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legendsdreamwidthlogs2022-03-11 08:04 am
GAME OPEN - INTRO MINGLE
| INTRO MINGLE: BOUNTIFUL BUFFET | ||
 | NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK | |
New arrivals will continue trickling in as time goes on, always arriving close enough to the Obsidian Fieldlands base camp to be spotted and shepherded back to the safety of Jubilife, or in the vicinity of a material-gathering party who can gather them up as well. Characters are given a spare set of clothes once they arrive at the village. It's usually something resembling a casualwear kimono and trousers, fitted to them specifically. | ||
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| PLANNING PHASE |  | |
| As the new arrivals begin to show up in force, the Galaxy Team's leader, Kamado, makes more and more visits to the Wallflower. Soon after, the Wallflower's chef and owner puts out a call for help: Ingredients, of all varieties, and extra hands that can prepare and cook food. It seems a big buffet is in the works - and the whole village is invited! OOC NOTES: ❧ The in game length of the gathering, prep, and meal phases totals 4 days, but feel free to thread well beyond that. ❧ Wildcards and additional prompts are absolutely encouraged here! ❧ Characters who arrived during the TDM may consider those threads canonical to the game if they wish. ❧ Have fun! | ||
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 | GATHERING PHASE (DAYS 1-3) | |
The request goes out in the early morning on Friday: Ingredients! Food items! As much as you can carry! The reward, the green haired maestro of cooking assures you, will come in time. Though if you can’t be convinced to work for free, he’ll turn over some coin with minimal grumpy mumbling. The ingredients he’s looking for are all easy to locate in the Obsidian Fieldlands - a variety of berries, the ever sweet combs of Dazzling Honey, and the savory Springy Mushrooms that grow at the bases of trees. There are other herbs and plants on the list as well, so feel free to make some up as you go. | ||
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| MEAL PREP PHASE (DAYS 3-4) |  | |
| As loath as he is to admit that he needs help, Beni is allowing folks into his kitchen to slice, dice, and sauteé in preparation for the big day! Ingredients need to be washed, sorted, prepared, and stored safely. Wood needs to be chopped for the cooking fires. New additions to the pantry are still being accepted. Whatever you can contribute helps, Beni assures everyone. If you’re feeling like there’s too many cooks in the kitchen, tables and benches need to be set up outside. The tables inside need to be washed and set up as well. Decorations are discussed - maybe some colorful lanterns or banners…? | ||
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 | FEAST (DAY 4) | |
When the day comes, tables and benches are set up in front of Galaxy Hall and filled to the brim with food. Rice, great big hotpots of ramen, plate after plate of mochi - potato or otherwise - and a truly incredible selection of clay pots containing quality teas, brewed fresh for the occasion. And that’s just scratching the surface! Between the Agriculture Corps tireless work on harvesting food and all the new arrivals’ hard fought spoils, the feast is truly grand. | ||
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| GOOD OMENS (NIGHT) |  | |
| After the feast, as night begins to fall over the village, characters may look up to see that in the clear starry sky, a meteor shower has begun. The shooting stars come in all colors, too, filling the night with a cheerful rainbow incandescence. Locals stop and point, the superstitious among them exclaiming that this is a good omen. A sign that things are looking up. They say there’s an old legend about this sort of meteor shower - that if you make a wish on the colorful streaks in the sky, it just might come true... | ||
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no subject
...yeah.
[ She nods and responds quietly. ]
no subject
Well, I'm probably not gonna be your best option for it given, uhhh....we're all outta water here, I s'pose, but at the same time. [ Shrug. ] There's a certain someone I'm assigned to protect elsewhere who's usually caught in the same boat. But anyhow--
[ They motion for her to sit with them at one of the tables set up nearby, hoping it will at least offer a little more of a shroud of normalcy for them to talk things out. Leading a stranger into somewhere actually private is something they reckon could go badly on all sides. ]
Is this a, ehh...were you separate before? Or is this more of a "how long have they been here" kinda situation?
no subject
It's... complicated.
[ And she can't help but wonder if she should even elaborate to this person they just met... so she asks everyone else mentally. ]
Should we...?
Nn... may as well.
Mm...
Nothing to lose...
[ Well then, with that decided... after a brief pause, Yuzu continues. ]
We uh, used to just be one person... then we got split into four, and somebody tried to put us back together to bring the original us back.
[ She awkwardly scratches her cheek. ]
It... it almost worked, but she's gone now. It's just us.
no subject
Not that you have to, to be clear. [ Very important. ] But I'm just tryin' to get a feel for if this is, say...an internal process or an external one, y'know? The mechanisms are different, depending.
no subject
N-No...
