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

---

Comments

Tuan Kirie / Harmony

[infodumped]

A. Muzzle and Mute (Arrival Prompt)
[Her heart is pounding by the time she's allowed to leave the horrible room. There's no denying that being tossed into an unfamiliar place with virtually no given explanations is frightening, but all the same Tuan feels as though it shouldn't be if only because fearfulness implies that there must've been something safer, something more palatable about being home. Tuan rejects this notion with every fiber of her existence.

It'd been easier when she thought all these people were after was a bit of "fun" at her expense. It'd have all been over then. Like this, Tuan doesn't know what to do or where to go... but the fact that she has choices to make and no guidelines, no nosy busybodies trying to help her has to mean that this place is more liberating than home had ever been, despite the jarring welcoming reception. She repeats these thoughts to herself as she walks. The most obvious sign of tension is how tightly she's holding her new device as she shoves the screen in front of a potentially useful looking passer by.]

What do you think they really want from us?

B. The Man in the Hat (House 3 Prompt / OTA)
[Yooooo, housemates! Please don't mind too much if the weirdo who claimed the garage goes into whichever room you claimed as your own and looks around intently for some trace of intelligent technology. She would have at least knocked but noises or something.

Or as a less intrusive option, you might catch Tuan moving armfuls of pillows and blankets into the garage, along with some other small bits of furniture - desk lamps, a chair, that kind of thing. She may or may not be far too stuck in her own universe of self reliance to ask for help moving in a proper bed....

((feel free also, if you aren't in house 3 to bump into Tuan as she's crrying around her furniture!))]

C. The Man in the Hat (Pickle party prompt!)
[Tuan is eyeing the pickles with some suspicion. She doubts the natives would have gone through all this effort simply just to poison them all at a party, but nevertheless she's not hungry enough to eat the food that's been provided here. Looks like it's not just the natives who don't really know how to party.]

D. Sound Eaters (Meeting Prompt!)
[Tuan's keeping to herself this meeting and not making eye contact with anyone if she can avoid it. She hasn't exactly slept well since the party (trans: she hasn't slept at all), but she's trying not to lose sight of the bigger picture here. The only reason she doesn't scoff at the end of the meeting is because she's literally too tired to do so. Instead, she types out a message on her device.]

Are they hoping we'll get Stockholm Syndrome if they share sob stories with us?

[shotfired]

[ All aboard the not sleeping train. Lup turns to Tuan and shrugs. She could care less what these people were hoping to do to them, mostly because she has other things she's focused on. Besides, she'd take them all on if need be. It's not like she can die. ]

Probably, but they're in for a surprise if they think it's gonna work on me.

[infodumped]

[Tired as Tuan may be, that reply gets a small smile.]

You'd have to be a special kind of person to start feeling sorry for them, yeah.

[Her own world is filled with these kinds of "special people." Compassion - they'd called it at home. Kindness for your fellow human being. All of it suffocating and unbearable.]

I wonder how many people here will fall for it anyway.

D

[hoaxer]

[Lu Li looks down at the message, her visual sensor shrinking slightly as she zooms onto it before it darts back to the stranger's face. She's quickly checking to see if there's any emotions she can pick up from Tuan's expression.

With one swift motion, Lu Li retrieves her own device and taps out an answer.]

DON'T BE A BRAT.

[She isn't happy to be here either. She'll die here if she remains too long, she thinks. Unable to look for clues, unable to find a way home, unable to do anything save to remain silent and to wait--

Even so... even so...! These people were trying their best and they've demonstrated a kindness Lu Li has been longing for. That in itself colors her perception of them.]

[infodumped]

[Give Tuan a few seconds to process this because even with the advanced technology of her world she's still never seen something quite like Lu Li up close before. When she's regained enough of her senses to stop staring, she writes back fairly quickly:]

Are you a person underneath all that tech or...?

[Why yes this is clearly the more important topic at hand!!]

[hoaxer]

[Normally, she'd give an actual answer. But she's feeling annoyed and that attitude is reflected in her response.]

