ENDLESS PLUMMET INTO MORE OF THE UNKNOWN.
» THE MALL — INTRODUCTORY NOTES
On the morning of August 19, every device in the city starts to buzz.
The screen illuminates, displaying a white page not unlike the orientation survey that welcomed you into the city. Unlike the orientation survey, though, there are no questions—only a single phrase in bold, dark text. WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE, it says, with a single "OK" button below.
For a minute, nothing else happens. You try to turn the device off, but the screen stays lit; you try to reboot the device, but the screen stays lit. It seems that the only way to get rid of the screen is to press the button.
Besides that, though, nothing much seems to happen. It's a nice day, sunny, blue skies, a little warmer than usual but that's not so bad. Maybe you decide to take a walk, explore the park near city hall. At the park, you may notice that there are signs up for the grand re-opening of the shopping mall—it's back and open for business. Maybe you should go and check it out. Who knows? You might find something interesting there.
Be warned, though—it won't be difficult to head inside, but it may be considerably harder to get out.
Midway through your browsing, you start to notice that things are… strange. The air feels a few degrees colder than it did minutes ago, and it's dark. Was it always this dark in here? You look up, look around, and find that the mall has been plunged into an almost preternatural darkness, lit only by strips of emergency lighting along the walls. As your eyes adjust to the gloom, you can tell that the mall looks… well, mostly the same as it did before. Still empty, still quiet, but the low hum of electricity in the building has been replaced with silence, save for some faint scuffling sounds you can hear at a distance. How long have you been in here? Did the mall close while you were shopping? Maybe it's for the best if you try to get out—assuming that you can find the exit…
The main body of this event begins at 10:00 AM City time on August 19 and will continue for six days, until 10:00AM City time on August 25. Within that timeframe, characters may enter the mall and explore, but when they try to leave, they will find themselves trapped from inside, the shutters having closed over the main doors of the mall to prevent them from escaping. This trap is one way, meaning that characters can enter the mall at any point but will not be able to leave the same way until the end of the event period on August 25.
There won't be anything obvious about the mall's exterior to suggest that anything is wrong inside, but characters who are particularly sensitive to energy flow may notice that something about the building seems off in a bad way. There is also plenty of room on this ride for a few characters at a time, so even if one character becomes trapped, others will still be able to enter at a later time and become trapped as well. Characters who enter the mall in a group will become trapped as a group, but are of course able to split up and reconvene at will during the event duration. Once trapped, characters can—optionally and with some difficulty—find their way to a fire escape and force it open to make their way out of the mall before the event period is over.
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ENDLESS DARK, STILL TIME MUST ENTER YOU.
» THE MAINTENANCE ROOMS — KEEPING THINGS RUNNING
Inside the mall, the entire building has been plunged into darkness. The only illumination comes from exit signs and strips of emergency lighting low on the walls, guiding you towards exit doors that won't open for you, no matter how hard you try to force them. As your eyes adjust, you start to be able to make out shapes: the columns and escalators in the atrium, the shape of a dry fountain in the main lobby. The mannequins in the storefronts.
If you're brave enough to explore, there's nothing stopping you from making your way around the mall in the dark. You might find your way into the food court, or maybe one of the mall's many clothing stores. There's also a wellness store selling all sorts of vitamins and protein powders, a toy store that seems to exclusively sell carved wooden block toys, and a jewelry store selling stopped watches and all manner of diamond rings and necklaces.
There are also other things to see, deeper in the bowels of the mall. Through a door marked with a bold EMPLOYEES ONLY sign, you enter a hallway—a long hallway, a very long hallway, lit a sickly red by the overhead emergency lights. On the walls, you can barely make out graffiti scrawled in ink: RUN, it says. DON'T STOP. SAFETY IN NUMBERS.
When the hallway finally ends, you find yourself at a crossroads. You can make your way left at a fork to bring yourself down to the electrical room, home to all the transformers and breakers and switchboards that control the flow of power to the mall. (All of the breakers appear to be in the correct positions, and there is no visible reason why the lights should all be turned off.) Venturing further brings you to the mechanical room, where the boilers, elevator machinery, and air-conditioning are humming away contentedly.
