january 2020. welcome to the void.

[modblob]

Who: Everyone in Anchor.
What: Seventh Introductory Mingle
When: The Month of January 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.

a. champagne supernova.

Normally, the changes in the sky are subtle, happening between glances or over the course of days.

That's not the case now, when the bright sky with its three suns is wiped away in an explosion of blue light, right at sunrise on the morning of January 1st. The light pulses across the sky in uneven blazes, sending out lattices of what might be lightning or something worse. There's no moon. No brightness. Just this lightning-storm brilliance in space, shedding little light on the world below.

And the suns don't come back on. As the day wears on, the supernova brightness in the sky starts to fade out and no new light appears. The sky is static and black, with no stars, no moons, no suns. The mild rolling blackouts that started with the opening of the relaxation room intensify with the sudden loss of solar power, as the backup systems try to compensate for the increased use of power.

For a moment, power goes out in Anchor entirely, leaving the place plunged into darkness.

The darkness doesn't last. Thanks to those generators everyone worked so hard to sort out, the backup systems struggle back to life, keeping the lights on and the bar, kitchen, and agricultural supports open, but there are some things that the limited power just can't cover.

b. tower of babelfish.

The first, and perhaps the most noticeable system to start failing, are the auto-translation programs. While not affecting every area in Anchor equally, communication between those who speak different languages is going to be a lot more difficult. The effects are spotty, coming and going, sometimes completely failing, leaving only people's naturally-spoken languages available. Sometimes it just struggles, making conversations sound a lot more like babelfish translations than recognizable speech. People themselves seem to be affected differently by the translation struggles, depending on who and where they are. There's no rhyme or reason to when and how it fails. But the problem persists through most of the month.

c. the hidden passage.

The second system failure is harder to spot.

At the end of what seemed to be a maintenance hallway, a set of doors have appeared from behind what used to be a shielded hologram of a dead end. The doors stick out from their surroundings: thick metal, barred heavily from the outside. A clear attempt to keep something locked away inside, not to keep people from entering.

For those adventurous enough, or foolish enough, to wrestle the locks open, a problem will reveal itself. A short flight of stairs, leading down into an area flooded by murky water. It's hard to see more than branching halls down below.

Those who choose to brave the water will find a hallway lined with bulkheads and sealed doorways, all guarding rooms that could be accessed with the right combination of smarts and brute force. It's the question of what would be ruined by the water if the doors are opened that might give people pause. What kind of secrets could be wiped out or destroyed if the doors are forced and the water passes through the bulkheads? Can the water be drained? How?

But there is one room open, or mostly open, where the bulkhead doors didn't quite manage to seal when the area flooded. It'll be a squeeze, for bigger characters, but the flooded room beyond contains artifacts preserved behind glass - strange medallions, strings of glowing beads, broken sceptres, arrows fletched with feathers from creatures no one has ever seen before.

Only one object isn't sealed away. It's a handful of small orbs, with shifting colors, held in place by a shield array that still seems to function, for the most part. They can be touched, can even be removed from the stand with the right know-how or a willingness to smash stuff.

But once an orb is touched, the colors start to spin more rapidly. The more it's handled, the brighter and faster the colors shift. Whether it takes hold immediately or not is up to you, but those who handled the orb will find the bright colors start to glow under the surface of their skin, in the shape of veins, glowing bright for a few minutes before fading. And those people bring a different kind of contagion back with them to the surface. Memory loss, communicated from one person to the next via contact. It can be partial or complete, or not happen to your character at all - they can be an unwitting "carrier" of the effects, passing it on without experiencing the losses themselves. The loss can last from hours to weeks, with carriers being "infected" for the duration of that time.

It also leaves behind magical traces, ones that don't fade after memories return. The cleverest might start to wonder if it wasn't a kind of inoculation, though against what, it remains to be seen.

Navigation.

