ioduanlogs | [EVENT] March Memory Madness

[EVENT] March Memory Madness

Characters: Everyone!
Date: March 5-9
Location: All around Aifaran
Situation: The Dreaming is a bit enthusiastic about the research at the Aisling Tower. Memories ensue.
Warnings/Rating: Shouldn't need any, but add to subject lines as needed!

Outside the Aisling Tower, the first clue anyone will have that something is wrong is small. Little things: trinkets lost, but fondly remembered, appearing in your hand when you reach for something else. A snatch of song that tugs your heartstrings.

That alone might have been nice. Unfortunately, things escalate quickly.

How did memories get loose on Aifaran?

Science Fair

Well that all went a bit wrong. Researchers at the Aisling Tower sent out a request for volunteers, hoping to get to the root causes of just why Dreamfolk frequently wind up with memory loss. The tests are reasonably painless beyond the occasional blood samples taken and rather tedious questionnaire volunteers must fill out.

And then there’s the machine.

It’s not big or scary looking - just a small, strangely organic looking earpiece linked up to a console used to measure neural oscillations. All very new, high-tech stuff that the researchers just barely control their enthusiasm about. Again, the tests are mostly tedious. Just a lot of sitting around while researchers display pictures, ask questions, have you smell a variety of scents, and other things to spark various mental associations. Though side-effects may include dizziness and nausea afterwards. It’s still a little bit too ‘mad science’ for some, even if the researchers involved don’t even cackle maniacally even once.

But as all things of this nature must go, something takes a turn for the weird.

Memories On Display

The Dreaming takes an interest, insofar as much as an omnipresent force of nature can be assumed to take an interest - maybe it just reacted strangely to the mental probing of the Dreamfolk. The how, for now, is not important.

The immediate problem is that memories are running rampant in the city - and not just from volunteers for the little research project, but also any Dreamfolk who come in contact with them. It starts off small - little things appearing in and out of your peripheral vision such as an old toy or a beloved pet. Maybe the echo of friendly laughter, or the incomplete form of a first love’s smile. These flashes of memory only grow more potent, however, as entire scenarios begin to play out for you and those in your proximity - just as vividly as you remember them. And just as accurately as you perceive them.

---

OOC Notes: Your characters will have the option of seeing memories play out, and/or being drawn into a mind-share memory experience-- basically, however you want to play it, the Dreaming will accommodate! It's also more than possible that the Dreaming will oblige if someone really wants to show someone else something specific-- but there may always be a little more than bargained for.

There is a specific starter for shenanigans at the Aisling Tower but the rest of the post is open!

Please address questions regarding the event to the monthly agenda post.

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As the memory vanishes, Devin tries to ground himself in the present again, attempting not to look as shaky as he feels. He is moderately successful, and X receives an agitated glare for his question.

"Do you think I'd be so bloody surprised if this were a common occurrence? This," he snaps, gesturing to the empty air where the child stood, "is because of that damned tower and their 'research'."

He gives an angry huff, and starts to turn away. There is still work to do, hours left until his shift is over and he can leave.

"That was surprise?" The question's out before X can rethink the wisdom of asking it, and he visibly winces. "Sorry." He really should know better; Devin's not the first person he's met who uses sullen anger as a defence mechanism.

Come to think of it, X doesn't know much about Devin at all -- just that the Fool likes him.

"What's the tower researching?" X asks, following Devin along the row, heedless as to whether or not Devin actually wants him to. "Illusions? Memory?"

Of course, yet another stubborn Dreamfolk. Why would Devin possibly think that X might leave him be? These people are aggravating.

"Memory, from what I've heard," he answers, glaring at X over his shoulder. The vampire turns back to the adjacent aisle where he was returning books to their homes on the shelves. "And I know no more than that, so if you have a bevy of pointless questions, go ask them."

If you want to pretend stubborn Dreamfolk are what you deserve, Devin, X won't argue. He'll pretty much just look at you sadly.

"Thank you," he says, "I will. It's just the one pointless question, though, if that's alright." He gestures back at the now-normal shelf they're quickly leaving behind. "What gives you that much strength?"

X, Devin is noticing, is harder to get any kind of rise out of than most people. He hasn't pursued that thoroughly yet, but he gets the sense that X will take whatever Devin throws at him like so much water off a duck's back.

He's back at the cart of books before he decides to answer the question. "I'm what's called a vampire," Devin says tartly. He's far more gentle with the tomes than either the memory or his irritability would suggest. "It's a trait we all possess to one degree or another. I'm quite a bit stronger than that now." A beat. "Stronger than most, in fact; even then."

It's not a threat, for the edge in his tone is put there by discomfort, not interest in harming X.

It's not a threat, but an observant person will notice X hesitating for an instant before reaching the cart regardless. A vampire. Different worlds, X reminds himself, a well-worn sentiment that he's had to keep in mind quite a lot lately. Different worlds.

He steps closer to the cart and studies Devin. Irritated, but gentle with the books. Reluctant to work with others, but equally reluctant to distrust established authorities. Concerned about the outcome of a missing kin'nal.

In this case, X is happy to reserve judgment.

"When you were a child," he says, his tone mild enough to surprise even him, "when you were pushing bookcases over -- you were already a vampire?"

The gentleness of X's tone gives Devin pause, if only because it suggests that X would back off if he told him to drop the subject. The specific question isn't one of great secrecy, though his posture and tone are both cold.

"I was born a vampire," he replies, continuing to slot books into their places without looking up. The cart gets pushed a few feet further down the aisle to the next spot where books need to be returned. "We're exceptionally rare. I couldn't do what you saw until I was eleven, however, and inherited power I did not want."