If you go right at the fork, you'll find yourself in the mall security office, where a bank of televisions is still illuminated—albeit flickering and flashing, fizzing out into static for minutes at a time. There are no backdated security tapes, but there is a live feed of the closed-circuit camera system inside the mall, showing the main atriums, all down the hallways, the food court, and even the insides of the electrical and mechanical rooms.
As you look at the security feed, you may see flickers of movement on some of the cameras. Some of the cameras show fellow residents who have also become trapped alongside you. The fidelity of the tapes is bad, and the grain makes it hard to see clearly, but as the screen cycles between the different feeds, you become ever more sure that even aside from the other city residents, there is someone else here—and they're moving. Something about this fills you with dread, but why? You keep watching, and watching, and watching, and then it hits you:
It's because whoever it is is moving this way.
Players who want to participate in the event, but who don't want their character directly involved with the more intense elements, can opt to have their character explore the mall and observe the feeds, or even make an escape from the mall by finding and forcing a fire door. Alternately, characters can find themselves pursued by (or pursuing) a vision from their past, without catching it or being caught—read on for details. Players are welcome to mix and match event elements as they see fit, and characters can become trapped repeatedly if players so desire.
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TO BE THE THING NOT TOUCHED BY LIGHT (NO, THAT'S NOT IT).
» THE MAIN HALLWAYS — PURSUED BY HORRORS
When you exit the maintenance rooms and begin to walk through the nearly pitch-dark mall, you become aware of the feeling that you're being watched.
It's just a sensation at first, a prickling on the back of your neck that makes you think you're being followed. When you turn around, there's nobody there—no one except whoever else you came here with, that is. But the more you explore, the more intense the sensation becomes, until it's strong enough to make you feel like the next time you turn your head, you're going to come face to face with whatever has been following you through the building—although when you do look back, of course, there's no one there.
Until there is. At some point, you turn your head to look behind you and catch a flash of something—hair? clothing?—vanishing into one of the empty storefronts, or behind one of the standing advertisements in the hallway. If you choose to go investigate, to chase down whoever has been making the hair on the back of your neck stand on end, you find… nothing. Not a single trace, just racks of clothing, boxes of shoes, and mannequins standing still on their displays.
The next time you turn around, though, you see them again. A person, someone you recognize, standing and watching you from a few meters away down the hall. That's when you realize something is wrong. They shouldn't be here. They weren't here, at least not as far as you know—and they don't exactly look happy about it. But they look so real, and in a place like this it's impossible to know for sure, isn't it? How can you be positive that isn't really them?
Maybe you choose to give chase. If you do, they run away from you down the hallway, taking turns at breakneck speed as they try to escape your grasp. (Has the mall always been this large? Has it always had so many labyrinthine corridors?) Several times you almost catch them, only for them to slip out of your grasp at the last second and twist away down another hall.
Or maybe they chase you. As the hallways wind away from you, you find yourself taking turns faster and faster, trying to avoid the grasping hands of this person from your past who seems determined to catch you. Their hands extend, reaching for you, and you just narrowly manage to avoid being grabbed, pivoting around yet another corner in your attempt to get away.
But nobody can run forever. Eventually, they reach out and grab you—or you reach out and grab them—
(For a split second your senses are overwhelmed, blinded by the vivid image of blood and torn limbs, fire, ash, stone, decay. It's so real, the memory is so real, like you're back in it again, in that moment—whether this moment actually happened or not.)
—and there's no person there at all. Just a mannequin, blank-faced and plastic-limbed, standing in the hallway in front of you.
Characters participating in this segment of the event will, over the course of the time they're trapped in the mall, begin to feel like they're being watched. The sensation grows increasingly more intense, until finally the character catches sight of someone from their past who is indeed following them through the mall. With the permission of the other player, this can be a character who is currently in the City, or it can be someone else from the character's past who by all rights should not be in the City currently.
After will follow some extended hide and seek. Characters can be trapped together, go it alone, or start out together, split up, and then regroup at a later time. No matter what, if the one doing the hiding is found, the character (and any characters around them) will experience a brief but intense flash of memory of one party's death at the hands of the other. This memory, which is shared between all parties present, does not need to be a real memory, but it will absolutely be a convincing one! Were you chasing your long-dead lover? Congratulations, you just made her dead again. Were you being pursued by your sworn enemy? Unfortunately, they just took you down. However, when characters recover from this memory, the person will be gone, replaced by a mannequin—or maybe it was a mannequin all along?
