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

memloss

[lallipop]

Lalli isn't far from the agricultural level himself, so he hears Onni just fine when he starts yelling. The rest is automatic. It doesn't matter that Onni is calling for people that he should not be, that he wouldn't call for--only that when Onni calls, Lalli responds. S he does.

He rounds the corner and immediately tenses. Onni looks fine, but something's... wrong. Something Lalli can't identify. There's something in Onni's body language that sets Lalli's teeth on edge, and he slows like he's approaching a skittish animal.

"Onni?"

Something's happened. He doesn't know what, but something has. And if it's Onni it's happened to, Lalli has nobody to ask for help.

[scowlish]

[By the time Lalli appears, Onni is reaching a level of panic that feels a little bit like dying. His heart is going too fast, his breathing is too shallow and quick, his face is burning and everything is tense. When he hears his name, for just a moment, he's completely relieved, because the timbre of the voice and the intonation is familiar, it's Lalli, even if the voice is still not quite right.]

Lalli! What happened? Where is everyone?

[He jogs toward his cousin, but hesitates and falls still as he registers how tall Lalli is compared to him, and how sharp his face is. Onni remembers a round-faced child with big eyes, his weird little cousin who pokes him in the eye all the time and disappears for weeks at a time with grandma.]

Lalli? Where's...grandma and Tuuri, and mom and dad and everyone?

[lallipop]

[Lalli stares at him.

He doesn't understand. Grandma and Tuuri and their parents are all dead. Onni knows that. Onni is the only one who really understands what that means. That he would ask about them is so incomprehensible that Lalli has no idea how to react.

He can't bring himself to say it, to speak the whole truth.]

They're... they're not... here.

[There's a panic rising in his own chest, too, a fuzz that fills his ears and crowds out all thoughts except that he wants to leave this conversation immediately. He takes a step back.]

Why--why are you asking me that?

[scowlish]

[It's definitely Lalli, there's no mistaking it. But he's taller, lanky and sharp-faced and looks kind of unnervingly like a not-old version of grandma. He's staring at Onni and Onni is staring back, trying to process what he's seeing. And of course it's obvious what's different about Lalli, but it's really, really hard to understand or accept it or even deal with.

Lalli is grown up.

Onni bites at the inside of his lip, remembers the sound of his voice and how deep it is, the feeling of stubble against his fingertips when he touched his throat. Somehow, he's also grown up, or at least his body is, but he doesn't remember growing up, or know where he is, or where everyone else is.]

So it's just you and me? I...

[He looks around himself, still scared and a little bewildered.]

Because...we were supposed to meet them at the harvest feast, but I just lay down for a minute and...

[A pause, and then he bursts out.]

Lalli, you're so BIG.

[lallipop]

[The harvest feast.

Pinpricks run down Lalli's face and neck, a sensation that he recognizes as blood draining in shock, leaving him pale. The last thing Onni remembers is the harvest feast.

They'd had many when they were children, of course, and without knowing anything further Onni could mean any one of them. But Lalli knows in his heart there's only one Onni could be talking about.

He doesn't know why or how. Maybe some of this place's stupid magic. Maybe... maybe everything has been too hard for Onni, and he's regressed just to cope. It doesn't matter. What matters is that Onni has lost all memory of what happened to their village, to them.

The truth pours out of his mouth mechanically.]

The harvest feast was over twelve years ago.

[His throat his dry, his body is numb. He could be saying this better. But that's always the case, with him.]

You're twenty-eight.

[scowlish]

[For a moment or two, Onni just stares at Lalli, his eyes big while he tries to process that. Twelve years ago? He's twenty-eight? So Lalli is...]

So you're...twenty?

[It comes out a little choked, and he lifts his hands again, to feel over his face. It's hard to feel the difference, but there's stubble under his skin, and his cheeks feel sharper, less soft. He swallows hard and drops his hands, opens his mouth and then closes it, looks around as if he's expecting someone to pop out and tell him it's a joke, but no one does. It's completely bewildering, and he looks back at Lalli.]

But...I don't remember becoming twenty-eight. When...how...was I in a coma?

[The panic is mostly gone, replaced by a sort of shock that rings in his ears, and then abruptly there are tears welling up in his eyes. Huffing, he turns away from Lalli and purses his lips, fights with the tears while he tries to catch his breath. He's got to set a good example, after all, for his little sister and his littler cousin...]

Wh-why are we here? Where is this place? Did we move? This doesn't look like Saimaa...

[lallipop]

[Lalli watches as Onni struggles to compose himself and feels very far away. There's some guilt that he isn't sympathizing more, but mostly he just feels like he's floating. Like this is a dream, and he just needs to ride it out until he wakes up.

But he knows how dreams feel, and he isn't lucky enough for that this time.]

It isn't. It's a place called Anchor. People get pulled here from all over. Most people here aren't even from Finland, they're... I think some of them are from the Old World, or a different place altogether. I don't know how it works or why. You and I are the only ones here from... [He can't help it; he stumbles.] ...Saimaa.

[Lalli looks down where his hands are twisting over themselves, fascinated by his own fidgeting.]

I don't know why you don't remember. I don't know anything else.

[scowlish]

[It takes a few long moments for him to choke the tears down and rub them out of his eyes with the heel of a hand, holding his breath until it starts being regular again instead of hitched. He feels like a total idiot, but the fear and confusion is overwhelming and he can't control it, it keeps welling up and he keeps barely swallowing it down.

