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

[thinhammer]

[ He might have changed what he was about to say, reeling himself in from speaking - or rather, typing - without thinking first.. but now that she's called him out on it he figures there's no point in keeping it up and lets a scowl tarnish his face as he folds his arms and glares down at her huffy response. He gives a huff of his own before he responds. ]

yeah well it aint my fault you were walking so slow either
some people have got places to be yknow and if youre gonna go around taking up all the space then youre gonna get bumped into!!!

[ He's annoyed, yeah, but as he holds his hand out to show her the message his ire kind of... dies. He's a very reactionary guy, so arguing silently doesn't really have the same kind of loud and explosive fuel it normally does, leaving him with his own thoughts for a few awkward moments in which he considers the possibility that.. maybe he's overreacting again.

He retracts the device and taps out another message, looking away like he doesn't care as she reads it. ]

im sorry for making you fall
are you ok?

[bowrettes]

[ she's already got a tight frown on her face from his first message, that by the time he's typing up his other one, she's picked herself up all by herself (thanks! for offering to help! boor!!) and dusted off what she can from her jumpsuit.

her hand smarts, but she refuses to look at it right now to check for damages as if that might some how give him any satisfaction. instead, she types up her own response, which she holds up to him for all of five seconds: ]

You keep changing your tone. Which am I supposed to believe?

[ before turning and walking back down the path. in a faster pace than before. as if to show him!

... not that it matters much, given how short her legs are. ]

[thinhammer]

[ Picking apart his attitudes and his swiftly changing moods, especially when he was trying to call a truce without really saying so, grates on Naruto so much in such a succinct and familiar way that he doesn't really realise he's following her until he's caught her arm, letting out a very audible grunt of frustration. Neither of them are going to be in the good books of the locals if this continues.

He gives her a tug, a silent bid for her to wait, while he furiously types. It's full of little typos - too many characters in certain words, words repeated, all products of a guy who's never used a touchscreen before coming here trying to use one quickly - but it's still relatively understandable. ]

i can still be angry at you for gettin in my way while checking if youre ok!!
you being slow doesnt mean i shouldnt care about you being hurt!

[ Maybe his words come off a little intense for a stranger, but that's just the way Naruto is. Sure this girl might be rubbing him up entirely the wrong way, bringing things to the surface he's not really happy to consider right now, but she's still a person and therefore someone Naruto feels responsible for. ]

[bowrettes]

[ she honestly didn't expect him to follow. most of the time, the person she brushed off was only more than happy to let the interaction die, so she's more than a little startled when she feels the tug on her arm, though fortunately she whips around fast enough to realize it isn't some random assailant or monster come to get her.

still, she's mildly embarrassed for the brief scare, evident in her pink cheeks. she lets out a short, aggrieved breath of her own, hastily typing up her response. ]

I'm fine. Happy?

[ ...except she's holding her device up with the hand she'd fallen on, the heel of it still red and swollen. ]

[thinhammer]

[ Naruto is about to call it a day at that, tell her fine, okay, good, see you around then, but then he notices her hand and his look of outrage turns inward, guilty, and a little vulnerable around the edges. He's hurt plenty of people in his past, don't get him wrong, but there's only been one time he's done it accidentally... This time isn't as bad as that time, not nearly as serious or potentially dangerous for either party, but for some reason it does remind him of it... whether that be because Lilina is a girl or because Naruto is just feeling a little delicate himself right now under all the bravado. He misses home a lot, as reluctant as he is to admit that even to himself. ]

you got hurt

[ He holds the message up for her to see, looking right at her so she can't shy away from how serious he is now. He's letting his previous petulance drop along with her first impression on him, and that much should be clear with his second message. ]

theres a house where theyve got bandages and stuff
i went there when i got here
ill go get you somethin for your hand
wait here

[ And then he turns, not really giving her a chance to say no. ]

[bowrettes]

[ she had been more than ready to just leave it at that, too, quite content to just carry on her way in what isn't even the chilliest encounter she's ever had, but certainly ranking high enough up there that her feathers are ruffled, unsettling her already frazzled nerves since arriving here.

but she winds up rooted to her spot under his hard stare, his eyes a brighter, clearer blue than her own. she is mildly startled by it, finding them cold where they'd once been full of fire,

and then he's gone before she can even have the chance to finish properly reading.

she's left staring after his back with an open, gaping mouth. like a fish out of water, her mouth moves, but no sound comes out. glancing about, she doesn't meet the eyes of any other, making her feel alarmingly alone, and she wonders if she would have felt the same way if she'd been the one to walk away first. ]

[thinhammer]

[ He's half expecting her to not even be there when he gets back - she'd already tried to walk away from him once, and there wasn't much likely to make her stay other than his command which she had no reason to listen to - so he's understandably surprised when he sees her in the distance, standing right where he left her.

He's got whatever he could find, whatever they'd let him take, which turns out to be a small roll of bandage, an almost used up tube of antibacterial cream and a single small block of ice wrapped in a cloth scrap.

He approaches and holds out the ice for her to take with one hand, and a message he'd apparently already prepared with the other. ]

The ice will take the swelling down and soothe some of the pain, then apply the cream to any cuts or bruises and wrap tight with the bandage.

[ It....... seems like someone else might have typed that. Maybe whoever supervised the supplies? Naruto apparently isn't telling. ]

[bowrettes]

[ she looks at the words, frowning a little at them. she already kind of assumed he must have gotten some kind of advice from whomever the supplies came from in the first place, but the proper capitalization and punctuation just drive that assumption right on home.

she looks mildly humbled as she takes the ice from him, clutching it in her small hand so it would press up against the injured heel of her palm. she hasn't yet quite met his eyes.

after reading, she holds up her own device, her message already typed out and ready for him. ]

Thank you for your troubles. It is appreciated.

[ alright, so still no apology but. but it's something..!! ]

[thinhammer]

[ He fishes the cream and the bandage out of his pocket once she takes the ice and gives him a free hand. His expression is... weird. He looks flustered, a little annoyed and a little guilty all at the same time, and he also isn't looking at her except for the quick glance he offers after he's read through her message.

He's standing there kind of awkwardly, just holding the cream and bandages since she doesn't have a hand to take them from him, and is pointedly looking to the side.

Then he taps on his device and shows it to her. ]

look ok

[ All he can see in his mind is what he'd done to Sakura, what Yamato-taichou had told him about needing to control himself and taking responsibility for his mistakes. It's reminding him of them, too, which hurts more than the guilt does. ]

i really am sorry about makin you fall
i didnt mean to
you went down like a bag of bricks yknow i didnt even think i barged into ya that hard
ill be more careful in future