Event - Material Goods

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Material Goods

➥ By Hook or By Crook

(cw: potential for violence, criminal activity, bombs/bomb threats, injury, incarceration, police brutality)

It's not difficult to identify the crates marked for Things of Beauty. They're colorful things, some might even say garish. Whoever chose them has a particular sort of taste, and it seems to be stuck somewhere in the 70s. They're stacked up on one of the docks, waiting to be loaded into delivery trucks by burly dock workers who look alternately annoyed by the hideous crates and disturbed by something about them. Anyone stopping to eavesdrop will hear one of them mention that he heard the crates murmuring. The concerns will be dismissed quickly as they move to load up the trucks, though.

The boat that's brought these over seems… confusingly small, like it's something local, rather than anything international. Getting onto the ship, itself, would be impossible during the day, and it seems to leave after having dropped off the boxes, heading out of port and off to places unknown. Anyone checking the ship's name–The Tarabroo–will quickly find it's not a ship that seems to be appropriately registered. The Tarabroo, as an internet search, does bring up some interesting information about a black hound with two snouts that oozes gasoline and breathes fire. It seems to be a legend associated with the Appalachian region.

There are, of course, many ways to disrupt the supply chain, and while stopping the actual boat that brought things isn't an option, there's slashing tires, incapacitating drivers, and attempting to shift or destroy cargo. However you try to stop things, best be careful not to get caught. There's security on the docks day and night, and they don't take kindly to intruders. You might find yourself boxed, tased, or otherwise incapacitated, if caught, and arrested by the police if a longshoreman doesn't decide to just punt you into the harbor for getting in their way. Enjoy the very icy swim.

Or maybe you're going the more… call in a bomb threat, or a gas leak, or otherwise cause a mess of paperwork route. It's not a simple task, either way. The people dealing with the bureaucracy at the docks seem to be uncannily well-organized and are quick to dismiss obvious lies. There might be more luck with bomb threats and gas leak notices at Things of Beauty, but after one or two, the police are going to catch wise to lies and start looking into exactly who has been making those calls.

For those who are caught, either in the act on the docks or making calls that tie up police resources, you'll find yourself chucked into the city jail for a night, maybe with someone else who was caught. The police seem to have varying degrees of what's considered appropriate use of force against those they catch, especially once they find out they're associated with ADI. You're horning in on their turf and making their lives difficult? How about they leave the lights glaring on you all night while playing some really annoying music and taking away any semblance of comfort? If you got arrested by a particularly angry officer, you might even end up with some bruises or a bloody nose for your trouble, before you're released.

➥ Comfortably Numb

(cw: body horror, injury (hands/arms), bleeding, mouths where there should not be mouths, supernatural drugging/apathy)

Despite best efforts, at least some of the product intended for Things of Beauty do actually make it there. Not many, but a small amount. ADI is tasking volunteers with the mission of acquiring whatever product has made it into the hands of the public… by whatever means necessary. (Which will likely amount to stealing.)

What is the product? Well, it appears to be… phone cases that have the approximate appearance and texture of flesh. Maybe even human flesh. With so much apparently persuasive marketing ahead of time for a product that will “change lives”, the fight to acquire one of these phone cases is intense and people are paying absurdly high prices for them. Those that aren’t able to buy the phone cases from the store itself can be seen offering even more money to those walking away with the precious goods.

Their efforts are all apparently in vain, though. Once someone has their hands on a phone case, they seem to be even more obsessed with it than they were with obtaining it. Any attempts to get them to relinquish the object–either legally or through less honest means–are rebuffed. They also appear to be very reluctant to let the cases physically leave their hands as well.

Even when the cases start growing mouths. Toothy mouths that are employed to bite at their hands. If people notice this disturbing occurrence, they don’t appear to care at all and continue to jealously guard their possession even as it makes a mess of their hands. Victims of these cases can be identified by the blood covering their hands, if they don’t happen to be holding on to the case.

Tracking down and retrieving all the cases will take a few weeks. It also poses a bit of a logistical challenge. Seeing the victims being utterly unaware or uncaring of their mangled hands doesn’t make any sense… until you physically come into contact with one of the cases. Then the reason becomes crystal clear (or will become crystal clear, in hindsight.) Touching them–even with gloved or otherwise protected hands–quickly begins to produce both an obsession with keeping possession of the object and an indifference to pain of all kinds, including emotional. Disposing of them becomes unthinkable, which poses something of a challenge for the mission characters have been given. However, if the cases are taken out of a person’s possession, both the numbing and possessive effects quickly wear off. They can then be destroyed or even just thrown away. Hopefully where no one else will be able to find them again.

