redshift: tdm #5

[modblob]

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.

Comments

[abheirrant]

The largest of the aberrations collapses, its structure caving in on itself as the magic that kept it animated dissipates from its twisted frame. The glow fades from its eyes, traces of lingering energy rising from the hollow sockets in wispy trails -- and as Carlisle finally composes himself and removes his hands from his face, there are similar vapors rising from his eyes, as well. He doesn't hear Ben's question through the ache in his head, but he couldn't have claimed to be alive even if he had; he somewhat hears Pratt's reply, but does not know what the fuck is happening, himself. For now, he's just trying to regain his control over his energies.

With a deep breath -- one of many -- he attempts to pick himself off the ground, his limbs shaking. One of his arms trembles, jerking violently as he gets to his feet; he cradles it with a hiss, his gaze going from Ben to Kieran, then to the abomination, and then to Pratt gasping on the ground. One man may be the person he was called to heal, and the other may be the one who dealt with the calamity he caused, but Pratt is his friend, and therefore, he's the one Carlisle beelines for first, trying to ensure his health above everyone else's.

"D- Deputy?" his voice rattles in the stillness, his legs unsteady as he takes a step to close the gap between them.

[benhargreeves]

It is only then that Ben notices the way the Deputy is holding his hand close to his chest. For a moment, he's confused. He hadn't seen any of those creatures getting close enough to land a blow. Had Pratt been hurt before, by the men that attacked Kieran, and Ben just hadn't noticed? No, no he hadn't. Ben had watched his hands as he'd texted Carlisle to come. They'd been fine then. But now, he sees blood, and he gets to his feet, legs shaking under the effort of supporting him as he stumbles over.

He isn't the only one, either. Carlisle is moving towards him, too, looking just as unsteady as Ben feels. When he's close enough to see the way Pratt's skin is cracked, he feels a surge of nausea, but he manages to swallow back that feeling. He's definitely going to throw up, and soon, but hopefully he can keep it together until he gets a chance to do so somewhere in private once everyone is safe.

"What happened?"

Ben looks, too, at that healer, who at least seems to be freaking out less, now. There's still all that dark stuff - ink? - staining him like blood but he doesn't seem like he's immediately going to keel over from any injuries. Ben doesn't even want to know how he must look - there's definitely a certain amount of inevitable blood spatter, but at least he's not completely covered in the stuff for once.

"We need to get you both to the medbay. And Kieran. Can you walk?"

He doesn't quite realize how much he looks like a stiff breeze might knock him over, too; right now, Ben's all about ignoring his own needs and keeping everyone else safe.

[theweakhavepurpose]

Pratt's brilliant plan to pretend nothing had happened to his hand isn't really working. He'd almost thought that if he didn't look at it, it wouldn't be real. But that sort of dissonance only works for emotions that he wants to bury and not the very real feeling of his hand cracking, bleeding and parts of his skin rotting away.

Still, he doesn't really want to look at it.

"I think everyone's okay. Or well.. we will be." He looks up at Carlisle, there's so much ink streaming from him and that seems bad. What if that goop is what keeps him alive? Is that his blood? Pratt doesn't really know.

"But Kieran's stabilized, we can get him down to the medbay." He glances over at Kieran who's still laying on the ground next to the wolf. "Might need to carry him, but.."

By which he means Ben and him might need to, and with one working arm... He finally looks down at his hand, flexing his fingers and wincing. Everything seems to be working, but it looks horrible and he can feel bile rising in his throat.

He keeps it down but he is very much going to be puking later.

[abheirrant]

Pratt might not want to look at his hand, but Carlisle certainly does, and the moment he sees the raw, bleeding, peeling flesh, he stops, utterly frozen with indecision. He can't get near, he tells himself. But it should be fine now, shouldn't it? The aberration is no more, and while riled, he can feel he's in control of his energies—

No, he cannot risk it. He can't risk anything right now. Look what he did. Look what he's done. And worst of all, he did it to someone who trusted him, who should be his friend.

But he wasn't like this in that other world. He was alive. He wasn't yet a monster, a creature, the Blight Heir.

Carlisle tries to force his guilt aside, his entire frame shaking as he struggles to convince himself to do something, anything; he remains petrified, much like a child surrounded by delicate trinkets, warned to be careful so as not to break them. He has to help take them somewhere, to get help -- he can't stay here. He can't—

"Wh- what should I do?" he asks quietly, his voice grating as it escapes him, his eyes locked on Pratt, on his hand.