asgardchrysalis | AUGUST INTRO LOG: MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE

AUGUST INTRO LOG: MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE

Who: EVERYONE
What: the August intro log and first god house competition, More Than Meets the Eye
When: August 8
Where: Gladsheim Palace for breakfast, around Asgard for the game/curse
Rating: PG-13; please take anything higher than this to a private log!

morning: a warm invitation

Everyone wakes up to a friendly invitation to breakfast at the castle with the gods. For most of you, this comes as a message on your bracelet, reading:

Join us at the castle today to welcome some new Wanderers into our midst. Breakfast will be served and a lively game will be available to all of our guests, both new and old.

New Wanderers are curious on their own, and this is the first there's ever been mention of a game. Perhaps it's enough for you to make the trek to the castle, to see what all the fuss is about, or maybe even to see if there's someone you know. Perhaps you want to learn more about the game, or maybe you just want the food.

For our new guests, this comes as a bit more of a surprise. Wherever you were before in your world, without even realizing it, you wake up in a strange new place. No time or space inbetween, just an awareness of There and then Here. A matronly figure tries to explain your circumstances with a sympathetic smile, but ultimately invites you meet them all for yourselves: the Gods of Asgard, and the Wanderers that arrived before you.

The sight that greets you on the castle grounds is a rather festive one, regardless of where you're coming from. Colorful streamers and flags are draped above large tables with room for several guests. Natives bustle about, cheerfully offering food and drinks to anyone that wants some. Everyone is welcomed to mingle and greet the new Wanderers on this bright summer morning.

the game: a friendly competition

Among the brightly decorated tables are ones highlighted in a specific color for a specific god house, and most of the gods themselves can be found sitting behind it with a few of their district's natives. They are here to welcome the new Wanderers into Asgard - but they're also here to explain the rules of today's game. There are coins hidden throughout the city and disguised as mundane items, and the god house that returns the most of their coins will win an upgrade to their god housing! No hints will be given, but the natives are excited to help facilitate the activity and happily invite you to wander through their districts to find what you can.

But you don't have to know about the rules to be playing the game! The coins are already hidden throughout the city, and no one knows what they are until they've been picked up. Whether you're banding together with friends to find as many coins as you can or blindly stumbling over an unpleasant surprise, the game and the curse are in full swing!

evening: a fair prize

At sundown, all of the coins in the city disappear at once, whether they're in your pocket or still disguised as a bowl. Points will be tallied and a winner will be announced (OOCly, on August 17) - but Asgardians are keen to celebrate regardless of who wins a rather inconsequential game. The same colorful display of tables and chairs is still spread across the castle grounds, although now they twinkle with fairy lights haphazardly blinking throughout the air. Snacks and drinks are made available, as well as more dinner-shaped meals for those that request it. Mostly the natives simply want to bask in the strangeness of these Wanderers from other worlds for a moment longer - but they're also eagerly listening to any stories from the day's mischievous game. Relax, enjoy yourself, or again, just stock up on some freely served food. Whatever suits your needs today. Welcome to Asgard, dear Wanderers.

[ OOC NOTE: This is the intro log for August, as well as our first god house competition/curse: More Than Meets the Eye. You are free to play with the curse prompts and searching the city in any way you want! If you would like to submit a map to earn points for your god house, please check out the rules to learn what to do. We will accept maps until August 17, at which point a winner will be announced and members of that god house will be allowed to vote for an upgrade to their god housing. As always, please let us know if you have any questions or need any help on the mod contact page. Enjoy, friends! ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Something like that?"

It sounds close enough to what this sitting situation is right now, and once they reach the table, Josie lets go and shrugs as she moves to sit. "I mean, I'm pretty sure in terms of the power structures there's the gods, and then there's us. I don't think they'll be granting us voting privileges anytime soon. But as far as we the mortals are concerned, I don't think any of us are in a position to say we're better than anyone else."

More or less.

Ariadne accepted that with a little nod, that made the fabric of her blanket wrinkle up. She sat down in a seat beside the other girl, perhaps a bit more pleased with herself than she had any right to be. But considering how much she'd lost so far today, the win was nice.

Democratic chairs. Go figure.

"I'm Ariadne," she said, figuring it was polite. "But...you can call me 'Airy' if you want. Everyone does."

It wouldn't last, most likely. The girl would realize she was talking to a demon and probably call her worse. But it was fun to pretend she was making a friend.

"I'm Josette. You can call me Josie."

