( 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

neptune, we know the devil

[neritic]

01. waking up / observation deck, deck 01 (growing poppies)

(Neptune wakes up slow. She's usually pretty good at getting up, getting going, but this time she has to take a long moment to gather herself before she realises something isn't right. What stands out starkly is that she's alone; that she is solid, alive and breathing, head aching. Bad taste in her mouth. Her head swims when she lifts it, and for a moment she sits there, slowly patting herself down as if in disbelief of her own corporeality. She had been the tides, she had been the raging oceans and the wicked swells and now...

She's not sure what to think.

She spends a long, disbelieving moment sitting and staring out of the window, out into the empty stretch of space, the planet below them, the twin moons. Trying to think, trying to piece everything together, her hand resting on top of the comms device in order to muffle its looped message. Somebody might notice that she seems to be... pooling water as she sits there in stunned silence, drips falling from her hair like rain onto the floor in little puddles about her.)

02. look around / fitness area (victim of circumstance)

(Neptune finds pretty quick that she's drawn to water, that she can tell where it is. It's... weird. She can feel it in the air. She traces it back toward what looks like a recreational center, up on the fourth floor. She leaves wet footprints as she goes, but doesn't seem to notice. Perhaps it's in reaction to the water that hangs in the air, heavy and wet. It stinks; the pool that she finds shortly is half-full and dingy.

Neptune had been wistfully dreaming of lakes, of streams, of hot pools with steamed water she could boil herself down into but nobody has been here in ages, so what the fuck is she doing here, exactly. She looks very frustrated.)

Ugh. This is disgusting.

04. noises in the walls (the sirens)

(While the screams do startle her, they don't necessarily disturb Neptune, who is more than used to ignoring what she isn't interested in. It's the whispering that does her in. The whispering and the constant banging, like somebody is trying to get out of something locked. There's no point trying to trace it toward a door, because the sounds die off whenever you get away from the small, closed in corridors. They seem like they're coming from inside of the walls

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Neptune stops trying to check the network for answers on her comms device, and deigns to push her hair back, press her ear against the metal to try and listen.

What comes back to her, muffled and far away, is telltale static and then something like... talking, or perhaps music? It's indecipherable. It's something in-between. Then a call so soft, a little blip of sound that makes Neptune jerk away from the wall immediately, uncertain.)

Did you hear that?

05. wildcard (three eves)

((ooc: if you'd like something else entirely to kick off with, feel free to drop me a bell at blisters, or blisters#2121 on discord to discuss! i'll happily write something out just for you!))

[veristitalian]

[Jasnah comes across her, sitting on the ground in a state of shock (which she can understand) and, for lack of a better word, leaking, (which she absolutely cannot.)

There are a long few moments where she tries to take in what she's seeing- the amount of water is definitely growing, it isn't that someone has just emptied a bucket of water on the girl and left her here to sit in it.

There's a second long moment, during which Jasnah actually wonders something more along the lines of 'do I have the energy for this new problem' which is almost certainly a personal one and not related to the structure of the station and what's brought them here. There's only so much she can think about at once. In the end, good manners mixed with a healthy dose of curiosity win out.]

It's a deeply unnerving sight, isn't it?

[neritic]

It's something.

(She doesn't look away, letting her gaze linger for another good thirty seconds before she puts her palm down on the ground to steady herself; that's when she notices the water.)

Ugh– seriously? (Just enough to be irritating. The comms device has gotten wet. Neptune wipes the display off with her thumb and straps it onto her wrist, tucking a wet strand of hair before her ear as she gets to her feet.)

None of this makes sense.

[veristitalian]

No, it doesn't yet.

[Says Jasnah, remarking mostly on the puddle, coming forwards to investigate the outside edges of it. That's a very strange effect.]

Find food, and a place to sleep at night. It won't be over quickly.

[neritic]

(Neptune's decided she won't care about the water on the floor: it's how she is, and she won't apologise for that, but the way the stranger is staring is irritating to her. She coughs roughly into her fist a couple times, clears her throat.)

This is getting really old. (Being made to stay places she doesn't want to be in. Maybe it's some kind of sick joke.)

Have you been here long?

[veristitalian]

[Jasnah isn't sure she follows what's getting old, exactly, but it doesn't seem like it matters.]

A day, maybe? It's difficult to say, with no sun.

[And she hasn't bothered with the little textured paperweight that is her communicator.]

[neritic]

(She's looking at her own now, tapping the display inexpertly as if it were a phone. At least its stopped repeating its looped message?)

It's hard to know if we are literally trapped in space right now or if this is some kind of elaborate joke.

02.

[aequoreal]

( kaldur notices the wet footprints. he has seen footprints like that in the sand or by the ocean so many times, traces of his own steps as he's emerged from the water or that of a fellow atlantean. he wonders, for a brief moment, if this woman could be — but that is a far-fetched thought and there are no indicators beyond the wet footprints, and atlanteans don't leave those unless they've been in water. it's just that atlanteans are in water more often than others, as a general rule.

he decides not to ask. instead, he inclines his head, the gesture almost mournful. )

It is.

[neritic]

Is this all we get?

(It's good, at least, to have somebody to complain to. At camp she had the lake, and it wasn't– well, it was cold, for one thing and had no current to speak of, but she'd take that a thousand times over whatever the hell this is supposed to be.

Come to think of it, she hasn't noticed any 'staff' around, or anything akin to such. Neptune sighs, and tucks a wet strand of hair behind her ear.)

Why does this place look like everybody collectively forgot it existed.

[aequoreal]

Perhaps because they did.