Comments

Deputy Pratt || OTA

[theweakhavepurpose]

A. A Feast He Will Not Eat
Pratt has returned from exploring the crash, and just in time for the power to go out. Fantastic. Beside him Princess Thugg is looking a little worse for wear. She's wet from the decontamination showers, and just spent a few hours wearing a doggy gas mask so she's not a happy wolf.

Currently she's wearing a harness with a makeshift cart attached to it, dragging a slightly bloody bundle of fur.

Pratt has killed one of the reindire and has the meat neatly dressed and trussed up in the skin. He's heading towards the kitchen to store the meat for whoever wants it (not him), and now he's wishing he brought a flashlight.

B. Being a coward has advantages - Network Post - Video

[Pratt has been down to see the orbs, but you know what he's not going to touch? Weird shiny orbs. Not until he gets more information, he knows just enough about magic to be wary of something that might vaporize him.

The video feed opens on one of the orbs, swirling with some unknown magic.]

Anyone know what these things are? They look kinda important.

B

[citharede]

[ Athena leans in toward her screen like that will give her a better look and not just give Pratt a clear shot up her nose. ]

No idea. Poke it.

[theweakhavepurpose]

I'm not gonna touch it. I don't want to get vaporized if this thing is ten thousand volts of electricity.

It looks like some Lord of the Rings thing. Which means it might turn me into a bunch of bugs or something.

[citharede]

Did that happen in Lord of the Rings? Man I haven't read those books in like ten thousand years.

[ She gets up from the chair at the little desk in her room, heading for the door. ]

Where'd you find those things anyway? I'll poke 'em.

[theweakhavepurpose]

There was a maintenance hallway that was flooded, I was gonna see if maybe the flooding down there is why we're not getting much water pressure upstairs but now there's all these things.

This room is fucking weird there's all this other crap too.

[He spins the camera around to show what looks like a weird exhibit of strange objects, each on a podium and behind glass. There's some shiny necklaces, what looks to be a ceremonial dagger that's missing a handle and other odds and ends.]

Maybe I found some remnant of the people who used to live here like some creepy museum to them.

[citharede]

Woah.

[ THAT'S AWESOME. Okay also creepy, but seriously, this place keeps getting more Big Mysterious Adventure-y with every passing hour. ]

Did you try breaking the glass? Where's the maintenance hallway? I'm totally coming to see this.

[theweakhavepurpose]

Bottom floor, head for the fountain if you go straight there's some greenish tubes? And it's kinda past that.

I tried to knock one of them out of there with one of these broken stick things. [he means the sceptres]. But no go. I guess I should be glad I didn't set off a bunch of alarms or some Indiana Jones booby trap.

B.

[hypothermic]

They're shiny.

That's important.

[theweakhavepurpose]

Shiny and suspicious. I tried to knock one of them out of there with one of the sticks laying around.

No go.

[hypothermic]

So brave. Thank you for your sacrifice. Don't know where we would be without you.

Next time why don't you let one of the big boys handle it?

[theweakhavepurpose]

If you want to take 10,000 volts if this thing is rigged up, then be my guest.

a.

[scowlish]

With the power going out, Onni's been spending most of the day securing things in the apartment, making sure everything is secure even in the absence of light. Thankfully, he's well used to living without electricity and had a good backup store of candles and extra blankets in case it's cold, scavenged over the months he's been here.

The next move is to check the kitchen to make sure it's still working, and if not to find a way to warm the leftovers he'd had in the fridge so they can be eaten before they go bad. A campfire down in the park would do for heating it up, and he's sure he'll have takers if he offers some on the network to anyone who might be hungry.

But just as he's getting up to the kitchen he spies a man with a large wolf or dog of some sort, dragging an obviously handmade cart with a bundle of fur and meat on it that looks familiar. Blinking, Onni raises a brow and lifts a hand.

"Is that a reindeer?"

[theweakhavepurpose]

"Sort of." He looks down at PT who's happy enough to stop walking and dragging this around, especially since she mostly just wants to eat it all. "It was kind of a reindeer but with weird.. claws."

