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redstringtheories2023-10-01 08:18 am
TDM #26 - The Final TDM!
(cw: potential for severe disorientation/vertigo, claustrophobia, arachnophobia, body horror)
It happens in the blink of an eye. You may have been asleep. You may not have. You may have stepped through a door or turned a corner. You may have seen a flicker of something at the corner of your vision and turned to look. Or maybe you didn't.
It doesn't matter. What matters is that you find yourself somewhere entirely new and entirely unfamiliar. The arrival point is not always the same. (If you're lucky, it might be a canteen or an open office. If you're not, well... you aren't claustrophobic, are you? Or arachnophobic. These ducts do seem to be a bit cobwebby.) You might even arrive in a section of building that has been demolished, leaving a pit of rubble open to the sky–hope you're up on your tetanus shots! There is no one waiting for you but you don’t seem to be alone, either. Even in a janitor’s closet or the bathroom, you’ll find at least one person who seems to be just as out of place as you are. The one exception is the demolition zone off what used to be one corner of the building: it seems the security teams are keeping a particularly close eye on that area to document new arrivals and bring them in quickly.
If characters have arrived in a location devoid of NPCs, they may want to work together to figure out what is going on... or to avoid their 'kidnappers.' If you’ve arrived in the middle of the entry foyer or the gym, there may well be a few people who startle a bit at your arrival and try to approach (or discreetly leave the room... where are they going?). Will you cooperate or fight? Do you even understand what they're saying? You might need to find a translator for English, if you’re not immediately willing to follow a stranger.
After characters follow their new hosts (or are forcibly taken in) there will be a limited tour and the chance to settle in at the ADI-provided housing. (Do you enjoy living with strangers? Well. It's a new situation to navigate, anyway.) The housing, itself is… dubiously all right. You might see the remnants of what seems to have been an all-out war of pettiness on the little apartment complex. A few places that haven't been painted over have things like 'MONSTERS' and 'GET OUT' written on them. One of the buildings (formerly Block D) looks downright derelict and shuttered. Exploring might lead you to find a hauntingly empty space that's been damaged beyond easy repair.
Some of the wider Gloucester looks like it's in a rough state, as well, like something might have happened to it recently. Damage to buildings, crews cleaning up broken homes and businesses. Perhaps there are people with insights who might be able to let you know what's happened.
(cw: thanatophobia; ghosts; superstition; memory loss (non-PCs); temporary paralysis; mention of spiders)
On the night of September 30th leading into October 1st, an ear-splitting shriek and a burst of something supernatural erupt from one of the graveyards in Gloucester. The effect is nearest to Dogtown for any who might be in the area, and quickly dissipates. But there's a lingering presence in the air. For the rest of the week ghostly figures in early 19th century attire walk the streets of Gloucester. All of them seem to be lost, confused, and in some amount of pain. Some seem to be frightened, as well.
Those encountering the ghosts will find that they speak in parlance more typical to the 1800s than modern day speech, and that they don't seem to realize they're dead. Most of them, anyway. They also seem to be stuck on a loop, wandering, completing some movements and then resetting, starting again. They can interact with those around them, but they always finish their path and never seem to remember anyone from their last loop. They also seem to be untouchable. Though, those who attempt it either by physical or magical means will find a crystalline frost forms along their skin and their bodies seize up, paralyzed for several seconds after the attempt.
Talking to the ghosts may yield some personal information. It seems these people are from Dogtown; though, the years of their lives vary. They talk of a town thriving (or suffering, depending on the ghost) under the Wolfes, a prominent family that owns the largest house in Dogtown and owns much of the land in the area. Each ghost has another piece of information they might impart:
"Never go hunting with a Wolfe, you hear? You're like as not to find yourself playing the game soon enough."
"The hall to Master Richard's office is… strange. Never can walk that corridor without feeling woozy after. We draw lots, you see, on who has to deliver his letters. Feels like you have to go miles, all twists and turns, but there's never any bends."
"You mark me: they've put that fence up to keep those folk in, not anyone out."
"Those Wolfes are witches. The lot of 'em. Sire down to little Ben and Martha. Should take 'em to the priest for a cleansing. Kids at least… but the money's so good."
