Event - Quarter

[apocalypsehowmods]

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Quarter

➥ Quarter Dollar

There are many different departments at ADI, all of which seem to be vying for new potential arrivals to join their ranks. As the Quarterly Meeting begins, everyone is shown into the large gym below ADI where each of the departments has set up a booth. Some are more impressive than others with activities and native and off-worlders alike there to enthuse about joining up with them. Everyone is allowed to join up to two departments at ADI. Choose wisely!

Administration and Public Relations
These two departments appear to have joined forces and, as such, have gone all out for their booth. There are colors and informational signs all over the place, snacks, grinning people willing to tell you that it's great to be able to do your part away from some of the serious danger posed by fieldwork. They have set up a competitive game of Two Truths and a Lie. Everyone is given a card out with the names of people they play with. There's a place for them to sign off if a person successfully guesses their lie on the first go. There's a $100 gift card for the Castaways Vintage Cafe up for grabs to the person who can gather the most lies! Get to know each other and get some delicious (local) coffee and pastries!

Canteen and Facilities
The people in the Canteen know what will bring likely new arrivals into their fold: food. Food combined with… cleaning? Mostly, this means that they have some tasty snacks cooking on a few hot plates, or available in coolers set up in front of their booth, as well as a coffee dispenser. Their activity to get people interested is a 'consume the evil avatar' challenge. There are fruits, veggies, and other foods available to design a consumable creature. Those who participate are told that they will be given three free desserts at the Canteen. You might win a few extra if you can convince your fellow participants that your edible avatar is the best. Or… worst, as the case may be. Please remember to clean up when you're finished!

Equipment and Research
The R&D team, as it were. Although Research is a much broader department, they've teamed up with the Equipment folks to showcase their departments together as a place for nerds of all stripes. There are some interesting-looking gadgets for anyone who comes over that basically amount to very fancy fidget cubes and fidget spinners. The Research team also has a challenge for those who think they might be cut out for this department: Collect at least three pieces of information from or about people around the gym and report back. The cooler the info, the more (arbitrary) points you'll score. Everyone who participates and reaches a certain points threshold will be given one of the fidget cubes or spinners to take home with them.

Security and Investigations
The Security and Investigations departments have taken over nearly a quarter of the gym with their combined booth displays. It's a mini-obstacle course with nerf guns and targets set up. It's designed so that people have to work in teams to overcome some obstacles, the better to show that this is a team, whether you're working close to home for security or out in the field, relying on other people to have your back. Those who participate in the obstacle course will be timed. The team with the best time will be given bragging rights plus a $100 gift card (each) to the General's Store. Teams are allowed to run the course more than once or break apart to find more agreeable partners for runs.

Medical and Counseling
The combined Medical and Counseling departments have set up a very cozy looking booth area. They've got colorful standing screens that give the appearance and sense of a more intimate setting in front of their booths. The comfy bean bag seats they've scattered strategically with tables nearby to set down food or drinks only add to the ambiance. There's a gentle suggestion for a game where you find as many things in common with another person as possible, but everyone who can find even one thing in common with another person will win a prize. Said prizes are things like candy, stress balls, and handheld massage tools.

Information Technology
This particular department doesn't seem to think it needs to work to get people to join. There are some TVs set up with video game consoles that feature 2-player games exclusively. If anyone asks, they'll indicate a lot of their job is sitting around, waiting for things to break. The hacking only happens sometimes and it's really cool when it does, but they can't be breaking into things like the FBI constantly. That would be a bad look.

Staff Development
The booth here is one sad, long-suffering-looking person who's sat behind a folding table. They're handing out pamphlets. Just… so many pamphlets about potential skills you could learn. There's no game here, just pamphlets. A disturbing volume and variety of pamphlets. It's like this person seems to have become a living Craigslist, advertising every bizarre thing someone at ADI could potentially teach them, from alien languages to how to play the hurdy-gurdy.

