apocalypsehowcomm | Event

Entry tags:

Event - Heavy

Heavy

➥ Deep

Photo from the inside of a snow/ice cavern. There is a blue light filtering in from a small entrance.
(cw: claustrophobia, existential dread, power loss, victim-blaming, time distortion, supernatural compulsion and hunger)

After the cold snap and plumbing issues comes the calm. For a few days, at least, nothing seems to break. Or break more than normal where the Flophouse is concerned. A heavy snow sweeps through and covers the streets. Not a blizzard, but thick white fluff that forms a blanket overnight. The snowplows aren't prepared and it's simply… quiet. People stay indoors, waiting for the weather to clear a bit. There are light flurries throughout the next few days, topping off the snowfall, and for the most part, the city just shuts down.

Even ADI puts out a notice that employees should stay home. Stay safe, stay cocooned in what warmth you have. Just… stay. Each day the message comes out from a generic work email, help@adi.com:

Shelter in place. No work today. Stay safe. We'll get by without you.

The next day is the same. The snow piles higher overnight, covering windows and freezing doors shut.

Shelter in place. No work today. Stay safe. We're s̴̳͘͠ͅt̶̨͂̍r̵̯̼͊͝ŭ̷͚̳g̶̠͋̓g̴̳̱̔͘l̸̤̻̎i̷̭͑͠ń̵̗͜͝g̷̤͂, but we'll get by.

Day after day. Frost creeps into the corridors of the ADI housing complex and the Flophouse. There is no food or other supplies coming and it feels like the hours are stretching out more and more.

Shelter in place. No work today. S̴̬̓t̸͉̿a̴̫̿ỳ̸͉ ̸̠̉s̸̲͆a̶͙͊f̶̢̏ē̷̤. We can't keep doing this, but we have to.

Attempts to leave the housing areas will be met with walls of snow that appear to be impossibly high. Around the flophouse, especially, it's as though they've been placed into the bottom of an icy hole. The walls stretch up higher than anyone can climb or fly, with only a pinprick of bluish light coming down from the opening above, deeper than anyone can dig through. Not even a magical portal or beam of heat can get through. There's just a wall of snow and/or ice through the portal and more snow beyond the beam. What's more, anyone who has supernatural abilities or is tied to a patron, even those not actively trying to feed that patron, will find themselves feeling increasingly drained, like something is sapping away whatever reserves they have, leaving them hungrier and hungrier, their powers waning by the minute, with a very limited set of options to feed upon.

S̸͉͗ḣ̷̦ȩ̵͒l̷͈̍t̸͎̽e̵̺̓ř̵̠ in place. No work today. S̴̬̓t̸͉̿a̴̫̿ỳ̸͉ ̸̠̉s̸̲͆a̶͙͊f̶̢̏ē̷̤. Why aren't they coming? This is their fault.

S̶͔͆h̸̅ͅȅ̴̮l̵̬̈́t̷̯́e̴̥̐ř̷̙ ̶̳̕ì̷̲n̵͓͌ ̷̮̋p̵̟̈́l̶̢̎a̷̺͠c̷̻̈́ḙ̵̊.̷̦̇ ̴̬̀N̸͕͌o̵͎̊ work today. S̴̬̓t̸͉̿a̴̫̿ỳ̸͉ ̸̠̉s̸̲͆a̶͙͊f̶̢̏ē̷̤. Why aren't ỹ̸̡͐ͅô̷͕̫ù̶̟̣͊ coming? Ḟ̴͓i̷̤͗x̶̨͝ ̴̜͒t̵̯̅h̴͔͛i̸͖̽s̶̱̚!

((ooc: Plain text versions of all messages are located here (LINK). You can also hover your mouse over the distorted text for hover text translations.))

➥ Chasm

Photo with a heavily blurred background showing a city street with people walking during the winter. The foreground has small snowflakes falling.
(cw: warped perceptions, memory-loss, implied trauma, supernaturally-induced feelings of missing out)

You've missed a step.

After what seems an interminable time, someone is finally able to tunnel through, to get out of the massive snowy prison everyone has been trapped in and-

And the city looks normal. Checking the wall you just came through, it's not actually there. As soon as one person makes it out, the effect collapses for everyone. There's a wintry wonderland of Gloucester beyond, and it seems like things have gone on without everyone. But there is a sense in the air that something has happened, something earth-shattering that everyone missed out on.