➥ Feed Me, Kahlil

(cw: severe emotional distress, emotional blackmail, internalized victim blaming, kidnapping, injury (hands/arms))

Things are not beautiful at Things of Beauty. In the days leading up to the launch the proprietor, Kahlil Nassir, sporadically haunts the place with a wide-eyed, tearful look and bandaged hands he tries to hide under long sleeves, his presence peppering the place with outbursts at complaining customers and his own numb, blank-faced employees alike. Weirder than that, perhaps, is how often he isn't seen around his shop at the height of the new product launch and the days following. ADI's investigations department has been having trouble sniffing out just where he's been going; it appears that he hasn't gone home in at least half a week by the time they finally give up on subtlety.

On the morning of January 18th, Kahlil is hauled kicking and screaming into an interrogation room on floor B1 of ADI headquarters. It seems that a pair of native ADI investigators took it upon themselves to stake out Things of Beauty and caught him pulling into the alley behind the shop several hours before opening time. He was driving a car that wasn't his own and that investigators suspect might be stolen, and at the time they apprehended him they also confiscated several cardboard boxes full of more fleshy phone cases that had been in the car's trunk.

This rather heavy-handed approach has not been immediately fruitful. Kahlil is clearly terrified but has been refusing to answer questions. Tensions are high at ADI; not all staff believe that bringing him in was the correct move, and removing him from the situation doesn't seem likely to have completely cut off the supply chain or sales of the phone cases. He's here now, though, and information is needed. Anyone who thinks they can get him to talk will be allowed to try, though higher ups make it clear that torture is not permitted.

➥ The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary

(cw: body horror, uncanny valley, pregnancy imagery, loss of skin, implied animal death, implied human death, unsanitary conditions, self-doubt/body image issues)

The warehouse is virtually silent when people enter. No sounds of industrial machinery, no signs that anyone is there, just the low hum of electric lighting and a heater running. The entryway appears to be utterly unremarkable, and it's not until moving deeper in that people might begin to notice something off. It starts with a smell, the scent of rotten, putrid meat, and the deeper into the heart of the warehouse one travels, the more pronounced that scent grows. The walls, too, take on a moist, unpleasant sheen, turning from an industrial gray to something that looks almost… living, flesh-like. Touching the walls, people will find they feel warm and quiver slightly. It's like touching the inside of a mouth. The doorways, too, seem to be warped, appearing to be more like gullets than anything else. They squeeze inward whenever someone passes through, shrinking just a tiny bit more with each passage. If there are too many people going in, they may find it significantly harder than they expected to leave.

There's a sound in the air, carried faintly through vents, and growing louder as people move toward the center of the warehouse. It's a bleating sound, like there are animals being kept in this place. Finally entering into a large central room, the source of the sound becomes clear: This room is infested floor-to-ceiling with what at first appear to be plants with fuzzy white flowers. They're roughly the size of fists, and in the form of giant puffballs on thick, glistening green stalks. The bleating is louder in this room and seems to be coming from the flowers. Anyone checking closer will find that the flowers are actually malformed lambs, their stalks more like umbilical cords growing out of their stomachs, propping them up.

All around the room, there are scattered evidence of animals being fed to the lambs. Blood and bits of bone are visible in the field of flesh. For the keen-eyed, they might also spot what appears to be some blood-stained clothes and larger bones.

The lambs will nip at anyone reaching for them, and those who manage to pick one up without being bitten will be in for an unpleasant surprise. The lambs split open, once they're 'picked,' sloughing off their skins and transforming into… the phone flesh cases being sold at Things of Beauty. These 'freshly formed' phone cases seem to have a different effect than their packaged and shipped counterparts. Instead of biting, they whisper.

They whisper your deepest insecurity into your mind. They promise they can take that away if you just hold them, if you just feed them. Unfortunately, these early stage phone cases haven't developed a numbing effect, yet, and when they bite, it hurts, but maybe it's worth if for them to be able to take away the thing plaguing you most?

Those not waylaid by the cases will have a tricky time dealing with the plants themselves. They don't seem to respond to being burned with fires fizzling out on their uncomfortably moist bodies and within the warehouse that pulses almost like it's a living thing itself. There are other options, though. Poison maybe? Hacking them to pieces? Eating them? The warehouse has all of the standard safety equipment one might think of. How would you go about murdering a field of fleshy flowers that grows back at a disturbingly rapid pace? The lambs seem to be able to regrow from any part of a live plant.

➥ 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. Please remember that character deaths are permanent and plan accordingly!
  
  
• BY HOOK OR BY CROOK (15-16 January) - Information on the Tarabroo as a cryptid is sparse, but stories seem to tie its appearance to disasters involving mines, particularly anything where a collapse or explosion led to the release of a tailings pond. These ponds hold the poisonous cast offs generated during mining operations and are highly toxic. When they break and run downstream, it can poison a landscape for miles.
  
