The Festival Continues [Day 144]

[bastionmods]

Who: Everyone
Open: Open
When: Day 144
Where: all over the Bastion
What: Day 2 of the festival because that other post filled up fast
Format: any
Warnings: none

Day 2 - Day of Hope and Bravery

Once again, at midnight, another torch arrives - this time with a horse along with the gear and bullshead. As before, they are list by Zulf. Some of the other decorations fade out, to be replaced by Yudrig or Lemaign-specific decorations like horseshoes, saddles, hammers and plants made of colored metal. This will continue to happen throughout the festival, with new decorations overshadowing old ones, but the old ones still remaining here and there.

During the previous day, conversations with a any of the NPCs (or the recently arrived Uras) will bring up the topic of the second day of the festival. Should you care to listen, you'll learn that they use the very early morning of this day to make wishes, wishes that you must think in to a horseshoe that will be left on the side of your home that faces where the "sun" would be rising (the closest approximation to "east").

Speaking of horses! There seems to be a pen with stallions! Unlike Pyth, one must ride one of these stallions and try to stay on it as long as they can while it bucks and jumps about wildly. Good luck to whoever can manage this, it is not an easy task at all! Only one person can win Yudrig's favor, because at the end of the day the stallions will all take off back to... wherever they came from. The person that manages to stay the longest, though, will win a lovely pair of Yudrig boots, and will gain a single very fast horse for the Bastion to keep.

Along with the horses, there will also be races! Three legged races, races while balancing odd objects on spoons, so many races! Most of these are for the kids to make up for the lack of kid-focused things from the day before, but adults are encouraged to help and participate.

Incidentally, respect is also given to those considered soldiers. Be it by their own mental thinking ("I am a soldier for justice/I am a protector, etc") or by their actual title (this includes exorcists, exorcists in training, rebel leaders, etc) but they will be honored on this day for their bravery, comittment and efforts. The same goes for masons. There will be a table set up with charms for the bracelets, specifically hammer shaped ones - everyone is welcome to take one, but anyone who isn't of this persausion may find them too heavy to wear. The charm can be removed, though, but remember to keep the bracelet!

With that in mind, about midday the center of the Bastion will be cleared and people will be asked if they would like to participate in a game of "Defend Lemaign". It's basically Capture the Flag, but with a singular goal in mind - only one team has a "flag" (actually a small hammer statue) and that team must defend it from the other team. Teams can be any size, but once that statue is grabbed and brought to the other side, OR the timer runs out with Lemaign still within his "temple" the game is over. This will continue throughout the afternoon.

When evening falls again, the second torch for the day will appear to be lit, this one decorated with hammers as well as the standard gear and bull. The day begins to wind down, though there are once again other things to do - this time an entire area dedicated to various sizes of building blocks ranging from small to huge. Go nuts, build what you want, show off your creations! And keep them, they will come in handy later! This is not just for kids, even if it seems like it.

There's also jousting taking place. Nothing as dangerous as true jousting - just wooden horses on tracks that have to be manually pushed along (so be sure to take a willing friend with yout) and padded poles that strike padded armor. Winners will find more charms for those bracelets that were given out as their prize, and five shards per win.

Also, something to keep in mind: Since the day is focused around bravery quite a bit, anyone who shows off a particularly awesome show of bravery (be it personal like asking someone out that you like, facing a mild fear and not running away from it, or something even more spectacular) you will inexplicably find your entire room decorated with horseshoes. Horseshoes everywhere. Why? Yudrig, that's why.

And anyone who visits Lemagin's shrine, for whatever reason, will find themselves inexplicably hit with a wave of optimism. Just for the day, though.

This night winds down much the same as before, and again the children are encouraged to sleep outside while lulled to sleep by tales of Yudrig and Lemagin's adventures.

Comments

Building Blocks

[bastionmods]

[coolerthansora]

[Roxas isn't totally sure what he's supposed to be making with these, but it seems like fun. Sort of like making sandcastles... Maybe he should try making a castle.

Care to contribute?]

[alwaysintense]

Ishimaru was quite side tracked by the blocks by now- he had just about finished constructing most of two walls, all in neat, white bricks. Unfortunately, he was finding it harder to spot anymore of the blocks he needed, mainly by virtue of having used them all up. He didn't want to have to change color halfway though...

So now he was roaming though the piles, looking for any he had missed. And finally, he found a few! ...They were right by where someone else was working though, so, "Excuse me, may I take those blocks?"