Characters traveling in groups may experience several of these mannequin chases, depending on how many people are with them, since each character may be pursued by a mannequin of their own. This means that there can be multiple instances of killing/being killed, and characters can encounter their figment(s) multiple times as well. It's up to the player to decide when is the "last time" - at which point, the figment will turn into a mannequin.
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WHAT IT IS TO BE QUIET, AND YET STILL BREATHING.
» THE MALL — NORMAL OPERATING HOURS
At 10:00 AM City time on August 25, whatever had taken control of the mall lifts completely. The shutters lift from the main doors of the mall, allowing characters to leave at will. The lights come back on and illuminate the entire mall in fluorescence, and the hallways are immediately their normal length again, all the maze-like twists and turns gone. Any character still hiding from, or chasing, the person from their past will find them replaced by a mannequin.
The shopping mall is once again open for business.
Characters will be free to come and go from the mall as they please even during the event, but as of August 25, they will no longer run any risk of being trapped. Any damage done to the mall by characters during their time in the darkness will vanish when the lights come on, and the only sign that anything was ever strange will be the mannequins standing in odd poses and even odder locations. After the end of the event, characters who are sensitive to energy will no longer be able to sense any kind of malignant presence at the mall, and the city will return to its pre-event energy state.
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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.
This month's event headers come from "Notes on the Below," a poem by Ada Limón.
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citylogs2023-08-19 09:00 pm
food
But he's got his phone flashlight on, and he shines it directly at Netzach's face as soon as he realizes there's someone else nearby. Hey.]
—Oh, hey. From the party.
[..........he shines the phone at the floor after too long a beat, oops, sorry-]
You pick up any good supplies? [that's what everyone is doing, right??]
no subject
[he raises a hand in greeting, squinting against the phone flashlight until junpei lowers it... he's used to things like this, it's fine. how else are they supposed to tell who anyone is in the dim light?]
I found a few things. Trying not to carry too much though, you know?
[too lazy for that.
he's got a pillow on the tabletop next to him, and from a pilfered tote bag he pulls out... well. uh. 'supplies' may be a stretch. it's mainly assorted craft supplies (though that does include a couple x-acto knives) and a couple fancy scented candles, which are useless since he's yet to find a lighter.]
no subject
[Anyway, once he shines his phone light on Netzach's, uh, supplies - those aren't supplies at all. At least the guy made it to a place with food, but hmm.]
You planning on opening a gallery while we're in here? What's with all the art stuff?
[Junpei can't really talk, given that he wandered into the jewelry store and got caught up testing a bunch of dead watches and is now wearing a total of four of them, still. He can't say a word about useful supplies.
But also. The off-brand Yankee Candle experience??]
I was thinking more like... the kind of stuff you get for camping.
no subject
[he has absolutely zero idea what you would need for it. a tent, right? and...
yeah. that's all he's got.]
But I figured I'd grab some of this while I was already here and found the store. It'll get boring if we're stuck here a while, anyway, and it'll be useful if we have to leave messages anywhere.
...the candles sounded better before I realized I wasn't finding anything to light 'em with.
no subject
[He's never been camping, but maybe he has more experience with the oil lamps than Junpei, because that's going to be a Minimal from him.
He considers, frowning a little; where could they find camping stuff... This place isn't just a big WalMart, unfortunately...]
Soooo, do you want to come look for some other stuff, or should I catch up with you later?
no subject
[probably. it's a light, how hard can it be?
and on considering that offer... well. does he kind of want to stay put? sure. does he want to stay stuck by himself in the dark? not really. sticking with someone else can't hurt, as long as he doesn't get saddled with carrying too many things.]
I'll come, sure. Beats sitting around here by myself... this place is kind of a pain to get around in, like this.
no subject
You know what'd be really helpful in here? One of those goddamn kiosks. Looove a little irony in the morning.
[is it morning. who can say.]
