INTRO LOG #3

[bequiet]

INTRO LOG #3
Put a Sock in It
Content Warnings: Disorientation, memory loss, confusion
Themes: Arrival, survival, exploration, horror

You wake, standing. A thick, muddy red dust coats your skin and clothes - it sticks to your tongue and blocks your vision. Inhale and it chokes you, exhale and your breath puffs out in front of your face in a transparent maroon cloud. It tastes of copper, tangy and harsh. Movement is difficult, every limb tingles and aches. Look to your left, your right. Evenly spaced in each direction stands another person indistinguishable in every way from the next. You're disoriented and lethargic, unable to grasp onto a single thought. A pinprick of light blooms ahead and grows steadily larger; a door has opened.

Hands grip your wrists, push at the small of your back and guide you out of the darkness into a room with four walls and a thin, sagging ceiling. The plaster is peeling, the air is musty, and the floor is slick. White plastic piping juts up from the center and curves into multiple spouts, clean water flowing in uneven streams. Those hands pull your clothes off and clear the dust from your body, redress you in handsewn jumpsuits. By the time they’re through, you will have begun to come back to yourself.

A finger is pressed to your lips. Kind eyes meet your own and a single word is whispered - hush.

Led out of the room in a line, you’re taken down a short hallway and into another, much larger room. There’s a woman waiting for you there, Constance, with a child hugging her leg - a cloth bag in her hands. She reaches in and pulls out a device, passes one to each of you. Once finished, she begins to move both hands in graceful gestures, a language. One of the people who helped you lifts their device and the screen lights up, tracks the woman’s hands. Letters appear on the screen and you understand the device’s purpose. She tells you what she knows and it’s not much.

This world is haunted. Noise attracts them, so it is not allowed. Communication is through body language, soundless writing, and the device. She tells you that your feet must be light and your mouth never used. There is a community outside these doors, where you can survive together, but only if you agree to one thing: complete and total silence. You'll have time to talk it over. You may ask one question and receive one answer. There are others like you in the room, those who'd come earlier. They're there to help.

Acceptance allows you to journey outside. The ground is marked in pathways of sand, lining the paths to each building and everywhere in-between. You notice that the locals hold their devices always, aloft and glance to it often. It will not vibrate or make a sound to signal a message. Notices appear. Rules. Guidelines. Feet on the sand and never anywhere else. To open a door you brush your fingers along the hinges - oiled and you may enter. If not, take the brush from the can sitting nearby and coat the metal with the dark liquid.

Now, you're to settle into your new home – with or without the help of those who have come before you.

In Freakish Flight
Content Warnings: Threat to safety, death, weird creatures
Themes: Plot, survival

This is the tale that was told to me by the man with the crystal eye,
As I smoked my pipe in the camp-fire light, and the Glories swept the sky;
As the Northlights gleamed and curved and streamed, and the bottle of "hooch" was dry.

The new arrivals are here, like clockwork it seems. A strange occurrence that the natives haven't missed. They don't have answers but following support and encouragement from some of the older arrivals, they have been looking into it. If they notice anything odd, they post it to the bulletin board and they're working as hard as ever to help. Settling in is easier this time around, smoother, as everyone is more prepared than before. The first few days go well, one of the natives finds a patch of wild berries and makes fresh jam - serves it with breakfast until it runs out. There's a nice breeze that night, not too hot and not too cold. The stars twinkle and the moon is full, a pleasant atmosphere rolls through the community as everyone falls asleep.

Everyone wakes to the soft sounds of birds chirping. There's a light fog, windows misted over, and abruptly, it goes quiet. The only way to see outside is to open the door and those curious brave enough will find, covered in red dust, a handful of individually unique creatures scattered around the fountain at the center of the community. There's about fourteen of them - each one focused on the door of the main residences and two have scurried off towards the others, quiet now but watching. After the first door opens, they move, stopping only when they're right in front of each of the houses and then the sounds start again. Louder.

OOC: Removing the threat, these creatures, is possible in a few ways. They have a weakness for water, which slows them down and shuts them up. They can be killed, the same as any normal animal might. Or they can be captured, something tied around their bills to silence them. Unfortunately, only a few will survive being caught alive ( we randomized out of the twelve houses - 5, 1, 2, 12, and Private Housing (Sora) and the Permanent Apartments ) and can be kept for study. The players in each house can decide what they want to do with them or use the comment below if they want to hand it over. As a side note, the dead ones can be kept too.

Alone or Together
Content Warnings: Poisoning
Themes: Plot

Up until now everything around here has been, well, pleasant. Recently certain things have become unpleasant. Now, it seems to me that the first thing we have to do is to separate out the things that are pleasant from the things that are unpleasant.

