Event- Siren

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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

[musicdied]

Yelena suppresses a shudder at the mention of the lambs, and though she keeps her expression one of mild concern to avoid provoking further distress, her spine goes just a little straighter.

"I remember," she says. "We destroyed the ones in the warehouse, but- Did you find one of the stray phone cases? The little squares."

Please let it be that. Let it be something so easily contained.

[graveyounglady]

"No, I seen 'em growing. I don't know where it was, though. I got pulled up into a camera somehow and caught sight of 'em in a back alley. I don't know how to find it, 'cept running around town, and I'm worried they ain't the only ones. It was a patch, but I'm pretty sure it weren't near that warehouse or Things of Beauty. Ain't sure how they even got where they are, if it ain't near either of those."

[musicdied]

"Spores caught on the wind," Yelena suggests, then grimaces slightly. "Or a parting gift from FYRE."

She isn't entirely certain which option is worse. The thought of the lambs spreading without any human intervention is disconcerting, but so is the thought that enough of the corporate cult might remain to cause ongoing problems.

"Do you remember where the camera was? If the alley was within its view, that will narrow things down for a search."

[graveyounglady]

"I... think so? I can try to show you? But I think we ought get things to kill the plants first. Think fire'll work." Funnily enough. "Or they had poisons when we were going in to that big warehouse." Mercy's much less subtle when she makes a face at the memory of that place. "Big ol' vats of it people were carrying on their backs.

"Think we can get some of that in the basement levels? Thing I'm most worried about right now as folks who don't know what they are finding those lambs. Though... I gotta think most of the people living here in Gloucester. They got to know something's going on at this point. Lotta somethings. They been through near as much as us. If they don't know the specifics, there's plenty enough to guess at from the broad strokes." She sighs. "I don't think ADI's doing them any favors still trying to keep it all quiet."

[musicdied]

"I think there's no good way to handle distributing information about things that feed on fear," Yelena says with a sigh of her own.

She considers the task before them, eyes narrowing slightly. "We should be able to requisition some poison. If not, then we will stop at a hardware store, and see what we can make do with."

[graveyounglady]

She nods and moves to start heading for the elevators to head down. Mercy is hesitant, though, clearly waiting for the other woman to follow take the lead. She doesn't like feeling this uncertain. It feels too much like the helplessness she'd felt years ago seeing what the Abbot was doing to everyone and being unable to stop it for weeks. They hadn't known the right moves to make to stop people being killed. And in the end? They'd failed so many more times than they'd succeeded with the people who mattered most.

"Right. I just-I don't know, miss. I been feeling unsure for a while now, that ADI's got the right of it, how to handle everything. It's all getting more dangerous, worse, even with us stopping them folks in Wolf Pen. I'm looking for the light that says dawn's coming, but it seems like there's more night ahead, yet."

[musicdied]

Yelena's stride is brisk, confident. They have a task, something to focus on, more concrete than the sticky morass of chaos that seems more and more to cling to every aspect of life in Gloucester.

"What would you do differently?" she asks. "And what do you think it would change? I'm not saying you're wrong for looking at things the way you do, but this is the kind of fight where you need to look several steps ahead."

[graveyounglady]

"I'd tell people there's a problem. Give them the reason Dogtown's like it is instead of spinning up all kinds of stories. Some of the people they love might die or go missing. If they never know why? That's a cruelty, ain't it? And we don't know how all these powers work. Maybe killing one of their kin makes the next person vulnerable, too. They might not know what's coming for 'em."

[musicdied]

"Knowing why the people you love are dead or gone does not make it any kinder," Yelena says quietly. "They're still gone, and never coming back. And with things like Dogtown, there's no vengeance or cure."

She rolls her shoulders, throttling the tug of grief, and adds, "But people will look for one. And they will look at strangers, loners, foreigners, and think, maybe this is their fault. The nightmares don't belong, so it stands to reason they follow other things that don't belong. Maybe this can be redirected, but you'd need a plan in place for that before telling people about the monsters."

[graveyounglady]

"I been a party to hiding how and why folk have died, miss. It ain't a kindness to keep it close, either. Ain't no closure in that, just wondering, thinking you could've done something, changed something. That fear cuts both ways, too. Not knowing, just lashing out at anything different from you."

She shakes her head. "Maybe there ain't no good way about it, but there has to be a better way than the one we got now, don't there? Tim was trying to do something like that, weren't he? That's what Aelwyn says. It's Ren who got in the way and made a mess of it."

[musicdied]

Yelena utters a low snort, and shakes her head sharply. "Tim made a stupid choice, and other people paid the price for it. He wasn't directly responsible for what Ren did, but he wasn't blameless, either. Even if letting the world know about the horrors is the right call, public demonstrations of magic without any real explanation of the dangers isn't the way to do it."

