A TRAIN COMES INTO THE STATION.
You wake up on a train.
Your phone is buzzing. It's in your pocket, in your hand, on the seat next to you. It's a normal phone, and you're on a normal train car. One of the lights flickers, a little further down. The world is very quiet. It feels like you're right where you're meant to be. On the phone's surface is a white screen and the words—
WELCOME TO THE CITY. BEGIN ORIENTATION?
▶ NO
Please take a moment to complete your orientation.
Once you're finished, the subway doors slide open to let you out onto the train platform. To your right, the platform continues on and eventually ends; to the left is a set of stairs that will lead you up into the station itself. The platform is quiet, clean, empty—there's no one else around, and the only sounds you can hear are your own footsteps, your own breaths, and the occasional faraway sound of a creaking pipe or rush of air. The train you disembarked will stay there as long as you do, its doors still open, until you finally decide to venture up into this new locale.
As you make your way up the stairs to your left, you find yourself in the belly of City Hall station. The station is large, a sprawling underground mini-metropolis of corridors and storefronts. Here, you may find others like you, freshly-arrived city residents from other realms (or even your own). There is also a subway map, which will give you an idea of the layout of the neighborhood, and ticketing machines, which can currently only be used to buy tickets to a handful of stations located on lines 1, 2, and 9.
If you're hungry or in need of any kind of supplies, there are plenty of storefronts inside the subway station as well—snack stands, convenience stores, restaurants, clothing stores, a pharmacy, and a variety of empty shops that may or may not have ever been in use. Everything is unlocked, and you can take whatever you need.
Characters may stay on the train platform indefinitely, and may re-board and re-disembark from the subway as many times as they like, but the train will not depart nor will the doors close. Once they go up the stairs into the train station, they may hear the train doors closing and the train departing. Another train will not arrive, no matter how long the character waits. Only once they come up the stairs into the station itself may characters encounter their fellow newly-arrived residents and take advantage of what the city has to offer.
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WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD.
The station is located in the city center. It has three major exits that lead to areas of interest in the district, but there are several other smaller exits that lead in other directions around the neighborhood. You are welcome to use any of them, but may find the north, southwest, and east exits to be the most welcoming.
TO THE NORTH
The northern entrance to the station leads up into the sunlight and puts you out in a brickwork plaza. There's a modest building in front of you, three or four stories of stone with a welcoming facade. There's a sign above the entryway—it says City Hall. You may be tempted to explore, if you're interested in learning more about the city and how it functions, but prepare to find yourself disappointed—the folders in the records rooms are full of empty, blank sheets of paper, and the logbooks and balance sheets are similarly devoid of information.
Immediately to the southwest of City Hall, you will find a small building that houses the tourist information kiosk. It looks welcoming, with an inviting glass facade and a sign above the entryway announcing it as the "TOURIST CENTER." It's a humble building with a receptionist's desk on the back wall opposite the entrance, empty magazine shelves lining the side walls, and a few spinning brochure racks full of blank pamphlets. Anyone is welcome to peruse the tourist literature, though they won't offer much information, being primarily filled with pictures of the surrounding area—City Hall, the park, a statue garden, and the surprisingly heavily-featured cemetery. There are a few sentences sprinkled throughout about basic offerings of the city, such as apartment complexes and office buildings, as well as a few maps with the same limited scope as the larger version on the wall behind the receptionist's desk.
The main feature of the tourist center is the interactive kiosk installed dead in the center, right in the middle of a few rows of uncomfortable chairs that fill the small room. It's noticeably in the way of any would-be foot traffic through the tourist center, and something about the technology seems a little more modern than the computer behind the desk or the landline phone on the wall. The kiosk is a tall silver rectangle, about average adult height, and the upper half is a screen welcoming visitors to touch it to activate the kiosk. If you were to touch it, the screen would come to life with simple dialogue inviting visitors to ask it their questions.
However, residents should note that the kiosk is only programmed to assist with exploration within the available areas of the city. It may not be able to answer every question, and tampering with the kiosk may result in unreliable or inaccurate answers!
