Event - Feeling Faint

[apocalypsehowmods]

↬ Main Navigation

Feeling Faint

➥ Flicker

(cw: Alterations in reality and perception, chance for violence or injury, potential chance of loss of name or other pieces of a character’s identity, depending on conversations with NPC)

Somewhere, deep in ADI’s basement, there’s a meadow in a metal room. That room has a door that always stays locked. Yet, after a couple visitors come by to talk to the inhabitant of that room, that door is unlocked and the meadow vanishes along with the inhabitant.

It isn’t a quick thing, no light switch is flicked announcing the change in the status quo, it’s an irregular thing. One day everything is as it should be and then, for an hour, all of the illusions and glamours making every non-human seem human simply vanishes. Then it’s two hours. Then a whole day. Then it’s only flickers now and then or only portions of a body left unchanged, all interspersed with days where nothing seems to happen at all. Like someone’s playing a game. Something that leaves the locals on edge as ‘monster’ sightings increase and send a ripple of fear and doubt through town. Fear and doubt that is sometimes answered in unkindness at best and violence and fear at worse.

Though, who the sadistic someone is might be difficult to pinpoint for those outside of the know. Anyone who goes looking or has ways of sensing where the fluctuations are coming from might come across a handsome stranger perched atop one of the now-vacant warehouses once used by Oculus where a rich carpet of grass and tumbling ivy now overtakes the roof and spills down the sides.

For the brave or curious or angry at heart, the stranger will turn to their visitor with a small, knowing smile from where they’re sat in their meadow, a flower crown in hand and held out like an offering. “Hello, who do we have here, then?”

➥ Feint

(cw: extreme distress, hallucinations, supernaturally heightened emotions, blood, monstrous creatures, potential for violence and death)

"Please! Please"--your name, someone is shouting your name--"I need- please! Help!" The voice is a familiar one, someone you care for, or at least have no negative feelings about. They might be someone you've met here in Gloucester, or they could be someone from home. They're distressed, they're in Dogtown. You only hear them as you travel around the edges of the park. And there are even glimpses of them. Flashes of a face that seems to belong to the person who's shouting.

Even if you're wary, sensibly so, the pitch, the distress, puts some sort of feeling into you. Fear, perhaps, for the 'person' in danger? Anger that someone would try to impersonate someone you love? Hopelessness that you can't actually do anything to help? The emotion fills your belly, wells up like a tide and crashes through the mind. It's not impossible to resist going into Dogtown, but it's certainly difficult.

Those who get any substantial distance, will note that they seem to be drawn deeper and deeper into the wood and that the ground grows moist and ruddy. The scent of iron fills the nose and senses. Those who have a sense of Dogtown as it is now may be able to tell that they're being drawn toward the blood river in the southern reaches of the park. Getting closer, you'll be able to see a creature shambling along sideways on clawed and webbed feet. It swings a lantern from its head that flashes to look like the person you know now and again. The false form shouts in fear and terror, crying out.

Should the creature spot you spotting it… be prepared. It will attack immediately, and it doesn't seem to pull its bites or slashes. While ordinary means are enough to bring it down, there is definitely more than one creature. Perhaps a brood has recently hatched in the river.

➥ Figment

(cw: hallucination, altered mental states, gaslighting)

There's a face that keeps turning up around town, but it's not really clear who it is. It's a Caucasian, mustachioed gentleman who seems to be in books where he doesn't belong, in the background of photographs, both old and new, and even on advertisements. You might notice him only in a few things at first, but once you clock him… he's everywhere.

Inquiries into his identity net a mixed response from locals. He's just… some man. Nice mustache, though! Does he look a little like Matthew McConaughey? He just looks like another New Englander, maybe some founder for Gloucester? A reverse image search yields much the same results. There are actors and models who look vaguely like this man, but no one that definitively matches him.

The strange thing is that as you see him more and more, there's the feeling of a hand gently touching your shoulder. A large, masculine hand, as far as anyone with particularly acute senses can tell. It only lasts a moment, and then it's gone. You can never turn fast enough to see anyone, and they don't appear in any mirrors; though… there's a mild distortion in the air if you manage to glimpse a reflection somehow.

Those touched by the hand of the mustachioed man will find themselves feeling more and more inclined toward mischief. Have you seen the mustachioed man? No, no, you haven't. When shown photos including him, you might be inclined to lie and say you see someone else entirely. It's just a little mean. With things in Gloucester spinning out of control, perhaps you ought to grasp control where you can. Making someone doubt themselves and their reality? That's one of the most powerful forms of control out there.