[coolerthansora]

Roxas had been using some of the smaller white blocks to make his perhaps trademark checkered pattern around the edge of a few turrets, but overall his castle didn't have much color unity.

He glanced up at the question, and then over at the pile of blocks. "Uh, sure... Were you- running out?" Weren't there plenty of blocks all over?

[freedom_engineer]

[Day time may have been reserved for work in the shop. NIGHT time, however, has Colin out and about with the blocks. An activity for kids? PERISH THE THOUGHT! He's setting to work on building a great big fort out of giant blocks. If nothing else, the kids will probably get a kick out of it!]

[croceamors]

...Do you always do this with children's toys?

[Saix isn't sure he should be impressed or unimpressed here.]

[unwrittenformula]

[Building things! Now this is a little more up N's alley. He used to construct things with the colorful blocks back in his room in the castle all the time. Granted he had a somewhat limited number there, but this seems to just scream possibilities at him.

Some time later, he'll have built several different sctuctures. None of them would do well in some sort of battle environment, but why would N worry about that? They're all pretty and very nice to look at!]

[wayofvoice]

[Oh hello strange green haired boy, how are you?]

You are very clever.

[Just an observation.]

[unwrittenformula]

[Hello, dragon!]

I spent most of my childhood playing alone.

[He lifts the structure that looks like a very rectangular house set in to a forest with a waterfall coming out from beneath it]

Building structures with blocks was fairly rudimentary by the time I was five but the idea of making small structures out of perfectly formed blocks and nothing more was always fascinating to me.

[wayofvoice]

It is something that I imagine can challenge the mind.

[He wouldn't know, having more difficulty with this sort of thing considering... yeah. Dragon problems.]

[unwrittenformula]

It was all I had, growing up. That and the Pokemon my father brought me.

[But that's a story for another time.]

Would you like me to build something for you?

[wayofvoice]

I would not decline such an offer, but I am unsure of what you could build for me.

[Unless it's a perch. He is totally down for a perch. People won't let him on top of the Tower.]

[ourlegends]

[ She kneels next to N and looks at everything he's built. She'd known that he had things like this in his room back in the castle, since she had been let in before she faced him for the final time so she could get a better understanding of him ... back then it had been such a strange realization, to realize the kind of life he had.

Now, though, this was just adorable. ]

These are really pretty, N.

[unwrittenformula]

[N actually smiles at her, lifting his head and brushing some hair out of his face after placing one last block on one of them.]

Thank you.

[ourlegends]

[ She smiles back at him and actually sits down next to him. ]

You look like you're having a lot of fun with these ...

[ She shifts a bit from where she sits. ]

I remember seeing blocks kind of like these when they told me to take a look at your room ... you played with things like this all the time when you were younger, right?

[unwrittenformula]

[N nods slowly, inspecting the structure before setting it down gently.]

I spent most of my childhood in that room. Father made certain I was isolated from all but him, my sisters and the Team Plasma scientists. I never even met the rest of Team Plasma until my "coronation" as their King.

[yinyangfox]

He hadn't expected to bother with the building blocks, eyes drifting over them several times as he aced around the Bastion watching the festival and enjoying other people being happy and distracted. As the day waned, he found himself passing the building blacks more often, memories fluttering about fondly or old architecture lost to him now.

Before he really knew what he was doing, the onmyoji had padded his way across the open space, fluffed out his robes with as much dignity as possible, and sat down to build something. Nevermind that this was something left to children in playrooms or over-zealous generals in war pavilions, he wanted to remember. So it was that the deft hands of the creative fox ended up giving quick rise to the walls and pillars of the old Kyoto Imperial Palace.

He built long halls and wide doors, built the elegant roofing with all its tiles like the scales of great dragons. He missed it. Miss home, missed the art and the music and the golden age that was the Heian era. He had more here than he'd had back there, but there were some things, like the food and fashion and architecture and structure that he simply didn't want to let go.

Yes, he definitely longed for the delicacy of Japanese culture in his time. H was adapting, surely, but sometimes he just wanted quiet instruments, obscene amounts of food and careful conversation about politics and local gossip.

All of that longing memory went into his replica of the castle, a fondness in his eyes as he remembered walking down those long halls and irritating his rivals every time he earned more respect. Ah yes, those were indeed the days.

