redstringtheories

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TDM #3

➥ Arrival

(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.) 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.

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, 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 Butcher's Camp

(cw: animal death, both human and animal butchery, implied cannibalism, potential for flesh/small limb removal)

Weird things happen in Dogtown, everyone knows it. The Apocalypse Disruption Initiative (ADI) is not above taking advantage of that to test out the waters for its newest arrivals. They're not looking to send anyone to their death, though. That's far too much paperwork, you'd been assured with a wink from the employee who'd directed you to the park trailhead. You've been left with another person. Maybe they're a new arrival, as well, or a more seasoned 'veteran.' Either way, you're together for the next while and you've been asked to find and record any paranormal activity in the park. You have your phones and any other equipment you might have brought with you. Those who succeed in documenting anything peculiar will receive a $100 reward to be used as they see fit.

This month characters who venture into Dogtown will eventually stumble across what seems to be an abandoned camp. Its usage is fairly obvious: the remains of a hunting camp. And remains really is the operative word, considering that whoever used the camp wasn’t particularly fastidious about cleaning up after themselves. There are bits of various animal carcasses strewn around and by the looks of things the prey of these hunters was quite varied. Not all of them are prey animals either.

Stepping into the camp seems to have an effect: anyone who passes over the threshold to investigate will find themselves powerfully driven to mark themselves - or their partner - with lines that seem to indicate where a butcher might cut. There are black, red, and white paint pens littered around the camp that are perfect for this exercise. As they proceed, they will get the sense that once the lines are completely drawn, something will be coming along to make use of them.

Staying too long after those marks are completed - either through curiosity or through some other force - will result in a sudden unconsciousness. And when you wake up? (If you wake up…) Well. It seems the butcher has returned and taken just a bit more flesh. At least the wound is properly dressed, though. Thank goodness for small mercies.

➥ Mirror, Mirror

(cw: altered perceptions and unreality/hallucination, body horror, dissociation, wounds, cancer, stalking)

Something is wrong with the mirrors.

Everywhere around Gloucester - at ADI headquarters, in ADI housing, at Bonnie's Flophouse, even in the bathrooms of mundane businesses (and, presumably, the homes of the innocent and uninvolved), looking in the mirror has become...risky. It's not predictable; it doesn't happen every time and may or may not happen to any given person the same way twice, but look into the reflection and you may see something that should not be there.

Perhaps your own reflection has changed, a face (human or monstrous) you don't recognize looking back at you, eerily in sync as though it has every right to be your true reflection… or un-synced from your movements, smiling knowingly at your distress.

Or maybe you still see your own face, but something about your body is warped, wrong: a growth or a seeping wound you can't find on your own physical form but that exists glaring and insistent in your reflection and feels, somehow, as though it's there in phantom form.

Maybe it's a pair of eyes watching from over your shoulder, hiding in the shadows, peering at you from every mirror you pass. Is it watching you from your reflection in that window, too? Is it growing nearer?

Possibly there's nothing wrong with your reflection at all, but the reflection of the room behind you stretches and twists, a view into an impossible, broken world that leaves you dizzy and wandering, lost down an imagined maze of hallways or following a phantom figure until someone else can snap you out of it.

Something is wrong with the mirrors. Best not to look again, lest you find out what else they have to show you.

➥ Haunting Tunes

(cw: hallucination, hypersomnia, vehicular accidents, potential for injury)

The summer is fading, and businesses around Gloucester have taken note. Fall decorations go up, and even some very early Halloween decor is on sale. The air is crisper in the mornings and evenings, the ocean breeze just a bit stiffer. There also seems to be a new melody floating around the town, one that leaves people feeling fatigued, heavy. Did you hear a snatch of it near the docks? Something that's vaguely familiar to you, nostalgic, almost. Maybe it's more a memory?

That song or memory seems to grow stronger when approaching the graveyards scattered throughout Gloucester. So, too, does the fatigue. Wouldn't it be nice to just sit down and rest? To close your eyes and let every worry that troubles your mind be soothed into the quiet oblivion of sleep?

Those most affected might find themselves passing out, and they always seem to do it when they are putting themselves in the most danger. You might drop while crossing a busy street or while riding a bike or some other wheeled mode of transportation. Those who investigate will find that traffic accidents seem to have seen an uptick recently, associated with the onset of these haunting tunes. They seem to be focused on the graveyards, but there's nothing immediately apparent there that might be causing problems.

Drink lots of coffee, and be careful trying to do anything. Stepping outside could be the last thing you do.

