>>30171574
>[]Sit and talk to Jill. Explain everything you should have told her a couple of weeks ago.
Avril will use that information against us; better that we see where Jill stands now, and if we're going to have to cut her out of our battle plans.

>>30171574
So much responsibility. What to pick? Gah.

I guess...
>[]Sit and talk to Jill. Explain everything you should have told her a couple of weeks ago.
It could bite us in the ass, but probably not TOO badly.

God, I wish you fuckers had never done what you did back in thread 6. Shit.

>>30171574
((Also, ANNOUNCEMENT:

You may or may not have noticed that the amount of time I have available for questing, as well as the actual energy I have available to put into my quest, has been steadily dropping over the past few months. I expect this situation to correct itself in the medium term, but not any time in the next few weeks. As such, there is a definite need for a hiatus.

I've been putting this off for quite a while now because I didn't want to interrupt an important plot arc or leave people with a massive cliffhanger for a month or two, but the result is just that the quest is slowing down even more. Part of the way that I run things is that there's always going to be a cliffhanger, there's always going to be tension and too many things to handle at once. Having every single plotline resolved and everything be totally at peace just isn't going to happen before the actual end of the quest.

As such, once the current set of threads around the Fae and the Spring Court are resolved, the quest is going on a hiatus of indeterminate length. Hopefully not more than a month or so, but I can't be entirely certain.))

>>30171574
>Sit and talk with Jill...

>>30171717
>>30171777
>>30171881
((Writing.))

Jill, the boy you'd been friends with and liked hung himself. I hung myself and then woke up. Remember when you were chucking knives at your mother, and when it looked like Avrils hair was on fire. How you were both brought back down before you did something that couldn't be taken back...
It happened to me before...I let go and gave in to try and save her from Jason's thugs...
It didn't save her, not from me. I did something that can't be taken back. And I fought for forgiveness, cut a part out of my soul and gave it to the court. Wanted to believe what I did could be forgiven. It can't.

>>30172231
"Uh, Jill... can we sit down a moment?"

"What? We're already sitting down... why are you looking at me like that? What's going on?"

"Sorry. Look, we need to talk. There's something important I need to tell you, something that happened between me and Avril."

"What, the thing with her knocking you out? I know about that, Chris, I was there when it -"

"No, not that. Just shut up a moment and let me talk. Uh, how the hell do I put this... okay, so, you remember last week, the storm, when you were throwing knives at your mother, or before that when Avril nearly put geases on the entire town? Sometimes people nearly do stuff that can't be taken back. That can't be forgiven. And sometimes they actually do them. I... I let go of myself, I lost control, and I did something terrible to Avril. It happened like this..."

There's a long pause after you finish your explanation. Jill shifts uncomfortably in her seat. She's not meeting your eyes.

"I, um... I guess I can understand why you told me. And I guess it's better that you're admitting it yourself, but... I don't know how to deal with this. I think I need to... to go away and think about some things, okay? I guess you had a point, what you said at the start."

"You mean about the storm, and the knives?"

"About there being things you can never take back. I... should go. I'll call you later, or something." She gets up and walks awkwardly away.

Well, that went... better than you expected, really. You didn't get a knife through your face, at least. But you've still got a thorn-wall to get over, and you're pretty sure you're not getting any help from Jill on that front, not right now.

[]Just climb up and over it. You did it once, you can do it again. You're not *that* badly injured.
[]There's got to be a gate or door somewhere. That's got to be a less dangerous way of getting in.
[]There are a lot of trees around here. Maybe you can climb one and get over that way.
[]Custom

>>30173263
>custom
>feel for the part of our soul on the other side.

>>30173263
>[x]Custom
Try to meditate, try to reach out for the lost part of our soul, see if we can feel a way towards it.

So, when Avril tries to throw us out again, do we just straight up tell her that we will always be with her, and come back to her, so long as she holds a part of our soul?

>>30173365
>>30173465
((Okay, writing.))

>>30173726
You focus inwards, trying to remember the sensation you felt when you first spoke to the King - or former King - of the Spring Court, when you gave up part of your soul. Maybe there's still a link there, something you can follow to find your way in. Maybe it will lead you to a doorway or a gate, or open a path through the wall.

You remember that sense of connection, of a massive network running throughout the entire forest, of something so old and yet so full of life. You just need to reach out, and - there - you feel it again - a vast force, connecting the whole forest, something deep and powerful and hard to comprehend. It's almost overwhelming. You try to take a step forward, watching how the trees shift around you, and stumble -

You blink, trying to clear your head. You put your hand out to catch yourself so you wouldn't stumble headfirst into a tree, and now you're somewhere else. You look around and see the smooth inner side of the wall.

