Who: Illarion and OPEN
What: Fighting about colors, spicy trespassing, and spicier food
When: Throughout October
Where: All over Trench
Warnings: Brief mention of a dead child.

i. what color is your red?
It has been half a decade since Illarion last put much thought into his appearance. Undeath erased many of life's desires and muted those that remained. Eyes' thrall eradicated individual interests that couldn't be bent to serve the Unearthed. What either of them didn't stamp out, the Prince of Locusts might ridicule into nonexistence, and the Knights Pariah couldn't afford to indulge in the middle of a war. An elven man's interest in looking his best was one of those little things that fell easily by the wayside under those pressures.

With no potential lovers in Trench to impress, nor anyone who knew him living to preen for, Illarion wouldn't have given his lapsed habits a second thought...except for the Black Parade. Every local he'd encountered from the minute he'd set foot in the city had mentioned it, and more, the warding power of a good disguise. Some had even offered to paint his face for him--offers he'd kindly declined, because they'd gotten him thinking: Who knew better how to do his paints and feathers than he did, himself?

And: Why not do them himself? Hadn't he earned the leave?

The initial burst of excitement over the idea (pathetic as it was, in retrospect) didn't last beyond locating some unusual crystals and foraged nuts to trade for what he wanted. That was, he was finding, common in undeath; no excitement or pleasant feeling stayed for very long. But even that fleeting emotion had been enough for him to build a plan on, and a solid plan could see him through any task he put his mind to.

Though maybe not without causing problems out of boredom along the way. By the time he gets to Willful Machine and finds the traders in paint and cosmetics, he's itching to instigate something as much as he's interested in finding some good kohl. An immediate opportunity to cause mischief presents itself in the form of his blindness: Of course, he needs to have the colors of what he's buying described to him... And that means ample room for disagreement on what colors certain things are.

This sets the stage for a scenario that plays out at least three times over the next couple of hours:

Illarion approaches one of the many individuals offering face-painting services, offering to trade for a paint that matches his face stripes. Aha! goes his unfortunate victim, who then produces a pot of paint in Warmblood red. "Will this do?"

"Ah--it grieves me to say, I cannot actually see it; will you tell me what color it is?"

"Warmblood red."

There's an odd gleam in Illarion's unfocused eyes. "And what color do you call my stripes?"

"Just the same--red as Warmblood."

At this the shrike gives a deeply affected sigh and shakes his head. "No, that cannot be--there is much less of the high-violet in my stripes than even blood; they are not the same."

Several minutes and paint samples pass before Illarion turns back toward the crowd to yell at a Sleeper at random; maybe it's someone he recognizes by ((feel)), maybe not! "You, Sleeper--are you a mammal? What color is your red? We need someone to settle this!"

Or, if it's the painter who gets exasperated first: "Hey, Sleeper! You over there! Come tell this fellow my paint matches his stripes; he won't believe me!" Because surely it's a Sleeper problem he's having, and not anything else.

ii. maps and territories (cw: child death mention)
Trench is a fascinating city.

It is also Illarion's new territory and responsibility for the foreseeable future. Establishing a proper patrol around and across it required a map, and a map--when you're blind--required direct experience.

Not needing sleep, he takes the nights to explore. This sometimes means walking the streets in the ordinary fashion, alone and lost in his own thoughts as he counts alleyways and enumerates lampposts. Wandering like that isn't the safest pursuit with Cloverfield's curse lying heavy on the city, but the corpse that trails him--sometimes a mutilated and statuesque woman of his own kind with blue-and-black hair, sometimes a neck-broken child with his eyes and colors--is at least still indistinct in its appearance and lethargic in its movements. He, like all the other cursed, doesn't notice it.

He doesn't notice it even when it follows him into yards and up drainpipes and over walls--for a simple ground-level survey from the street isn't enough to really know a territory, and he's not shy about trespassing anywhere that seems presently unoccupied... Or simply unwatched. Each district presents a different (and thrilling) set of challenges in making a more detailed map of it. Crenshaw's both watched heavily by Hunters--who want avoiding or placating, by turns--and full of empty houses; he does his best to avoid the latter while making scandalous use of the former (a jaunt through a solid wall to an interior stairwell is a quick way to the top floor and onward). In Willfull Machine, avoiding the canals is something of an art form, though at least once he leaps down into an occupied boat to share a ride; otherwise, no one looks twice at a figure fleeing across the rooftops. The wall-to-wall crowds in Cellar Door (to say nothing of the noise) send him seeking abandon places, slinking through back alleys that are still baroque and lovely in their design. Navigating Prufrock above street-level seems to be an open challenge to Hunters spoiling for different training than the Gate can provide, and he finds himself in more than one impromptu game of cat-and-bird when someone decides to follow him.

Whichever the night, whatever the district, there's one constant: Sometime, somewhere, he'll come across something small and breakable, and destroy it. Whether it's tiles kicked off rooftops to shatter on the street below or an abandoned statuette beheaded, a rope cut or a flower trampled, he ruins these little things with the negligent malice of a cat pushing a cup off a table...and always looks regretful as he does.

iii. bird peppers
A shrike's uncanny abilities always came at cost, Illarion's no less than any other's--even if he no longer had to pay that cost in sanity. Spending his nights flexing his unworldly powers makes for hungry days, and while food's plentiful wherever Trench celebrates the Black Parade, even a death-limited palette can grow tired of an endless buffet of sweets and roasted pumpkin seeds. The need for a little variety brings him to Willful Machine and the food vendors there sometime mid-month--and oh, the variety! It's enough to spark interest even from him, however transient.

Today's take, paid for with a handful of strange chitinous black feathers that might have come off a slain Beast, include two dead partridges and their feathers, and an entire box of bright purple peppers. He's got the former tied by their feet and slung over a shoulder and is merrily eating one of the latter like it's an apple, much to the obvious horror of the woman who traded them to him.

Obvious horror might, in fact, be the point. Especially given how quick he is to offer one of his prizes to anyone that gets too close to him. "You are sure you would not like one?"

The mock-innocence is deceptive. Don't take that pepper.

iv. wildcard

((Illarion might also be found throughout the month learning the role of a Disciple in Cassandra and taking incense to various districts of Trench; or, later on, making time to stop and talk to both Cloverfield and anyone suffering from the curse. If none of these starters suit, hit me up on Discord at Plagueheart#0051 or via DM to this journal!))