She pauses a moment, then adds, "I am not saying the way ADI handles things is the best way. But even in a world without creatures that feed on fear, this is the sort of information that needs to be handled carefully. Here, you don't only need to worry about people deciding to start burning witches, you need to worry about making them a target."

[graveyounglady]

"Mm..." Requisitioning the supplies they need, after explaining what they're for, isn't a difficult task at all. The personnel there are happy to hand over chemical spray and some ventilator masks to keep them safe from it. It's as they're heading back out that Mercy picks up the conversation again. She's been ruminating a bit.

"Why's magic got to be hidden here in the first place? That's what I don't understand. My world's full of magic, and folk don't lose their heads over it. Is yours?"

[musicdied]

"Because the magic here is provided by impossible horrors that feed on fear," Yelena says. She shifts the weight of one of the canisters of chemicals over her shoulder, so the strap lies flush against her coat.

"Even knowing that, there are people who would still take it up. Some of them because they're desperate. Some of them because they think it's the only way to fight back against the monsters, and they may not be completely wrong. But most of them would do it because they want power, and they don't care who they have to hurt to get it. Right now, only a very small number of that kind of person manages to find their way to using magic. The rest have to resort to more human methods, and those are bad enough."

She pauses, and gives Mercy a brief, tight smile. "We have plenty of that kind of person in my world, too. And we also have magic. It's made the last couple of decades...interesting."

[graveyounglady]

"I know magic's power. I- Well, that's part of why I was gonna join the Spring Tide. Have done." She's technically still a novitiate. Does that status lapse when you haven't turned up for your training for a year and a half? "Meant to do... They got healing magic. Brother Earth's more about the harvest and spiriting souls along to a peaceful sleep. There's power in that, too, but it- It wasn't the kind I needed to help the way I wanted to."

Her brows knit. "Thought about one of the war gods, but I ain't never been good with fighting. I ain't bad at it, but I don't like hurting if I got a better way to deal with something. But healing. That's- that'd be something I could use to help anyone, no matter who they were or what they thought of me. And maybe..." Maybe Ciaran would have loved her more than the girl he'd left behind, if she'd had some skill that would have helped him in his quest to take down the gangs in Torland and bring some sort of order and peace back to the people there. Maybe she could have saved the people she'd had to watch dying in her arms. Hereward, Warwick... Crystal and Brother Ainsley. She should have been able to do something.

"I don't know. I can understand wanting power to do good, make it so the world ain't such a mess."

[musicdied]

"My father wanted to do good - what he believed was good, for his country and for his people," Yelena says, tone almost meditative. "He still handed his daughters to a monster."

She pauses, then rolls one shoulder in a shrug. "But then he was thrown into prison for twenty years because the monster thought he was very annoying, so maybe it all evens out. Still, setting out to do good doesn't mean you will do good. And here, you would have to hurt in order to heal. It's a difficult balance."

[graveyounglady]

"Difficult balance, but ADI makes that choice. They got whoever's holding the disguise in place for folk who ain't full humans like us. And they got some kinda healer for the folk who arrive dying and regular healing can't fix 'em. That don't seem right to me. Them letting some things pass, but then telling all of us there's never an excuse to use powers."

Maybe a part of her wishes that Aelwyn could use her abilities more freely, that she didn't have to hold back or hide what she could do. There's so much more the elf could undoubtedly do if she only had the sanction to go after their enemies with her full might.

[musicdied]

"It isn't right," Yelena agrees. "But most people in power are hypocrites. There's always a reason it's ok if they do something thye've told everyone else not to do."

She gives Mercy a long, considering look. "You must have seen this in your world."

[graveyounglady]

"Aye. Can't say I liked it much there, either... and I helped with a rebellion to get him out of power." It had been Ciaran who'd truly led that charge, but she'd done what she could to support him and everyone else. "Don't reckon that'd go over near as well here." She tries to smile to show some humor. It's a joke.

It's mostly a joke.

[musicdied]

Yelena snorts quietly at that. "No, probably not, especially starting from outsiders. You would need a very charismatic leader, and people who are very good at sowing dissent without being caught."

Her nose crinkles slightly, the corners of her mouth turning upward. "You don't have a stack of leaflets under your bed, do you?"

[graveyounglady]

"Not yet..." But this conversation is making her wonder if that's a sort of campaign she might want to engage in. Ms. Tawnie's efforts had helped to spread the rebellion's message to the wider town before the end. "But if you got any suggestions on what I could include in that sorta thing, I'm all ears. Maybe could stick 'em into books in the town library. Spread the word quiet-like."