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meadowlarklogs2020-02-08 01:58 pm
EVENT #008 AFTERMATH LOG
WHERE: Lots of places—potentially? Mostly New Amsterdam as the focus.
WHEN: March 4, 2512
WHAT: Unlocking of the gates and the game's fast travel network.
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Uninvited visions.
The vision itself is almost instantaneous once the last of the four gates activates, hitting the Displaced no matter where they are. It doesn't matter where that individual Displaced is: if they're in New Amsterdam, at one of the gates, or sleeping, they'll see the same vision. A flash of seven colors (red, blue, black, gold, orange, red, and white) followed by an image of a nomadic people heading up a long, stone bridge that appears to be naturally occurring. At the end of the bridge is an open, lit-up triangle that acts as a gateway, inviting them inside. Then there is another flash, followed by the nomads walking through the gate and ending up in a different, new location. And then another.
Any understanding of this vision isn't immediate. The answers won't be apparent until later, when there is an innate understanding of what they've learned and what they've unlocked for themselves. The world has opened up to the Displaced, and in some ways, it's there for them to access and even take for themselves if they so choose.
After the vision ends, any of the Displaced located at the four ruins will immediately begin to glow in all blue before they fade out of view and find themselves crammed into a new location. The relocation is immediate, and if anyone checks a map via their neural implant to see where they are geolocation wise, they'll be able to tell that they're underneath New Amsterdam. For anyone who's been in the underground cave system of New Amsterdam, they may think their surroundings are familiar, if not the same. After all, this area has been locked away for a very long time.
One more thing is apparent: they've landed on another form of gate that needs to be unlocked. After the numerous trials and puzzles the Displaced have faced, what's one more?
◉ The puzzle to solve is right beneath the feet of the Displaced on a bronze-colored mechanism. At the center of the mechanism are multiple overlapping triangles, and on the outside, there are five separated triangles that sit individually.
◉ Solving the puzzle involves connecting a daisychain of Displaced and having five key focal points step on the triangles at once.
◉ Once the puzzle unlocks, there will be another understanding: that what they saw in the vision belongs to them. Any of the Displaced outside of the caves will know what it means.
◉ With that work done, it's time to explore. The underground cave system of New Amsterdam is half-inhabited by the sprawling megacity, and half-uninhabited and untouched. This part of the cave system was locked away for centuries, and just like the other ruins, there are some relics and lost items from the past. The eras vary: some are early medieval burial sites with items like brittle, forgotten swords and shields, while others are crosses and manuscripts that refer to this location as the center of the Holy Roman Empire.
◉ The manuscripts are a mix of imagery from Catholicism and the same, omnipresent geometric imagery.
◉ The way out of the cave system involves touching a hand to a handprint alongside what appears to be a door. This print will only appear to the Displaced, so they will be able to move in and away from this location largely unobserved.
Now that the gates trip is done and the Displaced have new answers—if potentially unhelpful ones, depending on their perspective—it's time to return to their lives. Surprisingly, New Amsterdam has no festivals going on, as if it's time to now be hungover from a February that involved nonstop partying. The city has been cleaned up and everyone's returning to their jobs as if the city around them is not in a constant state of revelry.
◉ Ah, it's time to return to work! No one is required to lose their jobs, but it might take a bit of groveling for the Displaced to return to where they were working before. (With the exception of the Red Wings bar. Poor Mister Doctor Stephen Strange.) El will have sent along any excuses to any bosses who might need an explanation. Ze's used to this gig by now.
◉ What about those cities left behind? No one planned on abandoning those gates at that exact moment. They will remain open to the Displaced. Anyone who had a hotel room in New Oslo or even kept stuff stored at New Beijing will find that they can just teleport back via this new fast travel system.
◉ Though for anyone who's been dealing with tampered food, maybe it's time to go take a break. You know where's a good place to do it? The Displaced-run Red Wings bar. Ah, poor Mister Doctor Strange, at least the people coming in out of nowhere are all Displaced looking for proper food and a drink. It's time to mingle, share notes, and see what's what. Might as well get to seeing where there's overlap—and what to do next.
◉ Or it's time to explore! The world is finally open and available to one and all. Well, to one Displaced and all.
◉ The information on these gates and what they do won't immediately be available to El and Gaby. It's up to the Displaced if they decide to share with their NPC friends. (Of course, if it's mentioned via the Morningstar network, then they'll know!)
