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apocalypsehowcomm2023-09-16 08:32 am
Event - A Little Perspective
The citizens of Gloucester are abuzz with talk of the new town square in the heart of the city. After some miserable few months… years(?) for some of the citizenry, it's a welcome spark of joy. The prize at the center of the square is a perfect replica of Gloucester set upon a large stone slab for people to view and enjoy. Some small festivities have been set up around the square. Food carts with tasty local offerings–it's a lot of seafood–and hawkers looking to sell jewelry, paintings, and other sundries.
The new town square, itself, is bracketed by the General's Store on one side, other tourist-type shops on two others, and an open park field with benches and plenty of shade trees on the other side. There are planters with gorgeous new flowers and everything has a shining, new feeling to it. Ring out the end of summer with the tiny bells that adorn the mini-clocktower in the replica city!
(cw: altered perception of reality, existential crisis, possible starvation, isolation)
The disappearances don’t happen all at once, but they do take place over the course of a few, unremarkable, hours. One by one, seven people step through a door, cross a street, or go to investigate the brand new replica of Gloucester unveiled in the middle of town and vanish.
Except, to them, they don’t. It’s everyone else who vanishes. Whatever path they were on goes uninterrupted, but every other soul is gone, leaving the streets eerily silent. Perhaps you can find each other through calling out or through chance, but it seems only a few others have been left behind.
It’s not just the lack of anyone else that’s off. It’s there in the very sky, a fog-filled horizon leaves little else to see even from the tallest building in the city…if you’re lucky. Where there should be stars or roads or trees beyond the confines of the city, there are unimaginably massive shadows, creatures that loom and shift and seem to occasionally try to stretch their dark and foggy forms down to grab for people who stay outside too long. Surely inside will be safer.
And, for the most part, it is. There’s no running water, no food that isn’t made of plastic, and only the weak yellow glow of lights that seem to come on and off every few hours without any switches or plugs to be seen. Except then there’s the nightmares. There’s no rhyme or reason, no indication of which building will hold the nightmarish scenario that plays out. The only certain thing is that there’s seven of them…and they’re oddly specific, as though tailor made to one individual. Hopefully a friend or stranger can be the voice of reason needed to see you through, but even facing your fears doesn’t seem to set things right. If anything, as time goes on, it only seems to make the shadows get more agitated. More creative…
(cw: gaslighting, potential for sadism, potential for large-scale destruction and injury/death, body horror, nausea, vertigo, supernaturally induced dread)
For those fortunate enough not to be sucked into the miniature town at the center of Gloucester, there's still more than enough trouble to go around. Mainly, the matter of getting people out of the town, whether they be friends or strangers. You might notice the little figures darting about the replica streets or banging at the tiny windows of buildings. Unfortunate that most (or maybe all) of them run in terror at the sight of you when you try to reach out and the sound of you when you make to run.
Most ordinary people walking by don't seem to notice anything amiss like you do. To them, it's just a quaint little attraction to view for a few minutes and then move on. The people trapped within it go unnoticed or unremarked. Even some of the people who work for ADI can't see it, like they have some sort of blindspot that you lack.
Regardless, there's the matter of rescue (or torment for the more sadistic persons out there). The tiny town, itself is designed in such a manner as to make access to the deeper portions of it challenging. The raised platform and general size makes it all but impossible for anyone under 8 feet tall to actually reach the center of the town without having to climb up onto it. And that… has rather dire ramifications. Those seeking to simply pull apart the town or climb onto it with little regard to the structures will find that any time they disturb or destroy a structure, they have a sinking, horrible feeling in the pit of their stomach. If it's a building that's near to where they are, they might even hear the sound of the real structure in Gloucester buckling and breaking as people scream and flee. Some unnatural force seems to be destroying their town and they have no explanation for it. You do, though. You know exactly what you've done. Perhaps you'll even hear about the injured and dead the next time you happen to read, listen to, or watch the news.
With wanton destruction a less-than-ideal solution to get to the darting figures in the town, that leaves a few other solutions. You could gather a team of people to help you corral the figures. If your hands aren't enough, perhaps others will be. The figures are far faster than they should be when they're that tiny or maybe it's that you're having trouble perceiving the depth of the place and where they are in space. In any case… more hands.
Or, maybe you'll go for a more creative option. If hands won't work, then some tape or netting or other traps might slow your quarry down enough to snatch. Perhaps you're even the sort to construct elaborate, Rube Goldberg-style contraptions to catch the tiny figures without hurting them. Much.
