INTRO LOG #1

[bequiet]

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

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Comments

Miach Mihie | Harmony

[imitationsoul]

< A = Muzzle and Mute >

[ Ah...
Miach hasn't been this dirty in a long time. Even if she had the presence of mind to react in any way to this situation, she'd be stunned into passivity by the memories that are brought to her mind through the dirt. People in uniform... scientists... doctors... soldiers... All the same, every person, all the same...
The thought flies away as quickly as it came, Miach doesn't quite remember that she thought anything at all now. Her clothes come off and she can do nothing about it.

Ah...
The bitter taste of reminiscence, the weight of the past on her chest... She'll suffer now. Forever, forever, eternally... For sure...

When the suffering doesn't come and her consciousness returns to her, Miach can't feel relief. She's been there before, kind-seeming uniformed people putting another uniform on her and pretending she's going to be fine... Frankly, she's sick of it. After she's released into the outside, she spends some time standing in the way of everyone else, just staring at the city and gently brushing her hand through her own hair. Her expression is blank. ]

< B = The Man in the Hat / Closed to House Two >

[ Miach has claimed the bedroom next to the door and is personalizing it all on her own, refusing the help of the natives entirely. She's not here to cooperate, not with those people who touched her, not with those strangers she hasn't evaluated yet. As a result, you'll see her pass through the doors on her own repeatedly, carrying blankets at first. Plural blankets. It takes her a few runs to amass a number of them she finds adequate to substitute for a mattress or proper bed.
And then... she brings in books. Any book she can find. Phone books, encyclopedias, old novels... Books in any state of decay and disarray. She's carrying them into the room and placing them in piles on the floor.

And that's it. Her entire interior decoration. If her housemates pass by her, Miach will probably not pay much attention unless she is directly addressed, sorry. ]

< C = The Man in the Hat / Meeting: Open to All >

[ After receiving her memento (a small business card), Miach grabs herself a glass of pickles and peaches each and sits down on the sand floor a bit away from the party. The disapproving looks of the natives at this act of greed mean absolutely nothing to her. She needs food, without food her brain won't work right, and she wants to think right now. She wants to assess this situation. If what she has to do in order for that to work is hungrily wolf down a few pickles at once, she'll absolutely do this.

Once again she doesn't pay much mind to the people around here, but anyone who looks unusual for a human (or downright nonhuman) may catch her staring from the sidelines. ]

< D = Sound Eaters >

[ Miach laughs. A quiet chuckle. Her comment is only audible for anyone else who is also standing off towards the end of the group, in her general vicinity. ]

Just one scream and you can end the lives of all those around you.. It's just a matter of wanting to do it.

((ooc: I am in European time, so I'll sleep after posting this and all replies will come tomorrow!))

D

[hoaxer]

[Though Lu Li has begun to grow comfortable with being among crowds again, she still feels too exposed to be in the thick of them. She was an easily towering figure at six and a half feet, with a face too inhuman for her not to be self-conscious of. Therefore, she stuck to the outskirts of the group. She could hear perfectly fine from where she is, regardless of how soft they may speak.

--but what is this girl saying? Lu Li looks towards her, the red eye expanding and shrinking as she scans her face. What sort of emotion can be read on it...?]

WHO WOULD DO THAT?

[Her voice is a soft, atonal buzz, without any human inflection to it. Yet she purposefully delivers the question a little faster than usual. It's her attempt to make it sound like a challenge.

She doesn't know this stranger but she knows one thing:

She despises those who put others in danger.]

[imitationsoul]

[ The giant robotic creature has caught Miach's attention before, but approaching people instantly is not her style. In a way, it leaves her pleasantly surprised to have provoked a reaction out of the... thing? Intelligent electronics aren't rare where Miach is from, but usually they aren't programmed to the point of fleshed out AIs. This is something new.

When she faces Lu Li, she has a soft smile on her lips. There's a challenging glint of her own in her eyes, but she looks more playfully intrigued than malicious right now. ]

Many people. Human beings are vengeful and selfish creatures, don't you know? It is not so unreasonable to blame the natives for our current predicament, so why not get back at them? There could be anyone among us who is thinking this way right now.

[hoaxer]

[The playful look is perhaps worse than a hateful one. It suggests that these scenarios she's suggesting is like a joke - or worse, a game to her - and it gives Lu Li a deep-set discomfort.

(but deep down, isn't she one of those "vengeful creatures," now? she's been willing to do so much to find the truth. what is she but a shell driven by a dead woman's memories...?)

Even so, her visual sensor flares a bit brighter at the suggestion.]

SPEAK FOR YOURSELF.

[How she wishes she could properly indicate her anger in this moment.]

IT'S STUPID TO PUT A WHOLE COMMUNITY AT RISK LIKE THAT.

