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redshiftlogs2019-08-02 02:02 am
modblob) wrote in redshiftlogs2019-08-02 02:02 am
Entry tags:
- !mod post: intro mingle,
- dragon age: cole,
- far cry 5: staci pratt,
- good omens: aziraphale,
- homestuck: aradia megido,
- hunger games: finnick odair,
- mass effect: commander rufina shepard,
- mcu: peter parker,
- mortal kombat: kabal,
- original: cameron waltz,
- original: cho takahashi,
- original: jeff calhoun,
- poison: poison,
- red dead redemption: kieran duffy,
- star wars: finn,
- umbrella academy: ben hargreeves,
- umbrella academy: diego hargreeves,
- umbrella academy: eudora patch,
- umbrella academy: klaus hargreeves,
- umbrella academy: vanya hargreeves,
- warm bodies: julie grigio
august 2019. welcome to the void.
Who: Everyone in Anchor.
What: Second Introductory Mingle
When: The Month of August 2019
Where: Around and outside the city.
Warnings: Please add any warnings in the subject lines.
The redout and accompanying power outage has been going on for over a week now - even though someone must have managed to get the generators up and running so things are a little less dismal, that doesn't mean that everything is fun and games. The generators are enough to power the essentials, like lighting, the MedBay, resident sat phones, sanitation facilities...basically just the things that make life livable instead of kicking the whole city back to the dark ages.
Sometime during the second week, though, around the end of July, residents might start to notice bright spots in the darkness, mostly around the Agricultural levels. Little bobbing blobs of bright blue or vibrant green or glowing red that move soundlessly through the night, poignantly noticeable because everything else is so dark. At first, and from a distance, they might look like your typical swamp gas fake ghost, little glowing smudges in the darkness. Could be promising...but it could be dangerous too.
If residents are brave enough to head up to the Agricultural levels in the darkness and investigate the source of the light, a mildly harrowing mission, they will find that the source of the glowing is...animals. Barely differing from the usual animals one might see in a daylight in the Agricultural levels, these animals prove to simply be nocturnal versions of the usual animals that might survive in the wild and who have made their homes in the faux forest and grasslands. And when everything else is dark, these creatures roam the night, letting off a curious and almost radioactive glow.
There are, however, a slightly wider variety of these animals, who are descendants of animals exposed heavily to radiation that mutated but did not kill them. While there are the usual deer and wild horses, foxes and monkeys, rodents and insects, there are also domestic creatures that seem to have thrived in their glow-in-the-dark forms where non-glowing ones were picked off by predators. Anyone investigating may find glowing kittens and puppies, domestic mice and rats, snakes that are open to being touched, and even a few more exotic domesticated pets like ferrets, hedgehogs, turtles and foxes. While these creatures are still wild, they are the descendants of domestic stock, and with a little effort and coddling, they might turn out to be passable pets, once they're scanned in the MedBay and found to not give off dangerous radiation.
It's not all puppies and kittens, though. Some of these seemingly predatorless glow-in-the-dark creatures are mutated, just like their regular counterparts, but to a more extensive degree. Keep a close eye out while you're trying to tame that adorable glowing purple kitten, because you might find yourself as the prey to a huge mutated lizard or spider, or maybe an oversized glowing wild warthog.
Nighttime exploring, after all, is for the brave at heart...and comes with pros and cons!
As if the mutated glow-in-the-dark creatures in the Agricultural levels aren't bad enough, there's something new in Anchor to cause problems. A couple of weeks after the generator room was opened, strange apparitions start showing up in various places around the city. At first they're nebulous clouds that gather in places where there's strong evidence of past violence - in the upper levels of the city where there's serious fire damage, near the security station, hovering outside the armory or wherever there are burns and gouges into the stone walls of the city. But as the month wears on, the clouds start to take shape, and some of those shapes might be very familiar.
Starting at around August 8th, whenever a resident passes by one of these ominous clouds, it will start to coalesce into a solid form, the particles coming together into a concrete shape - the shape of fear. Whether the particles coalesce into the shape of a monster or villain from a character's homeworld or previous game setting, the nebulous representation of their worst fear, a person or thing from their past that evokes a terrible memory of trauma, or even just a generic horrific monster that would particularly frighten that particular person, it's something that is guaranteed to terrify. Essentially, they will turn into the worst thing that your character can imagine.
