+ The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to You +

[vitaelamorte]

Who: EVERYONE!
Where: EVERYWHERE!
When: Saturday, May 19th - Wednesday, May 23rd.
Rating: PG-13, warn if you're gonna go higher!
Summary: A catch-all for the Kyln / Sierra Madre event!
The Story:

For the duration of this event, the entire mansion will be part space jail, part apocalyptic wasteland desert with an abandoned hotel/casino. On the third day an escape route not previously discovered in the Kyln appears and breakouts can be planned...

...Only for everyone to find themselves walking through a large glass prison toward the toxic gas filled wasteland of a desert, the Sierra Madre. Does the prison look better than the toxic cloud outside? If you're stuck in the prison after dark beyond day 3, you'll be forced into and locked in your cell for the night. But at least locked away, nothing from the outside can hurt you. If you try to brave the actual elements in the desert it might be a little hard to breathe. The air has pockets of toxic gas and even a few seconds of exposure could prove deadly. And watch out for the Ghost People.

Inside the abandoned hotel/casino you'll find shelter from the gas and ghosts, but beware the holograms that are 50/50 with their attitude. Prison beatings, a beating from the holograms, which one Would You Rather? And whatever you do, don't try on the collars lying around unless you like to explode. Literally.

[ This is a catch-all for all your prison/desert needs! Please mark your threads clearly in the subject line with your character's name and either a cell number or just a location if you didn't feel like randomizing it or you're making a top level for a public place (like the dining hall or wandering the hotel/casino). Here's the plot post if you need it!

Have fun! ]

Comments

[mucked]

[ well. it's he (un)lucky that peggy comes from an time where 'beowulf for children' was rather de rigeur. the name certainly finds a mark -- although her eyes narrow rather than widen. of all the tall tales she'd expected she might someday meet after having met snow white some weeks earlier?

beowulf's monster wasn't one of them. ]

Grendel. [ does she hold out a hand? do they shake on introductions? well -- there's no harm in trying. ] There's a name I haven't heard since I was a little girl.

[oneagainstall]

[The fact she knows it is somewhat comforting. Fables live longer, can take blows much easier when they're well known by the mundies. Popularity equals power, and all that. It's probably why Bigby gets up from everything thrown at him. Everybody and their mother knows the Big Bad Wolf. ]

Least you have heard it.

[He eyes the proffered hand, because carefully taking it. Or, at least, using the tips of his fingers. Handshakes are hard when your a big old monster. ]

More than what I usually get.

[mucked]

Never in the nicest of contexts, to be truthful.

[ monster, bogeyman, villain. a faceless creature for the hero to defeat. peggy probably thought of herself as a beowulf, once upon a time, charging into danger during children's games. st. george, king arthur, all those old tales... ]

[oneagainstall]

[He flashes a sharp-toothed grin.]

Well, 'course not. The stories are always written to be that way. The hero is good, the monster is bad. The hero defeats the monster and everythin' is fuckin' hunky dorey, right? Evil is defeated and good shines through.

[There's power in their stories, a certain narrative that can't be broken. Things are as they are. ]

They ain't so good with the shades of grey.

[mucked]

Of course. People aren't so comfortable with the concept, either.

[ oh she'd loved them as a child. every game of pretend had been wrapped up in those stories, with her older brother most often graciously standing in as her villains. black knight, dragon, monster. peggy retreats a step, but not with any disdain. it would be easy to be afraid of grendel simply for his stature -- and if she's honest, there's a quiver of apprehension deep in her gut. but she schools it out of her posture. because monster or not, the chap still has body language.

she's careful. but she aims not to be paranoid. the conversation helps -- grendel isn't being defensive, but rather wry. and she can work with wry. ]

Those hard lines in the sand take a while to unlearn.

[oneagainstall]

They really aren't. It's a fuckin' tragedy.

[It's been a long time since he's been in his true form around mundies. Being in Wonderland is the first time in centuries he's had cause to drop his glamour at all. For survival the first time, and now because he has no choice.

Still, he knows how humans tend to BE around things like him. That much, he remembers only too vividly. As abrasive as he usually is, he doesn't really want to pick a fight with her just yet. No reason to. He allows the distance, keeping his own body language as relaxed as he ca of his size. ]

It's the same for most Fables. They don't forget this shit easy.

[mucked]

Fables.

[ is that what they call themselves? peggy finds it odd that they should appropriate a word that denotes an imaginary sort of status. for someone to identify themselves as a moving part in a story, of all things, seems entirely too self-aware for her tastes.

she frowns. ]

Are there many of you? Back home?

