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aather_ooc2013-12-08 05:21 pm
dramatispersonae) wrote in aather_ooc2013-12-08 05:21 pm
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[SNOW QUEEN PLOT SUMMARIES - GERDAQUEST # 3 + ICEFIELDS EXPLORATION # 2]
❄ The summary of the plot kickoff/tunnel to the Icefields exploration (explore #1) is here!
❄ The summaries of Gerdaquest sessions # 1 (Kai and Gerda’s houses) and # 2 (the river) are here!
❄ Wednesday’s plot was Gerdaquest session # 3 (the flower field)!
Gerda followed the path that the heroes sent her down (the three trees signpost) and came to what appeared to be a still-verdant flower garden in the middle of the snow, with a climbable wall and an intricate, locked gate. When she climbed in, she found a small cottage and a wide flower garden with various objects inside and every flower except roses. Though she took off her coat and became sleepy and distracted from her journey quickly, the heroes noticed that she was shivering and that the Snow Queen's snow bees were at the scene and yet unseen by her -- Katou theorized that the whole place was an illusion, and after everyone told Gerda to put her coat back on and she found her pictures of her loved ones again, she was reminded of what she was really here for.
On Tamaki's advice, she tried to add paper roses to a bare patch in front of the gate, and was surprised when they combined with the roots and stems already in the soil to form an actual rosebush. However, the moving dirt unburied something that looked very ominous - a shard of dark mirror that looked very like the one Katou found in the tunnels. The snow bees attacked it immediately, freezing it and carrying it away, though quite a few of them became familiar Darkness statues in the process.
The rosebush's growth also broke a buried comb with an enchantment on it and dispelled the illusion, showing the beautiful garden to be a very bleak and frozen place indeed. Though Gerda was extremely frightened and discouraged, everyone's encouragement gave her the strength to use a literal key item - the rose key that heroes had gotten for a previous exploration, sent to her through the fire - to unlock the gate. Something about putting an item of power back through the fire and releasing an enchantment with it gave the spell allowing everyone to speak to Gerda an extra boost, and it gained enough power to become a door instead of a window for a little while at least…
The heroes got one of the Darkness'd bee statues in a glass box through the fire for their trouble, which should definitely be of help to anyone trying to experiment with ways to release the statues outside Camelot as soon as you figure out how to open the box. Gerda got to keep her sweet new (albeit faded) floral hat, and continued with fresh determination on her journey.
❄ Saturday’s plot was Icefields exploration # 2 (the robbers’ castle)!
The boosted fire portal allowed heroes into the next location Gerda reached -- albeit temporarily! (And without their skills, since the Snow Queen's deathgrip on her own realm prevented other powers from entering it.) The new location turned out to be a rundown castle mansion in the middle of a forest, converted into a robber gangs’ lair at some point but apparently abandoned by the robbers later on (whether this was due to the encroaching ice, someting else to do with the story, or the Darkness is unknown). Heroes caught up a little with Gerda and then tried the door -- while it was solidly iced shut, they were able to use their warm thoughts and actions to thaw it out and push it open.
The castle was in extremely poor repair and completely covered in ice on the inside, but the general layout centered around one large room in the center, with routes to a few smaller bedrooms-turned-treasure-rooms upstairs and a dungeon-turned-storage space in the basement. Though reaching the other floors and the part of the ground floor that had been cut off was a trifle difficult, everyone managed to either rise (or fall, SOLSTICE) to the occasion, and the place was thoroughly explored.
