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where we're going--
✖ EVENT HORIZON
Ⅰ. ARRIVAL
You can read all about your character's arrival in the game lore.
There has always been some confusion as to whether or not the ferry cuts through sea or sky, but this month as you glide along you will find yourself more and more convinced that it is the latter. It is nigh impossible to see where you are headed, the way forward shrouded in darkness.
At first you think the lights ahead are stars.
The ferry docks inside of a metallic bay of some kind. It’s an extension of what must be the island, although this one does not resemble any earthly land mass. It appears to be a deliberately constructed structure, contained on all sides. Maybe you’re familiar enough with technology or science fiction enough that you realise it resembles a space station more than an island.
Once you’ve disembarked from the ferry, you will find that you cannot go outside of the structure.
Inside, there are seemingly endless corridors for you to explore. The halls on the upper deck are rounded, metallic, with lights set at regular intervals. Here there are chambers roughly the length and width of a single bed, with sufficient height for a person to crawl in and sit up on the bed. There is a television screen set in the wall at the foot of the bed by the door, and sockets for electronics. That is all.
Also on this floor is a mess hall where you can get beige, mostly tasteless nutritional sludge dispensed from machines. Water and coffee are also available, likewise dispensed from machines. (There is a cookbook hidden on a shelf written by one Serak the Preparer, but no ingredients anywhere.) There are private showers and bathrooms, a small gym, and rooms clearly meant as places for people to sit and talk. There is a medical bay, although there is no staff. In fact, the whole place seems empty.
There are some rooms that are locked - these look like offices. The doors to these rooms are extremely difficult to break down, but if you have superhuman strength you could manage it. Or maybe you’re clever enough to work the electronic panels beside the doors.
Inside you will find round monitors on the walls and square tablet-like devices on desks. Attempt to work any of these and a soft, pleasant but emotionless voice will inform you that you do not have access. You can try to speak to the AI - called MUTHER - but it is supremely uncooperative. Someone very good with technology could use the tablet the old fashioned way, perhaps, to access files. You might want to be careful, though - MUTHER might decide to retaliate. Harshly.
There doesn’t seem to be a temple anywhere readily apparent.
Ⅱ. CONSCIENCE
CW: psychological trauma, threat of death.
It’s easy to get lost; nearly identical corridors branch off from one another. As you walk along you gradually become convinced that someone is following you. Periodically you’ll hear footsteps, a sigh, a rustle of cloth. But every time you turn around you see nothing… unless it’s one of your fellow Travelers. Or maybe you run into them because you’re so busy looking over your shoulder.
Regardless, as you walk along the lights in the corridor flicker, and when they turn back on you will find someone you know standing directly in your path. Someone who you know absolutely cannot be there.
Maybe they died. Maybe you haven’t spoken in years. Whoever they are, the feeling they inspire within you is one of intense guilt. You did something to this person, something for which you think you can never be forgiven.
The apparition might speak, or it might just watch you with silently accusing eyes. You begin to wither under its gaze, feeling weaker and weaker until you can barely stand. You just want to lay on the floor and close your eyes… maybe forever.
Your fate rests in the hands of whoever is with you or finds you. All they have to do is introduce a smidgen of doubt into your mind, a recognition that maybe it isn’t all your fault. Of course, that means you might have to tell them what you did.
Oh, dear.
Ⅲ. STOWAWAY
CW: monstrous creatures.
The lower decks of the station are darker, more utilitarian looking. These are corridors that lead to rooms full of computers and machinery that keep the station running so it’s probably best to keep out of there.
There are also storage bays filled with both prosaic wooden crates and large metallic pods. Most of these are locked up tight. But not all. Investigate some of the pods and you’ll find that the floor around them is wet with some sort of milky, slimy substance that sure seems like it came from a living organism.
Maybe you should get out of here.
Before you can get good and gone to the upper decks, however, you find exactly what you probably didn’t want to unless you have a very exciting Tinder profile: an alien.
At least eight feet tall, with pale almost translucent skin, the creature has an elongated skull and a mouth that hosts two sets of jaws like a moray eel. It has a whiplike tail and spiky protrusions along its upper back. It is bipedal, and very, VERY fast.
Better hope you’ve got something to fight with! Your chances of survival are definitely greater if you work with a partner.
And you better hope there’s just the one.
Ⅳ. TEMPLE
CW: potential insanity, violence.
If you wander the dark lower decks long enough, you will find yourself moving ever inward toward the very center of the station. There is a door there that is supposed to be locked, but often isn’t. It’s waiting for you, beyond that door and down a dark corridor: the station’s heart.
