EVENT #006 AFTERMATH LOG

[larkers]

WHO: Everyone
WHERE: New Amsterdam
WHEN: December 19th to the end of the month.
WHAT: Event aftermath, Winter Solstice, Christmas.
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Character death, self-sacrifice, drug use. Further notes at end of log.

> EVENT #006 AFTERMATH LOG

Zerzura's demise is a very near miss. Three out of four of the bombs detonate, with numerous Mycenaean guards' lives taken as a result of the assault. It's probable—even likely—that numerous Displaced were injured as a result of this attack. Just as the last bomb seemed likely to go off, everything stopped. As in: the scene ended, shifting, putting all of the Displaced to sleep. Zerzura won't end. Or will it?

The return from Zerzura will feel like waking up from a long nap. Instead of anyone waking up in their beds, they will find themselves on the ground beside the man-made river that runs down the center of New Amsterdam. The ground beneath them will be moist with recent rainfall. Anyone who was still in the throes of a fantasy and believing themselves to be a part of Zerzura will find themselves tossed out of that existence. Anyone who died at the precipice of the spear will still recall their actions vividly: their mind and body hitting a point in which it was finite, slipping away. There may be some room for doubt regarding their deaths. After all, they're very much alive now.

There are two constants among the Displaced when they observe themselves and others: that all of their chests are glowing with that familiar blue glow, and they'll all experience a feeling of serenity. This feeling won't come from any of the Displaced themselves. Much like the intrusion of the empathy bond, it will feel as if it's coming from elsewhere. The problem is that it's always there: there is no way of disconnecting, at least for now. The good news is that the serenity will begin to fade within the next day, and with it, the blue glow will go away as well.

All of the Displaced can't remain at the riverside. If they linger too long, it will begin to rain again. The rain itself will only be a light misting against their faces at first, before turning into a heavier downfall. If they're wary of returning to their lives initially because of the blue glow, they'll soon find that the people of New Amsterdam seem to look away from them as they trot through the city to return to their lives. This is a temporary sensation, seeming to have overtaken the city's citizens for the time being. Within a day or two, the blue glow will be met with the same paranoia that was fostered by the UN following the abduction of Kurt Fischer.

What can they do now? Aside from the feeling of serenity, little will have immediately changed for the Displaced. The best thing they can do is try to return to their lives as if Zerzura never happened.

Some things to check in with, though?

WORK. Upon realizing that the Displaced disappeared yet again, El worked overtime to make sure that all of the Displaced wouldn't lose their jobs. After all, that would mean they'd likely have to give up their housing, and Morningstar would need to financially step in to help. Not all of the places of employment will accept these excuses, especially since El can't put together a doctor's note without it promptly being verified as falsified. It's ultimately up to anyone's discretion over whether their character lost their job.

CHANGES. Some of the changes will appear out of nowhere: a dream that's shared, or a memory that's passed on rather unwillingly. It's time to explore what's happened, and even theorize as to why this has happened. And those objects that were the core of remembering who they were, back in Zerzura? They're permanent fixtures from now on. And what about those Union Attacks? For now, they may have an interesting place in the fighting rings. Time to convince the people running those shows to start including doubles matches.

PLANT LIFE. All around New Amsterdam, plants will begin to grow. These plants are varied, and they'll make an appearance anywhere that they might be allowed to grow. Is that a sink that's frequently full of water? Now it's mysteriously stopped up by a plant that's growing through the pipes. While all this plant life may seem like a miracle, having plants growing in every part of the city will quickly prove to be a problem.

HOLIDAY SEASON. The good news about everyone's trip to Zerzura is that they didn't miss Christmas—or rather, the December 25th edition of it. The city is still covered in Christmas trees and ornamentation. The stadium is still hosting a holiday market.

> WINTER SOLSTICE

In the days leading up to the Winter Solstice, there will be an uptick of paintings around New Amsterdam hinting as to where this year's party will be held: Sunpeak Garden. While there won't be any official notice, anyone interested or curious is free to visit this location on the day of the Solstice (December 21st) to see what's going on, and it will go on for the next three days, ending on the morning of the 24th. As they draw closer to the location itself, they'll find the botanical garden secured by a large, overarching tent, preventing rainfall from getting into the garden itself. On the air, there will be the scent of something being smoked—which they'll soon learn is a set of goats that seem to have been acquired by whoever put on this shindig.

