quietplacelogs | INTRO LOG #2

Entry tags:

the dark tower: jake chambers

INTRO LOG #2

INTRO LOG #2
Put a Sock in It
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 – with or without the help of those who have come before you.

The Place Inside
Content Warnings: Disorientation, hallucinations, body horror
Themes: Plot, exploration

Have you been to hell. And more importantly, have you been back. We all know this pain but are too scared to recall. This horror controls us, pulls at our strings to ensure how our life plays out. So, let me rephrase my question: have you been to Ile Lacrox. And more importantly, can you come back.

In the community, if you hear something you're not supposed to hear, you learn to look the other way. If you see something you're not supposed to see, you pretend it never happened. If you feel disappointed, you learn to never ask for more. So, through good times and bad, famine and feast, the natives held fast to their rules until one common day a sly wind blew in from the south...

That same red dust twists through the streets, curling up in faint, little plumes of familiarity. The farther south you go, the thicker it becomes. Those willing to explore far enough will find it coming from an island in the middle of the river. Once there, doting every available surface is the evidence of Sound Eater births, and the closer you are to the island, the harder it is to avoid being coated in red. Even if it's not rubbed into the skin, it doesn't take long for the effects to take over. Every sound is amplified. Your breaths are deafening, the slightest step echoes. But no Sound Eater attacks. Your vision blurs, and it's as if your mouth is sealing itself shut. Those you traveled with seem to be similarly affected, and you know you have to be quiet. Anyone who brought supplies with them might discover that a drink of water subdues the symptoms.

OOC: Only characters who entirely submerge themselves in water will be free of the dust effects. Just remember that noise will attract Sound Eaters.

Liplocked
Content Warnings: Violent tendencies, mind alteration
Themes: Love, romance, obsession, sex

The natives are of French origin, and with that comes a love of romance. Residents will find treats and valentines at their doors. That same night, there will be a small, red-glowing fire built near the fountain. There will be jars pressed into the dirt and filled with a sweet, red liquid. Some natives can be seen drinking it and being very affectionate with one another. Anyone who drinks this is inspired to show endearment or lust to others, and it will wear off after sleeping.

There's also the noticeable addition of a new arrival. They came through the Reset Room just like everybody else. They understand the rules and follow them to a tee. They are the perfect example of what the natives want in their residents. They are charming and captivating. They say nothing, and they don't have to. When your eyes meet, you feel seduced. There's a nervous flutter in your stomach. You can feel your heartbeat in your throat. Pounding, constricting. They smile and then turn away.

As they're walking, you notice you're not the only one looking at them, and in their expression, you see your own mirrored. What started as sweet infatuation and longing dissolves into a jealousy unlike any you've ever known. All you understand now is that to win their affections you have to come out on top—so you're the only one they see. Your actions are not your own, but they're still yours.

OOC: There are two ways to break the "spell". Your character fights it out with someone else who is feeling the same way OR they're approached and physically touched by someone who isn't affected by the newcomer. A third of the community will be completely unaffected (everyone else is affected unless the player is uncomfortable with playing out the scenarios). The newcomer can be of any gender the player wishes. For those partaking in drinking, the players can choose what effects it has; it can inspire feelings of lust or boost paternal/maternal instincts or devotion towards friends.

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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Jesus. He wouldn't do anything to me would he?

(Eddie doesn't...want to make assumptions here.)

[ Majima shook his head, accompanying the gesture with a wave of his hand for good measure. ]

Nahhh, he just looks like a big ol' bear. Wouldn't hit a kid, 'less maybe it was one of them punkass gangster types looking to pick a fight.

You know, the ones who like to hassle girls or tool around with knives.

I don't look like a punkass gangster type, do I?

(Oh, Eddie. You wore matching pastels. Granted, they took away his clothes, but the kid's hair was styled neatly. Not a lick of him screamed any sort of-...

But alas, he doesn't know anything about Japanese culture so as if he wanted to make assumptions.)

Don't most boys hassle girls?

Nah. Punkass gangsters have popped collars, bad hair, and an even worse attitude.

[ If only he could show Eddie a picture, but sadly, he hadn't had a smartphone back in the 80s. As for his other question: ]

No. Well, yeah, I guess... but we're talkin' about two different kinds of hassling, here. There's a difference between tugging someone's braid and cornering one with three of your jerk buddies and trying to force her to go out with ya.

I dunno any. The punkasses I know have a hairstyle that looks like a duck's ass.

(Some of them, anyway. And 'punkass' was a gentle word for who he was referring to.)

What do you mean by tugging someone's braid?

(Eddie....didn't fully understand the world of romance, truth be told. Or the world of flirtation, rather.)

What! That's so shitty. You can't force someone to do that.

