polymods: (Default)
polymods ([personal profile] polymods) wrote in [community profile] polylogs2021-11-01 03:04 pm

Time for a Cinnabon!

POLYMYTHOS: THE MALL

THE MALL


Ⅰ. ARRIVAL
You can read all about your character's arrival in the game lore.
You step off the ferry and find there is no beach. No, the concrete wharf opens up to a vast, flat plain of pavement. It goes on, and on, and on. Sodium lights on tall poles are spaced at regular intervals, and as you move forward you notice white lines painted in neat rows.Those of you from a typical earth world might recognise almost immediately that you are, in fact, in a giant parking lot.

Up ahead you can see a vast building, a long rectangle flanked on either end by an even larger square. In the very center there is a large, triangular glass awning hanging over an entranceway composed of several automatic doors. There is neon tubing running along the inside of the awning, lighting up the glass so it is a beacon shining across the expanse of pavement you’re crossing.

That’s right, Travellers. We’re going to The Mall.

The building is huge - it takes a good hour to walk from one anchor store to the other at the opposite end. There are stores selling damn near everything - clothes, housewares, books, kitchen supplies, movies and music, electronics - as well as hair salons, nail salons, and a ton of kiosks. The merchandise being sold seems to be from different decades - anywhere from the 1970s to the late 2000s. You can find almost anything you could want!

The flooring is faux marble, the pillars decorated with brass detailing halfway up their length. Potted palms are set at regular intervals. The mall’s concourse is huge and open, with a glass ceiling criss-crossed with metal supports. A fountain jets water coloured by lights into the air over and over in the center of the concourse.

Escalators and an elevator run up and down to the second floor, where the food court is, which is a heaven, provided you’re too worried about MSG. Food from across every conceivable world exists here - no matter where you’re from, you can find a fast-food version of something you’re familiar with. And there’s an Orange Julius!

Truly, a paradise. Kind of weird that the automatic doors won’t let you out the way you came in, but you have everything you need right here! Just be really careful on those escalators - wouldn’t want to get sucked under. And by the way, what’s that noise…?

Notes:
1. Please remember to mark threads appropriately with Content Warnings when necessary.

2. These prompts are a jumping off point - how they affect your character and their development is up to you.

3. Any food is safe to eat, and is consumable by non-human entities.

4. The people inside the mall are normal humans unless otherwise indicated. Killing them is possible and will affect the colour grading of your Scrywatch depending on the situation.

5. Have fun!



Ⅱ. BLACK FRIDAY
CW: violence, mob mentality
One of the mall anchors is a huge department store that sells everything under the sun. As you walk through the empty aisles, you’ll notice that there are signs hung everywhere that read “SALE!” Indeed, prices seem to have been drastically reduced. The place seems eerily calm, however; you can’t see any shoppers anywhere.

But if you walk close to the exterior entrance on the far side of the store, you will see them if you look outside.

Hundreds upon hundreds of people pressed up against the glass doors. With a start you see that all of them, from children to the elderly, are missing their eyes. Black, empty sockets stare sightlessly ahead. Store employees, recognisable by their red smocks, stand at the ready.

“Alright, let’s open her up!” one of them shouts, and the employees move to unlock the doors. Immediately the crowd surges forward. The employees pull each other out of the way moments before they can be trampled. The mob rushes through the entranceways, stampeding towards… towards…

Oh. You.

The mob lacks any empathy; people push and climb over one another, uncaring if anyone falls to the ground. You’re pretty sure several of them are actually being crushed beneath people’s feet. Oddly, they aren’t screaming in pain. People’s mouths are moving, but only to form certain words:

“FLATSCREEN!”

“INTELLIVISION!”

“TICKLE-ME-ELMO!”

They are only screaming what it is that they want. They are single minded in their purpose, and don’t care who they hurt in their pursuit.

Make your way to the entrance that opens into the mall and you’ll be greeted with a nasty sight: the gates are closed. No matter what you do to them, they won’t budge an inch, impervious to brute strength, magic, superpowers. That means you’ll have to find another way out if you don’t want to join in the bloodshed. Maybe there’s a ventilation system or a loading bay...

