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[Lenglon]

I'm not mad about you trying to lynch me, I'm mad at you for the way you're communicating.

[Vector]

Please hold for day end processing.

[Vector]

Warn the Prince of what the peasants think. Meaning what Horatio thinks--and..and then tell him what Horatio told me one evening under the light of the moon.

"Prince," you begin.  "S-Sigfred.  Horatio told me something you should know."

"Horatio sticks his crooked nose a great many places it isn't wanted," Sigfred mutters, drunk on bitterness to the dregs.

"Please, just listen," you say.  "This is no time for quarrels!  Both you and Horatio are in grave danger."

And you tell him the truth of what transpired that day, if not the details.  Sigfred sits quietly and listens, betraying nothing beyond his grave fatigue.  By the end you are crying with guilt, venting, at long last, your poisoned humors.  Though the Prince does not reach out to touch you, he leans forward a little and slowly traces nonsense patterns on the table with his fingertips, now closer, now farther away; and in this you appreciate, as intended, the simulation of gentleness.

At last he leans back, and says: "Alas, Horatio!  I knew thee well. . .

"What a shame, that all our best--our most brilliant ideals and highest sentiments should come to this.  I am sorry that you have seen this thus.  I am sore ashamed."

"But there's more," you say.  "He told me a secret."

"Enough of his secrets.  You have related far too many this evening."  He sighs.  "I am to die--or if not to die, to be crowned.  What use have I for secrets and stories?"

"He says," you say, "That you are too young for all of this."

"The gall!  He is only three years older than I!"

"He says that you have not decided who you are to become."

"King," Sigfred huffs, turning a little bit green as he says it.

"But what does that mean?"

Sigfred is silent.

"And--and he says that though he knows it's selfish, he doesn't want to give you up yet."

"And as always, he presumes too much."

"But all he means is for you to be well," you say, "just like all the rest of us you gathered here.  You can't count his love as lesser just because it is constant.  And it's not greater because it's enduring, either.  It's just itself.  Love's just love, no matter how long or short.  It doesn't need an aim or purpose.

"He has no demands on you.  He doesn't think of himself very often. . . I don't think he would have even said anything, if he hadn't been shocked by your anger today and thought to bring you some sort of happiness.

"That--that's what he doesn't want to lose you to.  It's that anger, and everything that might cause it.  War, and your obligations, and assassinations, and every dark thing you can think of!"

"I know you have the right of it," says Sigfred, "but I wish you did not.  I have used him abominably ill."

"Then apologize," you say, "And make up!  It's not too late.  I know it's not too late--to save that, if nothing else."

"You," says Sigfred, "are the wisest duck I have ever had the pleasure of meeting, if also the most idealistic."

At that moment a knock sounds at the door.

[Vector]

"Enter," says the Prince, and the iron-shod girl hobbles in, clang by clang.

"Um. . . excuse me for bothering you," she says.  She does not pick her eyes up from the floor, and curtseys periodically.  "I'm sorry about intruding.  It looks like you were in the middle of something.  But we've found the last of them.  Or so we think. . . I think. . ."

She waits there, quietly, in the way of someone who is long accustomed to being ignored and disbelieved.

Sigfred remembers.  He is too familiar with that look.

"Really!"  He rises and clasps her clammy hand.  "How did you know?"

"Well," she says, unable to look any higher than his collarbone with her hesitant smile, "Let me draw you a picture. . ."


Once upon a time, there was a young man named Sigfred.  Though he was not the wisest man of his kingdom, nor the kindest, nor the most loyal, he was to be crowned king.  And so despite his fear and misgivings he set aside the provisions demanded by the rituals of his culture: armfuls of blossoms, a musician and dancers, and magnificent birds for his feast.

(He was to be married as well, but his chief retainer had a mind like a steel sieve when it came to that)

One day, Sigfred was visited by a God.

She came to his castle and awaited an audience, but it was many days before he could see her, being busy with the business of his coronation and his other visitors.  So she slept there, and infected his dreams with wonders.  She could sense his fear and pain, and loneliness, and feelings of doubt.  She could feel his raw edge.  She was dismayed at his nightmares: of days long ago, of days soon to come.  And so she, being powerful and kind, dreamed of more comforting things with all her strength.  And so she, unconscious of her own nature and whimsical as every other deity, accidentally transformed the material adornments of his impending sacrifice to friends, who would all love him in their own way.  It was as it should be, in the order of things.  A good man ought to be blessed with kind companions.

He was charmed by the arts of a veiled musician and at last opened his drafty halls to seek a bride.  Those assembled saw him fall asleep, from time to time--then jerk awake, and, with a sweetly dazed smile, make a selection.  In this way, he chose thirteen beauties, some innocent, some passionate, some wise; some who would protect his surfeit of gentleness, some who would demand he grow strong enough to protect himself--and stronger--but all of whom adored him.

The Dreamer may have brought doom upon him, but that was not her aim.  It was, as her followers would have said, "beyond the scope of the question."  She had wished friends upon him, not moralists.

What would happen next?  She did not know, or have the fortitude to force a future.  She did not even notice that she was attended by her own companions, who loved her more than life itself, and from whom she drew her strength--and that it was from their great love of her that they derived their own powers.  She did not know that her dreams had become, in a word, well-ordered--as was their wish of her in a cruel and insensate world.

But as for the God herself, she was too busy dreaming. . .

So deep was her sleep that she did not know, even, that she had inspired the wrath of a Goddess far more jealous than she.


They gather in the Great Hall: a prince, a rose, a woman wearing black shoes, a small brown duck.  A servant, waiting and silent.  The focus of their attention is a pale slip of a girl, sitting on a bench and dangling her legs.  She has a blank, round face, yellow-green eyes, blond hair so ashy it looks almost white.

"So you were a lily, fair funeral-flower."

Sigfred draws his sword.

"Did you?" he asks.  "Did you slaughter them?  Why?  What made you think it was worth it?"

"i loved your beauty in simple black," she tells him.

"But surely it was not worth their suffering," he says through his tears.  "Surely you would not condemn innocents to Death--for that.  I--"

He levels the point of his sword at the hollow of her throat and she stares back blankly, uncomprehending, with a smile for his attention.

"prince though we do eat your dead, slaughtering her is not in the interests of the ROSE CLAN," another girl hastens to say.  The lily rolls her eyes.  "diversification of investments is the essence of a good reproductive strategy.  women will tire of wearing only roses before long."

"What?" says Sigfred, but he is interrupted by the duck, which quacks loudly and at great length.

"Perhaps," Sigfred replies.  "That was quite well said.  Thank you for your input."

"Sigfred, i-it isn't my place to say this, but I think. . . I--I think that you're being very stupid.  If the entirety of your argument is that she should not have killed innocents, then I would add as c-counterpoint that there is n-nothing more innocent than her.  Probably.  Do you think she knew what she was doing?"

"yes," the lily says.  "i am mistress of myself i was not born yesterday"

Albeit taken aback at being undermined by the very woman she was trying to defend, the girl in iron shoes presses on.

"Sh-sh-she knows enough to love b-b-beauty and i-it's said that a-aesthetics are the c-cornerstone of morals," she says, "So couldn't some-one teach her how to be a human being?  We have spoken together a great deal these past days.  S-she is not evil, just misguided.  I know the darker side of life far too well. . . t-trust me. . ."

The duck quacks some more, with great enthusiasm.

"B-be quiet you.  Th-the dead are dead and wh-what is past is past.  I-it's sad and my heart aches dreadfully to think of it, but it's true.  All the b-bodies are b-b-b-buried.  Let's move on.  I know too well that you could persist in this moment forever."

Sigfred sighs, and drops his blade with a clatter.

"This will not look well to the Guard," he says.

"Sigfred," Horatio says gently, "do you really mean you still aim to please them?  I have not seen you do anything that pleased anyone but your own self, these past days."

"You say I am to be framed for assassination of Mo--of that woman found in my bed, and that you yourself are to be condemned for, ah, other crimes!  What can we do but try please them?"

"give them roses, they'll calm soon enough"

"pull them up by the roots"

"QUACK!!"

"Th-they would kill you on mere speculation," says the girl in iron shoes.  "Because they are bored and brutal.  They have no interest in the facts.  Disband the King's Guard and offer them a portion of your treasury.  You are not using it."

"You were not here while Claudius ruled," says Horatio, "but he had an adviser who said something wise--if only once.  'This above all: to thine own self be true.'  Liege, do as you would and I shall follow."


"You knew I was a duck all along?"

"Yes.  It was not difficult to discern.  You are a prime example of a duck."

"D-does that mean that y-you would have married me?!"

". . . No, I'm afraid not--but I couldn't mention it and send you away.  I didn't want to embarrass you before all the other ladies."

The Prince is just as considerate as you had always imagined!

"Please keep Horatio company while I am gone, as you have been.  And don't go searching through his things again.  That was unwise."

You nod.

"And be sure he bars the door while he is sleeping, and does not forget to eat, and does not get wrapped up in one of his melancholic fits or do anything stupid as he so often does."

Horatio has more sense than Sigfred. . . you aren't sure where this is coming from all of a sudden.

"Be sure that the Queen uses him better than I have, and that you keep her in high spirits.  Even a duck has responsibilities."


Sigfred guides the two flower-girls to the armory.

"your family received this suit of armor from the ROSE CLAN as a gift back in the days when you respected the crops you grew"

"those days did not happen according to the LILY CLAN records"

"you are mistaken it is known in our roots.  thorns guarded castles and soldiers guarded gardens.  lilies adorned caskets once a lifetime"

"the LILY CLAN did not receive favor

"they gave that suit of armor as a gift

"a gift with no hopes tied to it"

"then why does it have roses stenciled on it"

"your colonialist attitude and smug superiority have permanently stained the LILY CLAN's cultural expression"

"now you find your words"

"i have words for what i know"

"Guard the Queen with your lives, you who do not bleed, who grow again from slivers of yourselves," says Sigfred.  "She will keep both your gardens blooming bright, and more.  I will make her promise to till the soil and water your grounds herself once a year, as a gesture of tribute.  I will ask her to adorn visitors' rooms with bouquets of flowers, and encourage them to take plants with them to their homelands.

"If you seek husbands, she will help you find them.  Your obligations are to her now.  Swear your fealty and live by it, and your clans shall be well cared for."

"the ROSE CLAN did us ill"

"the LILY CLAN does not know when to quit"

"We will give you all you need and more," says Sigfred.  "For both of you, it shall be days of plenty forever.  And a great number of lessons in elocution and ethics.  I cannot say I envy you."

He grins cheekily, and takes his leave.


"Sir," says the pageboy, dirty, ragged, and carrying an enormous bird.  "I have returned from the hunt."

"What's this?" says Sigfred.

"A wild goose, sir," says the pageboy, holding it out.

Sigfred clasps him to his chest.

"So there was one who was faithful after all," he says.  "To think you would return, even after three days of chasing wild geese."

They feast well that twilight, and offer every ounce of leftover to the hungry guards, who are somewhat mollified.


