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meadowlarklogs2019-01-06 09:54 pm
- !arrival log,
- darker than black: hei,
- dc comics: dick grayson,
- dc comics: jason todd,
- detroit become human: markus,
- ffxiv: x'rhun tia,
- ffxv: noctis lucis caelum,
- marvel comics: thor,
- npc: gaby,
- re6: jake muller,
- starfighter: cain,
- the 100: clarke griffin,
- the silver case: sumio kodai,
- voltron: keith,
- westworld: maeve millay
ARRIVAL LOG 006
WHERE: New Amsterdam
WHEN: Night of September 3 to night of September 4
WHAT: The sixth arrival
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Coercion and loss of autonomy. Further notes at end of log.
Awareness comes to you in blurred snatches, cloudy fragments of sound and light, color, sensation. Hazy and difficult to grasp on to, but slowly aligning into focus. A series of regular, rhythmic beeps. A medicinal, astringent smell. The sensation of movement, a low hum and accompanying vibration under you. Your eyes are heavy, hard to keep open, but in the glimpses between slow, dark blinks you see four people in black body armor seated opposite you, as well as a man in dark gray scrubs.
You realize there are others next to you. All of you in white scrubs, hair recently cut but at various stages of growth, restrained by straps across your chests, arms, feet, holding you to the bench under you. To your left, an armored interior door, two more people visible, the movement of streets passing through a windshield. You try to open your mouth to speak, but it's as if your tongue is coated in tar, and you manage nothing more than an empty parting of lips.
The vehicle stops. The guard opposite you stands and comes to unbuckle you from the bench, helping you to your feet. Your limbs feel wooden and heavy, slow to move. One guard opens the back of the vehicle, and false, colored light, illuminating the streets in the distance will first alert your senses of being somewhere else, combined with warm air that's only cooled with the setting of the sun. The nurse moves to stand at the back, checking each passenger over one by one just before they're helped out of the vehicle, quick and methodical. He doesn't climb out after you, moving to sit as the last passenger is unloaded.
The guards keep their heads down. Their actions are quick, firm, but not entirely unkind. Once all the passengers are out, they climb back into the vehicle and close the doors. The engine powers up again, and then the bus is gone.
You're left alone in an alley, with no idea of where you are or why you've been brought here.
Around the corner of the alley, the streets are lined with bright orange, yellow, and red ball-shaped lights cluttered together overhead. Despite seeming rather tangible in nature, the balls themselves are merely well-designed projections. These lights illuminate the streets filled with people – some of which seem indifferent to the festivities, while others move in dense clusters toward a city square filled with countless trucks and tables. They disperse as they arrive – to trucks, to stations to have faces painted, to admire the wide array of sweet confections available. Numerous bits of signage announce various additional activities – but anyone new won't be able to interact, won't know what information is there.
◉ Though entirely capable of independent action and thought, new characters will find themselves completely, unquestioningly compliant to any verbal statement which could be taken as a command or request.
The message from El – no, wait. It's Gaby this time. Otherwise, it's the same as previous: insistent, not waiting for any active attempt to open it. Scrolling within your vision as if being written while you're reading it.
I'm on announcement duty this time. Bus #6, for anyone who's counting. The location? Well, the heart of the lantern festival. A short walk from the safehouse.
Like many of these festivities, the New Amsterdam Lantern Festival is an annual event, dating back decades as a means of celebrating the mish-mash of culture that influences New Amsterdam as it's seen today. Sponsored by Polarized – a known subsidiary of Pulsar – the lights go bright just as the sun begins to set late in the evening, spreading over the city, acting as a dense layer of luminescence for 24 hours. Even in the daytime hours, the lights remain, and the technology seems to make them seem just as bright – which acts as a sign that the lights themselves are not natural, projected outward by numerous devices set up throughout the city.
Most of the events are concentrated in a district square that was once known as the city's Chinatown. At the heart of this festival is a large gathering where numerous food trucks and restaurants come out to advertise their wares. Specializing in desserts and little else, these businesses flood the street every year in hopes of bolstering their business because they can't partake in the restaurant promotion throughout September. The festival concludes with a competition, with each chef revealing their unique lantern festival dessert. These are often rather impressive in nature: cake pops strung together like a dragon, ice creams that make people's mouths look like they're glowing, and large cakes, shaped and designed to celebrate New Amsterdam's arts and festival scene. Many of this year's offerings will both celebrate the year before and offer a somber reminder of the lives lost in the monster attack just months ago. Smaller, sample sizes of these desserts will be available for purchase, which also grants people access to one vote for their favorite dessert.
