kaisou | August Event Log

August Event
Dominant Element: Fire
Waning Element: Wind

Full Moon: August 1st - August 3rd AND August 29th-31st (blue moon alert!)

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August has arrived and with it less rain than July, though it's just as miserably hot. Be sure to stay hydrated, especially if you're wind-aligned, as you'll be dealing with exhaustion and a general lack of energy or inspiration all month. Everyone who's fire aligned, meanwhile, will be full of excess energy!

That doesn't explain the weirdness this month with the moon, though. The first full moon of the month occurs early in the month, but whenever it passes in front of the Spirit Vein in the sky... it's probably fine. Thankfully this only occurs with the first full moon. Yes, first. August has the rare blue moon at the end of the month, meaning everyone with a monster change gets to suffer twice. Have fun!

The Great Kaisou Gathering

It is once again time for the Kaisou County Fair, which can be found on the edge of town at the fairgrounds. And with the county fair comes fried food as far as the eye can see. It's honestly a bit absurd how much fried food there is, especially since at least half of this should not be fried. They have, among other things, Fried Soul Food Egg Rolls, Cheese Curd Stuffed Pizza Pretzels, and Deep Fried Honey. Aside from the fried foods, though, there's plenty of things you can do. There's local entertainment such as concerts from local musicians, bull-riding, educational exhibits, livestock contests, cooking competitions (as usual, the chili competition gets the ugliest), rides, and carnival-esque games for all ages. They even still have the triceratops that appeared there last year during the Tear incident, though the normies seem convinced it's a prized bull. Spend a day at fair and make some fond, mostly normal memories!

If you're not inclined to go to the fair, there's plenty of other things to do around town. School starts up in a month, so it might be time to hit up those back to school sales! Get a good deal on a backpack, notebooks, and try not to think about how many times your academic life is going to get interrupted by oddities in the city. And if you're looking to stay cool in this heatwave, you can head to the beach or one of the city pools. Blue Fish Lake has now returned to it's normal depths, so you can go back to renting paddleboats and fishing as you did before. Unfortunately though, the geese are still there.

Chicken, Run

Now, with the fair in town, one might expect to see some chickens around, but only a few, and only within the fair itself. But for some reason, there are just flocks of roving chickens everywhere in the city, and no one seems to know where they came from or why they're here. They seem pretty chill for the most part, content to roam the city like a tiny feathery gang of troublemakers, but if you upset them... oh dear.

Attacking, insulting, or otherwise provoking the chickens (extremely easy to do, they'll attack you if they see you eating any chicken-based product) will result in them swarming you. With roughly six to ten chickens per flock, being swarmed by these chickens will feel akin to be attacked by hundreds of very sharp flying rocks. Should you have gone out of your way to offend the chickens, more will fly in out of seemingly nowhere. All of this is accompanied by a sound that can only be described as "unholy" or "as if a thousand off-key trumpets sounded at once". They won't do any serious damage, but they still hurt! Even worse, all these chickens seem to be completely invulnerable to any attacks you return, so all you can do is either try to escape or withstand the barrage.

Once the chickens stop attacking you (or you just pass by a flock without provoking them), you'll find brightly colored plastic eggs at your feet. Upon picking one up and opening it, you will find it contains random items that should not at all fit inside those eggs. This can happen to you up to three times throughout the course of the month, much like those plants that appeared back in May. What is going on here?!

The Plea for Help

On the night of August 3rd, everyone will hear a telepathic message from an unknown female voice: "Help... help... our Hero will not wake. Calamity Ganon will destroy us all... help...

The next morning, Zodiac will send out an alert message.

ALERT: SPIRIT REALM GATE DETECTED IN MOGHOME.
Element Classification: Fire
Danger Level: High
Designation: Hyrule
Zodiac has detected a Spirit Gate on the Moghome Floating Island. Early sensing reports indicate that a large level of corruptive energy is coming from this realm. We believe this was the source of the distress messaged received last night. Please proceed with caution if you choose to investigate.