"My dear," says Sigfred, "though it pains me to announce it after all this time, I cannot marry thee."

They are sitting side by side on a bench in the castle gardens, near the White Swan's final resting place.  The night air is cool and sweet.

"Oh," says the girl in iron shoes.  "I--"

She doesn't say anything more, nor does she cry.  She is too accustomed to disappointment.  She looks at her nail-bitten hands, which worry her black dress.  Sigfred cannot look at her either.

"I hear you are frightened for your prospects," says Sigfred, "and I know that you are clever, wise, and even-tempered.  I would not have you go wanting while I save myself.  Tell me, what do you know of Death?"

"Only that it is dark and fearsome, and that no two men believe the same of it."

"And--how much do you believe in the Gods?"

"This may shock and displease you," says the girl in iron shoes, "but I do not offer them belief at all, for in a just world I would not be shod thus.  In a just world I would have been forgiven.  Punishment without reprieve is also a death, and I would refuse this."

"Must the Gods be just?"

"They need not be just; but I need not be faithful either."

"I will not disabuse you of that notion," says Sigfred, shuddering, "nor may I offer you a wedding ring, nor can I offer you a just world, though you deserve it."

She blushes, from bodice to forehead.

"There is something, however, that I can offer."

Sigfred falls to his knees beside her and wrests the signet from his finger.  Shaking from head to foot, he presses it into her hand.

"Take it.  Please.  Rule this land.  Be gentle and discerning, and wise, and faithful to your subjects.  Show them--show them that their sovereign can be trusted, and that they need not live in fear of evil, nor fall to evil themselves.  Show them, if you will forgive the expression, that there is more to life than iron fists and sacrificial lambs."

"I shall do that and more," says the girl, and slides it onto her finger.  It is a monstrosity in ruby, onyx, and bone, but somehow, she thinks, it suits.

"Also," says Sigfred, rising and dusting some of the dirt from his trousers, "there is the matter of the royal gardens. . ."


"I have used you ill," says Sigfred, "been abominable and disloyal, insulted you and treated you worse than a dog.  And now, I ask you to serve the new Queen with as much tenderness as you have me."

Horatio swallows, but continues to saddle his master's horse without saying a word.

"Won't you say something?"

"It is all as you have said," says Horatio, "And yet, you--Sigfred, you are wan."

"Stop thinking of me for a moment and speak your mind," Sigfred mutters.  "You have tended me for far too long."

"Have you no other orders, liege?"

"I am useless without you," Sigfred begins, "And that is why I must depart alone."

"I see," says Horatio.

"And I shall forever be followed by Death.  I know that now.  Yes, this very mor--" Sigfred retches, presses his hands to his mouth, holds fast.  "I cannot speak of it.  How is it that I cannot speak of it?  I trust you more than any other man alive, and I cannot speak of it!"

"Peace, Sigfred.  It will come in time."

"How can I be at peace when--"

And again, his breath comes too quick, and he is overcome with shakes.  Horatio abandons the horse and sits beside him, carefully, in the hay.

"Won't you give me your hand, Sigfred?  . . . There.  See, it's warm."

"And. . . scarred.  Where did that come from?"

"Ah yes," says Horatio.  He looks away, but his face does not close, and he does not retract his hand from Sigfred's shaking palm.  "I fell down."

"One of these days, I shall. . . disabuse you of all your lies."

"That will happen only if we should meet again, liege."

"Stop calling me that.  I will never bear the weight of the crown."

"I await your final orders.  Once you have given them, then I shall leave off your title--and you shall leave."

Sigfred rests against the straw, pretending to think, but instead taking in the stable where he spent so much of his boyhood, its manure, its rough-hewn rafters, the corner of the kennel where his father had kept hunting dogs, the well-oiled tack carefully stowed--the sure sign of Horatio's work on anything that did not actually belong to him.  Having carved much bitterness into his memory over the past days, he struggles, at least for a moment, to cling to something sweet.

"Once the Queen is well-settled," he says, dropping each syllable as though from a great tower, "Once she is duly crowned and you know that the border is held, and that she is happy with her lot and well-respected, and she gives you leave, Horatio, come and find me."

Horatio beams at him.

"With pleasure."


So it was that the last of the three sons left his lands forever, and rode alone into the night.  The kingdom he left behind was better than he had found it, or than he would have ruled it; and the queen upon the throne of Denmark became known in lands particular and distant.  Her halls were filled with music and flowers, and the image of her iron shoes became known among her people as a symbol of both justice and mercy for as long as she ruled.  The hobnails with which they had always soled their boots became fashionable, and chosen for their resonance--so that a particularly enviable pair would be greeted with the exclamation: "Ah!  There's the Queen walking!"

As for Sigfred, he rode that road a long time--lonely, grieving, spent and anxious.

But not always.


"Prince," says Aureliusz Vektor.  "Prince, you haven't finished your story!"

Sigfred groans.  He is sprawled on the bar, drooling on the wood, with Mischka half-lying on his face.  He spits out a bit of her fur.

"It is either late or early," he says, "I cannot remember which, and I do not know if I am alive, dead, or dreaming.  Don't wake me.  Let me just sleep a little bit longer."

"This is not an inn, Prince," says Vektor.

"That is fortunate," says Sigfred, "since I am not a prince."

"Young man, you do not seem an evil sort, but you are not an honest one either; and I do not know what to do with you.  Also, you are soused."

"Help me be honest," says Sigfred.  "Teach me a better way to do things.  I have done ill--you do not know the beginning of it--and I have a longer story to be told than can be related in a single eveninggggsch."

"You can borrow the quilt my wife sewed and sleep in the stables to start," says Vektor, helping him stagger towards the door, "and then in the morning you can draw water from the well and save an old man his aches and pains.  I will not accept your money.  Coin never worked for is no good for a man like you."

"That's fortunate," says Sigfred, "because I haven't any."

"We are agreed, then.  You will help me here until you are useful, and then I will send you on your way richer in sense, if not money."

"Yes," says Sigfred, "Under you, I will gladly serve."

You are Lenglon the Lily.

you used to be a plant in the castle garden until one day you turned into a girl

this is confusing

you wear a white dress and you think you are very pretty

there is a prince here who wears black clothes and you think he is very pretty

a black swan says she will outcompete all the other plants/girls to win the prince's affections by adopting a more intelligent evolutionary strategy

like covering herself in bright colors to get more bees you ask because the LILY CLAN you are part of missed out on that one

no like uprooting the other girls she says

that is a pretty good idea to be honest

your flower wait your head hurts a lot and you want to eat dirt but the black swan keeps stopping you

maybe things will make more sense later?

You are a member of The Black Swan's Cohort.  You have a private chat here.  You win when the girls outside the cohort are dead.

you can follow someone each night to find out where they went

[Vector]

Cohort Chat
Dead Chat

"Fe"ather Chat
"M"ind Chat
"Fl"ower Chat
"B"ody Chat

Spoiler: Night One Actions (click to show/hide)

Jim Groovester uses Writer's Curse on Solifuge
Toaster gives Griffionday a rose
Griffionday inspects NQT
NQT redirects Zombie Urist to Griffinpup
Zombie Urist blesses Lenglon
Griffinpup strums chords
Solifuge NKs Griffionday
Lenglon follows Solifuge
Ottofar kills Griffionday
Webadict blocks Jim Groovester
Tiruin does nothing
Leafsnail does nothing

Spoiler: Night Two Actions (click to show/hide)

Webadict NKs NQT
Lenglon follows Toaster
zombie urist blesses Jim Groovester
NQT redirects Jim Groovester to Leafsnail
Toaster gives a rose to Webadict
Jim Groovester dreams of bells, having been upgraded to Dreaming Goddess
Leafsnail: none
Tiruin: none
The Wet Sheep plays the Seer's Song

Spoiler: Night Three Actions (click to show/hide)

Jim Groovester upgrades to Dreaming Death and spends the night in dead chat
Toaster gives a rose to Webadict
The Wet Sheep strums chords
Lenglon kills The Wet Sheep
Tiruin goes and inspects some graves
Leafsnail's role is downgraded: she has lost motivation, and her double-vote
Webadict's role is downgraded: she is now stuck with a plain roleblock
Webadict blocks The Wet Sheep [MODERATOR ERROR]

Spoiler: Night Four Actions (click to show/hide)

Tiruin tracks Horatio (?!)
Lenglon kills Jim Groovester
Jim Groovester tries to kill Tiruin and fails
Toaster gives a rose to Tiruin
Leafsnail does nothing

[Vector]

Character PMs, part The First

Spoiler: The Hopeful Prince (click to show/hide)

You are Griffionday, the Hopeful Prince.  When first you left home it was in search of your elder brother, who took his long body and regrets and drifted off into the snowscape one evening.  Though you may have cried a little when he left you, nose scrunched against a cold windowpane, he was admittedly in a rather difficult phase.  You hoped that he would be back soon, mature and prepared to take upon himself the burden of his kingship, and went about your business as the youngest of three sons.

The wheel of seasons turned, but he did not return.

You rode out through the winter woods, dripping coin wherever mead dripped down thirsty throats, and were finally directed to a certain cursed cathedral, where you opened the door to a certain mausoleum door and found a certain half-decayed skeleton and a certain sword.  You had hoped, upon being told The Legend of the Bleeding Nine, that you would not find him amongst the dead--that he had been laid out in state--that the truth of the story had not been so sordid--that he would have fought to the end--but the carcass was huddled in the corner, skull down-turned, and that was the last of your cynical brother.

You voyaged some months, always returning again and again to that deadened place, wondering why you had let him go, but unable all the same to give him a proper burial--and when winter's cold bud bloomed into spring, you met a girl in the cursed cathedral's weedy garden and laid your regrets aside.  Ah, she was beautiful!  A sea of red hair and gray eyes that pierced, a pleasingly full figure, a rosebud mouth that dispensed with scathing wit and the warmest love, a marvel, an erotic, glowing goddess, a queen--

Then you lost her.

You aren't quite sure what happened or why, sensing no signs of her dissatisfaction, but you awoke one morning and she was gone--and this time, you didn't wait.  You followed the rumors, even when they said something about a beautiful red-haired woman being transformed into an exceptionally pretty brown duck; you followed them back to your own castle, where it turned out that your own older brother was soliciting hands in marriage, having heard of The Cynical Prince's demise.  Therefore you girded your loins with hope, adopted women's dress, made eyes at your remaining sibling and, at sixteen years of age, threw your lot in with twelve damsels to search for your lady love.

Even if she was a duck now.

You will find her again, whatever it takes.

You must find your Duck.  You will be utterly heartbroken if she dies.

Each night and each day, you may inspect one of the players.

When you confident that you have found your Duck, you may ask her to come away with you--but be warned that anyone but Duck will probably be rather displeased to discover your masquerade.

Tiruin is, well.  Small and cute!  She sure seems to have a lot of energy.

