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
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NAVIGATION

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

MUZZLE AND MUTE
[Okay, no one is okay with this right? That's Aaron's first real thought after it became easy to have thoughts again. First the room with dust that clouded his senses and his mind. Then the new clothes. Weird, new clothes. Who wears jump suits? Aaron does, obviously.

The device is special. Something a bit too futuristic for his tastes. The woman's doing sign language, right? He knows that's a thing though he doesn't quite know if that's actually what she's doing. The device is kind enough to translate. He wants to patronize whatever spider is behind this but he leaves it be. Getting his one question out of the way he takes a breath and decides to see just how much self control he truly has.

Out in the town he walks along the sand, bare feet presses in and he moves like a man ready to sprint, ready to bolt or chase. He doesn't though. Seeing others look at their devices it takes him an embarrassingly long time before he realizes he should check his. Oh, rules. More rules. Great.

Reading the rules, mesmerized by the lit screen, he doesn't quite what where he is going or who he is walking into.]

MAN IN THE HAT part 1 (House 3 prompt!)
[Aaron finds his new home and plays along to see just what this town has. As far as furnishings go he's not too picky. All he wants is something not too hard to sleep on and something to put his belongings in. Oh, and a mirror. He's not vein, they're just so very useful. For a lanky young man he's got a lot of energy.

Oh, and he's going to be bad with personal space, making his way to the other rooms and seeing who else is in this with him. Might as well make friends, he's going to have to apologize to some of them later if he loses his patience. So for now he's greeting his house mates with a big smile and a friendly wave. He'll even flail his hands around trying to portray that he will aid them with moving things.]

MAN IN THE HAT part 2 (Party prompt!)
[Aaron finds the memento that seems most useful to him. There's a piece of rose quartz hanging on a wax coated string. He plucks it from the pile, watches it sway on the end of the cord and pockets it quickly. Good. Good start.

The party itself is really, really lame. Aaron has really crappy dance moves but he doesn't seem to care. He's careful not to jostle anything too much but he has fun with it. It's going to take some getting used to socializing through text. Aaron's never even had a cell phone. Still, he's starting to pick up how the natives communicate and mimics some of their styles.

Jarred pickles are fine but he's going to avoid following a strange man in a hat to his home. That just doesn't seem like his sort of party.]

SOUND EATERS part 1 (Closed to Ivor Grames!)
[Paired up and set to task? Okay, not really what he wanted to do but for now he needs to get a feel for this place. Which means trying to blend in a little until he knows just how to work it. So that means going on patrol with the person they put him with.

While taking stock of his surroundings and trying his best to find something that might be out of place to the townsfolk, he tries small "talk" with Ivor. Playing with the messenger, using the practice he got the night before, he starts with an easy question.]

So, Toto. How far do you think we are from Kansas?

SOUND EATERS part 2 (Everyone | Town Hall)
[Well, this dampens Aaron's mood noticeably.

Risk himself? Sure.

He's bound to survive somehow. It might not be pretty but he'll survive.

Risk a stranger whose only crime was having Aaron arrive in their town? Not so much.

So Aaron keeps his voice down while greeting people but even his usual easy smile is absent at the moment as he's forced to really think on this one. Ghosts. He should be able to fight ghosts right? But he might be wrong. He's fast but not super fast. He's still not sure what room reset means and though that's curious he's not going to risk killing innocent people over this. Instead he tries to meet as many people as he can while his voice is still usable.]

Edited 2018-01-16 02:35 (UTC)

[As Tuan walks out of the garage that she's claimed for herself, she spots her new housemate grinning and waving. She's tired from moving pieces of furniture into the garage and this apparent display of friendliness adds a secondary layer of exhaustion. She yanks her ponytail loose with a deadpan expression, then nods to acknowledge his existence.]

[Though he was curious about the garage, he heard noises in there and decided to just claim the first empty room he found.

So now he gets to meet who snagged another of the rooms! And she doesn't seem happy to see him. Not that anyone should really be happy to be here but he grins anyways.

He points to the garage then folds his hands and places them to the side of his head like a pillow. He's trying to get used to pantomiming things around here.]

[...Christ he's persistent. Despite wanting to march right back into the garage/her bedroom, even Tuan realizes there's little point in outright alienating people she has to deal with on a semi-regular basis. She doesn't really have the patience for charades though, so she pulls out her device to write out a response.]

It's not a bedroom, if that's what you're asking.

[A beat. Then she types further:]

But it'll do. Who knows if they've installed surveillance devices in the proper living spaces.

[He needs to remember that's a thing he can do. Use the messenger. He pulls it out after reading her comments. A weird thing to think of but Big Brother and all.]

If you need help getting any bed supplies for in there just let me know. Hopefully their not running surveillance in my room because otherwise they're going to see some weird stuff.

[It takes him far too long to read that out loud in his head after showing it to her. He quickly turns it away and types a follow up.]

I mean I'm weird. Not the kind of person that people usually like to watch. Like boring but in a weird suburban way. I'm not weird-weird, just weird.

[Even as he shows it to her he realizes this was a lost cause now.]

[A lost cause is certainly one way of putting it. Despite herself Tuan bursts into laughter and has to bite her lip to refrain from making further noise. She's never going to get used to this "no sounds" thing, truth be told.]

Really? You could have fooled me. What are you trying to keep private from them, huh?

[Her expression has shifted to that of genuine curiosity, as though her new housemate might actually be worth talking to now. In her own world, words like "privacy" and "secret" were dirty ideas - you owed it to society to be open about yourself as individuals were merely public resources. But in afterthought, she adds:]

You don't have to say. I'm kinda weird. too.

Edited 2018-01-17 20:45 (UTC)

[Well at least he got a laugh. That actually relaxes him some. He's supposed to keep most of this a secret but secrets were for people with more self control than Aaron. Still, it's a bit much for first impressions.

As for being weird, he's not sure if she means weird like he means weird.]

Okay, I'm a bit more than suburban weird. I just need to get used to this place before I show off everything I can do, you know? I just have some tricks to help me out if things get real bad.

[She raises an eyebrow at that mysteriousness, but after a moment she simply nods. He's allowed to have his secrets, after all. Just like she's allowed to have hers if she wants to in this world.]

You mustn't be very scared about being here then. That's pretty lucky for you, weirdo.

[She smiles faintly - enough to indicate she's only teasing and types further.]

I'd use your name, but I don't know what it is.

[He knows there are no guarantees but he gets nowhere being afraid. Though she brings up a pretty good point.]

Oh, yeah, I'm Aaron. My user name on this thing is Xochipilli. I'm usually very lucky or very unlucky so lets hope it's the good one.

What's yours?

I'm pretty unlucky so if we stick close we'll either cancel each other out or both of us meet a sticky end.

[If you're prone to superstitious thinking anyway. But despite the morbidity of the comment, she doesn't really seem all that perturbed.]

I'm Tuan. My user name is 'kirie' - my last name. Is your user name supposed to mean something?

Aaron Taylor | cWoD OC

House party~

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Sound Eaters pt 2

Re: Sound Eaters pt 2

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