There’s a chance you could just hide out until the sale ends - a store this vast has more than enough food and drink to sustain you, and you could probably get a good night’s sleep in a camping display if it isn’t torn apart by rabid consumers. Just be careful, because the longer you spend trapped in the department store the more likely you are to turn into one of them: mindlessly screaming what it is you want as you tear the store apart.

Notes:
1. There may be a few Black Friday shoppers loose in the mall, but primarily they stick to the department store.

2. Your character might find a way into the mall again, or the parking lot outside. However they manage that is up to you!

3. If your character does turn into a consumer drone, they can be changed back by being taken out of the department store. Maybe go chill out by the fountain in the concourse or get some chilli fries in the food court.



Ⅲ. UNDERGROUND PARKING
CW: potential starvation, dehydration
If the two floors of the mall are for eating and shopping, where do the down escalators go? Unsurprisingly they lead to an underground parking lot. More surprisingly, if you choose to enter the lot you’ll find yourself suddenly transported to the inside of a car. What car? Any car! It sure isn’t yours! It’s locked and you can’t get the doors or windows to open. Even trying to break your way out is futile.

Thank goodness you have a way to call for help: your ScryWatch! Although you can still access the public network, your ScryWatch will also now function as a private one-to-one device like a phone or a walkie talkie. You can ask a friend to come and help you!

The second person entering the lot won’t be magicked away, but a friendly mall employee will stop you and hand you a set of keys. Clearly they go to a car… but which one? Better start pressing that alarm button, huh?

The parking lot is massive. The party in the car would be wise to describe what they can see to their seeker. After all, teamwork makes the dream work! You sure don’t want to be stuck in a warm car for a couple of days!

Notes:
1. Your character can post/call the network or text/call an individual - in the latter case nobody else can read or hear the conversation.

2. The car might have some goldfish crackers or something in the glove box, or maybe an old gatorade bottle on the floor, but there’s not going to be enough to survive on for any length of time.



Ⅳ. MANNEQUIN
CW: automatonophobia
As you walk through the mall, you’ll see plenty of window displays. Gleaming cookware turning on pedestals under mellow lights, toys going round and round in fake wonderlands, personalised miniature license plates - although they’re all out of Borts - and of course plenty of stylish clothes draped over countless mannequins.

It’s always fun to window shop, isn’t it? Which is how you will come to notice that some of the mannequins look awfully familiar.

Everyone has, at some point in their life, treated someone like they weren’t real outside of what you wanted them to be. The romantic interest you put on a pedestal, the friend you only called when you needed them, or the poor bastard in the office who never did anything to you but who you hated on because it made you feel better. The mannequins greatly resemble that person or persons.

No matter which window you pass, they’re there. It looks like they’re watching you. But that’s silly, isn’t it?

With every mannequin you pass, the more your unease grows. Eventually the feeling of being watched is so great that it’s overwhelming. A sense of guilt grows alongside your paranoia, gnawing at your guts until you feel physically ill. Maybe if you apologise to the dummies for treating them like objects?

Or maybe if you just break all of them into pieces.

Notes:
1. Stating how you have wronged the person the mannequin resembles and apologising will cause the guilt and paranoia to vanish. But then, so will breaking them.

2. Could the mannequins sneak up on you? Move when you’re not looking? Sure! the floor, but there’s not going to be enough to survive on for any length of time.

Come on Jessica, come on Tori! Let's go to the mall, you won't be sorry!


Network · Logs · OOC · Memes · Plurk

necrosavior: (Default)

Gideon Nav | The Locked Tom | OTA

[personal profile] necrosavior 2021-11-02 11:53 pm (UTC)(link)
Ⅰ. ARRIVAL
OOC: Harrow mentions/actions made with permission

What Gideon is mentally calling Third Island resembles Canaan House in a structural sense. It is a massive sprawl of hallways with more rooms than Gideon cares to count squashed together. These doors are (generally) open, though the ones out of the structure are locked. While alarming, this too is like Canaan House once the skeletons had pushed the shuttles down into the water. Like Canaan House, Harrow decides the first course of action is to map all the rooms to create their own scrawled authenticated maps. Gideon points to the maps already provided. Harrow nabs one for the details she considers important and Gideon grabs a backup because she doubts they agree on what's important and the first will likely be ritually drowned in ink.