She was one of the ones who refused to wear the white dresses, though.  You think she looks pretty good in her fluffy brown clothes, especially the way they puff out around her skinny legs and chubby middle.  She's... got a bit of a mouth on her... especially when she's hungry.  Short, feathery brown hair, too.  You wouldn't think your brother would go for her, but seeing some of the other possibilities... maaaaaaaybe... ?  It seems that you can't account for his taste!

Sorry this took so long, LOL.  Next time will be more timely.

The death of the White Swan shakes you, but only solidifies your courage.  Something strange is afoot, and though you wish you could abandon your masquerade and comfort your grieving brother, you know he needs time to come into his own--that he would turn again to trying to protect and care for you, his sole remaining family, at a time when more than ever he must think of himself (and care for Horatio, who is more fragile than he thinks he is).  He has always been so selfless that, now that you have a chance to do him some good, you will take it.  You have your responsibilities, after all.

With that in mind, you steal to where NotQuiteThere is sleeping, in a chair by a window.  Perhaps she is your duck. . .

Well, no.  It is clear to you rather immediately, upon taking a more careful look than you had before, that NotQuiteThere is not a duck or a girl.  The moonlight reveals that NotQuiteThere is a very old man in lumpy and grass-stained robes.  He smells like the green growing earth; his skin is nut-brown, his hair cropped short to his skull and snow-white, and he seems to be sleeping peacefully.  He is wearing the same crown of red roses as all the other girls were and--somehow--it seems to suit him, as though it were made for his skull.  What is he doing here?  Has your elder brother gone blind in the proceedings?  You knew his taste was somewhat... esoteric, to say the least, from the moment that you saw the nun, but this is beyond strange.  Did Horatio mis-count?

Troubled, you go back to sleep, or try to.  On your way back to your room, where that watery carpet now adorns your floor, someone steals up to you from behind.  They catch you around the waist and press a hand to your mouth.  You try to struggle.  You were trained in swordplay in your youth, after all.  The fact of the matter is, though, that you have never killed a man, and that, as you understand with sudden clarity when the knife appears, you were born not to fight but to love.

That fact, along with a sudden impression of your lover's presence, is your last clear thought.

Your attacker draws an X in
your entrails with her knife,
as you gasp and choke,
and your impressions of love
pollute your impressions of pain.  You can
barely feel her lay
you down on the rug,
but you do feel her fingers
closing your eyes
as you lie dying, and smell the sweet
smoke on her hands.

You can hear her open the window for Death
and walk away,
and you can hear the next one walk in.
This woman braces
herself in your viscera as
she cuts your throat, and that is all.

You are dead.

Spoiler: Duck (click to show/hide)

You are Tiruin the Duck, hopeful and spry.  You briefly had a charm on you that made you look like a girl, because you were such a good duck for such a long time, and you fell in love with a handsome Prince!  And he fell in love you with you, too!!  But then the charm wore off and you turned back into a duck.  Boo.

You left, because you were ashamed, and scared that he wouldn't love you anymore.

Your hope had been, for a long, long time, that someone would love you; but you've always been down to earth about it, and realistic about your chances.

You are, after all, a duck.

Quack.

You waddled along the waterways and gobbled up cress; the sky is the ceiling, every tree a monument.  You're not quite sure why humans don't get that.

You waddled and waddled!  It took quite a long time!

And then you just happened to come to the Prince's beautiful castle.  But it was the wrong Prince.  But he was asking about wives so you went in with the pretty girls to take a look at him, and ooh, he was soooo handsome!  And he didn't seem to mind that you were a duck, so that was really kind of him and gentlemanly.  And you saw some familiar faces, which made you feel at home and comfy.

In fact, this Prince is also very handsome.  You would like to win his heart someday, and then maybe if he kisses you you'll turn into a Real Girl.  That would be really nice!

But some people are trying to kill him, so you'll do what you can to protect him for now, looking over him fondly the way only a good little Duck can.

You are town.  You win when all threats to the Prince are gone.

RESTRICTION: You may not reveal to anyone directly that you are a duck!  Because they they probably wouldn't let you marry the Prince, and that would be too bad.

RESTRICTION: Every post must have a k, q, hard g (like ghost, gamble or grow), or hard c (like in cucumber or cress) in it.  You are a duck!

You don't have many special powers right now except that you are very small, so it is hard to kill you!  Two attempts would do the job, though.  Boo.

But!!  You are pretty sure you aren't done transforming yet!  Have faith in yourself, little duck, and win your Prince's heart!

You had not realized that coming to meet the Prince in his castle would mean watching other birds die and be EATEN!  This is no good.  As soon as you are queen you will make it so no more animals are killed!

QUACK!!!

You strut through the halls that night and can't sleep!  Here is Horatio and the Prince.  Horatio has been sick for hours!  You hate that he isn't feeling well, but he understands it's not right to eat birds.  He is a very enlightened man!

When the Prince leaves the room you waddle in self-importantly and you waggle your tailfeathers a little.  Horatio's eyes are red and his face is very white and wet in the candelight.  But he picks you up and sets you on his lap and pets your head.  He is warm!  You close your eyes a little.

"Does he even know you are a duck?" he asks the air.

"Quack," you say agreeably.

"Yes, darling, we both know my Prince is a fool.  A lovely, warm-hearted fool, but silly to the bone."

You are falling asleep but you manage to quack all the same.

He breathes in suddenly, shuddering, tightening his arms around you.

"My little duck," he says, "To tell you the truth--to be honest, I don't know if I really knew she was a girl or not.  I keep thinking--and remembering--and I simply don't know if I knew--"

You sit still and let him cry a little, caressing your feathers with his warm fingers and at last he kisses the top of your head.  At this moment, the Prince walks in.  He turns bright red!

"H-Horatio!" he says.  "I--I don't mean to interrupt--Miss Tiruin, I am afraid that tonight I would like to see you safe in your own bed, and I of course fully encourage your courtship.  Tomorrow.  I am a little overtaxed this evening, as is, as I'm sure you know, Horatio.  Or--or so I thought."

Horatio looks back at him, cheeks colored a little.

"She was just leaving," he says.  He picks you up off his lap and sets you gently on the floor, brushing the down off his black trousers.

Silly Prince!  Horatio is a good man, but everyone knows that ducks marry Princes!  You waddle out through his legs and brush up against him a little, quacking with self-satisfaction.

You are still alive.  Congratulations!!

You are dreaming that night about your old pond.  The Prince sits with his feet in the water and feeds you bread.  In your dream he has a peaceful face!  The wind plays with his hair and smooths his uncreased brow.  He is dressed like a peasant but all his princeyishness is still intact in his kind regard!

Then someone begins to appear out of the water.  They walk up from the bottom, the wet crown of their head appearing slowly among the reeds.

QUACK!  You run to the Prince's side.  He scoops you up and holds you in his arms.  He stands his ground.

The person comes closer and closer until you see the Prince's younger brother coming closer, dressed as you knew him when you were a girl but with blood seeping down his front.  You can see through him clean to the other side.  His ghostly figure tries to inhale, even though his face is somehow fogged and blurred.  You would know his body anywhere--just from the way he stands--but his expression is so hard to make out.

"Brother?" says the Prince in a strangled tone.

Something is very strange about his appearance. . . ah, yes, he unfurls and soundlessly flaps a pair of large brown ducky wings, which do not unsettle the water.

"I am Jim Groovester, who stands with the Prince," he says, and disappears.

You are still alive.  Congratulations!

You walk out to the White Swan's grave and intend to check on it, but the Prince and Horatio are standing close by already.  You pop into the rose-bush's cool shadows and wait.  They don't seem to be doing anything, though.  Just standing there shoulder to shoulder, not quite brushing, not quite looking at each other, gazing out across the fields.  The moon is a white fingernail above them.

What are they thinking?

What are they doing?

Do they understand what's going on?

Are they somehow involved?

. . . Does the Prince like you, anyway?

You want to know!

You're so full of questions you want to ask, but you wait there huddled up in the nice cool rose-shadow and watch them standing there.  And you watch their breathing, and you think about how much of the world depends on this simple softness, and how all the kingdoms of the world are built on it.  Not that they would know it.

"Come inside," says the Prince, tugging at Horatio's cuff.  Or is that Horatio pulling at the Prince?  It's hard to distinguish two men all in black, standing in the faintest of light, fading into each other.  "Go to sleep."

They go, and you, too, pay your respects to the swans' graveplace.  You aren't a swan so you can't sing a swansong.  But you are a duck, so you sing a ducksong.

quack, quack quack--O moon!

does your hidden face still see

the wild brown duckling?

You are still alive.  Congratulations.

You set out to look for Horatio, as you had decided.  You find him lying in the weed-field outside, looking up at the stars.  It's tough going, waddling through there!  Wetter is better, as your ma always said.  But you'll stop at nothing to get to the bottom of this.

"Oh, it's you again, Duck," says Horatio.  "Solemn greetings to my feathered cousin."

You quack at him amiably and sit on his chest, fluffing your feathers a little as you settle down.

"Duck," he says, "don't tell anyone this, or imply it.  Not even another duck... you never know."

You nod your head.

"Sigfred is a little young for all this."

Really?  The charming, brave Prince?

"He's too young to settle down with a woman and raise a horde of usurpers-to-be.  He needs more time to sow his wild oats and decide who he wants to be, before he can decide who everyone else ought to be for them."

Now, seriously. . . if anyone is ready, it's surely Sigfred.  He's always talking about his obligations to his people and the Gods!

"It's selfish of me," says Horatio, who still doesn't look at you, "but I am not ready to give him up yet."

You try to kick him, but. . . it's not very effective. . .

"None of that, friend Duck," says Horatio.  He stands with some difficulty, tucking you under his arm.  "I must return, lest I be away when the Prince calls."


He thoughtfully puts you in a laundry basket, where you settle down quickly.  Something strange happens while you're falling asleep. . . you taste dirt!

Then you fall what you suppose must be asleep, but instead feels more awake than awake, each sensation sharp and stinging like alcohol.  Your body is shaking apart.  You see visions. . . the Prince torn apart into gore, then put back together backwards, feet where hands ought to be, his mouth licking from his forehead, his fingers waggling from his chin like whiskers and toenails armoring his eyelids.

Your heart pounds fast, faster, to the point when the space between the beats hurts and feels empty, and you feel sick, sick to the grave. . .

But not too much after that, it all goes away and you feel, if somewhat diminished, alive again.

You are still alive.

You have only one life left.  Use it wisely, little duck!

Spoiler: The White Swan (click to show/hide)

You are Webadict, the White Swan.  Preternaturally graceful, innocent, solemn, delicate, demure. . . anyone would love you and want to take you for their wife.  You came here to offer yourself to the Prince... well, no, you certainly wouldn't be that direct.  You came to place yourself in his presence, wear your best perfume and flutter your best fan, and find out what would happen.

The other girls mostly weren't all that pretty, which was a positive.  They had nice personalities and good hair, maybe, but they weren't... well, you know.  You couldn't say it.  That would betray your legendary humility.

