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quietplacelogs2018-01-15 08:09 pm
bequiet) wrote in quietplacelogs2018-01-15 08:09 pm
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!
D
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.
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[ 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. ]
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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.
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[ 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.
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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.
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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. ]
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[She's not wrong, and he knows it. The Sound Eaters clearly targeted their kills, given the information they have on them. 9S finally buckles with a frustrated noise.]
A long as your actions don't jeopardize the others, I guess it wouldn't hurt...but wouldn't it get lonely living all on your own?
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Why does solitude mean something negative to you?
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It just gets boring being all by yourself, with no one to talk to...
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[ Loneliness has never been a concern to her in a world where being with people always caused her so much pain. Loneliness is respite.
Yet she adds: ]
Besides, renouncing that we all have a connection simply because we are alive doesn't mean renouncing any form of well-founded alliance.
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[He just doesn't get it. Why isolate yourself if you don't have to? Then again, he supposes 2B often felt like she was doing the same thing. She never let him get too close to her.]
Okay, then let's make a well-founded alliance.
[He kind of feels like he should keep an eye on this one, but at the same time an alliance implies being equal, and as an android he was never equal to a human.
More importantly, it's his duty to protect the humans. He'll do what he must to try and fulfill that duty.]
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Oh, so then what would you like to found it in? Enlighten me.
[ It's so presumptuous to think one could relate and bond with her so easily, she thinks, but she'll be very interested in hearing out the reasoning. ]
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He raises his left hand, placing it over his chest. Over his "heart".]
For the glory of mankind.
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... really now. That's it? That's what you call a good foundation?
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Well, I was built to serve mankind. What would you consider a good foundation?
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Sharing beliefs in common would be a start. I don't think mankind is particularly glorious or really deserving of glory, for one.
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[He doesn't sound spiteful or sarcastic. He truly is sorry. He's sorry that this human can't see her own worth.]
I can't agree with that, but... I'm still willing to provide support if you need anything, Ma'am. Maybe you'll even change your mind about humans some day! After all, they're the ones who created us androids.
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Do you think humans are glorious because you are truly grateful or is it because they told you to think this way?
she's asking the tough questions
[The question catches 9S off guard, and for a moment, he can do nothing but stare at Maich in bewilderment. His admiration for humans is so deeply rooted in his existence that he doesn't know the answer. He knows what he feels, but is that the answer? Can he really say that's the answer?
It's like asking what came first: the chicken or the egg.
He finally manages to say something.]
Of course I'm truly grateful! You don't just believe something because someone tells you to. We androids were created in humanity's image. They need us, and we wouldn't exist without them. It's only natural respect someone like that.
sorry 9S, she thinks it's the only questions worth asking
It's not natural at all. It's simply something your society tells you is true.
But how fortunate for you, that you can feel grateful simply for existing and then being used.
[ She's not being honest, of course, in truth she feels nothing but bitterness about this state of mind that she herself doesn't share at all and can't accept as valid. Grateful for existing? Miach never asked to be born. She never wanted to be needed. ]
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Being used and being needed... That's not the same thing. I'm glad to have a purpose.
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And that's how humans get by, taking advantage of each other and other creatures all the same. I don't think there's any use dressing it up any prettier than it is.
[ She shrugs. ]
I suppose you're using humans as well, by making them your raison d'être.
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That's not true... Maybe some humans are like that, but most of them are good. That's why we fight to protect them.
[That's what he truly believes. He looks up at her again, his expression mostly neutral, with only the natural glow of his curiosity peeking through.]
What does that mean?
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[ She pauses, kind of glancing around. Her hand goes up to her hair to play with it. ]
That we're apparently in France was an afterthought to the word choice, but it's only fitting, isn't it?
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[He's really not sure he does. Don't they mean the same thing, in the end?]
I keep forgetting that's where we are. I'd only ever seen images of France in Old World documents. It doesn't look anything like it is now...
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