The process takes hours. Harrow furiously writes down her notes, and Gideon jots locations for bedding supplies (of the bag variety), food, clothing that looks cool, warm, and/or comfortable, soap not made from people, dirty books, and makeshift weapons. In all, it hasn't been a bad idea to map the place because she is making record time power walking between the noted stores to build up necessary supplies. No one else is running or even jogging, with ever increasing bulk of bags (the Ninth House panniers could actually be useful for once) so she leaves a morning run for... well, the next morning. It gives her some time initially on her own, able to run into people.

She can also be found the next morning jogging around the mall.

Ⅱ. BLACK FRIDAY
Sometimes it pays to be built like a rock. Gideon weathers the initial rush of people standing firm. Seeing people get trampled makes her swim upstream. She's firm, and people don't care to get back at her. It's not like she's holding anything they want. The trampled people don't approach saying thank you or noticing her at all. As soon as they're up, they're off toward whatever it is they want, even with a broken arm, a bloody and broken nose, a head injury, etc.

It's ridiculous. In a Second House kind of way if the goods were Blood of Eden terrorists and they were killing them.

The doors back into the mall are locked too now. Gideon—don't tell Harrow—wishes she had Harrow's annotated map. She skirts around the store with the vague inkling that they saw other doors or entrances/exits. Somewhere. It's a lot harder to tell in the throng of people, but Gideon's used to things being a slow wrenching process. No one's even trying to shoot her with a crossbow.

Ⅳ. MANNEQUIN
CW: mentioned child neglect/abuse, mentioned murder/attempted murder (of children) likely in comments to come

Gideon halts suddenly in the hallway on her third lap of the mall. Slowly, she steps back and back and back until she reaches a set of displays she is asbo-fucking-lutely sure wasn't there on her last lap. They couldn't have been there during the map making process, surely? Gideon frowns. Would Harrow have said something? Would she ask Gideon to confirm something is only in her head? Harrow isn't here, so unless crazy catches when you share a headspace, it's real. At least, as real as the mirror magic on Second Island.

Even though the great-aunts and Crux are as still and dead as the reverend father and reverend mother have been for the last seven (eight?) years, they look far too at peace. Crux doesn't deserve to look at peace like Harrow brought him personally to the Mithraeum to smugly flip her off from the ceiling. It does fit that he looks more alive dead than he looked as a living breathing person. Stylish veils cover the great-aunts' faces. Even blind, they recoiled from her for as long as Gideon remembers. Prayer beads hang from each hand; whenever Gideon looks away she hears the clacking sound that echoed through Drearburgh. When she looks back, the great-aunts are as still as can be. Pelleamena and Priamhark are posed pulling back, as though worried Gideon will break the glass and brush their fitted black formal wear.

Her heart rate spikes at this mockery, at the same age-old treatment Gideon has known her whole life. She hasn't forgotten it, but the bright painful life and un-life at Canaan House and in Harrow and the generously peopled (and insected) islands has made it easier to forget. For a day, a week, every night when Harrow sleeps holding her tightly. Words said an eon ago haunt her. The more you struggle against the Ninth, Nav, the deeper it takes you; the louder you curse it, the louder they’ll have you scream.

Gideon curses. The memories of working with Harrow, of fighting constructs, cajoling a dinner out of her, of everything Ninth she felt keenly the month before bites her. She bites her lip. "I won't scream," Gideon declares to the missing mannequin. She says to no one. Her fingers reach for her sword, but it's not there. The machete is, but even Gideon Nav hesitates before smashing a glass window. Instead, she's stuck, not able to just walk away, not able to stand the mannequins in the windows, not willing to smash the whole display (for the attention it would draw).

Quietly, Gideon fumes from the middle of the hall, with her back to an informational stand.
Edited (grammar) 2021-11-03 00:04 (UTC)
northerndragon: this is jon. he fights real good and we're proud of him. (right proper lad.)

this is so late bc RL, but I am here if you want to backtag it! featuring: mall goths.