Emotion might rule the day for you instead. If you can just find some way to communicate that you're not a danger, that you're there to help, maybe that would have the figure willing to approach you, to climb into your hand of their own accord. It's maybe the kindest and least terrifying route, but it's also likely to take the longest, and time is of the essence.
At least once you manage to pull a rescued person past a seeming threshold, they transform very suddenly into their full-sized self with all the pain, nausea, and vertigo that comes with the sensation of your body exploding from within. The sense of being too large may persist for just a few hours or up to several days for the particularly unlucky.
Those who spend long enough observing the tiny town will note that there is a small timer affixed to one of the buildings where a billboard is in the real Gloucester. It is steadily counting down and it carries with it a sense of impending doom. When the clock strikes zero, the entire display will simply vanish from the center of Gloucester, like it was never there. Anyone still trapped within will also vanish. All references in newspapers and news stories from the past few weeks will vanish.
Was it ever really there? Most ordinary people don't seem to think so. What an interesting suggestion. Maybe you should let the mayor know. A tiny version of Gloucester sounds like it would be a lovely little attraction in the new town square!
(cw: altered mental states; compulsion; painful transformation; dehumanization; being hunted; potential for violence, injury, and death, including gun violence)
There's a restless feeling about ADI headquarters, a strange sort of readiness and tension growing under the day to day office drudgery one always experiences in a lull between major crises. It's an itch in the back of one's mind, a half-noticed shift like the scent of blood carried on a distant wind. The longer the feeling lingers, the more unbearably dull all the paperwork and research and so forth becomes.
Then, all at once, it comes into focus. For some, it's sharp pain followed by a sudden feeling of terror, the knowledge that you are among predators that mean you harm. For others, it's that scent growing sharp and strong the moment you spot your prey.
The prey are easily spotted, at least within the bounds of ADI property, where Milo's glamour doesn't hide nonhumans and not-quite-humans from one another. The change is often small but always unmistakeable: a set of horns or antlers sprouting from one's head, still bloody from their sudden extrusion; the long ears of a rabbit, quivering with the effort to hear the hunters' approach; feathers that ripple out along one's arms in a mockery of wings; or the silky tail of a fox or mink, the mark of a predator long turned prey at the hands of humans. Any who find themselves marked as prey undergo one or more of these small transformations, gaining characteristics that clearly mark them as one of many animals traditionally considered to be game for hunting or trapping.
And if you're not prey? That makes you the hunter. The compulsion to hunt is overwhelming from the moment you spot a coworker, roommate, or even a dear friend marked as prey. Perhaps you're sly about it and set traps, or stalk them from afar. Or perhaps they run and you simply can't resist the urge to chase. What you'll do if you catch them…well, that depends on one's personality, or perhaps on luck. Maybe you'll snap out of it long enough to let them go. Maybe you'll try to lock them up–for their own good, of course, until you work out how to fix this. Or maybe just chasing them down isn't enough to satisfy the urge–the most obsessed hunters might attack, maul, or even shoot their prey if nothing stops them.
Everyone feels it, though. Anyone who isn't marked as prey will feel the compulsion to hunt when they see someone who is, and it simply will not stop as long as the mark remains. Even outside of ADI, normal citizens will even start to react the same way to something they can't even see through the glamour. The only way to end this curse is to remove the animal feature that grew from you–whether that's sawing off a pair of antlers or chopping off a tail.
Good luck…and good hunting.
- 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!
- SMALL FEARS (16-19 September) - Characters trapped in the tiny town will notice the buildings themselves, while sturdy and able to hold their weight, aren’t exactly built to code, almost like they’re made of various craft supplies and short cuts, even if the end result is very convincing. There’s no food or water in the tiny town, but enterprising characters might be able to collect dew outside and survive a little longer that way. Each character has their own ‘nightmare room’ across the various buildings in town and they won’t be able to escape their own nightmare room without someone else’s help. How they get out of the town through the various efforts of those outside is up to the individual player, but anyone still left in town after four days will either die of lack of resources or from the miniature town’s collapse. Please remember that death is permanent.
- BIG FEARS (16-19 September) - Players on the outside are welcome to enact as much destruction and mayhem on Gloucester and its citizens as they would like via the tiny town. Please just let the mods know on the OOC Post in the section dedicated to Town Destruction and Damage so that we can make note of it for future events/the final chapter of the game. Characters that destroy the town will sense the weight of what they've done, even if they don't see or hear the immediate effects. It feels bad to destroy the tiny town. Players are also welcome to come up with creative rescue solutions. The only limitations are that the tiny characters will not be able to understand their speech or anything written for them, so another form of communication may need to be found that doesn't use language.
