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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[Jack is so convincing, it’s a wonder that Stephen has any doubts at all.]

Right. Would it?

[Be crazy, he means. Other than the fact that he isn’t buying it, maybe this newcomer needs to put his new circumstances into fresh perspective.]

There are plenty of… artifacts that have a life of their own in my universe. [He’s wearing one.] Why would it be crazy to assume that rule applies in other worlds?

[Maybe because not everyone is a weirdo sorcerer supreme-ly magical type, Stephen.]

Or maybe you’ve forgotten that you’ve found yourself in another universe, clumped together with other equally strange individuals trying to stop a pending apocalypse? A talking box is almost mundane.

[Almost. Stephen is curious.]

( He has the distinct feeling Stephen might not be so understanding if he knew what was in the box, but that... is... way too hard to explain. That aspect aside, it's actually an enormous fucking relief that he doesn't immediately seem like a nutcase. Even despite Amy and Rosa being firsthand witnesses to the paranormal, they still occasionally err on the side of weird things being Jack's slowly disintegrating brain. Unfortunately, he's not actually sure how often they're right. Sometimes it's Jack's talking to a dead guy that isn't there and sometimes okay but how did the dead guy leave a very real full cup of coffee on the counter then?

The understanding hits like water on a fire, enough tension released that he blows out a slow exhale and admits: )

He said you're a wizard. Does that make it more or less crazy?

( Inside his head is a constant stream - surprisingly not from Jerry for once - of please be right, please be right, please be right. He could really use a solid W on this one just cement the fact that he's not flat out hallucinating it. He hasn't exactly had any outside opinion, which is... kind of how he anchors himself. )

Edited (word salad ) 2021-09-07 01:27 (UTC)

[Ah. A wizard. A little man in Stephen’s head is probably standing next to a chalkboard, scratching in another tally mark under the “Times I’ve Been Called A Wizard” category.]

I’m not a wizard.

[Not to throw your sudden sense of relief right off a cliff, Jack.]

I’m a sorcerer.

[This is clearly an important clarification.]

( A string of tension draws taut on that frankly rude cliffhanger, and then immediately relaxes, pulling a flicker of a deadpan expression from him.

On the counter, the box blows a raspberry. Jack's eyes flicker to it. Pbbbt, same difference.

Honestly, though, he couldn't care less. He's just gonna take a second here to let his eyes close. Let the feeling of something that's been tightly coiled behind his ribs for weeks finally release itself. He doesn't have the first fucking clue what's going on with this whole situation then, but all that matters is it isn't his FFI finally creeping in to let him know the remainder of his short clock's getting close to running out. )

Cool.

( He says finally, what would be a hilariously underwhelming response if Stephen knew the half of it. It serves to kill two birds with one stone, an acknowledgement of that title correction.

Okay wait though hold on important question sudden conversational track switch, to a much more engaged and much quicker (and yet, still somehow monotone??) series of questions. )

Hey- so- if you're a sorcerer ( wizard, corrects Jerry confidently. ) does that mean you work for these guys? Did you learn that here? Do they teach that here? I met somebody who said they're hiring, so if there's like an... internship or some kind of... sorcerer anti-apocalypse work study program or something...

( It's actually kind of super urgent. )

[It was a deadpan reply, but Stephen thinks it might have doubled as something more, because there’s a moment of quiet that slides in-between them — as though some manner of tension has lifted in the realization that, yes, Stephen is in fact a magic-wielding man of some caliber.

Interesting.

But then comes a deluge of questions, and Stephen stands and lets them staccato into him, one by one.

He’s going to try to employ patience.]

I learned magic back home, likely in some place you’ve never heard of. [Are there alternate universe Kamar-Taj…es? Probably. Does Stephen want to wrap his head around that right now? No.] ADI isn’t in the business of teaching those from other worlds magic — only that they’re interested in utilizing our talents if we’re willing to help. That includes myself. I consider myself working with them more than for them.

