EVENT #010

[larkers]

WHO: Everyone
WHERE: New Amsterdam and any other megacity the Displaced happen to be in/travel to!
WHEN: May 28, 2512
WHAT: Golden-eyed monsters stream into New Amsterdam and other megacities the world over.
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Violence, death, body horror, mind control, and transformation.

> EVENT #010

It starts in the middle of the night, when most everyone should be fast asleep in their beds, whether they're still taking up a cot in the safehouse or staying in their own apartment. One moment it's quiet, with most of the rest of the city having also turned in for the night, and then in the next? It isn't.

There will be mass confusion as the scope of the situation becomes clear. Monsters stream out onto the streets, thundering up the stairs of a train station, skittering out of construction sites, or climbing up the walls. Some of them fly. Others slither. Others run, loping forward with only one goal in mind: to find something to sink their teeth or claws into and to leave destruction in their wake at every turn. They are a horde, a swarm, a teeming mass of creatures that have no intention of stopping. All of them have eyes or bodies that shine gold and wherever they go, they seem to leave decay. Concrete turns black and porous where they step; plants wither and die.

There is no real preparing for an attack of this scale. New Amsterdam will awaken as the sound of these monsters crashing down on cars or bursting through storefronts or into homes forces people to run screaming from their dwellings or places of work. There is no discrimination in who these beasts might target, and no discernable pattern in where they go.

All that one can really tell is that they seem to want to spread out. They're constantly on the move, leaping from victim to victim, and they're relentless. No one knows why they've come, where they're come from, or what will make them stop. At least for now, the only option seems to be to cut down their numbers. It's time to fight the horde.

The first night will be utter chaos as everyone reacts to the monsters' sudden appearance, but by the morning hours news reports will start streaming in. This is not only happening in New Amsterdam, or wherever else a Displaced might be staying, but seemingly everywhere. Some cities seem harder hit than others, but practically every megacity is overrun with the creatures.

With no way of knowing who might have unleashed the monsters, all of these cities have essentially been turned into battlefields. Not many civilians are prepared to fight for their lives, and it will take a mobilization effort from the police, Morningstar, the Displaced, and anyone else who's willing to take up arms in order to survive.

◉ As a note, this attack starts simultaneously in multiple cities. While it's the middle of the night in New Amsterdam, the monsters will appear at other times of the day in other parts of the world depending on the timezone!

> BESTIARY

So as to not make this post overly long, we have compiled all of the monster descriptions into a Google doc here for everyone's reference!

> (NOT SO) SAFEHOUSE

For those Displaced who stay at (or spend any time in) the safehouse under the hoverbike shop or the Red Wings bar, they may become aware of the presence of the monsters sooner than others, due to the fact that at least a few of the giant mole monsters will end up burrowing up through the concrete basements to wreak havoc. The screeching noise of steel claws tearing through the floor will be sure to wake up even the deepest of sleepers.

This won't just be an occurrence on the first night of the attack, either. Unless something is done to deter them, tunnels leading straight into the safehouses will continue to be created, allowing even other types of monsters to find their way through (the smaller ones, that is). Where exactly they're coming from won't be entirely clear, though it's a safe bet to assume that they must have originated in the cave system somehow.

Suffice to say that El won't be happy about the safehouse being compromised in this way, though this isn't a possibility that ze or anyone else could have really prepared for. While ze can't do much to physically help with containing the invasion of the monsters, ze will offer whatever resources ze can—though Morningstar is going to be busy in plenty of other locations, as well, and they only have so many resources.

The Red Wings, being a Displaced-operated location, will also be in need of assistance, especially if it's meant to be a point of safety and a hub for handing out supplies. Speaking of—

> RED WINGS HQ

As things begin to deteriorate, Clarke Griffin and Stephen Strange sink their resources into Red Wings, adapting it into a base of operations for the Displaced. Clarke also called in PRESERVE to set up a checkpoint here, too, and anyone—from the Displaced to civilians—will be able to seek aid here. (Of course, Red Wings will be just one of a few locations throughout the city where they attempt to set up shop, but Red Wings may prove to be more fortified thanks to the talents of the Displaced.) Civilians will not have access to Red Wings' safehouse, however. That's still something that Clarke and Stephen want to keep under wraps, for now.