This is meant primarily as a laid back, return to life log for the Displaced after their exciting trips around the world (and trips-to-be, most likely). Any questions about the aftermath should be directed to our aftermath questions thread!
Our CR meme will be posted on February 14th (Happy Valentine's Day!), and our arrival log for all newbies will be going up on February 15th.
Thanks again for making this a great event!
Jon Snow ✥ All Over The Place! ✥ OTA
CAVES
All of the city is new to him, but this part even more so. Still, there's something familiar about it -- not because one cave is usually like enough to the next, but because in its way, it reminds him of the crypts under Winterfell.
What's down here is old, covered in dust and rubble and the grime of years. The active living city is above them and around them, but not aware of them. This is the realm of the forgotten dead.
He sees a pile of rubble opposite the entrance, as if some of the back wall has caved, and three stone coffins towards what was probably once the center of the chamber. Each coffin is topped by the iron bands and rotting splinters of a wooden shield that still have a scrap or two of red and yellow paint clinging to them, and a longsword, crumbling to rust.
Jon frowns at one of the swords for a long time until, with care, he picks up the fragment with the pommel and grip and part of the blade. It's then that he notices that he's not alone.
If the interloper is new to him, he says, "How long has it been, to you, since they used these?"
If he's met them -- especially if he knows they're anything like him -- he says, "I used to see the same rusty swords at home, but the world wasn't like this one. The time has passed, I've seen crypts like this one, but it's the same as it always was for us. A thousand years ago, two thousand, they lived as we do. Why is that?"
b. Mummers, maybe?
After all of it, as they explore the caves, something seems to be troubling him.
"You saw all those people, crossing the stone bridge, didn't you? What did they look like to you?"
c. Artifact
He holds something against him, wrapped in his clothing -- a bit of metal, a bit of crystal, and it seems that he's being careful with it. What might have come back with him that was made long ago in Tibet?
TRAVEL (CAVES, RED WINGS, ETC)
But when all the Displaced who had traveled find themselves in the same place, in the end, either in the caves or later at Red Wings, he tries to make it known that he's interested in visiting the places the rest of them had come from, or going back through the valley near Everest, or going to one of the cities they'd all traveled to, though he admits that he's less interested in cities than in the other gates.
a. Travel Tales Which Will Inevitably Result In An Invitation
As the Displaced trade stories about what the places they had seen were like, Jon can't stop talking about the mani stone walls at Everest.
"It isn't much like anything I ever saw. A little like something the Free Folk would do, but they don't write and they don't work much in metal. More color than any of the carvings at Winterfell. The pictures you can see in your head don't do it justice."
b. You Made Plans
He's waiting at the gate, just as he and your character arranged. You've both gone to find more appropriate clothing for your destination: maybe his was too warm, or your character's wasn't warm enough, and maybe each of them needed a good night's sleep somewhere, but either way, they're both ready to go see somewhere else for a few hours.
When he sees his travel companion, he brightens a little, though his smile is usually a little melancholy.
"Ready?" he says.
Hope they don't get lost when they get to where they're going. The neural nets should help with that, right?
[OOC: Please do tell me where they're going for this one, though.]
a.
That doesn't make the experience strictly comfortable. It's difficult to relax; she jolts at every unintended contact and ultimately takes up a position against the wall, a drink forgotten and slowly going sadly flat in her hand.
It's the stories that draw her in. Stories make sense, and Jon's fascination with what he'd seen is infectious. As tired and uneasy as she is, OA finds herself smiling, warm and real and guileless. In the excitement, in the coming down, conversations branch and weave together and spin out around them, but she remains attentive to this young man who speaks so easily of things for which she has no context.
"Free Folk, Winterfell; I don't know those things." She shakes her head, though if there's any reproach in it, it's for herself. "But keep going. It sounds beautiful."
no subject
For a moment, he wonders if mayhaps she could be from his own world. People could be, people who aren't his sister or Daenerys Targaryen, and he would have no way of knowing unless he used the raven in his mind to send out a message asking all the Displaced. But if she were, the chances are that she would know of Winterfell: it's one of the great castles of Westeros, a place everyone knows. The Free Folk are another matter, but....
"Aye, well, the Free Folk, that's what they call themselves. They're people whose ancestors lived north of the Wall when the Wall was put up. Others call them Wildlings, and most of them don't mean it kindly. Winterfell, that's the seat of House Stark, my father's people. The seat of the Kings in the North.
