august 2019. welcome to the void.

[modblob]

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.

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!

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.

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!

Navigation.

Comments

[tenuefarfalla]

It's a shaking breath or two before she's able to regain some semblance of composure, but then she's even more focused on the task at hand. "So if you're Cole now, you remember being forgotten?" Now that her own fears and worries aren't rattling quite so loudly in her mind, she can think back on the things he's said about himself, the things that she's curious about.

[killedwithlove]

"Yes. I remember everything Cole experienced. And then my own experiences as Cole." He empathised and became him and it was the moment that rewrote the history of Thedas, even if Cole doesn't understand that himself.

[tenuefarfalla]

Cho's frown is back, but it's not for her, and the noise in her head is not quite so loud this time. "I'm so sorry, that you were forgotten, that you have to remember being forgotten." It's a horrible thing, painful and unfair. No one should have to go through it.

She looks back at him, at where he's walking in her blind spot, which is how she recognizes it as her blind spot, that she has to turn to see him, nothing even in her peripheral vision. lt should be unsettling, having him back there, but it's not. The physical proximity doesn't worry her. "You know, some people say that our trials will make us stronger. Do you think that's true?"

[killedwithlove]

"It was a slower death than he ever expected but... it was also less violent." He had expected his father's murderous fists, or the Templars' blade.

He considers it. "No. Not really. Sometimes, they leave wounds and those wounds scar on our soul and the scar tissue doesn't hurt, but it's not stronger. Just different. Trials change us. Sometimes, they help us learn things, make wiser, or kinder, or sometimes not. I don't think adversity inherently makes anyone 'stronger'."

[tenuefarfalla]

"I suppose you're right." It's sort of a depressing thought, that the things that have happened in her life that have hurt her may have had no purpose other than to hurt her, no benefit to gain from the experience. It's nicer to believe that they've made her stronger, somehow, but life doesn't always give you what you want. Then again, the difference between the pair of them is fairly stark. Cole looks like he's ready to wage war, and Cho looks like she's about to go to the pressed juice place and then meet up with her friends to power walk around central park or take a hot yoga class.

Ahead of them, crawling slowly along a wall overgrown with some kind of foliage that Cho doesn't recognize, is a little lizard. It's roughly the size of her palm, and when it begins to pass over a large clump of leaves, the green colour that it's glowing seems to get a little bit brighter. Cho sets down the carrier, and pulls a pair of long, thick gloves out of the waistband of her leggings, slipping them on before she makes a slow approach on the little creeping reptile. Much less terrifying than her last reptile encounter, to be sure.

[killedwithlove]

"They just happen. but if you can find a less to learn from it, then your suffering has some meaning. You learn not to let another person treat you that way, or you learn the signs of someone who doesn't have your well being in their heart.

They might make you stronger. They might not. That's up to you, not because they happened."

Cole crouches down nearby. He's watching around them, making sure nothing tries to make a meal of them.

He also has a small family of mice climbing over his foot within moments, apparently completely unconcerned by his presence.

[tenuefarfalla]

Cho is pretty fully focused on the lizard. Cole said he could protect her. She believes him. She trusts him to be on the lookout for things that might harm him, and it lets her be fully focused on the chameleon. Her movements are slow and fluid, and she speaks softly, broadcasting her location to make herself seem less like a predator. There's a ficus growing beside her, perhaps the little guy's end goal. She pulls off a few leaves and cups them in her hand, patiently waiting for him to come to her.

It's the movement of the mice over Cole's feet that bring her attention in that direction. "How cute. They seem to really like you."

[killedwithlove]

"Most animals like me. They know me for what I am. And I like them." He dips a hand down to drag a fingertip over one mouse's head and spine, the tail curling around his finger briefly. "Is there anything else you want to have? I can probably get them to come here to you."

[tenuefarfalla]

"I like them, too," Cho says with a smile, tucking the lizard that has climbed onto her hand into one of the smaller containers that divides the inside of the animal carrier into a kind of specimen condominium. She's very concerned with keeping the creature calm and comfortable, with not scaring or hurting it.

