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Event - Untimely

Untimely

➥ Reality Check

Photo of a light-skinned person with dark hair lying in bed. They are wearing blue and white striped pajamas and a gray eye mask. The covers are white.
(cw: hypersomnia, coma, supernaturally induced metaphysical hunger, psychosomatic pain)

"We all dream," the representative from Copernicus explains, directing attention to a powerpoint slide projected onto the wall beside her. The seminar in one of the conference rooms is ADI's latest effort to combat Ava's influence and take the fight to their foe. If she's going to put them all to sleep, then so be it. Let their ranks be ready for battle there. "My boss, Zyrian Steel, is a big dreamer. Copernicus started as one. We-" She pauses as her eyes seem to catch on someone at the back of the room. "But that-that's another presentation! Suffice to say, Mr. Steel heard you were having some sleep troubles around the office and wanted to help.

"Hello, everyone. My name is Luna, and I'm here from Copernicus' Augmenting Reality group to talk to you about lucid dreaming. Now, I see some of us are here in our Halloween outfits." She smiles and poses in her 50's-style poodle skirt. "Some of you have very impressive make-up and prosthetics, I might add. I was told there might be some stiff competition for this mid-Halloween get-together. Glad to see they weren't having a little fun with me." Any non-human in the audience is given an appreciative nod. "I can see we have a few dreams brought to life here, but what about shaping the dreams we have while we're in them?"

"We're going to go through a few exercises today. The key tricks for inducing lucid dreaming include:

"One, assess your reality regularly. Even if you can't remember falling asleep, take a moment every few hours to test your reality. Dreams might look very familiar, but there will always be inconsistencies and distortions you can catch. This should help you to recognize when you're dreaming.

"Second, the MILD method or Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams. This is a method where you'll set an alarm for 5 hours after you go to sleep. Once awake, you'll tell yourself, 'The next time I'm dreaming, I will remember that I'm dreaming.' You'll also try to imagine yourself in a lucid dream as you go back to sleep. Silly as it sounds, just having that intentionality can be highly effective.

"Third, tell yourself when you go to sleep that you are going to have a lucid dream, that you will be shaping your reality, even if it seems outside of your control. Convince yourself. Convince others.

"And fourth…" Luna pulls out some high-tech looking eyemasks. "You can try one of our patented Lucidio Eye Masks. These devices help to unlock your mind and provide it with a few extra cues that you're dreaming once you enter REM sleep. We'll be handing out a limited number of samples, courtesy Mr. Steel. That's for the end of our presentation. Now, let's go through the stages of sleep…"

Whether you can stay away for the rest of the presentation, everyone will be chivved awake with increasingly harsh prods if they've fallen asleep during the presentation. There are more seminars throughout the next few days, always similar with Luna offering her guidance on lucid dreaming. Maybe it's enough. Maybe it isn't.

The music doesn't stop. As with last October, the haunting tunes extend their grasp from the graveyards and out toward the rest of Gloucester, ringing through ADI's halls, along with the Flophouse. The music induces intense sleepiness, and you might find your coworkers slumping down while they walk or you might fall victim to the music, yourself.

You awake… somewhere. It might be a place that's familiar, or one that's utterly alien. What you know is that there is something in this place that calls to you, sings in your blood and burns to be away from. And yet, you're terrified. There is something here that wants to consume every part of you, suck the marrow from your bones and leave you a husk of what you once were. You need it. You want it. You are hungry for it. For the fear it both brings and demands. This place seems to be some sort of pocket dimension, a personal hell built just for you and the things that sink their teeth into your bones and claw at the back of your mind. This is a terrifying place.

And you're not alone.

If you've been paying attention to the seminars, perhaps you'll be able to recognize this as a dream, something that isn't real. Sensations that aren't real. A world that isn't real. But with that realization comes a choice. You could try to break free of your personal hell, rip it to shreds, make it less horrific. Or… or there is something that calls to you in this place, a thing that sounds the death of who you once were, perhaps. You could call back, reshape this reality to terrorize the others trapped here with you. They'll never know if you were aware or not, will they? They don't need to know you did this to them consciously.