➥ 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! You're welcome to make up any details for your specific scene. Also, please remember that character deaths are permanent and plan accordingly!
  
  
• FLICKER (16 August - Potentially Onward) - Players are welcome to control their own NPC interactions. Some might be understanding or come to their defense while others might turn a blind or turn to violence. These moments of violence shouldn’t be outright mobs so much as small groups close to a mugging that only happen once and a while, not a certainty. Characters will have the chance to talk to Milo and either convince them to continue the illusions or drop them entirely, what happens with the illusions from an IC standpoint will depend entirely on these interactions, so if you tag into Milo’s interaction, please make sure that thread is prioritized.
  
  
• FEINT (16-23 August) - The monstrous creatures can be killed with enough bullets or other normally lethal methods. The figures they mimic will be perfect copies of characters who will elicit strong emotions in your characters. The only limit on who these can be would be for characters already in games. Please just get the other player's permission. If two characters are together, the creature will only mimic one important person. The mimicked individual will provide reasonable (if terrified) responses to questions that are shouted at them.
  
  
• FIGMENT (16-31 August) - Characters will be able to find plenty of people who look vaguely like the mustachioed man, but efforts to track them down will lead to dead ends. They seem to be ordinary actors, models, and people who have had their photos show up on an image search. Characters trying to investigate the strange happenings in Gloucester and the surrounding area, particularly Dogtown, will find themselves seeing the man more often than others. They'll also suffer the effects of the man's 'touch.' Characters who feel compelled to gaslight and deceive others will be affected until they take out that impulse on someone. It doesn't need to be anyone they care about; though, that makes it feel better somehow. Individuals aligned with the Spiral may find themselves feeling particularly well fed for the month of August on fear juice.
  
  

↬ Main Navigation

Comments

Elias Bouchard | The Magnus Archives | ota!

[hellojon]

feint
There are many problems associated with the Eye. One of the ones that Elias is encountering right now is the burning curiosity. The desire to know. There were rumors of an anglerfish like thing in Dogtown and he wants to know what it is. It's affiliation is obvious enough, the Stranger was either very subtle or absolutely not. But is this anglerfish like the one he knows? Are the avatars, the anglerfish and the Distortions and the Archivists of the world as universal as the Entities themselves are? He wants to know.

The fact that the voice sounds like Jon Sims is the final impetus to explore. Elias doesn't care about his Archivist, not in a sentimental way. This thing, whatever it is, it isn't his Archivist. But that's just that. It isn't his Archivist. And there's a tiny little possessive part of Elias that wants to see the thing suffer for even making the attempt at clumsy manipulation.

When he spots someone else in Dogtown, Elias (who's got a handgun and a truncheon at his side for weapons), gives them a little nod. "On the hunt as well?" For someone who occasionally speaks in capital letters, that is a very lowercase hunt in his voice.

figment
Honestly, the more people who get touched by these Fears, the better. Elias doesn't think that anyone's collected the full set yet, but he has a few candidates in mind. So as far as he's concerned? Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss, a phrase with Elias Bouchard has never heard in his damn life but what he's doing right now with style.

"You know," he muses, when looking at a photo of said mustachioed man, "he looks like one of those older film stars from the silent era. Perhaps they are remaking a film? The beard doesn't suit him, though."

It's a good thing that Elias Bouchard is adept at lying because he is just lying his ass off with every interaction he gets.

Figment

[graveyounglady]

"Does he?" Mercy knows nothing of 'older film stars,' so that seems perfectly reasonable to her. She's been helping out in other departments lately, and research seems to have a lot of photographs. This man does look familiar.

"I think his mustache is nice enough. Reminds me of my Papa." As for a beard... She glances over at Elias in confusion. "Looks like he don't got much of a beard to me at all, though. You sure your eyes ain't smudged?" She tries to make it sound amused rather than concerned.

Re: Figment

[hellojon]

Elias frowns, looking confused right back at Mercy's confusion. "No, he certainly has a beard. It's quite large and bushy."

He looks back at the photo, lying through his teeth and doing his best at it, before looking over at Mercy. "Perhaps you simply saw a trick of the light."

[graveyounglady]

She squints at him, then at the page. "Something's playing a trick here. Maybe it's one of them things where we're perceiving different-like? That's- I had that happen with someone. They was seeing a room that was trapping them, closing in, but all I saw was a locked door that only opened from their side. And the room was just fine.

