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
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You've got the wrong librarian for that. [ The overachiever with issues of control and taking every single thing on her shoulders would be Malkuth and, at this point, Gebura was content to admit she knew what she was doing. ] I'm fine taking orders if the orders make sense. And if I have to lead anyone, they're going to work. I'll just do my fair share, too.
[ ... And maybe a little more than that, but you know what, she's not going to say that. She still can't quite get a read on this man, which is disconcerting enough. ]
Anyway, isn't it pretty damn assuming of you to guess things about me when I don't even know who the hell you are?
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[ ... All right, now he's being a little cheeky. But she's telling him much that he finds valuable, actually. A hard worker, a believer in fair play, someone in touch with her own sense of ethics. A librarian. God. She is so hot. She is so hot. ]
I could do that. Or we could stroll along like a normal pair of acquaintances, in a normal city, having a normal conversation about the very normal circumstances we've found ourselves in. We could talk about the weather. I'm honestly not opposed to that, either.
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And she's going to use that honesty and straightforward nature now, because she is absolutely terrible at socializing, unlike this man who wields words like a song. ]
But if you won't, I'll go first. I'm Gebura. We're strangers, there's no way this is in any way a normal city or normal circumstances, I've been here a month and I can't stand people who play dumb. Now. Your turn.
[ She pauses to finally take a swig from the can and then stares at him pointedly. ]
Who the hell are you?
no subject
I do apologize. Really, I don't mean to alarm you. You're just very attractive, and I'm finding it very overwhelming.
Miss Gebura, please call me Midnight. In light of the tone of the conversation, I'd like to add that "Midnight" is a codename. I'm a civilian combat operator employed by Rhodes Island Pharmeceuticals. I've just arrived here today.
There. I believe we're evenly acquainted, now. [ He looks at his can, squinting at the label. ] This really isn't bad. Never heard of this brand before.
no subject
[ But that aside, once she's done being a killjoy, she takes a moment to focus on the rest of what he just said. A codename. Well, it's not like Color Fixers weren't known more by their colors than their names, and it's also not like "Gebura" was the name she was born with. A civilian combat operator, though? A pharmaceutical company??? ]
... But I'm gonna have to agree, this isn't terrible. [ Not that she's any kind of connoisseur but still, she knows what bad beer tastes like. ]
Why's a pharmaceutical company seeing combat anyway enough to have an ops team? [ She says. As a librarian. Who fights. ]
no subject
[ Actually unstoppable. Just completely impossible.
Midnight turns to Miss Gebura, looking at her for a moment before smiling and putting his can to his lips. ]
Would you actually like to know? I won't lie to you, but you may not be satisfied with the answer, either.
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Really unfortunate for the part of her that still wants to shake him very hard. Because she won't, because he means it, and she can't kick a man's ass for being honest with his compliments, as long as said compliments aren't about her reactions being amusing to watch. ]
I'm the furthest thing from royalty, for the record. [ Literally. An uneducated slums kid. A pause, to take a deeper pull from the can because she feels like she may need it. ]
Anyway, whether I'm satisfied or not, it's still an answer. What I choose to feel about it is up to me, isn't it?
no subject
Could've fooled me.
[ One actually can, if only because he doesn't actually care too much for identity... But that's a whole other conversation.
He nods in response. No argument there. ]
The company has a directive of philanthropy. It really is a bit like an NGO, in that sense. Lots of relief missions, lots of active medical research. But really, who in the world believes in philanthropy these days?
[ He takes another sip. ]
No one is kind without an ulterior motive. Of course not. So when Rhodes Island goes somewhere to help, we're usually met with resistance. A very logical response, honestly. But if one is still determined to spread a bit of benevolence at that point, one must be prepared to defend oneself. Secure the means for negotiations, if you please. Therefore: an ops team.
no subject
For now, he remains unharmed; she's listening intently to this explanation with a sharp look in her eye. He thinks it'd be unsatisfactory? This is saying quite a bit as it is. ]
So in other words, to get these places to accept help in the first place, you have to prove a certain level of strength or at least clear a path to make the objective happen. Makes sense. The ones who trust blindly are usually the ones who don't live to regret it.
[ Or do live to regret it and are even more miserable. ]
no subject
Not unless they get very, very lucky.
[ It's an agreement. He takes another drink. ]
You know, I did have my doubts about the company. I didn't come to them as a soldier at all, didn't have much formal training. It took me a while to see that they were exactly what they seemed on the surface. They fulfilled every promise they made. It's the only reason why I gave the citizen combat program a shot.