People on the streets seem to have a look about them. Haunted? Something happened, but when they're questioned about it, they can't seem to come up with an answer as to what. They just seem… confused, overwhelmed. Yes, something happened. No, they can't tell you what. Weren't you here for it? Didn't you see it? Didn't you feel it? How could you have missed something that big?

That feeling will sit with characters as time passes, dragging down on them. It may even begin to feel like a physical weight for the most affected. You missed it. You could have done something to change things, but you missed it.

➥ Stuck

An African American man with a graying beard is shown in profile. He is hunched over and holding his head, clearly stressed in some way.
(cw: flooding; natural disasters; damage to homes, workplaces, and possessions; references to burial, suffocation, crushing, and murder; supernaturally induced anxiety, responsibility fatigue, and feelings of inadequacy; illness.)

The feeling of having missed something only intensifies back at ADI headquarters. It looks as though the storm itself attacked the building; several exterior doors have been broken off their hinges, ice expanded within the metal past its breaking point, and the expansive water damage and muck ground into the carpets, walls, and battered elevators conjure images of an indoor avalanche…or a glacier pushing its way through, slow but biting cold and utterly inexorable.

There's no time to dwell on what's happened, on the days of hunger and isolation nor whatever disaster occurred here. There's too much to do, too much to fix, one crisis after another. There's the obvious problem: the need to repair the building and proof it against the cold wind that still blows in across the foyer, but no matter one's work area there is more to do than can be done. Endless requests and projects flood in from every quarter, all of them urgent, all of them important. As soon as one thing is finished, three more problems emerge: contracts to manage, investigations to be made into reported phenomena, glitching computers to repair, vandals to repel from the gaping wound that is the lobby entrance in the middle of the night–the list goes on, and on, and on.

Rumors circulate, stories about a prisoner in the depths of the building's secret basements who disappeared into the crushing ice and grit that had filled the cells, disagreements about whether it was a rescue or if the unnamed prisoner was suffocated, snuffed out by some indiscriminately vengeful force. No one seems to know the truth; no one even seems to know the name of the prisoner, who they were, what they had done to end up there. No one has the time to look too deeply into it; even head of security Neil Grace, is caught leaping from task to task, never catching up long enough to turn his attention to the matter in any meaningful capacity.

The struggle to keep up, the futile effort to keep one's head above water, never relents. No matter one's priorities at work or at home, something is always wrong, always in need of attention, the knowledge of things undone needling at the edge of consciousness like a toothache in one's soul. The Flophouse is in a disastrous state worse even than ADI headquarters, a wild-eyed Bonnie all but pouncing on residents with an endless list of tasks to fix it, to make the building livable again. At the ADI apartments, exhausted caretaker Benny Holt seems to traipse up and down the halls at all hours of the day and night with his toolbelt, gaunt and exhausted and tapping at doors in reply to requests to fix plumbing, lighting, and water damage that never seem to stay fixed. Local staff and interdimensional residents alike begin to fall ill, bodies and minds burning out under the strain, but giving yourself time to rest and heal means piling more work on those around you.

There is no time. There is no rest. There is only the work you are failing to complete.

➥ Sink

A sunny day over small beach dunes. There is low-growing vegetation on some of the dunes.
(cw: claustrophobia, suffocation or near-suffocation)

As if that isn’t enough, there’s still investigative work to be done. Once again, it seems as if Coffins Beach is a site of interest, as ADI has been tipped off that there might be something (or things) in the water. Again.

For safety’s sake - and perhaps to make sure that no one collapses out there alone - pairs are sent out to the beach to keep an eye on the water and to see if anything interesting has washed up. Orders are to both watch the water and walk along the beaches and through the dunes nearby.

Watching the water doesn't seem to yield any results, no matter how long it's observed. Nothing washes ashore either. But then there's the dunes. Sooner or later, it seems like climbing them and walking among them is all there is to do. Anyone who has spent any time at Coffins Beach might notice that they seem a bit larger than they have been in months past. Not inconceivably, but noticeably. There are dunes tall enough to scale the sides up to the top, though some are still no more than little mounds.

It doesn't matter which, when you fall into it. Small hill or gentle mound, one minute you’re walking on the surface. The next minute, as you put your foot down, it begins to sink. It can't be sinking, of course, sand dunes on a beach don't have quicksand. They’re nothing but dense piles of sand. You can't fall into a sand dune.

You are falling into a sand dune. There’s a hole in the sand, just wide enough for your body and you have fallen into it. Perhaps you're a little bit lucky and your partner witnessed it. Maybe you aren't and you suddenly just disappear. It's a long fall, though, down a tube of sand that seems hard-packed around the edges. At first. The drop is just far enough that light can be seen from above, but not the top of the hole itself. Call out. You might be heard. And maybe your partner is already trying to get you out.

