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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.

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

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Kyle pulls back just enough that he can see Quentin more clearly. He isn't used to his boyfriend being quite so earnest, quite so vulnerable. It's deeply touching.

"Yeah, dude," he says, smiling again. "That's exactly it. You're my ride or die."

He laughs and squishes Quentin to him. "It's okay," he soothes. "I had him as a best friend for almost my whole life, and that doesn't mean nothing. And, like... You can't help who you love, can you? So I guess it's not my fault for being a totally queer cliché, and it's not his for being like... not gay enough to fall for my ginger ass. It was years ago now, and there was always so much going on. Growing up is hard, that's all."

He balks a little when Kyle looks more closely at him, but even that doesn't feel like the kind of scrutiny it might once have.

"It's an asshole thing to say I'm glad he didn't. I'm not glad it makes you hurt to think about. Obvs. But I mean, it's hard not be a little relieved over here," he says, burying his sniffles under a dry chuckle.

As if momentarily overcome by the desire to hold on to what he's got here, he squeezes Kyle tightly. "Yah, but you're my queer cliché," he smiles.

"Are you... I mean I looked, ok? I'm sorry. I looked and I saw you thinking about like. Some nostalgic stuff. So. Are you missing home?"

Edited 2022-03-10 00:47 (UTC)

"Nah, not an asshole thing to say. I feel the same way about your Cuckoos."

That pulls a louder laugh from him. "Thanks, I guess."

Kyle blinks. "Oh. You mean like... sledding and blanket forts and first dances and crap? No, no. Not missing it just like... remembering it. And realizing how goddamn long ago and far away it is."

"Do you?" The fluttery way he blinks makes him look confused by this idea a moment, but then he smiles. "I'd never put those relationships on the same level as this. Just so you know."

"Yah that stuff. Or any of it really..." he sighs, but this time it seems a little more content. "It does seem far away huh? It gives me FOMO sometimes. Thinking about what everyone's doing on Krakoa without me."

He slides his hands deeper under Kyle's shirt and turns his head against the pillow to kiss him again.

"But I was thinking about it and I'd still rather be here with you."

"I know, but the sentiment remains." Kyle is a jealous man.

"Yeah?" He kisses back, skin warm under Quentin's hands.

"Yeah. Same. I miss my family, but like... I'll follow you anywhere, dude. Somehow. Some way."

His smile is too tired to transform completely into the mischievous smirk it so often is, but it curls with a hint of smugness at least. "I'm really trying not to enjoy your jealous streak, 'cause that's probably not a good thing to like... fan the flames of. But God it's like straight amphetamines to my ego when you're possessive."

Despite his lethargy Kyle's words light up his tired eyes. "Yes. Definitely." He punctuates every word with a kiss. Each one hungrier than the last. "I left them all behind to live on an island before. If you'd been there with me I never would have gone back."

"Yeah?" Kyle grins and nuzzles into Quentin's neck. "Well, I'm glad, because you're definitely mine and I'll fight anyone who thinks differently."

He finds a way to wrap himself even more tightly around Quentin. "Bullshit. You'd want new kicks every so often."

"Tell'em, babe." He can feel his skin prickle with goosebumps when Kyle's breath grazes his neck. It drags that unflattering laugh out of him that he likes to pretend he doesn't ever have.

"Heh, I mean. Yeah I would. But before I became a time-travelling billionaire, I was a broke orphan," he reminds. "I had all the newest gear all the time. Not because I actually had it but because I made people think I did on the reg."

Kyle listens to this, sucking thoughtfully at his lower lip. "Yeah," he says softly. "That's right, you were. God, that's so... Quentin, you sound like you were so sad, dude. I wish I'd known you."

His self-satisfied smile stutters to a halt when he was expecting a chuckle but got sympathy instead. He blushes to realize just how well Kyle sees his posturing that he can spot it even when Quentin doesn't realize he's doing it.

"I wasn't sad," he says at first, but it's a useless contrarian reflex and he walks it back immediately. "I mean, ok, I was. But you know what I mean. I didn't feel it 'cause I got really good at being angry instead. It's kind of like white-out for other feelings, you know?"

Kyle didn't even think that saying something might be a blow to Quentin's pride.

He nods and kisses the soft skin above Quentin's eyebrow. "I do know," he says. "I do that, too. Especially as a kid when people would say things to me that hurt."

Having spent so much time and effort cultivating a personality of owning his vices, the reminder that someone can see him doing that is startling. But at least, Kyle has proven a soft place to land.

He sulks a little a the thought of anyone being as mean to Kyle as he knows they have been. "Anyone who could hurt you is some kind of demented puppy kicker," he says. "I wish I'd known you too. Maybe it wouldn't have changed how other people are, but I'd have loved to brainfry anyone who hurt you."

Kyle laughs. "You know what's funny? Cartman loved cats. Like, he rescued a whole town's worth once and his them in his attic when they were outlawed." Like that's a normal sort of thing to make illegal.

"Still might have kicked puppies, though, not sure."

He strokes Quentin's back. "The idea of us all in preschool and you brainfrying him is pretty funny."

