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

III. Medical Bay [OTA]

[unkindled_madness]

[The amount of sleep he's gotten remains marginal, just a few catnaps in the hallways, but he is moving with purpose now. He has some trouble psyching himself up to enter the medical bay until it occurs to him that the door cannot close behind him if the door is not there. He's seen it done before, so he knows it can be. Tearing the metal door out of its frame takes... some effort, but he gets there eventually and leaves the now misshapen door leaning against the opposite wall.

Inside, he leaves the Masamune stabbed into the middle of the floor and forces himself to focus on searching through the supply cabinets. The brusque violence of his movements almost make it seem like he's ransacking the place, but he's being methodical, not sloppy. And if you pay attention to such things, his ScryWatch has, somehow, turned green within the past few days.

If your name is Chloe, you will eventually get the following brief (and possibly concerning) message:] Meet me in the medical bay.

[naturaldisasster]

So, should I make an appointment, or…?

[ There’s a woman standing just inside, with a crudely bandaged hand pressed against the span of her torso beneath her ribs.

Her glance darts from the deconstructed door frame, to the enormous sword jutting out of the floor for no apparent reason, before finally settling on him. She’s not a doctor, by any stretch of the imagination, but she feels it’s safe to say this isn’t standard medical procedure. ]

[unkindled_madness]

[Sephiroth turns sharply to look at the stranger. He scans her over, eyes lingering briefly on her apparent wounds. Then he turns away again, closing a drawer full of instruments he can't identify and moving on to the next.]

There are bandages in there. [He nods brusquely to a cabinet in the corner.]

[naturaldisasster]

[ Ookay. Just gonna walk on in there, while he finishes looting the place, apparently. No big deal.

She’s not entirely comfortable with the idea of turning her back to him. These rooms remind her too strongly of a facility where she played the part of unwilling guest and test subject; Her hackles are already raised, the tiny hairs on the back of her neck standing on end… But she finds the bandages where he said they’d be, so there’s that.

Scissors are next, followed by a small mirror, but her eyes keep flicking back to the empty space where the door should have been. ] Was it locked? Or did you find it that way?

[unkindled_madness]

I removed it.

[That's enough of an explanation, right?

He would fully understand her unease if she voiced it, but it doesn't occur to him at the moment that he might be contributing to it. Normally, he's aware that he cuts an intimidating figure. But he never felt powerful in the lab, in rooms like this.

He crouches down to investigate some lower cabinets, the ends of his hair pooling on the floor.]

[naturaldisasster]

You removed it. Sure, that’s not deeply upsetting.

[ Did she say that last bit aloud? Ah, well. It’s been a day.

At least there’s some water. She pushes the hem of her shirt out of the way, a muscle ticking in her clenched jaw as she pushes fingers into the open wound, searching. At last she withdraws the tip of a chitinous spike, no bigger than the tip of her longest finger, tossing the bloody appendage into the sink with a disdainful grunt. ]

Any particular reason why?

[unkindled_madness]

[The sound of the spike hitting the sink draws his notice again, long enough for him to actually think about how she might have been wounded.]

...it seemed unnecessary. [Sure.]

If you're concerned about one of those things following you, I am quite prepared.

[naturaldisasster]

Pfft, don’t bullshit a bullshitter. [ She snorts, grinning despite her discomfort as she cleans the wound with a pad of gauze moistened with water. Unnecessary, her ass.

Her bandaging looks like a child did it, but whatever. It got the job done. As for his offer… She seemed to consider it. ]

You mean with that? [ With a pointed look, she singled out his sword, still sticking out of the floor like an Arthurian legend. ] That is some ‘knights of the round table’ shit, if ever I saw it.

Don’t worry about it. I got the distinct impression that doors weren’t much use against those things anyhow.

[unkindled_madness]

[It wasn't meant as an offer so much as a statement of fact, but okay. His brow furrows faintly as she mentions the knights of the round... but if it sounds familiar, he can't place why. Probably some Earth thing someone's mentioned around him.]

I recommend a blade to the brain.

[It may have been Loki who dealt the killing blow, but Sephiroth has no doubts about being able to manage it himself. Plenty of blade to work with.

At last he's found at least some of what he's looking for. He pulls some needles and empty vials from a drawer and places them on the counter.]

[naturaldisasster]

I don’t really do blades…

[ At the sight of those needles, she freezes in the midst of fixing her clothes. The feeling of nope! surges back through her so strongly that it turns her stomach, but she tells herself she’s in no position to judge if he’s looking to “self-medicate”. Gaia knows she’d be at the bottom of a bottle, if she could. ]

… But, seein’ as how you’ve obviously gotten past whatever the fuck those things are, I reckon I do see your point.

[unkindled_madness]

[He has absolutely no interest in drugs, actually. He's up to something much weirder.

Though she can be forgiven for assuming otherwise, he is definitely hopped up on a lot of caffeine.]

They're aliens. From a human perspective, anyway.

[naturaldisasster]

[ Caffeine is a helluva drug. But she’s momentarily distracted from what he’s doing by what he says. A human perspective. Who talks like that? ] They’re annoying.

But they could be the owners of this ship, for all I know.

