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
Still, dark eyes tilt in the other man's direction at those words. Not only is the familial admission of particular curiosity — but so, too, is the angle of the man's smile. Unused to being treated with such unassuming familiarity in this context, he finds his guard naturally lowered. Perhaps it is a mistake. He'll come to learn the answer eventually, one way or another.]
I see. I can tell. [Even without a proper blade in hand, Rokurou's comfort in slicing vegetables is clear.] My clan also trained in swordsmanship, but it was not necessarily our specialization. That was...
[He frowns, gaze jumping away, as if it has touched something suddenly too hot.]
I lost my arm a year ago, so it's healed since then. But during that time I had little opportunity to practice with it. [On account of being bound and in prison.....] If there's opportunity later, perhaps we could spar. [It would be without weapons, but Sasuke doesn't mind this. Tools are only an extension of natural ability. With that said, he steps away from the counter.] I'm finished.
no subject
He listens quietly while the other man speaks. The tone of Sasuke's voice is pleasant to the ear: low, somewhat languid. Even his scent, something the daemon gets another whiff of when he leans over to grab another vegetable, is nice. Clean, but with the undercurrent of nature. Wood? A hint of metal. Ashy touch. It wouldn't be easy to pick out in a crowd.
Another clan ... Rokurou chews on that similarity after mulling on his scent. Interesting, but ultimately clans aren't rare. He peeks up when Sasuke trails off, interest piqued and wanting the man to continue. Unfortunately, he doesn't finish that train of thought; Rokurou is left to wonder just what their specialization is. There's much to glean from careful observation but not nearly enough. He wants to know more.
He finishes up the chopping soon after. Stepping in to sweep the pieces into the pot, his juice-stained blade scrapes across wood to catch stray remnants. ]
I'd like that. I need to sharpen up my hand-to-hand combat.
[ Only having kitchen knives is regrettable, and he isn't stubborn enough to rely on them for the sake of his style. A huge concession on his part.
The food in the pot begins to sizzle. Rokurou adds spices, doing his best to mimic the recipe for curry that he knows. Their friend kept decently stocked cabinets, but from the lack of use, it isn't difficult to judge that he was the kind of guy who liked to order takeout even when there was food at home.
It doesn't take long for the aroma to build. Satisfied that the measurements are good enough, he closes the lid over the pot and washes his hands. ]
You said you're staying in an unfurnished room. Even if it's temporary, is that going to be comfortable for you?
no subject
This city is worse than the world he came from, Sasuke realizes, because it has nothing. Nothing but an endless void of space — to exist. Nothing but a cage full of other people who know nothing about him. If they did, they would not offer this affable companionship as Rokurou has done, preparing him food and questioning his comfort...
Sasuke realizes his mind has slipped from attention, and the silence has pushed a point of tactlessness.]
No, I'm fine. [This isn't a lie; he is used to sleeping in the wilderness, so an indoor space is comparative luxury.] But I can't stay here long. I'll take some of the food with me.
[Spooked like a cat.]
I'll also repay you for the ingredients.
no subject
Showing me how to use this is all the repayment I need. [ he’s taken up the phone again, fiddling with it in his hands to pass time while the curry simmers, ] If it’s for communication I want to know how to do it too.
[ Sasuke has already said it’s fine, but in the end, Rokurou just can’t let it go. He glances up from the phone to continue, ]
Sure, I’ll pack you some in a box. [ or whatever is close to a food box here; there are some interesting things in the cabinets, ] And I know you’ll be fine, but you should have something. Take a pillow and blanket from here if you don’t have.
[ Who hasn’t slept on the ground outside or on the floor of a cold, dirty prison cell? But if there are options Sasuke shouldn’t have to do that.
But that’s just his own feelings. Rokurou doesn’t like the thought of the other man curled up on the cold floor without a stitch of bedding, and what he doesn’t like he doesn’t like. ]
no subject
Here.
[Surfacing the phone in his own pocket, Sasuke sends a message to one Rokurou Rangetsu. Or, as he soon notices, wheremysword. No hint of humor shows on his face when he sees the username, despite its ridiculousness.
His message is perfunctory: This is Uchiha Sasuke. The notification chimes from the device in Rokurou's hand.] You don't need to respond to it, but if there is anything you need to communicate in the future, you'll contact this name. [He taps the screen where his own username is displayed.] I'll receive it wherever I am. Practice first, if you need to.
[A frown mars Sasuke's lips, pulling his mouth down in a well-worn curve. He supposes there is no way to refuse.]
... I'll take a blanket.
no subject
This must be how the cavemen felt when they discovered fire. ]
This is really cool. I’ll practice it and write you a letter later. If messages can be sent at anytime, you can write me whenever you want, okay?
[ He turns back to the pot after happily sticking the phone in his pocket with more reverence than the first time. The curry will need a few more minutes to simmer before he can pack it up, so Rokurou uses that time to grab a blanket from the linen closet. It’s clean and lightweight, easy to pack and carry. ]
Here, take this one.
no subject
Thank you.
[Somehow, this interaction began with him being harassed on the rooftop of a building. He cannot quite puzzle out how it changed, only that Rokurou has swept him into an inertia of friendliness and companionship difficult to decline. For the first time — against his will, buried deep in the fold of his thoughts, to be later examined and criticized — he feels a sense of homesickness. But not for the village where he was born and lived.]
I can't promise I will always respond quickly. [Instant communication, an Uchiha nightmare.] ... But if it's an emergency, let me know.
no subject
[ The lack of promise is not surprising. Sasuke strikes him as the quiet type, an introvert, someone who values his privacy and ability to communicate when he deems necessary. Frankly, the fact that he appears willing to respond at all is enough to make the daemon happy. He had plucked this one personally, why wouldn't he be happy with reciprocation?
That is his style. Pick someone he likes out and just stick to them. Velvet is probably enjoying her vacation from him back in Midgand.
He heads back into the kitchen to pack up the curry. There had already been rice, so he adds that as well, giving a generous amount before sealing it up. Even if he is a daemon that does not eat humans or other daemons, he has never needed to eat much. Better to give the bulk of it to Sasuke who, from what he can tell, is human. ]
Here. Let me know how it is, alright?
/ties a bow on this
It would not feel right if he didn't. With a short nod of his head, he takes the offering and turns to leave. He can think of nothing else to say.
Only a day later — his coming and going silent, purposefully evasive — Rokurou will find a paper bag of fresh groceries on his doorstep as well as the cleaned bowl he borrowed, pinned with a note that reads in neat Japanese: It was good. ]