Should you head to the Zodiac office, there's an apprehensive energy in the air. The (fuzzy) Professor is there, though he won't be able to illuminate anything this month. If you ask why not, he will point out that his specialty is history and as far as he's aware, there's no historical record of a kingdom called Hyrule existing on Earth. Geez Professor no need to get so touchy about it.

Zodiac, in the meantime, will do their best to fill everyone in. According to their research, Hyrule is a kingdom that once thrived, but fell to an evil force called Calamity Ganon about 100 years ago. According to Hyrulian legend, there is a chosen Hero that would usually reincarnate to save them from such calamities; however, for some reason, this time he failed to wake. Based upon Zodiac's readings of the gate, they believe it's a good candidate to be tethered as a stable gate, but before they can do that, they want something to be done about Calamity Ganon to avoid that somehow getting out of the gate and spreading into the city.

They will also caution that maybe you should bring multiple weapons with you on this trip. For some reason, weapons have a shorter shelf-life in this realm. Just a word to the wise. But on the other hand, they've successfully updated the Libra app to work with some of the more unique features in the world, which you'll find out about soon enough.

Once you're ready, it's off to the gate. The gate this time is located on Moghome, a large floating island that hovers above Kami State Park. For those who can't fly or come up with some other inventive way to get up there, the best way up to Moghome is by a single rope ladder that hangs all the way down from the edge of the island to the ground. When you reach the top, there will be a collection of moogles who are irritated by the gate that showed up in their home. They won't hesitate to express their irritation, and also perhaps attempt to make a character do tasks for them to "ease their suffering". More likely though, they're just mooches trying to freeload.

Once you finally get past the moogles, you can hike to the gate, which is not too far into the island. It looks like a small shrine, with green and blue lights circling above it. As you step in front of the gate, a blue circular glyph will appear beneath your feet and the Libra app will inform you that the gate has been unlocked as a warp travel spot, as part of the Libra app new features mentioned before. In other words, you can use the Libra app to teleport you to this spot, and never have to climb up that rope ladder ever again.

The Fallen Kingdom of Hyrule

When you step into the gate, you will find yourself in the ruins of a church that was once a house of worship to a goddess. If you look outside the church, you can see that you're atop a great plateau and that the church isn't the only ruined building - not by a long shot. Zodiac wasn't exaggerating when they said this was a kingdom that fell to a calamity. Just about everywhere you look, there are ruins of a once great kingdom. Veterans of the Spirit Realm will be no strangers to ruins, but the sheer volume of ruins in this realm speaks to how dramatic the realm's downfall must've been.

On your first visit, you'll encounter an old man. The old man is friendly enough, and will help go over the ropes for the new arrivals. Like Zodiac before him, he explains that this was the once kingdom of Hyrule, but it fell to a calamity 100 years ago. The evil at the heart of this calamity, Calamity Ganon, is sealed within the old castle at the center of the realm. Calamity Ganon has been held at bay by the Princess Zelda, who has spent the past 100 years using her sealing magic to hold him, but she can't hold him forever. They have been waiting for the chosen Hero to wake up from his century-long rest... but for some reason, he doesn't seem to inclined to wake. So, they've no choice but to look for outside help or face obliteration.

From there, he'll walk you through the new features of the Libra app that work in the realm and should help you out. First, is the warp travel. Across the land of Hyrule, there are shrines that were built by the ancient Sheikah tribe to help and challenge any heroes. Find these shrines and complete their challenge within, and you'll be able to use the Libra app to quickly teleport to that shrine's location.

Next, is the Ultrahand mode. When this mode on your phone is activated, you'll be able to grab nearby objects telepathically and move them around (though it's more clunky than legitimate telepathy). Even more impressive, put two objects and you can attach them together with a green goo to build something. You can even fuse items you find lying around to your weapons to give them new attributes or strengthen them. The old man will note that mysterious technology from an even more ancient tribe called the Zonai have begun appearing in Hyrule recently, so perhaps that can be used to make even more impressive builds. Just try not to blow yourself up.

