Anarion

Princess-Champions of Hyperborea

Kathelia finishes tucking her pretty pegasus underwear back into its proper location and pulls up the straps on her overalls. It occurs to her that she and Dandy could match, except for the horse thing. But! That is unimportant right now. What is important is that Eupheria has made the classic villain blunder of allowing the suffering protagonists to get together and plan just so she can delight in their communal misery. Well, Kathelia won't have it.

"Everyone!" She says. Stops because Alina is saying something to King Isolde and that's important and oh void are they all staring at her now? She blushes fiercely and tries to cover it up by pushing her glasses up on her nose. "Um, everyone! I want to thspeak to you!" Oh god, the lisp, it's too late, no backing down now Kathelia, even if you look like some kind of blushing eggplant up here and Azora is probably using some kind of magic spell to capture this moment for all eternity. "We need to work together to get through the mathze. I know we have our differentheth" Pointed glance at Azora and Eska, "but Eupheria is trying to separate all of uth and make uth into her playthingth. I think, the way her contetht is sthet up, the winner really doeth get a wish. That meanth we all have to sthtick together so we can keep each other focuthed and moving through the labyrinth until we beat it."

There, see, she's an awesome leader and public speaker. Kathelia reaches over and scratches the ear of the nearby fluffy Adiladog for reassurance without really thinking about it. Then thinks about it and keeps going, since she can see it's making Alina nervous and it will be better for everyone is Adila is enjoying scratchies and not leaping onto the table at the cats.

See, totally got everything covered. Kathelia is the smartest.

Monster Hearts: Sleepshy Rise

Take the condition CRYBABY, Timmy.

CREEP
WHIPPED
TRUANT

"Please. I made you look a little off, big baby. And I am entirely confident that you would do the same thing at Samael's request if our positions were switched. One does not simply refuse him. Now, let's be off to the library and we'll easily sort out the matter of this dark curse of yours, I am confident."

Annalee seems full of energy all of a sudden. The pent-up frustration is all gone. Perhaps that's the hypnotism rewarding a success? Perhaps she's just happy to be doing something that she wants to be doing! Regardless, she waves a hand and speaks some words that make the room seem darker, then looks at the sphinx with no small amount of frustration. Does it again, taps her own shirt this time and [5+3+2=10 to act staying cool] manages to slip out of it leaving her wearing only her bra covering her ample chest. The dark red shirt seems to merge with the Sphinx and she looks at the thing. "It looks horrific on you and I'll expect it back presently, pressed and folded. We'll be going now."

[Rolling to turn on...everyone I guess. Definitely Elodie, I can do multiples if necessary. 1+2-1=2. Marking experience.]

Princess-Champions of Hyperborea

Kathelia thought she would actually die. She wasn't sure she had ever blushed this hard, not in all the terrible jokes and tricks that all her siblings had played. It wasn't fair! The spriggans were laughing and Eupheria was laughing, and it felt like she hadn't reached the princess at all. Besides, how was it funny that she had color coordinated her undies and her overalls, anyway?! She'd have matching heart pins for her hair too if she restyled it anyway. Hearts were cool, glitter was cool, the spriggans obviously had no taste! And neither did Eupheria. She was so...so far gone. It made Kathelia's heart hurt. Eupheria really couldn't hear her, or wouldn't show it at least. And Kathelia was convinced that their pain was comparable. They had shared it through the ages and loneliness was...well, it was lonely and the only way to get through that was to find the connections between people. Little tears formed at the edge of Kazelia's eyes, and got caught on the rims of her thick, dark-rimmed glasses before beading into little droplets that fell off. With all the blushing, Eupheria probably just thought Kazelia was crying from the shame and discomfort. Just as well for now.

Princess-Champions of Hyperborea

Kazelia, or Kathelia, the princess standing here has learned something since coming to Hyperborea. She's learned to be less sharp, to feel empathy for others and the pain that they have. If you've been watching, the nightmares she admitted to Eupheria earlier are old nightmares and her pains old pains. They still haunt her, but with people like Alina, Adila, Kyouko, Rita, Tashana, Dandy, even Brill teaching her about the world, she'll figure out that she doesn't need to be too afraid of them. All that is to say that Kathelia doesn't start this out by gloating (no, not even as a know it all) or by making accusations and demands. Instead, she starts out with something about herself.

"When I firtht got here, I got to find out that my father wath mortal. and then I learned that he could never love me, and he wasn't even thorry." She sighs. "That really hurtth. It might never sthtop hurting. I've heard sthories about you and I know you got hurt too, really really bad."

Kathelia looks at her own hands. Eupheria probably wouldn't give her much time with this, it wasn't going to be nice to listen to, but she figured Eupheria also wouldn't interrupt her mid-speech because she was from Hyperborea and a princess (or a queen) just wouldn't be that rude. "I think itsth okay that you're mad now and you want to play gameth with uth. I don't really mind. But I hope you know that you're really hurting people too. And I want to ask you to put Hyperborea back the way it wath after a while. I really, really love it. And I think you wouldn't really like being itsth queen anyway. You can still make sthome changeth too, we're all going to need to clean up after Oberon, even if he never getsth your sthaff. But, pleathe, think over what you really want."

