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TEST DRIVE MEME 005
⚰︎ ⍢ ⌲ ⍚ TEST DRIVE MEME:
Welcome to RUBILYKSKOYE — a dark, horror-smut game where player choices will drive a mod-run storyline about the world and its NPCs. This test drive meme provides a medley of prompts evoking the game's general tone.
THESE THREADS CAN BE GAME CANON if both players are accepted into the game and agree to it. However, if players who'd prefer to start fresh are welcome to reuse these prompts in their own personal logs upon acceptance into the communities. Note: the universal test drive arrival prompt will not be repeated on the any event log, but players are welcome to reuse the prompt.
CONTENT WARNINGS for this game include: monsters, body horror, dub-con, non-con, religion, blood/violence, and marking/branding, loss of autonomy/self, and mental influences. This log additionally has warnings for: spiders, aphrodisiac and truth serum effects, public nudity, exhibitionism/voyeurism, bdsm, kink negotiation, social pressure, and animal sacrifice.
If you have QUESTIONS about the test drive prompts, please ask HERE. Questions about the game itself or the general setting should be directed to the FAQ.
FAQ ✧ SETTING ✧ CALENDAR ✧ RESERVES ✧ APPLICATIONS
THESE THREADS CAN BE GAME CANON if both players are accepted into the game and agree to it. However, if players who'd prefer to start fresh are welcome to reuse these prompts in their own personal logs upon acceptance into the communities. Note: the universal test drive arrival prompt will not be repeated on the any event log, but players are welcome to reuse the prompt.
CONTENT WARNINGS for this game include: monsters, body horror, dub-con, non-con, religion, blood/violence, and marking/branding, loss of autonomy/self, and mental influences. This log additionally has warnings for: spiders, aphrodisiac and truth serum effects, public nudity, exhibitionism/voyeurism, bdsm, kink negotiation, social pressure, and animal sacrifice.
If you have QUESTIONS about the test drive prompts, please ask HERE. Questions about the game itself or the general setting should be directed to the FAQ.
IN THE WOODS SOMEWHERE
The chirping of partridges in the treetops rouses you. Light barely filters through the canopy, just enough to suggest daylight. By the time it reaches the forest floor, the light has taken on a sickly green. You lie amongst the frost-covered mosses and ferns, the frozen soil cold and just a little damp on your bare skin. Wherever you were before this moment, whatever you were doing or wearing, when you awaken in this forest, you find yourself naked and helpless as the day you were born. As you sit up and get your bearings, aside from a brief wave of disoriented nausea, you seem to be no worse for wear than you last remember.
You seem to be alone. The gnarled oaks and moss suggest no sign of civilization or sentient life. Just flickers of movement from curious squirrels or brave lizards reemerging after a long winter. With your feet under you, and you'll find the wood is filled with berry bushes and nut trees, though much of the fruit has been picked clean. The freshwater stream that runs north-south, populated by both poisonous toads and delicious crawdads, will lead people towards the first signs of civilisation, the cabins of those who choose to live beyond Rubilyskoye's formidable walls.
In the forest, you may run into others with stories just like yours. Some may have already formed clumsy nudist groups, others may still be processing their confusion, with no memory of how they got here. Now is a good time to overcome any hang-ups you have about modesty; it's going to be a long hike.
Turn your back to the darker, shadowy parts of the forest and eventually the glow of manmade lights and the curve of a dirt road may come into view. At the edge of the wood, you'll find a town surrounded by a fifty-foot wall of beige stone. The only entrance is an iron gate positioned on the southern edge. When you arrive, the gate is already open, welcoming people inside.
This quaint, historic town of five-thousand has cobbled street and signs lit by gas lamp. Wooden shutters protect otherwise open-air windows on the buildings, which are all under three stories with gabled roofs. A number of businesses hug the main street — a clockmaker, a cobbler, a grocer — while residential homes sprawl outwards towards the wall. At the far end of the main street, visible about a mile to the north now that the trees and the enormous wall is out of the way, sits a castle with three towers.
