november 2020. welcome to the void.

[modblob]

Who: Everyone in Anchor.
What: Monthly Mingle
When: The Month of November 2020
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.


[Announcement: Hello! One of the writing/NPC mods here. I pilot Creepy Joe and in the last nine months my life imploded, and then did it again, and then again, and you get the idea (not even bc of COVID! Lucky me.). But things have finally stabilized and I have the brainspace to actually mod again, so Joe will be around reliably and will even start responding to character posts. There are a couple of people I owe interactions to, and I’ll be reaching out to them over the next couple of days via Joe’s account so we can either set up threads or talk through what happened. If you want him to hit up your post or toplevel, please let me know under the “mod questions” section at the top of the comments page. It will be on a first-come, first-served basis, as I don’t want to bite off more than I can chew when I’m only just stepping back onto the mod team. All this to say, I’m really glad to be back, and I’m really glad I get to toss my creepy nutjob at all of you again!]

a. colony 2.

It takes a while, but by a combination of destruction, manipulation, and reasonable discussion, you all are able to smash your way through the tunnel and...up to another bulkhead door. It's cracked open at the bottom, enough for smaller people to squish through. Definitely enough for some of the remaining golems to get their limbs under and lift.

Once the combination of golem and Anchorite efforts have forced the doors open, the Anchorites are faced with...another hall. This one slopes upward and is lit by intermittently sparking lamps between spans of darkness. The sparks cracking overhead are the only sound.

At the end of the hall is another door, this one only half-shut, with plenty of room to get through. It's scarred with claw marks, burns, and ripped-up metal, inside and out. It's impossible to tell if someone was trying to get in or escape. Maybe both.

The space beyond is vast. It's clearly a set-up not entirely unlike Anchor, though there's no dome overhead, just a solid metal shield. The bleak roof is lit by powerful flood lights that are certainly not lacking in the energy to run smoothly and consistently. The rest of the space, however, has spotty, emergency lights here, jury-rigged illumination there. Crystals under lingering magical spells. Electric lanterns that are starting to fade. By this thin light, it's possible to see the stretches of broken plexiglass that served to keep each level separated from the open air between them. No luxury suites here. The med bay is utilitarian and barely stocked, but not at all dusty. The space that serves as a park in Anchor is a mass of dead or half-dead vegetation, most of it weeds arranged in rows that imply some kind of long-abandoned farming.

Level by level, this place is like Anchor's evil twin. The halls are narrower, the entertainment areas almost non-existant. It looks much more like a military installation than a place meant for people to live and thrive. There are hydroponic gardens that still seem to be in use. A farming area with a few gun-shy cow-like creatures that bolt at a stranger's approach.

This place might be desolate, but it isn't empty.

b. what remains.

For all the signs of intelligent humanoid life, the monsters are more common. Creatures prowl the halls, but not all of them are aggressive. Some are as nervous as the cow-creatures on the farming level. But those that are aggressive attack at once, like they expect to be killed if they don't strike first. And it looks like someone has tried. The monsters have missing limbs, missing eyes, wounds that have scarred over or that ooze with pus or have just begun to scab.

As the creatures get more curious about these strangers in their territory, more of them start to emerge, and it's clear something isn't right here. The ones that aren't badly mauled are patchwork combinations of limbs and heads and tails that don't all belong together. One of them, with a cow-creature's head stitched on next to the head of a cat-like thing that's all teeth, keeps trying to either eat or escape itself. It isn't the only one in this miserable state - there are an incredible amount of these stitched-together creatures in almost any combination you can think of. Even the creatures that people recognize from home will be warped, like someone poured a dozen puzzles into one big box and started cutting pieces to fit.

What was that shadow? Another hapless monster?

Maybe. Maybe not.

c. trick & treat.

It's not all monsters and thankless, dim-lit halls, though. Near the top, in much the same place where a person would find the weapons room and garage in Anchor, there's a weapons room and garage in this colony to match. Only the weapons room is open, and it's jam-packed with goodies from a dozen different worlds and then some.

Of course, it's not as simple as walking in. The entire area is boobytrapped, the floors ripped up here and there to accommodate pits full of stakes covered haphazardly with twigs and grass and monster bones, logs that come swinging out of nowhere when you step wrong, falling boulders that could crush you if you time your jump over that manufactured cavern poorly... Basically it's like someone set Indiana Jones in a Mario 64 level only more violent. Much more violent.

