redmarsshit | redshift: tdm #2

redshift: tdm #2

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. smoke and generators.

It's early morning, and if any of Anchor's residents thought that taking a vacation in an abandoned hellscape would at least be relaxing enough to sleep in, they're about to find out they were wrong.

It's about 5:30 AM when a loud screeching noise of metal scraping against metal rings out and echoes through the entirety of Anchor, quickly followed by a plume of smoke coming from the topmost levels, near the Research & Development area and a loud series of catastrophic banging noises that simply refuse to let up. Once residents converge on the area, they'll discover a previously closed and completely impenetrable metal door that had comprised most of the back wall of a room full of burn damaged and broken down generators slamming open and shut, shrieking on unoiled hinges and sliders, and emitting plumes of smoke with every slam. A bit of technical finagling with the control pad (or a well-placed blow with a hard object or shot from a gun) will make the door creak to a stop at the top of its usual arc, exposing an enticing scene.

A pristine room sits behind a thick pane of violence-proof glass, decorated starkly with the walls white and white LEDs shining coldly on the scene, it's spartan except for a display of about 5 generators in perfect working condition, complete with pulsing blue-glowing power indicators. Sweet. Those would definitely come in handy for rebooting a few of the city's amenities and life support systems, with the main power grid offline as it is. The only trouble is getting inside. A bit of research would find a few ways:

There are a few options for getting into the room: through the air vents around the door, by hacking the door locking mechanism, by blowing through the door in some way. Each has its drawbacks (the vents are full of large mutated and possibly radioactive vermin such as rats and scorpions; hacking the door is incredibly technologically advanced and difficult to do; blowing up the door comes with a risk of any damage reflecting off the door and back at the people trying to blow it up, or damaging the generators inside, or the structural integrity of the area) and its advantages.

Whether residents want to try one of these options, or think of something on their own (feel free to pitch your ideas in the mod questions thread!), this treasure is definitely worth trying to get hold of.

b. it's all fun and games...

Getting the generators out of the hidden room was a trial, but finding places to hook them up is a snap - the only real problem is that there's way more spots to hook up to than there are generators. It's completely up to the residents where said generators get hooked up, but no matter what they choose, one room will power up. The VR Room.

Considered necessary rather than just an amenity by the previous residents of Anchor, the VR Room is a necessary outlet allowing the opportunity to relax and unwind for residents. And it's set up to divert some power from the system no matter where the generators were set up. When the room powers up, an automated message is sent out to all functional sat phones - a pretty little series of bells, and an audio announcement that the VR and Games Room is open and available for use, with an attached GPS map showing the room's location in the city.

Any resident who goes to the indicated place will find the VR Room open and powered up. Everything is dusty, but there are couches to lounge on, vending machines with snacks - some of which are decades past their expiry date and some of which are preserved or shelf-stable enough to still be edible - and a little coffee bar. The most important part, though, is the VR and the games.

One area of the room is set up with various interactive video games that two or more people can play together. They run the gamut from dancing games, racing games, first person shooters, and even some simple sports games and childrens' games. It's like a mini digital arcade and anyone is free to play. Some games function with the use of a handheld sensor, or sensors attached to feet or other body parts; some function via camera to track player movements; some have unique functions specific to the game style (players can use their imaginations for this one).

The VR area is a little more complicated. "VR Room" is something of a misnomer - there's one large room to the left, with a hallway sporting more, smaller rooms off to the right. The large room is an environmental simulation room with artificial sunlight and a default oceanscape that can be programmed to resemble a person's own world. There's a certain degree of automatic cerebral interfacing to make sure it gets the details just right. The smaller rooms have access to a library of VR games, some of which work and some of which will insult you in various languages before crashing. People can meet and socialize in the environmental simulation room, or in any of the smaller rooms through virtual reality. Additionally, there is a completely digital "shared world" that any character accessing the VR Room can enter, which represents the city at its peak of functionality and beauty - this VR shared world is the first place that some new arrivals manifest, as ghosts in the machine that can interact via VR before waking up physically in the arrival room.

Anyone accessing virtual reality will receive a warning spiel before entering their chosen program that states that excessive or long-term use of the VR services can cause users to experience mental and/or physical damage.

As long as it's been since the VR rooms were used, however, there's bound to be some glitches, and a few of the programs seem to load up fine only to glitch out partway into the scenario - whether it's an escape room, an in-depth virtual reality murder mystery, a dance party, visual novel, or any other program, there's a chance it might stall, freeze, glitch, and trap players inside until they can figure out how to unfreeze the program, or until they're rescued by someone on the outside recognizing their plight. Good luck!

c. the crash.

