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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.
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"Get. Off." With his help, she's able to break away from the doctors and looks around the car for something. The door is first in her sight. "Out. We gotta throw 'em off the train, Winter! She grabs for one to try to haul it away from Winter and toward the door as it struggles and informs her they need to get back to work. "Only work we're doing... is getting you off this train."
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He drags the two still clinging to him in Mercy's wake, hands closing on plastic throats that keep talking, anyway, as if they don't need air. They're dolls. They're toys. (Just like him?)
He hurls one off the train over Mercy's shoulder, watches it bounce. But there are more reaching for him, for both of them.
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A bridge with the middle missing.
And doctors. A seemingly endless supply of doctor dolls grabbing at them. She grabs for the one person amongst the puppets and tries to pull him away and kick the door closed at the same time. "We can't stay here," she says. "The train's gonna go off the track ahead. We need- we need to jump off or stop the train somehow!"
It seems like they have more time for the jumping. Getting to the engine room with all of these dolls in their path is going to be near impossible. And even then, they'll need time for the carriages to slow down.
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He blinks blankly at her, for a moment completely unable to comprehend her words. Jumping from a moving train is madness. Impossible. He doesn't think he can even unlatch his metal fingers from the railing, let alone jump off.
The door behind them rattles ominously.
Prod him again, Mercy. Or maybe give an order?
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Whatever his response, Mercy is going to throw her leg over the railing and steel herself just before the doors to the carriage slams open. "Relax. Put yourself in Pelor's hands. Believe. Relax. And jump." She's going. And she very much hopes her hold on Winter will be enough to pull him with her.
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And even if it's madness, even if it's impossible-- that's better than being put back into the Chair. The Chair is worse than death. He can't.
He can't. He has, and he has, and he has, and he can't. Not again.
The door slams open behind them and he twitches away from Mercy, gives an entirely-unlike-Winter sort of whimper at the sight of the doctor dolls reaching for him again, then tumbles over the railing in Mercy's wake.
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"Pelor, protect us." The prayer is whispered as she closes her eyes and lets her body go loose.
The ground is unforgiving when she hits it, but it's a cotton-y sort of faux-grass, and as he goes rolling, pulls herself in, there is pain, but not the sharp crack of bones. She's dizzy beyond belief as she comes to a stop, and she hears the scream of the engine, once more, as the train powers on to its destruction.
After a few seconds, she pushes herself up on one arm and looks around. "W... Winter?"
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He's watching the train go over the broken bridge, off the track, no more rails.
It vanishes before it hits the bottom, to start the loop all over again, even though its principle subject is no longer aboard.
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It's effort to get up, so she just crawls over to him. Mercy's bleeding from a few scraps, one prominent one that's ripped the sleeve of her shirt. "Let me look you over."
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Mercy may or may not have been him the last time they were on a train for a mission, and how he'd been terrified then, too. Or whenever he was forced to stay in the medical wing for more than a minute or two. It's like that.
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"Winter, can you hear me? I got my hand near yours. You want to reach out and touch it? Let me know you're with me?"
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"Mercy," he finally says. Then he swallows heavily and asks, haltingly, "The train. It. How long was I."
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He remembers Mercy. That's-- that's something. They didn't take everything. "The chairs. The. Machines. They take-- they took--" His breath comes out in a whine and he breaks off, burying his face in his hands. "Don't let me go back. No matter what," he says, slightly though his palms.
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Tentatively, she moves to crawl a little closer. "You wanna hold my hand? Give it a squeeze?" They can deal with the medical attention in a moment.
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He might be free now, but someone had the Words. Whether it was an Entity, the person who built this horror show, or some echo out of his own mind, it could always happen again.
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"You're better than anything they're holding over your head. I've seen it more than once. I promise."
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"A toy soldier," he whispers, as much to himself as her. "Just like them. Take the memories, say the Words, and I'm just like them."
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"Mr. Rogers and Ms. Yelena'd agree with me, too. Just you ask them once we get outta here."
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So he doesn't know that he believes Mercy, not right now. Maybe not ever. There's no fighting the Words. But he does think that maybe if they're further away from the track, from any trains, maybe if someone inside said the Words he wouldn't be able to hear them.
He looks blankly at her hand for a moment, then reaches over just enough to tap a finger to the tip of one of hers, then starts slowly picking himself up. "We should go. Somewhere else. Away from. From any train tracks."