- ONE FEAR (16-30 September) - Players are free to choose any variety of animal features beyond the ones listed, so long as a.) the feature is linked to an animal traditionally hunted and b.) the change is a discrete feature that can be removed, however painfully. Characters with animal features will find that everyone, not just offworlders and people within ADI, seem to feel the same compulsion to hunt them down until the feature is removed.
Edalyn Clawthorne | The Owl House | OTA
Despite the fact that Gloucester—and this world in general—frequently proves relaxing is a bad idea, Eda could really, truly use a distraction. Which means she finds herself at the little festival, doing her best to enjoy the atmosphere. Nothing seems off yet, after all.
A part of her still misses Bumble Gum, even if she wouldn’t risk their food again. But it’s probably just as well that none of the offerings from the food carts here appear to be striking the humans as strange; it’s partly because of that she can be found trying the various seafood options.
Or perhaps you’ll find her haggling over a piece of jewelry she likes—or, more likely, thinks someone she knows would like.
Small Fears
It isn’t a sound that makes Eda’s ears prick up suddenly so much as a lack of sound. It takes her a moment to realise the background hum of the city and the festival that she’d almost begun to tune out is missing.
And just like that, she realises she shouldn’t have let herself relax to begin with. She looks around the newly empty street, instantly on high alert. A growl rises in the back of her throat, half wary and half frustrated. Couldn’t she have one nice day out?
i. - tinies only
Eventually, Eda’s spent the better part of an hour searching for people, and while she’s had a depressing lack of luck, she’s also noticed some other strange things.
The sky is the obvious one, though she’s not quite sure what to make of it. But the rest is somehow what’s actually weirder. The lack of proper details on the buildings, for one. The food, for another.
She picks up an apple, or what looks roughly like one, from an unattended cart, tossing it up and down a couple of times idly. Just to be sure, she tries biting into it. Yep, that’s definitely plastic. And not even plastic with a good texture. She’s not sure what else she expected.
ii. - tinies only
At some point, Eda spots someone she hasn’t run into yet. There’s a sense of relief, regardless of who it is—not that she’d wish being here on anyone else. Still, maybe together they’ll be able to figure something out.
But the relief doesn’t last long, and she doesn’t even get a chance to say hello to them.
A huge, shadowy hand reaches down from the sky, not towards Eda but towards whoever she’d just spotted. Without stopping to think she darts out of cover to grab them, pulling them out of the way.
iii.
As wary as Eda is of the looming shadow creatures, staying inside doesn’t appear to be getting anyone anywhere. They need to figure out what’s going on here, before they spend any longer without food.
It’s this desire to figure things out that finds Eda having climbed onto the roof of the clocktower, peering up into the shifting fog. The building is holding her weight, but she can’t help noticing it really doesn’t feel as sturdy as it ought to.
She’s seriously considering just… trying to see how far she can fly. What could go wrong?
Small Nightmares - tinies only
cw: rot/fungus, potential animal attacks, potential possession/body horror
Eda isn’t prepared for what happens when she steps through a doorway into what’s meant to be the library. Everything in this place has been… oddly mundane, in a plasticky sort of way. The walls falling away is new, the bland scenery suddenly replaced with something far more organic.
Despite the sudden shift, there’s something almost preferable about the forest she finds herself in. Nature is infinitely more comfortable than the oddly sterile version of Gloucester. And the trees look familiar, nostalgic—the red leaves of the Boiling Isles as opposed to the green of the Human Realm.
She takes a deep breath of the rich forest air, a stark change from the faint smell of craft paint and glue. It's tinged with a note of decay that isn't unpleasant… at first.
It quickly becomes hard to ignore, followed by wet crumbling sounds. She hears trees shift, branches creak and fall, before she finally sees the creeping rot. Sickly green fungus, or something similar but wrong. A tide of decay consuming everything it touches, inch by inch.
It may or may not actually look precisely like the corruption spread by Emperor Belos, but it certainly looks like what her own mind had conjured when she’d been told about it.
Which is enough to send her scrambling back, and pulling any companion she has with her. She’s not sure how real this is, but she doesn’t want to find out by touching it.
