[Open/mingle] Alexa Play The Completionist's Theme Song

[strawberryredgrave]

Who: The Heroes of Light
When: Post-time loops
Where: Myste Aura, particularly the hot springs
What: Mingling! Celebrating both a job well done and 100% completion of the game
Warnings/Notes: Hot spring antics, hot wing antics, potentially washtubs





Everyone knows the Heroes of Light by now. They took the world by storm over the last few days (over and over and over the last few days) and with the calamity averted and Bahamut fended off? They needed a vacation. One on a brand new day would be great; the past few became a little too predictable for anyone's taste. The solution? Celebrate a brand new day at a place they're sure to be welcomed and are least likely to be thrown out. A job well done is well and good as a hero's reward, but a person's got bills to pay and feet to get off of now and then, so the ultimate destination place was an obvious one: the Myste Aura hot springs.

The invitation's an open one and Dante's one of the first to arrive, primarily to get the cooking all set up. There's a lot of it to be done, but given the zora's amused smirk through it all, he's having a good time. It's as much for him as it is everyone else. He could only bring enough for cooking and serving, so no vacation gear here! Gotta bring your own or pick some up on the way over. Either way, it's a stress free time that everyone really needed. Oh...and the invitation insists that the heroes bring along their Calm Deity Masks for an unmentioned reason...


THE HOT SPRINGS

Without a doubt, the main attraction of this trip. The hot springs are world renowned for a reason! Take a dip into the waters and see for yourself. The bubbling warmth of the natural waters are more than enough to let weary heroes and travelers alike unwind and let their troubles melt away for a little while. Some people have actually fallen asleep while settled in these, so be careful to keep your head above water!

Waterside refreshments are also available, particularly beverages. Remember: no underage drinking!


FOOD STANDS

There is. A lot of food. Including the shawarma Dante promised! He's got a few volunteers willing to help keep things clean and organized, but a majority of it is self serve with various kinds of cuisine for all kinds of tastes! As thanks for all the shenanigans Bass puts up with, there's a separate food table for moogles and dishes incorporating kupo nuts. Appetizers, entrees, desserts, it's all here. Dante himself is manning the shawarma station and offering anyone who asks a good, hearty slice of cooked Ochu meat. Trust him, guys; it's so good, it doesn't even need a sauce.


LIVE ENTERTAINMENT

The nice thing about being this close to Myste Aura is that the Bard's Guild is nearby. Once word got around that the Heroes of Light were gonna take a vacation in their neck of the woods, a few enthusiastic volunteers were more than ready to perform as a show of thanks for all they've done. Enjoy the concert of songs, some classics, some composed in honor of the heroes themselves. Naturally, there's little to stop anyone who wants to hop on stage and perform themselves. Hell, the bards would be proud to perform alongside a hero of light! Just don't mind the spotlight you'd be under.


COLLECTIBLES

So remember the whole thing about bringing your Calm Deity Masks? Surprise! Everyone who approaches the table of bagged goodies wearing their masks receives one! Each bag has a collection of goodies inside, from toy crystals to even figurines of the heroes themselves! Were you lucky enough to get yourself or your friends? Nothing's stopping you from trading until you get the one(s) you want!

Along with each bag is a free t-shirt. They have several different sizes just in case and all of them bear a familiar logo as a reminder of the great deed the heroes accomplished.


Wildcard

We're all kicking back and relaxing, I'm not gonna tell you what to do. Have fun, go nuts and remember to clean up after yourself.

(Make toplevels! Relax! Have fun~))

Comments

[musicinmysoul]

"He's tough because he had to be." Necessity can do all kinds of things to someone. The old Nohr sounds cold and unforgiving, but Tilly's seen Garon through Corrin's memories; with a man like that in charge, it's no wonder the kingdom was as messy as it was. Still, this is someone who learned to be crafty about such a heavy situation: give the appearance of obedience and cruelty while still following his heart.

"It must've been so difficult, for you and your Nohrian family to tolerate Garon for so long while quietly working against him. Times like that can bring out the worst in people, but it can also bring out the best, I've learned..."

[bladeofconquest]

"Everyone their ways of coping with it." Corrin admits. "Xander clung to the memory of who he remembered his father used to be, in the hope that winning the war would bring him back. Camilla focused on protecting the people she loved at all costs, Leo masked his compassion with the appearance of cold pragmatism, and Elise focused on learning how to make peace wherever and whenever she could. They'd all had time to figure out those methods of dealing with it while they worked for change. It was something I had to learn how to do as well, and I suppose I settled on forming bonds with people. Not just my siblings, our retainers, or Silas. I tried to get to know every soldier we brought on at least a little. It was...diverse group, by the end. The trusted family retainers, a few other soldiers of exceptional skill languishing in posts not fit for someone of their abilities that we scooped up...even a couple of Hoshidan defectors; there weren't many of those, but it helped knowing I wasn't the only one in the army. One of them, a ninja named Kaze, actually went so far as to swear himself to my service as a retainer. He's a loyal and true friend. Nobles, commoners, outcasts and rogues...it helped trying to get to know them all, helped remind me what we were all fighting for and that there was good to be found in Nohr; the night sky may be dark, but that's what helps the stars shine so much brighter, to quote our new king."