Unfortunately, one of the girls who showed up was your rival, The Black Swan.  You fought her over another prince a while ago, and it was all very tragic, and then finally you pretended to commit suicide to get her off the scent, but the prince killed himself in sympathy and you were both out a prince.  Boo.

Anyway.

You want this Prince, who has nice looks and an expensive castle, and you very much don't want The Black Swan to have him.

In fact, you'd like it if SHE killed herself this time.

Well, no.  You wouldn't like it, per se.  It would be awfully sad not to have a rival anymore.  You would be sure to cry and flutter your fan very gracefully, but unartfully, the way one does when beset by true tragedy--as is proper when one has lost a sister.

You are town.  You win when all threats to the Prince are gone.

You have a one-shot kill, but you actually aren't very good at this killing thing.  So: choose a target during the Night, and set it off during some subsequent Day.  You may change targets during any Night phase, provided that you haven't used the kill yet.

Spoiler: The Black Swan (click to show/hide)

You are Ottofar, the Black Swan.

Preternaturally strong, intelligent, solemn, delicate, clear-sighted. . . you are a rare beauty.  You came here to offer yourself to the Prince.  It isn't that you're desperate.  It's just that you want to be loved.  Your best qualities aren't easy to see.  That's what you keep telling yourself, anyway--reminding yourself that your good points exist.  Your hope was to woo the Prince with your lively mind and clever conversation.

Unfortunately, one of the girls who showed up was your rival, The White Swan.  Not so long ago you fell in love with the prince of a neighboring kingdom, but she butted in as she always does--well, no, she didn't quite do anything that aggressive, just stood there with a particular suggestion to her posture.  Like she always does.  You fought like cranes and turtles for a good long while, when she finally pretended to commit suicide--just to keep the Prince away from you--and he killed himself.  You were sick for weeks.  Then she returned, in the pink.  You remained in mourning.

You have never forgiven her for that.  Nor will you forgive here for coming here, as well, to simper and steal away what should have been yours.  So you gather some other unhappy girls together and decide that you'll win the Prince with one of your other talents: the blazing intellect of a tactician and spymaster.  You will slowly kill the other girls here to narrow down the odds, thus proving to him that he would do well to choose you.  Very well.

It wouldn't be much of a rivalry, would it, if you just laid down and died?  Or pretended to?  When she is gone, you know you shall mourn her all the same--as is proper when one has lost a sister.

You are a member of The Black Swan's Cohort.  You have a private chat here.  You win when the girls outside the cohort are dead.

Due to your similarity to The White Swan and legitimate love for the Prince (the speciesists apparently can't tell you apart, despite one being black and one being white!), you will appear town upon inspection.

Spoiler: The Gardener (click to show/hide)

You are NotQuiteThere the Gardener-Sage.

The massacre in the cathedral was called "The Legend of the Bleeding Nine."  You survived and traveled on to greener gardens, where the sunlight did your bones well, where the trees did not seem quite so full of bleeding children.  The way took you to a castle which had been home to three princes--one of whom perished in the Legend.  But you are ready to forget.  You are ready to tend a new garden and grow a new crop of good men.  These flowers shall take the places of your children, and you will love them as such.

Unfortunately, you have grown old--so old that no one can tell, anymore, if you are a man or a woman.  So when you spend evenings in the castle, resting before the fire and telling morality tales, the Prince takes an eye to you for "your flourishing goodness" and brings you in as one of his Thirteen.

This is a terrible idea, as you keep trying to tell them, but you lost your wooden teeth a while ago and you don't think they'd listen to you anyway.

You are a Survivor.  You win by being alive when the game ends.

At the moment you can either

ROSES: Protect another party
or
LILIES: Redirect another party

every night.

That night you settle your aching bones into a chair and settle down by the window.  You've seen beautiful women come and go before, and young men waste their lives.  The Swan is nothing new, though the thought of her demise puts a chill in your old bowels.  You are glad, for the first time in your life, that you are a man and not a free bird.

When zombieurist steals past you during the night, you tap her leg with your cane.

"Grandmother?" she says politely.

"That's Miss Grandmother to you," you say, wishing you had a beard to chew on and trying to smile.  "Have you lost your way?"

"I'm--I'm looking for--"

She can't quite seem to finish her sentence, and blushes a little.

"This is all very new to me," she says.

"Never fear," you say.  "You'll find her sleeping by the fire in the great hall."

"Thank you--Miss Grandmother," she says, and makes a little reverence before stealing off.

Satisfied that she will visit griffinpup, you shut your eyes and fall back to sleep.  Being old isn't so bad.

You are still alive.  Congratulations!!

You drowse off in your chair, waiting for Jim Groovester.  A woman drifts past you in your dreams, and you say:

"Hey. . . I think the one you're looking for is over there, young lady," pointing towards Leafsnail's quarters.

"Thank you," she says.

She looks at you for a moment--or seems to.  Her face is veiled.  Indeed, she seems to be draped in white cloth from head to foot, even her hands cloaked, the outlines of her body visible beneath the diaphanous fabric as she stands before you in a square of moonlight.  Somehow, this figure gives you a peaceful feeling, even as she comes closer, touches your short hair with a gentle hand, and breathes in your ear:

"I am Jim Groovester, who stands with the Prince."

With a whirl of dust-colored fabric, she is gone, and something strikes you in the gut.  Gasping and fumbling, you fall backwards, but the kicks keep coming, and you stumble back, and all the tenderness in the world cannot save you from crashing through the window you always sat by, and falling through the moonlight.

You are dead.

Spoiler: Lily (click to show/hide)

You are Lenglon the Lily.

you used to be a plant in the castle garden until one day you turned into a girl

this is confusing

you wear a white dress and you think you are very pretty

there is a prince here who wears black clothes and you think he is very pretty

a black swan says she will outcompete all the other plants/girls to win the prince's affections by adopting a more intelligent evolutionary strategy

like covering herself in bright colors to get more bees you ask because the LILY CLAN you are part of missed out on that one

no like uprooting the other girls she says

that is a pretty good idea to be honest

your flower wait your head hurts a lot and you want to eat dirt but the black swan keeps stopping you

maybe things will make more sense later?

You are a member of The Black Swan's Cohort.  You have a private chat here.  You win when the girls outside the cohort are dead.

you can follow someone each night to find out where they went

the other swan-girl is worm-food now

this is good, isn't it?  soon she will be dirt and you can eat her too

you follow solifuge but she seems to be going where the black swan is going

to visit griffionday

so you go out in the castle garden under the moonlight while the black swan isn't looking

you try a little dirt but that is not a good idea, yuck

you dig a little and try some swan too even though the worms haven't done a good job yet and that isn't a good idea, yuck

your flowerface is rolling with dew and you don't know what to do any more because you hurt and feel empty and don't know what to do

and if you become dehydrated too that will not be in the interests of the LILY CLAN

and putting your feet in water doesn't work any more they just feel cold you don't fill up

it is scary being a girl!!

the black swan finds you outside.  she pats off your dress and reburies the other swan.  she brings you to the dining hall and gives you some bird to eat that isn't swan-girl but maybe just white goose and feeds you apple which is strange but they are from the rival SUN-FRUIT FAMILY anyway so that is all right and you feel better so that is all right

you like the black swan very much

You are still alive.  Congratulations!!

you follow toaster and find her walking from where webadict is sleeping

you cozy up next to webadict and something strange happens

you are a lily, not a lily-girl, rooted with twelve of your sisters

and you see someone coming from far off a woman with thirteen torsos fanning out from her slender waist

and ploughing through the earth coming to you

all her faces turned to the sun and you see her hair is draped with crowns of lilies

and she comes to you beautiful and says

"I am Jim Groovester, who stands with the Prince."'

but how can it be possible to move like that

and why does she seem familiar

you wake up

is this the phenomenon human beings call dreaming?

You are still alive.  Congratulations!

you find the music girl

plink plink plink

and your friend the dancing girl takes her by the hand and they shuffle around a little

tap tap tap tap tap tap

and your friend the dancing girl whispers to you

shh shh shhhhhhhlistentomyplan

and you do what she says

SNAP CRACK POP

that was the right hand

ahhhhhhhhh!--CRACKCRACKCRACK

that was the right hand's wrists

ohstopstopstopbozhe mi stop dopomozhit', bud' laska, bud'

was what she said when her left arm shattered

and together you make a new kind of music

you did not know humans had this beauty in them

You are still alive.  Congratulations.

you go looking that night near dawn for the dead goddess

(you could not sleep)

she is sitting outside the Prince's door

(you dreamed of her)

waiting for you

(you dreamed of this)

"Hello little deathbringer," she says with a smile

she has something rotten in her teeth

you reach for her like you reached for the music girl and she isn't there

standing beside you she says

"Even you don't recognize me?"

i'm going to kill you, you say

"You don't fear me," she says

you're an inconvenience, you say

"So you want this, then," she says

she looks at you and plunges her hand into her breast

and pulls out her beating heart

she puts it in your hand, gushing and spurting

all over your black gown it splatters

"Strange age," she says, walking to the door "Willing to put up with a fool like this on the throne but you've lost all tolerance for other antiquated things"

where are you going, you say as the heart in your hand spurts and gushes

"I have a man to rouse," she says "Keep out of grown-up matters, won't you?"

your heart hammers in your chest and the heart in your hand doesnt seem to want to stop

you put it gently on the floor

and step on it


You are still alive.

Spoiler: Rose (click to show/hide)

You are Toaster the Rose.

you used to be a plant in the castle garden until one day you turned into a girl

this is confusing

you wear a red dress and you think you are very pretty

there is a prince here who wears black clothes and you think he is very pretty

you pick lots of flowers from the garden to help the other girls with their reproductive strategies and promote the ROSE CLAN's interests

(more roses worn => lots more roses planted)

you used to have a little prince come by once and lots of roses were picked and made into desserts and so on but he left so you are serious about this

he smiles at you and compliments your kindness and generosity - that feels like sunlight - if you stayed here you would bask in his radiance and help the ROSE CLAN by growing lots of them and nothing else

your flower wait your head hurts a lot and the other girls keep stopping you from eating dirt and fertilizer like a pretty rose needs

maybe things will make more sense later?

