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redstringtheories2022-03-01 09:51 am
TDM #9
(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.)
(cw: death, child death, semi-graphic description of injury, existential terror, memory manipulation (adding memories))
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, especially not with recent events that have transpired surrounding Dogtown. An employee gives you a number to call if anything truly dangerous happens and you've been left with another person at the trailhead. 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.
There is a body on the side of the path. From a distance, it's hard to tell who it might be… apart from someone who's made terrible life choices about where to take a break. You might find the body propped up against a boulder, lying in the snow, or even slumped on a bench. Approaching, though, brings into view… someone. Maybe someone you recognize vaguely. Do you know them from- Where exactly do you know them from? Or maybe it's a complete stranger, someone foreign in face and form.
The body is never the same for any groups of people who might happen upon it. One time, it's a young white man dressed in what seems to be parachute pants, a boombox fallen or resting with him. Another, it's an Hispanic person, their clothes reminiscent of something out of a western. Still others, it might be a little black girl, looking like she's cosplaying one of the original settlers for Gloucester. People of all different races, ages, genders, times, all beside the path. Some of them look to be obviously dead, their heads caved in or blood splattered across the path. Others, it's harder to tell. They might be someone who's passed out? A drunk who's wandered here from town and could need help.
The moment anyone touches them, though, the body crumbles, something made of ash that simply wipes itself away. And in its place, it leaves memory. The person who touches the body will find themselves reliving the last horrified moments of this person's life. They will know precisely how and when this person died. Every death has some component of agony or fear. No one found passed quickly or painlessly.
Everyone dies, and it is never so kind a thing as they might have hoped. Never.
(cw: altered mental states, breathing difficulties, imprisonment, victim-blaming)
Repairs are going about as well as they can be at ADI; the building still bears the scars of last month's attack but day to day matters slump back toward the status quo now that the acute crisis has passed. For a few days it actually seems as though the press of unending needs and obligations has abated, like a massive crushing stone lifted from one's back to allow a gasp of breath, leaving workers and residents reeling in the exhausted aftermath.
It doesn't last, but when the pressure intensifies once more it takes on yet another new form. Things will seem to be back to normal when suddenly you realize that the room in which you find yourself is getting smaller–or perhaps the air has grown stale, perhaps that's why it's suddenly so hard to breathe. You're trapped in here, locked in, locked away. Windows seem to shrink and fortify into slitted openings too tight for escape; what might have been an ordinary office door is now a heavy metal thing fortified with deadbolts.
They've locked you in; they've decided that you're not to move about freely, that you're a danger to others. Are you a danger to others? You must be; you must have done something to deserve this. The question of who 'they' are is one without an answer, a nebulous sense of them, the ones who call the shots, the ones who must be looking out for everyone. They don't speak to you; there's no chance to plead your case, only this miserable, tiny cell and your own guilt over something you must have done. You hear them passing by your door at times, keys jangling, footsteps heavy, but there's no hope of aid from them.
None of it is real. The rooms don't shrink; the doors and windows don't change. To someone not caught up in the illusion, it will seem as though those caught in its grip have gone into hysterics over nothing at all, insisting that they're trapped when all they need to do is open the door.
(cw: monsters in the dark, altered mental states, semi-graphic description of injury)
When the crushing claustrophobia finally abates, this time seemingly for good, the shadow woman makes her first appearance. She is seen only in darkness at nighttime, silhouetted in a doorway or lurking in an underpass. Turn on the lights, and there's nothing there–it must have been a trick of the light, the mind making connections out of something seen from the corner of one's eye.
Turn off the lights, though, and there she is again.
She's patient at first, toying with her prey. Lights on, and you're safe. Lights off and the figure returns, still and staring and something you can almost convince yourself you've somehow imagined. But leave the lights on too long, play with the light switch too many times, or watch her too closely, and her patience has an end. When she finally moves, she's fast, charging across a darkened street or a darkened room, the only expression visible on her face is the inhuman light in her eyes, and there is nothing left except to run for the nearest patch of brightness in the night. Maybe you even get away–flee to the circle of sickly light under a lamppost and she must halt at the edge of the darkness, unable to follow. She might circle, waiting for you to make a run for it, or she might disappear back into the night. Will you chance a sprint to the next pool of light?
