redstringtheories

➥ Arrival

Photo of a modern office building from the outside. There is a manicured lawn with several trees and bushes. To the left side of the photo, there is a waterbody with reeds around the fringes. There is a purple gradient filter over everything.
(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 Road We All Must Travel

Photo of someone in blue jeans and brown boots walking along a path in the Dogtown forest. The trees do not have foliage, the sky is blue, and there is one of the Babson boulders to the left that reads 'study.'
(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.

➥ Prisoners of Consciousness

Photo of a woman of Asian descent banging her hands against a frosted glass pain. The woman looks distressed.
(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.

➥ A Trick of the Dark

Black and white photo of a woman on a cobblestone street at night. She is backlit by a street lamp and appears in silhouette, her features completely obscured. She is holding something in her left hand.
(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.

➥ Mod Notes

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.
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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[OOC: Jaskier does not want to touch the body so clearly it should be him.]

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.

Caduceus approaches the corpse slowly. He can see the roots leading here, though Jaskier certainly won't. He makes a circle around it, studying carefully whatever details they can glean with the limited light. It's about then that he remembers he also has a flashlight. He turns it on and crouches down to examine the body more closely, though he doesn't touch it just yet. He's torn between turning it over to see a face or simply leaving it as it is and reporting it to ADI.

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."

"Ask them? Like what, you can magically speak with the dead?" Jaskier asks incredulously, eyebrows raised as he crouches down on the other side of the body from Caduceus. He is not intending to touch the body. He does not want to touch the body, and this close it is very clear that's what it is. Human shaped in the sense that it's got a torso, two arms, two legs and a head, but the snow and clothing make it hard to tell. From what little clothing does peek out from the drifts, those close it looks more like someone from Jaskier and Caduceus' kind of world than a local. Jaskier's trying to brush the snow off near to the head when he accidentally touches frozen skin.

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.

"Yeah, I can. Even easier when they still have a mouth," he says as he peers at the body. He leans to try to see if the jaw is still intact, but the death doesn't seem old and so they likely have plenty to work with.

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?"

It feels like he's still in it. Like he's been dying for more than an hour now, life and blood slowly fading as nobody comes to help. Even when he frantically pats at his neck, his chest, sees everything is in-tact, he swears he can still feel the pain of them being ripped open with teeth not quite sharp enough to make the task as straightforward and clean as one would hope if they had to endure it.

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.

"I don't know," he responds gently, eyes searching. He avoids shining the flashlight in Jaskier's eyes, keeping the light down but offering enough for them both to see by. He studies the young man, then looks over his shoulder at the fading roots along the ground. Hm.

"What happened? What did you see?"

"I saw- I saw-" he has to catch his breath, to try to think about what he saw in words to express to someone else instead of just the overwhelming horror of experiencing it.

"I - was that person. In the snow. I saw - I felt them die."

"What happened to them?" he asks, voice low and even and intent. Caduceus thinks he could know if he looked hard enough or if there was a corpse left to talk to, but there isn't, and now Jaskier is the only source of that information and it aches in his chest how much he wants it.

Caduceus knows it is likely his patron's hunger and not his own, but he cannot ignore it, either. The End is not demanding, but it is ever-present.

"Calm down... and tell me." Caduceus crouches down close and reaches a hand out to help Jaskier sit up more.

(To a log!)

TDM #9

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