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

[sleepyhollowed]

[Kieran's just about to ask about the deal with the trolls and the fact that Reynir seems to be so nonchalant about such monsters existing...]

[...but then a cat shows up.]

[Everything else is forgotten.]

[Including Reynir's question.]

What a cute little kitty you got there!

[Kieran catches up to Reynir, eyes following the cat. He hesitant in trying to pet her, and his hand is stuck in that awkward in-between where he's not quite reaching out, but he's certainly ready to start with the ear and chin scratches at the drop of a dime.]

[It's only then that he remembers the fact that his new friend actually asked him something. Probably shouldn't be rude when you're first meeting someone in a weird place...]

O-Oh! I, uh, I've been here for maybe a month or so? Not too long. Not as long as some of the folks here, at least.

[braidmage]

[ Luckily for Kieran, cats know nothing of hesitation. Kisa sees a human hand and makes a beeline for it, TARGET ACQUIRED. She may never have met Kieran before but she shows no shyness, and in a second she is just absolutely mashing her face against his hand in a demanding, clumsy way. Reynir watches the interaction with a bright smile; not only is Kisa not afraid of Kieran, but she seems to like him already. That's a pretty great sign. Reynir trusts her judgment about people. She's a clever one. Except when it comes to rolling around in dust. ]

Her name is Kisa. Or Kisu. Or Kissekat. Or- well. Whatever kitty is in your language, that's her.

[ The cat, Kieran will notice, is actually wearing something. Not quite a collar, but some kind of small sash draped across her shoulders. She seems not to mind it, which is definitely unusual cat behavior, but then she is from another world. ]

So then let me ask you - is it true what people have been telling me? Everybody here's from different... different worlds?!

[ His voice still goes pretty hushed when he brings it up because even going as far as Denmark had seemed like a wild amount of excitement to Reynir not that long ago. Hell, going to the city and meeting people who weren't from his village had even seemed pretty huge. So meeting strangers from, somehow, other worlds entirely? IT'S A WHOLE LOT. ]

[sleepyhollowed]

A kitty named Kitty, huh? Fits her.

[Kieran chuckles, gladly playing with Kisa's soft fur, scratching behind ears and under her chin, careful with the sash, but keeping it in mind for future questions.]

[He matches Reynir's suddenly quiet energy with his own hushed voice. He's not sure what the secret is, but he does know better than to try and blab loudly when someone else is trying to stay on the down-low.]

Yeah! Uh, i-it's hard to believe, but we got people from all over the place! Some of us come from different times, other folks came from different planets... it's some wild stuff!

H-How about you? Where you from?

[braidmage]

Kit-tee.

[ He tries out the sound - most of what Kieran is saying sounds to Reynir's ears like Icelandic, but that part had come through untranslated. Interesting, how similar it is to the Icelandic name for the same thing - half the same! Kisa does not stay still, but keeps doing little circuits, running herself past Kieran's hand, rubbing her cheek into his knee and leg, and then coming back for more pets, her tail held high. ]

Different times...?!

[ Just. He's just going to blink a few moments. He understands, conceptually. It's just a WHOLE LOT to process.

At least he can answer Kieran's question, while he grapples with it. ]

I'm from Iceland. I would tell you the name of my village but you won't have heard of it, I promise. Even people from the city haven't heard of it. It's very very small. And um. It's Revised Year 90.

[ He says, as if anyone else has heard of that format for dates. For all he knows, apparently Kieran might be from his future. Or way back in the past, in the Old World. How strange it is being here! Like something out of a myth! ]

What about you?

[sleepyhollowed]

[Iceland... woah. Kieran's never met anybody from there before! How exciting!]

[It helps that Reynir's making a great first impression. Enough that Kieran's looking forward to eventually meeting that friend he mentioned.]

[But first, he has to process Reynir's words and answer a couple of questions.]

I'm, uh, I'm kinda the same. From America, but I ain't really got a town name to share with ya.

Don't know about any revised year stuff, though. Fer me, it's uh, it's 1899. AD, if that means anythin'.

[braidmage]

[ Reynir gives a little shrug of his shoulders and smile, when Kieran mentions America. ]

I've never heard of it, sorry. Is it anything like this place?

[ He doesn't specify in what ways - really he is just curious about other worlds, the same way he's been curious about other countries all his life. One of the reasons he had wanted to leave his village so badly was to find out about other places and other ways to live and people who had had lives very different to his own. And now he has more of a chance to do that than ever before.

At the mention of the date Kieran is from, Reynir's mouth drops open in surprise. ]

Eighteen ninety-nine?!

[ His voice squeaks on it, amused and shocked: ]

But that's so many years! That's, like, thousands!

[ The fact that the date hadn't reset in all that time implies a continuity in culture and history that is completely unthinkable to Reynir, honestly. Almost two thousand years of continuous keeping track... ]

What's AD mean?

[sleepyhollowed]

[For a moment, Kieran looks absolutely befuddled that nobody's ever heard about America of all places. He's pretty sure that most people have heard of the famous land of opportunity!]

[But that pales in comparison to the complex emotions Reynir seems to be cycling through. Kieran's not sure if he should smile or pat the poor guy on the shoulder.]

[He settles for the latter.]

...Y'know, I ain't really sure. I just know that's what people say.

What about yer Revised Year? What's that mean?

[braidmage]

[ Aw, man. He was really curious! Just one more unsolved mystery to go with the billion others that he'd discovered since he arrived here a few days back. But he doesn't blame Kieran for not knowing. As he is reminded, trying to talk about his own world's way of calculating dates, he isn't exactly a huge history buff, either. ]

The Old World collapsed ninety years ago. It was the end of the way everything had been before and it was all so different that I guess... someone made the decision to start the numbers from zero. For a new start.