[ Majima flashed another quick grin. A duck's ass? Eddie had a way with words that was both unexpectedly colorful and kind of hilarious. ]

Sounds like the assholes you know and I know are pretty similar, if ya ask me.

[ To Eddie's exclamation, he nodded, bringing his hand up in a brief point as if to say 'exactly!'. Learned in the world of romance or not, Eddie was already clearly heads above the punks of Kamurocho. ]

Right? A girl's gotta make her own decisions. Can't say I've got patience for that kinda bullshit, either.

[ Whatever other faults Majima might have, watching a bunch of goons at work almost invariably drove him nuts. If it was someone like him, fine; easy enough to throw some bows and send them on their way.

Maybe it was the way they battened on the ones who looked too scared or weak to fight back, the systematic way they landed on those least likely to present a challenge. They didn't want to fight. They wanted to bask in the feeling of power, the cheap glory of knowing exactly how the whole deal would go down -- in their favor. ]

(He was only getting started, buddy. He was filled with dumb and colorful descriptors.)

I guess all assholes are supposed to look the same if you look them deadon.

(Yes. That was a really crude joke, okay.)

Boys are stupid.

(Says he, who is also a boy, but he also never has claimed to be smart. But then again, he also thinks girls are pretty idiotic too. People in general were morons, see, is what he's getting at.

But this makes him think this Majima guy really isn't bad at all.)

I have only one girl friend. She's got short red hair and blue eyes. She's taller than me. Her name's Beverly. We were with her where we just came from but...

(Not anymore. This is his only girl friend from his world, anyway.)

[ Eddie, goodness. Where was the lie tho ]

She one of them best friends you were talkin' about before?

[ Either way, it didn't sound particularly out of the ordinary to have mostly friends that were dudes... at least as a kid. Majima had lost touch with most of his childhood friends, anyway, had only met Taiga once he was in the Tojo. ]

Didn't have a lot of girl friends when I was in school. But I ended up with a royal shitton all of a sudden.

Yes. She's not here, but there's seven of us in our group and she's one of them.

(This particular trend followed Eddie through his life. Sure, he got married later apparently, but God. At what cost. He does not like thinking about that though.)

Most girls don't like me back at my school. Or boys really. Me and my friends are kind of losers. I don't think I'd really want to wind up with a 'royal shitton' of girls at once though. They can be a lot to deal with.

Some are okay though I guess.

Nah, the ones I know right now are pretty great. They got their problems, but that's the same with everyone. Met 'em through work.

Like Hibiki-chan, her mom's sick, so she's gotta take care of her little brother. And Saki-chan wants to be a nurse, only she's got to send money over to her folks since they've got such a big family back home.

[ Majima was smiling with genuine affection as he recounted the details of some of the hostesses of Club Sunshine. How were they doing right now? Probably better than he was, and here was hoping they never ended up in Reims... ]

Losers? You mean ya got beat up a lot? But you still got a lotta friends.

You're not wrong there.

(Honestly, since the station and all, Eddie's not known what to do with so many people actually...Not hating him? Or at least, not thinking he was a total sissy.

Hearing about the women in this guy's life though has Eddie grinning a little. It was nice seeing other people care about their friends.)

They sound pretty awesome. I love nurses best when I go to the doctors. Bev's awesome too. She doesn't got any little siblings or anything, and we're too young to know what we wanna do, but her daddy gives her a lot of bruises.

(Eddie gets a...funny look on his face as he types that out, because there was more there that he didn't know how to word. But he also thinks maybe some of that situation...Adults shouldn't know about it. Or if they did, they never would care. At least back in Derry they wouldn't.)

Oh yeah all the time. That asshole Bowers broke my arm once. And practically broke my nose. And a whole bunch of other fucked up stuff. He was a real psycho. Other kids were just assholes.

[ At first Eddie's story was sounding like a nice little interlude. Only when he got to the part where Beverly's father was apparently not above smacking his daughter around, Majima was mouthing 'the fuck?', screwing up his face in distaste.

It wasn't that child abuse was some unheard of social ill; the ranks of the yakuza were not filled with the well-adjusted children of happy, supportive families, and Majima knew his share of guys whose parents or someone like them had beat them to all hell or put out cigarettes on their bodies or simply drank away the day in the living room, surrounded by an ever-growing collection of empty bottles and leftover meals.

It was the something about the way Eddie said it, that matter-of-fact honesty, that brought Majima back to a place he hadn't thought about in years. ]

You're right. Your town IS a shithole.

(Eddie just winds up giving Majima a look like 'you're telling me, buddy.' Eddie was familiar with all kinds of mistreatment of kids through both himself and his friends. Though considering it was something he was so used to, and the fact that he was still kind of going through it, it meant he didn't see it maybe as severe as he ought to. But no one really ever did when they were living that sort of truth.