"It's what I tell all the new folk that get hired. Now, it sounds strange, but you need to follow the spiderwebs if you want to find anything on the grounds. They'll never lead you wrong."
And then there are the few ghosts who seem to have realized what they are, who look less confused and more… distraught. "There's nothing. Just… nothing after the end. A void and you're alone. Nothing and no one. I don't want to go back. Please… please don't make me." They reach for the living, bringing the chill of death with them. Others speak of a different fate, one that you might consider the worst possible fate after your death.
Just as they appear, the ghosts will vanish completely at the end of the week, becoming fainter as time goes on and blinking out of existence like they were never there to begin with.
(cw: altered mental states and disorientation; amnesia/memory loss (PCs); loss of identity; entrapment)
The long corridor stretches out ahead of you, dingy wallpaper broken up by dusty, cobwebbed frames on the walls, sunlight straining weakly through grubby glass window panes that offer murky views of the world outside. The floor under your feet is uneven, your footfalls sometimes loud on warped wooden planks, or swallowed up into silence by thick, moth-eaten rugs. You've been walking so long; you must reach it soon; it can't be that much further. Did you get turned around? How could you get turned around when you've seen no turns? But you've been walking so long, following this corridor for so long without reaching…without reaching–
Where were you going? The thought of the journey begs the question of your destination, but when you turn your mind to it, there's an aching lack of any answer. You're on your way to somewhere; you came in here when you…when you….
The apparent fact of the journey also begs the question of when and where it started, and once again the question is unanswered, unanswerable. You haven't always been here; that wouldn't make sense, but where you were before this, how you came to be here, all of that is a blank.
Blank, too, is any knowledge of who you were before you came to be here. There's a world outside here and you were once part of it, might even recall places and scenes that you must have seen, but in this place you are simply here and now with no memory of there and then, and somehow, somehow you have lost your way in this hallway with no twists or turns in sight.
Peer through the dingy windows and you can see a stately lawn long dead, the grass brown and withered though no weeds have come to overgrow it. Beyond that, a tall metal fence, strong and impassable. Beyond the fence, a sea of weeds, of gnarled vegetation, climbing ivy and thorny briar sticky with spider webs. Beyond the weeds…Dogtown. You remember Dogtown, recognize it somehow with absolute certainty whether you've been there before or not. You're deep in Dogtown, trapped here in this house, in this corridor. You're not alone, though; your companion is as lost and unmoored as you are but they are real and present and trapped here alongside you.
Strung on the walls all down the corridor, paintings offer views into places other than Dogtown. That's you in one of them, your companion in another. The paintings depict scenes from lives you don't remember, scenes of loss or triumph presented with no more or less fanfare than scenes of mundane daily life. There are stories here, yours and the person or people with whom you're trapped, but it's like looking into the life of a complete stranger with your own face.
Look long enough, perhaps enlist the help of your companion, and eventually perhaps something will come back to you. You need to dredge up something about yourself: some important detail that is distinctly you. Your name might work, a memory of some key moment in your life, the date of your birth, or the color of your mother's eyes. You must remember something of yourself, and when you do—
When you do finally remember, you wake up in your own bed, exhausted and sore as though you trod that corridor all through the night.
(cw: apocalyptic anxiety; decay; threat of physical harm from plants)
There’s been a nearly imperceptible shift in the energy around town. More subtle, certainly, than the more recent afflictions to Gloucester. Still, it’s a shift that makes itself known soon enough.
It starts at the edges of Dogtown. People who walk past the blocked off park might notice their phones flicker or their music warps and decays only to right itself once more a block away. Then two blocks. The effect seems to spread each day, noticed or otherwise. As the days drag on, it’s more obvious in cars left parked for too long. Rust eats at new paint jobs, corrodes engines into stalling, and wears tires to threadbare no matter how new they once were. Phones and other electronic devices that stay too long in the afflicted areas face a similar threat: cracked or clouded screens, glitching displays and that one button that simply will not register no matter how hard you press it.
By the fifth day, it’s not just the blocks near dogtown, but the entire town seems to steadily succumb as vines and weeds and trees dig in and spread and flourish regardless of what building, sidewalk, or even person might be in their way. Luckily, there are ways to fight plants that don’t require the use of a cellphone or laptop.
