Mesdames et Messieurs, Voilà, C'est Vous

[lesmodsalouette]

Bievenue

You're wrapped in a soothing, all-encompassing darkness.

Well, perhaps not perfectly all-encompassing -- you can see some slivers of light here and there, just enough to realize that your current space is literally wrapped in something, and that you are a highly customized burrito at the mercy of an entirely too fluffy bed and set of blankets. Moreover: you are definitely not alone.

Depending upon the contents of your bed (two of you, waking up dressed exactly in what you wore last you remember back where each of you came from, in the exact same state as those last moments no matter how illogical or disjointed), it may not be comfortable or feasible to stay cocooned up for much longer. There's a low, muted GONG, GONGG coming from not far away, your bed creaks like a beleaguered ship in an unannounced storm, and it is joined by even more noises of movement beyond the bed canopy as you try to take stock of where you are.

Eventually, you either fall out of bed or drag yourself into this world: your new and strangely crowded personal rooms, the clock insistently sounding out the hour, and the halls and heraldry of the venerable Château Ambregris -- a lavishly decorated and fully furnished version of a more-or-less authentic French castle (assuming you know what France or a castle are).

Left to your own devices for the moment, you may find it helpful to explore the castle for your own purposes, check out the suspicious statues and personalized plaques in the Promenade of Reflexion, or perhaps to try to get to the bottom of the mysterious and frankly alarming amount of bread piled up in front of the place settings in the Banquet Hall. (Were you thinking of escaping? Any attempts to leave the property will be met with no forward progress at all, treadmill style). There's just about every kind of loaf, roll, boule, baguette, croissant or even animal-shaped bread you can think of stacked in baskets. There's absolutely nothing else save for plain bread, but at least you won't starve.

[OOC: Welcome to Château Ambregris, a perfectly normal castle receiving perfectly normal guests. Feel free to ask any questions in discord! The NPC Meet & Greet will be later today, March 8 at 6 PM EST/3 PM PST.]

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[obtect]

[Caroline doesn't want to wake up. Caroline never wants to wake up. But this time, it's not propelled by dread or loathing, but by incredible comfort - she's not even bothered about being fully clothed.

Eventually, she realises she's not alone.

Kicking off the duvet, she recoils in the bed and surveys those around her. She's never had many friends, but there's not a single familiar face here.

There's certainly something smarter she can say here. But since she just woke up:]

What the fuck?

[With (presumably) no better idea of what she's doing here, Caroline sets off to exploring. She winds up in the banquet hall, and -]

Someone likes their carbs.

[Her red right hand hovers over the animal bread selection, before going for a piece of turtle bread. She pulls off its limbs one by one, eventually ending with the head.]

All this luxury, and they can't even spare us any butter. Why'd I bother growing my tastebuds back?

[simulacres]

[ the soothing atmosphere is what makes ayaka come to. after days of sleeping on floors or boxes, the comfort of a luxurious pillow is one that contrasts heavily enough to immediately jolt her awake.

she sits up, looking around the unfamiliar room. is this the white lady's castle? no, it couldn't be. after all, the last time she saw philia... ]

Aaah....

[ for the other members of the narcissus room (and especially whoever is sharing the bed with her), you may see her stumbling to find an exit like a newborn foal that is just learning to use its legs. she can't be here with others. she needs to leave. she needs... she needs to be alone.

in the end, she'll end up at the promenade of reflexion, her eyes focused on a certain profile's. not hers. she would rather do anything than look at her own reflection at the moment. ]

Saber... why is he...?

[siffriend]

new beginnings - water lily suite

[ Siffrin bolts upright, gloved hand clutched to his chest and gasping for air.

...

Hold on.

(This

is not the beautiful meadow with the same birds calling piioo piioo. This isn't even the old clocktower you don't sleep in. This is a whole other place, with no Mira stumbling upon your napping form to wake you up with the same cheer she's had the past

50? 60? Loops.

...)

Siffrin flops back and closes his eyes again. Impossible. Maybe the shock of the last loop actually gave them a dream for once, instead of the same "blink and it's the next day". But when he opens his eyes once more... It's the same varying shades of a room he doesn't recognize, in a bed he doesn't remember, and next to someone who isn't Isabeau.

And may soon be kicked out of bed (literally) but it's fine. Siffrin probably won't mind stepping out after to meet the others that've been gathered. ]

exploring

[ ... Released from Water Lily Suite Hell... The first thing they do is begin to walk around. They're gonna get lost. It's fine. Eventually they learned to memorize the House Of Change's layout, so. It's fine. Besides, Siffrin's more looking for a way out, and having failed that (there's a lack of progress forward, which is probably because of some mechanism yet to be solved) wanders as silently as the ghost their snow-white cloak makes them appear...

