Event- Siren

[apocalypsehowmods]

↬ Main Navigation

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.

↬ Main Navigation

Comments

Frederick Cotgrave | The Twisted Ones | OTA

[cotgraveseffigy]

I. The Public Eye

The camera's eye view he caught seems to have been mostly about people with spray paint. Interesting. Surely there's some meaning to that, right?

Frederick wanders about after dark, attempting to find these rogue eye-painters. He pauses in front of one of their works, tapping his chin thoughtfully. "Are you going to blink for me, mister eye?" he asks it, though of course he doesn't expect an answer.


II. Thicker Than Water

Frederick peers out the window of the small submarine space he's somehow appeared in. It feels very cramped in here, especially for someone who is, beneath the illusion of the small old man, actually rather bigger than most people, and he would very much like to get some kind of idea of how to get out of here.

"Oh my," he says to his erstwhile companion, his voice very faintly accented, something out of Scotland or Wales. "Have you looked out here? It's rather, er, red. And I don't that's window tinting."


III. Research

Comfortably settling in at his new job in the ADI library, Frederick bustles about, putting away books, looking up books, scanning things for the digital version of the library (what an idea that is!). Since this is within the ADI's sphere of influence, he is, unfortunately, in his true form: a tall skeleton of both deer and human parts, wrapped here and there in deer hide, held together with twine and wire, and with stones dangling within and from his otherwise empty ribcage that rattle when he moves.

That's also how he talks, so he keeps one of the computers up with a word processing program open, so he can communicate with visitors.

Most of his free time here, however, is spent searching through the books and, more ponderously, through online databases for information on that submarine vision he was trapped in, and a red sea. Or lake. Or something of the sort. Also, the giant serpent thing, because he's pretty sure they're related.

Research

[failedpromise]

Perhaps he'll hear the sudden thunk before he sees the blueish purple woman standing there and staring at him, wide eyed and frozen.

It doesn't take Cortana more than a moment to realize that this is probably not a threat-plenty of people look unusual, and he's out in the open at ADI headquarters without causing any alarm-but she struggles to make herself say anything. He doesn't even look like the Flood-oh God there are human parts in there.

Her books lie on the floor where she dropped them.

Re: Research

[cotgraveseffigy]

He stops what he's doing and turns his... upside-down skull... in her direction. Yes, his skull is on upside down, and it's a deer skull so that makes it even weirder, tied on with wire and twine so in order to make some motions with it he has to move his whole shoulders.

The human bits are mostly his torso, which is at least harder for most people to recognize as human. Cortana is not most people, though.

He slowly holds up both hands, which are actually cloven hooves with slightly more articulation and some wire thumbs, and pulls his head and shoulders down to make himself smaller, trying to look as harmless as possible. He's used to this reaction by now. Some people actually scream, so Cortana's doing okay.

Then he carefully reaches over and taps the computer monitor to his right, where there's his standard greeting message if she cares to glance at it: My name is Frederick Cotgrave. I won't hurt you. I can't speak in your language but I understand it just fine.

[failedpromise]

Dr. Halsey cracked open plenty of ribcages in her life, and definitely passed some of the relevant knowledge and experience to Cortana when she created her, so yes, Cortana would know what a human ribcage looks like.

She takes a step back when he lifts his hands, though she doesn't bolt. The wires almost make her think this might be a construct-while bones would be a strange and morbid choice out of which to create a robotic (or otherwise) body, it wouldn't be impossible.

"...Guessing you get this a lot." She says, almost automatically, when she sees the text. Look, she resorts to quips and dumb jokes in situations like this, it's just a thing.

Frederick, huh? "Were you Human in the past?" She almost winces at the thought. Sure, he looks like an undead, so it wouldn't be surprising, especially with that name, but being turned into something like this would absolutely suck.

[cotgraveseffigy]

He inclines his head and shoulders, both, unable to properly nod with his head attached the way it is. Definitely human at one point. Also, yes, he gets this a lot.

Construct is probably closer to what he is than undead-- some of his kind were made with stolen tools and car parts, or wasp nests, or wax. The fact that he's made mostly of bones is less by design than by chance.