The natives have been up front about those that came through the Reset Room before. Some left, some didn't survive, and a few now call themselves natives. The above message lights up everyone's devices ( username - lamar ) but all ways to respond are disabled. A follow up message comes from Constance, explaining that they don't know how the message has been sent due to the fact that Lamar has been dead for over a decade. That night at dinner, the set up in town hall, the natives are abuzz talking about the mysterious message. Food is passed out. Drinks are had.

Before the first person leaves the hall, a plume of red dust sprays out from an old vent near the floor boards and fills the room. Quickly, all color is leached from the world. Every person is now color blind, seeing everything in varying shades of black, white, and grey as they cough and choke, trying to clear the dust from their faces and mouths. Was this Lamar? Was this the person who rigged up the noise machine in Verdel Square? What did the message mean?

OOC: The effects will fade after twenty four hours. All arrivals, new and old, plus all natives will be effected. For each character, one person will still be in color. Players can decide who this is. A friend, lover, enemy, one of the natives.

OOC
From your mods:

Please be mindful of content - if something triggery comes up or if it goes up a rating to say, something sexy, mark your threads in the subject line. We're very flexible and allow any material; we just want our players to be respectful of each other. If you have questions, pp the mod account, use the faq or comment to the appropriate post below. Have fun!

NAVIGATION

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Comments

[limped]

( Continued from: here )

"Good to meet ya, Ellie." When she smiles, he offers one in response, and while he's a little uneasy with the whole situation - he seems to mean it. He's never been great at guessing ages, and the fact that he could count on one hand the amount of girls he remembers meeting, well, he's not really going to try to guess her age. She's been basically good to him so far, so he'll quietly add her to the people he plans on protecting, regardless of her age.

He knows no matter how much he tries to recall why he knows how to handle a shotgun, he'll come up with a blank, so he doesn't bother trying, he simply nods at her words. He just hopes he's not a crap shot with guns other than a rifle. "Clickers? Ya mean you gave the Cranks a different name?" Or maybe there were different types... He really hopes not, but then again, most of the stuff he hopes wouldn't happen, does...

The moment he steps into the snow, something gives him an eerie feeling. The sound of snow under his boots, is enough to make his stomach churn and he's not exactly sure why, but he keeps it to himself and instead lets her lead the way. What really makes him nervous is the weird squawking and clicking sounds he hears getting closer to them, followed by the sound of loud footfalls in the snow.

"Shit!" His curse is quickly followed by the loud blast of a shotgun, and then another. He might have had the audacity to complain about the recoil that rocks his shoulder, but he's too busy trying to put the ugly things down. When he notices how blood and god knows what else explodes from their heads when he manages to hit one there, he decides that that's the way to try to go instead of abdomen shots. "I hate to sound negative, but this feels like it was a bad plan."

[antigene]

Clickers, Cranks. She guesses things have different names in different regions. But they're all the same thing. A disgusting pain in the ass. This dream always ends with a swarm of them overtaking her. She's immune but not to blood loss. She always dies and wakes up in a cold sweat. Maybe she won't tonight.

Newt fires the shotgun like he's made for it. Ellie's grateful she doesn't have to coach him. He goes for the heads and she cheers, whooping and hollering as she stabs and lunges.

"No shit!" She keeps bringing the clickers down and more just take their place. It's a good thing she's not winded yet. "The dream always ends with a swarm of them. There's no way one person can kill them all. But maybe two can!"

While he's busy firing at one she rushes forward to tackle and repeatedly stab a clicker that's advancing on him.

[limped]

Newt's beginning to notice that she's right, they just seem never-ending. It feels like a trap, circular logic in a dream - he's had enough nightmares to know that sometimes the easiest solution is the best one. He shoots again, watching it finally crumple to the ground and then she's covering his ass by taking one down that seemed to think he'd make a lovely dinner meal. "Thanks," he rasps the word out before taking aim at another.

"Why are we out here, where were ya headed?" He questions, glad that the dream logic has decided that even if he knows that the gun can't hold more than five shots, it seems to be infinite as long as he pumps it again.

Newt's not exactly sure what will happen to him if he dies in someone else's dream, and he doesn't particularly want to find out. It all feels so real, the cold air, the noises the Cranks are making, the way the shotgun shoves back into his shoulder.

"Have ya tried running?" He asks before realising that two are advancing on her whilst she's stabbing one to death. He rushes towards her shooting one and using the shotgun as more of a blunt weapon to smack hard into the head of the other. What he doesn't expect is the thing to seem to be only angered by it lashing out towards him with surprising strength, and causing him to stumble back, trying the best to his abilities to avoid the swipes. It's a rush of adrenaline, and trying to avoid teeth that he fires off the gun again, the close shot causing it to tumble backwards. He doesn't have time to sigh in relief because he needs to shoot it again.