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CR & PLOTTING: JUNE
Miss Nessie and her Witches had suspicions about the longevity of the new arrivals, and a theory was proven true when they all vanished before June 1st - Mirrorbound require a mirror in the Looking-Glass House to truly anchor them to this world. While they do not yet understand what allowed people to be pulled through other surfaces, Nessie feels for all the Mirrorbound who saw old friends and family only to have them ripped away again. There is a renewed interest in the Coven in trying to discover the secrets of the Looking-Glass House and harness its magic in a controlled manner.
As Ieuneril sets in, with the departure of so many temporary Mirrorbound, the city grows quieter and starts to settle back into familiar routines, bustling as they prepare for Litha at the end of the month. Hopefully a less-ominous Litha than last year! Eyes are kept somewhat tersely on the skies searching for any hint of red. So too, there are whispers around Parliament about the sheer number of Mirrorbound that arrived last month, a fact many are uneasy about, but concerns must shift as a new problem arises...
What Lies Beneath
On the morning of the 13th, Sowilo, the Bonded Fae of Miss Nessie's assistant Theodore, will broadcast himself through the Watches, haughty expression uncharacteristically grim, bearing news. A dozen Wilders stationed at the Northern Outpost vanished unexpectedly a handful of days ago while investigating a rockslide in the cliffs, and search parties have turned up very little. Until now. Two of the missing Wilders were successfully recovered, injured but alive, and brought back to the Coven for treatment. Their story is a strange one.
From what they can gather, the group found a tunnel in the stone, leading far, far underground, where they were ambushed in vast caves of illuminated crystals. Overtaken, they were captured and pressed for information. Eventually, two were sent back with a message from a Monster the attackers called their Matriarch: she will release the Wilders unharmed if those who witnessed the stone spires of their city in a dream will come and visit. She has a keen interest, and the Mirrorbound (and only the Mirrorbound) are cordially invited to her realm.
Many may remember the dream from Mareuer - the caverns, the sheets of man-eating moss, and the bustling marketplace: the Underground, with all the strange people who have never heard of the world above them. Before, they were not allowed into the city proper, halted at the marketplace that rings the outskirts, but now there is an opportunity to make a discovery, an entire civilization no one in Aefenglom knew was there. Sowilo will explain that a group will leave in just a handful of days, and he will accompany them as far as the strangers will allow. They will need curious minds and strong bodies both: they know nothing about the people who live there, and weaker Mirrorbound could need fighters for backup. The Wilders may be over-curious meatheads but they cannot merely leave them hostage in a strange land, and with the tunnels lying so close to the Northern Outpost, knowledge of their neighbors will be highly valuable...
Yes, this June, we return to the Underground! All who wish to volunteer are given the mission to visit this new city, on the Matriarch's invitation, and gather valuable intelligence and experience for Aefenglom and the Coven. Ten characters as well will be chosen by the Matriarch's guards to have a conversation with the Matriarch herself - which means a chance to ask questions directly, questions other NPCs may not be able to answer, not to mention potentially affect relations. Representatives will be chosen by RNG and will each get an NPC thread. Please only sign up if your character would ICly volunteer for this duty and if you want to have a small thread with an NPC!
Representatives will be chosen OOCly on the 15th at 3pm EST by RNG. ICly, they will be chosen by guards when they arrive to the city, and will have 4-5 days to discuss with others and prepare their questions and comments. The meetings will ICly take place on the 21st.
They aren't the only ones who can affect relations with the Underground, however. We will be posting a good ol' Action Tracker for you all to let us know what shenanigans you get up to, and how things go will determine future friendliness or enmity, along with whether they accept a teleporter set-up in their city or not. They could be a new ally in the fight against the Cwyld, or a new enemy right at the Northern Outpost's doorstep.
The Underground will be ICly open until mid-July at minimum, possibly permanently.
FORMS
With all that out of the way, here is your CR/Plotting form!
Player Name: Your name, handle, whatever you'd like!
Pronouns: Your preferred pronouns.
Contact: Preferred method of contact - discord, plurk, twitter, PM, ye olde MSN messenger, etc.
Timezone: Where are you in the world?
Character Name: Name & username!
Canon: Exactly as it says.
Appearance: Link an image or describe your character; if there's anything notable about them at first meeting, put it here!
Brief: A few words to sum up your character, a couple of lines to tell what they're about, whatever you'd like. If you have an info post all ready to go, feel free to link it in addition to your summary!