Well... you guess that worked. You have no idea how you did it or how you're going to get back out again, but at least you're one step closer to your goal. And you know where to find the path to the Court, and how to get in. So... what's the plan when you get there, anyway? How are you intending this to play out?

>>30174874
Avril cannot so easily throw us out, because we are bound by our soul to the Court.
What was the wording of the original contract we swore with the King again?

>>30174874

Find out why Avril didn't just kill us. Why did she let us think there was a chance at redemption?

>>30174874

Find Avril and have a talk with her, preferably alone. If not, then just use the court and declare loud and clera that you can defeat the (I forgot their names). A common enemy is a common enemy, and if she doesn't want to join herself or the court, then at least return the soul piece the King took before should help.

>>30175108
>>30175139
>>30175414
((Okay, I can probably work with this. Writing now, but feel free to throw in anything else you think of, it's all good stuff to build on.))

>>30174874
Straight business.

Just focus on getting our soul back, and let the fae fester in their hidey hole, until we can handle up on the Excrucians.

Avril is a lost cause. Time to focus on those that actually help and assist us. Isabella. Esther. Gloria. Ajani.

>>30175505
Gloria and Ajani already got themselves captured, so they won't be of any help.
Not to mention, that vision we had showed the Fae being pretty important to our victory.
If Avril won't help us of her own free will, then we'll have to consider another coup in order to take over the Court.

>>30175505
Out of the 4 you mentioned, 2 are captured by the Excrucians, and 1's power is only useful with mortal agents who aren't even speed bumps against our foe.

You got a plan on how to make those 3 be of any use to us?

>>30175486
It doesn't take you long to find the strange, looping path that you were almost trapped on the last time. You close your eyes and walk forward until you feel the ground change from packed earth to soft grass.

The clearing is mostly empty this time. The dais and throne are gone, as are the crowds of courtiers, but there's a small group of people standing in the middle of the clearing, talking amongst themselves.

You clear your throat. There's a satisfying flurry of surprise and confusion, and then suddenly all but one of them turn and scurry out of the clearing. You're left alone with Avril.

There's some small differences in Avril's look and bearing. She seems taller somehow, more composed. Her hair is longer than it was last night, falling just over her shoulders, and it seems a deeper green. She's wearing a long, flowing robe that matches her hair, trimmed with silver thread.

You clear your throat again, a little less ostentatiously.

"We need to talk. You could just have killed me, but you didn't."

"No, but I'm starting to think I should have. Didn't I make it plain you weren't welcome here?"

"You still need me to defeat the Excrucians. And you have something of mine that I need for that. A small gem, about the size of your thumb, in a gold setting. I think you know the one I mean. You want to keep your court safe, you need to give it to me."

"Is that supposed to be a threat? You may have beaten my father, but he wasn't using the full force of the Throne's magic. Don't presume I'm bound by the same rules."

"It's not me that's the threat, it's the Excrucians. Remember them? Do you think any of your court would be more than a speed bump to them?"

Avril bristles. "I could fight them if I wanted. I'm not scared. I-it's just easier for you to do it."

"Right, sure. Are you going to give me that gem back or not?"

She scowls. "And what do I get? Your solemn promise to leave me alone from now on?"

>>30177390
time to get The Man on the horn and dominate the shit out of her

>She scowls. "And what do I get? Your solemn promise to leave me alone from now on?"
I gave you my word and so much more before, and look what you did with them, no I don't think you'll get that now

>>30177390
"Avril, I hate you with a vitriol I only barely contain right now. I want -Nothing- to do with you."

>>30177390
"Avril, after all I did for you after the mistake I made, I hoped things could be good between us and they could slowly be repaired given time, but time is something we don't have, give me the piece of my soul back, so we can fight the Excrucians and actually live to tomorrow to sort out our issues"

>>30177390
>I gave you my word and a chunk of my being, a piece of the everything of myself before, you clearly didn't trust it then so what good will it be now.

>>30175747
Isabella can literally get every mortal asset in her pocket if she tried.

Banks, cops, criminals, assassins, and even supernaturals. She has the second most useful power aside from Jill, who is pure destruction.

We should focus more on our Monsterhearts powers vs Nobilis.

