quietplacelogs | 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:

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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I remember it better if I draw it myself.

[Also, because then he'd have to tape a piece of paper into his notebook, and that's just messy.]

Besides, it gives me something to do besides sit in a room and stare quietly at the walls.

[Well, that's fair enough. Just the thought of sitting inside and doing nothing makes Kiryu feel a little antsy, too -- though the lack of nicotine is definitely a factor in that one.]

I guess that makes sense. So how much have you gotten done so far?

[He offers over his notebook for Kiryu to look at. He's done some sketching. A lot of it, of the streets around them, the fountain, the housing area, the community center, the sandpaths, and other landmarks.]

I started two days ago. I'd say I've done maybe six or seven laps?

I'm about ready to find something else to take notes on, honestly. I've got the map mostly done.

[Genuine astonishment finds its way to Kiryu's face as he looks it over. He certainly wasn't expecting something so... meticulously detailed.]

Hey, this is pretty good. I had no idea we had cartographers here.

[It doesn't even register to him that text messaging doesn't convey tone. That wasn't even a compliment, flattery, or sarcasm. Congrats Joseph, he legitimately thinks you draw maps for a living.]

[Joseph fully assumes he's using good-natured sarcasm.]

Thanks. I'll make copies once I have it finished and hand them out to people. Then find something else to obsess over, I suppose.

[goddamn it Joseph he thinks you're being 100000% serious.]

I'm not sure that everyone would need a copy, but one per house would probably be good.

Once we actually travel outside of the town, you'll have more to do.

[He smirks at that.]

Oh, no, one per house is plenty. I'm not a copy machine.

I'll be very interested to head outside of the town. I want to see the state of things elsewhere, and I'm especially interested in these so-called "monsters."

[Well, that certainly is a thing that Joseph just said. Kiryu's brows knit together in confusion as he reads over the message a second time.]

"So-called" monsters? So, you don't believe them.

[Not that he wholly buys into it, either, but most people here seem to have swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.]

[He's seen monsters. And they only existed in the fucked-up figments of an insane imagination that he'd been forced to share. Not in this, the real world, actual reality... or some form of it, anyway.

He's not about to get into that with this gentleman, though.]

It's not that I don't believe them. Something had to do this to these people. But I'm not going to call them monsters until I've seen them myself.

[Kiryu nods solemnly at that. It's as fair an assessment he's seen so far. And shockingly pragmatic, coming from a map-drawer.]

I agree. The worst monsters I've ever known were men.

Same here. Especially in my line of work.

[He shakes his head, and offers to take back the notebook.]

I've seen you around but I didn't catch your name.

[Wait, what? That look of confusion returns as he hands Joseph's notebook back to him. What the hell kind of monsters exist in the map-making world? Not that he really knows much about it; it could be dangerously cut-throat for all he knows.]

Kiryu.

[Joseph tucks the notebook under his arm so he can send a message, then offer a handshake.]

Joseph Oda. Nice to meet you, Mr. Kiryu.

[A handshake, huh? Not exactly the greeting he expected from one of the few people here who actually looked like him, but he'll take it. And does. It's just one more thing on the list of things about Joseph that seem weird to him. The western-sounding first name is a bit of a tell, though.]

You don't have to be so formal. We're both stuck in the same place.

INTRO LOG #1

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