If You Don't

[animusmods]

Characters: All who are signed up for the If You Don't event!
Setting: Everywhere
Format: Anything
Summary: The shadow children come out to play, hungry for their candy...
Warnings: Psychological horror, possible character death.

As those who are participating in the event wake up on the morning of the 26th, they'll see clawing hands at the edges of their vision that dart away as soon as they're fully awake. Maybe it was just a lingering dream? But there's another note left for them to find:

trick or treat
smell my feet
give me something good to eat

i f y o u d o n ' t

There is a drawing of a heart at the bottom of the paper, as usual for notes received during Ruana's games, though it's wet and red and appears to be fresh blood.

Still nothing, will happen until the sun begins to set. Once it does, skittering, shifting shadow children will come out to play, tracking down one of the characters participating in the game. They will request a specific kind of candy--not with a normal voice, but with a penetrating, tearing sort of mental intrusion.

You will have until 11:59 PM to figure out what they want, and woe betide you if you get it wrong and give them something they don't like...

Reply to the subthread for each night to receive your character's riddle for that night. Note: While you can request riddles in advance, you will not receive the riddles for nights 2 and on until your character has solved or failed to solve the riddle preceding it and received their consequences, if applicable.

Riddle Subthreads:
October 26th
October 27th
October 28th
October 29th
October 30th
October 31st

Feel free to create your own top-levels for IC mingling during these days - to have your character trying to puzzle out their riddles, search for/negotiate with people who have the candies they need, make attempts to steal candies, and deal with any consequences they get later on for not giving their shadow children the correct candies - but be sure you indicate which night it is in the subject header.

Some other things to note:
- Now that all the remaining candy in the Tower has been put into bowls, it can be perceived and interacted with by everyone, even those who are not signed up for the event.
- Candy that is removed from a bowl will remain in existence so long as it is in a character's hand, but will vanish if set down, put into a bag, etc. If it is transferred from one bowl to another, that is okay. If it is taken from a bowl and handed to a shadow child, that is okay.
- Only the character being asked for candy will be able to hear the shadow child that is doing the asking, though others will be able to see it.
- The shadow child will follow your character until they fetch the candy from their room and will repeat the riddle at any time, when asked; this can be handwaved without a mod response.
- The shadow children will not take any notice of characters that are not the ones they are asking for candy from.

Mod replies will only occur in the riddle subthreads, to 1. give out the riddle and 2. respond with any consequences once a character has given (or not given) a shadow child their candy.

Comments

[keepscalm]

[England does a double-take as he passes her, because-- well, he knows that face, and it hasn't gone well for him any time it's turned up in the Tower. He already feels an unpleasant pinch in his chest at the recollection of screwing up with the other Amelia, and the Amelia before that.

Before he can wonder too long on if this meeting will go as badly, her wings catch his attention. The others...definitely didn't have those.

Even though England is the one who spoke first, it's a moment before he fully registers what she said. At that moment, he starts a bit, tearing his eyes away from her wings (staring, he was staring, how ungentlemanly). Candy...pumpkins? Would candy pumpkins count for the riddle?]

It wants something that can be found at harvest time. I haven't seen any other pumpkin sweets, so-- [He stumbles a bit, clearly distracted by something other than the riddle, but he tries to play it off by continuing.] Do you suppose those would work?

[ladyliberty]

The little ones that are like candy corn, right? [She did notice him staring, but she's not exactly unused to it, so she doesn't give it much thought.] Seems like they should work, yeah.

[keepscalm]

[He tries to distract himself with reasoning out the riddle, squashing down his Amelia-related conflicts to deal with later in relative privacy.] Ten of the bigger and fifteen of the smaller, it said. I already gave it apples...

[And then a thought occurs to him. At first, he'd assumed he needed ten pumpkins and fifteen apples, since apples were smaller than pumpkins. But if it wants the pumpkin candies...then those would probably be the smaller ones, in this case.

After a moment of thought, England clarifies:] I believe I need fifteen of them.

[ladyliberty]

Shit... I don't have that many. But you can have the ones I have.

[keepscalm]

[Hardly surprising. Fifteen is pushing it.

England frowns and folds his arms over his chest, averting his eyes from Amelia just slightly and trying to ignore the guilt he feels at her response.]

Are you certain?

[ladyliberty]

I only have a handful. Like four or five maybe. Sorry...

[keepscalm]

You don't need to apologise. I'm sure it's better than nothing.

[He pauses, a bit of an awkward weight to his silence. He's offered help quite a few times now in exchange for candy, but he still can't get past the whole...Amelia thing.]

Is there anything you require? It would only be proper of me to offer assistance in exchange.

[ladyliberty]

No, I already got everything today. [A pause.] Are you Sealand's dad?

1/2

[keepscalm]

Wh—?!

[His dad? He knows there's a family resemblance, but—!]

Heavens, no! [His denial on that point is vehement.]

2/2

[keepscalm]

[...but after taking a moment to un-ruffle his proverbial feathers a little, he explains.] He's...my little brother.

[ladyliberty]

Ohhh, gotcha. [She smiles.] He's a good kid. It must be nice to have some family with you.

[keepscalm]

[England glowers, which is perhaps not the best way to make a good impression. But England doesn't have much of a good track record with that anyway.] I'm not sure what kid you've been talking to. He's been a brat as long as I've known him.

[Brothers...]

[ladyliberty]

[Definitely grouchy.]

I mean, I don't have any or anything, but I'm pretty sure little brothers are supposed to be like that.