( 0 0 1 » ENSEMBLE ) welcome to the inaugural log

[reveriemod]

» WHO? everyone
» WHEN? may 1 onward
» WHERE? all over the station
» WHAT? introductory log feat. waking up, exploration, meeting over food and noises in the walls
» WARNINGS? potential for body horror, psychological horror, hallucinations, physical injury

( 0 0 1 ) » WAKE UP

Were you asleep or were you unconscious? It doesn't matter: when you come to, there's an odd taste in your mouth and there's a low-level mechanical hum in the air. Your head hurts and you feel nauseous. You aren't anywhere you know: everything around you is metal, from the floor you lie on all the way to the ceiling. You are dressed in a jumpsuit you definitely weren't wearing before.

"We tried to save the world. I think— I think we did the opposite."

The message repeats on a loop. If you look for its source, you find a comms device on the floor next to you. The logo on its wallpaper says REVERIE TERMINAL. Upon closer inspection, you find the same logo on your jumpsuit.

Welcome to your new home.

( ♪ )

( 0 0 2 ) LOOK AROUND

You've woken up — but where have you woken up? It may be time to explore your new home. Rifling through a crew quarter will make the room's terminal lock to the comms device you're carrying; the room becomes yours. That includes everything in it, from the additional jumpsuit to the two extra sets of underwear. In some quarters, you may find remnants of whoever was here before you: a book on the nightstand, a coffee mug still on the table, a lonely sock on the floor.

A look around the shared areas will reveal the bar, some of its bottles already open, the mess hall, observation deck and the gym area with its dirty pool. An even closer look around these areas might reveal basic first aid kits as well as basic tool kits and fire extinguishers. The kits are located near the fire extinguishers in compartments in the wall that are not immediately visible. Hopefully, nothing's on fire and no one needs first aid... but that tool kit might come in handy.

Every now and then, as you explore, you might find yourself standing before a door that is locked. Try as you might, you will not be able to get it open.

( ♪ )

( OOC: What items characters find of those who were there before them is up to players, but please limit it to a single item that is mundane and somewhat useless in nature. )

( 0 0 3 ) HAVE A BITE

Sooner or later, all characters will have to make their way to the mess hall if they want to eat. In the mess hall, here are a number of replicator-like devices that sometimes work and sometimes don't— but after a recent malfunction that some characters may have noticed, they seem to work just fine... or at least as well as ever: nothing is particularly palatable, but at least it's nourishment, right?

So why not sit down at a table, whether it's already occupied or not, and have a meal. Maybe use it as an opportunity to introduce yourself, or just to complain about what passes for coffee around here.

And if coffee isn't your preferred beverage, well. There's always the bar.

( ♪ )

( 0 0 4 ) NOISES IN THE WALLS

For some, it's been over a week on the station. For others, merely a day or two. For all, things are starting to change: maybe you were asleep or maybe you weren't, but surely the scream that reverberates through the station will startle you. Was it human? Whatever it was, it seems to be coming from the walls of the station. Banging, clanging, then more screams.

Are you going to chase the sounds? Hide away from them? Try to investigate?

If you follow the sound of screams through the station's corridors and halls, you might feel someone - or was it something? - grab you from behind and pull hard. But when you turn around or turn your head if you've fallen, there's nothing and no one there. If you investigate and perhaps put your ear to a wall to see if the noises really come from there, or bang on the wall, you might hear something other than screams and clanging. Strain your ears and you might hear nothing at all — or you might be able to make out a soft "help me". It's barely above a whisper. Did it sound familiar? If you try to take apart the wall, two things will happen: you'll feel uncharacteristically weak and lethargic all of the sudden, and you'll find nothing at all but wiring and more metal.

Whatever you do, you'll find that the noises stop after a while, with no discernible source other than "the walls". And then hours later, they'll start again. Stop again. Start again a day later— and then stop for good.

( ♪ )

( O O C ) ACTIONS

Hello Reverie Terminal Operators! Welcome to our inaugural event. We hope you'll enjoy it!

To help exploration and interaction with the station, we have put together ten (10) 'actions' that you can request. These actions range from very minor, such as receiving a small piece of information about the station, to major, which may be a more vital piece of information or something far less pleasant, and are completely opt-in. These actions can help get your character involved in the plot, jump into the plot and its mysteries, and have more of a personal prompt to jump off of if you so wish.

Please note if you would avoid particular kinds of consequences (for example, if you'd rather your character not be injured), and we'll try to accommodate that, but please be aware that heavy themes are in play and the actions may feature body horror, injury and hallucinations.

If you'd like to receive an action, please reply to this comment with the following:
» Character: » Type of action: minor, medium, major » Notes:

In the future, actions such as these may be "bought" with bonus AC.



Please use content warning in your top-levels wherever necessary.

Comments

[luciformis]

[ Power had always been a difficult thing to wield.

For Ryo, who seemed to carry it with all the grace one could perceive with the eye, he only managed it through the degree of distance he kept. There was no means to sway one who refused to accept the possibility of fundamental and substantial emotions — the warmth that any of those could bring. Ryo remained at once present and absent, a lone figure cut across a foreign shoreline, pale and white and cold. He was a creature unlike the rest, but Akira had tugged at his hand and bid him to come with, come in. He bid Ryo to join the world around him, but still he never truly did. Standing at the threshold, with his hand against the doorjamb — it was easiest to look in. It meant, in some unconscious part of him, that nothing could ever come again to cast him out. It meant he would never fall and he would never bleed, but it might have once been different. Had it not been for Jenny who came to tear him away from that town by the sea, Akira might have succeeded in getting Ryo to join him. Akira might have succeeded in coaxing him in, given all of his patience and devotion — all the tenderness that he seemed to pour out across every person in this world who deserved even a touch of it.

