Event- Siren

[apocalypsehowmods]

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Siren

➥ The Public Eye

(cw: potential body dysmorphia, loss of control, human-caused pollution, animals in distress/animal cruelty/injury to animals (specifically seabirds for one small portion of this prompt), body horror, uncanny valley)

Like most towns of an appreciable size in America, Gloucester, MA, is graced with something of an overabundance of video cameras. Perhaps even more-so than most small towns given the presence of ADI and the supernatural phenomenon that regularly plague the place. The mechanical eyes gaze silently out at the world, sentinels or sneaks, gathering information. And there is something very, very wrong with them.

It's not every camera. It's not even consistent among cameras, but every so often, perhaps related to whatever hacker has already been causing problems, something shifts. Those walking nearby (or even far from) a video camera will find their consciousness momentarily ripped from their bodies and transported into the camera's viewer. There, they'll be granted the vision of the camera, whether that's grainy black and white, full color, or maybe even night-vision. For those lucky enough to be transported to a camera near their own bodies, they will be able to see themselves twitching, moving irregularly, as if something is trying to gain control.

There seems to be no way to control the camera they're in. It is stationary or perhaps it moves in a set turning motion. Those trapped within have no control for the minute or so they seem to be transported. If they can take a moment to calm themselves and take advantage of this new perspective, of course… there might be rather interesting things to see, including:

• A massive, scaled form moving out in the deep water off of Gloucester's shoreline. With the night-vision capabilities granted by these particular visions, those trapped might even catch sight of strange figures swimming near the impossibly large creature. They throw… something at it and the vast creature thrashes, kicking up enormous waves that rocket toward the coast.
  
  
• Piles of garbage are cast up onto the beaches by some of the rogue waves that seem to be kicking up. Some of them move and almost appear to have a humanoid form before they simply fall apart, becoming a pile of simple rubbish.
  
  
• Unidentifiable figures in dark clothes are moving around the city at night, spray painting eyes in alleyways, across buildings, anywhere they can find that cameras might be able to see. If someone were to catch a glimpse as they were just finishing up their artwork, they might notice that the spray painted eye blinks.
  
  
• A small growth of horrible, lamb-esque plant creatures seems to have cropped up in an alleyway near Things of Beauty, one of the curiosity stores in town. There aren't a lot of them and they seem to be small and young. They're also in an out-of-the way spot that might be difficult to notice for more people.
  
  
• A group of youths appears to have found a weak point in the fencing around Dogtown. As dusk descends, they can be seen traveling into the closed park. It would seem some refuse to be deterred by law enforcement and ADI.
  
  
• Head of ADI Security, Neil Grace, seems to be spending his lunch hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays entering into an unmarked building to do… something. He enters and exits completely alone.
  
  
• Non-native (recently demoted) PR person, Reyes Amador, seems to be in some remote back alley in town some evenings. They have a large fishing hook that may be familiar to anyone who saw the flayed bodies on the beach. They also have a caged seagull with them. There's clear upset on their face as they reach into the cage and manage to plant the hook into the bird before quickly shutting and locking the cage. The bird goes wild within its confines, attempting to attack Reyes as they cover their face and appear to cry to themselves.
  
  

➥ Rogue Wave

(cw: thassalophobia, large creatures, drowning, flooding, (un)natural disasters, human-caused pollution, animals in distress/injury to animals)

rogue wave (n.) a random, enormous ocean wave that sometimes travels at an angle to prevailing seas.

The beaches are closed.

To be fair, the beaches have been closed since bodies started washing up on shore and left ADI's PR department working overtime to keep the grim scene out of national news. Now, though, the problem is rapidly becoming more vast than what horrors the sea dumps ashore: the ocean itself seems to be trying to relocate inland. The first rogue wave to hit the harbor early in the morning on August 16 is devastating enough on its own, battering boats against their docks and drowning one unfortunate fisherman who was swept out with the wave when it retreated. That incident alone would have been a freak occurrence, a tragic and frightening tale but ultimately a mundane one born of the unpredictability of the natural world.

But then the next rogue wave hits, and the next after that, and the next after that. They're not regular or predictable; the waves don't hit in the same place each time or at regular times. One day might be a reprieve of calm, and the next see massive waves battering the coast one after another. Gloucester is taking a beating, and the rest of the region is suffering along with the city. Homes and businesses on waterfront property are left abandoned in the face of unpredictable, uncaring destruction, and flooding extends inland. The air in Gloucester is thick with salt and humidity, the ground increasingly soggy underfoot as one nears the sea. ADI sends out custodial crews to batten down and place sandbags at headquarters and the housing complex. Thanks to ongoing repair efforts, Bonnie's Flophouse is, for once, not flooded, though Bonnie and the Visionary are pessimistically preparing for the eventuality of having to evacuate their basement apartment once again. Neighbors around Gloucester are in similar distress; for the civic-minded there is no end of work for volunteers in water-proofing buildings or helping salvage that which has already flooded.

