redstringtheories

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TDM #10

➥ 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 Flowers Came Early

Photo of yellow daffodils backed by wooden planks.
(cw: existential dread, altered perceptions, apocalypse, tsunamis, wildfires, meteor strikes, potential for botulism/food-based illnesses)

Weird things happen in Dogtown, everyone knows it. And the weird things have been getting worse. The Apocalypse Disruption Initiative (ADI) is not above taking advantage of that to test out the waters for its newest arrivals, but they're far more conscientious about it than early days. They're not looking to send anyone to their death, especially not with recent events that have transpired surrounding Dogtown and in Gloucester proper. An employee gives you a GPS device where you need only press a button to alert ADI there is severe danger and someone needs to come help you right away, 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.

This month, flowers are finally starting to bloom throughout the city and into the park. Bright blues, purples, pinks, and deep crimson. There's one set of flowers that seem to have formed suspiciously consistent patterns, though. The golden daffodils only seem to be growing in select spots. They're not quite in rings. More… rectangular? Something like that. In any case, those who observe the daffodils may note they're exceptionally fragrant, the sort of thing to draw one in…

Stepping foot into the middle of the daffodils causes a sudden, but brief, plunge. Congratulations, you've found a cellar, one of the old ones left behind and covered over by time and nature. Investigations will lead to mostly-collapsed root cellars, the sort of thing someone interested in local history might be fascinated by. The occasional tin or jar can be found, as well, which might net a healthy sum for collectors of Colonial Era foodstuffs. Those foolish enough to try to eat what's inside will likely find themselves exceptionally sick. Please Do Not.

Whatever adventures characters get up to in the cellars, there doesn't appear to be anything actively dangerous down there beyond the place collapsing and self-inflicted botulism. Stepping back out, though? There is nothing. Dogtown is a barren wasteland, and in the distance, in the direction of Gloucester, there are only the ruined remains of a city long-since lost, itself, to some horrible catastrophe. Different pairs might see different kinds of catastrophes. Perhaps it looks like an enormous tsunami swept through, pushing the town out before dragging pieces of it back into the sea. Perhaps it looks like there was some sort of wildfire with only the burned out husks of buildings left. Perhaps there are no signs, at all, just a crater where the town used to be, wiped out by something that fell from space. Whatever might be their worst visions of a decaying future, empty of life, this is it. They've emerged and-

And it's normal again. Just Dogtown, just Gloucester. Characters who fell prey to the daffodils will find that any time they get a whiff of the flowers in Dogtown or elsewhere, they will have brief, recurring visions of being in that desolate landscape, of the horrors that await in some future they haven't reached, yet.

➥ Ctrl + Alt + Delete

Binary code in varying shades of bright green against a black backdrop.
(cw: potential for mild public humiliation, paranoia, altered perceptions, insects, claustrophobia/choking/suffocating, body horror/tooth horror)

After a certain AI's foray into the world of stealing account passwords, on top of other instances of cyber security lapses by new arrivals, ADI has decided to implement mandatory cyber security classes. It's not enough to prove you can use a modern phone and computer, everyone who arrives will be asked to attend at least one course put on by the Staff Development and Information Technology departments. Or perhaps you've proved your mettle already and are one of the ones actually teaching these courses. The topics covered are wide ranging, but some seminar highlights for this month include:

Cyber Security Awareness - What makes a good password? Why do we have those? What even is two-factor authentication. This course is your basic introduction to cyber security and teaches things like don't give everyone your password on the public network. Don't download anything that hasn't been pre-approved by IT - devices are locked to prevent this, but don't get wily. And if you see something, say something in terms of any oddities in your devices. IT would rather tell you there's nothing wrong than deal with something worse getting through.

Brute Forcing It - An interactive class where participants will create passwords and have a paired participant attempt to brute force hack it. Pairs are allowed to ask each other questions, but nothing will be compelling honesty. Better get sly if you want to hack your compatriot's login. If you manage it, you'll receive a congratulations and gift card to a local coffee shop. If you're the one whose password was successfully hacked… you get nothing apart from a stern lecture about picking a better password. Get to know your fellows and see if you can rise above them on the field of cyber battle.

Spooky Threats - A rundown of potential supernatural threats that have entered into this digital age. Worried someone is spying on you through a camera lens, even when your device is off? It's very possible. There are some Eye-based avatars with that sort of technopathy available to them. Worried you might have a bug in the machine? Have you considered that this is literally the case? The Corruption has a strong foothold, particularly in the social media space. Digital tech also tends to interact in strange ways with the supernatural. Participants will be able to take photos with their phones of a few different artifacts brought up from the lower levels and kept in a display case. They'll be able to see the strange warping and static effects associated with the photos as a first step to identifying supernatural phenomenon.

The artifacts brought up aren't the most dangerous in ADI's catalog, thankfully, but there will be reprimands and getting kicked out of the class for those who can't keep their hands to themselves. The objects include:

A flute that induces severe migraines and temporary synesthesia when touched;
A doodlebug pen that makes it feel like there's something crawling up your back for several minutes after touching it;
A ticket stub for a car parking lot that looks perpetually damp. There is the scent of gasoline and a tightening in your throat the longer it's held;
A wax apple that makes you want to bite into it, to consume it, to smile as your teeth turn to wax.

