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

The Festival of Goop is weird and lovely to Cole.

He talks to the robots like they're giving him responses no one else can hear (they might be) and he accepts anything they give him, only to gift it to someone else, or another robot shortly after. He hasn't really eaten any of it; despite his foray into ice cream with Ben, he hasn't actually tried eating anything since then.

He mostly drifts around, enjoying people being... if not happy, at least confused and bemused rather than outright upset. His fingers are sticky from handling goods and he's sitting under a tree, talking to it about being tapped for syrup.

[ Ben hadn't been thrilled with the total shutdown of other facilities and rooms that GOOP FESTIVAL had caused. He'd gone through his quiet morning routine and walked all the way to the library, only to tug fruitlessly at the doors for a few minutes before a robot appeared to yell at him about some sap-related holiday.

But he gave in and let himself be shepherded, and he had to admit, once he got there, that Goop Festival does have its charms. It's nice having a lot of the people he's come to know in the Anchor all close together; besides, those hot sap drinks are pretty great. He drinks a couple before he realizes they're not not drugs of some kind. He feels floaty and warm and calm, even as he's taking out his phone and texting to warn Klaus to stay away from the stuff. Hopefully giving him a heads up won't just make him more tempted to have some.

Still, Ben is really trying to be supportive, to help his brother manage his addiction without hovering constantly and treating him like a misbehaving child. So he resists the urge to fuss, and wanders through the trees instead. He's sucking a piece of sap candy when he spots a familiar horrible hat, a familiar pale hand waving in the air, hears a familiar soft voice.

Ben comes around, settling himself on the ground near to Cole, but not interrupting, waiting for him to pause before he asks: ]

Can you really talk to trees?

[ Honestly at this point he wouldn't be surprised. Plenty of cultures believed that trees had some kind of spirit or sentience, and if anybody here could have a chat with an orchard it would be Cole. Wordlessly, Ben holds out the handful of little hard sap candies that he's been eating from, offering one to Cole. ]

Hey, Cole.

"Anyone can talk to trees. But most people don't listen to hear what they say in return."

It might be a Cole's power thing, or just a Cole thing. The Dalish talked to the trees, and some of them knew to listen to the ways they spoke back.

"Hello, Ben. You feel floaty and warm, like being cuddled by a sunbeam." Cole looks at the hand, then slowly takes one and holds it in his fingers. "Thank you."

He doesn't eat it. There's a possibility he intends to take it back to his storage closet and keep it.

Ben considers that; he wonders if it really is as simple as that. After all, trees aren't silent. They have branches that creak and groan, leaves that rustle. He is quiet for a moment, looking up into the tree they are sitting beneath, waiting, listening. It's peaceful, focusing on the soft sounds of the tree's surfaces moving in the light currents of air, but if there's a message in it, he doesn't know the language it is in.

So he looks back to Cole, shrugging.

"I can't understand it. What is it saying?"

He is curious, after all, what a tree might think. Are the trees amused, or maybe disdainful, of all this fuss over their sap? Are they happy for the company? Confused? Talking of other matters with one another, completely unconcerned with the humans congregating?

"I do feel like that."

Ben would not have been able to put it in words quite that well, if Cole had just outright asked him. There really are some advantages, to being friends with someone who can just know when you're feeling relaxed and bright and buzzy.

"I think those sap drinks might have a little bit extra in them."

It's not exactly like being drunk - Ben had tried that a couple of times and only felt morose and nauseous, for the most part. Which means it is possibly some other kind of intoxication. Normally, the idea would bother Ben a great deal. He's (understandably) wary of substances, after watching what addiction had done to Klaus. On top of that, he'd always put a great deal of stock into the lessons his father had instilled in him, about the importance of control, of maintaining focus at all times, or else the evil in him would spill out and destroy everything he held dear.

But he's been questioning that, lately. Questioning whether he really needs to police himself so rigorously, over every little detail, every possible indulgence. Maybe, in an odd and roundabout way, this will be a good test. If he can do this - get a bit high or tipsy or whatever it is - and the world doesn't end, that will tell him something.

He realizes he's been drifting in his thoughts for a little while, not saying anything. With anyone else, that would probably be rude and call for an apology. With Cole, he just gives a small smile, another shrug, and then decides that laying down sounds amazing right now. He flops over easily onto his back, tucking a hand behind his head and looking up into the tree. He can still see Cole, in the corner of his vision. He'd been right - lying down feels awesome.

