june 2020. welcome to the void.

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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. welcome to paradise.

What at first appears to be an odd glint in the sky over Anchor slowly broadens and brightens into a truly enormous...cruise ship? Yes, that's a cruise ship, and it's coming down to rest just outside of Anchor's exit doors. The ground shakes as it lands. A bubble forms over the ship and connects to Anchor's exit, and there's no two ways about it: the ship comes with its own radiation shield.

This sucker puts the Titanic to shame. Nearly as long as Anchor is wide, it's more like a floating city than the cruise ship it resembles. Little satellite ships hover and dart around it, occupied by alien lifeforms with too many arms to quite fit the Hawaiian print shirts that they're wearing.

The Daisy Darling Interdimensional Cruise Barge has come to Anchor.

b. anchors away!

And it's quite accessible to residents of Anchor. In fact, the people (of every shape, size, and coloration that can't be considered human) on board will be delighted to host the creatures they've been watching for the past few months as they orbited the planet. Not only will Anchorites find themselves accosted for photos, but they can also find figurines, keychains, and small novelty items of themselves in almost every knick-knack store on the promenade deck. The souvenir shops will also come heavily stocked with red shift-themed items, including toys and decorations featuring some of the monsters that have appeared from the wastes. You always wanted a slinky sand worm, didn't you?

Anyone who can sing, dance, play music, or otherwise perform will be encouraged to do so and showered with gifts - both useful and useless - by the vacationers. Have an instrument, or a good voice? Go busking! Sell your art, give lectures about your home worlds, teach salsa dancing. The vacationers are just waiting to give you money for helping them have a good time.

There's an alien casino, with machines both familiar and very very not. It's a rollicking place with neon signs, free-flowing drinks, and even more free-flowing money. You might not have any use for alien currency in Anchor itself, but it couldn't hurt to check out the shops with a little extra cash from the poker tables, could it? At one side is an all-you-can-eat buffet of everything under the sun, from alien fruit and vegetable platters to...is that a whole giant squid? I never knew they came in quite that color...

You can sneak around the casino without too much effort, stealing from pockets, tables, and platters, but that could get you caught and thrown in the brig, which. Well. We'll get to that, but you don't really want to go there.

The uppermost level of the ship is a beach and water park. There's sand, palm trees, a wave pool, water slides, and a lazy river with inner tubes big enough to support even the heftiest alien. Oh, and a regular old pool, over there. Where all the old aliens are hanging out and playing hover-shuffle-board. Swimming gear is required in this area, but not to worry! There’s an automated booth that will supply you with just the suit you need.

In addition to these places, there's a whole ship to explore, with all the amenities a weary traveler could want. A spa (manned by real (alien) people!), jacuzzis, restaurants that actually function with food the bold can actually eat, clothing stores (though not much of it is designed with humans in mind), deck chairs on sunny promenades, gardens full of alien flowers, and an enormous library filled with books that are checked out based on the honor system. So, y'know. Be honorable. Or something.

c. the first rule of daisy darling.

For those unentertained by the above-board offerings of the upper decks, there's the ship’s more hidden amenities. A fight club filled with creatures of every shape, size, and level of power. A drug den with everything from euphoria-inducing cigarettes to hallucination-causing body paints. A thriving black market, though the offerings are comparatively innocent - bootlegged episodes of Anchors Away, mostly. What's that? Oh, just the reality show of your lives over the past six months. Let's hope no one comes across any awkward vids showing things you don't want people to know about.

Attached to the fight club is the brig. Can you see where this is going? People who get caught breaking the rules on the Daisy Darling can expect to face the music by being put opposite some of the ships more powerful monsters, or its more powerful and reckless vacationers. Who wouldn't love to test themselves against a giant robot or an honest-to-god cowboy? Don't worry! If you get too badly hurt, there's a repair suite on the medical level that can fix up almost any injury. Just don't die before you get there.

If anyone asks about staying on board, escaping the planet with the ship, or tries to convince an alien to help them stow away, they'll be told it goes against both the prime directive and the Daisy's petting zoo rules. Try to stow away on your own? Well, if you're lucky, you'll get caught by a benevolent guard and booted back to Anchor. If you're unlucky, get those boxing gloves ready, because you're headed for the brig.

d. the network.

