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.

numerouno: (LXXIII)

[personal profile] numerouno 2020-07-02 02:53 am (UTC)(link)
His body freezes from the ground up, eyes wide and bright as he stares down the blade at his neck. That's what he gets for shooting off his mouth without looking both ways first.

He got too cozy.

"Easy, babe," he tries to placate, his tone even.
kaballin: (I woke up for this)

[personal profile] kaballin 2020-07-08 12:12 am (UTC)(link)
"You have any good reasons why it wouldn't be fun to see if you bleed?" Because Kabal's suddenly interested. And annoyed. The deadliest combo when it comes to him.

"Because I don't think you're adding much to this little duo. Fashion choices notwithstanding."
numerouno: (CXIV)

[personal profile] numerouno 2020-07-09 09:15 am (UTC)(link)
His luminescent optics shift to the right, his focus redirecting on to the mercenary's masked face.

"You don't know what I bring to the table."
Edited 2020-07-09 09:19 (UTC)
kaballin: (Sketch)

[personal profile] kaballin 2020-07-11 01:53 am (UTC)(link)
"If you've got something to convince me with, now is the time." Because he's not about to lower the sword until given a good reason to.

"You were all talk just a little bit ago. Lost your touch already?"
numerouno: do not take (CXXVII)

[personal profile] numerouno 2020-07-11 07:49 am (UTC)(link)
"If I show you," --that is, throw the mad dog a bone-- "will you cool it?"

It'll be a live flute performance, made to order, just for him.
kaballin: (Green)

[personal profile] kaballin 2020-07-13 04:11 am (UTC)(link)
He tilts his head, thinking about it. Because it sounds a little like Scaramouche just decided to try and fight him. And boy is he down for a fight.

Lowering the sword he backs up, giving him room to make the first move. "Make it good."
numerouno: (L)

[personal profile] numerouno 2020-07-20 01:12 pm (UTC)(link)
He watches him step away.

That turns this bot's frown upside-down. Scaramouche bends a little at both knees before springing backward on to a concrete ledge with a swiftness that only a select few in Anchor have witnessed from him.

"Meet me outside the security station, big guy."

With that, he leaps out of view; at a glance, he seems to have taken flight. Where he actually went is four floors up, effortlessly clearing the atrium and sticking the landing on another ledge at the opposite side of the colony. There he waits to watch the man's reaction.
kaballin: (Crossed Blades)

[personal profile] kaballin 2020-08-05 03:17 am (UTC)(link)
Well well well. Looks like the grinning fiend has some tricks up his metal sleeve. Not that Kabal is impressed, but it's more than he expected.

Kabal too has some sneaky little tricks, but his work via running which as of yet he can only do horizontally. Which means even though he's wicked fast, he still has to go up stairs like a pleb while Scaramouche levitates himself up there. Nothing to see here, just two henchmen cheating at a fair fight.

"Alright alright. Not bad. You might wanna do some sword flourishes though. Really sell the moment."
numerouno: (XXXVII)

[personal profile] numerouno 2020-09-17 01:36 pm (UTC)(link)
"Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you?" he calls out playfully with a metallic white grin to match, watching and waiting for the man at the opposite side of the atrium to get to his level before leaping across to an even higher ledge, keeping himself out of reach.

Once Scaramouche has made it to the security station, he pulls out his flute and wills his grin to abate so he can get busy trilling out a decent improvisational number for his scarry-eyed co-star. As Mister Nobody approaches the area, he'll hear an upbeat jazz melody echoing through the hallways, and when at last he turns that final corner, he'll see a troupe of small boulders levitating above, behind, and around the lead performer at the end of the security hall. Each boulder appears to be cracked; that's simply because they were never boulders to begin with. They're a jagged assembly of tiny rocks and flecks of rubble coming together to obey the whims of a flute-playing assassin--

"Took you long enough!"

--and they're up! Three of the projectiles suddenly careen toward his opponent.
kaballin: (Psycho)

[personal profile] kaballin 2020-10-08 02:13 am (UTC)(link)
Wow. Here he was, a decent fellow engaging in a totally normal fight with another evil doer and this guy had to go and have some sort of weird marching band telekinesis.

"You calling me slow? My delicate pride." His tone says he's anything but offended, because Scaramouche's opinion doesn't matter to him. What does matter is not being pummeled into paste by some boulders. So instead he dashes forward, disappearing an explosion of purple energy and reappearing on the other side of them.

"That sword just for show then?"
numerouno: (XLII)

[personal profile] numerouno 2020-12-10 04:32 am (UTC)(link)
Waiting in the wings, bobbing in the uppermost corner of the ceiling behind the man, is the biggest boulder of them all, ready to be called to the stage. Its time to shine will come.

For now, his fingers flutter along the length of the instrument; the snappy banter will have to wait. Did Mister Nobody think those stones were out of the picture now? He'd better think again. At a string of high notes they come swerving back around at velocity toward his co-star's back, none of their earlier momentum lost.
Edited 2020-12-10 04:34 (UTC)
kaballin: (Ready for a fight)

[personal profile] kaballin 2021-01-01 07:02 am (UTC)(link)
You know what? He kind of did.

Kabal might have the object permanence of a toddler and out of sight out of mind has suited him well so far. Which is why the first one smacks into him and sends him flying.

Rude.

At least he's fast enough to avoid being squished into paste by the rest of them, bolting back up to his feet and charging right at Scaramouche. He's about to turn that flute into confetti along with Scaramouche's smug robot face.