A few days after the Generator Room opening up, residents of Anchor will experience another rude awakening, this time in the middle of the night. While they were sleeping, a red shift has occurred outside the city, and while they were shielded from the radiation and the chaos that comes with it, there are things outside the city that are affected.

Just after midnight, there is an extremely loud noise - it starts as ground-shaking crash, like something massive has hit the ground a few miles outside the city, and is followed by an ominous rumbling. Residents will feel the ground shaking, enough that items may fall off tables, anyone walking might lose their balance, and people might even fall out of bed. After a few minutes, however, it will die down and after a short, almost deafening silence, wind will start to whistle around the dome protecting Anchor from the outside elements. The impact of...whatever crashed in the wastelands...has triggered a massive dust storm.

Anyone who makes it up to the Observation Room near the Decontamination area and look out the wide glass windows (treated carefully to withstand the elements) over the desert will see the vague outline of a massive hulking form in the desert. With some observation, before the dust piles up too high outside the windows, they will get the impression that it's something artificial, created by people and not a natural formation or monster, though any details will be hard to make out. It could be anything from a building to a ship to something else completely alien.

As the day carries on, the dust storm rages outside the city with no signs of letting up, and with every passing hour more red sand builds up against the Observation Room's windows...and on top of the dome. By evening, what should've been a bright sunset is filtered through a layer of red dust thick enough to tint what little light makes it through a vibrant red, painting the city in psychologically jarring shades of crimson.

d. red-out (& network prompt).

The lack of light isn't the only problem going on in the city because of the dust storm - there are consequences much worse than a lack of Vitamin D for residents. Dust storms were a common problem when the city was created and inhabited by its previous residents, and there are failsafes in effect. As the dust clogs up the power generation apparatuses on the exterior of the city, power starts to fade. By the early afternoon, the backup generators kick in, but the power from the backup generators only lasts a few hours before technical problems from decades without maintenance cause them to power down almost completely, leaving the city dark and cloaked in red.

Good thing those generators showed up, huh?

During the red-out, power will be completely diverted to life support, and the Exit Area will be completely locked down, preventing anyone from leaving the city or re-entering it, apart from new arrivals. All amenities, entertainment, and anything non-essential has been completely shut down. This may result in residents stranded in strange places with or without company, and many other awkward situations, at least until someone can jury-rig the new generators into place to make the not-necessary-but-super-convenient parts of the city work.

The one thing that's completely unaffected is the network, and the city's failsafe includes another way of trying to keep residents from going insane during the red-out: a network game.

Every device in the city will pop up with an prompt:

Please input two truths and one lie about yourself. These will be posted to the network so other residents can guess which is the lie!

Well. It's. Something alright.

Mod Note: This red-out is set to last from July 22nd until August 1st, when the intro log goes up at the start of the app cycle.

Navigation.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ ooc: First impressions here! TL;DR Ami is just Aradia after being reincarnated as a human and slowly remembering her past life (and then forgetting it again after I dropped her). Currently she is fully human. ]

    > Ami: Descend.

[ This doesn't feel like a dream.

It should. Suddenly finding yourself transported to another planet? She's pretty sure there's a Syfy original series like that, only this is actually atmospheric and scary. No amount of Idris Elba's soothing British baritone can make this okay.

With the humiliation of the decontamination room behind her, Ami carefully makes her way into Anchor proper, alone for at least a few minutes. No sign of another living human. Where's the bustling city Idris Elba showed her? Why are the plants so overgrown? Are those bullet holes? Oh god please don't let her be all alone here.

There's not much she can do on this uppermost level, and leaving the dome is out of the fucking question. She doesn't even know if there's air out there. That just leaves ... down. She has no choice, she has to start descending into the dizzying depths of the city.

You may find her on the stairs, or anywhere else, really - a small, teenage human girl, all in black, her hair in pigtails. She can hear distant sounds every so often, but hasn't been calling out - in a place like this, who knows what might answer? ]

    > Chill.

[ It's been several days now. Enough of them that the permanence of the situation is starting to sink in. She's really trapped here. What if she never makes it back to Recollé? What if she never sees her mom and dad again? If she dies here, no one will ever know.

She's been trying to put on a brave face, but it's incredibly depressing. Moreover, she wasn't much use when it came to fixing the generators earlier. She's never been a computer whiz, even by 2018 standards... Anchor's technology is way beyond her.

As such, she's expecting something quite different when she hears the term "VR Room." Maybe some kind of futuristic Oculus? She has been wanting to try that. But when she enters the large beach room, she finds herself gobsmacked, to the point where she doesn't even notice someone else is already there. ]

Whoa... we have a holodeck?

    > Get stuck.

