aionlogs | EVENT #3: THE COST OF INNOCENCE

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EVENT #3: THE COST OF INNOCENCE

The Cost of Innocence

INVESTIGATION

As the Aions arrive in Venera, they will find the natural beauty of the city in sharp contrast to its uncomfortable aura. Though the sun still shines and flowers still bloom in a place filled with physical vibrancy and life, the air itself is impossibly still, as if wind no longer blows. You can taste the stagnancy of it when you breathe, and the pleasant sights only make that feeling of absence more haunting. The streets are mostly empty, with most of the city's residents hiding away in their homes, fearing the touch of whatever illness has caused this. That is, all the citizens besides those most affected, who wander the streets in a lifeless and painless daze.

Normally, Venera would be occupied by both Hylician and Achamite soldiers, but it quickly becomes apparent that both have abandoned the city, only guarding its furthest outskirts. Their reasons vary: the Achamite soldiers seem to take religious objection to the feeling of the city, believing it to be some trickery of the Innocent, while the Hylicians simply see it as a plague they have no interest in catching or spreading. Because of this, it will be easy for Aions of both sects to explore with little pushback from any form of law enforcement. The Kenoma will be directed into the city with warnings about the potential physical and spiritual danger while Pleroma will be able to sneak in mostly unbothered. After all, no one is eager to follow you.

Most shops and businesses are currently closed, though some uninfected individuals still nervously keep watch over their workplaces, fearing potential looting. It's difficult, but not impossible, to find people to talk to, and while the most plentiful wanderers are the infected, the reactions from those with their minds still intact will vary. Some will be eager to speak to anyone who looks like they're trying to do something about their situation, desperate for any source of outside help. If revealed you are an Aion, this may either entice them even further or cause them to retreat, as if fearing that you are somehow to blame for their plight. For those that are enticed, it will become clear that they hold onto faith that Aions are in Horos to save them, and will tell these new arrivals whatever they can without discriminating between sects.

The base level information that can be found is thus: the infection began at the same levels it has been in the rest of Horos, only for the numbers of the afflicted to rapidly accelerate upon the coming of the Innocent's Moon. Some see it as a form of divine punishment for their cooperation with the Regent, while the less cooperative citizens see it as a malady brought about by the Aions themselves, their only hope being that they will be able to clean up the mess they made. Some citizen have managed to corral their inflicted loves ones into their rooms and will be willing to introduce you; most of these individuals are past the point of conversation, and seem fully lost to whatever fantasy world they are experiencing. They are disinterested in eating or drinking and it seems like, without help, they are destined for a slow death of starvation and atrophy. That is, if their apathetic state doesn't result in a severe accident, as it has in many cases already.

Any other clues will take more dogged investigation. It will be a day or so after the majority of Aions have arrived in the city that the first signs of their own infections become clear.

HEAVENLY BODIES

The first to feel its effects will be the Innocents, Lovers, and Celebrants; like a voice has fully awakening to them, whispering of how their touch can be the cure to the others' pain. It bids them to take their fellow Aions into their loving embrace, to share this gift, as only suffering lies ahead. It expresses without words that it will be a shield for their Aion kindred, and that those that accept will become their outstretched hands to a cosmos that craves peace. Any form of physical contact with those three Legacies will either introduce or rapidly accelerate the infections experienced by the others, this effect only becoming more intense if the wielder intentionally forces the power of this strange entity into their victims.

Even without that accelerating touch, however, other Aions are not necessarily safe; the infection will still seep in, albeit more slowly. All Aions may experience a growing feeling of connection to the infected Venerans, as if the energy within them is being drawn into their their own bodies. As the Aion's symptoms worsen, the the ones suffered by the Venerans will gradually lessen, though not go away entirely. It seems that the Aions soaking up this strange power is enough to take the edge off of what is happening to the citizens: but at what cost?

Various symptoms will manifest in afflicted Aions with outcomes far more diverse and devastating than what the Veneran civilians have experienced. Visionaries, Firebrands, and Artisans will suffer the most catastrophic symptoms, the clash between their spiritual natures and that of the Innocence being the most extreme. This malady is characterized by its innate desire to quell its victims of their resistance, smothering them in artificial peace, even if it has to deprive them of their bodies and minds to do so.

