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reveriance2018-04-20 07:45 pm
reveriemod) wrote in reveriance2018-04-20 07:45 pm
Entry tags:
» TEST DRIVE #001
TEST DRIVE #001
( 0 0 1 ) » WAKE UP
Were you asleep or were you unconscious? It doesn't matter: when you come to, there's an odd taste in your mouth and there's a low-level mechanical hum in the air. Your head hurts and you feel nauseous. You aren't anywhere you know: everything around you is metal, from the floor you lie on all the way to the ceiling. You are dressed in a jumpsuit you definitely weren't wearing before.
"We tried to save the world. I think— I think we did the opposite."
The message repeats on a loop. If you look for its source, you find a comms device on the floor next to you. The logo on its wallpaper says REVERIE TERMINAL. Upon closer inspection, you find the same logo on your jumpsuit.
Welcome to your new home. What choice do you have but to explore your surroundings?
( 0 0 1 . 1 ) » WAKE UP WHERE?When you wake up, you find that you're not alone. But more importantly, you find that you're in a closet. An empty closet, bar you and your new companion. It's small, cramped, and there is no door that you can see. The ceiling is low, there is barely any lights, only some coming from the tiny flashlight clipped to your suit's shoulder. You cannot be sure that there is any air coming in to the room.
Are these grooves in the wall supposed to mean something?
( 0 0 2 ) » OBSERVATION DECK
There were no windows in the corridor you woke up in and no windows in any of the crew quarters you might have checked for occupants — but there are plenty of windows on the uppermost level of the station, deck 1. In fact, there are windows from floor to ceiling all along the circumference of the station's circular deck, and it's possible to walk along it all. What it shows is a strange solar system you've never seen before and a planet that might resemble one you know, but certainly isn't the same.
You're in space. You don't know where you are. Neither does anyone else.
( 0 0 3 ) » BAR
On deck 3, you find the bar. Tucked away from the crew quarters, it's dimly lit, there are bar stools thrown down on the floor and what looks like some very old drink spills, crusty and dark against the bar top. But there is alcohol here, or at least, what you think is alcohol, in bottles with faded labels, most of them indecipherable. Take a drink, get drunk, start a fight, or start a party? You're stuck on this station, might as well make the most of it, right?
( 0 0 3 . 1 ) » VIRTUALBut the alcohol isn't even the most interesting part of your discovery (depending on who you are, of course). No, what catches your interest is a second, smaller room off from the main bar room, which looks to be some kind of arcade. There are a few VR sets lined up against one of the walls, and surely, they can't be working, right? Nothing is on this rust bucket. And yet, if you put it on, the display comes to life.
It's a pretty simple HUD, and when you move around in reality, you move around in the virtual world you've just entered. It's a luxurious world, full of brightly, saturated colors, making it just a little obvious that it isn't real. Ahead, there is a jungle, a temple, and a city. You can play around, slay some monsters, have some fun, but you can feel yourself growing hot, like the VR helmet is burning your forehead.
And when you try to take it off, you find that you can't. The HUD glitches, the sound cuts off to a blaring alarm, and an error message appears, in glowing, blinking red letters: FINISH THE MISSION. Will you, despite not knowing what the mission even is, or will you fight to get the helmet off?
( 0 0 4 ) » MALFUNCTIONS
(cw: body horror, bodily functions, gore, blood, death)
The fabricators function well enough, until they don't. One day, one moment, everything's all right — the food doesn't generally taste amazing and sometimes downright awful, but it's nourishing and filling no matter what your dietary needs — and the next, things go a little haywire.
In short, the fabricators are malfunctioning.
Oh, they're still producing food that looks and tastes much the same as before, but now there are some unexpected side effects.
NB: Characters may experience any of the following side effects: nausea ranging from slight to debilitating, the sensation of being happily and affectionately — but not overwhelmingly — drunk, bone-deep exhaustion and weariness that makes it hard to move, or repeated hallucinations of loved ones screaming for help, reaching out to characters and leading them down abandoned corridors or being killed by unseen forces.
The extent to which characters are affected is up to players, as is whether you'd prefer to play this more lightheartedly or tackling more serious themes. If the latter, please provide warnings in subject lines where necessary.
( 0 0 5 ) » NETWORK
The comms device you found next to you when waking up connects to a station-wide network, REVERIE NET. You have the option to post video, voice or text messages.
What will you share?
