Lost Souls

[shimmershimmer]

[You don't wake up, exactly, but at some point you come to. There's something wrong with you, a numbness and translucency. Should you try to touch something, your hand will pass through it. Why, it's as if you were a ghost. So that's the bad news. Sorry about that. The good news is that mentally, you've woken up entirely. You remember the real truth of who you are, your relationship to your so-called "family," and all the other lies you've been fed by the Shimmering Lady.

You can move freely around what you will soon realize to be the village. The reason why it may take moment of realization is simply because it doesn't look anything like you remember it. The sky is black, the grass is dead, and the cottages are run-down and shoddy concrete buildings. The pond is dirty, and there are no animals whatsoever, anywhere.

And the temple. It's more like a storehouse than a temple. The Shimmering Lady is there, or that mass of flesh and tendrils that calls itself the Shimmering Lady...

She doesn't seem to see or hear you. When the others exit their "homes," neither will they. And there's some strange force keeping you within the walls...]

((Popcorn, mingle, curse the Lady, etc! Also! There will be a special thing for you to do here once Night 01 starts. Watch for it~ :>))

Comments

[irenicly]

Do you think he's some kind of monster like the Lady?

[He hadn't thought about the Gentleman not showing them mercy, but it makes sense. Again, more aspects of the brainwashing Banjou hadn't questioned.]

He'd probably kill us for our failure.

[Or worse. It could always be worse.]

[fauxlosophical]

Oh, it's worse than that. This doesn't appear to be a matter of one sort of monster against another.

They're the same species.

[irenicly]

[Oh god that's

worse than he thought]

Being sent to the barn would mean death.

[Come to think of it, being sent to the Lady would mean the same fate.

How the hell are they supposed to do anything about a pair of eldritch horrors that everyone considers their own patron deities?]

[fauxlosophical]

Why do you think she would even offer it to us as an option? Surely she's aware of what's in there; she wouldn't send those she was "punishing" there if it was so simple as returning us to our deity of choice.

[irenicly]

[He's never been so thankful for Clover.]

I'd take the fire over that.

[Banjou's kind of a bad apex predator, but if another apex predator is going to kill him he'd rather it be another ghoul and not a horrifying abomination.]

[fauxlosophical]

To be frank, I would have demanded it, had the vote gone that way.

[irenicly]

[Now he knows this whole thing is apparently a couple sadistic monsters playing dolls with 32 people for kicks.

.....and apparently they are lousy playthings because they invented their own non-lethal option.

There's no way that'll last forever. The things will get bored eventually.]

We need as many people as possible to learn the truth.

[fauxlosophical]

We've bought them time, if nothing else. Admittedly, that wasn't quite what I was intending at the moment, but it serves everyone's purposes quite well, I imagine.

[Ah. There's the insufferable confidence.]

[irenicly]

[....dammit, Kimblee.

He just... stares at that.]

We need to think carefully about who to target. The Faithful won't believe anyone they suspect of being a demon.

[fauxlosophical]

We need influential people. Someone seems to have awakened Connor, but I'm concerned that our Archdemon is going to target him eventually.

[irenicly]

[...Dammit.

Connor is someone the Archdemon would want to get rid of. They'd probably assume he has a role and strike.

Even if they're right, the village needs Connor right now.]

I don't know if it's possible to stop the Archdemon. Not unless we can interrupt the meeting.

[fauxlosophical]

Somehow I wouldn't be surprised if that's what Oswin thought he was doing last night.

[irenicly]

[...that's probably exactly what happened.]

Even if we were successful when Oswin-san wasn't, I don't know how reliable the Archdemon would be.

[If they said something and were then outed as the Archdemon it has the potential to ruin everything.]

[fauxlosophical]

Reliable, definitely not. Useful, however, is another matter.

[irenicly]

...if the Archdemon was woken by one of us, that might be enough direction.

[fauxlosophical]

My thoughts exactly.

[irenicly]

[Punching their leader in the face isn't something he ever considered as a possibility, but if it gets results...

He's not going to complain.]