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redstringtheories2022-04-01 07:15 am
TDM #10
(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: 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.
(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.
(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.
- 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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His smile lifts at the corner, bemused for the question, but he nods. "Is there another way you would hoist yourself up? It is quite strong, I promise."
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"I could maybe scramble up the sides. Glad I don't have to." Without any further jawing about it, he grabs hold and pulls himself up. The sides of the collapse are rough enough to give him plenty of toe holds. Once he's out, he intends to move out of his way.
Instead, he freezes in place and stares. The sky is ruddy with still burning distant fires against black smoke. He immediately chokes on the thick ash raining down, coughing hard and lifting his arm to shield mouth and nose from taking more of it in.
"What the..." He ducks his head down, too, eyes watering from the caustic sting. Ash stirs thick against his boots. Every step sinks a print at least three inches deep. There are no flowers, no trees, just jutting, blackened skeletons of them clawing at the low hanging smoke.
He turns a full circle. It's worse than any aftermath of any wildfire he has ever seen. It's as though the entire world has been swallowed whole. "Hey," he calls back down into the hole. "You might wanna stay down there. It's...somethin's really wrong." Remembering the phone, he pulls it out and pushes the button. Nothing. Nothing but him, a hot wind, and the distant crackle of a sweeping fire still burning out of control.
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At the warning, however, he wastes no time immediately hoisting himself up, his grip on his weapon tight even as he finds his feet- and then finds his lungs filled with acrid air and the taste of ash. He knows the smell all too well even as it chokes him just as surely as his companion.
"Have the woods caught fire?" He pulls the loose neck of his overcoat up over his mouth and squints against the heat in the air. The give of the grass beneath his boots crunches as he shifts to retrieved his phone and take a picture of their surroundings as he was taught, though it's hard to listen for the audio cues over the distant crackle of flame. They couldn't have missed a fire this bad overhead while they were done there...
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When he sees him taking pictures, he moves to do the same. It takes him longer to get the camera pulled up. Once he does, he snaps one of the hole they came out of, the ash all around, the skeletal remains of a few blackened trees, the sullen glow in the distance.
"I tried pressin' that button. Ain't nothin' happened. We can't stay out in this." Maybe they can find some food down there worth risking if it comes to it. Water's a different matter. "We oughtta take shelter again."
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"Go back in the hole, we'll regroup, but we can't stay down there waiting for this pass when it might not." He pockets his phone and crouches again to lay the glaive back into place. He had a waterskin still on him, it was small, but enough to wet their throats and maybe find covers for their faces.
"I have a plan." Sort of.
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He scrambles back down into the pit with relative ease. This is nothing unusual, not with all the rambling, sometimes on the very urgent run, he had to do with Lennie. He stumbles a few steps at the bottom but catches himself just fine.
Immediately, he turns to be sure he's being followed. Down here the air isn't so choking. He rubs his eyes clear of tears from the caustic ash, careful not to just rub more of it into them. Christ, this is one helluva fix they're in, and he still can't fathom how it happened so fast.
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Once George sounds like he's down the hole, Garner follows and, this time, slides the glaive so he can bring it down with them. He sets the weapon against the shelf and unbuckles the small waterskin from his belt to offer to the other man. "Take a drink, slow. Splash some in your eyes. We'll want to find coverings for our nose and mouth and wet those as well to get through the ash and smoke."
He shakes his head and, once his hands are free, reaches into a pocket for where he'd left a hair tie. "This came on unnaturally, I'm sure of it. My glaive wasn't even warm to the touch when we used it to get out, a fire that intense should have melted or at least damaged it. We need to head back to ADI."
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"Thing is there ain't nowhere to get to. Th' city's gone. Unless you know 'a some other place..." He lets it hang. They're in a real bind.
He's impressed by his observation about the...glaive. New word to him. Sounds better than bladed stick. It's true. It wasn't hot when he pulled himself up. In fact, now that he thinks about it... "I'll do ya one weirder. When I was goin' up, the sun was shinin' down into the hole. I saw it all the way up until my feet hit the ash."