( 0 0 5 . 1 ) » NETWORK USERNAMEWhen you first turn on your communication device, it requests for you to pick a username to identify you on the network. It can be anything you want. However, as you try to input a username in your wristband to access the network, you get the following message, along with a small, but irritating, warming sound:
this username is already in use.
What does this mean? Is there other people around? Were there other people around?
( 0 0 6 ) » WILDCARD
The station features a variety of locations, from sleeping quarters free for the claiming to a dirty swimming pool and a bar that still holds alcohol (though some of the bottles seem to have been opened a while ago).
Go wild, but don't wreck the place. It's your home for the foreseeable future, after all.
001 | oh my god JASNAH...!!
And then the dream talks to him. It's his turn to start; he snaps to consciousness, his head lifting sharply enough to crack softly against the junction of the walls behind him. He grunts, rubbing at the spot stinging on the back of his skull, and he unsteadily hauls himself to his feet.
"What the hell're you —" His slightly slurred words trail off as their surroundings finally settle into focus, defined by the faint light the woman holds. He immediately feels a powerful wave of anxiety roll over him; he does not like the feeling of an enclosed space like this, and even less so as a sweeping scan of the small space reveals there are no doors or windows.
"Huh?" One thing about Akira: he's not really much of an actor. His current bafflement is completely earnest, worn on his sleeve. "What the..." Suddenly her slightly-veiled threat reasserts itself in his mind. He turns quickly to face her, hands up in the air, empty palms offered. "No way, lady. I've got no idea what's going on."
:D
"Good." Jasnah announces, when she's sure he's telling the truth, and sure her voice will come out clear. She pulls herself to her feet, and doesn't pause to flinch at her exposed safehand. Instead, she reaches out with it, to touch the walls with her fingertips, holding the sphere aloft.
"Begin to look for a seam. We're not staying in here."
so exciting! i have a kaladin journal lyin around somewhere
He turns to blink owlishly at her, initially confused at what she's doing. Realization snaps into place readily enough, however. Shit, that was a good idea. Why hadn't he thought of something like that?
"Yeah. Right."
He starts on the opposite wall she had taken, wanting to cover the most ground. At first he feels nothing but unbroken metal—something he still feels creating a pressure in the back of his mind, egging him on to just sink claws into it and tear an exit free. He doesn't. He keeps looking.
"Hm?" It's faint — enough so that there wasn't much of a shadow cast by the faint light, but it is there. A very minute groove, running up the wall. "Hey. I think I found something." He turns and gestures her over, keeping his hand over the correct place. "So, what, d'you think it's a panel or something?"
oh god those two. have you read oathbringer yet?
Turning from her wall, she shuffles the (too small) steps over to join him, pocketing the sphere for now, since the small flashlight on the shoulder of her suit is enough to light the wall, from this short distance. Only a little fumbling reveals that it comes unclipped easily enough, too.
"Hold this."
She wants to use both hands- now composed enough to wince internally at that, but there's no time to dwell on it. Slowly, her fingertips map out the patter of grooves into a shape, some kind of outline.
"This feels like it might be a piece that depresses, but I'm not sure. It's as likely to open a door as bring the ceiling down on us." So, she spares a glance back at him, prepared to at least note any objections before she takes matters into her own hands and shoves.
oh yes absolutely i have
Well, if she's anything like Ryo, then she has a point, and he should try his best to listen and do what he can to help out. He tries to step out of the way as best as possible, but given the limited space, he mostly just succeeds in shoving himself into another corner. At least there's enough room for her to examine the wall.
"Huh? Oh. Yeah, sure."
He takes the flashlight from her, holding it as best as he can to the part of the wall that she's investigating. With better light, he thinks he can see it now: the sort of shape or symbol that they make. It's definitely too small to be a door, not really the right shape for a window.
She continues, and it makes sense. A button? When she checks it, his expression is a strange combination of rapt and blank: interested in what else she might say, but not really seeming to have anything to contribute himself. If it were him, he probably would've already pressed the button; that's what they were for, right?
So he doesn't have any objections when she presses it.
For a second, nothing happens. Then there's a pneumatic hiss, like air pressure being released from a valve, and then there's a... grating noise. Like something moving. And then before he knows it, he's moving, falling backwards into the empty space of a chamber beyond as the wall he'd been pressed up against slowly retracts.
He hits the floor with a loud thud and a winded-sounding, "oof." And another groan.
"Well," he says, slowly pulling himself up off the ground. "It's better than getting crushed by the ceiling."
cats and dogs- or should it be axehounds and sky eels?