➥ Fiscal Quarter

(cw: references to character deaths/disappearances, reference to animal attacks, mention of insects/centipedes)

Once 3 PM rolls around, everyone is herded into an exceptionally large conference room on the lower levels of ADI. People are allowed to bring their drinks and snacks, but are asked to be respectful with their volume. There's a raised stage at one end of the room, and it's onto this that Nia Lehrer steps. She is a short, dark-skinned woman with her hair styled into a tight and professional braided bun atop her head. She's in a striking scarlet pants suit and carrying a small remote that she uses to turn on a projector for a PowerPoint slide presentation titled: Third Quarter 2021. She is accompanied by another woman with a shock of bubblegum pink hair who stays to one side and proceeds to sign as Nia speaks.

"Thank you for coming, everyone." Nia directs a tight smile at the camera aimed at the stage. "And tuning in if you can't be with us today. It's been a hard year. We have new faces, but… a lot fewer old ones. I'd like to take a moment, please, a moment of silence for those who are no longer with us, whether their fates are known or not."

The slides shift and there is one titled 'In Memoriam.' It includes what may be many familiar names, but also the names of people native to this world or others from different worlds who arrived from earlier in time.

"Thank you. Now, I'd like to turn everyone's attention to our accomplishments..." Nia is a skilled public speaker, and it shows as she walks the room through two separate, major threats that ADI and its personnel have managed to contain: a ritual attempt by the Endless Sky Cult out in Montana, and an infestation of dog-sized centipedes that turned up in North Carolina. She also gives praise to those who fought against the kelpies and eradicated them closer to home. "We've identified the likely origin point for the kelpies as Bar Harbor in Maine. It seems strange animal sightings and 'shark' attacks dropped off when the population was relocated to Essex Bay. We're still looking into how they were transported and who brought them down. If anyone has any additional information, we welcome it.

"That brings me to the question of how we're obtaining our information, though." There's a pause as her gaze sweeps over the room. "Many of you are from worlds where you have magic, where you have extraordinary, superhuman abilities and there is no cost. It's just a natural part of who you are. That's no longer the case. While we appreciate efforts to gather information on our behalf, we do things the right way here. We don't feed off of other people and do exactly what's been done to so many of us. There are limited circumstances that ADI can authorize the use of the kinds of abilities some people have been discussing around here. Saving your life when you get here and keeping all of this a secret." She motions to the room at large. "I know many of you probably have an opinion on this, but I'll be blunt with you. If you have the ability to use whatever powers you possess, you are hurting or have hurt someone. You have made the conscious choice that someone else is going to suffer because you wanted or felt you needed that power. Justify it to yourself that 'they deserved it,' but that doesn't change what you are doing."

She takes a deep breath. "This is a difficult transition. We've allowed some things to slide because of that. Know that the longer you're here, the less leeway we're willing to grant you.

"Now, there are a few other threats we're tracking at the moment. Fenix Down is one of them. We have field operatives monitoring his performances and keeping track of his movements. As he seems to be in the early stages of accumulating power, he's not our highest priority. We're more concerned with reports coming out of the Blue Ridge Mountains. We're still gathering intel, but there may be a ritual in the works somewhere in that area. Until we have more information, we'd like to keep most of the people here, particularly our new arrivals, busy closer to home. The source of the singing around the city is a concern. We'd like to start sending out patrol teams for the graveyards to try to find the source. Similarly, the situation in Dogtown is becoming a problem. We've never seen anything quite as vicious as what's been happening there lately. Again, we'd like volunteers to assist in routing out whatever's hiding in there and putting an end to it before it hurts anyone else.

"If you're interested in that, Reyes will be organizing the patrols. And I'll be available for 10-minute discussion blocks after the next presentation. Please check in with Reyes to reserve some time."

And with that, she heads off the stage, leaving it to the CFO, a nervous-looking man who goes over the company finances at a high level for the next 20 minutes.

