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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What we must find are the cracks in the surface. The beauty of this world does not...belong.
[ And if it were all an illusion? How might she combat that? ]
Might I ask where you were taken from, Mr. Rammsteiner?
[ Dare she hope for a familiar city uttered by her new German albino acquaintance? ]
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he slants a look at her that invites her to return the information, but doesn't press if she doesn't offer. ]
Looking for the cracks in things is my speciality. [ this isn't even the first time heine has had to look for the cracks in a city, as it were. ] But you know this place takes from us, right? Like any, uhhh. "Special" [ real air quotes, there ] skills you had back home are probably mostly gone.
( ooc: heine's city almost definitely has a name, but the name isn't dropped in canon, so i'm going with "something that sounds german and probably vaguely familiar but not immediately recognizable" as the poison of choice orz )
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How she wishes to return, especially as he reminds her of the worst instance yet. ]
Oh, I was made keenly aware. I did not believe it at first, but I have been proven the fool several times over.
[ But there is something she knows to still be there, no matter its dormancy. She is no witch with simple magics; they cannot take what is innate. This is the only belief that can sustain her for now, or else she may let desolation consume her.
She is not accustomed to someone else speaking of having unique abilities, and not so freely. How does he intend the meaning for himself? He said 'us'. Did he only mean his weapon? He had reached for his holster on her appearance. ]
And you have 'special' skills that they attempted to weaken?
[ An attempt at the air quotes. She's quick.
He had mentioned seeing through cracks, but Vanessa had assumed it to be metaphorical. ]
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[ and it speaks to something considerably more sinister than just kidnapping. being able to grab people from their lives and drop them somewhere else is—unlikely, heine will grant, but possible. being able to grab people and undo what's inherent to them is another task altogether.
and at least in heine's case it shouldn't be possible, not as long as he still wears his collar. ]
Yeah. [ he doesn't offer what they are, although probably five minutes in a gunfight would give heine away. ] You know what really gets me, though, is they took my fucking guns. I like those guns.
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Or would he be happier with his monsters tamed?
He certainly wouldn't be happy if his firearms were taken. Thinking of him now makes her heart ache. Before being brought here, he had only been just outside the cottage, waiting for her. Is he still waiting? ]
They must be kept somewhere. Perhaps we can find them.
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which leads to the problem. ] No security forces, though. [ he ticks it off on his fingers. that would have been his first guess. ] No police, no army either. [ another finger. ] No churches I could see. That was the last ditch, in case it was some kind of "you get your guns back when you repent for the people you've killed with them" kind of thing.
[ judging by the cavalier tone of heine's voice, he's not especially remorseful on that front. ]
Only place I haven't checked is the city hall.
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I was there. I could only find blank papers. I...admit I did not check every room before I became...impatient.
[ Someone had a temper tantrum. ]
I will help you find them.
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he regards her warily for a second. kindness freely given is a rare commodity where he's from, and heine is in the habit of considering the strings attached to every offer. ]
In exchange for what?
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Remaining out of my way, should we happen upon the ones who took them.
[ Assurance he doesn't get too trigger-happy before she gets to do her thing. ]
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on the one hand, he's fiercely independent to a fault and sometimes would rather quite literally die than let someone help him.
on the other hand, we're not in kansas anymore, dorothy, and with his body behaving the way it is, heine isn't sure he's in a position to turn down an offer of allyship, however short lived.
on the third hand, he's still not entirely sure that this isn't some kind of fucked up fever dream granted to him by the brilliant mad mind of angelika einstürzen, which would make agreeing to work together with vanessa a terrible idea indeed. ]
...Fine. [ is his eventual begrudging answer. heine bares his teeth like a dog, belying how much effort it takes for him to be even this agreeable. ] I'm not promising I won't shoot. But I'll let you finish it.
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Well enough. If you leave them able to speak.
[ She doubts that a simple gunman would be able to do any true damage to Lucifer, but she suspects there are also his demons to contend with. Some of them die easier than others.
And this is likely no simple gunman. Neither was Mr. Chandler. In him was a beast so feral that it did not know it starved for love; fear controlled him still. How much of it controls this young man? ]
I should suggest the rest of city hall as your next search, but I imagine they would keep weapons elsewhere. Somewhere less...visible.