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“It must be an entity’s influence, like the darkness before and-” which one had Jon called it that had caused such anxiety in the building? “-the buried before that.” There were a few this could fall to and he was not so confident in his own knowledge yet to guess.
More importantly was what they did with this. “It might be fake or not as wide spread as it seems. Last month, something got into my head, made something I was scared of come to life, but it didn’t just affect me, it affected my roommate as well, causing him to lose sight of his surroundings. This might be like that. Let’s head out of Dogtown and search for others on the way. If this is real…there must be some survivors.”
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"Awright," he says when he finishes. "But I think we should mark this hole somehow, jes' in case there ain't nothin' else out there. We'll want a place to shelter, an' if the wind kicks up too much, I won't be able to follow our tracks back. I'm gonna see if I can find something else further back in the cellar. Old cloth, somethin'. I'll be right back an' callin' to you the whole time. If I stop, somethin's wrong. Sound good?"
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"That sounds perfect." He takes a moment to search himself and what he has. Rope, some very small provisions that wouldn't last them more than the day, his glaive, the various totems around his neck...he lingers on the stylized palm of obsidian that lay just under his shirt, under the sun-like symbol of the Dawnfather he wore more proudly...but there was nothing his gifted magics could help them with in this.
"Do you have anything on you to cover your nose and mouth while we walk?"
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"Sit tight."
He takes a few seconds to pull up the flashlight on the phone then starts carefully toward the back. "So far it's fine. I see a few crates. I'm gonna do a little digging."
He continues narrating as he goes, more swollen cans, some jars of gloppy yuck, there! A mildew streaked length of old canvas that smells as bad as it looks. He hauls it out of its rotting crate and drags it back to where he'd left Garner. "Think I can bust up one a' them crates to give us something t' stick this on. Then we can get goin'. I was hoping we'd find something down here we could eat, but it's all ruint." Besides that, it takes a man a lot longer to starve than most people think. Lack of water is their real enemy here.
He breaks up the nearest crate and drags a few of the longest and sturdiest pieces of wood back. "Maybe if you get back up there first, I can hand these up to you."
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Eventually, his companion returns with...something that smells rank, enough so to his keyed-in nose that Garner's face scrunches in distaste and he takes a half step back on instinct. Strong smells were just as strident as loud noises, but they had little other recourse.
"Alright. I'll head up first." He moves back to the vicinity of the hole and it's ash and fire smell and slides the glaive back into place, talking as he does. "I have some food with me, but no more than enough to keep us for one more day, if pressed to the limit. The lack of fresh water will kill us first." It's pragmatically said and he wastes no time before hoisting himself back uo through the hole-
And onto soft, lush, grass. Yes, fresh air, the scent of green and sound of birdsong meets him....was it...over?
He turns back to the hole and offers a hand down. "Come back up here, I need your eyes."
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He watches anxiously, already moving to grab one of the planks when his call down to him stops him cold. Wasting no time on questions, he grabs his hand and starts scrambling up, prepared for anything, he thinks. Immediately, he whips out his kerchief and wraps it over his nose and mouth, tying a quick, hard knot at the back of his head and pulling a few tufts of short hair in the process.
"What is it?" He's quickly scanning the ashen hellscape, trying to see if something is coming for them out of the gloom.
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"What is...the air smells sweet again, I can hear birds and-" He crouches down to the grass below him and pulls a few blades free as though they might suddenly be visible against the darker shade of his palm "There's grass again, yes?"
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It's not unlike how he'd talk to Lennie, and he immediate realizes this isn't necessarily a good thing. "I didn't mean to snap like that. I'm jes'...nothin' has changed up here. Not a god damned thing."
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No, that didn't mean he was right, illusions and tricks of the mind happened, especially here, but what if-
His mind turns over every possibility from George stuck in an illusion to Garner having some sort of episode brought on by the smell of burning and the memories attached to them, even if he didn't feel like that was the case. He wasn't sure he could trust his own mind.
"Fine. It doesn't matter." He stands and brushes the grass from his palm, then pulls his phone from his pocket again and takes another sweep of pictures...just in case. "We should stick to the original plan and make for the edges of Dogtown."
