redmarsshit | redshift: tdm #5

redshift: tdm #5

Redshift: Welcome to the v͖͕̺̲̘̱̜͎o̴̦̣̠̦̘̹͞i̯̖d̛̪̬͈̱̦̝͍̕.

▶ Click here to read what characters will experience when arriving in Anchor.

▶ All TDM threads can be considered game canon, and current players are welcome to either top-level on the TDM so prospective players can tag them, or use the prompts for logs or network posts on the communities. All threads on the TDM can be used for Activity Check.

a. don't be a sap.

Good morning, October 25th! Whether you're a confused new arrival or a current resident, you probably had some plans for today, right? Grab breakfast, visit a friend, pick some fruit, explore a new part of the massive city.

Well. Too bad. Because, as every single bot in the city will be telling you the moment you show your face, it's GOOP FESTIVAL DAY! What? You've never heard of it? Preposterous, everyone knows about the Goop Festival, it's one of the most anticipated holidays in Anchor! Haven't you been preparing for this for a week now?

The Goop Festival is a harvest celebration, in particular, a celebration of the sap-producing trees that grow wild in the Park, thick around the edges of the south side of the lake. The bots have been hard at work setting up the festival grounds in the shade of the trees in the balmy fall temperatures. There are spiles tapped into trees with buckets placed underneath that are already half-full of a thick, viscous, amber-colored sap. The bots have also set up troughs of shaved ice with long sticks nearby, with which they will demonstrate for excited residents (you are excited, right?) how to cool the sap in the ice and wrap it around the stick to make it a sort of taffy candy. That's not the only sweet surprise waiting, either.

A long table set up in the grass is loaded down with all sorts of delicious sap-related goodies, ranging from cupcakes with thick globs of sap-flavored frosting to sap-flavored jerky to sap sugar candies, and just about anything else you can imagine. There are a wide variety of offerings that would taste good coated, flavored, or glazed with the sap, which tastes sort of like a caramelized toffee. Another table is laid out that has row upon row of cups, each half-full of the sap, heated lightly to a thinner consistency and served similarly to hot chocolate - at least, if hot chocolate gave you a floaty, happy, hazy sort of feeling. Everything made with this sap does, actually, with the cups of pure sap having a stronger effect and items with less sap content having barely any effect at all.

Does this not sound like your cup of weird tree sap? Too bad. This is the GOOP FESTIVAL, and everything is shut down for this lovely paid vacation day. Spa? Locked down. Kitchens? Locked. Bar? Nope, totally shut down and the server bots are all down at the park. VR Gaming? Too bad, the computers are all shut down. Even roaming the halls and trying to stay out of the way won't help much...be prepared to be dragged down to the park to participate in this mandatory festival! Isn't it exciting?

b. familiar ground.

Every year in Anchor near the end of October, there's a very strange interaction between the protective dome over the city and seasonal radiation surges that happen in the wastelands. Some complicated combination of refraction and reflection means that for the last few days of the month, residents will experience some of the more benign effects of the red shift inside the city.

Did we say benign? Because while there may not be any dangerous radiation to melt your skin off, there are some mind-bending dangers. Characters experiencing the shift will find the world becomes distorted, warped, impossible to navigate; they are enveloped in auditory and visual hallucinations, and can become so disoriented that they can't even recognize people they've known for years. And characters will find that the citywide shift brings in slivers of other universes, little slices of places characters have never seen before...or places so familiar they make the heart beat hard with joy or fear.

And just like in the wastelands, the things that show up in these shifts are all too real. Characters may find themselves walking through a door into a scene straight from home, or from someone else's home. Whether it's a favorite place to share with a new friend, or the nightmare landscape you almost died in, complete with the monster that almost killed you, be careful. Everything you experience here is real, and if you die in the shift, you die for real.

Of course, the city has its own safety measures in place - residents experiencing the hallucinations and appearances of items and places from other worlds may find themselves locked down in the room they're in, trapped with the otherworldly effects of the shift.

c. the virus.

A few weeks ago, people in Anchor started getting a case of the sniffles. While some of the earliest cases might be clearing up, there are still a few people suffering, or people freshly infected by those who were sick earlier, including some of the new arrivals who may not even be feeling it yet.