( he certainly hopes that the station was evacuated calmly and abandoned without any dire need. that collective forgetfulness is why it is in the state that it is, and that nothing else is responsible. he has been wondering what has become of its original crew.

there must have been a crew; everything points toward it. )

[neritic]

A whole station though?

(sounds fake.

Really, Neptune's just trying to wrap her head around the idea that they've been left up here and potentially forgotten all about. It's a strange feeling.) Somebody brought us up here, it can't be abandoned.

[aequoreal]

Somebody or something.

( kaldur doesn't know which of the two would be the better option. people can be cruel, but they can also be reasoned with. artificial intelligence is much the same in all the ways that matter. he is neither a diplomat nor a programmer. )

[neritic]

I'd love to say that this is the first time this has happened to me, but it wouldn't be true.

(Sometimes, life is a real nightmare!)

Did you just wake up too?

01

[twoaffirmations]

[Where am I? That question echoes through him as he stands at the entrance of the observation deck, not for the first time today. The planet outside the expanse of windows is foriegn to him, as foriegn as the idea of two moons, and of humans being within arm's reach.

Without his visor to cover his eyes, his emotions are laid bare. Awe and dread all rolled into one. He sees someone just on the horizon, and decides to distract himself that way. 9S approaches cautiously, calling out.]

Umm, excuse me?

[neritic]

(Neptune doesn't answer. To be fair, she's busy staring out the window and 9S' voice is faint enough that she's assumed he is trying to talk to somebody else. She sighs, and pushes a wet strand of hair behind her ear. This feels like a dream, like a strange, scaled-back nightmare.

She gets to her feet, and when she turns somebody is right there behind her.)

What.

(He might notice that she's dripping as if she just got out of the rain, droplets of water trickling down her hair and onto the floor.)

[twoaffirmations]

[As he got closer, he realized something strange about the human. She was soaking wet, and he thinks that's probably not normal? At least, he knows humans were usually only wet in the shower or when swimming. Oh, but they could also become wet from over-exertion.]

Are you okay? You're, uh...all wet.

[neritic]

(It's a good thing he doesn't think out loud.

Neptune glances down at her hands, then startles as if she's only just noticed all the water. Her hands jump to her wet hair; after a moment's concentration, the dripping stops. She's drying out.)

Yes. I'm fine. (Convincing.) Who are you?

[twoaffirmations]

[9S gives her a clearly dubious look, especially as the water seems to just...evaporate? His answer comes at a delay, as if he hadn't heard her at first.]

Oh, I'm YoRHa unit 9S! It's a pleasure to meet you, Ma'am. Sooo... What happened?

[neritic]

Unit?

(She squints, giving him a head-to-toe look.) What do you mean?

As to 'what happened', your guess is as good as mine.

02.

[dvmn]

Mm, yeah. [The rough-edged voice sounds from a short distance nearby, where a tall young man stands leaning over the edge of the pool, staring down into the overgrown depths.] I don't recommend goin' for a dip. It's pretty nasty.

[Said like someone who had experience — and he did. It's definitely not as though someone'd offered to trade him information about where to find the food in this place in return for jumping into what stood for a pool in this place. And even if that were the case, well, he'd gone and gotten cleaned up and changed into his other jumpsuit, so no harm, no foul, right?

(He can tell himself that, at least.)]

[neritic]

I'm glad you said so, (Neptune says pointedly, glancing up from her comms device. She hasn't quite figured out how to use it yet, and it's frustrating her greatly. All she wants to do is send a text, maybe get some information about this place. Get some information about why the pool is absolute garbage.)

Otherwise I might have gone ahead and jumped right into a half-full pool, completely ignoring the fact that the water is literally green.

(If there's a story here he may as well tell it. She's not going to ask, because it sounds so so stupid.)

[dvmn]

[Honestly, the story is even stupider than he is, so there's not really anything lost if he doesn't tell it. He'd done it to learn where the food was (something he would've found out anyway, given a cursory look around the place), though it'd also been a combination of personal recklessness and a self-assuredness in his own inhuman durability that nothing that bad could possibly happen, right?

Anyways, he rolls his shoulders in a shrug, the perfect image of nonchalance.] Hey, someone has to do it, right? Just think about it. If you were gonna hide something, where's a good place to do it? Bottom of a nasty pool of water no one wants to touch'd be near the top of my list.

[This story would be a lot better if he'd actually found something in there...]

[neritic]

(Well, that isn't a... terrible point. Neptune raises an eyebrow, and looks down at the pool again. The water is incredibly murky, there's no way you can see the bottom of it.

Oh, this had better be good.)

Is that why you took a dip? To go and find something somebody left in there? What did you find?

i lost this notif im so sorry

[dvmn]

Yeah, of course. Why else would I do a thing like that?

[It wasn't. But it makes him sound moderately more intelligent about it than the real reasons, so no one has to know, right?

She does call him on it, but...]

Well -

[He seems deep in thought for a moment.]

We found the pool net. You know, for cleaning it? And I tripped over a couple a' dumbbells that must've fallen in there at some point.

[He turns to look at her closely.] So no treasure chests or anything, but... now I'm wondering, is there anything on the bottom. Like what if there's a door down there, or somethin'.

[There's no evidence for it, but there's also not not any evidence for it?]

that's ok! ♡

[neritic]

Oh, you found the pool net. Clearly it helped!

(She gestures widely to the water. The joke is that the pool still looks really, really terrible.)

I think you're just making stuff up to try and keep the egg off of your face. Nobody puts a door at the bottom of a pool. How would you ever open it without having to refill the entire thing? It isn't practical. Besides, it would be impossible to open underwater because of all the pressure.