where we're going--

[polymods]

✖ 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.

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.

Is anybody out there listening?

Network · Logs · OOC · Memes · Plurk

Comments

Kyle Broflovski | South Park (AU) | OTA

[kyley_b]

I - CONSCIENCE

He can't stand.

The lights overhead are cold, and Kyle's skin looks paper white under their brutal illumination. His eyes are barely open, the lids flicking up and down spastically.

He can't stand. So he crawls.

"I'm sorry," he manages. "We were just little. I'm sorry. It wasn't... I'm sorry." He slows, barely staying on his hands and knees, crying softly.


II - STOWAWAY

For a perfectly average human from small town Colorado, Kyle has seen an awful lot of aliens in his lifetime. He even speaks one alien language, although he hasn't had any reason to use it since he was a child. He isn't afraid of running into an alien species on board the ship - he had, in fact, been hoping to since that would mean finding someone running the place. His search had led him to the lower decks and eventually the storage bays.

Kyle has never been good at avoiding trouble.

He investigates the pods, noting the broken glass and milky fluid on the floor. "Sick, dude," he mutters loud enough for anybody nearby to hear. "That looks like spooge."

His lips thin as he looks around uneasily. Yeah. This is creepy, and it's time to go. He starts heading for the storage bay exit as softly and quickly as he can. Before he can reach the door, however, he hears something behind him. If you happen to be stood nearby, you'll see the nine-foot pale alien drop down from the ceiling just a few seps behind Kyle. Its mouth is open, drool running freely down its chin, as it looms above him.

"...It's right behind me, isn't it?" Kyle breathes softly. "Oh, fuck."

Yeah, he could use a hand.


III - Wildcard!

I'll do pretty much anything. Will match format!

II - STOWAWAY

[extrasensory_problems]

The second Carter sees the nine foot pale thing drop from the ceiling he goes still, his eyes becoming as huge as dinner plates and he nods up and down slowly.

"..hoooleeee...fuuuuuuuuuuuck." He breathes and then looks at Kyle.

RUN!

He yells telepathically as he sends out a telekinetic blast to try and shove the alien away from his best friend.

[kyley_b]

He doesn't need to be told twice: Kyle runs forward as fast as he can, head down and arms pumping. He grabs blindly at Carter as he goes by.

"Go! Go, go!"

Behind them, the alien emits a warbling scream as it clambers up from the boxes Carter threw it into.

[extrasensory_problems]

Carter takes off the second he sees Kyle start to move and the two run blindly through the storage bay.

"FuckfuckFUCK! It smells like ass!!!"

[kyley_b]

"Nevermind the smell!" Kyle shrieks. He risks a glance behind them and screams when he sees the alien gaining on them easily, its slavering maw gaping open.

"Do something!" he yells as he hits a corner, skidding, heading for the exit.

[extrasensory_problems]

"Like what?!" Carter yells back, "There's no fucking way I'm going into that things head!"

[kyley_b]

"I don't know!" Kyle screeches. He puts on another burst of speed qhen he hears the alien closing in, darting out into the hallway.

"Shut the door, shut the door!" he chants, slamming on the button to do so.

I

[prodigalmess]

Kyle's not the first person that Malcolm has come across this month who seems to have lost all control of their body while in one of the corridors of the ship. Something is going on and Malcolm doesn't like it. No matter how hard he tries, he cannot shake the feeling of dread that he gets from this place.

When Malcolm finds Kyle on the floor, he crouches down over him and offers one of his hands. "Hey," he says quietly. "It's okay. Can you get up?"

[kyley_b]

Kyle looks up at Malcolm with wet eyes.

"No," he says. "No. I'm just going to lay down. Malcolm, have you ever realized that you're a bad person?"

[prodigalmess]

"You're not a bad person," Malcolm says in response, which he realizes isn't answering the question. He sighs softly. "I've thought about it sometimes."

Sometimes he hates himself and then sometimes he realizes that he really hates his father instead. Malcolm hates the parts of himself that remind him of his father, even if he tries to use them for good rather than for evil.

[kyley_b]

"I am."

Kyle looks very lost and very young at the moment - he's twenty-four, but right now he could pass for eighteen. "So how do you know you're not?"

[prodigalmess]

Malcolm bites his lip. It's possible that Kyle is a bad person, although Malcolm didn't get that impression when they met. Based on what he could tell, he seemed like a fairly normal young man.

"What makes you think that you're a bad person?" Malcolm asks. Perhaps it ought not be up to him to be judge and jury for Kyle, but hopefully Malcolm will be able to reassure him that he's not a bad person.

