redshiftlogs | august 2019. welcome to the void.

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.

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

a. bright spots in the darkness

[It isn't that Julie isn't afraid to go up into the Agricultural area, particularly in the dark, but rather that her curiosity overrides her sense of danger as a general rule and she has to find out what that glowing is.

She enters the area with a bat, for all the protection it will offer if something tries to attack her, and doesn't venture too far from the door to give herself a quick exit. Julie sits in the dark, her hands white-knuckled around her chosen weapon, until her eyes get used to the dark and she begins to make out the glowing shapes moving between the trees and plants.

A fox is what comes close to her first. Unsure of what to do about it, Julie holds her breath while it approaches and sniffs her knee, only to back away as soon as she moves.]

Hey-- [She whispers, and while the creature doesn't run, it backs off further and vanishes.

It's with her heart thumping that she races down to the mess hall and begins rummaging through the cupboards. If you're nearby, she'll glance over and ask--]

Do you know what foxes like to eat?

b. nightmare swarm

[Hard not to notice the weird swarms, and Julie knows this dance. She avoids them as best she can, but it's when one catches her by surprise that she's subjected to just what they can do.

The shadowy cloud shudders and begins to coalesce, taking on a tall, thin, skeletal shape that all but hums with a peculiar kind of malevolence. Julie feels her heart rise up into her throat and lodge there, her lips parting without sound, and she takes a step back... then another.]

Hell no. [She whispers, soft, slightly strangled.] Ohhh, hell no.

[ The swarms? Have been getting on Shepard's nerves. Weird shit like that is never a good sign, but so far, they've been avoiding a decent scan from her omni-tool. It's hard without EDI to supplement, it's hard without Mordin or Tali and their specialised data-collecting programs. But until now, the swarms have just been lurking.

She doesn't see this swarm form the husk-like creature. She doesn't have to.

She sees the blonde girl backing away from something, sees the husk, and the only hesitation is for her gun which she doesn't have. Biotics it is, then. ]

Come back straight towards me.

[ It's quietly, calmly said: the reason for the instruction comes clear a second later as Shepard throws a ball of mass effect energy directly at the husk with nearly hurricane force. ]

[She doesn't have to be told twice, it just takes her longer than she'd like to react. That sudden ball of biotic energy that throws the boney backwards and sends it skittering across the floor in a tangle of skeletal limbs is enough to make her utter a strangled shriek, but it sure as hell gets her moving.

Julie retreats quickly enough to the older woman's side, the added protection of someone far more capable to deal with this than she currently is giving more than a little aid towards calming the instinctive tightening in her chest.]

Holy shit, how did you do that?

[It's going to get up, but... important questions.]

[ The girl moves back towards her and the husk is sent flying, and that's the main thing for now. Shepard keeps her guard and her ground, crackling blue covering her forearms as she keeps herself ready in case the thing gets back up to its feet. If it were a true husk, like she knows, it shouldn't.

But something had been wrong about it. ]

I'm biotic.

[ That... may not be a useful enough answer. ]

I can move energy fields with my nervous system. Stay behind me, okay? Are you hurt?

[Biotic. Sure. Makes sense. All of it makes total sense, and if Julie hadn't just spent the last eighteen months having her emotions toyed with, surrounded by elves and wizards and people that weren't even human, she might have thought this woman was totally insane.]

No, I'm fine.

[Just scared, though that's being helped by the fact she has some defence now.]

Those things. They don't stop. Not unless you can stop them moving. [In short, blast the arms and legs off, but they'll still go for your ankles if you get too close.]

Good to know.

[ It's said quietly, but with the kind of confidence that suggests that she has faced shit like this before and walked away without a scratch. Which she has. ]

Let's just keep back away, okay? And how fast-

[ The husk is pull itself back to its feet, movements jerkier than they were before. But it's still moving and that just won't do at all

Shepard narrows her eyes, concentrates, and moves. A lunge forward, her hands open as she sweeps her arms in an arc to throw another glowing ball of energy at the husk. This one is different, the core of it black and the lightning around it more energised. The ball slams into the husk and Shepard twists her hands apart, the movement small but vicious.

This time, when the energy hits the husk's body, it tries to tear it apart molecule by molecule. ]

Fast.

