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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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!
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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)
citylogs2023-07-01 11:00 am
no subject
[ Well never let it be said that Molly is above cheating, but usually he's doing it on purpose. He is finding, with some observation, that everyone else seems to be stopping right at a painted line on the ground, so fair play. He considers his position for a moment and the unsteady floor beneath his feet before he starts trying to skate his way back to firmer ground. ]
I wanted to see how the targets are set up. [ Oddly not an excuse! Molly's going to have to do a lot more lying to make up for it. ] But far be it from me to interrupt your search for bragging rights.
no subject
[But that's how you know they're good, so he holds up a piece of one for emphasis before taking a bite. See! Pretzels! Everything is fine over here on the chairs, where he's not supposed to have food, but who's going to stop him!]
You, uh, need a hand out there?
[Junpei doesn't know a whole lot about how bowling alleys are run, but he does know that the lanes are super smooth and that bowling shoes are unnaturally slippery compared to all other shoes, too? He... puts his pretzel down, in case he needs to get up and peel someone off the lane in the next few moments.]
no subject
[ And he might make a fool of himself in the process, but that's never stopped Molly before. It takes just a bit of flailing before he's finally back on solid ground and posing like he's just completed an impressive trick. Clearly that was all on purpose! ]
There now. No harm done. [ Probably? ] So if you're not here for the game, is it just the food?
no subject
But good, crisis averted. He can take another bite of pretzel, while he gestures around with his other hand (the one with a soda in it).]
—No, it's the atmosphere. I'm real into old-fashioned neon and stuff.
[old-fashioned... junpei is a zoomer.]
I mean, I could bowl. I'm not that good or anything, though... Why, do you, uh, wanna bowl?
no subject
[ Clearly some sort of impressive magic and Molly is all for that kind of expenditure on looking fabulous. Honestly he'd fight right in if he had any idea what neon is.
But aesthetics aside, he peers at Junpei and then at the lanes around them. ]
Is that what it's called? Bowling? [ A moment of consideration before he grins. ] I'm game to try.
[ Clearly he's not going to be much in the way of competition, but he is also astonishingly unconcerned about making an ass of himself. As he's already proven. ]
no subject
[Opportunities missed, in Junpei's fine opinion. He stands, taking one last sip of his soda before he puts it down. The pretzel is coming with him to the ball rack to consider balls; he gestures for his new purple pal to come and join him.]
C'mere and look at these. You gotta pick one you can lift, first of all—they're numbered balls, so that's easy. Anything too light's not going to go where you throw it.
[Junpei is not a professional bowler and he's getting all of his bowling facts (tm) from video games, but that's better than nothing, right? Come pick a ball!!]
no subject
There's a red one on the end with flecks of something iridescent running over it, and the teifling covered in sparkly things immediately gravitates towards it. He hefts the thing with a quiet huff of effort as it turns out to be a bit heavier than he'd anticipated. Where's a barbarian when you need one? ]
Right, now what?
no subject
You get two throws before it's the other guy's turn. Obviously, you want to knock over all the pins...
[A nod, down to the pins, and he situates his grip on the ball in a way he thinks is professional and correct. Hmm.]
Uh, if you can get it to spin a little while it's rolling, that usually knocks over more pins... I'll go first.
[And RNG has given him an even 5, so while his first throw kind of verges off to one side, it doesn't drop pathetically right into the gutter! Wow! He's kind of in shock from this for a second, hold on-] —Ha! You see that? That's what I'm talking about!
no subject
[ Was that good? Molly has no idea but he's going to be real enthusiastic about it anyway. Junpei seems pleased, at least, so that's what they'll go with. ]
What happens when you knock them all over?
[ Is the game over? Does someone have to go and reset them? So many exciting options. ]
no subject
It stands them back up and you go again, until the thing runs out. Uh, you can put your name in the computer, it's just me right now...
[Indeed, it is just JNPY (to fit the character limit) and his lone 5. He'd come here, put in his name (ish), and sat down to have snacks without throwing a single ball. That's how it's done.
But here's the ball back from the return, and Junpei winds up for another Sick Throw... it's a 2. You know, it's not nothing. He is satisfied, and turns to see how Molly is handling the Computer.]
Huh. Well, you're up.
no subject
None of which stops him from popping his head back up as Junpei addresses him to offer a bright grin. No problems here, everything is fine. ]
Am I?
[ Well if Junpei says so. Molly gamely hauls his ball over to the line like he's seen other people do and does his best to hurl the weight down to the other end. Which mostly results in the bowling ball hitting the ground with a solid thud and immediately making its way into the gutter where it slowly rolls its sad way down to the other end. ]
Hm. [ Going to guess that's not good? ]
no subject
And that's a gutter ball among gutter balls, wow. Hm indeed.]
Try throwing it a little harder... And what's your name, anyway? I'll put it in here, before you're just "P2" forever.
no subject
He does pause long enough to flick Junpei a grin as he hefts the weight with a bit more grace this time and heads back to the line. ]
Call me Molly.
[ That done, he pokes his tongue out a little and attempts to fling the ball with a bit more force. And it does go a bit farther this time, only wobbling into the gutter a foot or so in front of the pins. Alas. ]
Well! What an exciting game. [ He may not actually be joking? ]