In the bar proper, there will be medical aid, supplies, and even weapons for those who can use them. During rare moments of downtime, the gang at Red Wings will also work on reconnaissance missions to find safe spots throughout the city to provide much needed protection and safety for the people of New Amsterdam. This task may be much easier said than done. Gathering intel on the monsters is a high priority, too, and for anyone who tries to capture a monster to learn more about them, the basement might be a good place to hold them. If the Displaced are going to be able to fight back, they need to know exactly what it is they're fighting.

However, the truth of the matter is that this attack happened quickly, and in the middle of the night to boot. As much as the group at Red Wings tries, resources are stretched thin, and they didn't have time to prepare as much as they wanted to. Supplies need to be rationed, bandages and stitches used for wounds that really need them, and if you're not a great shot, it might be best to let someone with more training take that gun you're eyeing.

More than anything, despite the difficulty, this is a way for the Displaced to help out as many people as they can, and a way for them to cement their humanitarian efforts and affect the population's opinion of them. The citizens of New Amsterdam are sick of this cycle of destruction, and are just waiting to be empowered. Now's the time to teach them to fight back and help them protect their city.

Red Wings' safehouse underground will be damaged by burrowing monsters as well, and will need protection. The bar itself will escape relatively unscathed.

> INVESTIGATING / GATES

Maybe the best way of dealing with the monsters isn't violence at all. Maybe there's a more strategic way to deal with this.

The monsters will be moving from city to city via the gates, just like the Displaced do. There might be a way to keep them from spreading, or at least slow them down, by shutting down the gate network. Of course, with the mag trains shutting down, getting back home could be an issue. One option is the delivery network of hover trucks. They'll still be running to get supplies from city to city, but their batteries don't run indefinitely, so these will be relatively local trips only. No getting from New Tokyo back to New Amsterdam with this method, unfortunately, and convincing a driver to let you hitch a ride might be a challenge, but it's doable.

Of course, there's also the question of where these things are coming from. Intrepid characters might be able to track them back to their nests, which are tucked away in wildly different places depending on the city. In New Amsterdam, they might be in the caves below the city. In other places, they might not be in the city proper at all, but just outside of it. It's important to keep in mind that the nests are far away from any of the action taking place elsewhere. Tracking these origin points may provide some answers, but the cost would be less involvement in the crisis taking place.

And then there's the matter of the monsters themselves. How can you fight an enemy you know nothing about? For those determined or crafty enough, capturing them might be an option, although this will take some creativity. Once these creatures are captured, they'll need to be kept contained, and kept alive. Just because they're monstrous doesn't mean they don't have to eat, after all, and some will need special environmental considerations as well, such as the mind control slugs.

What happens after that is up to the Displaced. Is dissecting them the best bet? Their internal anatomy won't be wildly different from most "normal" animals, with the exception of some creatures who have strange appendages or the like. Still, this might give the Displaced a better idea of how they operate and what their weak spots are. Sending samples to a lab is another possibility, if the Displaced can figure out how to safely store those samples. After all, the world is in a crisis, and no one is running tests at the moment.

All monsters, though, seem drawn to the blue light. When a Displaced uses a power or activates the empathy bond, the creatures will lock onto it, utterly transfixed, and if this is done enough times, that gold glow of theirs will intensify. What does it all mean? Maybe figuring that out will be a pathway to stopping their attacks.

> PITCHING IN

While all of this is going on, it certainly won't be just the Displaced who are heading out into the streets to try and stem the flow of the monster attack. These creatures are certainly not holding back, and no matter how much work might be put in, their numbers are overwhelming. Plenty of people will end up dead as a result, ripped to shreds or dragged off somewhere to be eaten. Yet, for some reason, these monsters are not as vicious toward the Displaced. They'll engage them in a fight and injure them, but they never go so far as dealing a fatal blow.

Seeing how that's not the case for the rest of the populace throughout the world, however, some groups and organizations will be rising up to do their part.

