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.
JUMP TO TOP ↑ | ↓ JUMP TO COMMENTS
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.
JUMP TO TOP ↑ | ↓ JUMP TO COMMENTS
SO A TURKEY WALKS INTO A BOWLING ALLEY...
There's a bowling alley open in the newly-accessible district, and you're invited to come test your mettle!
Walking into the lobby, you're struck by a peculiar combination of scents—shoe polish, floor wax, pretzels and nachos, and something pungent and a little oily. On the wall behind the desk is a shelf full of pair after pair of shoes, in every size you could possibly imagine, and there's a low rack filled with brightly-colored, heavy bowling balls that are ready for the taking. You can also hear the low hum of machinery and the rattle of pins being reset every time someone knocks them down, the bowling alley a well-oiled machine despite the fact that no one seems to be manning it.
You can bowl alone, start a match play (1-v-1), or bowl as a team, but you'll quickly find that bowling is much more fun (and somehow easier) when you're playing with others. Maybe it's because being around other people raises your spirits, but you feel more confident when you step up to bowl, and you find that when you're playing as part of a team, the bowling ball travels faster and in a straighter line, and you seem to be making strikes and spares with much greater frequency. Teamwork really does make the dream work!
If you occasionally see what you think might be the shadow of someone passing behind the machinery at the far end of the lane, don't worry about it—that's probably just your imagination.
If you stop by the bowling alley at night, you will find the place totally transformed. There's a disco ball hanging from the ceiling and brightly-colored lights flashing and dancing around the floor and walls. Any white parts of your clothing glow a delightful blueish color, and you find that you're illuminated in all kinds of interesting shades by the blacklight bulbs glowing in the ceiling. This is cosmic bowling, truly not for the faint of heart!
When you've finished bowling, you may want to stop by the snack area for a pretzel or hot dog, a soda, or—if you're there for cosmic bowling—maybe even a more adult beverage from the food counter on the far end of the building.
There isn't anything especially spooky about the bowling alley—except, of course, being forced to wear shoes that have been worn by a hundred strangers before. Characters are welcome to find their shoe size, grab a bowling ball, and go to town! Characters who come during the day will encounter a normal bowling alley, but they can always come back at night to get the full cosmic bowling experience. There will always be shoes in their sizes, the pins will reset themselves, and the balls will always be returned. Just be careful, those ball chutes can crush your fingers if you're not careful!
JUMP TO TOP ↑ | ↓ JUMP TO COMMENTS
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.
JUMP TO TOP ↑
|
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
citycenter) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
citylogs2023-07-01 11:00 am
no subject
crashing his hq with modded chainsaws (ACCIDENT)going too far with her shenanigans, every single last one of their mutuals know this!! her shop might as well be part of his patrol route at this point, so even if he's off duty, it's STILL also tied to his ice hard sense of responsibility. thus the second part of her question, which he only keeps reaffirming. ]Mm-hm. Is that why the handcuffs in particular caught your attention? Because they remind you of work?
[ yeah she's never letting that go, ]
Pela raises your flowers. [ *their, actually, but this isn't about serval so she's not including herself when she flatly corrects him. ] I should hit up the Guards' medical chief once we get back and ask about the results of your latest check-ups. Maybe they could tell me just how much tension you're been repressing?
no subject
gepard doesn't want to answer or even address that question, if only because they both know that it's just going to be a resounding "yes". why else would a brightly-colored, gaudily-designed handcuff catch his attention other than it's because it's related to his work with the guards? ]
To be fair, I can't just bring my plants to the restricted zone. The cold weather will kill them right away.
[ as opposed to dying a slow, probably painful death in his care—or lack thereof, since he's usually not at home. hence he appreciates pela's assistance in the matter ... even if they die eventually anyway when they're returned to his care.
but even his response sounds like an excuse. gepard sighs under his breath. ]
Sister, let me ask you this. [ and he hates that this is his way of deflecting. ] Do you truly believe that Dad would simply accept anyone I bring home, even if I insist that they're someone I like?
no subject
gepard doesn't need to know about that though, so she doesn't comment. she's not batting a single eyelash either, at the unimpressive excuses he's scrambled up this time. ]
Of course he wouldn't. But that's not his decision to make, mom would understand that too. [ serval won't go so far as to say they can easily secure their mother's approval, but she'll be easier to reason with and give more of a chance to this hypothetical SO than their stubborn old man ever would. ] Besides, he's in no position to criticize you for anything right now. [ mainly because it's physically impossible, two can play at serving cheap shots to each other. ] Are you so scared of looking into your own preferences that you're gonna hide behind his archaic values when he's probably worlds away from us?
[ getting scolded by neesan bc you don't wanna entertain your type or think about hidden kinks you've yet to discover/admit to... it's hard being gepard landau 😔 ]
no subject
Please, Serval.
[ honestly, bringing up their dad like this ... if there's anyone who's lived longer under his shadow all these years, it's certainly not gepard; he's not the one who still has hangups that he refuses to speak with him. but he's not pointing that out, knowing how his sister would react to that.
he's also not uncharitable enough to say that to her face, knowing where her sister's aversion towards their dad stems from. still, to say that he hides behind their dad's ethos— ]
We have no idea how long we'll remain in this world. [ mr yang also had no clue how to go about explaining what's happening. ] And upon returning to Belobog, I'll be resuming my duties, and whatever I learn here will be once more set aside in lieu of the things I need to do.