Main Room
This was the hub of activity both in the explore and in the memories of the place when it was more lively that everyone found scattered in the ice! From here you could get to the menagerie past the ruined wall on the left, explore the far left corner that the robber girl took over as her domain, examine the remains of a map to the right, or head for the other floors via the collapsed stairwell at the near right corner. The room itself was dominated by a cold fireplace, the only thing in the explore that started off not covered in ice, which was lit and nourished by Irisviel and Aradia -- it looked like it would go a fair ways towards thawing the entire castle out after the explore ended, given time. Scattered around the fireplace was the detritus of a large group's meals and sleeping arrangements and life -- the ice was holding memories of sleep, drunken merriment, and general lively activity in place, along with at least one bottle of someone's sleeping "medicine" (unsure). This was retrieved and will later be sampled by Tavros. Good job Tavros. Other things found here included a hidden scrap of the decimated map, a book that told people where to find the Snow Queen, and a magic torch that ran on warm feelings and kept the chill of the location somewhat at bay.
A Child's Corner
The easiest-to-reach and most popular destination was the robber girl's play fort in the corner of the room that she'd claimed. Here you could see memories of her threatening to kill Gerda if she made her mad (...in a friendly way!) and a reflection of the girl herself in the ice, as well as find various objects of interest to her -- a rusty old pistol, LOTS of knives, a box of precious glass trinkets… a map scrap was also found here! Heroes continued to find that if they touched the memories trapped like spots of light in the ice, they could see and hear a frozen echo of the events as many times as they liked, while melting the ice would grant them an experience of the memory… but release the memory forever.
Menagerie
The menagerie took a little effort to get into, as the combination of a wall caving in and thick ice made it inaccessible for most at first. Thorn, Selenia, and Roxas together were able to melt the ice blocking it off, and entered to find a living place for animals, complete with a stall, kennels, a dovecote, and frozen bird poop and feathers scattered around. There was a magic torch in a pile of dove perches, the memory of some kind of animal struggling to get loose in the stall with a copper collar on a sawn-off piece of rope, and another memory of pigeons billing and cooing in the dovecote near a nestful of frozen eggs with a map piece tucked inside. Despite the rigorous challenges of touching bird poop and Joshua's commentary, they retrieved all of this and returned triumphant!
Storage Rooms
This modified dungeon could only be reached by descending the ruined spiral stairs, or falling from them. It was dark and icy, but light spots showed up very clearly, containing a lot of memories of people bustling around retrieving the clothing and food stored here. Another map scrap had gotten stuck under a pile of former cell doors, and a torch was hanging out on the wall right in the shadow of the stairs, where it would be hard to see till you were leaving. Everything here was retrieved except for the food, which could have been useful! Oops.
Treasure Rooms
These modified bedrooms could only be reached by winning a luck roll to climb the ruined spiral stairs. While they had been mostly stripped of things of value before the heroes arrived, they contained clues to how Gerda had met the little robber girl to begin with - a dress fit for a princess in Gerda's size, the remains of a golden carriage, memories of an old woman threatening her with a knife and of a little robber girl… biting her ear… along with some clues as to how the rooms were used by their occupants (dicing for the treasure!) Mixed in with all the junk jewelry and old furniture were some genuine items of value like a sack of old coins, too. A map scrap was hidden with some magpie feathers under one of the heaps of discarded stuff!
Conclusion
Once people reconvened to find that their efforts had started to make a serious change in the place, everyone put their map scraps together and consulted with Gerda and decided the best route for her to take towards Spitzbergen was straight across the river. They also asked about other locations, gave Gerda stuff, and asked her about the explore - these threads are ongoing!
Wrapup
Everyone's skills returned as they returned to Camelot, the oppressive weight of the Snow Queen's control over her realm lifting. The fire looks like it has enough juice left for at least one more explore proper. Anyone who found something and wants it shared with others is encouraged to do so here or wherever else they want! If you found something and want to find out if it does anything special, comment and we'll let you know asap <3
TL;DR A LOT HAPPENED. If you wish to handwave attendance, try to take a look over things and get a good idea of what you did and saw, just like in the last explore event connected to this plot!
❄ While the Snow Queen doesn’t seem to have twigged on to the realm infiltration happening yet, and is still dumping snow over the populace, all the cumulative activity seems to be having an effect on her . . .