In some quiet and overlooked part of him, Ryo ached for all of it, for every part of it. He ached more than he could understand or know. And still, even in these moments, he cannot see it. He cannot map the shape of his emotions and his desires with his own hands, because he chooses to be blind to it. He chooses to smother it, even as the line of Akira's arm comes to rest across his shoulders, heavy and warm. This proximity has become increasingly familiar as time has gone on, but then they had always been like this: exchanging touches both large and small, as if going too long without the contact was somehow aversive. And it was, but Ryo chooses also to deny that as he curls his fingers about Akira's wrist to keep his arm positioned where it is, feeling the steadiness of Akira's pulse beneath the meat of his thumb. It is all that Ryo can do to help Akira in what ways he could here. It was all that he could do to provide a means of support when he was otherwise left up to designing his own defenses. Back home, he would not have had to worry after it. Back home, he could have protected Akira as much as he protected him.

But here, Ryo was human and knowledge was the only true weapon he could use against what and who could come to trouble them. And it is something he uses now as he carefully guides Akira to his feet, only to be jerked to attention back to where they'd just contended with the Station's door.

It is an odd thing. Ryo watches the door twist and settle with the faintest narrowing of eyes, the glimmer of them cool and sharp — calculated. There are possibilities that filter across his thoughts, but none seem sufficient enough. Ferrofluid would not harden the way that it would have about Akira's arms, but he knows of several more that could have provided some difficult if the temperature was suddenly in flux. Gallium was a possibility, but the applications here were useless. So, it is with some puzzlement that Ryo furrows his brows. It is a slight expression, but it is present enough to catch.

Ryo's mouth dips into a frown and he adjust his hold about Akira's wrist. It is a considering gesture, one that allows for more comfort in the rest of his arm around him. ]

I see, [ he says, more to himself than not. His eyes flit from the door to Akira. Back again. ] I won't be able to tell what it is or how to prevent it without a sample to test. [ It doesn't make much sense as it stands, but very few things like this do at first glance. ] There has to be a reason why your touch activated it.

[ He pauses and then adds a slight nudge of pressure to Akira's side. ] I'll come back for it.

[ Beneath it, the let's get you settled is implicit. ]

[dvmn]

[In his youth he'd grown used to playing the role of arbitrator and advocate for Ryo. He'd always seemed in dire need of someone to play that role, to stand by his side and try to argue for what he meant when instead people would only focus on the barbed words said or brusque actions brandished. Akira had always been able to see the kernel of good at the heart of all of this, knowing deep within his own that the reason why Ryo had carried a blade was to defend them from the potentially-dangerous mysteries of the world (or cut away an attachment which would only cause misery down the line). That he only interjected to correct the teachers on their small, harmless inaccuracies due to a stringent standard, not wanting to mince anyone's time by presenting them hurdles in the forms of misinformation.

Initially he'd been shocked to see him in the crowded internet video, navigating cordial conversation and discussion seamlessly, without the need for interpretation or arbitration. There'd been happiness there, some pride, the easing of a feeling of worry he'd held for years, wondering if Ryo had managed to find anyone else (in singular or in plural) that would put forth what was necessary to understand him and desperately hoping so, because he knew he had so much to give the world if the bridge was properly built.

And, seemingly, they had, and he did, but there was something... off about it. Akira had sensed the distance in that cordiality, noticed in that seamlessness the dearth of the momentary pauses that he'd observed when they were kids, after he'd said something just ridiculous and heartfelt enough to throw him.

He doesn't really know exactly what it is, but from what he'd seen since Ryo'd returned to Japan and to him, it still seemed to be something he was in ownership of.

This isn't even close to the first time Ryo'd hauled his injured ass around like this, and he's still surprised how strong the guy is, even though he seems thin enough to be knocked over by a brisk wind. Still Akira is wary of his weight, handling as much of it as he could on his own two legs, allowing Ryo to guide them along collectively.

He didn't even notice the awkward jut of his arm, the way that his shoulder had started to ache a little bit from it, before Ryo had already moved to adjust how he held onto his wrist. Akira settles into the new alignment gratefully, a wordless rumble in his throat, watching Ryo's expression as he most likely worked his way through all the scientific possibilities for the impossibility that the door had just presented them with (nailed it).]

Nn. [Yeah, that makes sense. He glances down, casting his gaze at the metallic debris that he'd littered the hallway with.] Well, luckily there's plenty to look at. [Hell, there's a possibility some of it is still stuck to him and he just isn't aware of it yet.]

Maybe it just wanted to fuck with me.

[He laughs a slightly wheezing laugh.

He's swift enough to follow the intent behind the touch to his side, however, walking in a way where they can comfortably keep stride with one another, making their way back to the room.]

Any chance we can get somethin' to eat first? [It's said with a toothy smile, but he's actually pretty fuckin' hungry all of a sudden. Ratcheting your internal body heat high enough to nearly boil your blood'll do something like that.]