The problem with having Cole help her look, is that she isn't really certain what she's looking for. Though she does appreciate his offer. "There isn't anything specific. I'm looking for prey animals, anything that doesn't have an obvious way to defend itself against a predator. They have no functional camouflage, yet they're surviving up here. I want to figure out why. So I guess I'm just... looking or anything that seems pretty helpless."

Another animal has come to investigate Cole, similar to the mice, but so much larger, and quite a bit fluffier. Cho recognizes it, after a few moments, as a relatively small chinchilla glowing an intense jewel tone indigo, and she smiles. "Like that little one," she says, nodding her head at it as it comes over to sniff Cole's foot.

[killedwithlove]

"Oh." Cole sort of understands. His mother taught him about the forest. "Cole's mother knew a lot about the forests and mountains. The movement of animals, which plants filled you, which would kill, which would heal."

His hand lowers to let the chinchilla climb him, its tiny hands clasping his fingers and then waddling up onto his palm. He lifts it carefully, so they're face to face and it can sniff at him. "Hello. You're comfortably full, but you like the smell of what's over here. Would you let Cho hold you? She's very safe and has food."

He then offers the chinchilla out to her.

[tenuefarfalla]

So it's animals, too? How amazing would that be? To be able to communicate with anything you came into contact with, regardless of the barrier of language? True communication. It sounds wonderful - no misunderstandings or confusion or sticking your foot in your mouth without meaning to. No crossed wires or misread signals, just connection.

Cho reaches her hands out and waits patiently for the furry little creature to feel like waddling over to her, and the cut up bits of apple balanced near her wrist. Once it does, she smiles, watching it eat and feeling peaceful and much calmer than she did a few hours ago. "Does it-- feel safe with me? Is it afraid of me?"

[killedwithlove]

"I still say the wrong thing," Cole corrects her. "I don't always get things right, or understand them the way someone needs me to. It's easier with animals, their needs are simple. Their hurts are simple."

He watches the animal, gaze unfocused for a bit. "Not safe. Not unsafe. Wary, but not afraid. My presence is calming to them."

[tenuefarfalla]

"But mine isn't." She doesn't sound upset, or even sad, necessarily. Resigned, perhaps. Cole makes them feel calm, and she's glad for that. Even if she can't achieve anything similar, even if they don't feel safe with her, she's grateful that they feel safe at all, that their stress is lessened by Cole being here.

He will just know, but that doesn't mean she shouldn't still talk with him. Conversation, it's not a bad thing. She talks to things that can't understand her all the time. Why wouldn't she also talk to someone that can understand her on a level no one else has ever been able to? "I'm glad that you're here, and that you calm them. I wish I could do that, but I'm not like them, I can't communicate the way they do." She brings the chinchilla close to her face, lets it's unspeakably soft fur brush against her cheek. Such a beautiful, soft, trusting little thing.

[killedwithlove]

"No person's is." It's not Cho specifically. In fact, her hurts are easier to start working on than a lot of people's, because her hurts are founded on things, on other people who were wrong.

"People don't have those powers usually. Most spirits don't either. But Compassion..." Compassion is fragile and powerful, rare as fallen stars and found in a moment's contemplation.

[tenuefarfalla]

"We can't control the way others feel about us. We can only control how we feel. I love them. That's enough." Love is love, and even if it doesn't flow both ways, it still puts something beautiful into your life. The chinchilla isn't running away, isn't panicked or scared, and that's enough for her. "And compassion is love, so it makes sense that it calms and soothes. It's... it's love, and understanding, and patience, and acceptance. It's all the best things that a person can put into the world."

[killedwithlove]

For a moment, in the darkness, it almost seems like Cole glows. Not the cool blues and whites of the creatures, but something warmer, yellow peach maybe.

Something else shows through for a moment, something fragile and beautiful and not human.

"Yes. That is love, compassion, it is loving without trying to control how others feel." And in response to that moment, there's other things appearing around them, drawn by Compassion's presence.

