september 2019. welcome to the void.

[modblob]

Who: Everyone in Anchor.
What: Third Introductory Mingle
When: The Month of September 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. turrets.

That power surge kicked off some sh... stuff, all right. It took a while for the systems to cycle back on, but two new areas of Anchor are now accessible and usable. One of them is nice and relaxing and safe, and we'll get to that one in a minute. The other one, addressed first, is not very nice and not very relaxing and definitely not safe.

The internal defense systems on the upper levels have come to life, and have targeted anyone within their range as a hostile entity. Get ready to run the gauntlet if you want to turn them off - you'll have to dodge lasers, bullets, and aggressive defense bots (that can be rewired and/or rebooted to assist characters instead of trying to murder them). The reward? Getting to the heavily protected (think many many murderbots and lasers) security control room. If you can make it, you'll be able to reboot the internal defenses, turning off the aggressive targeting and having access for the first time to surveillance of almost all of Anchor. Those areas your characters didn't know were there? Revealed. Those dense patches of jungle-like growth in the agricultural center? You've got a spotlight into their heart.

Though, huh, not all the cameras seem to be working. What's with those screens that show up from time to time that are nothing but static?

Oh well, doesn't really matter, does it?

b. hot springs episode.

One of the areas adjacent to the bar and intimacy lounge has been sputtering on and off ever since the power surge. One evening, with a loud crack and a humming sound that slowly dissipates, the lights come on and water starts flowing down the artificial waterfall into the fountain out front. The spa is back online!

The lobby is inviting and zen, with holographic walls that depict scenic locations (some of them very unlike Earth), with fountains splashing delicately on either side of the door. The attendants are slightly malfunctioning bots, but the most harm they'll do is bring you six towels when you ask for one, or a bucket of massage oil to work on those knots in your back with.

There are three areas in the spa, each of them fully-outfitted with towels, robes of all sizes, fuzzy slippers, the works. One has all the amenities of a Turkish bath, right down to the fantastically arched roofs and mosaics of Istanbul. One is designed not unlike a Japanese hot spring, though the spring is heated artificially rather than naturally. The springs are large enough to be communal in some areas and small enough to be private in others, varying in depth from deep enough to swim on one end and shallow enough to sit on the bottom on the other. All hot springs have a stone shelf around the edges where those who don't want to swim can sit. The last area is more Western, with steam rooms, saunas, massage tables, and mud baths for the adventurous.

One thing all of these areas have in common: the settings on virtually everything can be adjusted to taste. Not in the traditional way, either. The steams and waters can be tweaked to be soporific, can serve as muscle relaxants, can ease anxiety, and can even bolster moods. None of these effects are involuntary, and none of them are brought on by drugs - it's more an advanced mix of pheromones and harmless compounds that can affect a single person or a given pool or room. Also, the baths and hot springs have adjustable bubble settings. The water colors can change, some of them even allowing characters to dye their hair the color that's been selected for the tub without staining their skin. Bubbles of all kinds can rise up out of the water, from the foamy comfort of childhood bubble baths to hovering golden bubbles that chime when you pop them. Characters can choose from a variety of bath salts, scents, and oils - the spas were designed not just for relaxation, but for pure and simple fun.

c. joe's dirt.

So you've survived the security malfunction. You've washed off the dirt and anxiety at the spa. But the newly reactivated security stations throughout Anchor have revealed something odd. There's a blip in the power systems in one area of the agricultural level, like something is siphoning off power from the main lines. Tracking down the source in the deep tangle of underbrush won't be easy, and there may be a few mutated, fanged, clawed cattle that maneuver shockingly well between the trees, but eventually you'll come to a breach in Anchor's wall. At first it just looks like a crack, but it's large enough to squeeze through and there's the darkness of an open space behind it. A tunnel, leading down into the earth outside, well below surface level and thus largely safe.
Wires run along the roof and floor, though the tunnel itself is dark. Walk long enough and you'll come to a wider space, open enough for two or three people to move around comfortably at the same time. It's still dark, lit only by screens that show the same security feeds that are available at the stations throughout the city. And others. Angles on the surface that show Anchor from a distance, and other visuals that don't show Anchor at all, trained instead on massive structures or formations or lakes out on the surface somewhere. But there's something more disturbing: there are cameras set to record some people's rooms. And the only rooms that are shown are occupied.

Someone has been here, recently enough to track where new people have moved in.

On the floor in one corner, there's a crumpled photograph of a man some might recognize as Creepy Joe, happy and whole, with a little girl sitting on his shoulder. It looks like it's been stamped into the dirt.

Navigation.

Comments

[abheirrant]

Carlisle shifts uncomfortably, his foot sliding back a step as though to physically distance himself from his rising apprehension. He's not sure what to make of this -- Pratt says he met him, but he doesn't remember it... and yet, what he said about Bear Den -- that it is notably lacking in bears -- is something Carlisle recognizes himself as having said before when explaining his home, an apt description he picked up from one of his uncles long ago. Perhaps Pratt heard it from somewhere else. He must have. How likely is it he met someone else from Bear Den in this place? How many worlds are there?

Or maybe, Carlisle considers internally, this man is a seer, an individual able to tell the future and read the minds of those around them. He's never placed much faith in such abilities, but he knows them to exist, however skeptical he may be of their merits. On the other hand, Pratt doesn't exactly look like what Carlisle thought a seer would. Furthermore, he hears no dishonesty in Pratt's voice, sees no physical signs to indicate he's telling anything but what he believes to be the truth. Carlisle doesn't feel him prodding into his mind, either, and, having once worked in them himself, he's usually quite sensitive to the presence of such magical intrusions in the body, particularly his own.