>>30177390
"I gave you my word and a chunk of my being, a piece of the everything of myself before, you clearly didn't trust it then so what good will it be now."
"I don't want to cause you unnecessary harm, Avril. I truly don't. I did it once, but it was of no value to you. Just don't cross my path and don't get in my way of fighting the Excrucians."

This doesn't prevent us from tkaing her out for the throne and use the fae to fight.

>>30177496
>>30177509
>>30177683
>>30177649
>>30177882

((Okay, so general conclusion is that there's no point making a promise because she won't honour it, but right now we don't care anyway and just want the piece of our soul back.

Writing now. Apologies for the slow speed of posts - as mentioned at the top of the thread, both my time and my energy are at a low ebb these days.))

>>30177969
But I don't want it to end :-(

I love this quest. It sucks that I'm always on shift and can't make as many posts as I'd like

>>30178020
((It's not ending, I promise. But I really do need a break. I'll be back before you know it.))

>>30177849
It's a useful power, but nothing useful against the Excrucians.
She won't be of any help at all in the coming fight, except maybe for the Man's backup when we die for good.

>>30177969
"I seem to recall giving you plenty of solemn promises before. I even gave up a piece of my soul, and it didn't seem to make you trust me any more. And right now I don't particularly trust your word either. I don't want to hurt you, I truly don't, but I really don't have time for any of this right now. Give me the piece of my soul back, and then stay out of my way while I go and do your fighting for you. Got it?"

Avril scowls. "You really have some nerve, talking like I'm the one at fault here. As for the piece of your soul, I have no idea what my father did with it. I'm not exactly an expert on souls, it could be anywhere."

"I told you, there's a small gem with a gold setting. Clear at the edges, black in the middle, and it looks like it's got something alive inside it. That's what I need."

Avril pauses, blinking slowly, and produces, apparently from thin air, a jewel just like the one in your vision.

"You're telling me that my father put a piece of your soul into a gemstone? That is so..." She pauses, staring at the jewel. "That is so fucking cliche. I mean, really. Thousands of years old and this is the best he can come up with." She sighs and shakes her head. "Whatever. Take the damn thing and fuck off. It's not like it's worth anything to me anyway. It's just a useless piece of junk." Avril tosses the jewel lightly in her hand, and then throws it to you. "We're done here. You've got what you claimed to be here for, so don't come back."

You snatch the jewel out of the air, and everything goes black for a second. Just as you're starting to think it's another trap, the blackness clears and you find yourself inches away from several foot-long thorns. You're back outside the wall of vines, still holding the gem in your hand.

What do you want to do now?

>>30179222

Say Goodbye.

Head out, find Zach. We need the wolf for this.

>>30179222
Break the gem?

>>30179222
We should have taken the throne from her while we had the chance.
Now we have to figure out how to win the fight without Fae support.
Goddammit, we're going to have to make a deal with the Winter King.

Let's call Esther and see how the consolidation of her power has gone. Then we need to consult with the Man on how we can use his power to fight the Excrucians.

>>30179222
say under our breath "then why did you ask for it" and break it

>>30179448
If we were going to do anything now would've been the time to do it. We should've forced her to do what we wanted while we had the chance. The coming fight is going to be waaay harder without fae help.

>>30179286
>>30179542
We're already off the scene. Nothing to say anymore.

>>30179286
>>30179420
>>30179602

>>30179358
>>30179448
>>30179542

>>30179735
>>30179868

((Okay, writing.))

>>30179890
You hold the gem carefully in your fingers. It doesn't seem particularly soft or fragile. But you recall your vision of crushing it in your hand. You wrap your fingers around the gold-encased jewel and start to squeeze. At first it's simply cold and uncomfortable. The edges of the setting dig into your fingers. It's like trying to squeeze a stone.

You concentrate, pushing extra strength into your muscles, using far more than human strength, and are rewarding with a cracking sound. Black mist starts to drift out of your fist. Another squeeze and you can hear the gemstone crack in half. A black fog swirls around you, blocking out your vision of the forest and the wall of thorns. You take an involuntary breath, and it rushes into your lungs, making you cough and gasp.

When you recover, the fog is gone, but you feel... better. It's like you didn't even realise what was missing. Your body is infused with power - the same overwhelming magic that you could previously only focus through your voice is now flooding through your veins, filling your lungs, reaching deep into your bones.

You're whole again, and with that, you can truly claim your borrowed power as your own.

Let's just see them try to stop you now.

