Event - Untimely

[apocalypsehowmods]

↬ Main Navigation

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.

↬ Main Navigation

Comments

[twicelost]

Dreams, visions, and inexplicable changes within them are not foreign to Katrina. Her people's ancestors dwell in the spirit realm, and they can appear to the living, and there are ways the living can go to their realm. To walk into another's dream was difficult to learn, but not to accept. She isn't very good at it, but it's enough.

She does not crouch to touch the owl beast. Let it get to know her in its own way. She lets it sniff at her for as long as it wants before she goes and sits next to Eda.

"Even in this dream, my song will not have power." It won't hurt the owl beast or Eda. "But still I will not sing hunting song." Because neither Eda nor the owl beast are prey.

She sings instead a song for tranquility. Her voice echoes slightly, resonates, but lacks the undercurrent that gives it the ability to affect others. Still, the notes are crystalline and soothing, wordless tones that feel like floating in the embrace of a calm sea.

[edalyn]

Eda stays where she is and watches, because getting up or letting on how tense she is wouldn't help anything.

The owl beast sniffs at Katrina for a bit and then circles around her once before seeming satisfied. She makes more sense than most of the people Eda's met here, and although she's another predator it isn't feeling territorial. Going hunting with Eda goes a long way, apparently.

"Yeah, best not, hunting is what we're all trying to avoid tonight." She says this just a little bit pointedly, which is probably directed at the creature following Katrina back over. She has to admit she's curious about the siren's singing either way. Even a version that isn't magic.

Initially, when Katrina begins singing, the owl beast sits and tilts its head to the side, watching her curiously. Eventually, though, it settles down and curls up in front of the two of them and Eda reaches over to scratch behind one of its wings lightly. She's quiet during the song--she doesn't know it and she doesn't want to interrupt--but she'll speak up once it's over.

"That's... that's beautiful." She loves music, even if she hasn't been able to safely play her own lately.

[twicelost]

The song feels strange to her, without the parts that give it strength. All of her voice was in it just now, but still it lacked... it lacked. She misses her true form, her true strength. But she must stay strong, for her tribe, her people, and all the other worlds there are out there.

"It is for calming." Eliza knows so many more songs, passed down to her by her mentor, and so on, all the way back to time immemorial. "Owl beast seem to like this song."

Taking compliments is still not her strong point, sorry. Land-dweller society is just... very strange to her, still.

[edalyn]

"Yeah... it did," Eda agrees. Which is honestly interesting. They haven't been on good terms for all that long, and she's still figuring out the best ways to keep the creature calm.

Said creature looks up and nudges Katrina's knee with its beak. It isn't particularly clear if this means it wants to hear another song or if it wants her to pet it.

Eda, meanwhile, looks thoughtful. "Your song didn't have power... I wonder if mine would in here," she muses. After all, the point to the lucid dreaming is having control in here, right?

[twicelost]

"Do you think it is safe to try?" Is using their powers in dreams any less dangerous than using them in the waking world?

To the owl beast, Katrina extends a hand, palm up, a gesture of nonaggression, of welcome.

[edalyn]

"I'll... know pretty fast if it does anything," Eda says with a little shrug. If nothing else, it always seems to take a bit before it gets genuinely dangerous. "Just hoping it doesn't."

The owl beast hesitates briefly and then licks Katrina's hand. Despite the owl face it has a scratchy sandpaper tongue, like a cat.

Eda mutters distractedly to herself as she tries to get her dream to do what she wants. After a moment she draws a circle in the air with her finger, and it hangs there glowing yellow briefly. It doesn't feel like doing magic, not really--but she didn't really expect it to. In here, it's just a way to focus. It wouldn't work for real anyway, even if she was feeding her patron.

Either way, a stringed instrument--specifically a bell cittern--materializes and falls from the disappearing circle. It has a little design burned into the body, a cloud with raindrops, a lighting bolt and simple winking eyes. She tries to ignore the pang of nostalgia at the fact the real one is... is it back home, actually? She files that question away for later.

[twicelost]

What a strange little creature. A small predator.

"I am friend," she tells the owl beast. "I do not hunt you. I do not fight you."

In the time it takes to say that and watch it more, Eda... makes? Makes, yes, an instrument.

"This is first time I see instrument like this."

