modblob: (Default)
Mods ([personal profile] modblob) wrote in [community profile] redshiftlogs2019-09-04 09:06 pm

september 2019. welcome to the void.

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.

abheirrant: (❧ but none could be found)

[personal profile] abheirrant 2019-10-21 09:39 pm (UTC)(link)
Carlisle's eyes flick from the floor to Poison -- that is certainly a dangerous power, one he cannot imagine being placed in the hands of someone so young. Then again, he never imagined he'd rise from the dead and bring ruin to his entire town, yet here they both are, terrible examples of gifts gone wrong.

"What did you do?" he asks softly, no judgment in his voice. He's not in a place to cast such stones -- not anymore.
writtendestiny: (Default)

[personal profile] writtendestiny 2019-10-21 10:09 pm (UTC)(link)
He's not to know she did the worst of it before she even knew the power was hers.

"When I met Melcheron - that was his name - and he told me that my whole life was just... something written in a book, I stopped. I stopped eating, I stopped trying, I stopped doing anything." And when she thinks back on it, she's ashamed of how she acted. It had felt like the only thing she could do then.

"I couldn't stand the idea that I had no control over anything. It felt like my whole life had been a joke."
abheirrant: (❧ troubling times)

[personal profile] abheirrant 2019-10-21 10:23 pm (UTC)(link)
As someone who has felt as though he had little to no agency his entire life, Carlisle cannot help but commiserate, even if he cannot fully relate to the situation. To find out she was merely written into existence, her choices predetermined by the whims of a writer -- that is a struggle Carlisle cannot even imagine.

"Those you hurt, then" —he'd thought maybe she was the Hierophant, given what they were talking about and the way she worded it, but he assumes he may be wrong now that she mentions someone else— "who were they? And would they have not also been written into being?"
writtendestiny: (060)

[personal profile] writtendestiny 2019-10-26 08:30 pm (UTC)(link)
"Well... yes, of course. Knowing that didn't help, either."

She'd been ready to see it all end. A ridiculous, childish tantrum that had served little purpose at all, until it served as a vehicle for an important realisation.

"I decided that if I had no control over my life, I wouldn't live it, and... everything started to fade away. Everyone around me started to get sick. Even the Phaerie lords and ladies. I was... stubborn, and selfish, and I nearly killed them all." Poison frowns and shakes her head. There's no way to phrase it that makes it sound good.

"Because it was my story. It couldn't exist without me. Because I was the next Hierophant."
abheirrant: (❧ it only hid so much)

[personal profile] abheirrant 2019-10-26 08:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, his initial assumption had been right, in a way, but that doesn't make the reality Poison faced any easier to swallow.

"Like a poison to them," he muses under his breath. "In that regard, I suppose the name makes, um... sense."

Murmuring an apology at how rude his immediate thought was, he continues. "But you did not know, did you? It was an accident."
writtendestiny: (025)

[personal profile] writtendestiny 2019-10-28 09:18 pm (UTC)(link)
"I suppose so. But I chose my name, when I was fourteen." Just to make it clear, in all respects, that it wasn't something she got as a result of what she did before she finally realised her destiny.

"... I didn't know. I don't think I ever would have known. Melcheron was supposed to tell me... I think. He was murdered before he could."
abheirrant: (❧ something was missing)

[personal profile] abheirrant 2019-10-29 08:19 am (UTC)(link)
"Oh. Well, er."

He clears his throat, deciding another apology regarding the remark about her name would just make him look even more foolish. He's done plenty of that in this conversation already, what with his earlier tirade. At least there's one thing he can commiserate with her on:

"Make that two of us, then, who knew not what evil we could unleash upon our worlds."
writtendestiny: (010)

[personal profile] writtendestiny 2019-11-02 08:03 pm (UTC)(link)
It's not the first time someone has made a remark about her name and no doubt it won't be the last... nor the most colourful. 'Poison' is a strange thing to be called, even where she comes from.

"I was a child having a tantrum. Now, I'm the Hierophant, and the world is in my hands until I hand it over to my successor."

She says it so easily, so matter-of-factly.

"But I can't do anything here. This story isn't mine."
abheirrant: (❧ they weighed upon him,so heavy)

[personal profile] abheirrant 2019-11-03 02:46 am (UTC)(link)
"I cannot imagine this is a story many would choose, if given the chance. I certainly wouldn't."

Not that Anchor hasn't been a breath of figurative fresh air composed to the ruins of the life he left behind, but if he had his druthers, that life he left behind wouldn't be in ruins at all. He pushes a sigh through him.

"May both of our stories improve from here. I cannot imagine mine any worse, but... I suppose I thought that before, didn't I?"