When you enter, the streets are full of people, but despite any efforts on your part to hide or make excuses, they don't seem offended by your nakedness. Even families with children don't gawk or look twice. Those determined to find proper clothing regardless will find that modern clothing stores aren't available — the closest this town has is a tailor's shop and a stand in the central marketplace selling scarves and blankets.
breaking and entering
If you intend to have your character break into someone's house or yard to steal some of their clean laundry, please review the info about game laws on the FAQ and give the mods a heads up HERE.
Fortunately, the people of the town are very generous! Anyone who ask the locals will be directed to the boarding house for both clothes and a place to stay. Accessible through an embellished iron garden gate and obscured by hanging plants, trees, and vines, beyond an overgrown yard in the residential sprawl of the town is a bright-red door, which opens to a spacious cottage of several stories. It's already full of people who appeared in the village just as you did today.
finding roommates
Don't spend too much time asking questions in the common areas. You'll want to claim a bedroom quickly because each one only has two full-size beds, and there aren't enough spaces for everyone. Maybe you'll get lucky and run into someone who has decided to move out? (Roommates will not be mod-assigned; players should coordinate directly with one another to determine their living arrangements; at this point, many characters have used activity rewards to move to accomodation outside the boarding house.)
Get a good night's rest. By the light of day, locals will help get the new arrivals set up on the coal stove with a breakfast of thick grain porridge and caramelised bananas from the new peaks; these NPCs can also answer any questions about the situation. You may notice they're dressed in a way you would almost call normal — at least, in a manner befitting 19th century Eastern Europe. Gossip about new arrivals spreads quickly, and Rubeans who run businesses or train trades are eager to help you find a place to apply your skills so you can contribute to your new home.
writer's block?
If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try: naked hiking, acquiring clothing, being offered work, asking questions over breakfast, or staking your claim on a bedroom!
HEARTS FESTIVAL
New arrivals to Rubilykskoye will find themselves strongly encouraged to participate in the current zadza purging festival, and will be assigned either a collar in leather or iron based on their Niez or Wilk mark, or a wrist-strap or manacle that suits the attachment of a leash for those with a Diabel or Skala mark.
Characters are encouraged to embrace this temporary designation as a sign that they will be good citizens; those who object or ignore their designation may find the NPCs try to helpfully guide them, express displeasure at "Void-Touched" who won't assimilate, or in rare cases exert social pressure, coercion, violence or shunning to ensure compliance.
Throughout town various NPCs have set up tents and booths to host myriad performances, workshops, demonstrations, and food stands for their celebration. The foods were made using some of the new flora that have brought back from the peaks. Characters can get their hands on the following heart-themed foods from the second day of the festival onwards:
The nature of the booths set up for performances, workshops, and other goods focuses around the festival's dominance and submission themes. These persist throughout the day regardless of the hour or the audience, so very few people can be found consistently at their places of work during the day this week. In addition:
However, characters may also come across some carnival games operated by NPCs who are eager to help the Duchess find her heart! Some involve slaughtering livestock by removing their hearts—rest assured, these livestock were already on the menu, but their ritual sacrifice will now involve the cutting out of their hearts. Cut out an animal's heart yourself, or just attend the show! Many of the townspeople will get into it, painting their faces with animal blood or drinking from it.
Characters are encouraged to embrace this temporary designation as a sign that they will be good citizens; those who object or ignore their designation may find the NPCs try to helpfully guide them, express displeasure at "Void-Touched" who won't assimilate, or in rare cases exert social pressure, coercion, violence or shunning to ensure compliance.
Throughout town various NPCs have set up tents and booths to host myriad performances, workshops, demonstrations, and food stands for their celebration. The foods were made using some of the new flora that have brought back from the peaks. Characters can get their hands on the following heart-themed foods from the second day of the festival onwards:
- HEART-SHAPED COOKIES: eating these intensifies body heat, making characters a great cuddle buddy for the cold weather and likely to strip down, feeling overheated even in a snowdrift
- BEEF HEART STEW WITH DUXELLES: eating these fills those who consume it with confidence, making them more solicitous and dominant
- LIME-GLAZED GOAT HEART SATAY: eating these intensifies sensation, making characters more sensitive to both pain and pleasure
- CINNAMON GLUWEIN: drinking a cup of this hot beverage will make characters especially honest
The nature of the booths set up for performances, workshops, and other goods focuses around the festival's dominance and submission themes. These persist throughout the day regardless of the hour or the audience, so very few people can be found consistently at their places of work during the day this week. In addition:
- Skala and diabel NPCs may offer to share their partner(s) with the Void-touched, or ask to share theirs.