[ as many as there are characters in stories? ]

[oneagainstall]

Sure are. Used to be a lot more of us before the war. There's a couple hundred of us left, these days. If you count Fabletown, the world at large and the fuckin' Farm.

[That last one has a lot of venom towards it. No non-human Fable in their right mind likes the Farm. ]

There's enough of us, I guess. Look out for each other- least that's the pitch they fuckin' sell you on.

[mucked]

Yes. Well. It's a pitch that only works if everyone else is buying.

[ the more seconds that tick by, the more accustomed she's getting to the creature in front of her. peggy is nothing if not adaptable -- and conversation only serves to adjust her to these new truths. someone else's truths, of course, because she doubts his world and hers have anything much in common. ]

Where on earth is Fabletown?

[oneagainstall]

Used to be everyone did. But then the folk at the top of the ladder decided they were worth more than the rest of us and things went South pretty fuckin' fast right after that.

[His old home...well, that was worlds away. Literally. But his new one? Not so much. ]

New York. It's got magic shit around it to keep the mundies from wandering in- or at least noticing too much weirdness about it. They got huge fuckin' laws about that kinda thing. Blending in.

[mucked]

[ new york! of all the places -- peggy won't even begin to try and parse what's real and common about these claims. it can't be the case in her new york; surely, she would have known about it. sod the laws. sod the magic.

peggy tempers her scowl. ]

Mundies. [ she tests the word out on her tongue. mundies? mundanes? must be. ] I imagine that's what you'd say I am, then.

[oneagainstall]

Mundanes.

[Her guess would be right on that one. ]

If you're a regular human from regular Earth, then yeah. That's what you are. The people who know our stories, who probably wrote them, but aren't part of them.

[mucked]

-- But it's not simply a case of having powers, or abilities, versus having none. Is it? [ she's trying to sort out these lines. to discern the difference. ] You're talking exclusively about a population of people that your everyday someone would otherwise consider fictional.

[oneagainstall]

Yeah, well, there's human Fables- but they're still Fables. Still live by the same way the rest of us do- namely living for a fuckass long time and being really fuckin' hard to kill. Mundies-

[He waves his one hand in her general direction. ]

You're just- that. Least where I come from. Just people. Living normal fuckin' lives, unaware that 'fictional' people live amongst them.

[mucked]

[ just that. he has no reason to understand why that should rankle her -- or how it does, given some of the tender spots raised over her last year in wonderland. how steve once tried to sideline her because she was, in his words, only a baseline human. it's taken a lot of coming to terms.

she might just be able to forgive him soon enough. ]

Those lines are a great deal more blurred. Back home. Forget Fables and Mundies. It's all -- enhanced individuals, inhumans, super soldiers. And then it's the rest of us.

[oneagainstall]

[He's had hundreds of years living with mundies, but he still has a hell of a lot of learning to know how to live properly with them. He usually avoids them. But here, he hasn't got a choice, he HAS to learn to live amongst them. Even befriend them. ]

...No shit. Sounds like some comic book stuff, but I guess we gotta get used to that kinda thing. Like you said. Blurred lines.

[mucked]

Here, especially.

[ she means wonderland -- and not just the prison. ]

Considering we're all a mixed bag. Liquorice allsorts.

[oneagainstall]

That's a really fuckin' nice way of putting it. I'd of just said we're a buncha fuckin' weirdos.

[Because he's super classy. ]

[mucked]

Oh, come now. There must be some among us who aren't in the least bit weird.

[ a beat. ]

Although, by context, I suppose their very normality amidst a sea of what's otherwise would suddenly make them the new weird.

[oneagainstall]

See? Whichever way you slice it, there's gonna be some weird in there somewhere. Makes sense, right? Wonderland wouldn't steal people with boring memories.

[mucked]

You know, I'd not considered that angle. I'd always assumed even the most boring of bores must still have something worth remembering. [ else why bother??? ] But you're not wrong -- we have no way of knowing what, exactly, Wonderland's standards are for a memory worth feeding on.

[oneagainstall]

Trying to make sense out of anything in Wonderland is like trying to swim in custard, y'know? We can theorise all we fuckin' like, but it'll still pull something out of its metaphorical ass that no sane person would every think up.

[mucked]

Quite possibly.

[ a beat. ]

Doesn't mean it's not worth trying.

[oneagainstall]

Sure, I guess. If you like being fuckin' bamboozled.