... The halls, staring at the ornate-- everything with varying levels of interest. It's all very interesting, and the shades are enough variety that there must be something else to it, but more than that it must've taken a while for whoever to make this place to Craft everything. Unless they had a pretty big team. He isn't sure how people build stuff, actually. Never thought about it.

... The theater, which gives Siffrin pause at the very top for all of a moment before he steps down into the audience, sitting in one of the seats momentarily (When was the last time you did this? It feels like years, when... you guess it should only be a month, or so.) before climbing on stage and peeking around. Oh. The costumes are jesters. What kind of play could anyone put on with just jesters...? A comedy, but...

... The observatory, which. Sparks a memory, faces vague and voices muffled. It fades, disappears, and they think of their family instead. How none of them knew what stars were, how they didn't care to know, how the world's forgotten to look up.

...

This might be where Siffrin spends the most time, really, testing the instruments with the kind of confidence one has if they've used it for most of their life. ]

but every adventurer hungers

[ ... Bread...

But the animal shapes are cute. Siffrin takes an alligator and sticks to a table a little farther off, picking at the crumb more than. Actually eating it.

(You don't have much of an appetite. It smells really good, but you... have to get back. They're stuck without you, aren't they? They can't... Even against the King, they won't...)

Looks like someone's having some Pretty Thinky Thoughts all quiet and wasting food over there. ]

banquet hall

[simulacres]

Growing your...tastebuds?

[ ayaka tilts her head, her own hands fiddling with a bread. ]

You didn't have them?

cw starvation implications

[safetycheck]

[ Lili recalls losing her senses, caving in immediately to the soothing aura of the darkness that surrounded her. It really couldn't have happened to her at a better time – no, arguably a worse time, actually – which is why when she wakes up in Primrose, she's visibly shaken. She's sort of frozen in place for a bit, eyes wide as she tries to take in her surroundings, what it feels like to be on a comfortable bed again. Any Primrose who approaches this early on will be met with a simple question, worded rather defensively: ]

Who are you?

[ After calming down, though, it's time to explore and gather information. Man, she's tired of being taken to weird places...though at least this one is giving her basic needs, like the bread. Lili is quick to shovel quite a few pieces of it into her mouth like she's incredibly hungry, and maybe that's the case, given how she seems a little...malnourished, is the best way to put it.

If you see tears rolling down her cheeks as she eats, don't worry, that's just your imagination.

Later, she can be found staring at the plaques, namely her own. She's staring at it with immense scrutiny...but when she gets to some of the other information, her expression turns from one of great concern to one of utter embarrassment. She's fussing to no one but herself, but anyone also exploring these will be able to hear her grimacing. ]

H-how did they get any of this? This is an invasion of privacy!

[caporegrimme]

[When Scarlet wakes up, in the Tulip villa, he bends in pain.

When he realizes he's in an unknown place, and in pain, he scurries out of the bed, and runs towards the nearest place he can think of: the powder room. He enters, locks it behind him, and stays there quite some time.

When he comes out, he's pale, but he has adjusted his red cloak to kind of hide the bloodstain on the front of his body. He leaves the villa without really talking to anyone -- or at least tries to, feel free to catch up to him in the sitting room area while he's on his way out.

-----------

From there, Scarlet is exploring, and once he finds there's no way out, you might find him in various locations. Perhaps he'll be at the solarium, exploring and trying to look out of the windows]

...I can't see anything...

[Maybe because he's too short to see outside, at least if we assume there are a whole bunch of plants on the lower half of these windowwalls!

Or maybe you'll find him staring daggers at one of the bread baskets, before he pushes it away, shaking his head.

Or maybe he'll be at the Mars room! Looking around at the incredible collection of weaponry in this place!]

This kind of stash is disquieting, don't you think? But it's fine. Most are ornamental.

[obtect]

I did. Back when I was...

[Well. Look at her.]

Not this.

[She lets the implication fill the gap.]

It's weird, my sense of smell was just fine - but I couldn't taste a thing. Took ages to grow them back, and it wasn't easy either.

lets get that bread

[simulacres]

[ ayaka is pretty good at minding her own business...or so she thinks. she's been dazed and idly playing with the piece of bread in her hands, not taking it apart or eating it.

it's only when she sees someone running to pick up bread like a squirrel gathers nuts that she glances up...and then back down. it's not her problem, she shouldn't meddle.