➥ Mod Notes

ARRIVAL (Sep 1 - 21): Two people will always arrive in the same general location together. Arrivals occur throughout the early 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. 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.
THE BUTCHER'S CAMP (Sep 1- 24): Characters will only encounter the camp once. Everyone will feel the compulsion to draw carving lines along their own skin or that of the person they're with. If they stick around for long enough, they will pass out and may not wake up again. Those who do wake up will find that a piece of their flesh is missing and the wound has been bandaged. Whatever is taken will be non-fatal, but it will likely be inconvenient (e.g., some part of their calf or forearm, perhaps a finger or toe). Once ADI is made aware of injuries happening, they will stop sending people to Dogtown for training and only send people with the understanding that this is a potentially dangerous mission. Please bear in mind that if a character dies in the TDM prompt, they are dead. A different version who doesn't have TDM memories may be apped in their place. Similarly, injuries will not magically disappear. If your character loses a chunk of themselves, it is gone unless they can find someone who might be able to magically heal them. No one at ADI will offer this service, just mundane medical assistance. Magical healing is reserved for fatal injuries given the price of it!
MIRROR, MIRROR (Sep 1- 24): Characters may encounter a mirror effects multiple times, and may experience the same effect each time or different ones. As noted in the prompt, there is no apparent rhyme or reason to when any particular mirror exhibits any particular effect. Within the first week of the effects becoming known, ADI will cover all the mirrors within their headquarters and send out an advisory for characters to do the same in their homes. Characters who experiment and/or interview locals will, after a lot of legwork, be able to ascertain that the effects seem to be most concentrated on the west side of town, nearest the empty fields where the Fenix Down Extravaganza had set up their circus tents last month, with additional concentrations around ADI-affiliated buildings and Bonnie's Flophouse. Mirror effects will gradually grow less frequent over the course of the month and cease to occur after the 24th.
HAUNTING TUNES (Ongoing Effect): The tunes will be oddly familiar to the character, even if they are not from modern Earth. There are currently no ill effects from the song apart from inducing fatigue in characters. They can fight it off with coffee/caffeine, or other things they'd typically use to wake themselves up, but that tiredness always returns. An examination of the graveyard will not turn up a specific source. It just seems to be something there.
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Arrival
[cw: claustrophobia, panic]

With a sharp, ragged breath, the purple tiefling sits up straight. Or, he tries. Immediately, he slams into something... metal? With dawning horror, Mollymauk realizes he's closed in on all sides. His pulse skyrockets and he tries to remember how to breathe. He's not buried. He's--just stuck. This is fine.

Trying to shove down that spike of panic, he figures out that he can move. Okay. Okay he can work with this. He wriggles along, hitting his horns against the duct walls if he moves his head too much. While screaming is wildly tempting, he thinks, maybe, he's already making enough noise and he has no idea where he is. Seeing light ahead, he makes for it. Is that a voice...?

He isn't anticipating that the grate isn't actually strong enough to hold him.

With a resounding crash of metal, body, and ceiling tile, Mollymauk lands in a heap of dust and cobwebs in front of whoever is unfortunate enough to be standing in that particular room or hallway.

Red eyes focus on his unexpected new companion and, for a few seconds, Molly can't decide if he should run or take a bow.

"Uh... Mollymauk Tealeaf, at your service?"

The Butcher's Camp

On the one hand, Molly gets it. Someone like him running around a town full of humans who have never seen someone like him is going to cause problems. Possibly accusations of devil worship or something. But it still feels strange to know that every time he isn't on ADI property, he looks... human.

At least he still has all of his tattoos.

And he is definitely paying attention to what the ADI agent is telling him and the person he's being left with. The reward sounds descent enough - he's still figuring out currency here - and he needs money. Charm and sleight of hand are only going to get him so far.

"Is this kind of thing the usual?" he asks as they start down the path. "Sent off into the wild to investigate things with promise for pay? Because if it is, it isn't all that different from home after all."

He's talking to fill the quiet. But Molly shuts up when he sees the camp. He can smell blood and it isn't long before he notices the carcasses... or pieces of them. His first instinct is to look around, scanning the woods around them. But he doesn't hear anything.

Mirror, Mirror
[cw: body horror, dissociation, wounds, altered perceptions]

Molly stands in the ADI bathroom, staring into the mirror there. He's searching for something, hands running over his face and his horns, through his hair and down his neck. He feels the same as he always has, but--

That isn't him. The person looking at him through the mirror isn't him. They, too, are a purple tiefling with red eyes, curled horns, tattoos and scars. But the smile isn't right. And the--it just isn't right.

He's been seeing that face for days and now he's trying to figure it out.

"Go away," he hisses as his hands drop and he grips the edge of the sink. "This--You're not me."

As he looks, the faint phantom of red eyes open in the reflection. Molly whips his head back but there's nothing there. He looks at the mirror again, at the person there smiling at him, full of mockery and derision.

