( 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

Bite (Eating Disorder CW)

[magneticfields]

Erik doesn't trust the food. Or the air, or the water, or the other residents save Rogue. His suspicions about the food are confirmed by the hallucinations he suffered the first day, but after purging and fasting for a day the visions seem to have disappeared. Nobody else who is eating the food seems to be suffering the ill effects anymore. He has to eat something, and his explorations has not revealed any source other than the fabricators in the mess hall.

There are no empty tables, unfortunately. Erik prefers solitude to the company of humans in general, particularly if he's going to be vulnerable to hallucinations. The man who meets his eye looks friendly enough, if overbuilt in a way that borders on the vulgar. Erik carries his tray of something attempting to be oatmeal and a not-quite-hot enough cup of something that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea over to the table and joins him.

"I'd say I've had worse, but I try not to think about those times," he says in a dry tone as he stirs the oatmeal-adjacent mush. As if it will make a difference.

[unshielding]

Growing up on almost entirely boiled food in meager times, Steve's definitely had worse. Army rations hadn't been much better. The last few years, though, he's been a little spoiled for food and while he doesn't entirely mind the food, he'd be lying if he said he enjoyed it. It's bland and at least a little off.

"It beats field rations, but only by a little bit." He shakes his head and takes another bite of what he can only describe as a bean-like dish.

"Steve Rogers." He transfers the fork to his left hand so he can offer his right.

[magneticfields]

The mention of field rations takes him off guard. Maybe it's the mess hall with the metal tables. Maybe it's something about this man dredging up memories. "Henryk Gurszky," he introduces himself. And even feels a bit bad about the lie.

He stirs his oatmeal again, the tide of memories tugging at him. Better to confront it head-on than get caught in the undertow.

"There was a time in my life when field rations were quite the step up." He turns his arm over, lifting his sleeve enough to reveal part of the tattoo. "Though I can't say I'm precisely pleased to have been brought here against my will."

[unshielding]

The tattoo has Steve's focus for longer than it should. He remembers seeing those, remembers a lot more about the war than people tend to realize and for all the people they'd saved, the lives of those they hadn't still weighs on him. The knowledge of what the Nazis did to people is what has caused Steve to feel so passionate about joining the army to begin with. It's what brought him to Project Rebirth and ultimately to where he is now.

His feelings haven't dulled with time at all, but he's not used to meeting anyone who might remember those times so vividly. Most of the people left are older, memories fading as they live out their lives. Bucky's the only one he knows who remembers it keenly and calling Bucky's memories keen might still be a stretch.

His eyes move back to the man's face. "Steve Rogers. I--" He clears his throat, voice heavy with something that feels deeply personal down to his bones. "I fought in that war. I'm sorry we couldn't get you out sooner."

[magneticfields]

It's always a minefield, which is why he tends to err on the side of not talking about it. That and it's been forty years. Forty very eventful years. But it's good to know his instincts were correct.

He shakes his head slightly, waving off the apology, and the guilt that came with it. "I think most of the mistakes on that front were made a few steps up the chain of command from where you were." There are certainly members of the American military and government that he will never forgive, and would take revenge on if it were possible. None of them are average G.I.'s. "Men like you are the ones who unlocked the gates." He smiles slightly.

He glances around the mess hall. Most of the others are significantly younger than him, in the age that they are right now as well as what time period they're from. "Besides, it's nice to to be able to talk to somebody who is more familiar with a party line than a text message."

[unshielding]

Steve nods, but he can't shake that ever-present feeling of responsibility that he carries. There will always be more people to help and more bad people to fight. He's realized that the hard way and he knows that he'll never really be done fighting.

He lets himself smile a little at that last remark. "I'm not unfamiliar with text messages, but I was resistant to new technology at first, too. It took me a while to adjust."

Maybe if he'd lived those years in realtime, he might have been different. Or maybe he never would have picked it up as easily after a few years of struggling, but he'd woken up in a very new and different world.

"I missed a few decades after the war."

[magneticfields]

There's a guilt that Erik carries as well. The guilt that comes with the question "Why not me?" The ever-present drive to justify his existence. To prove that there was some reason why he was spared, while the rest of his family were slaughtered. It had to be for something. And that cause was his fellow mutants. Ensuring their survival in a world that sought to destroy them.