[Mod Note: Please note, Ultrahand and the crafting ability will only work while in Hyrule itself. The green goo will evaporate the moment it crosses the gate. You cannot bring your DIY Gundam back to the city. ]

Finally, rather than a new app feature, the old man will give you a paraglider to help you glide off the plateau when you're ready to see the rest of Hyrule. With all his exposition finished, he'll reveal that he is just the spirit of the last king of Hyrule who died in the Calamity, and will fade away. In other words, you were talking to a ghost the whole time. Welcome to Hyrule!

I Want To Go Home

As you leave the plateau and begin your trek into Hyrule, you'll begin to realize that perhaps the Old Man didn't fill you in on every necessary detail you need to know. Like first of all, the realm is massive. To travel it all in one day is simply impossible, and there's even a few different biomes within the land. Even if you intend to head just to Hyrule Castle and not explore anywhere else, you're still going to be in for quite a journey.

And if the size wasn't enough, this realm is full of monsters. Loads of monsters. You don't have to go very far to find an encampment of Bokoblins and Moblins, or to be swarmed by Keese. During the night hours, monster skeletons will come out of the earth and keep attacking until you destroy the skull. And don't relax too much if you think you've cleared all the monsters in an area, as every Sunday night, a blood moon will rise in the sky and revive all the monsters that have been slain in the past week.

To make matters with the monster fighting worse, this realm seems to have an unusual effect on weapons. Weapons found within the realm will break rather easily, not lasting more than a few battles before they become badly damaged. Weapons that you brought in from outside the realm won't necessarily break, but they will only last so long before they start to dull, jam, or temporarily lose their magical ability, requiring maintenance to be done. If you wish to survive in this realm, it'd be best to have multiple weapons on you so that you don't find yourself suddenly defenseless. For those who are more creative, you can make use of the Ultrahand ability to make contraptions that will help you through your journey. Zonai technology will be found littered around the ruins for your use. These technological artifacts have limited battery life, though you can always try to find other ways to keep them powered.

The weather in Hyrule is... interesting. Rain showers are fairly frequent, with a chance of one occurring every couple days (or sometimes even multiple times a day). This can make traveling and climbing (which you'll be doing a lot of - what is infrastructure in a ruined kingdom?) especially difficult. When it thunderstorms, you'd best stow away any metal items you have on you, as the lightning seems to love targeting you. Some regions of Hyrule have rather extreme climate biomes. Depending on where you're traveling, you best bring clothes that can handle extreme heat or extreme cold. And if you're heading to Death Mountain, you'd better find some way to fireproof yourself, as you're heading towards an active volcano.

As the Old man mentioned, every few kilometers you'll come across a shrine that can be used for quick travel. In order to activate this quick travel, you must head inside the shrine and complete the trial within. The trials differ from shrine to shrine; some of them are combat-based where you're expected to beat various types of robots, some are obstacle courses, and some are massive puzzles you're meant to solve. If you manage to complete the challenge, you'll gain access to a room with a mummified monk and approaching their alter will unlock the ability to quick travel. Again, welcome to Hyrule!

It's Not ALL Bad

Alright, so Hyrule has a lot of downsides to it. But while you're in constant peril in this world, there's some nice things about it! While the kingdom has been destroyed, the races of Hyrule have found ways to survive the past century. The most common folks you will encounter are Hyruleans, who act and look human aside from their pointed ears. Hyruleans can be found living in small villages and outposts scattered around Hyrule, just trying to go about their lives in this post-apocalyptic world. If you travel on major roads, you will even occasionally come across a stable where you can rest in a bed, buy from traveling merchants, and even rent out a horse to use! Merchants use gems called "rupees" as currency. If you don't wish to rent a horse, you can try your hand at taming a wild one - they can be found out in the wilds nearby the stables.