❄ The next session will be on Friday, December 13 at 7pm EST! Similar to yesterday’s run, it will be a trip into the Icefields and a hands-on explore by the heroes. We’re heading towards the finale in the next couple of weeks now (check the calendar for futher dates) -- we hope everyone’s been having fun with this plot so far!
❄ The summaries of Gerdaquest sessions # 1 (Kai and Gerda’s houses) and # 2 (the river) are here!
❄ Wednesday’s plot was Gerdaquest session # 3 (the flower field)!
Gerda followed the path that the heroes sent her down (the three trees signpost) and came to what appeared to be a still-verdant flower garden in the middle of the snow, with a climbable wall and an intricate, locked gate. When she climbed in, she found a small cottage and a wide flower garden with various objects inside and every flower except roses. Though she took off her coat and became sleepy and distracted from her journey quickly, the heroes noticed that she was shivering and that the Snow Queen's snow bees were at the scene and yet unseen by her -- Katou theorized that the whole place was an illusion, and after everyone told Gerda to put her coat back on and she found her pictures of her loved ones again, she was reminded of what she was really here for.
On Tamaki's advice, she tried to add paper roses to a bare patch in front of the gate, and was surprised when they combined with the roots and stems already in the soil to form an actual rosebush. However, the moving dirt unburied something that looked very ominous - a shard of dark mirror that looked very like the one Katou found in the tunnels. The snow bees attacked it immediately, freezing it and carrying it away, though quite a few of them became familiar Darkness statues in the process.
The rosebush's growth also broke a buried comb with an enchantment on it and dispelled the illusion, showing the beautiful garden to be a very bleak and frozen place indeed. Though Gerda was extremely frightened and discouraged, everyone's encouragement gave her the strength to use a literal key item - the rose key that heroes had gotten for a previous exploration, sent to her through the fire - to unlock the gate. Something about putting an item of power back through the fire and releasing an enchantment with it gave the spell allowing everyone to speak to Gerda an extra boost, and it gained enough power to become a door instead of a window for a little while at least…
The heroes got one of the Darkness'd bee statues in a glass box through the fire for their trouble, which should definitely be of help to anyone trying to experiment with ways to release the statues outside Camelot as soon as you figure out how to open the box. Gerda got to keep her sweet new (albeit faded) floral hat, and continued with fresh determination on her journey.
❄ Saturday’s plot was Icefields exploration # 2 (the robbers’ castle)!
The boosted fire portal allowed heroes into the next location Gerda reached -- albeit temporarily! (And without their skills, since the Snow Queen's deathgrip on her own realm prevented other powers from entering it.) The new location turned out to be a rundown castle mansion in the middle of a forest, converted into a robber gangs’ lair at some point but apparently abandoned by the robbers later on (whether this was due to the encroaching ice, someting else to do with the story, or the Darkness is unknown). Heroes caught up a little with Gerda and then tried the door -- while it was solidly iced shut, they were able to use their warm thoughts and actions to thaw it out and push it open.
The castle was in extremely poor repair and completely covered in ice on the inside, but the general layout centered around one large room in the center, with routes to a few smaller bedrooms-turned-treasure-rooms upstairs and a dungeon-turned-storage space in the basement. Though reaching the other floors and the part of the ground floor that had been cut off was a trifle difficult, everyone managed to either rise (or fall, SOLSTICE) to the occasion, and the place was thoroughly explored.
Main Room
This was the hub of activity both in the explore and in the memories of the place when it was more lively that everyone found scattered in the ice! From here you could get to the menagerie past the ruined wall on the left, explore the far left corner that the robber girl took over as her domain, examine the remains of a map to the right, or head for the other floors via the collapsed stairwell at the near right corner. The room itself was dominated by a cold fireplace, the only thing in the explore that started off not covered in ice, which was lit and nourished by Irisviel and Aradia -- it looked like it would go a fair ways towards thawing the entire castle out after the explore ended, given time. Scattered around the fireplace was the detritus of a large group's meals and sleeping arrangements and life -- the ice was holding memories of sleep, drunken merriment, and general lively activity in place, along with at least one bottle of someone's sleeping "medicine" (unsure). This was retrieved and will later be sampled by Tavros. Good job Tavros. Other things found here included a hidden scrap of the decimated map, a book that told people where to find the Snow Queen, and a magic torch that ran on warm feelings and kept the chill of the location somewhat at bay.
