melodiesofeternity | Event || A History of Light and Darkness

Event || A History of Light and Darkness

Who: Brave Explorers and/or Those Poor Souls Being Dragged Along by Friends
When: Oct 15-30th
Where: Thilmit Border Post, inside the Old Heranean Doll Museum
What: The Heroes of Light received a strange letter, and are now being asked to investigate the strange occurrences at the old doll museum.
Warnings/Notes: OOC Post Warnings for Spookiness, Creepy Dolls. Post toplevels for each group. Please post warnings as needed for memory fragments and exploration. For random numbers, use the dice functions on Plurk or Discord.

The Old Heranean Doll Museum is a small building, but somehow the dark, dusty windows and poorly maintained roof give it a menacing feel as you approach. The sign says, "OPEN"...although, as you approached, you think it might have been turned to "CLOSED".

The door creaks as it swings open, though there is no one from the museum to greet you as you enter. A cold breeze blows in behind you, sapping any lingering warmth in the room. The building is dark, and cobwebs are starting to form in the corners of the lobby and on the velvet rope stanchions that guide the flow of traffic in and out. Out of a shadowy corner, a large centipede skitters across the floor and into a crack low on the wall.

At the reception desk, one of the antique dolls sits, unmoving, unblinking. That goes without saying. Its eyes do not follow you as you enter.... The hairs prickling up on the back of your neck are just coincidence, that's all.

There is another doll perched on the wooden brochure display stand near the door. It's strange that the curator leaves the display pieces out where visitors can touch them....

As you enter, you hear something whistling through the air toward you a moment before it makes a impact. A tiny pebble, too small to do any damage other than a brief stinging. During this moment of distraction, the door slams and locks.

When you look at the spots where the dolls were perched a moment ago, there is now just empty space. There is movement in the shadows, and the nearly imperceptible sound of tiny shapes creeping around.

As you move past the lobby into the exhibits, a sign above the entryway declares:

Welcome to the Old Heranean Doll Museum. We hope you enjoy our historic Heroes of Light displays.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Couldn't agree more.

[All in all, he could have ended up with worse companions on this little-haunted museum trip. Both Baiken and Adrien have proved themselves valuable to him, even if it has been in the glaring obviousness of his own 'newbie' status on this world. It irritated, but it's necessary to go through this stage so often Sephiroth cooled his own bitterness at that fact.

Wasting no time at all striding across the employee's room to the open door of the Curator's office before the ghost-Zombie might get its urge to kill them back.]

[If the party ends up finishing off the zombie with their parting attacks, they will be rewarded with a Fat Chocobo Plushie for their troubles. It is so fluffy you could die!

Within the office waits the Curator, who is staying inside in case the ghostly enemy still lurks around.

The Curator, a Bangaa woman, stands by the door and gestures them inside. Her office has been turned into a makeshift shelter, and it's obvious she's been living here for at least a few days.]

Quickly, come inside, it's not safe out there. The ghosts won't come in here, though. You can rest and we can bandage up any wounds you've gotten.

[He certainly doesn't expect a zombie ghost to drop something so cute. Then again, he didn't expect monsters to drop loot at all - seemed a tad random, BUT that aside, Adrien lowers his weapon now that their encounter seemed concluded, blinking at the Bangaa ushering them into the office.]

[Oh boy, how long had she'd been stuck in this place.]

Why don't the ghosts come in here?

[ Baiken marched right up to the Curator, chewing on her pipe and blowing a trail of smoke into the woman's face, getting right in it and reaching to grab at her collar. ]

Alright, just what the hell is going on here? The hell was with that poison trap? Why are their monsters running around? Start answering or I'll start breaking fingers.

[ Someone please... reel her back. ]

[Though immediately suspicious, considering what may or may not have been rumored about the Curator's habits of late, Sephiroth seems apparently more level-headed than Baiken right now. Though for sure she could be exactly the personification of his own level of outrage, right now.

Still, it's not going to help that with that approach so he steps forward and about as close to one of Baiken's shoulders as he can make without actually passing a boundary and touching her. The strain the miasma-cough has left on Sephiroth's vocal chords making him sound altogether more gritty than he likes to sound.]

