+ May your days be merry and bright, and may all your ewaymases be white. +

[vitaelamorte]

♪ I'm dreaming of a white Ewaymas~ Just like the ones I used to know~ ♪

That's totally how the song goes, right? In any case, welcome to Ewaymas 2016! We're a little later than usual this year, so this event will run from December 15th to December 26th. Why the 26th? Think of it as a mod-sanctioned backdate day - ICly the event will end on the 25th, but it's silly to have the final day be when a big chunk of you won't be here. For those of you who will? Congrats, you get an extra day!

One quick announcement before we get started though - if you signed up for Secret Santa and NOT received your giftee email yet, please PM vitaelamorte as soon as possible. Notices went out on December 4th, so everyone should have their match-up by now! Similarly, if you need to pull out of Secret Santa for any reason, let us know so we can assign a pinch hitter to your giftee!

With that all squared away, here's all the event info, under the cut - because there is a LOT this time:


At midnight on December 15th, Wonderland will undergo its usual holiday transformation. For those who are not used to this particular tradition, it means that in the middle of the night there will be lot of of ruckus and noise as the mansion loudly decorates itself for the holiday season - garland will race down the halls, stockings will be hung for everyone with care, and a fully decorated tree will grow right out of the floor in the foyer. The decorations will be representative of all winter holidays celebrated by anyone currently in Wonderland and everyone will be able to find sign of their familiar holidays around the mansion, except for one small detail - this year every single decoration is white.

Yes. All of them. Sure the yearly snowstorm is to be expected (and once it snows on the 15th, that snow will last until spring) but every decoration is white. All of the garland, every menorah and dreidel, everything will be glittering white. Even the tree, which is clearly a real growing tree, will have white branches and pine needles. If you attempt to pull more colorful decorations from the closet, they will only give you white ones (but anything else you pull from them will keep its usual color scheme).

And at first, it will seem like this is the only change for the season. The day will proceed as usual. No other holiday magic to be seen. But when night falls and everyone is nestled, all snug in their beds, they will not have their usual dreams. Instead they will "wake up" in an alternate version of Wonderland - one where those white decorations are displayed on top of white walls, white furniture, white everything in the common areas of the mansion. Even when the holidays are over, this mansion would go back to a mostly white color palette. There are others in this pale place, your friends and loved ones, but something is not right. They are all nice enough and everyone seems content, but it will become apparent the more you speak to them - they do not remember anything outside of Wonderland. None of them do.

For those of you who have been paying attention, this is exactly what happened to Alice! After remaining in Wonderland for decades, she eventually lost all of her memories of home. A few more details on this alternate world in bullets:

• THIS IS NOT TOTAL AMNESIA - Characters in this alternate Wonderland will have only forgotten all of their isolated memories of home. This means they will remember who they are on a basic level, but they will only remember canon friends and family if they've been in Wonderland at the same time. For example, Characters A and B are sisters and are both in Wonderland, meaning they will remember each other and that they are sisters, but not the world they came from (aka they must have grown up in Wonderland without parents). Character C had a sister in canon who never came to Wonderland, so they will have forgotten that they ever had a sister. And Character D has a sister who was in Wonderland at one point but left at some point, and Character D will only remember that they were in Wonderland together, and not any of their shared memories of home. Dreamers will NOT be able to make them recall their lost memories through normal means like talking and showing them photographs but see the last bullet point for one opportunity to help them.


• NO ONE IS LOSING THEIR EYES OR OTHER BODY PARTS - that was a special circumstance for Alice and is not a requirement for anyone to lose all their memories of home. The main symptom, aside from the memory loss itself, is complacency. If you do not remember ever living in another place, then you will assume that the only place you have memories of is your home.


• THERE WILL BE A LOT OF GAPS AND FUZZY PLACES - many important words will be completely forgotten and there will be holes where more sensible memories should be (like where are all of your parents? Why was there never a giant Wonderland orphanage? Why is just about everyone lacking in formative childhood memories?) The general attitude among these residents is to ignore the inconsistencies - remember, this is their normal, and if no one can remember these things then it isn't unusual. They will also have very poor concepts of time, though it is clear they have been in Wonderland for a very long time. They will also remember your character an will be under the impression that your character is acting very strange - because normally in the Dream Wonderland, your character does not have their memories either.