[ She puts her hands together and clenches tight. ]
S-She's gone... and we're not her, we're not Ray...!
[ She can feel everyone else's emotions spike, showing all of it in Yuzu physically. What would happen if they became Ray again? Would they simply... cease to exist? That's what it felt like, back when they were Ray... however incomplete and brief that was. ]
no subject
H-Hey! No, you're absolutely right, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to...that is, I don't think at all that it's a good thing to go through, at least not for everybody in situations like yours? I just, ehh...
[ How by the lines are they going to fix this? ]
Let me explain a bit. The...person I'm supposed to look after back home, let's say, they had to go through that themself. A good six or so very different folk all ended up as one new person, with a whole lotta baggage attached. My point is that for them, it was a magical process, no undoing it, an' the, uh, therapy has to be pretty unique for them.
But there are folk who are in situations like this for non-magic reasons. [ They gently tap their temple, trying to keep casual but for once actually hard-pressed to keep the worry out of their manner. ] Some brains just get wired to do that, one way or another. I'm not anywhere close to suggestin' you go back to...Ray. Poor Sunny's in such a bad spot from it that quite frankly I'm not a fan of the idea of anyone doin' it if they can avoid it. But if you an' the others, ehh, have the potential, there might be some, yknow, frameworks you can use to make all this easier on you?
[ They sigh and shake their head. ] This all probably sounds like utter nonsense to you, doesn't it? I'm sorry. Point is, was this a spontaneous thing or, y'know, a process?
beware the MASSIVE LORE DUMP
It was... a process. Sorry, it's a long story... do you mind listening for a while?
[ Is it time? Time for an Arc-V lore dump? Yep. She takes a deep breath... we're gonna be here for a while. ]
See, where I'm from, there was once just a single dimension... we'll call it the Original Dimension. It was incredibly advanced technologically, and a major part of that world was it's most famous game... Duel Monsters. In Duel Monsters, you summon monsters using cards and 'Duel' another 'Duelist' until one of them drops down to 0 LP, life points. It was a game... a fun game.
...in that Original Dimension was us, Ray Akaba. She was a duelist too, and it was around the time she started to rise in the rankings that her father, Leo Akaba, started to try and further-develop the Duel System.
See, in duels, you summon monsters using Solid Vision... which projects lifelike holograms. The Original Dimension, however, had something greater... Real Solid Vision. Regular Solid Vision just produced holograms... three-dimensional images, but while shockwaves could be generated to an extent, everything was just a hologram... you couldn't touch or interact with them.
But Real Solid Vision was different... it created hard light projections, holograms you can touch and feel. It was already used for a variety of purposes... advertisements, business, and so on.
What Leo Akaba did, though, is that he managed to implement this Real Solid Vision into Duel Monsters. Effectively, he gave the monsters we summoned real bodies... but they were still just Duel Monsters, right? Just a game, right?
...there was an old wives' tale in that dimension, stating that Duel Monsters well and truly have souls. Leo Akaba considered it when, during testing, one of the monsters would react slightly to external stimuli and even give off faint signs of body heat... but it was ultimately brushed off. After all, it was just an old wives' tale, it was just superstition, right?
Leo Akaba's work with Real Solid Vision revolutionized duels... you could now run alongside your Monsters, ride them, feel them, and experience the impact of monsters with actual mass battling. Duel Monsters wasn't just a game anymore... it was a sport. In fact, the Real Solid Vision system took the the Dueling System better than any other version of Real Solid Vision before. It was more real than ever...! And down to the last hair... it felt like it even had life within it. The passion people had for dueling rose higher than ever before.
...among the rising duelists wasn't just Ray, there was a boy.
A Duelist who simply wanted to entertain the cheering crowd, win, and become stronger. His name was Zarc.
He didn't initially stand out, but he kept winning... rising rapidly in the ranks and quickly qualifying for the biggest Dueling Tournament in the world, where he continued to win again and again. He was a fan favorite... and he commanded four powerful Dragons, each representing the four Summoning Methods of Duel Monsters, and when he dueled... it was like he was in perfect sync with his Monsters, like he was one with them.
He even claimed once that he could hear the voices of the Monsters.
...during one duel, though, there was an accident. One of Zarc's attacks caused his opponent to be severely injured. He was horrified at first, but then... do you know what the crowd did?
They cheered.
It was brutal, it was intense and exciting. It was... entertaining.
As far as we know, Ray... never knew Zarc personally. We can't say exactly how quickly it happened, but... something changed in the way he dueled after that.
His opponents would frequently end up hurt by the end of each duel, their injuries increasing in severity over time. The way he started dueling... he started to do it in a way that was violent. Intentionally moving in ways that would cause the other duelist to end up hurt.