He leans over he computer and types out a proper, albeit slightly typo'd, answer. when i am out in town look like used t when i was aliv it is rather nice

[failedpromise]

And at the response, Cortana does wince. Poor guy.

"I'd ask if that was your ribcage, but do I really wanna know?" Ew. Undead or not, the bones really aren't to Cortana's taste.

"I think I'd like to see that." It's brief and awkward, but she attempts a smile.

[cotgraveseffigy]

Frederick doesn't type a response to that, but he does turn his hoof-hand to one side and stick up the bit of wire that serves for his thumb. Yes, he'll be happy to show her sometime. Yes, it is his ribcage, he thinks. She can take it as whatever answer she wishes.

What he does type, though, is, do you need something? i work here and i can help

[failedpromise]

She grins at the thumbs up and how ridiculous it looks coming from him, happy to assume that he's agreeing to show her his human form-she really doesn't want to think about the answer to the ribcage question, actually.

She ...likes this guy? His personality, at least. His physical form is going to take some getting used to.

"I was actually researching this worlds technology-trying to see what was possible and where the line is on what can only be sustained by entity ...magic." She uses the term begrudgingly-magic isn't a thing and she doesn't want to attribute it to these creatures.

At least one of the books she dropped is about computers.

[cotgraveseffigy]

Frederick doesn't breathe, exactly, but he does heave his shoulders as if he's sighing, the stones in and dangling from his ribs hitting each other softly. Yes, he understands that, as well. He's probably only alive from entity magic, himself, if he understands the things he heard at orientation properly. He doubts there's much he can do about it, though. He is pretty sure whatever is left of Freddie is directly tied to his physical remains.

Still, he knows what section of the small library to lead her to, so he turns away and beckons her to follow him.

[failedpromise]

She watches him, head tilting a little in curiosity though she doesn't actually say anything. She makes sure to pick up her books before following.

"Thanks, Fred. ...I can call you Fred, right?"

[cotgraveseffigy]

What a sweet question. No one's called him something so familiar in decades. (No one's called him anything at all, until he got here, except "the one apart" or "the lone one", which are hardly names.) He tilts his head a little to look at her sidelong, then turns his wire thumb up again.

Then he taps the shelf in question with one hoof-finger. The library is not large, and the selection for her perusal is also not large. There are two treatises on "mechanical magic", one much more readable than the other, which he taps specifically for her next, and one on "resisting technological magic", which he pulls out specifically for her.

CW, brief mention of torture/Gravemind reference

[failedpromise]

Cortana is one of those overly familiar, overly casual, in your face types. Now that it has been firmly established that Frederick isn't part of a sadistic undead eldritch abomination that likes to torture AI to death for funsies, she's just going to resume her usual behavior.

She'll set the books she has already picked out on a nearby table before taking the treatise on resisting technological magic from him for a closer look.

[cotgraveseffigy]

He pulls out the other two enough to make them obvious, then steps back to let her peruse. They might be helpful, or they might not-- or they will most likely have a few gems of useful information in between a lot of chaff-- but those are the only ones he thinks really apply to her question.

[failedpromise]

"Thanks, buddy." The way she flips through, it might almost seem like she's skimming, but fast processing perfect memory enable her to memorize those pages as though she were a camera.

Also yeah, he's her buddy now, apparently. Boy her attitude sure turned around fast.

"So, how long have you been here?"

[cotgraveseffigy]

Since his computer is across the room, Frederick holds up a hoof for her to wait, then fishes in his satchel for his other method of communication: a tablet. He flicks it on and goes straight to the notes app, where he taps out, just shy 2 wks.

Which is not really very long.

[failedpromise]

She'll keep flipping through the book while she waits.

"Newbie, huh? I've been here since February."

She finishes that book and pulls another down to flip through. She can process the information more thoroughly later.

[cotgraveseffigy]

He's quiet for a moment, watching her read. Or possibly just staring off into space in her general direction, it's hard to tell without actual eyes.

Finally he writes, u read very fast

He's impressed, really. He wishes he could read like that. He'd get through so many books.

[failedpromise]

She catches him writing out of the corner of her eye and looks up from the book for a moment.

"I'm not actually reading the way an organic would. Just imaging the pages for more thorough processing later." Sort of like digestion, in a way. Information goes into brain (stomach?) and gets broken down over time.