You are town.  You win when all threats to the Prince are gone.

you may give out roses to other girls to advertise the ROSE CLAN's interests

they will have a random ability they have used replenished since their improved evolutionary strategy will provide positive motivation

no girl wants more than two roses, one for each side, as you have sadly found out through a lot of experimentation

you do not understand what happened to the swan-girl

the prince did not know she was a swan?

or the girls did not know she was a girl?

what confused them?  they seem upset about this

"plant her under the roses in the castle garden" you tell the tall man horatio

he has been looking sad all evening and has been sick many times but he smiles at you a little

"that would be a lovely idea.  thank you.  i shall tell the prince" says the tall man horatio

at last someone respects the need for proper fertilization!!

but you feel something new, a not-rose thought: you will never see the white swan again

the roses were all together but the humans do not share each other, and this is new to you

you do not know how to fix this, but you steal out at night and put a rose in griffionday's hair where she is sleeping on the ground

that should cheer her up

You are still alive.  Congratulations!!

you wander through the castle and find webadict where she is asleep and put a red rose in her hair

pretty!

then you go back to your room, feeling good

you lie down and close your eyes and something strange happens

you are a rose not a rose-girl

and a woman all in red with roses in her hair and bare feet ploughing through the earth comes to you, her face turned to the sun

you cannot see her dewy brown features with her face turned to the sun and she has smaller faces and arms coming from her torso

like it was a central stalk, all turned to the sun

beautiful

and she says to you with lips you cannot see as she withers and sprouts:

"I am Jim Groovester, who stands with the Prince."

but this doesn't make sense

you are indoors how can you be outdoors

and how could anyone move like that, and why does she seem familiar?

you wake up and realize you have had your first dream

You are still alive.  Congratulations!

the petalless girl was dead-headed.

you are glad for this.  she can grow much better blooms now.

but humans don't put human heads in vases, or wear them tucked behind their ears.  and these ones don't eat their dead for improved nutrition.

you put a rose behind webadict's ear.  a face and a face.

roses will eat buried roses, but humans will not decorate themselves with dead-headed humans.  humans do not have to be like roses.  why should roses have to be like humans.  a rose needn't waste anything.  a Rose itself suffices.  it needs no higher call.

that night you wonder about the order of the universe

you make lists of everything you know

You are still alive.  Congratulations.

Tiruin takes some work to find.

she is asleep in a laundry basket, sprawled out.  you don't want to disturb her, so you try putting your rose in her hand.  she clasps it, even in her sleep, and holds on hard.

you wander off to find your own sleep.

again, you dream.  you see the earth turned barren.  every rose is desperately eaten--not in custards, creams, or pies, not in teas or delicacies, but stuffed into the slick human maw and crunched before the greedy hand reaches to rip another mouthful.

blooms, withered petals, and buds.

before long there is no such thing as a rose on earth, and all other manner of bird and beast starves anyhow.

You are still alive.

[Tiruin]

I laud Lenglon's moves in how she worded those words. That was nice aggression!

It came off too general to me, but darn did you do well!

Also dat flavor.

*reads the chats*

Edit: Err..I think I interrupted a list of Vector-posts. Oops.

...Toaster, your all non-caps is beautiful.

Tiruin tracks Horatio (?!)

Loved the flexibility you did.

Edit II: I can't believe it but I'm crying at how happy the ending is--The lily and rose clan reunited and..and well pretty much everything else. That's really beautiful Vector!

[Vector]

Character PMs: Part the Second

Spoiler: The Balalaika Player (click to show/hide)

You are griffinpup the Balalaika Player.

You came to the Prince's castle following a troupe of dancing girls.  They painted the floor with their pretty steps and lithe shadows, you strummed your balalaika, the audience tossed money at their feet, and the Prince came to you directly with a handful of flowers and a bag of coin.  This was unusual in your country, where it was assumed that the dancers would pay the player, but he came forward in person, squinting a little at your shawls and layered skirts.

"Magnificent," he said.  You were not sure from the tone if he was present or elsewhere, but he looked again and said: "I--We are most grateful for your performance, and the distance you have traveled."

"What are you thinking about?" you asked him, after he had been standing there for a moment too long.

"Oh. . ."  He shook his head.  "Fare thee well."

Not a day or two later he asked you to sing for him privately.  You tuned your instrument, hands trembling, and he stared down at you with a faintly forlorn expression when your pegs squeaked.  The sunlight from the window opened a panel on the floor, in which you posed your stool and began, slowly at first, to play.  It was a marvel that you made no mistakes, as you were busy watching the minute movements of his face, the betrayals of expression, waiting for the moment when his attention would wander. . . but it never did.

Not a day or two later he officially opened his search for a wife.

You are town.  You win when all threats to the Prince are gone.

During the night you may strum chords ("none"), or you may

Play a love song (no NKs go through)
Play a warrior's song (no protects or roleblocks go through)
Play a seer's song (all inspections go through)

Each song may only be played once.  You wouldn't want to wear out your audience!

Okay, sorry this is late.  Thanks for waiting!

You are sitting on the Great Hall's steps, tuning your balalaika and wondering if you should play a gravesong when you see the Prince walk past.  He returns shortly with a wet cloth and basin, seemingly preoccupied.  In his plain clothing and hustle, you could have mistaken him for Horatio.  But he is not so preoccupied that he cannot turn to you.

"Do you need help?" you ask him.

He blushes to his ears.

"No, not at all.  I can tend a sick man as well as any other," he says.

Yet he stands there a moment longer, waiting, as you play a few scales, idly exercising your fingers.  You wonder if a wisp of hair has managed to escape your shawls, and draw them closer about you.  He observes this gesture with a familiar, melancholy smile, recording it as he has your every other.

"He is my best and only friend," says the Prince.  "I hate to see him suffering, and I--we thank you for your gentleness on his behalf.  But I should feel most guilty if I did not fulfill my obligations on my own.  Sleep well, when you can."

He leaves, a worried expression stealing again over his comely face.  You would like to tell him in your native tongue that you, who barely know him, would be his helpmeet in all things--but you are too sad to play or sing, and pass the night plucking out arpeggios in A minor.

You are still alive.  Congratulations!!

You play the Song of Seeing, slowly strumming out the chords.  You could play them in your sleep.

In fact, you drift off while playing them, all the way home.  Your mother, or someone like her, gently readjusts your shawls.  She has you sit by the fireplace, warming your skirts, and brings you bread and salt on an embroidered towel.  You keep your eyes on her as you eat, looking up every time you can, and stumblingly telling her about your experiences with the Prince.  She nods and smiles quietly.

But she is old. . . !  You know it is your mother, but her face is wrinkled like an old apple.  Her cheeks crowd out her lips and her brows obscure her eyes, and her arms are fat, and she totters a little as she walks, and her bed is laid out above the stove, and your father is gone.  A blend of sorrow and fear crawl up your spine.  This will be your fate one day, and it is her fate now.  Or might not be.  You can't really see your own mother's features beneath the wrinkles and begin to wonder, slowly, if this is the woman who raised you at all.

With a knowing smile she at last looks you in the eye and says in impeccable Danish: "I am Jim Groovester, who stands with the Prince."

You are still alive.  Congratulations!

You sit on the steps, strumming your instrument and thinking, idly, of all the songs you could play but have chosen not to play, and of the home you left, and of the trees your balalaika came from.  They are not sad or wistful thoughts, as much as anyone might expect them to be.  You are satisfied with your life as it is.  After all--after all, despite all this, you have been able to cultivate tenderness.

And as you play, two girls come and sit with you.  One distracts you for a while.

Then she whispers in the other's ear so that you can't hear it (rude, but--you don't mind, not this once), and the other--

She breaks your strumming hand first and then she crushes your wrist and then she breaks your left shoulder and then she breaks every finger in your fingering hand, and she

You pass out, and while you're lingering elsewhere, it must be that your body dies.  After that, you wouldn't want to return to it, anyhow.

You are dead.

Spoiler: Black Shoes (click to show/hide)

You are Leafsnail, who wears Black Shoes.

Your shoes are not only black, but made of iron.  You cannot dance.  This is a great sorrow to you.

The shoes were bound to your feet for some imagined misdeed--a while ago, some time ago, too long to care about, a pain too old to redress.  For years of your fountaining youth, you have walked like an old woman, dragging.  All you know is that when you came to the castle, seeking the Prince's hand (for it has been said that he is wise beyond measure and can see past all maladies), you heard a music so beautiful, nearly magic in its potency, that you were able to pick up your feet and take a step--lightly.

And the next day, you walked across the room--in his presence--with a flowing gait, and you watched him turn his face to yours, almost considering, and--oh heavens, the only thing that had changed was the way you walked, but it felt so satisfying to see that face thinking of you.

And the next evening, you danced with him, your heart in your throat and your body bathed in warmth from head to toe in his presence.  He turned your face this way and that as he admired the fresh yellow roses in your hair and you thought--silly as it seemed, you thought "Oh, is this what it's like to fall in love?"

You are town.  You win when all threats to the Prince are gone.

As long as you can keep dancing, you get two votes--surprisingly enough--from your newfound charisma and enthusiasm, such as it is.  These votes must be placed on the same target, and the fact that you have an extra will be unmarked on vote tallies.  Back your opinion with that full-hearted charm.

Sorry I was late on this.  Here you are!  It's total fluff and like a week late, but I care.  Next PM will be in your hot little hands by the deadline.

As you slowly drift to sleep in your bed, wiggling your feet back and forth, you remember that the swan had had her feet cut off.  You aren't sure how to feel about this--after all, birds die every day--but you take a moment to be glad for your wholeness.

Gazing up at the unfamiliar ceiling, you wonder: was she a swan disguised as a girl, or a girl disguised as a swan?

As much as you have been cheered by the Prince's attentions and your blessedly light feet, the slow, sad arpeggios tinkling through the hallways remind you of your responsibilities to others and that, in sadness at least, you are not alone.

You are still alive.  Congratulations!!

You dream that night.  You are in a hall with springy wooden floorboards, wearing a ballgown.  You feel a little bit anxious, though you try to convince yourself that the feeling would better be called excited, worrying the fingers of your gloves.  Will he come to see you?  Well, it's not like you'd be upset if he didn't come.  It's not like you really, when it comes down to it, really actually like him or anything.

You take a couple of steps, worried that you will get too tense.  When you spread your arms, prepared to pretend to waltz, you are shocked to feel a pair of hands take yours.  You can't see anything, though, and this ethereal figure pushes you backwards and begins to lead.

When you step on its feet, you say: "Oh, I'm--I'm sorry," and see, for a moment, a bruised and dainty foot before it shakes itself and disappears.  Emboldened, you graze its waist for a moment with your hand, and see a patch of embroidered white cloth appear.

A woman?

Quietly, you dance together, until finally you say: "Thank you."

She says:

"I am Jim Groovester, who stands with the Prince."

Her presence disappears and you continue to wait.

You are still alive.  Congratulations!

At some point that night, the music stops.  You hear screaming and so you get up unthinkingly out of bed, tossing the covers on the floor, gathering your shift up about your neck (what if the Prince saw you--what if) and in this tumult of wool and lace you take a step, two steps, and--

CLANG

And you sit on the ground, wishing you could take your shoes off and touch your feet, just to remember what they feel like.  Even if you never walked daintily again, you wish--more than anything--you wish you could see them, just to see how they're doing down there.  Well--or not so well--either way, you just want to know.

And, come to think of it, perhaps this was what your girl had wanted to tell you.  You had thought it had been about the playing around, though she hadn't said mentioned that--what she had said was:

"You don't tell me anything!"

"What are you talking about?" you had wondered.  Surely you had told her everything.  Everything worth saying.  Everything she had to know, certainly.  But she looked at you with a hurt and tender look, and said:

"Someday you'll learn."