Which may make the cause of some unexpected 'glitches' around the city a little unclear. Residents who are feeling the effects of the illness, or who are infected but not showing symptoms yet (or anymore) will find that their access to certain parts of the city are restricted. Suddenly, automatic doors aren't opening for them, as if they were ghosts, particularly when they try to access anything that may facilitate transmission of the virus. Suddenly, only some of the residents of the city will find they can't get into half of the MedBay, or the spa, the kitchens, the VR or games rooms, the bar...anywhere people gather or eat or sit close together.

Residents may put together that it's related to the illness some of them have been experiencing over the past few weeks, but it might take a while, since these safety and security measures are affecting people who are showing no symptoms yet. Be prepared for a few days of paranoia while seemingly perfectly healthy people are locked out of common areas. What does the computer know that residents don't? Are these people security risks? Is it a system glitch? What could be going on?

c. the network.

Need to get hold of someone, call for help, ask the city at large a question? Need to warn a friend not to leave their apartment unless they want to be forcibly press-ganged into the Goop Festival? Maybe you need to hold your sat phone up to whatever crazy thing you're seeing and send out a recording to double-check if your eyes are deceiving you and what you're looking at is real?

Whatever the reason, the network is going strong, so feel free to include a post to it in your top-levels.

Mod Note: The "familiar ground" prompt will be active between October 29th and October 31st; "the virus" prompt will be active until the next introductory mingle, which will be kicking off the second part of the illness plot.

Navigation.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I will have to take your word for it on what a vape does until then," Carlisle replies, pushing his door open. "But I appreciate you keeping your eyes open."

For a man who has been in Anchor for barely two months, Carlisle's quarters are remarkably cluttered. Three of the four beds are occupied in some way: one has been stripped of its bedding and turned into a shelf where he seems to be massing a pile of glyph-covered papers, as well as some with runes he copied from Reynir; another has what appears to be the beginnings of a makeshift shrine, much like the one he had in his cottage in Hadriel, albeit made of materials from the agricultural area and the park rather than his garden; the third seems to actually be his bed, the sheets neatly folded, but still obviously disturbed. Maybe he simply hasn't gotten to the fourth one yet.

His desk is equally busy: atop it is an open journal, as well as the final annuls of Bear Den's chronicler. The latter is closed -- he hasn't managed to get very far in that one without losing his nerve. One of the other desks has been cleared for this experiment, save for some papers with glyphs tucked off to the side and a few mugs awaiting whatever concoctions he will make. He motions for Pratt to bring the bucket over and set it on the chair.

"We do have pipes, though. How primitive do you believe we are?"

"I dunno maybe you guys realized how terrible it is for you and stopped doing that. I already smoked enough to be guaranteed lung cancer later." Well, if he were to live that long anyway. He can't say anything about Carlisle's living quarters, the man had seen his house in Hadriel that was about sixty percent canned soup and the top bunk was used to house his gun.

Not that Carlisle remembered that, but Pratt was keenly aware of how much of that prepper hoarding he had in him. He hadn't really been much of one back home, but faced with the barest hint of needing to survive and he'd start making fortresses of canned peas.

He's been slightly better here, only keeping about a weeks worth of food instead of trying to plan for the next year, but that's only because it seems slightly more .. hopeful here. Just a little.

"Are all of these things spells?"

Carlisle decides to save his questions about pipes in other worlds for later, answering Pratt's inquiry instead.

"Some. I have been attempting to practice my glyphcrafting, seeing if I could combine some of the elements with these runes I saw Reynir use. That- that rock you showed me, the one I insisted could not be mine -- if I did manage to make it in another world, then who is the say I could not learn to do the same here, given enough time. I know not how much I have, but... I thought I should start somewhere."

"I should bring you Floki's too. I don't think they do anything, but he made one for each of the gods to honor them. I only brought Fear's, the others were too big to take with me. I wasn't sure if they'd really come with me anyway. I didn't want to be stuck in a chair covered in rocks." Now that he thinks about it, maybe he should have. Jacob could have come back to find his corpse with dozens of weird rocks with runes all over them. That would have alarmed the calm and unflappable military man.