  Anyone attempting to look into the crates at the docks will get a sneak preview of the flesh phone cases, but not have time to really do much with them.
  
  In terms of the dock disruptions, players are encouraged to get creative! Not every officer will be abusive if your character ends up arrested, but some will be. Characters will be held overnight, then released with a fine ranging from $500-$2,000. No complaints to the police from those who are jailed will be taken seriously, but ADI will help to pay fines... provided you're working with them regularly.
  
  
• COMFORTABLY NUMB (16-31 January) - The effects of the phone cases are not instantaneous, but they do come on quickly enough that characters attempting to steal and dispose of them on their own will have serious difficulties in accomplishing the second part of the task. The phones can be dealt with in any way that destroys them except for the use of fire (thus neutralizing their effect) or brought into ADI for disposal. (Or they just can be thrown away, though that does run the risk of them being rediscovered and is not ADI’s preference.)
  
  
• FEED ME, KAHLIL (18 January) - Characters will have the opportunity to talk to Kahlil in this prompt. Please respond to the NPC Threads comment below for responses from him. Shortly after he's brought in, investigations reveal that the car he was driving belongs to Hakeem Williams, a retired bank teller who was reported missing last week. Legally-minded individuals might realize that a private investigations company like ADI "taking Kahlil into custody" constitutes kidnapping–Kahlil is certainly aware of that fact.
  
  
• THE VEGETABLE LAMB OF TARTARY (18-19 January) - While the vegetable lambs' whispering will mainly focus on body image insecurities, if your character does not have those, they will hear the lambs whispering about other insecurities that plague them. Fire is the only option that will not work to kill the lambs, and they're numerous enough that no one person will be able to wipe them all out, whatever method they're using. Once the lambs are killed, the walls of the factory will revert to normal walls. Until then, they will appear to be uncomfortably close to real flesh and will bleed if cut. The 'blood' that comes out will appear to be putrid, black, and corrosive.

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Comments

[oldbookshop]

[ Oh! A crime boy!

Aziraphale does the world's least subtle subtle lookabout. Thousands of years of clandestine meetings and for what. Nothing.

It would be a shame to see him get caught out, though. ]

I'm normally highly against crime, generally speaking. [ Most criminal activity. Although sometimes the laws are more the problem. So the spirit of criminality?

But that's always a very squishy thing. Nuanced. Not in his paygrade. Humans are weird, so.

Normally.

Generally speaking. ]

But, well, letter of the law versus the greater moral good. I expect missing paperwork is a bit more long-lasting than a low tire. Not that I would know anything about that sort of uncouth behavior. Obviously.

[ It's not even really property damage to deflate something. Technically. ]

We may need to make ourselves scarce in short order, though. Better safe than sorry.

[lowficharm]

[A soft little British man who looks unassuming but is full of rather polite crimes. It's almost like they're related. Either or, he slips the papers back into his pocket rather quickly.]

Trust me, I'm-- I'm not-- I just didn't want to break anything, you know? They can get them recertified, and the drivers are union so they still get paid, and-- well it'd be much worse if more of these things got out, right?

[Who is he convincing, him or Aziraphale? Who knows. Martin probably doesn't even know. He does a much more subtle one-two look before nodding at the last suggestion though.]

Yeah, that's prrrrobably a good idea. I, uh-- I assume you work for the ADI, if you're hanging around here and don't work for any of... this.

[oldbookshop]

Of course. All fine and good to consider a moral path straightforward when the Earth was made curved, isn't it?

[ So many squishy moral zones in Earth and humanity. A lot of inherent conceptual clashes of Right And Wrong versus right and wrong, uncapitalized. Always been a spot of trouble for him. ]

-- oh, right. Terribly sorry, so rude of me. [ He sets off at a relatively casual pace, just to get the distance-from-incident started. ] I'm with the ADI, yes. Suppose we must have that in common. My name is Aziraphale.

[lowficharm]

[He's not really sure he gets the entire metaphor, but it doesn't seem like this guy is mad at him, so you know what? Works for him. Martin gives a smile when Aziraphale introduces himself- not a particularly British name, but who cares- and starts to hold his hand out for a shake before he realizes they're walking and that would kind of be the worst.]

Yes, I'd say so! I'm Martin, uh, M-Martin Blackwood. Been here a couple of months now. I'm, uhm, guessing you're newer? Or uh, new, new-ish. Not that I know everyone who's around or anything, I just, you know, you, uh-- see people. Around.

[martin. please.]

[oldbookshop]

[ Important notes: Martin is adorable. This knowledge is vital. ]

I think I'd say more new-ish than newer. It's splitting hairs a bit, I'm sure. But in the grander scheme of... [ Of?? Of this general invisible-rainbow gesture meant to encompass the concept of All This. ] Well, of what's going on with this place, quite new, yes. Less than a month, I think. There's an awfully steep curve to getting your bearings.