Just this once, what if you gave in? If someone dies in the dream, it's not like they die in real life. Right?

➥ Knead Help

Photo of several bread skulls on a red, glass platter.
(cw: blood, unsanitary food, supernaturally-induced existential dread, supernaturally-induced suicidal thoughts, isolation, dissociation)

Deathbed Bread is off the market. Thanks to a timely tip, the Health Department has finally made a slightly less timely visit to Better Loaf than Never, and were forced to shut the storefront down when their inspectors were unable to gain entry to the kitchen. The lights are still on behind the boarded-up windows, though, the smell of sourdough still permeating the air as loaf after loaf is delivered through a slot from the kitchen through the day and night, bread piling up on the counter and floor behind the register. They come at regular intervals, still warm from the oven. ADI has taken over the little storefront now and set up a tiny field office there, the higher-ups having pulled enough strings for law enforcement to look the other way and not ask too many questions about the people coming and going as efforts to break into the kitchen intensify...and as ADI staff truck away loads of Deathbed Bread to incinerate back at headquarters.

Someone has a bright (or maybe desperate) idea: if they can't get in, maybe they can at least stop the bread from coming out. Boarding up the bread slot, by all accounts, works for perhaps an hour or two as those present can still hear more bread piling up on the other side. Then there's a soul-wrenching cry of anguish followed by a violent attack on the barrier from inside the kitchen that ends with an ADI agent injured by flying debris and a cascade of sourdough loaves stained with bloody handprints. It's enough, though. Whatever supernatural seal that made the kitchen blockade impenetrable has broken, and within the day ADI is able to break down the door.

A thick, unnatural fog is all that can be seen inside the doorway. Rather than the cool of an early morning, though, the damp air is hot and cloying; those who venture inside will soon find themselves drenched with a mix of sweat and humidity from the air. They will also soon find themselves alone, regardless of what companions they might have had with them when they entered. Did you have someone with you? You must have; it would be foolish to enter alone, and yet it rapidly becomes difficult to remember their face, their voice, the touch of their hand. Perhaps you imagined them. Perhaps you've always been alone.

Dark shapes in the fog resolve into tombstones as one nears--no, into huge, upright loaves of bread jutting up from where they've been sunk into the soft ground of this strange graveyard, dry and cracked and dead. There are names pressed into them, dates of death spanning the last few weeks…and the next few. Perhaps you'll spot your own name and today's date. And why shouldn't it be today? Everyone dies, and everyone dies alone. Any action other than laying down on the soft dough of your own grave and letting it swallow you up is only delaying the inevitable.

The spell of deathly quiet over this place isn't complete, though. Keep moving, keep trying, keep hanging on to thoughts of those you love and the clear sky beyond this little world, and you might find a friend who needs your help as much as you need theirs. One or both people encountering each other may feel as though they're in a dream, unable to see or hear the other–but with persistence, with feeling, it's possible to reforge the connection. Love and friendship may shine a light on what was invisible–but so will shared anger, joy, or disgust. Any strong, shared emotion beyond the fear and sadness that permeates this place renders would-be ghosts visible, solid, and real to one another, able to move forward or turn back to escape together–or to begin tearing up the tombstones in fierce denial of their portents.

This hellish graveyard is as far as most will go. Somewhere deeper in what was the kitchen, Bryn still labors and the bread still piles up. It will be up to those few lucky (or unfortunate) enough to stumble across him to put a final end to this.

