TDM #1

[apocalypsehowmods]

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➥ Arrival

(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.)

➥ Sticks and Stones

(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.

➥ I Will Survive

"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.

➥ Shifting Perspective

(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.

➥ Mod Notes

• 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.
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Comments

[hxppythxughts]

[If Sayori were to keep her eyes closed, she could pretend that she's back in the clubroom. She's back in the clubroom and she's just stumbled over something in the closet, and Monika is coming to check on her, because that's what the President does. They take care of their members.

That's the only way this makes sense. Because if that's not what's going on, then hearing Monika's voice means that she's here too. And that can't be right. They're both— they should both be dead. Deleted. Gone. However you'd like to refer to their existence, neither of them should be here. Especially not together, not after everything.

Sayori's throat tightens, as does her grip on the Switch which she has so gracelessly commandeered from the employee whose desk she fell out of. She laughs again, because she's worried that if she doesn't laugh, she might cry instead; it's strained, but that could just be because she's still rattled from falling out of a drawer. She makes no move to get up and complains the way she normally would.] It's not my fault, it was this desk! The drawers aren't big enough!

[writetheway]

[Sayori laughs like she always laughs, maybe a little strained, but still almost like nothing has gone wrong. It's like they're back in the clubroom. But that's the last place Monika wants to be, even if her thoughts betray her again with the idea that it would be easier there, that she'd know what to do. But no, if she was back there right now, she still wouldn't have any clue.]

Not for a person, no. [She's trying for her usual poise, but there's a small but persistent crack, a wobble of awful unease in her voice.] They said people were showing up all over the building, but I didn't think they meant it this literally.

[Of course, Monika hasn't even been here a full day, herself. She hardly knows anything about anything here.]

[hxppythxughts]

[Monika knows, of course, that Sayori isn't as dumb as she often acts. Perhaps Monika's vicelike grip on the shreds of her own composure would fool someone less attentive to the emotions of others, or someone who doesn't know her as well. If they did notice, perhaps someone else would chalk up the nervous crack in her voice to the anxiety of the overall situation — of finding herself in a new strange place when she shouldn't be anywhere anymore.

But that's not Sayori. And they both know that.

So not only does she clock it as instinctively as she breathes, in almost the same moment, she puts together what it likely means. Monika has no reason to be uneasy around Sayori unless she remembers what she did. The realization carves a cold pit of dread into Sayori's stomach, which is a funny feeling in the body of an electrical ghost.

The real question is: does Monika remember what Sayori did?

Holding the Switch to her chest with one hand, she uses the other to finally push herself up to a sitting position (giving her the excuse to hide her face with a bow of her head as she shifts around.) The whine in her own voice serves to mask the slight crack in it.] Nobody would be able to fit in there! Why did I— who's "they?"

[As overwhelmed by Monika's proximity as she is, it is totally lost on Sayori that she's in an office with employees who are now buzzing around trying to orient the various arrivals. The employee to which the desk belongs has left, maybe to ask about the policy on technoghost-possessed personal items.]

[writetheway]

[Monika's eyes flicker to the Switch Sayori is clinging to. Of course Sayori would need to have something like that, too. Does Sayori realize? Monika's memories don't go beyond her own deletion, those painful moments where she really understood how awful she'd been, when she'd used the last of her grip on life to bring back everyone else. That horrific insight Monika had gained should have died with her, and that would mean Sayori would have no reason to believe that console is important. But what can Monika say? "You're inside that machine, don't lose it?" If there's a way to handle this delicately, it isn't that.]

The ADI. Officially they're Apex Detectives, Inc., but supposedly they're also the Apocalypse Disruption Initiative. It's a bit like we're in one of Yuri's books.

[And Monika feels strange about bringing up Yuri, but the comparison is the quickest way she can think of to explain what little she knows of this baffling situation.]

[hxppythxughts]

[Hearing Yuri's name out of Monika's mouth elicits a painful, burning cocktail of emotion. Promiment sadness complemented with nostalgia, with a twist of fondness and the bitter aftertaste of anger. She feels some weak inkling to ask how Monika could invoke Yuri's name after what she did, but she doesn't have the heart to commit to nastiness like that, even though it might be warranted.

Instead, a different flavor of bitterness sneaks out, though it's masked with the saccharine rim of sugar that Sayori puts on everything.] Ahaha! We'd better not be!

[It could just be a joke on the usual content of Yuri's books, dark as they tend to be. It's not, but it could be.

She doesn't elaborate, or even linger on it long enough to leave room for doubt as to whether it's really about their shared existential crisis. She just pushes forward the way she always does, master of conversation that she is. With the force of her joke, she's even able to put on a smile as she looks up at Monika, though it's disconcertingly hard to read beyond the simple politeness with which you'd smile at a stranger.] So you got here before me, huh? Guess it was my turn to be late, ehehe. How long have you been here?

[writetheway]

[There's something odd about Sayori's tone, about the way she says they'd better not be in one of Yuri's books. It's odd because Monika thinks she agrees with that unspoken sentiment, and not just because of the often horrific nature of Yuri's preferred fantasy fiction. But that's obviously what Sayori means, that it would be bad because it would be scary. Monika is the one who thinks it would be bad because it would be another fiction. She can't push her own emotions onto Sayori like that after everything else Monika did.]

I got here last night. It was a little scary, showing up in the dark... [It was baffling, showing up anywhere at all.] So I don't really know much more than you! But once the ADI realizes someone new has showed up, they tell you a little about what's going on. I'm sure they'll do a better job of it than me.