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redstringtheories2023-01-01 11:39 am
TDM #18
(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.)
(cw: toxic online behavior; supernaturally induced cruelty and social anxiety)
Since the dawn of the Internet, hiding behind a screen has always seemed to bring out the worst in people. You'd think, though, that a company network with accounts easily traced back to their owners would largely be an exception to the rule, and maybe so far it has been–but lately the ADI network is becoming a seriously unsafe space. It's not that the rumor mill is churning out falsehoods, at least no more than usual (there's always some risk of that when you bring people together and make communication lightning-fast). No, the problem is that lately people are being entirely too honest with one another. Brutally honest, in fact.
Do your coworkers annoy you? Maybe they smell weird, maybe their eyes are set too far apart, maybe they whine and complain too much or you simply find their mannerisms off-putting. It just feels right to tell them about it over the network–you're just being honest, after all, and the truth shouldn't hurt unless they deserve for it to hurt. Even the kindest, most socially conscientious individuals on the network find themselves getting caught up in the need to share their most judgmental truths, feeling righteous in the moments those messages are written or recorded. It's good to get things off your chest. It's good to air everything out.
Being on the receiving end doesn't feel so good, though. Everything hurtful that's just been said to you: that's the truth; that's how people really see you, and you know with certainty that everyone around you is keenly aware of your every failing. The brutal honesty of friends and acquaintances cuts through even the thickest of skin, and coming back to the network to argue, to tell your own truths in retaliation, to read and reread hurtful messages like you're prodding an open wound just feeds a growing addiction.
Off the network, face to face, the urge to be brutally honest with one another is suddenly gone, replaced with shame over all you've been told and all you've told others. Can you still meet your roommate's eyes after what you said to them online? The compulsion may be gone until you're back on the network, but the impact of your words remains, unforgotten.
(cw: potential for temporary blindness/injury to eyes, skin injuries, acid burns, weather catastrophes)
Snow seems to have arrived late this year in Gloucester. January sees the first big storm blow in, blanketing the coastline in light flurries. As the early part of the month progresses, there are occasional storms that bring fresh powder. Most of it is fine, but every now and again…
"Acid snowfall," the weatherman announces. "Keep yourself bundled up and inside, folks. It's not just the sting of Old Man winter on your cheek this year. Experts say it's not likely to melt you like the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz, but it can do some light damage if you're out in it a little too long. Researchers from NOAA - the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are looking into the reason for the sudden and unusual phenomenon in our slice of the state. More news to come on that front as they figure out just what's going on with our ever-changing climate."
Out on the streets, the reporting seems to be mostly correct. Those who find themselves out in the snow will find that it tingles a bit more when it lands on bare skin. But mixed amongst the normal snow, there are darker, heavier clouds with a purple tinge to their bellies. The snow that drifts from these clouds is sharper. It doesn't just tingle where it lands, it burns. Faces, eyes, tongues, anything it hits. Fabrics are eaten away at a faster rate, and you might just find yourself hurrying inside with holes all through your clothes if you're not fast enough to escape. The indoors might not even give you full respite. The flurries from these clouds seem to last a great deal longer than they should and dance through the air on wind currents that don't make sense. They'll follow you in through doors and windows to add another burning rebuke. The sky, the weather itself, seems to have turned against everyone. How do you escape a 'natural' phenomenon?
(cw:ghosts, broken/altered limbs and necks, implications of drowning and being buried alive, spider-like imagery)
It starts as a flicker in the corner of your eye. The sound of someone moving, of eyes on the back of your head. Except no one is there when you turn to look. There’s a brush of fabric as someone walks past, but the storage room you’ve stepped into is too small not to see who’s there with you. Someone crosses the street beside you, but when you look up to take notice, they’re already gone. Maybe it’s just the stress of living in Gloucester, no one’s immune forever. It’s a reasonable thought.
Until you’re headed out of the bar one night and a man lingering nearby the oddly deserted street gives a hoarse cough. You think. A dry, wretched sound that doesn’t hold the harsh repetition of a cough, but of a low rasp of a voice that doesn’t come out correctly. He steps closer, and the evidence of why is clear: his neck isn’t right.
Stretched impossibly long, his neck holds his head on his shoulders precariously upright as he reaches a hand out to you. Snapped vocal chords rasp and he staggers a step forward, causing his head to roll unsteadily on the column of elongated muscle and dubious bone.