Unlike many other events around New Amsterdam, this seems to be more private in nature. There is an unspoken understanding that beyond the paintings, there will be no social media posts. Inside of the garden, there will be a lot of plants and decorations carefully molded into sacred geometric shapes. Despite the unofficial nature, whoever put this event together definitely spent their time doing it. This Solstice party isn't a spontaneous thing, and anyone who goes will hear about the previous parties and how the proprietor does his best to make everyone happy.

Anyone who went to the Harvest Festival or Insomniac's Ball will see a lot of the same people working it, complete with some familiar tattoos. They'll be eager to welcome in any of the Displaced, especially any of the ones who tend to be featured in the shrines around the city.

Once everyone's here, they're welcome to enjoy themselves. Under some of the canopies of trees, there will be beds and futons, giving people places to rest. Some of these will be claimed, so anyone who's eager to stick around for a few days might want to get dibs. Otherwise? It's time to enjoy what's been put together:

FEAST. There will be a feast for the next three days. Aside from the smoked goats, there will be a lot of goat cheese and vegetables. These are the people who put on the harvest festival, after all. There will be a lot of pickled vegetables out on tables, salads, and everything else. Aside from cheese for snacking, anyone can partake in some delicious berries (strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, and blueberries) and nuts (walnuts, pecans, peanuts, and almonds—despite the difficulty in getting most of these in New Amsterdam). There will also be figs, because of course there are figs.

FLOWER CROWNS. To go with the more laidback flair of this event, there will be flower crowns available for everyone. They will look more Christmas-like in spirit, like small little wreaths to go on everyone's heads.

ALCOHOL. Of course, what kind of Solstice or Yule event would it be without alcohol to imbibe? There will be mulled wine available, as well as the delicious apple-flavored beverage of wassail. It seems as if these two things never run out. For anyone avoiding alcohol, there will also be some sparkling grape juice and apple juice.

PSYCHEDELICS. Undoubtedly also inspired by Yule celebrations of old, anyone can partake in some species-specific (and at a safe dosage) amanita. Primarily available as a tea, anyone can drink this pleasant beverage and have a good time together.

MISTLETOE. There will be spots all around the botanical garden where the decorators took good care to make the mistletoe stand out. Surrounded by little lights, no one will be able to miss them. That means they can be easily avoided, if that's what someone would prefer!

BALL PROPRIETOR. While he's not hiding that he put this on, he's just as mysterious as before. If anyone wants to catch his eye at this event, they can. They'll need to stand out to get him to talk to them. To do this, reply below! Ball will definitely be interested in any Displaced trying to catch his eye, but it's still up to them to go through the motions.

> CHRISTMAS

As the Solstice party comes to an end, it'll be time to focus on Christmas itself. Around New Amsterdam, this is a deeply commercial holiday. Since most of New Amsterdam's citizens prefer to celebrate Sinterklaas, the day of Christmas itself largely emphasizes purchasing access to Christmas movies and giving gifts to anyone who had been forgotten earlier in the month. For new couples, Christmas Eve acts as a romantic occasion, giving them the chance to spend some time alone. Restaurants around the city will have Christmas Eve and Christmas Day specials and feasts—though these will be very expensive to enjoy.

> GRINCH INTERLUDE

Once reports start to hit the news about the rapidly healing atmosphere, a strange cypher begins to appear in the replies of people's posts on Cooltalk. This misfire appears at random and without a pattern. While some of the Displaced will get hit on their Cooltalks, they won't be among the majority by any means. How to get ahold of 100342? A reply might do the trick, or it might not. Drop a message in the questions thread with ideas!

