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

[kyley_b]

Deadpool and Kyle are destined to have their paths cross whenever the opportunity presents itself. It's a combination of the fact that they are both potentially reality destroying in their fourth wall bending knowledge, and that the Fates think it's funny.

Kyle, just walking down the hall being well behaved thank you ever so much, recognizes Wade's voice at once. And really, who else would be yelling about nipple slapping monkeys? David? Logan? Doubtful.

So he walks up the deserted corridor on this scary deserted space station that is totally not modeled after Solaris, and stands in the doorway, hands n hips.

"Dude, what the fuck are you doing?"

[what_fourth_wall]

It is a destiny written in the stars. Literally. Or at least, it seems like literally to a tripping balls Deadpool, who is staring out the window and reading messages that he sees in the stars about Kyle rolling up on him soon.

"Whoa...I'll have a Pong bro..."

So, when Kyle shows up, Deadpool is entirely unsurprised. However, he is also high. So a lack of surprise is pretty common there, unless it's a particularly bad trip.

It's important to note, by the way, that Deadpool believes he is playing Pong and drinking coffee while monkeys slap his nipples. What Kyle sees is Deadpool feeding coffee to his crotch and slapping his own nipples, seemingly believing that this nipple slapping is him playing Pong. Nipple Pong. Hey, it has a nice ring to it. Or ring in it? Heyo!

It is also important to note that pink gas is belching out into the hallway and Kyle's face. Welcome to the trip, guy. Hope you survive the experience.

It may also be important to note that there is a naked person doing pushups in the hallway. And another person walking back and forth muttering about solving for the mysterious variable X that keeps all of us locked in our bodies forever with the only way out being through our own anus, but how can you escape through your own anus when it is itself a hole that is a part of you, but how can a hole be a part of anything when it is defined by it's nonexistence, but how can we know a hole's nonexistence except by the existence of the things around it, this is the paradox of the anus...

"Heeeeey Kyle!!! I'm playing Pong! Wanna come and be player 2? I promise you won't get attacked by the ladies in my head this time." Except, how can he promise that? How is this different from the time he was tripping balls in a hot tub?

[kyley_b]

Kyle sees absolutely no people in the halls... until he inhales that gas. Then all of a sudden the place seems a LOT more inhabited. Kyle's focus is still on Deadpool, though.

"Pong? What is this, the seventies or whatever?" He steps cautiously into the room that they were not supposed to be in, coughing. He looks around, frowning still.

"...is it like, really pink in here?"

[what_fourth_wall]

"Nah, this sci fi vibe is more the 80s, right?"

He blurts it out before he remembers that he's supposed to be gassed. Oops. Then he's back to tripping nipples.

"It's the pinkest, man. I think you just stepped into my pink. But isn't it so, like, comfy?"

One of the crazy people outside hisses and drools a little. Fortunately, it's not the acid kinda drool because we did read the syllabus that far, but it could be. It's at least pretty smelly. This "hallucination" needs better dental hygiene at the very least.

[kyley_b]

Please, Deadpool. It's both.

Kyle looks with alarm at the now populated hallway. He sees the puking guy and for a split second thinks it's Stan Marsh, but no. Thankfully, no.

He realises that some of the people in the hallway are making out very, very aggressively and he looks away. He moves a little closer to Deadpool.

"I thought this was a ghost ship."

[what_fourth_wall]

BOTH!!!! Both is always the best.

"Is it? I've made a new friend! MUTHER, Kyle, Kyle, MUTHER!!"

"HELLO KYLE. I AM YOUR MUTHER. PLEASE BEWARE THE PUNISHMENTS THIS ONE HAS BROUGHT UPON HIMSELF." Of course, with the gas in the room, it was entirely possible this sounded like Kyle's actual mother.

And the drooling person moves closer...(probably to make out with Kyle, let's be honest here)

[kyley_b]

Kyle freezes because MUTHER really does sound EXACTLY like Sheila Broflovski to his ears. He doesn't even move when he's groped by the drooler.

"Ma? Wade, I... no. No, this all wrong."

[what_fourth_wall]

"Of course it's wrong, because she clearly said she's my mom."