>>30181148
((Thank you all for being an excellent audience and for being excellent players. As announced at the top of the thread, there will be a HIATUS. This will almost certainly be at least a month, and is very likely to be less than two months, in length. There will be an announcement on Twitter and in the QTG several days in advance of the quest's return.

I will also be happy to answer questions on pretty much anything up to this point, and although naturally some things will be spoilers, I will otherwise endeavour to be as clear as possible.))

>>30181214
If we had fought Avril, would she have used our piece of soul against us?
I only just now realized that she would have had a trump card against us in an actual fight.

>>30181530
((She wasn't kidding when she said she had no idea what to do with a piece of someone's soul. She barely believes in them. Of course she has plenty of *other* trump cards now, like the ability to teleport pretty much reflexively and command over most of the forest. Whether those would have been enough for her to win is a very good question which I'm not going to answer on the grounds that you might decide to go back and fight her again at some point. Following this little upgrade, however, I wouldn't put my money on Avril.))

>>30181776
Yeah, I didn't understand the wording of the oath.
Did she twist it around so that she swore the oath of someone taking the throne, and then knocked us out, effectively winning a 'duel' against us for the throne?

>>30181776
((Basically, she knocked you out and *then* issued the challenge. Which is distinctly dodgy and at the very least a massive bending of the rules, but she had the guy who officiates the rules, the short Fae with the book who was named as Robin earlier, as part of her conspiracy already, and he declared it to be a legal challenge. And as >>30181953 noted, she more-or-less swore the oath that an actual claimant is supposed to swear, which makes it dodgy-but-vaguely-legal rather than blatantly-illegal. You're still not supposed to swear by the hollyhock, but again, she has the guy who makes the rulings in her pocket.))

>>30182042
Well, now we've got our soul back, once we get some breathing room with the Excrucians, we should head back over the wall, fuck up her shit, and get The Man to 'Isabella' her for us.

Have fun on your break OP, I'll be watching your twitter feed.

>>30182119
((I still wouldn't recommend going directly toe-to-toe with one of the Excrucians, but only because it'll be a war of attrition and you'll run out first. Other than that... you've now got access to Miracles of every type. With an exertion of power you can become as fast, strong, smart, and skilled as the very best of humanity - you can run as fast as an Olympic sprinter, punch like a heavyweight boxer, and beat Stephen Hawking at chess, all at the same time. You can also do certain more nebulous and abstract things related to the creation of bonds of control or obedience between things - fleshing out Domain is one of the things I'll need to do when I'm wrapping up the hiatus. Oh, and you *might* be able to do what the Man in White did to Isabella on your own, now. That's a little bit up in the air - I'll have to think about it. You can most certainly claim, enhance and invoke regular items and people of personal and emotional significance as Anchors, which makes them substantially enhanced, but giving you Wondrous Anchors when you're only very insubstantially a Noble is a bit more dubious.))

>>30182470
>Oh, and you *might* be able to do what the Man in White did to Isabella on your own,
Oh ho, that would make things interesting

>>30182639
((It would, but that's part of why I'm weighing up whether to allow it at all. To a certain extent I'm hacking pieces off two completely contradictory rules systems and mashing them together into one complicated mess, here. Not everything is necessarily going to end up working exactly the way it 'should'.))

>>30182697
Since even Chris, enhanced with power as he is, shouldn't be trying to go up against an Excrucian, will the mortals that Isabella can control being a useful speed bump? Or are they so hopelessly outclassed that they may as well not be there for all the good they'll do us?

>>30182784
((Well, the Deceivers in particular have a more-or-less human way of thinking. They can be distracted, tricked, or decoyed. If it comes to a plain stand-up-knock-down fight, though, Coriander Hasp in particular is going to go 'you work for me now' on large swathes of any kind of non-Miraculous infantry group, human or Fae.))

>>30183000
Did Avril ever love us? Or were we always just her ticket to the throne and entertaining toy?

>>30183000
((To overthrow her father? Since she was old enough to understand that Fae don't die of old age, so if she ever wanted the throne she'd need to take it. About 12 years. Specifically to use Chris as her weapon? Pretty much as soon as she saw him and realised that a teenage boy was walking around with more magical power than she'd ever seen. As Esther's great-grandfather noted, you can see Chris's power at a glance. She always knew she'd need some sort of proxy or catspaw, as she wasn't strong enough to fight her father at his full strength, and Chris happened to be exceptionally qualified for the job.

>>30183035
This one I'm afraid I have to call {SPOILER} on. Sorry.))