The talk of being resistant earns an eyeroll. "I'm not resistant. I'm unfamiliar. This sort of technology isn't exactly in common use in 1983." That's the most frustrating part. Erik is not a stupid man. Quite the opposite. But there's so much he has to master to even reach the base level the rest of the residents seem to be at already, let alone progressing to the level of the technology of their captors. It's incredibly frustrating.

But what Steve says is odd enough to distract him from that. "Missed a few decades? Doing what, exactly? I can't imagine you'd last long as a field agent."

[unshielding]

Steve sees no reason to be shy about what happened to him. It's common enough knowledge where he's from that he's made peace with a lack of privacy on certain things and on this, he doesn't really feel a need to try to fight for it, either. He's not unhappy with his decisions or where they got him, even if there are some disappointments and guilts that dwell.

"I was frozen in 1945. It took them almost 70 years to find me and thaw me out." Which is a small miracle in and of itself. "By then, everyone was texting and society was a completely different place."

At first, he had resented the changes, but he'd come around eventually. "If you need some judgment-free help learning how to use anything, feel free to ask me. I've been there, myself."

[magneticfields]

Erik isn't sure what he expected to hear, but it certainly wasn't that. A thousand questions rush together. Does he mean cryogenically? How was he lost for seventy years? But the details don't seem to be of much interest to Steve as he continues on.

How did they thaw him?

Erik clears his throat and tries to push aside all these questions, as they would be quite rude to ask. "The technical aspect isn't of that much concern to me. It's more of the linguistic standards I'm concerned about. Does one include a greeting and a closing in a text message? From what I've seen of the network, they tend not to include salutations."

[unshielding]

"Oh." Steve's face lights up a little. He'd struggled with that for a while, too, and he's happy to be useful in a way he can relate to.

"Most people treat it like a conversation. Unless it's someone you'd normally be more formal with, it's pretty informal and you can type exactly the way you'd speak to the person. Sometimes people open a conversation with a small greeting, but you don't have to and if you sign it, people will make fun of you. I learned that the hard way." He smiles, clearly amused with himself. "You can usually send pictures, too, and sometimes people use shorthand, but I still can't keep most of that straight. LOL means they think something is funny, but it usually isn't."

[magneticfields]

Erik listens attentively. Steve's good humor is infectious, and while Erik doesn't brighten up nearly as much as he does, his expression does soften somewhat.

"Send pictures," he repeats quietly, musing to himself as he looks at the device. He looks at Steve again. "El-oh-- Is that an acronym? What does it mean?"

[unshielding]

"Laughing out loud, but they usually aren't." Not that Steve uses any of the acronyms. They're nice to know so that he can understand others, but he feels too silly trying to use them, like he's trying to sound young and hip when everyone who knows him is waiting there to make a joke about hip replacements.

"Don't worry. I went through a solid year of being made fun of over this stuff. Real friends eventually let you in on the joke." He shakes his head. "While finding new and different ways to call you old."

[magneticfields]

His brow furrows in confusion. "How often does anybody 'laugh out loud'? Why would they lie about it?"

The comment about "real friends" stings in ways Steve certainly didn't intend. The number of people he'd consider a friend is very, very short. And he's not entirely certain they would agree with the assessment. "My friends are contemporaries. They wouldn't know any better than I do. Although some of the younger ones would prove more adaptable, I suppose."

Another sting. Darwin would have thrived here.

[unshielding]

Steve shrugs at the question. He barely has the answers he's given about these things.

"Well, if any of them show up here, maybe you can teach them." It's not out of the realm of possibility here. Steve's got Bucky and Wanda. It seems like there are others who've wound up here with people they know. It's not an experience he'd wish on anyone, but he's thankful he's here with them to keep them safe.

[magneticfields]

The prospect of other mutants arriving is something he's ambivalent about. On one hand, it would be preferable to have more trustworthy allies should they need them. On the other, the fewer of his brethren that are imprisoned here the better. "With any luck it won't come to that. We will all return to our own homes and learn all of this nonsense when it happens there."

He finishes his "tea" and as much of the oatmeal-like substance as he's able to convince himself to eat. "In the meantime, if I find myself stymied by any more acronyms, I'll ask you first." He gives something of a smile. Better to keep his ignorance to is peers, or the closest to that he can find.