"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

[makesomedeals]

"But crushing that hope would be beneficial for the ship as a whole. It runs off our energy, our emotions, which apparently are represented by... colors."

Yeah he's not gonna talk about 'shrimp colors' with someone he can't even see.

"You're fitting right in, an entity with an availability problem."

[blindwatchersees]

"Ah, yes, I probably should have a word with the Captain. I presume he's got some idea of why the Erda summoned me here, unless he doesn't. Not that I pay any mind to what mortals want of me, but I do like to know what they thought they were going to achieve by calling to me."

[blindwatchersees]

"I spent far too much of my life worrying about debts and bargaining and breaking my chains. That's over and done for me now, and I would ask you to likewise not worry about that while you're here. This place doesn't really like causality."

He smiles at the mention of the "myriad self."

"How did you like it, becoming a grove?"

[blindwatchersees]

"Perhaps it's less common here, but I often have a nice troll soul with a glass of late Third Era Surille wine in the evening. It would be nice if it turned out the ship carried both."

He pauses, suddenly seeming deep in thought.

"How many ants can one umbrella provide shade for, do you think?"

[pinballer]

"Shut up, man, I said I'm in the zone."

But he's starting to realize that the voice he's hearing isn't coming from Sheogorath. It's coming from...inside the machine?

"Hey, uh, that the fuck?"

[blindwatchersees]

Sheogorath shrugs, keeping quiet and non-distracting in an act of only-so-slightly-malicious compliance.

[abhorrently]

"It was truly unlike anything else I've ever experienced. I don't think I'd have the exact words for it unless I somehow ever managed to speak a dozen of them at the same time, it overlapped so. But like....like someone took all the Weave in me, all the fiddly bits and pieces, and then it was rewoven, but I didn't have to think. Couldn't, or I was thinking too much."

A storm turned into a grove, still twitching with lightning, still purring with thunder, humid as the pressure right before.

"Wonderful. But I don't think I could handle it long term. It's hard enough thinking as one, most days."

[pinballer]

"You still there, motherfucker? Can you hear that voice?"

He's not letting it disrupt his pinball game, though. Those numbers are still going up. Hardcore gamer moment.

[makesomedeals]

"You're not another god type are you? Those never seem to last long here."

[blindwatchersees]

"Well, I suppose I'm not any more of a god than other gods, if that's what you're asking!"

[blindwatchersees]

"Hmm? Your voice, you mean? Or are you talking about something else?"

[tempingainteasy]

April, stunningly, knows the answer to that:

"However many it takes to hold them up plus, I'll ballpark 30-50 depending on how big the ants are and if they're stacking." April says, and then raises their finger to tack on an extra point: "However, if you use tiny pieces of olives or cherries or whatever came in your drink plus some toothpicks to make a sort of mini-parade float with the umbrellas stuck in the garnish used, you can easily multiply that number, and it's more efficient for the ants."

[blindwatchersees]

"Why, how wonderful! I'm not always a fan of math, but that's the sort of math I can get behind. And how many ants do we have on the ship?"

[tempingainteasy]

"No idea, I wasn't there for the last roll call." April says with a shrug.

Hey, good news though, the counting and the math is about to get a lot easier now that they're nearing the poolside bar!

[blindwatchersees]

"Well, do let me know next time you're there for one. There really should be a poolside area appropriately sized for ants. People don't appreciate how much their ants do for them, usually. But as someone with ants I can absolutely attest to the fact that people should love and cherish their ants! Even if you step on them by accident and maybe have a few as a snack, that's just nature, it doesn't mean you don't adore them."

Sheo. Sheo sweetie. Your metaphor is getting weird.

[blindwatchersees]

His smile grows warmer.

"The agony and euphoria of being like the Madgod isn't something a lot of people get to experience. Really, I don't think it's something a lot of people should experience, as beautiful as it is. But... I think he was right to let you see and feel what it's like. As much as Lord Sheogorath likes to insist that nothing he does makes sense, I think the lack of sense only comes from the fact that he operates on a particularly strange sort of wisdom. There may be a very good reason why he wants you do understand madness as he does."

A pause.

"Of course, you should take my thoughts with a grain of salt. I do think my faithfulness to his lordship has the potential to cloud my judgement."

[abhorrently]

"Your faithfulness, or that connection you share?"