[imitationsoul]

[ The rhetoric is only too familiar to Miach, or at least she assumes so. Putting the community at risk means putting yourself at risk, so you have to live your whole life for the community and adjust all your choices to it.

It's exhausting, existentially exhausting. If this was home, she'd walk away from the conversation immediately. But this isn't home, these people are from different places and contexts and that adds a freshness to an overdone conversation that Miach has never experienced before. ]

Stupid? Who decides that? 'The community'? The community doesn't know anything about an individual person, their logic and their goals. It cannot know what is stupid or smart for anybody but its own stagnating collective.

[hoaxer]

[This manner of logic - Lu Li can't understand where it comes from. If she had Cassie's touch for conversation, perhaps she'd find a more convincing retort. But Lu Li is Lu Li. She acts upon her gut. Which is why her response is short and to the point.]

IT'S ABOUT HUMAN LIFE!

[Ah. It's a little too loud. She knows she's been looked at but--]

IT'S SELFISH TO PUT ANOTHER LIFE IN DANGER, ISN'T THAT OBVIOUS?

[imitationsoul]

[ Miach glances at Lu Li's robotic face and contemplates "what do you even know about being human?" as a retort, but it's too directly catty and it also excludes the chance that there is a person within this armor.

Instead, she breathes out slowly and simply asks: ]

Do you truly believe that selfishness is anything less than human nature?

C. OH BOY OH BOY

[infodumped]

[Most people are allowed to live with all their comfortable delusions about themselves unchallenged. For Tuan, she's lived through the destruction of her own image not once, but twice. And even then, given her endless foolishness she really did think that would be the end of it.

Not once since waking up here in this strange town with its own set od oppressive rules had it crossed her mind that she might be here, too. Why would she be? The dead are gone forever to a place where Tuan can't follow. Miach Mihie existed only in her memory now, radiant and piercing - someone she still clung to when things became too difficult to bear.

Seeing Miach sitting on the floor like she had every right to be there makes Tuan gasp audibly.

Three years.

Three whole fucking painful years without Miach Mihie in her life, without Miach to tell her all the things she knew about the world, without Miach to paint all the things she'd felt into vivid, explosive color. Three years since Tuan had decided to live a life without hope the day she cried on the way home from the hospital.

The Tuan Kirie of the past could have easily run up to MIach and said her name like it was a magical incantation that was every bit as special and unique as the girl herself. The Tuan Kirie of the present has no such right. None whatsoever. Her hands curl into fists -- not out of defiance, but out of hatred for the fake person she's become from her hair to her bravado. The person who could only emulate MIach, but never truly stand on her own feet.

She has to leave. She has to go before anyone at this party can see that there are tears in her eyes. Before the unbearable questions from people who don't even matter start cutting into her like blades. But for the moment, she's frozen in place. How is it that you can miss someone so much and fear everything that they have to say to you?]

[imitationsoul]

[ Miach's gaze initially passes over Tuan. People are all the same (except for those here who are not people exactly), uniform-clad boring conformist creatures. Miach has no interest to fit in with them, the only reason to observe them at all is to gain information. She chews on her pickle that is too sour for her mouth that is adjusted to the mild tastes of lifeism. It makes her feel good that it is. So she chews and moves on and then recognition hits her and her eyes snap back and the chewing stops.

It's been so long.

Three girls, a set of pills, a promise.

A small army, thrice the damage of what Miach could do on her own. Terrorists against the world, public enemies in gentle colors and flowing skirts.

Miach hasn't forgotten Tuan and Cian for a day since. Those girls were hers like nobody else had ever been hers before. Her allies, her fighters, her friends. Those who betrayed her.

There's no mistake that this is Tuan right in front of her now. Her hair is longer, her face looks more mature, but the eyes are eyes Miach knows so well. Fixed on her from behind even when she couldn't see, she's always known they were there. Adoring, understanding, eyes that belong to her, eyes that hold compassion for nobody else.

She stands up, jars of pickled food forgotten on the floor. The pieces of pickle still in her mouth are quickly swallowed and she only narrowly avoids choking on them. But when that crisis is averted, she smiles and holds out the business card with both hands, the way they used to, the way she's shown Tuan so long ago, when a world without SA scores displayed overhead was unthinkable. Now it's real, they are there.

It doesn't taste of success, but Miach will not let her reappearance be that of a prevented, beaten martyr. ]

[infodumped]

[If there'd been any doubts in her mind before that maybe this is all somehow a mistake, a dream or a nightmare, and the girl before her isn't truly Miach Mihie but a deeply rooted wish, the smile and the business card offered out to her quickly puts a stop to all of it.