"You and Reynir should meet if you haven't already. He was going to try and replicate the one you gave me that keeps the temperature even. Just haven't gotten around to it."

Mentally trying to make a note of these names Pratt is mentioning, he finally catches one he recognizes.

"We are acquainted, Reynir and I. Have actually spoken, I mean. He insisted these runes would not work for me, but the temptation to experiment remains. I would like to get a better look at that rock of yours myself one day, if you don't mind. I assume I'll be able to recognize my own work upon closer inspection."

Or at least he hopes this other version of him from another time isn't that much better at glyphcrafting than he is now.

"Are glyphs and runes different?" As soon as the words are out of his mouth he mentally winces, this might be the equivalent of the time he asked Wade if scotch, whiskey and bourbon were all the same thing. That's a four hour lecture he'd rather not repeat.

"Sure, I can bring them by. The temperature one isn't on right now. I think something happened between transitioning home and coming here and I've been kind of scared to turn it back on in case I break something. I don't know how the magic works, I only know I was using my energy to power it."

Which is all he needed to know at the time.

"If you were using your own energy to power it, then simply pressing your finger to the contact point should be all it needs to recharge. As for your other question, glyphs and runes -- the runes Reynir is utilizing, at least -- seem like they are capable of similar effects, though their construction is apparently entirely different. Think of if one was building a, ah..."

He catches sight of Pratt's expression, and though his wince was internal, Carlisle senses it all the same, and decides to spare Pratt some suffering. "Actually, let me save that explanation for another day. It is terribly long. Likely boring."

He grabs the stack of papers from the desk, setting one beneath each mug before fishing a spoon out of the drawer. He scoops a varying amount of sap into each: one barely gets half a spoonful, the second gets a full spoon, and the third gets two heaping spoonfuls of the goop.

"You say that but I'm from somewhere that magic doesn't exist, so I'm liable to accidentally explode it somehow. Or it won't respond to me. That's... that's actually what I'm afraid of. That it won't recognize me as a power source." Maybe he has to be pure of heart or something to make it work. Carlisle was a healer, he was a good person. Pratt is not. And the thought that he might not be able to get the stone working again because the magic somehow knew he was a terrible human being frightened him. He'd rather not try and therefore not know.

But instead they're apparently doing science experiments with goop.

"So what's supposed to happen here?"

"If you were able to charge it before," Carlisle insists, "you should be just as capable of charging it now. However, if you are worried about it, I will certainly take a look, as I am the one who wanted to do so in the first place."

But for now, there are experiments to be done. He conjures orbs of water into his hands, dropping one into each mug. After that, he taps each glyph on the designated contact point, leaving his finger there just long enough for the lines on the page to light up. They hiss as they illuminate, the light fading as the water in the cups boils, steam rising into the air above them. Grabbing the spoon from the bucket, he stirs each one.

"I am hoping that some concentration of this sap will work on me the way it did on others in the park."

He's not going to argue the point, as it's more a feeling than an actual concern. Irrational and inexplainable. Something about his self-worth being tied up in a magic rock that controlled temperatures.

"So you're trying to get drunk." he folds his arms and watches, leaning against the wall to observe. "I'll make sure you don't faceplant or wake up on the front lawn with your pants on inside out."

Both definitely things he's done while drunk.

"I hope to do neither of those things," Carlisle remarks, knowing good and well he won't be waking up on anyone's lawn. In the corridor is much more probable, given the layout of Anchor. "Truthfully, I am unlikely to be affected at all. None of the enchantments I have tried so far worked. I just- I want a moment of peace from my own head. My nerves are overwhelming, as they have always been."

He pulls the first mug to him, inhaling the steam, waiting a moment to feel something -- anything. With a sigh, he sets it back, recording the results in the open journal nearby. Next mug, same thing: he doesn't even feel the slightest bit lightheaded. He stirs the third one again before inhaling deeply, hoping it will garner some reaction; he's met with nothing.

Carlisle shakes his head, deflated. "I suppose I should give drinking them a try, though I'm starting to think this entire endeavor was pointless."

"Is drinking them a good idea?" For one who knows what this stuff is, and secondly if Carlisle is sort of still dead then can he digest anything? Will it just sit in his stomach until he throws up?