- PIOTR, a farmer, brings tools over from the farm including bridles and saddles, which can be found at a booth near some hunters who've made anal plugs that end with real animal tails, as well as muzzles.
- The cages from the Moot Hall have been moved into the streets, and people are allowed to move freely in and out of them. One of them has been covered in curtains to function as a glory hole booth.
- Some niez and wilk NPCs line up near the main event stage and kneel to offer themselves as human furniture.
However, characters may also come across some carnival games operated by NPCs who are eager to help the Duchess find her heart! Some involve slaughtering livestock by removing their hearts—rest assured, these livestock were already on the menu, but their ritual sacrifice will now involve the cutting out of their hearts. Cut out an animal's heart yourself, or just attend the show! Many of the townspeople will get into it, painting their faces with animal blood or drinking from it.
writer's block?
If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try reacting to being assigned a dominant or submissive role, scenes where your character is starting to feel the effects of the food, watching (or participating in) a performance, or joining in on a gory animal sacrifice. NPCs that are usually welcoming may strongly pressure even new arrivals to participate in their cultural festivities.
the fathomless dark
At the outer edges of the forest, shadows grow long and the air grows thick. Though the sun never grows warm red-gold with sunset, the wood darkens. Birdsong is replaced by the click of mandibles and the skitter of many legs. Anyone who ventures out this way will soon find it difficult to see before them, even in the middle of the day — eventually, even the brightest magical light source or darkvision cannot stretch further than a few inches. In the void, the air feels heavy, as if it were not air at all but some more solid mass. Almost like liquid-smoke, it presses down upon you. Slowing your movements. Characters who push too far into the void may stop being able to move at all, and find themselves given over to insanity if they collapse, unable to draw themselves out. This is just one of many dangers.
Monsters thrive this far out. Huge, blood-red spiders the size of hunting dogs drop from the treetops. In addition to their venomous bite, which contains a fast-acting paralytic, these creatures are clever: they attempt to use their webbing to entangle any trespassers, binding limbs together or to trees. If you're unfortunate to become fully cocooned, you don't have long before this forest will be the last thing you see.
Those who seem lucky enough not to run afoul of the monsters here are in for a worse fate. The void can play tricks on your senses. As madness sets in and you lose all sense of direction, you may also lose control of your body — what is that steers your hands to turn against your friends? Why does it sound like your own voice whispering?
In the fog, you may also hear the voices of those familiar to you — people you know from the town, or people whom you know with almost perfect certainty aren't here. these figments may recreate unhappy memories or force trespassers to hallucinate their worst nightmares. Nothing is as it seems in the void, and when you swing at these figments, desperate to silence them, it might not be a figment at all, but a friend in the flesh trying to help you. By the time you see their true face, it could be too late to stop yourself.
writer's block?
If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try fighting a monster, hallucinating your worst nightmares, and/or attacking a friend or stranger!
HIDING INSIDE EACH OF US
Uh oh spaghetti-os.
The marks worn by all residents of Rubilykskoye aren't just cool body art, as it turns out. The town is full of rumors, whispered in shadows and over candles of a starving creature hiding in the dark corners of your chest. Feed your inner beast, they say, before it finds a way to feed itself.
Alas, its emergence is inevitable — sooner or later, the horrible things that happen here pile up and make someone repulsed by the idea of human contact. Someone holds themselves back, bites their tongue, or simply does not believe the stories. Today, for one reason or another, that creature is coming out. Someone hasn't been keeping it sated.
Symptoms escalate over weeks, from monstrous irritability to full-blown body horror transformation, where people physically shed their human forms and evolve into the monsters this place made them. Once a person becomes something more (or less) than human there's only one way to go back — sate the beast.
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Poor Merta Chesnokov, the usually stalwart older woman who mans the Apothecary, has been beset by unusual requests in addition to her regular demands, not to mention sweating blood. The festival, a rash of skala blood flu, and a little extra town chaos in January, has brought a high demand to her little shop. Now there's also a local fashion springing up for teas and herbal remedies sourced from the recently revealed tropical mountains.