Across town, you look up from washing your hands and perhaps learn the taste of your own heart jumping up as a face stares at you in the mirror from directly over your shoulder, her mouth spilling dirt and blood onto it as she tries to scream and torn fingernails claw at your back.
Elsewhere, there’s the wet splat sound of something slapping down the hall towards you. If you don’t go to investigate yourself, it will soon come to you as a dripping, bloated, corpse drags bound legs behind it. As soon as the pits that were its eyes turn in your direction, its pace quickens in a desperate drive to get to you. It claws at your ankles, at your knees, as its mouth spits water and wretched howls of insistent anguish.
There’s eyes on your back, you’re sure of it. Positive. And there’s a sound of something creaking and the unsteady pattern of steps, like each one is carefully made. This time there’ll be something, you tell yourself, this time- you’re right. When you turn, something long lurches and hobbles behind you. Each limb is rail thin, stretched beyond comprehension, but what looks like a stick-legged spider, is most assuredly a person. Or used to be. Now it offers wretched rasps like whispers mixed with nails on a chalkboard as it toddles towards you.
The ghosts change, each one as horrible and gruesome as the next and never in the same place, but they all do the same thing: talk and grasp and try to catch whether with nail or teeth or arms that might wrap too many times around you, they want to get you, chattering their static or scrambled or damaged voices at you the whole time. Take a swipe, a kick, swing a weapon….and it passes through their desolate forms, trailing the image like smoke behind it as they vanish from sight. Though, not without leaving traces of their scratches or dirt or blood behind.
- ARRIVAL (January 1-31): Two people will almost 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.
- AN EYE FOR AN EYE (January 1-15): Tech-minded individuals who manage to stop tearing into each other long enough to dig into the network's system and access history will discover that the increase in antisocial truth-telling corresponds with an external device having hacked in. Further investigations reveal that the hostile device in question shares unique identifying information very similar to a security system ADI agents recently encountered while cleaning out the Oculus Cult's warehouse of horrors. Once the source is discovered, the network will be shut down for a day on January 15 to revert settings, beef up security, and eliminate the brutal honesty-inducing effect.
- SOFTLY FALLS THE SNOW (January 1-31): There are two kinds of acid snow. The normal sort that is discussed in the weatherman's reporting, and a more supernatural variety. Anyone who comes in contact with the supernatural acid snow will experience acid burns that can vary in intensity from mild skin irritation to something that needs medical attention and skin grafting to fix. The acid snow probably won't completely dissolve you or your clothes if you don't stand out in it for hours on end, but characters may be able to surmise that if someone were to fall in the supernatural snow overnight and not get back up, there might be nothing left of them by the morning. The supernatural acid snow also seems to have a mind of its own, moving in ways it shouldn't and trying to land itself on bare skin. If examined under a microscope, the supernatural snowflakes seem to be pulsing and moving.
- PHASMOPHOBIA (January 1-12): The ghosts can’t be fought, actions taken against them will dissipate their forms temporarily. More than one person can see the same ghost at the same time or in two different times or locations. Regardless, if they get hold of a character, they will claw and scratch in a way that, afterwards, might seem more like desperation than intent to hurt as all the injuries are largely superficial unless an errant nail gets lucky. Despite their attempts to seemingly talk to the characters, the only words anyone might be able to parse with any dubious certainty are pleas. Sightings of the ghosts will taper off towards the middle of the month with no further reported incidents past the 12th.
jeff | oc
[ OOC: Your resident Spiral avatar is back! I know this tdm is pretty much done, so this whole prompt is going to be recycled in the upcoming tdm anyway, but whatever, I got impatient. Anyway message me at weeyotch#8200 or
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He’s still a little dazed by the reality of what’s happened to him (again?) when he spots Jeff, and the selfish (human) part of him that’s worn down with shock and just trying to cope almost turns to walk another direction before he can be spotted.
But Jeff has been gone too. Maybe not in the same way. He still has. And Gil had concerns he never got to address.
So he approaches JEFF which my phone keeps autocorrecting and I’m not fixing this time on one of those nondescript street corners, where the younger man stands cradling what Gil can only assume is a cat.
“Hey kid.” A pause. “Been a while.”
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Of course it's a cat. Look at its general.... cat shape. Cat vibes. Whatever. Jeff might look like something of a scruffy 90s grunge Bond villain right now, cradling the creature in his arms as he stands under an awning, humming softly.