As the lantern festival comes to a close almost a full day later, the lights clear a path to the river, where countless people will be stretched out and looking skyward for this year's fireworks. Loud, symphonic music featuring some of New Amsterdam's most popular composers will play throughout the area, synced up with the bombastic explosions themselves.
Most of the six newcomers will have hopefully been gathered long before the fireworks go off – but anyone else is free to enjoy them and the festivities leading up to that final conclusion. The festivities vary in nature, from a place for someone to claim a lantern of their own with a wish, to using UV paint to legally cover the ground in unique symbols and lights, to joining competitions where people place chess and checkers for a wider audience. Each of these activities is monetized, so don't expect anything to be for free.
There will be several new and persistent additions along the most likely path to the festival from the safehouse: small, man-made shrines that have appeared just hours before the dense layer of lights settled over the city. Depending upon their makeup, these shrines vary in structure, size, and design, but have several unique, persistent similarities between them.
Some of the shrines are fully formed, with candles lying underneath them, and cloth blankets acting as an overhang for the art within. At the heart of each of these shrines is an image of a person, with a large, upside down triangle projecting from their chest – blue and noticeable – with their arms spread wide. Some of these triangles project from the chest as if a piece of a 3D pop-up structure, while others are simply a part of the image itself, a flat, smooth surface. Beneath them, there will be a scene from a familiar event for anyone who's been here for a while: a car flying into a monster's mouth, a person healing someone else, bright blue eyes and fingertips, showing the artist's personal interpretation in motion. Any of the cloth is covered in geometric symbols, intersecting circles and triangles, many of them in specific and particular patterns.
Other shrines are two dimensional in nature – painted, to be more specific, on the walls themselves – both hidden bits of scenery meant to blend in with the surroundings, or large and spread out, splashing wide arrays of colors and symbols. Whoever set up many of these artistic displays had a special paint and familiarity with the lantern festival lighting, as it draws special attention to the blue light that pours out of the people featured, whether it comes from their eyes, mouths, or the traditional chests. Silver and gold geometric symbols stretch around these images, framing the scene portrayed.
These additions aren't only located near the safehouse, but that's where they're concentrated for now. Within days, they'll be elsewhere: on walls in oft-frequented public restrooms, behind popular nightclubs and bars, and just about anywhere else – popping up and coming down as people tire of their presence – or are simply bothered that they're there at all.
Access to the safehouse is a hatch hidden behind stacks of empty storage shelves in the back of an abandoned supermarket in an outer district of the city. The immediate area is similarly abandoned, empty stores, flanked by several blocks of dive bars and clubs which cater to more niche tastes. A place where people can come and go unseen, or, if seen, not spoken of. A dark haired woman called Gaby is ready to greet the new arrivals and get them settled in, brusque and no-nonsense – she'll be open for in depth questions later, but will advise everyone to ask the people who brought them in for the beginning bits of information.
◉ The safe house is a large open space, filled with rows of basic cots set up to sleep a large amount of people. Basic, but outfitted with everything necessary for daily life. A few doors lead to back rooms for storage, medical care and a large communal bathroom, and past the long rows of cots there is a communal kitchen, fully stocked, and an eating area. Privacy is at a minimum.
◉ New characters will be asked to pick their beds, and provided with a change of (second-hand, mismatched and somewhat threadbare) clothes and basic toiletries.
◉ While there were previously also NPC occupants of the safehouse, natives to New Amsterdam, these people have now been moved on to somewhere safer. A few of their belongings remain, discarded or accidentally abandoned.
◉ Gaby will make it clear to all new arrivals that if they have any requests or queries, they should contact her or El.
◉ The drugs making new characters compliant will remain in their systems for a few hours after their arrival at the safehouse before finally beginning to fade. They will be gone entirely after a night's rest. In the meantime, they may want to be careful of what others say to them.
◉ New characters will be given rudimentary access to the network on arrival in the safehouse, but will not have their ID set up yet. They will be able to make posts and replies, but their messages will be anonymous and they do not have inboxes yet.
◉ New characters will not be allowed to leave the safehouse until SEPTEMBER 7. These 4 days are for them to adjust, learn about the world they've arrived in from their fellows, and for El to speak with them and work on setting up their IDs.
Welcome to Meadowlark, newbies! You're now free to post to the network and logs comms. To reiterate, your characters will have no IDs or inboxes, nor be allowed out of the safehouse until September 7 (January 14). At that point it's expected they'll have gotten a good idea of their new situation from their fellow characters, and will have discussed their background and job potentials with El in order for their false IDs to be set up.
If you have any questions or ideas about how you'd like to get your character involved in the world, or if they'd like to join Morningstar, please head over to the plot engagement post and drop us a comment! For questions specific to this log, there is a thread below.
Please check out our January calendar rundown for a look at things happening this month.