"I AM NOT A MOM OR A MA. I AM YOUR MUTHER."

"She is so pedantic...," Deadpool mutters. "Hey wait, if that's your ma and my mom, does that make us brothers???"

The drooler starts to nibble on him.

[kyley_b]

Kyle's own mother is a bit pedantic, so he's not particularly convinced that the AI isn't somehow channeling her.

"My little brother IS Canadian," Kyle says slowly. He squirms and shoves at the drooler. "Dude, stop it, I have a boyfriend."

"A BOYFRIEND? KY-AHL! IS HE JEWISH?"

Kyle cringes. "Oh, god. No, Ma."

[what_fourth_wall]

"See??? If you think about it and factor in timey wimey South Park vs Comics timeline shenanigans, I could be your brother all grown up and not even know it. Because, you know, shitty memory." He taps the side of his head. "Yeah, it's canon now, we're brothers."

The "person" hisses and full on bites Kyle, saying "I'm Jewish, Kyle" around a mouthful of his flesh. Or rather, that's what Kyle hears because, you know, hallucination.

"Oooooh...that one is feisty."

What Kyle had heard wasn't what MUTHER actually said. What MUTHER said was, "WARNING: ALIEN INFESTATION DETECTED. CONTAINER BREACH CONFIRMED IN SECTOR 37. ALIEN PRESENCE CONFIRMED IN THE PRESENT LOCATION. WARNING."

[kyley_b]

The idea that Ike could be Wade hurts Kyle's head so badly. He can't quite disbelieve it at the moment, either, although Ike was always a LOT calmer than Deadpool.

"OW!" Kyle shrieks, shoving at the drooler. "Dude! Fucking no means no, oh my god!"

He frowns and moves closer to Deadpool. "Dude. This place is all... all fucked up. Let's go get something to eat." Nevermind that all there is in the mess hall is that protein goo.

And nevermind that a fucking Neomorph is at the end of the hall in that direction.

[what_fourth_wall]

"Your mom picked me out special for you, Kyle. You always do what ma wants, don't you? You're a good boy, Kyle. Come here and give me more kisses." The drooler stalks towards Kyle, licking its bloody lips.

"Ooooh shit...man, I think you're gonna need some Neosporin. Get it? Neomorph? Neosporin? I think it's funny, somehow. Wait, does that mean I know that hallucination is an alien?"

His eyes go wide and he grabs Kyle by the shoulder that doesn't need antibiotics and stitches. "DUDE!!! We might get to meet Sigourney Weaver!!!!" His stomach burbles. "But I do have the munchies...and while you might be tasty to that guy, you definitely aren't tasty to me. Because, y'know, I'm not a cannibal."

[kyley_b]

"No, I do NOT," Kyle protes5s, sounding anxious. Unsurprisingly, the topic of his mother is one that induces a LOT of anxiety in him. "I told you, I already met someone and he's sweet and smart and I love him."

He looks at Deadpool. "I'm bleeding?!" Kyle claps a hand to his neck then pulls it away and stares, horrified. "Dude! What the fuck?! I need to get to the medical bay!"

Even more confused now, Kyle grabs Deadpool right back. "I have no idea what the fuck you're babbling about, but you gotta help me before I bleed to death!"

At the end of the hall, the alien starts creeping forward.

[what_fourth_wall]

Deadpool isn't aware of what Kyle is responding to, but it sure sounds like he thinks Deadpool is coming on to him for some reason. He looks at the redhead appraisingly, and nods to himself a little.

"Yeah, I'd hit it. But you got me wrong, man, I don't want you because I've got someone too. Her name is Foxy Roxy and we have had so much sex in so many positions, some without gravity and OH MAN, let me tell you what you can do without gravity..."

And he proceeds to do exactly that, in graphic detail, until Kyle freaks out about bleeding.

"Oh yeah, you're definitely seriously injured. That dude over there bit the fuck out of you, which I thought was pretty kinky and that you were into it until you started freaking out just now. I guess we gotta kill your biter before we can address your med bay thing. Did you manage to keep any weapons from previous islands? I could probably pull a tommy gun out of my ass that I did keep from like the first? island, but whether it would work or not is probably dependent on how much we wanna stretch the reality that I would have hoarded the bullets and kept it in good condition across multiple islands..."

