#But either way I become a vessel ; for your purposes or for theirs || M'nghn a' Esl'aaka 2022

[royalreef]

(( It’s that time of year again! I have a long-standing annual event on this blog for the Merkingdom holiday of M'nghn a' Esl'aaka, which just so coincidentally happens to share the date for my Miranda’s Birthday! This is the third year I’m holding this event, and thus, I’m touching up on the information regarding it, as well as providing everyone a chance to figure out if they want to participate and in what manner.

It’s the one single biggest event that I have for this blog, and so I want people to generally be able to plan for it instead of me springing it on them last-second! Plus, I know how long roleplays can stretch on, and this is a lore-heavy event with a lot of stuff going on. As always, if we have plotted something out together beforehand to take place on a certain date or during a certain event, then it will not be restricted to that date alone. We can start that thread early, or even late, and have it stretch on much longer than the given time, which is all the further reason to go ahead and establish something with me over DMs.

That said, this is a very large, very lore-heavy event, so there’s a lot of information to establish!

First of all, it’ll come in phases.

Right now I’m considering this the first phase, being a lot of IC planning and dread. Essentially, the events of the holiday haven’t begun yet, though they’re being considered and put into stone as plans for the immediate future. It also has the least amount of planning involved, and a good place to jump into the event if you know nothing about it. Miranda’s going to be walking around in a sour mood, and all you have to do to get involved is to get her talking. This phase’ll last right up until the end of February.

This first phase is largely through the act of muses ( and muns too ) to be able to gather information on what exactly is happening and why Miranda’s so upset about it from her own mouth. This is the time for questions! Miranda’s going to have a lot on her mind, and be kept rather busy, so it’s not hard to ask her why exactly she has to do what she has to do, what this holiday is, why the Merkingdom has it, why it upsets Miranda, what she has ahead of her, what chances other muses have to hop in, what the Merkingdom is like, and what exactly all of these events entail. 

The second phase is a lot of minor parties and events. Miranda will be visiting other places in the Merkingdom and hosting a few herself, meeting with other Merkingdom royals and essentially keeping them politically calm. She is still going to be having downtime between, coming back to Spooky High here and there, and so can talk with other characters then. This makes it the perfect time to actually talk to her about the event and what it’s about, and possibly even get her mentioning that the main event falls on her Birthday, since she doesn’t actually tell people when her Birthday is! If you want, there is even the possibility of attending one of these events with Miranda, though I will go ahead and warn that you’ll have to be someone Miranda can trust for that to happen, and that both muses’ behavior will be under intense scrutiny during it. This is where the meat of the event is - as it has the highest potential for relationship development and lore exploration without having already been intensely familiar with both Miranda and the Merkingdom.

The third phase occurs within the time of Marth 14th to March 18th. Miranda will be travelling back to the royal palace and the Merkingdom capital city during this time for the “main event” of the Holiday. During this time, she won’t be available for other muses to talk to her about the event nor interact with her involving it, and essentially she’ll be entirely absent IC.

That said, I might still have her join in on dash shenanigans, as they’d be entirely unrelated to the event itself and thus could take place at any time. Anything that could take place at literally any other time in the year, I’ll still do, and I’ll also still write for pre-existing threads, even those that involve the event, during that time, since I know threads don’t typically wrap up in the same time that they last IC.

Another muse can be invited along to this event for a massive amount of lore and relationship development, however, I will warn that the criteria for such a thing is much harder than in phase two, and the vast majority of muses won’t be able to be brought along. You can still ask, but realize this is only for the people that Miranda trusts the very most AND are safe for her to bring right to the heart of the Merkingdom, and if your muse asks IC, be prepared for them to get bitterly rejected. As this is the best time to meet Miranda’s family and explore, not only inside the Merkingdom, but inside their capital and the Royal Palace itself, this holds the MOST potential for lore and worldbuilding exploration, even if it is available to the least amount of muses.

The fourth phase takes place after the night of March 18th, at 12 am EST, as Miranda gets back from the Merkingdom. This is going to be effectively the aftermath. There can still be some plots started, dealing with how exhausted and mentally destroyed Miranda will be, likely with a heavy lean into hurt/comfort as she recuperates from it, but at this point, I’ll start to taper them out and end it.