For those she catches, there is pain. There are rending claws that leave her mark, bleeding, on her victims–but the pain does not end in death. It ends in madness. You may descend into a state beyond thought, mind disappearing into a panicked fugue from which you will retain no memories. Or you may believe yourself to be still fighting off the creature of the night and legions like her, using your environment to protect yourself, to stave off attack.
Those unaffected will see what is truly happening: victims of the creature run rampant in frenzied efforts to bring more and more darkness to the nighttime city. Wild-eyed and unaware, they may start at something as simple as unscrewing a lightbulb, or engage in something as complex as cutting power to entire buildings. Regular citizens of Gloucester fall victim along with the people of ADI and sabotage runs rampant through the city, but it seems that above all else, ADI itself is the target of these attempts to turn out the lights. Panic begins to spread throughout the city as the attacks continue night after night.
- ARRIVAL (March 1 - 31): 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 Road We All Must Travel (March 1 - 31): The bodies found can be photographed, but they'll turn up blurred. There's nothing that can be gleaned about the bodies from a distance, only by moving close and touching them. The bodies can be anyone from any time and any place, even other worlds. Characters might even see non-human races represented. In every case, the body will disappear when touched and characters will pick up the final moments of the person's life. Players are welcome to make these final moments anything they want. The person could have died by mundane or supernatural means, but they will have died a painful or terrifying death in some way.
- Prisoners of Consciousness (March 4 - 12): Episodes in which characters believe themselves to be imprisoned will occur exclusively on ADI property and in the Flophouse. The hallucinations may last for minutes or hours, though characters are likely to perceive time as though they were imprisoned much longer. Characters not affected by the hallucination may help pull others out of it by grounding them in reality, but it is also possible for them to be drawn into the hallucination themselves if they become frightened.
- A Trick of the Dark (Nights of March 12 - 15) While people who have been caught by the apparition seem to focus their attacks on ADI property, the shadow woman herself never appears within ADI offices or apartments. She may sometimes appear in the Flophouse, and frequently appears outdoors, in darkened hallways of local businesses, and in the homes of locals. ADI housing curfew at 11:00 PM each night is still in effect; characters who stay out later may crash at HQ but will not be let into the apartments (they may also be able to get into the Flophouse…if its residents are kind enough to take them in). Characters caught by the shadow woman will experience confusion, terror, and compulsion to sabotage lighting, particularly in and around ADI property, until dawn of the next day. Characters who attempt to fight the shadow woman will find that she fights back (and that any scratch from her claws still causes the fugue state); if they manage to pin her down she will dissipate into shadows.
Jaskier / The Witcher (Netflix)
The thing is Jaskier doesn’t immediately realize something is wrong. He’s only been in Kaer Morhen for a few days, and it’s a maze in only the way a space meant to house hundreds of people and containing not even a dozen can be. He’s also spent a not insignificant amount of that time either a) drunk, b) concussed, or c) both.
He’s on the tail end of both, so sure, maybe he took a wrong turn and ended up in an unlit underground part of the keep? It’s so black his eyes simply can’t adjust for it, and the leftover liquor in his blood can account for why it’s not as cold as it should be. There’s the sound of someone else breathing in this space very close by and a tickling sensation against his neck, but reaching out to find a wall hits resistance far too close to be a proper corridor. Then a few things happen rather all at once.
Jaskier’s hand brushes against a strange hard notch in the wall that moves with a soft click and floods what he can see an instant later is some kind of storage space in light so bright it could be daylight. Before he can even get out a curse at the blinding unexpected light, he also realizes that tickling against his neck?
Very. Large. Spider.
“FUCK!”
Sometimes a large vocabulary is unnecessary to get across the proper feeling of dislike. In short order the bard is rapidly flailing and smacking at the arachnid to try to get it off of him and the fact that there’s barely enough space in the dusty, cobwebby storage room for him let alone a second person is taking the back seat.
➥ THE ROAD WE ALL MUST TRAVEL
If he was going to be transported to some magical other Continent, Jaskier would have hoped he could have at least gotten summer. Instead he’s left to stomp through snow up to his ankles, trying not to slip on every patch of ice his boots catch on.
