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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
"I just figured it was some kind of mood ring kinda thing honestly. I wasn't paying attention when I got the lecture on how things work on this cruise."
In the med bay, he hops up on a steel bed thing and just hangs out while Kyle does his thing, looking around and appreciating how much it looks like all those sci fi movies he watched at some point or another. Other than that, it wasn't very interesting.
His eyes are caught by a drawer labeled "DRUGS", and he pulls it open and sees a lot of little injection devices that look a lot nicer than needles. Obviously they have to penetrate, but they at least look more comfortable. He reaches out and grabs one, turning it over in his hands. The drug name doesn't make sense to him, but he does notice that it looks like a pregnancy test. (It does not - but how would Deadpool know what a pregnancy test looks like?)
"Hey, I bet this is one." And he sticks Kyle with it.
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He's too busy looking at what looks like a basic first aid kit to notice that Deadpool is approaching until it's too late. He jumps when he's jabbed, turning around.
"Wade!" he screeches. "What the fuck did you..." His vision swims and he sinks to his knees, grabbing blindly for support as he goes down.
"Oh no," he moans. "Oh noooo why do people always do this to me?! Why did you... I. Wade? Eric? Why?"
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"Ah fuck." He looks at the thing. "Guess it wasn't a preggers test after all. It doesn't really have any instructions. It just says something in weird alien. Or scientific medical speak. Who knows, really? Either way, sorry dude. Wait, did you just call me Eric?"
Deadpool leans down to help Kyle up, and then sets him on the medical table. "Well shit, if that was a drug like the label said and not a preggers test...maybe another drug will cancel it out? I'll look for something with letters that are the opposite of these letters." Because that's absolutely how drugs work.
He begins to root around in the drawer, pulling out various devices that look the same as the first and checking out their incomprehensible names. "How about this one?" Wade turns around and holds up another one that is a purely arbitrary choice, but it does have a completely different alphabet soup name.
no subject
Kyle lolls like a giant doll, one hand coming up to weakly slap at Deadpool's face as he's moved. "Eric, stop it," he says querulously. "Stop fucking... don't inject me with anything! Just STOP IT! It's MY body, you can't just fuck with it because you hate me!"
He sounds both pissed off and genuinely frightened.
no subject
"Wait, what? You think I'm Cartman?!" He stands back and runs his hands along his sides, as if demonstrating that he is neither round nor short. "I mean, that's kind of an insult, my man. Sure, he's a brilliant mastermind, but he's also Cartman."
Except, what Kyle heard instead was, "So you figured it out, Kyle! It took you long enough, but everyone knows you think a little more slowly. How do you like my new Coon outfit? Doesn't it hug my body well? Now come over here so I can pump you full of more drugs..."
"I mean, what do we have to lose?," Deadpool continues with a shrug, gesturing with the drug injector device thing. "We might even just murder the baby alien inside you with a cocktail of intense drugs. Let's do it!" And he reaches out with it to give Kyle the injection.
no subject
He yanks his arm away and backs up, snarling. "Don't. Touch me. I'm fucking warning you!" He's terrified of the needle-like thing being held aloft, but the thing about hallucinating Cartman is that it makes Kyle really, really angry. There has never been another person he is so willing to engage in physical violence with. Even as they got older, kicking the shit out of Cartman was one of Kyle's great joys in life.
Kyle spies some sort of medical instrument on a counter and lunges for it. He brandishes it, realising belatedly that it appears to have an 'on' button. He presses it and a little laser blade appears. Yeah, it's basically a lightsaber scalpel.
"I will cut your fucking dick off if you come any closer!"
cw: nudity, genital mutilation, childhood bullying trauma
Kyle's fury isn't lost on him, and having watched his share of Southpark, he totally gets it. Cartman was an ass. Grown up Kyle would definitely harbor some trauma from allllllll of that shit. If there was one thing Deadpool got, it was trauma...even if he didn't remember his own for a variety of stories and reasons. But seeing Kyle's Cartman trauma so raw...it got to him, somehow.