➥ Quarter Pounder

(cw: animal attack, consumption of human flesh, violence, gore, body horror, potential for severe injury, including puncture wounds and broken bones, potential for choking, potential for animal death)

Once you really start looking in Dogtown, it's almost… obvious. That's not water splashed across the path through the dirt, there's a rich iron scent to it. Blood. Blood is everywhere around Dogtown. It lingers in the air, but so many ordinary people seem to just… ignore it. They can't see it. Or maybe they don't want to. Ignorance is bliss, after all.

You are not ignorant. Make of that what you will. It's the reason why you'll be able to find your way, eventually, to a clearing where the scent of blood is the thickest. Or… almost make it there. There are no paths to this part of Dogtown and wandering, you could believe you're deep in the woods, well away from any civilization. It will take a keen eye to spot the traps set out all around the clearing. Snares hung on branches and hidden amongst leaves, bear trap-like devices made of sticks and pieces of twine, spike pits, small trenches you could break your ankle in. All manner of simple traps designed not to kill, but to wound.

If you do find yourself caught, you may be waiting a long time before anything comes to check on you. But perhaps you'll get lucky and someone else will be making an ill-advised trip out into the woods! When you do finally make it out and manage to get to the clearing, it may seem to be a deceptively uninteresting place. It's just a meadow with some wild boar turning over chunks of mud near some sort of drop off. A large hole?

The wind changes and you get a whiff of what's coming from that hole. Rotting, putrid meat, blood that's curdled and a body that's just gone off. Take an actual step into that field and the boars turn as one to look at you. And then the creatures actually stand up, revealing a collection of human arms and legs writhing along their bellies. The only sound is a squeal as they charge. Ready to gore, grab, and make you another piece of their collection.

➥ Quartermaster

(cw: flooding; damage to homes and possessions; drug paraphernalia; potential for memory loss or reference thereto)

It's two in the morning when disaster strikes at Bonnie's Flophouse. A few thunderstorms have rolled in over the past week, but they were nothing in comparison to the tempest that pelts the building tonight. While residents of the ADI apartment complex are warm and safe in their beds, residents of the Flophouse are liable to learn at the worst time that their windows are less than watertight. Thankfully, all it should take is a bit of elbow grease and/or improvised dam materials to stop up those minor leaks, so while it's not a particularly restful night, no one's out of a home.

No one, that is, apart from Bonnie and the Visionary. Their shared room in the basement of the Flophouse fares much worse, water from a stopped drain pouring down the inside of the unfinished foundation. In the hours directly after the storm hits, Bonnie can be found frantically ferrying their things upstairs (there are many potted plants and sodden wall tapestries--and yep, that's a bong) while the Visionary perches uneasily in a lumpy common room chair. Show up downstairs during the crisis and Bonnie will absolutely put you to work removing things from the flooded basement or trying to figure out how to stop more water from coming in. Show up the next morning and you'll find the two of them asleep on couches in the ground floor common area.

It takes days to dry out the mess in the basement. Bonnie is kept busy with that work, directing anyone who will help and doing what she can to correct the issue so it doesn't flood again the next time a storm rolls in. She's constantly on the move; conversations with her during this period will tend to be limited to Bonnie handing out instructions for repairs or for drying things out before rushing off to the next thing she has to get done. In the meantime, the Visionary spends most of his time in the common room, seeming overwhelmed by it all. She's a thin, sickly figure with a white walking cane and a blindfold they never remove, and up until now has only been a sporadic visitor to the building's shared spaces. Despite the blindfold, he always seems to know when someone has entered the room, head turned and tilted as she listens, a hungry twist to their mouth.

"Don't tell me where you come from," he'll warn you before you've even had a chance to say hello.

➥ Mod Notes

• GENERAL - Players are welcome to play NPCs for themselves when they are needed in a thread. If you need more information on general behavior for these types of NPCs, please feel free to ask! In general, the information provided in the prompt should be sufficient and you're welcome to make up any details beyond that for your specific scene. For this event, the only NPCs that should not be controlled by players for threading are: Nia Lehrer and the Visionary. These NPCs will be played by mods and available for interaction.
  