[Without warning, Stephen tosses a couple of cloths straight at Jack.]

If you have more questions, then I’d prefer to work and talk. Help me cover these mirrors.

( Jack is many things, but none of them are athletic or graceful. Stephen tosses the cloth, cloister bells go off in his head, and his brain says priority number one! catch!! abort all previous orders!! Which means the bat drops from his hands to make a loud wooden clattering on the bathroom tile. He scrunches his face up apologetically. Holds up the cloths a little to demonstrate-- )

Caught 'em.

( Weakly, incredibly aware they both know he looks like a total idiot for it. Maybe worth noting, it probably flashes his left hand enough to notice he's completely missing his pinky finger.

He's just gonna... leave Ricardo there for a few minutes.

A n y w a y

Yeah, he can do this easily enough. He starts on the furthest mirror, diligently avoiding looking into it. )

So, let me get this straight. There's an initiative specifically devoted to preventing the apocalypse, completely willing to rely on trans-universal refugees as a source of cheap labor, but according to that woman I met they refuse to help other universes prevent their own apocalypses and they won't help teach the skills necessary to do it ourselves when we figure out how to leave. Isn't that a little... I don't know, exploitative and opportunistic?

[Poor Ricardo. We hardly knew ye.

He cringes only a little at the clatter; boy, this guy is the very image of grace. But he’s willing to help, and that’s what matters. Stephen politely steps over the bat, fussing with the cloth in his hands to better spread it out.

And he absolutely noticed the missing pinky. There’s probably a story to tell regarding that, but it’s not like Stephen’s hands are without injury — look closely, and they still have a slight shake to them. There are still old scars, faded pale, marring the skin of his fingers and palms.

So the pinky situation is just another question to queue up in the line. He has plenty, he can just deploy them one at a time, when they’re needed, single file line please.]

Yes and yes. [Because, yes, they are the ones at the disadvantage here.] But our choices are limited, meaning our solutions are just as hard to come by. ADI acts as a way to uncover answers that might lead to a way home, all while saving our lives and the lives of everyone else by helping them stop an apocalyptic event.

Sure, you could shrug it all off and leave — but could you, knowing what you now know?

[He hangs the cloth over the mirror, pointedly avoiding looking directly at it. He doesn’t need to see what was there more than once already.]

Besides, were you hoping a few lessons in sorcery would help you… what, prevent your own brand of apocalypse?

Yes and yes.

( He echoes back, some strain creeping into that monotone. )

That's exactly what I'm hoping. The longer I'm here, the more likely it is- It's a long story. The point is, I need to go home and I need... something. I need anything, because I'm-

( There's an edge of desperation in it, and he maybe smooths down the next mirror with a little too much effort. )

I'm losing, and I'm running out of time, and I can't think of any other reason- what the point of this is if not to find something that'll help. I don't care if it's... magic or a gun or just a big... giant button I can smack.

[Despite himself, he’s caught off guard by the shift in tone. Stephen presses his palms against the cool countertop, looking over at Jack with a cinched brow.]

Were it so easy.

[He exhales, thinking of the covered mirror. Last he glanced into a similarly reflective surface, he saw the facade of Dormammu staring back at him, twisting time into stillness. Or himself, fading away into nothing like he was made of ash, blipped into a non-existence.

It was a reminder of the danger of the universe, the multiverse. How close the Earth was to disaster at all times — mystical and magical or otherwise. How he was not there to do his work, his job, to desperately keep them at bay.]

ADI might not have a quick fix for you, but who says you won’t find a solution for your universe while you’re looking for a way to save this one?

[It’s all he can offer. Just that small mote of potential hope and help.]

What’s threatening your world?

[It’s a professional interest; maybe he can advise.]

Edited 2021-09-07 03:27 (UTC)

( All he can do is shake his head over that first question - it's so hard to explain in a few succinct sentences, but there's a reason he hasn't left the gas station in six months. The longer he's gone the more likely it is to be taken over by the things who want what lives beneath it. The time he spends saving this one could be getting his friends killed or replaced with something worse.