Need to get hold of someone, call for help, ask the city at large a question? Need to ask a friend to back you up and tag team in the fight club? 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.

Navigation.

Comments

[bakudan_bambino]

"Six months..." Gokudera repeats softly. He wonders how the other feels about that, if he's feeling any sort of way. There is expression on that cold-looking face, and Gokudera had befriended a cyborg in the last world he'd been in, who had all the warm features of a human and with no emotion whatsoever. "Ah... I feel as though I might have wanted to be here," he says, ruminant as his mind wanders. Gokudera has thought a great deal about how those around him arrived and left, and when and how he would leave the world he'd been on. Why did he always assume he'd go home?

"Right. I was on another world called Amoi. I was there for... a year and ten months? I feel like maybe more time has passed in how I got to be on Anchor." He figures either it was a leap through time and space, or maybe he'd just been some form of energy quickly transferred and it took so long for him to arrive on Anchor because... in a way his physical form would have had to catch up. He's been through a lot for a fourteen year-old who's body has been through two years on Earth and two years on Amoi. Time travel three times makes him feel tired. He'd only just arrived today.

[vosseeker]

Six months to a Cybertronian is infinitesimal, in all honesty. Though there's no shortage of expression to be read in Starscream's features and body language. For metal face plates, they seem to have just as much range of motion as any human face, and the various countenances are all familiar ones.

"Amoi," Starscream echoes, but there's no recognition there. "It was another world like this one? You arrived there unwillingly, away from your own dimension?"

[bakudan_bambino]

Gokudera is unaware, and doing his best to read the expression playing out on the being before him.

"Yes. But it felt like waking up from a dream, and that Amoi was real..." Even though he knew it wasn't his home, after a year, his memories began to change, his thoughts altered.

[vosseeker]

Starscream compares that to his own arrival to Anchor, but it doesn't match. Then again, his own arrival to this world was a departure from the normal procedure. Was it happenstance that he'd found himself outside the colony rather than in the video relay room like everyone else? Considering he wouldn't fit in that room, Starscream is inclined to think it was planned.

Perhaps he should have spent more time querying his fellow Anchorites about this topic. But maybe this is also not the time or place to grill Gokudera about it.

"Once you're more settled, perhaps you should share that tale. The more data we have of similar events, the better chance we have of understanding what brought us here... and how potentially to leave."

[bakudan_bambino]

Gokudera is used to having to keep his mouth shut about how the world he was on operated. People too often looked at him as though he were crazy or uninformed. But there were means of keeping power by having so many people ignorant to the world they'd been forced to inhabit. Gokudera would expect to be grilled, actually, so it's a relief he isn't.

"Thank you." That's awfully considerate.

"My name is Gokudera, by the way." He nods his head.

[vosseeker]

Starscream likely would have some more questions of his own once he'd had a chance to really think about the fact that Gokudera had been through this before. That there would be a lot of potentially valuable information laying there for the taking, and if he controlled that information, that gave him leverage down the road.

"Gokudera," he echoes. "I am Starscream."

[bakudan_bambino]

The bomber would more readily tell Starscream than any human. He feels that someone like this being is probably smarter than most, capable of actually turning whatever information he shares into something useful. He'd like to be put to use, and would hate to sit on valuable information that could potentially shed light on traveling between worlds.

"Nice to meet you, please treat me well," He says, reciting a typical Japanese introduction and bowing at the waist.

[vosseeker]

Starscream cocks a quizzical orbital ridge at the unusual diction, not recognizing the ceremony of the phrase, but the bow certainly is understood. After some of the brash personalities in Anchor including his a little formality and manners was going to be appreciated.

"I will not keep you from your..." Something faintly wry coloured his expression at the topic of the books Gokudera had requested. "... research."

[bakudan_bambino]

Why in the world would Gokudera mouth off to Starscream? He looks like he could pop the teenager's head like a grape between his fingers. No thank you.

"Thank you." He'll be doing the same. He gives him a nod and turns to go back to the papers he'd been taking notes on.