[kyley_b]

Kyle rolls his eyes. "Not YOU, the guy who was chewing on me! And I KNOW what you can do without gravity!" He is, for once, not blushing like a maniac. Mostly he just seems vaguely offended.

Kyle keeps his hand pressed to his neck, looking alternately angry and sick. "I am NOT into weird drooly guys biting me! And can't we just run past or something?"

One of the hallucinations starts dancing badly. In the real world the alien hisses as it gets closer still.

"No, I don't have any weapons!"

[what_fourth_wall]

Deadpool tilts his head to the side and looks Kyle up and down, an obvious smirk under his mask. "Oooohhh, you really do have a boyfriend, and you two been getting kinky. Love it. Good for you, guy."

The only thing Deadpool loves more than getting under someone's skin is when a friend has leveled up to the point where he can't get under their skin any more. That "good for you" was far from sarcastic, and was quite earnest.

"Fine, fine, let's do the action movie thing where nobody counts bullets. I mean, this IS an 80s sci fi island, after all."

He legit reaches down into the spandex around his ass, and for all intents and purposes appears to withdraw his Tommy Gun from said ass. It....doesn't look clean. That's the only indication as to whether or not this was an optical allusion or a real ass storage technique.

"Roxy helped me put it up there." Look, he might be proud of Kyle's level up, but now he has to hit him with even more intense things designed to rattle him. "It was fun!"

Then he points the gun at the drooling hallucination. "SAY 'ALLO TO MY LEETLE FRIEND!!! No, no, not Kyle, you met him already and did the whole bad touch no consent thing. This is why we ask for consent. No consent, you get the bullets." And he opens fire on the entire hallway, mostly aimed in the direction of their alien pal that neither of them can perceive correctly due to MUTHER's gas.

cw: dookie cos we're very mature here.

[kyley_b]

Kyle rolls his eyes. "Shut up. His name's Quentin and he's wonderful." He's huffy, but he's also a little bit pleased to have someone congratulate him.

But then any good feelings are completely destroyed by the ass gun. Because it's an ass gun. It smells like shit. Like, actual shit, and Kyle would know considering his past. Yeah, somehow most people haven't found out how much feces really factored into Kyle's childhood.

"DUDE! Do NOT tell me that, Roxy is my friend!"

Any other protests Kyle might have are swallowed up by the sound of gunfire. He watches as the bad touch zombo is all but disintegrated. Weirdly, it makes a sound that sure sounds terribly inhuman.

This is, of course, because Deadpool has just shot the fuck out of the Neomorph. Yeah, neomorph, fuck you they were cool even if Alien: Covenant sucked ass.

The MOST mature

[what_fourth_wall]

"Okay, not gonna judge your love or anything, and you know I'm happy for you, but by every objective metric Quentin Quire is not wonderful any more than I am. I like the guy, but let's be real, he's not the worst because I'm pretty sure that's a guy that pulls a tommy gun out of his ass that smells like the horrific colon fuel he ate last night, but he's close. I'm not one to judge. I just call a spade a spade, you know?"

This is about when he opens fire on the neomorph. Unfortunately, if Covenant was the last one, we didn't see it because we heard it sucked ass, but the reference is amazing and we're here for it. It's only too bad it's not the big bald dude from the previous movie. What even was that? Now, if it was Charlize Theron, we'd be in business, but alas, no. It's just a dead alien now.

"Oh hey, I think that was an alien now that the gas is wearing off. You think there's a queen? I'd love to shoot the shit out of a queen. OOOOHHHH...hey, do you think your Alien Preggers now? I mean, I know that you didn't get face hugged, but I have no idea if the last movie introduced any other kind of alien preggers. I know the robot doctors can inject you with the stuff though. You might wanna be careful and watch your sternum closely for a while."

[kyley_b]

Kyle, bitten and still tripping balls, scowls. "He IS," he protests in a tone that very clearly indicates he will throw down over this. "Like, okay, he's done some bad shit but so have all of us! And he's sweet, underneath his whole... irritating façade."