After another failed tisane test drive, and the third customer asking for a new kind of aphrodisiac to add to their festival food, she was seen tossing down her work knife with uncharacteristic frustration, and taking an "early lunch" that she didn't return from that night. Though her children, friends and employees reach out to her, there's no sign of her until you stumble upon her in the woods.
Merta overboils with her suppressed fury as her body distorts and her flesh blackens and crusts. Her attempts to hold off her transformation have failed, and Merta turns into a Smoldering Skink, a large repillian creature whose thick scales hold back her magmatic insides. The noise she makes is an unhearthly hissing scream like a boiling kettle, and she attempts to vent her pent-up stress by wildly attacking everything in sight. Immediately, the surroundings catch aflame! There will be a small fire eating at the dead wood of a long winter if it's not put out, but your first priority might have to be fielding a stampeding lizard with massive teeth and burning hot scales...
(There are other monsters lurking in every townsperson — feel free to invent your own npc monsters and scenarios!)
The marks worn by all residents of Rubilykskoye aren't just cool body art, as it turns out. The town is full of rumors, whispered in shadows and over candles of a starving creature hiding in the dark corners of your chest. Feed your inner beast, they say, before it finds a way to feed itself.
Alas, its emergence is inevitable — sooner or later, the horrible things that happen here pile up and make someone repulsed by the idea of human contact. Someone holds themselves back, bites their tongue, or simply does not believe the stories. Today, for one reason or another, that creature is coming out. Someone hasn't been keeping it sated.
Symptoms escalate over weeks, from monstrous irritability to full-blown body horror transformation, where people physically shed their human forms and evolve into the monsters this place made them. Once a person becomes something more (or less) than human there's only one way to go back — sate the beast.
someone else transforms
After another failed tisane test drive, and the third customer asking for a new kind of aphrodisiac to add to their festival food, she was seen tossing down her work knife with uncharacteristic frustration, and taking an "early lunch" that she didn't return from that night. Though her children, friends and employees reach out to her, there's no sign of her until you stumble upon her in the woods.
Merta overboils with her suppressed fury as her body distorts and her flesh blackens and crusts. Her attempts to hold off her transformation have failed, and Merta turns into a Smoldering Skink, a large repillian creature whose thick scales hold back her magmatic insides. The noise she makes is an unhearthly hissing scream like a boiling kettle, and she attempts to vent her pent-up stress by wildly attacking everything in sight. Immediately, the surroundings catch aflame! There will be a small fire eating at the dead wood of a long winter if it's not put out, but your first priority might have to be fielding a stampeding lizard with massive teeth and burning hot scales...
(There are other monsters lurking in every townsperson — feel free to invent your own npc monsters and scenarios!)
you waited too long
At first, as you hide yourself from your darker impulses, a subtle itch develops under your skin. An irritability that makes you snap at the person who bumps into you on the stairs because all those fleeting emotions that you've been repressing bubble to the surface. Every dark thought you've had about being here, all the fears of never getting home, of being surrounded by ticking time bombs, the anxiety of wondering who you might hurt or what relationships you might betray by doing what you have to do. The anger. Oh, the anger.
Maybe you shut yourself in your room or run into the woods to hide away, but there's only so much you can do to deny the itch that grows into hunger like a spark catching and growing to wildfire. Someone comes to check on you. That knock on the door or crunch of leaves in the wood that fills you with dread at what you might do and hope that you will be sated.
As claws and fangs and scales and spines and fur grow and your body transforms with a sickening crunch of bones and peeling of skin, so do your appetites. If you won't sate them, you'll lose yourself to your beastly impulses sooner or later, mauling friends and taking your fill. Is it better or worse if only your claws get inside of them?
Maybe you shut yourself in your room or run into the woods to hide away, but there's only so much you can do to deny the itch that grows into hunger like a spark catching and growing to wildfire. Someone comes to check on you. That knock on the door or crunch of leaves in the wood that fills you with dread at what you might do and hope that you will be sated.
As claws and fangs and scales and spines and fur grow and your body transforms with a sickening crunch of bones and peeling of skin, so do your appetites. If you won't sate them, you'll lose yourself to your beastly impulses sooner or later, mauling friends and taking your fill. Is it better or worse if only your claws get inside of them?
no subject
Faeries sound like dicks. All this only makes sense if she's your mom. If she's not, what the fuck does she care about purity and shit? Even if it's a power thing.