TO THE SOUTHWEST
The western exit of the station takes you up into a city park, lush and green with a very light fog still hanging about the trees. There are lampposts on the walkways and benches where you could rest, and plenty of flora, although you can neither see nor hear any signs of animal life. You walk the paths that meander idly through the verdant grass and you feel a sense of peace, some of your unease about this place easing into a pleasant calm. The air smells fresh, like it's recently rained, and you'll find the grass ever so slightly damp should you decide to take a seat.
As you make your way deeper into the park, the trees grow denser and the smell of soil and plant life grows stronger. This is the older part of the park, very nearly a forest, with ivy climbing the trunks of the trees and plants and shrubs growing riotously around their bases. As you turn a corner, you find yourself first in the statue garden, although the statues are harder to see now, choked as they are with ivy. There are many statues, some partially obscured, some fully—very few of them still stand free of the vines and clinging roots. (It doesn't feel quite as peaceful here.) If a statue's face looks a little bit familiar, you may not want to look at it too long.
Continue down the path and you will find yourself in a graveyard, one that seems centuries old. Most of the headstones are worn away by time and covered in moss, rendering them impossible to read. The few that are free of moss are blank, or bear only suggestions of names too faint to be understood. (Was that the name of—no, it couldn't have been. Could it?) Many of the headstones stand at an angle or are toppled over completely, having been subjected to either strong winds or the roots of the trees that grow up from some of the graves, spreading branches toward the sky.
TO THE EAST
The final exit of the station, to the east, puts you out on a quiet surface street. Are you hungry? Or are you paralyzed by choice? There are plenty of restaurants, offering options of almost any food you can imagine. You could try a convenience store—it's well stocked, and the items there seem free for the taking. How about a restaurant? There's no one to take your order, but when you look in the kitchen, there's something on the stove, and it's just what you've been craving. Imagine that.
A few blocks down, you come in through the lobby of a tall building and find yourself in a corporate office. The fluorescent lights are steady and unforgiving, and the cubicles and offices are empty. There are a few pieces of paper on desks, a few folders left in organizers, but everything is perfectly blank. Despite how empty and quiet the office is, it nonetheless gives you the feeling that just a few minutes ago, this place was bustling with workers going about their daily business.
You enter another building and find yourself in the lobby of an apartment complex—finally, a place to rest. The first door you try opens easily into a completely empty living room, freshly vacuumed but without a single piece of furniture. It's a nice apartment, quiet, but with a little too much echo for your taste, maybe. Still, and perhaps oddly, you have no trouble envisioning what life here would be like.
The second door you open leads to an apartment that feels lived-in. Why does it feel lived-in? It's fully furnished with items that seem to go together perfectly, true, but the feeling is more than that—the room feels like someone was just here, maybe standing right in the kitchen only moments before you swung the door open. The air is a perfectly comfortable temperature, and it somehow smells like home despite that you've never once set foot here before. The refrigerator is stocked, and the cabinets are full of spices and flatware and kitchen utensils.
As you look around the living room, you find that there are pictures in frames on the walls and some of the flat surfaces—a seascape, a field, a shot of a city park bench. In each of the photos there's something just slightly wrong with the angle, as though the photographer were aiming for a subject that can no longer be seen.
Characters are welcome to explore the district around the City Hall subway station to their heart's content. The City Hall building itself contains several floors of offices and file rooms, but none of them contain any particularly interesting information. Nonetheless, characters may wish to team up with other newcomers and try to find some hints about the nature of the city. They can also spend a while in the park, the statue garden, or the graveyard. In the blocks surrounding the station there are plenty of options for food and housing, as well as office buildings, storefronts, and alleyways to look around. There are no workers in any of the buildings, and there does not seem to be an honor system for payment, nor any consequences for taking food from the stores or setting up camp in an apartment or office building.
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I SCREAM, YOU SCREAM.
Have you ever visited the ice cream parlor located in District 2? It's a pretty quirky little joint!
When you walk in, what you'll likely notice first is the colors. Everything is bright, almost oversaturated—the pink of the leather seats, the teal of the walls, the red of the menu sign hanging over the counter. By all rights it seems like these colors shouldn't go together, but somehow they do, or maybe that's just because being in an ice cream parlor puts you in a good mood. It smells like waffle cones, and overhead, there's music pumping through the speakers at just the right volume, providing some nice background noise to your decision-making process.
Wait, music?