[Does she need to say more than that?

Julie watches, and there's a good amount of satisfaction in watching the way the thing comes apart like a brittle bundle of twigs under the pressure and gravity of the woman's biotic powers.

Each of the individual pieces continue to buzz and rattle with the same malevolent energy that the whole thing held, but if it can't move... it's harmless.

More or less.]

[ Jeff spends a fair amount of time in the mess hall. It's the dad in him: there's a lot of young people, and he wants to make sure they've got food to eat! And no, he's not desperately overcompensating in a futile attempt to keep from drowning in his own grief and depression over being separated from his daughter! HOW DARE YOU IMPLY OTHERWISE.

Anyway, he's making sandwiches. ]

Oh hey! Hi!

[ A beat as he furrows his brow and mulls over that question. ]

You mean like... in nature? Or is it, like, a riddle...?

Hey!

[Jeff, her favourite not-quite-speedwalking buddy for dangerous escapades exploring the park to run away from their mutual senses of impending doom. She flashes a bright smile his way, half way through climbing up on a counter to get into a high cupboard.]

Not a riddle. Real question.

[She pulls a jar out, checks it, then puts it back.]

I just saw the most amazing thing up in the agriculture area. I want to see if I can get this fucking glowing fox to come to me.

Huh. [ Jeff's gonna have to take a moment to think on it, so lost in thought that he doesn't even have the presence of mind to go into dad mode and tell Julie to GET DOWN FROM THAT COUNTERTOP, YOUNG LADY. ] Chicken? Eggs? Grapes! No wait, that's just a fable...

[ Wait hang on what? Jeff stops mid-sandwich prep, looking at Julie with an expression of pure wonderment. ]

No shit, really? [ Wait, he's got it! Jeff waves his sandwich at her all excitedly. ] Ooh! Maybe it'll eat peanut butter! Dogs love peanut butter, and foxes are, like, dog-adjacent!

[This guy is... really endearing, honestly. If Julie's father had been more like this then she wouldn't have half of the problems she does right now.

She leans back slightly, her small form balanced somewhat precariously on the counter top in front of an open cupboard door.]

Ooh, good idea. Do we have peanut butter?

[ Ben doesn't recognize her, from a distance, and from behind. All he knows is that he is wandering past a place where he knows those nightmare-conjuring clouds have been lingering, and he glances up to look as he passes by. Just force of habit.

That is, until he sees someone standing right near it. Someone backing away from - well whatever the fuck those things are, which clearly have some kind of awful significance to her. His errands are forgotten in a moment; he jogs over, why has no one warned her yet not to come close... ]

Get away from it! Quick!

[ Aaaaand then he is close enough that, with a jolt, he recognizes her. Julie. Klaus's friend from Hadriel. This would be awkward, if it were less perilous. Probably the awkward will come later. ]

Edited 2019-08-12 23:33 (UTC)

[Under any other circumstances, this could have been awkward. Anything else other than Julie staring one of her worst fears in what it had left of a face.

She makes a noise when she hears him shout. Something held low in the back of her throat, unintelligible as any kind of a word. These things have always been terrifying, and even more so when you don't have a weapon to fend them off. Even more so when, the last time you saw one really moving with any kind of purpose, it was dragging your father to his death.

But move.

Move.

The command makes its way sluggishly from her brain down to her legs, and the thing is moving towards her when she suddenly turns and begins to run in a sharp burst of movement.]

You should be running, too! [She shouts, slightly breathless, and the monster is chasing after her, moving far too quickly for something that looks like little more than a walking skeleton.] Get going!

[ Ben is worried for a split second that he is going to have to grab Julie and drag her away. He gets it. He knows that kind of fear that freezes you in place, and he can't blame her. Whatever those things are, they look fucking terrifying, and Ben hasn't even got a history with them.

But she starts to run, thank goodness, and Ben follows at her side, glancing over his shoulder back at the thing pursuing them. Maybe it will give up, maybe they will get in the clear soon...

Except he sees that it is gaining on them, and how can it move that fast when it looks so... tattered, so decomposed? He glances again and they're not gonna make it, he can see that they're not gonna make it. So he makes a snap decision, plants his feet and stops running - just for long enough to use his powers, open that portal and summon a rush of tentacles. They spill out of him, hardly less horrifying than the thing following them, and the impact of them sweeps the creature off its feet. For now.