Either way, to this day, both back on the station and here, it always surprises him when an adult actually seemed bothered by this stuff. After all, the amount of days Bev went to school with bruises, or how much school Eddie missed, none of the teachers ever really seemed to notice or care. So for Eddie? It is a matter of fact. Because- what else is there?)

Oh yeah. That's like only half of it. But that's whatever. I'm glad I'm here now. Do you have any kids or anything?

[ If Majima had been drinking, he might have done a spittake. As it was, he recoiled as though someone had taken a swing at him before recovering enough to type: ]

What???? How old do you think I am??

[ he felt personally attacked by this question ]

Old enough to have kids probably.

(Was Eddie wrong tho. But he takes the question a bit more seriously and tries to pinpoint an age.)

Twenties? Mid to late?

[ oh ok at least he didn't say forty or something ]

Twenty-four. I still got plenty on my hands without worryin' about gettin' hitched.

[ TOO BUSY cabarets to run, dudes to punch, responsibilities to avoid if they didn't involve suffering horribly to prove his undying loyalty ]

And anyhow, I ain't so sure I'm the having kids type.

Edited (ugh edits) 2018-02-16 04:33 (UTC)

(He's from the fifties, dude. Almost everyone was popping out kids at twenty-four. If not sooner.)

Yeah marriage seems like. A lot.

(God, Eddie had endless problems with the idea of marriage after seeing his future. And...other things. But yeah, running crime rings usually didn't allow a whole lot of time for the little ones.)

I'm definitely not. So I can't blame you.

[ look doN'T PRESSURE HIM, fifties kid ]

Yeah. Still, I guess if the right girl came along, it'd be a different story.

[ But that was a story for a different time. In any case, he tilted his heard at Eddie, curious: ]

So why the question? You sweet on someone?

(Wow could there be a more relevant gif for Eddie's existence. What a hero. Majima was going to get on better with Eddie than Eddie even realized.

Eddie has nothing to say to that first part. He. Cannot relate.

The second part gets him blushing a little. And probably not for the expected reason.)

No. That whole

Part of my life is complicated. I just ignore it mostly.

[ Well alright, something was clearly going on there, but it wasn't Majima's place to pry. So instead, he shrugged it off. ]

Yeah, probably better out here anyway. Shit's complicated.

[ He looked back at the swimming pool now that there was a little break in the conversation. Many of the buildings in the town seemed pretty old -- not that Majima knew what they were supposed to look like originally, but he got the feeling that the Sound Eaters had been around for a while, meaning that new construction would be rather complicated. How long, exactly, had it been...? Maybe it was worth investigating further, seeing exactly how far the currently available paths would lead. ]

So what brought ya out here, anyway? Not that I'm complainin'.

(It's easy enough for Eddie to follow along with. Truthfully, he had been originally wondering about Majima having kids mostly cause he seemed pretty good with them.

Although from Eddie's experience so far, the people who were best with kids always wound up not having kids at all. He's not so sure if there's a correlation there or not.

Eddie turns his own attention to the pool as well. It felt weird being back on mostly-earth, but an earth he was no longer familiar with. Yet he couldn't help but feel some relief too. His eyes wander to the device and he gives a small shrug.)

I guess I was trying to calm down so I took a walk.

(Remembering now- he rubs at his cheeks hard to clear away any remaining traces of tear marks.)

Bill was calming me down but I didn't want him worrying too much. What about you?

I dunno. Felt like I needed to get outta there, clear my head.

[ And it wasn't easy to do that with so many strangers around. And those strange townspeople, with their silence and their smiles. Eesh. ]

Tell you the truth, this place gives me the creeps. People always talk about leavin' town to get some peace and quiet, but ya can't even hear the crows.

Wonder if the whole world's like this.

(It was pretty unsettling in there, Eddie would be in full agreement of that.)

It's weird having everything be so silent, yeah. I don't think I've even seen a bird since showing up.

(He certainly wasn't Stan when it came to birds, but because of their friendship, he had come to notice birds in an area more than the average person might. And there didn't really seem to be any around.

But Majima is pointing out a more interesting thing. Eddie, being twelve, had the unfortunate talent of sometimes seeing the world very narrowly. The curse of a child only seeing their own life and what directly impacted it. He forgot to consider the rest of the world.)

If it is, I wonder how it got like that. It doesn't look like there was a third world war or anything.

Yeah. Reims seems like a decent sized town, though. You'd think if there were people around in neighboring burgs, someone'd wander over here at some point to see what was up.

I did ask one of the people who showed up last month about it. The natives told her that there were people from here who left town before, but no one heard from them after.

[ Did the Sound Eaters get them? Did they escape? There were tons of questions here, but few answers. ]

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INTRO LOG #2

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cw; child abuse.

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