- ARRIVAL (October 1-31): Two people will almost always arrive in the same general location together. Arrivals occur throughout the month, not all on the same day or in the same place. Arrivals are not naturally fluent in English/other languages immediately upon arrival. Characters may attempt to evade capture, but they will eventually be snagged before they can leave the building (or the rubble that used to be part of the building). PC's already in-game are more than welcome to interact with and try to guide new PC's to get them oriented. Please refer to the Arrival page for details regarding the arrival and onboarding process, as well as information about the state of ADI Headquarters.
- GHOULISH TIDINGS (October 1-8): The ghosts are only about from 12 AM to 3 AM during the week that they appear in Gloucester. Prospective players are welcome to make up any details about the ghosts. The only limitations are that they be people who could reasonably have been living in a small town in New England in the early 1800s. The ghosts cannot be filmed or photographed as anything will appear to be blurred out with static or glitching. Each ghost will only impart one piece of 'wisdom' on their repeated loop, so anyone wanting all piece of information to be gleaned would need to find all different ghosts or discuss the situation and what they might have learned on the network.
- ONCE UPON A DREAM (October 1-15): This prompt as described above takes place entirely within a shared nightmare realm. Characters will encounter one another in the corridor seemingly at random; upon entering the dream they will forget who they are and how they came to be there. The only way for characters to wake up and escape the dream is to remember some important detail about themselves or their lives; while characters may realize they are dreaming, no other tricks to escape the corridor or make themselves wake up will be effective. In the waking world, characters who are trapped in the dream will appear to simply be asleep, but cannot be awakened by normal means.
- THE FUTURE WITHOUT US (October 1-Ongoing): Feel free to get creative on any plant massacure you would like, within reason. The city will still protest if you’re caught driving an unlicensed tractor down the road, but weedkiller might be quick to leave the shelves. While the effects of the plant growth and technology decay might eb and flow and subside to more subtle levels with occasional spikes, the effect will be ongoing for the foreseeable future.
no subject
Hob rightfully snaps back at them, politely but firmly holding his stance on the unneeded commentary on being called cruel for yet another incident with another mystery letter, and Rue's eyes go wide. The softness that comes next, the gentle backtracking and reassurance, it all comes too late in the flood of Rue's instant sobs, their touch all but disappearing so that they can press their heart-shaped face in their palms instead, feathery shoulders heaving and trembling with every choked wail.
It is months of grief and hurt and uncertainty to sob out, unleashed like a tidal wave from Rue's trembling frame. Beneath where their palms are pressed into their teary eyes, their beak clacks together more than once, the words right there at the end of their tongue, the need to answer him right there, but all they can do is cry.
Give them a quick moment to just heave and sob and hyperventilate a little, they have so much to work through.
no subject
It was generally the way things went in the Goblin Court, and it had happened enough times at the Bloom—including with Rue, but he'd rather hoped they'd begun to get past that. He'd thought they'd gotten past that.
But clearly he's a fool.
"I didn't mean to make you cry—" His practised manners and diction slip somewhat, giving way to something more casual and awkward.
He's not sure what to do. He feels as lost as when no one would explain the duel to him, or perhaps even moreso given he's still quite literally lost. But asking for context only seemed to make things worse.
His other instinct is to belittle himself, because clearly he is the problem here whether he understands why or not, but that habit never seems to make Rue feel better. He settles on waiting, for the moment, for them to collect themself.
no subject
But the more that they weep and cry, the more that the owlbear is left to realize that the pair are in a totally public space and that their Hob - for he is theirs no matter what - is not the same Hob that broke his vow and left them months earlier.
It takes longer than they would like to admit, but some minutes pass and Rue finally manages to breathe without sniffling and hiccuping, looking exhausted and more heartbroken than the bugbear has ever seen them. They want nothing more than to bury themself in his arms, but instead, they clasp their paws together and wait for the tremble along their shoulders to subside. Hob is already frustrated and Rue does not have a clue where they even stand with him or if he even loves them - the very idea leaves them sick - and they would hate themself if they imposed upon him anymore than they already have.