Jaw tight, Molly wraps his coat sleeve around his fist and slams it into the glass.

Haunting Tunes

That music...

Molly hears it first in the park. It reminds him of the tunes he'd hear at the circus, played to draw visitors in and entertain them while they waited. He waves it off as a weird memory at first, nostalgia or longing or something.

But he keeps hearing it. So, one day, he follows it. And when it brings him to a graveyard? He suddenly has every reason to stop following it. But he can't stop hearing it. He hears it wherever he is and it makes him feel heavy. He sinks into sleep on a sidewalk, half in the street. Another time, he's practicing with his swords at ADI when the fatigue hits him. He nearly lands on the blades as he drops to the floor.

That's when he starts finding ways to stay awake. And he keeps an eye out for other people who might be wandering and looking a little tired. He'll approach other ADI people and offer to stay up with them.

Wildcard

[Happy to match brackets or prose! Molly will be investigating all over town so please feel free to run into him. When not on ADI property, Molly looks human with all of his tattoos still intact. Otherwise, he will look like his usual self.]

Exploring is a great way to take her mind of things, Jester reasons. Like how there's no one here she knows and she's been taken away from her family to this 'Earth' where money is paper and everyone is human and she can't seem to get Artie to talk to her (though he's probably really busy) and oh yeah! Giant fear things are trying to end the world! Actually that last one seems the most familiar out of everything, which probably says something fucked up about Exandria but the Nein fixed it so its fine.

Yup. Totally fine.

She hears the sound of shattering glass and immediately goes to investigate, completely ignoring the sign on the door proclaiming this to be a restroom for whichever gender its supposed to be for.

"Hello? I heard a cra- Molly?!" She stands agape at seeing him here. "Uh, I mean, Kingsley. But you've got your coat so you have to be Molly, right? Maybe???"

She bites her lip, hoping against hope that this isn't some trick, or Lucien returned or other awfulness. In that doubt she glances to his hand. "Oh, uh, do you want me to-- I can heal, in case you don't remember, maybe."

"Jester?"

That's a lot of things coming at him all at once, but over it all is this trickle of relief. She's okay. Jester is okay and she's alive and--Oh. That's a whole lot of things he's going to just not think about right now. He wants to fling himself at her. He wants to make sure she's real.

Molly gets up carefully to dust himself off. A red eye is hidden among the peacock feathers climbing up his neck; another on the back of his hand in the serpent tattoo. When he's sure he's in one piece, he looks at the little blue tiefling again, daring to let hope bubble up.

"I'm fine, nothing a bath can't fix." She's staring at him. He's staring at her. Molly takes a step closer and reaches for her.

There's recognition in that and Jester could sob in relief. So she does. She lets out a sob at a depth she hadn't even been quite aware she was feeling and immediate bypasses his hand to slam bodily into his chest with a hug of pure desperate emotion. She's missed him, she's missed him so much and she thought she would never see him again. Kingsley isn't Molly. Lucien certainly wasn't Molly. For all they're grateful for the Wild Mother bringing even a piece of him back, Jester had still felt that hole, that loss, made all the worse by her having been torn from Exandria entirely and lacking everyone, not just Molly.

To have him here, solid in her hug, is a much bigger relief than she expected. It takes her several moments to finally pull away enough to look up at him, her face wet. "What happened? How are you here? Not that I'm not happy to see you, I'm so happy to see you Molly, but you- I mean..."

She shakes her head and buries it in his shirt again, unable to either ask nor answer the questions how she wants.

Molly stumbles back as Jester flies into him, and if they go down they're going down together because he wraps his arms around her as tight as he can manage. He buries his face in her hair between her horns and, when he feels a wall at his back, he leans into it. She's okay. Maybe they're all okay.

His hands slowly loosen their grip on her clothes as she pulls back and he manages a smile when she looks at him. It wavers, and he's glad she buries her face again before it falls completely.

His hand rests on the back of her head and he doesn't answer right away. He hasn't noticed yet, but there is dried blood on him. And a hole in the back of his coat.

"We were coming to get you," he murmurs. "Beau, me, Caleb, Nott. We were coming to get you and Yasha and Fjord."

Oh. Oh. He doesn't know. Of course he doesn't know, the last thing he would remember was-

She hugs him tighter and the tips of her fingers find the hole in the coat.

Surreptitiously, she reaches her senses for the Traveler, trying to mend the fabric, but while there's a vague warmth in her for the reaching there is no spell cast. She worries at her lower lip with her teeth and pulls back again to look at him, this time less frantic. "I know. You don't remember, because you-... But I know you were coming."

She smiles, somehow bright despite the drying tears. "And here you are now too. Like magic, even in a different world."