Here’s the current list of planned dates for both the minor parties and events, where they are being conducted at, and at what time will the main event be:

February 28th: Celebration within the Merkingdom March 4th: Celebration at the Schooltime Castle March 8th: Celebration within the Merkingdom March 11th: Celebration at Schooltime Castle March 14th - 18th: Main Event

If you’re interested in getting involved anywhere in this event, PLEASE go ahead and send me a message! This is a lot of planning and plotting and it is going to be a big event, so the earlier you get in contact with me, the better! This has been incredibly fun for the past two years I’ve hosted it, and I’m very much looking forward to the third. 👑

#Most secret royal advisor || OOC #Given by Divine Right || Headcanons #But either way I become a vessel ; for your purposes or for theirs || M'nghn a' Esl'aaka 2022 #(( polished this post up from last year!! LETS GOOOOOO

[royalreef]

(( Fuck it, interaction call for the Birthday Event?

#Most secret royal advisor || OOC #Pounding of the drums of war || Starter Call #But either way I become a vessel ; for your purposes or for theirs || M'nghn a' Esl'aaka 2022 #(( BC I RLY DO NEED TO START DOING EVENT STUFF.

[royalreef]

       She leaves out tomorrow morning. It’s a late ordeal, so while the travel time is still atrocious, the trip shouldn’t outlast a day or so. The kingdom won’t get to keep her, not this time.

      ..... But eventually they will, right? That’s the promise. This entire plan was to help in her future rule, and to forge bridges that will be used in the current rule. Doesn’t matter if it’s today, or tomorrow, or decades from now.

       Princess Miranda is property of the Merkingdom. She was forged within their hearth, given a form and name and title that befit a creation of their need, and for that she will always be. The very date alone, dreaded as it sits, is proof of destiny. Machinations outside of Miranda’s will are turning, and it doesn’t even matter if she doesn’t want to go back, or tries to resist it. How can you resist something that so wholly shaped what you were? Her future was laid out in gold, set so deep that it didn’t matter what her own choices were. She was tiny. Infinitesimal against millennia of tradition and inheritance, ideas given words given form and shape, a force of creation that had made everything she alone had ever wanted null and void.

                                              There is only one ending to this story. 

       It is laid out in another’s bones, and soon Miranda will join herself to that fate. In all stories of princesses, of kings and gods, there is only one possible way that this can finish. It doesn’t matter whether she escapes the tower, whether she is snatched from the jaws of death, or whether the sword sinks deep into her belly scales and she chokes on her own fiery breath. It does not matter if the knight coming to save her walks or rides upon a horse or carries a banner and shield. It does not matter whether she eats another, whether she poisons the ground she walks upon, whether she flies or swims or crawls upon her belly like a worm.

        Those are all set dressing. Precious little trinkets, for her to distract herself with, to fill heads with daydreams and hatred. Something to keep her still, while the trap sinks further into her leg, calm and gentle as the sacred calf she is, leaving the hurt and the festering wounds wonderfully unaddressed. 

                                              There is no other version to this story.

         The princess escapes this time, but it doesn’t last. The dragon is slain, but she gets up again. Over and over and over again. Not until it’s finished. Not until every last drop is wrung out, until the Merkingdom decides she’s useless, until she can be replaced by someone else who wears her name and face and will be killed again and again and again.

       So the cycle goes on. So every year comes, budding with dread. So Miranda receives knowledge of what she must do, and so she follows it to a T. So she begs them, please, please let it last a little longer, clutching what scraps she’s managed to find close to her chest, desperate to listen in on those who are so free and so far outside of this story. So they tease her with keeping it out of her reach, so she stays in line, so they reward her with what scraps she already has, so the cycle begins again.

       She was born to die. This was never a secret, never kept from her. In fact, it was encouraged. It made her more pliable, more easy to work with, more calm in the face of stress. The outcome was always guaranteed, and if she went to it with grace and skill, if she did not once balk when her body began to rot in on itself or when the blade was placed to her neck, if she did not jump or frighten over her own slaughter— well, then it would all be worth it, wouldn’t it? What’s a little suffering to an ultimate good? What’s a little pain to keep the world turning? What’s the total destruction of the self and all her hopes and dreams bludgeoned to death before her to maintain something so grand, so perfect?