Talons is more like it, but he can't really describe the things without it sounding super strange.

"You can recognize that from a pile of parts?"

[scowlish]

At that comment, Onni's brow raises and he makes a 'hm' in his throat.

"Did you see its eyes before it died?"

It's a serious question for all that he says it conversationally, because that kind of mutation sounds like something that might have happened because of the Rash. Onni is pretty sure at this point that there's no Rash here, but it's always worth being cautious.

"And yes, I've eaten my fair share of reindeer. Are you planning to cook it? It can be a bit finnicky."

[theweakhavepurpose]

"It's eyes? Yes I suppose so?" He's not sure what Onni is getting at. He didn't make a habit of staring down the animals that he hunted. He made sure they didn't suffer and then field dressed them as quickly as possible.

Other than the creature having strange talons it hadn't seemed to abnormal, it had reacted like any other animal he'd hunted.

"I was going to take it to the kitchens, I don't eat meat - but someone will want it. It can feed a lot, and we can freeze the rest. Better to be prepared if theres a famine or the game becomes diseased or the crops die." If there's a worst case scenario, Pratt has imagined it.

B; text; @apocalypseArisen

[livingdeadgirl]

[ Why yes, Ami does have a new display name! But she's still using the same text formatting, so it's pretty obvious who it is. ]

ooh i have no idea
but theyre very pretty arent they
what do they do

@Pratt

[theweakhavepurpose]

No clue. I'm not gonna touch them. This isn't Jackass i'm not gonna get vaporized on camera for public viewing.

[livingdeadgirl]

to be fair you dont know for sure that they will vaporize you
for all you know they might hold answers to the deepest mysteries of existence
or they could even be edible!
those are definitely the only three options though

[theweakhavepurpose]

I'll give you a pic of Princess Thug upside down sleeping if you come down here and lick one.

[livingdeadgirl]

whos princess thug

A

[sleepyhollowed]

[If blindness came with any benefits, one would have to be not exactly needing the lights to navigate.]

[Kieran has been practicing moving around Anchor with nothing but his cane and memory, and he's gotten pretty good at it over the months. Enough that he's capable of navigating around the kitchen and fixing himself something to eat without much trouble--it just can't involve more cooking than using the microwave or a toaster (both of which are amazing inventions. keep your computers and your TVs, guys, the toaster is the future).]

[Kieran hears the familiar taps of Princess Thug's claws against the floor, and his head whips up.]

H-Hey, Pratt? Is that you?

[theweakhavepurpose]

[It's been reassuring to see Kieran up and about. While Carlisle might not have restored his sight, at least he'd stopped the bleeding and stabilized him. They could have been watching Kieran die that day instead of... well watching a whole different sort of horror.]

Yep. Evening.

Or, well I think it's evening, it's kind of hard to tell.

[Though he realizes after he says that that Kieran doesn't know about the power outage or the super nova or any of that. Awkward. Princess Thug eases the tension by padding over to do a sniff.]

[sleepyhollowed]

[A horror that, to this day, Kieran hasn't grasped in its entirety. To be honest, that's probably a mercy for the already heavily traumatized cowboy.]

[He tilts his head at that last part, taking the time to pet Prices Thug's fuzzy head once he feels her wet nose against his palm.]

What's goin' on that it's hard to tell what time of day it is?

[theweakhavepurpose]

There's some kind of... I'm not even sure how to describe it.

There was this bright flash in the sky. Have you ever seen the Northern Lights? Like that but a zillion times more intense. That went on for a bit and now it's super dark outside. And it has been for a few days, like maybe the sun went out?

[sleepyhollowed]

...

I ain't never heard of the sun just... goin' out.

[That's so weird. THAT'S SO WEIRD. HOW DOES THAT EVEN HAPPEN???]

[That said, now that Kieran knows, he's in pure panic mode.]

W-What do we do about it? Do you think it's gonna... I-I don't know... Uh... k-kill us? Or s-somethin'?