Lalli explains what's happened, what the place is called and what the people are like - all foreign, they're the only ones from Saimaa. He sees the way Lalli stumbles over the name of their home and a flutter of terror starts up on top of the low-level panic. Lalli is fidgeting, and Onni knows things aren't good when Lalli starts fidgeting like that, avoiding any chance of eye contact - he's 20, but he's still so much the same in so many ways.

Onni has no idea what he's like as a 28-year-old. If he even has a personality or if he's been in a coma or something and he's still 15 but in this old body, and the tears well up again. He makes a noise of frustration and pushes his hands over his eyes.]

So I wasn't in a coma, then? I'm...

[Okay. Lalli had said that he doesn't remember, not that he'd been unconscious or gone or...anything. Maybe it's just temporary, or...something?]

Okay, okay, um...

[A few deep breaths.]

How long have we been here? Are we trying to get home?

[lallipop]

[Lalli can't do anything for Onni's distress. Even if he knew what to do, his limbs feel like lead. All he can do is watch and wait, uselessly, the same as he's always done whenever Onni loses composure.]

A few months. Nobody knows how to get home, we're all stuck here.

You should talk to Reynir, he's your friend. [He's better at helping you than I am, he thinks but doesn't say.] He's tall and has red hair and always looks like he doesn't know what's going on. He lives with us.

[In a faraway sense Lalli realizes he's panicking, in the same way he does when he's on patrol and caught out by beasts--clamping down on his fear and acting only on instinct, purely focusing on survival, so that he can go to pieces later instead. But this isn't a survival situation and he has no instincts here; he simply doesn't know how to fix this.]

[scowlish]

[The tears keep welling up and he keeps swallowing them down, trying his best to be strong and keep it together. But Onni has lived in Saimaa his whole life, in the same village, without leaving it except to go to the farming island, and being somewhere new is so overwhelming, let alone realizing that he's now 28 and doesn't remember 12 years during which he was apparently growing up and continuing to live. And now Lalli is 20, older than him somehow, and he's feeling just...overwhelmed.

But he's doing his best to keep it together. He keeps biting his lips and swallowing the fear and trying to be strong for Lalli even if Lalli is older now, somehow.]

Okay...and I've been around for the past 12 years, right? We grew up together? I don't remember any of it, I'm sorry.

[A pause, then, when Lalli says that he should talk to Reynir and describes him, that he lives with them, and Onni shakes his head a little.]

You're not leaving me, right?

[lallipop]

[Lalli takes another step back. Then another. His expression crumples; he'd never been good at keeping a straight face whenever his emotions were too strong to contain. And this is very much one of those times.]

Yeah. We--we grew up together.

[He keeps moving backward, unconsciously, looking at the ground, shaking his head like he can simply will the situation into unreality. He can't deal with this. He can't but he's the eldest now, so it's his responsibility to take care of Onni, to know what to do, but he can't. It's too much. He can't think. He keeps shaking his head no.]

I-I can't...

[There go his hands toward his ears.]

[scowlish]

[Even at fifteen, Onni had known Lalli well enough to recognize the signs of an impending meltdown, but he doesn't have the memories of how to deal with it properly. Doesn't have those years of experience behind him, all those trials and errors and learning experiences. So he steps forward toward Lalli and reaches out for him as his hands lift to clap over his ears and closes his hands against his shoulders.]

It's okay Lalli, don't worry.

[It's similar to how he might comfort Tuuri, squeezing his shoulders and then patting carefully.]

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you, it's okay. Calm down, don't worry...

[lallipop]

[Everything Onni does is wrong. The way he moves, the way he talks, and for all that they look the same as they always have Lalli is eight years old again, sitting on a boat, listening to Tuuri cry and Onni alternate between unconvincing, tight-lipped reassurances and grim silence, knowing without really understanding yet that everything they know and loved had just been forever destroyed. Being pulled along, utterly powerless, the only recourse just to weather it all.

The roaring in his ears is like the sound of the water.

All of it's too much, and he jerks away from Onni as soon as his hands take his shoulders. This Onni doesn't know how to help him.

But unlike him, Lalli does remember their history and the experiences that made it, and he knows how much he's capable of unintentionally hurting Onni. And he doesn't want to make this worse.]

Sorry. I--

[You're not leaving me, right? Guilt spikes in his gut. But he can't do this. Not right now. He doesn't know how to be the pillar, and suddenly he wonders how Onni ever managed it. He wants to, but he's eight years old and his grandmother is telling him to run.]

I'm sorry. Find Reynir. Okay? He'll help you. I'll find you later. I promise.

[scowlish]

[He realizes he's done it wrong when Lalli jerks away from him so harshly, the minute he touches him. Onni drops his hands to his sides, his fingers closing into loose fists at his sides, his body a bit tense, and he keeps looking at Lalli, unsure of how to help, unsure of what to do. For the moment, at least, most of his own distress is forgotten because he's worried about his cousin.

But Lalli steps back and away from him and Onni lets him go, can feel the tears welling up again because Lalli doesn't look any better and he can kind of tell it's going to happen right before it happens. Lalli looks at him and apologizes and tells him to find Reynir and that he'll find him later and Onni can tell he's going to go. He's going to leave him out here by himself in a place he doesn't know, and Onni's heart starts pounding, lifts a hand to reach out for him.]

Lalli, don't...please don't leave me by myself...