• AU WONDERLAND: A HISTORY - According to everyone in this world, the Queen of Hearts was overthrown. No one has seen her in...well, no one knows exactly, but it's been a while. Instead, the White Queen is in charge and just about everyone considers her a significant improvement. She's kinder, she's nicer, and even those who are wary of her will struggle to have anything bad to say about her. She will not appear in this event, but everyone will swear up and down that she cares very deeply for her subjects. Some will even willingly be loyal to her, and consider her their Queen. The biggest point in her favor is that there hasn't been a single event since she took over, and her reasoning is that she does not see the need for her subjects to suffer so much. They live ordinary, peaceful lives in her monarchy, which is more than they've had in years.


• WHAT ABOUT THE MIRRORS? - in this alternate world, there is little animosity for the Mirrors. The White Queen rules over both sides, but sees no need to pit them against each other the way the Queen of Hearts did. She is kind to her Mirrors even though she did not Make them, and does not demand their devotion with threats of Unmaking. She appreciates them for who they are, exactly as they are, and finds value in each and every one of them. Due to the physics of Wonderland they still have to remain on their side of the glass more often than not, but relations between the sides are not uncommon - many Reals and Mirrors correspond through messages and exchange things through the glass by leaving them within arms' reach of it.


• THE MIRRORS WILL HAVE THESE DREAMS TOO - normally Ewaymas does not extend to Mirror Side, but all of the Mirror Characters will be subject to these dreams as well, so they can see the sort of monarchy they could be living in. None of their alternate peers will have memory troubles, but they will be universally happier now that they aren't living in the Queen of Hearts' abusive dictatorship. THERE WILL BE NO CROSSING THROUGH THE GLASS IN DREAMS mostly on the grounds that this event is complicated enough as it is.


• THERE IS CONTINUITY BETWEEN NIGHTS - characters will go back and forth between the two versions of Wonderland EVERY time they go to sleep, and while they are in Dream Wonderland those in the Waking Wonderland will not be able to awaken them until they "fall asleep" in Dream Wonderland, no matter how hard they try. When they return to Dream Wonderland the next night (and each following night) the people they encountered will remember them. HOWEVER there is not continuity between dreamers, so Character A and Character B will have the same dream of an alternate Wonderland, but with different conversations and different content.


• THERE WILL BE A LOG FOR THE DREAM WORLD - How it works is you will make a top level for your character's dreams, and then from there you will be able to tag other people's top levels and play as the alternate, Alice-ifed version of your character.


• IF YOU DIE IN THE DREAM YOU DIE FOR REAL - and YES it is a mansion death. This is only true of "Awake" characters though. You could kill an Alice-ified cahracter in a dream and it would not add to the awake version's death toll, but if YOU die in YOUR dream, you die for real. Any injuries sustained in Dream Wonderland will appear on you in Waking Wonderland. If you are holding something when you fall asleep, it will appear in your hands in the world you wake up in. You will always wake up in whatever clothes you went to bed in (though you can always get a change in the closet, since people might ask why you're running around in pajamas).


• KEEP YOUR EYES PEELED - More details on this will come in the log because this post is getting REALLY long but there will be an opportunity to return one random memory to one person in the Alternate Wonderland, if you so choose. There will also be a few more hints there on why this Wonderland is so peaceful and how the White Queen has managed to do all of this, but the above information is everything your characters would know about it. Everything else is a closely-guarded secret.

That should be most of it! One final note though - because characters will not really be resting when they are sleeping, many characters will start to feel the classic effects of sleep deprivation depending on their tolerance for that sort of thing, especially towards the end of the event. They might even start to lose track of which Wonderland is which! Everyone will get their first good night's sleep on the night of December 25th. Aside from that, they are free to do whatever they want to during the day, while they're awake.


As usual there will be a FAQ thread, but I'm also going to make a separate thread for plotting what your Alice-ified characters will be like and what they've been up to under the new monarchy, in case anyone wants to hash out CR specific to that alternate Wonderland (so that it's all nice and separate from your actual event plotting).

I KNOW THIS WAS A LOT TO READ THROUGH THANK YOU FOR MAKING IT TO THE END and we all hope you all have a very Merry Ewaymas (and a happy holiday season in your real lives)!

~ Koji

Comments

ROBYN COUSLAND

[heroica]

Robyn, like my other two characters, will be perfectly happy in Wonderland! She doesn't have family there, true, but she also doesn't remember that her real family was massacred or that she died ending the blight back home. Since she also isn't a Grey Warden, Robyn is more or less a medieval lady with a big dog. She doesn't have the array of skills with weapons and things that she had from Ferelden, but she does enjoy a generally active lifestyle in addition to spending a lot of time reading all around the mansion and grounds. She's loyal to the White Queen, too, and will happily tell you so.