Or at least he was sensitive when he was alive. He was many things when he was alive: proud of his name despite his failures, gifted with a power he may no longer be able to use, trusted leader of a congregation in the town his family swore to protect. Now his name may be infamous, synonymous with the ruin he brought to Bear Den; his energies have shifted, necrotized until they presumably animated him on their own; his congregation is long gone, the people either dead or worse.

But he was happy in some other world, a teacher and friend to the stranger before him. It sounds so idealistic, so much so that Carlisle is reluctant to believe it, but there's so much he has seen already that he doesn't yet know how to believe: portals that bring people to other worlds, devices that can speak to one another, a man trapped in a pane of glass. Even he has become the walking dead, an utter perversion of his former self. Would he have believed this to be his ultimate fate a year ago? Or a week? Or the very day of his death?

There are other worlds, but he has yet to come to terms with the fact there might be other Carlisles. "I am him," Carlisle insists, feeling bitterness bubbling in his chest at the thought of this other life. It can't be true.

"I'm him," he tries again, the ground beneath him fading, discoloring, decaying, "and I've never been anyone else. I've never been anything else. But I- I don't remember any of that. Any of him or what you said."

Did Pratt meet him when he was already dead? Was he aware of himself before, only to forget? How much has he lost?

The grass at his feet withers the longer he stands there; he takes another step back, his body tense beneath all his layers. "I don't know you or a Hadriel, so you must- you must be mistaken after all. You have to be."

[theweakhavepurpose]

Pratt doesn't know how to respond, how to convince this Carlisle of who he used to be and why they know each other. He's not even sure if he should.

Most of all he just feels sad. Like the last vestiges of hope are melting away. One of the few people he could truly commiserate with and who seemed to understand the guilt and the shame of becoming something you abhor - and that had been taken away and replaced with... well with Carlisle. But not the one he'd befriended.

"I'm not mistaken at all. Here. Look." He reaches into the pocket of his pants, pulling forth a small stone etched with a rune. "You made this for me. For the final battle to help heal me. I used it a lot."

He rubs his thumb over the runes he doesn't understand that channeled a magic he barely believes in. But the item had helped. He'd activated it after he and Law tried to hold off far more enemies than they were capable of and he'd been slammed into a wall. Ultimately it hadn't kept him from dying after he'd been riddled with bullets, but had kept him going far longer than he should have been able to.

All thanks to Carlisle.

[abheirrant]

Pratt offers him the rune-etched stone, and Carlisle's glowing eyes affix themselves on it, their light intense from his agitation. His hands shaking, he takes the rock, turning it over in his gloved fingers. The sigils are cleaner than his writing, too clean to be his unsteady script -- and how would he have etched them into the stone to begin with? This can't be his work.

But it is Anaric, the language of magicians. He recognizes the symbols, the way the lines curve around the stone. It's glyphcrafting -- of that much, he is absolutely certain. But a stone to heal him? Why would he give Pratt a stone to heal him instead of just doing it himself?

"I... I couldn't have made this." His voice is soft, filled with the same uncertainty that courses through him. Carlisle's thoughts start churning faster and faster, brewing into a storm. Final battle. They were friends. Perhaps they were separated, and he wanted to keep Pratt safe. Friends are such a rare commodity for Carlisle that he undoubtedly would want to keep him safe, assuming they did know each other and were friends. Which they weren't. He doesn't remember this, he reiterates to himself, the admission more damning by the second.

This couldn't have been him. Pratt is mistaken -- Pratt has to be mistaken.

He doesn't know someone else etched the runes; he doesn't realize he had years to hone his skills in glyphcrafting, to make friends and realize his full potential. He doesn't know he had a life there, one he never lived. All he knows is that the longer he looks at that stone and tries to wrap his head around its creation, the more he panics. His hands tremble violently; the stone slips from his fingers as he takes another step away. His gaze follows it to the ground, to the spot where he was standing -- the dirt there is dried, the grass having shriveled and died beneath his feet.

He couldn't have made that rock. He's not capable of such things -- certainly not anymore, not with what he's become. That dead patch of dirt proves who he is -- less Carlisle Longinmouth than the Blight Heir. Even if he was the Carlisle this man met, he certainly isn't anymore, and that thought utterly terrifies him.

Beneath his veil, his mouth opens to utter an apology; he doesn't get it out before he takes off running. He may barely be Carlisle these days, but he is still one thing: a coward, a man unwilling to face the truth -- and the guilt that accompanies it -- in full just yet.

[theweakhavepurpose]

Carlisle drops the stone and runs but behind him, Pratt's somber expression marginally lightens.

"You are definitely Carlisle."

There is nothing more quintessentially him than encountering something he doesn't have the words for and then running the hell away from it. One of them was bound to do it at some point - it was the reason they'd been friends in the first place after running away from situations they didn't want to be in.

He stoops and retrieves his rock, tucking it safely away and frowning a bit at the grass that had been nice and green and was now shriveled and dead. Had that always happened and Pratt had never noticed?

It seems unlikely given how much he'd prided himself on his garden. But Pratt isn't sure. He'll have to try to talk to him again another time.