The why of it all will take some legwork to discover. Within a few days ADI manages to spin up a story about seismological disturbances on the ocean floor, which...actually isn't that far from the truth, as far as anyone can initially tell. The rogue waves all originate from roughly the same patch of open ocean, and the best view from shore is at the far end of Coffin Beach. Investigators are strongly cautioned to have an escape plan to reach high ground at a moment's notice, and anyone known to lack outdoor survival skills will be officially discouraged from going. Observation efforts will be hit or miss; one might strain one's eyes for hours and see nothing but a few erratic ocean swells.

Get lucky enough to see more, and your luck might quickly run out. The creature that appears offshore might be mistaken for a whale breaching in the first few seconds, before one realizes that the shape is wrong, what one mistook for the whale's body resolving into the reptilian head of a serpent whose body goes on and on and on, heralding the realization that it is so much further away than one first thought. The creature is impossibly huge, a leviathan that could swallow a cargo ship whole. Its coils rise from the surface of the ocean before crashing back down with a low, bone-rattling bellow of pain. From this distance the human-sized creatures that surround it and provide the apparent source of its distress are mere specks.

Hope you remember your exit plan. A mere flick of this serpent's tail would be enough to capsize a ship, and this is a full-body thrash of pain. The waves offshore swell as the creature submerges, a wall of dark water heading all too quickly toward the beach, carrying yet more garbage with it.

➥ Thicker Than Water

(cw: thassalophobia, large creatures, claustrophobia, blood, siren sounds in the first link, hallucinated death)

Though few, the towering forms of the signal tower creatures still stalk about the edges of the town, largely still and passive but for the blaring tones they occasionally cause. They could almost be forgotten about, a new and eerie installation to Gloucester's skyline but nothing too distressing as long as you don’t look up, right? At least until the day a new sound issues from some of the phones.

The effect is immediate. The smell of rusted metal and a gentle chirp of electronic equipment mixing with a less than comforting creek of metal on all sides. One second you’re on the city street and the next, you’re in the cramped and stale-aired interior of a submarine. Large pipes line the sides of the sub and two bare-bulbs in metal cages light the interior with a harsh glare. Oxygen and depth meters frame the single porthole window to the outside above an instrument panel that displays coordinates, a compass, and simple controls for piloting the rust-encrusted submarine.

When you look around, the back of the sub is only a few paces away, the space clearly meant for no more than one or two people. At the back is a small, blank, video display surrounded by additional pressure gauges. A large map sits beside it, the topography of it faded and nearly useless, but the lines of the coordinate grid can just be made out. Between the map and the display, is a rectangular button backlit in dull orange. When pressed, the display struggles to life with a whirring sound before finally displaying an image of the empty ocean ahead in black and white.

Luckily, you’re not alone here and you and your new partner can quickly find instructions laying around; though, the edges seem warped and encrusted with a rust-red and flaky substance. It’s an easy task: move to the listed coordinates and angle, snap a picture of the anomaly, move on to the next. Simple. You certainly don’t seem to have much of a choice as any hatches appear to be welded shut and the forward window is covered by a sheet of metal as the sub lurches to life. Though, not before you perhaps notice the ocean outside isn’t a deep blue as you might expect, but an unsettling red.

Probably fine.

Eventually, you reach depth and idle, the submarine now left in your capable hands. Those more willing to explore will find the ocean around them entirely unfamiliar. While rocky outcroppings make maneuvering hazardous, there’s also the odd, sharp plantlife to consider and the occasional tube-like shapes that wave about and knock against the sub like over-eager worms. Those particularly lucky might even catch sight of something else out there. Something unfathomably huge. Whether the pair of you decide to follow instructions or not, in time, the creaking of the metal sharpens and feels as if it presses in on you, like it might just crumble. Seams warp and shift and the bottom of the sub begins to slowly fill with a thick, fresh, blood.

The oxygen meter steadily drops and as you move or don’t, something seems to knock against the outside of the metal walls, surely too thin to protect you from whatever lurks outside. Which will get to you first: whatever lives in blood or the threat of suffocation? Perhaps if you finish your task quickly, you won’t need to find out.