It's been a long night, let's just hold back a touch for a little longer, hm?

[Though really, he wouldn't blame her at all if she totally ignored him. He does level a similarly charged gaze at the Curator though; silently communicating with a look that he's just about had enough of the games being held in this place at their expense.]

[The Curator draws back from Baiken in fear. She'd like her fingers in working order, thanks.]

They aren't my traps. I have been trying to put the pieces together, and I think the rifts are somehow related to the Moogle doll. He's the cause of all this.

[She turns to Adrien, who is the most approachable of the group, though she gives Sephiroth a grateful nod.]

I think the other dolls are keeping me safe here. I know they might have attacked you, but they're just...confused...I think. That Mog doll, or 'King Moggle Mog', has them thinking you lot are 'Calamity spawn' or something like that. But the Hero dolls have protected me from the ghosts Mog let in, and they won't let them enter here.

[Keeping her distance still from Baiken, she gestures for the others to make themselves comfortable.]

Can you tell me what you saw out there?

Baiken! Please, don't break any fingers!

[At least Sephiroth was quicker to defuse the situation even if he still looked irritated... and sounded sick. He can have Adrien's antidote; he really doesn't mind. Looking back at the Curator, she doesn't seem dressed in any attire to be controlling the dolls.]

Rifts? Like in the Dream Width...?

[But they were this low? That's not good.]

Right. The Heroes stopped the Calamity so if they think we're behind this too, they would think we're a threat. I don't know much about King Moggle Mog, but isn't he the one that was corrupted?

[Bah, maybe there was some language barrier with the dolls.]

Well, besides the Zombie Ghost, we couldn't really make anything out in the Miasma. But we did find that photo in the History Room that was noted fake. I brought it with me if that's okay.

[ Baiken did step off, at least, mostly at Adrien's behest. Sephiroth was still a stranger to her, whose opinion she didn't quite respect. Arien, though, was a friend... Lucky for the Curator. ]

You wrote a note on it saying you thought it was fake and thus couldn't display it.

[Situation diffused somewhat, Sephiroth settles his posture out of the constant combat-ready that he's been poised in for the majority of their venture in here and even before the Curator has offered for them to make themselves at home, he's looking about the office intently. The others are sharing the only potential clue they were able to find, back from in the timeline room, thanks to that Rift-fed miasma in the workshop.

Keeping his ears open, Sephiroth begins to explore; a loose perimeter first, his gaze like a fine tooth-comb looking for anything vaguely interesting or might indicate anything extra to what they were now being informed.

He has ever been the type to only believe theories when the evidence is presented in front of him.]

"Yes, rifts. I haven't been in the Dream Width, personally, but from what I've seen and what's been described to me, it seems like the same sort of phenomenon. The moogle doll comes and goes through them."

She gestures for Adrien to show her the picture. She doesn't seem to mind that he brought it.

"Yes, this one had to be a fake even if the 'experts' I've had look at it can't find any evidence of image-tampering on it. The background doesn't match any of the known stops of the tour, and all of troupe's time is accounted for, except for the days they had off for holidays. The show in this picture couldn't have happened."

She gives the picture another glance before handing it back to Adrien. "You're welcome to keep it, if you want. It's not worth anything, but it can be a souvenir for you."

"Huh..." A moogle doll could go through the Rift without issue? Well, that didn't seem fair. If that was something they could learn to do, but where could one even begin trying to learn that?

Looking at the picture again himself, he wondered. "Could this picture have come through the Rift too?" And if not the Rift, he was curious if it could be a surviving remnant of Crystallis.

Accepting the picture back, he'll have to ask the others about it.

"This is all going over my head, I just want to know how to stop it and get paid," Baiken grumbled, letting out several frustrated puffs of smoke.

Sephiroth paused in his casual searching once he overheard the discussion about the Rift. Indeed he had recognized that from the workshop, briefly before choking and drawing sufficient breath had become an issue. If the moogle doll could come back and forth from the Rift like that-

"And what about the other dolls; were they all made here in the museum?"