[unwrittenformula]

Seimei wasn't the only fox in the Bastion anymore, though this one with his spiky red and black fur and lack of even a normal tail certainly didn't look like any of the foxes that most people were probably used to.

Zoroark had gotten bored waiting for N to finish up with his building, and had wandered away for quite some time before eventually making his way back to the area. N was still building, but that was also because he was having a conversation with the giant dragon at the same time. So Zoroark, not wanting to interrupt, decided to see who else was building what.

Eventually he came across Seimei and his lovely rendition of the palace. It was really neat to look at, even nicer than some of the things N had built (of course N had a habit of making things far more rigid and much less ornate and decorative) and even from a distance the fox Pokemon could see that a lot of work had been put in to it.

He didn't want to intrude on the builder's personal space, so he edged closer until he was a few feet away, sitting on his haunches to watch with a curious headtilt.

[yinyangfox]

For a long time Seimei simply built in silence, working steadily along, taking particular care on the entrance. As he was completing the roof, he looked up at the fox, as though knowing he'd been there the entire time. Perhaps he had.

"What do you think so far? My memory is not quite perfect, but I knew the palace for many years and walked its halls for countless hours," he remarked with a sad fondness, looking down at a black in his palm.

"It seems silly, remembering something like this, but not all of the faces in it."

[unwrittenformula]

It's really pretty... is what Zoroark thought, looking at the building with appreciation at it's form.

Zoroark didn't really understand the last comment fully, but memory was one thing Pokemon often seemed to have in greater abundance over humans. They remembered faces, names, places so well that even seeing some one they had once known in a pre-evolved form brought recognition.

Still, the man sounded a bit sad at it, prompting a soft whine and a nudge at his arm with his nose as if to say "It's okay, it happens to people sometimes..."

[yinyangfox]

He smiled, chuckling softly and reaching out to scratch gently behind one of Zoroark's ears.

"I will live a very, very long time. Perhaps forever, who can say? My memory is quite good, but there are things that slide away like snow melting off a roof," the onmyoji remarked, running a finger down one of the rooftops.

"It makes me wonder how much I've forgotten over the years. How much I could have preserved."

[individuates]

Surprised as Kaoru was to find Seimei playing with the blocks, he couldn't resist watching from a distance. It was endearing, in a way. And as he watched, he soon enough figured out what it was Seimei was building.

The Palace had been lost long, long before he had been born but he recognised it, even if he had only ever seen models or renderings of it in textbooks, snippets of literature, paintings capturing the clothes of the time. It was strange to look back on it, on how he used to think. Of course they were all beautiful works of art and moving, in their own right, but for the longest time, Kaoru had only seen them as relics. He had never considered that something from a thousand years ago could have any way of touching his life now.

Funny, how things had worked out.

He rested a hand lightly on Seimei's back for a moment before moving to sit beside him, enjoying a closer view of his creation.

"...I can't imagine how beautiful it must have looked back then."

[yinyangfox]

He looked up when touched, smiling faintly before returning to his self-assigned task, stacking pieces together and turning things just so, determined to bring to life a piece of his own history, much the same way he'd done with the estate he shared with others.

"Am I to take it by your words that it no longer exists in your time?" he asked, a little sadness creeping into his tone. He should have expected as much. Japanese architecture weathered the ages well, but a thousand years was pushing it, even to his estimation.

[individuates]

"Mmm." He nodded, leaning his chin on his hands. "There were a lot of fires and... well, in the end they stopped trying to rebuild. The capital relocated east, then out of Kyoto altogether some five hundred years after that. There are models and stuff, but we only have drawings of how it used to look to base them off. I don't think they can really compare to the real thing..."

Running a fingertip along one of Seimei's rooftops he pouted in thought for a moment before stretching forward to grab his own box of blocks, settling down to rummage through for white pieces.

"Do you think we can keep these afterwards? I'm sure we can find somewhere in the house to put it."

[yinyangfox]

"They moved the capitol?" he asked, looking up slowly and arching a brow. "I cannot imagine the level of spiritual unrest in that area. Unless..." he trailed off, looking back down to the blocks, placing them atop one another with a faint smirk.

"Someone must be there to placate the spirits. There are not many with that level of skill and dedication. I wonder, who could it be?" he murmured, thinking out loud as pieces clicked together.

"We can put it in the common room we share, if you like. Though I do not know if they remain here after being built. Perhaps all of this disappears as mysteriously as it arrived."