Besides the Hyruleans, there are several other friendly races you're likely to encounter. There's the Rito, a race bird people that hail from Rito Village in the northwest. Then there's the Gerudo, an extremely tall race of exclusively females hailing from the southwestern desert. Notably, men are not permitted into Gerudo Town... but you could always dress in drag to get around this. Next are the Goron, a type of rock creature who live in Goron City within Death Mountain. If being on fire isn't your thing, you can also head eastward to the Zora's Domain, a large city surrounded by pristine waters that are home to the semi-aquatic Zora people.

All of these people and towns will be friendly to the new visitors (unless you're a man trying to go into Gerudo Town). If you're feeling charitable, you can help out the locals with various tasks, such as fighting monsters that have been problems, helping them find lost animals, or gathering resources for them. Not only that, but they've found plenty of fun ways to pass the time. You can go sand surfing with Sand Seals in the Gerudo desert, practice your paragliding (or flying) in the Rito flight area, do some gambling in Lurelin village (a beach village on the southeast coast), or many other fun activities. We have fun here amidst all the deadly peril, really.

Outside the monster population and sapient creatures, there's a large diversity flourishing flora and fauna throughout the realm. You can gather different fruits and vegetables to consume, or go hunting for some game. The culinary style in Hyrule is mostly throwing things into a cooking pot and seeing what comes out, but there's still plenty of great(?) cuisines you can make from it. Or you could try your hand and learning how to make elixirs using various critter and monster parts to help combat some of the extreme elements. Just don't try to mix the elixirs and the cooking ingredients together, unless you want a real upset stomach.

Last but not least, throughout your travels through Hyrule you will encounter the playful Koroks. These forest spirits hail from the Great Hyrule Forest to the north, but have decided they'd much rather play hide-and-seek with the Libra app users. You can find them hiding under rocks or posing as fairy lights. Some might want you to perform simple challenges, such as shooting a balloon with a target on it or solving a block puzzle. Should you find the Korok or complete it's task, it will give you a golden Korok Seed (at least, we hope it's seed). Should you gather three of these, you can turn them into a larger Korok spirit named Hetsu, who will dance and give you the ability to hammerspace a single item or weapon permanently. Not bad!

[Mod Note: Players can up to three free hammerspace slots from Hetsu per month. For each hammerspace slot, they are required to thread at least one of the Korok hunts with a minimum of three comments from your character. Free hammerspace slots can be redeemed on the regain page.]

Traitors in the Midst

Unfortunately, not every person encountered this month is friendly. By now, Libra app users have have received intel that members of Krusnik, a shadowy Earth organization who are fixated on possessions and powers, has infiltrated Kaisou. Led by Alba, a "researcher" that some app users may have done quests for, they are hoping to use the chaos of Hyrule to snag potential victims to experiment on. Their targets are usually younger people with interesting powers, and they'll attempt to come at them when they are either alone or their guard is down. Libra app users can get involved in either being potential targets, helping fend off ambushes from Krusnik, or taking down any members involved. As for the Black Order, they've been tasked with dealing with leader and subordinates by any means necessary.

MOD NOTE: Due to the involved and sensitive nature of this subplot, anything related to the Krusnik plot-line has been moved to its own log here! Please be aware that there are content warnings abound in that log.

Calamity Ganon

Once you've finished messing around and exploring Hyrule, it's time to head to Hyrule Castle to deal with Calamity Ganon. Hyrule Castle sits in the center of the kingdom, in Hyrule Field. Before the Calamity, Hyrule Field was home to the largest city in the kingdom, but now any surviving Hyrulean won't go near the place for their own survival. While the terrain is more forgiving here, it'll be anything but an easy trek. All over the fields and ruins in the field are Guardian Stalkers, large robots who will shoot powerful lasers should they lock onto you, and whose only weak spots are their single eye and a spot on the underbelly. There's a lot of them, and each one is dangerous, so you'll need to either find a way to beat them or move past them quickly.