➥ Nereid

(cw: human-caused pollution, animals in peril, potential animal death, potential drowning)
(Additional Note: Thank you to Alexis, Katrina's player, for reviewing and contributing to this prompt.)

It's taken a few days to arrange for the boat and organize their forces, but an expedition out into deeper water is underway, spearheaded by Katrina, to investigate the flayed bodies that have been washing up on shore. Sable, ADI's primary contact at the Docks, has volunteered her small vessel for the task. It might be dangerous, but with the waves lashing Gloucester's banks and infrastructure, it's either help with this or deal with the fact she's not going to have a place to do business in town soon.

With the bodies cropping up at night, volunteers who take to the water are outfitted with night-vision goggles, harpoon spears, knives, and nets. However, the boat heads out during the day for anyone there to freedive. "This is not race for speed or depth," Katrina advises. "Be calm. Do not waste breath or strength. Save both for when you fight. If creatures here are like ones from my home, they are strong, and they fight. Do not swim here if you are afraid. Do not push your body." For weaker swimmers, there's plenty to do on the boat under Sable's watchful eye. Keeping a lookout, prepping the nets in case there's something that needs to be hauled aboard, and spotting and disentangling sea creatures that might need some help with whatever plastic or line that's been caught on them are the primary duties.

The boat sets anchor, keeping an eye out for any rogue waves, and it's into the water for the freedivers. The first thing that becomes abundantly clear is that there is a lot of trash off the coast of Gloucester. Far more than seems reasonable, in fact. It's as though someone tipped a cargo ship containing heaps of the stuff out nearby. The second thing to become clear is that at least some of the trash is alive. The mermaids, if you could call them that, seem to be made of the stuff. Their long fingers are made of hooks and broken bits of metal, their webbing is plastic bags and discarded netting, their hair is fishing line and wires. Whatever has been thrown into the ocean has been pulled together into these merciless beings. Any diver grabbed by one will need to think quickly and fight hard to escape, or they'll find themselves rapidly pulled deeper, limbs entangled.

It's not a completely one-sided fight. The harpoon spears seem to stun them momentarily when pieces are knocked apart or off. But it's getting a net over the mermaids and hauling them up into the open air that seems to kill them. Mermaids raised out of the water for more than a few seconds break apart into lifeless trash. Maybe get some trash skimmers. There's a lot of clean-up to do out here.

➥ Mod Notes

• GENERAL - Players are welcome to play background 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! Although, the people of Gloucester seem to be becoming more and more aware of supernatural phenomenon and they are frightened by it. You're welcome to make up any details beyond that for your specific scene. Also, please remember that character deaths are permanent and plan accordingly!
  
  
• THE PUBLIC EYE (16-31 August) - Characters who do not have actual bodies can still have their consciousness hijacked and pulled into a camera. In those instances, if they can see where their 'body' was, they'll simply be able to see the device that their ghostly form is usually attached to. This seems to be an entirely supernatural phenomenon with no coding or commands being executed to cause this. Cameras that are checked will appear to be completely ordinary to the technological eye. Those who might have some kind of supernatural sense that they are feeding might get some read off of various cameras that indicate they might be about to snag someone's consciousness. The various items that characters observe in cameras are welcome to be followed up on. For prompts that involve unnamed NPCs, players are welcome to assume interactions and take control of those NPCs. Anyone wishing to try to fix something (like the vegetable lamb infestation) will be encouraged to take care of it directly by ADI with another team member. Named NPCs can be found and/or confronted in the NPC Top Level below.
  
  
• ROGUE WAVE (16-31 August) - Characters will have the opportunity to assist locals in a variety of ways; players are welcome to invent their own scenarios for assisting local residents and businesses (as well as shoring up ADI property) and play any unnamed NPCs as desired. Characters who are able to get a better look at the serpent through magical or technological means will see that it has fishhooks and other detritus stabbed into its scales and that the creatures harassing it are the same mermaids seen in the Nereid prompt. The serpent's thrashing and subsequent rogue waves will diminish as the mermaids are killed off following the events of that prompt.
  
  
• THICKER THAN WATER (16-31 August) - No more than two characters will be trapped in the submarine at the same time, players are welcome to come up with alien plant life and structures they might find in the camera, but there will be very little life found beyond the encounters with the leviathan. Bones of impossibly huge creatures, brief snaps of a fin or a scale, huge teeth, and other such oddities may also be spotted at the listed coordinates. Characters can either finish the assignment or simply wait it out, but the pressure will increase, filling the chamber slowly with blood. Before they can drown, however, the sub will be crushed either through pressure or through the jaws of the creature, and characters will find themselves suddenly jolted awake again where they’d been before the siren sounded. No time (or very little time) appears to have passed. They will be unharmed; though, they might find blood still lingering under their nails or trickling from the corner of their mouths or eyes.
  
