quietplacelogs | INTRO LOG #1

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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!

NAVIGATION

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[Faith hadn't really cared about the cross, so if she got swindled or not didn't really matter to her. The rock, even if it was some trash he'd found seemed more interesting to her than that cross.

Maybe he would get more use out of it?]

She glanced down at the device and smacked her head with her palm, smiling. Right, there was an easier way to do this than to practice their mime skills. She dug in her pocket for her device as well.]

Ha, right. Well, if you'd had a pack of smokes then you would have seen some real negotiation. [She may have just ripped them out of his hands.]

Name's Faith. You?

[Luckily for Aaron, he has no cigarettes to lose in this situation.

As far as chatting, pantomiming is fun but it makes it hard to have real introductions.

Her name is Faith, with the cross. Aaron types up his response to show her.]

Rocky. Nice to meet you.

[He only holds the straight face for a few moments before the smirk breaks it and he quickly types.]

Actually it's Aaron.

[Yeah, yeah. Faith with a cross. She was aware how that looked. Faith rolled her eyes at his joke, but was still smiling as she held out a hand to shake his.]

Nice to meet you.

Do you have a few moments to talk about our Lord and Savior?

[Straight face right back. Serious eyes. Two could play at that game, mister.]

[Then a wink. Yeah, no way Faith wanted to talk about god.]

I'm not religious. The cross and the name... just a coincidence.

[He has to choke down a laugh. Even that little bit of noise is going to get him dirty looks and he just covers his mouth.

He waits until he's pretty sure he's fine and then he lets his hands move from his mouth to type out his response.]

I don't know many religious types who trade crosses for magic rocks anyways.

So, where are you from?

[She watched as he attempted to contain himself, trying not to smile too much. This was supposed to be serious right? Laughing could like make them all dead or something.]

Fair point. Clearly I wasn't very attached...

From? Well grew up in Boston, Mass? Was in California before I showed up in this shit show though.

[He's not sure what else to do in a situation like this except get to know people and wait for the moment to actually act. This isn't it.]

Boston's nice. I grew up a bit in Jersey, don't hold it against me. I started traveling for a couple years then I ended up waking up here.

Shit, Jersey? Well, I'm kind of obligated to hold it against you, aren't I? [Come on! Shitting on Jersey was fun!]

This place is a trip. Right? Fucking weird.

Edited 2018-01-18 12:10 (UTC)

Yeah. All doom and gloom and everyone gets really pissed off if you're a little self destructive.

[He understands not pissing people off but they're really, really intent on making sure you don't mess up.]

Shit. yeah, I hate it when people care. Those jerks.

[Faith was clearly being facetious. She'd used to be annoyed by people caring about her. She'd been self-destructive... and just generally destructive in the past, so she understood that annoyance. But she wasn't that person anymore.]

I know, right? Everyone's super nice too.

[That makes not doing anything about this tough but for now he's still far from settled.]

So what did you use to do before you ended up here? We eliminated Nun.

You mean nuns? [She was pretty sure he didn't mean he made a habit of wiping out nunneries, but she didn't know what the hell was talking about otherwise. As to the other question she just told him, never so reluctant to reveal what she was as Buffy. She'd nothing to lose. Especially here.]

I'm a Vampire Slayer. That's what i do. That's what the cross was for.

[Vampire slayer. Aaron grins. Well, it's not the most outrageous thing but this means she really fights vampires or she's messing with him. Either way, no harm in playing right along.

The truth is stranger than what he'd come up with anything.]

I should have known since you're not a nun you'd have to be a vampire slayer.

[Sarcasm in texts!]

I'm a werecoyote. It's like a werewolf but smaller and less angry. I fight and deceive monsters for a living.

[Ah. Now this was something she had more familiarity with than most everything and everyone else she'd run into here.

Deceive them? That pulled something out of the recesses of her Slayer training, things her first Watcher had attempted to teach. Some of it had stuck.] Are you a trickster, then? Gonna cause some noise just to make everyone shit their pants? [She wasn't so sure he'd only deceive monsters. Coyotes had a reputation in myth, after all.]

[Good guess! Or maybe not. Maybe she really does deal with the strange things out there. Maybe a self proclaimed vampire slayer possibly hunts other things.

Fortunately, Aaron's not the careful type.]

Maybe. It's only fun to scare people who think a threat is real but it isn't. Or people who think a threat isn't real and it is.

Maybe I will make some wind chimes out deep in the woods and watch ghosts get angry.

[Of course, when the town hall meeting happens his glib responses will die down as he's not all about getting others killed with him.]

[Yeah... Faith's gonna have to keep an eye out for this guy. There's no reason to do anything yet. But- he's not harmless, that's pretty clear.]

there's gotta be good reason we have to be careful, yeah? Maybe, you know, don't do that wind chime thing until we figure this place out?

[Meanwhile Aaron knows he should be wary but just doesn't bother with it. The trickster spirit has many faces and the one Aaron follows isn't known for self preservation.]

Sure. Also, I need to find a camera first.

[Though on the topic of her being a Vampire Slayer. She put that in caps. Like it's a real title.]

So, what happens if we find out there are vampires here?

Camera? you a photographer too? [Interesting combo.

She shrugs at his question.]

Depends. if they mind their own business. nothing. If they feed on people. I'll have to stake em.

It's no fun making ghosts mad if you don't have pictures!

[Obviously.]

So how do vampires exist without feeding on people?

Right. Photos for when you prank ghosts. You're a weird one, you know that, right? [He probably did.]

They feed on animals? Rats and shit. Or they rob blood banks. it's doable.

[Okay, she had him there. And he did know that.]

What if no one believes how angry they were? As for the vampire thing, I'll take your word for it. You're the expert right?

[His lessons on vampires was quick and uninformative.]

Oh, it's for proof of your shenanigans. Got it.

I am the expert. Thank you for noticing. [She brushed her hair off her shoulders with a mock smug flourish.]

Of course! So what's the coolest trick in your vampire slaying handbook?

[Not that he wants pointers but they never hurt.]

There actually is a handbook. As far as the 'coolest trick'? [She had to think.] I can bend a crowbar with my bare hands?

Also have prophetic dreams sometimes. But most of the time it's just this recurring weird dream about this bald guy with cheese slices.

[Okay, which part is he going to call bluff on? The cheese slices seems like the obvious one.

Or she's telling the truth and her life is weirder than his.]

You can bend a crowbar? So you're like super strong right?

[Her life is pretty dang weird.]

Yeah. I'm pretty strong.[She moved around to set her elbow gently on the table they're sitting on, wiggling her fingers. Clearly she was inviting him to partake in an arm wrestling contest.]

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