LOVE POTION #9

[metamods]

LOVE POTION #9

LOVE IS... not in the air! The reintroduction of Confluences into this world has left it rocked, so the season of love is not quite as lovey-dovey as it usually is. People are stressed and anxious. Valentine's events are being cancelled left, right, and center in fear that a Confluence may catch young lovers unawares.

Unbeknownst to mortals, the God of Love really can't afford his month to be ruined by a few little dimensional catastrophes. This is his month! ... And for whatever reason, he seems to be stranded on the Earthly plane.

Surely he can fix things. Push it along a little. Though Gods don't usually meddle in mortal affairs, this is a personal catastrophe. All it takes is a few drops of love potion on a token of affection, and voila! Instant-connection.

(This event has a blanket warning for dubious consent of the love spell variety. To opt out completely, characters can simply not be in Sunset Falls at the time of the event, which runs through Valentine's Day.)

WHITE HEARTS FESTIVAL

Welcome to Sunset Falls, the most magical place in all of America! Literally. The streets are charged with magical energies, and while it won't be spinning your words into spells, it will give anyone who is magically inclined a comfortable little buzz. Maybe it's the boost you need to get a spell working, or maybe it's just a pep in your step. Confluence-displaced metas who take the Guilds up on their offer to tour the new housing will arrive just in time to witness the an annual tradition: The White Hearts Festival, a festival dedicated to all forms of love - familial, friendship, and romantic.

The whole town is decked out in pinks, golds and reds. Town square has been overtaken by food booths peddling elaborate meals and desserts with various magical effects. (It's probably better not to ask why some of the cookies being handed out are in the shape of anatomical hearts.)

• Eat an emoji cookie and find yourself sprouting heart-eyes, or gaining a flurry of hearts above your head.


• The Bolder Biscuit - by far and above the densest thing you've ever tried to eat - makes you bold. It compels you to march right up to someone and tell them what you think, good or bad.


• And there's also the Firework Delight cake, which makes you shoot off literal fireworks the moment you touch that special someone that makes your life complete... but honestly, they go off when you touch anyone. Sorry if you end up giving off the wrong impression!

In addition, pop-up craft stands sell trinkets that guarantee you'll be together with your people forever and ever. The most popular item on sale this year appears to be the Eternal Bond - which is just an enchanted finger-trap that refuses to let go unless you tell someone a deep dark secret.

There is an altar at the town park where you can make your offering and give prayers to the God of Love in hopes he will smile favorable upon you. Lay your chocolate heart at its base and offer up a prayer to the God so that your life will be full of love and connection.

Truthfully, when it started it wasn't as cutesy as it is now. It became a lot more wholesome when people began to offer only chocolate hearts to the God of Love. Now it's fun for the whole family! ... So long as you don't veer into the woods. Some people still practice the old ways, and there are (what you hope to be) animal hearts nailed to trees. This is Sunset Falls, after all. Weird often goes hand in hand with terror.

LONELY HEARTS

For those of you who don't yet have those special people, lonely hearts still single can collect white rose enamel pins from the festival committee. They're expected to pick someone to give it out to as a declaration of their attraction by the end of the festival. However... there seems to be an issue this year. There's more pins here than there are people in town. Committee members start handing them out to anyone, single or not, and from there that's where things start to get a little weird...

You clip the pin onto your shirt and at once, your life has suddenly become a romcom. Everything is just a little brighter, the sounds a little more musical (sometimes literally), and you're suddenly compelled to reach out and find connection.

And the universe is conspiring to bring it your way! Cliches won't stop happening around you. Suddenly people are determined to give you a makeover so you can catch the eye of an admirer. Your friends are betting on your romantic future. A complex love triangle is springing out of previously platonic friendships.

You're not not limited to one partner, and that partner doesn't need to be romantic. It could be a best friend, or a nemesis that you're compelled to fight over and over again for the joy of it. What matters is the connection and the way the world seems to stop at nothing to give you that perfect three act structure: You Meet, You Lose, You Get.

Reach the end of your romcom's little arc and you'll find yourself freed from the spell... and probably will have some choice words for its caster.

HEARTS ON FIRE

Regardless of how you participate in the festival, everyone is at risk when the town itself falls under a love spell.

This may be unlike anything you've known before. Perhaps it's the first stumbling steps of puppy love. You want to be with this person all the time. Hold their hands and work up the courage for a kiss. Or perhaps this is something fierce and passionate. You want to be kissing them always, pursuing these passions heedless of consequences.