A small shake of her head. "Wonder if it's just... these things or others? Maybe they're cursed?"

[hellojon]

Elias looks over at Mercy, giving her a once-over, a quick furrow of confusion flitting across his face. He gives her a look that implies he's trying to phrase this as delicately as possible.

"Out of curiosity, how many experiences have you had where someone saw something different than what you saw?"

[graveyounglady]

His expression and tone strike her as odd, concerning. "I- Well, you been here a while, sir. There's... lots of things like that?" She frowns at him. "It's the Spiral, right?"

[hellojon]

"It could be." Elias's expression remains the same slightly worried as he continues with, "Though sometimes there are things that aren't caused by the powers. Have you heard the expression 'when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail?'"

[graveyounglady]

"Well, sure. But other folk were experiencing the same things at the same times. Weren't just me, sir." She glances down at the photo again. "How are you sure you're not the one seeing things wrong?"

[hellojon]

"I'm not," he says, with a simple shrug. "All I'm doing is simply pointing out the possibility. After all, we don't have any idea of knowing which of us, if any, are right—at least, we don't have any idea at the moment."

[dangerousmind]

Aelwyn doesn't bother with the handgun anymore. It's a clumsy and mortal weapon, a weak imitation of the arcane devices she used to sell back in her luxurious personal hell. Besides. Whatever decided to imitate Adaine's voice won't get a death as clean as a bullet. She's going to make it hurt.

Having witnesses is a bit of a pain, but she's confident that she can get away with it anyway. So she returns the nod.

"You'd think they would get a little more creative with their taunts, mm? As if the forced emotional response isn't just a dead give-away."

[hellojon]

Aelwyn is certainly going to get away with that copious destruction and violence as long as she's with Elias. His entire being is a live wire, something ready to spark, ready to drink in whatever the hell this new horror is before, let's be real, probably shooting it.

The Stranger's already having a field day with the glamors breaking. It doesn't really need an anglerfish to cause more problems.

"It always attracted the easiest prey back home. People who were foolish enough to go in an alleyway at night. Those too drunk or too tired to notice something was off. I'm not surprised to see it's tactics remain so...base in this world."

[dangerousmind]

"Like the lethal equivalent of those spam emails," Aelwyn muses with an amused huff. It feels a bit... cheap, to prey on the lowest common denominator's complete stupidity rather than being a bit more creative.

She makes a note, however, on the familiarity with which he speaks of the Stranger. She got the impression before that he spoke on these matters with a fair amount of experience and authority. The last person who would vaguely allude to those things was Jonathan Sims, and he certainly turned out to be tied up in all this.

But she doesn't let that observation show on her face, nor does she have any intention of asking him. Instead, she turns towards the woods.

"Well, regardless, you should probably stick behind me unless you have some unseen form of protection," His safety is probably in her best interest, after-all.

[hellojon]

"I have a handgun," he says, showing the gun, "and a bludgeon. They're fine in a pinch, but I'm perfectly fine letting you have the honors. After all, I'm sure you'll get more out of it than I will."

What with being so obviously Desolation and all. Let your pyromania fly! And also better this anglerfish target Aelwyn than him!

[dangerousmind]

She remembers dragging Jon along to her interrogation of Fenix, the way he'd largely sit back and watch, keen to let her do all the heavy lifting.

Beholding. It has it's claws around her charred little heart too, but it's not what saved her in the end. Only the fire.

Better the Beholding than any of the other options, really.

"Lovely. I'll leave what I can do as something of a surprise," Quite a lot, as it turns out, especially now that she's not holding back.

[hellojon]

Elias gives Aelwyn a nod, looking at her with interest in his eyes. He absolutely wants to see that surprise, so he'll move to stand behind her as they continue onwards.

"I believe that..whatever it is isn't too far off." After all, the scent of blood has just hit Elias's nostrils. Not a good sign. "Whatever you want to do, I hope you're ready to do it."

[dangerousmind]

Her eyes flare with a crackling intensity, glimmering like flames themselves, or something lost in them. She might as well be salivating from how hungry she is right now.

Her hands flicker with an orange light, and the field around her is visible, barely. Just a shimmering, a barely traceable matter in the air around her, like flammable gas surrounding her. She was powerful long before she was embraced by the fire.

She can faintly hear the voices screaming out. Adaine. And then she sees the beast.

