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redstringtheories2021-07-04 06:36 pm
TDM #1
(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: hallucination, potential mind-control)
Weird things happen in Dogtown, everyone knows it. The Apocalypse Disruption Initiative (ADI) is not above taking advantage of that to test out the waters for its newest arrivals. They're not looking to send anyone to their death, though. That's far too much paperwork, you'd been assured with a wink from the employee who'd directed you to the park trailhead. You've been left with another person. Maybe they're a new arrival, as well, or a more seasoned 'veteran.' Either way, you're together for the next while and you've been asked to find and record any paranormal activity in the park. You have your phones and any other equipment you might have brought with you. Those who succeed in documenting anything peculiar will receive a $100 reward to be used as they see fit.
This month, there seems to be something odd afoot with the stones around the park. Instead of the questionably useful advice they offer, there is, instead, something embarrassingly or horrifically true about you carved into the stone. Trying to show your companion or gauge their reaction will net nothing; they will simply see their own truth. It's only when you admit to what's on the stone that it seems to become visible to others or any camera in your possession.
Take a picture. The least you deserve for the trouble is some money.
"We'll have others with you, but all of you will be out on your own for missions, so to speak," the ADI employee who had led you down to the underground training facility explained. "You'll need to have some basic skills. Even if you're not going out soon or ever… it's safer to know these things."
Basic skills, in this case, appear to mean survival and weapons training. The room you've been brought to on Floor B3 below ADI Headquarters is a massive, underground gym, and there are sections set up for various skills practice. One side of the gym is dedicated to fighting: bare-knuckles, wrestling, knives, and tasers are all out on display. There are also a few guns, but those are reserved for people who can prove they can manage the other weapons first. The other side has areas for fire-making, building a shelter, navigating without a phone, supply preparation, cooking, and basic first-aid. Through a side door, there's also a small pool where people are being taught the basics of swimming.
Any or all of these skills would be useful in a dangerous situation, and there aren't enough native ADI employees to cover training for all of them. If you show that you're proficient with something, you'll be asked to man one of the areas to assist in training others. If you're at a loss and looking lost, you will be pushed toward whatever skills practice area is physically closest to you, whether you wanted to learn anything about that or not. Best make the most of it… and try not to kill anyone or burn anything down.
Even those who have refused ADI Housing and taken themselves to Bonnie's Flophouse will find that they're welcome for this training under the strict understanding that no supernatural abilities will be used. Bonnie will have informed them of it and helped them get to ADI to ensure they learn some of the things they might need to survive... and also just to bond with the people they'll be working with for the foreseeable future.
(cw: body horror, implication of near-drowning, violence, potential for blood, gore, drowning, death)
The beaches around Gloucester are numerous and varied with reported supernatural activity at many, if not most of them. For those working with ADI, they'll receive the direction in a mass email from Reyes Amador, the assistant to the Head of ADI. For those not technically working at ADI, Bonnie will provide the same information.
All,
We have received reports of strange noises and sightings at Coffin Beach. Please take at least one other person and investigate. A $300 bonus will be offered to those who bring back evidence of the source of these reports.
Take Care of Yourselves,
Reyes
Those who head to Coffin Beach will find that the sand beneath their feet squeaks softly with each step, like the faint sound of a poorly-maintained hinge protesting their movements. It makes stealth especially difficult, and those who wish to maintain their cover would do well to stay farther up into the vegetation and off the beach, itself. There aren't any houses out this way, just coastal marshes, the beach, and some higher ground with low-growing shrubs, tall grasses, and thin trees.
For the patient, those who wait for night to fall, they will be rewarded when they hear the sound of someone crying. Searching the beach, they will be able to spot a young person who appears to have washed up in a kayak on the beach. The young person is visibly injured in some way with blood coming out of them. Those who approach cautiously may get the sense that there is something not quite right about this person. Man or woman, their face is too long, their angles too sharp.
There is something wrong. It's not the injury.
There is something very wrong with what this person is.
They will not respond to any calls or move from where they lie, half-submerged in the surf. Anyone who approaches within a few feet will discover they're not nearly as helpless as they seem to be, though. The person will burst from the water with a powerful thrust, attempting to tackle anyone nearby and bite them. The person's face transforms into a long, fanged maw, trying to rip and tear and drag their prey into the ocean with them, away from any safety.
