JANUARY DUNGEON

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→ 1/12 Lockdown: The Final Dungeon

When preparations are complete and the team is ready to tackle the dungeons, both Attendants can be found at the castle, with Minato sitting on the armrest of the throne with a plain short sword balanced on his knees, and Souji standing to the side with several backpacks full of food, water, and blankets at his feet. "Last chance to change your mind and join the Champions of the Just," Minato pipes up from where he's sitting. "They've got trail mix." The team he's heading, incidentally, he named the Legion of the Dead and there is no trail mix or any other supplies provided by Minato, because Souji is a responsible leader who comes prepared, and Minato just doesn't care.

A several day hiking trip up the mountains for the sake of team bonding was considered but ultimately vetoed, so Souji simply opens a portal up from the forest shrine's torii to the mountain shrine's, and from there, it's only a short trek through the drifting snow to reach the honden. At the stroke of midnight, each Attendant places their hand flat on their door, the surface glowing bright blue and turning translucent: a one-way barrier swallowing each person whole as they pass through the portals.

Legion of the Dead

It's a straight ten-foot drop once you step through the ofuda door in the castle, with nothing to break your fall but hard stone— or Minato if you happen to be the next person after him. It's a large stone chamber, with two large indentations on the far wall the size and appearance of doors, but neither open when touched or attacked. The only other thing of note in the room is a pedestal at the center with three omamoris slowing burning in a weak flame, one with Rio's name and arcana, another with Kido's, and the last with Yamato's, the same ones that were thrown away at the forest shrine on New Years as a statement of rejection of the Kotengu and his lent powers. Really, it's just Rio and Yamato's, though, because Kido had two omamoris to start with and doesn't need this second one. But with nothing else in the room, the first choice is a time-limited one: will you save the omamoris from the fire so Rio and Yamato can have it to summon their Personas, or will you respect their decision and allow the omamoris to burn to ashes?

Depending on your choice, one of two doors will open.

Champions of the Just

Entering the honden brings the group to a large stone chamber reminiscent of the forest shrine dungeon: a circular hub with a dozen arches along the perimeter, clearly meant to entice the impatient to spread themselves thin. Instead of multiple Shadow ghosts appearing from the ether to ambush the group, however, there is only one: a semitransparent ghostly form of a young boy huddled against the archway on the opposite side of where everybody had entered. He looks to be around seven, with very little distinguishing features other than pale eyes staring at the group. The moment anybody takes a step closer to him, calls out to him, or tries to attack, he starts in fear and turns to run through the archway— anybody who gives chase is met with a barrier; in fact, every other archway is blocked by the same invisible barrier, cutting their potential routes in half.

The rest of the room is empty. There should be a way to get the barriers to drop in one of the five available passageways... Will you proceed all together, or divide and conquer?

There is no Velvet Room within the dungeons, and using a traesto gem or goho-m will only bring you to the beginning of the dungeon in either main hub, not outside. Falling unconscious within the dungeons doesn't bring you anywhere to be revived either; all it means is that your unconscious body lies there to rot or get eaten by Shadows until somebody hopefully saves you. So look after one another in the dungeons, and don't be afraid to rely on your Attendants. Souji will keep everybody safe.

→ MOD NOTES

⬥ Both dungeons are team-based and require some coordination with other members of their team, with some decisions involving the entire team (e.g. Legion of the Dead's first decision regarding the omamoris). The teams will make their way through several rooms to find the exit, either split up or all together, with each room containing a battle, puzzle, decision, or another obstacle. The team as a whole will bear the consequences of the actions taken, so please give each choice careful consideration. As actions may affect subsequent rooms, new rooms will become available after the previous are cleared, rather than all the information given at one time.
⬥ A toplevel for the boss will go up once a team ICly reaches the boss' chamber, and overall, this deadline is the end of the month to avoid IC consequences.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Jiro takes the ice, because that isn't too horrible of an idea.]

Straw tea? He didn't fucking make it from warajis, did he?

[Once the restored castle comes into view, Jiro stops. Is it the restored castle, or the castle before it was destroyed? Avoiding the guards is a good idea for now, until they have some sort of plan. But all plans will include going inside.

His injury is no longer his priority, and he whispers to Ala.]

I wanna see what's on the walls in there.

[The murals he was trying to clean before, and potentially more of them.]

[ It might be made from boiled warajis. Souji probably just takes the loose straw, while Minato dumps the entire Shadow into a pot of water, but the effects are the same and they might not be able to get to that point anyways, not without finding a way inside. ]

There's only one way inside, and that's through the front, since neither of us can fly over.