  
• QUARTER DOLLAR (25 September) - For anyone who participates in the Administration and Public Relations or Security and Investigations booth events, there is a sign-up below. The ultimate winners for those booths will be RNG'd and announced on 9/30. Characters who are already part of a department are more than welcome to say that their character is manning the department booth for a portion of the meeting. Selecting a department is something that can be handwaved. There is no official sign-up sheet. Please just remember characters can only join two departments at a time. ADI is mindful of people trying to overwork themselves as a trauma-response and will actively prevent your character from trying to do so by keeping tabs on where they're working and what hours. They'll have to leave the building, at least to continue working after a max of 50 hours each week between their assigned departments.
  
  
• FISCAL QUARTER (25 September) - Nia will be available for conversations with characters after the presentation. You can handwave that Reyes set you up with a time to meet. Please simply tag into the NPC Top Level below with your character entering into an office where Nia will be seated and waiting for them. Characters may meet with Nia individually or in pairs. Characters who attempt to use supernatural abilities on Nia may experience extremely negative IC consequences, as a warning!
  
  
• QUARTER POUNDER (25-30 September) - Characters will be able to use mundane or supernatural senses to track the blood and bits of flesh they might find along the way to the meadow. The traps have no particular pattern to them. They're simply numerous and clearly hand-made from whatever could be scavenged in the forest. There is nothing supernatural about them, but they will hurt characters who aren't careful. They seem to be fairly well hidden. Even someone experienced might not notice them. The boars will attack and attempt to rip pieces out of characters if they see or smell them. They do not speak, but will squeal and attempt to rip people apart if they get ahold of them. The hands and legs on their torsos will assist with this. Once killed, the boars will simply separate from the human pieces that are attached to them leaving them looking like they were just ordinary boars. There are multiple groups of boars that may be found at different times in the meadows. Various groups will need to eradicate them over the course of the week to finish them all off. The hole filled with meat isn't actually that deep, but there's a good handful of body parts and just chunks of meat in there. No full bodies, though.
  
  
• QUARTERMASTER (26-30 September) - As far as anyone can tell, the flooding is just that: normal flooding and water damage. Bonnie will not be available for threads; it can be assumed that anyone trying to strike up a conversation with her will be given something helpful to do and not a lot else. The Visionary will not stray much from the common room until their shared room is habitable again, and will generally be available for conversation. The Visionary is nonbinary and uses he/she/they pronouns interchangeably. Mod narration will reflect this.

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Comments

Nia Lehrer

[lesbeau]

At first, Beau is very tempted to circumvent any structure, get in before anyone asks, and lie her absolute pants off. But maybe because Caduceus is the only one of the Nein around and she knows the value of not burning every bridge she coems across, she's taking this with the diplomacy of her station, waiting her turn before she turns up in the head office. Even if it doesn't mean anything, she comes wearing her cobalt soul sash through the loops of her jeans, carrying that rank and file partially out of habit and partially because it makes her a little more secure.

"Hey. It's Nia, right? You prefer that or are you one of those title people?" Beau saunters in and takes a seat without being asked, her eyes sharp and coming with a little bit of the judgement on how cool this woman is based on her answer to that question.

[apocalypsehownpcs]

Nia lifts a brow at Beau's cool demeanor, but quirks her lips briefly. "Nia's fine. You do nicknames or are you one of those 'the full Beauregard' people?"

[lesbeau]

Alright, that recieves a snort in return. "The Full Beauregard is a drink, not a name, and it'll knock you on your ass. Like me."

But alright, that gives her an answer and a better bit of Nia's demeanor, so she'll relax enough into this conversation. "Guess you've heard of me. Or they just put my name on the meeting book. Everyone said it was gonna be damn hard to talk to you, but I guess it's my lucky arrival time."

Is she flirting? Not intentionally, but like, that was absolutely accompanied by a little wink. She's too gay not to give a little nod to any attractive woman in power before she gets down to business.

