[DROP] lock and key

RaNdOM

As this thread occurs in a place 'between' places and doesn't technically 'exist' anywhere, it is being put in the IC Communications so that we don't confuse our exploration records.

It starts with a door. Doesn't matter where. Maybe it's the door to the shop you were about to walk into. Perhaps it's a hatch up into the attic. Or a trapdoor down into a stock room. Or a-- you get the idea. But whatever door it happens to be, when you open it, you won't be in that place you expected to find yourself.

No, you find yourself instead... on a beach.

A beach of pure black sands, with a slate grey sea, with a hazy white sky. No colour, nothing all around. Just holes in the sand.

Neat, square holes, each one accompanied by a shovel. How very peculiar!

Well, there's only one two options, really. Keep digging, or fill the bloody thing in. What do you do?

---

This is our very first MP DROP! The winner of this drop will have 400MP added to their OOC account. This drop will be conducted by a process of elimination: this means every round will have two choices. Those who pick the wrong choice will be eliminated, until only one remains!

You have 48 hours to add a character! NOTE: You may only participate with ONE CHARACTER for this drop, due to the nature of the prize being OOC.

EVENT

REMI

the alchemist

What good are hands
if there's nothing that they hold

"Well, well. That can't be good." Remi mutters to his son, who blinks up with sleepy nonchalance in his father's arms. Frowning deeply at the door, Remi turns the handle to see a beach of black sand. Thinking this another one of Ludo's tricks, Remi steps through without a second thought.

Glancing at all the various holes, Remi smirks. "Perhaps Ludo is trying to find something it lost? Shall we help?" He asks of the boy, who reaches out toward the sand. Setting him down and taking a protective place next to him, Remi lets Mateo decide what they'll do.

And because he's just a baby, he squirms and kicks and flails about. Filling in the hole, it seems.

---

Remi and Mateo fill in a hole.

And what good are hearts
if you bury them all alone?

Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!

In a rare moment of descending to her personal quarters, Wessex opens the trapdoor to her cave-like room and finds… a beach, instead. Pitch black sand, that reminds her more of ground of obsidian than the gold-white grains of Torchline. Grey waters, and more, more mist. Huh. Mist seems to be a theme in her dreams these days - and she must be dreaming, because there’s no way someone would bother to do this to her House.

Well. In she goes. Remi is there, and a baby she assumes is Mateo. Her fingers offer the smallest of waves to the pair (not that they would pay any attention to her), as she wanders in between the rows and finally stops at one that seems… okay. A ways off. A hole for herself. And since there’s a shovel, and Wessex always wants to know what’s beyond, she takes the tool and begins to dig further into the unknown.

-------------------
Wessex digs the hole.

The world is new to you, and you to it. During PQ/PQ+/KQs/Drops, you roll with advantage on luck-based rolls and receive an extra name during drops. (In order to use this, make sure to note the ability at the bottom of each post)

The Wraith
the bright
the thing in the night

Wessex

Lena

and sweetest in the gale is heard
and sore must be the storm

Maybe it was a dream again – like a whisper, like a sonnet, like a psalm, like a prayer. One moment, she’d been going to snag at more supplies, and the next, within a haze, a midst, of likes she’d never seen.

And rather than be scared, because it’d be an automatic reaction, she froze – hands tucked down by her sides, fingers clenching together, she strived to understand just what was going on. Her eyes sharpened, honing in on the world around her – a beach, like those in storybooks, with painted figments of sand and seas, except this was black. Ochre, sable, and underneath her toes.

She withheld the shudder yearning to pierce and flail through her form, and with nowhere else to turn, nowhere else to go, she advanced, striding outwards, noticing others in the same predicament, but too uncertain, too strange, too confused to wander towards them. Instead, she glanced towards the holes lining the dunes, towards the shovels, towards the sky. Uncertain of what to do, how to act, the caretaker grabbed hold of one of the tools, and seemed to follow suit on what someone else must’ve accomplished (and what for – why?), digging into the sand.

--

Lena digs!

that could abash the little bird
that kept so many warm

SAMUEL i am the ocean, crawling madly at your moon. and with one wanton whoop — "Oh, what now." While Sam's reaction to most things was to anxiously breakdown at them (and this was not really an exception, the tell tale fluttery feeling in his chest already), this just felt like the one thing that was too many, that would shift him from upset to annoyed. He had just wanted a season of normal, easy work in his shop. With a sigh, figuring he may as well get it over, he stepped out onto the dark beach. The holes spread out before him were a sight to behold; for a moment he wondered if they were strange graves of some sort, if this was a grim nightmare. Perhaps he had to help. Digging a hole for himself, probably a metaphor. Taking a shovel, Sam hopped down into one of the holes and began to dig deeper. -- Sam takes a shovel and digs deeper in one of the holes! The world is new to you, and you to it. During PQ/PQ+/KQs/Drops, you roll with advantage on luck-based rolls and receive an extra name during drops. — i melt into a sycophantic soup, & all that's left to do, is giggle, fawn, and swoon.