[ At least the gate is up, a twenty foot wide gap in the wall that goes straight to the castle, but it's too hard to see anything in there without getting closer. She has to think about what to do... there's the option of one of them being bait and leading guards away from the castle, but there's probably more soldiers inside, with an actual armory to arm themselves with instead of just farm tools. ]

What should we do? Do you think... if walk out quietly, they won't shoot? Or maybe they're like the people back in town, and will attack right away? Maybe if we say you're hurt...

[ Maybe they will have pity. Maybe they will cut Jiro down knowing he's wounded and no longer a threat. ]

[It's not going to be easy, if they can get in at all. Looking at Ala, Jiro thinks they'll be suspicious of her as an outsider even if this castle is somehow from before the Persona users' time. She doesn't look like a Hirajiro native. But he does. If the guards do know about them and it's a restored castle from the future, they'll probably be killed on sight.]

If they don't already know who we are, they might see you as a foreigner and be wary, if the guards are anything like the people from town. I can tell them I got attacked by a bear or something...

[Either way, their plans are basically "walk through the front door".]

But if they know who we are, it's gonna be a fight no matter what we do.

[ If either way is a fight, Ala is understandably uneasy about all of this, because Jiro's hurt and she can't fight and she really doesn't want to find out what happens if they die here. ]

We can see how they react, whether they let us talk or if they shoot first. If things look bad, we can always run away. How about that?

[ Go up and make themselves known, and judge then whether the soldiers here are willing to talk, or if they'll shoot no questions asked. ]

Or we can just forget about it and find someplace else... Like the shrine. Maybe we can meet up with Minato and the others by going through that door in the back? I don't think the two dungeons would be connected, though.

They might be.

[Which is something Jiro hadn't considered; there has to be a reason there's two dungeons. It's something to look into, even if it's unlikely. The shrine's not far.

Jiro looks over at the guards again. If there's even two more of them inside, they don't really stand much of a chance. Ala has her sword, but they could shoot her before she even gets close enough to use it. Jiro's already bleeding all over the place and it's a very bad idea in the end.]

Let's try the shrine.

[They can come back to the castle if that's a dead end.]

Okay!

[ There's more relief than anything in her voice, renewed energy in her steps as she pulls away from the castle back into the thicket of trees to find that path that will bring them to the shrine. There's little hope that the other team can come out and help, but that doesn't matter as long as the two of them can enter this shrine and find somebody to help Jiro.

Again, she has to march through the snow, picking her legs straight up and down instead of pushing through the foot and a half— and steadily taller mounds of snow until they find that path that's been shoveled and well cleared. Ala stands at the bottom of the stairs and looks up. All there is is the faint blue glow of the weird lanterns with the blue-white flames, but she can't see any moving shadows or hear any voices, though she also can't be 100% sure until they're at the very stop of the stairs. ]

Hopefully there's nobody up there.

[The deep snow is annoying; trudging through it takes more energy than Jiro wants to expend at this point. If he bleeds to death in the first room of this dungeon, he'll never go in one again. Someone can only die so many times.]

It doesn't look like it.

[He's also not discounting the possibility of Shadows emerging when they get to the top. Will the shrine look different, like the castle?]

[ It sort of does, but the difference isn't as stark as the castle's. If anything, it looks like the shine is well cared for for once and has been for a long time, the snow swept aside and structures gleaming under a light dusting of snow instead of the trampled slushy ice normally seen in front of the offertory box only because none of the Persona users bother to maintain the place. Inside each stone lantern is a blue-white flame, and the offertory box is overflowing with golden coins instead of gemstones. There's a spot to burn incense and leave other offerings, and the sign that's to display the name of the shrine's deity is still painted over in black, but is heavily stained with blood, strong enough to smell with no writing visible underneath.

The shrine grounds are completely empty, with no people and no animals either, not even a sign of bird or fox tracks in the snow.

Ala, ignoring all of this, makes a beeline for the honden behind the shrine, where the two bird statues on either side of the door stare down at her with shining red gemstone eyes. The door does not open. ]

[The blood on the sign is the first thing Jiro notices, because he was looking for the name on the shrine. There's no blood in the snow around it, but it smells fresh. Unlike the usual sight at the shrine, crow feet patterns are nowhere to be seen.

Jiro doesn't follow Ala to the honden right away. He's stopping to pocket some of the coins, to maybe examine them in detail later if they don't disappear when he leaves this room.]

[ They may or may not disappear, but they're not the usual currency used by the townspeople he's familiar with either. Terry or Ala might recognize it, if he shows either of them later, but their priority should be getting out of this place to meet up with the others, whichever team that might be. ]

It's no good, the door won't open. Maybe it's because it's not midnight yet in this world?

[ It's nighttime but not midnight. From this height at the top of the stairs, they can see the town in the distance that still has its lights, but once night falls, it's very hard to tell the difference between 2am and 4am, the entirety of night looking exactly the same between dusk and dawn. ]

How're you holding up? Can you wait until midnight, or should we not just sit around and do nothing?

We can wait.