...

she looks up again. looks down at her bread. she shouldn't meddle. it's not her problem. and yet... ]

Do you, um...want this? [ she holds out her animal shaped bread. ] I haven't eaten it. I think I probably wasn't as hungry as I thought I was.

narcissus room

[distain]

[Ah, she must be dreaming... And if she is, it's a dream she doesn't want to wake up from. Unlike the fantasies she'd just shared in Confession, this is much sweeter. Her eyes crack, registering the comforting sight of blonde hair and deep, frigid blue eyes. After a moment, Andrew moves to curl back into that warmth and dream a little longer, moves to twine her arms around -


Wrong. Something's wrong. Somewhere in the haze, she snaps to her senses, fully awake.]

Did I faint...? Her--

[Glimpsing Ayaka's silhouette staggering away, she throws her legs over the side of the bed and gets (equally unsteadily, actually) to her feet. She ignores the other beds and the nigh-unrecognizable room and makes a beeline for her, whether they make it out of the bedroom door before they collide or not.]

You. [Her voice is a little hoarse.] Not another step until you explain yourself. Why were you in bed with me?

[simulacres]

[ the more she looks at her, the more ayaka understands the situation. in a way, this stranger reminds her of that humanoid thing that she saw floating in the sky...and the memory itself is enough to make her want to stop remembering anything. ]

Sounds like a pain.

[ she sighs. ]

It would be nice if we had something to eat these though. Jam or butter...I'm sure there's other things too.

bread

[obtect]

[She wouldn't really care about what other people are doing, except for the fact she's apparently stuck with them, and this guy is piercing the bread with his eyes.

...and then pushing it away?]

It's not poisoned. Probably. Wouldn't really know.

[She says, eating the bread.]

banquet

[the_obedient_servant]

They might be fattening us up.

[A child, characterized only by their green and yellow sweater and a mop of brown hair that they used to keep neat, stabs a teddy bear shaped piece of bread with their knife and lifting it up to examine it.]

You know, to eat us.

[frostlight]

[In the sitting room of the Narcissus Suite, Tia can be heard before seen as she stands a few paces from the lit fireplace, seeming to speak directly at it.]

Are you listening? Answer me.

[Silence. She sighs, her shoulders drooping in frustration. It's time to head out.

For the most part, Tia moves like a woman on a mission, halting only once she reaches the Promenade of Reflexion, where she stares down her own statue—or, rather, the associated plaque—looking cross at what she reads on it. So much for that. Eventually, she winds up in the Mars room, her brow creased in lieu of squinting at the numerous reflections of light.]

What good are weapons if they're stored away like this?

[She's never understood this inclination toward displaying everything under the sun.]

[simulacres]

[ with her heart thundering in her chest, ayaka can barely process the words of the woman towering over her. in a way, she elicits the same response that philia did when she was first caught in the forest. in the face of a mysterious woman with a dangerous, alluring aura, all that ayaka can do is stare and wrack her brains for an exit.

saber will not be coming to save her. this might be her end. ]

I- I don't know. Th-this isn't my bed. This isn't my room. [ she takes a step back, blue eyes fixed on her like a deer in the headlights. with a raspy voice, she makes a single request. ] Please, leave me alone.

[obtect]

There's a whole world of condiments out there.

[Said without much enthusiasm.]

The possibilities are endless. We could've had marshmallow fluff.

[littlegentleman]

Primrose Suite

[Whether he wakes up of his own accord or due to the frenzy of one of his other suitemates, Junior leaps out of bed at once. His hand shoots back behind himself, as if reaching for something...only for a flash of further alarm to cross his face as he finds himself unarmed. Taking quick stock of himself, he realizes that each of his concealed weapons have been taken from him. Eyes darting silently from one person he shares the room with to another, he abruptly turns on his heel and bolts--but not toward the door.

Junior runs headfirst into a solid wall at full speed, as if he expecting to pass right through it, and promptly falls backward onto his bottom with a dazed look on his face.]

Exploring

[Once the initial panic wears off, it's time to take stock of his surroundings. The boy's main concern, once it becomes apparent that there's no escaping this mysterious place, is to find a means of self-defense. He takes some time in the mars room, assessing the suitability of the weapons lining the walls...and frowning at both their overall lack of efficiency and otherwise positioning above his short reach. After that comes the workshop, where the tools were less than ideal for combat, but could potentially do in a pinch. Junior turns a sculpting tool over in his small hands, carefully testing the sharpness of the edge with a finger.