Choice: Witch or Monster; and for the latter, which one?
Event Plans: Anything specific to this month's event!
General Plans: Any other plans you have for the month! Don't forget to check out the Quest Board, too.
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Pronouns: she/her
Contact: PM here! I also sometimes make plurks about Aefenglom at
Timezone: North America’s Eastern Time (currently UTC-04:00)
Character Name: Leslie
Canon: The Monster Duchess and Contract Princess (I only have translations of the comic)
Appearance: Cute. She’s had about 4-5 months of real food and physical training for a little over 2 months, so these days she looks much healthier than she did when she arrived. Her arms are no longer thin enough to expect them to snap in a stiff breeze. You’d have to be marking her height on a doorframe to really see any difference there, so she’s still the height of the average ten year old. (She is maybe a centimetre or so taller than when she arrived. She hasn’t noticed and is still grumpy about her growth spurt not starting yet.)
Brief: Former abused child who seems to be making up for a lifetime of not being allowed to express emotion by having every feeling immediately broadcast on her face. Sincere to the nth degree. Still learning about the world.
Choice: Silver medalist of the littlest Witch contest.
Plans will be divided into two comments: Regular Monthly Plans and Leslie’s Background Outer City Plotting, because the latter has gotten some parts sorted out (I’ll be linking the info given by the mods to make sure my summary doesn’t miss anything). Since I am wordy, this will get long, but I’ve bolded key phrases in hopes that it will allow people to skim stuff.
Regular June Plans
For Litha, Leslie will be participating in the flower parts of the festival and will be unaware of the adults around her gently steering her away from the spicier parts of the festival. Unless anyone tells her otherwise, she will think it’s a festival of plants and marriage and nothing else. She will specifically be aiming to gather the seven flowers to put under her pillow. She doesn’t currently have any direct interest in romance, but she was told growing up that getting married is a necessary part of a happy life for a woman, making it more a box to tick currently.
General Plans: I fell absolutely flat on my face when it came to activity last month and I basically missed the fourth wall. My bad. Leslie likely spent much of early Maiuril not going out very much: she believes that only good people come through the mirror, but she’s not so confident about people popping out of midair (especially if she picked up on any of her housemates or friends being rattled by meeting someone unexpectedly) and she has a list of people she never wants to see again, on top of some lingering memories during the memshare dream hitting her self-confidence. Not that she entirely disappeared: Ferdie the beagle still needs walkies and the Coven library is needed to keep up her witch studies. She started coming out more towards the end of the month, especially for her job at the newly opened Purramid Cafe as “Royal Cat Petter.” (No, really.) She’ll be back in regular action by now.
On the Quests side of things, I’m only going to sign up for ones if I end up plotting out a thread with someone(s), as she has a
n allowancepaying job now that means she doesn’t have to take a part-time job to earn her own money. Candlemaking might work well with her current efforts withUncleHubert to work on her fear of fire. I can also see her attempting to placate some sheep for shearing, or berry-picking and somehow being more emotional? Hit me up if interested.On a more personal note, this is now the fifth month of Leslie living in Aefenglom and the fourth month of her having a living shadow familiar, with only a couple of temp bonds of a day or two when she ventured out of the city. If she doesn’t get a more normal bond by then, she will start to feel the effects of not having a bond on the new moon/first day of Litha: nothing bad enough to suggest a risk of explosion, thanks to her familiar, but she promised Hubert to tell him and/or Edelgard if anything changed in her magic, so she’ll be reporting that. In the end, she’s going to have to admit she needs a regular bond.
I mentioned it to someone offhand, so she will have at least one option: Hector (a monster) will offer to provide a bond on an extended temporary basis. He got the mistaken impression that he’s bad at bonding, so it seems he ICly intends to be a stopgap measure. If anyone is interested in a Leslie bond, let’s chat, but also if it’s not the right time, she will be fine thanks to Hector. I like bonds developing naturally and I recognize a Bond, Leslie Bond, Double-O-Cute (someone stop me) comes with some complications from her being A Cute Child Who Must Be Protected in the eyes of the majority of her CR. Did you want to pretend everything was okay in front of the child? Too bad, spill your emotional guts. Did you want to partake in the sex-friendly RP? Better have a grasp on blocking bonds temporarily.