Ben is running again before he even gets the portal closed properly, which hurts but he has been here before, knows it is pointless to fight these nightmare clouds, the only way is to run. Hopefully he's bought them enough time... ]

[She does glance over her shoulder, just in time to see that-- those things spill out of Ben and take the boney down to the ground. It lands hard and the snap of at least one leg follows them audibly, but Julie knows that won't stop it. They have to get away from it. Far enough away..

So Julie runs. She runs until her chest tightens up and she has to stop. Until all she can hear is her heart pounding in her ears and her wheezing breaths inwards. She stops and leans against a wall, and they've gone far enough that the boney isn't following them anymore.]

Shit-- shit... [She fumbles against a pocket, finds an inhaler and pulls it out. She shakes it, it rattles, then she shakes her head and puts it back into her pocket unused.]

Oh my-- god. This is--- fu-fucking bullshit.

[Didn't she spend long enough running for her life already? Give her a break, life!]

[ Ben is right on Julie's heels; he only stops when she stops, even though he's pretty sure they've been in the clear for a little while now. He didn't have enough breath to shout that to her and besides, he's not sure she would have listened. So he keeps on until she stops and he does too, hand at a stitch in his side, made all the worse by the lingering pain from having used his powers even for just a moment.

He sees her pull out an inhaler and feels a flicker of worry - one that only gets bigger when she puts it away without actually taking any of the medicine. He's pretty sure that's not how it's supposed to work.

First, though, explanations. ]

That thing- wasn't real. I mean, it was real- it would've fucked us up if we'd- given it a chance but it- they're shapeshifters. Reads your head and mirrors your fears. They're confined to- certain areas. Turn into these weird clouds when no one's around to- to attack.

[ He gets out the information the best he can around his gasps as he regains his breath. It's a bit of a jumble but he tries to get all the important parts out, so she knows it won't pursue them further, that this isn't an invasion of weird skeletal creatures but something else. ]

Are you okay? Are you hurt, are you sure you don't need- ?

[ He gives a little gesture to the pocket where she'd returned the inhaler. ]

Edited 2019-08-21 11:08 (UTC)

It sure f... fucking looked real.

[And it sounded real. It felt real. She's not convinced it couldn't have torn her apart if she didn't move. If Ben hadn't been there. God, she can't believe those things can still get to her like that.

She tries to straighten up, to put her shoulders back and ease the iron band around her chest, but she can't hide the wheezing sound that her lungs make as she forces air into them.]

Yeah. Yeah, I'm-- I'm fine. I haven't... haven't been able to find another one yet.

[Maybe the medical bay could replicate the contents, but she hasn't spent any time running for her life yet, and this is the first time it's come up.]

It's just asthma. Don't-- don't worry about it.

Yeah, what the fuck was that thing, anyway?

[ Sure he's asking about her deepest darkest fear, which is intrusive, but her deepest darkest fear just chased them both down and they only just barely got away and Ben's still trembling all over so he thinks he's earned it a bit. ]

Asthma's kinda worth worrying about!

[ It's a little fussy and a little bossy, because this is Ben we're talking about, but there's real concern in the words, and written all over his face. He reaches out as if to touch her arm, hesitates, adds: ]

You should use it if you need it. I'm bad at remembering first aid stuff when I'm freaking out and I don't know what I'm supposed to do if you stop breathing.

[ Ben looks scared enough that it's clear he thinks that is a genuine possibility right now. ]

And Klaus will hate me if anything bad happens to you so- just- don't die okay?

They're c... called boneys.

[She'll explain them better when she can draw enough breath to make complete sentences. In the meantime, she pulls her inhaler out of her pocket again and looks at it, before letting out a soft, defeated groan and taking a hit. The effect is almost immediate, but the wheezing doesn't quite go away.]

Fine, fine... [And the inhaler goes back into her pocket again. It isn't mentioning Klaus that pushed her to it, but it does get her eyebrows raising a little bit.]

Didn't think you wanted me... around your brother anyway. Y'no, not saying you'd want me dead... or anything.