It is not without treatment, however. It will gradually become apparent that feelings of intense suffering or upset are capable of purging the infection, that clash with painful reality seeming to wake them up from their trance and reduce or eliminate physical symptoms. The more intense the distress, the more effective it will be. Fortunately, this heightening of Aion spiritual energy has the added consequence of making empathic communion connections far more acute. Instead of just transmitting and receiving emotions and thoughts, Aions will find themselves more easily able to enter the delusions and memories of their kindred, drawing them out and manipulating them for this purpose. The catch is that they will only be able to access what is on the surface of the other Aion's mind.

When an infection is reduced or expelled this way, the energy causing it seems to be dispelled from the city, lowering the intensity of its ambient effects. While similar can be done to Veneran citizens to help treat them, the energy will not leave, and will either go into the Aion casting it out or return to the nebulous source of Innocence and eventually infect someone else. Something about going through the Aions specifically seems to act as a filter, as unpleasant of a way as it is to help.

IN THE SILENCE

For those unlucky enough to develop complete, or near complete, infections (IE. a full Innocence petrification) a presence will awaken within them regardless of their Legacy. It will urge them to join with it, to embrace the peace it offers, and to become the extensions of their will in this ravaged world. With an infection of this intensity, there will be little they can do but to hear its call. What exactly this would ultimately entail is unclear, but there is the sense that his entity is looking to join with you on a spiritual level. If your character becomes infected to this degree please let us know under the Committed Actions toplevel below along with the context of that transformation and whether or not they are being cured from it. You may receive some additional information in return!

QUESTIONS

What is the best way for Aions to travel to Venera?
The quickest travel paths are for Kenoma to take a boat from Achamoth, which will take about a day, and for Pleroma to teleport to the Celebrant's shrine and take either a carriage or river boat to the city (there are offshoot rivers not marked on the setting map). The riverboats would be the faster option option of the two, and would also take about a day. The carriages/delivery carts would be slower and take a couple days, but have relay access to horses and therefore could keep going overnight. Characters with flight are also able to use that, though flying right into the city might cause a bit of spectacle. Then again, none of the local law enforcement is eager to chase you at the moment.

Are Veneran civilians experiencing the same symptoms as the Aions?
Veneran civilians are only experiencing apathy/loss of self/daydreaming and maybe the loss of pigments/color for advanced cases. The more body horror orientated effects are Aion only and are being caused by their body's spiritual makeup.

Can 'cured' Aions be reinfected?
Yes! Even if cured or treated, symptoms can return or worsen again. This will keep happening until the build up of Innocence energy in Venera is entirely expunged, at which point the illness will fade away across the continent. Whether or not the Aions mere presence will be enough to trigger that is yet unknown, but it does seem to be helping lessen the effects suffered by the civilians, at least.

How long does the infection period last in Aions?
Chronologically, we are considering the infection period of the plot to last 2-3 days.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Zenos does what Zenos has always done, when things outside of his control start happening around him; he hunts. Enough of him still remains to remember that much, to know that the best defence against this overwhelming beige numbness is the rush of blood, the quickening of senses. Enough of him still remains to Struggle.

And so he hunts. His skin is bleached white now, as is his hair, as are his clothes. A collar of bloodsoaked feathers, like the mantle of some especially-wretched Egyptian king, encircles his throat, hiding his shard from view. From his shoulders spring what would be glorious angelic wings, if they did not sit so crookedly, rising from the wreckage where he'd torn off previous pairs while he still cared enough (could move enough, without his skin cracking when he twisted) to do so, a tower built upon the ruins of what came before (splintered bone, at first, shattered porcelain nearer the top), too many fern-fronds packed in too small and lopsided a vase. A scythe is slung over his shoulder - where did he get it? He does not remember. He saw it and picked it up and it is His now, except in all the ways it very much is not His Scythe – this is the tool of a farmer, not a warrior, and weighted accordingly, ungainly and awkward much as he, now, is ungainly and awkward.

Venera, alas, offers very little in the way of sport. Those citizens with wits enough left to flee, to fear, have with enough not to be roaming the streets, and there is no pleasure in bringing ones blade to throat not even willingly bared, just there for the cutting. Culling is not Hunting. So he continues to roam, until he reaches the park.

He has read of unicorns – knows that they used to be a common sight in Coerthas – but never seen one in the flesh before now (they are cautious, capricious creatures, and his aura is one of undisguised, predatory malice). A wounded beast would not be his first choice of quarry – it is not His kill, if it comes to him Half-Dead – but beggars cannot be choosers, and it will feel good to destroy something beautiful that can, hopefully, still feel itself breaking.

