redstringtheories

Entry tags:

!tdm

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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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I. Arrival
[ Were you trying to use the little employee's kitchen on the second floor? You're going to be treated to the sight of a weirdly elf-looking girl kind of... perched on top of the fridge, trying not to fall off. Romelle has materizalized right here and, a bit like a scared cat, she is not yet ready to come down from her involuntary hideout.

Making eye contact with someone else - either someone who just wanted to grab a coffee or someone who maybe manifested under the tiny table? - will cause her to offer a very smile. ]

Good... afternoon? You wouldn't happen to know where we're headed?

[ She absolutely assumes this is a spaceship. ]

II. Mirror Mirror
[ Romelle is a naturally suspicious person but even she does not suspect everything - mirrors had, so far, always seemed like perfectly safe objects. So really, she is not expecting anything untoward when she passes by a mirror in the ADI foyer and quickly checks her hair, only--

It's herself, but it's not. She's young yet old, she's alive but lifeless, shriveled up and drained of everything that has ever made her herself. She looks like her brother, the very last time she ever saw him, and though that face haunts her sleep every other day, she had not been prepared to be confronted with her own possible demise like this.

She screams, but it's only a second before she covers her mouth (her skin feels full and soft, it's fine, she's fine, it's fine) and stumbles backwards, falling rather unceremoniously onto her butt. She's going to remain on the floor for a bit, just kind of hugging herself, don't mind her. Juuuust walk around her, it's fine. ]

III. Haunting Tunes
[ In the caféteria, Romelle is staring back and forth unhappily from what is her third cup of coffee this afternoon to her own shaky hand. ]

How can one be so jittery and yet dead tired at the same time? This 'coffee' thing was recommend to me very kindly, but I do not think it is working...

[ How is she going to get anything done like this? Maybe she should have stayed home and just spent the day in bed.... ]

[ from across the condiment table, keith is busy with the microwave to heat up a cup of soup. he looks even more exhausted than usual, and the somnolent tune isn't helping in the slightest. head full of the sleepies, the monotone hum of the microwave and a vaguely familiar tune, he doesn't quite register that the girl is talking to him, much less register the subtle oddities about her appearance.

the microwave dings loudly, and that more than anything is what gets keith to straighten up very suddenly. no, he wasn't dozing off just now, shh. ]

Dead -- what? Where? -- [ he swivels around, scanning for anything that mmight be an immediate threat and then sighs loudly. ] ...oh.

[ Whoa there, please take it easy!! Romelle, shaky as she is right now, flinches at the sudden intense reaction and spills a bit of lukewarm coffee over her hand.

... she should probably jump up and get paper towels, but for a second she's just staring down at it dripping and all the can think is ".......ah." ]

Looks like it's not working for you either? I don't know if that comes as a relief... I thought I might just be making it wrong or something.

[ give keith a moment. disoriented and somehow in the middle of a conversation he didn't know he was having, keith scrubs his hand down his face before pulling the microwave door open to get the beeping to stop. ]

Look, I-- [ he pauses just long enough to remove his hot soup and places the cup on a paper plate. he looks up then, still slightly bleary eyed. ]

Sorry, what are you talking about? I was.. [ great. how do you say you were falling asleep without offending the other person? ] ...uh. Out of it.

[ out of what? the idiom goes unexplained as keith squints then at the green markings at the corner of the girl's eyes then to her pointy ears. ]

Edited 2021-09-05 23:35 (UTC)

I can make some more?

[ Coffee, she means coffee. What else could he be out of? ]

But I am really uncertain it if will help. Frankly, it does not even taste that good.

[ She has known coffee for two days and it has betrayed her personally on multiple levels. ]

[ ????? keith is confused on so many levels right now..... ]

Hold on. What are you offering to make?

[ this is by far the least important of the questions he has right now, but it seems like the easiest to sort out. how did they even get to this point anyway? soup momentarily forgotten, he's full on staring slightly incredulously.

is she altean? how many realities could even exist where elves have those markings? hell. and if she is from their reality, is she from some prehistoric era of altean history? could he possibly be speaking to allura's great-great-great-great grandmother? his head is really starting to hurt.]

I'm lost.

Coffee? You said you were out of it.

[ Did she get the name wrong? They've been talking about coffee for like a minute now, as far as she's concerned, how did they get so confused?

Also her hand is still dripping, so a little belatedly, she gets up to actually grab a paper towel... god, she's so tired, maybe she should just lay her head down on the table after this is done... ]

It's really not been helping me though...

...We were talking about coffee?

[ well duh, if that's what possible ancient altean is saying. keith doesn't mean to parrot this way, but the gears in his head aren't turning as quickly as they ought to. a beat later, it clicks. ]

Oh. That's not ... I'm not literally out of something, I just meant -- [ ... ] You know what, never mind.

Edited 2021-09-06 20:50 (UTC)

[ one breath and the awkward demeanor clears. ]

So are you from Altea?

[ masterfully executed subject change right there. ]

[ wat.

Romelle freezes up, scrunching the paper towel in her hand up completely. How does he even...? What does he mean from Altea - as if Altea was still a place one could visit, instead of an empty space in the vastness of space. To begin with, nobody had recognized her species before and this boy really does not look any different from the 'humans' here, so....... what.

Does she need to be worried about being ratted out to the Galra empire after all? But then, why would he ask her so straight-forward, instead of trying to be more sneaky about it?

There is a long pause as Romelle tries to will her tired brain to think and what the eventually comes up with is just: ]

Altea is gone.

Romelle | Voltron: Legendary Defender

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