This doesn't need to be a romantic love. It can be strong and familial. Perhaps the sort you've always desired but never had. You could fall into a family unit with others affected by the spell. Compelled to hug each other and say words of encouragement or praise. Perhaps you, while living your own love story, are the best friend in someone else's - offering up the speech that tells them they deserve more than they think they do.

Whatever your flavor of love may be, you're prone to dramatic declarations. Confessions at the drop of a hat. It's go big or go home, and since nobody's going home right now, you might as well go as big as you can. Perhaps you're arranging for Flash Mobs to declare your feelings! Or making plans to move in together despite only having met a few hours ago.

This is all fine and well at first, but it may become clear pretty quickly that characters who try to hold their burning passions are likely to burn themselves! If you're the repressed type and you try to resist the compulsions that the love spell puts on you, you might just burst into flames, and someone will need to put you out. Don't worry — move quick enough, and there won't be any lasting damage, and if there is, the Guilds' healers can help you out.

MEET CUTE-PID

For those paying attention to that sort of thing, one constant of all these wild declarations can be spotted in the background. A tall man with curly blonde hair and an all too charming smile never seems to be far from the romance.

Those who are curious enough to follow will find he retreats to a lavish mansion on the outskirts of town. The mansion has the gaudy and abundant decor of a honeymoon suite on the Las Vegas Strip, with lights attuned to music and a massive twirling heart above the roof of the building. Peer inside and you will see hundreds of tiny viewing windows, each depicting a different romantic story unfolding outside of town. The door to the mansion appears to be locked tight and the windows are magically sealed, but some quick thinking may get you inside.

If anyone wants to engage him, HERE is a top level where we will summarize encounters. The more PCs involved in an encounter, the bigger its outcome will be. We will determine the impact on the god of love on Valentine's Day, so get your comments in by end of day on the 13th! You may also use this top level to ask event-specific questions about the effects on this page! (Please refer general questions about the setting to the FAQ, and refer any player plots to the PLOTTING page.)

Comments

[rehandle]

[ After downing the rest of his coffee and making the short trip back, the remainder of his ten minutes are spent in his hotel room, fortifying himself against enchantment. It's a fairly generic spell but woven intricately enough to protect him from anything that isn't too precisely targeted. Malleable too. He'll tweak it if he needs to once he knows what he's up against. When he's satisfied, the teleport token drops him on a high school rooftop and from there it doesn't take much more to open up a portal and step out between trees.

Loki isn't hard to spot. What surprises Stephen as he inspects him from the edge of the glade, wrinkling his nose against the faint odour of nearby dead flesh and the potential oozing from it like battery acid, is how rough he looks.

It makes sense in the context of the messages he'd sent: MATH. This place is charged with magic, something innate to the area, but laced through it is a spell so insidious that it whispers incessantly against the ward Stephen had cast. Magic like that must have him in a chokehold. And if the other messages he sent are anything to go by...

(The cloak is present. It follows along at a safe distance - no point in giving the spell any fuel for its fire.)

In the end Stephen doesn't utter a word to Loki, halting several paces away to begin pulling searing shapes out of the air and sending them outward and upward. First order of business: casting the glade into isolation. Crafting Loki a little bubble of neutral space in which to breathe. It'll take him a few minutes to shut the spell out entirely, and then comes the fun of finding out if a severed connection is going to be enough to cure him of its effects. But it's a start. ]

[ikols]

[ He can taste Stephen's magic in the air and, just like that, any sense he had been making evaporates as the spell returns in full-force, magical claws hooking into Loki's chest to make his heart beat faster as he looks up. He's aware of the ward Stephen is casting but it doesn't matter, nothing does except the man before him who is brilliant. A former adversary at times back home, sure, but this isn't that man; he's better, he has no reason to hate Loki.

And Loki can't think of any reason not to devote every inch of himself to Stephen.

He releases a shuddering breath and gets to his feet, unsteadily pacing over with the intent of gripping the front of Stephen's clothes. With a spell-curdled mind, Loki desperately searches Stephen's face with widened eyes. ]

I knew you would not leave me here.

[rehandle]

[ Of course it couldn't be as easy as turning up and standing a few feet away until Loki was good and cured. Stephen uses the time it takes him to approach to move through a few more casting patterns, but that only buys a handful of seconds of progress before the god is a lot closer than is comfortable, grasping hands holding them both in place as Stephen's hover, charged with an in-progress spell, in the air either side of Loki.

(The magic protecting him from the love spell's hold runs vibrant under Loki's touch, ready to repel any magic thing that tries to pass through it.) ]

Sit down.