A Child's Corner
The easiest-to-reach and most popular destination was the robber girl's play fort in the corner of the room that she'd claimed. Here you could see memories of her threatening to kill Gerda if she made her mad (...in a friendly way!) and a reflection of the girl herself in the ice, as well as find various objects of interest to her -- a rusty old pistol, LOTS of knives, a box of precious glass trinkets… a map scrap was also found here! Heroes continued to find that if they touched the memories trapped like spots of light in the ice, they could see and hear a frozen echo of the events as many times as they liked, while melting the ice would grant them an experience of the memory… but release the memory forever.
Menagerie
The menagerie took a little effort to get into, as the combination of a wall caving in and thick ice made it inaccessible for most at first. Thorn, Selenia, and Roxas together were able to melt the ice blocking it off, and entered to find a living place for animals, complete with a stall, kennels, a dovecote, and frozen bird poop and feathers scattered around. There was a magic torch in a pile of dove perches, the memory of some kind of animal struggling to get loose in the stall with a copper collar on a sawn-off piece of rope, and another memory of pigeons billing and cooing in the dovecote near a nestful of frozen eggs with a map piece tucked inside. Despite the rigorous challenges of touching bird poop and Joshua's commentary, they retrieved all of this and returned triumphant!
Storage Rooms
This modified dungeon could only be reached by descending the ruined spiral stairs, or falling from them. It was dark and icy, but light spots showed up very clearly, containing a lot of memories of people bustling around retrieving the clothing and food stored here. Another map scrap had gotten stuck under a pile of former cell doors, and a torch was hanging out on the wall right in the shadow of the stairs, where it would be hard to see till you were leaving. Everything here was retrieved except for the food, which could have been useful! Oops.
Treasure Rooms
These modified bedrooms could only be reached by winning a luck roll to climb the ruined spiral stairs. While they had been mostly stripped of things of value before the heroes arrived, they contained clues to how Gerda had met the little robber girl to begin with - a dress fit for a princess in Gerda's size, the remains of a golden carriage, memories of an old woman threatening her with a knife and of a little robber girl… biting her ear… along with some clues as to how the rooms were used by their occupants (dicing for the treasure!) Mixed in with all the junk jewelry and old furniture were some genuine items of value like a sack of old coins, too. A map scrap was hidden with some magpie feathers under one of the heaps of discarded stuff!
Conclusion
Once people reconvened to find that their efforts had started to make a serious change in the place, everyone put their map scraps together and consulted with Gerda and decided the best route for her to take towards Spitzbergen was straight across the river. They also asked about other locations, gave Gerda stuff, and asked her about the explore - these threads are ongoing!
Wrapup
Everyone's skills returned as they returned to Camelot, the oppressive weight of the Snow Queen's control over her realm lifting. The fire looks like it has enough juice left for at least one more explore proper. Anyone who found something and wants it shared with others is encouraged to do so here or wherever else they want! If you found something and want to find out if it does anything special, comment and we'll let you know asap <3
TL;DR A LOT HAPPENED. If you wish to handwave attendance, try to take a look over things and get a good idea of what you did and saw, just like in the last explore event connected to this plot!
❄ While the Snow Queen doesn’t seem to have twigged on to the realm infiltration happening yet, and is still dumping snow over the populace, all the cumulative activity seems to be having an effect on her . . .
❄ The next session will be on Friday, December 13 at 7pm EST! Similar to yesterday’s run, it will be a trip into the Icefields and a hands-on explore by the heroes. We’re heading towards the finale in the next couple of weeks now (check the calendar for futher dates) -- we hope everyone’s been having fun with this plot so far!