Belril

Every day's a challenge
But I always seem to get through

Belril couldn't help but stop upon his winding travels through the Woodlands, blinking a few times at the sight of something he had not seen before while out here. "Why...does that tree have a door on it," he couldn't help but ask in disbelief. He could see another Abandoned turning a tree into a small home, the tree in question did look big enough for someone his size to turn it into an opening for an underground area...or even work some form of spacial-warping magics to make the inside far bigger than the outside.

That was honestly an idea for a future home he could do, now that he thought about it. Figuring out how to pull it off was a puzzle for another time, though.

Curiosity getting the better of him, he approached the door and opened it, seeing inside a space that reminded him of the portals. Thinking this might be a secret new connection, or at least a backup one, he went through the open door, closing it behind him.

Then the door on the tree disappeared from anyone else's view, never there to begin with.

------------

"...i-is this Torchline?" He was surprised to see sand after a moment of travel through what looked like a part of the portal system, stepping onto blackness. He knelt down for a second, looking at the strange ground underneath him before running one of his hands through it. "...but Torchline doesn't have..."

He looked up towards the sea ahead, then up towards the sky, rubbing his eyes as he thought they had stopped registering color for a moment. He looked behind himself, ready to step out of here before seeing that door he walked through was gone, causing him to gulp and better look at his surroundings. "...where's the color," he asked himself outloud in confusion before looking around and seeing...

"Wessex?" He then ran up beside the demigod, slightly confused. "Where are we?" He then looked around at the place as a thought crossed his head. "Wait...this kinda looks like..." His eyes widened as a realization came to him. This looked like one of his stories his parents told him, regarding people sailing the seas and burying treasure among the sands.

Grabbing the shovel near him that wasn't already taken by Wessex, he found another hole not too far, but also not too close to Wessex, digging into the hole that didn't seem deep enough to find any treasure that may be under the sandy ground...

---

Belril seems to be digging away like a scrawny dwarf here, hoping for some treasure.

The world is new to you, and you to it. During PQ/PQ+/KQs/Drops, you roll with advantage on luck-based rolls and receive an extra name during drops. (In order to use this, make sure to note the ability at the bottom of each post)

Each day's a balancing act
Of good and bad events

AISHA

and now we're breeding a feeling of animosity

So much to get in order in preparation to move, people to visit and tell, clothes to exchange, the usual training and socializing to maintain. And Aisha was tired, exhausted even. As she trudged up the stairs of the manor and to her door, her legs were tired and shoulders slumped. She reached for the door knob with a sigh, turning it and yawning as she walked through.

But this wasn't her room was it?

She opened her eyes from the deep yawn as her boots sank slightly into sand. Black sand, strewn about and littering a mundane beach. The only source of color was the other figures that stood scattered about, a few of them she recognized. The boy, the red head, some others. She would've asked them what was going on, if everyone didn't already seem to be engrossed in their tasks.

Digging holes and filling in holes. Seeing as this clearly wasn't a normal occurrance, and talking it out the rational way probably wouldn't get them anywhere (god or spirit magic? something else caido-esque), she chose to follow along. Play the game. Aisha loved games, but she did not love shovels (they'd done her dirty recently) and so instead of going for one she chose to fill in one of the holes, using her boots and her hands to pile the ebony sands back in.

---

Aisha fills in a hole!

fear has the sharpest teeth, it eats and eats and eats

DELPHINE

Delphine doesn't think twice when she finds.herself on a beach with holes. No, she simply does. She finds herself standing on a beach, by a strange hole in the sand, and a shovel next to it.

And she digs. Because what else may be underneath the strange sand, but some sort of treasure?

She had been going to pack more of her things up, but when she had opened the door, she'd wound up here. Stranger, but see, it was hard to find things strange when you'd been whisked to this world.

Every single thing was strange to her, yet oddly familiar all at once. From dating a man that cared for her as a human being to... well, not know how the hell she should care for him.

This world and its anomalies... made life interesting.

---

Delphine digs!

I'd like to see the world upside down,

it could be more beautiful.

You had big, big, big plans, you used to play gracefully with your mythical hands

Confusion is slow to fill Hester, the attuned so overwhelmed by surprise that she can’t even speak. One moment, she’d been stepping into what was supposed to be an inn, the next, she was stepping out onto a beach.

At least, she assumes it’s a beach. The monotone landscape looks more suited to Halo than Torchline, and maybe it’s that familiarity that has Hester stepping towards one of the holes in the sand, looking around at the others who seems just as lost as she.