But hey, there's a benefit to making it through the traps first - and you have to get through the traps in order to get to the armory. The first two through the doors will find lightweight, shimmering cloaks resting on a pedestal in the center of the armory. It's impossible to tell what they're made from. They pool over hands like water, barely feeling like anything - and yet somehow, you can't see your hands through the cloth. In fact, put a cloak on and you'll disappear entirely. Undetectable by the eye - organic or robotic - and invisible to magic, area scans, bio detectors, heat detectors - you get the idea. Moreover, you'll be invisible on surveillance footage too. Somehow these cloaks even work on electronics. Besides the cloaks, there are a variety of very nice weapons in a range of styles - a few automatic projectile and laser guns, a couple of easy-to-use staffs that even those not magically inclined can use to deal magical damage with a thought, and a wide variety of angry-looking pointy sharp hand-to-hand weapons.

The garage might be an even better surprise for the curious, and the, you know, trap-averse. Not only are the vehicles inside more heavy duty than the ones at Anchor, but their power levels are clearly higher and they're built for long-term exploration. Not only that, but there are small personal shield generators, like Anchor's dome on a micro scale. When turned on, they provide just enough room for a small camp.

A little something for your monstrous troubles.

mod notes.

The garage is open and relatively easy to get to once you get past the creatures that populate the area, the armory is supposed to be a challenge. Players should not post top-levels that start with having already beaten the traps around the armory.

While there are enough weapons in the armory that every person currently in Anchor could have one, there are only two invisibility cloaks. The first two characters to thread out a trip through the traps will receive them. These threads must be a minimum of 10 comments (5 from each character) to qualify. If characters aiming for the cloaks would not be doing so in the same group and would be going in with other characters whose players aren't interested in the cloaks, please contact the mods by PM and we'll work something out!

Navigation.

Comments

QUESTIONS.

[modblob]

Any mod questions can go here!

Finnick Odair | OTA

[fishermansweater]

a.

This place makes Finnick's skin crawl. He knows the feeling of unease that comes from being sure danger is present even when he can't see it, has been intimately familiar with it for years. It's everywhere here. It's eerie to see a starker, more utilitarian version of the place they've all been living.

It's almost like coming to Thirteen after the Capitol. Everything seems useful, designed for survival without any of the (admittedly small) luxuries that exist -- or existed -- in Anchor.

It's even worse to see how dead it is.

The first cow mutt he sees nearly gets a trident through the head, and when he realizes it really is just a cow, Finnick takes a deep breath, lowering his trident as the thing skitters away.

"This was a waste," he says, kneeling by a row of dried-up, dead plants that he assumes were once crops.


b.

If he'd been waiting for the next shoe to drop, it does when he reaches the ...

It's a Cornucopia.

He knows the word is armory, even has some idea of what an armory looks like since he'd joined the military in Thirteen and been issued with his own weapons. But he knows a Cornucopia when he sees it, the shining rows of weapons laid out in a room that's open for anyone to see.

He knows better than to take that bait, though. Senses jangling from the mutts and the desolation, he expects traps before he even notices the pits full of spikes.

He chuckles, darkly.

"Just waiting for the gong," he says when he hears footfalls behind him, glancing over his shoulder at the sound of movement.

Julie Grigio | OTA

[redwinekindofgirl]

i. colony 2 | action & voice;

[Julie, being slight and small-boned as she is, wriggles her way under the doors befor they're wedged further open by the golems. What she finds on the other side is... disappointing, in all honesty. At least at first. To find nothing but another hallway at the other side of a previously locked door feels like one hell of an anticlimax.

But she ventures deeper with a torch in her hand, swinging the beam in wide arcs in front of her. Now and then she darts it behind her, thinking she hears the noise of someone following (is it you?) but eventually she reaches the vast space at the other end.]

Wow. [She murmurs, pointing the torch upwards and not hitting the uppermost parts of the ceiling with the light. Not that she needs to to be able to see that it's entirely different to what she left behind.] What the hell...

[Julie fumbles her communicator into her hand and holds it up to her mouth.]