[tenuefarfalla]

Cho watches the shift, silent and still, afraid of breaking the spell of the moment. It's beautiful. It's love.

"I was in love before," she whispers as the glow fades slightly and she can see Cole through it again. She doesn't know why she says it, what draws the admission up from the bottom of her chest and out through her lips. Cole already knows that, though, doesn't he? He already knows it all. "He didn't love me. It hurt so much. But I don't regret it... I wouldn't change it. I was in a place where they could have changed it, where they could have taken it all away, but I didn't want them to. I just asked for it to stop hurting. I wanted to keep it all, even the disappointment, and just be able to remember it without crying. It was beautiful, having the chance to love like that, to feel that much. It was different than all the other love I'd ever felt in my life. Sometimes I'm afraid I'll never get to feel like that again."

She lets out a little puff of air, averts her eyes and knows that she's supposed to feel ashamed now, for revealing so much. She tries to focus on the animals around them, on the waves of little glowing creatures drawn to the outpouring of good. She lowers her empty hand to the ground and lets a brilliantly orange stick insect crawl across her palm.

[killedwithlove]

Compassion looks up. "We don't feel love. Spirits. We don't feel anything. We are. I am, was, am compassion. I care about everyone and everything, not because it deserves it, but because I do. It hurts because I care."

He closes his eyes as a lizard climbs up his back. A small bird flutters over to land on a knee, another two land on his shoulder, one a male who waves luminescent eye spotted plumes.

"Cole loved. Cole loved his family. But he was never in love. It feels... all encompassing. Like jumping off a cliff into a river and landing in the warmest, softest pile of pillows."

[tenuefarfalla]

Unrequited, it might be the most bittersweet word she knows.

"Letting that river carry you along, sweep you out to see, weightless, floating, safe and clean." That's what it felt like for Cho, like diving off the side of the mountain, feeling the water open up to accept her, close over her feet, nothing but ripples to mark the change. The weight of the depth pressing in around her, the burn of the air in her lungs, the beating of her heart. That's her blissful feeling. The falling in love.

The insect is climbing up along her arm now, spindly little limbs carefully finding purchase on the folds of the fabric of her jacket. Is it filled with love, too?

[killedwithlove]

Not love.

Compassion.

"Yes. I know that's how it felt. I can't fall in love, I can only know it."

[tenuefarfalla]

"I can't even imagine that." Which, of course, Compassion already knows. To go that far beyond just feeling love. Her mind can't even comprehend it, because her mind isn't made to.

She wonders if there's some aspect of Cole and Compassion's physical being that she's no longer seeing, either, because her mind can't comprehend it. The way that he glows, that fragile and beautiful and inhuman thing that shines through in tiny glimmers. Is it the tip of an iceberg? Does it exist outside of her sphere of understanding, in the space that's full of what she doesn't know she doesn't know?

She feels like laughing and crying and... and things she doesn't have a name for.

[killedwithlove]

"You don't need to understand, because you feel."

Compassion says it can't feel, but it's clear that Cole has. He might be not discussing that, but Cole clearly feels things.

"And you're allowed to feel however you feel. That's what feelings are."

[tenuefarfalla]

It seems so simple when he says it like that. Too simple, like there's no possible way that something that feels so big can be boiled down to something so basic. He would know, though, wouldn't he? Who better to understand a feeling than a feeling? She just experiences, he is.

"I like it," she offers, even though the words feel so inadequate. "Feeling love, and acceptance, and patience, and understanding. I like feeling like love can do anything. I can't always control what I feel, but I try... to be full of love whenever I can."

[killedwithlove]

"Compassion is a choice," Cole echoes. "To let yourself love... make the choice to think and feel for others, spare them..."

He gives a tiny smile and nods. "You have enough Compassion that in Thedas, you could keep one from warping."

[tenuefarfalla]

Thedas. Cho remembers her friend, Marjara, tiny and feisty and magical, pointed ears and mirthful smiles, only one arm but so feisty, so determined and energetic. Her world had been full of magic - Thedas. Cho remembers hearing her speak with such fond longing.

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.