Police departments will be mobilizing in every megacity to put the monsters down, and while they are armed, it's not on the same level as the UNA. They also don't have any sort of training that's prepared them to fight monsters, but they'll still be putting their lives on the line to put a dent in the monsters' onslaught. When it comes to enforcing regular law and order, they certainly won't have the bandwidth for anything like that. Then again, most people won't be in any position to take advantage and commit crimes either, given the chaos that will be a constant everywhere.

Morningstar will also be jumping into action around the world. The New Amsterdam branch will be most likely to work alongside the Displaced and share some of their resources, particularly with those who are signed up as official agents or those who've supported them in the past. In cities like New Prague and New Beijing where the Displaced have made some contact with Morningstar before, they'll also be open to working with the Displaced. However, their resources are by no means robust. Morningstar is an organized rebel group, but they're hardly an official army in any sense of the word. They might be able to hand out a weapon here or there and they have a safehouse set up in almost every city, but beyond that, they'll mainly be getting boots on the ground to help with the fighting.

UNA soldiers who have been left without any sort of purpose or guidance will now have an opportunity to put some of that training to use. Their involvement will be much more scattered, though in some cases small groups of these soldiers who used to work in units together will reconnect in their effort to fight off the horde. However, having been cut off from the UNA in an official capacity, they won't have much in the way of gear or weapons. They're still formidable fighters, though, and now might be the perfect time to reach out and make a connection with some of them.

Mercenaries belonging to various different outfits, depending on what city they're based in, will also be joining the cause. Whether they're acting out of a basic desire to survive the attacks or if they're actually being paid by someone to go out there and risk their lives will be less clear, but they're some of the best-equipped fighters (other than the police). They also won't really find much reason to protest any of the Displaced pitching in to fight with them. The more firepower, the better, right?

A group of regulars from the New Amsterdam fighting rings will be rising up to add their fuel to the monster-fighting fire, as encouraged by Hawke and whoever else might know them well enough to reach out. Given that some of these people have illegal mods to enhance their strength or cybernetic attachments that can do impressive amounts of damage, some of them might hold their own against the monsters. Hell, some of them might even ask the Displaced to demonstrate some of their powers if they end up fighting together, as word of their abilities has become more known among their ranks. Either way, they'll be jumping into the fray with quite a bit of gusto.

PRESERVE will be involved on the other end of these efforts and will be doing their best to tend to the wounded and the dead, along with finding shelter and safe spots for people to barricade themselves from the attacks. It's not like the grand majority of civilians could stand a chance against these monsters, after all, yet not all of them can rely on their homes to be safe enough to stay in. They'll be quick to accept an offer of Displaced help, as they'll be doing their best to try and drag the recently dead to hospitals to get them put into medi-units before they're too late. Along with what's set up at Red Wings, they'll also be cobbling together other relief spots throughout the city for taking care of wounded and offering up what supplies they have (food and water, medical supplies, etc).

And what are the corporations doing in all of this? Well, suffice to say, mainly just panicking. Unsurprisingly, they're not much help during a crisis like this, with most of the super-rich opting to hide away in whatever highly secure bunkers they might have. Too bad that these bunkers might not prove so secure in the face of these attacks. Could that prove to be an opportunity if someone went looking?

> FINAL OOC NOES

Please refer to the OOC EVENT POST for all OOC info, including suggestions for directions on how to engage with the event. Given the spread out nature of this event, as well as the amount of additional details provided here, please direct all questions to our QUESTIONS thread below. This is, naturally, a huge event in terms of scale, and so we're certain there are aspects of it we haven't covered and questions that have yet to be answered. We do encourage that all of our players use the event planning post for any additional ideas and for touching base!

Please do not begin to thread out any aftermath until AUGUST 8, 2020, which is when we will put up the aftermath log and OOC post. If this date changes, we will provide a gamewide update as needed! As a note, the August calendar will be posted alongside the aftermath!

As a reminder, there is one power level up available for this event, granted for a thread of at least 5 log/action comments containing your character utilizing their power in some way during the event itself. They will need to reach the 5 comments required by SEPTEMBER 11, 2020 to be eligible. Submission will be handled on the wrap up post.

Our Activity Check will be posted AUGUST 1 at 12 AM UTC. It will run for seven days and close on AUGUST 8 at 12 AM UTC.