The kitchen, of course, is the most promising place to swipe a knife, if needed. It would probably be more obvious if one went missing, which he considers to himself as he eyes a paring knife. He needed something easy to conceal, that would fit nicely in his hand...but hurriedly puts it back where he found it as soon as someone else joins him.]

Banquet Hall

[Eventually, like so many others, Junior's hunger gets the best of him. He doesn't trust the accommodations that's been left for them...but seeing others taking the bread and not apparently recoiling from a potential poisoning, gives in to the growling of his stomach and tentatively takes plain loaf to nibble on. The youngster promptly tucks himself into a corner, effectively cutting off any attempts that may be made to surprise him, and proceeds to watch the others who are trapped here with him.

If anyone catches him staring, he'll at least have the decency to snap his gaze down to his feet, looking every part like the contrite child he is.]

narcissus

[frostlight]

[Halfway over the threshold that leads to the sitting room, Tia finds herself staring.]

What are you doing?

[She can't look away. This girl is two steps away from crashing into anything and everything.]

[simulacres]

Marshmallow on bread?

[ wait...

somehow, this piques ayaka's interest. turns out the best thing to do when faced with the impending anxiety attack from the confusion of everything is to...have a conversation about bread toppings. ]

Is it... like... frosting? [ has she ever had frosting? ] It might go well with chocolate, too... probably.

[obtect]

On bread? I guess that's one way to do it.

[She watches this child stab the bread. Is this...what kids do? She's so out of touch.

She guesses she can't judge, though.]

Have you checked if there's any absurdly large pots in the kitchen?

[simulacres]

[ ayaka can feel eyes on her, and she's immediately on edge about it. she freezes up, trying to keep her anxiety from being too obvious... but clearly failing at it, from the way that her chest is quickly rising and falling with each breath. ]

I'm trying to find an exit. Or somewhere to hide. [ she chuckles, bitter and self-derisive. ] I don't care which.

[distain]

[Of course she's afraid. She could be punished for something like this.

Andrew pauses, her eyes flicking for signs of movement. The other canopies are undisturbed, so it's hard to tell. She lowers her voice.]

Calm down. I don't care about what you are or if you ran away. But we're going to figure out what happened and why we are here... regardless of your involvement.

Step outside. If the door's unlocked, that'll tell us something right away.

[frostlight]

[This is way too much bread—or so Tia thinks, until her eyebrows lift in mild astonishment at the girl who's seemingly made it her mission to eat it all. Tia is used to seeing aristocrats fat on their affluence. That kind of gauntness is . . . ]

Slow down, or you'll choke.

[That's what happens when one eats too much, right?]

[allrounder]

[ This isn't the rudest awakening he's ever had, but it's up there for one of the strangest that's for certain. Waking up in a luxurious suite like the Tulip suite is very, very new.

What's even more new is waking up right next to someone. G'raha dislodges himself from the blanket burrito and then the little mountain of pillows he's inevitably sunken down into, and practically bounces up out of bed. He's flustered and it's obvious in the way his ears lay flat on his head. ]

Are you all right? I realize now that was quite the rude awakening.

[ You know, all his flailing around and all.

The rest of his time in the Tulip suite is spent looking around for any clues or signs of why they might be here or how they got here. Too bad he comes up with nothing. He'll offer his fellow roommates a little smile as he tries to decipher some of that writing on the writing desk in the sitting room with no real success.

He doesn't spend forever in the suite, however. Getting his bearings is important and so he'll be out and about in an attempt to do just that. One of his stops is the Banquet Hall, where he stops and ponders over the bread for a long, long moment.

G'raha even takes one of the portions—a roll—but he puts it back and decides against eating any of it at all, a frown settled on his face.

His next destination is the plaques, where he spends time poring over each and every one of the statues and their accompanying plaque, eyes lighting up in recognition at one other than his own, even if he says nothing of it. ]

'Tis a surprising amount of particulars on each of us.

[ And a surprising amount of them here in general.

Finally, G'raha stations himself at the library like any good little nerd would. And just like a nerd of his caliber, he's making use of the bookwheel, with books ranging from geology to cooking to fashion arranged on each little shelf. He's got to learn as much as he possibly can, after all. ]

kitchen

[frostlight]

[The haste once she enters is what tips her off more than anything else, but Tia doesn't hesitate. She makes a beeline for the hearth in the back, keeping the boy in her periphery as she moves.]

Whatever it is you're taking, you should do it before anyone else comes in.

[obtect]

[Apparently, this is good for Caroline too. Yay for the small things.]

Have you ever melted a marshmallow before? It’s like that, but a whole jar. Chocolate’s not bad, but you should try it with peanut butter.