Once you've somehow made it past the field of death, it's onto the castle itself. Once a grand castle, it now sits in ruin and is covered in a miasma of corruption, or Malice as it's called in this realm. Monsters wanders the destroyed halls in large numbers, including more Guardian Stalkers. You'll have to navigate your way through the crumbled halls and monsters in order to make it to the former throne room. There, you'll find a massive, cocoon-like growth of corruption on the ceiling where Calamity Ganon has been held.

However, before you have a chance to try to destroy the cocoon, Calamity Ganon will sense your presence and use it's power to break free of its binding. A grotesque monster will come forth and attack. It's large, made of a mix of Malice and machine. It can also infuse itself with fire for periods of time. It will be certainly a tough fight, as this is the same monster that brought down this kingdom all these years ago.

When it's defeated, the monster will begin to fall apart at the seams. However, it's not quite done yet. The Malice from its body will fly off and reform into a massive beast out on Hyrule Field. Princess Zelda, the voice you heard and has been keeping the Calamity at bay all this time, will use her magic to teleport you and your party out onto the field, near some horses that are fit to use if you're capable. She'll explain that Ganon is evil and rage incarnate before using her power to bless your weapons with her light magic. Your goal is to use these weapons to strike at weak points she makes with her magic, while trying to avoid getting smashed or burned by this monster's destructive power.

Eventually, the blows will weaken it enough that its true weak spot, an eye on its back, will reveal itself. After that, all it'll take is one last, strong strike to take it out. Once the hit lands, Princess Zelda will be freed from where she's been trapped, and appear on the field. From there, she'll finish the weakened Ganon off with her power of Light, cleansing the land of its Malice and calamity once and for all.

Aftermath

Once Calamity Ganon has been defeated, Hyrule will go back to a, well, slightly less dangerous state. The Guardian Stalkers around Hyrule Castle will deactivate, and the corruptive energy in the kingdom will dissipate. The woman you saved will introduce herself as Princess Zelda, the last living member of the Hyrulian royal family. She thanks everyone for their aid, and vows to do all she can to rebuild Hyrule... and find out what causes Link to continue to sleep. They have a long road ahead of them, but for the first time in a long time... Hyrule may have a future beyond just survival.

A future, as it turns out, that the Libra app users may get to bear witness to. Zodiac will inform everyone that with the Calamity no longer posing a risk, they will be able to secure this realm into being a proper stable gate. So, should you ever feel the need to revisit Hyrule, it'll be there.

OOC Notes

The dominant element this month is Fire! Anyone with an affinity to the fire element will find themselves boosted throughout the month. This could mean a boost to their power, having more energy, feeling more inspired with creativity, having better luck on different attempts -- the boost can manifest in all sorts of different ways. By contrast, anyone with an affinity for Wind will be experiencing the opposite. Perhaps their powers will be weaker, they have less energy, they're having a creative block or general worse luck - again it can manifest in all sorts of way and players are free to play with this mechanic as they'd like.

From this point on, the kingdom of Hyrule will be a stable gate meaning that it'll a place characters can visit at anytime. Characters are also allowed to seek Koroks in order to increase their hammerspace inventory slots without regain points. In order to do that, they will need to find three koroks per slot, with at least one of these korok hunts being threaded (minimum comment require is 3 comments from your character). Please redeem your inventory slot on the Regain page and link your required thread. This can be done a maximum of three times (aka three hammerspace slots) per month.

The original OOC plotting post for this event can be found here. Another Zodiac Post will be going up August 15th to serve as an intro post for new characters and allow characters to react to developments over the network.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'm going to owe him so many weird cooking things...so far I just give him Polly's eggs when she lays them, they're really rich in flavor...

[She hopes the local hens don't get worked up about other bird's eggs...] What do you think you'd do...? If someone from that...'other life' showed up here?