He pauses with the next cloth in hand, so he can scratch at his eyebrow with a thumbnail. )

It's gonna sound--

( His eyes land on the cooler sitting on the bathroom counter, and he stops himself.

Okay, fine. Let's say this crazy shit out loud. Screw it.

He's talking to Stephen, but his eyes are on the cooler. His voice gone slow, careful, a little wavering if you're particularly keen. )

I- apparently they're-- I mean, I can't really explain what they means except for... everyone from every other... dimension or whatever, is quarantining my universe because a couple of stupid... gods got into a fight and attracted the attention of something they say can't be stopped once it sees you. It's... old. It came from before... anything. It came from the nothing. It feeds on terror and suffering, so it's not even just... gonna kill everyone in a big tragic firey ball of apocalyptic... Independence Day but if Will Smith didn't exist. It's the opposite of that. It won't let anyone die. It'll keep everyone alive and in pain for the rest of eternity.

( So what's your advice, Stephen? Because he could really fucking use some. He just runs a gas station. )

Edited (u saw nothing) 2021-09-07 03:46 (UTC)

[Well. That’s… certainly not good.

His eyes track Jack’s, whose gaze appears fixed on the cooler. Stephen no longer needs to wonder if whatever is in there is relevant — he has a very strong notion that it is, somehow.

It’s uneasy, listening to this explanation, hearing his voice quaver. How many universes will be put under threat by such entities, he wonders, beings that only want to feed and slowly subsume the human race, if they’ll not bother to destroy them outright?

Advice is difficult to give, so very dependent on the entity itself; but Jack makes it sounds like the whole multiverse shut its doors to his universe to keep this thing out. Not promising.]

…A few years ago, a group of dissenting sorcerers summoned an entity from another universe to ours — a being that could halt time and imprison mankind in an state of subservience and agony, simply to expand his realm. There was no way to defeat him. None of us possessed that kind of power.

Instead, I struck a deal with him. Gave him more incentive to leave than to stay. I don’t know the nature of the entity threatening your world, and I don’t know if you have anything that can help you, but there’s always a way for you to direct its attention elsewhere. You just have to find it.

[It just might be highly unpleasant.]

Can I ask you something?

Edited 2021-09-07 04:28 (UTC)

( The cooler is only relevant because it isn't anymore. Because Jerry's dead, and because he knows it was his fault.

When Stephen starts his story, Jack drags his eyes back up again to settle on him. Sure does sound pretty similar to his situation. Unfortunately he hasn't even got past that warring gods thing yet. He's already losing and the real thing hasn't even started working out how to contact... whatever it is. And, so far as he can tell, there aren't any sorcerers running around to deal with it.

Anyway. Time to reel it all back in. )

Sure.

( He says simply, lifting up to put his last cloth on the mirror. )

[This was, probably, inevitable—]

What’s in there?

[He inclines his head towards the cooler.]

You called it a “he”.

( C r a p. He was kind of hoping the whole cosmic destruction via hellish eternal agony thing might have been enough to steer them away from that. )

Um.

( He's not a very good liar, so he opts instead for the simplest... Technically true explanation. )

My friend.

Edited 2021-09-07 05:03 (UTC)

[Not when Stephen thinks there’s a chance these strange circumstances might be related to whatever is in that box — or is a consequence of said circumstances.

But also, he’s been wondering.]

Your friend.

Your friend speaks to you, in your head, through an ice box. I need more than that.

Edited 2021-09-07 13:19 (UTC)

It's a really long story.

( He hedges, a nervous and breathy laugh written midway through the sentence. Dodging attempt number two, as though he didn't just go on a massive tangent about a pre-big bang unspeakable horror.