For some reason she can’t quite explain, the holes in the black sand fill Hester with a type of distant dread. Normally, she is one to follow the crowd, but this is an exception to that rule apparently. Instead, she takes a shovel in hand and begins to fill the nearest avoid, doing her best to erase all signs of the dip.

---

Hester fills in a hole

Hester

my whole life is mine, but whoever says so will deprive me,

for it is infinite.

Walking through the doorway, Amun frowned. This definitely wasn't the Artisan's Guild storeroom. Turning in a circle, his frown deepened as he took in the assembled crowd, some familiar, some not. He sent a quick message to Wessex as he made his way over to Sam. Any idea what's going on, Princess? The potter squeezed the bookmaker's shoulder.

Then Amun stepped towards his hole. Sighing as he picked up a shovel, he began to fill it in, grumbling under his breath all the while. As he did, he squinted up and around at the sandy beach, hoping the sunlight wouldn't be too damaging to the many Ascended who'd gathered.

---

Amun fills in a hole.

The world is new to you, and you to it. During PQ/PQ+/KQs/Drops, you roll with advantage on luck-based rolls and receive an extra name during drops. (In order to use this, make sure to note the ability at the bottom of each post)

by being moved I exert my empire,

making the dreams of night real

AMUN

This is... odd.

You aren't used to this sort of weird nonsense situation where you go in a door that seems totally normal and come out somewhere random. This is not your beautiful house. This is not your beautiful beach. This is a strange somewhere else and you are tired of all this god shit.

Still, only one thing to do.

Holes in the sand? Not super safe. And while some people seem eager to dive in and look for treasure, you figure you might as well start cleaning up. With a grumbled sigh you grab a shovel and settle in to work, lowering sand back into one of the holes and waiting to wake up.

---

Zeph fills a hole

Zephyr

you can be the ripest, juciest peach in the world
and there's still going to be someone who hates peaches

Aurelia

It took her a moment to register what had happened to her. She stood there in the threshold and passed over it into some place that wasn't really there, feeling as though she was in some sort of dream-like state. It's an odd place, one that only your imagination could conjure up. The world around seemed like a blank slate, with its dark sand. Sometimes dreams were symbolic, weren't they? She glanced around at the people around, unfamiliar faces that didn't stand out to her. Except for the last one, which she was struck by.

"Zeph?" It came out like a mumble but, the world around was so quiet from all the nothingness that surely he could've heard it. She made her way across the sand towards him, pausing only to glance over the uniform holes and shovels.

She stopped to see that he was filling one, while others seemed to randomly choose whether they were digging or filling the holes. He seemed concentrated, so Aurelia approached the spot beside him and picked up the shovel. She wasn't even sure why but, she knew she had to make a decision. Something compelled her, some intangible force or energy or... maybe it was just a gut feeling.

It felt heavy in her hand. She bent down to touch the sand in the hole, how cool and soft it felt. It was familiar to her, being beneath the surface. The part of her that longed to return home, to return to what she knew, it wanted her to keep digging. She looked back over her shoulder at Zephyr, brows threading together and lips pursing.

The thing was, even if she could go back, she wouldn't belong there anymore.

So she scooped up the black sand and, growing more determined with each shovelful, she let it descend into the pit until the hole was filled.

---

Aurelia fills the hole.

standing in the ashes of who I used to be

Delta

See the light as it shines on the sea? It's blinding
But no one knows, how deep it goes

How peculiar!!!

This was quite a strange place to be but no matter, it seemed very exciting.

There was much to do and so, after not really thinking for very long, Delta makes her decision.

Grabbing onto the shouvel, she takes her time to dig the hole, clearly very excited to be doing a task so human! Ah, it was very very exciting and she could only imagine what would be coming from the hole! Maybe treasure? Oh, that'd be lovely.

Oh, but others were here too! But... would anyone of them want to chat? She wasn't sure and tried to focus on her task, but did hope maybe she would get a simple hello from one of the mouthbreathers. Maybe they'd understand the holes?

And it seems like it's calling out to me, so come find me
And let me know, what's beyond that line, will I cross that line?

A panther in the night, a fire burning bright. Ray blinked in complete confusion. She'd opened the door of her shop to start her day as usual. And now she was on a beach unlike any she'd ever seen. She carefully took everything in the monochrome world. It was unsettling. Warily she stepped further into the sand, noticing the abnormal holes and the shovel. Humming to herself she debated on whether or not to explore. Curiosity won out and Ray grabbed a shovel and began to dig. Acting on a hunch, se tried to make her holes square shaped as well. If someone was this desperate to dig, and to dig in such a peculiar pattern, there had to be something of interest here, right? r a y The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. —Albert Camus