Also, Leslie will start calling herself thirteen years old this month! I guess pedantically she’ll be a teenager. Wow that’s weird. No one bothered to remember her date she was born, so she just counts based on how many summer solstices have passed since she was told her age. So anyone calling her a child after Iuneril 20th will be getting told, “I’m not a child. I’m thirteen years old.” She’s not going to mention it otherwise, because she’s not used to thinking of her age as something anyone cares about, but that’s a thing.
(This is headcanon, as the information on her birthday is not out in English or on the Korean wiki page I could find. I did find a forum where people were discussing information from the untranslated web novel and I asked if there is any information on this, but unless that gets a response or the information comes out in the next comic chapter, it’s either headcanon or learning to translate Korean.)
Otherwise, it’s a case of trying to get the RP mojo back and poking around at things that look interesting.
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Also I can offer Kurumi up for Bond? Shovel girl needs a regular bond too, and Leslie is on her list of potential bonds.
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And that sounds like a good Bond for both of them! Kurumi may need to prepare for the emotions behind stress nightmares occasionally, but she’s currently in a state where that’ll probably only happen once every few weeks, it’s fine. Maybe toward the end of the month, if that works with your own timelines? I think I can get some neat stuff out of Leslie reaching limits and temp bonding with Hector first, and then any time Litha festival or later would work to have a “you need a Bond? I also need a Bond. Let us deal with this.”
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Near the end of the month/during or after the festival works! Kurumi will have to learn how to block out bonds temporarily, but she can probably deal with it when they come. The same goes for Leslie, Kurumi hides A LOT of her emotions from her trauma and nightmares, she might have to occasionally deal with that too.
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She's likely to be sympathetic to him, because even if what he did might not be right (and even that depends on how he spins it and whether Mikasa talks to her at all about it), Mr. Krüger is a good person! Which I realize might twist the knife more than if she were properly disappointed in him.
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It helps that they already have a congenial relationship, and it will certainly make resolution of the event in April (Gosh, April?! We both had a bad May!) very interesting for the both of us.
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But also it’s good in terms of the character fit! ...I mean, also a bad character fit given Lorenz already unhealthily denies himself with adults and Leslie worries that people bonding with her could be putting themselves last, but an interesting bad. Plus gosh, yes, the follow up on The Previous Event (sorry 4th wall it was a rough May) with a Bond sounds GREAT.
And he already learned about the dangers of Bonded having sex with someone else, so he’ll definitely remember to cut that off if he gets laid.no subject
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Frankly, these all sound amazing, so I could easily go for any of them if you have a preference! After thinking about this for like a day, my conclusion is that if I had to decide, it’s probably slight preference to cute Litha shit, but for yesterday evening, it was sheep favoured and GOSH drunken baking is such a funny and unique thread option that I’m not about to get anytime soon with a preteen.
SO IF YOU HAVE A PREFERENCE FOR ANY OF IT, I THINK IT WILL BE STRONGER THAN MINE but if I have to decide, I’d probably pick cute Litha shit, like the marriage superstitions where they could talk about Leslie’s confused ideas about marriage and romance, or down at the harbour since she’s been working on her fear of fire enough to be okay with the candles and she hasn’t been down by the water since early February and her guardian is going to be going to sea at some point this month on the kraken mission. BUT ASK ME TOMORROW AND I’LL PROBABLY HAVE CHANGED MY MIND.
P.S. I’ve been slowly picking away at my backtags. Would comtinuing the memshare be something you’d still be interested in? This reminded me to check and it seems I lost the notif for it (but also I didn’t tag basically at all through May so it would have been this late anyway). I know different people have different standards for how late is “too late would rather go to new stuff.”
The Second Bright Wall Story (spoilers: there will not be a second bright wall)
In mid-March, Leslie began to research the possibility of surrounding the Outer City with a new Bright Wall, which involved working on her understanding of Abjuration. This got derailed in April with the memshare dream, but she started it back up in May again.
On the architectural front, the building of such a wall would be ruinously expensive for a single person and Parliament won't ever support it (proposing it to the Parliament at large would hugely damage the reputation of anyone who tried).
On the magical research front, information on the Bright Wall is restricted-access to a level that any Mirrorbound could at best hope to maybe see a tiny part of it. There will be some success in finding anti-Cwyld protective spells, but these neither are perfect at stopping Shades (a major problem) nor help contain the spread of the Cwyld among residents who are already infected. As well, trying to cover the border of the Outer City would also require many Witches working themselves to exhaustion to have any hope of covering the whole thing.
