quietplacelogs | INTRO LOG #1

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INTRO LOG #1

INTRO LOG #1
Muzzle and Mute
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, a child hugging her leg, and 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.

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.

The Man in the Hat
Content Warnings: Heavy lifting, following the rules, alcoholism
Themes: Moving in, survival, exploration, horror

Once you’ve claimed a room for yourself, it’s time to acclimate to the community. Natives will ask what you need and take you along the sandpaths to different areas in the city to gather supplies - furniture and the like. Heavier items will require assistance and will take longer. Houses are mostly empty so if you and your housemates need something, you’ll have to carry it and put it inside the home. Do not make any noise or the natives will refuse to help you. Getting to know your housemates is key to a smooth transition. They are going through what you are right now; take the time to get to know them. Make house rules.

As the first day gives way to night, the natives can be seen moving at a faster pace outside. They’re hurried, though not frightened. Some even smile at you. When the sun sets behind the ruins of what was once picturesque Reims, your device will signal that it’s time to meet at the center of the community. There, natives will stop each person and give them a small gift - a trinket, a token to show that they are trying their best to make all the new arrivals feel at home. These are all items from the character’s home or from another character's home (they will not be anything that belongs to anyone else). Small, soundless and either something taken during the application process or something brand new. They will have no powers to speak of and are meant to be a momento. If asked, the natives found them the same way they found each of you.

Then the party starts. Sort of. A soundless, stitled kind of celebration. Fun is meant to be had, but it’s not an overly joyous occasion. The natives simply don’t know how to cut loose. There will be extra food in the form of one and two; Phillipa even brought some of her homemade bread. If you stumble across a man wearing a hat, the only man in town who does, and agree to go with him when he offers to show you his house - he’ll gift you with a jar of hooch; it’ll burn on the way down.

Sound Eaters
Content Warnings: Threat, danger
Themes: Survival, exploration, horror, game plot

It’s the second day of your stay, and the natives call for an emergency meeting at the Town Hall. Everyone is paired off (see below) and are asked to walk the perimeter looking for anything out of place and patching any areas that might have been affected by weather. Once finished, the same is done on the inside, and when the community leader is satisfied, the main hall is opened up so that everyone can congregate. Characters, during this time only, are allowed to make sound. This is so that the natives can explain why silence is so necessary...

The Sound Eaters.

In an effort not to frighten everyone, the natives won’t go into the history just yet, but they will warn that when someone makes a sound, it attracts them. They don’t know what they look like because they are so fast. If you’re too loud, then in the blink of an eye, you’ll go through a room reset. This is because either the natives ‘silenced’ you or the Sound Eaters have. They will explain that the room came at the same time the Sound Eaters did and that it doesn’t work for the natives. Sometimes, it doesn’t work on new arrivals. Death, for those born in this world, is permanent. If you attract them, you’ll get someone killed. Hence the need for no noise. During the meeting, the natives will tell each character of their own experiences. Their losses. The families they have left and how they’d do anything to keep them alive. They don’t know if you’ll be reset, but is that a risk you’re willing to take? The meeting will last a few hours and will end on a somber, ominous note - at the end of the month, they are taking everyone to meet them.

OOC
From your mods:

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NAVIGATION

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

(Prose, brackets, whatever you prefer!)

A. (After) The Party/The Man in the Hat

[Joseph stands off to the side of the gathering place for the party, a frown on his face, watching-but-not-really watching the crowd.

Here he thought that man needed help or had some kind of emergency going on. Turns out, the emergency is a steel shelving unit absolutely full to the brim with glass jars of good old-fashioned homemade hooch.

Though Jesus, is he grateful for it. After the day he's been having, he expects to partake in a few glugs before he tries to sleep tonight. That might keep the nightmares at bay.

He's not convinced this isn't another nightmare in itself. It doesn't have the twisting, blurry, tenuous environment of STEM, but he felt as real and solid and conscious there as he does now. The presence of all these people, unaffected, unaltered, untormented... that has to mean something. Either he's found a pocket within where he's safe, where there's no longer that voice in his head egging him on, coercing him to let go, cackling with that horrible, twisted version of his own laugh--

Or he's out. And there's something else entirely bizarre going on.