  
• NEREID (19 August) - Sable's boat, the Minx is a large vessel with plenty of room for as many characters as might like to come on this adventure. Characters do not have to get into the water and will be relatively safe as long as they stay in the boat. Sea creatures tangled with the garbage include things like seabirds, sea turtles, and even a few dolphins, seals, and sharks. Sable will be able to guide characters on how to safely catch creatures to free them or to help them from a safe distance. There's plenty of deck space for if and when characters need to start hauling up mermaids. Once characters provide info on what's going on, ADI will take efforts to start a large-scale clean-up operation with multiple rented vessels to dispose of the mermaids. Players are welcome to have their characters assisting with those endeavors throughout the end of the month.

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Comments

Thicker than Water

[cardinalrule]

Hunter doesn't know all that much about phones either, but he's never heard of them being able to teleport anyone before. That ability is reserved for doors, thank you, not weird little communication rectangles.

So suddenly finding himself (and Flapjack) amidst a bunch of rusty pipes is enough to completely throw him off. Instinctively, he grabs for Flapjack, who shifts to his staff form, and Hunter points him at Hickey. "I don't know! Where are we?? What did you do?!" Because obviously, this is Hickey's fault somehow.

[friendsfordinner]

"Why the hell is this my fault?" he snaps. "And what the hell happened with that bird you had?" That bird that is now apparently a staff? Magic is weird.

"I don't even know how we arrived here to begin with. My phone made a noise, I checked it, and here we are."

[cardinalrule]

Magic is super weird, and Hunter makes an irritated noise before lowering his staff. Okay, okay, Hickey probably didn't do anything. He knows that, from a rational perspective, that is very unlikely.

He just doesn't like getting teleported to weird places.

"The same thing happened to me," he says slowly, looking around, deliberately not answering that question about Flapjack. "They never mentioned our phones being able to do something like this. Do you think an entity is involved, or did the phones just break?"

[friendsfordinner]

"It's got to be an entity," he frowns. Hickey leans over towards the controls, poking slightly and prodding a few of the buttons. "How the hell would the phone teleport you somewhere else? It's a bloody phone."

Admittedly, Hickey doesn't know how phones work. But he does know they aren't supposed to do that.

He's found a button to raise the shade on the main forward window. As the shade raises up, the blood that surrounds him is suddenly visible. There's a pause before, "That's not how it's supposed to look."

[cardinalrule]

"There are things containing magic that allow for teleportation in the demon realm," Hunter replies, sniffing. That includes Flapjack.

He steps over to where Hickey is, looking down at the controls. While he can fly airships no problem these things look incredibly alien to him, so he doesn't offer any help. He just watches quietly, so when the shade is raise he looks up and stares, totally bewildered.

"That - is that supposed to be water?? Are we under the ocean?!" Oh Titan he's so confused.

[friendsfordinner]

To be fair, Hickey's method of working the controls is 'push a button and hope.' This is definitely more advanced than he's used to and he's just not gonna say it!

"What the hell sort of ocean is red?" Hickey points out. "If anything, it's...I dunno. One of those entities mucking about?"

[cardinalrule]

"I don't know! Maybe there's a red ocean in the human realm!" Hunter argues back, though of course as soon as he says it he realizes how ridiculous it sounds. Sighing heavily, he moves closer to the window, peering out. "It must be. There must be something we can do to get out of here."

[friendsfordinner]

"Right. Well, a tip from someone from the human realm: our oceans are blue." There's a pause before, "Or kind of this awful greyish green color if you're close to a city."

Pollution and run-off sure are a thing.

Experimentally, Hickey presses a button. Nothing happens. He presses another button. This is a terrible strategy but, as he hasn't noticed the instruction manual on a nearby table, it's the strategy he's going with. Pressing the third button makes an odd chirping noise but that's about it. It is very obvious he's planning on pressing literally every button in the cabin.

[cardinalrule]

"I'll make sure to remember that," Hunter responds, his tone edging into snide territory even though what he's saying is sincere. As annoying as this is, it's still good information to know.

Having seen his fill of creepy red ocean he turns away, noticing Hickey pressing buttons. He raises an eyebrow. "Do you know what you're doing?"

[friendsfordinner]

"Obviously I know what I'm doing," scoffs the man who has no idea what he's doing. "I'm piloting a ship." And he presses a button, giving off the air of a man who knows exactly what he's doing.