And talking. Incessantly. Hopefully whoever he got stuck with is another chatter box.
“I’m not against helping, that’s not what I’m saying, I’m happy to be a helper,” Jaskier explains as he moves the flashlight around a little too much to be terribly efficient with it. He’s not really using it to search the darkness of the park in the time where it’s either late night or early morning depending on who you ask. He’s mainly just entertained by the flameless torch and how moving it quickly does not put it out at all. “I just think whatever Destiny Machine that brought me here was a little mis-aimed, a whole keep full of witchers and witches and the child surprise with her own strange abilities and you get the bard? I’m amazing in my own right but I promise you compared to my companions back home this was not a wise choice anyone would have made.”
Not that he’s without skills in his own right. For example, there’s a certain familiarity with corpses and thus how to recognize them in an instant that simply isn’t a common skill here.
“-Oh, that’s a body. Body. Body!” Jaskier calls out, snapping his fingers for attention as the flashlight beam falls upon what at a first glance just looks like a slightly larger mound of snow a stone’s throw off the path. Longer staring gives away the things Jaskier has practice to notice in an instant. The particular dips and hollows in the mound that signify a vaguely human shape. Almost completely snowed over dips that could be covered drag marks from the path leading to it. The black spots against the white nearby that particular shade blood gets in moonlight.
arrival
He opens the door, standing aside in the process with the assumption that whoever happens to be inside will come tearing out of there, based on the banging about going on.
"You alright, mate?" He already knows the answer to that question, but humans tend to like being asked these sorts of things. Gives them a chance to fuss about whatever has their knickers in a twist.
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Did we mention the liquor and recent concussion?
He lands on his ass instead of his head at least, small mercies there, though it hardly feels that way given the severe bruising his tailbone is already facing thanks to Geralt’s redheaded brother shoving him under the table and out of the line of fire of the monster in the keep the night before. The pain takes a back seat to the panic of surprise insect for the time being, with Jaskier flailing and shoving his coat and hat off and jumping back up to make sure the spider is off of him.
It is, there’s no sign of the thing anymore. Still.
“Merciful Melitele that monster was as big as my hand!” he exclaims, cautiously toeing at his jacket on the ground with the toe of his boot. No eight legged beast comes skittering out from it, though. That’s when the panic drains enough from him that the pain registers and he just kind of. Leans a bit, bracing his palms against his thighs as he tries to catch his breath.
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Which there doesn't appear to be, so he returns his attention to Jaskier and his shenanigans, eyebrows climbing higher as he watches the whole production. Humans are so weird. The outfit kind of fucks, though, so Jaskier gets points for style.
"You've got to be new if you're worrying about something the size of your hand." A rude but fair assessment.
His curiosity gets the better of him, and now that he isn't worried about being caught by a stray flailing arm, he steps around Jaskier to properly look into the closet. The source of Jaskier's problems has scrambled up one of the shelves, and Crowley holds a hand out to let it crawl onto his fingers, which confirms his suspicion about why he felt drawn to the spot. "I'm still not feeding you, you little shit."
This is a normal thing to say.
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He pulls a face at seeing Crowley allow the awful thing to just crawl onto his hand like that. Gross.
"What, is that your pet? Familiar?" annoyed as Jaskier is about the thing he would have felt bad killing someone's pet and/or familiar so he's ... mildly relived that it didn't get killed in his flailing. Spider accounted for, he picks up both his coat and his hat to give them a quick shake down anyway (can't be too careful, what if there were two spiders?) before pulling them both back onto his person.
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"Fuck no." It occurs to him, a few seconds too late, that he now has a spider on his hand and isn't sure what to do with it. For someone who's older than time itself, he isn't very smart sometimes. He just has a spider now, he guesses. At least it doesn't seem to want to bite him. "You'll get the orientation from the people in charge, but the long and short of it is that most of us have been claimed by one of these... personifications of fear, I suppose? They feed on whatever fear they represent, so. Spiders. Among other things."
Not that this particular spider is Crowley's. It'll just play nice with him because the Web apparently decided to call dibs, even if he's stubbornly refusing to feed it.