Even worse, in order to promote themselves, other duelists started to mimic him... and the violence of each duel continued to grow and escalate.
The crowd cheered every time. His duels were more intense, more brutal, more exciting than any other... and realizing that this was what pleased the crowd, he kept doing it, carried along by the current that he had created.
Ray's memories are still foggy in our head... but when she was watching one of his duels, she said that his monsters were... crying.
He kept answering the demands of the people, turning duels into genuine battles with intensity you could never find anywhere else.
...eventually, there was nobody left. Zarc, leaving the battered bodies of duelists behind him, reached the top of the Dueling world. He was the strongest champion, the undefeated duelist... commander of all four summoning methods and the finest dragons from each one.
Out of all of Ray's memories, this one is the clearest... hearing what he said on top of that podium, proudly declaring himself the strongest and wielding all the strength he needed and more to back it up.
"Is that all!? Is there no one left who will fight me!? I'm not satisfied yet! I want to continue to battle, to continue battling more fiercely than ever!!"
...the crowd agreed, agreed that they weren't satisfied yet. They wanted him to continue showing them greater and greater duels. They wanted more.
"Good! It is your cheers that will give my monsters strength! Just as you wish, we will become even stronger!! Enough that we will be able to destroy everything in the world...!! Yes, we will continue winning! Just as you all desire!!"
[ She takes a moment to take a deep breath before continuing. ]
He summoned his dragons... everyone was cheering, they all thought it was just a show... but he really was stronger than anyone could ever imagine. His dragons attacked with a destructive force nobody had ever seen in a Duel before. Everyone ran for their lives... and some didn't escape.
We don't know enough about him to understand where his mind was at... what possibly went through his head that would lead to such a dramatic change... but he went berserk, and his Dragons responded in-kind. At that point, they weren't even being controlled by him... they were genuinely angry. Ray was able to tell... that they were lashing out in rage at the people that caused their Master to change, who encouraged the increasing violence.
Duel Monsters have souls... what Leo Akaba had brushed off as superstition turned out to be as true as possible. The consequences were immediate. The monster's real bodies gave them a physical avatar to channel their rage, and even the Original Dimension's modern weapons did nothing to them.
They destroyed faster than anyone could even begin to imagine. By the time they realized how bad things were getting, it was too late. Everything was in ruins, and the destruction caused by Zarc's monsters only continued to expand.
Then, amidst all of the destruction... they stopped and returned to Zarc. Ray was there when it happened. None of them were satisfied, not Zarc, nor his dragons... and then he said that he would become one with them, and in doing so... obtain supreme power.
Impossible, right? But it wasn't... Ray saw him summon a Monster that had the power to do that. He... he well and truly became one with All four dragons... and became what they could only describe as the Demon Duelist. Supreme King Dragon Z-ARC.
It only got worse from there... he had power that could rival that of gods. Nothing could stop him... the only way we could stand against him was with Duelists. But still nothing worked, he was well and truly unbeatable... but Leo Akaba, Ray's father, didn't give up. Because he was the one who developed Real Solid Vision for Duel Monsters, he felt it was his responsibility as the one who ultimately gave rise to the Demon Duelist, to stop him.
While the world desperately fended off destruction, he traveled. If humans gave rise to this power, then he would find a power that surpassed humans. He sought to harness the power of nature itself into cards... and despite all odds, he succeeded. He created four cards with the power to counteract Zarc. When he was about to face him, though, we—no, Ray—stepped in. She stole the cards... because she believed that her father was someone the people needed for the future.
[ She suddenly scoffs, muttering under her breath: "Look how well that turned out..." ]
A-Ah, sorry... so after that, she stopped her father from chasing her, and went to face Zarc by herself.
By the time Leo Akaba managed to catch up to her, it was too late... she used the cards, channeling their power into her own body, which...
[ She holds up her arm, a silver bracelet with a pink gemstone embedded in it on her wrist. ]
...created four bracelets, one for each card.
It worked, Zarc was finally defeated, and the four Dragons that had become one started to forcibly be separated again. But... that's not the only thing that was separated. The cards were too powerful... too much for any human to fully handle.
Zarc's four dragons were split and returned to their original forms... and the Original Dimension itself was also split into four, becoming dimensions separated by Summoning Methods. Zarc was split into four as well, with one of his fragments each reincarnating in one of the four dimensions with their corresponding Dragon.
[ A pause. ]
And Ray... went through the same thing. Four dimensions, four boys each with one of four dragons, and then four girls... each with one of four precious bracelets.
And so you have us. Yuzu of the Standard Dimension, Serena of the Fusion Dimension, Rin of the Synchro Dimension, and Ruri of the Xyz Dimension. Four girls with the same face.