"I-I-" Their words begin to stutter, choked with emotion, and Rue gently clears their throat, closing their eyes to breath in deep again. When they open again, even if their frame has not stopped trembling, at least their voice sounds a touch more even. "You do not remember being here before, do you? It has been about a year now, since you and I first arrived, but I have known those who disappear and then return without memories of their stay. I do not know why. I am told it is an unexplainable occurrence. Something to do with the travel between realms, I imagine. But I have been here for many months already, some with you by my side, and you do not have any recollection of it."
Straight and to the point. Usually distancing themself by speaking logically helps, but there is just nothing they can do to rid themself of the tears that keep welling up in their big eyes.
"You left voluntarily five months ago, leaving behind only a letter for me to find. It -" Rue sucks in a sharp breath and shakes their head. That is neither here nor now. "I did not mean to accuse. I apologize for the assumption. I thought you were the same, I should have held my tongue."
no subject
And then they do explain, and he finds it barely helps. It does give much needed context but at the same time it’s overwhelming and confusing in its own way. And it’s upsetting on several different levels.
“That’s… a lot to take in,” he admits, still unsure where to start only for a different set of reasons. His ears flatten back even more.
Especially when he doesn’t want to believe it was the truth. But he also doesn’t want to doubt Rue.
“I cannot imagine what would have lead me to break my word,” he finally says, doing his best to stay collected because honestly it probably wouldn’t help if they were both crying, right?
“Nor can I expect you to accept an apology for something I can’t begin to explain,” as much as he wants to apologise anyway.
“But if I truly did as you say, I can assure you that you’ve done nothing wrong.”
All of this feels deeply unfair, but that’s not Rue’s fault.
no subject
Rue has barely scratched the surface. As if arriving here from the Feywild was not overwhelming enough, now they have to make it even more complicated for the man.
"And there is more, oh Knickolas, there is so much more, but I do not want to overwhelm you all at once."
There are the things that occurred during his last stay - moving into their apartment, their wedding, the horrors that they ended up facing together, the friends made along the way - but when would it really be appropriate to bring up to him? He deserves to know, it would be unfair to hide all of it from Hob, but Rue does not want him to feel responsible or pushed into the same exact path again. It seems silly to say, when they are technically the same man, but putting unfair expectations on this Hob is the very last thing Rue wants to do.
Their paws wring together, the owlbear blinking away unending tears that keep soaking into their feathers, wanting nothing more than to push themself into his arms but instead they stand uncomfortably at arm's length, squeezing their palms together.
"And truly, beyond that hurt, I am - I am so grateful to see you again. I missed you every single day. I feared I would never see you again. I was so heartbroken by the thought."
no subject
But he seems to relax, just a small amount, when they talk about being grateful to see him again.
“I… cannot pretend to know what this was like for you,” he says, finally. “It has been mere hours since we were together.” From his perspective, at the very least. He’s not sure what’s actually the truth.
“And since I said you would never find yourself alone. I meant that, and I don’t—I don’t intend to break my word, whatever else has happened here.”
But apparently he did. And right now he’s not sure if that’s something he’ll ever understand, without having those memories. He doesn’t like this at all.
He does, however, reach to touch Rue’s shoulder, if they let him.
no subject
Hob reaches for them with his fearsome, but always gentle, claws, just barely beginning to brush at their shoulder, and Rue is already in his arms, clinging to the man like he may just slip away into nothingness again. Without even having to think of it, the owlbear presses their face into his neck and shudders at the sensation.
He feels the same to them, he smells the same, their body fits right against his in exactly the same way it did with the last Hob. This truly is their real flesh-and-blood husband, not just some trick of the Entities, not just a trick of ADI itself, trying to draw Rue back into their cause.
It is their Hob, repeating the same words he did upon their engagement, promising once more that Rue will never again be forced into such utter solitude.
Are they quite the fool to trust Hob's words so completely? Because they do, they believe the conviction in his tone, the vow that they once made to one another that went above and beyond mere words whispered between them. It was a promise written in magic, binding them to one another for life, and even after all that has happened, Rue trusts this man completely.
"It does not matter. We can discuss all of that unpleasantness later. I - Oh Knickolas, I am just so grateful you are here. And safe. And whole. I have so much to tell you of this land we have ended up in, the journey we have been on, the fight we have fought. But I think, first, I should like to take you home and see you fed and rested."