And Now We Return To The Present
Sometime in the near future (possibly delayed by a lot of people going Underground), Leslie wants to start visiting the Outer City, both to survey the area and to talk to the people who live there. She'll definitely need to be accompanied on this venture, since her self-defence training is still in early days. Since she dresses like someone from the upper class, has no experience with slums, and is a literal child, though, other people might have more success in talking to the residents of the Outer City than she might.
Conversations will reveal an oversight in Leslie's plans: some people in the Outer City don't want a wall. There are those who live in the Outer City because they have nowhere else to go and those who stay to live with their Cwyld-infected family and friends, but there are also those who choose to live there. Some are proud to live free of the city's influence; some Monsters think this is getting back to their roots; some infected people just want to live out the rest of their lives in peace and not have things uprooted by some well-intentioned Mirrorbound; and so on.
There is also a problem with trying to keep the Cwyld out: after some moved to the refugee district during the December snowstorm, the majority of the population remaining in the Outer City are infected or wish to stay with infected loved ones. A barrier against the Cwyld outside won't stop the spread of the infection within the population and the infected in the Outer City are generally unwilling to submit to the Coven's methods of curing the infection.
Conclusions
A downside to this is that it does not solve the problem of the spread of the Cwyld infection within a population. The Mirrorbound involved in this protection could insist that people wishing to move into the protected neighbourhood must be uninfected (of a population that is majority infected/unwilling to be cured by the Coven) or they could accept that they will not be able to stop the spread of the Cwyld and focus more on providing a space more protected from Shades.
At this point, I don't know what approach Leslie will choose, as discussions (related or not) with other characters or in-universe events could change her mind, but with the information I have right now, both seem plausible.
Any questions/comments/suggestions/interest in threads related to this/handwaving plotting/etc. are appreciated! Thanks for reading this absurdly long comment. (This is me trying to be succinct.)
The original proposal and response in case I mischaracterized any of the information
In cases where either she’s denied entrance or her questions are dismissed as coming from a child, she will ask for Edelgard’s help to see if her authority as a member of the Mirrorbound Council or just her much more impressive aura as an emperor will open doors, literally or figuratively. Leslie, not bothering to be subtle about her investigations, will be attracting the attentions of several members of her CR over the time she is investigating the wall, such as Bishop, Soren, Juza, Hubert, Mikasa, Lorenz, and Arthur, who will want to help with such a goal. In particular, while Hubert is not an expert in Abjuration and Enchantment, he has much more experience than Leslie in both the magic of Talam and experimental methods (her science background is iffy at best), making him someone that she can turn to if she gets stuck in her research. (She’s an academic prodigy, but she’s a prodigy for a twelve year old, which means the academic intelligence of about an average undergrad.)
Phase 2: Based on the response on the FAQ, it is almost certain that the answer is going to be “there’s not enough money in the world.” While Leslie is reluctant to accept this answer, having an idealistic view of helping people and no money sense, there are other people working with her by this point (such as Bishop), who will convince her to seek out more practical solutions. Her first step on this will be to explore the habited zone outside the walls and speak to those who live there to get a better grasp on the situation, under the protection of the others involved in this project. The people helping her also range widely in terms of class and life experience, which may allow them to experience more success when talking to the various people living outside the walls than a child with limited life experience who dresses like a noble would have.
Among the people interviewed will be Elliot, whose work with the infected citizens who refused Coven care gives him insight on the problems with the Outer City and the Cwyld. Investigations of the outskirts will also be aided by Emil, whose experience with clearing infected land that has diseased monsters in his own canon will help with understanding options regarding placing any barriers farther out from the city.
Phase 3: With this information, the group (Leslie and the more research-inclined of the collaborators) will begin looking into alternatives to at least slow the encroaching of the Cwyld, using similar methods to phase 1 of searching records and asking members of the Coven. When the anti-Cwyld enchantments mentioned in the FAQ are found, then upon at least one of them learning how to use such a spell (Leslie at least will be willing to focus her witch education on this direction even if she ends up slowing down learning other spells because of it, but it’s possible by this point they will have attracted the attention of someone who already specializes in the school the magic it falls under), experiments will be run to determine how much area a witch can conceivably cover such that A) they can renew the enchantment before it runs out and B) they retain enough power to not be then completely unable to do anything other than power such spells. This will be compared to the area needing to be covered. (Also determining whether it turns out to need to be done over the whole outer city or if it can be contained to the borders, and whether it can be used on some kind of “Bright Fence,” where some more reasonably costed barrier like a low stone wall or wooden fence can be built and the less intensive anti-Cwyld magic be applied on that and the land around it.)