[ Firm without meaning to be cruel, meeting his gaze unflinchingly. The longer Loki's close like this the longer it'll take for him to cast the spell, but more than that (Please help I hate this please) he doesn't want him doing or saying anything he's going to regret. ]

[ikols]

[ Loki looks like wants to resist, wants to argue, but he also wants to please and his knees hit the grass hard. Kneeling before Stephen is not likely where the sorcerer planned, but it's what his straight-forward words get and Loki wraps the iron arms of a god around him, holding him at the waist as he chins an abdomen.

Blinks up with dark, green-ringed eyes. ]

What else do you want? I can show you what you never dreamed. Omnipotence City, the parliament of pantheons. I will take you there, Stephen, built with trimmings from the clay of Creation, fired with embers that lit the First Sun. All the secret corners of the multiverse, they are yours, sights and magics that the Sorcerer Supreme is not permitted to know, that none have ever known. You can never know them without me.

[ A frown scores between his brows, intense and focused as Loki's voice cracks. ]

All this I will give you, Stephen, if you will be but mine.

[rehandle]

[ There goes any hopes of damage limitation. The offerings sting as they land, Stephen's expression tense with changing shades of surprise as he bears witness to Loki arranging him a bouquet of secrets. If he were ever to succumb to bribes, they wouldn't be money. They would be out of reach places offered up like forbidden fruit - perhaps by a god whose words weave them into promises.

I am in danger. Yeah. He recognises that now. Less a thin layer of spellcraft thrown together three states over, he wonders how much worse that danger might be.

Loki's price yanks him back into present reality. His answer's immediate. ]

—Okay.

[ Which could be confused for simple acquiescence if it weren't followed by a sudden flurry of motion from behind him, the cloak moving fast and fierce in a bid to wrap over Loki's eyes and rob him of some of that laser focus. ]

[ikols]

[ The moment he believes Stephen is his he looks like he might beam with joy but that split-second is short-lived. A yelp of alarm as the cloak furls around his head has Loki hastily releasing Stephen in order to yank on that binding force instead, muffled curses meeting fabric. ]

Stephen!

[ Odin's tree where I could not move, held prisoner. There's a note of panic in the way Loki yells anew. ]

[rehandle]

[ Loki's grip gives and Stephen steps away. When he hears that shout, muffled under fabric and tinged with something unexpected, the cloak is already anticipating his need and on the move to meet it: it disengages, making the short trip back to latch onto Stephen's shoulders and lift him up and out of easy reach.

He's regarding Loki from his new distance, concern evident mostly in the patience it takes him to not immediately turn his attention back to the ward he'd been casting. ]

I need to finish this spell.

[ikols]

[ The gasp he gives drags down air in a rush once the cloak disengages and he struggles to rise, eventually staying on one knee with blurry-damp eyes. He offers up a hand as if to lead Stephen back down into his embrace. ]

What are you doing? Are you afraid I would cause you harm? I would never! I swear it.

[ Stephen is so far away, out of reach. It makes Loki's heart rend and writhe in his chest, twisting to find a reason for the betrayal. ]

Am I not to your liking? I can be whatever you want! [ Zelma, he loved her. The moment he shapeshifts is between one blink and the next; long hair cascades down her shoulders and Loki stares up sadly, altered but still wearing the same anguished expression on softer, feminine features. ] Please, I cannot bear to be feared by you.

[rehandle]

[ Histrionics. Spell-induced and better than what came before them. From a distance, it's easier to separate himself from reality as it's mapped out in Loki's own head, and he takes a full breath and turns his attention back up to check where he'd left off with the casting—

Only for his focus to drawn back again as change catches at him and he looks down to see - her.

That's new. Except there's every likelihood it isn't. As he's learned, somewhat painfully, it's a mistake to assume that what's true of one Loki is true of them all.

It's difficult to know if the pity he feels is for the denied god of the spell's drama or the addled one who wouldn't be saying any of this when of sound mind, but as he starts to pull symbols back out of the ether that sympathy compels him to at least do her the favour of not pretending like she isn't there. ]

I'm not scared of you. Take a seat. We'll talk when I'm finished.

[ikols]

We will talk now, this is important to me.

[ Loki gets to her feet, using the only weapon she has against Stephen with him so far away. Her Silvertongue locks each word into the air, buoyed by the love spell simmering with an undercurrent of force, coercion thickening in a wave toward him. ]

Come down, Stephen Strange. Come into my loving arms, be my consort in the eldritch and arcane, let me walk you through nebulas of possibility.