Anyway, uh, if we can find a big department store, we're probably set. Ready?
no subject
[he has not been successful with that so far. but he gathers up his pillow and bag, pushing himself to his feet once more to follow junpei and his flashlight. carry on, fearless leader.]
At least a store like that can't be easy to miss, once we get close enough.
no subject
[Grim... But let's go; Junpei leads the way out of the food court and makes a turn for the widest hallway once they reach the big "intersection."]
We just have to get to the end of the hall without being whacked by ghosts or whatever, and we'll be there. Dunno if we'll be on the right floor to find camping stuff, though...
[But that's for them five minutes into the future to figure out. Junpei shuffles a bit ahead to look at a normal mall kiosk, the stand kind that would be selling something if the lights were on. What have they got here...]
I think they fix jewelry here... Oh, hey, look at this. [Turning to hold up Hand Lights,] Now you can really do art in the dark.
no subject
[those are useful as hell? let him see those, he absolutely wants some lights on his hands. he's just wiggling his fingers experimentally with them on...
cool.]
Man, if the regular booths have stuff like this, maybe we won't even need to find camping gear.
no subject
Okay, those are for your pop up art gallery. We need actual lanterns to just set up and not have to point at everything.
[Is he pocketing another pair of the cool light gloves though? Absolutely. And he'll do a circle around this booth to make sure there's nothing else that might be useful. Maybe some... pliers? He thinks they're pliers; he doesn't really know that much about jewelry repair. Those also go in his pocket.
Back to the walking grind, unless Netzach wants to look at more jewelry stuff--]
Besides, who knows how long we're stuck here. I want another change of clothes, at least.
no subject
[making a face at the thought... he hasn't needed to deal with things like laundry in a While, not until he showed up here. he probably still doesn't, considering that he lives with local wifeguy numero uno.]
This is gonna be a lot of stuff to carry around by the time we're set.
no subject
We can probably find a cart somewhere. Or one of those, uh... [he gestures for this part,] flatbed big carts for furniture and stuff. Assuming these stores still have a back room to sneak into.
[Last resort: one of those ride-on panda things for children.]
And let's hope we're not moving in for real, but the big stores usually have real beds, too. You don't have to sleep on food court tables.
no subject
Not a bad idea. If we have to, we could probably use a cart to help block an area off...
[you know, just in case.]
You definitely had me at 'real beds', though. It's been a while.
no subject
[The floor somewhere?? A different table? Junpei, who still stubbornly sleeps on his stolen apartment's stolen couch because the bed-that's-not-his makes him uncomfortable, thinks it's weird to sleep on not-beds.]
—Well, let's hope we don't have to make another fortress like whatever they were doing with the t-shirts upstairs. Look, here we are: affordable household goods paradise.
[He gestures up ahead, at the entrance to the department store, as dark as anything else. There are some mannequins in the window that are probably just mannequins, hopefully? Godspeed.]
no subject
[you know. anywhere, everywhere... if he weren't too lazy for it, netzach could sleep standing up.
he could still fall asleep standing up, there's just no chance he'd stay that way.
once they spot the store, though, he's marginally more lively, picking up his pace just a bit as they head toward that darkened entrance.]
At least getting here was easy, right? Shouldn't be too hard to grab some stuff and get back to the rest of the mall.
no subject
So far so good.]
Well, that depends... I think we're gonna have to find the escalators to get to the camping stuff. Or I guess right now they'd just be stairs.
[Indeed, the products on offer around this particular entrance appear to be mostly clothing. A stop for clean clothes first, can't forget that.]
If anything moves that isn't supposed to, chuck your pillow at it.
no subject
[netzach... is less concerned with the clothes than he probably should be, wandering on past them and flicking his own phone flashlight on to look around.]
Just clothes and stuff so far...
no subject
You're not gonna get some clean clothes...?
[Hm............]
no subject
[listen, they might have had to clean the library itself, but in a place where you can get anything you need out of a book, there is No way this man ever worried about washing clothes. this is a slight adjustment.
he'll check them out, then, browsing curiously through a few racks-- there should be something comfortable, right? he's mostly looking at looser-fitting options, things he can slip on easily and that won't be too restrictive.]