of a window being rolled down, however, because comedic effect.

"My dear semi-sinusoidal seductress, I don't suppose you've heard the rumors of the infinite cheese shop on board, and the fortress of cheese that lies within its depths?"


"A grin without a cat is the most curious thing" [Hallway outside Stellar] [CW: potential body horror]

Amongst all the flowers, a fungal grotto has appeared in the hallway outside of Stellar. It's a strange sight indeed, filled with curtains and irises of fine, wispy mycelium and dotted with fruiting caps of vibrant yellow-oranges and metallic purples. There are also woody roots and stumps, out of place in a fungal environment, that periodically release clouds of green, sweet-smelling spores. If you pay close attention, the bursts of spores almost seem to come and go at a rate suspiciously like someone breathing.


"At least I know who I was when I got up this morning" [various] [CW: transformation horror]

The Prince of Madness is in a frightfully fickle mood, and without much warning, perhaps not having even given you a customary greeting, he brandishes a staff in your direction and lets loose a blast from it. In a peculiar sensation, rather like becoming water and going swirling down a drain faster and faster, you find yourself stretched and squashed into a new form. Perhaps your mind is unaffected, or perhaps you immediately begin wondering if you've always been this way, and the thing you were before was but a dream. In either case, it's going to be a weird couple of hours while the effects wear off.

(In particular I'm looking for at least one person to become a sentient pinball, but I'm up for anything, in the direction of both something harmless/inanimate and something large/dangerous. The suffering can go both ways here)


"I can't explain myself, for I am not myself" [stern, various] [CW: general existential dread]

Across the stern of the ship, in various places, there's a sound like a man howling and weeping, and the sound of fingernails scratching against metal and chalky paint. In a twisting line, the words "The sea knows what isn't. The sea knows what can't. Is the sea a thing that is? Am I, because it is?" are being scratched into the paint and the metal of the ship over and over again.

"A most uncivil offer" [Sports Deck]

Oh tarnation! Oh tribulation! Here he is in a place where he might ply his craft with sword and crossbow, yet he's brought neither. But perhaps someone eager for a sparring partner might offer to lend him one?

"Is it labelled 'poison?'" [Wildcard]

Comments

[blindwatchersees]

He sits back, leaning on nothing, and eagerly awaits the chaos.

[blindwatchersees]

There's something about brown-sugar-and-molasses cookies that feathers his brain right now, and he wastes no time in moseying on over to the dessert table, plate in hand, and he begins to stack up a leaning tower of brown, cakey confections.

"You know, they really ought to make plates in a wider array of sizes," he comments to one of the ants. That particular one. That ant over there. Yes, that ant.

[kingoftheanthill]

"I'm allowed to be up here!" Victor says immediately, and then: "Heeeeey..."

Heeey, there's something familiar about that smell! And voice! And guy!

"Hey, did we meet earlier?"

[blindwatchersees]

"Yes! Yes, we did! Why, we had a ball, in fact! Or rather, I had a ball. You were the ball. What did you think about that, might I ask?"

[kingoftheanthill]

"No way!" cries Victor, in a 'what a coincidence' tone of voice, the kind you might associate with running into an acquaintance from school.

"Um, I wish you asked first, but it was mostly fun! But, um," And he hopes Flan and April are proud of him for approximately remembering this, "was it an experiment? Or were you just doing it for fun? Um, because I think, um, I'm not supposed to work on experiments outside the union!"

He isn't 100% certain if he's remembering that right, but he tries anyway, because dangit, if it's important to his coworkers, it's important to him.

[blindwatchersees]

"I can't say it was really one or the other. It was really just a whim. Madness, chaos, doing what it does, not necessarily what it will. Except I do do what I will, but I don't always know what I will. Do I need to file something with your union? I wouldn't mind. I don't like filing things, but I do like unions! They change things! They're a lever to shift the status quo. And the power to change, that's a most precious and critical thing. Yes... speaking of... would you be interested in becoming a pinball again sometime?"

[pinballer]

Vance plays as he normally does, which is to say he totally rocks it because he's a hardcore gamer that always goes for the win. It's a true tragedy that he didn't live long enough to call other players filthy casuals on the internet.

"Don't fuck this up, ok? I'm in the zone."