Then again, this message more of a simple response to a slight than anything else, most likely recognizable to the displaced, who are familiar with the cipher's formula:

200805 02011414051819 1506 200805 11091407 1506 08051212 04180123 031215190518
200805 02011414051819 1506 200805 11091407 1506 08051212 04180123 031215190518
200805 02011414051819 1506 200805 11091407 1506 08051212 04180123 031215190518
200805 02011414051819 1506 200805 11091407 1506 08051212 04180123 031215190518
200805 02011414051819 1506 200805 11091407 1506 08051212 04180123 031215190518
200805 02011414051819 1506 200805 11091407 1506 08051212 04180123 031215190518
200805 02011414051819 1506 200805 11091407 1506 08051212 04180123 031215190518
200805 02011414051819 1506 200805 11091407 1506 08051212 04180123 031215190518
200805 02011414051819 1506 200805 11091407 1506 08051212 04180123 031215190518

> FINAL OOC NOTES

Welcome back to the world of New Amsterdam proper, Larkers! This will act as the mingle log for the month of September since we didn't receive any applications this month. In order to plot out some aftermath, please head over to the CR Meme for the month of September! Our September calendar and Event #006 Aftermath are also up for perusing.

If you'd like to get your character in touch with Ball, please reply to the comment below with how they'd like to stand out! Ball, like all of our NPCs, will act as a means to an end to uncover plot details. With the gates excursion on the horizon, we wanted to make him available for all of the playerbase. Due to time constraints, this means that Gaby won't be available for this log.

If you have any questions about event aftermath, please hit the thread on the Aftermath Post here. If you have any questions about this log, go to the questions thread on this post!

> NAVIGATION

Comments

[watcherless]

[ The terrible sound booms around her, and Faith's dazed by it before she notices — she's one of them. Just like you, a voice in Faith's mind tries to correct, but it's wrong. She's not one of them. She's never belonged anywhere, certainly not with these people.

She gets her hand around bare skin, and her own chest begins to glow. The rage comes through, and somehow, that calms Faith, because it's easy, it's digestible, it's all things that Faith knows. Everything is painful and nothing makes sense and the world is hard and violent.

The sound reverberates back, echoing back at Laura, just as Faith tries to stagger to a straighter position, collect herself, and throw an elbow in there at Laura's face. ]

[apathet]

[ sound opens up, and it's loud, and it's even louder for its previous absence, and it shouldn't be happening at all. but that doesn't matter, there's no time to panic. skin. touch, contact. it's all she needs.

sound is left alone, the whole near world booming in her ears, but something else goes tweaked. and that elbow smashes into her face without obstacle, and her nose starts to bleed - but she barely blinks. she'll feel it later. for now, unless she does something about it pretty quick, Faith's going to feel the impact of Laura's face to her elbow a whole lot more than was desired.

she'll also feel the meager shove that Laura gives to her torso as though her small hands were burning, as though they had the strength to bruise and lay bare.

whatever happens, Laura's using any slightest pause in proceedings to try to level out that sound, revert them both back to base levels. ]

[watcherless]

Fuck.

[ But she can barely hear herself say it. Her ears are still ringing, even after the sounds around her have leveled out. Faith's elbow feels broken on Laura's face. Instinct has the light in her chest flaring brighter as the sensation seesaws back over, exaggerating instead the pain in Laura's face with a power Faith doesn't understand and shouldn't have.

So it goes.

The backlash only happens with contact. Faith pulls back to flinch away from the contact she thinks is causing this -- it has to be the empathy bond, it can't be her -- and she assesses Laura, recognizing then that she must be one of the Displaced, that this is the only way it would happen that their chests would glow and the pain would share. That power, though, doesn't make sense.

A sensible person might stop and ask for answers. Faith just tries to go at her again, this time aiming the punch at her stomach, carefully instead, trying not to touch skin. (She can't take Laura's power without skin contact. It does not occur to her, yet, that this is what happened to neutralize the sensory overload.) ]

[apathet]

[ pain disappears then explodes, worse than the damage, worse than anything. she screams out, the sound more fury than pain, and then just like that it's gone. neutral, the the sort of pain you should expect for being elbowed full in the face, but not that same blistering agony.

only again, no time to think. the woman's coming for her, fist flying for her, and she's been burned enough. this time, she leaves outside senses alone, works only on her own. minimises pain out to nothing, so she can no longer feel her own body: not the fabric on her skin, not the air around her, nothing.