"Huh, the way you talk about this guy I'm surprised he had any compassion for another living thing."

That hand on his back warms him thoroughly and he kisses Kyle's nose. "I bet you were a fucking adorable little kid with your fluffy hair."

"Just his cats and his mom. ...and more so the cats."

He cackles. "I was funny looking. And I wore a hat almost all the time, from like, preschool to high school graduation."

"Wow. That paint a picture," he smirks. His eye widening comically.

"All kids are funny looking. Some are just funny looking in a cute way," he theorizes. "A hat? Like the same hat? Sounds like a security blanket. Which is like, one point for the cute column."

Kyle snickers and presses his face into Quentin's neck briefly.

"Well. I had to replace it as I grew, but... Okay. You know when we were in the mall island? I bought that green ushanka and you said you'd burn it if I wore it around you? It was like that. But like, a lime green. But it was perfect, because it covered my hair and didn't squish my ears."

"Like a trapper hat??" His face cracks into a big dumb grin, surprise and amused at once. "Oh my GOD I can't even— ugh it short circuits me to even imagine a little stubby legged Kyle wandering around in a fucking trapper hat he refuses to take off," he snorts openly.

His grin turns wicked as he snuggles Kyle aggressively a moment, growling his words through his teeth. "God how can you be so stupid cute all the time."

Kyle starts laughing, nodding. "Yup! I wore it every day. I slept in it, sometimes."

Kyle cuddles Quentin, then gropes his ass lightly. "I dunno. Talent?"

"Fuck. That's so cute it's infuriating. If I'd known your love of trapper hats was nostalgic I wouldn't have been a dick," he says, covering Kyle's lips with little apologetic kisses. "If I come across one anywhere I'm getting it for you."

Pushing his fingers into Kyle's curls he scritches his scalp a little and lets those ringlets wind around his fingers. "Definitely talent. The genetic kind," he says softly. "You are handsome, you know? Cute too. Obvs. But like really stupid sexy too."

"It's okay, I kept the one from the mall. It's in my Temple locker." He kisses back happily, melting when Quentin plays with his hair.

"I have a hard time believing that. I mean, you know that. I realized I wasn't attractive in the fourth grade. I'd never thought about it before, but when suddenly you're the ugliest kid in your grade? You go, whoa. This sucks. And I guess I just never got over it."

"Oh my GOD, when were you gonna bust that out for me!" he laughs.

Quentin's face pinches into an angry little pout. Not so much at Kyle but to be reminded of that story. Wrapping his legs around Kyle he rolls them over until his boyfriend is under him and Quentin can frame his face in his hands.

"Kids are the fucking worst, but you're not ugly Kyle," he stays sternly. "You're not all square-jawed and blond-haired like some kind of Friday Night Lights looking, Captain fucking America knockoff. But that's just one way to be hot. And frankly it's boring as fuck."

He kisses his boyfriend insistently.

"You're better than that because you're rarer than that. You're the kind of athletic, lanky and unconventionally sexy guy that avant garde fashion houses stock their runways with. I know you can't wrap your head around that, but. I could change that, you know? I could totally Eternal Sunshine that whole shitty memory and leave you loving yourself as much as I do. Say the word, babe."

"When we went somewhere cold!"

Kyle lets himself be manhandled - it's a good sign that Quentin is feeling better.

"I mean, yeah, I guess it's boring. But it's the standard. I know you know what I mean, because you're hot as fuck in an unconventional way too." He rolls his eyes. "You're not memory scrubbing me, Quentin. You know somebody I was talking to was kinda creeped out that I like that you're telepathic? Like I was cheating at the intimacy game."

"And if that never comes!? You're just going to stow that hat away from me forever without letting me see it in action?" he feigns like he's personally offended by this.

There's still a fog in his brain that keeps him from reaching out too hastily, but Kyle does have a way of energizing him.

"Was the standard. C was the standard too. Then it was C++. Now it's Python. The standard is fleeting. Temporal. Meaningless to anyone with a future. Unconventional is the new convention." he rambles. When angry and impassioned it's easy to see how he fancied himself some kind of activist. When his energy takes a dip he lays his head on Kyle's chest.

"Ok. I just want you to know you're a total hottie. Like one of those chicks in high-school rom comms who every one can tell is stupid hot but when they take off their glasses and let their hair down every still gasps for some reason."

Then his eyes turn attentive and curious. "What? Who? Creeped out why? They sound like someone who drives five miles under the speed limit just to be safe."

Kyle cackles softly. "Oh my god, you fucking nerd, you make me so hot for you." He wraps his arms around Quentin and holds him close.

"Stan was a standard hottie. Kenny was like... you'd have liked Kenny, he had this trashy wiry appeal. Worst teeth you've ever seen but SO charming. And Craig Fucking Tucker... Yeah. You'd have gone for Craig, actually, I think." He's rambling a little, thinking out loud. He never feels bad doing it with Quentin.

He looks down at him, smiling. "Doesn't matter. And I think they just felt it must be very invasive. But I was like, hey, he never almost reads my mind without permission. Plus, like... whatever, so it's a cheat code for intimacy. I don't care."

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