Have fun and fight some monsters! Or … whatever else you might do with them. 😉😏 Your secret's safe with us. 😙

> NAVIGATION

Comments

Red Wings Interlude - closed to Strange

[bornrussian]

[Natasha's sitting on the edge of one of one of low tables nestled in a booth, hunched over on herself. The suture kit sits open next to her hip on the table, along with a half empty water bottle, and a wash cloth stained a rusty red with her blood.

The loosely fitting and bloodstained Henley, with the tear stretching across her belly has been pulled up and tucked into her bra to reveal her stomach, and the nasty gash running from her lower rib down to the opposite hipbone.

Natasha misses her tac-suit. So, infinitely much. If she'd been wearing it, the claw wouldn't have dug quite so deep. Maybe if she'd been a little less tired, the claw wouldn't have struck her in the first place. She jumped back, kept the swipe from gutting her, but just a fraction of a second too late.

Each movement tugs at the wound. Makes fresh blood spill out. So, until she can get it sorted, she's benched.

There are people worse injured than she is at Red Wings. The air filled with moans and whimpers. A pressing need she has no desire to contribute to unless it's absolutely necessary. She's stitched up worse injuries than this before.

They've brought all the lights up in the bar. Gone are the red neon highlights. But no matter how Natasha twists, it's hard to keep her own shadow from falling across her hands.

The needle slips from between her blood slick fingertips and she curses under her breath. In her brain, it's in Russian, but somewhere between the synapses firing and her mouth, it turns into what she assumes in English. Caught in the damn neural mesh, she supposes.

Another thing they stole from her. The beauty of languages.

Natasha clenches her fingers into a tight fist before shaking them out. Wipes her fingertips clean on her exposed skin, and picks up the needle again with a frown of concentration.]

[rehandle]

[ The place is in chaos, has been ever since the flood of violent creatures first erupted. It's inevitable that it became a central point of gathering, a place to help and to heal, but with the size of the problem and the size of the building they're trying to make part of the solution, there's no respite for those working inside.

Faces revolve in and out, some more often than others, but there are very rarely snatches of more than thirty minutes between one grievous injury and the next and Stephen's opportunities to check in with friends and strangers come few and far between. Unless they're bleeding, they're not his business.

The size of the task holds more challenge than just its pressures. Stephen's work lost its precision years ago in another world. Now he's both one of their primary medical resources and one of their least effective medics. It doesn't stop him. It can't. Where he can't operate and apply he directs, and where he can't direct he delegates. More faces, more voices, more injuries. He snatches naps in the relative lulls and it's shortly after one of these, when the hubbub in the bar has reduced to the residue of suffering that others are well equipped to manage and there are no immediate requests for his specific attention, that he notices her.

He's never met her. He recognises her immediately. A million contesting thoughts run slapdash across his mind and he squashes them all down to focus only on the ugly streak of red and the messy patches of it her fingers have left behind.

A patient. That's all. He can deal with the rest later.

He ducks behind the bar to wash his hands thoroughly clean and picks up a few supplies - gloves, crucially - on his way over to her, setting them all down on the table beside her with no preamble and no introduction. Bedside manner never has been one of his strong suits and he's absolutely no energy for it now. ]

Mind out of the way.

[ Said as he gloves up. ]

CW: needles and stitching and yuck

[bornrussian]

[Despite her focus on the work at hand, Natasha clocks the stranger the moment he starts moving towards her. There's a determination to his steps as he cuts a path from the bar to the tucked away booth she's occupying.

Without truly giving him her full attention, Natasha gathers first impressions. Lean. But with enough of an edge that she thinks he might know how to handle himself in a fight. Dark hair with enough white peppered in to give him a distinguished look. Or it would, if he didn't look as harried as the rest of the people manning the hastily erected shelter within the bar.

His shadow falls across the table. (Tall. Natasha adds it to the short list.) Out of the corner of her eye, she watches him add supplies to the table next to her. Without looking carefully, there's no way to tell if the white lines crisscrossing his hands are a play of light and shadows or something real and physical. Before she has a chance to double check, he's pulling on gloves, the motion rote enough it's obvious he's done it before.

