🏝️ dulces sueños group excursion! 🏝️

[hearthwarming]

🏝️ who: intrepid adventurers (vacationers?) and more!
🏝️ what: ori organized (origanized?) a group trip to the resort! mass memshare ensues.
🏝️ when: fall 9-10
🏝️ where: dulces sueños resort
🏝️ warnings: threads will be marked as needed for memshares.

[ Hopefully everyone had fun on the Arco Lunar! The morning after the boat departs from the docks, a letter arrives to your mailbox: ]

Hello, intrepid adventurer!

I am excited to have you along for a group excursion to the mysterious new island! In two days' time, let us gather in the town square and set off from there! Please be prepared to stay the night. It will be so fulfilling and memorable for everyone to spend a night on an adventure together!

If you have any questions or concerns, please come find me at my flower shop in town or at the forest farm where I live!

Sincerely,
Oriphi

[ If she accidentally delivered it to a few wrong mailboxes, then... Oops!

On the promised day, once everyone (and likely a few surprise tag-alongs) has gathered or been gathered, Ori distributes little paper bags of snacks to everyone. Inside are cookies, oat snacks, and a freshly-picked apple from her and M-21's orchard. Do with them as you please... Just don't let her catch you throwing it into the sea or something. 🥺 ]

Alright. I think we should head out, then! Thanks for coming along, everyone! I hope it'll be a great time. Oh, and please don't forget to drink plenty of water and use this incredible ointment I discovered on this island! It's called "sunscreen!" Tieflings don't really get sunburnt, but you should use it!

[ And with that our intrepid adventurers set off to the mysterious, dangerous, unknowable... resort island! ]

( This is the ill-fated mass extinction memshare event. Please refer to the event for details on the resort and the plotting post for any specific details for characters' memshares! There are toplevels for each area of the resort (and for the memshare). Enjoy! )

Comments

[pactmarshal]

[ It is a quiet memory of a time long ago, one that, perhaps was not objectively action-packed, but left an impression nonetheless. As He Xuan dreams, he inhabits the body of the dreamer, feeling what he felt, thinking what he thought, as it unfolds before him.


It is quiet.

The stale air is filled with dust, with the faint scent of parchment and earth and stone. Walls extend ever upward, embedded with bookcases all the way up, all around you. There is a silent shuffling of feet on stone, of rustling papers, of the quiet murmur of scholars exchanging and discussing information. You sit in the Priory's special collections, far beneath the earth, a paradise for scholars like yourself, who seek specialized knowledge for specialized tasks.

Before you on your table is a modest pile of books, neatly arranged by topic, era of history. One sits open before you alongside your own personal notebook. The open page of your notebook is crammed with notes, dates, people names, properties of magic, haphazardly drawn diagrams. It seems a jumble, especially if you have never seen any of these words before, but somehow, in the back of your mind, you understand what it means. They are nuggets of information that you think, perhaps, will eventually slot in somewhere within the web of knowledge you have accumulated, perhaps provide you the answers you so desperately seek.

One word stands out on the page:

Orr.

There is a call, an irresistible urge in your mind that will always draw you back to the land of Orr. It is your Wyld Hunt--the purpose you were given in life the moment you emerged from the Mother Tree--to heal this land. Long has the Elder Undead Dragon's corruption plagued it; it is seeped so deep into the land's pulse that the rot may as well be a part of its very lifeblood. Orr has been a dead, forsaken land for as long as living memory serves--how are you, the eldest of a race that is scarcely a decade old, supposed to fight something so ancient, so steeped in history?

Yet on the days you are not in Orr itself, you are doing what you can to put together as much information as possible so you might know where to even begin.

It is a futile effort. Logically, you understand this. But your Mother-given compulses cannot be ignored.

You are not the only one who thinks this.

"...back again looking for information on Orr and Zhaitan."

"Ugh. Again? Doesn't he understand how he sounds when he talks about this stuff? He can come back as many times as he likes, he's not going to get anywhere."

"Who is this?"

"You haven't seen him? The sylvari--he's all green. It's kind of eerie watching him move around. He's like a walking houseplant."

"Yeah, and he kind of smells. He creeps me out."

"That must be the Orr on him. I can't believe he actually willingly goes there. He can't be sane."

"He says it's his Wyld Hunt. Whatever that means."

"I think it means he hears voices in his head."

They speak of you. It is not the first time you have heard these sentiments.

And yet all the same, you sink into your chair. You bow your head behind a stack of books, hoping they don't come this way and see that you are right here, that you heard everything they said. Not that it would change their attitude, however. The people of Tyria have always made it perfectly clear to you that your pursuit is a foolish one.

Even though, naturally, you are unable to disregard your urges.

You hold your breath, listening to their footsteps as they echo through the cavernous halls of the Priory collections. They do not approach you. They do not know you're here. They continue on with their day, unaware of the sting they have left for you in your chest. How full of hope and confidence you were when you first stepped beyond Mother's boughs. How hard could it be? Orr is a cursed land, yes, but all curses can be undone, you simply had to find the correct magic to counter it. But the longer you spend among the horrors of Orr, the longer you spend researching its history and the dragon's corruption, the further your goal seems to slip from you. The more you lay out your facts, the more notebooks like this one you fill with notes and theories, the clearer you understand that it is simply not possible. The more people you interact with, the more you see their confused faces and expressions of disdain, the more you wish you could give up, to give into your despair.

But you cannot.

All you can do is lay a hand, green and faintly luminescing purple--the only sign of the passing time in this underground repository of knowledge; it is almost dawn--over your face for a moment. You have to cleanse Orr. But you cannot. Once you finish your research here you must return to Lion's Arch and personally ask for your chartered ship to Orr. But you don't want to. You have no choice but to crawl through brine-soaked ruins and steep yourself in the oily slick of the dragon's corruption to find a way to undo it. But you wish you did have a choice.

You take a shaky breath, composing yourself. You sit up straight again, spreading your arms over your table and reassessing your notes, the books you have collected. They are a messy map of the path you must take, as much as you wish you could give up. Such is the nature of your life. And it will be, you think, for many, many years to come. ]

[esurientabyss]

[ Sometimes memories don't necessarily need to have so many scenes before them in order to be one worthy of great significance and impact.

Such a strange thing it is, to find oneself watching the events of another. But to be in the position of some form of study once more. Though the last time had certainly been centuries ago, and does not match up to holding these types of subjects that are before him now...this 'Orr', and 'Zhaitan'.

But the tones of others speaking in disdain isn't dissimilar.

Before the end, it is clear who he is in this memory he's currently intruding.

And though he certainly isn't in a position to say anything to those talking smack, or anyone else for that matter, towards this portion when they're finally gone, he certainly knows it's for the better. He can't have expected Trahearne to waste his energy on something so insignificant with apparently solving a bigger cause before him.

Yet, all the same, he can only wonder if he ever finds the answers he seeks. ]