[abhorrently]

She's been nodding at the appropriate points in this story, listening to how his world was created. In her mind, a little play of everything takes place, with shadowy figures, and the one marked Jyggalag is mercilessly turned inside out, with all the tinny screaming and agony that comes with. And then it twitches again, life returning.

"I am. So they mistook the caterpillar for a worm?"

[blindwatchersees]

He nods.

"And they were very surprised when it changed."

"The being that came to call itself Sheogorath didn't hesitate to show the other Princes how badly they had messed up. He bested each and every one of them when he saw the opportunity to do no, not letting them forget for a moment that this was their own doing. Sheogorath began to prove in time that he was just as capable of being dangerous and poweful as Jyggalag... with one caveat."

He pauses to pour her a cup of tea from one of many, many, MANY teapots on the table in the center of the garden.

"At the end of every age, Jyggalag would re-emerge from Sheogorath, tearing the Madgod to pieces and laying waste to his opposite's realm; indeed, he was justified in doing so, for everything the Mad Prince had built kept the Grey Citadel of Order buried beneath it, trapped and slumbering. But any time Jyggalag came close to victory, came close to freeing his realm from the tangle of roots that had suffocated it, he would transform back into Sheogorath, and the cycle would begin anew, with Sheogorath struggling to rebuild everything Jyggalag had destroyed."

"Sheogorath took little joy in being Jyggalag's prison, as well as being his own prison, in a sense. But what could be done, when the two only had one existence between them?"

"The answer, it seemed, was to do something impossible."

[abhorrently]

Taking her cup of tea in her hands, she continues to listen, the little shadowplay in her head moving on with his words. Ruin, rebuilding, and then more ruin and rebuilding, and a suffocating tangle it must be. Not a happy existence for either of them. Both of them being the other's chains. But like he said, what could be done?

"You said he's the embodiment of the incomprehensible. So the impossible might not be as far off as it seems?"

She's not some scholar, well versed in fiddling words and exact ritual. Nor does she have on the headband that somehow clears her thoughts, draws that specific intelligent focus. No, right now, she's just Fever, muddling her way through with guesswork.

[blindwatchersees]

"Certainly less far off than impossible, and yet somehow not any more probable. Lord Sheogorath knew that he couldn't possibly stop Jyggalag's Greymarch, for whenever one Prince would emerge from the other, it would kill their opposite until the other became still and cold and dead once more. So how impossible would it be, if despite all that, Sheogorath still somehow met Jyggalag on the field of battle?"

[abhorrently]

"Pretty impossible, from where we sit."

But she knows that's not the end of the story. And so she sips the tea and waits for the answer that her mind can't fathom, not accustomed to thinking in the ways a Madgod's might.

[makesomedeals]

"Atronach?" He pauses, it's been a while since someone spoke so confidently about something he can't identify. "I believe the term is construct though I'm not sure how accurate that really is. And the Captain, as she'll most certainly tell you. Multiple times."

Another long suffering sigh. That master/creator relationship makes him glitch if he thinks about it too long.

"Oh then you'll be right at home. Strange how many who've arrived here are from similar circumstances. It's supposedly random, but one does have to wonder just how arbitrary it can truly be, especially after so long. Surely she's been learning.. adapting."

[blindwatchersees]

"Oh, construct probably is more specific. Atronach is sort of a catch-all for spirit-beings that are primarily comprised of one particular elemental something. Fire. Mud. Flesh. Some of them occur naturally in the primordial chaos and others are manufactured by binding a spirit to an artificial form. I'm quite particular about the latter, we take sarcomancy quite seriously on the Isles-"

"She?"

"She must be the one who knows. The one who bound me."

[blindwatchersees]

"It was simple, for an impossible task. Convince the world that Sheogorath was alive when he was dead. How could Jyggalag then go back to being Sheogorath, if someone else was already filling that role? But creating a forgery of a god is no easy task when the eyes of reality itself are upon you."

He takes a sip of his tea, seeming to consider his next words carefully.

"It's a very old, very profound, very fundamental magic, to know that the world can be tricked, and through its belief in what it thinks it sees, the world can be made to change."

[abhorrently]

There's a silence between them, as she struggles to make the pieces line up in her head. Tricking the world? But...wouldn't there be some obvious tells? How to make such a switch, when someone's directly looking at you?

And then something gently connects, a puzzle piece having found a home.