[Kazelia is rolling to speak softly with Eupheria. 3+2+1=6. Her questions are
What can Eupheria tell us about what she plans to do with Hyperborea?
What should I be wary of when dealing with her?
What does she want, and how could I help her get it?]

Monster Hearts: Sleepshy Rise

I'm looking for a reply here from Amish before proceeding. Say yes, Timmy, and Annalee will kick it into high gear.

Princess-Champions of Hyperborea

No more disguises! Ugh, really, Kathelia couldn't figure out why her mind kept going to disguises around here. She was wearing cool overalls with a pink heart on them, there is a) zero chance Eupheria would miss it and b) no way she's getting them dirty enough to do a proper spriggan disguise. it was bad enough she was mostly buried without intentionally messing up her clothes!

What kind of cunning trap could she set for someone who had the power to reshape reality itself though? The only way something like that would work would be if Eupheria didn't know she was trapped herself. Or if she wanted to be trapped. Oh there's an idea. If Kathelia could make it funny, make Eupheria want to play along for a while, then the trap would work. It wouldn't defeat her or anything, but it would give her a chance to talk. And maybe keep her here longer? Kathelia wasn't sure if Eupheria was actually limited to being in one place at a time or not, but it did at least seem possible that she didn't have equal focus everywhere all at once. Like, otherwise how would anyone be doing anything? Ugh, getting distracted Kazzle-dazzle. What's important is making the setup something over the top.

Kathelia slowly extricated herself from the dirt, tiptoeing away from the Spriggans. She didn't need to get far, just into the cover of the underbrush. She used her magic, which only gave off a few little bits of blue glitter, to pull vines and leaves to herself and started weaving them into a net. Yeah, this would be perfect she just needed...ahah! There was a tree with some ripe berries of some sort. Perfect, this would be perfect, she just had to attach the small net to a loose tree, set up the berries, and Eupheria would wander in, then Kazelia could pull the cord tight and dangle Eupheria upside down! It was absurd, it was ridiculous, it was incredibly obvious: there was no way Eupheria would be able to resist it.

Princess-Champions of Hyperborea

Kathelia...zelia, stars above she's thinking like she talks now?! Ka...ze...lia. Okay Kathelia, think. Ugh, forget it, just think. You're bound up in ouch very uncomfortable thorns. They didn't bother with a gag and they're mimicking your voice. You could use magic, throw your voice, pretend to be them and confuse them, maybe tell them to untie you. That could work, right? Ugh, no, that's dumb, she's tried to shout and mess with her voice like three times, but she's acting like she's normal and can do tricks that way to distract when clearly her voice is all messed up and only getting worse.

Hmm, maybe, she could try to activate her spear still. Her ultra cool awesome spear might be able to burn some of the thorns off. She'd rejected that one earlier though because she'd just get stuck fighting spriggans if she started doing that and it would take a long time. What she wanted was to slip away quietly, or to take them down decisively. If she only had help.

Well, there was Mother. She knew in her heart that could still help, but if she let Mother's power out now, she'd be exhausted, probably just curl up right here in the ruins to take a nap, especially in her weakened body. That was an ultra, ultra last resort. Like, things had to get way worse than being buried to pull that one out.

Okay, okay, what if, what if they just buried her poorly. If she could loosen the thorns. Spriggan thorns only had hardness 3, so that wouldn't be too hard, she could just use a little magic (she'd be careful not to make it sparkle like normal) and then, yeah, with the thorns looser she could cave out some extra dirt as they did the burying so she'd have room to move and a little air pocket. Everyone knew that air pressure was really strong, so if she did it right and the air had nowhere to go, it would hold while they finished burying her and that would mean she could wait a few minutes without needing to hold her breath and then just push her way out and walk off with no trouble. Okay, yeah that could work. Good thinking, Kathelia!

So, the key here was just being a bit subtle about loosening things. A bit of chilly magic, no sparkles, loosen the thorns bit by bit so they didn't cut or pinch and then just pull them off and do her big breakout when the moment was right.

[Overcome the thorns with subtle magic: 5+6+1=12]

Monster Hearts: Sleepshy Rise

Introducing

Annalee Sokolov

The Witch

Look: Edgy clothing - makeup and eyebrows that say don't mess with me - wicked eyes
Dark hair - pale Russian complexion - medium height - a bit stocky
Origin: Taught by grandmother, Baba Sokolov

Backstory and Strings (and Tokens, marked with a carrot)
I've got a sympathetic Token on Samael (some blood)
I've got a sympathetic Token on Timothy (some hair)

Elodie caught me rummaging through their friend's stuff and hasn't said anything about it, so they have a string on me.

I made out with Timothy in the broom closet and I have two strings on him.

I opened the doors and let Samael in before the dawn, saving his life, giving me two strings.