➥ Never Sleep Again

image of a country landscape with a two-lane road running through it, a bicyclist riding toward an impossible split in the road where the ground splits like a zipper and peels away toward the sky
(cw: child death, body horror, violence, potential injury or character death, nightmare dream logic)

Are you dreaming or are you awake? It becomes harder to tell as the music flows through halls and streets, rooms and parks. It’s dangerous out there, people falling asleep where they shouldn’t, or finding themselves face-to-face with what shouldn’t be when their eyes close unknowingly. Perhaps you planned it, your practice made perfect and your mind set to confrontation, maybe this time you sat down with the intention of stopping this. Or maybe it was simply an accident, but you’re here now. What else can you do but fight to survive?

The hellscape of your mind's torment might be familiar or maybe it’s a new flavor, but there’s something different this time. This time, there are seams; the dream around you is sewn together and you hold the scissors. Fight your way or will your way through, and you can pass between the swatches of your dreaming landscape. Maybe you find a friend or maybe you spot the retreating form of a little girl, turning a corner that isn’t there. Except you can see it now, the corridors of this place. You can follow her.

She leads you on a chase, her laugh a ricocheting titter of joy for the game. If you listen closely, however, there’s more to hear. The further you chase her, the more snatches of sound and sensation follow you as well. Grim melodies and snatches of song, searing heat, the taste of ash in your mouth, the sound of screaming that isn’t quite familiar. Your parents? Someone’s parents. Whispered voices. Snatches of words. ‘Amber.’ yelled, called, pleaded. Hide and seek was always fun.‘Ren’ a name that holds fondness, a feeling of a hundred tiny legs across skin- Stop! A command like a pick through your mind filled with anger and fear. Maybe it isn’t just your nightmares in here…

If you catch her, when you catch her, the game is over. Cornered and angry, Ava skitters up the wall, and across the ceiling to hang above you, neck at an impossible angle and clearly broken for it. “What’s wrong? Not having fun?”.

➥ Mod Notes

GENERAL - Bryn and Ava will both be available for NPC interaction and threading. Players who want to talk to ask Luna anything should respond to the Questions section of the OOC post. The mods will provide her answers to specific questions. Characters who die in the dreams will not die in real life, but they will experience severe fatigue and pain, and may retain scarring in the waking world from whatever killed them in the nightmares. Characters who die in real life… well, they're dead. Please bear this in mind as the game does not have an easy resurrection mechanic.
REALITY CHECK (16-25 October) - Everyone will be encouraged (but not technically required) to attend the lucid dreaming seminar. There will be a few of them over the course of three days. Characters can also pick up one of the Ludicio Eye Mask devices that will assist them in being able to enter a lucid state while dreaming. They don't always help, of course; they're mainly augmenting someone's abilities, provided they're following the guidance provided about how to enhance your lucid dreaming capabilities. Luna is clearly unaware that any non-humans are actually non-humans. She believes everyone is just really into Halloween around here.

The nightmares this go around seem to be specifically focused on the Entities that your characters fear most and/or the ones they might be drawn to. You are welcome to make up a personalized hellscape for your character with anything you'd like in it. These are dreams! Go wild! Characters will fall randomly in and out of each other's dreams and personalized hellscapes. Those who have mastered lucid dreaming will be able to traverse dreams with more purpose, aiming to go to specific people's dreams or get themselves out of ones they don't want to be in. Lucid dream experts will also be able to shape the dreams that are meant for them. In their own nightmares, characters will feel a definitive pull toward one (or more over different nights) Entity and experience an intense fear of that Entity along with the desire to feed it, even if you want away from it.