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although now that he's bargained away his killing shot, maybe he'll save it for an even more deserving target back home. ]
Where have you looked already? [ aside from city hall, that is. ] I've covered the train tunnels and most of the north part of the city on foot.
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I have explored nothing in the eastern districts just yet. I admit I did not wander far beyond the tourist kiosk before learning of this place.
[ Few people would be eager to dash for the cemetery, but then she could mean she hurried to the garden (she does not mean the garden).
In any case, they will probably not find his guns in the cemetery, so she's already stepping away from her headstone to head slowly for an exit. If there's a limp impeding Vanessa's usually more graceful walk, it's faint. She doesn't seem to mind.
But she does expect him to follow. ]
Have you ever before been held against your will, Mr. Rammsteiner?
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[ heine stays abreast, but at a distance that's far more than polite, his ordinarily fast-paced stride slowed somewhat to match. unfortunately, or fortunately depending on perspective, heine's sense of sympathy is stunted by the oversized chip on his shoulder, so while he notices that she's limping, he doesn't especially care—just files it away in his head, the same way he catalogues potential exit routes when he walks into a room.
the question turns his head a little too quickly, eyes narrowing with a flash of suspicion. ] Do I seem like an old hand at it?
[ it's not an answer, but then again, he's still not sure he can trust her. ]
—Just Heine. [ mr. rammsteiner, what the hell? heine's no gentleman. ]
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How very faint, though.
She notes his distance, but isn't offended. At the moment, she can only assume he is this wary of everyone he meets, which is sound. Distance is wise. Distance is also while she'll prefer Mr. Rammsteiner, regardless of what he says.
It is no matter of class. First names are earned in their intimacy.
And though she is gathering her own pile of information about him—from the placement of his hands to the cadence of his speech to the glint in his eye—there is little reason to say exactly why it matters so. Vanessa had wondered if others here might have similar histories as her, and his lack of an answer is...answer enough.
'...cull the weak and the dissidents...' ]
You move like an animal once caged. You speak as someone who has witnessed the corruption that slithers through the shadows of the world, where good men and women do not peer. Not by choice.
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"hah, she's got you there," kerberos whispers faintly in his ear. the dog is weakened the same way all of heine's abilities are, yet still an unwelcome voice. ]
Shut up. [ muttered and barely audible, the words directed to the spectre in his periphery.
there's a split-second pause, one hundred thousand thoughts jockeying for space in heine's mind. underneath the sick echo of einstürzen's voice vanessa had spoken without judgment. like she knows him (which pisses him off), but also like she knows him (which is some fucked-up kind of relief).
he imagines for a second that vanessa really is one of einstürzen's avatars, trying to play with him. heine is without his guns, sure, but he's always been brute force stronger than his so-called "mother." if not for her mutts he could rip her in half. he will, if this goes badly. ]
"Witnessed" is too many steps removed. [ there's an edge to his voice that almost sounds like a growl, kerberos lurking just below the surface. ] I was born and raised in it.
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As though she had been burned, Vanessa's fingertip suddenly presses to her lips while the tremors in the air tickle at her skin. Over her shoulder, ice-blue eyes unblinking, Vanessa watches with bated breath. It had been faint, but if she could feel it at all in this weakened state, what might she have sensed under normal circumstances?
Shut up, he says. Not to her, but Vanessa hears. She sees.
His neck. Does it still hurt? A growl. Do you weep? She turns away. Have you forgotten how?
Mr. Chandler liked to pretend that he had forgotten, carrying his violent acts with dry eyes. Only the once, with his pistol pointed at her and his voice breaking from his pleading—as she begged in turn—had she seen tears in his eyes. And she had, in the moment when the beast did not control her, thought she could finally be free, with something resembling love at her side.
Breath is recalled; it shudders in the eerie space as they now stand amongst the statues. ]
If I have offended you, I am sorry.
[ And she is, quite so...but then she is also selfish. He may seem young, but he does not seem innocent. Vanessa had been young once; she had never been pure. ]
I ask because the enemy we fight here will test our limits. [ Even more limited as they are. ] To break free of such restraints requires a strong will and unique character. You cannot falter, not for a moment.
no subject
but that was a different world, wasn't it? that vanessa doesn't immediately try to rip him limb from limb is promising—not enough so that heine can relax entirely, but he feels the pressure of kerberos fade from the back of his neck and the back of his skull, his hackles lowering again. not without one last parting jab, though: a muttered "still just a stray," and then he's gone.
when she turns away, heine drops his hand, draws in a steadying breath and exhales. wishes he were a little more like badou, his nerves capable of being calmed by a cigarette. ]
I've had my limits tested by worse than this and lived to tell about it. [ fought to live to tell about it, too, tooth and nail quite literally. it's no small amount of blood that has been spilled at heine's hands. ] And it sounds like you have too.