Tim: o^
Sam: oo^
Elodie: o
Alextralia: o

Post play
took a sweaty Twilight Sparkle shirt from Elodie. (used)
took some of Samael's shirt sleeve when he slapped me (used)

NPCs with strings on Annalee
Margot: 1
G'eldriia: 1

Stats
Hot -1 Cold 2 Volatile -1 Dark 1

Darkest Self

The time for subtlety and patience is over. You’re too powerful to put up with their garbage any longer. You hex anyone who slights you. All of your hexes have unexpected side effects, and are more effective than you are comfortable with. To escape your Darkest Self, you must offer peace to the one you have hurt the most.

Harm: [X][][][]
Experience: [X][X][X][X][]
Conditions: Creep, Whipped, Truant

Moves

Sympathetic Tokens
You gain power from Sympathetic Tokens - items of personal significance taken from others. Sympathetic Tokens count as Strings.

Hex-Casting
You can cast Hexes. Choose two that you know. To cast them, either expend a Sympathetic Token during a secret ritual, or meet the target’s gaze and chant at them in tongues. Then roll with Dark. On a 10 up, the Hex works, and can easily be reversed.
On a 7-9, it works but choose one:
-the casting does you 1 Harm;
-the Hex has weird side effects;
-trigger your Darkest Self.

Hexes
Wither
The hexed loses all of their hair, or their teeth start falling out, or their period arrives unexpected and heavy, or their skin gets all sickly yellow and spotty. Whatever the specifics, it’s bad

Ring of Lies
Whenever the person attempts to lie, they hear a piercing ringing noise. Big lies will often make their knees buckle and disorient them. Severe lies can cause harm or even brain damage.

Binding
The person cannot physically harm others

Watching
Enter a deep sleep and see the world through the eyes of the hexed (including reactions and internal impressions of what they're seeing).

Illusions
Snakes and bugs, demonic visages, false prophecies, non-existent subtext. Pick one and the hexed sees it everywhere. (MC controls what exactly they see).

Sex Move: After sex, you can take a Sympathetic Token from them. They know about it, and it’s cool.

Advances

Add +1 to one of your stats.
Take another Witch move.
Take all the remaining Hexes.
Create a new Hex.
Take a move from any Skin.
Take a move from any Skin.
You belong to a Coven

Monster Hearts: Sleepshy Rise

CREEP
WHIPPED
TRUANT

Annalee is in the middle of trying to open her backpack and inch out one of her spellbooks without being crushed by the sphinx, toppling over, or properly being able to move her arms and legs. It sort of looks like she's being slowly buried in a hot topic store that's oddly sphinx shaped. You might expect her to be awkward in this situation, but in some ways, your arrival is a blessed jolt of normalcy. And she looks positively, perhaps even unnaturally delighted to see that you brought Timothy Crompton with you. Well done, Elly-belly, we knew you were useful for something after all.

"What, the mouth hex? That was at Samael's request, but he didn't ask me to keep it." She waves a hand (as much as it can wave) and Timothy, any lingering oddity with your mouth is completely and utterly gone. "There, it was nothing, I'm glad that you enjoy my work. But now, now it's is excellent that you're here!" Her eyes light up. "I was just working on passing through the entrance, which I've never done before. And while I'm magically fused to this sphinx, I'm sure you can both assist. You see, Timmy, we really must go to the library at once. It's very urgent and I'm confident that whatever you both need, we can take care of it there!" Annalee looks at Timothy knowingly, and he might remember the last time she got him "whatever he needed."

[Spending a string on Timothy to tempt him to go with her (and Elodie if he wants) to Samael's library room. He gets an experience if he does it.]

Princess-Champions of Hyperborea

The key thing to think about during these sorts of decision points is not only likelihood of success, but what success gets you. They always trick you with these branching paths that way. Fun fact, did you know that a couple worlds back, Eska used to write choose your own adventure novels for entertainment? It was the high tech one where she really got into the scarab bots, so all the choices were like "hotwire the keypad with your trusty multi-tool" and "use your superior intellect to trap the guard robot in a logic puzzle" but she really got into it for a while, and the Riders even had some fun setting them up and acting them out as a party game (Eska would umpire, of course, since she was far too skillful and knowledgeable to be able to participate fairly).

Oh right, the Spriggans. The point was that the Kazelia had learned a key lesson, which is that you couldn't just go for success in these adventures, you needed to push for the best outcome. If you stumbled into something you couldn't handle, well, you had to extract as painlessly as possible and come back with the right tools. So here, even though spear-fighting was the easy choice, Kazelia knew that stalling the spriggans would just lead to them grouping up with their nightmare commander and coming at her in force. She could try to run, but that has never been her strength, especially with all these tricky vines. So, of course, she's going to impersonate the commander. If she's quick about it, she'll get her own team of support Spriggans, and at the very least, she'll confuse them long enough to make the whole thing a non-factor in the victory equation!

[Rolling wisdom with despair: 5 2, 1 +1=4.]

What Kazelia hadn't counted on, of course, was that she really didn't quite have the voice control down yet. Attempting to mimic the rustling sound they make while doing speech caused her braces to grate painfully and led to her attempted "Obey me, Spriggans, I am your leader!" to come out more like "Okay me, Sthpriggens, I am your theater!"

...Oops