The room the solitary corridor opens into is round, walls sloping gently up to a domed ceiling. In the middle of the room is a machine of some kind: a series of concentric thick metal rings rotate in different directions around a sphere. The only noise it makes is the gentle swooshing of the circles as they spin out, up, around.
The air feels heavy and charged. It’s not pleasant.
Before you can leave, all of the rings line up so that they appear to radiate out from the sphere in the center. Light flares, and then in the space where the sphere once was you can see it:
Home.
It’s your homeworld, perhaps exactly as you left it, or perhaps earlier or later along in the timeline. It may be pleasant, or it may be awful, but it is undeniably the place from which you came. The place where you belong.
Stare into this portal home long enough and the compulsion to return will slip over you. You just need to jump into the glowing, trembling center of that dimensional gate.
Whoever is with you, however, realises that leaping headfirst into an unknown dimension might not be the smartest idea you’ve ever had, especially considering how ominous the whole place feels. They might be able to talk you down. Hopefully they can talk you down, because the longer you stare at the portal the more convinced you become that you MUST leap into it, and the only way to do so is to kill whoever is trying to get in your way.
If instead you turn away from the dimensional gate, the lights will flare once more before the rings resume their movement. That brief glimpse of home is gone. In its place is the sound of soft voices; people you have left behind, calling out to you with accusations of things left undone, begging to be told why you won’t come home...
These voices will follow you throughout the ship. They are not constant, but they never leave you alone for very long. They won’t be silent until you give them an answer to the question of why you have chosen to remain.
Is anybody out there listening?
You can read all about your character's arrival in the game lore.
There has always been some confusion as to whether or not the ferry cuts through sea or sky, but this month as you glide along you will find yourself more and more convinced that it is the latter. It is nigh impossible to see where you are headed, the way forward shrouded in darkness.
At first you think the lights ahead are stars.
The ferry docks inside of a metallic bay of some kind. It’s an extension of what must be the island, although this one does not resemble any earthly land mass. It appears to be a deliberately constructed structure, contained on all sides. Maybe you’re familiar enough with technology or science fiction enough that you realise it resembles a space station more than an island.
Once you’ve disembarked from the ferry, you will find that you cannot go outside of the structure.
Inside, there are seemingly endless corridors for you to explore. The halls on the upper deck are rounded, metallic, with lights set at regular intervals. Here there are chambers roughly the length and width of a single bed, with sufficient height for a person to crawl in and sit up on the bed. There is a television screen set in the wall at the foot of the bed by the door, and sockets for electronics. That is all.
Also on this floor is a mess hall where you can get beige, mostly tasteless nutritional sludge dispensed from machines. Water and coffee are also available, likewise dispensed from machines. (There is a cookbook hidden on a shelf written by one Serak the Preparer, but no ingredients anywhere.) There are private showers and bathrooms, a small gym, and rooms clearly meant as places for people to sit and talk. There is a medical bay, although there is no staff. In fact, the whole place seems empty.
There are some rooms that are locked - these look like offices. The doors to these rooms are extremely difficult to break down, but if you have superhuman strength you could manage it. Or maybe you’re clever enough to work the electronic panels beside the doors.
Inside you will find round monitors on the walls and square tablet-like devices on desks. Attempt to work any of these and a soft, pleasant but emotionless voice will inform you that you do not have access. You can try to speak to the AI - called MUTHER - but it is supremely uncooperative. Someone very good with technology could use the tablet the old fashioned way, perhaps, to access files. You might want to be careful, though - MUTHER might decide to retaliate. Harshly.
There doesn’t seem to be a temple anywhere readily apparent.
Notes:
1. The High Temple and anything characters may have stored there is only accessible to those who are experiencing their first island outside of the TDM via a marked door. Everyone else must make do with what is available.
2. Please remember to mark threads appropriately with Content Warnings when necessary.
3. The televisions play mostly game shows. You can also find a set of controllers for it and play Pong. Just Pong.
4. MUTHER will not deliberately kill any people on the station - her programming forbids it. She is not above releasing hallucinogenic gas into the air vents, though.
5. Have fun!
Ⅱ. CONSCIENCE
CW: psychological trauma, threat of death.
It’s easy to get lost; nearly identical corridors branch off from one another. As you walk along you gradually become convinced that someone is following you. Periodically you’ll hear footsteps, a sigh, a rustle of cloth. But every time you turn around you see nothing… unless it’s one of your fellow Travelers. Or maybe you run into them because you’re so busy looking over your shoulder.
Regardless, as you walk along the lights in the corridor flicker, and when they turn back on you will find someone you know standing directly in your path. Someone who you know absolutely cannot be there.Maybe they died. Maybe you haven’t spoken in years. Whoever they are, the feeling they inspire within you is one of intense guilt. You did something to this person, something for which you think you can never be forgiven.