[ Ben's eyebrows raise a little, because the name is not nearly as terrifying as the actual thing had been. Then again, not like Julie named them. And just based on her reaction - she wasn't confused that they were there, as if they were only something she'd seen in a movie or imagined - they are a real thing she's run into before. Whether that had been at Hadriel or the world she came from, Ben doesn't know. He knows there was strange shit in that world she and Klaus had been in. But then, he knows nothing really about where she comes from. He'd kind of shut down the conversation before they could get that far.

He also breathes easier once she uses her inhaler, but it's only out of relief. He really didn't want to have to deal with her passing out or stopping breathing. When she brings up - rightly - their previous encounter, Ben ducks his head, rubbing at the back of his neck. Right. Well, he isn't sure this is the most urgent topic to discuss but. ]

I might have overreacted.

[ A beat, and then. ]

I definitely overreacted. And was a jerk to you. I'm just... overprotective. Finding out he'd been in Hadriel for months without me there to look out for him... it freaked me out. A lot.

[ All that on top of being alive again all of a sudden, and in this new place, and everyone and everything was looking like a threat. Ben could handle people being potential threats to himself. But potential threats to Klaus? Ones he might not be on his guard against? That had set him off in a major way.

He looks over at her, mouth scrunched to the side in an apologetic expression. ]

Sorry 'bout that.

Might have? [She shoots back bluntly, but lets him continue. She can, at least, respect the fact that he's admitting he did something wrong.

Julie does have some sympathy for the guy. It can't have been easy, and he'd had more shit to deal with when he got dumped here than most of them do, but still. He was kind of an ass to her.

People had, though, said far worse things to her in the past.]

... Yeah, okay. I guess I forgive you. [One side of her mouth pulls up in a smirk.] It'll make things hard for Klaus if I hold a grudge.

[ Ben actually appreciates that she gives him push-back on his wording; she's not letting anything slide and as someone who doesn't let shit slide himself, he can respect that. ]

You're right. No 'might have' about it.

[ He rubs more at his neck, feeling guilty and awkward and knowing there is more that should be said but hating that he has to say it. Why are words so impossible sometimes? They get all tangled up in his throat and it's so awful, trying to put them in the right order, make them come out. There is a long stretch of silence in which Ben clearly has more to say but is having a hard time just spitting it out. Eventually, he manages: ]

He told me you helped him. With the oxy. I guess... it's easier for him to come to you than me about that kind of thing. So. Thank you.

[ Ben sighs, short and frustrated, more at himself than anything else. He'd dealt with all that and now it is long past time to change the subject. ]

Those boneys. They're from your world?

[She does look surprised, just a little, that Klaus mentioned the incident with the oxy. Not that he mentioned it to Ben, because if he talked about it to anyone she's pretty damn sure it would have been him, but that he'd mentioned it at all.]

Yeah. I mean-- Yeah. [God knows she's never intended to tread in on Ben's territory, but she knows what it feels like to want to protect Klaus from himself. At least they can share that in common.

Then, looking back the way they came and finally drawing in a deep breath, she nods.]

Mm, yeah. They're what happens to the zombies when they... finally give up, I guess? It's the last thing they turn into, and there's no coming back from it.

So there are zombies, where you came from?

[ No joking about it, no disbelief - just confirming that he had heard her correctly and understood what she was saying. That sort of thing was only fiction in Ben's world, but he'd spent half his time on earth as a ghost. He knows that the rules of life and death can be permeable, and that impossible things can happen at any time. ]

And you have fought them, before?

[ Not that she'd seemed up to much fighting when he came across her just now... ]

Yeah... More zombies than Living people.

[Still true, even now. The Cure hadn't been a quick thing, and even the ones who were slowly coming back to Life weren't all the way there yet. The Boneys, though... they were something else. They'd always been dangerous, even to other Dead, and she'd never seen one of them come back. There was nothing human left in them.]

Fought... not exactly. [She's swung a hedge-trimmer at a few of them once or twice.]

Hard to fight something that doesn't really notice when you harm it. They don't feel pain.

august 2019. welcome to the void.

Julie Grigio | Open

nightmare swarm

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bright spots!

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sorry for the delay!

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