And these representations of fear? They're not ghosts, they're not digital afterimages, they're not apparitions or holos. They're real, or at least they feel real, they can do real damage, and they're almost impossible to kill. The best way to survive an encounter with the nightmare swarm? Run fast. Because they're generally confined to areas where the echoes of old violence linger, and the quicker you leave those areas the better. Get into whatever light you can, get somewhere safe, and the fear creature will dissipate back into a nebulous cloud, lying in wait for the next victim.
What: Second Introductory Mingle
When: The Month of August 2019
Where: Around and outside the city.
Warnings: Please add any warnings in the subject lines.
Redshift: Welcome to the v͖͕̺̲̘̱̜͎o̴̦̣̠̦̘̹͞i̯̖d̛̪̬͈̱̦̝͍̕.
Click here to read what characters will experience when arriving in Anchor.
a. bright spots in the darkness.
The redout and accompanying power outage has been going on for over a week now - even though someone must have managed to get the generators up and running so things are a little less dismal, that doesn't mean that everything is fun and games. The generators are enough to power the essentials, like lighting, the MedBay, resident sat phones, sanitation facilities...basically just the things that make life livable instead of kicking the whole city back to the dark ages.Sometime during the second week, though, around the end of July, residents might start to notice bright spots in the darkness, mostly around the Agricultural levels. Little bobbing blobs of bright blue or vibrant green or glowing red that move soundlessly through the night, poignantly noticeable because everything else is so dark. At first, and from a distance, they might look like your typical swamp gas fake ghost, little glowing smudges in the darkness. Could be promising...but it could be dangerous too.
If residents are brave enough to head up to the Agricultural levels in the darkness and investigate the source of the light, a mildly harrowing mission, they will find that the source of the glowing is...animals. Barely differing from the usual animals one might see in a daylight in the Agricultural levels, these animals prove to simply be nocturnal versions of the usual animals that might survive in the wild and who have made their homes in the faux forest and grasslands. And when everything else is dark, these creatures roam the night, letting off a curious and almost radioactive glow.
There are, however, a slightly wider variety of these animals, who are descendants of animals exposed heavily to radiation that mutated but did not kill them. While there are the usual deer and wild horses, foxes and monkeys, rodents and insects, there are also domestic creatures that seem to have thrived in their glow-in-the-dark forms where non-glowing ones were picked off by predators. Anyone investigating may find glowing kittens and puppies, domestic mice and rats, snakes that are open to being touched, and even a few more exotic domesticated pets like ferrets, hedgehogs, turtles and foxes. While these creatures are still wild, they are the descendants of domestic stock, and with a little effort and coddling, they might turn out to be passable pets, once they're scanned in the MedBay and found to not give off dangerous radiation.
It's not all puppies and kittens, though. Some of these seemingly predatorless glow-in-the-dark creatures are mutated, just like their regular counterparts, but to a more extensive degree. Keep a close eye out while you're trying to tame that adorable glowing purple kitten, because you might find yourself as the prey to a huge mutated lizard or spider, or maybe an oversized glowing wild warthog.
Nighttime exploring, after all, is for the brave at heart...and comes with pros and cons!
b. nightmare swarm.
As if the mutated glow-in-the-dark creatures in the Agricultural levels aren't bad enough, there's something new in Anchor to cause problems. A couple of weeks after the generator room was opened, strange apparitions start showing up in various places around the city. At first they're nebulous clouds that gather in places where there's strong evidence of past violence - in the upper levels of the city where there's serious fire damage, near the security station, hovering outside the armory or wherever there are burns and gouges into the stone walls of the city. But as the month wears on, the clouds start to take shape, and some of those shapes might be very familiar.Starting at around August 8th, whenever a resident passes by one of these ominous clouds, it will start to coalesce into a solid form, the particles coming together into a concrete shape - the shape of fear. Whether the particles coalesce into the shape of a monster or villain from a character's homeworld or previous game setting, the nebulous representation of their worst fear, a person or thing from their past that evokes a terrible memory of trauma, or even just a generic horrific monster that would particularly frighten that particular person, it's something that is guaranteed to terrify. Essentially, they will turn into the worst thing that your character can imagine.
