Event - Feeling Faint

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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.
  
  

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Comments

[worthallthis]

Winter is silent a moment, then he says, "I was a person. A pretty normal person, I guess. So Stevie says. I don't remember much about that. A group captured me during a big war, experimented on me, took my memory, gave me the arm, made me into their assassin. I remember more of that, but not everything."

He hitches his right shoulder, the one that doesn't ache all the time, the one HYDRA didn't fuck up. "I. Wasn't a person. I didn't feel things or want things or. Make decisions outside of tactical mission ones. I didn't have a name. It wasn't allowed."

[ruevealing]

"Oh, my dear Winter..."

To have his memory tampered with, to be forced into murdering against his will - Rue had no idea his history was so terrible considering how gentle and generous and sweet they have always known him to be.

"I had no idea." They reach out to rest a paw at his arm, their heart-shaped face pinched with sorrow. "They did this to you on purpose? To turn you into a weapon for them to use? I did not know humans could be so cruel."

[worthallthis]

"Yeah. They can." And worse. Winter remembers a lot of horrors from that time. He doesn't know how many of them are real, but if they're in his brain, it's probably likely they're at least mostly real. He doesn't think he's that imaginative.

He pats their paw on his arm a couple times, slowly. "I'm okay. I'm. Better. A lot better. I'm a person now." Mostly. Most of the time. "I'm trying to be a person now, when I didn't really try before. I have people who would be sad if I wasn't. You know?"

[ruevealing]

And worse, he says, and the owlbear's whole face drops.

"The fact you have overcame such horrors and not just survived, but thrived! It makes me so proud to know you and call you friend. And truly, my dear, just in the short time that I have known you, I feel as if I have seen you blossom. You are doing such a marvelous job. Just the fact you have walked away from ADI, you are taking your own life into your hands."

[worthallthis]

He looks away again, this time in a little embarrassment. "Not sure if I"m doing that good." He still talks in fits and starts. He still has to plan out social situations with people who aren't his actual friends. He still has probably too much fondness for blowing things up.

But Rue likes him. Rue probably likes everyone, but they still seem sincere about it. So: "But. Glad you think so, at least."

[ruevealing]

Rue does have a particular way of seeing the best in others, unless they are Hickey.

"Thank you for sharing that with me, Winter. And again, for coming to my rescue. I think I may be ready to glamour myself to return. Truth be told, I hate doing it myself and feeding to any of those Entities. But if ADI's has failed me, then I can use my own. Just in get back home safely."

[worthallthis]

Well, nobody likes Hickey, so that's certainly fair.

"I don't mind waiting," Winter protests. "If you don't want to spend your own magic." He'd rather nobody spend their own magic, at all, in this place.

[ruevealing]

"Truly? I do not want to take up your whole afternoon..."

But also consider, Rue will cheerfully talk his ear off if given the chance.

[worthallthis]

"My afternoon was going to be shadowing you, anyway," Winter shrugs. "So this way I get to talk with you, too."

[ruevealing]

"Then I would be happy to spend the time with you."

It may not be the most comfortable of places to hide out in, but the company is perfect.