Says Jasnah, standing over him. It's also better than being stabbed, or drowned, or stepped on by a thunderclast- she lacks the background in film necessary to appreciate the extreme likelihood of a trash-compacting situation.
But, she moves to offer him a hand to help him up.
"We're out. Let's go get some questions answered."
so true... so true...
At first, this even more innane statement might've been the only thing he said in response. He reaches out to accept her offered hand, slowly clambering back up to his feet, stretching out his aching back and rubbing at the back of his head which had just come into sharp contact with the ground. Once he's mostly recovered, he shoots her a look through squinting eyes and mutters, "Yeah, yeah. I'm full of 'em."
At least, he's reminded of something along those lines occasionally enough that it's sunken in.
But years and years of unkind words from his peers at school had given him thick skin; he doesn't seem fazed at all. He just nods, casting a cautious look down the darkened hallway. It was, in a word, nondescript. Not much to learn yet, so they'd have to continue onward.
"Yeah. Let's see if we can't track down the real reason we woke up in a closet."
And, brazen, he starts walking down the shadowed, echoing corridor, eyes and ears sharp for anything that might be set to startle them.
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Jasnah actually has to stop dead, and search the space around them. There isn't single one, not in eyesight.
"But this isn't Shadesmar-"
Another point, through some unknown perpendicularity?
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He blinks. He wouldn't even know where to start in spelling those words...
"Huh?" Was he mishearing or something? Is that some other language? "What're you talking about?"
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She finally explains.
A tiny part of her wonders if she's going mad, if this is lunacy. But no- it's all oo real. Surely.
"Let's keep moving."
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He considers it for a moment before rolling his shoulders in a noncommittal shrug. "You and me both, then."
Akira's actually rolling with the punches pretty well, here. In the last few weeks he's had the entire fabric of everything he thought was true and concrete about reality unraveled and changed, including himself and what he was down to a core and central level. As much as waking up in a tiny closet with a stranger was pretty high on the weirdness scale, it didn't really get up to what he usually had to deal with day in and day out.
"Yeah." He starts walking again, nodding. "It's not like this hallway's gonna tell us anything."
What they find as they continue down the hallway and turn into another, broader one, however, might actually lend some clues.
It's a very long hallway full of identical doors. They're each numbered, with a blank panel outside. As Akira looks down the long hall, he starts to feel an odd sense of sinking vertigo, like how one might feel when they look down a similar corridor on a ship as it's moving up and down in the waves.
"Looks... kinda like a hotel, or something."
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Jasnah wants to know, steadying herself as the sensation hits her. It's an unfathomable hallway to her, too, full of alien details, and made of pure metal? Absent spren, and peculiarly... light? Like she's been touched by a sliver of a Windrunner's lashing.
"It looks like a prison."
It probably is, if the cell they were just in was any indication.
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That's probably a conversation for another time.
"It's a place to rent a room to sleep in." Or whatever else you might be needing a hotel room for, but he calmly decides not to add on such a uncouth subject; he gets the sense that it wouldn't really find much purchase humor-wise with her.
Her comparison is a little more unsettling than his. He frowns, shifting his weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other. "Yeah, well... let's hope that's not the case." Because then he'll have to bust out of it, and it'll be a whole big thing.
"Thinkin' maybe we should try looking through one of the rooms? Maybe we'll find something useful."
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Says Jasnah, perhaps less politely than she could, but she's beginning to get angry now. Someone brought her to this place, cut her off from Ivory, and then locked her in a small cubby in the dark?
A door, or a person to ask several severe and pointed questions. That established, she starts walking, striding really, down the hall.
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"Yeah, but there could be, like, clues or something -" And, she's gone. He'd turned back towards her to see her taking long, purposeful strides down the long corridor. Oh, shit. It doesn't leave him very much of an option; he jogs after her, slowing to a walk as he catches up.
There isn't much to say about the repeating doors on both sides, especially if they were gonna bypass them in favor of something a little more telling about their situation. Eventually the numbers on the doors wind down and the corridor ends in a much broader landing (the largest room they've seen yet), plain but for a few more corridors heading off in different directions. And stairs. Two wide sets, one going up and the other going down.
"...Huh." He decides to just look to the woman to see what she'd do. She's seemed happy enough to blaze the trail so far.
