Event - Untimely

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Untimely

➥ Reality Check

(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

(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

(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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Comments

[aelwyn_aberration]

Hello, Ava.

[The dream they find themselves in is one of Aelwyn's. It's a house - large, two stories it looks like, with a Fallinese flag in front of it. It's burning, smoke and flames lick up the side of the house but Aelwyn remains seated. There's food in front of her and her alone, a stack of food burnt black from Aelwyn's rejection of it. For the first time since she's arrived here, she feels in control.

She raises her arm, glad to finally have access to her magic - her real magic, and she summons a translucent hand the size of a small car that attempts to grab hold of Ava, and to prevent her from escaping the dream.]

Let's chat.

[Without a word, the chair opposite hers pulls out. The one that would belong to her little sister. Her usual prey when she's at this table, aware that it's a cage match. She smiles and her pupils narrow into slits, a twisted fondness in her expression that doesn't reach the ferocious hunger for pain in her eyes.]

[apocalypsehownpcs]

[She struggles a little, but ultimately finds herself in the chair across from Aelwyn, a pout on her lips but eyes sharp.]

I don't want to talk to you. Especially not at some stuffy, half-burned, manor.

[aelwyn_aberration]

It is stuffy, isn't it? I hated this place so much when we first moved here. [She talks in the way she seems to talk to kids now, like it's some kind of secret she's sharing. But while with others it's with a degree of warmth, with this child her eyes are cold enough to snuff out every flame in this room. It's not hard to guess that she intends to kill her.

There are the screams. She can almost recognize them, or maybe all people sound the same when they're burning. They certainly smell the same.]

I don't think either of us are in the habit of asking permission.

Why did you come after us, sweetheart?

[apocalypsehownpcs]

[She shrugs and smiles a coy little thing, like sharing a secret.]

Why not? You were so fun last year, why not do it again? That's what you like to do, isn't it? Find playthings around you? Maybe break them a little?

You get it.

[aelwyn_aberration]

[She laughs, like it's their own little in joke.]

Oh, I do. You wrap your hand around their hearts and you snap them in two. It's a delightful little game. It helps too, doesn't it?

Makes you forget what it's like to be broken.

[apocalypsehownpcs]

[She settles further down into her chair with a slouch, a stuffed lamb appearing in her lap.]

Are you broken, Aelwyn? You could fix that yourself...no one thinks you're anything but nice and worth remembering once you're dead. They say so many kind things even if they didn't like you.

[Her head tilts slightly.]

Maybe it's because you've only put half of yourself in the fire.

[aelwyn_aberration]

[She laughs, bitter and self indulgent. It's not that she doesn't understand - she really, really does. But...]

I already got sick enough of that when I was living, little lamb. 'Oh, Aelwyn's delightful, Aelwyn's a fantastic daughter, a great sister, a good friend, an incredible student, a genius, a prodigy, a beautiful elven maiden as pure and innocent as can be.'

When I die, I want them to wake up screaming at the thought of me, knowing that they never knew a damn thing about me. That was the plan anyway. [She hums.] I've already gone all in with a demon. Maybe I just don't like double dipping.

What made you embrace it?

[apocalypsehownpcs]

[She shrugs and the walls of the house pulse as she looks down at her lamb, fingers fiddling with its ear.]

You don't actually care, so why don't you ask what's important?

[aelwyn_aberration]

Call it a professional curiosity.

[apocalypsehownpcs]

[She Huffs out a heavy, petulant sigh.]

It happens to everyone. It embraced me and I embraced it. This is nicer anyway.

[aelwyn_aberration]

You're not much of a storyteller, kiddo.

[The word rolls off her tongue, and she realizes only a second too late who she sounds like.]

Any kind of inciting incident that let you transform? Anything at all? I'll answer one of your questions if you answer mine.

[apocalypsehownpcs]

[The walls wobble again, like a ripple of steam through the air.]

Aren't you listening? I died!

[The ripple increases and Ava smiles sweetly.]

Don't you want to try it too?

[The walls shift and shoot out into spikes angling for Aelwyn's torso.]

Promise to make it nice and slow so you can feel it, it'll be fun!

[aelwyn_aberration]

Cute.