After a moment, Corrin stretches languorously. "Anyway, that's Leo. Tell me about this Lionel friend of your's now. "

[musicinmysoul]

"Ever the compassionate type, aren't you?" Can't give her too much trouble for that. A leader who takes the time to get to know each and every one of her troops...on on hand, everyone gets to know their leader. On the other, it'll make war that much more difficult. Even a single loss can hurt...but that's still better than the alternative. And considering Tilly does the same with the spirits she meets and recruits? Yeah, she can vouch for that.

"Lionel Lightfang was both the only human and the only guy among the legendary heroes. As a ranger, he lived with nature and among his peers, I'd say he had the most purpose. The Lightfang are a prolific family in my world; generations before him, a cleric named Tyto Lightfang was chosen by the god of light and rebirth, Lathandar, to put an end to Wastirek's reign. With his god's blessing came what would become the family heirloom: the Virtuous Legacy. Tyto realized that his efforts alone wouldn't be enough to succeed in his quest. Even when my father struck him down, he knew he himself wasn't meant to complete this task. He would hand it down to his daughter, Namir, who would hand it to his son, then to his daughter, with the the Virtuous Legacy growing stronger with each generation, bearing the will of its previous wielders.

Lionel was the fifth to inherit the weapon. Unfortunately, the Lightfang's reputation with the people was well tarnished by this time; Wastirek and his cult framed Namir for the destruction of the city, leading the people to hate their entire bloodline for inciting the Great Wyrm's wrath. Lionel had all but abandoned the family responsibility by the time he met the others; much of his relief came from being away from crowds, tolerating them enough to bury his troubles with alcohol. Carys, Felena and Samiah were among the few who didn't bear such a grudge against his family. Over time, they became his greatest allies.

Despite what he endured, Lionel was a fun loving man. A gentle giant, almost, and really enjoyed himself when the situation allowed. He was certainly talented, with his knowledge of undead and dragons a great boon for his companions. He was able to understand Samiah perfectly; she was an oracle with foresight almost too powerful. She would speak of random things in random languages that had barely any involvement, but Lionel could always make sense of it. No one ever understood why. He...carried an understandable grudge against my father, so when he and the others discovered my egg, he was the most hesitant in getting to know me. He did, eventually, and I was able to see in him what the others did.

After five generations of Lightfang, he was the one who finally accomplished his god given task. Public opinion towards his family completely changed afterwards, something he...didn't appreciate. Those who jeered at his presence suddenly praising him? He didn't care for it. His greatest motivation was allowing his future descendants to choose the kind of lives they wanted to live, rather than endure the task he and his ancestors shouldered. He lived out the rest of his life peacefully and with children: his son, Owein, and his daughter, Selene. Though my father's previous cult, the Black Talon, still acted against them, Selene and her nephew still remain. She's...actually been able to reconcile with Wastirek somewhat. Ironically, he helped her break away from a life of hiding and return to adventuring. She's old now, but you should never underestimate a monk, no matter their age!"

[bladeofconquest]

"Always." Corrin replies promptly, and proudly. "I've been warned that my compassion might get me killed some day, but if I die kind, then at least it'll be without regrets." Even Xander couldn't find fault with that sentiment.

This Lionel though, he sounds like the sort of heroes Corrin has heard about in the old mythic cycles; a divine mission, a heroic weapon, and a lineage to match. Even the part about the Lightfang family being persecuted due to Wastirek's manipulations is a similar story device she remembers reading about by candlelight in her old room in the Northern Fortress.

"He sounds like a good man." She says. "Trying to do good when you suffer from an ill reputation can be...difficult. It weighs on you, and sometimes it can be quite a heavy burden to bear. Having comrades to help share the load with, friends who see past the lies for who you truly are and understand your goals...such friends are worth their weight in gold, and are just as precious."

"I hope when my time comes I can meet it with the same contentment and grace that Lionel did. To be able to look back on a life well-lived and be satisfied with everything you've accomplished...well, who can ask for more?" It seems a simple thing, yet how many people can actually say that they've done so at the end of their lives?

After a moment however, Corrin giggles. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh, I just remembered something funny. Red Savarin ended up getting dropped into one of my memories once, a battle between both my families and he got a little...confused by all the named weapons that belong to them." Come to think of it, the Virtuous Legacy shares more than a little in common with the five Divine Weapons; a gift from the gods, passed down by bloodline, their wielders marked for greatness... "He'd find one more named weapon to keep track of a real pain!"