He should probably not be allowed to be on the welcome wagon.
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Crowley's specific explanation might not involve the keywords Jaskier knows, but it's close enough that he just rolls with it. He knows magical beings.
"Great. Witches bad enough, but now spider witches. Well, I don't play gwent with Chaos but I'll be sure to pass on whatever message you all need to Yennefer who I assume you were trying to contact given her recent dealings with something similar. Advance warning: she'll probably tell you to fuck off, if you're lucky," Jaskier explains, looking down the hallway he's found himself in in one direction, then the other. "... So - which way back to the Keep? Is this still Kaedwen?"
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the road we all must travel
"So what exactly is it that a bard does?"
He's vaguely aware of the fantasy genre's existence but as far removed from its tropes as a preppy boy could be.
Except body. Body. Carter snaps to attention right away. Jaskier is right, that looks like... He's already moving forward, automatically heading over to check on the slumped figure, his doctor routine kicking in. What if they're still alive? Not likely but he has to make sure.
"Come here, give me a hand with them."
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On the other hand, unlike John, he has to learn what a car is.
Thankfully for both of them the body discovery prevents Jaskier from explaining what a bard does. His eyebrows shoot up as John just blows right past him to go touching it. Because that's apparently what we're doing now, touching bodies! Great! Wonderful!
"A hand with what? Best case scenario it's a dead body, worst it's a ghoul waiting for you to get close enough before it springs up to eat your face off!" Jaskier complains - but still follows after John even if now he's less than pleased about the flameless torch. He's pretty sure fire would be helpful in the event of undead monstrosity.
the road we all must travel
He's paying attention, though, and he's ready to make Jaskier stop talking if the necessity should arise. Dogtown is dangerous, after all, even if Caduceus feels relatively at home here.
"Sometimes you just need a witness," he says as the bard downplays his own skill and importance in the current circumstances of the world they find themselves in. Someone has to witness. Someone has to remember.
He knows the body is there before Jaskier's light hits it.
"Yeah," he confirms quietly. He doesn't sound particularly sad or scared, surprisingly neutral over the discovery of a body. "Hold the light still, please. Is that blood?"
[ooc: happy to let Jaskier touch the body first or have it be Caduceus]
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Steadying the light rather than just playing around with it, Jaskier points it firmly at the suspicious mound of snow. It is, at least, a body. Maybe worse than a body though. He's seen the dead get back up again a little too often to feel secure in something being down meaning it's out, and with the snow there's no way to tell anything other than 'that sure looks human sized and shaped'.
"That's definitely blood. I ... don't think it's fresh?"
But snow does strange things to blood doesn't it? Makes it hard to tell how recently it had been spilled if it's been more than a few minutes. Cringing and hating every choice that lead him to this moment, Jaskier begins to take a few careful steps forward to get a better look.
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Jaskier's reaction is--well. Caduceus notices it, the fear and uncertainty. The End is not difficult to feed, but it's nice when it just happens.
"The cold makes it hard to tell," he agrees absently. He tips his head. "I could always ask them."
tw violence
It comes to him in a flash, like he was reliving his own vivid memory. Running through the snowdrifts, slipping on a patch of ice and falling hard on one knee, feeling something crack with the impact and being certain it's himself. Knowing it's behind him before he even looks but needing to look anyway and see - Jaskier doesn't know what he's looking at, frames everything within the context of what he knows.
Something that looks like it was once human but fundamentally is not, if it ever was. Emaciated, too tall, pale with dark patches like a body with frostbite and a mouth with blood gone black from drying in the dark, eyes like two pits. Some kind of ghoul? It's slow to approach, an inevitability until he gets his feet under him even with the ache in his leg, then the movement is too quick to see and he's back down in the snow, teeth in his neck.
Not enough to kill, just enough to keep him from screaming for help. He is alive and aware for far, far too long as it devours his flesh and insides.
The only blessing is how much time was compressed for that vision, because it means Jaskier only screams for a few seconds as he scrambles back, the snow pile beginning to collapse like a failed soufflé as the body under it turns to crumbling ash.