Her eyes are light, though, to say it, and she savors the tart in the space between one sentence and the next. This place isn't like being elected to the ship, dragged in away from everything she knows, all the friends she has - time is flexible, and being fresh off of being an innumerably networked self, the idea of timelines that Johnny had spoken of, other selves, it all makes more sense right now.

No, Fever isn't resigned to leaving a copy in her place back in the closest thing she can relate to home. She still wants to kill the double and burn her bones and come back. But in regards to any pressing urgency to leave nowhere? It's quieter, and there's precious few moments where her head is quiet.

"Being connected to another...it changes you. For better or worse. Nearly all of my companions and I were connected, not by our own choice, but by creatures inflicted upon us. Vile tadpoles, that would consume our mind quite literally if we left them unchecked, turn us into the very beings that did this to us. Leaving us helpless slaves to a hivemind, utterly lost with no return."

That is the true terror of ceremorphosis. Everything, absolutely everything, consumed and altered and remade and lost. To Fever, with as little as she has, that is what scares her the most.

"We had the process halted, and sought to kill the creatures in our heads, to free ourselves, but...I won't deny there were one or two aspects that were not all horror and abomination. It's easy to realize you can trust someone, when you can open your mind and they show you that they aren't lying."

She doubts that otherwise they'd have grown so close, so fast. Nor would they have been able to believe that they had each other's backs until the end of everything.

[blindwatchersees]

"Ah. That explains quite a bit."

"I think Lord Sheogorath might have an inkling of your struggle with that parasite. There was a time, when he was still bound to a mortal aspect in the aftermath of tricking the world, where the touch of the Prince of Domination and Tyranny ran thick in his blood. Had he lost that fight, he would have lost his very soul to the Lord of Coldharbour. The search for an answer to earning his freedom is what brought Sheogorath to Sheogorath, actually. It was... a mutual breaking of chains, so to speak."

He pauses, pouring himself a cup of tea.

"I think it's my faith to him, and my gratitude towards him, and my connection to him together. I trust Lord Sheogorath, perhaps in ways I shouldn't, both because of what he has done for me, and because of what I understand of his nature. Do not mistake my words for claiming that he is a merciful god. He is perhaps the most volatile and destructive of the Daedric Princes. But... he is also my friend, and I do not use that word lightly."

[makesomedeals]

"Well the one that needed worshipers to sustain himself faded away and both of the ones who were gods of wind must have blown away. So it's not a great precedent for whatever you're supposed to be in charge of. Or however it is gods work." He doesn't sound very impressed with even the idea of gods.

[blindwatchersees]

"Hmm, you're right, that doesn't sound promising! But then again, I don't think what I am is going to be leaving the ship anytime soon."

[makesomedeals]

"Oh they didn't leave per se. They're just not physically here anymore. We used to call them ghosts but it's probably more accurate to say they've been reduced to nothing and no longer exist as they once were. I'm told it's horrible."

[blindwatchersees]

"Reduced to nothing." A sum of zero, he thinks, and then promptly unthinks.

"And that is a terrible thought, but also rather reassuring. Well, reassuring that other people think and know such a thing. Because it reinforces that I won't be doing that, at least hopefully."

[abhorrently]

"A rare soul that can claim a god's friendship."

It's more murmured than anything else. She wonders idly if the tadpoles, even dead as they must be, left psychic traces on her. If the way they wriggled and writhed behind her eyes left trails in their wake, feeding on things she'll never know to miss. If that had been so terribly obvious to this god's eyes. And then she wonders what else is obvious about her, to those who know how to see.

Her fingers twitch on her teacup involuntarily.

[blindwatchersees]

"Lord Sheogorath would say that Daedric Princes don't have friends. It's contrary to their nature. And that does not stop him from having them. But... I do want you to appreciate how dangerous it is, to keep him as a friend. There is power in being close to the Madgod... and there is utter chaos. He is the blood of Padhome, the father of the end of all things. By all means, be his friend, but know that that might end in your annihilation. Or your salvation."

He sets down his cup with a soft clink.

"Whenever you've had your fill, I'll lead you on a tour of the root tunnels."

[abhorrently]

The good thing about finishing her tea is that she's not required to respond to that. Not to give voice to the ever growing mixture she's taking in from this day. There's a lot already, and she could mutter that if he's dangerous company, so is she, from all she can piece together. The true desire to say that never rises.

Instead, she waits til the cup is empty, and then rises.

"I'm ready."