DOES IT MATTER? I'M JUST AS SUSPECT AS THOSE PEOPLE, AREN'T I?

[infodumped]

[... Huh. Hostility is rare where Tuan is from, and the honesty is refreshing, even if what prompted it isn't refreshing in the slightest.]

No. Not to me, you aren't. You aren't trying to tug at my heartstrings with gifts and sad stories.

[hoaxer]

THEN YOU ARE A BAD JUDGE OF OTHERS.

[Says the person who placed her trust in the heir of a criminal empire.]

[infodumped]

[That gets a self deprecating laugh out of Tuan. Even before she types out another response, it's pretty obvious she's heard that on so many occasions.]

I am. It might even get me killed one day.

[hoaxer]

[That wasn't the response she was expecting. There are some benefits to being in an expressionless, metal hunk. Having a perfect poker face is one of them. Lu Li doesn't answer for a moment. The only indication that she heard her is the way her red eye shrinks and expands, zooming in and out.]

DO YOU THINK PEOPLE ARE ONLY HONEST IF THEY ARE CRUEL?

[infodumped]

[Tuan reads the message, then briefly closes her eyes. If she ignores all context, it'd almost be like she was in counseling again with all the leading questions and the socially correct answers that she's supposed to give if she wants the questions to fucking stop. She types out slowly"]

Obviously not. But I don't trust those who abduct others and then hide behind a mask of courteousness. Neither should you.

D

[rou_gui]

What else would you have them do.

[infodumped]

From their perspective, they don't have a choice, but to try and coax us into cooperating with them. We're not an enemy they can kill, supposedly.

But that doesn't make the emotional manipulation less irritating.

[rou_gui]

They know it will sway those who think only with their feelings. They will get the extra hands and naive hearts they're looking for.

The rest of us may be more cunning.

[infodumped]

[She nods once in agreement.]

They strip us naked, steal our possessions, and force us to silence ourselves. But when they return an item that was rightfully ours to begin with and tell a story or two, people forget.

Strange how that works.

[rou_gui]

[ She smiles, just a little. ]

Yes, the offering of a gentle hand after much attrition has its way of distorting the moment.

[ Her family was... rather infamous for that behavior, in fact. When they recruited outsiders it was always a terrible ordeal. They tended to like locking them in cages in their cavernous basement before offering them the terms of joining the House. ]

But I am very much too vengeful for that.

[ Forgiveness was not one of her better qualities, not these days. ]

[infodumped]

[Perhaps this should be setting off some kind of alarm in Tuan's mind. After all, vengefulness is subtly different than rightful resentment.

But it doesn't and instead it gets a wry smile.]

Oh? Planing on getting even?

[rou_gui]

Sooner or later.

[ What a wishy-washy answer... ]

But I am a stranger to this place, it will take time to find the truth of the matter.

Sound Eaters

[imitationsoul]

[ Approaching Tuan Kirie should really, really not feel foreign to Miach. Yet it comes with a certain thrill now, a feeling of delving back into something that was long lost.

Miach approaches from the side, a soft smile on her face. ]

Tuan.

[ It's nice to form the name with her mouth again. Though Miach has spent years talking to people at Dian Cécht, none of them could quite recreate her simple high school group, her little attack squad. ]

[infodumped]

[A chill runs down her spine when she hears her name in that voice. Is it joy, dread or both? Sleepless nights at least have the one advantage of being so exhausting that the acuity of her own feelings are dulled, distant enough that they may as well not belong to Tuan Kirie at all.

There are tell tale signs that give away exactly how her night had gone, from the dark shadows beneath her eyes to the more hidden cues. There's no way she'd have been able to go outside looking like this without lowering her mother's SA score at home, but here nobody really cares. The relief is immeasurable, though fleeting as she knows there's just no hiding from Miach's eyes.

Or rather, there's just no hiding from Miach at all. Even when supposedly "dead" Miach had always been one step behind her, like a ghost both watching over her. Watching her live on like the coward she is.]

Miach.