Most people do, unless you happen to be friendly enough with her for Jo or Jojo. She also probably wouldn't judge Ariadne for being a demon, but that's going to be a bridge they cross when they get to it.

"Ariadne is a pretty name, though. Like the myth?"

"Myth?"

It was a question that genuinely caught her off guard. And no matter what the context, Ariadne loved surprising questions like that. Especially if it involved myth.

Doubtlessly one of the many flaws--as her mother would say--that she inherited from her father.

"I...don't know what you mean."

"Oh. It's a story where I'm from."

And since she's Alaric's daughter, of course she knows the story, so buckle up.

"She was in charge of a labyrinth on an island where seven men and seven women were forced to be sacrificed as a tribute. When a hero came to rescue them, she showed him how to defeat the labyrinth in exchange for him getting her out of there. Some people say she loved him, but he abandoned her. But she wound up marrying a god, so ... I guess sometimes it works out?"

She's not sure marrying a god is a good thing, she mostly just liked the story because Theseus couldn't solve the puzzle without Ariadne's help. She deserves to be the hero of the story. Theseus was just a dick.

Ariadne leaned in to listen to the story, her lip curling a little at the idea of such a horrific sacrifice. Honestly, who would do such a thing? Well, the Red Dragon might, she supposed. Or one of his lieutenants. They'd done far worse. But the whole ritual of it just seemed...

Like a justification. Some kind of rite.

She shuddered a little bit.

"How did she defeat the labyrinth?" she asked, immediately forgetting that there had been a 'hero' in the story.

"She gave Theseus an endless ball of twine, so he could find his way back again after he beat the Minotaur. Without her, he would have either starved or gotten gored to death."

Maybe Ariadne should have let him get gored, though, considering he theoretically dumped her on an island, never to be seen again.

Twine. That was simple. And although Ariadne had a hard time believing that any ball of twine could be endless, she decided not to press the fact. Josie had said it was a story, after all. And stories always lived lives beyond the possible.

That's what made them worth telling.

"What's a Minotaur?" she asked instead.

Unfortunately for Josie, Ariadne could probably ask a thousand questions and still come up with more. It was only her training about social convention that would stop her.

...eventually.

Questions aren't a bad thing in Josie's mind. Her parents had always taught her to question authority, even if they had hoped it wouldn't be their own (spoiler: it was), and mythology happens to be a thing that she shares in common with her dad.

"The Minotaur was a ... " She pauses because stories about the minotaur always made her a bit sad. "A creature with the body of a man, and the head and tail of a bull. The Labryinth was built to contain it. He was the son of the Queen of Crete. The story is grosser, but basically her husband was trying to validate his claim to the throne. He prayed to Poseidon to send a majestic bull to prove he was the one favored by the gods, and he would sacrifice it once he was king. Poseidon did as he asked, but instead of sacrificing it like he was supposed to, he kept it. Naturally, Poseidon was pissed, and he punished Minos by cursing his wife to fall in love with the bull and ... eventually she bore a son that was half bull, half human."

As she said, gross. Greek mythology is full of so many gross stories.

Half bull, half Human. "So...a demon."

She sighed, a little disappointed. It seemed that no matter what the world was, the stories always cast demonoids in the role of villains and monsters. Some things never changed. Admittedly, she'd never heard of a demonoid that was half bull, half Human. But she could just imagine it.

The poor thing.

"I feel sorry for him," she said lightly. "It's not his fault he was born that way. I'd be cranky too, if I were locked up in a labyrinth."

"Not a demon. Just a person."

Josie has a feeling the Minotaur was called a demon once or twice, due to it's shape and the way it was used by it's stepfather, but that doesn't make it the truth. Not that Josie has ever met a demon before, so who knows.

"His name was Asterion. And you're right, he didn't ask to be what he was. But people are always going to find a new way to be cruel, I guess."

Ariadne lifted her head just slightly, to get a better, second look at Josie. It wasn't exactly that Josie had caught her off guard. It was only that she'd never heard someone so bluntly refer to a demonoid as a person. At least, not a Human.

Admittedly, her experiences with Humans were somewhat...skewed.

But she looked at Josie with new interest.

"Not a demon. But you said he had a tail. That makes him a demonoid, doesn't it?"

"He had a bull's tail. Because he's half bull."

So while it's not necessarily the most natural occurrence in the world, it's also not necessarily a demonic one. Just because something looks different, in Josie's mind, doesn't necessarily mean it's evil or demonic.