- ARRIVAL: 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. Please refer to the Arrival page for details regarding the arrival and onboarding process.
- STICKS AND STONES: If so desired, to facilitate CR, characters may feel themselves compelled to ask about the stones when they see their truth written on it. Resisting the compulsion will become more and more difficult as time goes on.
- I WILL SURVIVE: Characters may be students or trainers in this scenario. They might be able to get away with small displays of supernatural abilities if they want to risk it and if they find themselves with the necessary reserves of power. Anything significant will have them immediately removed and asked not to return to ADI for a few days.
- SHIFTING PERSPECTIVE: Characters may fight off, capture, or kill the creature. If they successfully capture it and bring it back to ADI (or call for someone to come and do that for them), they will receive a significant monetary bonus beyond the promised $300 for their work. If characters successfully kill and document the kill, they will also receive the bonus and instructions to push the body out to sea. If a character is taken by the creature, they will be killed. Please bear in mind that if a character dies in the TDM prompt, they are dead. A different version who doesn't have TDM memories may be apped in their place.
Kate Cordello - Original
Coward.
Coward is what the first rock said. The message was so completely different from the others. It wasn't motivational. It didn't offer good advice. It simple had the word coward carved into its surface.
"Do you think we'll actually find anything?" Kate asks her paranormal-hunting companion. She has decided to ignore that rock. It probably has nothing to do with her. This entire place was weird.
You are a coward.
Kate stops walking. She takes out her camera and focuses on the rock. She would have taken a picture except what she sees in the lens view is not what she sees with her eyes. She takes a picture to be certain that her camera actually works. When it turns out that the camera is working, she feels a new sense of uneasiness quiver down her spin. "That's odd. Are you seeing anything weird written on the rocks?"
Perhaps her traveling companion wasn't seeing anything odd. Maybe it was just Kate's own eyes that were the problem. Maybe she is loosing her mind? Or maybe the stones were telepathic, sentient and set on messing with her? It is hard to say.
Kate fans out from her partner. She doesn't completely leave the sight of the trail. The rocks don't stop leaving funny messages for her.
Kate is a coward!
She involuntarily shudders at the cold chill that had just ran down her spine. She lets out a deep breath. Kate thinks that she cannot be imagining it. At first, she could pretend but not now! This inscription is pointedly directed at her. She takes a picture of the message but just as with the last one, there's nothing about her being a coward. It's just the rock.
"Hey! Can you come here and tell me what this stone says?"
She's not sure which would provide her with more relief, that it's her mind playing tricks on her or that the stones knew what she had done.
WHAT IN BURNINATION?!? (I will Survive)
Once, Kate had been shown how to start a fire using a battery and foil. She remembers the concept. She figures that it can't be hard.
Kate starts by unscrewing the bottom of a flashlight and removing the battery. She then cut a narrow strip of foil. Using her bare hands, she folds the length of foil to connect at first the positive end and then the negative end. Nothing happens!
Using her free hand, Kate lightly taps the middle part of the foil. It feels warm but not hot enough to combust. It's trial and error. Kate cuts down the length of the foil but when it's still doesn't combust, she works on the width next. She whittles it down until the middle is very thin and then tries again.
"It works!"
Congratulations Kate! You have done what your ancestors before you have done with less. You have created fire! Fire that burns especially if you don't pay attention to it. She had indeed created fire but so pleased with her success that she hadn't paid attention to getting it put out safely. The fire jumped to the cuff of her sleeve
Kate shrieks "Ow. Ow ow ow ow!" The battery goes clattering to the floor as Kate frantically smacks down at the little flame on her shirt. But in trying to put that fire out, she ends up hurting her other hand.
Help?
Will glass coffins ever take off? Remains to be seen. (Sticks & Stones)
Night has fallen, the sun has set. The bugs and other nocturnal creatures are out. They make their presence known with every chirp, squawk and ribbit. Fireflies light up and down the coast. It might have been a charming even had things not been about to get very real.
"Let's have a look in the evening, they said. Maybe it's nocturnal, they said. It's probably nothing." Kate is being sarcastic and doesn't believe that it's nothing. Who sends out two people at night to look for something weird when there isn't something going on. Perhaps they would get lucky and it would be a prank but Kate doubted that. The location of where they are at says it all, Coffin Beach.