➥ Dawning Realizations

Photo of a spring festival. There are many people scattered around a grassy area with trees around and a blue sky above. There is a white bigtop style tent cover, and colorful balloons flanking the image.
(cw: references to violence and death; scopophilia)

April's dawn has come to the seemingly endless nights of March as nightmares fade and the monster howling at the door goes silent. The days are growing longer, but they feel longer still than they are when the night no longer holds so many dangers.

The peace feels uncertain at first, but as the days and nights go on the shadow woman does not make her reappearance. A few at ADI voice the hope that she might actually be dead following the destruction of multiple shades. Others are more doubtful, claiming that they saw her as recently as the night of April 1st and that not all of the shades were caught and killed. The official word from the top is that she's all too likely to still be alive and field agents are on the watch for her to re-emerge in Gloucester or some other, easier target. Investigations around town in search of bolt holes and places she'd been spotted turn up nothing but the occasional drift of black sand…and, in a few too many places to be easily dismissed as coincidence, wax dripped on the ground or intermingled with the sand. Some characters may have suspicions about what this is, others may simply have questions.

Whatever ADI's lingering misgivings, the city of Gloucester is grateful for the reprieve, and more openly grateful for the help of ADI than ever before. Officially, the spring festival thrown in a city park near ADI headquarters is a show of gratitude for ADI's assistance during the blackouts that recently plagued the city and inspired an unprecedented crime wave. Unofficially, ADI quite suddenly has the city council's logistical support as well as its ear, and the festival is a thank you for quite a bit more than providing a few backup generators to local businesses.

Eat! Drink! Celebrate! There's live music as well as jugglers, stage magicians, and basically any entertainers that could be brought in on short notice on the promise of tips–that is to say, an effort was made but this is not exactly Las Vegas. There are homemade carnival games that have clearly made the rounds of a few community festivals and elementary school carnivals: bean bag toss, plinko, mini golf, and more. Try your skill at musical chairs or run an egg relay race with your friends. Get your face painted, jump in the bouncy castle, or volunteer for the dunk tank–no one will judge you (probably).

On the more sedate side of things, there are local crafters selling their wares. There's also food and beer from local businesses, with ADI staff receiving a generous handful of tokens to exchange for each. Or you might just want to take a stroll among the spring flowers further from the hubbub of the festival proper; they're coming in nicely now (including the daffodils). And if the spots on that one flower looked like eyes for a moment, or if you feel like you're being watched in the gardens–that's just nonsense. It's a beautiful sunny day, and you deserve to relax and enjoy yourself.

➥ Mod Notes

ARRIVAL (Apr 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 FLOWERS CAME EARLY (Apr 1 - 31): Characters are welcome to find the odd relic from the 1800s tucked away in the cellar. ADI's IT department will be happy to help with listing it on places like eBay or Facebook Marketplace to sell to potential collectors. They'll also offer to just buy it for a few hundred dollars to avoid the hassle and then gift it to a relevant museum for the tax write-off. Players can come up with any catastrophic scenario they would like for this prompt. We would just ask that you pay particular mind to listing content warnings as they arise. Pressing the GPS Device's button while in the 'other' place will result in the device making a crackling error sound. It will work as soon as the vision stops. The recurring visions will last anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes and will be all-encompassing. Whatever the character is doing, wherever they are, they will feel like they're in this destroyed world. These recurring visions can carry past the April timeframe, should players want that.
CTRL + ALT + DELETE (Apr 1 - 31): All characters will be asked to attend at least one cyber security lesson, whether they're a new arrival or someone old hat. If your character has the skills to actually teach these classes, you may handwave that they are an instructor, rather than a participant. For the Spooky Threats option, anyone who touches the artifacts (and is caught by the instructor) will be verbally rebuked in front of the entire class before being sent out. Characters will receive explicit instructions not to touch the artifacts when they're first brought in, and will be informed they're things that ADI is still trying to figure out how to destroy as they're surprisingly resilient to the usual flamethrower/incineration method.
DAWNING REALIZATIONS (Apr 8 - 11): As far as anyone can tell, Katie Dunn is no longer in Gloucester and no immediate threat has arrived to replace her. Characters who killed or injured one or more of her shades have been commended with an internal announcement, a bonus to their pay, and a gift card for frozen yogurt. And yes, the flowers do occasionally have eyes, but it's probably fine. If examined in detail, the wax is high-quality and scented to smell just a little bit like a campfire.
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ARRIVAL

It happens in a blink. That's how they say the Institute gets you, too. So the obvious and immediate conclusion for Nick is that the Commonwealth's Big Bad Boogeyman has finally decided to bring him "home."