Joseph leans on the nearest wall and rubs his eyes beneath his glasses. Time to stop ruminating for a while. Time to find someone else to focus on, someone who might need this mind of his to do something more productive than panicking. This is a party, after all. Not that he's been to one of those in many, many years. He couldn't be more uncomfortable here if someone tried.

The jar of hooch is tucked into a cloth sack beside him, along with his other provisions and his newly-returned notebook. Joseph picks it up and tucks the strap over his shoulder, then heads through the crowd in search of someone to talk to.

Quietly.]

How are you holding up?

B. Sound Eaters

[At first, Joseph thought this might all be some kind of weird religious cult or other strange commune (barring the time he spent/still spends thinking it might all be a mass delusion caused by an ill-advised technological brain experiment... but that's another story.) He's been leaning that way in his notes, at least, as he's spent nearly all his spare time glued to his notebook. After the morning partner patrols, he's a little less sure of that theory.

When they announce the presence of Sound Eaters-- honest-to-god monsters, from the description-- he has no idea what to think.

(Ruvik doesn't work like that. Ruvik doesn't play the long game. These people have been living like this for ages, and it's not because of Ruvik...)

It looks like Joseph is barely listening through the meeting, as he writes down notes at a rapid pace. Only once it's adjourned does he close the notebook, relishing in the sound of other voices, even if they're quiet ones. He indulges himself in a little talking of his own, though mostly to himself.]

"Taking us to meet them." Then they know where "they" live.

The Sound Eaters? Or someone else?

C. House Three

[Congratulations/condolences on your roommate, House Three.

Joseph makes himself available in the kitchen late at night on the first evening, opening his jar of pickles in the manner that someone pops open a bag of chips at a housewarming party. He's seen most of his housemates earlier and shot brief introductions to them via device, but this is the first chance he's had to actually converse with them, between moving furniture, attending weird "parties," and attempting to sleep, which ended in horrific nightmares that nearly had him screaming when he awoke.

In the interests of not repeating that, he's chosen to forego sleeping for now.

He greets any comers to the kitchen with a nod, an offer of communal pickles, and a message on their device.]

Do you have everything you need? We can go get more furniture tomorrow if we're missing anything.

D. Out in the Streets

[During the day, Joseph can be seen walking through the settlement, sticking closely on the sandpaths, of course. Notebook in hand, he concentrates deeply on sketching, occasionally stopping to get a more detailed sketch of whatever it is he's working on.

Then he's off again, around the perimeter, over and over again, silent as can be.]

E. Other?
(Anything you'd like to do? Hit me!)

[Victor had followed the man with hat (a very fashionable hat it was) and been given a jar like the others. He will take this, thanks, no doubt it'll be handy to have booze. Judging by the wall of the stuff, it's not exactly being rationed out so much as the food was, but Victor can be careful... later on. He's pretty intent on getting to the heavy side of buzzed before collapsing into his pillow fort. Steady on his way to buzzed, he's not exactly looking Joseph's way as the man approaches, in fact he only catches a glimpse of him from the corner of his eye.

The voice barely registers, if it had he probably wouldn't have reached a hand toward him. He definitely wouldn't have slid that hand around him waist, pulled him flush against his side, and rested his face into a mop of black hair with a relieved sigh. It will take him exactly two seconds to realize this isn't right. Firstly, because his fiance does not smell like this and second, probably more obvious, was not so tall. Who did he grab?]

[Victor comes very, very close to getting punched in the throat.

That is to say, he has the misfortune of coming up close to a guy who's spent the last little while very much avoiding being touched (understandably, though, as the most recent people trying to touch him were more aiming for strangling or stabbing him to death.) Victor gets about one second of startled pause before Joseph grabs him by the wrist and twists his arm backwards.

He stops himself before straight-up throwing the guy to the ground, as that would make a lot of noise and attract a lot of attention. Instead, Joseph keeps the grip on his wrist, blinking wide-eyed behind his glasses and looking halfway to totally panicking.

With a gasp, he lets go, and barely remembers to keep his voice down.]

Excuse me? I'm sorry. What...

Joseph Oda | The Evil Within

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sup roomie

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