[lowficharm]

[You're right and you should say it. He's cute as hell and he... well, doesn't really know it, but that's not important right now. The semantics do make Martin chuckle just a bit in a good-natured sort of tone.]

I think the, uhm-- the first month is always the hardest. It's one thing to hear about what happens and the Entities and all that, and another to, well... see it. Though I kind of think these phone... things aren't as bad as it's going to get.

[oldbookshop]

Realistically, I suppose you're right about that. [ It does tend to be the way of things, or at least when there are these types of supernatural issues on the docket.

Dreadful. ]

I'll admit I'm more of an old hand at the idealistic lens. Silver linings. Thin though they seem to be running.

[lowficharm]

Oh-- sorry, that, that sounds so dreary of me-- please, don't think I'm telling you to give up on that.

[He's realizing at top speed how cynical that sounded and how much he... should not be encouraging that kind of despair, under the circumstances.]

It's really, really good you do that. I think, honestly, more people, uh-- p-probably should! I know I could use it, it's-- that's what we really need, in a place like this. Someone to remember that there's good in the world and, and really believe in it.

[oldbookshop]

Not to worry. If a bit of dreariness was all it took to do me in, I wouldn't have managed to get through the late seventies.

[ They did have their ups and downs. Well, most decades do. They weren't his least favorite of downs, but Aziraphale thinks they're a safe enough time period to pull for someone of his apparent age.

What is he supposed to do, math out an imaginary birthdate and year to remember? Ridiculous. ]

And if you should ever find yourself needing to stretch your proverbial positivity wings, you're welcome to look me up. My friend Crowley is a bit on the opposite end when he's around, of course, but he grows on you. [ Or Aziraphale will ignore Crowley being grumpy, if Crowley is indeed grumpy, in full view just to be a bitch, but that's basically the same thing. ]

[lowficharm]

[It gives Martin a moment of pause, but he doesn't think a ton of it. After all, Aziraphale doesn't look to be especially young, and he could believe the man was pushing 60 and just had a really good skincare routine. That math makes sense, right? Sure. Uh huh. Hm. Anyway.

It doesn't especially matter, because Aziraphale is being very nice about it, and he doesn't need to pry right now. But also, he will remember that. The note about Crowley does make him smile just a bit though, because that sounds incredibly familiar to his own situation.]

Oh, I'm-- I totally understand. I live with, uhm, m-my boyfriend Jon, and he's... really, he's very sweet when you get to know him. People just say he's a bit, uh, abrasive, sometimes. Very to-the-point and smart, you know?

[You know, Aziraphale. You fuckin' know.]

I'm sure he'd be happy to welcome you if I'm not in.

[oldbookshop]

[ Another day, another point for love. That's adorable.

He misses being able to sense those sorts of things. Like a phantom limb. But one of the nice things about humanity is that it's always very evident somewhere, if one is looking. ]

I think I do know. [ Sometimes "who wears the ring that says Passive and who wears the ring that says Aggressive that you can then interlink like the Wonder Twins to be more powerful than ever" is the real romance we found along the way. ] He sounds perfectly charming, I'm sure I'd be pleased to meet him. Everyone takes a bit of acclimating to when it comes down to it.

[ At home he liked to do that on his own terms by being in his bookshop and trying very hard not to allow any customers to happen most of the time. ]

[lowficharm]

[One proper but devious boy versus one antisocial fool and they're both british is apparently a universal constant. The only difference is that Jon is closer to a demon than he probably should be, and Martin would never qualify as an angel. But hey, who's counting? Not this god, for sure.]

It's true, after all, it's-- you know. Everyone has their things. Just a matter of being patient about it.

[Eventually they will quietly figure out they are incredibly similar people, but not quite yet. They'll get there.]

Thanks for stepping in back there, and uhm-- all that. I'm sure if we put our heads together we can come up with lots of minor inconveniences that stop those dangerous things from getting where they're supposed to be going.

[oldbookshop]

[ The Entities have taste and it's the only valid thing about them.

In any case Aziraphale is very pleased to get an invitation to mischief. Truly the only difference between him and a fluffy white cat is that it's frowned upon for him personally to list mischief as an occasional hobby. ]

Oh, no need to thank me. And I'd quite like that. Two heads are better than one. In this case, very much safer than one. People do get awfully up in arms over being inconvenienced.

that meme killed me thanks

[lowficharm]

[Well in that case Martin might as well be the fluffy cat, frankly.]

Of course! Besides, it's kind of fun when it's not angry customers.

[He'd say 'and I can't get fired' but like that's an entirely different can of worms.]

Nevertheless, uhm-- I appreciate meeting you. And you helping me out back there. I'm sure we'll find a good time to fix problems without violence and with paperwork again soon.