[ whatever vanessa's story is—her thing about the church, lucifer, her knowledge of the dark underbelly of her world—it's not heine's business, and he doesn't ask. he resumes walking, still carrying tension in the set of his shoulders. ]
I think we're gonna be fine.
no subject
How many times before he stops granting it? To know her is to know disappointment in so many things. Her still-living friends might have warned him, were they here. At least on one matter, where everything ends, she will rise above. ]
To be brothers-in-arms, then?
[ Her feather-light steps continue onward at his form of acceptance, however temporary it may be.
She has worked alongside men who thought worse of her. Though she would do anything for dear Sir Malcolm—had once nearly given him everything for the cause—their bitter history could never be forgotten, and at times she wonders if an ember of hatred still smolders deep beneath their heart's ashes. In the beginning, at least, there was only one reason that he agreed to use her. It may assist their cause for her to mention it now. ]
In which case, I ought to mention that my offer in joining our missions did not merely entail strolling around the city. I have other ways of conducting a search.
[ Her powers could be unreliable even before arriving here, however, so it is a shaky suggestion at best. She had never really used the abilities to locate every-day objects, not without something more to them, such as a connection to the source—a thread betwixt that she can twist around her finger while she walks alongside. ]
Would it be too much to hope that these guns of yours have any sort of personal significance?
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[ by and large, heine doesn't get along well with women—thank the woman who made him for that particular brand of trauma—but he respects vanessa's no-nonsense attitude, the fact that she neither coddles nor needs coddling. despite his general aura of suspicion, which applies equally to everyone he meets, heine can at least appreciate when someone is able to get shit done with efficiency.
whether or not their efforts will play out remains to be seen, of course. ]
Personal significance? [ he furrows his brow. does she mean like, his favorites, or like gifted to him by a beloved mentor who was later killed in a heated gunfight, leaving heine to carry on his legacy? ] I haven't used any other guns for half a decade unless I had to. I carry them with me everywhere I go. Is that personally significant?
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Something like...a potent memory whilst carrying them.
[ A concept that seems likely if he has carried guns for that long. Not every kill can be detached. ]
Or, perhaps— [ Quite a reach for her, but so should any attempt in this scenario. Times are trying. ] Has anyone important to you ever touched them?
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Doesn't have to be important in a good way, does it?
[ if not, then—yes, absolutely. heine thinks of giovanni, standing in the shattered glass of a blown-out window, ten stories up and pumped full of lead from heine's gun. how he had slumped, blood dripping from his mouth, and then straightened up with that sick fucking grin of his spreading over his mouth: evidence that he, too, had finally tamed the wild dog inside him.
heine sucks in a breath, exhales it through his teeth. ] My brother. Why?
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Ah, well. Perhaps not the right label for their continued exchange, after all. ]
That would indeed suggest a significant connection. I cannot say for certain, especially when such things have been deemed unpredictable by the city, but I might hope to locate them through such a memory.
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[ just... making sure he heard you right. for a second, heine's disbelieving—how could a memory possibly be useful when it comes to finding an object?—but then again, him being the way he is... would also be impossible by many people's standards, so he swallows his protests. ]
So I just think about him real hard and that tells you where my guns are?
[ okay, maybe not all of the protests... ]
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[ A gross oversimplification, though not incorrect. He may be making some assumptions to his own favor, so she had best clear those up. ]
Not entirely incorrect. But you would not travel the memory alone. I cannot say it would lead me directly to your guns, either, but it is possible. It may only grant me a connection of sorts, so that I should get a sense if they are near.
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1/2 i hate myself
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breathes heavily i love it here
60% chance of miss ives getting punched in the snoot by the end
i apologize in advance just in case
she can take it
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the psychic part won't work but the gentle compulsion can for a short time (only if you want it to)
heine will enjoy his brief moment of not being a micron away from a nervous breakdown
the spa package includes a mellow joint and a boobhug as amenities for less resistant clients. alas~
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