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
[Nansen, gripping his fingers into his hair, drops to a squat in the cemetery weeds and lets out a long, low wail:]
What am I gonnya doooooo!?
[How can this old fart be so calm about this!? Jerking his head upward, slitted eyes focus on Tsuru's hip, his hands, his... his... where else would he even put his sword--] O-oi... Isn't your body gone, too!? [He squints, jabbing his finger up in Tsuru's direction,] Isn't that, like, a huge problem!? What if someone finds 'em, decides we're scrap, and melts us down, nya!?
no subject
Hm, that would be a problem, wouldn’t it?
( He sounds so calm about all of this. )
I guess we’ll die!
no subject
[Since someone is being unhelpful about that!]
[Ahhh, let him just sit here and think a moment. The wheels are turning. He woke up on that moving tube, that train thing, and stumbled all the way out here... Could he have fallen asleep on a mission or something? He'd remember that, though, right? Then again, he does have a talent for falling asleep anywhere.]
[In fact, now that he thinks of it, the nice patches of grass on all these graves look really comfy......]
[--No, no, no! He can't! Nansen shakes out his head and springs back to his feet again.]
That's right! As long as the enemy doesn't appear, it's probably okay, right? But if there's no enemy, why'd we get sent here? ...My head hurts.
no subject
Hmm... I wonder. Without Konnosuke, we've no way to contact the citadel.
(They are stranded!!!)
... I don't sense the enemy. (But then again, his senses feel rather dull here. He wonders if Nansen has caught onto that, too.) Of course, that doesn't mean the enemy can't be hiding its presence.
As for why we've been brought here... I wonder if it was intentional.
no subject
[They sure are stranded... Grumble. Nansen wonders if anyone else is around that they haven't seen yet. Konnosuke could always be with whoever the leader was, but with his brain feeling this fuzzy and weird, he's got no guesses as to who that could even be.]
Eh? What do you mean? [Getting sent somewhere accidentally??] Ahh. I guess it's uh, possible, right?
--I, I swear I wasn't playing with the transporter! No matter how shiny and sparkly the crystals are, nya!
no subject
If we're lucky.
(A hundred years is short time compared to a few centuries. If they can keep things interesting, the decades will fly in the blink of an eye!)
Don't worry, don't worry. (And just going to reach out to pat the cat sword on the head,) Of course, Nansen-kun is a good kitten, right?
(Pat, pat.)
But this city... doesn't feel natural, don't you think? (It's so... vague. It's kind of unsettling (even if he doesn't act at all bothered).) I wonder if this is some sort of simulation, perhaps? But then, I don't remember training, either. Perhaps something is wrong with the citadel.
(Did it trigger some sort of training exercise on it's own? Send them to a glitched out city for practice?)
no subject
[Still, he puffs up his chest with Tsuru's confidence. Good head pats, good head pats!!] Yeah, I'm--! Hey, I'm not a cat... [Pouting. (You don't have to stop patting though.)] I can't really sense anything in particular right now, and my nose feels kinda dull, but it's pretty off-putting, nya?
This graveyard.. It should feel way more "human" or something, right? [You can feel time in a place like this, he thinks. Just one of those weird instincts that must come with being a touken danshi.] I came over here thinking there was some presence, but I guess it was just you.
no subject
This is a city without people.
(He holds out his arms, turns dramatically on his heel, and continues foreward through the graveyard,)
A city without records. (Because earlier in the city... he had found no records or any useful information. His hand brushes over a gravestone lightly,) But the presence of graves says there's history.
(There were people before. And those people were worth remembering at one time.)
So the question now is... where did everything and everyone go?
no subject
[Nansen doesn't really "get" it, but he understands. Somehow, instinctively, he could tell there wasn't really anyone here. Everything felt stale, somehow- and that was what was putting him ill at ease. He looks down at the graves under their feet, wondering if there were actually any people buried down there.]
Nyeh, are they down here? [They can't exactly go digging them up, though...] That's just way too many people.
........You don't think......... History's already been changed here?? Is this a- a-- [Another place, just like that time. A closed-off branch of time that's already died. What'd they call it??]
[He bristles nervously.] I-it's probably better there's no people then, right? Hehe...
no subject
(He wonders if there are really people down there. Or if they've also disappeared.
He continues walking, leading the way through the fallen stones and weeds and though he doesn't look back, he listens. He listens to Nansen work his thoughts out, speaking them out loud, coming to conclusions he'd also considered... and he listens to the way Nansen's voice fills with anxiety and can only imagine what his heart must be feeling. Poor thing.)
If it was changed, it's been erased already.
(There's nothing here as far as he can tell.)