"Forging a god."

Two meanings in that. Two paths, in the same sentence. All you have to do is turn it one way or the other, and the second message goes quite unknown. Angle one's perception, like a hidden switch in plain sight, and no one will notice until it's pointed out.

[blindwatchersees]

He smiles.

"Precisely."

"A branch from a timeless tree. An eye that holds secret unspoken. Find these things and bind them as Sheogorath's symbol of office, and who's to question that the bearer of that station isn't the Madgod, when it was by their own hand that they formed that mark of authority? From there, there's just one final proof- don't fall on the end of Jyggalag's sword, for the Madgod is a mad god, and it would be rather suspicious if such a being were so easily cut down."

[abhorrently]

"The same way you're not going to question that the man on street in fine clothes is a noble, regardless of whether you know his backstory or not. So then, what is seen becomes an accepted truth by the world."

She laughs a little, leaning back in her chair with her cup.

"Clever. And so then, he can't go back into his prison, because someone's already filling the cell. That's why you talked about 'another him.'"

[makesomedeals]

"Mud. Dirt. Teeth." He muses softly, "Sarcomancy sounds like something Skulduggery would say and expect me to know what he's talking about."

Hmmm. Now he's torn on how much to say, decisions decisions and he drums his folded fingers against his arms, "Not Friday. The Erda Flow. But I don't think we can simply speak to her when we wish. Or maybe we can, I haven't tried, and have no wish to talk to her ever again. She's told me nothing but terrible things."

[blindwatchersees]

"Oh, but that's just typical of entities with availability problems, isn't it? They love to tell you about terrible things. It's like a drug, a bad habit. You can't very well be the one to tell someone something good, because then you give them hope, and then you're partially to blame when that hope gets crushed." He delivers all of this in a casual, cheerful tone, as if he's talking about having had a nice breakfast that morning.

[blindwatchersees]

"And when the world sets the rules, then what it believes to be truth becomes fact."

He reaches over and cuts her a slice of a nearby pastry. It's some sort of tart with a red filling, the crust beautifully flakey.

As he hands her the plate, he continues.

"A slight adjustment there. The world sees that the cell is filled, but it cannot see anyone in there. The cell is simply unable to be occupied in its understanding, for the cell has become its own inhabitant. The secret inhabitant at the heart of the ruse thus goes from being in the cell to being a part of the cell, and the name and the face and the life of who that person might have been fade from the world as the world is convinced. Otherwise, a new cycle would have begun, with the cell's new inhabitant raging against its prison. And... perhaps that was the case, in the beginning. Only the Prisoner was willing."

There's a strange emphasis on the word 'Prisoner,' there, the meaning of which is not especially apparent.

[tempingainteasy]

April waggles their hand as they lead the way.

"Now that, unfortunately, depends on if we have service or not." April says, used to wiggling essences from Victor (alright, not QUITE the same, but still) and only encouraged by it. "That said, if you're good for mixing your own drink, the world's your oyster there, the bars are stocked with everything here, from everywhere."

[blindwatchersees]

"Everything, you say? Even distilled Elytra ichor?"

[abhorrently]

Fever takes the plate, listening well, for that is her role here. To listen, and recieve what secrets are to be placed in her keeping, to tend them well because they have been given at all. It hardly feels fair, all this telling - but then again, the Madgod can read her thoughts. Her secrets are not so far away, what of them she has. Perhaps Macaelius can peer in there as well, and her head is but an open box to those with power. Oh, there's an unsettling thought. She doesn't like it.

"Do they remember who they used to be? Or does that go away as the world gets convinced?"

It's a good tart, when she bites into it. Her host sets a very fine table for tea.

[blindwatchersees]

"Well, some would say it's better to forget. There's evidence to suggest that clinging to that knowledge can drive someone mad. Of course, if you're meant to be mad..." he trails off.

It's a strawberry tart, oddly tangy with a hint of red wine. It would pair incredibly well with a mild brie. Oh look, there's some on a dish along with five other kinds of cheese.

"But even if they remember, they change. They cease to be the person they used to be, moreso than the average person, who wakes up a new person to find that the world that existed for yesterday alone has been destroyed and replaced with something new."

"Such a person who seeks to exist in that very particular manner ends up here, in this particular subset of nowhere."