#thqtask

Blood rushed in her ears while she saw the lions alive and beginning to roam the arena.  Her chest heaved and she felt sick.  The scar on her side from a lion’s claws practically burned beneath her clothes and she scrambled to get up from the couch.

Glitter pushed her way out of the room and ran up the stairs, pushing past sponsors who tried to stop her.  “Glitter isn’t it wonderful?” she heard a sponsor ask, but Glitter couldn’t register.  Not when she felt sick.  Not when her heart felt like it would burst from her chest.

A dozen flight of stairs later, she was on the roof, sitting against the wall as she took a deep breath.  Glitter fidgeted with the necklace she was wearing and she held her knees to her chest.  Just breathe, she reminded herself.  Breathe.  They can’t get you.

Tears blurred her vision and Glitter threatened to break.  It wasn’t often she allowed herself this.  Those walls were strong, yet she couldn’t handle this.  Not facing the very thing that nearly killed her once.  But she was jolted from those thoughts upon hearing the door.  Glitter glanced in that direction wiped at her eyes.  “If you’re looking for privacy, too late,” she admitted. // @thqstarter​

ORANGE SKIES. 

                                          a playlist for jack fox.

❝ god, how is he supposed to answer such a question? how does anyone ever talk about grief, when the entirety of language as it is taught to schoolchildren does not encompass the damn thing adequately? how do you talk about loss, when the very nature of the thing is an absence? how do you remember a version of yourself that you no longer recognize? how do you remember a limb that you no longer have but feel phantom ache for, an organ that did something vital but now ceases to function?

The Reaping was always a weird day for Soleil. She was required to be at the square bright and early before most of the rest of the district, prepped and looking nice for the cameras. And she did so, wearing a light sundress with her hair delicately curled and nude heels strapped onto her feet. If anything, it was an excuse to get dressed up in this drab district she called home.

It also served as the most bizarre trigger she could imagine. Every year when she watched the District Three escort saunter between the bowls, pick names out, read them aloud, Soleil was instantly transported back to the year she was seventeen years old. Back then, she’d worn a shabby muslin sheath dress, passed down from an older cousin who had bullied her for years about how scrawny she was. Her bony knees had knocked together as her name was called, and she emerged from the crowd on the verge of tears with her hair limp and drab, her skin pale and lifeless. Her district partner could not have been older than thirteen or fourteen, and though his coloring was darker there had still existed that pervasive paleness and ashiness to his complexion that seemed to infect everyone in the factory district. 

the celeste troupe of entertainers : est. in paris, 1830s.

— cedric, the troupe’s leader & playwright, networker extraordinaire ;

— lucille, an acrobat, dancer & escort doubling as a thief ;

— essi, a stage artist & costume maker doubling as an underground forger ;

— ezen, a firework designer & fire-breather doubling as an arsonist ;

— thien, an all-around musician doubling as a fighter & sharpshooter ; 

                                AN INTERACTIVE PLOT DROP

When the first whispers being, the night is still young. A garden path in bloom and promise, rather than a scaffolding ready to be built — it allows hope to transpire. Allows bravery, and courage, and curiosity strong enough to defy the ice.

It is in this spirit that people gather in THE DOCTOR’s precarious kingdom, the Sick Bay. Just a handful, a small circle in the dark. It had all started with THE DOE-HEARTED’S insistence that no creature would wound others without being wounded itself. That they must track down whatever hunts them and reach out to it. There is no other way to truly find out where it comes from, or what name it bears. No other way to find out what it wants from them. Because, and this question is mirrored by others, if it wanted them gone, why did it freeze the ocean?

The Doctor had picked up on this, leveraged with the prospect of knowledge the Western world might never glean again. A similar promise lured THE SUNFLOWER. Whether in kindness, revolt, or scientific interest, the fledgling plan begins to take root. Now, they have met to lay down its groundwork. THE ARCANE, brought on by their friend Dr. Bhavsar, has decided to lead part of the foregoing discussion.

It is less of a coup, and more of a rescue operation. Or so they want to believe, even as they hush and murmur among themselves with heads bowed together, with hands wrung at their sides. The telltale posture of saints — yet also of conspirators. History will judge the truth of it in a matter of days rather than decades. The Silent One can make either fools or martyrs out of them. Yet failure to track the creature can render them traitors or saboteurs to the already shaken passengers.

What is to be done? How do they find the creature and try to establish contact? Forgiveness? It is less of a question, and more of a prayer under the lamplight—a thing you ask in the night, but from the night as well. Soon, a fifth voice answers. Then another. The quiet becomes querulous. There are more people here: but who?

Lovely members !! This weekend we bring you a plot drop whose blueprint was created by the fantastic, phenomenal, Sexy crew of Lia, Kat & Trixie !! They proposed it to us and we  knew we had to whip it into a full-formed event.

This being said, please message the main if you want your muse to join the dooming courageous discussions! They will take place inside the Sick Bay on the 27th of July, in game time. Whether the character you sign up for this will actually proceed to venture over the frozen ocean in hunting down the Silent One is up to you ( someone else can persuade them against it, or maybe they just realize they have brains. hmmm ? a lot can happen ).