Retreating sends her further into the trees, even as they seem to press closer together. It’s surprisingly easy to put some distance between herself and the corruption, at least at first. Unfortunately, there’s no time to rest before it’s clear there are other problems. The ground trembles with heavy footsteps as something begins to stalk closer, and Eda tenses, listening.
The scrape of talons. The rustle of feathers.
It's not hard for her to make a guess at what's waiting for her in the trees, and if nothing else she's prepared.
Because… is that all they've got?
The owlbeast is a cheap trick. One this place has used before. Not to mention one that's starting to lose its sting.
The problem with recurring nightmares is that anything can start to feel routine, given enough time.
And besides. She knows where the owlbeast actually is, the version that matters. She can feel it in the back of her mind, on her side, bristling warily in much the same way she is.
Or maybe it's bristling because it's noticed something Eda hasn't.
Wildcard
Surprise me or hit me up at
Small Fears - ii
The enormous hand gropes at the road and then slowly withdraws as the young woman's heart thrums in her throat. She looks over at Eda only when the hand is no longer in sight. The shadow is, though. "Make a break for a house?" The words are a whispered question. There are a few nearby where they are, but it will still be a risk.
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Eda makes a shushing sound and gives a sharp not towards the hand; she's glad Mercy catches on quickly enough that she doesn't scurry back into the path of danger.
She's very still herself, until the hand finally pulls away—not far enough for her to relax, but certainly an improvement. Right now, she'll take what she can get.
"Yeah, I think we ought to. If nothing else these things seem pretty slow." She keeps her own voice low in return, though she's not sure if the creatures can actually hear them.
She watches the shadow for a moment, making sure of the direction it seems to be going, before making a dash towards a house that lays in a different one.
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"One of them nearly got me a few hours ago. What do you think they want?" A pause as she just pants quietly. "Are they gods?" Probably not, but these are definitely the sort of thing she'd class in that category.
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"Well, they're almost big enough to be Titans." Almost. Nothing compared to the Isles, but still huge.
"And I guess you might as well call anything powerful enough a god," though she has her doubts. "What they want... I don't know. They tried to block off my path earlier."
It reminds her of someone trying to capture a small animal, but it also feels like maybe they're being played with.
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"Feels like they're trying to trap us, aye. They covered the whole of Grove Street near the cemetary in something that looked terrible sticky. Maybe we're food for them?"
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"Sticky...?" That was strange, even on top of everything else being strange. So far they'd just tried different approaches to grabbing at her, as opposed to using... tools? If that's what this was. Then again, she might grasping at theories that aren't anything.
"If we are I hope they're getting as hungry as we are." Not that it would help them, but she was feeling petty.
cw: mention of starvation
"There was a fellow my family took in named Mr. Thomas. He was gonna be locked up in the Abbey dungeon for trying to steal from the stores. Said he hadn't ate anything for near on two weeks." Her expression shifts to something a little more pained. Gods, she wishes she could have done so much more for him. "Mama and Papa couldn't abide seeing a man punished for just trying to feed himself. We asked the abbot if he could just work for us to pay off his debt. Grateful he said yes."
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"But you're right, we've got a week or two." At least, she'd like to think so. A few days might be more accurate, but could it really hurt to be optimistic?
"Just weird there's not even... things to catch or anything." Or maybe not weirder than anything else about this, but she wishes there were animals if nothing else.
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i
Likewise with the medallion. Raine hoped.
that's why the new town square was a good distraction. Raine had been excited to go out and do things after such a long period of time feeling like shit. They'd unfortunately lost both their partner and their... Ward? Adopted son? Raine was still trying to decide what to make of Hunter but admittedly they quietly liked the thought of being a parent to Hunter, alongside Eda.
Eda almost appeared as if the thought of her brought her back to Raine. They spotted her at a booth, haggling with somebody over something Eda had set her sights on, based on how she was acting.
Raine watched until the seller walked off to pause their standoff to help another customer.
They peered over Eda's shoulder-or rather, around it- at whatever she'd been looking at. They've got quite a pleasant smile on their face, and their hands were clasped behind their back.
"Did you find something you like?" They asked, and moved to her side. They're looking at Eda, more than the object on the table, with a sly undertone to everything about Raine- the way they talked, how they held a half-lidded gaze up from behind their glasses at Eda. They simply wanted in on the chaos if there's any more, and they don't seem to be aware if there's anything significant to whatever Eda was arguing for.
"If you need help with it..."