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She asks him, standing still. On this point, she's ready to take input. Jasnah has no frame of reference here, can't guess up from down, can't feel if they're below ground, sense any kind of sun. It's deeply, miserably disorienting.
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"I say up." He points an index finger upwards as he does so. "Even if we end up on the top floor or roof or whatever, we'll at least get an idea of where we are. And how many floors we gotta go down to get to the exit."
It's probably one of the most well-thought out things he's ever said.
And as long as Jasnah is on board, he'll start making his way towards the stairwell heading up.
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"I've never seen any kind of architecture like this."
Jasnah feels like she should be able to name the culture, but there are no hints. No one on Roshar should even have this much metal, or the ability to work it into thin sheets like this, into the very walls.
Part of her wonders if she's dead, honestly. If someone came for her in her sleep and these are the Tranquiline Halls. She knows the Heralds haven't led the charge there, after all.
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"Architecture?" He isn't even really sure that's what he'd call a lot of it. It mostly just seemed kinda... plain, utilitarian. There hadn't been much design in a lot of it besides flat, metallic surfaces. "Hm... I guess if you put it that way, yeah, I haven't really either. Seems kinda futuristic I guess? But not really fancy."
'Futuristic' isn't a type of architecture but he doesn't necessarily know that.
It's definitely not heaven, though. Too many devils around here for something like that.
They round around the turn for another flight of stairs. "It's definitely big." Even as much as they've been climbing, Akira doesn't seem very winded. "We've been climbing for a while and haven't even reached the next floor yet. Where the hell would they put a huge metal building as tall as this, anyway?"
Out in the desert or something? Because he gets the feeling that when they get to a window, they're not gonna see the skyline of Tokyo.
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Jasnah's been living in Urithiru, which is stories upon stories high. She can't say she exactly understands why or how the great city was made, but it's as least as large as the one they're in now, if not larger.
"There's absolutely no indication why it's here though. It doesn't seem like a habitat."
And, finally, she comes upon a doorway. It's the observation deck- Jasnah freezes.
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He'd been thinking something like a skyscraper, like a really tall hotel (still thinking about that long corridor of identical rooms), but the fact that they hadn't come across any identical floors after so many flights of stairs killed off that particular guess. A tower... it makes sense, even though he isn't sure where on Earth they'd find a tower like this.
Maybe because the answer is that it isn't on Earth.
"Yeah, maybe. But it does seem like people're supposed to stay here, though. Don't know what those rooms would've been for, otherwise." Usually stuff like that was for people to either live in, recover from illness in, or work in, right?
He's about to voice another thought when they finally arrive to the top of the stairs, and then whatever stupid thought it'd been, it dies somewhere in his throat.
"...What the fuck?"
Akira walks, very slowly, into the bay of the observation deck. His eyes are wide, fixated on the wide array of windows that open out into... nothing. Well, not nothing. It's space. It's a vast tapestry of stars and, as he walks closer, he can see something spread out beneath them: the scape of a planet, and one that wasn't Earth.
He feels a sickening rush of vertigo. His head feels a little light, swimming, and he repeats somewhat breathlessly, "What the -"
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"This is a world."
An entire planet, seen from so far above it's actually unfathomable. She takes a step forward, then another, then does not allow her knees to shake.
"Where are we?"
And how is this possible?
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"Space." The word is dull, dropping from his mouth like a piece of lead. He blinks. "I guess."
There's no other explanation, is there? He doesn't see anything else. Nothing familiar (not that he would be able to recognize any constellations or anything like that).
Just this planet.
"That's... not Earth." Indicating the planet below.
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She wants to know, but it makes sense. It's not Roshar, either, so why does that mean they should be from the same world.
Jasnah is much, much further from home than she originally thought. Luckily, there's a few seats here, for viewing the window, because she sits down in it quite suddenly and heavily.
She has faced things. She has travelled to Shadesmar. She has already had her world fundamentally heaved over once already in her lifetime. Again?
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He shoots her a weird, sidelong look, expression already a little dazed by what's spread out in front of them on the other side of the glass, so this is kinda the icing on the cake. He gets the sense she's not fucking with him. He gets the sense from her that she doesn't really fuck with anyone.
"The planet, Earth? The planet humans are from?"
Well, it's not the only one, so he's going to have to get caught up to that.
Akira decides to remain standing; he stands with one corner up next to the glass, looking to where Jasnah sat in one of the chairs. "So, uh. You... not from Earth, or something?"
Weird. It's super weird. But they're also in space so it could get in line.
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