[It's incredible to think that this was easy once upon a time. Three years ago, saying Miach's name and being in Miach's presence was the best feeling in the world. Now the act of establishing eye contact feels so much like looking directly into the sun that Tuan keeps her eyes on the opposite wall. Miach didn't die. Just having that truth that had defined her come apart at the seams still makes her dizzy. Everything else that followed the rest of that simply makes her skin crawl.]

[imitationsoul]

[ Tuan is being avoidant, still, and Miach doesn't like it. Their relationship isn't supposed to change. Cian, Tuan, Miach. Even after the event that separated them, Miach had somehow had an image in her head in which they'd be forever the same. In her heart, Cian and Tuan had always remained the two girls who listened to her with enraptured fascination, tempted by the horrors that their society forbid them.

She steps directly into Tuan's line of vision, daring her to look away now, and smiles. ]

Meeting people without knowing their data is really different, isn't it?

[ After the way Tuan reacted to Miach's current situation yesterday, living in the now and talking over their current situation seems better to draw the other girl into conversation.

Nobody here means anything to Miach but Tuan is different. Tuan is already her ally, Tuan is already her partner, she is one of the bodies of one head on their symbol. They're one. ]

[infodumped]

[A knot forms in her stomach as Miach steps in front of her. It isn't a reaction that makes sense; Tuan has nothing to hide from her. If anything, it seems that Miach is the one who's been hiding things from her - the most basic of things like her general well being for starters. Though she knows why, the sting of bitterness hasn't left yet.


Miach's unspoken directive to act as though this is just another ordinary conversation like the ones they used to have is unbearable. Tuan glances down and to the side. It's only after she does it that the weakness of the gesture registers.
Self loathing ensues as that's too late to fix. It may as well be the story of her life at this point.]

I've gotten used to it.

[It's you who I haven't gotten used to.]

[imitationsoul]

[ That's quick. And unlike Miach, Tuan has never lived in a place where AUG lenses and the like were at all rare. But Tuan's eyes are expressionless and Miach doesn't think she's lying.

Her smile drops. Tuan has always exhibited an exceptional lack of interest in anyone but herself and that's one of the things that makes her great, but this is not an acceptable state of affairs. ]

I like it.

[ She announces this and then brushes her hand over Tuan's shoulder, letting it linger there. ]

Not this place itself, of course, not being chained to this city or having my voice taken. But we're in a place where nobody knows any of us and for the first time we are masters of our own information.

Having secrets is the default not the exception now.

[infodumped]

[Yes, yes, that's all very well and good, and prior to yesterday Tuan might've clung to Miach's every word and even smiled at the affectionate touch on her shoulder, but right now this just feels like the prolongation of torture. Why is she doing this? Why is she insisting on pretending like nothing happened even when the truth of what happened is making Tuan freeze with horror on the inside? Why is Miach making her feign normalcy the same way everyone else back home had insisted from her as well?

She glances at Miach through the corners of her eyes, looking for an answer that she doesn't find.]

Youve been living as though secrets have been a default for some time now, haven't you?

[Her voice is soft, but there's a bitter taste in her mouth. Still she makes no move to make Miach stop touching her.]

You must feel right at home.

[imitationsoul]

[ So that's it.

Understanding dawns on Miach and makes her pause. She doesn't remove her hand from Tuan, she just stands there quiet for a moment, adjusting the thoughts in her head.

I must be hungry she thinks, because when the world isn't as crystal clear to navigate to her as it usually is, lack of food is most often the cause.

She'd never considered that Tuan might be angry about the way she arranged this situation. In Miach's mind, the idea that she had been successful should have been an inspiration to her left behind friends. An example for what they failed to do, leading them to more resolve. This isn't how it worked out and now is the first time Miach is forced to acknowledge that. ]

Dian Cécht is no better than Japan. Worse, actually.

[ Surveillance 24/7, a limited space to move in, more doctor appointments than there had been morality sessions before... ]

But that's not what you're talking about, are you? This is about the mere fact that I'm alive.