TDM #14

[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.) You might even arrive in a section of building that has been demolished, leaving a pit of rubble open to the sky–hope you're up on your tetanus shots! 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. The one exception is the demolition zone off what used to be one corner of the building: it seems the security teams are keeping a particularly close eye on that area to document new arrivals and bring them in quickly.

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.)

➥ Mired Way

(cw: Stalking, scopophobia, drowning, loss of skin)

Weird things happen in Dogtown, everyone knows it. And the weird things have been getting worse. Much worse. The rise in dangerous rather than merely uncomfortable or startling phenomena has put an end to ADI's use of Dogtown as a testing ground for new recruits. Under ADI's advisement, the City of Gloucester has officially and indefinitely closed Dogtown to the public, and work is ongoing to construct barriers around the entire park to prevent trespassing. Dogtown's borders are now patrolled by Gloucester law enforcement as well as ADI employees from the Investigations and Security divisions, who document phenomena visible from outside its borders and actively keep people out. New arrivals who volunteer for the work may still find themselves dropped off outside the borders of Dogtown in order to beef up patrols and help document paranormal activity while receiving an introduction to the kind of work ADI does. An employee will give 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, explicitly instruct you not to actually enter Dogtown, and leave you with another person at the edge of the park. 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 record any paranormal activity visible from outside the park. Those who succeed in documenting anything peculiar will receive a $100 reward to be used as they see fit, but those who are caught entering Dogtown in pursuit of such proof will be reprimanded and receive no reward.

This month, all of that changes. ADI personnel have reported seeing people entering Dogtown through cuts in the fencing, climbing, and whatever other means they can find. They're mainly youths who seem intent on bucking the authority, but there are adults, as well, who are not taking the quarantine of the park seriously. Many of these people appear to have got lucky and haven't encountered things. But others? Others have, and it shows.

It’s dark in Dogtown. The leaves and branches press in close overhead, making it seem shadowed and cramped after the first few steps into the woods, no matter how bright it was when you entered.

At first, that’s all it is. Dark and overgrown, the previously worn paths now quickly overtaken and lost to the life here. And there surely must be life of some kind, because trees groan and twigs snap and leaves are brushed past by something, though what it is never seems to appear…because the first thing you become aware of makes no sound at all. It starts as a shadow at the corner of your eye, a slightly thicker patch of darkness in the trees. When you turn to look, it’s only a play of the light. Yet the feeling persists. The next time that shadowed form appears, it has more of a shape. Shoulders, a body, a head, and from the head are two clearly defined, white eyes. Staring. Again, no matter how quickly you turn your head, the form vanishes, only to drift back into its watchful place once more a little while later.

As you continue, it becomes quickly apparent the forest is a patchwork. Where one stretch finds you stalked, another quite suddenly starts in as a bog. Chunks of semi-stable ground pepper the murky water or form slender coasts that might be traversable to the sure-footed. At least you think it is. Some of those patches may only be floating patches of plantlife, loosely attached near the surface. At best, you might find your shoes filled with water and decayed vegetation. At worst, you might just find your whole leg slipping beneath the surface. Slipping or…pulled. A clammy, bloated hand wraps tight around your ankle and yanks the more fiercely you resist or thrash about. Hopefully there’s someone there to help you before you get tired and find yourself pulled beneath the surface by a far too patient force. If your savior is successful in pulling you out, you might just find a very long vine wrapped around your ankle when you escape. How odd.

Another accessible patch of Dogtown seems perfectly harmless. Still dark, still full of tripping hazards and eerie sounds, but nothing appears to be threatening in the area. Really, the only thing to notice is that, after a time, you begin to itch. How annoying. Bugs, probably. Certainly, it feels like something crawls along your arms or leg or even face now and then, but nothing’s actually there when you check. A persistent itch here, and idle scratch there…easily ignored. Until something flakes away under your nails. As soon as you notice the bits of skin scratched away, it starts spreading and getting worse. A simple brush sees a large, if thin, patch of skin falling away from your body and even under your clothes. The longer you stay, the more skin sloughs away: pieces to sheets to chunks and shows no sign of stopping. Perhaps it is time to turn back.

➥ The Path More Traveled By

(cw: disorientation/altered mental states)

With all the dangers lurking in Dogtown, one might wonder how any of the local rule-breakers come back unscathed. One overgrown path looks like another at first glance, but one path might lead straight into a bog while another winding corridor between the trees could almost pass for a normal walk in a normal park. At first it seems like blind luck as to which is which; one could swear that going the same way twice on two different visits has completely different results. Attempting to memorize landmarks doesn't work; the trees and rocks blur together in memory. Was this the way you came before? That boulder with its engraved inscription–that's not one of the ones on the official guidemap at all!

There is a safe way through, though, even if it feels anything but safe. It's something about the way the meager light shines through the branches ahead and the glint of something reflective half-buried in the dirt. The closer you look for these things, the harder it is to see them and to suss out the way forward. Relaxing one's mind and trusting the glittering hints of light is the only way to consistently find the safe path. The more careless one is, the less afraid one is, the easier it is to find the way. Try too hard to trace your path back in your mind and it becomes all too easy to get suddenly turned around, unable to remember the way out at all.

Step off the path and all signs of it disappear behind you, the darkness pressing back in and danger re-emerging. Retracing one's steps reveals no sign of the path; once it's lost there's no way back to it except to stumble across it by accident where you least expect to find it…or to heed the call of a companion still on the path, provided they keep their feet planted and don't follow you into the thicket.

