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

[overashadow]

[ He keeps his composure when they wander through the house, taking care to stay quiet despite being in an area he assumes is safe. Or as safe as this place is going to get, apparently. What had Sora called those... things? Sound Eaters? It doesn't take a genius to figure out what they might do, given everything else in this place, but he isn't sure he wants to broach that subject just yet, walking into Sora's room and remaining standing when his friend takes a seat. He notices the cat, Sora's posture when he tells him things that... both make sense and don't. It's easier to swallow it that way if he compartmentalizes it, trying to put the pieces together, and his conclusion is this: he's not telling him everything. He isn't explaining what had happened while he'd been there or the rest of it, really, and it's frustrating to see that, to hear it in Sora's voice like he wouldn't be able to handle it.

Of course, Riku has his own secrets too. He just thought Sora would never keep things from him when it mattered most.

He sighs to himself, crossing his arms and staring down at the floor as if it's much more interesting than anything else in the room. The basics had been answered, and as annoyed as he is, he also knows Sora. When he wants to tell him, he'll do it on his own terms and probably all at once the same way he's done since they'd been kids. Riku would just have to try to be proactive about keeping them both together and on the same page until they resolved this world's problems and could go home. (He's not even going to start with what Sora had said about wanting to stay.) Just the thought of all this makes him feel sick, but he's beginning to catch on, which means there's something important he needs to ask about. ]

And you're stuck here like those other places. [ It's not a question, just an obvious statement. ] What you said about not remembering... Was I there with you? Have I been here before?

[skyofreverie]

[There's just a lot. This isn't like he woke up in a world and couldn't leave a couple of months ago, Sora is talking years here. All the things Sora's been in those four years are pretty horrible even if it was sprinkled with good things. So many times he thought he'd break - that the weight of it would smother his light. Eventually he'll tell Riku about his time in the Facility and then in the Cities. Those were the two that really got him, the ones that settled heavily on his shoulders. And he probably won't mention everything. Sora has one secret he can't bring himself to share. Even to Riku.

But his friend only arrived to this world today and he doesn't want to dump it all on the taller boy immediately.

While Riku takes everything and processes what he said, Sora is silent. Waiting for the other to give him a cue to continue. Pulls his feet up on the bed and crosses his legs before wrapping his fingers around the spot his legs connect. Looking mostly casual but there's a tension in his back and shoulders. Already Sora knows he's said a few things that his friend doesn't like. For a year, Riku looked after him while he slept and put him back together. To even think of being unable to help Sora is probably not a good feeling. But for it have been four years is the worst thing.

He fixes his gaze on Riku's face when the other starts talking again.] Yep, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to look for a Keyhole so other people can go home if they want.

[There is absolutely nothing that would stop Sora from trying to help where ever he can - not when he can.

A small frown at the question and he chews his bottom lip before replying.] You were there. Twice, actually. You didn't remember the first time when you came back the second. When you came back the second time, it was about six months after I'd gotten there and you were there the next two and half years with me. A lot of other people from home were there too. Kairi, Roxas - I don't know how, Axel, Namine, Xion, Leon, even your Replica - we called him Mera, Terra and Ventus and Demyx, Marluxia and Zexion. The king was there for a week and other faces from different worlds. Cloud, Tifa, Yuffie, Sephiroth, Cid, Yuna, Rikku - with two ks, Aerith and a whole lot of others.

[His eyes look down at the ground.] Almost everyone left before we did. When I got to the next world one of my friends was already there and they said we left the Facility at the same time. And you were in that world too - two of you, actually. Really you and not the Replica. It was like seeing younger and older versions of you. But neither of them remembered our time in the Facility. And the same was true in the world after that. It was just your Replica in the world after that.

[A sigh and he lifts a hand to rub his forehead.]

If you've been here before, I don't know about it. This is the third month that people have shown up but apparently there have been other times years and years ago.