It's just that there's crazy and then there's crazy; he's separated the word into a few distinct categories. They're mainly ranked on believability, scale, and how intensely they'll personally reflect back on him. This one is... not. Good. )

Really long and really... boring. And weird. And totally not important.

( Dude, Jerry says flatly. He fires back an annoyed, )

Shut up, Jerry.

[He finds it odd that there’s a sudden hesitation to speak on the subject, especially after he’s just regaled him of a tale of eldritch terror and the potential end of the world, drenched in fear.]

It sounds important. And possibly r—

[Related somehow to the matter at hand, he almost says. But then the interruption comes, and how is he not supposed to latch onto that?]

Your friend’s name is Jerry, I assume.

[okay.]

I called that ice box an artifact, but now I’m not so sure. Is there magic involved?

I seriously... don't know.

( It's said with the stress and fatigue of a guy who's been trying to wrap his head around the situation for so long he can't even stick a number on it. He's been confused about everything, about the reasons behind the things that have been happening, about his own sanity, about how any of this has been possible, and--

He shakes his head. Turns to settle against the bathroom counter, not quite sitting, just enough to take some weight off his prosthetic leg.

Context is probably... helpful. )

I work at this gas station. Weird things have happened there for as long as I can remember. Unexplainable, supernatural, weird, but that's-- normal. For me. It turns out it's because it was built on top of-- someone called it a crossroads... A big universal dumpster where stuff falls through the cracks. Somebody- something's been trying to steal it, so I don't know if it's...

( Because of the Collector and it's a weird mind game he doesn't understand, or because the gas station is fucking weird and gave him the grossest possible version of what he wanted, or because Jack is weird and sometimes his hallucinations just stop being hallucinations. )

He died. I actually thought I lost my mind when he started talking, except he knows things that I don't, and he's demonstrably right about them.

Edited (repeating words is illegal) 2021-09-09 02:05 (UTC)

[Context is very helpful, and the context is also worrying, but not in a way that makes him look disbelieving or skeptical. Because where the inner workings of the multiverse and multiversal threats are concerned?

It isn’t ideal, and it sounds like a worst case scenario, to house that kind of anomaly in one’s universe, but it also isn’t far-fetched. Plenty exists that still can’t be explained; plenty exists that would terrify, never meant to brush shoulders with a human existence.

None of it to be trusted.]

And how sure are you that it’s him, and not some facsimile pretending to be him?

[To him, it’s a reasonable concern.]

Yes, it's totally him.

( He says, sounding confident.

Sounding mostly confident.

Sounding like a solid 60% confident at least.

He breathes out a quick huff. )

No. I don't know. I think it is. It acts like him, sounds like him, plus he saved my life a couple times. I kind of hope it's not him, because then he might actually be... slightly... more... not dead. But they've been replacing people, I think they got my friend Rosa, they definitely got this guy Benjamin, which, he was kind of an asshole anyway but-

( It sounds like he might be letting loose a whole bunch of pent up frustration right now, talking faster and just a decibel louder. )

I don't even- know how to- find out, it's not like I can go get a paternity test on him. All I have is--

( Vague gesture with his hand that almost kind of seems like a mimed explosion. All he has is his gut instinct, and that's... so not the intuitive gesture for gut instinct, which kind of seems like it ought to be a point against his gut instinct, doesn't it?

And in almost the same breath as all of that, he abruptly switches tracks because he kind of just realized he's spilling all his crazy out to-- ?? )

I'm sorry- what- what- who are you exactly?

Edited 2021-09-11 22:52 (UTC)

[Advice to all of that is harder to give — Jeff can provide context as much as he likes, but Stephen knows that there is no way of applying a solution, when the world in question is literally universes away.

He frowns.

And then he blinks, with the sudden shift of subject, now expecting a (belated) introduction. And fairly so.]

Sorry. My name is Doctor Stephen Strange.

[So, a doctor or a sorcerer? How about both!!]

Master of the Mystic Arts, et cetera, et cetera. Titles don’t mean much here.

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TDM #3

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