Then again, so could you. [ She’s mumbling to herself now, as she starts undoing the soiled wrapping around her palm. ] Maybe there’s a hidden room somewhere, full of armed giants in dire need of a haircut…

[unkindled_madness]

[That remark earns her a quick Look. We do not talk about cutting the hair. The hair is exactly the length he wants it to be.

With a faint huff, he moves on to the next cabinet.]

I no more chose to be here than they did. They were being stored, like cargo.

Besides, this ship was not designed for them; the beds are too small.

[Not that he has made use of the beds, but he can judge when a bed is too small for him and these things have another foot on him at least.]

[neverwither]

( Yes, that message is concerning. Given Sephiroth's propensity for action, her first thought is one of him having tangled with something he perhaps shouldn't. But. If it proves to be the case, at least he's gone to the medical bay. And asked for her presence, which would indicate an acceptance of help. Silver linings and all.

What is also concerning is the state of the door. She's well aware he's strong but this... Well. There's strong and then there's strong. Something to do with their latest surroundings she's so far unaware of? Possibly. Something related to Sephiroth himself? Also possible.

She watches him for a moment before announcing her presence. The concern remains. )

What is it that we're looking for?

[unkindled_madness]

[Sephiroth pauses when she speaks, glancing over at her. Asking her here at all felt like a rash decision, even in the moment. But he needs to go through with this, and that means making her a part of it. Even if he refuses to explain... if he gets the results he's expecting, no explanation will be necessary.

He doesn't want to go that far. He doesn't want the tests to speak for him. But he's only said it once and it's not so easy to say it again.

By now he has nearly completed his search, and he gestures at some things he left on a counter.]

I've located the phlebotomy equipment.

However... I believe analysis may require the computer.

[neverwither]

( Naturally, Chloe has questions. She knows him well enough not to ask. Not this time. Being there at all is a display of trust on his part (all technological necessity aside) and she means to honour it.

The only query is a factual one. )

Do you know how to use the phlebotomy equipment? I only ask as my medical capabilities are fairly basic. If there's some guidance on the computer...

( ...she might be able to pick it up enough. Her gaze goes over to said device, eyeing it up. MUTHER makes interfacing... slightly more complex. Nothing she can't handle, she's sure. For Sephiroth, she'll dive right on in when they're ready. Giving the AI too much time to realise someone's tinkering doesn't seem too wise. )

[unkindled_madness]

...yes. I know how to use it.

[He's still a little surprised that she isn't asking. It shows on his face a moment before he lets the cabinet fall shut and strides back to the counter.

He's seen it done a million times. Even done it himself a few, towards the end, as he finally started to say no. No to lab techs touching him, then no to going at all.]

I only require your technical expertise.

[neverwither]

( She just gives him a little smile. They'll get there, in his own time and in his own way. Possibly with a little gentle poking from her.

The implications from knowing how to do the blood draw, the sparse details she has about his background, allow to her reach her own conclusion as to what they may be doing here. Right or wrong as her hypothesis could prove to be, it keeps her focused on the task at hand. Talking too much could end with her talking him out of something he wants - or needs - to do. )

This is almost like disabling security systems, isn't it? Some sneaking may be required.

( Yup, she's all smiles as she steps closer to the computer and lets the synthetic skin on her hand retract, revealing the white plastic shell beneath. Time to navigate on in - and around MUTHER. )

[unkindled_madness]

[Sephiroth watches her as he shrugs out of his coat, tossing it across the nearest bed. It's the most inhuman thing he's ever seen from her, and somehow that's... reassuring? This is still uncomfortable but it helps cement the feeling that she's an ally.]

...is this dangerous for you?

[neverwither]

( Uncomfortable is right. Her android-ness being on blatant display isn’t something she’s entirely happy with. But at least they’re uncomfortable together? And what’s a little discomfort between friends allies? )

Oh, no. It’s just a little different to interface when he devices are, well, inhabited, for want of a better word. It’s interesting.

( See? She’s up to the challenge. She’s smiling. This is all totally fine. )

Is there a particular test you’re looking for or would you like all we may be capable of accessing?

[unkindled_madness]

I see.

[Sephiroth absolutely cannot read her well enough right now to pick up on her discomfort. She says she's fine so she must be.

He concentrates more attention than he needs to on rolling up his sleeve. Go through the motions, this used to be routine.]

I had thought to attempt... blood typing and DNA analysis.

[neverwither]

( Chloe is very mindful to not make any sort of face. As suspected, this type of analysis seems intensely personal. Though none of what he might be going through is being addressed directly, at least he’s not alone in it.

A glance over to him to see how he’s getting on has her doing a double take. She nods to his ScryWatch as she speaks: ) It’s quite a nice shade, isn’t it?

[unkindled_madness]

[He blinks over at her, not immediately understanding what she means. ...Oh.]

...I suppose it's more my color.

[Does that count as levity? It matches his eyes now.]

[neverwither]

( It counts as levity in Chloe’s world. Then again, Chloe isn’t the best judge of levity. Regardless, it makes her smile. )

Do you have any idea what might have prompted the change? In the name of scientific enquiry.

[unkindled_madness]

I failed to catch the precise moment.

I was with Loki.

[There are a number of things that might have counted as "growth." Which irritates him somewhat, given he doesn't believe in this whole system.]