Feeding the Entities in the dreams and using the dreams to torment others will not necessarily lead to an Entity alignment… but it can do. Or it can set a character down a particularly destructive path in that vein. We would just ask that players remember that ADI is very anti-magic/Entities and anyone who is caught displaying powers/Entity alignment is liable to be mistrusted, watched, and potentially killed by the NPCs if they make themselves too much of an overt problem.
KNEAD HELP (18-25 October) - Characters may find bread gravestones with their own names, the names of people they have lost, and people they fear losing, as well as names of locals who have been confirmed dead due to eating Deathbed Bread. Some gravestones will bear the names and correct dates for people who are actually dead; others will refer to people who are still alive. Gravestone engravings may include characters back home in player characters' worlds, as well as player characters that have been dropped from the game. OOCly, the appearance of a person's bread gravestone is not a reliable indication of whether that person is actually dead or going to die. ICly, characters may or may not realize this fact at players' discretion.
NEVER SLEEP AGAIN (20-25 October) - As characters begin to gain control over their dreaming, they will find they can begin to track down Ava the Lullaby Girl. Confrontation can occur within the dream or, with enough willpower, a character can pull a piece of Ava into the waking world to try and kill her. Upon bringing her to the waking world, characters will find themselves faced with a teenaged version of the girl they were following, Ava’s actual body. She's not a little girl at all, but someone who's just entering into adulthood. Fights are likely to result in injuries ranging from mild to severe and can include death, please keep the setting’s death rules in mind for this. Threads with Ava can start in the dreams or already mid-fight in the waking world! It will take a concerted group effort to actually kill Ava. No one person will be able to do it themselves. Only a piece of her is pulled through or fought in the dreams that any person encounters.

The morning after the last pieces are killed, Ava’s mangled corpse will be found on ADI’s grounds shortly after dawn, clutching a bloody, stuffed lamb in one hand.

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[Dreams are funny things. They don't make sense yet, at the same time, make all the sense in the world. There's nothing to poke his knife into, but it slides between thin sheets of perception and pulls way. In barely a blink of an eye, it parts like a curtain...an invitation.

Just beyond, there's a low buzzing hum. Familiar, perhaps, when the distinct thunk of something 'locking' into place begins to take.]

Better hurry...

[The wind whispers through the trees.]

[That’s…weird, but okay. He’ll roll with it. The world seems to simply…open a curtain, where his knife had poked into.

Should he follow? Is that voice ominous? He’s seen this movie before.

But it was either that or be stuck in the woods alone forever and he would rather face the danger.

He tries to slip in through where the curtain of perception parts, following the sound.]

[The curtain parts far enough for him to slip through and then slides firmly behind him, smoothing over into the concrete wall of the dark room he's stepped into.

There would be no light here, except that hum and shift and thunk continues, a blue glow steadily lighting the room as sigils shine from the darkness, slowly forming a circle.

Someone passes in front of the lowest set humming a melodic tune to mix with the mechanical hum in the room and the gate comes to life as the arrangement finishes dialing up...something. Somewhere. Blue water-like energy pulses to life in the center of the circle and a little girl is illuminated in its glow where she stands leaning against the metal apparatus, her eyes glint in the light, cat-like and watching.]

[He's tense when he enters the room. Which ordinarily, forests don't contain rooms with gates that you can enter from cracks in reality, so it's probably a good idea to be on guard.

He moves carefully, focusing on the circle of sigils appearing in his vision. He doesn't get too close--but the gate finishes dialing and there's a figure there. She doesn't seem to be approaching or leaving, so he takes a couple steps forward, holding the knife back against his wrist, and behind his back.

He's been here before--except fighting an evil dream entity doppelgänger of himself. As one does. He takes a look around, just in case. You never know.]

Going somewhere?

[The gleaming eyes don't blink, just stare and a childlike voice rings out to him.]

Where do you want to go?

Home?

Honestly, yeah?

[He’s not gonna lie about that.]

But the fact that you pointed it out makes me extra suspicious.

[There's the smallest sign of a shrug and the little girl steps out into the light of the gate, a stuffed lamb in her hand.]

Oh. Well, I want to go to your home. Bye!

[ She gives him a little wave and then turns to head through the gate.]

[Definitely not a good idea—]

Oh, no you don’t!

[John makes a running leap, in an attempt to grab her arm and stop her from entering the gate.]

[His hand wraps around her arm and as it does, the flesh seems to give way to sludgy goop that oozes across his fingers, bringing with it an acidic, burning sensation.

