modblob: (Default)
Mods ([personal profile] modblob) wrote in [community profile] redshiftlogs2020-01-01 03:38 pm

january 2020. welcome to the void.

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.

einselective: (worried)

[personal profile] einselective 2020-01-17 02:18 am (UTC)(link)
"You're welcome to fix it yourself if you want." Oh no, she's not explaining anything to anyone that's that kind of ominously creepy. Unsure if it would make it worse, or better, she hazards as a suggestion, "Why don't you take off the mask?"
0thingsonmymind: (Glowing)

[personal profile] 0thingsonmymind 2020-01-17 02:26 am (UTC)(link)
He cants his head to the other side. Fix it? Was this place for fixing those things? He'll have to look through it. He'd ask about it but then she asks him to take his mask off and no.

He shakes his head and takes a step back. He does not remove the mask. He's totally not creepy. At all. Ever.
einselective: (u what now)

[personal profile] einselective 2020-01-17 02:37 am (UTC)(link)
Creepy masked man taking a step back is at least better than creepy masked man advancing. Nonthreatening at least; she wouldn't have been above fleeing to a few hours ago, before she will/would/had arrived. Still isn't, if need be.

"Can you speak?" Marian asks, with a little authoritative-ness. The silence only adds to the eerie feeling, and she doesn't care for that much at all either.
0thingsonmymind: (Default)

[personal profile] 0thingsonmymind 2020-01-17 02:45 am (UTC)(link)
He shakes his head. Technically he can talk but he refuses to do so almost always.

He cants his head and points at her. Who are you?
einselective: (not this shit again)

[personal profile] einselective 2020-01-21 01:01 am (UTC)(link)
Marian can hazard a guess at his meaning but the whole thing is still making her somewhat uncomfortable, clearly. It doesn't really hurt to give a name, she supposes, with some trepidation.

"I'm Dr. Tenebris. Can you write? Or type?" As clunky as it is (as clunky as her own watch/pack, maybe even slightly more refined) it's easy to find her communicator in her pocket and show it to him, by way of example.
0thingsonmymind: (Watching)

[personal profile] 0thingsonmymind 2020-01-21 01:17 am (UTC)(link)
He nods. He can write and type, but there's an easier way.

Words appear in the air before him.
ican
this
einselective: (u what now)

[personal profile] einselective 2020-01-21 01:48 am (UTC)(link)
Holographic text generation? It's Marian's first guess at least. She's seen enough not-entirely-explicable things by now that it goes on the mental list for another time.

"That's good. Who are you?" she questions in return. The least she can do is get a name to go with this creepy... person.
0thingsonmymind: (Watching)

[personal profile] 0thingsonmymind 2020-01-21 01:49 am (UTC)(link)
If she tries she'll find her hand just goes through the text. Its basically a hologram, just a magic one.

iam call ed
brian
Edited (letters are escaping) 2020-01-21 01:50 (UTC)