Kate has not one but two flashlights. She has a headlamp attached to a hat on her head is not turned on yet as to prevent bugs from being attracted to it. Then, Kate has the more traditional flashlight that could double as a baton if needed. She stops walking before her feet hit the sand and shines a beam out over the surf and sand. "See anything yet?"
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Info. Will match action or prose! Hit me up at
Leave No Stone Unturned
"Yeah. Someone with too much time and money carved a bunch of childish insults into a cluster of rocks." Tak's perpetually irritated voice makes it sound like it pains him to point out the obvious. He's got seven and a half inches on her and that's the least intimidating characteristic he's got going for him. Suffice to say, he has no idea why she's taking pictures of said rocks.
Or why she is making him read that particular rock out.
"You can't read it yourself?" Tak asks, defensiveness wrapped up in a ice cold exterior. Clearly the taciturn blond charges extra for being friendly, although he seems to never stray too far from her side.
"It says I killed everyone." It's not exactly what the rock says, so his tailor made remark doesn't appear, but it's close enough.
no subject
"Of course I can but it's not showing up on the camera. Will you please lend me your eyes." It's not a difficult request, she feels.
"That's not what it read to me," Kate replies and feels just a bit more nervous. "It said that I'm a coward."
What are they going to discuss next? That he's a murderer or that she's interested in saving her own skin? Kate doesn't take a picture, not yet.
no subject
Personalized annoying rocks, apparently. He sees the 'coward' inscription now.
"Here. Give me that," he gestures to her camera. When she hands it over to him, he takes a photograph of the rock before showing the picture to her. It does, indeed, now show up, and call them both cowards. A short lull of silence ensues before he pipes up again. He's not sure why he feels compelled to reassure her, why she would even feel bad over a ridiculous rock. But if it bothers her, it's probably worth dispelling.
"There's nothing wrong with it. 'Cowardice' is just some asshole rebranding 'survival'."
no subject
"Maybe." It's a knot in her stomach. She feels like she is being urged on by an invisible force to say more, that it's better out than in. Kate isn't certain about any of it. She knows what she's done. She is a coward and the worst part is, she's not the only one effected by it. "Maybe you're right. If there's no way to fix a problem, why risk your own neck?"
no subject
He doesn't seem capable of being polite and courteous - she wouldn't be too far off the mark if she thought he probably believes having to work with a partner is being accommodating enough as it is - but what she says hits a little close to home. And he can either make a point or just give in to his own centuries-forged cynicism. Agree with her.
"Because the problem needs to be fixed," is what he ends up saying. "Nobody else is going to risk their necks for you. And the people who have everything, they keep on taking, they keep shitting on you, and all the while they tell you 'it's the way of the world', 'it's not personal'. You have to fight back - for yourself, even if you don't give a shit about anyone else - but you can't fight if you're dead."
That may be the most number of words anyone has managed to get out of him since he arrived. But nobody thus far has touched on that kind of despair she's describing that he can resonate with.
no subject
It comes down to the five w's and the question of how. Who would believe her? What could she do? When should would she do it? Where would she go to get started? Why would anyone believe her? How should she do it?
"You're right, I can't fight if I'm dead but I don't know how much longer I can pretend that everything's okay."
no subject
“Make allies,” he says, echoing a fearless leader he could never measure up to. Sometimes he is still that good little soldier, following orders. She always had the rousing speeches, the clarity of vision. She had been easy to fall in love with.
“You need to start with one other person who’ll believe you, who won’t pretend that everything’s okay, and who isn’t afraid of getting their hands dirty to fix it.” He clenches his teeth, ignoring the rock and how it calls him out from the periphery of his vision.
“And you need to make your peace, with how they will go after everyone you know, how they will tear you down. You’ll be persecuted across the stars. People will sit around discussing how best to torture you for information when they catch you and how many casualties they can accept as collateral damage. You’ll go down in the history books as a terrorist. They’ll rewrite the narrative, pin their war crimes on you, turn public opinion against everything you stand for.” Tak swallows the growing frustration of a lump in his throat, lowering his gaze momentarily before making eye contact again. They’ve stopped dealing in hypotheticals a few minutes ago.
“If you can’t accept that, let go of your fight.”