But the moment you hit the bottom, it seems like the hole becomes unstable. Especially if someone is above and trying to reach down. Even if they're not, though, sand begins to crumble from the edges and sides of the tunnel, falling down on the body trapped at the bottom of it. A slow trickle, not a burial. Not yet. Still, it could be, if rescue doesn't come, if the person left up above can't dig you out. Meanwhile, the sand falls and falls, pressing down on limbs and creeping up your body. It’s cold and struggling only seems to make the sand fall faster.

Surely you’ll be rescued before it covers you completely. Or soon after. Surely.

➥ 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 prompts should be sufficient and ordinary people will act like… ordinary people! You're welcome to make up any details beyond that for your specific scene. Please remember that character deaths are permanent and plan accordingly!
DEEP (16-20 February) - Characters will be trapped in their homes for five days, confined to either the Flophouse or the individual apartment buildings within the ADI complex. It will feel like significantly longer, even for characters with fully accurate internal clocks. Travel outside of these bounds will be impossible, even with the use of supernatural abilities. The network will be fully operational; though, not the regular internet or anything beyond the internal ADI network. Characters will also receive periodic messages from help@adi.com begging for help, even as they order everyone to shelter in place.

Characters who are outside their homes when the snow starts will find they're able to get inside just fine, but will not be able to get out again. Characters may be trapped with people who are not their standard roommates/at their usual housing, if they're unlucky (or lucky).
CHASM (21-24 February) - The first character(s) to break through the snow barrier will feel an especially powerful weight fall upon them before there's suddenly just… nothing. The snow walls are gone. Even if another character was in the middle of digging through, the snow is just there one minute, then gone the next. Characters will experience a profound sense that they have missed something. This may dissipate within a day or maintain over several days. Anyone trying to question residents of the city will receive confusion and incredulity, but no answers. There is no indication that anyone seemed to notice the walls of snow. Even some of the natives at ADI will be perplexed. All non-native NPCs and some native NPCs will have experienced the same thing as the PC characters.
STUCK (21-28 February) - The need to be doing more than they can will be ever-present for all NPCs and player characters. Those who would choose to eschew responsibilities at work or try to reprioritize will find that there is always something in need of doing that is important to them, to the point where new problems may seem to arise in impossibly, almost cartoonishly quick succession. Tasks and problems can be mundane matters related to work, building repair, and living spaces; as well as minor supernatural occurrences similar to past Dogtown TDM prompts (players are welcome to make up small supernatural encounters; anything that would affect other characters beyond a single thread should be submitted as a player plot). Characters may find themselves feeling mentally foggy and struggling to focus on core issues in the face of this inundation of needs from the people and environment around them, and may fall sick from overwork. These effects will overlap with both the Chasm and Sink prompts.
SINK (24-28 February) - Characters who find themselves falling into one of the dunes will end up in what appears to be a vertical tunnel that is definitely too high to climb back out of, regardless of how tall the dune actually seemed to be when they were on top of it. The temperature of the sand is very cold and in addition to possible suffocation, characters may find themselves slowly freezing. Struggling or rescue attempts will quickly make the walls of the tunnel unstable. Additionally, the tunnel may not be exactly straight, depositing characters slightly or more than slightly off of their original falling point.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh, christ...

[Jon pushes himself up into a sitting position where he'd laid down on the floor. He peers towards the door, with an apologetic expression.]

Not you. Sorry. Did you need something?

[Garner steps a bit more into the room to be visible, albeit with a measure of uncertainty.]

I was merely checking to see if you could use some help. Someone mentioned you seemed...bogged down.

If you've already company, however...

[At least, that's his assumption: some unseen companion to whom the man was talking. Garner couldn't hear the shifting of another person, but that wasn't foolproof.]

No, no company. Just me.

And I'm fine. The paperwork can just... rot.

So…[He pauses as he fully comes into the room and closes the door behind him.] …you were telling the paperwork. To fuck off.

[He listens, head cocking to the side.]

I don’t know that it’s listening, by the sound of it.

...not exactly, but close enough.

[He should voice his suspicions, but that's more information than he wants to reveal to a stranger right now.]

It doesn't need to. It doesn't change my sentiment.

Right.

[He's still half tempted to just leave, but he'd wanted to offer help to someone and this someone seemed to need it.]

I'd offer to shake your hand, but I'm afraid I don't trust being able to find it. [He offers a small wave instead.]