And these representations of fear? They're not ghosts, they're not digital afterimages, they're not apparitions or holos. They're real, or at least they feel real, they can do real damage, and they're almost impossible to kill. The best way to survive an encounter with the nightmare swarm? Run fast. Because they're generally confined to areas where the echoes of old violence linger, and the quicker you leave those areas the better. Get into whatever light you can, get somewhere safe, and the fear creature will dissipate back into a nebulous cloud, lying in wait for the next victim.
c. power up.
On August 2nd, the dust storm causing the redout and power outage will subside, and a stiff wind will take its place, washing away about two thirds of the red sand piled up on the dome. This fortuitous change in weather will make it possible to start work on getting the power back up. Residents will be able to exit the city through the usual channels so they can work on clearing the dust out of the various installations outside the city that transform wind and radiation and sunlight into power that keeps the city up and running. After they're cleared off, residents can start to get the power up by making repairs to the dust-damaged computer systems. Thankfully, once the power installations outside the city have been cleared off, an automated computer subroutine will boot up on some of the computer panels in the common areas of the residential quarters, with a user-friendly guide to repairing sand damage to the power system.
Mind you, the user guide assumes that residents have a lot of tools, supplies, and assistant bots that the current population doesn't really have on hand, so user-friendly or not, it's tougher than the system seems to think it is.
Thankfully, there is another option. Anyone with a particularly tech-savvy mind who's encountered the nightmare clouds might have picked up on it already, but the clouds are actually swarms of nanites. Released from the room that held the generators, these nanites were originally intended to conduct repairs on the city (there was a reason that room and those generators were so pristine!) that have been corrupted and are malfunctioning due to the ambient radiation in the city that has only increased since their creation. Anyone with even a basic knowledge of computers (and a very strong spine) could collect a sample of the clouds in one of the containment units from the labs or the R&D area, where the semi-functioning computer can be used to work out what's wrong with the nanites...and fix them.
If characters are able to work this out and deploy repairs to the various swarms around the city, those nanites might be super helpful for fixing some of the malfunctioning tech around the city. Food for thought!
Mind you, the user guide assumes that residents have a lot of tools, supplies, and assistant bots that the current population doesn't really have on hand, so user-friendly or not, it's tougher than the system seems to think it is.
Thankfully, there is another option. Anyone with a particularly tech-savvy mind who's encountered the nightmare clouds might have picked up on it already, but the clouds are actually swarms of nanites. Released from the room that held the generators, these nanites were originally intended to conduct repairs on the city (there was a reason that room and those generators were so pristine!) that have been corrupted and are malfunctioning due to the ambient radiation in the city that has only increased since their creation. Anyone with even a basic knowledge of computers (and a very strong spine) could collect a sample of the clouds in one of the containment units from the labs or the R&D area, where the semi-functioning computer can be used to work out what's wrong with the nanites...and fix them.If characters are able to work this out and deploy repairs to the various swarms around the city, those nanites might be super helpful for fixing some of the malfunctioning tech around the city. Food for thought!
d. the wreckage in the wasteland.
Once the emergency situation with the power is sorted out, residents might become a little curious about what caused all the trouble in the first place. The dust storm was, after all, initiated by a loud crash landing outside the city. With the dust storm abated and the windows in the Observation Area cleared off, residents will be able to see the wreckage of a spacecraft crashed into the ground, several miles out from the city. Far enough away to make it impossible to see any identifying marks, but close enough to be a tantalizing mystery for anyone so inclined.
Adventurous souls will be able to suit up and trek their way out to the site of the crash in the battery Jeeps to see what's going on, risking the rough ever-changing terrain and the possibility of a red shift, to see what might be salvageable from the crashed ship, or just in pursuit of knowledge. Once those characters approach, they will find the hulk of a badly-damaged spacecraft, about as big as a medium-sized cruise ship. The hull is badly burned, with tears in the metal, and it will be obvious to anyone who's got any experience with space travel (or even anyone who's watched enough sci-fi movies) to see that the ship didn't do well on its slow fall through the atmosphere. The metal is melted and punctured, anything that might have extended away from the hull has been burned off and lies in tatters, and the sand around the crash site is littered with metal and plastic debris.