[musicinmysoul]

Tilly nods in agreement. Lionel had it rough, he was able to make it through. The other heroes definitely helped hold him together while he returned the favor here and there. She's glad he was able to find peace in the end, carrying on with his family's legacy and, despite what many people believed, he died an old man comfortable in his bed. She misses him dearly, but is always glad to remember him.

Though mentioning Red snaps her out of that train of thought while she giggles as well. "Poor Red...I certainly wouldn't help in that regard, if I told him about the heroes. Carys' Solar Flare, Felena's Distant Thunder, Lionel's Virtuous Legacy, Samiah's Road to Babylon..." Those are the big ones from home. Still, that almost doubles anything he'd know from Corrin's world. "I don't think I've mentioned the last one before. Maybe a tiny bit about Sam, but what about your sister, Camilla?"

[bladeofconquest]

It suddenly occurs to Corrin as Tilly lists off the names of all the personal weapons of her friends that her brother Leo's retainer Odin would be right at home with them. He'd have named every weapon in the armoury if they'd let him (which Odin did lobby very hard for). It's an amusing thought to say the least.

"Well, she's the second-eldest of us all, and like Xander she's old enough to really remember what it was like when the feuding of the royal mistresses was at its worst." Corrin begins. "Leo was still quite young, Elise barely a toddler, and I was stuck in the Northern Fortress, but Camilla, as the eldest daughter, was right there in the thick of it." For a moment, Corrin hesitates. "I know she did things to survive that she's not...proud of. I've never asked because I know how much the memories pain her, but I know that the mistresses used their children as pawns in their schemes against each other. It often ended violently. I know that at least a few of the other siblings that died during the in-fighting did so at the end of Camilla's axe."

She look over at Tilly. "I know how that sounds, but she wasn't Xander, she didn't have the protections being the Crown Prince afforded him, but she was the next-biggest target. She did what she had to do to survive, and I'm glad she did, but I know she carries a lot of guilt with her. When the dust cleared and all the mistresses and the other siblings besides us five were gone, that's when she and Xander called a truce between themselves; I don't think they'd actually been very close before that, but it was mostly because the situation wouldn't allow for that. When there was no one else forcing them to fight, they stopped, and vowed to make those of us who remained a true family. In that, they succeeded greatly, and I think in a large part that was due to Camilla. In a lot of ways, she was more of a mother figure to me, Leo, and Elise than we'd really had to that point. Me, especially, she doted on me growing up. She still does to a certain extent, but she's also accepted the reality that I'm a grown woman with a family of my own now." They'd had that talk about boundaries, and that, along with Corrin's assurances that she would always have time for her big sister had helped tremendously. "But when I was still confined to the Northern Fortress, she did everything she could to make it feel less like a prison and more like a home. It turns out-I'd actually completely forgotten this incident until Camilla told me about it-but at one point she took over the kitchen to make some cookies for me but some of the younger serving staff, including Silas, apparently, didn't realize that they were intended for me and ate them all. When I showed up looking for them, Camilla was forced to tell me that they were gone and I...I said something very cruel to her. I said, "thanks for nothing, my so-called sister", and then stormed out." Corrin's wings ruffle slightly. "I was a child, and certainly acting like one, but I didn't realize how badly that hurt her. I guess it made her think she'd been as cruel to me as her own mother had been to her, and she resolved to never do that to me again. Hence why of all the younger siblings she tended to pay closer attention to me. I felt so terrible about the whole thing when she told me about it years later, long after I'd forgotten, but Camilla had no regrets. She likes who she is now, and I guess that incident went a long way in shaping her to be that way." It's still not ideal, especially since Corrin often suspects that Camilla won't hesitate to place her younger sister's happiness and well-being above her own, but that has died down a little as she's come into her own and they've started their own respective families.

"She's much like Xander in that her family is basically everything to her, but as she doesn't have or particularly want the responsibilities Xander also carried from being the heir, that meant she could be more relaxed and approachable than he was. When we were growing up, when we had problems to talk about we often went to Camilla since she was so good at sorting them out. Not that Xander wouldn't help us out either, because of course he would, but his responsibilities kept him a bit more distant from us and we didn't want to add to his troubles. She'll also...do what she has to do to protect us, and she'll do it without regrets." Of all of them, Camilla was the most comfortable with casual murder, at least on the battlefield. Fighting her other siblings for her own survival was one thing, but protecting the ones who remained, the ones who were truly her family from harm? There was no conflict there. It had been an eye-opening experience for Corrin when she saw her beloved big sister mercilessly cut down two Hoshidan soldiers with little more than a condescending smile from the back of her wyvern, just because they had been defending themselves in a battle Corrin's own forces had initiated thanks to that brute Hans. She also had the least problem with keeping her head down and following the King's mad orders, especially since to do otherwise would risk the deaths of her beloved siblings. She wanted to change things of course, but the protection of her loved ones came first, before all other considerations.