Nothing happens.

He jabs the button again, quite forcefully, before jabbing another button. This time, the submarine lurches to life with a slow groan.

[cardinalrule]

Hunter keeps on looking thoroughly unimpressed right up until the sub lurches to life - then he wobbles and grabs onto a large pipe to keep his balance. At least it's moving now? Though he isn't sure that's a good thing.

"You have no idea what you're doing," he says, starting to look around. "There must be instructions in here. Maybe a guide. We need to figure out what we're doing before you break something."

[friendsfordinner]

"Big talk coming from a boy who doesn't know what color water is," Hickey teases. But though he'll never admit it, Hunter does have a point. They probably should look around for something of use.

He doesn't want to admit it, though. Hickey adjusts his position so that he's casually leaning against a different large pipe as he starts to look around the room. He doesn't physically walk around in his search, of course. Why extend effort just yet?

[cardinalrule]

"I know what colour water is!" He snaps back, though of course as he says it he's fully aware of how lame that comeback sounds. It's barely even a comeback, honestly, it's just... dumb.

He keeps on poking around, trying to find anything that could help in explaining what all the buttons and levers mean, and thankfully, he finds a few ratty-looking papers with basic instructions. "Hey! I've got something!" He straightens up, waving them in one hand before starting to read. "We're supposed to take pictures of an anomaly."

[friendsfordinner]

Hickey looks at Hunter. Then looks back at the ocean. Then looks at Hunter again.

"I mean, the ocean's an anomaly," he says. There's a little hesitancy in his voice because it can't be that simple. There's no way it's that simple. "Do we just...take pictures of the redness?"

Time to poke around and try to find a button that could possibly be a camera.

[cardinalrule]

Hunter pauses, then makes a whole show of rolling his eyes, even though Hickey has a point. "No, of course not. There must be specific things in the water we have to take pictures of," he states, in that teenage know-it-all kind of voice that every adult hates.

He has no idea if he's right. He's just guessing, but at any rate he moves over to a panel of buttons and looks down at the instructions. "We should be able to control this thing."

[friendsfordinner]

Hickey stops his poking around for a camera button to try and look around for a steering wheel. And hey, he finds something that's got what could pass for directional arrows. That's probably it?

"Right. Shall we head down deeper?"

[cardinalrule]

"I... think so," Hunter replies, scanning the instructions one more time before holding them out for Hickey to see. "There are coordinates we have to follow. We go down, go to those places, get the pictures, and get out of here."

[friendsfordinner]

Hickey takes a look at the instructions before nodding. "Seems simple enough. There was a keypad over here that looked like something you could punch coordinates in."

And so begins another round of pushing buttons he's not entirely sure how they work. At least this time, the keypad is for coordinates, and the ship lurches to life as it starts to dive deeper.

[cardinalrule]

As the sub lurches to life Hunter wobbles, instinctively latching onto the console to keep himself on his feet. There's a lot of ominous creaking and rolling but they're moving, at least.

Hunter shakes his head, and starts looking around for the controls that will let them take pictures. "This is ridiculous. Whose orders are these? ADI's?"

[friendsfordinner]

"Don't think so." Hickey hasn't moved from his spot directing the sub (he's the captain now, dammit). "Doesn't ADI usually give us more of a heads-up? We were dropped in this without any warning."

He's keeping an eye on the scanners as he talks, trying to spot...well, anything of note.

[cardinalrule]

Hunter pokes at a few buttons while Hickey steers. This is working out so far, so they, maybe they'll get through this in one piece?

He hums thoughtfully, figuring he's got the photo controls figured out as they reach the coordinates and a vague black shape slides by on the monitor. "Maybe, but it seems strange for an entity to be giving us a mission," he says, squinting and hitting the button to take a picture.

[friendsfordinner]

"You know, that's a valid point." Because it is. Why the hell would entities be giving them a mission? Hickey frowns, thinking things over before he points out,

"I'd bet good money this'll end up with some sort of nonsense trying to traumatize us."

[cardinalrule]

That... also seems very valid, and it's giving Hunter an awful sinking feelings. He lists off the next coordinates that they need to travel to, then pauses, hesitating. "... Do you really think so?"

[friendsfordinner]

"What sort of unexplained bullshit hasn't been nonsense trying to traumatize us?" he points out, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. But he'll still punch in those next coordinates, directing the sub even further into the red.

[cardinalrule]

Good point. Great point. Hunter hates it.

"Then what do you think will happen when we finish getting the photos?" He asks slowly, getting ready, and once they're at the next coordinates he hits the button again to take another picture. "We need a plan."