But the one thing that's still possible to tell from the wreckage? It probably came from Anchor.
The ship is pieced together from salvaged materials, the tech will be familiar to anyone who's been in the colony for more than a couple days, and there's even a few corpses of very familiar bots lying in the sand. Approaching a large tear in the side of the hull will reveal a way inside the husk of a ship, giving access to the ship's small crew quarters section. If explorers choose to proceed inside, they'll be able to dig through what few personal items remain and find personal tablet computers and sat phones with their hard drives corrupted but possibly salvageable with the right skillset and the right technology repaired back in Anchor. They will also be able to find a way down further into the ship, though it's dark and clouded with sand and...well, quite menacing.
Because it isn't just the darkness and the danger of the red shift coming while you're trapped down there, or the danger of the ship's hull cracking with the weight of the sand piled up on its shell from the dust storm...but looking into the darkness, there's a flickering bluish glow. Digital and glitchy, it flickers from wall to wall, with the faintest impression of a human form. A face. A hand. The movement of hair or clothing. And then there's the echoing sounds - soft laughter, snippets of childrens' rhymes, unintelligible whispers or mumbles.
Well. Enter at your own risk.
Adventurous souls will be able to suit up and trek their way out to the site of the crash in the battery Jeeps to see what's going on, risking the rough ever-changing terrain and the possibility of a red shift, to see what might be salvageable from the crashed ship, or just in pursuit of knowledge. Once those characters approach, they will find the hulk of a badly-damaged spacecraft, about as big as a medium-sized cruise ship. The hull is badly burned, with tears in the metal, and it will be obvious to anyone who's got any experience with space travel (or even anyone who's watched enough sci-fi movies) to see that the ship didn't do well on its slow fall through the atmosphere. The metal is melted and punctured, anything that might have extended away from the hull has been burned off and lies in tatters, and the sand around the crash site is littered with metal and plastic debris.
But the one thing that's still possible to tell from the wreckage? It probably came from Anchor.
The ship is pieced together from salvaged materials, the tech will be familiar to anyone who's been in the colony for more than a couple days, and there's even a few corpses of very familiar bots lying in the sand. Approaching a large tear in the side of the hull will reveal a way inside the husk of a ship, giving access to the ship's small crew quarters section. If explorers choose to proceed inside, they'll be able to dig through what few personal items remain and find personal tablet computers and sat phones with their hard drives corrupted but possibly salvageable with the right skillset and the right technology repaired back in Anchor. They will also be able to find a way down further into the ship, though it's dark and clouded with sand and...well, quite menacing.
Because it isn't just the darkness and the danger of the red shift coming while you're trapped down there, or the danger of the ship's hull cracking with the weight of the sand piled up on its shell from the dust storm...but looking into the darkness, there's a flickering bluish glow. Digital and glitchy, it flickers from wall to wall, with the faintest impression of a human form. A face. A hand. The movement of hair or clothing. And then there's the echoing sounds - soft laughter, snippets of childrens' rhymes, unintelligible whispers or mumbles.
Well. Enter at your own risk.
ooc: exploration info.
As you can probably tell, this final prompt is kind of a doozy! While the first level of the ship is available for anyone to explore with the information provided in the prompt, going further into the ship will require mod guidance, via an NPC.
Any questions can be asked in the mod questions thread below, and if your characters have progressed to the point of wanting to explore deeper in the ship, please hit up the NPC request thread with a link to where the NPC should tag in.
Have fun guys!
Any questions can be asked in the mod questions thread below, and if your characters have progressed to the point of wanting to explore deeper in the ship, please hit up the NPC request thread with a link to where the NPC should tag in.
Have fun guys!
no subject
Warping. She doesn't know that. "I don't know what that means," she admits, voice barely above a whisper, but she's still smiling, remembering her friend, feeling love, and the certainty that even though she doesn't know exactly what Cole's words mean in context, they're something Good. Something positive.
A little pink sugar glider has come to investigate them. It jumps from the tree near them, and unable to make it all the way to Cole, lands in Cho's hair, decides this is an all right place to stay, looks over at her with huge luminous eyes.
no subject
Cole soaks in the context, the memories, the flickers of people he knows but doesn't, the echoes of other maybes. "Inquisitor Lavellan," he says. "I knew another Inquisitor Lavellan, in the Drift Fleet. She was Jove. My Inquisitor was Nadezhda Cadash, a dwarf."