Tuan's lurches lurch like a gentle wave of nausea. InstinctivelyN, acting purely out of muscle memory, Tuan takes a half step closer, but halts jerkily with her hands trembling mid-air. Whatever Miach's intentions are, Tuan knows the truth is that she doesn't deserve even the appearance of an olive branch. How could she, someone who left her friend to die alone, possibly be worthy of such mercy?

She opens her mouth, then remembering belatedly that she can't speak, Tuan simply gives up trying to hold back her tears. She hasn't had her face pushed against the wall of her own powerlessness like this in ages, and...

And then something inside her simply gives way. Without a proper warning, she throws her arms around Miach in a tight hug.]

[imitationsoul]

[ If Tuan pays attention to Miach's expression as she advances, she may catch a split second of surprise on her face. This is forward for Tuan, forward, emotional, unexpected. Then again, it has been three years... A time far longer than they had spent in each other's vicinity in Japan.

Miach hates compassion. Miach hates a society that coddles each other out of uncomfortable truths, that puts its real feelings within cotton and refuses to examine the shape of its true self. But when it's Tuan who is pressing against her shaking, seeking her because nobody else will do, because this is something private... then Miach has no qualms about wrapping her arms around the other girl, gently running her fingers through the familiar red hair.

Tuan Kirie should be dead, but for three years Miach has known that this isn't the case. Miach Mihie should be dead, but for three years Tuan hasn't known that this isn't the case. There is much they need to talk about, but their position is truly unhelpful for it.

And so long minutes pass with nothing but this, Tuan's crying mercifully muffled by Miach's clothes. Those tears are hers as well, all hers. Miach doesn't remember the last time she cried herself, but to say she's living vicariously through Tuan now would be too much. It simply is, Miach perceives it and oddly, finds it calming.

It is only when the shaking of Tuan's shoulders seems to have subsided a little that she detaches herself from her former comrade enough that she can take out her device and type a quick message. ]

It's been a long time since we parted ways, Tuan.

[infodumped]

[Amidst the cascade of conflicting emotions, the smaller observations didn't seem pertinent. With her face buried in Miach's shoulder though, it becomes all the more obvious how much time has passed. She's taller than Miach now and somehow that's wrong. Miach had always been so much larger than life, someone who was stronger than anyone could've known. This kind of disparity sits poorly in Tuan's mind, even as she continues to cling.

June 2060 was the last time she's cried, and even then she thought it might be the last time. After all, what does a person who's accepted hopelessness have left to cry over? But as with a lot of things it seems, Tuan was wrong about that too and this time she doesn't even know why she's crying. Shouldn't she be happy? Shouldn't she be excited?

Even as Miach pulls back and reaches for her device, Tuan still hasn't answered that question for herself. That question becomes even harder to answer for herself when she takes a proper look at her friend and sees the more subtle changes of adulthood on her pure face.

Wiping her eyes with the back of her sleeve, Tuan reaches for her own device to reply. Her answers remain pointedly on her hands as she types out a reply.

I thought I'd never see you again.

Delete.

I've missed you so much.

Delete.]

I don't understand.

[imitationsoul]

[ Miach supposes she can't blame Tuan for that. It's not a situation that's within the expected for sheltered, kind Japan. No, more than that, it's not the kind of situation one would expect from their own father. Tuan may be an outlier, someone who sees more than others, but she's still been raised with some sort of extremely basic understanding of faith in her family, Miach wagers.

And she herself had lived through a period of disbelief upon waking up and finding herself strapped to a hospital bed on the other end of the world.

Her smile drops in favor of a more neutral expression as she types away at an explanation. ]

I was stolen.

[ For the third time she adds in her mind, bitterly. But there are things that she won't simply share with Tuan or anyone. Things that are so private and so so publicly pitiable that even the idea of seeing someone react to them is revolting to Miach. The faces they had made in therapy, the sticky-sweet words of comfort that were the candy they tried to placate her childish self with... Miach doesn't want them. Back then she hadn't thought much of it, happy to have a solid roof above her head, but looking back Miach shivers every time she recalls the medical regimen she had to go through. ]

They took you right before the inevitable, right? It was the same for me. Only they didn't deem Japanese morality centers appropriate for me anymore. No, they took me to their medical mecca, right to the heart of their God - as if he can 'cure' me any better in direct proximity.

I've been kept at Dian Cécht in Baghdad for three years now.

B

[lurkandwale]

[With that bedroom being right next to the door, it shouldn't be too surprising that she'd run into a housemate. Billie's on her way in with a blanket and a bag full of a few miscellaneous items like pen and paper under one arm, when she happens to catch a glance into Miach's room.

With one arm free, she doesn't bother with the network device at first, just trying to catch Miach's eye before raising her eyebrows very slightly and pointing at a novel on the top of one stack, then back at herself, a clear 'mind if I have that?'