"I understand wanting to get away from yourself, but maybe you need something I dunno.. magical?" Did that make sense? He felt like it did - yet he didn't really know what Carlisle's world was like. He assumed everything was magical, some sort of Harry Potter land but far more dangerous and real. He can hear the disappointment in Carlisle's voice though, and he definitely knows the sensation of wanting to drink the pain away.

The suggestion must have made some sense, as it gives Carlisle pause; after a quick glance Pratt's way, he stares into the mug, considering it.

"That is an idea," he notes. "I had thought that the tea I'd tried before hadn't worked because I lacked the proper plants, and that may be a part of it, still... but with this not working, I believe you are right. There may be more to it, and an enchantment may be the answer. Perhaps such concoctions do not work on the living, and more is needed to make them affect a man who is otherwise."

Determined to rule out just outright drinking it, he brings a finger to the top of his mask, hesitating for only another moment before he gives it a tug, drawing it below his chin. Pratt knows what must be beneath there, he reminds himself: ink stains trailing all the way from his eyes to his jaw, matching the one on the side of his mouth where the skin isn't torn away; a completely missing nose and dried, dusty musculature, the layers of his skin worn all the way to the bone closer to his teeth; a dull light glowing from the depths of his throat, a sign of the magic that keeps him alive -- or some semblance of it.

He avoids the deputy's eyes all the same as he brings the mug to what remains of his lips, taking a sip.

Pratt manages to not grimace, but it's a struggle. He'd seen the man's fingers, he knows that the rest of him likely looks the same. But it's certainly different seeing the man he knew, the one who'd been very alive and always seemed to look presentable, seeing him look so torn and disheveled really drove home what had happened to him. It's not even so much the fact that he can see his bones and muscles, though that's very unsettling in it's own right, it's that he knows that if it was up to Carlisle even that would be in pristine condition. The ink stains must drive him crazy.

He's still not sure that drinking it is a good idea. How would he digest it? But he figures that Carlisle will know best.

"Maybe one of the fancy contraptions in the kitchen can make something that'll work. It's not magical, it's just advanced tech but who knows. Unless this works?" He sounds vaguely hopeful, because he just wants Carlisle to have at least one good thing in his life.

The ink stains indeed drive Carlisle absolutely mad, and are likely one of the many reasons on the long list that pushed him to try this experiment in the first place. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and given that he's disfigured, undead, and hasn't slept since he became aware of himself, he's very, very desperate for some respite from himself, however temporary.

Unfortunately, he doesn't get that temporary relief just yet. He sets the mug down and pulls his mask back up, wanting to spare Pratt from having to see his marred face for any longer than he has to. "I will try the kitchens after I try glyphs," he says tiredly. "But I believe the true problem is what I am."

He gets a piece of paper and his pen, starting on a glyph, pausing as he considers the inscription needed; his eyes flick to the mug with the least amount of sap in it. "Do you mind testing this? Not a whole swallow, but enough to see what I should be feeling."

Oh. Well that makes sense in a way. Hard to know if it's working or not if Carlisle doesn't even know what it's supposed to do. But the thought of consuming something that he doesn't know what it is makes Pratt's skin crawl.

Others had been eating it with no real ill effects, so that was promising. But others had also eaten all the 'meat' at the Veteran's Center just like Pratt did without dying. Much as he wished he had.

There's real hesitation as he takes the mug and stares into it, smelling the sickly sweet aroma of the sap. "This smells like pure sugar."

Something he would normally enjoy, but right now he's stalling.

"Some saps are sugary," Carlisle remarks, tapping his pen on the corner of his paper as he ponders over which sigils to use in his glyph. He scrawls one down on his paper, only to scratch it out and replace it with another, then crumple the entire page and start all over again. He stops again.

"Wait wait wait," he mutters, going to snatch the mug from Pratt's hand before he can drink any of it. "Let me enchant it first, then you take a sip to see if it works on you. Logically, if I'm changing the structure of it through magic, it shouldn't, but I'd rather you have a clear head to see."