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"Yeah, let's do that. Jes'...stay close to me, awright? I don't know who's wrong about what. The only way this could get worse right now is if we got separated." OK, it's far from the only way. Like hell is he going to sit there and scare himself imagining things when they have a plan they can stick to.
"I'm gonna hang onto your sleeve. I'll tell you if I see anything or anybody comin'." And he'll get out of his way. That stick, that glaive, doesn't look like it's for walking. "Let's go." He sets out in the direction he thinks they originally came from. He usually has a pretty good sense of direction. In all this? It's a lot harder to tell.
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He waits until he can feel the tug on his sleeve, then starts in the direction he feels is right. The path was clear, what he remembers, no odd flowers until the ones they'd stumbled across, just a large rock in the road some twenty paces around the curve ahead. Which...
"There...should be a large rock around-" He stops...there was a curve ahead because of the trees he knew were there, but if George was still seeing cleared land, he wouldn't see a curve. He bites the inside of his lip as a flicker of vague frustration takes him. "Nevermind, might not look the same to you anymore anyway."
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Still, he takes it slowly and cautiously, having another thought, too. "Say, you think you could jam that s--that glaive of yours into the ground every few steps or so? There ain't no path no more. For all we know there could be more cellars all over the place, and we ain't got no way 'a tellin'."
It will slow their progress down further. So would tumbling into the ground. They might not be as lucky with the fall the second time.
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He hadn't seen the flower formations before, George had, and while he hadn't commented until the ill-fated one, that didn't meant there weren't more cellars. No matter whose mind was playing tricks on them, neither of them would be able to see another before it was too late.
"That's a good idea. Yes, I can do that." It is slower-going, but every few feet, he jams the end of the glaive into the soft grass and dirt below, each hit sounding solid and vibrating through his hand instead of the unseen cover of an overgrown (or ash-buried) cellar door. As they neared the curve he remembered up ahead, he takes the slight turn, even if he knows how odd it might look to George. If he were wrong, he looked a fool, if George were wrong, they'd both be face-full of undergrowth and Garner knew which he preferred.
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"Hey," he says, "You're veerin' off. We don't got that much further to go. Let's jes' stick to a straightaway." The last thing he wants to do is meander back and forth as long as this is already taking. The wet bandana is only so helpful.
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It was one thing to stand there feeling foolish and not knowing who was right about this, it was another when they actually had to make a decision based on who was experiencing what. If he was wrong and the edge of Dogtown didn't spell the end of whatever illusion had taken over one of them, then they'd be forced with this again.
"I can hear branches and trees in the wind, but I know you can't. Forward, then." He didn't know George, but of the two of them, he was willing to bet the other man didn't have a history of hearing whispers and having connections to evil liches, so he was willing to defer this time.
Garner adjusted his path and headed straight. The wind moving around trees got a little louder, the grass under his boots crunched with more and more wood debris, but the real issue came when reaching branches that brushed by his clothing, snags instead in his hair. Garner stumbles and lets out a pained hiss as it yanks, leaving him to try and disentangle the strands.
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"What is it?" he asks sharply, alarmed all over again and squinting as though that could show him the invisible. With that disturbing thought, he even takes a few swipes through the air near his head just in case there is some unseen assailant, God forbid. Nothing.
"I don't know what's got you." His voice is a lot closer now, because he's right beside him. "I can't find nothin'. Maybe this phone thing..."
He holds it up to try to snap a picture. It heats to searing within seconds, making him drop it with a loud curse and wring at his hand. When it hits the ash, it bursts into flame. "God damn it! God damn it to Hell and back!"
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It had to be just him then, right? It's only his mind playing tricks- but then his mind was doing an excellent job making his scalp sting with the pulling of his hair.
George's curse is distraction enough from any threat of spinning a circle in his mind, but he can't begin to tell what just happened. Did he drop it?
Garner pulls out his own phone, set to start the camera up as he had before, but the little chime to signal if he has the phone level seems warbled and distorted. Before he can question it, searing heat washes through his fingers and he wrenches his hands away from the thing with a gasp. "What in the name- what is going on?"
His fingers are throbbing to the beat of his heart, but he reaches up and grabs his own hair and the offending branch and wrenches the two apart. One confusing annoyance at a time.
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