"Man, he really did a number on you, didn't he? I bet you can just hear him in your head hurling homophobic slurs at you in addition to the anti-semitic stuff now that you have a boytoy."
It's entirely possible that Kyle only hears Cartman taunting him some more as Deadpool pauses to think. Then he pulls down his pants and thrusts out towards Kyle.
"Would cutting my dick off help you heal, big guy? If so, have at. Cut that dick off. And when it grows back, cut it off again! Let's get to a healing space through genital mutilation here, buddy."
cw: nudity, genital mutilation, childhood bullying trauma, illness, sexual harassment?
And then suddenly, to Kyle's eyes, Cartman has his dick out.
This is not the first time this has happened.
Kyle turns his head away with a grimace. "Sick, dude!" He waves at Deadpool's groin. "Put that shit away, I am NOT sucking your fucking balls, oh my GOD."
cw: nudity, genital mutilation, childhood bullying trauma, illness, sexual harassment?
Okay, so he couldn't help himself. It's hard not to quote Southpark at Kyle. Granted, that was Chef and not Cartman, but it was still fun.
"But no, not suck, cut!! C'mon man, catharsis! Healing! Don't leave me with my dick out and no cutting here. I'm trying to be a pal and help a guy out. I definitely do not want you to suck it, because I know where that mouth's been and I do not need pink pubes near my junk."
He takes a few steps towards Kyle and grabs his knife hand and puts the blade near his crotch.
"Now stop hallucinating because of some killer alien drugs and get to taking your sweet revenge on Cartman!! Wait...keep hallucinating Cartman to get that revenge but...well, you know what I mean. Cut that dick off, Kyle. Free yourself from that Cartman haunting your brainmeats."
cw: everything is terrible
That can't be Chef. Chef is dead, shot, impaled, torn apart and hit by lightning. But it isn't something Cartman would say, either. Kyle's vision swims and he realises that there's an awful lot of red spandex happening here.
He opens his hand so the scalpel falls to the ground, turning off as it goes.
"Quentin doesn't have pubes," he volunteers, trying to shake Deadpool's hand off. "Lemme go."
cw: everything is terrible
He watches the knife fall and frowns. "Aw c'mon, man, how can we achieve healing if you're going all penis pacifist on me? I know I haven't always been the best of friends, but I was proud of this one. It felt real. It felt good. It also felt like potential agony, but I can take it. A dick is much easier to grow back because it doesn't have any bones. I can do my best Cartman impression if it helps you feel more violent?"
Deadpool clears his throat and does his best nasally Cartman. "Yeah, suck my dick Kyle!! I promise it doesn't have AIDS this time!"
cw: just dicks.
He snorts, although he does look a little bit like he might cry. "How many times have you had to grow your dick back?" he asks. "And that's a terrible fucking impression. You need to pronounce it Kahl."
Kyle sighs and drops his hands. "Thanks, dude. In your own super weird way, that was sweet."
no subject
At Kyle's question, he looks exactly like the shifting eyes monkey GIF thing. "Uh. Lots. You know, it hurts a lot coming off, but random fact, regenerating it feels like growing a stiffy. So in a weird way, not all that bad on the flip side of the slice."
As Kyle's hands go down, Deadpool's go up in frustration. "Aw MAN!!! We were so close to a breakthrough!!! Damn my shitty Cartman impressions!! Hey, you want to get high on that drug and try again? I think we can really get Cartman out of your head if we do it right."
no subject
Kyle grimaces lightly. "Sick, dude."
He shakes his head. "No, it's fine. Working through my issues with Eric would take a lot more than genital mutilation, I'm afraid."
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"You're nuts, you know it?"
no subject
A little sigh.
"Just try to remember me in the next place you end up, alright? I know I probably don't deserve it since I kind of got you attacked by ocean zombies...and shot at...and traumatized by carrying my severed head around...and beaten up by my fantasy ladies...and shot up with drugs...but I tried to do right by you, I promise."
no subject