"This place, Rongbuk, and what was past it... there were brass bells, very old. The stones were for some kind of prayer, and they had been some kind of offering once. There were banners there, old and faded, the same colors as some of the writing on the stones. The gods these people follow are not the same as the ones my people follow, but --"
He frowns. There were moments in Rongbuk when he didn't really feel like the Old Gods could be far away. If they are in every tree and stone, then... a stone is a stone, and he had found things in the heart tree in a Wildling village once, long ago, offerings to them. The stones at the monastery reminded him of it. The place was so deserted, the sherpas only permitted to look after it when they had people to take up the mountain... had the gods of these people heard them when they'd left the stones? It was something about peace, if he remembers right, but he has everything to learn about this world. He can't yet wrap his mind around all of it.
no subject
What he tells her means nothing concrete, nothing she could pin into the warp and weft of her own experience of reality, but that doesn't stop her smiling. It's wondrous, really, that they're all here, all these people gathered from across the span of possible worlds and brought here and now. In light of what they've all just accomplished, it feels momentous.
"But it echoes. Like... I don't know, like different people painting the same landscape from different angles. Ripples across all things, all emanating from the same point." It sounds wonderful and she, accordingly, sounds a little wistful.
OA pauses to take a tentative sip of her drink. The bitter, biting palate is more intense than she'd expected. For a moment her expression registers surprise, and then disgust, and then she swallows it down and regains her composure.
Worth trying once. Maybe worth trying again.
"Do you know the story about the blind men and the elephant?"
no subject
"Aye. It echoes. Some of it's in where you stand."
He watches her sip the drink, mildly sympathetic at the disgust. Not all ale is to every taste, and beyond that, ale isn't mead. But she seems to master it once it's out of her mouth.
Still, he has no idea what she's asking about.
"No. I know elephants -- never seen one, but I've seen mammoths, and giants riding them. I know blind men. But I don't know a story of blind men and elephants."
no subject
"The way I heard it was this: someone brings an elephant into a village. Living in this village are a group of blind men -- friends, people who understand one another, look out for one another. They hear about the arrival of the elephant, but what does that word mean? Elephant. It's just a collection of sounds. They can't just go and look at the animal the way everyone else can, so they have to approach it another way." OA slides easily into the cadence of the story. She's an animated storyteller, interspersing the words with gestures of one hand, shifts in expression, carving out units of space and of emotion as seems appropriate.
"What they do have is touch. And so they go, and they lay on hands. The first man, he touches the elephant's trunk." One of her hands comes up, sketching the path of the blind man's hand along the trunk of an invisible elephant; her gaze goes unfocused, upwards into the middle distance -- the concentrated inattention of the unseeing.
"And he says, 'Ah: an elephant is an animal like a snake.' But the second man, he's touching the elephant's ear, and he says--" she shakes her head with a soft tut, brow furrowing "--'Then you are touching a snake, for the elephant is not an animal, but a plant with great leaves.' The third, touching the elephant's leg, says, 'Not just a plant but a tree, for I have found its trunk.' The last man has taken hold of the elephant's tail. He works it between his fingers, thinking hard."
Again she mimes the motion, feeling out the shape of the invisible thing. "And he says, 'You are my friends and I trust you and I love you, but I fear you have all failed to find the target, because an elephant is clearly a kind of rope.'"
The story falls away; OA ducks her head with a soft huff of voiceless laughter before fixing Jon with her attention again. "We're all touching elephants, all the time. What did yours look like from the other side?"
Red Wings
Clark grins. He is enthusiastic to learn more.
"I figure we can find a store somewhere in town to get some equipment, tell them it is for a new job as window washers or building maintenance, or something of the like. And we can go prepared."
He nods. He has been thinking on this.
no subject
But Clark's manner is easy in a way that makes him seem like a good traveling companion, and he's as enthusiastic to go back as Jon is to go for the first time.
"If the floors are as unsteady as that, it would be best to have ropes. I have some experience with mountains -- that's why I went to Everest. But a crypt like that, that's something different. Sometimes a place like that falls in on itself." After a pause, he adds, "The monastery we went to, it wasn't for burials. Were all of these places holy to their people, at some point?"
no subject
Or so it felt to Kal, and now he is hoping it is right.
WILDCARD
He will also be seen around Red Wings post-event, working as a bouncer or bar back.
Finally, I posted super late to the first part of the event: you might be interested in checking those out if your character was at Everest and none of these work for you. Several of the prompts could also easily be adapted for a return trip.]