His words have a weight to them that tells Natasha's he's used to being obeyed. When he gives orders, people listen. There's an unspoken expectation that she'll do what he asks.

Sorry, stranger. She's stubborn.]

There are others hurt worse. [The protest is spoken without looking up at him. There're already two stitches anchored at the upper end of the wound, the dark thread standing out starkly against her pale skin. They're not neat by any measure and the way the skin puckers up between them means she'll have another scar to add to the collection (the most prominent ones being the twin bullet scars: one low on her belly close to her hip -- a clean through and through -- the other one on her left shoulder, hidden away beneath her rucked up shirt) but they'll do the job.

Natasha pushes the needle through whole skin at the very edge of the wound. Her face tightens briefly with the sharp jab of pain, but it's the only sign of discomfort.

The next words out of her mouth are a dismissive:]

I've got this.

[rehandle]

You'll waste more of my time denying my assistance than you will accepting it.

[ Which is to say two can play at that game, and only one of them has a gaping wound. Stephen doesn't move an inch, neither to intervene nor to go away. He knows this space. It's his. His workplace, his business, his shared operation - he and the team here have their own language embedded by now, from the medically proficient to those helping with laundry and food. He runs periodic checks with his chest glowing blue to ensure nobody's pain is going ignored or unnoticed, nobody slipping through the cracks.

So it's with total confidence that he stands and waits her out, unperturbed by the suggestion that he might be neglecting somebody who needs his attention more than she does, unswayed by her determination to take care of things herself. He knows how capable she is, but they all have their roles here.

She finishes another stitch. He marries the reality of her present up to the blurred images of a few hundred pasts. One thing is for certain, if this isn't Natasha Romanoff he'll be surprised. ]

[bornrussian]

[Natasha doesn't scowl up at the stranger, because she is not a child. However, there is a small and petty part of her that wants to ignore him. If he wants to stand here and watch her fumble her way through this, so be it. Except, that would be willfully wasting the time of one of the few medics (the way he snapped the gloves on suggested familiarity and long practice) they have around here.

Between the angle and the lack of direct light, it's not like she's doing great here. As if to emphasize the thought, the needles slips from between Natasha's fingers again, and she just barely manages to catch it.

A muscle jumps in her check, and she casts another look up at him. He's wearing gloves, there will be no accidental triggering of the empathy bond (she's had enough of that this week to last her a life time), and the arrogant set of his jaw indicates that he knows what he's doing. Even if he doesn't, he can't really do worse than Clint Barton with a sewing needle and a pack of dental floss.

With a sigh, Natasha rests the needle against her skin, and leans back on the table. The motion pulls at the bleeding muscles in her abdomen and a sharp breath skitters across her lips. She braces her forearms against the tabletop, lying down to give him space to work, but staying where she can watch him the whole time. She's not exactly a great fan of medical procedures.]

If you insist-- Be my guest.

[rehandle]

[ He doesn't need to be a mind reader to follow the approximate process that takes her from stitching her own wound to barely catching a bloody needle to fixing him with one last glance and settling in for the inevitable. Unhappy about it but too practical to be stubborn for long. That's the upside. The downside is she's given herself a front row seat to the show and the idea of eyes on him itches.

He's had infinitely more complex procedures observed more times than he can be bothered to recall, by both bigger and more expert audiences. Which only serves to rub it in.

It is what it is. She's granted him permission, he knows what he's doing, and the rest of it he's just going to have to get over. ]

Thank you.

[ Somewhat terse, through no real fault of hers. Stephen steps up to the plate, dipping into his small selection of supplies for something clean to wipe the area with and a few quick blasts of an antiseptic spray. An anaesthetic spray to the area comes next, more to dull the throb of the wound once its sewn shut than to have much of an effect on the sharper, shorter pain of the stitches. Then it's time to take up the needle. ]

What is it that got you?

[ More a distraction for him than for her as he lifts the needle from her skin, wipes it clean, and braces the wound edge with his pare hand before going in for the first stitch. It's impossible to hide the trembling of his hand now, not that his actions seem any less sure for it. But it does mean that he attention remains resolutely on what he's doing, not so much as casting a glance up once he has her skin pierced with the needled. No. longer able to afford himself the luxury of split focus. ]