Event - Heavy

[apocalypsehowmods]

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Heavy

➥ Deep

(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

(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

(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

(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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Comments

[myfavoritemurder]

[There's a rrrrrrip as one of the coat's arms tears - not all the way off, but enough that it'll leave Callisto freezing even after she does get fully dressed again, and necessitate either a new coat or a good patch job. Still, this barely even registers with Callisto, and even though that's due to a lack of self-preservation and self-care than any sort of well-intentioned heroism, Beau gets to benefit from it all the same. Scooting up to the edge of the pit, she tosses the clothing rope down again, peering into the gloom.]

Can you reach? What's down there, Tartarus?

[Har har! Jokes!]

[lesbeau]

[Somebody will be able to sew that, but probably not Beau. Regardless, that's hardly the issue now, and Beau makes a mental note to ask what Tartarus means whenever she gets out of here.]

There's nothing! It's just-- dirt, sand, nothing!

[She tries to reach up again, but as soon as she does, she can feel a slight tremor in the hole and sand starts to pour in on her head, making her sputter and tilt her chin back down.]

Fuck, and now it's in my mouth. You're probably gonna need to dig, it's not stable!

[myfavoritemurder]

If it's not stable, then I'll end up down there, too!

[But all the same, she starts to dig - just using her hands, in absence of any tools.]

[lesbeau]

Then-- then don't do it yourself, I don't know--

[Well that's not the best advice to be giving someone who needs to be saving you, and she knows this. Beau curses again, tucking her head down to her shirt to take a deep breath. She can do this. She's trained to handle worse. She can do this.]

Find somebody who can blow this whole hole out then!

[myfavoritemurder]

I don't know anybody who can do that! Do I seem like a people person to you?

[She starts to slip, then snarls, digging her fingers into the shifting sand in an effort to gain some sort of traction. It works, but only just. She keeps furiously digging regardless.]

Is this helping?!

[lesbeau]

Not really on both accounts!

[Everything keeps falling, and there's sand starting to overcome her hips. She's got to keep going or she's fucked.]

Is there anything else on the sand up there? Or is the top clear? I'm gonna-- try going sideways or something!

[myfavoritemurder]

It's clear!

[She hisses again as she scrambles backwards, narrowly avoiding being casualty to another cave-in.]

But hurry!

[lesbeau]

[It's clear is all she needs to hear. Beau's legs are already pressed up into her chest, so she presses her back against the wall and just pushes back with all her might. It's difficult to move, and she keeps struggling, but it seems to only be caving in further. The sand is going into her mouth, her eyes screwed closed as she tries to climb, but she has no idea how far down she is and--]

Fuck!

[She's just going up now, as much as she can, even though she can't see and doesn't feel like she's moving. But Callisto, at least, will see disturbances in the sand a few feet from where Beau fell, suggesting she's not too far from the top even though she doesn't know it.]

[myfavoritemurder]

Ugh.

[This is so annoying, so insane, so ridiculous. Callisto shoots out a hand and clamps onto Beau's shoulder - nails digging in, gripping hard, making no attempt to be gentle. But she'll do her best to haul her up and out, shoving at her roughly once her upper body is free, trying to roll her away from the hole.]

[lesbeau]

[Oh, doesn't she know it. Beau has no qualms about a little pain making her avoid death, and Callisto's hand only comes right at the moment where she's starting to actually think this might get her. The fear was always creeping, but this felt like a real pressing, tangible issue-- something in her throat that really makes her think this might be it.

But then there's a hand, and the pain grounds her to grit her teeth and kick up- and once she sees the light she knows she's got this. As Callisto rolls away, Beau all but rolls herself out of the hole, wiggling until she's almost lying down and then traveling with a wider surface area until the ground feels more solid.

Once she's anywhere that isn't trying to eat her, she just ends up on her back, breathing hard. She's absolutely covered in sand, and spits a bit of it out of her mouth.]

That. Fucking. Sucked.

[myfavoritemurder]

You should have been more careful.

[Callisto snaps, though it's without any seriously-meant bite. She will verbally blame Beau for this not because she actually holds her at fault, or even because she's angry with her, but because she's essentially always angry on some level or another and Beau is currently a nice, convenient target.

After a moment or two of lying out flat on her back, breathing heavily, she finally pushes herself up on her elbows.]

What now?

[lesbeau]

Oh fuck off.

[Same back at you, Callisto. She takes a moment to breathe herself before wiping the back of her hand across some of her clothes, and then across her mouth to make it slightly less grainy.]

I mean. Now for me is getting off all this fucking sand and then telling ADI their reports about the water were stupid and wrong. Probably with some fuck you words in there.

[myfavoritemurder]

Do you want to handle that? You're so eloquent.

[It's a bit too deadpan a comment to be properly teasing, but there's no condemnation to it, either. Swear away, Beau. You give ADI a well-deserved what-for.

Callisto bends, filters some sand through her fingers as if to prove to herself that at least this patch of it is normal, and then straightens again, moving to head out.]

Besides, I don't think most of them like me much.

[lesbeau]

Oh, I'm gonna handle it. I'm gonna make them handle it.

[She's gonna march into someone's office and shake all the sand from her pants out on their desk. She won't, probably. But like, she might.]

I don't think they like me a lot either, but I get results. So. As long as I actually give them a report it can say fuck as many times as I want it to, and it is gonna say fuck so many times.

[Eventhough she doesn't especially want to, Beau sits up, brushing a bit more sand out of her tits.]

Fucking horror bullshit ruining things I like. Figures. Thanks for not running off, though.

[myfavoritemurder]

Oh, please don't thank me. I thought about it so many times.

[Whether this is actually true, or if it means anything that she didn't end up doing it, is something that she elects not to comment on.]

It's not like I stayed out of the goodness of my heart. After all, there isn't any of that left.

[lesbeau]

Aww, so you do like me.

[Her grin is lopsided and tired, but still just a little smug. It isn't meant to have real teeth to it- she's way too exhausted for that- but it wouldn't be her if it didn't have some tease.]

Good to know.