The apparition might speak, or it might just watch you with silently accusing eyes. You begin to wither under its gaze, feeling weaker and weaker until you can barely stand. You just want to lay on the floor and close your eyes… maybe forever.
Your fate rests in the hands of whoever is with you or finds you. All they have to do is introduce a smidgen of doubt into your mind, a recognition that maybe it isn’t all your fault. Of course, that means you might have to tell them what you did.
Oh, dear.
Notes:
1. The severity of the offense is of course up to the player - this can be deadly serious, or played for laughs. No matter how it is played the only way to save a character from sleeping on the floor until they die from dehydration is to convince them of even the possibility that they might not be guilty. They do not have to feel completely absolved.
Ⅲ. STOWAWAY
CW: monstrous creatures.
The lower decks of the station are darker, more utilitarian looking. These are corridors that lead to rooms full of computers and machinery that keep the station running so it’s probably best to keep out of there.
There are also storage bays filled with both prosaic wooden crates and large metallic pods. Most of these are locked up tight. But not all. Investigate some of the pods and you’ll find that the floor around them is wet with some sort of milky, slimy substance that sure seems like it came from a living organism.
Maybe you should get out of here.
Before you can get good and gone to the upper decks, however, you find exactly what you probably didn’t want to unless you have a very exciting Tinder profile: an alien.
At least eight feet tall, with pale almost translucent skin, the creature has an elongated skull and a mouth that hosts two sets of jaws like a moray eel. It has a whiplike tail and spiky protrusions along its upper back. It is bipedal, and very, VERY fast.Better hope you’ve got something to fight with! Your chances of survival are definitely greater if you work with a partner.
And you better hope there’s just the one.
Notes:
1. The aliens are extremely dangerous, but they CAN be killed. Their blood is thick and yellow but is not acidic or poison.
Ⅳ. TEMPLE
CW: potential insanity, violence.
If you wander the dark lower decks long enough, you will find yourself moving ever inward toward the very center of the station. There is a door there that is supposed to be locked, but often isn’t. It’s waiting for you, beyond that door and down a dark corridor: the station’s heart.
The room the solitary corridor opens into is round, walls sloping gently up to a domed ceiling. In the middle of the room is a machine of some kind: a series of concentric thick metal rings rotate in different directions around a sphere. The only noise it makes is the gentle swooshing of the circles as they spin out, up, around.
The air feels heavy and charged. It’s not pleasant.
Before you can leave, all of the rings line up so that they appear to radiate out from the sphere in the center. Light flares, and then in the space where the sphere once was you can see it:
Home.
It’s your homeworld, perhaps exactly as you left it, or perhaps earlier or later along in the timeline. It may be pleasant, or it may be awful, but it is undeniably the place from which you came. The place where you belong.
Stare into this portal home long enough and the compulsion to return will slip over you. You just need to jump into the glowing, trembling center of that dimensional gate.
Whoever is with you, however, realises that leaping headfirst into an unknown dimension might not be the smartest idea you’ve ever had, especially considering how ominous the whole place feels. They might be able to talk you down. Hopefully they can talk you down, because the longer you stare at the portal the more convinced you become that you MUST leap into it, and the only way to do so is to kill whoever is trying to get in your way.
If instead you turn away from the dimensional gate, the lights will flare once more before the rings resume their movement. That brief glimpse of home is gone. In its place is the sound of soft voices; people you have left behind, calling out to you with accusations of things left undone, begging to be told why you won’t come home...
These voices will follow you throughout the ship. They are not constant, but they never leave you alone for very long. They won’t be silent until you give them an answer to the question of why you have chosen to remain.
Notes:
1. If characters DO jump into the gate… They can pass through and emerge on the opposite side gravely injured or completely out of their minds. Or you may use this as a very dramatic exit from the game.
no subject
[But there was no way she'd be able to make it out of this alone, could there be?]
[Maybe if he was fast enough, he could run back to the upper decks for help...to get people to follow him down and help her. Surely she'd be able to last that long, right?]
[He pivots on his foot and prepares to dead sprint to the upper decks. With his speed he could make it in record time. She can hold out, right? She has to...!]
no subject
[But it's not nearly far enough to get away from the creatures, who at this point are practically climbing each others' bodies like a bridge down from the vent. Now that there's some distance between themselves and Allura, none of them seem to be charging at her — instead, they seem to be waiting to gather a small group, to surround her like a pack of animals.]
[And Allura takes another stance with her makeshift staff, ready to move or swing at a moment's notice.]
What are you waiting for?! Come at me!