Always, eventually, the path comes to an end at the border of Dogtown, helpfully spitting you out at a break in the fence. It's never the same break in the fence, though. Even those who keep enough of their wits about them to retain some sense of direction on the twisting path will find that just where along Dogtown's border they come back out...well, it makes no sense. It follows no pattern or logic. One might walk for what feels like ages and end up right back where one entered. Or one might explore for what feels like only a short time and find oneself pushed out on the opposite side of the sprawling park. Once the path has come to an end, it disappears behind you, leaving only the forbidding overhanging branches of the trees.

➥ An Old, Familiar Tune

(cw: reference to dead children, hallucination, fatigue, hypersomnia, coma, vehicular accidents, potential for injury)

The music starts with the rain, a few bursts of late-summer showers before the world turns to a crisper autumn. Soft voices singing out from graves around Gloucester, some obscured by the downpour until there's a break in the clouds. They're all different voices, and a quick check of tombstones might even lead one to believe that the voice singing a given song is the deceased. Children's graves, young women, old men, the voice matches as a person hones in on the location of the song.

Of course, honing in might be a challenge as the music itself seems to induce a heavy fatigue and desire to just lie down, to join the bodies in the gentle earth. Sink, rest, and never rise again. Just listen to the voices around you as they sing you to a final sleep. All things end, and maybe this is your time… whether you want it to be or not.

As the month progresses, the songs carry further afield from the graveyards, a weariness that seems to overtake those most stressed, most willing to listen to the voices. Come, close your eyes. Sleep.

Traffic accidents are on the rise and the police seem to be out in force trying to rouse those sleeping out in public and push them to move on. At least the ones they can get to wake up. Those who seem to have fallen comatose are quickly transferred to the local hospital.

Hush now, listen to the soft rain and the quiet voices… and dream of nightmare things.

➥ Mod Notes

• ARRIVAL (September 1 - 30): 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 (or the rubble that used to be part of 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, as well as information about the state of ADI Headquarters.
  
  
• MIRED WAY (September 1-30): Any of the sections can be come across in any order, their borders and effects bleed together in the parts of Dogtown characters can access. The Stalker will not approach nor harm characters, only ever watch. There is a chance for drowning in the peat bogs, but the actual corpse that seems responsible cannot be spotted through the murky water. When characters finally leave Dogtown, they will find that light losses of skin will look like a mild to bad sunburn shortly after returning to sunlight. Those who stay longer and suffer worse loss of skin, will find raw or wounded patches where much worse wounds previously lay. There is a chance of a slow disintegration as in these parts of the forest as, once there's no more skin, the effect will move to chunks of flesh. Feel free to use your best judgment on what wounds linger after escaping and please be aware death is permanent in this setting!
  
  
• THE PATH MORE TRAVELED BY (September 1-30): This and the other Dogtown prompt are occurring simultaneously; players should refer to the general goings-on in Dogtown this month regarding the consequences of straying from the path. Characters may find local NPCs on the path (or in Dogtown in general), and players are welcome to play any unnamed NPCs in need of rescue (whether they're convinced they need to be rescued or not). Close examination of the glittering light in the dirt path will reveal that it comes from tiny shards of broken glass ground into the dirt. Similarly, the peculiar glinting in the trees comes from glass embedded in trunks and branches. If characters take even one piece of glass, they will find that the path has immediately disappeared out from under them.
  
  
• AN OLD, FAMILIAR TUNE (September 1-30): The music can be any lullaby your character might know from their own world; the playlist linked is just an example. All songs will be twisted in lyrics or in tone to make them far more sinister than a character might remember hearing. Anyone who gets close enough to the graves to actually determine where a particular song is coming from is likely to pass out for a day or more. Hope you have a friend to collect your body, otherwise you might be waking up in a hospital bed. Those passed out will experience horrific nightmares; though, it will be very difficult for them to hold onto what the dream was even about when they wake. They will just have a sense of some impending doom associated with them. Characters who might have been in Gloucester longer than others will likely recall similarly haunting tunes from a year ago which involved an avatar calling herself Ava. Her parting message to characters:
  
  Mr. S was right. This was fun! I'll have to come back next year to play with you. - Ava, the Lullaby Girl
  
  P.S. Sorry for stealing your phone, horsegirl67. But I wanted to say, hi. C:
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Comments

[jumpthegun]

[Considering some of his own... issues, John doesn't immediately jump to suggesting the man might be mentally ill. He doesn't look like he's lying, which means he probably believes what he's saying, whether it's reality or not. His tone is just a little gentler as he responds. He has potentially been dragged to another world, himself, so... maybe? It still seems unlikely.]

That sounds like a living hell. And like you struck out hard on the cosmic lottery for it to happen twice. Who exactly were these assholes dragging you to another world?

[recorderheart]

They're a corporation called LMG, they want to get involved in, well, everything. Including magic, I guess. They needed me because my soul is apparently really sturdy. I can be exposed to a lot of horrific things without it being torn apart.

[ Dan is well aware that he is the textbook definition of being blessed with suck. He shrugs helplessly, barely even noticing the change in tone. John is treating him like he's still a person so he'll take what he can get.

Looking around them, the path looks the same in both directions. So Dan picks a direction and starts walking. ]

Tell me if you notice anything out of the ordinary. More out of the ordinary... Little details can make a difference in places like this.