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She didn't notice Raine until they were looking over her shoulder, or maybe even until they spoke up; there was a lot of noise in the square today—and, for better or worse, she was doing her best not to be on high alert.
Either way, she seemed happy to see them when she glanced over.
"Yeah, I think I see something I like," she said, deliberately ambiguous whether she actually meant the jewelry or if she just felt like taking the opportunity to flirt. She leaned closer to give them a quick kiss on the cheek.
"But I don't need your help," she added, before dropping her voice under her breath. "...Unless you feel like being distracting." Could she afford things anyway? Yes, but she suddenly had the feeling Raine might enjoy some mischief.
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"I'd say I'm very good at being distracting," Raine flirtatiously winked, their voice almost at a whisper. "I'll see what I can do..."
They clasped their hands behind their back and walked over to a different section of the booth. They browsed, very intently, and they decided on something easy to control: a pair of black boots.
Raine softly whistled, and the boots sprung to life- and walked off the table. The woman behind the booth, attention snagged by Raine's whistling, caught sight of the boots as they hopped off the table and ran away.
"Did you see that?" She frantically pointed to the boots.
Raine stared quietly for a moment.
"Saw what?"
"The boots! They ran off!"
Raine shook their head.
"I'm sorry. I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't see any boots."
This back and forth continued, which left the ring open for Eda to swipe. If, she didn't pay attention to Raine's newfound act.
no subject
She did her best not to look like she was paying attention to Raine, but her glamoured ears twitched at the whistle and the motion caught her eye as the boots hopped off the table.
While the woman argued with the bard, Eda pocketed the ring with a very practised ease. After a beat, she looked up in false concern.
"D'you just mean they're gone? I think I saw some earlier, cause I remember they weren't my size. Maybe someone swiped 'em. That kind of thing's easy to miss after a long day, I used to run a booth like this so I ought to know."
It was the sort of nonsense that came easy to her, she certainly wasn't new to this kind of scam, and it was the sort of thing Raine used to help her with now and then. And it was really funny.
So there was no reason to worry about Raine automatically taking the tactic of trying to convince someone she didn't just see what she saw.
Right?
It was
probablyfine.no subject
The woman's attention, on the other hand snapped to Eda, her eyes wide with frustration and bewilderment. She was too late to see Eda steal the ring, but that wouldn't stop her from trying to see if somebody else had any sense.
Unfortunately, that didn't seem to be the case.
"No! I saw them run away! Are you two in on this together?!"
Raine shook their head.
"Shoes don't just run away, ma'am. I'm sorry but I don't know what you'd like me to say- I don't even know this woman."
They glanced over to Eda, as if to share a worried exchange with a stranger. The woman, though, frustratedly huffs.
"No, this has to be something. Am I being punked?! Or has this town finally made me lose my shit?"
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Eda glanced back at Raine, doing her best to feign her own expression of unfamiliarity with them.
It took some effort... and it was still taking effort not to laugh. But hopefully it didn't show on her face, and hopefully the woman hadn't happened to notice that little kiss on the cheek.
Not that it really mattered. Who was going to believe the idea of boots just walking away? Then again, as the human was pointing out, it was Gloucester.
"This town... I guess there has been a lot of weird stuff on the news lately. Gets to the best of us sometimes. You get some rest, okay?"
She did her best to look concerned before starting to turn away. A part of her wondered if this would be good or bad as far as the entities were concerned. Maybe getting people to write off the strange things wasn't the worst approach, in some ways.
Nightmares
Right now, he's with Eda. He doesn't have his real weapons here, but he's fashioned some out of materials around the tiny town: jagged shards of plastic with carefully wrapped handles, pieces of sharp metal like the ends of pins, and of course his heavy metal arm.
He immediately draws the plastic knife when their surroundings change. "What is it?" he asks Eda quietly, who doesn't seem as terrified as she could be. Not yet, anyway.
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"It... looks like home. My home." is her answer, not that she really trusts that.
Then, at first, what draws her attention is the sounds, followed by spotting the rot. She backs away, gesturing sharply for Winter to do the same.
"Don't touch that stuff," she says, which is probably a fairly obvious call to make, but she seems upset in a way that goes beyond the visible destruction that it's causing.
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Eda wrinkles her nose, skirting around the creeping rot as she tries to spot some way out. She knows that explanation probably raises more questions than it answers, but it really would be a long story. And she's only guessing as it is.
"If he's here..." Well, honestly she's not sure what that means. She is sure this isn't really real, but things might be dangerous all the same.
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