#weaponizing DNF for fun profit and mind control

[kisuminight]

More DSMP Blade System AU Red Banquet details! We'll start with who got invited and why.

c!Sam and c!Puffy got invited because they are the driving force behind Pro-Omlette and the Egg wants to shut that down hard.

c!Ponk gets invited to mess with Sam. Oh, he joined the Egg's side and is a spy? Well, that'll just mess with Sam even more!

c!Niki basically got invited for the same reason, except they're trying to get to Puffy. The Egg did not know about the Syndicate or realize that Niki was close to Techno, or they would've had her stay home.

c!Foolish getting invited messing with Puffy is more of a bonus than anything. The Egg has heard about his search for godhood and got curious.

c!Sapnap gets invited because he is one of the few ties that c!Ant, c!Bad, and c!Skeppy still have to the rest of the DreamSMP. Controlling him will make them easier to influence. Bad was able to wriggle out of this, but it did make a good excuse to get Punz out of the way for a bit, and the roses c!Hannah has helped plant around Kinoko Kingdom are enough of a timebomb/trap to satisfy it for now.

c!Eret got invited because they are the King, even if the King doesn't really have any power. The Egg likes breaking things, and Eret's sense of self and purpose would be an easy one. Eret is also vocally Pro-Omlette, more than several of the others.

c!George, c!Ranboo, and c!Purpled are where things get complicated.

c!Ranboo has occasionally turned up where the Egg can observe him as ew!Ranboo, complete with a Resonance with c!Dream (they were testing if Blades can switch Drivers without reverting to core crystal). The next day, the Egg observed c!Punz as being in a chain Resonance with Dream, and Purpled as the Driver at the head of that. Since none of the Eggpire know about the Memory Patch, or that Dream is volunteering for these experiments, it looks pretty sus. Like, killing a newly Awakened Blade maybe a day after you Resonated with them and they're still in the blind obedience phase. Multiple times. Over a short period. Like, bad and Skeppy don't really have their own thoughts or even private thoughts anymore, but their outsider perspective absolutely has them interpreting it as an abusive relationship, as far as Blades go. Shutting that down and maybe getting access to Dream is why Ranboo gets an invite.

Purpled did not get invited to the Red Banquet so they could kill him. On the contrary, the Egg wants to basically imprison him right next to it and the altar, so that when the Egg gets the powerups from the murder, Purpled is getting splashover effects from this. If that is not enough to corrupt him, the Egg has...

George! Who is slated to get murdered last in the program of events. See, DreamXD is being much more subtle with George as compared to c!Karl. The Egg does not know they are in contact. The Eggpire is made in large part from the original friend group, and they all know how DNF is. George is slated to get murdered last, and if Purpled hasn't joined the Eggpire yet, they are going to tell George that they are doing this because they are trying to reclaim Dream (from Purpled specifically). The idea is to get George mad enough and out of sorts enough that he comes back and succumbs to the Egg. Then they can send Eggpire!George out to retrieve Dream. They'll still be out Punz, but if they have Purpled and then Dream's core crystal, the Egg assumes that Punz will willingly walk into a trap so they can kill him and get him reAwakened by another Eggpire member.

Other non-invite details under the cut:

The new timeline has the Red Banquet taking place late June, early July. Because of that, c!Quackity has already found and Awakened c!Slimecicle as his Blade. c!Slimecicle is noteworthy in that he is the original volunteer for the Blade Memory Patch project, and is a bit weird for a Blade as a result. He's classified as a tank/lightning Blade, and I want to say he is more of the "debuff the enemy" type of a tank than a "absorb all hits" type.

Slime's Soul Weapon is a sword. His core crystal is green, though not quite the same shade as Dream. Since both Blade and Driver can carry and use the Soul Weapon, Quackity comes to the Red Banquet with a sword with glowing green aether lines. He is bluffing on the idea that he has found Dream and Awakened Dream. It very nearly causes a fight with Techno when Quackity goes to recruit him. It does cause a fight with Sam, after the rescuing is done and the Eggpire is running. Quackity is outed as being a Driver to a Blade, though he does not say who the Blade is, other than Not Dream.

The Red Banquet is actually when a lot of people find out about the Blades on the server. Skeppy lets loose from where he's sitting on top of the Egg. He's tossing around homing arrows and Shredding Winds. Unfortunately, the close quarters makes Meteor Storm nonviable. Techno uses his basic shuffle technique to raise barriers of dirt and stone for protection. This is the first time most of the attendees have seen Skeppy let loose and the first time anyone has seen Techno pull out the magic. Techno even goes so far as to pull his Soul Weapon, and the two wreck the place quite a bit before the Eggpire retreats. Suddenly, Quackity and George are recalculating a lot of things that they thought they knew about Techno.

In the aftermath, Quackity's going to have a lot of fear about how easily Techno could've wrecked L'Manberg, the mysteries of why he didn't, and what that means for Las Nevadas. Sam starts thinking that Techno is just a bit too dangerous, but he doesn't know who the Driver in this relationship is because he is aware that c!Philza is also a Blade. George is going to be comforted a little by the fact that Dream didn't ditch him to go be Techno's Blade, but that doesn't help the overall feeling of abandonment caused by Dream being dead and missing.

~

Sapnap and Punz are sparring in Kinoko Kingdom to make up for missing the banquet. After a fairly simple exchange, Punz stumbles and drops his sword. Sapnap thinks he might've really hurt him by accident, but Punz isn't looking at Sapnap. Punz is looking towards the Eggpire, and his face his pained. Sapnap has never seen him looks like this before.

"Purpled?" It's gasped, like Punz has no air left in his lungs. One arm wraps around his stomach like he's clutching a wound. The other reaches towards a gleam of blue at the base of his throat. Punz glimmers and is gone, snuffed out like a candle, and an indigo core crystal hits the ground where he was standing.

Sapnap is torn up about this. He keeps losing his people. Bad and Skeppy have a cult and he is apparently not welcomed. Ant has sided with Bad and Skeppy. Red is dead. Dream is dead, more recently, and his core crystal is missing. Alyssa left. He never sees Callahan. Quackity left, too. Karl is forgetting things. And George has been sleeping every since Dream. And now Punz?

On one hand, the right thing to do would be to track down Purpled and give him Punz's core crystal. On the other hand--Sapnap doesn't really know Purpled. He didn't know Punz was a Blade, let alone his Driver. He doesn't know where Purpled can be found. Can't he keep just one friend? Even if the Punz he Awakens from the core crystal is not the Punz he just lost, it will still be Punz.

Core crystals usually take about 3 days before they can be Awakened again. At least Sapnap has a little time to think on it.