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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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COME ON IN…
Now that summer is drawing to a close, are you regretting how little time you spent at the pool? Well, worry not—now that District 3 has opened up, residents have access to the city university, and along with it, the university's impressive athletics building, including its two full-sized swimming pools!
Residents who pay a visit to the pool facilities will find that the swimming pools have different purposes. The first is a relaxation pool—it's shallower in general, with a maximum depth of about six feet, and residents are welcome to use toys such as floaties or pool noodles, provided for their convenience by the facility maintenance staff. There's no pressure here to swim laps, race with each other, or perform any impressive diving maneuvers—this is a suitable pool for just having a soak, playing around, or sitting in the shallow end and reading a book.
Of course, this sounds all good and well, but the longer you spend in the pool, the more different you start to feel. As you drift toward the deeper end, you may start to feel your worries and weights lift away from you, leaving you feeling rejuvenated and youthful like a child. On the other hand, you may start to feel yourself grow tired, weary, world-worn… almost like you've aged significantly in the short time you've spent in the pool. Don't worry, the effect is temporary—once you return to the shallow end and climb out onto the deck, you'll find any effects washing away with the pool water.
The second pool is for the more serious swimmers, those who like a challenge. It boasts an Olympic diving board with several levels, and a deeper deep end than the relaxation pool—and boy, do we mean much deeper.
If you want to swim laps, have a race, or practice your high dive, this pool is the one for you. No need to worry about hitting your head on the bottom—the water is so deep you can't even see the bottom. You may sometimes notice shadows moving beneath you, but you can ignore them—it's probably just a trick of the light.
That is, until it's not—until you stand a little too close to the edge of the pool, or tread water a little too long in the deep end, and all at once feel yourself being grabbed by the ankle and yanked down into the water. By what? You can't tell—it feels like a hand, maybe, or a tentacle, but it's hard to get a good look with all that chlorine in your eyes. You'd better shout for help, if you can—any good pool should have lifeguards on duty.
Right?
There are two full-sized pools available in the university athletics building. One is the relaxation pool, which has a fountain of youth effect (or fountain of anti-youth, depending on player preference): moving into the deep end of the pool will cause a character to either grow younger and more carefree, shedding worries and baggage and trauma as they go, or will cause them to age both mentally and physically. Staying in the shallow end will allow a character to avoid the effect entirely, and exiting the pool will end the effect.
The second pool is for more serious swimmers, those who like to swim laps or dive. It has an extremely deep deep end—so deep that the bottom isn't visible to the eye, no matter how deep a character is able to dive down. It's obscured by almost total darkness, except for the occasional large, dark shadow moving under the water. Characters who spend too long in the deep end, or who stand too close to the edge of the pool, may find themselves being grabbed by one of these shadows and yanked down into the water. There are no lifeguards on duty, so hopefully someone nearby is able to help! (There is lifeguarding equipment, of course; characters are free, even encouraged, to use it to rescue each other.)
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…THE WATER'S FINE.
The cedarwood walls give you a warm sense of belonging, and there are even hot coals and a bucket of water with a dipper, perfect for creating a bit of steam to wipe away all your stress. As you spend more time within the sauna, relaxing, you can feel your muscle aches from swimming and playing around in the pool begin to disappear. You notice there are a variety of aromatherapy oils provided as well—consider adding a drop or two to the dipper before pouring water into the coals for a great addition to your stay.
Of course, you recognize that residents should practice good sauna safety: there is a poster on the outside of the sauna that you recall seeing, reminding participants to keep their sessions limited to between 15 and 20 minutes, or even up to 30 minutes for those more experienced with the effects of a sauna. You may try to linger a little longer, and really, you feel fine at first—but the more time passes, the more you feel like this was a bad idea. A really bad idea. A really, very bad idea.
You can feel yourself growing panicky, as though the air in the sauna is being snuffed out by the steam—there's a sense of total foreboding that overwhelms you until the fear of your impending doom forces you up from your seat and out the sauna door. If it sticks a little as you try to leave, as though something is considering keeping you there, you pretend not to notice.
Of course, once you're finished in the sauna or the pool, it's important to have a shower to wash off all those chemicals before heading home. There are locker rooms available with complimentary towels and shower slippers, as well as baskets containing body wash, shampoo, and conditioner.
And if you don't shower? Well… when you get home, you may find yourself suffering the consequences. Red, blotchy skin, and an unbearable urge to scratch and scratch and scratch—try not to peel all your skin off in your itching frenzy!
The sauna is a normal sauna made of cedar and heated with coals, over which a character can pour the provided fresh water to create steam. There are aromatherapy oils as well, which are really just aromatherapy oils to help relax or stimulate depending on the player's desired effect. Definitely provided are birch, citrus, eucalyptus, lavender, and tea tree oils, but players are welcome to imagine other oils as desired.
Should characters leave the pool or sauna without showering, however, they will find themselves almost immediately starting to suffer dry skin and an itchy rash, starting wherever the player decides and quickly spreading to the rest of their body. It will increase in itchiness and severity the longer it goes without being addressed, and the only way to address the rash is, of course, to take a shower. Characters who shower in the locker room will not suffer any such effects. Hygiene is important!
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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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citylogs2023-09-01 08:58 pm
