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

[ Poor Faith. Friday couldn't help but feel sympathy. ]

This place must feel like torture. Did you go to a lot of parties at home?

Less than I used to. Been busy. But I go to bars and clubs from time to time... I really like to dance. [It had always felt good to go on patrol, slay a few vampires and then go for a night on the town. Maybe have some fun afterward with someone who caught her eye.]

[ Dancing. She had never been very good at it, but the word brings a soft smile to her face. It reminds her of Saturday. A lot about her reminds her of Saturday.

She guesses her she doesn't have to lie about that. ]

I'm a terrible dancer, but one of my sisters used to do it a lot. She was a ballerina when we were little, but she liked bars and clubs a lot when we were older.

I was never any ballerina or anything so fancy as all that. Just like doing it. [She shrugged. This woman was a bit odd, but Faith didn't mind it. Although she had to wonder how someone could reach adulthood without having ever been to a party.]

If you don't dance. Or go to clubs or whatever. What do you do for fun?

[ Fun. It shouldn't take her so long to think of that. She bites her lip, forehead wrinkling. It wasn't like they didn't have fun in the apartment, it was just... hard to think of the small things sometimes. ]

Computer programming. Sometimes I make my own hardware improvements. Reading, I guess.

[The look on Faith's face was not one of understanding. It waffled between confusion and horror. Really? Computer programming? Reading? Fun?] Takes all kinds, I guess.

No offense.

[ Oh hey, Saturday used to give her that look all the time. It gets some weird mix of amusement and heartache inside of her, but... That's to be expected, she imagines. ]

None taken. I'm used to it.

[Faith was a little worried she might have offended her with that last comment. She looked sad, but she'd also smiled? She wasn't sure what to think about that.] I'm sure it can be fun. I just never understood much about computers. Never got into books either.

My grandfather and I used to work on them together, he taught me everything I know. None of my sisters cared about that kind of stuff much either though.

That must have been nice. Learning something from a grandparent. [Was she jealous? Yeah, little bit. Look, she'd never been taught anything by any family member. Not anything that a little girl should be taught, anyway.]

[ She shrugs in response. Nice is one word for it, but she learned everything from him, really. The praise was probably the nicest part. ]

Are there a lot of places to go dancing where you're from?

sunnydale only had one place to dance. Was alright.

Of course all of Sunnydale just disappeared into a massive sinkhole.

so no places to dance there anymore [She shrugged, as though she wasn't so bothered about this. Luckily most people had gotten out before disaster struck.]

[ ............. Because places just disappear into sinkholes all the time, Faith.

She hasn't heard of it happening in years, but she remembers Lu Li, and how their Earths were slightly different. Maybe this girl is just from... before her? When that stuff happened more. When the ice caps were still melting and the sea levels fucked things up for everyone.

Yes. That's possible. ]

I'm sorry, that sucks.

It was a Hellmouth. Probably better this way. [She wasn't from there and there's no love lost between her and that place. A lot of bad memories. That's all it was.]

grew up in Boston though. That place was riddled with places to dance.

[ She wants to assume that was her way of saying that the place was terrible, because she's convinced literal Hellmouths don't exist, and she'd like to stay that way for now.

Besides, she's more curious about the last part anyway. ]

Boston like the one in America?

Yes. Boston, Mass. In the US of A.

Where are you from? [Maybe she will have actually heard of it, if the other woman had heard of Boston.]

[ HA... ha...where... That's... That's a good question. That's a very good question. Naming a sector or a check point number will be meaningless to this girl. She's sure of it. Since Boston is very much under water.

She's trying to think of a country that still existed and was roughly maybe where she was located, but she's not sure, because everyone speaks English and she hasn't got anything to go off of.

Uhhhhh. ]

Sweden.

[ That's a good. Way to go, Friday, you did that smoothly. ]

And here I thought everyone in Sweden was blonde. [It's a joke. Although perhaps Friday won't know that?] Way to break the mold.

[ oooOOH NO why didn't she think about predominant hair colors based on region. ] I like to be unique.

Unique is good. If everyone was all the same, life would be real boring.

Horribly so. Our differences are the most important things about us.

So, you like tech and everything. Have you had the time to look much at these devices? Work them out?

[ ... excuse her while she looks really excited while she types because talking about tech. ]

They were the first things I really decided to focus on. It's interesting, they seem to be the most advanced tech here. Everything else is pretty ancient, the stuff I can find is all from around 2015-2020 or so,
nothing beyond it. It seems like they put all of their effort into making sure these communicators were on advanced, though,
including auto translators and an ability to recognize and type in logographic and syllabic languages. It means they were expecting them to have to be used by people who don't necessarily speak French from the moment they started building them. Why waste the time on the software otherwise, y'know?

It's still a little bit behind what I'm used to back home, but the software is pretty simplistic coding and the hardware inside is easy to put back together, even if the pieces are little tinier. I would have expected them to start using holographic projection for the screens at this point, but I guess they haven't gotten there yet.

I tried to get them to give me a second one so I could mess around with it, but I guess it's too much right now. I'm hoping I can replicate it with the computer parts I picked up when I moved in.

[Way to go Faith. You opened the flood gates. Her eyes go a little wide with all the information. At least Friday hadn't gone all 'tech speak' on her. She did catch an important detail in all of that.]

So you're from some time past 2020? When's that? I'm from 2003.

[ Oh. No wonder there were sink holes. ]

2076.

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