There's a jukebox at the far end of the shop, which seems to be where the music is being chosen. As you head over, the song comes to an end and the jukebox machinery shuffles through its options before landing on a new one. The song sounds sort of familiar, doesn't it? And the longer you listen, the more the lyrics really seem to speak to you. It costs money to pick your own song, so if you happen to have some coins on you—or if you're really, really determined—you can choose the next round of tunes.
When you're done at the jukebox, you can go check out the serving area of the shop. Behind the counter you can see milkshake mixers and waffle cone makers; there are ice cream cakes in the freezers that line the wall; and when you approach the main counter you can see the tubs of ice cream in almost any flavor you can imagine.
Pick a flavor, whichever one's your favorite! Do you want it in a cone or in a bowl? There are regular cones and waffle cones, and all kinds of toppings—sprinkles, syrups, gummy candy, mini marshmallows. Decorate your ice cream however you want, the sky's the limit when it comes to choices! You can even come back for seconds if you want, or thirds. Who's going to say anything about it, after all?
But the more of your ice cream you eat, the more you start to feel… strange. Maybe you're starting to get angry, or sad, or giddy—maybe you feel romantic, or feel like you want to tell a secret to a stranger, and you're not really sure why. You also can't quite seem to stop eating your ice cream, and the more you eat, the less worried you feel about whatever's happening to your emotions. After all, why be concerned about that when you have something so delicious in front of you?
| Flavor |
Effect |
| Strawberry |
You find yourself compelled to seek out strangers and tell them a hidden truth about yourself |
| Rocky Road |
You find yourself compelled to seek out strangers and convince them of some egregious lie |
| Vanilla |
You are overwhelmed by a sense of total calm, and can only speak in aphorisms and platitudes |
| Rainbow Sherbert |
You are overwhelmed by amorous feelings towards whoever is near you and try to cuddle or kiss them |
| Chocolate |
You feel suddenly morose about something in your past and cannot stop crying until someone consoles you |
| Bubblegum |
You become uncontrollably giggly and giddy, and can only speak in rhyme |
| Caramel Ribbon |
You become angry and perhaps even violent, trying to attack anyone who comes near |
| Mint Chocolate Chip |
You suddenly have a common but exaggerated phobia (for example, a fear of heights where the step down off the curb is too much) |
When characters first enter the ice cream parlor, they may notice that there's music playing overhead! That's from the jukebox, and the lyrics of the song may sound like they're particularly apt for a character's circumstances. Players are welcome to choose their own jukebox songs for their characters—it doesn't need to have appeared in canon, but characters from modern times are welcome to recognize the music being played. (Players can also feel free not to pick a real song at all, and instead just describe the overall sound of the song and content of the lyrics!)
This is an ice cream parlor, so of course there's also ice cream to be had. Characters can serve themselves whatever flavor combination they want, but shortly thereafter will find themselves suffering certain emotional effects depending on what flavors they chose. These emotional effects, shown above, will last for roughly an hour before slowly dissipating, and their intensity depends on how much ice cream the character ate and whether they were able to recognize what was happening and stop eating. Not every flavor has an emotional effect, so players can also choose to have their character eat a normal scoop and go about their day.
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WILDCARD.
The city is by no means small, and there are plenty of things for you to see. There's no rush in exploring, so feel free to take your time looking around and peering into various nooks and crannies and alleyways—and don't worry, you're not very likely to find anything peering back.
If none of the above prompts appeal, feel free to check out the Locations and Maps pages and write your own freestyle prompt using one or many of the available locations.
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citycenter) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
citylogs2023-08-02 12:00 am
no subject
But her brows arch as he freezes. That alone speaks volumes. There are many different species where she's from. Then again, it is not like there are many of Gamora's race running around the galaxy. He'd likely have a similar reaction to Nebula, if he ran across her, although her sister has more modifications than Gamora.]
That's not a question.
no subject
I-- What? Yeah.. shit, yeah, sorry. I'm- just-
[ I'm just a normal human and no matter how much weird shit I see I'm still kind of amazed when I do see it? He pushes out another breath to steady himself, then studies her. She doesn't seem outwardly antagonistic, if a little restrained. She looks like she'd rather not be talking to him, but she answered and didn't just walk away from him, right? She's also pretty. Very pretty. Maybe that's why he's nervous. ]
Do you.. know what's going on around here? Where I am?