That includes any preferences [ or types ] that you'd like for me to discover.
no subject
[ she glances away with her eyes lowered. okay, okay, so she might've been a little overkill there. the question's pretty rhetorical anyway, and she didn't need to amp it up with her own Feelings, that was uncalled for.
but she's not gonna apologize, not because she's petty
maybe, but because the point still stands. she DOES feel strongly about this, even if it's none of her business and she's probably projecting at least a little. b-but that's neither here or there, so let's leave it at that! ]So why raise flowers if they're gonna wilt anyway? Why have hobbies at all if you're just gonna shove it aaall aside once you're back on duty? Just because the future is uncertain means you should live as little as possible in the present?
[ "better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all." or... something like that? hah. not that she expects him to have come across the adage somehow, but ugh, this hopeless lil bro of hers...! how's she supposed to ever keep her nose out, if he's really gonna fumble through life with an awful mindset like that? ]
no subject
he gets where she's coming from, maybe even better than what she expects from him. but it's only because he's seen her suffer loss after loss, only able to come to terms with her own feelings recently. gepard pats her head, the only privilege he has as a little brother for being taller than her. ]
Well, just imagine if that's a person I'm shoving aside once I'm back on duty. [ isn't that why his flowers are dying? because they're set aside once he's left for the frontlines once more. ] And while wilting flowers can be grown back, broken hearts can't.
[ if he were to chase after his own desires, then it's only going to be a mess from that point onwards. his priority has always been belobog above all; anyone whom he decides to pursue based on his own preferences will have to share that.
he'd like to think that he's better at keeping his composure than her, but that's because serval wears her heart on her sleeve a little too openly. ]
I'll be fine, don't worry. I don't need ... implements to help me.
no subject
That's still not up to you. Aren't you getting presumptuous too, deciding on your own how someone else should feel?
[ an imaginary one at that, but whatever. she knows very well deep down this isn't something she can change his mind on in one day, it's no different for herself after all. plus there's the classic Landau Stubbornness DOUBLED at play here, it's already kinda impressive she managed to drag the topic on around him for as long as she had this evening. so if he gets the feeling that she's finally beginning to relent, that's why: the ONLY reason why. don't get her wrong though; she is NOT giving up. as long as they're not back on belobog, this opened window will stay open. not that she can in good conscience claim she's a patient person, but time has a way of working things out you never quite expect.
so on a different note. ]
Does this place look ~reputable~ enough to meet your standards?
[ it really is painfully obvious to tell when she's not happy with him, hm... but it doesn't change the fact that they have reached an apartment building during their conversation, punctuated by a beep from her City issued phone followed by a mechanical declaration of You have arrived at your designated destination. well, Captain? ]
no subject
he supposes that serval just isn't used to gepard "rebelling" against her in a way, which he's always assumed she'd find amusement given her free-spirited personality. in this case, however, he thinks it's because he didn't give her much to go on, hence her reaction. sometimes, he does wonder which of them is younger.
if only he was given credit every time he sighs at the antics of serval, he'd be richer than their family. ]
I never said the establishment earlier was disreputable. It's simply something that's not within my area of interest.
[ or expertise.
he looks up at the building, frowning. he'll need to make sure this entire place is secured, at least. ]
... I assume you'd prefer to live on your own as usual?
no subject
the laudaus have always been stubborn, and stalwart stickler to the principles they live by. in that regard, they are exactly the same. ]
What, would you have me move back in if it was up to you?
[ she shoots back nonchalantly while giving the building an unimpressive look-over, she'd really rather find somewhere she can rock out in undisturbed first. but this stick-in-the-mud worrywart wouldn't stand for it, would he? ]
no subject
but gepard knows his sister better than anyone despite their petty arguments and their silly rows. forcing serval to do something she doesn't like doing is simply a way to get on her bad side. it won't work, it's never worked—not for madam cocolia, not for their father, not for him. and while it's exasperating at times, he also understands that these are choices she's made; even when she's decided to try and run off with the astral crew, he's never once stopped her.
and there's no reason for him to. serval, after all, is an adult and has a mind of her own, and he won't encroach on her space or personal bubble. ]
We don't have to stay together while we're here, but at least tell me where you'll be staying.
[ that's the most he can compromise. if something were to happen, he wants to be able to get to her immediately. ]
no subject
morningaround noon or later, she'll look back to this evening and acknowledge (albeit grumpily) that she'sdone a bit of tantrumingmade things unnecessarily difficult for the brother who has only tried his best in doing right by her. no further proof is needed beyond his handling of her rhetorical question, one devoid of any 'correct' answer....it's irksome. just like when he helped her pack, that was also troublesome. sigh. then again, it's no news that their good intentions can also (if not often) end up making things more difficult for each other. maybe he's just getting even...
she briefly pinches the bridge to her nose, takes a heavy breath, and after a few seconds of borderline dramatic silence, finally glances back up at him. ]
In that case, I wanna look around a bit more. I'll come back to this building once I'm done touring for tonight, can't fill you in about tomorrow just yet though.
[ she's a night owl, for one, and this is her counter-compromise: she'll return tonight, but no promises beyond that. it could be worded better, yes, since the main reason she can't tell him about tomorrow and beyond is because she doesn't know herself. she's gonna keep searching for a place that suits her better is all, somewhere amenable to loud noises regardless of the hour. it's another reason to love (and miss) her shop: it's not in the residential district, but commercial one. ]