"Oh, yes! I think you SHOULD make it a desert!" Courtney said gleefully. She looked around at the phantasms manning the various stalls and listened to the carnival music playing. She had never been to a fair before. But her childhood had been filled with plenty of ghosts. "Hmm... would there be any harm in torching this place down? After all, if it's just a bunch of ghosts, a bit of fire won't hurt anyone--right?"
Kimiko shivered when nightfall broke. Oh god, they were in a
carnival. Not too awful in and of itself, except this one was something out of a horror movie, creepy music and all. It seemed as though all the stalls were operating by
themselves. There were her ghosts. "I'm all for burning it down," she said.
"I am saying to not be surprised if no one speaks up about it today, as there are many reasons as to why no one will take responsibility."
"Isn't it a bit foolish to assume that the delcatty got the power meant for the abomination? There are many other alternative, and more likely explanations to this. Honing in on just this one is shortsighted at best."
He squinted at the Delcatty, then the Slakoth. "Well, what he said yesterday was the recipient of the vote power thing wouldn't know anything about it, so I definitely took it they wouldn't get a glowing fucking diamond on their chest. That's besides the whole redirecting daytime actions thing. So unless he's got something to say that makes that sound even remotely likely, I'm guessing this was somebody else. Fucking everybody has a bunch of powers in this thing; why wouldn't there be another person who can put diamonds on people? We just plain don't have the information right now to guess what's up with it, but at any rate it doesn't look harmful, so I think we're fine to ignore it for now. Person who did it probably shouldn't speak up about it."
"Just going to echo this. It was said beforehand that the recipient of Sans' ability wouldn't
know about it. So why would there be a bright, glowing marker on them? And on that note..."
And that brings things to the diamond. “Diamonds, diamonds…” Mythology was more Cuicatl’s thing, but he’d picked up some things in Japan and Alola. “I know there’s a cult in Japan that uses a diamond as a symbol. They worship a time god. Time could do anything, though. Change the length of the day, undo votes, reverse actions… who knows. Or it could be Diancie. Rebirth. Protection. I hope it’s Diancie. That’s less ominous.”
"If we're looking for origins, maybe it's less about the shape? Are there any light legendaries?" There were a couple she thought might be related, but hesitated to speak them. She still had doubts that it was connected to speaking
your own patron or if it could be more random than that, but she wasn't about to take any chances. Let the others think of them for themselves, and share names if they so chose.
[[ This was prompted by Namo's introduction of the mark, here:
There was also another curiosity at play, and it was right on one of the players. Ajia had a diamond-shaped symbol of light on her chest. It didn’t seem to do anything else, though.
Why was it not, say, tattoo'd onto the target, or something, for example? Not sure this is relevant, but something that caught my eye that no one's mentioned yet either way. ]]
"Y'know, that's another thing. Only one elimination last night? In a group of almost twenty? My guardian's makin' a lot of noise about this. They're nervous about some kind of mass elimination event or ability? With at least three people claiming to be able to give some kind of ability or effect to others, not to mention the whole Strings thing... Like, I know we shouldn't panic, but... should we be more nervous about these kinds of things?"
"Agreed with this, too. My guardian says 'refer to his previous post', but generally we agree that there's probably more than one delayed killing ability at work here. Unless anyone has any ways to counter them, though, I don't know what else we can do about them right now..."
[[I'm starting to think that the strings might be a third party, similar to an arsonist but an arsonist who can act in the day. Is that the technical term? Oh well. Either way, I'm expecting Strings to attach to players randomly with no connection to their Legendaries.]]
"I'm not sure about this, honestly. What if it's just someone's passive ability? It's someone's ability, sure. But people seem to be treating it as some activated effect, like... someone actively doing it. But it feels to me more like a passive effect and we don't know the trigger. Doesn't make it third party, given how many abilities everyone has... but given that I also suspect we have multiple similar effects in play here, I wouldn't rule out a third party yet, either."
[[You think so? There’s many many different ways I could know about this. I find it rather odd and a bit fishy that your immediate response to this is “welp you’ve said too much so might as well tell all”. I’m not opposed to revealing more but I don’t think it’s necessary tbh.]]
Her attention shifted to the quagsire's guardian stone. "I'm kind of in the same mind space here. With how many abilities we have, I suepct there's a ton of abilities Puck could have that could have failed to work properly (admittedly I don't have a
list handy and I'm still too inexperienced [[ and strapped for time ]] that I wouldn't even think of attempting to create one, but I imagine it wouldn't be hard for someone more familiar with the game to whip something up if it becomes an issue). I'm... definitely curious how you know it was a swapper rather than just you being blocked or something, but I agree, if it's not necessary to say so, don't put a target on your back, Puck. " [[ We may need to use you for future post reacts! ]]
Ajia shook her head. "Guys, I really don't think we should be thinking of the strings as being similar to an arsonist, because from Dave's description, it sounds way closer to a cult leader. Their goal seems to be taking control of people, not eliminating them."
"And yeah, I have a few different ideas how Puck might know there's a swapper. Only one of them is the sort of thing that would really need to stay secret. So, as long as there's even a bit of uncertainty, I'd rather not ruin that."
With a sigh, she turned to the delcatty. "Oh, cult leader is an actual role? I thought Dave was implying they could legit take control of him and therefore use his abilities on targets of their choosing regardless of Dave's wishes. Admittedly I imagine hard to enforce, I suppose, but that's where I've been getting the 'multiple delayed deaths' angle from. There's gotta be more than that, though, too. Even if I were correct, that's a
lot of effort involved for just two night kills in a game this large..."
[[That's all I've got for now. Almost midnight, been home for three hours, need dinner. If things happen before I go to bed I will attempt to address, but otherwise, goodnight. ]]