As your tears splatter against the toes of your hard slippers, you wonder where she is, and how she is, and whether you'll meet again someday.  You won't pretend that you are grateful for your lesson.  You wouldn't smile at her if you saw her.  Forcing someone to wear iron shoes--for the crime of not understanding someone else's warm feelings?  For being a little cold or secretive, and untrusting?  A crime both cruel and hypocritical. . . but you understand, now, and much as you hate her for it, you can't help wondering if you could possibly walk that long way home again--just to know.  Well--or not so well--either way, you just want to know.

Your role has been modified.

Rather than having two votes, as when your disposition was sanguine, you now have -1 vote.  Your broody nature leads others to lose confidence in holding any opinion that matches yours.

You are still alive.  Congratulations.

You close your eyes that night, and drift.

What you remember is a single moment not worth remembering: the moment when you decided to be unfaithful.  It had come over you one day, walking hand in hand with your lover beneath the hot summer sky, pretending to be friends as you abandoned the fields where you had taught each other secrets.  It was that moment, that moment when you gazed upon her glowing sloe-eyed face and you thought:

I could have so much more than this.

You shook it off, then.  It was nonsense.  It wasn't a decision in the sense of your deciding.  It was that, upon that thought, you realized what you had already known, and what you had already decided.  You tried to love her and hold her close, but you had decided; and beneath every kiss you planted on her sun-browned forehead was the memory of that moment and your bitter dissatisfaction.

So you remember now.

And similarly, you remember, as you wake up, the moment when you looked at the Prince and saw the sour truth beneath his kind countenance: that he had no strength to offer you, no constancy of character, no dedication--and you, with your foul melancholy, would not be able to satisfy him.

Having remembered, and remembered, as though in a fever-dream, you awake with its over-chewed remnant still weighing on your conscience--like a dead songbird, or an iron shoe.

You are still alive.

Spoiler: Red Shoes (click to show/hide)

You are Okami no Rei, who wears Red Shoes.

You have been cursed to dance forever--cursed by some shoes once sent to you by a former suitor, spurned.  Hell hath no fury like a lover scorned, as you knew, but you made your decisions and now you shall lie with them.

The real reason why you're here is to get those shoes off your feet.  They were not red at first, but white satin.  The red came after, from bruising, from sores you could never treat, from blisters that formed upon other blisters, from blood and pus pouring out of your soles as you leaped and frolicked, a rictus grinning out of your face.  So long as there was a musician playing you could never stop dancing.

So long as you kept dancing, the musicians would never leave.  They waited while you slept and, to see you wake, began to play.  You begged them to go, but as you smiled and struck just one more attitude, jumped just once more to your toes, they changed the key again and blissfully watched your dance--and the coins passers-by threw at your bleeding feet.  Those that left told others about you--the amazing girl in the red shoes, so lithe, so lean, so tough, who never stopped dancing and smiling, hour after hour, who cried sometimes with the passion of her art!

When the Prince made his famous declaration calling for wives throughout the land, you pirouetted your way to his castle.  As queen, you could issue edicts and order the musicians beheaded, even after you were able to take your shoes off.  If you recognized one of your torturers, his head would roll.

Unfortunately, there is a musician around here somewhere who keeps strumming her balalaika and won't stop, no matter how many times you've asked.  You and your aching feet really wish that she would quit that.

The Black Swan approaches you with some sort of half-baked plan, mentioning personal vendettas and almost foaming at the mouth--but she says she'll kill the other ladies until she gets her target, and as they've all been smiling and laughing and throwing flowers and money and all sorts of other inanities at your feet, complimenting you on the authenticity of your screams in particularly dramatic places, you really wouldn't mind.

Maybe you'll be able to take out the musician, while you're at it.

You are a member of The Black Swan's Cohort.  You have a private chat here.  You win when the girls outside the cohort are dead.

Each night you may perform a pas de deux with someone, effectively making sure they get nothing else done (roleblock).  If you do this three times with the same person, they will die.

Even at night, someone seems to be playing some variety of infernal music.

You waltz to where JimGroovester is sleeping, curled in on herself, and shake her awake.

"Fuck off, I'm sleeping," she growls.  You aren't particularly shocked by this unladylike language.  Some people are simply rude and don't know how good they've got it.

"Up you get," you snarl.  "Come on, you shithead.  Dance with me."

A moue of disapproval crosses her face, but you take her unresisting body in your arms and dance the night away.  When she splits a toenail, you can't help smiling.

You are still alive.  Congratulations!!

You fit your shoes with a blade in one of the toes and hop-skip-prance through the castle, looking for NotQuiteThere.  He seems to be resting in a chair by the window, asleep with his face cradled in one of his big hands.  The man has short hair. . . how is it that the Prince mistook him for a woman, somehow?!  Clearly a mistake.

You wake him up by kicking him 32 times and, finally, launching him out the window in a shower of broken glass and bad ideas.  More than anything he seems surprised, really, but that's not exactly interesting to you at this point so you take his chair and cop a snooze to rest your aching feet.

You dream of being suspended somewhere in absolute, perfect silence, an endless plane of dull gray-white space.  Choking a little on your tears, you begin to unlace your shoes.  They make a strange red dot in that emptiness.  Just as you begin to be able to peel them off, and see with a moan that your toes have twisted and curled, almost begun to fuse, a cool wind blows through.

You hear someone say: "I am Jim Groovester, who stands with the Prince," though the wind's voice fortunately has no musicality to it.

A moment later you wake up, eyes wet, and vow not to sleep in any more strange places as you teeter on your toes back to where Lenglon must be waiting.

You are still alive.  Congratulations!

You ask the musician for a last dance, and she complies.  It's an idiotic affair which involves a lot of kicking and bending and gosh your thighs will never shrink down to a normal non-musclebound size again.  Ever.

But you can think about such things now, can't you?

You whisper in the lilygirl's ear, and she reaches out with her ghosty tapered hands and starts breaking things.  As she occupies the balalaika player's fingers, you reach down and untie the ribbons on your shoes, jerking at the knots.  And you pull them off, and a full layer of skin stretches, clings, rips away with them and they smell like a soldier's boots and is that a puff of fungus

Who gives a flying fuck?

In your dreaming mind you always thought you'd give your toes a wiggle, or massage them, or something.  But you just sit there, unable to move, and laugh, and laugh through the tears rolling down your face.

Your role has been modified.

You now just have a plain old roleblock.  You kvetch at people, show them your feet, and generally distract them so much by being disgusting and foot-obsessed that they totally forget what they were up to.

[Vector]

Character PMs: Part the Third

Spoiler: Sleeping Beauty, Dreaming Goddess, Dreaming Death (click to show/hide)

You are Jim Groovester the Sleeping Beauty.

You cannot be bounded by a nutshell, nor can you stretch across all infinite space.  You have touched all existence with your fingertips; you have touched nothing; you have been a pauper; you have been the other; you have loved and hated all creation with a fervor the exorcists feared.

You have been drowned, you have been lit ablaze, you have been buried, you have been resurrected, you have seen kingdoms fall and rise and stagnate, you have seen the secret strings of the very universe, touched God with your lips, made courtesy to the Devil, traipsed a thousand miles to hell and guided a damned man to heaven, scraped clean, gorged fat--in your dreams.

You were meant to be sent to the prince by your well-meaning parents, to see if your nightly terrors, your passions and your glories, could be cured by his touch.  Instead you were entered in his marriage lottery with twelve other girls, in your heavy homespun.  He doesn't seem very choosy, and this you like--he, like you, seems to still be dreaming.

What your parents don't know is that you have always controlled your nighttime vagaries and chosen where you walked, too curious to abandon the highest and lowest imaginings.  It was you who, in your sleep, deduced the threat to the Prince, spoke while still resting, warned the other women.

Who knows what you might discover yet?

You are town.  You win when all threats to the Prince are gone.

Each night, you must choose one of the below topics for your nighttime explorations, and a target other than yourself to share the dream with; each dream may only be chosen once.

Bell
Taste
Cut
Anvil
Clarity
Gift
The Writer's Curse
Prince Gauss
Sanctity
Touch

You open your mind to the universe that night and all its possibilities and in particular--to curses.  The delicate mirrors of your mind reflect the notion in all its facets, hexes and wasting diseases, every piece of witchery you can imagine.  Nothing can shock you anymore, from the death of swans to the death of girls, having dreamed it all before, but all the same you welcome the opportunity to clear and clarify your mind.  Here, your power is absolute.  You are as a goddess, and bend your reality--and everyone else's--to your every whim.

So long as no one wakes you up.  Just as you reach out for the bright point that is Solifuge, drifting through the dreamscape, a rough hand shakes you awake.  The gray, dim world peeks in.  The mirrors are shadowed and you can still feel Solifuge--vaguely. . .

"Fuck off, I'm sleeping," you growl.

"Up you get," snarls a female voice.  Not the Prince, then.  You're glad.  The gladness fades when you realize that this thought dropped your connection to Solifuge.  God, what a bitch.

"Come on, shithead."

You stand up and move around as she directs, but elect to sleep as you're doing so.  Fuck if you know or care what she's trying to do.  You're asleep many of your "waking hours," anyway.  It makes life easier to deal with.  And, asleep, you dream--but the dream is your own.  Some strange dream about princes and ducks, tinged with love and melancholy.

When you wake up, in the morning, your feet hurt and one of your toenails is split.

You are still alive.  Congratulations!!

You fall asleep during the proceedings.  It can't be helped--you couldn't dream the night before, after all, and you are tired.  As you enter the dreamscape, you feel Solifuge distantly, a guttering candle.  As she ebbs and fades, flickering in and out, you begin to feel the presence of the youngest prince and the White Swan as well, beside many others.  The Prince's family; the Swan's lover.  You have traipsed through a thousand nightmares, but never felt a vision or clarity such as this; though you have a foot in both realms, there is no confusion.

You reach for Ottofar's bright life in one of those moments when you can sense both living and dead, wondering where she is.  In the moment when you ease her mind to sleep and prepare to share your dreams with her, you see her standing by the castle door, gazing out.  Her heart is a turmoil of revenge unsatisfyingly exercised; her sister is dead, but she can find no peace in it.  This is infuriating.  Not only has she transgressed the natural order, but in her selfishness she can choose neither remorse nor fulfillment.  She is base.

You suggest that she pay respects to the White Swan's grave, and languidly, she walks down the castle steps.  When she kneels, you attempt once again to read her feelings.

Yes, you are certain you intended only to read her feelings in minute detail, but instead you feel her panic as you start to reach for her.  You reach; she shrinks back.  You will read her.  You will not be frustrated.

And you do connect to her, if clumsily.  You feel for a moment her horror as she, too, dances between the realms of the living and dead, and the many other lands you routinely traverse.  It is a just a moment, though, with every life that is or ever was whispering and shedding light into your linked minds, and her writhing, and you holding on (waiting for that echo of regret or remorse), before her heart stops and you black out.

