Roleplay Thread (Non-Combat related thread)

Surprise beams once Carke asks his question. "Well! I can blow up a balloon, and tie it into an animal! And apparently, if I tie it into a dragon, it becomes one for realsies! Don't know for how long, though, but after a time, it pops. Don't ask me how to make a dragon balloon animal, either. I have no idea."

She thinks for a moment, then continues. "Oh! If I look through a balloon, I can see things I normally couldn't! For example, when Twilight and I looked at a quill, we could see who it came from, how fresh it was, what the last thing it was written with was, and all sorts of neat stuff!" She pulls out the package of balloons again. "You can check it out if you want to see for yourself. Don't break any, though!"

Surprise drops the balloons, as a metaphorical light bulb pops above her head. She digs out an envelope from her saddlebag. "You should also look at this. I don't know what it does, but Derpy -- er, one of my friends -- said it had a return address on it. I can't see one, though."

Carke raises an eyebrow. Taking the envelope in hand he turns his gaze to it. "Magically hidden perhaps?" ((Psyniscience, target 48)) ((Rolled 23, 3 successes!))

Leon nods, falling silent so as not to disturb Carke's working. He had no idea what he was doing in this case; best to defer to the superior knowledge. This is some shit we've walked into...

After several minutes, he finally asks: "That orb and the stars in the sky... You seem like you've dealt with a lot, and that scared you... How fucked are we?"

"If we allow the Red King to come to power. Very." Carke says as he moves a desktop magnifying glass into place.

Leon nods... "I don't suppose there's a computer database I can use? Unless you happen to have a pamphlet on the Red King too."

"Later we will go and meet Yen Sid, he will be able to answer your questions better than I on that matter." Carke continues working for a second and something clicks into place. His head swings to face Surprise "Wait. It becomes a dragon?"

"Yup! Pretty cool, huh?" Surprise smiles ear to ear. "Or, at least, that's what I've been told. Never tried it, myself. I'm not very good at balloon animals." She holds up her forehooves, mysteriously standing bipedal for a few seconds. "Hard to with these, you know. Unicorn magic is much better for things like that." She sets her hooves back on the ground and steadies herself.

Leon occupies himself, momentarily, with scanning and uploading the information in the pamphlets to his 'vice. Never hurts to have more data on hand. "Any headway on what sort of world-ending magical artifacts we've got for ourselves here?"

"Whoever H.R.M is I must say I am becoming more and more concerned about them. Any one of these items where I come from would have been an artifact. They would have been either kept in the highest security vaults or used by the most powerful adventures. And this person is giving away dozens if not hundreds of such items. Not to mention that each items shows a remarkable amount of knowledge of each recipient. And every invitation is going to act as a teleportation spell to the location of the party! I wonder how many people have noticed that the invitation fails to mention if there is going to be as easy of a way back to their homes." Carke says as he stands up and starts pacing around the workshop. "Only one other entity I know of has come even close to such a feat. I know for a fact that it cannot be them."

Surprise's eyes widen the moment she hears the magic letters -- 'H.R.M.' She lets Carke finish his little speech while struggling to keep her own train of thought. Gosh, this 'not interrupting other ponies' thing is hard.

"Ooh! H.R.M.? I know who that is! Kinda. I mean, it's not really a 'who', more like a 'what'. It had something to do with the Holy Titan of Honesty being eaten by something called Ram Abbalah, which was then sealed away by the Holy Titan of Magic. It was... Honesty, Ram Abbalah, Magic. That was H.R.M.! Simple, huh? Twilight figured all that out after an all-nighter." Surprise is now jumping up and down, flapping her wings a bit to give herself a little bit of hang time between bounces. "She has a lot of books back in her personal library in Ponyville. I'm not surprised she figured it out! She's really smart."

"Yeah... What chills me though. Is that all of these 'party favors' seem to be something that suggests intimate knowledge of the subject. I mean... I get a toy Digivice with a pixellated renamon in it? The... horse who's obsessed with fun gets a bag of self-animating balloons? You get... is that a pizza cutter? Point being. Like I said, coincidences like this don't happen, ever."

"Someone's manipulating us. Someone powerful. I would compare it to Yggdrasil..."

"Similar. Of course, this time Masaru Daimon isn't around to punch it in the face. H.R.M... You mentioned a Red King. Could stand for 'His Royal Majesty.' Maybe he'll make an appearance?"

While the pony--who he was surprised to find he recognized--and the dude with the teenage mutant ninja dog were talking to mr wizard, Sketch pulled out his own item. Intimate knowledge, huh? Guess whoever sent this must've thought it was pretty funny sending comic artist a paper shredder. As he handed it over to the wizard--Carke--he looks over at Leon and Dante.

"Dudes, you read Thor? Sweeeet. Him and Thunderstrike are pretty fly, man."

He then turns back to Surprise.

"Titans, huh? Sounds beards, but then again I'm talking to something I thought was just on tv until now."

(Damnit, I go away for an hour and there's a new page of posts.)

Benny leans back on his throne and exhales slowly. He's in a relatively bad mood with all this stress going around. He might as well get his feelings out to this trainer so that he can understand. "Look. I'm really sorry. It just came out of my chest one day and my life's been different ever since. I wish I could go to every world that's in trouble personally and see it through that they're taken care of. But I can't. So I'm doing as much as possible to ensure that I can at least help people. But you have to realize, I might sending people to their deaths. Sometimes I do. And there's an infinity of problems to be solved. And you aren't the first to come to my throne and ask for help. So I'm asking you politely, to please go to this party, something you were going to do anyway, and report back to me what the issue is, and I'll do everything in my power to make sure you go back to your home with a keyblader. Okay?"