Is anyone in here? This fucking... evil mirror Anchor?

ii. trick & treat

[Slow, careful exploration takes her up to the topmost areas of this dimly lit, abandoned zone. It hadn't been long into her trip through the quiet halls that she had turned her torch off and tucked herself into a corner for long enough to let her eyes get used to the dark, and though her heart is in her mouth at every clatter and bang she hears in the distance, the deeper she goes the less she feels she can turn back without finding something to take back with her.

She may not be the first to find the weapons room, but the boobytraps are still active when she gets there. Julie discovers this when she almost falls into a pit, losing her footing and falling backwards rather than forwards only by the grace of whoever is watching over her (and doing a shitty job of it, most of the time). The young woman scrambles backwards, cursing, then claps her hand over her mouth and looks over her shoulder.

Shit.

Hope nothing out there heard that.]

Poison | OTA

[writtendestiny]

i. colony 2

[She doesn't have a habit of being cautious about new things, but this time Poison hangs back and waits until the cracked-open door is levered open enough to see that there is nothing lurking behind it. Perhaps her years of experience in horrific situations has left her more wary than she realised.

But once the door is open, she wastes no time in investigating the hall beyond it. She reaches the door at the other end before she stops to examine the damage on it, running her fingers over the claw marks, spreading her hand to try and work out the size of whatever might have done it. And then there's the burn marks. It's... nothing like what she's seen in Anchor itself, where the damage looks more like gunfire, laser marks, and bloodstains.]

What happened here? [She puffs out a sigh, scratching the back of her neck and then pulling a small sketchbook out of her bag. With a pencil and by lining up the paper side by side she marks out the spaces between the claw marks, then sits in the spark-broken dark to make a few notes with her head bowed low towards the paper.]

ii. what remains

[Poison does, eventually, duck beneath the second door. What lies beyond it is not what she expected to find. From the outside, Anchor looks large, but she had never travelled far enough around it to see just how big it was... and how much of it they didn't seem able to access. Her cats stayed behind but her bird 'familiar' came along and unusually doesn't stray at all from her shoulder while she ventures into the strange space, hardly daring to even breathe too loudly.

The first creature she comes across isn't too startling. A skittish fox-like thing with no tail and an oozing, injured leg that runs away as soon as she shines a light on it. Still, something about it sends a lump up into her throat and makes the small hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

It's not too long after that, as she traverses the edge of what she thinks is the mirror to Anchor's park, that her torch flashes over something that makes her blood run cold. Large. Teeth. Something so uncannily unsettling about it that her first instinct is to duck down behind a half-fallen tree and turn off her light, hoping it hadn't seen her.

Poison has died many times, but she does not want to die again today.]

Anthony J. Crowley | OTA

[saunteredvaguelydownwards]

i. colony 2

[The demon doesn't go very close to that cracked-open door at all. Bad things come out of things like that, and his always-present low-key paranoia doesn't trust it one bit. He sees other curious residents poking around, some of them going inside, and he chews his lip as he absolutely does not worry about what might happen to them on the other side.]

This is stupid. [He says, and he pulls a cigarette out of the packet in his coat, toying with it without lighting it.] Would they jump off a cliff if someone told them there might be gold down there?

ii. what remains | network (open to action)

Anyone else leaning more into the idea that there's some kind of really messed up experiment going on here?
Or was.
Because I feel like the evidence is starting to mount.

[Anyone coming across Crowley while he types this will find him somewhere in the park in the 'other Anchor', having given in to his curiosity. Somehow, he's standing by a fresh corpse of one of the more grotesque beasts. It looks like it's been crushed to death by something huge...

Perhaps a very large snake.]

Deputy Pratt | OTA

[theweakhavepurpose]

Network | @ Pratt
If anyone is going to that other colony and happens to be poking around their agricultural level, lemme know if you see any more of these blotchy colored critters.

[He attaches a photo of what he's talking about but imagine a few extra legs and mutated and beefier.]

I caught two. Both males, but there's gotta be a female somewhere. Let me know, and try not to kill any of them.

What Remains
Pratt is a solitary creature so the fact he even came exploring is a shock. But he's here and after poking around the agricultural level for more livestock for his farm, he's gone downstairs. He hates it already, this place is set up to be some horrible evil twin of Anchor. If a city could have a goatee to denote it was the bad version, this would be it.

The creatures are grotesque and if he had more bullets for Jacob's pistol he'd probably start mercy killing them. Right now he's a level up watching them come and go from around the 'park' with a grimace on his face.