[He's getting a smidge riled on Peony's behalf. Regardless of how she feels about it, he's not loving the concept of selling away one's autonomy. The thought makes his skin crawl.
He thinks of it as a problem to solve instead. Loopholes, indeed. At least she has some options.]
You could always lean into the violence instead. That's my plan. I killed a pig earlier. Otherwise... I don't know. Have a lot of phone sex. Maybe that counts.
no subject
I'm an adventurer by trade. No doubt I'll end up murdering someone sooner or la-- [Okay, this is the point where she stops. Puts her hands on her hips and thinks really hard. Because she definitely wouldn't have said that willingly.]
What I meant to say was I'll end up starting a fight--
Nope.
Okay. Something fucky is going on here. My words are fucked up and I'm being honest and I fucking hate it.
no subject
Yeah, I don't normally go around advertising my sex life. Maybe someone spiked the drinks.
[He swirls what's left of the cider in his cup. Should he dump it? Probably, but, hm.]
I'm cool with murder. I kill people, too. They hire me if they want to become a ghost. You have a better shot of coming back as a spirit with a traumatic death, and all.
[He's not sure whether that's the mysterious forced honesty talking or if he's just fully given up on discretion over his hobbies. Could go either way! It's not like he wanted to keep that shit a secret back home, anyway. Hi, I'm a murderer doesn't tend to net him a lot of friends.
He downs the rest of his drink. If he says something he regrets, whatever. At least he's telling the truth.]
I like honest for you. You've said a lot of interesting shit. Speedrunning right past the small talk. It's good.
no subject
[Zone of truth might do that but Peony was sure she would be able to feel another spellcaster in the locale. ]
Oh. [And clearly Peony has a similar thought to him as she glances down at her cup and then decides to down the rest of the glass.] I try not to kil unless they try to kill me first. Or, they're really really evil and work for something wicked. I have. But I try not to.
[She nods understandingly. Yes. That makes sense to her.] And you do that for work? [It's said with the same tone as if he'd stated he was an accountant. It seemed reasonable work to her if they were asking for him to do it.]
Yes, normally I dazzle people with words and false compliments first, this is a novel experience in not being able to obfuscate the conversation to be entirely about the other person.
no subject
Uh, sort of. I don't take money for it. I like hurting people, but it does nothing for me if they're not into it too. Clients let me cut on them and I kill them when we're done. Most people aren't big fans of pain, so I've got magic puts them in a good mindset for it.
[He huffs out a breath. There's the oversharing. Oh well. If it scares her off now, then it'd scare her off in a couple of years after he spent all this time getting attached and being an awesome friend and teaching her how to play guitar and helping her with her stupid girlfriend problems—and he's definitely never had a friendship implode like that before, but either way, best to get the dealbreakers out of the way early.]
I know how it sounds. I don't do anything that they don't agree to in advance.
[His thoughts flash to Ben: sitting on the floor with the corpse slumped next to him, spotting faces in the blood smearing the wall, the refrigerator humming too loudly.]
Most of the time. Mistakes happen. I usually just tell people I'm a private investigator, which is also true.
[He clears his throat and stuffs his hands into his pockets for lack of something to do with them. This is the most he's talked about himself in a while.]
Your philosophy's a good one, though. About the killing, not the dazzling. Why do you do that?
no subject
If Peony is especially bothered by his confession, it certainly doesn't show on her face beyond a curious tilt of her head to the side.]
It sounds like you preform a service to them that they request and you are all adults capable of making their own choices. Like a courtesean. I don't think I'd like to be a ghost, but then, there's fucking liches that exist so I can believe some people choose that for themselves.
What's that phrase again? If you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life. If it brings you joy-- [She shrugs her shoulders.]
Oh. Well, if I let people meet my real personality they'll hate me. Because I'm a conniving power-hungry void of need. It's easier to be what people want to see; a pretty fool.
no subject
Thank you! Yes! That's what I'm saying, but people get such a bug up their ass about it. Fucking stupid. I don't know that it "brings me joy", but whatever, it works for me. I'm good at it.