[kyley_b]

Tears shiver in Kyle's eyes; he's too tired to fight them.

"I got my teacher burned alive," he says softly. "And an innocent kid sent away for years and years because we let him take the blame." He shudders all over, barely resisting the urge to just go to sleep and hope he never woke up.

"I saw him. The kid. He was here."

I

[helpdesk_hero]

Sometimes the best thing you can get when you can't stand, is to have someone there to pick you up and carry you. Well, no, he didn't intend to do that without permission, just like always, but there was no denying that things were tense in the moment.

Kyle had a presence, and that presence was curled in on itself right now. ANd while there was something in this hall that had David on edge for a moment he almost thought he'd seen a familiar blur of white, there was something more important. And in this case he went to his knees by Kyle, his hand settling on the other's back to rub it.

"Kyle, what's happening?"

Re: I

[kyley_b]

"I just want to lay down," Kyle snuffles. "I feel so bad. How can anybody feel this awful and go on, David?"

He forces himself to look at his friend.

"You should go. This place is haunted."

[helpdesk_hero]

"We get up and we keep going because that's what matters," David answers. "Because there are people who love us that would hate to lose us. NO matter how awful you feel, others would feel worse if you took yourself out of the world, away from them. Strength, even through the pain, matters."

He continues to rub the guy's back.

"Yeah, probably. But I've dealt with a haunting before. ANd I haven't found a pond yet for this place to drop me into.

[kyley_b]

Kyle shivers. His nose is running. "I can't. I'm just going to stay here. I can't, David."

He shakes his head slowly from side to side. "I saw my preschool teacher. She can't really be here, can she?"

[helpdesk_hero]

"No," David says, moving to wrap his arms around Kyle. "If your preschool teacher was here, you would have come talking to Carter and me about it by now. But I don't see anyone around here right now but you and me."

[kyley_b]

Kyle nods, still sniffling helplessly. He presses himself against David's chest.

"Leave me here. I deserve it for what I did to her."

II

[naturaldisasster]

She doesn’t know yet if she can change shapes, or if the strange journey has stolen every ounce of Rage that was her birthright, but the one thing that wasn’t completely stripped from her is experience. Snatching up one of the shards of broken glass from the floor, Oni hurls it like a fucking dagger at the alien looming over Kyle.

Not fast enough, as the creature darts behind the pods, hissing. Shit. She can’t even be sure if she winged it with her makeshift projectile.

“GO! Move your ass…!” she hollers, half-pulling, half-shoving Kyle in front of her. “If he didn’t wanna eat you before, he sure the hell does now!”

[kyley_b]

Kyle has time to register that a crazy woman is throwing glass at him, and he very nearly turns and runs right into the alien. Luckily it bolts and he realises that, oh, she was trying to save his ass. Not that he has time to think much else with her shoving him along.

"Okay, okay!" He runs as fast as he can, not sure what direction danger is likely to come from.

"The fuck do we do?"

[naturaldisasster]

"Who the fuck is WE?" she barks back in reply. "Just keep running!"

If you're not runnin', you're dyin', her father always told her. Wolf or no wolf, running comes so naturally to her that she can tear a narrow strip of her clothes off mid-stride, using it to bandage her hand because of course she managed to cut herself on that jagged piece of glass.

"See if you can open the door!"

He'd probably have better luck with it than her, since she defaults immediately to button mashing, but she doesn't actually know if it's the exit or if they're headed deeper into storage. Any door that doesn't suck them out into space seems like a good idea right now.

[kyley_b]

"Us! Us!" He shrieks hysterically. Still, he runs like hell.

Kyle slams against the closed door, then scrambles to hit the button that operates it. He can feel cold fear sweat between his shoulder blades as he fumbles.

The door slides open, spilling both of them into another storage area not much bigger than a walk-in freezer.

[naturaldisasster]

Good news! They weren’t going to die of asphyxiation, their frozen corpses floating forever through the endless void. They were still gonna die, though. Probably.

“Merdasse,” she breathes, seeing the glorified closet they’ve stumbled into and her Scrywatch, for some insane reason, sees fit to translate. Her fingers jab the button to close the door, but it takes a short eternity to slide shut and freezes, half-open.

She throws a backwards glance at Kyle, punching the button again… And again. Each time, the mechanics inside the door shudder, whirring noisily, until it finally closes and she puts her ear against it, listening.

“That’s gonna do a whole lot of nothing, if it can figure out buttons…”

[kyley_b]

Kyle is don't a little half-jig of absolute terror as Oni fucks with the door. When it finally shuts he wrings his hands.

"So what do we DO? I don't have any weapons!"