and she stands, takes the blow. buckles only because she's not resisting, then rights herself. a zombie again. closest to dead she's been in ages. turns out, sometimes, that can feel pretty good.

there's blood dripping from her nose, a slight cut near her eye where a bruise will flourish later, but no fear on her face. not even a sign of a flinch. ]

Got anything else for me? I could do this all fucking day.

cw: suicidal thoughts

[watcherless]

[ Faith searches her for pain, and finds none. It doesn't make sense. Whatever strange yoyoing of her senses was going on seems to have stopped, and that's more confusing. So has the blue glow in her chest. Then she's doing minor calculations. Faith isn't especially clever, but she can put together a few basic premises:

While they were touching, Faith had been able to cause her pain. Now that they're not, she can't. Laura seems able, on her own, to subvert that pain. She hasn't quite fully put it together with the strange experience of molting into a dragon in Zerzura, but she's got some inklings. The itch of awareness. ]

Yeah. [ She resolves, sort of distantly, almost dissociating as she works through this. Then she reaches out suddenly to close her bare hand around Laura's throat. The choking isn't the worst of it because now -- now, she can do it on purpose. She feels it there, the warm glow in her chest, and also awareness of her senses and of Laura's. Her grip tightens, barely, as she tries to crank up Laura's awareness of her own pain. ] Just one thing.

[ But the empathy bond opens in turn, and Faith feels it. Her own fear and panic and anger and misery pouring out of her, open to Laura's consideration and awareness. It's the worst depths of depression, the maybe it's better just to end it kind, the doesn't care about what happens to her kind. Like maybe, no matter how mad she makes Laura, or how this turns out, she won't be broken hearted. ]

cw: also suicidal thoughts/reflection on a suicide attempt

[apathet]

[ oh, you fucking bitch.

Laura's getting it now, even as the cogs whir in Faith's mind. skin contact is made and a series of struggles ensue: a struggle to breathe, a struggle to grip onto Faith's wrist and find some way to break that hold - but a struggle, too, to fight the manipulation of her senses coming across the connection between them. a fight to decrease her own sense of pain even as she feels it ramped up from somewhere beyond her. from this fucking woman.

but there's something else, something more overpowering than that struggle. a wave of feeling, a quagmire of it. Laura rakes a breath past Faith's grip and it's not a result of the fight, but the laying bare. these are not bug spray in your dead grandma's jacuzzi after a mind numbing night at work brand suicidal tendencies, not the cloying lack that seeps back across the bond now like scorch marks at the corners of slowly burning paper: emptiness, faithlessness. the terror of finally being alive and it still not quite being enough. what's coming back at her is the opposite end of the scale. it's feeling too much. it's wishing it would stop.

she hadn't been wrong, she really could do this all day. turns out, they both could.

and why bother?

all at once, just as her surprise seeps past her indignation and the strange pulse of excitement (something happening, adrenaline going, it's all better than boredom) over the empathy bond, Laura lets herself go limp. full weight supported only by that one hand around her throat. either she's going down alone or they're both going down, but unless there's some superhuman strength hidden away in that arm somewhere she figures someone's ending up on the ground.

and then they can take another look at things. ]

[watcherless]

[ Feeling so much of it reflected back at her, recognizing that Laura can feel all of what Faith feels, the fear that trembles across that tight chord of the empathy bond leaps up, loud and blaring like an alarm. For a moment, Faith's grip tightens.

She thinks about killing her. Then comes the guilt for the other lives she'd taken. The deputy mayor. The vulcanologist. Faith can't get away from them.

So she releases Laura, instead, dropping her to avoid dropping with her and backing off at a stagger. Gasping, tears forming on her face before she can even feel them. No, she can't feel anything. It's more fitting, somehow. The numbness finally reflects what she'd felt emotionally. It's like being dead inside.

For a moment, Faith opens her mouth to speak. She wants to defend somehow, fashion a barb into a weapon, go on the offense that she might deflect attention from herself, but she finds nothing. Nothing that won't stop her being vulnerable. So instead, she looks Laura over once, and turns to flee.

Not this time. ]