"She's a demon with a battleaxe and almost unstoppable when she's on the back of her wyvern; those creatures are not easy to tame, but she handles hers with unparalleled grace. She can use magic, but not as effectively as the rest of us so it's more of an emergency weapon for her when an axe of some form isn't enough. She enjoys battle as a past-time but she also enjoys family life so now that there's peace I have a strong feeling she'll happily hang her axe up to devote herself to that. I wouldn't be at all surprised if she renounces her royal title before too long; I don't think she gets anything out of it, and now that Xander's in charge and Nohr is changing there's little reason for her to keep it. Sometimes I think, given the emphasis she placed on me above all else before I returned to Nohr, I think if I hadn't, if I'd defected to my birth family in Hoshido, it would have...done things to Camilla. Emotionally, I mean." Caring for her siblings, and Corrin most of all, had been most of Camilla's identity, something she clung to to try and atone for the things she did growing up during the worst of the courtly intrigue. If that had been snatched away from her...if Corrin had no longer been there, if Camilla thought she'd been replaced... "Well. One more reason to be glad of the choice I made." She says finally. "I love Camilla too much to want to be responsible for doing that kind of harm to her." Hinoka had obviously been hurt by Corrin's abduction, but she had compensated by taking up the lance and pegasus husbandry, to become strong enough to one day rescue her little sister from Nohr. She had learned to survive the tragedy that had befallen their family; Camilla wouldn't have been able to refocus herself like that. It would have been bad.

"Anyway, there they are, Tilly." She says finally. "My beloved, precious siblings. It still hurts to be separated from them after everything I did to be with them again, but I know they're waiting for me and that I'll see them again when this is all over. Hinoka, and Sakura too; I have a standing invitation to visit them in Hoshido whenever I want that I am far past overdue taking them up on! We have a lot of catching up to do, and relationships to rebuild. I'm very eager to get started on that." Plus Hoshido is just a beautiful country to begin with, and to be able to see more of it not ravaged by war, rebuilt and prosperous again will be a sight to see.

[musicinmysoul]

The more she learns about Camilla, the more she has to wonder how she and Carys would get along. "I think if any of my adoptive family would understand doing what was necessary for their loved ones, it'd be Carys. Necessity shapes the most dangerous of fighters, I feel. Neither of them are malicious, but unquestionably fierce when the time calls for it. Even clinging to loved ones sounds about right for her." Carys definitely did a lot of that. Poor elf is way too used to people around her dying, even when she fought her damnedest, but with the few people she could relax around, the ones she fought for? She would do anything for them.

"You have an incredible family, Corrin; Nohr sounds so cutthroat, from your descriptions, but I can't say mine had a better standing. I'd ask about your Hoshidan family, but I think that'd require another tradeoff. For that, I could tell you about my blood siblings."

[bladeofconquest]

"Oh, absolutely." Corrin agrees. "Camilla can be cruel to her enemies, but to the people she loves? Gods, there's no one sweeter, caring, or more attentive." Maybe a little too much at times, though Corrin had had need of her big sister's support plenty of times during the war. "I'm glad there will be far less need for her to be the former now, and I'm pretty sure she will be too. Even she and Hinoka seem to be on the way to becoming friendly now, which...is a far cry from how I thought things might turn out during the war." Corrin loved Camilla, but her constant needling of Hinoka every time they fought during the war over Corrin choosing her Nohrian family over her Hoshidan-choosing Camilla over Hinoka-had been unfortunate. But it had been Camilla who helped Corrin convince Hinoka to go into hiding near the end of the war to wait it out, even if she'd only done it more for Corrin's sake than anything else. But now that the war was over, she appeared to be letting the matter lie and had made some happily unexpected overtures of friendship to Hinoka during Xander's coronation ceremony.

Cruel to her enemies, sweet to the ones she cared about. It was heartening to see Hinoka go from one to the other.

Corrin nods at Tilly's offer. "Absolutely, Tilly. I might not have had a chance to spend much time with my birth-sisters yet, but I know all the important things about them. I'd be delighted to tell you about Hinoka and Sakura. And my brothers too, but..." For a moment Corrin falls silent. "Those stories aren't quite as happy as the others." She admits, finally. "But I still want to remember and honour them and how they lived, and I think I can do that by telling you about them. So, yes. I'll tell you about Ryoma and Takumi too. But why don't you start? Tell me about one of YOUR blood siblings."