Phiss imagined his pawn for a brief moment. Okay, judging by everyone's reaction, their things are actually relating to experiences they've had, not just calling them out abstractly. Well, most of them. The pony's a bit of a rogue element.

I can't believe I just thought that.

Sketch realizes this is probably going to be the most interesting thing that's going to happen for the next few days, and so takes out a small journal and begins creating rough outlines of everyone.

"Seems like a fair deal to me, your highnessness."
"Also, I'm sorry, small horse, you're a dudette, not a dude."

Sketch makes sure to capture the look on Carke's face.

Carke stares at surprise as she explains. The horror on his face growing with each passing sentence. "This is almost as bad as when Benny found the hat and robes.". Carke sits down on his stool and starts rubbing his temples. "Yen Sid. Yen Sid will know more. We need to go talk to Yen Sid." Carke will return the items to their owners and gather the rest into the bag. He then sets back off for the throne room motioning for everyone to follow.

Sensing the immediate change in tone, both Leon and Dante follow wordlessly, Leon stowing the 'artifact' once more, never intending to use it. This is bad...

"Surprise, right? How much do you know about this?"

Surprise turns to Leon. Her expression gets a touch more serious, although she still maintains a vestige of joviality. "Well, Applejack told me the short of all of this, but she never mentioned any Ram Abbalah. The story goes like this...

"There were six Holy Titans of Harmony: Magic, Laughter, Loyalty, Generosity, Kindness, and Magic. Kind of like the Elements of Harmony, but I guess you silly fillies wouldn't know anything about that. They made Equestria and pretty much everypony who lives there, and everything was all hunky-dory! Except, the Holy Titan of Magic thought there was a betrayer among them, so she wasn't feeling all well. The Holy Titans helped with controlling the sun and moon, made the Elements of Harmony, and all that good stuff. One day, the Holy Titan of Honesty started gobbling up all the other Titans. Yup, the Holy Titan of Honesty was the betrayer that the Holy Titan of Magic thought was around them! Magic knew she couldn't defeat the betrayer, so she did the next best thing: she gave birth to two daughters to help with raising and lowering the sun and moon, and sealed Equestria away from the Titans' influence, so the Holy Titan of Honesty couldn't destroy Equestria."

"I'm not sure how much of this really affects us, or where Ram Abbalah fits in, but I guess all of the rest of it is true to some degree. Hopefully, we'll figure everything out before the party. That's gonna be fun time!" Surprise bounces around, blissfully ignorant of what she just implied.

Ono casually follows, still enjoying his plate of sandwiches and re-pocketing the patch. He had been just chilling out in the throne room this whole time.

"What's going on Carke? You look look like you've seen a ghost."

Phiss looked at Surprise with a very horrified expression on his face.

"... Wait a minute. You said that it was banished. Or your universe was sealed away. Correct?" He let a moment of pause go by. "So where the *ZZZT* did it go?"

(Logic check untrained: 21 vs. 24 = Success!)

(( Testing Logic, Target 49 )) ((Rolled 47, 1 success!)) "If they sealed it away from Equestria that means it could be anywhere in the multiverse. Yup going to go see Yen Sid now." Carke says over his shoulder. "Oh good! Ono! We are going to go see the wizard!"

(Leon tests Logic versus 35... 35. Dayum.
Dante tests Logic versus 30... Also 35.)

Leon just... stopped in place. "Surprise... Oh dear god fuck no."

Dante blinked. "Wait... Oh Sovereigns above, no."

"THIS IS EXACTLY HOW WE GOT THE DEMON LORDS SHOVED UP OUR COLLECTIVE ASS!"

Benny looks at his watch. "Let me know how that works out. My two o' clock is almost here." He says casually, his keyblade being summoned to his hand with a flash and a loud 'ching' sound. Phiss briefly thought about what that must've meant. To anyone with an attentive nature, the sound of breaking glass would reverberate throughout the halls.

Phiss simply rose his hands and followed Carke. Too much crazy in one day, not enough retiring. "Welp, we're F*ZZZT*-ed. Does anyone else feel like having snowcones? I could go for one."

Surprise follows Carke out of his workshop. "You know, I probably got a couple of things wrong. It's been a really crazy couple of days. Twi told me a LOT of that from reading the envelope, so you should probably check it out yourself."

She turns her head to Phiss. "Why do you keep doing that 'bzzt' thing? It's funny!" She giggles.

Phiss looks at the pony very flatly. "Because Spiral HQ is full of *FZZT*-s, and everytime I want to say *FZZT*, *FZZZT*, *FZZT*, *FZZT*, or 'Cursors *FZZT* it, the brain implant they forced into my head zaps me. They said it was a discouragement for saying things that go against the Uniform Code of Chivalrous Conduct or something. I think they just wanted us to know who had us by the reproductive globes, though."

"Benny we need you to drive the train. You are the only one that can take it to Yen Sid's tower. Also Surprise I may know where Ram Abbalah comes into this, on the envelope says that the Holy Titan of Honesty consumed the titans by his command. Also every 'favor' holds terrible power. I will explain more on the train."