[ ... Midnight looks over at Miss Gebura. ]
Do you feel like you're a good judge of character?
no subject
But she's lived long enough to know her abilities. ]
I can tell when someone's full of shit or being honest, or if they've been through hell.
[ His story sounds similar, honestly. The way everyone had thought Carmen was a weirdo until they'd seen how passionate she'd been about helping humanity. It sounds like a fairy tale now, to hear of a while company who cares without an ulterior motive. It's honestly still hard to believe, hearing it. ]
no subject
That's good. More than that, I'm grateful. I'm aware I'm a difficult person to know. If you've the patience for that, how am I supposed to see you as anything other than kind?
[ He laughs. ]
Well, of course, there are plenty of perks to speaking with me, but one cannot live on eyecandy alone.
[ ... He doesn't think about whether he's been through hell or not. Honestly, does it matter? He's here now. Couldn't have been that bad. ]
no subject
[ Gebura. Gebura??? Gebura, stop, that's too blunt??? ]
So I don't really put value into perks. Either I can handle talking to you and learning more or you get too obnoxious and I shut you up. I don't think there's anything kind about that. This much is just thanks for the free drink.
no subject
You don't mean that. I work so hard on it...
[ ... But he laughs after a second and pops right back into step. He doesn't take his own emotions too seriously. ]
Gratitude only takes one so far. Patience, attention... These things are relatively rare. Valuable, even, especially coming from someone like you.
[ He'll never understand these logical types. He's got too many emotions. At least two. ]
no subject
I wasn't always the most patient person, but sometimes you learn that anger when you don't know how to wield it is just gonna destroy yourself and everything around you. And attention is just another part of observation.
Where I'm from, if you can't focus and pick up on things, you're as good as dead. There's no company there that's as philanthropic as your pharmaceutical place.
[ There's a bit of a distant look to her eyes, and her next breath is a little heavier. ]
"Someone like me" is just trying to figure out what needs to be done here and who needs to be protected, in the end.
no subject
[ Now that they're both acquainted with each other, Midnight lets that statement stand where it is. He drains his can, tosses it in a nearby garbage can, and pulls another from the bag, cracking it open. ]
Not a particularly librarian-ish sounding life you've got there, unless you're under some sort of government surveillance for censorship. Something of the like.
no subject
[ Gebura shrugs and returns to her can. ]
Believe me, I still get way too many books that I have to sort out and shelve now. Librarian-ish enough, right?
[ We won't talk about the fights to the death. ]
no subject
Librarian-ish indeed. And it's true. Old habits die hard. [ Midnight laughs softly into his can. ] Still, the old lessons do come in handy. Sometimes it's enough for the times they hold you back.
no subject
So what were you, before you decided to join an ops team? [ Gebura looks him up and down, scrutinizing because she's a fool who can't appreciate a good-looking body like a normal person. ]
Escort? Host?
no subject
Was it that obvious? I was good at it. Excellent, actually. Top producer at my club for nearly 20 years.
no subject
Then again, it's not like Gebura's opinions on how old someone looks hold any water, considering her own age. Or something close to it. Still, she blinks. ]
Anyone who can so easily say half the things you did to a total stranger is either a professional of some sort or sincere enough to get stabbed in an alley one day. Since you're not dead, I just made an educated guess.
[ Ma'am. ]
no subject
Anyway! That is hilarious. Midnight chokes, swallows a mouthful of beer, then starts laughing really hard. ]
"Stabbed in an alley." Phew. No, no, you're quite right. I'm certainly not dead yet.
[ He's still chuckling to himself, but he takes another drink and calms down. ]
Looks like we both made some dramatic life choices, mm? Yours was quite domestic. Sounds nice, honestly. Settling down in a library.
no subject
What a duo. ]
It was more of a compromise than a choice. And it's not as peaceful as you'd think.
[ Her kill count's only increased since starting her job there, technically. ]
no subject
Ah. I do wish the circumstances were a bit more kind, then.
[ He'd really thrive in a profession where he was surrounded by books... If wishes were fishes, though. ]
A compromise implies that you settled in exchange for something you wanted. May I ask what it was?
no subject
[ So at least he appears to be taking her
orderadvice to heart. Or he's just being delicate about the matter. Not that Gebura's going to go into too much detail, pausing to chuck the can into a nearby receptacle before accepting her second can. This one's sipped at a little more leisurely. ]... Just a second chance. [ Finally. ] To make things right.
[ It's a horrendously vague answer, but it's also a truthful one. And it was also a gamble, one she's not sure will or won't pay off yet. But if anyone deserves the chance to be understood, to be seen through her anger, to be given another chance like the rest of them had...
She owes Angela that much. To see what she'll do next. ]
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