[ Kisa, who seems to have marked Kieran to her satisfaction, makes her way back over to Reynir, who scoops her up in a practiced movement and sets her on his shoulder, where she likes to sit.

If Kieran doesn't know about revised years, he won't know why the change had been necessary. That strikes Reynir as an important thing to mention. So, spreading his hands out in an apologetic gesture, he explains: ]

There might have been an America in the Old World. I'm not really sure. There... was an Illness. Travelers carried it from one country to another and it spread really fast and- and pretty much all the people and animals on Earth got infected or died or both. The only reason Iceland was mostly okay was I guess they closed the borders super early on and nobody was allowed in or out for like, a really really long time. It's an island, so - that was possible. But all the different places in the world lost contact with one another. The old governments and religions and economies and all of it just - died.

[sleepyhollowed]

[Woah... that's a lot to process.]

[If what Reynir is saying, then sometime in the future--way in the future, he hopes--there's going to be a complete worldwide collapse. As far as he knows, up until 2017, everyone is safe (that seems to be a somewhat popular year for other people he's met on Anchor), so at least the next century and a half is going to be okay.]

[Still, sucks to hear, though.]

Sounds like you and Kitty and yer other friend are from way in the future, then.

I ain't heard of any sickness that can do that. Not around the whole world, at least.

Kinda grim, when ya think about it.

[braidmage]

[ Reynir reaches up to run his fingers absently through Kisa's fur. It is plausible enough; Reynir is aware that the history of the Old World was long, and he has no reason to doubt Kieran's guess is right. But it's strange, thinking about speaking to someone from the long-distant past. He's never really mourned the loss of the Old World, because he had never known it. Never known anyone who knew it - not his parents or their parents or anyone in the village he'd grown up in.

But it occurs to him, when Kieran calls it grim, how awful this news must be to him. Even if it is so far in the future that he wouldn't personally live to see it, it's still like hearing that the world he loves has a death sentence. Reynir tries to imagine how he would feel, if he heard that sometime in the future, something on a similar scale happened, and everything he knows and loves was changed beyond recognition.

Reynir smiles sadly at Kieran. ]

Yeah. Kinda.

[ And it's not like he's blind to the ways the Illness is still causing tragedy. He'd been sheltered from it, growing up, but recently... he's learned a lot. Solemnly, he goes on: ]

Where I grew up is really safe, but a lot of places aren't anymore. Onni, my friend, the one who's here... when he was a kid, there was an outbreak in his village. He and his sister and his cousin, they got out but... they lost everything, just like that.

[sleepyhollowed]

[Oooh yeah, Kieran can sympathize with the whole 'losing everything and having to start from scratch' front. He's kind of looking forward to meeting Onni even more now, if for no other reason than to commiserate with the guy.]

I'm sorry ta hear that, friend.

[He claps Reynir on the shoulder, though, nice and friendly, before he smiles.]

Hey! At least we know how important it is to look after one another, right?

[SIL..ver li..nings...?]

cw brief suicide mention

[braidmage]

It happened a long time before I met any of them.

[ Reynir says it with a little shake of his head, smiling softly in gratitude for the support regardless. This is not his tragedy; he had just wanted to give an example of the kind of thing that can happen. So Kieran could understand the world he's from, and how different it is to be here.

There are other examples he could give, Reynir thinks. More recent ones, that involve him directly. Sitting on the floor of the tank, convinced he was going to die, when a troll had grazed him, just barely not enough to break the skin. Sitting on the floor of the tank, listening to the cacophony of threats and screams from the vengeful ghosts of people who had been euthanized with a fake cure, during the chaotic first months of the outbreak. Sitting on the floor of the tank, talking to Tuuri through a makeshift barrier, not able to see her or go near her because she'd been exposed and they had to wait a few weeks to find out if she'd been infected. Tuuri, killing herself without even saying goodbye to him.

No. Better not get into anything more recent, anything more personal. Reynir is trying to plant, right now. He is trying to focus on survival and hope and the things that are good. ]

It is. To look after one another, and- and be as careful as you can, and take as many precautions as possible.

[ He lifts down Kisa again, petting her. It occurs to her that he has a lot of knowledge that would be essential if the Illness were to ever spread here, and that he ought not to keep it all to himself. So he looks at Kieran, and explains: ]

That's why I'm glad she came with me. Cats are immune to the disease, and they can sense it. If you ever see a cat hissing at somebody or - or at something you can't see. I mean, as far as we know there aren't any infected animals here, but just in case, if you ever see that, you should get out of there, as quickly as you can.

[ Kisa walks up to Kieran again, stretching her back legs as she goes, tail swishing in mild curiosity. ]

[sleepyhollowed]

[All Kieran can do is nod in both agreement and understanding with Reynir's words. He's unsure as to whether or not this sickness is something he should worry about at this point, but then he remembers how that fungus had sneaked up on him so easily and quickly. Not the most promising of starts.]

[That just makes Reynir's information all the more useful, and Kieran all the more grateful for it.]

Thanks. I'll be sure to listen to Kitty.

[He grins and then bends down to pick the cat up, if she'll let him.]

A smart girl like you is gonna keep all of us safe, ain'tcha?

[braidmage]

[ The little cat not only allows herself to be picked up, but actually starts purring pretty much the moment Kieran lifts her from the ground. Maybe it's unusual, but she'd spent an unusual amount of her first year of life being carried by humans. Her purr is not the loudest, but Reynir can hear it all the same, and grins at Kieran. He likes this guy. He might be a stranger from a strange time, but Reynir is glad there is someone like this around in this odd place. ]