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Event - Feeling Faint

Feeling Faint

➥ Flicker

Photo of a wild rooftop garden with a city skyline in the background.
(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

Photo of a forested area around a crimson red river.
(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

White billboard with the words This Ad Is Real written in black and red block font.
(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.

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I. Nameless - For Steve(?)

Winter is waiting outside the ADI campus for his guy to finish his little infiltration. Or to perform a rescue, if he needs to. He spends his time in the little coffee shop down the street alternately staring through the window at the ADI buildings, or staring at his phone with the little tracker dot labeled "Steve".

Only when the dot starts moving out of the building does he get up, finish his coffee, and come out to meet him.

II. Flicker - For those who need the illusion

Winter figures out pretty early what's happening, and he starts kind of... loitering... around where people he has trackers for go, or where he thinks those he doesn't have trackers for might go. Maybe it's a little bit like stalking, but whatever, if their illusion flickers he's there, with a hood or a blanket to toss over their faces, a glower for anyone who is around making a fuss, and an arm around shoulders to usher them out of danger.

Or a gun if anyone is actively threatening his people. He'll have that, too.

III. Feint - OTA

While Winter is not a hunter per se, and actively rejects the Hunt, that doesn't mean he's not good at tracking and taking down monsters. So, armed with his trust earplugs, Winter prowls the edges of Dogwood relying on vision only for snatches of the beast.

And only once he spots it-- or its lure-- does he plunge in with his rifle and handgun and a couple of his precious grenades. And hopefully backup. You want to come help him kill monsters, right friend?

There's a lot to think about, he thinks, as he makes his way back up through the bowels of ADI and out of the building. He heads straight off the grounds, not wanting to risk running into anyone who might detain him, or worse. He'll certainly put up a fight if he has to, but the idea is not to have to, after all.

So it's a relief to see Winter's face; something in his own face relaxes as they close in on each other. "Hey. I'm good, you can stand down."

"I'll trust that you're good when I've seen it myself," Winter grouses at him, because you never know when something weird happened when you're messing with magic. Winter trusts nothing. "Come on. Walk. Tell me what happened."

That's clearly a wise outlook, Winter, and one this guy here does not quite share. He spreads his arms a little, as if to try to prove his point, but there's something like a fond smile almost, almost trying to tug at his lips.

He does, though, get moving, falling into step beside Winter as they head farther away from ADI. In fact, he waits just a minute before he goes into detail: "Well, it is a person maintaining the illusions for the nonhumans. I found them, but they don't seem to be a prisoner." In fact, they'd implied it was a mutually beneficial arrangement, though he's still not so sure about that. "They also said that ADI has never asked them to stop using an illusion for someone - and nonhumans have to have disappeared off the grounds, right?" People disappear without a sign much more frequently than he'd like - which is basically not at all.

"I thought it would be," Winter mutters. He'd never believed there was some kind of machine. It had to be magic, and if it was magic, it had to be a person. Even if it was an artifact, the artifact would require a person to use it. And if it's a person and the person is getting a benefit from it, then that person is clearly serving an entity.

"There have been," he agrees, at a more normal volume. "Lots. From before you got here, and after. The pink guy. The rat man. The bone monster. More. So if they're still out there, and not dead, they still have their illusions?"

"Right," he agrees, slowly. "They said..." He pauses, wanting to get it right. "No one has asked me to stop for any of my names."

It had seemed like a bit of an odd way to put it, but it makes sense, right? They must have been given a list of names of people to hold the illusion for. And never told to stop, even when one of those people disappears. Or leaves. "They suggested we were imposing that idea ourselves. Which... I understand why people worry about it, but maybe they are."

"Or ADI is implying it," Winter says grimly. "To control them. To keep them from leaving."

Then he stops. Because Winter tends to say people's names a lot, just in conversation, whether to get someone's attention or for emphasis or just because he likes the feel of their names in his mouth. And he just tried to say the name he thought was associated with his guy, only to find he didn't know it.

He stops walking, too, looking shocked and a little afraid. His only thought, first and foremost, is that he's lost something again, that it's his own memories and his own fear of losing his memories that is getting in the way. "You. You. Tell me your name."

"Yeah," he agrees, just as grimly. "That's sort of what I'm thinking."

Which, if it's the case - he really isn't surprised. He can't even wish he could be.

But then Winter stops dead in the middle of the sidewalk and he comes to a halt, too, once he realizes, turning, confused. "What?" His name? Why -

It's -

His mouth opens, but for a second, nothing comes out. It's like... like he can't wrap his lips around the word, his name; it's getting tangled and garbled and he can't even start to make the right noises -

"Rogers," he finally manages, but he doesn't look relieved when he does. "It's - Rogers. Rogers - "

He's trying to slot a first name in front of it. He can't. Not until he finally forces out, awkwardly, "Steven."

Which is true, but... not what he wanted to say.

There's some relief from Winter, though, because he does remember that. Rogers. Steven Rogers. "Steven Grant Rogers," he pulls up, from some vague memory of a small, stern woman.

It's not quite right. But he hasn't lost it. Not all of it.

And Steven Grant Rogers has lost the same part of it. Which means it's not him it's something else.

"Yes," he agrees, slowly - not because it's wrong. It's not.

But no. It's not quite right, either. It's not what most people call him.

"I can't remember," he says, and there isn't exactly a note of panic in his voice, but it's close. "There's - another name. I can't remember it."

"I can't, either. Something happened since you went there that made your name-- go away," Winter says.

The person inside said something about names. The weird phrasing. Something that pings an ancient knowledge that he didn't know he had. "Steven Grant." He hates that so much. He needs something else to call him, and he's not calling him Rogers. Not anymore. He barrels on. "Tell me exactly what the thing in there said to you, and what you said back."

Yeah, it definitely sounds like he's in trouble every time Winter says that, although he supposes that maybe, given the current circumstances, he is.

He frowns. "Exactly - " His memory's not exact anymore, but it's not bad. But he isn't sure what part of the conversation is most relevant, here. He certainly was never any of the names being associated with an illusion.

"I mean... they asked for my name. When I came in," he hazards, which had seemed a little odd but not that odd. And he knows he hadn't been afraid to give it.

"Actually," he corrects, and his voice is very quiet. "I think they said, May I have your name."

Yeah. Yeah, that tracks. Winter's stomach sinks a little. "And. Then you gave it to them," he groans. "Shit." At least now he knows what happened. It's some-- some faerie shit. He remembers faerie tricks like that, somehow, though he doesn't know from where. And Steve, who has no memory problems whatsoever, didn't remember.

Really, how could he know? This is a whole different world. How was he supposed to know that was a faerie?

He decides, "I'm gonna start calling you fucking Stevie." And he is grimly pleased that this name actually works.

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ii. flicker

Re: ii. flicker

i have never been more sorry about rue until this moment

Rue you are a treasure

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so sorry for the delay! month-end close kicked my butt

you are golden!! <3

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