Edited (typos everywhere) 2019-11-01 00:57 (UTC)

"You already understand. You just don't trust that what you hear and feel is it communicating. They don't think, not like animals do, but they're talking all the time." He takes Ben's hand and lays it on the trunk, to feel the bark, to listen to the soft shift of leaves and wood. "Sunlight and a soft breeze, damp roots. Creaking ache around the taps, but fleeting, passing again and forgotten soon. Just because there's no words and no emotions doesn't mean they're not talking."

Cole lets his hand come to rest in his lap. "They don't hear, but they feel the ripple of voices against them, the sharpness of shouting, the gentle stroke of a whisper."

He watches Ben lay down and just leans his own head against the tree.

Ben doesn't know how it is that Cole can say things that, coming from anyone else, he might find ridiculous. Perhaps it is because he trusts Cole, knows that if he wasn't really communicating with those trees and understanding them, Cole wouldn't fake it to present himself as wise and natural and superior. Cole doesn't do that - tailor the way he presents himself to please other people or try to pretend to be something he's not. He is honest, and connected to things, and open-minded in a way that Ben actually envies, just a little bit.

"Is it nice here, for you? With everybody feeling happy?"

He can't be the only one who had had some of that sap, who is getting into the holiday spirit - and even those who aren't seem amused by the event or at least appreciative of the edible treats. Ben knows Cole's mood, his feelings about himself and his place in the world, are shaped by the emotions of those around him. He thinks this is probably a nice place for Cole to be; he hopes it is.

Ben watches the trees swaying in the breeze, little glints of light coming through, the ground dappled all around him. How much of a difference it can make, to just be in a beautiful place like this. To have fresh air and green things all around, bright light and the sounds of people laughing and talking softly all around (and of robots saying the word 'goop' a lot which is charming in its own way).

"Are there any festivals like this that you know about in Thedas?"

It's always a little bit of a risk, asking about back home - not just with Cole, but with anybody. But Ben is feeling so relaxed and peaceful and good, and he likes Cole and wants to know more about him, to learn all the little things that he doesn't know, yet. He hasn't got insight into people's minds, and so if he wants to become closer to Cole, his only way is to ask questions.

"It's nice. Here, now, it's nice. People are annoyed they can't do what they want, but the reason is a nice one, so most people don't mind too much." Cole slides to lie down, setting aside his hat. He lays to put his feet up on the trunk, head near Ben's solar plexus and face tilting to look at him stomach.

"Satinalia, I suppose. It's a bit like Christmas on Earth. There's celebration and wild parties. I never participated in any, but I know of them." Festivals happened, but were of limited interest to a spirit and Cole never got the chance to celebrate a lot. "The trees are like your Them. They experience things, but not like mortal animals do. They communicate, but it's not with sound and words. Them and the trees are not like each other... but they're unlike us in similar ways, I think."

Ben isn't all that surprised to learn that Cole hadn't really participated in the festival back in Thedas. They both have histories - different, but parallel - of being on the outside looking in. Sir Reginald had had no time for something as frivolous as holidays. Grace had done her best to make them festive treats, to give little gifts and make some special moments and memories out of almost nothing. But it wasn't like what Ben had seen in movies, read about in books. It was a shadow of the real thing.

But now here they both are lying on the grass, at the goop festival, a part of it all. Ben feels a calm, settled sense of... belonging.

That calm is disturbed when Cole mentions the creatures on the other side of the portal, but only a very little. Just a few ripples of reflexive unease, before he adjusts. That sap stuff really does work wonders. Or maybe it's just - Cole. His presence, and the way he talks about them, and the fact that he keeps bringing them up, like they're not unspeakable monsters. It wasn't until he became friends with Cole that Ben realized how much time he spent trying to avoid thinking about them - and by extension, about himself. He buried himself in books, avoiding his family, avoiding the person he was and his powers.

But Cole just... talks about them. Like it's okay to do that. Like it's okay for them to be there, a part of Ben.

He settles a hand on top of his own stomach, making a wordless hum of consideration. After a long silence - some of it thoughtful, some of it less so as Ben's mind wanders, he says:

"I used to daydream about losing my powers. About finding some way to cut the connection for good. But... that's never gonna happen, is it?"

"I don't know."

Cole doesn't. He doesn't lie, doesn't really know how to, and he doesn't know. "I can't see the future, not like that. But it would probably be more comfortable to learn how to live with yourself and Them, because that's a thing you can do and it doesn't matter if you have Them in the future or not."

Cole doesn't know how to make it happen, how to be okay with it all, but he knows it's the best way forward for Ben.

GOOOOOOOOP (Cole | Dragon Age)

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