         ....... It wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that she’d be frightened. Crying. Having broken fits of rage and self destruction, and they do come. In brief, lucid moments, it all hits Miranda at once and she is a hurricane of claws and teeth and tears and her own blood on her tongue. There’s a despair so deep and so cold that it’s frozen over, which is partially why Miranda isn’t even mostly doing any of that.

         How many years has it been? Miri should know, but she’s lost count. Probably doesn’t even matter, anyways. This will always be happening. Her agony and rage won’t fix it, because it’ll just be there again for another turn on the rack.

       There’s no amount of energy in the world to maintain that. Eventually it’s easier to just... Give in. Give up. If she won’t get out, if she can’t escape, then why does she fight at all? Better to worry on more important things, like trying to minimize the pain. Better to just try and survive than to agonize yourself further. Let the lights shutter off and close off all the doors, plunge into a numbness and an emptiness but there’s just no other option. Try to cut off feeling. Try to accept your own impending destruction.

         Miranda leaves out tomorrow morning, but in all her years of doing this, it doesn’t feel like her who’s leaving. Someone else, someone who wears her body and shows her what they see through her own eyes, but not her.

                                                                                                      And so it goes.

#Glory and Gore || IC #But either way I become a vessel ; for your purposes or for theirs || M'nghn a' Esl'aaka 2022 #The sea knows something we don't || Drabbles #(( FIRST MINI PARTY TOMORROW......... #(( YEEYEYEYAAHAHHHH!!!!!!

[royalreef]

(( The Fish Birthday has Arrived.

#Most secret royal advisor || OOC #But either way I become a vessel ; for your purposes or for theirs || M'nghn a' Esl'aaka 2022 #(( HAPPY BIRTHDAY MIRANDA.......... #(( and absolutely no one else #(( she 23 now :>

[royalreef]

      It’s time to go home.

#Glory and Gore || IC #Many fish in the sea || Misc. IC Content #But either way I become a vessel ; for your purposes or for theirs || M'nghn a' Esl'aaka 2022 #(( AND THERE SHE GO..... #(( palace time :)

[royalreef]

Please read warnings in tags before continuing.

       Forward creeps time in its deadly slog. One day after another, again and again, in just another senseless countdown to the end, following all the way to its apex without pause for breath or relaxation or comfort. They repeat, even in this misery, that one is quickly replaced by another even as the seconds spread out into a frozen eternity crafted of her torment. 

       Is this drawn out just to spite her? That Miranda’s brain refuses to decide whether it should be too fast or too slow, and picks specifically whatever will draw the most agony out of her? It has to be. There is little other explanation of how it sticks, crawls its way beneath her scales, embeds into the soft tissue beneath their caps and eats away at her.

          That has to be how the itch started, right? If every little drop is torture, if time refuses to behave and tilts the world into a funhouse of horror so that Miranda can truly admire all of the worst parts of what’s coming, does it not make sense that this would be the irritant?

       It still sits there. Right beneath her scales, sandwiched between their hand outer castings and the bone studs buried in the flesh proper. Itching against her nerves, forcing them to fire warnings as the slick spreads. It is a vile feeling. Dripping with rot, curling around right below where Miranda cannot see it, an adipose that seeps down into her with great dripping frequency. Vicious coiled sensation, sitting at the edge of pain, a discomfort that blooms in many fungal spots, a fuzziness that holds her tight and grips her skin tighter with every second more to bear or every hour lost in an haze. It holds her to the fire but never lets her touch the flames, dangling her over the moment where pain begins and leaves her anticipatory but never satisfied in torture or relief both. This is what it means to go stale. This is what it means to be held on ice, only awaiting the moment when death can finally tear her head from her shoulders.

                                                                                     And it does itch.