Come down.

[rehandle]

[ He hasn't warded against this. Ambient magic and anything that tries to breach with force, yes - but the magic here is wound up in words and they find the loophole, passing through his guard by merit of being heard, the power of two gods enough to overwhelm any filtering his spell might have provided. His hands drop, mind gone briefly blank as he turns in the air and makes to descend—

Only his flight isn't in his own power. The cloak yanks at him, a short jolt that becomes an abrupt escape, winding him away between trees until the hiss and sting of the wind against his face and the distance from the god at his back pulls him back into command of himself. Stephen rips a portal out of the air and in seconds he's back in Central City, breathing hard.

After a minute, he pulls out his phone and puts in a call back to Loki. Pick up. Do not be throwing a godly tantrum. Pick up. ]

[ikols]

[ Loki's infuriated yell as Stephen is flown away by the cloak echoes off the trees and she paces, back and forth, gripping her hair until she wends her way to lean against a tree. With Stephen absent it's easier to think, to gasp at how awful what she did was in attempting to influence his free will, and she covers her face to cry a little in frustration.

When her phone goes off, she takes a few deep breaths before reading the name and answering in a shaken voice wholly unlike the coercive power of before. ]

... Are you okay?

[rehandle]

[ A quiet sigh from his end, relieved. She sounds about as in control of herself as can be managed under the circumstances. ]

I'm fine.

[ It's as much a dismissal as it is a confirmation: we don't need to dwell on it now. No harm done besides a few minor scratches caught from branches as he passed them. He'd been under her thrall too briefly for the consequences to have been any more dire than that.

He doesn't ask how she is. She's already given him the answer. ]

Will you be able to stay put if I keep the town between us?

[ikols]

I know not. I am ... burning. I burn and it aches, Stephen.

[ Trying to suppress the feelings is the next worst thing about the spell, the insidious nature of it causing Loki to overheat as she lurches forward, mind giving ground as the enchantment grinds its way forward over her sensibilities. ]

This is a — a god's work. I feel it. [ Barking out short sentences is the best she can manage, trying not to let her thoughts dwell on Stephen now that her craving for him has heightened with their disastrous audience. She can smell him, his scent lingering in the glade ...

No. No, this is wrong.

She stares at her own arm as smoke starts to rise and shapeshifts back into a man, seeing if that alters what is happening. It doesn't, and his voice is deeper but no less anxious when he speaks. ]

Stephen? S-Something new bodes ill with me.

[rehandle]

[ It's bad. Whatever this is, whoever's power, it's not letting up even after Stephen's removed himself from the equation. He'd been hoping to start his spell afresh elsewhere in Sunset Falls, transport Loki there once it was ready, but it doesn't sound like there's time for that now. ]

I'm coming back. I'll keep well clear, but I have to finish that spell. It'll help.

[ It's a warning to brace himself. If anything's going to make this worse, it's this. But he can't just leave Loki there to be overtaken by whatever it is this other god's spell is doing to him.

So he opens up another portal and steps through high above Loki's little glade, phone line open and held to his ear by the collar of the cloak. He's too far above and too otherwise engaged to notice the smoke yet as he picks up casting where he left off. ]

Just stay where you are.

[ikols]

Okay.

[ His teeth grind as he senses Stephen's magic far above, gripping his phone tightly. Loki folds an arm under, across his chest so as to stop the smoke, and half-laughs, half-sobs. ]

Should I sew my mouth shut, do you think? Oh, fuck.

[ Pacing in a circle to keep busy, Loki bites his lip and muffled grunts of pain make their way down the line as his vision starts to blur, the heat rising up his neck for every second he resists the spell and lets Stephen work. ]

The curse d-doesn't like being ignored.

[rehandle]

[ He's casting as fast as he can, faster than he had been, hyper-aware of the distress Loki's in on the ground. ]

Just hold on. I'm almost there.

[ And he is. The spell's almost sealed, just a few more moments and he'll have to bones of it locked down. After that it's padding, extra protection - it's finding out how much of a difference isolation will make when Loki's already overtaken. ]

[ikols]

[ The spell forces its way into his blood, his mind, and as he becomes more aware of it the pain increases threefold. ]

It knows!

[ It's the will of a god and refuting it is agony in the pit of Loki's guts as he doubles over with a yell, anger fuelling his resistance. There is so much of the other god in the enchantment made on that deity's home-soil that the very air buzzes angrily as Loki tries to buck it off, an effort made far easier with Stephen assisting from above. Glaring at the ground, Loki sums up every ounce of rage he can and drops the phone, snarling for the other god to hear wherever it is. ]

I am ... Loki ... of Asgard, [ hothotHOT ] and I ... am not for anyone to put in their box — ARGHHH!