Son of a whore. Immigrant. Racketeer. Sudaca. Thief. Crook. You’ve been knighted with these titles, judged a malcontent by virtue of your heritage, your roots, your mother tongue, your luck of the draw. You grew up looking contempt in the eye, so you know it when you see it, and here, in the officer’s mess, you see it in spades. The blue-bloods gather their furs and hold them close ’round their necks to stave off the cold, or maybe the fear. They cling to the lap of luxury like they cling to their antiquated notion of hierarchy, and you watch them turn up their noses as they lament the looming dangers of welcoming strangers—outsiders—into their fold. You share their wealth, but not their bloodlines, and certainly not their fear-bred entitlement. They bleat like sheep without a shepherd, so frightened by the darkness ahead that they fail to take note of the wolf that prowls among them already: you. None of the Agathe survivors, you suspect, are half as likely to put a match to the Promethean as you are. And yet… The guests turn a blind eye to your ill will—not on account of your person, but your purse. New money you may be, but coin calls to coin, and the aristocrats aboard have acquitted you of malice before the trial’s even begun. Ah, the spoils of classism. They think you a sheep—a black sheep, but a sheep nonetheless. They think you one of their own, heedless to what big teeth you have (all the better to eat them with). 

Your pursestrings are loose, but your code of honor among thieves is not. You can take the man out of the whorehouse, surely, but never can you take the whorehouse out of the man. You have one saving grace, and it is this: your devotion to the outcasts. What are the Agathe survivors, really, if not outcasts? Immigrants on an Admiralty-christened ship. Refugees deemed madmen. Tragic, downtrodden beasts who know now that survival tastes the same as blood in your mouth, acrid and sour. They’re kin to you, outsiders of the same ilk cut from different cloth. You consider telling your audience to fuck off in express detail, damn their snobbery, but you’re an empresario through and through, and there’s little room for folly or feeling where business is concerned. You’re here to secure a trade route to the Far East, and your objective must remain paramount. Your word carries some weight among these people, so you must think carefully about what you say next. Your notorious repute precedes you, but so, too, does your impressive fortune, and among the upper crusts, the latter accrues more merit than the former. What you say next could be taken to heart, you think. What you say next could be meaningful. You stand at the helm of fate’s piano, and you, maestro, must choose carefully which keys to stroke. 

You weigh the risks and rewards: DO YOU RILE THEM UP?

Should your labors bear fruit, the Agathe survivors will be banished from the Promethean, and so, too, will THE AMBASSADOR—and the threat he poses to you and your voyage. You don’t mind getting your hands dirty, but if there’s a way to depose l’ambassadeur without slitting his throat in the dead of the night... Well, you won’t object.

A plague of boredom is catching like wildfire aboard the Promethean, and if there’s anything in this world worthy of your hate, it’s doldrum. Inciting a quarrel between the Promethean’s guests and the Agathe survivors might bear the fruit of an exciting diversion.

Reinforcing the protests of the Promethean’s nobles could catalyze dissent among the ship’s passengers, which would likely delay the expedition and put a kink in your plans to outwit the Queen and negotiate trade with the Far East.

Your moral compass hasn’t worked in a long, long while, and though lawlessness becomes you, you’re not altogether without principle. Some things are sacred even to you, heretic. Your black heart has always bled for the outcasts—the immigrants, the vagrants, the criminals, the lepers, the down-on-their-luck—and you don’t think orchestrating the eviction of a homeless people will sit well in your gut. You’re unacquainted with guilt, and you want to keep it that way. It’s hard enough to sleep on this godforsaken ship without the complication of remorse in your belly, fitful and sleepless. You need your beauty rest, after all. 

If the Agathe survivors remain aboard the Promethean and learn of the role you played in the guests’ bid to exile them, there will be bad blood aplenty. You don’t need any more enemies on this ship, and you could certainly use a few more allies. What’s more? There could be potential allies among the Agathe survivors, lucrative resources to be tapped and wielded to your advantage. Who knows what kind of folk walk among them? Translators, perhaps, to help facilitate relations between you and leaders of the Far East. Mutineers, perhaps, to help you sate your greed—no matter the costs. Wolves, perhaps, to help you hunt the sheep aboard. Sheep, perhaps, to quench your hunger. There could be many a friend or many a foe among this crew, but you’ll never find out if you oust them all. One of these people could be your key to fortune. 

The Promethean could stand a little je ne sais quois. How frightfully boring this lot of well-bred Englishmen can be, and how marvelously electric you know the French to be! You’ve spent many years in Paris, and you know with some surety that the French are connoisseurs of le tête à tête and le budoire. If good conversation doesn’t lie ahead, a good fuck surely does. You would be remiss to encourage the eviction of the Agathe survivors and forfeit the opportunity to break bread with them—and break beds with them, if the occasion calls for it.

It’s decided, then, laid out for you like the blueprints of a ship: riling up the guests is a venture that would benefit you little, likely, and cost you much. 

It’s decided, then: for profit, for alliance, for resources, for carnal pursuits, for excitement, for honor among thieves, you opt not to stir the pot.

they mistake it for a knife, nearly cutting open their foot as they chase after the rat that they saw, going deeper into the ship that they normally would dare. it’s only when they pick it up, thumb running gently over its sides, that they realise the texture isn’t right, too natural to be forged metal.

as they pass a latern they see it and at first, think of it as bone, but the jagged edge that has already cut open the skin of one hand is too worn, too sharp. the realisation comes and they go to fit it into their own mouth before realising that some of the red that stains it is dry, not their own.

their foot hesitates on the ladderway to the deck, uncertain whether to just tuck the rooth into their own pocket, when they remember jonathan. he was a nice one, pulled splinters and dealt with rope burn with ease and a kind spirit. and their hand was hurt and bastien might be there as well.

THE TRIBUTE PARADE || IVY