hotelcaelum | Event Log #002

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Event Log #002

EVENT LOG
number 002

The hotel humbly hopes that you're settling in well and are taking advantage of the various pleasures on offer for your stay. In Mr Bennet's opinion, things have been going quite well and he doesn't think that the guests are unhappy at all. New guests have arrived, some have left, it's all going along perfectly. So, of course, this is when the next troublesome thing pops up.

SHADOWS

One morning, characters will find the hotel to be a little dimmer than usual, a little more shadowy. Yet if anyone asks Mr Bennet about it, he will claim to not have noticed anything different than usual. Either way, as the characters move on with their day, they'll start to notice a few odd things start to happen.

PHASE ONE: Initially, characters will notice their shadow beginning to move a little out of sync with them. Discreetly at first until eventually, their shadow takes on a life of its own, mischievously playing with characters and enjoying their newfound freedom. Very Peter Pan, and completely harmless.

PHASE TWO: Now, shadows might disappear entirely, roaming the hotel to their own discretion and ignoring the characters they belong to. As the shadow takes on this free will, characters will begin to feel slightly off balance and have a hard time feeling whole without their shadow around. The shadow may become slightly aggressive as well if told they should return to their characters, fighting back in their own way from knocking things over to outright attacking other characters. It's a little hard to fight back though when your opponent is a shadow, isn't it?

PHASE THREE: The shadows have become fully aggressive now, fighting anyone who tries to get them to return to their original person. Characters will find themselves feeling weak and low energy as a result of losing their shadow. Eventually, the shadows will come back to their owners but the characters will find themselves sinking into their shadow, eventually changing places entirely with their shadow. The only way to rescue a character from this fate is for another character to pull them out of their shadow forcibly. The bright side is once a character is pulled out of their shadow, it all returns to normal and their shadow is no longer sentient.

These phases will last over the course of the week and it is quite alright to stay in phase one/two/three. Not all shadows will become aggressive, not all shadows will be playful. Feel free to manipulate your character's shadow in the way that's most fun for you.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ a mess? a MESS? ]

You destroy half of room! I am going to be in so much trouble! Banned from library, forbidden to touch tomes—

[ she grabs for the nearest torn book, its remaining pages crumpled from how it landed on the floor, and begins searching for any pages that seem like they might fit. ]

Help me. I can Mend this.

[Help her? Help her how? They just survived being eaten by their shadows and this is her knee-jerk reaction?]

Do you really think this hotel will be inept enough to blame you for what happened?

[Oh. He dares them to. He will have words with them, should they have the gall to blame this on the guests — and by proxy, him. ]

[ it is, indeed, her kneejerk reaction. the venom in his voice, however, stops her cold, with a crumpled tome in her lap. ]

I—...

[ he calls it ineptitude, if she were blamed. no one has ever done that before. not for Teaferth. not for Sprezzatura Vaux. ]

[Henry doesn’t know what to attribute that to, not right now, other than her strange, blind panic over someone else’s mess. Even if the hotel wanted to blame someone, wouldn’t they blame him, instead? The man who actually blew up the tomes like they were birds shot out of the sky?]

Leave it. It’s their fault, they can clean it up.

But books...

[ it is antithetical to her, she can hardly make herself come to terms with the conceit of leaving it. ]

I was reading them.

Sprezzatura.

[Is this really up for debate?]

Are you in any state to read right now?

[ .................................

after a long, sharp, seeming razor-taut moment, she sniffs and turns to pick up her arcanabula. a small and weathered leather notebook, pages bent and crumpled. ]

[Seeing that only as an accedence, Henry pushes himself up to his feet.

Wobbly. But stubbornly standing. This body sucks.]

Come on.

[Maybe it’s more impatience than actual comfort, but he offers her a hand up.]

[ she stands herself, every motion heavy with a burden she refuses to bear. ]

Surely staff will not allow this to go on for much longer.

[She’s about as stubborn as him. Henry drops his hand.]

This is a farce. We should have known a “wish” would come with strings attached.

[ nearly laughing at that. what a nonsensical idea, to not consider that the power to make any desire come true would not be dangled like a carrot, tempting and damning in equal measure. that is the very conceit of the spell.

brushing past him, holding her tome close. ]

We? Speak for yourself. There is always consequence for making Wish.