[It won't bleed as much if he stops moving.]

I wanna see what happens at midnight.

[If anything. But they're already here; they may as well see if something changes at Lockdown.]

[ They really can't wait. But Ala nods and scoops up another snowball to pack against Jiro's side, so he can die a slow painful death from infection if he isn't done in by blood loss or hypothermia. ]

It shouldn't be too long... hopefully... The sun sets at around five, right? And it was dark before we got here, so we won't have to wait any more than seven hours!

[ Jiro should take a nap to pass the time. But he might not wake up. ]

[He thinks he'll be dead in seven hours, but he can't seem to care right now. It's gotten to the point where he can't feel the cold, and probably the only reason he hasn't passed out is because his heart won't slow or change rhythm.]

There should be something we have to accomplish to get a door to show up, right?

[ Thank god his fake heart is there to keep him alive whether he wants to be or not. ]

If it's the one in the shrine, it should just open at midnight, like it usually does. It's not like the shrine in the mountains that needs us to be super strong, or the one in—-

[ She breaks off, whipping her head around towards the castle. ]

Oh! The guards will disappear at midnight! Jiro, we just have to make it to midnight, and we can walk right in and go to the Velvet Room!

Yeah, let's go with that.

[The Velvet Room is probably a better idea than wherever the forest shrine door goes inside this dungeon.]

Though if we're already inside a dungeon during Lockdown, I dunno if we should be expecting the same rules to apply here. What if nothing fucking happens at midnight? Does time even pass here like that?

[The mechanics of time inside a dungeon don't follow any logic.]

[ If it's a nightmare dungeon, Ala's current nightmare is never being able to leave this place again, so she'll place her bets on the Velvet Room over meeting up with Minato's team in the shrine. ]

Umm... I don't know. What else can we do but wait? If nothing happens at midnight, we can figure it out then right?

Right.

[And so, they wait.]

[ And now they wait... Ala manages about seven minutes before she gets too antsy and has to stand up and then sit back down. There's no way she's going to make it all they way to midnight... ]

Jiro, are you going to sleep? I have tarot cards, and maybe we can play to pass the time. Sometimes, when people are lost, they look to the cards for answers.

[Jiro was definitely on his way to sleeping, zoning out until everything started blurring together. When Ala speaks, he's pulled right out of that, to full alertness.]

Did you get them from the shrine?

[The crows wouldn't let him get close enough to look at the tarot cards that had appeared. Then he'd been arrested and forgot about them.]

[ Ala shakes her head no. ]

I got them from Akira last month. And inside the shrine, there was only the Moon. Was there another full set besides the one on the door?

[ If Jiro didn't pick the whole set up... probably nobody did and they're lost somewhere, possibly scattered around in the forest under heaps of snow and nobody will find them until spring comes. The relevance, if any, can wait. ]

Edited 2020-01-18 23:00 (UTC)

I dunno if they were all there, but there was a stack of them the crows were guarding.

[Looks like no one found them.]

What do you do with them?

[He knows nothing about tarot, and would dismiss the entire thing outright if the Personas weren't obviously tied to the arcana.]

It's a type of fortune telling! You do it like this—-

[ The exact process behind it she isn't well versed in, but there's a simplified version she plays with by herself sometimes, which is to take out the deck of cards, sit cross legged so her dress makes a good enough table that she doesn't have to place the cards on the snow, and spreads them all out without regard to what's right side up or sideways. ]

You pick three cards and it tells you your fortune! Like this.

[ She picks up a random card and it's... hm. She places it back down without showing Jiro. ]

Like that! Pick three and I'll tell you what it means!

[After Ala just shoved her card back in, Jiro can't expect the "fortune telling" will be anything good. However, he's very bored and it's cold and he needs to occupy himself with something.

He picks three cards randomly, but he doesn't think Ala's doing it right. Tarot scenes in movies are spreading a bunch of the cards out and then flipping them over.]

[ It was the Tower, and she would use a flat surface and make it all nice and neat, but she doesn't have that luxury, so they're going to have to do it like this. Have faith in the cards that it'll do something.

She takes the three cards Jiro picked out, and puts the rest of the deck in her pocket for safekeeping. ...On second thought, she also moves so she's sitting next to Jiro instead of across, so there's no confusion as to which one's upright or upside down. ]

Okay, so the first one represents the past, the center is the present, and the last is the future. First, you gotta give me a question! Like "How do we get out of here?" or "How do I survive winter overnight with a broken stomach?" or "What's for dinner tomorrow?" And then I'll interpret the cards, and advise you on what to do.

[Not that Jiro believes in any of this shit, but he chooses to ask a relevant question.]

Are we going to leave Hirajiro?

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→ 1/12 Lockdown: The Final Dungeon

Legion of the Dead

Champions of the Just

→ MOD NOTES

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