(And though he's already protected by the awning, it seems as if the snow's sort of... avoiding the area. Maybe it's just Gil's eyes playing tricks on him. Definitely not some corrupted bardic magic at play.)
"Hey, Gil." His faint smile grows, a little too sharp on that dreamy face. "I missed you."
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Other than the cat.
"You're looking better."
When he's in the lee of the building with Jeff, he's relieved not to have the light sting of snowflakes against his face, but the wind--the wind isn't right for it. Gil mentally shakes it off and tries to focus on what's right in front of him. "Should that thing be outside?"
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"I'm feeling better..."
'That thing'? You're talking about his (adopted? kidnapped?) child, Gil! Jeff makes a face, faux shock, and gasps, covering the cat's ears. She doesn't seem to mind, possibly because she's nested cozily in Jeff's partially unzipped coat, and knows that this is the price she must pay for warmth.
"Her name is Macaroni. And I can't leave her alone long. She gets separation anxiety." He hums softly and tilts his head, looking down at the cat. "Probably 'cause everyone disappeared on her..."
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Then Jeff makes that comment and Gil closes his eyes for a moment, the pain of lost time, trust unwillingly broken weighing on him. He opens his eyes and studies Jeff’s face. “I’m sorry kid. I wasn’t—it wasn’t part of the plan.”
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“Jeff?”
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Jeff smiles brightly, all good cheer, as if he hasn't been missing for (about? over?) six months. It's like, as far as he's concerned, he just saw Malcolm yesterday.
"Hey, dude. Buy me a drink?" He shrugs helplessly. "I'm short on cash."
As usual.
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"You look well," he says, opening the door of the coffee shop and holding it for him.
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He sees Jeff again a day later in a place that's so entirely unexpected: the hardware store. There's heat packs on sale for cheap, and having a body that's previously been broken in so many places means that acid snow isn't the only pain in bitter weather. Tim's methodically clenching and relaxing his fingers, two of them feeling sore and out of place on his hand. And Jeff's hanging out by the doors.
Jeff, looking like gold. Like sunshine.
Tim slows his steps, thinks he can do better than hold a grudge. He thinks, maybe he'd make the choice to leave too, if
"Hey."
Smooth. Tim lingers. Thinks, he wants to step closer. But he won't.
"Where are you staying?"
Like that's a safe enough question to begin to catch up with. Like there's nothing raw biting at his brain.
"Or are you just passing through?"
--well, he tried.
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"Hey."
Jeff looks at Tim with bright eyes, a slow, dreamy smile coming to his face as he waves the ice scraper at him.
"I'm, you know, just crashing somewhere." Vague, in the way that Jeff's always been a little bit vague and ditzy. He blinks, looking infuriatingly innocent, before asking, "Do you hate me?"
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Then he meets those dumb, bright eyes and says the truth. "No, you idiot," Tim says. "I'm glad you're okay."
...that's it. He doesn't feel empty having said it. It's, shockingly, not strange to him. Still, Tim frowns a little. It's his way of staving off the nagging scare that he might be way, way off. He remembers Jeff's scar. So he gestures broadly, blandly, absentmindedly to Jeff's... face. "I mean you look... like you're okay. Are you okay?"
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It's hard to say if Jeff's smiling now because Tim admitted to being glad to see him (well, see him in a state of okay-ness, which isn't quite the same as being happy to see him, period), or because Tim just called him an idiot. It's Jeff, so. You know. He accepts both as a love language. He reaches out, as if to take Tim's hand, before figuring it'll just get swatted away, and touches the collar of the other boy's jacket instead, giving it an affectionate, familiar tug.
"I'm okay. I'm--" He hums in thought, searching for the word. "I'm golden, man." But. His smile fades, and his brows furrow, looking... a little confused, or maybe concerned, or confused over his own concern, or whatever. "You disappeared."
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He glances back at a gruff and handsome woman who is expecting Tim to dawdle; he drops his heat packs in a display bin and mutters a sorry.
He mutters his sorry and his face is feeling hot already, and Tim sighs and gets a hold of Jeff's hand. "I heard," he says with a tug. They should escape and have this conversation... literally anywhere else. Tim is refusing to meet Jeff's eyes as he marches them out. It's a painfully guilty gesture.
"I was in Wolf Pen--"
Jeff's birthday.
"...and then I was here. And everyone I knew was saying I had been missing for months, and it's winter now, and I don't. I don't remember-- how I lost half a year just like that."
And, because he feels like that's not enough I statements:
"I was worried you were lost too."
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