[And he turns and follows, rubbing at his upper lip with the back of his hand, streaking blood across his face.]

If this hotel does that to me again, I don’t care what “consequences” it’s framed as. I’m not going to be weakened again and again.

[ this is a different man to the one she'd met. this is the truth, showing through the thin spots. someone with anger, someone who does not want to be made powerless.

it... resonates. ]

Before that. We stop that bleeding.

[Someone who wants control when he's been deprived of it for so long.

His brow knits, surprised that his bleeding has made the top of her priority list.]

My nose always bleeds when I strain myself too hard.

[Wrenching her shadows away was... definitely that.]

[ "then you are not casting your magic correctly," she doesn't say, because he doesn't believe in that, and what's the use in trying to make him start? if he bleeds, then the cost of the magic is blood. simple as that. ]

Well.

[ "thank you" does not come easy. in fact, it doesn't come at all. ]

We will find washroom.

[He’d hardly know what to do with gratitude, besides, without the bolster of his niceties and proprieties that he’s too worn to summon again.

And so Henry thinks of saying not to waste their time with it, but another trickle begins to run down his nostril, and he rethinks the notion.]

…All right.

[A low concession, but a concession all the same.]

[ to the bathrooms, then. staggeringly, slowly. ]

[Staggeringly and slowly, straight into the first bathroom they come across, squinting against the buzzing lights. And also straight to a sink, looking into a mirror — blood down his nostril, and a nasty bruise already starting to form along chin and jaw.

What an awfully weak form. He turns on the faucet, his first instinct to rinse the blood from the back of his hand.]

[ this is the first time in days she's managed to get a good, long look at herself. her skin sallow, her eyes shadowed. hair limp and tangled from the fight. all her clothes are rumpled in a way that isn't even cutely bookish; she just looks run ragged. her lip is swollen where she bit it when she fell—hadn't even realized it had happened.

when the flickering fluorescent lights cause her shadows to jitter, she jumps with a scratchy-sounding gasp. ]

Blyat.

[Don't worry, he looks about as bad as her and perhaps even less flattering with his pale complexion in these bright lights. Henry looks like he hasn't slept in a week, bags under his eyes. His hair, usually so perfectly styled, has practically fallen out of its coiffed curls, hanging limply across his forehead, loose at his temples.

And a very, very wrinkled shirt. Untenable.

He scoffs. "Blyat?"]

I don't know what to do, except stand here and keep my nose pinched.

[The buzzing lights just annoy him. He raises a hand and they buzz even more angrily, shining bright-- Then quit, their illumination now steady.]

[ if she looks sallow, he looks practically jaundiced. such a complete change from the man she stepped into an elevator with, as though he really has changed places with someone else. even his voice sounds ... different.

her eyes flick up as the light thrown from the fixtures swells and hum threateningly— ]

You are bleeding from using too much energy, and you are standing here using more? Stop that. Sit on counter top.

[He sure is. He's stubborn like that.

And from the look he tosses her from his reflection in the mirror, it also seems like he doesn't like being told what to do. His instinctual reaction, while in a mood like this, is always to perform the opposite, to be contrary -- who does she think she is? His mother? Papa?

But when that instinct recedes, rational thought takes it place more easily, knowing she's trying to help him for some unwieldy reason that must be shaped like concern(???), so Henry straightens and hops up to the space between the sinks, sitting there and tilting his head... up.]

Yes, mother.

[Sorry, he had to.]

[ she does catch that look, unsteady and exhausted though she is. he's viewing her with pure disdain, even after she put herself out there to help him. even though she's helping him still, now.

her own lip curls slightly; she turns on the faucet with more force than she needs to.

over the hiss of water: ] What is wrong with you? Stand, then. Sit on floor for all I care.

[What is wrong with you? Henry bristles, a muscle quivering in his jaw. He remains sitting.]

Don't ask me that. [There's nothing wrong with him-] My head is going to explode. My chin hurts. There's blood running down the back of my throat.

[From tilting his head up; if the blood doesn't drain out, it drains... in and down.]

Stop tipping your head back!

[ instinctively, she reaches up to take his chin and pull it down a bit, then steadies herself on the lip of the counter ]

Mammon. Don't be angry with me. Would you rather we both be wherever those shadows were taking us?

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