"Just another monster. Nothing particularly inspired," Her voice is calm and quiet. It's best to act on the opportunity that surprise will lend. The fire builds in her hands and she throws it, and it shifts and twists into a dark orange bolt of lightning, lancing through the monster and filling it with more electricity than any normal creature could survive contact with.

And yet, all it does is howl with agony.

[hellojon]

Elias watches with rapt attention. The sheer power behind Aelwyn's attack, the sheer force of the Desolation is enticing in it's own way. But why should she have all the fun?

The power of the Ceaseless Watcher is a bit more subtle than that of the Lightless Flame. But the sensation of being watched settles around them as Elias stares down the monster, inserting a memory into the thing's head. Does it want to know just how precisely it's going to die? How it would feel when Aelwyn completely burns it to a crisp? Well, it's learning now.

The agonized howl shifts to something close to terror. The creature's getting sloppy. It'll be easy enough to burn to shreds now.

figment :v

[lowficharm]

Honestly, Martin's not inclined to let Elias know the running counter of Fear experiences, but frankly he's pretty certain out of everyone here, he's been around the longest (along with one or two others). Unfortunately for Elias' potential plans, anything that may involve Martin would also involve him beating Elias to death with his bare hands, so he's probably out of the question. It also makes this conversation especially pithy, as Martin just rolls his eyes as he passes through the office, barely taking a glance to see whatever it is Elias is looking at.

"Of course you'd know something about old men." Ha ha, ha ha ha, it works on many levels and Martin wants to further explore none of them. "Why do you care, anyway?"

Re: figment :v

[hellojon]

You turn one Archivist boyfriend into a herald of the Apocalypse and suddenly you're the bad guy.

At Martin's question, Elias raises an eyebrow before pointing out, "It's interesting. This world is much more...open about these sort of things than ours. I want to judge the extent of it."

[lowficharm]

Yes!! Yes that would do it buddy, among the myriad of other problems he continually caused and Martin can't think about simultaneously without leaping on him like a feral ape.

The reply makes him slant his mouth, like he wants to find something wrong with that statement and is miffed he can't. "It's not like thay everywhere, you know. People say all the time that this town is particularly odd in terms of this stuff."

[hellojon]

"It makes you wonder why."

Or at least, it makes him wonder why. It makes Elias Bouchard, nosy bitch and flunky to the Eye, curious as to why the town's like that. And he wants to poke and prod and dive deeper and figure out why Glouster is Like That.

"I wonder if part of the reason is due to the...continued presence of the Entities, as it were. The longer you live somewhere, the more you get used to the eccentricities. After all, I'm certain that even those not under the Archivist realized that things weren't exactly normal at my Institute."

The fact that the Institute's been attacked like four times in four years probably helps with that assessment.

[lowficharm]

Martin thinks very hard about saying something insulting and then doesn't for the sake of letting himself let it go. Still, Elias does make one point- if he figures it out before Martin does, he has the opportunity to do some real damage. So despite his internal protests to leave it be, he sighs and looks back towards the flyer.

"I mean, the library was pretty normal, you know. Just, just regular people with books and research." But also, he knows he wasn't there too long before getting pulled down to the Archives, so, there's that. "It seemed normal enough before. I mean, we all thought it was weird when Gertrude just disappeared, but we just thought she-- you know, retired. Not something like her boss shooting her."

[hellojon]

A small little shrug! No regrets with regards to shooting Gertrude, these things happen in their line of work.

"The key word in that phrase is 'it seemed normal enough before.' Then there were the worms, Hopworth's attack, the not-Them, Montauck and Herbert...even before the world changed, the densest person in the library would have realized something was wrong. And this world feels like it is right at that same spot."

[lowficharm]

Martin makes a face, but doesn't refute him because, well, he's right. You don't just get a worm flood and frequent visits by only the most unhinged cops and think it's just fine. Then again, there's something to be said for willful ignorance, even if it won't save you.

"No I-- I know. Something's wrong and it's been wrong for a lot longer than we've been here, which is what I can't figure out. They-- they shouldn't be here, right? How could they if we went to an entirely different universe? And more than that, how-- how would they even do that with the kind of frequency and volume we've seen?"

[hellojon]

"Perhaps the fears are constant throughout all the universes? Perhaps they simply slipped through a crack, moving in when nobody could see them? And perhaps they appeared and developed on a much more frequent, rapid timescale than that of our own world?"

Elias gives a cavalier little shrug. "At the moment, all we have are hypotheses. In order to find anything remotely close to an answer, we should do what the Institute does best: research. Bother a few people. Ask questions."

Know.