       Miranda is already aware of her habit of scratching at her scales. Born of stress, she’s had it for as long as she can recall, and it is hard to not notice it when she is so continually chewed out by her beauty team for destroying her lovely scales. Then too, it is an itch, but it is a milder one than this, this utter hell of waiting for the shoe to drop. This has wormed its way deep, burrowed through sinew and flesh, and in the privacy of her own chambers, her claws meet her arms, pushing down into them to find some reprieve.

        On her best days, she scratches the caps. Thin white lines score their polished surface, dents are created in the perfect image of royalty, and her assistants have to scrub her raw afterwards to finish them up again. If she is unlucky, and particularly persistent in pushing her claws underneath the edges, she can scratch into the area where scale fuses to skin, causing bleeding and the burning of split fine nerves.

        On her worst days, Miranda starts pulling the scales off. There is only so much pressure they can take, and applied so pointedly, and her claws are still massive, and hooked, and even she is not safe from their overgrown edges. They begin to chip. Pieces are pulled away, tiny strings of skin and connection stretching and snapping to reveal pink, fleshy wounds that begin to bleed in rivulets, trailing down her arms as they weave between the pale mounds of all of her other scales.

        The ITCH still remains. It darts back and forth, evading her. Refusing to be trapped beneath a claw, to be pulled out of her broken skin, darting back and forth across her body like it can hide behind any of them. She begins pulling. More and more have to come off, pried with her claws positioned like a crowbar, desperately attempting to relieve herself of the pressure, of the irritation. The blood continues to pour, dribbling onto the floor in splashes that make her jump. Broken bits of scale fall right behind them, clattering with sharper tings that can be heard plainly against Miranda’s labored breathing, the gasps of her barely-held whimpers, the slow, guttural groans of simple animal agony. It sticks to her dress, finds little folds to stick into so that Miranda can be flustered over them later, soaking her sleeves in a ring of crimson that just can’t wait to dry and crust.

        Her tailors will chew her out again. As will her beauty team. And her doctors. And every single person who is assigned to her to prevent her from being an embarrassment to her family line. They will make expressions to themselves, hastily gather themselves. And they will pull her back together again. Stitch everything back into place, force her body back into a pristine condition that she doesn’t even want. Every seam sealed, every scale put perfectly back in order so that no one will know the difference, not that there was ever one in the first place. And Miranda will go back to the Royal Palace, back to her seat of power, and she will pretend this never even happened, that these thoughts and actions and dreadful results are so far beneath her that it’s foolish to even humor the idea.

                                                                The itch still isn’t going away, though.

#Glory and Gore || IC #But either way I become a vessel ; for your purposes or for theirs || M'nghn a' Esl'aaka 2022 #The sea knows something we don't || Drabbles #Many fish in the sea || Misc. IC Content #blood #gore #self harm #self hate #abuse #sh #depression #(( yyyyeah miri is. not having a good time!!! #(( this event + time is year is notably. the worst for her Everything.

[royalreef]

       ..... Well, she’s back home, in mostly one piece, for what that means. Royals are foul creatures, a fact that Miranda is getting worse and worse at politely ignoring for the sake of her own wellbeing. Sure, they’ve always acted this way, but at least before, Miranda didn’t know there was any other way. They were like that because everyone was like that, that anyone who looked at her would see a title to either rip from her hands or to be crushed by, that constantly feeling hunted was normal because she was hunting them too. 

         She really should feel more concerned, that she’s started to consider the land her home. Not where she was born, not the royal palace where she grew up and spent her years, not even the ocean that she was made for and which doesn’t leave her body aching and miserable.

      But the sun is warm and Miranda would rather not stare back at what awaits her near future.

#Glory and Gore || IC #Many fish in the sea || Misc. IC Content #But either way I become a vessel ; for your purposes or for theirs || M'nghn a' Esl'aaka 2022

[royalreef]

      If nothing else, at least she’s finally back home.

#Glory and Gore || IC #Many fish in the sea || Misc. IC Content #But either way I become a vessel ; for your purposes or for theirs || M'nghn a' Esl'aaka 2022 #(( aaaaand the event is done- #(( only wrapup now

[royalreef]

      Almost time to go back home. Mere hours away now, until she returns to the Merkingdom. Returns to the Palace, to her duties, to her title. Until she is tucked away beneath the waves, unseen by the sun that she has gotten to know so well, to face her people, her family, her sisters, her father, and the vacant hole where her mother used to be. Even a week feels like finality, like eternity, that it can and would seal her away forever, damned to the fate she knows she can never escape.