[ Very good way to ask if you've been abducted by a race of green martians, Daniel. Excellent reporting skills. ]
no subject
But he sputters, which seems to solidify her previous musing. She had been no less settled with her own arrival, but she tends to put her hackles up in strange situations. Perhaps bark a little, so to speak, but far less fumbling.]
What is the phrase... Join the club. From what has been told, anyone you meet here arrived at some point. I suppose you might be the third wave, if people are to be believed.
no subject
Third, huh.. So, they just keep bringing new people in and telling them nothing? That seems... [ Stupid? Scary? Pointless? Like purgatory? Is he dead? ] Productive.
[ Ah yes, the armor of sarcasm. Daniel tightens his lips a little, somehow unable to look away from her face. She is kind of enchanting. Or Daniel's just a weirdo. Column A, column B. ]
So you've been here a while, then, if you know I'm the third wave. Were you wave one?
no subject
Idiotic.
[Gamora supplies, as that is about where she stands. Frustrating, ridiculous, annoying- those are also words she would happily use to describe this whole entire mess of a situation.]
That depends on your definition of a while. I was the second. [If she believes everything others have told her.] Apparently when the first arrivals came, this place was as it is now. More or less like someone just... snapped everyone away.
no subject
It says a lot about Daniel that merely having the same sentiment as someone can make him this ecstatic. ]
And that's so weird, right? That people keep coming here but nothing's actually happening? Like, are more and more people just going to arrive until we're all crammed in here on top of one another? [ He casts his eyes around, imagining this place like he's seen the cable cars in San Francisco. Then, like an elastic band snapping back into place, he looks back to her. ] And why us, huh? That's the money question: why us, specifically us, you and me? What's so special about you and me, or him, or those guys over there? What've we got to bring to this place?
[ He's in reporter mode, and like this he seems to come alive. All that nervous energy seems to spring forth as his brain latches onto a string of thought and pulls like unravelling a sweater. So it's pretty easy for him to have the balls to finally ask: ] What kind of world did you come from?
no subject
[Almost like who ever is behind this is building up for something. Reach a certain capacity, and then what? Release the hounds, so to speak? Is it an experiment to see how people will react? There are plenty of theories that Gamora could come up with, but little real answers.
Like how is she here? She should be dead. There would be no escape from her fate, and it has been confirmed. It creates a bit of an anomaly, does it not? If she is here, has Thanos actually obtained the Stone? She had thought for some time that perhaps this is what happens after, but she has struck that theory off the list.]
I didn't. I was usually aboard a space ship.
[Being technical about that. Vormir doesn't count. The world of her birth? She hadn't returned since Thanos has massacred her people and taken her away.]
no subject
Daniel does his second double take of the afternoon, probably not his last, and just kind of.. blinks at her for a second or two. He's not as surprised as he was earlier - because she's green so hearing the 'spaceship' buzzword isn't exactly a stretch of the imagination at this point - but he still reserves a moment to allow his brain to hyper-fixate on the conditions of her statement. Spaceships are real, she's green, she's clearly an alien, which means spaceships and aliens are real and goddamn it, he fucking kneeeewwww it!!!!
Sorry Gamora, this is an important moment in Daniel's development. He's always been a 'the government know more than they let on and totally have aliens at Area 51' kinda guy. ]
Ahh so like-- [ He says, a little lost in the conversation for a minute because his mind is still thrilled with the satisfaction of being right all along. ] You were.. born on a space ship? In space? [ He cringes at himself as soon as the words have left his mouth. ] What a fucking stupid thing to say, sorry, I mean.. You're from a different world, at least, right? Arguably I'd say you've got more to offer a place like this than I do. I'm just a guy.
[ Who cuddles up to vampires at night, but, y'know. ]
no subject
She hesitates at the question, watching as he flounders a little, and it's when he stops that she's shaking her head.]
Beings can be, but no, I was born on a planet.
[Not that she seems troubled by this 'stupid thing' he has said. She has heard worse. Far worse. And, most of it deserved. The person that stands here today is not the same person from five years ago, even from a few years ago.]