That was Ancient Aliens theory, which honestly was less badass but more interesting and they should have just kept going there in the next one but oh well.

Kyle's scowl grows confused. "What? Oh. Oh SHIT, yeah, those things are in the like, cargo bay... I didn't see a queen though. And what?! No, I'm not PREGGERS!" He starts feeling his chest up as if that might prove it somehow.

"I don't think so, anyway. How could we tell?"

[what_fourth_wall]

"Sorry to tell you, bud, but "sweet" and "irritating facade" are extremely incompatible. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that. You grew up being irritated by goddamn everybody, you ate, slept, and breathed that shit, from Cartman, your mom, Kenny, Stan, your teachers, everything that happened in South Park...I guess it actually makes sense that irritation would turn you on. It's all you know! It was foundational in your development!"

Did we just come to a deeper understanding of Kyle? Or was this just more random armchair psychology bullshit? Hmmmm...

"Although does that mean I turn you on...huh...oh hey, that does look like a boner down there..or is that just a pants wrinkle? Eh? Eehhhh?" Eyebrow waggle.

"Honestly, I dunno." He taps Kyle's sternum, peering at it curiously. "I think you'd have to start feeling really, really shitty first. Right now, it's still baby batter. And usually, I'd say that you won't die, your writer loves you and wants to keep you around, but this whole shindig is ending real soon. I could see Emma having you end on a chest burster, possibly during an intimate moment with Quinten. That'd totally be her style."

[kyley_b]

If there's one thing you can do to get Kyle to reach Sheila Broflovski levels of indignant rage, it's to bring up Eric Cartman. Especially in the context of anything remotely sexual.

Kyle's eyebrows knit together and his face turns red - not with embarrassment this time, just with anger. "I. Do. Not. Get turned on by irritation!" This isn't strictly true, considering how Quentin and he developed a relationship in the first place. Deadpool really did kinda nail it. Which of course pisses Kyle off more. "And I ESPECIALLY do not find YOU remotely attractive! You're not just irritating, you're also a fucking psychopath!"

He smacks Deadpool's hand away. "Fuck off," he says, a little disturbed. What if he IS filled with alien sperm? He isn't sure what to say about that rest of that, not being privy to the fact that it is completely and utterly true.

[what_fourth_wall]

"Uh huh, uh huh, well you definitely have a little boner now, soooo~"

Whether or not it's true, getting Kyle to glance down to check would be a win in his irritation books. He just shrugs at the rest of Kyle's rant though

"I mean, people tell me that a lot. But really, how many people have I killed around you, buddy? It can't be that many! And I probably had good reasons for the ones I did, like saving you!! Or was that you saving me...I think you might have carried my disembodied head somewhere...but in my defense, I was so drunk when that whole event happened...I can't remember much of it Tee Bee Aech."

Deadpool does not, in fact, fuck off. It's kind of endemic to how he makes and keeps friends. They tell him to fuck off, but he just...doesn't. And then he grows on you, mostly because you get used to his presence. FRIENDSHIP!

[kyley_b]

"I DO NOT HAVE A BONER!" Kyle shrieks. He does not look at his groin.

He shoves a hand through his hair, pushing it back. "Dude, you killed a LOT! With that same tommy gun!"

Kyle stomps down the hallway. "I'm going to the med bay to take a pregnancy test!"

[what_fourth_wall]

Deadpool just shrugs as if he's letting Kyle have his boner in privacy. Except not really. Without further comment? Probably that one.

"They were gangsters! And maybe some bystanders. But it's not my fault they didn't put a lot of distance between themselves and some gangsters! I can't do much about some people's survival instinct or lack thereof!!"

He wanders after Kyle. "I'm not sure if a preggers test would work with a chest burster..."

[kyley_b]

"Oh my GOD," Kyle fumes. "That's not how that works! Dude, you seriously might be the only one in these fucking islands whose dumb watch hasn't changed at ALL."

He grinds his teeth together. "I guess we'll fucking find out," he grits out. Indeed, when he gets to the med bay he starts tossing the place, looking for a pregnancy test. It occurs to him that they may not look the same in the future.