That's only assumed once they try to kill her.

"As far as I know, there aren't demons where I'm from."

Curious. "So...every single being in your world is a humanoid, then?"

The dividing lines in Ariadne's home were...pretty stringent. You were either a humanoid or a demonoid. Nothing in between, apart from the divine, which really had no shape at all. And every shape possible, simultaneously.

She was learning about so many interesting new things today. It was a shame she couldn't enjoy it as much, given the state of her own body.

"One head, two arms, two legs, nothing else?"

"Not nothing else."

Vampires had their fangs, wolves had their claws, witches had magic. Monsters were more diverse than that, depending on the day. But she has a feeling that there's a distinction here that needs to be made.

"But ... it doesn't make them less."

"Less?"

There was no mistaking Ariadne's genuine bewilderment now. She couldn't keep it out of her voice, and was only glad that her hood was hiding the crease in her forehead, between her eyes.

Josie was exceptionally confusing.

"How can you be less when you're the apex predator?" Perhaps it was a problem of language. Ariadne understood that their fancy, new bracelets were translating things. But she was used to doing that the old-fashioned way. She wondered what was getting lost. "Where I come from," she said, trying to speak more precisely, "humanoids are in charge of everything. We don't have...democratic chairs for demonoids to sit in."

Josie is also confused, because she isn't really sure where the miscommunication was. She was talking about those that looked less than human, but she decides to just swallow that and react to what's being told to her.

"Where I come from, most humans don't know anything non-human exists. They're either willfully ignorant, or have been lucky enough to never encounter one."

"Really?" That sounded kind of remarkable, actually. In the first place, having a world dominated by Humans. And in the second place...one with...only Humans?

Ariadne didn't have as much experience with Humans as she did with Elves. But she saw much to admire in them, as a race. What they lacked in magical aptitude, they seemed to make up for in a nearly infinite well of ingenuity. All the greatest inventions in the realm were created by Humans. They seemed to strive harder than most to make life easier for everyone.

"But you're not one of those, are you?" she asked. "Willfully ignorant." Or lucky, but it felt rude to say that. "You must not be, otherwise, you wouldn't be telling me all of this."

"No," she gives a bit of a laugh, before shaking her head. "No, I'm not."

She then pauses, because it's not like she could prove her witchy-ness at the moment, but it feels right to be honest and put it out there anyway.

"I'm one of the not-quite-humans. I'm a witch."

The word 'witch' was occasionally tossed around back home. Mostly as an insult. One that had never made a lot of sense to Ariadne. Which was to say, she had only the vaguest notion of what a witch actually was. She knew it was a Human with magical aptitude, but that was it. She'd never met one. Never even seen on before.

And somehow, Josie's confession put her at ease in an unexpected sort of way.

"Do you...like being a witch?" she asked.

"I do!"

She grins in response, because it's more than just like. Being a witch is one of her favorite things in the world. It's so ingrained into her identity, she couldn't imagine being anywhere else.

"It's complicated and messy, but it's part of me. If I try and shove that away, then I'll never be happy."

Now that was a statement more pointed than Josie knew. Ariadne had done plenty of shoving away of herself. She's sacrificed her wings.

And her identity.

And the ultimate irony of it all was that she didn't understand what that meant for her now that she was here. Surrounded by people who had never even heard of Alastrians, much less formed some ill-conceived notion of what they were. She had to rethink everything. And it was happening so very fast.

"Is that...the general opinion of people in your world? That it's important to be yourself?"

"Usually."

Being your own person has become more and more pervasive as of late, especially considering that Josie is from the future. Usually it's terms of your sexuality or your gender or just your general personality, but it applied to supernaturals too.

"That doesn't mean it's easy, but ... we do our best."

Ariadne considered that a moment. And easily decided that she liked it. It was much simpler, anyway. If you always told the truth, then you didn't have to remember which lies you told to which people.

But it couldn't be that easy, of course. She'd seen firsthand what frightened humanoids did to Alastrians and other 'demons.'

Still, maybe...

Very slowly, she unfolded her arms, letting her fists uncurl like flowers on her lap. Ariadne had long, slender fingers. Her skin was the color of the underside of a maple leaf. The nails were onyx black.

Josie tips her head to the side, always more curious than cautious, before reaching a hand forward to take Ariadne's gently. She doesn't have any green friends, necessarily, but that doesn't mean she can't start.

"I like your nails."

Because that seems like the thing to say, other than commenting on the fact that she's green.

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