He refocuses on the words Cho's body said. "Compassion can become Mercy. Mercy and Compassion can both Despair." He shivers roughly. "Wisdom becomes Pride. Justice, Vengeance, Rage. The mortals around us can change us. When there's no Compassion, mortals Despair... so we Despair too."
no subject
Compassion to Despair. Wisdom to Pride. "When Compassion becomes Despair, that's warping? When the mortals around you... feel the positive emotion strongly enough, they can keep the bad one from taking over?" She doesn't know if she has that right, but she wants to understand. It sounds like such a wonderful thing, the way Cole says it, the way the emotion wraps around the words, she wants to much to understand what it means.
no subject
A single tear rolls down Cole's face. It seems to take a little of the light with it.
"We know what we have become. But we can no more change it than the sun can stop shining warmth. We are what mortals make us. And Compassion is very rare in Thedas. I'm not like other spirits. I understand what I am. I remember feeling, even though it was Cole, not me."
no subject
Cho can still feel that lovely warm glow beneath her ribs, because Cole thinks that she has enough compassion in her to keep that awful thing from happening, but it's tempered now. The bright happiness is sharing space with a sorrow, because that awful thing does happen, because Cole has seen it happen, perhaps felt it happen? Felt what the demon had been, before becoming warped?
She doesn't know if it's the right thing to do or not, but it feels right when she reaches for his hand. "I'm so sorry," she whispers. Sorry for the memory behind that tear. She wants to take the pain away, and she doesn't know how.
no subject
He looks at her and gives that little smile again. "You care too. Yes, I've seen spirits be warped. It hurts them, they're confused and scared and angry and out of control. It's okay when Desire is born of Desire, but Desire born of Love... Love dies for Desire. Compassion can be Mercy but Despair kills it."
no subject
"I don't know-- exactly how I help." What about being compassionate keeps it from becoming warped, other than just feeling it completely, with ever fiber of your being, she could not possibly guess. "But if you ever need it, I will always try." She will try to help, and not just because it's always been what she wants to do - to help, to protect, to safeguard the fragile things in life. She will help because Cole has looked inside her, and tried to take her pain away. She's not at all used to having that desire to nurture reflected back at her.
no subject
There are bones. There are tendons that flex when he squeezes back.
"You help. Just by being. You."
no subject
"No one has ever told me that before." This is not about her childhood. She's had friends since then, some very good and supportive friends. She's had people appreciate her, and the things that she does for them, but no one has ever told her that she helps simply by existing, even if she did nothing more. She had thought that maybe she'd been that for Marmalade, that her cat had been calmed and felt loved and safe just by being around her, but it doesn't bother her that humans can't do that. She still knows he loves her. To know that she can be a help for Compassion, just by being herself, it's kind of amazing.
Of course, thinking of her cat reminds her of her reason for coming up here, of the animals all around them, called by the spirit of, well, the spirit. The little sugar glider is sniffing at the sticky sweet residue of apples on her fingertips, warm little tongue licking at the sugar. It's easy enough to transfer it to an empty small container in the carrier. It goes almost happily, content to just be near Cole, she assumes.
no subject
no subject
The question is a little bit trickier. She withdraws her hand from his, not in any effort to get away from him, but to cradle the strange little bird that's hopped up on her leg. It looks a bit like a quail, but the wings are so very small, it can't possibly fly. Can it? She's getting off track. Returning them. She wants to answer Cole honestly, but the problem is that she doesn't have an answer yet. "If I can," is what she settles on. She will have these animals for a while. Some of them might get too used to being cared for. There is always a danger, with wild animals, that they won't survive if released after prolonged observation and care. "If it's safe for them to be back up here, I'll want them to be home. If they get too used to being cared for... I won't turn them loose up here just to let them be killed. I'll keep taking care of them rather than leave them in danger."
A thought occurs, something that causes excitement to bubble up from deep in her chest. The look she turns on Cole is open and hopeful. "You'll know, won't you? When I'm done studying them, I can only guess, but you'll know which ones would rather stay and which ones are homesick, won't you? Would you help me? When it's time?"