[ Ami's wound up in the orchard procuring food. Luckily, there are plenty of apples on the trees that are still alive! But it's just as she plucks one that the red-out begins. All the grow lights go out, leaving the orchard in near-total darkness, with only a faint red glow indicating which way is "out." Behind her, she hears the door she came through creak shut. ]

Aah! Sorry! [ As if plucking an apple caused this somehow? Wait no that's ridiculous. ] Uh, could somebody get the lights?

[ There is somebody else here, right? She's been hearing movement, after all... or was that just stray livestock? ]

    > Shitpost.

[ username: AA ]

ok well this strikes me as a silly use of network resources during an emergency, but what do i know
two truths and a lie then, hmmmm

1. my birthday is in september
2. i see dead people
3. i own a first edition ouija board

It's a red-out.

[Poison's voice comes, disembodied in the darkness, from somewhere to Ami's left. She can't see in the dark, but as someone who grew up in a place without electric lighting, she can find her way through it well enough when she needs to.

Still, she's treading carefully, feeling her way between the trees towards the red glow over the exit when she hears the other girl's voice. She alters track, working her way towards it.]

Keep talking. Quietly. There's something else here with us.

[ Ami jumps a little in spite of herself. It's not that she's afraid of the dark, that would be silly! It's just what might be in the dark.

She lowers her voice, panning her head to try and pinpoint its direction. ]

I didn't see anything earlier... [ But then, there's no shortage of trees to hide behind. ] What's a red-out? I mean, aside from a blackout that happens to be red.

[Poison would say that's a perfectly reasonable fear to have, particularly when there really could be something lurking in the dark. She makes her way towards the other girl's voice, finds her arm, grips it lightly for a moment before letting go.]

Something that happens on this planet. We're safe enough in here, from what's out there. [Ah, but not from anything that's already in here.]

With that dust storm too, it's just knocked the power out.

[ Eep! Ami tenses, but relaxes a bit when she realizes it's just the person she's talking to. She picks up on the unspoken stipulation - they've already established something else is in here already - but doesn't mention it. ]

... How long before it comes back on?

[ She says as if power being restored is a given. That's just what happens in a power outage, right? It comes back on sooner or later. ]

Don't know. Could just be a few days.

[She blinks several times, trying to force her eyes to get used to the dark. Eventually they might get to a point where this shit just doesn't happen, but she doesn't see that being any time soon.]

We should try to get out.

[And... hope the door didn't lock when the power went out.]

[ Days? Panic starts to stir inside her. Days without power... what does that mean in a place like this? Will they lose the radiation shielding? Can they still get food and water? What if the air stops? It's bad enough being trapped on an alien planet without all these vital systems falling apart around their ears.

Having some direction draws her back to the present, though. Harder to freak out if you're busy. ]

Right. Uh. I see some light over that way, is that the exit?

[She points, because that's helpful when it's this dark.]

[All questions Poison would be able to answer, perhaps, but doesn't think to answer when she has more pressing matters on her mind - like making sure they can get out of here without being eaten.]

That's it. [She slips past the other girl, and then stops, staring hard in the direction of the light.]

... I'll watch this way. You watch behind us. Alright?

[ Ami nods, before remembering it won't be seen. ] A-alright.

[ She turns away from the red light, and finds herself staring into near-total darkness. It's almost immediately disorienting. Her eyes should have adjusted by now, but she can still barely make anything out, and none of it clearly. If they get out of here in one piece, she's never going out without a flashlight again. ]

Hey, um - give me your hand.

[ Her voice is a little frantic - right now, nothing scares her more than getting separated. She reaches in Poison's general direction, probably poking her by accident, whoops. ] Sorry.

It's okay.

[She understands, and she reaches out in turn, fumbling against Ami's forearm before she finds her hand and grips it tightly. It's only when she makes the contact that she realises how reassuring it is.]

I'm here.

[Poison can take that role - the quiet leader, the one who has the plan - with relative ease, even when she has no plan at all.]

Can you move?

[ Ami falls into the role of follower just as easily. Poison seems to know what she's doing - or at least, close enough that Ami's willing to do what she says. Maybe they'll actually be okay. ]

Yeah. Yeah, I'm good.

[ At least, at that exact moment.

Until she sees something move. ]

Wait-!

[ It emerges from behind a denser stand of trees, not even fifty feet away. And she can see it because it's glowing. Bright blue, almost ultraviolet. The eerie light outlines the shape of a four-legged creature, stocky, hooved and horned - but with two heads.

Both of which are looking straight at them. Ami backs up, inadvertently shoving a bit in her haste. ]

Nooo no no no. We gotta go, we gotta go.

Ami Aihara (Aradia Megido) | Homestuck | Recollé CRAU

> get stuck

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playing it fast and loose with the timeline: the movie: the musical

>Shitpost UN:Spides

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> Chill with Cephalon

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