[The spikes shoot out and in an instant, Aelwyn snaps her fingers, calling forth the fear she's saved - all the nightmares she's fed upon in the last few days. Mercy's skin crackling under her fingertips, Caitlyn's insecurities brought to the surface as she stole everything, and of course there's the other employees who passed through. Too unremarkable for her to even bother remembering their names.

The shield glimmers around her. It's pink, like the rest of her aura. One of the spikes blows past her and catches the side of her ribs, barely reaching over the threshold necessary to harm her.]

You died, yes. But what I don't think you realize, kitten, is that you can and will die again.

[Because in the end, as powerful as she might be in this dream, the lullaby girl is hardly the only person capable of instilling fear. In fact, that just so happens to be the name of the spell she's casting.

Fear. Dreams are shaped by emotions. To so directly control someone's emotions like this will surely transform the dream itself to be far less desirable. That's where Aelwyn's head is at, anyway.]

[apocalypsehownpcs]

[She shifts in her seat and her breath quickens and the room ripples stronger than before. The spikes crumble like toy blocks scattering across the ground.

The room grows hotter by the second.]

Stop. Stop it!

[Ava wails but the room gives way to fire and splintered support beams and crackling wood.]

[aelwyn_aberration]

[The heat fills the air, the wood falls apart and the girl screams in terror. Aelwyn feels the roar of the fire and it embraces her like the mother she never had.

It hurts to watch it all burn, to know she'll never have it back, to know she never deserved it to begin with, and the flames hurt even more. But it's in a beautiful way. The fire loves her. She is once again the nightmare's favourite.

Her expression twists into a wicked grin and she presses harder, laughing.]

What's wrong? Scared?

The fire loves me so much more than it ever loved you. Now, let's see how you like being trapped in your own worst nighmares.

cw: body horror

[apocalypsehownpcs]

[Her face twists and breaks, her wail splitting the corners of her mouth as her eyes sink into pits in her skull.

Ava shatters into pieces and melts along the floor to re-form as far from the flames as she can. A door begins to form behind her, but she turns back towards Aelwyn to force the ground to open beneath her with a desperate cry of anger while flames lick closer and burn hotter.]

[aelwyn_aberration]

[The unfortunate thing is that there is no escaping the flames. They aren't summoned by Aelwyn, not directly.

It's all the Lullaby Girl, all her own fear. And so, of course, they follow her as well. Everything that Aelwyn learned about controlling dreams told her that to do so requires emotional balance. You can't control your dreams in the midst of a powerful terror gripping your mind and body. The little girl's angry desperation only proves her theory.

The floor cracks open, and Aelwyn loses her balance and falls, but her laughter doesn't stop. She grabs hold of the edge of the floor at the last moment before the abyss can take her below. She crawls to her feet. It's neither exceptionally fast nor is it exceptionally slow. She's not the weakling she used to be, after-all.

All she can do is protect herself and wait for the fear to consume her prey. So she channels the fire licking at her legs lovingly in scorching agony into a shield, surrounding herself with the heat like a protective shell.]

[apocalypsehownpcs]

[She opens the door ahead of her, but the passage that should be there is fire beams and the broken framework of a house collapsing in on itself.

Ava gives a scream of frustration and fear and turns around to face the room again. A gout of flame jumps up and catches her dress and her lamb and she shrieks.]

It's not fair! It's not fair, this is my home and you cheated!

[aelwyn_aberration]

Didn't mummy and daddy ever tell you that life isn't fair?

[She sneers. Sometimes she looks at people and sees Adaine and thinks it's a good thing. Now she's reminded of how often she hated her little sister. Aelwyn Abernant is not a good person, nor was she ever. This kid was a victim who grew into a monster, eagerly and happily dancing through misery.

She finds the place in her heart that feels empathy and remorse and wants to stay her hand, and she crushes it. She was born stronger than this pathetic mewling creature clinging onto a childhood she lost. She was born stronger than anyone who thinks they need or deserve things like 'safety' or 'home' or 'love.'

She's the greatest wizard in her fucking generation. And she's tired of being the victim.

So she raises her hand like an executioner raises an axe, fire licking up her arm and scorching her hands. But the veins are left untouched, that mark of Mercy.]

Goodbye, Ava. When you see Ren in hell, do tell her I said hello.

[And she launches an explosive orb of fire at Ava. Fireball. To send her off with a bang even the Desolation can smile at.]