[ Flame rush up with a vengeance as the spell turns on the defiant will refusing to be enthralled any longer, engulfing him as he screams. ]

[rehandle]

[ Fuck.

It's too late to prevent by the time he understands the battle unfolding below. Nothing he could do beyond what he's doing already. And then everything is flame, the heat of it reaching Stephen even up here, and he seals the spell with one last violent press of magic and then drops down into the buffeting heat to use that seal to its fullest potential.

Taking a hold of the space he's created, Stephen tugs at its contents— and voids it. Creates a vacuum.

The upside is there's no air. No loose and drifting elements for the magic already inside to continue to hijack. No external fuel for the fire that is Loki. The downside is the fire is magic, and Loki is fuel. The other downside is there's no air.

He can't speak because he can't breathe, but he holds it long enough to see if it's having any effect on the blaze. If it isn't, he'll let the air back in - clean air, stripped of the spell on its way through Stephen's ward. If it's helping to quell the flames, he'll hold the vacuum firm to starve them for as long as he can. ]

[ikols]

[ Loki is fuel and he goes up in a wild furore of flames, violently licking at his skin and hair and clothes before Stephen drops down and casts something (oh, there goes the air but it's alright because Loki doesn't need it) and the furious fire gutters.


He drops to the grass and rolls from side to side, smacking at himself to try and put it out. The lack of oxygen definitely reduces the flames but they cling to him like orange leeches, flashing higher wherever he burns fastest, anguished screams filling the glade of hearts. ]

Help, help!

[ At least the rolling is helping too, on top of Stephen's spell. ]

[rehandle]

[ Back floods the air and down swoops the cloak, coated in Stephen's earlier ward as it presses in around Loki to keep the incoming air from breathing new life into diminished flame. Stephen sucks in breath and closes his eyes, dragging his thoughts back over anywhere he's been in the last few days, searching for— there.

A moment later, half the contents of the Diadem's pool come cascading down over them from a portal opened above. ]

[ikols]

[ The cloak smothers the flames that try to leap to wherever it can't reach, covering a far greater surface area than Loki's best efforts, yet the downpour extinguishes the god-sent inferno once and for all so that Loki's shrieks are drowned out (literally) and the enchantment gives up its grip.

(The chair. He burned me in a chair. I burned at the Siege of Asgard. I burn.)

Shaking in shock, whimpers leave the godling as he curls up on his side to see his badly burned hands from trying to smother the unrelenting flames and from the pain all through his body he knows it was a bad day not to wear his armour. He can't see well through one eye; his ear is throbbing; Loki's face and neck stick to the grass.

More than anything, his mind feels frozen in the shock of being on fire. Again. ]

[rehandle]

[ It works. It's over. Or as over as anything like this can really be when the happening of it was so awful. Stephen shuts off the portal and stops the downpour, sloshing over sodden earth to kneel at Loki's side. ]

We need to get you to a hospital.

[ His godhood makes no difference when he's covered in burns, deep and fierce as the spell that's just been purged from him. Hospital is Stephen's first thought because it always is. But a hospital isn't the most efficient option here, and he halts in the middle of his careful checks to determine the state Loki's in as a better option lands with him.

He knows a doctor, of a sort. One who could fix this a lot faster than any hospital could. ]

Stay still. I'm going to call someone.

[ikols]

[ Loki coughs, wheezing as he forces himself up on a shaky hand, burned skin an angry red which his usually carefree flirtatious self inhabits, now scorched raw. A mortal couldn't sit up with those sorts of burns but he doesn't intend to lie on his back like a weakling — not in front of an Avenger, certainly not one who saved him. ]

Take ... me home. My place. [ He shakes his head a little, wincing. ] No hospitals.

[ Whoever it is that Stephen wants to call, they can wait until Loki isn't looking like Deadpool knocked on his ass. ]

Your hand. [ He twitches his fingers, meaning to touch Stephen's. Through swollen lips, he hisses, ] Guide your portal.

[rehandle]

[ It's bad. Loki's going to need some serious attention. But since there are ways to expedite the healing process, Stephen doesn't fight him on the hospital.

The sitting up he does almost fight him on, only it has a purpose. Once Stephen understands it he offers his hand closer to minimise the reaching Loki needs to do and twists to opens up a portal, allowing himself to act as conduit for their destination. ]