When you wake up that evening, Solifuge is dead.  You cannot feel the world of the dead save as a close-by shade, but the living shine brighter than ever.  You feel you could swallow all of humanity in a single mouthful.

You are town.  You win when all threats to the Prince are gone.

You no longer share your dream with one person during your nighttime explorations, but with everyone.  Those topics available at this time are:

Bell
Cut
Anvil
Gift
Touch

You must choose one and use it each night; each dream may be used only once.  Attempts to awaken or redirect you will be unsuccessful.

You fall asleep easily that night and reach out to other sleeping minds, envisioning a broad, resonant bell.  You are more careful, this time, not to share with them things they cannot hear, and so you appear to them one by one in forms that will be familiar to them, if flattering to you.  Ghosts, goddesses, hybrids of humans and plants, the wind. . . from all these strange lips, you tell them your message:

"I am Jim Groovester, who stands with the Prince."

You want to laugh a little as you browse the kaleidoscopes of their minds and appear to each in fitting fashion.  Despite their blindness and small-mindedness, all of them--even those who have taken poor paths--have a certain charm.  You wake up that morning feeling confident and kindly.

You are still alive.  Congratulations!

I'm sure you're going to ask this, so here is a list of the forms you appeared in:

Woman with many heads sprouting out of her body in various places
Silence/wind
Invisible dancer
Winged ghost-prince
Awkwardly sleeping "Goddess"
Figure draped in white
Woman with thirteen torsos
Aged mother

YOU HAD A CRISIS OF THE HEART.  YES.

THE ACOLYTE LOST HER HEAD AND YOU LOST YOUR FAITH(FUL).  YOU BROUGHT LIFE THROUGH THE LANDS OF DEATH.  AND NOW YOU BRING DEATH TO THE LANDS OF LIFE.  YOU WOULD SAY THAT THIS IS A DIVINE ARRANGEMENT IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE FOLLOWERS' IDEALS BUT THE SIMPLE FACT IS THAT THE BALANCE MUST BE RESOLVED.  THEY WERE WRONG.  THE WORLD IS CHAOS MEDIATED BY FORCE.

LAST PRAYERS

RITUALS

RITES

OPEN WINDOWS AND CLOSED DOORS

BURNT OFFERINGS

ALL THIS NONSENSE MUST BE REORDERED IN ACCORDANCE WITH WHAT IS KNOWN.

HANG IT THERE'S THAT WORD AGAIN.

ORDER

AS THOUGH ORDERING THE WORLD TO CLEAVE TO YOUR WILL WERE SOMETHING OTHER THAN PURE WILL UNTAMEABLE.

. . . MAYBE IF YOU STOP MENTIONING IT IT WON'T HAVE HAPPENED, THE PERVERSION OF YOUR WORSHIPPERS.  THE PRINCE OWES YOU HIS RULE AND YOU OWN HIS LIFE.  BUT HE DIS-O-BEEEEEYED

SIMPLE GRAVES FOR SIMPLE PEOPLE WHO WITH THEIR DEATHS WORSHIP DEATH AND OFFER THEMSELVES BODY AND SOUL

YOU WILL BRING THINGS BACK THE WAY THEY SHOULD BE, TO THEIR NATURAL CONFIGURATION.  TO A WORLD WITHOUT ROOM FOR OTHER DREAMERS.

OH CURSES AND DRAT.  IS THIS REVIVED BODY POLLUTING YOU?

COULD IT BE THAT SOME EVENTS AND THEIR INFLUENCES CANNOT BE ERASED BY DEATH'S MATERNAL EMBRACE?

You are Mother Death's avatar.  Your win condition is as follows:

Kill all the other prospective brides.

You may continue speaking with the dead.

You may kill one person each night by dreaming with them.  As such this kill cannot be blocked.

For Tiruin's sake, can you describe the sequence of events that led me from my half-dead, half-dreaming state, to the point at which I found myself in a pantry, commenting on the presence of no edible food?

Better yet, can you just feed her more red herring?

YOU RESURRECT ON A BIER AND YOUR PUNY HUMAN BODY IS HUNGRY.  YOU WALK TO THE KITCHEN.  THE FOOD ROTS WHEN YOU ARRIVE, AS IS APPROPRIATE FOR YOUR SUSTENANCE.  JUST AS YOU ARE REACHING OUT TO STUFF A MORSEL OF WILD GOOSE IN YOUR FACE, THE PRINCE WALKS IN SO YOU MUMBLE SOMETHING ABOUT THERE BEING NOTHING TO EAT.

AFTER HE LEAVES YOU STUFF YOURSELF FULL.  MM.  THE OTHER GIRLS MAKE TITTERY COMMENTS ABOUT YOUR BREATH.

Yes, you count as a threat to the Prince.  LOL.

In the unlikely event of a TPK, you win.

One person will die and all the rest will have horrible nightmares of my choosing, because this game has gone into Full Trauma Mode Autofire.  The one who dies will taste dirt in their mouth, fall asleep, then experience significant psychic distress before having a heart attack (as you did when you transitioned, in case you didn't catch that) and expiring.  There will be no marks on the body, but they will look absolutely terrified.  The OP text will be something like "scared to death" but will say nothing about dreams.

If you want to use M-chat as an SK chat, you may.


As for what the Prince did, there's this, for example:

"'If we perform a pagan ritual,' I told her, 'it will be very hard to bury you.  We would be transgressing the law of Mother Death.'

He's broken the burial laws repeatedly, both by intentionally allowing practitioners of heathen religions their last rites and burying those who have corrupted themselves with pagan ritual.  He also has been dilly-dallying on marrying and giving the earth his blood.  These symbolic rites of binding rule to the land through blood (his own, and that of others) are the only ones you permit, and they are even older than you--not something to mess with.  The marriage isn't necessary for coronation and the bleeding, but he seems to be pretty fixated on it.

The latter issue is mostly annoying.  The first necessitates a lesson.

YOU COZY DOWN TO SLEEP AND EXPECT SOME EFFORT REACHING OUT TO THE MINDS AROUND YOU, BUT THIS BODY DOES IT NATURALLY.  CONVENIENT.  YOU CAN FEEL THEIR LITTLE MINDS TICKING AND FLUTTERING LIKE DEFECTIVE BEETLES.  THE LIVING.  THE DEAD.

THERE IS TIRUIN, THE MOST FLUTTERY AND DEFECTIVE OF THEM ALL.  YOU REACH FOR HER, FEEL THE LIGHTING OF HER MIND, HER RUNNING PULSE, HER TENDER VAPID THOUGHTS OF LOVE.

TIME TO REARRANGE THAT A LITTLE.  PUT THINGS IN OR--DO A LITTLE SPRING CLEANING.

. . . SHE IS A VERY SIMPLE, STUPID GIRL, ISN'T SHE.  THERE'S NOT MUCH TO CLEAN.

IN FACT, SHE'S AS DUMB AS A SHOVEL.  YOU CAN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO TURN HER MIND OFF OR EVEN SEND HER REALLY BAD DREAMS WHEN EVERYTHING LOOKS THE SAME.  YOU MANAGE TO MAKE HER HIT HERSELF IN THE FACE A FEW TIMES, THOUGH.  SATISFYING.

YOU DECIDE TO JUST GO, FULL-BORE, FOR EVERYTHING.  YOU TAKE HER ESSENCE IN BOTH HANDS AND SQUEEZE.  IN THE REAL WORLD, SHE BEGINS TO SHUDDER AND SPASM.  YOU CAN HEAR HER WORRYING ABOUT WHAT THE PRINCE WILL DO WITHOUT HER, SO YOU SUGGEST THAT HE MIGHT BE DISMEMBERED AND POORLY REASSEMBLED.  NOT CREATIVE, PERHAPS, BUT EFFECTIVE.

THEN SOMEONE'S FOOTSTEPS WAKE YOU UP.  PERHAPS IT WAS FOR THE BEST.  YOU GOT HER ABOUT HALFWAY, MAYBE, BUT YOU WASTED A LOT OF TIME TRYING TO MAKE HER MAKE SILLY NOISES.  A TOUGH ONE TO CRACK.  EVEN YOU HAVE TO RESPECT THAT.

A LITTLE SLIP OF A GIRL IS THERE BEFORE YOU.  SHE SAYS SOMETHING ABOUT KILLING YOU.

SO IT HAS COME TO THIS.  EVEN MURDERERS HAVE LOST THE TOUCH.  BETWEEN THE PRINCE PUBLICLY DISOBEYING YOU AND THE "PRIESTESSES" SPREADING AROUND THEIR "RELIGION" TO EVERYONE WHO WOULD LISTEN IN THIS CASTLE--AND A CERTAIN LACK OF PUBLIC APPEARANCES LATELY--YOU WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO CONTINUE ANIMATING YOUR BODY IF SHE WERE TO GO AT IT.

JUDGING BY THIS MORNING'S CADAVER, SHE'S FULL OF VERVE AND TALENT WHEN IT COMES TO BREAKING HUMANS INTO BONE-SACKS.

RATHER THAN ALLOW HER TO TOUCH YOU, YOU RIP OUT YOUR HEART WITH YOUR HAND AND PUT IT IN HERS.  SHE LOOKS AT IT LIKE SHE ISN'T QUITE SURE WHAT TO DO, AS IT KEEPS BEATING.  STUPID CHIT.  TOO DULL TO EVEN SCREAM.

YOU SAY YOUR FAREWELL POLITELY--MUST SET A GOOD EXAMPLE FOR THE LITTLE ONES--AND INSINUATE YOURSELF INTO THE PRINCE'S BOUDOIR TO ENJOY YOUR FINAL MOMENTS.  YOU'LL MAKE A BELIEVER OF HIM YET.  EVEN ONE SOUL, POTENT AND PROPERLY CONVINCED, WILL BE ENOUGH TO RETAIN YOUR DOMINION HERE.

You have been temporarily banished from the land of the living.

Spoiler: Lovelace (click to show/hide)

You are Solifuge, AKA Lovelace.

You have followed your Goddess here, she the all-seeing wonder.  You aren't sure what would happen if she were hurt.  Something terrible.  Therefore, for her own good, to protect her in her every sleeping moment, you followed her to this place where the walls are a foot thick and the guards well-armed.

So are you, not only with your Code but also with a stiletto in your boot.  One evening you are practicing with it while the Goddess bestows her smiling countenance upon you.  She has a face like the moon and eyes like the stars.  You think, anyway.  It isn't your job to traffic in beauty and fine words, or judgments; it's your obligation to protect the Goddess with your mortal body, to forget all but her, all the charlatans and all the world's troubles, and all the better if you are fond of her in every way.

You have worked up quite a sweat when the Prince walks in.  The Goddess has fallen asleep, meanwhile, and you run past to protect her--

"I'm... sorry, my liege," you say.  You have realized too late that you cannot fight with the Prince, and if you are not going to fight with him, then you are standing too close.  You also notice, somewhat embarrassed, that you are taller than he is.