                                  And yet again, Miranda is afraid of going home.

#Glory and Gore || IC #Many fish in the sea || Misc. IC Content #But either way I become a vessel ; for your purposes or for theirs || M'nghn a' Esl'aaka 2022 #(( places this here as the main event begins.........

[royalreef]

       Uh oh. Amanda’s in a bad mood, and Miranda’s not looking forward to having a little post-Ball chat with her.

#Glory and Gore || IC #The rumor mill || Dash Commentary #But either way I become a vessel ; for your purposes or for theirs || M'nghn a' Esl'aaka 2022 #(( ah yes. the ''babysitting'' part. #(( aka miranda gets lightly ''tutored'' by amanda and overseen by her just before the big event #(( but alas. we wont see the outcome of that Here.

[royalreef]

      Good afternoon, she gets to babysit the Crown Princess for the day.

#Don't you want devoted followers? || Amanda IC #But either way I become a vessel ; for your purposes or for theirs || M'nghn a' Esl'aaka 2022 #Many fish in the sea || Misc. IC Content

[royalreef]

       A breath is sucked between her teeth as Miranda reads over who to expect tomorrow. A celebration at her castle is one thing, even with the sensation that these guests are invading the one place she feels so secure and safe, that they will find her secrets. It is another thing entirely when it is family who is deciding to visit too.     

#Glory and Gore || IC #But either way I become a vessel ; for your purposes or for theirs || M'nghn a' Esl'aaka 2022 #Many fish in the sea || Misc. IC Content

[royalreef]

      By all estimates, it looks like Miranda’s trying to smother herself. Her hands clutch tight to a pillow, smashing it over her face and head so completely that she vanishes beneath it, hidden between that and the cushions below her. The biggest hint that she’s not — or, not exactly — is the fact that there’s a low, miserable groaning coming from the merprincess, enough to be felt in the ground around her.

                          It’s been a long two days, and she’s missed these comforts.

#Glory and Gore || IC #But either way I become a vessel ; for your purposes or for theirs || M'nghn a' Esl'aaka 2022 #What the tide spits up || Open Starter

[royalreef]

@gigabattery​ inquired:  “When is the last time you ate?” Noticing Trauma - Accepting

      The question didn’t even make Miranda pause. That was the funny thing, wasn’t it? That Miranda was getting used to that being one of those ever-persistent things that she couldn’t shuck off, floating around her all the time, unable to be missed. Miranda couldn’t see them. She could feel the weight of them, bearing down against her scales, but that was a different story than seeing them.

      Stubborn. At least underwater, amongst her own people, no one dared ask the question. They danced around it, of course, suggested hints of it when they thought it could slip beneath Miranda’s defenses, but they feared her enough and thought highly enough of her position that they dreaded ever making clear that open secret.

      The land, in comparison, had no grace to spare. It came in like a wrecking ball, finding the sore spots and scratching them into open wounds if they could. All the time asking why Miranda flinched, or why she didn’t answer, or was she in pain?? Even when the blood had started to pour and all Miri could do was gasp for breath. Clueless as infants, and with just as much tact. It was one of the few things Miranda truly despised the land for, which at least came with the justification that it was mostly her that they were hurting with their carelessness.

      “Lunch was scheduled at 1,” she began, as if that answered the question. Miranda knew it didn’t, sitting there as conversational filler, but she didn’t really care to put the point back into the spear tip, so to speak. Sure, it rang hollow around her paling scales, her tired eyes, her avoidant gaze, but Miranda paid it no mind. She avoided the unavoidable by burying herself into preparation, nose held low to paper below her. “I saw to it as I followed my routine.”

#Glory and Gore || IC #Dreaded rumors || Asks #gigabattery #disordered eating #But either way I become a vessel ; for your purposes or for theirs || M'nghn a' Esl'aaka 2022