[apocalypsehownpcs]

"We'll see how lucky you're feeling at the end of ten minutes." Nia quirks a smile. "But I usually like a drink that can knock me on my ass. So, why don't you start asking questions?"

[lesbeau]

This is already more fun than she thought it was going to be, so damn, she's going to take it. Even with the flippancy of the beginning of this though, she's keying in and did come with questions.

"So. How the hell did you find out about these... things. Entities, whatever. How has anyone researched them without getting eaten? Because everything I've been trying to find out points to if you know too much, one of them comes along and punches you in the face pretty quickly after."

[apocalypsehownpcs]

The question has Nia leaning back and gesturing to a portrait behind her. It's of two dark-skinned women with determined expressions on their faces. "More than two hundred years and a pair of founders who didn't think the sorts of things they were seeing while they were on the run up north were natural. We've done a lot of learning through the decades by trial and error... getting punched in the face and losing teeth. You build up a knowledge base after enough time that way. Like figuring out which plants have medicinal properties, and which are poisonous.

"One of the oldest members we have records of apart from our founder is the one who gave them all names. Polidore Edgefield. He pooled together what we'd learned and we've been using that breakdown ever since to help us fighting them."

[lesbeau]

Beau nods a bit, her notebook open on her lap and a pencil twirling between her fingers. "Alright, so lots of people got punched in the face. That's an answer, even if it's a shitty one." Not that it's a bad answer, just that it's one that promises she's going to get kicked in the teeth at some point, and that's not really preferable on the long-term.

"So then how did you figure out they were these... I dunno what kind of word you'd use, you guys don't seem to have a planar system or anything." She twists her wrist as she thinks, trying to find the right word. "They're not just gods or demons or... I mean, all kinds of shit, I dunno, something from another plane that's supposed to be there and super shouldn't be here."

[apocalypsehownpcs]

"They got cults, so some people'd tell you they're gods. Religious folk might tell you they're demons. Far as I'm concerned, they're parasites, just bigger, meaner, and more entrenched than your average termite infestation. The fact there have been so many different cults through the ages, but all following similar themes is how we coalesced the idea of the different Powers.

"You get themes showing up over time. I don't know how Polidore actually got his list, specifically, but they seem to work. More or less. Not everything fits neatly into one category every time, but they've got a main theme, for the most part."

[lesbeau]

She hums, making a few notes and trying to coalesce her thoughts. These people have such weird ideas about gods and infernals, and it's getting hard to keep track. "Well yeah, I mean-- that's still gods, right? Influence on the world from far off, bigger influence to people who help them. I dunno how gods work here, but where I'm from, that's pretty normal behavior. The difference is that they're not all based on terror. What happened to your like-- nature gods, or whatever, maybe they got eaten."

That's not really a productive use of this conversation and she knows it, even if it's something interesting to think about. It helps her think about how she can reason this out, at least. "I just don't know how you'd do all of this without magic. That's how the systems were made in my... world, I guess, to hold everything in place. It's what the gods used to do their shit, just way more powerful than your average schmuck. Except it seems like engaging in this, uhh, at all, gets you drawn in to serving one of them, so how the hell would you even stop them?"

[apocalypsehownpcs]

"You don't." It's a simple answer, but one that probably needs more explanation. Nia takes a breath. "This is the Apocalypse Disruption Initiative. Maybe what we think of as gods is different from your world. God in this one, in the modern day? That's some sort of creator deity for a lot of people. Eldritch creatures existing on another plane didn't create the worlds, so we don't think of them as gods. We also aren't aware of any form of opposing forces in this universe. You have these things that feed on terror and... that's it.

"No eldritch horrors or hopes or happiness. It's just this. And we're their feeding ground of choice, for whatever reason. The thing about fear, though? Anything that's alive and thinking in some capacity generates fear. You can overcome it, fight through it, numb yourself to certain types of it, but it never goes away. Not completely.