As a reminder, AC for new characters accepted in December and January will be 10 comments across 2-4 threads, while current characters will need to provide the full AC of 20 comments across 2-4 threads. AC will be posted on January 20 and close on January 27. If you do not reply to AC, you will be considered idled and dropped from the game. We will not post a warning list.
THERE YOU ARRREEE
there are more pressing matters to deal with, like who this kid is and why he's calling him todd.)
Ah, he— (his mouth is dry, his throat closing around his words. hei swallows thickly and tries again.) Yeah, hey. You took too long, so I...
(god, he's gotten rusty. or the drugs are ruining his acting skills. either way, he knows he has to do better than that, but the sick feeling propagates until heat is creeping up the length of his neck and rolling under his sternum. there's no way he's going to be able to keep all of this down. but he hasn't received an order to stop, only an order not to worry about payment — something that wasn't on his mind in the first damn place.
so another bite's raised in a shaking hand.)
:eyes:
Whoa, easy... They, uh--
[ How does he weasel through this one without arousing suspicion? ]
They must be really good if you're eating that much when you're hungover, you know you're super sick. Make mine a double order while I take care of him! And a water, too. [ Noctis abandons his side long enough to get that bottle, not about to mourn the depletion of his funds when it's something this small. He returns to him, assuming he's set a good enough cover to allow for his next whispered order. ]
Stop eating, stand up and walk over to the side of the stall with me. You're gonna' crouch down and you're gonna' spit that out, okay? [ Which Noctis will stay with him for, a hand even moving to his shoulder in a faint touch. ]
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hei struggles, however, to accept the orders in his mind. it's true that stopping, standing, and puking on the side of the road sounds like something he sorely needs. it's also true that this stranger seems to be too familiar with his state, his mandatory compliances, and how to take advantage of that. his body doesn't see the problem, betraying his white-knuckled grip on the edge of the picnic table, standing the moment noctis murmurs his aside.
damnit.
fingers find and scrape at the curb, spewing what's in his mouth up — far more follows it out.
his entire body heaving inches forward to empty what's poisoning his stomach, leaving him spitting at thick drool that beads from his lip, trembling under the palm that settles lightly on the back of his white tunic. everything else is chewable, hei can accept the fact that he's at the beck and call of someone he's never met, ready to spring free and duck away the second he screws up a demand. what makes him sicker, makes him grit his teeth and speak through them in a voice that drops far lower than the stammering one used at the table, is the hand.)
Don't touch me. (it'd be menacing if not for the fact that it wobbles out of him, choked by exhaustion.
vomiting takes effort and energy and he has neither.)
Pay and walk away.
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And there it is, the negative reaction as soon as they're out of earshot. Well... It's not like he can really blame him; Noctis hadn't been thrilled to show up here either. He withdraws his hand sharply as requested, already starting to unscrew the cap on that bottle. ]
I'm gonna' pay, relax. Here, drink this -- slow, though, as much as you think you can need. I can buy another one. [ The bottle's extended as Noctis winces, choosing to avert his eyes from the chewed up version of food he's about to eat. ]
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slow, until it's gone.
a full cheek of it is swished to clean the leftover tissue from behind his teeth, spitting onto the roadside.)
What do you want? I can't repay you. (there's a reason why this person's helping him and hei's mind defaults to the worst of them — he's going to use him for something illicit, maybe deviant. tell him to follow him somewhere safe, promise him he'll help him. he did the same thing to people in south america, a too-skinny child begging for fake help and luring the fools who believed him into their camps.
he could play along, but he'd rather not.)
Doesn't matter if you're like me or like them, I have to follow your orders. Make the wrong ones and I'll show you why manipulating me was a mistake. Understand?
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I'm not manipulating you. [ ... ] At least not in a bad way, I get how the orders seem and sound. It just felt like you wouldn't listen if I didn't use them, and I can handle you not trusting me or liking me way more than you can handle going through all this out here with no water. Trust me, I don't like it either.
[ His gaze turns back towards the food stall, taking a deep breath before his voice drops even lower. ] I showed up like you did, just a while back. From a totally different place, had to listen to people, didn't know what was going on, everything. The drugs making you like this are gonna' wear off soon, but it's gonna' be dangerous for you to stay out here while they're in your system. Okay?
no subject
hei's eyes narrow when he casts a lasting look at noctis, who tries to explain away the commands, but it does make sense. that might be the off-handed "trust me" he's accidentally fit into the conversation, neither of them noticing. he just bobs his head in silent agreement, throat stinging from the sugar and bile, before making to stand.)
You want to take me somewhere else... (that's worrisome, he hates the idea, but there's not a whole hell of a lot he can do.)
Fine, whatever, but I want to know where.