[And both of them are lucky that he doesn't know what a courtesean is.
He shakes his head at her last statement, though. He'll choose "conniving power-hungry void of need" over "pretty fool" every time.]
If you had tried the pretty fool thing on me, I'd go back to hanging out with the fire-breathing lizard. Power hungry I get, with you chasing after that faerie nobility shit. Good for you. Conniving, I don't see, but maybe that's just because lying's off the table.
[She's not getting off the hook that easy, though. He makes a note to circle back.]
So, "void of need". What's that about?
no subject
Peony looked out over the path of destruction that the monster had left behind it.] It's nice not to rely on it though. And nicer that you wouldn't fall for it. Shallow men are the worst kind.
[Her lips quirk with a knowing smile.] 'Void of need', that's what my first boyfriend called me before the bastard took the horse we'd been riding and left me in the woods to be eaten by wolves. He's right, of course, but fucking rude to say it, I've never been satisfied with what I have.
no subject
[He wouldn't leave anybody to be eaten by wolves in the forest though, so! There's that! The story pisses him off.]
To your point, he sounds like the poster child for sexism. Literally, that's just the classic "you wouldn't call an ambitious man a bitch". If what you have is a piece of shit boyfriend ditching you in the woods and a piece of shit vampire trying to lock you in a crypt, you shouldn't be satisfied.
[The sun has all but set by now. Most of the cleanup crew is packing up—there's more work to be done by the sound of it, but the fires have been extinguished and the rest can wait until morning. Harlan kicks lightly at the ground. He doesn't want to be left out here after dark, but he's not ready to go home, either. Whatever truth spell has gotten into them is a comforting bubble he doesn't want to burst.]
Look, if you want to put up a front with other people, that's your business. But if we're gonna hang out, don't pull that on me. Okay?
no subject
[Peony takes note of the encroaching dark, lifting a hand and with a mutter of arcane words she conjurs four brightly coloured lanterns above their heads to light the night. She hadn't been a fan of the dark since stepping into Barovia.
Harlan's comment pulls a small smile from her. Yes. She knew she deserved more. Because she was special and special people deserved to strive for more and more. It was what was owed to them.]
I think I can agree to that. If you promise to pull me up on bad behaviour - it takes me a while to drop the act.
no subject
I don't—oh.
[For a long moment, he's captivated by the lanterns. He's spent the past few days listing everything he hates about this place, but every so often, he spots something difficult to resent. Magic like this doesn't exist where he's from. The lights hover serenely above them, and you may as well have told him Santa Clause is real.]
You just did that like it was nothing.
[There's a quiet amazement in his voice. He's not shocked given she's just told him about her magic, but seeing it is something else—and she made it look so easy.
Oh, but she's said something.]
What? Yeah, sure. Deal. Is that an illusion? Or are they real?
[He reaches up to touch one of the lanterns.]
no subject
[The lanterns are truly beautiful. Upon closer inspection, they are finely crafted with shapes punched into their paper exteriors, one with small flowers, another with the a spray of stars, one with arcane symbols and one with little suns, the glow within a wispish faerie light. It can be touched and bob slightly in the air as Harlan disrupts it's path.]
Oh. Well. It is nothing. Nothing impressive usually. You're safe to touch them - they won't disappear. They're real.
[She looks up at the lanterns and smiles.]
It was the first piece of magic that Lady Titania taught me. To light my path back through the woods. "Walk in the path of my light, my flower, turn your face to it and grow." That's what she said to me. And then I could conjure these. [Peony had memorised those words. Titania's first gift to her. She looks over at Harlan and smiles.] They're a little silly, I know, and a light spell would probably be more effective but they're special to me.
no subject
[The corner of his mouth ticks up in a small smile as the lantern wobbles gently.]
Magic is all mental shit where I'm from. It can't conjure things. The best I can do is make people believe whatever I say.
[Later, he'll realize that was the truth spell talking. He's too busy admiring the lanterns to notice he's said too much.]
I don't think they're silly. It's nice, especially here. I'd be conjuring lanterns all the goddamn time. I'm already sick of lighting candles for everything.
[Yes, a lot of places in town have electric lighting, but still. He may as well be camping. It's awful.]