Oh gee this is getting to be a lot tougher than I can imagine… Hm let me see about it

(He can’t imagine what the look on those people’s faces if he did ever get to cross paths with them and he can’t just simply lie between his teeth as he gives his order to the person running the milkshake stall.)

I probably would have told them that they must have gotten the wrong guy in the front of them. Begging them that I don’t resemble him in any form and they might have to find him somewhere. Or that they probably drank something weird in the water.

Well at least I'm not alone in that... [Yasuho murmurs, staring at the ground.] ...I suppose I let him down a little more gently than you would have though, which...almost feels better..?

[The woman groans.] I just feel so bad, he makes me think of a kicked puppy...

[There is, curiously, a reason for that.]

Oh gee, that must be very tough to tell him about the whole past life situation. Yeah it is probably for the best to go easy on the guy so he wouldn’t have this sort of shell shock early on. Bet that he will be very understanding after all.

Sorry about that level of freaking out, I’m just being super paranoid for a while now. Especially after I got that mysterious photo album on my birthday and seeing in the photos faces I never saw before. And they can move inside the photos for some reason.

Er...

[That bit feels a little important. Yasuho blinks, and if the shakes are there, she quietly takes hers.]

....A photo with...moving pictures? And it's not one of those video frames? I knew they made picture frames that do that but...

(It took some time for the person manning the shake booth to make and deliver the milkshakes, but they are now done as said person passes them on to Jamie. He lets Yasuho to get whichever milkshake she wants to get while he gets the last one.)

Yeah, photos with moving images. And yes, there are no video frames involved either. I’m not sure how whoever made this album was able to make these photos move on their own, but if I had to guess, they might have added in magic onto them or they took pictures with a magical camera.

Magic pictures...

[Numbly, she takes her shake.] ....things like that really make it clear how much technology and magic has started to blur, don't you think?

What kind of people are in the pictures?

Oh yeah. It could be the case here.

As for what kind of people in the photos, there was a woman with red hair, a man with eyeglass and, then in some photos, they had a little baby boy that resembles a younger version of the man with the lady’s eyes. And some photos had the boy, now grown, with a red haired boy and a girl with brown frizzy hair.

A woman, a man, a little boy...

[She ponders this.] ...A...family album maybe?

[Actually, considering their current discussion, an idea comes to mind.] Maybe you once knew someone in the photos...

Yeah. It does look like a family photo album considering the photos it contain. Maybe, perhaps I might have. Although the details are pretty scare right now, it is entirely possible that those faces might felt very somewhat familiar.

Maybe it could some friends I once knew but lost contact with or possibly some old neighbors who somehow look identical to the family.

I take it there wasn't anything noted on the back of any of the pictures then...if there was at least a date we could probably pin down a little more...

I have no luck in finding out the exact dates of many photos in the album either, but judging from the clothes that the couple were wearing in some photos, apparently they had the boy somewhere in the 1980’s. Which means that the boy in the pictures would have been in his 40’s by now if he’s still alive.

That's solid parent and uncle range...

[The plot truly thickens...] Though...if we all have past lives, shouldn't that mean any of us could be from another era..?

[......................] ....this is turning into a headache...

[She sips at her shake.]

I’m also wondering about that as well. Maybe some of us might have been hailed from other worlds or time periods. But how deep the range goes is beyond me.

(Jamie is taking some sips on his milkshake.)

Yeah, me too. I am starting to have one as well from thinking too hard on that album and the photos. I can’t get over the strange feeling I had in looking at the people in the photos. Familiar but still all strangers to me.

Maybe we put a pin in it for now...

[Hmm hmmm...] Just until we have the chance to look into it somehow...

Yeah. I agree, Yasuho. I could definitely take a break fom all that strange feelings the album has been giving me lately and relax and have a semi-normal life for once.

August Event Log

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in canon, yasuho says gappy/josuke reminds her of her old dog lmfao....

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