It certainly helped him to have it, but Devin had been hellbent on escape, not taking up his father's mantle.

Born a vampire. X is silent for longer now, but this time it's not with wariness, it's with immediate and painful sympathy. What must life be like, growing up like that? He's just seen a snippet of it, explosive anger destroying a library.

Inherited power I did not want.

"Feel free to tell me to mind my own business," says X, still following Devin and his cart along the aisle, "but what happened when you were eleven? Did the library offend you?"

"The library's owner," Devin answers flatly. "My father."

He pauses then, hands stilling over the spines of books. They steady him, the titles and feel of the bindings and the leather and cloth of the covers acting as touchstones despite being unfamiliar to him.

There is a warning look in his eyes when he turns to X, a hard edge of pain in the twist of his mouth. Well, fine, if X wanted to know, then so be it. "He was the elder of our line. His abilities passed to me when I killed him, and then the rest of my family."

Years ago, back before everything went so very wrong, X would not have been able to understand the desire to see one's own family dead. he'd barely known desires like that existed. Now, after seeing so much and experiencing so much, he understands it completely. Devin's confession doesn't shock him. It barely even surprises him.

X's reaction is important, he knows, so he approaches it from another angle; the barely suppressed shudder doesn't come from disgust or fear, but from imagining what the circumstances might be. If they were anything like Silvanes's --

-- no. They can't have been. Not for a child as strong as a vampire.

When X speaks, it's with an inquisitive tone -- not like Devin's a puzzle, but like X is a child hearing a new story for the first time and wants to make sure he gets all the little details right. "What did your father do?"

Devin's eyes narrow. He's grown more used to Dreamfolk not caring about his past, or what he spends his life doing, but it still makes him hesitant. It doesn't daunt these people; conversely, it has a tendency to draw them in. At least X seems to want to understand before passing judgement, which Devin sort-of appreciates, on some level.

He turns away from X, but doesn't move the cart. Instead, Devin lifts the hem of his shirt several inches, revealing the beginnings of thin, criss-crossed scars that climb up his spine and across his back. His tone is a quiet, icy thing when he replies. "The first time he beat me within an inch of my life, I was six." The fabric drops, and Devin goes back to the books like he's discussing nothing of importance. "Vampires don't scar. I am an aberration among my kind, and my family treated me as such."

Edited (word order oops) 2018-03-19 16:42 (UTC)

X inhales sharply and audibly. Even after Devin drops his shirt, he can't take his eyes off where the scars were. It takes several seconds before he makes a noise -- a frustrated and angry noise -- and tears his gaze away.

"I'm sorry," he says. "Where I come from, we don't -- it takes a lot to leave any kind of mark at all, let alone a scar." Scars, X learned the first time he visited Earth, happened after a bad wound healed on its own. Actaceans didn't heal on their own; scars just didn't happen. It's still an alien concept to him, even after all the bumps and scrapes his children sustained and subsequently healed without magical help.

X swallows hard, closes his eyes and shakes his head. "What do you mean, they treated you as --" His eyes fly open. "Your father deliberately scarred you?"

X is practically a stranger. Hearing frustration and sympathy grates on Devin's nerves, which tells him that pretty much everything is going to piss him off right now. At least he can't feel pity radiating from X; he has no time for pity, and no desire for it.

The sharp curve to his mouth when he looks at X cannot rightly be called a smile. Pain hides behind cold blue eyes, but his posture is eerily relaxed. "Half of the time, yes, to test me - to see how much I could stand, how long it took for me to recover and how I would react. The other half was simply because he hated me; I was a failure, not the triumph they had so dreamed of." The vampire shrugs, managing to appear at ease. "My mother did not shield me from him, because she felt the same. My siblings considered it their duty to taunt me about all of the reasons I was different, and pushed me into doing vile things on the pretense of making me a real vampire. Eventually, I decided I'd had enough."

No pity, no. X never comes from a position of believing he's better than anyone else. Quite the opposite. It's hard not to internalise decades of hiding from people who believe you should be executed simply for existing.

"I don't blame you," he says softly.

Almost immediately, he flinches, and shakes his head -- like he doesn't want to take the words back, but needs to shake them off, to snap himself out of the state of mind they lead him to. "So you escaped," he says, his voice stronger again, "after destroying your father's library, and the Dreaming forced you to relive it. That's going to get old very quickly, showing only the cruelest moments of peoples' pasts." A pause. "I can't decide if that would be helpful or not."

Incandescent fury flickers in Devin's eyes like a challenge to judge him if X dares, but it's the fury of a child; the uncontrollable wrath that had driven him for too long after killing his family. He didn't understand his own power, and had no one to guide him.

"I escaped from my family's first estate when I burned it to the ground," Devin corrects sharply, but it's not as though X could have known. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, reaching for calm. "That library was in our second. I fled there because I had nowhere else to go, and have lived there ever since. I used his books for kindling."

He pauses, runs his fingers over the cover of a book with a sigh. There are much crueler memories the Dreaming could have chosen. "It's an invasion of privacy. People should be allowed their secrets." And their wounds. "This is not nearly the first time it's forced things out into the open before anyone was ready, but there's little point in cursing a plane of existence. It will torment us as it sees fit."

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[EVENT] March Memory Madness

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cw: mention of murder

why can't he make friends with anyone who isn't a murderer

make good choices X; adding a cw: child abuse

you can't tell him what to do just because you're a few centuries older

he's only 124 :P

you can't tell him what to do just because you're 86 years older

Yes he can, but that doesn't mean X has to listen