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

[infodumped]

[There's another long silence on Tuan's end. The answer isn't even a secret, but she's tired of this cross examination. She's tired of being the one who has to dole out explanations while having her own feelings dismissed.]

No.

[Miach was always the one who asked questions and challenged orthodoxy. To say that her questions weren't valuable would've been a blatant lie through and through. Still, Tuan can't bring herself to care whether or not Miach has an answer. Or rather, she can't be bothered to answer a girl who clearly doesn't care about her feelings.]

But I'd say how you feel about the situation is just as negligible as how I felt about it.

suicide mentions return, to nobody's surprise

[imitationsoul]

[ Miach doesn't react visibly in any way other than that she, too, pauses, and silence hangs above them for another little while. ]

You're right. The past is past and we cannot change anything. We're here now anyway.

Alive. You and I. Once again.

[ The final comment is more directed at herself and thus it's made even quieter than the rest of her speech. Trying to die so many times is frustrating, even Miach, who shuns self-criticism, has to admit it. ]

Let's make the best of it, Tuan. Together.

[infodumped]

[That's new. She'd never been able to say something that well and truly silenced Miach before. It seems to be an apt reflection of how times have changed, though the feeling is markedly bitter.]

Why?

[The question escapes her lips before she can think to silence herself. The regret is immediate; it's a question that should be pondered on her own. The thought of Miach's real answer is terrifying in its uncertainty. It never used to be an uncertainty.]

... Never mind.

[imitationsoul]

[ Miach's stare bores into Tuan, trying to decipher everything that is going on within her now and also failing. It didn't use to be like that. ]

I live in House Two, in the room closest to the entrance.

[ She doesn't elaborate on what she means by this, but the invitation is there. Miach's space is open to Tuan and Tuan alone. ]

[infodumped]

[That gets Tuan to look up again at Miach's face in confusion. Tuan never had a clear idea of what it was that Miach would have to say to any of this, but after this hollow conversation she wasn't expecting something so private. It almost makes her smile wanly. Ultimately it doesn't really change the past or how much it stung knowing MIach had actively decided against trying to contact her because it had 'no point.'

Part of Tuan is still angry about that. Perhaps that feeling won't truly go away any time soon; Miach didn't seem to understand what the crux of the issue was after all. She'd deflected and demanded Tuan explain something entirely different and in the end... she was expected to sweep all of this under the rug and let the past be the past.

In a way that was just typical of MIach, too. It's strange to think of her that way when she was always so thorough and careful with details for her dangerous, seditious ideas. But when it came to discussing subjective human experiences like the fear of falling. she always had her own ideas and those ideas were hard to combat given how articulate and well read she was. It certainly hadn't helped that back then, Tuan can admit to herself that she was a foolish little girl who was easily enchanted by someone so different from everyone else.

And truthfully, she knows that hasn't changed at all. Despite it all, she wants to accept Miach's words as an unspoken declaration to start over together. Despite it all, part of her wants to nod and tightly hug the person she thought about every single day for the past three years.

But it's just too soon for her own state of mind to readily accept.]

Ok.

[imitationsoul]

[ Miach waits a moment more, trying to see if there is anything else Tuan wants to add, anything that isn't so totally dismissive. When nothing of the sort comes out her mouth, Miach gives a faint smile and turns to leave. ]

You know where to find me then.

[ And despite everything, she still feels confident that Tuan will find her. ]

[infodumped]

[And as Miach turns to leave Tuan does absolutely nothing to stop her. Instead she watches, almost as though the whole thing is being played out in slow motion, as Miach walks away and disappears into a crowd of meaningless people.

Out of sight, out of reach... and yet never out of mind.

Immediately her legs feel unsteady, and Tuan simply slides down onto the floor. This whole conversation feels like a giant mistake ... and somehow she's just not at all surprised that she made it. She's a failure for letting her anger get to her and a coward for not chasing after Miach. As tears cloud her vision for the second day in a row, Tuan has a new adjective to add to the list for herself: weak. She wipes her eyes stubbornly and picks herself up off the floor to hurry off back to her room before anyone can ask her what's wrong. There just aren't any good answers to that.]