"That's all right, Sister," he says.  "I understand that you came here to guard her, even from me.  You cannot be friends with everyone."

"But I should like very much to be friends with you," you say.  The words stumble out of your mouth.  Blasphemy!  You promised yourself to protect one woman, and only one; what if there was a collision of priorities?  How would you adjudicate the conflict?  And what if you decided to protect more people?  You're pretty certain that would be beyond the scope of your Code and you might have to rewrite it, which would be a pain, like that part of baking you always hated, where you have to sift through flour to pick all the bugs out. . .

He has been standing there, looking up at you, smiling a little this whole time.  You are sure you are very red.  You do not have to query him in the least.  It comes from your class, a face that betrays you--

"Let us be friends, then," he says.

You are town.  You win when all threats to the Prince are gone.

You may kill one person every other night.

You are not sure that evening if it is to protect the Goddess or to protect (your Friend) the Prince that you wander out.  You, unlike the other priestess you saw here, have not trained your mind to free it of emotion--indeed, you always thought it was your fiery love for the Code, for the Goddess, that gave you strength.  But now, despite feeling the customary clarity that comes when she reaches out and touches your mind, you are haunted by the vision of the dead Swan.

She, like so many other beautiful things, died--and despite your bone-deep knowledge that there was a truth beneath the abstracted surfaces of things, despite the Code that orders all operations and makes all clear, you confess yourself confused.  Why had this happened?  You had not wanted Webadict dead... you had taken a risk and tried to argue otherwise.

Perhaps the strength of your will was not enough to make a decision that day.

This night, however, it is enough.  In the corner of your room you light your woodchips in a bronze bowl: oak, ash thorn, and sprigs of rosemary.  That's for remembrance.  You breathe in the heavy smoke and pass the blade through, asking Mother Death to grant Griffionday safe passage, waiting for the scent to permeate your clothes.  She may not be your preferred patron, but you cannot be too careful.

You steal to Griffionday's room, where you wait until she comes back from her midnight wanderings.  You take hold of her about the mouth and waist and cut the sign in her stomach, through which her essence will slowly unite with all possibilities and all things.  This is a good death, if not a gentle one.  She struggles only a little, though her choked breathing and moans are horrifying (how did the Swan die?  Was it like this, the Swan and Horatio?)--and you lay her on her back on the carpet, and close her eyes.

You open the window for her spirit and leave, closing the door behind you.  With you gone, Death will arrive to make her bargains, and Griffionday will leave in peace.

You are still alive.  Congratulations!!

Spoiler: Hypatia (click to show/hide)

You are RangerCado, AKA Hypatia.

You have followed your Goddess here, she the all-seeing wonder.  You aren't sure what would happen if she were hurt.  Something terrible.  Therefore, for her own good, to protect her in her every sleeping moment, you followed her to this place where bread is plentiful but unblessed.

She seems safe and is enjoying the presence of the Prince.  You pass your hand over her bread in blessing, bowing your head, and uttering your prayer:

"Let B be a loaf of bread unblessed and bring to it, O Goddess, the full generosity of your blessing you do not even know, b(B), that it may be canonically embedded into your stomach and bring you sustenance, to better act on the set of all mortal souls through the morphism of your Gentle Rationality forevermore.  Amen."

The Prince looks at you and says:

"Are you fond of Euclid, Sister?"

"Almost as much as I am of the Goddess, though if it please you sir, I cannot read and have only heard of his demonstrations as provided by wandering mathematicians.  I am especially fond of Pons Arsinorum but the theorem by Thales also has a certain charm when backed with a lyre--"

"Wait here," he says, and leaves.  You bless the Goddess's water, the bench she is sitting on, her countenance (that it may be free of spots) and her bowels (that your blessings not give her digestion) while you wait there.

Soon enough he returns with a most marvelous book, with diagrams drawn more cleanly than you have ever seen before, and in a gentle, stumbling way he transforms the ancient letters into words you understand.  You and the Goddess sit there in sweet contemplation for hours, and at the end of the night, in your round of blessings, you include the Prince.

You are town.  You win when all threats to the Prince are gone.

You may watch over and bless one person per night to keep them from harm.

The tragedy of the Swan only fortifies your will.  You have trained your mind for years in the Goddess' service, and you will not permit your sorrow to be your master.  Much as you would like to spend the whole night curled at the Goddess's side, soothing her sleep and basking in her radiant presence, assuring her that Death shall never come for her while you still live, you have other obligations.

You leave your room and travel down the smokey corridor, past the kitchens that still reek of flesh and out to the garden.  The White Swan was buried here beneath the rosebushes at Horatio's direction, and you kneel in the dirt above her grave.

"Suppose S is a Swan," you begin.  Hang it, this part is always hard.  You never quite know how to begin.  "She is, ah, white, being a Swan, and also a bird.  And she was taken from us all too soon, by illusion and mistake.  This was not our intention, Goddess."

But the Goddess does not care for intentions or sentiment, as you know.  That is rather more Death's domain.  But you do not worship Death, the mind-stealer.  Besides, you have started by stating the obvious, which is leading you nowhere.  You inhale the universe and begin again.

"Suppose that S is a Swan and H Horatio, a clear-thinking man.  Clearly the product S x H of these two elements is the null Swan, which we have buried in order to fill one more place in the uncountably empty earth.  Please, O Goddess, project the Swan from this product and lift her to her original context--bring her up to the constellations in the sky, from which she has been projected.  As you are infinitely good to the point where it can no longer be written with alephs, we take the projection π(S) as previously described and send her to the sky.  We take the projection π(H) and deliver Horatio from his guilt and suffering, to the state of grace in which he initially found himself.  Quod Erat Sanctificatum."

You brush the earth from your hands.  On the way back you stop by Lenglon's chamber and over her threshold describe the Sign of the Variable with your hand--a script X, tonight.

"Let script X be a variable equal to Graham's number, at let anyone who would pass through here to bring dear Lenglon harm find herself embroiled in the divine pleasure of its contemplation.  Quod Erat Sanctificatum."

You sleep easy that evening, and have pleasant dreams.

You are still alive.  Congratulations!!

You walk to Jim Groovester's door and raise your hand to draw a sign.

"Let script gamma be the graph of the blancmange function, and--"

But as you call on the Goddess's protection, you feel terribly weak for a moment and sit down bonelessly to rest, just for a moment, resting your head on the doorframe.  Something seems to be coming over you, some supernatural drowsiness.  You at last fall asleep, and begin to dream.

You open the door you were on the verge of blessing and step over the threshold.  The Goddess is there asleep, sprawling over her covers, mouth open, snoring.  The pose makes her facial features difficult to make out, but you are sure it is her.  Smiling, you kneel by her side and wipe the drool from her lips with the edge of your skirt.  She snorts a little and says, very clearly:

"I am Jim Groovester, who stands with the Prince."

"Yes, my love," you say, smoothing her brow.  She continues to sleep.

Then you leave, and wake up in the cold corridor.

"Let f be a function describing a cardioid," you say, "and let whoever passes by this door to bring beloved Jim Groovester harm find herself brought to trembling by this notion--that even in shapes and letters we find love.  Quod Erat Sanctificatum."

You are still alive.  Congratulations!

[Vector]

Folks, you've been lovely, it's 1:30, I kept writing through an earthquake, and now I'm going to bed.

I'll fully explain the seven puzzles (of which you deciphered six!  Good job), various planned and possible endings, a massive text-dump on flavortext and everything else either tomorrow or the next day.  For now, yes, I did hit the character limit three different times.  There's a lot to read if you're feeling romantic and masochistic.

[Vector]

Edit II: I can't believe it but I'm crying at how happy the ending is--The lily and rose clan reunited and..and well pretty much everything else. That's really beautiful Vector!

YESSSSS AT LONG LAST SOMEONE OTHER THAN THE MOD IS CRYING

*cough DeadChat cough*

Thank you >______________<

[Tiruin]

Edit II: I can't believe it but I'm crying at how happy the ending is--The lily and rose clan reunited and..and well pretty much everything else. That's really beautiful Vector!

YESSSSS AT LONG LAST SOMEONE OTHER THAN THE MOD IS CRYING

*cough DeadChat cough*

Thank you >______________<

AS IN, REALLY!

It's so..it's so beautiful. That ending? (Yeah Leafsnail got the major puzzle, I wanted to post a finishing statement but..darn, it felt..too hammer-ish on Lenglon..)

The Iron Shoe. The Queen of the Realm.

AWWWWWWWWW You don't know how darn happy I am with all that writing <3 <3 <3

Folks, you've been lovely, it's 1:30, I kept writing through an earthquake, and now I'm going to bed.

I'll fully explain the seven puzzles (of which you deciphered six!  Good job), various planned and possible endings, a massive text-dump on flavortext and everything else either tomorrow or the next day.  For now, yes, I did hit the character limit three different times.  There's a lot to read if you're feeling romantic and masochistic.

Awaiting it well!

Edit: Phah! I knew everyone else had a quicktopic!

..Also wondered what the Fe was. Firstly thought of Iron xD *shakes fist at chemistry*

Edit II: ...The scum PMs.
They're very moving.
Especially Lenglon's? Wow. It's..it's no wonder she got a good ending too.

...She just wanted to belong.


Also did we get this thing right here?

Edit III: [Emotional overload on reading everything else. Tears, joy and praise.]

Last edit: Flower Chat for best chat. :v

Thank you Solifuge.

And his first name is Adolf, why did that not tell you anything

I got the memo right when I was fed red herring. Ok, maybe not then, but really when I read the Capt.'s words.
But I figured, hey, let's roll with being simpleminded here! All for the Prince! _Hurrah~


>_>
<_<
Is it weird that I somehow like Adolf?!

[Jim Groovester]

That was a fun game. Thanks, Vector.

_{Especially for changing my wincon at the last minute arghgrumblegrumble.}

hints and clues, hints and clues everywhere!

Could you explain more fully your N1 and N2 flavor?

*sigh*

[Lenglon]

One side-issue that I tried to keep somewhat hidden was that for the first three days of the game, up until I got this pm from Vector:

...
I don't see how the cohort can win as a group. our motivations are to be to individual the prince picks, but we can't guarentee that unless everyone, including the other cohort members are dead.
are we really a team? do we really win together?

No, "all the other girls outside the cohort."  Sorry about that, I never meant it to be obscure.  You're a regular three-person scumteam.

I was convinced that I had to be the last scum standing.
after all, with the way I was allowing people to guide and manipulate me in my night pms, I would not win against any of the other scum when the infighting began.

Annnd...
wow @ ending.
that's pretty amazing there Vector.
I... kinda had a pet goal in mind, I wanted me and Tiruin to be the last two left ever since day 1.
Almost managed it too...

that pet project was the real reason i didn't even try to make a case against you Tiruin

[Leafsnail]

I kindof knew I'd skipped the actual reasoning for the puzzle, but the answer seemed to work.  Also I probably should've realized webadict's weird claim was due to a quicktopic screwup.