[edalyn]

The owl beast looks up at Katrina and seems to study her for a moment before giving a little tilts of its head that might be a nod.

"It's a bell cittern," Eda says, turning it over in her hands for a moment. "Not sure if I've seen anyone play one in the Human Realm. I... used to play this one a lot."

Well, the real version of this one, but she supposes that goes without saying. She plucks at the strings lightly with her nails, and so far nothing out of the ordinary seems to happen.

[twicelost]

Katrina nods back and reaches out to gently pet the owl beast's head.

"Its sound is beautiful. You played for ceremony? For family?"

[edalyn]

The creature hesitates slightly, then leans into Katrina's hand with a soft trilling sound. The nagging hunger is still there, but it's doing quite well at being calm tonight. This sort of interaction is still a novelty.

"Mostly... for myself. And friends. Don't love a crowd." Eda chuckles just a little awkwardly. Her stage fright might not be as bad as Raine's, but performing in any formal way in front of people never proved to be her favorite thing.

[twicelost]

The petting doesn't last long. Katrina does it because she's seen humans do that with pets, but the owl beast isn't hers. She wouldn't blame it if it attacked her, either. That's how predators are.

"Your music, can it be a weapon?"

Like her people's siren song?

[edalyn]

The owl beast looks up at Katrina in a way that might be a little disappointed, but after a moment it just settles back down and rests its chin on its paws.

Eda responds to her question with a tired little chuckle. "It's kinda always a weapon these days. Fun new side effect of the curse." She gives the owl beast a little pat on the wing when she says this, though. That part is neither of their faults.

"But proper bard magic? Yeah, it can be a weapon when you want it to. It can be a lot of things. It's pretty cool, actually." She's not really thinking of her own when she says that last bit, but she does miss being able to use it.

[twicelost]

"In my home, our song is a weapon. It bring dangerous enemy to us. It... mm. Humans say my people use song to lure males to death in the water. But but work on females also."

She's still not convinced they don't deserve it, all the ones who have died because of the siren song. Step by step, for this one.

"We have song for healing, calming, sadness... maybe in your world, our song is call bard magic. Only in Gloucester, my song us not a weapon. But in my home, it is always a weapon, even if we do not mean this."

[edalyn]

"Yeah, I bet," Eda says with a little chuckle--look, it's a very pretty voice. And a very pretty siren.

She listens a bit more seriously to the rest, though. "Probably works different, but at home bard magic is anything that uses music. Or just sound. It's too bad if you can't turn it off, though... I mean, I know the feeling."

She picks out a few more notes experimentally, still half expecting the grass around her to start wilting into ash.

[twicelost]

"Your music should not bring you sadness." From a human, that would sound soft and sympathetic. From Katrina, it sounds like a firm statement: it shouldn't be the way that it is. The sympathy is there, just in a different form.

"This music... it is calm. It sound peaceful. But you do not sound happy when you say you know the feeling. Is this because of curse on you?"

[edalyn]

Eda doesn't seem to mind terribly. As much as she usually nigh-constantly uses sarcasm and flippancy, reading social cues has never been her strongest area. Katrina is a change, but not an unwelcome one. It's part of why it's easier to be fairly straightforward with her on Eda's part.

She nods. "It messes with my magic. Like I say, always a weapon these days. If this was the real world and I played long enough I could turn this whole place to ash. Useful in a pinch, but not great if you just want to play someone a song."

She neglects to mention that she'd be included in the things that turned to ash. Or that her definition of useful in a pinch is sometimes fine with that.

[twicelost]

"Maybe, when we reach goal in Gloucester, we can find way to change this."

Katrina might not feel strongly about music as an art form, the way humans do, but she can't imagine life without it. It's ingrained in her culture, in her very biology. For Eda to be cut off from it, perhaps similarly to how Tia was... it horrifies Katrina.

"I am happy for you, my sister, because in this dream, you play your music and no bad thing happens. I am happy I can listen to it."

[edalyn]

On the other hand... sometimes the sincerity is a lot.

She gives a vague nod to the first part--sure, maybe. But she doubts it. No one could cure the curse back home, and it has nothing to do with the entities.

"Thanks, Kitty. Yeah... it's nice." And since it seems to be fine, she starts to pick out a full tune. It's soft and relaxing, something she wrote years ago but still remembers how to play.