[personal profile] northerndragon 2021-12-01 04:23 am (UTC)(link)
He can’t say this place is the strangest yet: not many of them have been familiar, and each time, it’s been in different ways. Some have had more chances for peace than others. What he can say of this place is that its strangeness is unique to it, so far.

So why are all these dummies dressed the way they are? There were some girls and boys down by where the food is who looked a little like this, but only a little. And he didn’t see this girl, who seems to always be with Harrowhark and who reminds him a little of his sister’s sworn sword, admirably strong and not very girlish, around those children. They are not the source of what looks like distress. It’s the dummies.

Why isn’t she with Harrowhark? It’s that and her expression that makes him approach her. He likes Harrowhark, for herself and what she reminds him of. He would be a friend to her friends.

“You all right?” He asks it gently.
necrosavior: (Default)

It’s been a month in a year that has been a year x.x (aka yes)

[personal profile] necrosavior 2021-12-01 01:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Gideon startles, one hand moving to the machete’s grip without drawing it. These islands haven’t favored violence so far (Sephiroth’s mirror murder notwithstanding; she’s pretty sure that was the ‘you don’t get it, Griddle’ approach). With people milling about with more or less direction, his approach isn’t truly like the Fourth House’s creeping. The question reminds her of Palamedes. Here and gone again, Sextus.

Gideon hasn’t been hiding her feelings (she hasn’t needed to when practically no one pays attention to them). He’s vaguely familiar in a ‘black anchorites pull together’ kind of way. Harrow’s kind of person. She’s not sure how to react, but she thinks back to the question of whether or not it’s real. Harrow’s not the type to ask. Gideon can handle looking like an idiot.

“What do those fake people behind the windows look like to you?” Gideon asks. It doesn’t answer his question, but his answer will give her the answer to his question. Part of one.
northerndragon: (break the silence)

[personal profile] northerndragon 2021-12-07 04:00 am (UTC)(link)
He looks at them for a long moment, then half-shrugs.

“Like they belong at a funeral. I’d say the Night’s Watch, but some of them are in skirts. Some houses wear black, too, but there’s only one Targaryen left these days, and their colors were black and red.”

That doesn’t explain much, on either side. She doesn’t look sad, the way she might if this reminded her of the loss of someone dear to her. She doesn’t look happy, either. And there’s something else.

“They look like Lady Harrowhark. Like they’re the same sort of people.

“What are they really?”
necrosavior: (Default)

[personal profile] necrosavior 2021-12-07 04:24 am (UTC)(link)
Like they belong at a funeral. Couldn't get more Ninth than that. So, real. Non-living clothing-modeling versions of Ninth House jackasses. Even with Canaan House and these islands, Gideon hasn't beaten her all time record for avoiding the great aunts. This time isn't her fault. She doesn't know how they can be here, even statues of them. Creepy watchful statues. "What--I don't know. Who? Who's who of the Ninth House," Gideon says. She motions toward all of them but Crux. "Those're all related to Harrow. That one, Crux, is a mean old corpse without the sense to move on." Well, the real one. This one finally has moved into the immortality of the dead.

"That's weird, right?" Gideon confirms. "It's weird to see people you know as models or whatever this is. Could be a practical joke, but Harrow's the only other person here whose seen them before." She eyes them suspiciously. "That we know. Sure, the Ancient has the skinny on all of us. If we can get pulled here," Gideon waves toward the life-size mannequins. The Reverend Father and Mother both look livelier than Harrow's actual corpse set back on the Ninth. They're probably molding away behind the sealed in tomb Harrow left them in. If it were Gideon, if she didn't know they were dead, she'd have knocked her way through by now. There's just no way there's enough food for people to eat (and no reason for Harrow to waste it).

Which isn't the usual Ninth House rites. The usual funeral. The usual treatment of the body (they still have all their skin and muscle). Gideon doesn't like them. She gets why Harrow's done it. She's still a little sorry on their behalf. Only a little. They made the problem themselves after all. Another wince. What had they thought would happen? After. Or did they no longer care for anyone, for the Ninth House, the way they didn't give a shit about her? "Ninth's one long funeral in slow motion."