"Are we in a different world?" It's then that he actually takes more than a few seconds to look around. It's not quite like anything he's ever seen before. It's a hallway. But the duct he'd just fallen out of was weird.

"This is weird, even for me." He's got a thing about waking up places and not remembering how he got there. Slowly, Mollymauk lets go of Jester... almost all the way. His fingers curl loosely to catch hers, just in case something tries to pull them apart. Or maybe just to comfort himself. Or her. "I don't suppose you remember how you got here."

The rattling and crashing from the ceiling is more than enough to draw Yelena out from the training salle into the corridor, tracking the noise to the nearest grate and deposit a dusty pile of tiefling at her feet. She rocks back on her heels, eyes widening slightly as she takes the...man? in - not everyone at ADI is human, but horns and red eyes and purple skin are a little bit outlandish, even by their standards.

She recovers quickly, putting on a slightly crooked smile, not entirely without sympathy. "If this is going to keep happening, I think they are going to need to put in ladders," she says. "And maybe signage."

She swaps one of the escrima sticks she holds to the opposite hand, and offers her newly freed hand to help him up. "I'm Yelena. I guess I should say welcome to the ADI."

(For her own part, she looks painfully human, a compact woman dressed in loose black pants and a matching tank top, blonde hair bound up in a crown of braids.)

"But then how we anyone else make an entrance?" He grins, but he keeps his eyes on the sticks she's holding. He accepts the hand, though, and hauls himself to his feet. "Welcome where?"

Being on the back foot is nothing he can't cope with, and the fact that he has never heard of ADI doesn't mean much. But the place he's in is... different. Nothing about it feels familiar, not the aesthetic, not the smells, and not the person in front of him.

"Apocalypse Disruption Initiative," Yelena replies readily - it isn't anywhere close to the full explanation, but it's the easy part. For a given definition of easy. "Or Apex Detectives Incorporated, if you are talking to people outside this building." There's a hit of something...skeptical, perhaps, in her tone.

"I think this is going to probably sound insane, but this isn't your world. Or mine. There's no portal back inside the ceiling, if you were wondering."

Molly gives her a blank look. Fantastic, none of that means a damn thing. And her skepticism does not go unnoticed.

"Yes, it sounds insane. Lucky for you, insanity has never been a reason for me not to trust someone."

Plenty of other things, but not that. And the story - vague as it is - is too weird to read as made up. There's no attempt to assure him that any of this is okay or normal, and so he's inclined to believe that she's tried to find a way back herself. Mollymauk tips his head back to look up at the hole he left in the ceiling.

"Well then. Do you know what happens next?"

"Next, I take you to the people who do belong to this world, so they can give you some very vague information about the horrors that haunt this place, and make you a job offer," Yelena replies, giving him a slight, apologetic grimace. "You don't have to take it, but I think this world is probably different enough from yours that you might have difficulty making it on your own until you've had time to learn how things work."

She studies him for a moment, sharp and evaluating. "Or if you're hurt, I take you to the infirmary first. Then the monsters, and the job offer."

Beau also has absolutely no idea where she is, and having weird noises coming out of the ceiling certainly isn't helping that. She's been quietly stalking after whatever the hell has been bumping, staying just a couple of paces behind with her staff out until it's the exact right time to strike.

She... doesn't exactly expect a purple tiefling to be the one tumbling out. And especially not this purple tiefling. Molly will find her staff leavied at him, but not in a strike once she sees his face... even though she looks different than he left her, for certain.

"... Uh." Is this a joke? Is she dead? Fuck, maybe she's dead. "What the hell?"

Red eyes blink slowly as he focuses on the staff pointed at him.

"I know it wasn't my best entrance but does it really call for violence?"

That's Beau... isn't it? She looks different, but she's Beau: from the set of her shoulders to the incredulous look on her face, Molly is sure that it's her. Still, he's already trying to determine the best way to dodge if she decides to swing the staff at him anyway.

As he sits up more, hands kept in sight, the bloodstain on his white shirt becomes wildly more apparent.

The good news for Molly is that she doesn't seem intent on beaning him in the face today, or at least not right this moment, as the staff is swiftly returned to it's position on her back. She's still looking at him with suspicion, trying to sort what makes sense in her brain. He can't just... be here, can he? No way. No way.

She's snapped out of it by the red stain on his shirt, stirring a memory of a similar wound in her that makes her want to cave her chest in. "Are you bleeding? What are you doing in the ceiling trying to scare me like that?"

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TDM #3

Mollymauk Tealeaf | Critical Role | OTA

Mirror Mirror - hiiieeee!!

I was so tempted by Kingsley you have no idea

Either one is fabulous~

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Arrival

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let's do arrival this is fantastic

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