Plus you got to bring something from home with you.
no subject
We call this the school of abjuration. Pulling from the forces of nature to shape it into a new form.
[She wasn't schooled in the arcane beyond what was common knowledge and the things she had gleaned from run ins with wizards over the years.]
I can normally summon demons to do my bidding. Can't here though. Probably for the best as I don't have any fresh blood to contain them with and there's already enough monsters running about without me adding to it.
[Yet another Very Honest Truth she normally wouldn't have shared quite so easily. Peony reaches up and bats one of the lanterns, making it bob and spin in the air.]
They do have their charm. One of my happier magics.
no subject
Whoa. Cool. How much blood would you need? Can't be that hard to get.
[Frowned upon, maybe, but not hard. He's more interested in her other spells, though.]
What's your favorite kind of magic that you can do?
cw - mentions of human blood being used for ritual magic
[It wasn't a pleasant thing to have to gather the materials needed but any large magic required more valuable components. Value wasn't just in the cost of coin.]
Oh-- [She grins widely at that. Stepping in front of him and in the blink of an eye, there's a perfect copy of Harlan standing in Peony's place. When she speaks it's with his voice.] I'd say this is my favourite.
no subject
[He recoils, startled.]
Shut up! That's the worst thing in the world!
[But for all his yowling, he's more amazed than horrified. He can think of like 40 ways in which that would be the coolest shit ever. Awesome spell, terrible execution. Get out of his bones!!]
That's gotta be an illusion, right? You're not... I don't sound like that. There's no way I sound like that.
[And yet.]
no subject
You asbolutely sound like this.
It is an illusion. See, if you put your hand through here - you'd swipe straight over my head.
[She gestures at the top of the illusion.]
Can't make myself taller. But I can make myself look like whoever I want to.
no subject
You could cause so much trouble with that shit. I bet you have.
You're casting that on yourself, right? I could theoretically do that, but it'd be me messing with your perception of me. In your head. And I'd probably have to sleep for like a week afterward.
[He's very jealous that her magic seems a hell of a lot less taxing than his. And more versatile.
He puts a hand over his eyes.]
Go back to being you. This is creepy.
no subject
[One of the many eldritch invocations that Titania had taught her during her journey.
But she lets the disguise slip away bringing her back to fully herself. No funny business or nothing.]
I have been a bit of an imp with it in the past, I'll confess. Very handy to be able to be anyone who you can think of. Wonderful for slipping out of places unnoticed. Or into them.
You're safe. I'm me again. No more borrowing your face. For now.
[There were no promises she wouldn't borrow his face in the future. But Peony does muffle a yawn.]
Oh. Don't get me wrong, I could use a nap. Magic is exhaustive but the little stuff is less so. People think I'm not powerful simply because I'm pretty - they're soon corrected of the thought when I knock the stuffing out of them.
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[Said with the air of a seven-year-old trying to stop a sibling from poaching their french fries.]
If you're gonna pretend to be me, you have to ask first.
[But okay, good, she's herself again. His hands go back into his pockets.]
Do you know a lot of combat magic, then? You said you were an adventurer.
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But if I ask first, that'll spoil the surprise.
[She's mostly teasing and with a grin she adds;] Fine. No borrowing your face unless you say it's okay. I'll be good.
Oh, yes. My party is mostly physical types who wouldn't know a spell unless it smacked them in the face. I'm a bit of an allrounder - a jack of all magics. Force magic, Lightning, Necrotic, Psychic, Healing, Radiant and good old fashioned Faerie Charm. If all else fails, make them fall in love with you and ruin their lives, right?
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[He foresees some pranks in his future, but he can live with that. Maybe. He'd be pulling that shit all the time if it were him, so...
As for her list of magic: Whoa.]
Healing magic sounds cool. Useful. I'd learn the hell out of that if I could.
[He'd learn the hell out of everything she's listed, honestly, but healing sounds the most immediately useful to him. The last thing makes him quirk an eyebrow, though.]
Have you done that?
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[It's an unfortunate truth.]
No. I've influenced their minds to be kinder towards me - enemies attacking, guardsmen who wanted to lock me up, my family to allow me to escape captivity - but I end it within the hour. Any longer would be deeply cruel.