And back to writing he goes, trying to make the glyph cleaner this time. His skeletal hands don't make holding a pen easy, so he slides his right one back into his glove, the extra padding giving his fingers more purchase. He gets halfway through that glyph before tossing it aside, grabbing another sheet and starting a third time.

"All right," Carlisle starts in, having given Pratt hardly a second to get a word in (or himself enough time to realize he was stalling on drinking) as his thoughts turn over and over in his head. "Better idea: I enchant it, then let it rise as steam, and we see who is affected."

More than happy to give up the mug, he watches as Carlisle goes through several iterations of this experiment in the course of a few minutes. At his suggestion though, Pratt almost laughs.

"This works better in a car." He's aware that Carlisle won't get the joke, but he's just relieved he doesn't have to actually eat anything. He hated Bliss too, the cult's airborne drug that made people compliant and hallucinate, but that was preferable to Jacob's mystery meat that was in no way a mystery.

"So potentially I'm gonna get high as fuck in a few minutes? That might not be a good idea?" Though the more he thought about it the nicer it sounded to not think about anything and pass out on Carlisle's floor.

Carlisle would ask what a car is and where they can find one, as he'd like for his experiment to have the optimal chance for success, but decides his room will be fine. Anchor probably doesn't have cars, much like it doesn't have paw plants for his tea.

"Potentially, yes," Carlisle reiterates, "though with my modicum of knowledge in glyphcrafting and any luck, I will be the only one getting 'high as fuck.'" He's just going to assume that means what he thinks it means.

He finishes the glyph after one more attempt, setting the mug with the middling amount of sap atop it. "Ready? Actually, would you prefer to do the honors? You seemed unsure if glyphs would work for you before. This one is fairly benign, and would be a fair test."

Well potentially getting high from some smoke is slightly better than eating syrup that might be alien jizz for all he knows or scraped from the bone marrow of some humanoid life forms.

"Do I just touch it?" He eyes the glyph, trying to remember what Carlisle had him do for the rock. There's a hint of hesitation as he reaches out to do so, part of him a little fearful that it won't work. That the glyph won't respond to him because he's a boring, non-magical human who isn't even good enough to power a piece of paper let alone a rock that will keep his plants temperate.

"Yes, right here." He taps his finger near a little arch at the bottom. "That's the contact point. You should feel it draw energy from you. Not too much, given it is a tame glyph, but if you were able to charge the rocks I -- apparently -- made for you in another world, then this should be relatively easy."

But he does pick up on that hesitation, on how Pratt asks for instruction despite logically knowing what he should do; it gives Carlisle himself a moment's pause. "Is there something wrong, Deputy?"

"No. Not at all," said hurriedly in a way that makes it seem like he's probably lying. In any case he does as instructed, placing his finger in the contact point like he knew he should.

There's almost a sigh of relief as he feels it 'catch' drawing out his energy and flowing through the glyph, lighting it up. Well that's reassuring, he's not a complete waste of a human apparently.

"I've still got it." He smiles, holding his hand there until he can feel the symbol almost let go of him when it has enough power. "That's good to know."

Carlisle gives Pratt a wry grin, one that barely touches his eyes from behind his mask.

"Were you truly worried you'd not be able to activate a glyph? Or was it that you feared your rock would no longer work?"

Damn Carlisle for being observant. Pratt looks away, running his hand through his hair anxiously, "Both. I thought maybe it wouldn't work anymore. That I wouldn't work anymore, and then I wouldn't be able to power the rock."

Which sounds stupid now that he says it out loud, but he was honestly scared that maybe he'd lost something since being in Hadriel and wouldn't be able to power it anymore.

"I dunno what makes someone magical, but I don't think I have that thing."

Pratt worried he wouldn't work anymore, that he was the faulty element in the equation -- Carlisle has felt that since his reawakening, especially since he dispatched the undeads in the Whole Foods with Qubit. Magic that once came so easily to him was now hazardous, volatile when channeled. How could he help others now? Could he even heal the wounded anymore? And if not, what was his place in this existence? His work had given him purpose, direction for so long...

He shakes his head, not wanting to think about it. Those are the kinds of thoughts he's trying to escape from, hence his determination to make this enchanted tea work.

"I believe the magic you just performed would say otherwise, Deputy," he reassures.

redshift: tdm #5

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