On the side, they might also see if some kind of Cwyld infection alarm spell might be able to be applied to the places that are covered in the anti-Cwyld enchantments to know when the Cwyld has managed to pass through anyway to allow for Wilder/other volunteer response.
At the end of this phase, the group will likely pass on their findings to the Mirrorbound Council and/or the wider Mirrorbound community.
Phase 4ish: Leslie is probably going to chase the idea of a proper Bright Wall for all the residents of Aefenglom forever after she finishes the more practical investigation, but that’s just something for her to do in her spare time on her own.
Note: I recognize this kind of investigation is going to take a long time, even if Leslie focuses on it as priority one. I am good to either be given a timeline or to propose one myself if you don’t want to have to make that decision. It's also possible that the scope of characters involved could grow, particularly from new arrivals in the next app period.
Thank you for the very in-depth response! Some of these impossible tasks are probably going to be difficult to convince Leslie of their impossibility (though she’d be willing to treat the actual possible solution as a good first step), but if she isn’t made to recognize the futility of the attempt, it’ll just be a case of further dead ends that won’t need questions to the mods.
Anyway, with this information, I think I’ll be approximating a timeline of her initial attempts to find information spanning from late March to mid-June to let anyone who might want to take part now to get in on the ground floor, and then the rest of the process I’ll get to over the next few months.
Now moved up to the proper spot!
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I read your posts below, and maybe these two would do well in the Outer City together? Dimitri has been venturing there himself trying to help (and teach kiddos how to swing a sword), so he has an alright reputation to help Leslie poke around.
If he saw her there, he'd approach to check on her, so it'd be an easy thread to start!
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Leslie won’t ever be out alone out in the Outer City, but I’m sure we can find some neutral party who might be hanging out in the background. (Read: not someone from Fódlan.) Mikasa tends to not be interested in conversing so I could probably ask Kitty is it’d be cool to assume she’s just watching from the sidelines.
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I'm cool with whoever watching from the sidelines - Dimitri will probably notice but just continue as usual and assume the observer will step in if they deem it necessary. If you'd like, I can get us a starter set up soon!
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Sounds like an excellent plan! I’m probably going to put up a log later this month for various things if you like it being on the log comm (I know some people prefer it), but if you want to get it rolling sooner than that, her IC inbox is ready for this starter whenever!
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Yosie I'm begging you, get this man into the cat cafeMore seriously, Felix will be down to talk to her about the Outer City and idk.... manage her expectations? Steer her toward more reasonable solutions? He's a man disinclined toward magic barriers, but he's started chatting up a few people on the network about more crude, utilitarian solutions for the most endangered sections of the slums, as well as more organized hunts to clear the Shades out.
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If Leslie was ever feeling bummed at the end of a visit to the Outer City due to the troubles involved in finding ways that will help them, would Felix ever suggest for her to get something to eat or some kind of treat? Because then she’d know a café for that which she thinks would be great for both of them, forgetting to mention the kitten part.That kind of help would be greatly appreciated. Leslie may know how bad life can get (she grew up in something near the bottom), but she hasn’t lost the idealism of “but it’s not how life has to be for anyone.” And this is the first time she’s really been able to look beyond herself and the people of her small world, because before she was barely treading water as it is. So she doesn’t have the perspective she’s going to need to make realistic nudges of change. Help me, Obi-Won Cynicobi, you’re my only hope.
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After seeing what he saw in her dream? Yeah, he'd totally try and round up some food for her. Eat some cookies, Leslie, you'll feel better.I'm definitely down, let me know if you want me to throw up a starter or if you're planning on doing a log or anything and I'll be there. brb adding Obi-Won Cynicobi to the list of nicknames he's collecting
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Anything but soup after that memory, haha.I wasn't planning to do an open log since I'm trying to get back into RP without skimping out on my real adult life person work, but there's so much I'm excited about happening this month that I'm probably going to do at least a closed log, but probably an open log. It will probably take me a bit to get it together, though. Also hooray, I've added to the Felix lore!!
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