Her head whips around too far and she grins sweetly at him.]

Didn't your mommy ever tell you not to grab a lady?

[That's...

...unexpected.

John draws his hand back quickly and tries to wipe the sludgy goop off on his vest.

Very uncool.]

She said it was fine to grab monsters made of goo, actually. Though that seems difficult in retrospect if they're made of goo...

[He doesn't hesitate, he tries to slash at her arm with the knife in his other hand.]

[The goops comes off, but the skin tingles where it was touched.

The knife connects and cuts through her arm, but she twirls away to make her skirt spin and blood fleck off onto the floor before the wound reforms.]

Why can't you just be fun?

I am fun? I am so fun! I skateboard, that makes me like, ten times more fun than anyone!

[Augh, what was in that stuff?! He tries to wipe his fingers off on his tac vest more, just in case there’s any leftover.

This also doesn’t seem to be working. But he tries again, this time moving faster, attempting to slash at her side.]

You know what would be really fun? You telling me exactly how to stop you, that would be super fun…

Nuh-uh! That would be cheating.

And you're too old to skateboard, so you must be lying.

[The knife does connect with her side and she hiss and backs away again, though the wound isn't as quick to close.]

[Somehow this is the greatest injury of all.]

Wh--old!? I'm not too old to skateboard!?

[Offended!]

Sometimes cheating is fun. Don't you like fun?

[He notices that he seems to have had some effect with that hit, so he dives in again, this time going to slash at her neck.

Is there any guilt at all in this? Nope.]

I do! Dessert's fun!

[The floor seems to twist and warp around his feet, like he's suddenly standing in pudding as it oozes around his ankles, but it leaves her open for his strike. His blade catches her neck and opens the skin, leaving inky blood to bubble forward. Her hand clutches at her neck with a whine and a wince, collecting the blood in her palm.

She flicks her wrist out at him, aiming to throw the blood at his face while the floor tries to swallow him further.]

You’re right, dessert is fun.

[Like, he’s not gonna disagree there, but—

—suddenly the floor just melts and this is not the fun kind of dessert.]

Hey! Now that’s cheating!

[He struggles against the sludge quicksanding him and it drags him down, further as the seconds tick by. The blood gets in his face—gross—and he realizes he’s not going to be able to reach far enough for another strike.

He’s got one chance at this, but if he waits and she gets out of range he’s done for. So he doesn’t wait—

—-he takes the knife, holding it by the blade with the tip of his fingers, and aims, and then tosses it—-

—hopefully sending the knife straight for her heart.]

Edited 2022-11-01 00:23 (UTC)

[She squeals and claps with delight while he sinks, even as the blood oozes down her dress and her palms and lamb turn bloody. She takes another step back and clutches her hands behind her back, swaying a bit in place on her heels while she hums in thought.]

What should we do ne-hk-!

[The blade flips through the air, but strikes it's target with deadly aim. It sinks deeper than perhaps it should and Ava takes a step back with the force, but her knee crumples beneath her as she falls back and down, the lamb crushed beneath her.

The air is still and silent and the gate seems to dissolve into the ground just as it solidifies under his feet. There isn't long to inspect the body or consider what to do next before John will feel a tug in his abdomen and that rushing jolt sensation of stepping off a curb as he wakes up.]

[The strike hits and everything changes--he's on solid ground again, somehow, and the gate has dissolved. Even though he seems to have eliminated the threat the guilt comes full-force. It really did look like he'd just killed a little girl, even if she clearly wasn't human, and had been a deadly threat. For a moment he's reminded of Ellia, her story far more tragic, though--

He makes it two steps forward to attempt to check on Ava but it's too late--

--he jolts, waking up. For a second he can't remember where he'd originally fallen asleep--he jerks up on a park bench, gripping the edge of it as he tries to orient himself.]

...that was, uh, different.

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Event - Untimely

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cw: even more knife violence

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cw: child death

cw: child death