"And when you can't take a fight to the things that are feeding on that endless source of food? You don't stop them. You delay them. You put up blocks and fight the people that support them. You stop the people you can actually reach and you slow whatever's coming to a crawl. Because at least we can draw out a little more time. I don't plan on letting them win on my watch. Same as every Warden before me. Might be inevitable, but at least you can keep it back for one more day."

[lesbeau]

Now this gets Beau's attention, her face becoming more serious as she displays that she's taking all this info on board. It complicates things severely for her to be so out of her depth, and being cut off from the resources of the Cobalt Soul is making her realize how much she valued access to a thousand year old archive. She's really out here on her own for this, and this really, really drives that home.

It's a moment before she speaks again. "Okay. I hear you, and I'm not saying you're wrong, because this world is-- different, from mine." Cool, she avoided saying 'weird'. Moving on. "But. I went against something like this before, okay? This big, fleshy, mass of something that people were trying to bring into the world that was hiding out in the void elsewhere. And I-- we, my, er, the team, we got it. If they've got a way in here, there's gotta be a way in there. 'Mm more than willing to help you out on whatever you think the priorities are, but that's where I'm heading. If they wanna come in, doors go both ways, and I wanna bring the party to them before they bring it to us. You feel me?"

[apocalypsehownpcs]

"You figure out a way to open a door without murdering hundreds or permanently traumatizing them, my people'll back you to the hilt." Nia inclines her head. "Problem is, in this world, those are the only things we know of that are supposed to create that door. In theory. That's what these apocalypse rituals we're stopping are. You build up enough sacrifice of one kind or another, and that's what twists the world, turns it just close enough to what these things want that they can maybe break through the barrier."

[lesbeau]

"Okay, that's-- to be totally fair, I see what you're thinking, and I am not a mass sacrifice sort of person. Trust me, that's not what I'm going for." Of course there's no good reason for her to be trusted right now, but it's still worth saying. Besides, the priorities are there, so she's confident she's at least got some backing.

"Actually, that's-- that's a good question while I have you. What can I do to get you all to trust me? How do I know you're not going to be lying to me about all of this, because I can't do my job right if I'm getting fed bad info or bad research."

[apocalypsehownpcs]

"Don't make yourself a problem, let us know if there's anyone who is, try to stop them if they are." A small shrug. "I trust people who drop in, but I verify. And the minute you lose my trust, I don't give it back easy. As for us, not sure what evidence you're looking for in terms of good faith."

[lesbeau]

She nods; reasonable requests, at least. Not something insanely weird and doesn't immediately flag her as a cult, so that's good.

"Then what do I do to get access to all your stuff? Can't do a good job researching if I don't have everything. I know you've got clearence levels, stuff we're not allowed at. Not making myself a problem isn't gonna get me a fancy key." Honestly Beau's expecting the next sentence to sound something like 'be a narc', which she's going to hate and have to subvert, but it's worth asking if there's another option.

[apocalypsehownpcs]

"Take the time." Nia offers another small shrug. "I don't do speedruns, Beau. You build up enough trust over time by doing good work and proving you'll stay the course, not get pulled off it and lost to one of the Entities. Sound reasonable?"

[lesbeau]

Well, that was what she suspected, though not what she was hoping. Beau nods in a way that says 'that's fair' while taking another note- not her first time around the town. Smart.

"Guess I'll just have to take you at your word. And you at mine. I believe in finding the truth, no matter how shitty that truth looks. So if you think someone's fucking around, I'm gonna be the one to find out." It's the statement she says with the most conviction, the least amount of bullshit she's given thus far. "As long as that's good to you, it's good to me."

[apocalypsehownpcs]

"Sounds good to me." Nia gives Beau another long once over. "Pleasure doing business with you for now."

[lesbeau]

"Oh, pleasure's mine." She gets up and gives Nia her own look before grinning and giving a little two-fingered salute. "See you around, miss boss. Call me if you need me."

Beau punctuates that with a wink, shuts her notebook, and takes her leave before any questions can be asked about that, exactly.