It seemed entirely likely to him that should the moogle doll -however absurd it was for dolls to be animated at all- possess such an ability, who knew what or who else he might have brought through onto Vaikuntha.

"Oh no, sir. The dolls weren't made here. They were found in the Dream Width, decades ago. I maintain them here and do any restoration work needed to keep them in prime condition, but their providence is otherworldly."

Celain turns to Adrien. "It's possible, I suppose. Usually objects only appear in the Rifts in the Dream Width, but in theory, a picture that size could come through a rift anywhere."

She thinks it over. "But the Puppetmasters in the photograph are the same as from the rest of the tour, so I don't believe the picture was taken before the dolls arrived here."

She shakes her head, frustrated, before eying Baiken nervously. "I don't have much money, but I do have some collector's items. If you take them and sell them, they might be worth something?"

She pulls a binder of Blitzball Trading Cards from one of her little bookshelves. It's the full line-up from 30 years ago, including a rare misprint of one of the reserve players from Cloud City, and it could be worth some gil to a collector. Please don't break her fingers.

So the puppets were already here... something about that, he doesn't know if that's creepy or cool. Hmm, he's going to settle with both. Both is always one of the best answers.

"That makes sense." She recognizes the Puppet Masters unlike him. "... Well, I'll ask around. With all the weird moogle activity here and outside, maybe another moogle will know."

Frowning, he looks over at Baiken and watches Celain pull out a binder of Trading Cards. Since they haven't had much reason to doubt the Curator so far, she's probably right about those cards. A Blitzball fanatic would likely love to get their hands, claws, or paws on the collection... but would they really?

Baiken looked over the cards, quickly selecting a single card, pulling it out, and stuffing it away in her kimono.

"Consider this my payment. Let's find this moogle and kick its ass already."

[Sephiroth begins to frown as the relevant topic gets lost a bit there; who gives a damn about Trading Cards. How irritatingly juvenile. It's not long before the expression stretches itself into him folding his leather-clad arms up over this chest.]

Puppetmasters...[He mused, albeit muttering the word mostly to himself. It rings some relevant to him that's personal, something he's most certainly not sharing in present company. Or any company here on Vaikuntha -a matter of fact.]

I don't suppose they're always able of self-animation; is that this Mog dolls' doing, as well?

Edited 2018-11-27 19:16 (UTC)

[The Curator is poised to lead them to the door, but pauses at Sephiroth's words.]

Well...there has always been...rumors...of minor activity on their own. Lost keys being returned to their rightful place the next day, a mess left at closing that is already cleaned by the time the staff arrives in the morning. Just small, benevolent things. But nothing like this. The Mog Doll must be doing something to them.

[She sighs, knowing how odd she must sound.] Give it no mind. If you Outworlders can defeat the moogle doll, I am sure everything will go back to normal.

[[OOC: If you would like to battle the King Moggle Mog doll, the party can encounter him once they leave the office. It is also fine to handwave the encounter if you'd like!]]

[That... did sound weird. And their behavior now was definitely contradictory to their actions before. It did sound like the Mog Doll was the only odd thing out that might be causing the misdeeds.]

... Well, what do you guys want to do?

[He's not opposed to confronting the doll, but he knows these two might not care for anymore adventuring in the museum.]

Kid, you know what I'm gonna say. [ They've known one another long enough by now. ]

I'm only good at one thing. And besides, I already took the payment.

Let's put an end to all of this.

[There really isn't anything left to do, and Sephiroth is willing to bet the museum doors won't be unlocked until somehow this issue with the King Moggle Mog doll has been resolved.

Hopefully, at least the boss will be on this side of corporeal, unlike the ghost that they'd been beating on previously.]

[[OOC: Happy to run the encounter or handwave it, whatever is preferred!]]

[[OOC: If everyone is fine with handwaving the encounter, we can go with that. If the group decides you would like to play it out, please let us know.]]

[OOC: I believe we're all going with the handwave route.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Event || A History of Light and Darkness

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