I have never been to Terra- to Earth. So yes, I was born on a planet different from it.
no subject
This must be pretty weird for you then, huh? Bein' here? Which... I'm assuming is Earth, but, now that I think about it I don't have any concrete proof. We could be anywhere right now. In a video game, even.
[ He's pretty sure he's watched a movie like that, trying to remember the name of it as he gives the station another once over. ]
no subject
Hell.
[She offers, not explaining that she had thought it had been some afterlife when she had first arrived- or whatever happened to come after for her. She hadn't thought to ask Peter anything about the snap, but maybe... Maybe she will, some day.]
Is there anything in particular that would scream Earth about this to you?
no subject
[ Daniel repeats stupidly, his eyes widening a bit. He hadn't considered that this world could be some kind of fucked up middle-space to keep dead souls until they got sorted into heaven and hell or whatever the communal belief was about purgatory's management. But now that he's thinking about it, she does have a point.
He whips his head around, but sees exactly the same things he did before, and then he throws up fingers to his throat. He could still feel Armand's pulse, but only after feeding and only ever so faint it was almost not there.. If he could feel his own, he couldn't be dead.
Thump, thump.
Thank fuck for that. It's pretty easy to imagine him taking a confusing cocktail of whatever he could get his hands on and slipping away into the ether on a park bench, but he's sure Armand wouldn't let that happen. He's relieved to find out that's the case, or it at least seems that way. ]
I... I mean it looks like Earth. I've never been here specifically, but I've been somewhere that looks like it, generally, y'know? I can't be dead.
no subject
She watches as he brings his fingers up, no doubt checking for a pulse. She has one. What does it actually mean? She shouldn't, not truly, or at least she wouldn't expect to have one. It's been confirmed that she has passed. It's not a glitch or a blip.]
It bears some resemblance to various planets I have been on.
[Not to all of them. Some are far more advanced, whereas others are more run down, dirty, grimy. Others far less, like what she recalls of her own planet from her childhood.]
But not an exact match to any.
no subject
[ Daniel looks around again, his eyes alighting on the shopfronts sitting completely abandoned and unmanned but still somehow full of stock apparently ready for the taking. ]
It feels like a movie set or something, like The Truman Show.
[ He throws her a glance then. ]
You probably don't know what that is, huh.. Do you have, uh, movies on the planet you're from?
no subject
I'm not familiar with that one, but the Bacon man and his dancing. The show with the man and his talking car. Cheers.
[Familiar being the key word, and remembered through the mind of Peter.]
no subject
... You're talking about Footloose? I saw that last year!
[ Yep, and Knight Rider, and Cheers. Daniel is from exactly the right time to have seen all of those, and recently! Of all the things he expected Miss Green Alien to bring up, it was not that. He can't help a stifled laugh at Bacon Man. ]
How the hell do you know about Footloose? They have Footloose in space? Really big antenna or something?
no subject
Quill. He is a Terran man. He has told us about these Earth things.
[She is more familiar with the music, of course, or at least the music that Peter had. No doubt much has changed in the years since he left but Gamora does enjoy the tunes. Can sing along with them.]
no subject
[ The fact that this situation she's describing is so painfully similar to his experiences with Armand is not lost on him. Now he thinks about it, applying alien logic to him kind of makes him easier to withstand. ]
But- We're getting off-topic. [ He wafts a hand as if it'll help him stay on track. Good luck, buddy. ] The Truman Show is about a guy who thinks he's living real life, but it's actually a show staged for an audience. So he thinks he's got a job and the world is real, but at a certain point it's just a set. This is like that. That's the point I was trying to make.
no subject
[Which... alright. If that is the case here, they don't know it either. Or would they? It is not like Gamora thinks that this is real life. It's something else.]
no subject
[ Daniel shrugs, casual. ]
Here, the American Dream aspect is the same; things are a little too nice to try and keep you ignorant, but.. it's missing the life, you know? The NPCs, the people, the dirt. We have the capacity to imagine something like that, the movie set or the idea that whoever's responsible for this is surveying us, but none of the tactics to get out of it. He ends up trying to drive out of town and gets stopped, or there are barricades. If I remember right he ends up tunnelling under the city and sailing away in a boat till he gets stopped by an invisible wall. [ Squint. ] Is there even any bodies of water here?