I'm Garner. Somewhat new to all this still...but I can...toss the papers for you if you'd rather not work on them? Or maybe just join you on the floor.

Well, hello? Apologies in advance for when things try to horribly murder you or worse.

[He shrugs, which is relatively impressive when he's lying on the floor.]

Eh, leave them. They're- well, a bit of a trap. I would recommend ignoring tasks that are given to you beyond the norm. Don't let it push you into feeling buried in work.

[A trap? Well, okay then.]

Things could potentially try to murder me horribly back home as well. At least there are apparently no cults.

[That's what he'd been told by someone else here and he didn't seem to have a reason to lie.]

I don't know that I have a lot of work to bury myself in, but I...have been itching to help. You're saying try...not to help?

[Jon snorts at that.]

Oh, there are almost definitely cults. Supernatural entities which can bestow powers on people? There will be cults.

[Jon cocks his head slightly, trying to think about how to explain it.]

You've been given the introduction, yes? Various 'entities'. The Desolation, the Vast, etcetera?

Oh

[Well, yes, that's what he told Bruno, but no one else had confirmed or denied it, so while that isn't exactly comforting news, he's at least glad his gut instinct hadn't led him astray.]

Good to know, but yes, I have been given the introduction. These entities sound a little like slightly weaker Betrayer Gods. From my world, that is.

[Or other such entities people made pacts and things with.]

You'll have to tell me about those. Sounds interesting.

But yes... they're not strictly literal. Corruption doesn't have to be about rot or bugs, it could be a toxic love.

the Buried doesn't have to be... actually getting buried, it can be crushing debt, or... work piling up and never being able to complete.

I'm simply choosing not to feed it.

When there's less...pressure in the air, perhaps.

[He wouldn't mind talking about what he knew, but some tea and a better atmosphere might be kinder. Besides, this was much more relevant information.]

Ah. Does...feeding it not benefit you in some way? Or is it only certain ones? Or perhaps only if you have abilities of particular note..?

[He finds a patch of floor to settle himself on as he asks his questions, though the last one trails off as though he was half reasoning it out for himself rather than directly asking.]

Yes. It is rather... heavy, isn't it?

[It seems to have its claws into the entire building.]

Not feeding it might make it lose interest. Things that feed off fear can't feed off your fear if you just aren't scared.

Also I just find it satisfying to not.

Ah...a rebel of sorts. I can respect that.

[He can respect it a lot, actually, it was hard to look at things with more power than you could conceive of and tell them no.]

Then I hope you continue to evade it's interest for as long as possible. I don't know that all here will be so strong.

I wouldn't exactly call myself that. It's more out of spite than anything.

[Stubbornness and a refusal to give up some of tht power he had once weilded over them.]

It's not great, I agree. But these things feed on people being afraid, overwhelmed. They gain power from it.

That sounds familiar.

[Perhaps evil entities were the same in nature no matter the plane. If so, there was little they could do against them but resist.]

Unfortunately, in my experience...it is nearly inevitable that people will fear. Most overcome it or defy it, but that doesn't stop it from still occurring. If these things gain power from that basic emotion, then as long as we exist, they will as well.

Oh fear is perfectly natural.

So are bacterial infections but we don't just not take antibiotics because of that.

....I'm sorry, take what?

[Infections, sure, but bact-what...?]

Ah, antibiotics?

Medicine that kills bacteria? So if you have an infection it helps make you better?

Oh...we simply use certain types of plants and herbs or poultices put together by healers, if healing magic isn't available, at least.

Antibiotics sound useful.

Many plants do have antibacterial properties and... yes, antibiotics are very useful.

Huh. Learning something new makes each day worthwhile. Or so they say.

[He stands with a small stretch, his clouded eyes sweeping near where the man lays.]

I will leave you to your flat contemplations, thank you for indulging my questions.

I certainly do.

[It's just usually not anything he wants to know. He doesn't need to know the horrible way someone's relative, or friend, or former teacher died when he talks to them, or the dark thoughts that someone is having.]

You're welcome. And if you do get sick or have an injury, I very much recommend going to the medical centre rather than picking random plants.

[He smiles briefly.]

I will endeavor to head your wisdom, thank you.

[Then turns to head back out into the hallway and maybe find someone who would take his help. Or....maybe not. He'd think about it.]

[Jon smiles back, albeit a little strained.]

Take care!

[And with that, he lies back down, determined to spite the Buried as much as he can.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Event - Heavy

Re: Stuck

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