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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citylogs2023-08-02 12:00 am
no subject
[ A playful quip in return as he returns to gather his own kimono. As a man who can drink with someone one moment and then kill them in the next, the back turned toward him means very little. The mood has shifted to drink, one he slips to seamlessly, amorous thoughts of beautiful throat slitting and gutting everything beneath ribs exchanged for daydreams of sake and sweet potatoes. Wanting one's companionship and wanting to kill them do not strike him as mutually exclusive.
When straightening up, he does not miss the face Getou makes. Like biting into a lemon. The daemon immediately makes an assumption: girlfriend? With a face like that, it may be an ex-girlfriend. But he quickly puts pondering on what kind of woman could make a man like Getou Suguru pull a face aside in favor of a race. As nearly as much a lover of competition and games as sparring, delight brightens his features. ]
Yeah! [ he follows the line of Getou's finger, nodding as he marks the route, ] As long as you aren't tricking me and planning to run off in the opposite direction.
[ Lightly said with a laugh, but if that really is the gambit, he will hunt this man down. You can't hang liquor and candied sweet potatoes in front of his nose and then take them away; too cruel, too cruel, especially when he has not eaten since arriving. Even if he had considered leaving earlier sheerly to be contrary, he is invested now. ]
Want to make it more interesting? [ Rokurou takes a moment to stretch, limbering up a bit more, ] Something like ... loser has to do what the winner says for—is a day too much? Maybe an hour?
[ He tosses a stick down to act as their 'starting line' out of fairness and stands behind it, ready to take off. ]
no subject
[ but then... if he won dishonestly, would that also not bother him? perhaps not, if the swordsman has already made up his mind on where they stand... and he seems the greedy sort that would take advantage. as he lowers his center and ponders at his gut, he finally accepts the terms with a nod. ]
I'll even give you three. [ how generous. he'll have to decide if he will give him those three hours. his hand raises, far off in the distance, a street light, perpetually running their cycles and directing a city full of traffic that does not flood her streets. it's currently green, about to throw up cautions. ]
When next that light turns blue, shall we? [ not just speed, but reaction time. ]
no subject
[ He flashes a cheeky smile while tapping the ground with the tip of his foot in anticipation. Mismatched eyes glint, once again judging the distance and calculating the most direct route with consideration to bushes and trees. At the mention of the street light, his gaze flickers, nodding once he understands the way the colors work. Traffic lights are novel and unfamiliar thing he would take the time to study in interest if there were not a competition. ]
Three? Then I really have to win.
[ Edging his foot up against the line of their charming stick, he crouches sightly, ready to take off at a flash of blue. From head to toe, nothing about the swordsman suggests that he believes that he is going to lose—even if is aware that he migh be the underdog in even a footrace against this man. It's this: the sense of dragging down something colossal, clawing hands up against a concrete wall until it crumbles, trembling under his own limits with bones grinding and tissue ripping. The best feeling, even with something as inconsequential as this.
Which is why the smile across his mouth is genuine. Eyes bright, his body is a bow with limbs taut in tense string-draw—one, two, three—and a straight shot once the light turns blue.
Crunching grass. Cutting wind. An earnest race without any tricks at all, at least on his part—relishing the challenge too much, Rokurou doesn't even think about it once he goes. Every stride is thunderous applause, synapse symphony with trickling beads of sweat and rib-expanding breath. It does not matter if he loses when he skids into their agreed upon spot; he is delighted anyway, standing tall with a happy huff and mane gone wild. ]
no subject
[ he has a good summation of this man, he thinks. will he stay interesting? ]
[ at the rectangle of pavement the traffic signs bracket, a challenger sprints with their dearest efforts, trickling sweat and lactic acid. the other blinks into existence, covering the distance in a fraction of all his admiration, before those final few steps eat up the tarmac: dry, still, regulated and controlled. the only thing out of place is a few floating hairs that delay settling into gravity after the speed of his transfer. it suggests far more strength than he released during their spar. ]
[ before Rokurou can speak, he raises a finger, hushing him. time starts now. ]
Don't complain. [ he can already hear this man accusing fraud, demanding do-over. these fall outside of the promise of his loss and their agreement, and Getou challenges him to not be a man of his word with a pointed gaze. only when he proves his obedience will they move on. ]
no subject
[ The daemon brushes back an unruly lock, scarred palm swiping along temple and hairline. Déjà vu’s fingers caress his throat and ripple fine hairs along his nape as he watches dark strands settle against Getou’s shoulder. That effortless strength and unruffled skill is solid confirmation that his initial estimation had been well off the mark. The second assessment had not been right either.
A subconscious comparison. Rokurou’s killing intent spikes suddenly, ashcloud malevolence roiling with flurrying sediment throwing calm murk into frenzied malice. Laborious swallow, adam’s apple a slow roll before he exhales; the fluctuation snaps into blank nothing quickly with a yanked zipper tab. This is not the man he yearns to claw down with him—no matter how familiar that weight may be now that he’s gotten a better feel of it.
Two losses.
But who’s counting?
Lips stretch tightly over white teeth and pink gums. Head tilting, a single dark pinhead pupil needles onto Suguru’s face, carving its features and marking its differences for his own sake. Become too familiar and he may do something impulsive. ]
I’m a man of commitment. The loss is mine—I’m all yours for an hour.
[ Relaxed, he brushes off his kimono to shake off the wrinkles from his run. Being at the mercy of another’s whims is quite the comfortable fit. ]