He is not stealthy in his approach – practically snarling Get up as he gets closer – because remaining unseen is not the point; he wants the creature to Know its Death is here, and try to flee. That, after all, is the Game.

[Hayame had never had nice daydreams.

Perhaps every creature in the world was capable of them, but she had never allowed it. What use was there to hope for anything beyond what was realistically possible in the world she’d been born into? So when the contagion sets in and turns her mind to fantasies and dreams… hers are not kind, nor peaceful. She had always been the hunter, the one sent out to retrieve her master’s escaped property, but in her delusion she thinks of what her fate would be if her last plan failed, if she took the place of those Armless she had pursued through field and forest and snow.

So she had run and run and run and now she rests… but no, of course there was no rest, no succor to be found. Not for a jinba who had been property since the moment she tumbled from her armless dam into the hay of the breeding stable stall. The sound of approach seizes her, the snarl of an man that her infected brain makes into a pursuer the likes she was familiar with pulls her from her curl in the moss of the park grove…

And her intent to die before being captured drives her to grab the bow from the grass, to snatch an arrow from her quiver… and as she throws herself up in a clumsy heave of a heavy body, she buys the time to do so by firing quick and sure, the bow intended for a much weaker and smaller human near to cracking with the force she applies to its bowstring.]

Her attack comes as a surprise - horses cannot, as a rule, fire bows - and therefore the shield he reflexively conjures once he realises what's going on (dark blackish-purple bleeding into dull brownish-red; the hand he holds up to summon it is missing most of its ring finger, and the top knuckle of the index, both stumps ending in shattered porcelain) comes a heartbeat too late, coalescing only after the arrow's buried itself in the meat (albeit porcelain-coated meat, at present, a spiderweb of cracks racing across that hard white surface which brackish blood quickly floods and overflows) of his shoulder. Under normal circumstances that sort of mistake would vex him - it's clumsy, he knows better than that - but these are very much Not normal circumstances.

Case in point; this is very obviously not Just A Horse. Not even a legendary magical horse. The sharp flare of pain drives back enough of the fog for him to recognise that much and he looks at her through the shield, sidelong, brow furrowing slightly.

"... what are you?"

[Something is wrong.

Reality and the daydream blur together, turning her opponent into some strange amalgamation of the hunter she should be familiar with and what he actually was. Details of porcelain cracking, a towering height that should be physically impossible for a man on two legs, possibly even slightly taller than she was.. and a shield, where had he pulled a shield from... ?

Her thoughts run what feels like a mile a minute, but with the Innocence coursing through her veins, there was still moments of clumsiness, a heaviness she struggles to fight through as she gets up, she manages to get all four equine limbs beneath her... and to notch another arrow on the bow too small for her, too weak for her, the wood creaking as she levers another shot at the ready.

What was she?]

A jinba that won't be bested so easily.

[That's what.

And if that man took one more step forward... the next arrow would fly.]

[Jinba. He trawls through his memories (it is like running a comb through treacle - just as difficult, just as ultimately futile) and draws a blank. From her appearance he's guessing there must be a half-human, half-equine eikon out there, and a misbegotten race of savages who venerate it.

And in any case, she's wrong; what she is, is Prey.

He grins]

Come, then, Jinba. Show me your fury.

[He turns his hand so knuckles rather than palm are facing her, and flicks his fingers forward, as if gesturing for her to take her turn in the conversation, but as he does so the shield dissipates, and a percussive wave of energy races towards her. At full strength this would be enough to knock a grown biped, even one of his size, from their feet, and its passage would be marked by a rippling of the ground itself, the earth rising in jagged black spikes beneath the wave. But he is very far from full strength, so it may only be a mild annoyance.

Either way, it is a distraction he intends to capitalise on, surging (as much as he is able to surge right now) forwards in the shove's wake, scythe moving from across shoulders to ready in-hand]

[Something strikes her. Something with no form and no scent and no sense, but it has force. Coming from a world with no magic, she rejects it whenever possible, but in this case... She cannot, it must be some kind of spell or curse because he throws out his hand and something hits her, hard enough that her back hooves dig furrows into the earth and she has to half rear up onto her hind legs, forelegs lashing out for balance-

But there isn't time to linger on what it was. He's moving, and there isn't any way in the sixteen hells that she will let him close to her with a scythe that large. Attempting to neutralize the dangerous blade, she leaps straight into a canter, firing off another arrow from her ill-fitted bow as she moves towards the tree line where large swings of such a weapon would grow difficult.