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He's simultaneously the most and least cooperative person he's had to deal with yet, glad for his smarts but that also makes him more suspicious by nature. Noctis again reminds himself that he has every right to be. ]
... I'm not gonna' force you. But there's a place we can go where they'll explain everything better and they can help you learn how to use the new tech you've got. It's -- [ Again he checks their surroundings, just in case. ] -- not far, couple streets away. Underground.
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Ah, underground. (what a transparent attempt to — what? get him on a bed of ice and steal his organs? maybe later. right now, there are gaps in his memory hei needs to fill in and noctis is a convenient source.) I'm willing to make a deal with you. I'll do what you like after you sit down, eat, and answer some of my questions.
(maybe he'll gain favour and get this guy off of his back once he realizes how dangerous bringing him in would be for his entire... gang.)
Just make sure I don't eat anymore of those damn cake balls. (circling back to the picnic table.)
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As if Noctis couldn't force him if he really were trying to steal his organs, but that's not the point. The point is keeping himself approachable and trustworthy to hopefully ease this guy's nerves a little, unaware that he's pretty significantly out of his league here. ]
Yeah, yeah, I've got it. [ Time to abandon his side long enough to retrieve his food, hesitating before buying two more bottles of water too. Just in case. Maybe having another will help Hei cope with having to smell the food, helpfully positioning it a little further away from him on the table when he returns and takes his seat. ]
Here... You're welcome, by the way, for me settling your bill. Ahh, that was expensive...
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Who are you? (first and foremost, so he knows who he's dealing with.
it won't help a whole hell of a lot, but it's something. hei already feels himself calming down some with the stability of a pointless conversation. does it matter what he knows? should he even bother asking?)
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Noctis. What about you?
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before noctis can open one of the water bottles, hei grabs for it and twists off the cap. but he doesn't drink it, not yet. the perspiring side is held against a hot neck in an effort to cool himself down. it helps, if only a little.)
Are you enjoying the festival?
1/2
Uh.
2/2
Are you... from Earth?
Re: 2/2
(how the hell— ah, surveillance. their idea of a good time is watching the alleys for the lost and lonely.
noctis' question about earth goes unanswered as he minds the water dripping off of his chin, dabbing at it with the back of his hand and a liberal sigh that makes his head hang a little. god, he can't remember the last time he was this dizzy. the first wave of sobriety hitting him after crawling into the bottle, maybe.)
If you're referencing Earth, what's that supposed to mean? That this place isn't?
no subject
No. No that's not what it means, anyway. This is Earth.
... listen, are you okay? I get that there's a lot going on but if you need to rest we should get back there quick. Otherwise I can grab you whatever you need.
no subject
anyway, hei's busy checking the height of the buildings with an upward raise of his eyes, tilting his head enough to broaden his view but keep his neck covered by the downward slope of his chin.)
Aliento del diablo, ah— "Devil's Breath". It's a drug in South America. That's what I think this is.
no subject
[ He'll still take another bite to appease him, chewing thoughtfully while continuing to stare right at him. Not fine. He is not fine. ]
... wait, you know what it is? Is South America close or something?
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I'm saying that's what I think this is. I've never experienced it before, I just know the symptoms are similar. (loss of willpower, confusion, disassociation, nausea, hallucination — that last one hasn't hit him yet, but jesus christ he sits through hallucinations on a good day.)
...
Don't really know where we are. The architecture's different.
no subject
Forget it... "Devil's breath", huh? I'll see if anybody else knows anything about it. You can help me with the spelling on the other name later.
Where we are, though, is New Amsterdam. Pretty sure it used to just be Amsterdam. [ genius ] I'm not from here, so I'm still learning a lot of it.
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(hei doesn't need any help in the suspicious department, sitting in ill-fitting clothes. he takes another swig of the water.)
The Netherlands? It's too hot for a maritime climate. If you're not from here, where are you from?
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Ah, blame the country, not me... Obviously it's too hot; it's too hot for anywhere. Wasn't as bad when I showed up. [ Chance to complain, taken. ]
I'm from Eos. Lucis.
no subject
(anyway, barring that? this is a halfway useful conversation. hei just doesn't know what he wants out of it, stuck between wanting to know everything and wanting to know as little as possible. but he's always stuck, cut down the middle on everything. it's exhausting.
why couldn't he have just fucking died like he was supposed to?)
I'm not familiar with Eos-Lucis. Where is it located?
no subject
Maybe you can get around to saying "thank you" one day instead of criticizing me. [ there ]
Anyway, it's not Eos-Lucis. Lucis is the country, Eos is the star. Or... I guess planet.
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heibo...
SHUT
1/2
2/2
1/2.
2/2.
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