[That doesn't sound like a boast. Rather, it's a cry of someone trying to psych themselves up... or perhaps, to brace themselves for what's coming.]
[And then, one charges, trying to bite at her — and she swings the pole up, cracking it upside the jaw. A second one swings its tail across to sweep her feet. In jumping over it, a third one knocks her from the other side, and she finds herself flung back.]
[It's a rough recovery, and when she tries to rise back up from her knees, she finds that the creatures have drawn in close around her.]
no subject
[He was out of time. Running off now just meant he'd be back to try and gather up whatever remained of her...if there was anything. Why did he have to fight? Why was any of this happening? He never asked for his life to be upended! And that was before he wound up touring the Endless Isles!]
[He could feel his anger prickling up. This wasn't fair. All he wanted to do was live peacefully. If he wasn't born with these powers, he'd have jumped in by now and—]
[...he would have, wouldn't he? He would have stepped in without a thought if he wasn't trying to hard to hide his powers. Could he live with himself if he didn't step in now?]
[Holding on to that anger, he rushes back around the corner towards the cluster of beasts surrounding Allura. As one throws an arm back to rake at her with its claws, Darin catches it by the wrist and twists sharply. He uses the momentum to spin the creature in place, trading places with it leaving him with his back to Allura. He's still gripping the creature's arm, but it's bent at a horrible angle, the shoulder clearly dislocated and broken. The beast writhes in Darin's grasp, unable to break the incredible hold imposed by a single hand. Finally, Darin lifts his leg and kicks straight out, sending the alien rocketing to the opposing side of the room where it punches a clean hole through the metal wall, leaving a trail of thick, acrid yellow blood.]
[Darin looks at the arm, torn from the beast's body as the others hesitate for a moment, screeching and chittering amongst themselves.]
[He glances over his shoulder to Allura.]
If you can move, you need to get the hell out of here. Leave this to me.
no subject
[That's not scoffing, that's genuine confusion. She hadn't had much time to ponder the mystery of the flying metal shards, and thus had assumed she was alone down here. Yet somehow, here he is, the first person she had the displeasure of meeting upon arriving here.]
[One of the creatures tries to bite at her again, and she holds up the pole to block. It doesn't catch the smaller mouth, but it does block the larger one, allowing her to keep the whole thing at arm's length.]
As tempting as it would be to abandon you here— [She pauses to catch her breath as she knocks away the one she had successfully parried.] —I fail to see what good it would do! You would still need to escape as well!
no subject
[That comment about it being tempting to leave him here does find a bit of purchase though; as much as he wanted it, it never felt good when people were disgusted by him. Just something he never got used to despite always saying the opposite.]
[Regardless, she can't run when one of the monsters is chomping at her. So he grabs it by the tail and whips it with astounding and alarming strength, using it as an improvised club to slam another one of their assailants away.]
In case you haven't noticed, I can handle these things easily!
[Which is good because another half dozen or so are clamoring out of the vents from both flanks.]
no subject
[But there's not much opportunity to mull it over.]
That isn't my point! Do you intend to stay down here, fighting them until the last one drops?! Because if you ran back now —
[She strikes one from the side, making it collide into another. It's not nearly so flashy as Darin's battle tactics, but at least it's an effective way of using their numbers against them.]
— and no one else were left down here to fight them? What would stop these creatures from chasing us all the way back?!
no subject
I know you're stubborn, but listen to someone else for once!
[For the first time in this entire fight, Darin actually throws a punch, and it cracks off like a cannon shot caving in the entire chest cavity of one of the beasts and sending a blast of force through it strong enough to topple a second. The first one drops dead instantly while the other is clearly struggling as if its internals were scrambled.]
Now get out of here before one of them manages to actually injure you!
no subject
[Her eyes can't linger there for long, seeing as she still has these monsters bearing down on her. But even as she continues to fight back defensively, her option seems to be softening:]
Will you at least give me some way to keep in contact? Just in case you do need my backup?
no subject
[He's not concerned about needing her help. But he can't go all out with her around. Even now, he's holding back and he just kicked one of these things in the head so hard its entire head snapped back with a terrifying snap. But whatever hive they managed to piss off seems to have put out an 'all hands' call because this space is quickly getting over run. At this rate, there's no way she can even make it out of this room, let alone away from this.]
Dammit, we're out of time! Come here!
[He reaches out and grabs her by the wrist, hauling her into his arms and picking her up.]
Hold on!
[He lowers his body and rushes forward with blinding speed, using his body to physically ram anything that gets in his way, taking long, wide strides and throwing his muscular body to each side to smash any alien that is unfortunate enough to get in his path.]