And this time, if he wants to see her fury... She's aiming straight at his head.]

[This time, at least, he sees it coming - diminished though his faculties may be, it would be plain embarrassing to fall for the same trick twice - and a dark mist (the reddish-black of an aging bruise) coalesces around him almost before the bowstring is pulled taut, though here it resolves into neither shield nor dome. Instead, his own form shimmers, and seems to mingle with it - the arrow passing through it as if through smoke - and the entire cloud lurches a couple of feet forwards before reforming.

- and there's a beat, after he reforms, where he seems almost as surprised by this as she likely must be; as he'd told Ciel at the party, he has had little chance to truly test what he's capable of (and there is no substitute for a real battle, in that regard) so he is grateful to this Jinba for that, at least -

The trees are an issue - a blade such as his requires ample room to truly sing - but he will not catch her on foot in his current condition. Another lurch forwards, then, this time aiming to reform between her and the treeline. A risky move, perhaps - the kind that might well see him trampled - but life without a little risk is exactly the kind of beige this place wants him to surrender to, isn't it?]

[Where a giant of a man once lumbered towards her, only mist remains. How? Is it dark sorcery that transforms flesh and blood into vague shapes in the air, from an enemy that can be shot into an enemy that cannot? Hayame does not know, for she hails from a world of the mundane, and so what can she do- ?

He reforms, and the arrowhead that should have punched through his skull instead shatters the thick bark of a tree behind him.

Her hooves churn up grass and dirt in her breakneck pace towards the cover that would provide protection from the large scythe in the madman's hands, but he is mist again, there, and then suddenly-

In front of her.

She has a split second to decide whether to try and dodge or carry forward. If she darts to the side, throws her heavy weight left or right to try and run past him... depending on his speed, he could bring the long, curved blade to bear where she was most vulnerable far too easily, and if he swept that weapon low through her legs like an anti-cavalry soldier with an odachi-

There is only one option.

Hayame drops her shoulder and slams into the man with her entire weight, over half a ton of jinba flesh and muscle come to bear in an attempt to knock him off balance and trample him underhoof.]

[A horse would stop, and try to buck its rider, but she is clearly no ordinary horse; he may be taller, but in terms of mass she definitely has the edge, and even his adamant flesh has to yield to that as she slams into him, existing cracks in that porcelain veneer spiderwebbing further with the impact.

Zenos rolls as he lands, trying to ensure he ends up somewhere not underneath those trampling hooves, but it is not a graceful thing, the unfamiliar mass of feather-and-bone at his back bending wrong, so it splinters further and hangs at an even-less-flightworthy angle (or will, if he can get to his feet again), something in his chest crunching in an entirely unwholesome manner. Still despite that - despite the copper-tang in his mouth now, the film of red coating his teeth - he laughs. Delighted. Delirious. The pain is exhilarating, in a way life in Achamoth to date has not been. For the first time since the Dreams, he feels like himself.

As he begins to try to rise, pushing himself up from the dirt, the next move is hers; will she flee, continuing her charge into the woods, or take advantage of the shifting tide?]

[He is harder than he should be, there is something unnatural in his flesh and a sick sound of cracking when they collide, but Hayame cannot focus on that longer than single second. Her shoulders will be bruised from the impact, but what was more important-

He's laughing. Laughing? Though the sound makes her want to flee, he must be absolutely mad, she still cannot risk it while he is yet armed that way, even if she could abandon her pride in such a manner. Adrenaline pumps through both of her hearts and reminds her body to fight the inaction of the Innocence in her veins, blood slicking over her hooves from the feathers sprouting at her fetlocks. The same hooves that dig into the earth and bring her back around from their collision, that lash out as her enemy begins to rise-

But this time, more than his skull or his body, afraid that he might simply vanish from the realm of the solid again and leave her trampling on mist... she aims to bring her weight down on the handle of that threatening scythe, high enough on the wood to snap it off too close to the blade to be gripped or brought to bare in close-quarters.

If she could just remove that from the equation...]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

EVENT #3: THE COST OF INNOCENCE

03 - Tall vs Tall - CW body horror and murderous intent

cw for jinba being like that (aka forced amputations, breeding, and slavery)

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