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redmarsshit2019-10-24 11:41 pm
modblob) wrote in redmarsshit2019-10-24 11:41 pm
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.
▶ 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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
the virus;
When he gets there, he comes across a man he's seen around the farm a few times when he visited, though he's never had much opportunity to talk to him. Onni is, as always, not particularly inclined to making new friends unless pushed, and he'd mostly kept himself to weeding the plants Reynir had been cultivating. But he knows of him, thinks his name is Kieran, if he remembers correctly, and so he has no particular problem helping.
One brow raised at the concept of complaining to a door, he walks up to it and looks over at the other man.
"It isn't working?"
The sentence is barely out of his mouth before the door slides open easily in front of him, and that brow raises a little more.
"That's weird. Come in, then."
And with that, he strides into the kitchen, expecting the other man to follow.
no subject
"How'd ya do that? It just went and shut on me like it didn't want me in th--"
Kieran's next words are effectively cut off as he approaches the door and it closes again right in his face, knocking off his hat.
"Oh, you gotta me kiddin' me!"
no subject
"I didn't do anything special. I just walked up to it." he says, tilting his head to peer at Kieran. Then, as the other man tries to follow him into the kitchen, it slams shut in his face again. Onni blinks, and then turns around, and the moment he's within range, the door opens again. Huffing out an annoyed breath, Onni stands with his body in the door itself, and gestures for Kieran to give it another try.
"I have no idea what it's up to, but hurry up and get in." he says, gesturing again, then after a moment's pause, "We don't want you to starve."
no subject
“W-We certainly don’t, friend,” Kieran chuckles. Meeting new people, no matter how friendly, comes with its own brand of nervousness. A few more moments pass before Kieran shoots out an arm, jutting his hand outward in Onni’s direction.
“N-Name’s Kieran! Kieran Duffy!”
no subject
For a moment, Onni stares at Kieran's extended hand, and then he extends his own, takes Kieran's and gives it a shake.
"Kieran Duffy. A friend of Reynir's, aren't you? From the farm? I'm Onni Hotakainen. We come from the same world."
It's calm and straightforward. Onni is also nervous when meeting people, though possibly for entirely different reasons, and he tends to try to keep that particular anxiety to himself, to appear as calm as possible at all times. It's never completely successful, but he at least doesn't seem as jittery as Kieran.
"I'm going to make some stew from a rabbit my cousin hunted. Do you want some?"
no subject
Kieran shakes Onni's hand with a genuine gusto. Although not entirely relaxed, he's certainly less jittery now that he knows there's some common ground between the two. That always helps--almost as much as the promise of food.
He's far from the type to be shy when it comes to being offered a good meal, and just the idea of a good stew is enough to make his eyes light up.
"Sure, if yer offerin'." Kieran grins, "I can help you cook it if you want."
He's not much of a chef, but he's learned how to chop!
no subject
The handshake is warmer than Kieran had been thus far - it seems he's a fan of Reynir, and Onni supposes he can't blame the other man for that.
"Of course. There's enough game and root vegetables to make enough for anyone we want to share with." he says, then after a moment he tilts his head, "Is there something you particularly like in a stew, some recipe from home? I'd be glad for the help."
While he's speaking, Onni goes over to the refrigerator, where he's left the skinned rabbit Lalli had caught, and takes it out, bringing it to the cutting board on one of the counters.
no subject
Cowboys aren’t known for their refined palates, unfortunately. Some of them just go ahead and throw a piece of meat over an open flame, then eat whatever came out. Kieran’s definitely done that at least once or twice.
The good news is, that means he isn’t squeamish when he sees the rabbit and barely pays it any mind other than a quick thought of how good it’s going to be when it’s cooked. Instead, he focuses on searching the refrigerator (such an incredible invention!) for some vegetables. A few potatoes, some carrots, and bunch of celery later, Kieran closes the door before setting everything down on the counter and pulls out a cutting board—Cho has him trained well.
“S-So, uh, how do you know Reynir?”
no subject
While he talks, he gets the rabbit laid out and picks up a cleaver, calmly chopping it into sections and starting to get the meat off the bones, discarding some of the organs and sectioning other ones to add to the stew. He glances up when Kieran comes over and starts getting the vegetables together to chop - it looks like a fine selection, and Onni nods a couple of times approvingly.
"We come from the same place, relatively speaking. I came from Finland originally, and he came from Iceland, but we knew each other through various circumstances. He's done a lot to help, back then and since we got here."