redstringtheories

➥ 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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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Look, to most people, this would likely be incredibly unsettling. For Jon, this has unfortunately become the majority of his life. He looks up at her maybe too intensely, trying to sense some kind of motive, detection, alignment to something that wants to hurt him--

But it seems... innocent enough. For now, at least. Not that her demeanor is putting him at ease or anything.]

While I'm aware... you know the saying on beggars and choosers I'm sure, but I'd like it if you were to elaborate.

[He's not expecting much, but it's in his nature to do his due diligence. Maybe this will just finally kill him. That would be appropriate.]

[She doesn't seem malicious, at least. Just alarmingly cheerful about the general existence of major stab wounds.]

I'm going to touch you, which will let me use my power to heal you. [She seems very matter-of-fact about the whole concept, as though superhuman abilities are something totally normal.] Also, I want to pull out the knife first, because if your body heals up around it then we'll just have to yank it back out again eventually.

I won't do anything else without asking permission first, though! Patient consent is very important.

[Oh. Oh, okay, now he knows what's going on. Even if he knows it's going to hurt, Jon still feels like if he doesn't sigh it'll do more damage than the knife hanging out in his ribcage.]

I-- yes, I understand how the knife would need to be removed. That said, it's not every day someone of the Flesh would want to help without something in return.

[Well he's just assuming a lot. Jon knows he doesn't Know any affiliation, but things are weird and distorted and that's one part the Eye being far from him and one part blood loss. Ah, the perils of existing in a canon where you still have to just be human enough to suffer.]

What's your price?

[That gets a curious little headtilt. "Of the Flesh"? Weird thing to call a healer, but okay, she guesses. Maybe it's a regional dialect? She doesn't quite recognize his accent. It reminds her a little of old movies, somehow... (After all, it's not like there's an England in her world, anymore.)]

[Brightly:] I promise not to bill you if you promise not to tell anyone I'm practicing medicine without a license again!

[Listen, she'll have that degree in like another five months, tops, it's fiiiiine. So what if she's getting a little bit of a head start on that whole "being a doctor" thing? It's not like she hasn't been cutting people open for years already.]

But if you want to pay me back, I do have a lot of questions about how I got here! Knowledge is power, right? [Uncomfortably literally so, in his case. Not that she knows that.]

[That's going to be an entire other series of questions when there isn't a knife embedded in his chest. Right now it's just time for the most tired look in the world that comes from a man who should have died multiple times now and can't find it in himself to be concerned about minor things like medical malpractice.]

I'm... not sure how much I can answer you, but I can try. Provided I survive.

[Aka, if you want to get any answers you'll keep me alive and not mutilated... please.]

Good enough! [Bargain... accepted? Apparently??]

[At least, she seems to think it's sufficient, because she reaches out and braces one hand gently but firmly on his chest- and uses the other to pluck the knife out with quick, practiced ease. And then she reaches out in a... less physical way.]

[The feeling of her power at work is... surprisingly painless. It's more the complete absence of feeling at all, or only distantly, like a dentist drilling on a Novocaine-numb jaw. Still, even without pain, the sensation of your own flesh and blood reshaping itself at the will of another person is probably at least a little alarming.]

[But when she draws back a moment later, the odd feeling stops and the injury is gone, with no further unpleasant additions. It's simply healed, cleanly and neatly, precisely.]

[A surgeon's work.]

[The "doctor" in question is frowning pensively, looking down at her own hand, now lightly bloodied on the fingertips where she touched him.] That felt... different than normal... [That's because "normal" isn't being an Avatar of the Flesh. Normal is her own powers, not the twisted counterpart provided by an eldritch patron with its' own malicious ends.]

[But she doesn't know that yet.]

[In any case, she blinks and shakes her head briefly, to clear away the momentary distraction. She'll have time to try and figure out why she feels so off later, there's a patient to focus on right now. That has to take priority.]

There we go, that should do it! Take a deep breath, tell me if it feels like anything in there is splitting or tearing. You shouldn't feel any lingering pain or tenderness, although phantom sensations may be normal for up to an hour afterwards. [Recited as briskly and calmly as a medication commercial listing the unwanted side effects.]

[A brief pause, and then:] Also, did you know you're missing two ribs? Do you want new ones?

Because I could absolutely grow some, if you're interested- but no judgement if you aren't! It's your body, you have the right to have as many or as few bones as you want.

[Look, she's giving him more consent than most people who have removed things from him have. You know, like the ribs thing. It's actually quite akin to that sensation once the whole thing is over- Jared with his hand in his chest felt like pain, but not that kind of pain, and there was no recovery time to speak of. Ultimately, this is very, very similar-- only confirming many of his hunches.

He takes a breath, much less shaky than before, gently placing a hand on his chest as if to confirm what he already knows would be true.]

Uhm-- no, thank you. I mean, yes, I'm aware they're not in there, it's fine.

[Is it Jon?? Is it fine?? At least he used to know where they were.]

Frankly, I'm a bit surprised you're not asking for one as payment.

I mean, if you wanted to give me one I wouldn't say no! [Listen, there's a time in every young mad scientist's life when they need to accept that grant funding is a difficult prospect, and learn to acquire resources where they can. No one ever got anywhere by being too proud for free body parts.]

But it seems like you still need them, unless you have some improvements planned? The human body is a little like a Jenga tower- [She makes an illustrative gesture, hovering one hand slightly underneath the other.] -if you keep taking pieces out without replacing anything, eventually you're going to have some problems with structural integrity.

[Frankly, it might have been harder for that knife to get so far into your chest if you had a few more ribs in the way. She's just saying, Jon.]

[Having recalled the knife in question, she flips it around to politely offer it to him hilt-first.]

I'm pretty sure if you get your bodily fluids all over something, it's officially yours now- so I guess this belongs to you! [It's the same principle as "I licked it, now it's mine", but bloodier.]

TDM #1

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Let me know if this works for you, I'll change it if not.

nah you're good, you're good <3

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