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Caduceus stills when Jaskier goes rigid and screams. And then he's scrambling back away from the body, and the cleric is momentarily torn between the crumbling body and the human's very apparent--uh. Episode. Something happened. With a soft sound of frustration (not at Jaskier), he abandons the body, stepping over it with long legs to get closer to the man trying to get away. He has enough thought to grab the abandoned flashlight along the way.
He gently-but-firmly gets hold of Jaskier's ankle and he cannot ignore the shiver in his own spine when he realizes that part of the man's terror is to do with death itself. He's pretty sure he could cast something and it would work... but he doesn't.
"Hey." Caduceus crouches down and tries to get a look in Jaskier's eyes. "Still with me?"
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His blue eyes are wide and unseeing for a few moments longer before they manage to focus on Caduceus in front of him.
"What - what the fuck?"
It comes out as a hoarse whisper instead of a shout, the shivering from the fear as well as the cold.
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Wildcard - Prisoners of Consciousness
She starts pounding on the door. "Please! I'm sorry! I can't- Please let me out!"
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"Hey, I hear you - stand back, alright?" he calls out, hoping she can hear him. Giving the handle a jiggle and bracing himself against the door to test it, Jaskier ends up slamming his shoulder against it HARD to pop it open. It gives him just enough time to really hope he didn't just smack someone in the face with the door.
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"Please! Please, it's getting tighter, sir!" There's no recognition of him in her eyes. She stares past the man, through him, as if he isn't there. "Brother- Brother bless me and all those who praise the earth below as above. I will dance with you when my time is met, and let me be the soil that feeds all things. But please-please I don't want to dance yet! Please!"
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"I'm here, - close your eyes for me okay can you do that?" She clearly isn't seeing things as they are, so maybe...? It's not the stupidest plan he's ever had. Honestly, this is Jaskier, it doesn't even rate the top ten worst plans he's ever had. This one doesn't involve fire or outright violence. "Close your eyes and please do not hit me."
Not that he'll do much other than be sad and pissy if she does take a swing at him, but that's the warning he gives before trying to reach out to take hold of her arm.
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No, this feels constricting, like she's done something wrong. But hasn't she? She'd left him, turned her back on her god and her people to join the Spring Tide. And for what? To wind up losing her way to a new faith because she'd come to this place, instead. Maybe she deserves this. If this is Brother Earth coming to claim her... she deserves to be in pain and suffer for what she'd done.
Mercy closes her eyes, and promptly screeches and lashes out instinctively when she feels something grab her arm. Right, so, she should probably give in, but her body's not there, yet. She tries to rip the... hand? It's hand. She tries to yank that away as it seems to have sprouted from one of the walls.
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"By Chaos woman - in the face, too?" he declares, checking to see if his nose is bleeding. Thankfully not that bad, but gods it hurts enough that it's a surprise.
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the road we all must travel
"Good thing this is only the second-bloodiest body I've seen in the past two weeks," she says cheerfully, making an inside joke with herself that she has zero plans to explain further. "Okay, wait, hold on; I saw something like this yesterday, too. I'm gonna walk over to it, but you need to start filming now, okay?"
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Too bad about the corpse ruining the party. That's usually what they do, though. Few parties are improved with corpses, Jaskier stands firm on this opinion. He looks about to ask about the whole second bloodiest thing before clearly coming to the decision that he really doesn't want to know. At least not right now when there is clear and present danger around. Maybe back when they're back at the flophouse or whatever, safe and sound, THEN information will be pumped for. As it is, he starts patting down his pockets for - What, he's not sure really. A - veil, maybe? He doesn't know what filming could mean.
"Right - how do I do that?"
(Yes it's weird being in a place with modern technology, and no he doesn't know anything about nets he is not a fisherman.)
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Then she won't have to worry about talking him through sending the footage to her. Opening up her camera app and switching it over to video mode, she starts a new recording.
"Just hold this up, and point it at me. Don't touch the screen, and don't get your fingers in the way - luckily you'll be able to see if you're blocking the feed!"
Assuming he does as instructed, she walks towards the mound in the snow, reaches out to touch what she figures is probably its shoulder... and then jerks back like she's been burned as the body dissolves into ash.
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