He's no fool. They hold all the cards here. The switch, or the pulse, or the recall code that's gonna shut him down and leave him a pile of junk, their long-discarded prototype. But he's not the type to lie down and give up when the (computer) chips are down. The Institute has a hell of a lot of pain and suffering to answer for. And before the Institute takes him out, he's gonna make them feel as much as he can.

Pistol in hand, a determined glare on his face, the synth stalks through the hallways. Funny, he expected it'd look a little nicer down here. The dingy Pre-War office look is a little unimpressive for the folks who invented the teleporter and the existential nightmare of sapient artificial consciousness.

His motion sensors pick it up first, someone moving up ahead. There's a bump, someone brushing against furniture. He keeps his pistol down but he's ready to raise it if a scientist or courser comes around the corner.

"Who's there?" he calls. "Put your hands up and step where I can see you."

FLOWERS

"Nice to see a mathematician dare to follow his landscaping dreams."

Nick draws the cigarette from his mouth, careful to blow the smoke away from his partner on this odd little mission. He's half staring at the odd rectangular pattern of the daffodils, and half at the human fingers crimping his cigarette. (He had his first several of many panic episodes about the "form" back in his room, enough to get a grip for the sake of the assignment. But it's little moments like this where it really freaks him out...)

He's so busy staring he misses the moment his partner takes one step too far forward, and the ground caves in and takes them with it.

A collapsed cellar. Damn it, he ought to have noticed the signs-- they're a common enough occurrence back home.

"Hey, you okay?" he calls. "Don't move if anything hurts. I'll come help you."

CTL + ALT + DEL

(note: Due to very literal machine logic, Nick is canonically an incredible hacker.)

Honestly, it's nice of them to give a primer in this newfangled... oldfangled tech (and he can just hear his secretary laughing at him for that phrasing.) It's all subtly different from the literal artifacts he's used to, but apart from a couple differences, it generally makes sense.

Maybe a little too much sense. And maybe Nick's starting to get a little smug after his fourth straight win in the password-guessing game (though he's giving the gift cards back to his opponents on the sly, since it's not like they do him any good.)

"I'd better be honest," he says to his fifth opponent, "I have an unfair advantage here. Maybe we oughta skip it?"

But hey... maybe his opponent's just that competitive.

DAWNING REALIZATIONS

As much as he dreaded coming out here today, it's actually pretty nice... in a real melancholy way. It's nice to see pristine landscapes. Blooming flowers and leafing trees, green grass, clear skies, and natural beauty. It's nice to see families, big ones, lots of people and lots of kids enjoying a carefree afternoon. No fear, no violence, none the dust and rust and blood and grim misery that colors even the most gentle moments in the wasteland.

It's nice to stand here off to the side. Nobody staring, no overheard snatches of muffled conversation about him. Nobody's looking at him at all. Because for all they can see, he's not a synth. Not a mechanical man to gawk at and fear. Just an ordinary human man in a nice suit, standing off to the side and watching the world go by.

It's a lie, if a nice one. But Nick can't bring himself to dislike it. He remembers when it was real, even though it never really was. And that brings with it all the usual swells of pain and nostalgia and tangled feelings. He reaches for a cigarette and lights up, stepping back and accidentally bumping into someone standing nearby.

"Pardon me," he says, and steps away. "Wasn't watching where I was going." Despite his better efforts, the quiet melancholy shows up in his voice and on a face much more expressive than he's used to.

(ooc: Prose or brackets are fine by me, so please tag at your leisure. There's plenty of info about Nick in his journal, but feel free to ask if you need something pertinent to tagging.

Out in public/away from ADI property (prompts 2 and 4), Nick's mechanical nature is covered by a human form.)

"Actually, I was thinking you might want to play a few rounds with the teacher?" Cortana stepped in to interrupt. She'd been intrigued since she saw this other artificial intelligence enter the classroom, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to get to know him a little better.

"Maybe show the rest of them how it's done?" She sat on the edge of the desk and gave him a smirk. Education and fun! ~~It had been a while since she got to outhack another AI.~~

The other "student" looks beyond relieved, slipping aside to find someone less massively advantaged in the password-guessing department.

Now, this oughta be interesting. Nick smirks back and gestures for her to take a seat. "Ms... Cortana, you said? Hope I'm saying that right. I'd be honored."

The smirk transforms into a full face splitting grin as she moves to take the offered seat.

"Got it in one." Her posture exudes the confidence of someone ensured of victory, and there's a touch of mischief glittering in her eyes, "And you're Nick Valentine. How about I let you go first?"

Normally it should be ladies fisrt, but she figures he's gonna need a bit of a headstart on this.

She is the best, after all.

"Sure, sure. Let me come up with one real quick." That's as easy as thinking about it for a second. The ol' CPU loves nothing more than to invent random strings of numbers and letters, so he spins one up. Eight characters, nothing too wild, but nothing a person could ever just guess, either.

"All right. Now we play 20 Questions."

Nick Valentine | Fallout

CTRL+ALT+DEL

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Arrival

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Dawning Realizations

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Flowers

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Dawning Realizations

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god damn it >(

>:3

dawning realizations

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