It might be good to have a little reading material here in this quiet, quiet town.]

[imitationsoul]

[ Miach gives her new housemate a good look over, gaze lingering at her face the longest. The eye, the rough skin... It's not what healthy members of lifest society are meant to look like and it immediately makes the woman more interesting. It takes only a glance to see she hasn't been living in a suffocating soft world like the one Miach has been condemned into.

So where she normally would have rejected immediately (the expected caring and sharing for no good reason is so so sickening to Miach), Miach now gives a headtilt. A wordless 'why?'. ]

[lurkandwale]

[And when she shifts the bundle in one arm, it's more clear that her right arm ends below the elbow, a strange device of bone, stone, and metal replacing the rest of her arm and hand.

It'd be wrong to assume Billie doesn't care about the way she looks now, but it's far from the first time she's gotten a long stare or comment in the streets. Billie fishes the network device out and types, slowly, as if not very familiar with the act:]

Might want something to read later. I didn't see any books when I was out.

[She might have commented on curiosity about the natives' stories, but it's a lot more effort to type than it would have been to say.]

this tag is super late, I apologize orz

[imitationsoul]

[ As soon as the arm comes into full view, the corners of Miach's lips curl upwards into a little smile. Such inhuman-looking prosthetic here as well.

Miach hates that she's been brought to this world without her own consent, but all of the people here are novelties that she longs to explore. The boredom in her own world that was part of what made her feel trapped and helpless and wrong is lifted as she is left wondering just what might have happened to her housemate in the past. ]

Let's make an exchange. I'll give you reading material if you tell me a little about the world you are from.

nooo worries

[lurkandwale]

[Admittedly, Billie has a little curiosity about that herself, just where the rest of these people are from. She's not the only one to be less familiar with the network devices, that much she's observed, but most here seem to take it as a matter of course, typing into a little glowing screen. She shrugs.]

Sure, why not. A little. I'm guessing you haven't heard of the Empire of the Isles?

[imitationsoul]

I know of the British Empire, though it lays far in the past, and Britain is an island... but I assume that isn't what you are referring to.

[ Which is great, because she knows her own world's history pretty well and the more divergent this is from it, the more it is of interest. ]

D

[twoaffirmations]

[9S just happened to be only an arm's length away from Miach when she laughs, her morbid observation not something that 9S hadn't already realized for himself. This entire community was built on trust that balanced itself on high wires. It only took one person to destroy it.

It was that realization, that fear of harming the humans around him, that had 9S resolve to turn off his vocal capabilities. It left him feeling a bit disheartened, and sometimes he struggled to convey himself through sign language alone, but it was something he had to do. Of course, for this meeting they were turned back on.]

Who would want to do something like that? We have to work together.

[imitationsoul]

Do we? The way I see it, we have no real dependency on the natives. What kills them doesn't appear to kill most of us, so how much does the loss of people we've never met before and don't know if we can trust matter to us?

[ There's no real passion in Miach's words, she's just outlining this as if it's a math equation. It doesn't bother her that the natives might easily overhear how little she thinks of their value to the newcomers. ]

[twoaffirmations]

[Despite the lack of passion in Miach's words, 9S is just the oppisite, his voice rising.]

What kind of logic is that? They're still people! And if it weren't for them, we'd probably all be dead the moment we got here.

[imitationsoul]

And then we'd revive, so what?

[ Miach shrugs and smiles. ]

I'm not advocating for a citizen genocide right now, I'm just saying that there is no valid reason to assume we as groups need each other. Or even that we, individuals within the group of arrivals, need one another. When it comes to survival, everyone is on their own. One may chose to share part of the way with someone else, but it's purely utilitarian.

It's stupid to pretend it's anything but that. If life itself is concerned, believing in trust to strangers is nothing short from delusional.

[twoaffirmations]

[9S grimaces; this human girls speaks so casually about death, but humans aren't like androids. They can't back up their personality data. Who knows what the side effects are of this "reset room". Even the natives couldn't guarantee it would save you.]

But you said so yourself...if one of us makes a noise, we could all die. The survival of everyone in this room relies on the cooperation of us all as a group. We don't have any other choice but to work together.

[imitationsoul]

Only as long as we all stick together. From what I gather and judging by the amount of natives still left alive, a Sound Eater attack even at another end of the city wouldn't concern us who are here right now. They are targeted kills.

Nothing requires us to keep the group this large. We might even split of and try to live all on our own, though I concede this is definitely the riskiest option.

[ She just... really doesn't think a big tight-knit group is any safer. Though in the end, it is all novel fascinating material to her and not something she feels existentially concerned by. Death doesn't intimidate Miach. ]