Whatever it was before... it's peaceful now. (He hasn't experienced an abandoned world himself but he's heard about how chaotic they become in the final moments. The way this city is now doesn't match the reports he's heard.) And this world is still standing.
If this world was like "that" then this one would surely have collapsed...
(And been erased with all of the history, too.)
Of course, we also don't really know what happens after... so we'll have to see.
no subject
Yeah, I guess so. [Shaking his head out and squinting his eyes shut, he instead furrows them onto Tsuru's back, watching his hood and chains jiggle back and forth. Ah, jingly..! That was a good distraction. Better to focus on that than to think about that time.] That's what Hizen said, anyway.... Um, that the world gets "muddy" and collapses after, meow. Like a pond.
But, if that was the case....? [Thinking is making his head hurt.] Shouldn't we definitely find some kind of exit? Although, it'd be bad if we leave our bodies behind, huh.
no subject
( He isn’t sure if he follows but if it helps Nansen understand then he won’t really question it. )
We can try. ( And this is perhaps the first helpful thing he’s agreed to do since they met. ) I’m not sure where an exit would be in an open place like this, though.
( He imagines that usually the exit would be somewhere… of note. Somewhere of historical significance where the streams of time can converge and flow strongest. )
no subject
[See, you understand him, right. Nansen looks very pleased with himself as he follows after, already feeling a little more at-ease since they've left the graveyard. He stretches his arms behind his head and glances around- the streets were so quiet.]
We don't know enough about this place to do much, huh. [Or this time? Whatever it was. This is confusing...] It seems pretty big, so maybe we'll find humans if we keep looking around. Should we split up and look?
...For the time being, I don't wannya have to think about stuff, so I'll let you lead the way! [He stomps in place with a salute.] Captain!
no subject
(For the first time, he looks like he's been caught off guard. It's not that he doesn't mind being captain but after his last experience... he does wonder if Nansen understands what he's asking.
Whether Nansen understands or not, Tsurumaru does. As the senior touken danshi, as the one with more experience, as Tsurumaru Kuninaga... he'll make sure to bring them both home. He straights his back, his shoulders tensing as if bracing for something (a burden).)
Since it's just the two of us, it's best to stay together for now. If something happens to one of us, there's no way the other would know.
(They should cover ground and learn what they can together before deciding to split.)
Let's secure a place first.
(A safe place they can reliably return to.)
no subject
[Even if he's a quirky old guy...]
Ohhh, ohh! Good point, nya... [Nansen taps his chin as he follows after, glancing around... and then points up at one of the tall buildings around them.] How about up there!? I walked around in there a bit and there's toooons of rooms with soft, fluffy beds! Like a castle! A napping paradise...!
[Nyehehe.. That was gonna be his secret spot, but he's okay sharing it with Tsuru, since they're gonna need a base camp and all.]
no subject
My, you made it all the way up there already?
no subject
[Nansen stops, arms spread out wide to gesticulate as he tells his story,]
There was a bunch of pretty, blinking lights on the wall when I walked in there, so I started to play with them- and suddenly a door in the wall opened up! Ka-ching! It was a tiny room!
At first I wasn't really sure what it was for, but when I went inside, there was meowre lights! I got pretty freaked out for a moment, cuz the door closed again, but after playin' with the lights again, the doors opened and I was in a toootally different place!
[An elevator. He took the elevator.]
It's like a castle inside! There's these loooong hallways, and all of them have rooms, and allll of the rooms have a bed in them!! ... Well, almost all of 'em.... A couple had a mop...
--Anyway!! I guess humans must have lived in all those rooms, right? We can make base there, and probably there'll be some stuff left behind by humans. Nyeheh! I'm pretty smart, aren't I?
no subject
If it's like a castle, then it might be a type of stronghold. And maybe you found the living quarters!
(Yes, this makes sense.)
Well done. We'll have to see what else is inside.
no subject
[If they can navigate through all of these other tall buildings, anyway- a lot of them actually looked really similar... So strange. Did this city have a lot of enemies, that it needed so many fortifications? Could it be even some of the regular people in these cities lived in the castles? There didn't seem to be many of the low, tenement row houses around here that had once filled a castle town...]
Nya, so... [Nansen hums, glancing around as they stroll into a city intersection. There were so many shops lining the streets, too. Some even had yummy-smelling food in them- but if the humans were all gone, then who was cooking it?] Have you ever been on a mission where the world ended up like this? [Was that sort of experience a common thing? It had seemed like it wasn't, but here he was in a creepy, stale timeline again...] Where history just... stopped?
no subject
(That sure is a question and he takes a moment to look up the street... at the shops, at the restaurants, at the way everything here is designed for people and it seems to be ready for people, too. It's easy to imagine people living here. And yet, the only ones who are here are them.
Briefly, he wonders if this is how things might look outside the citadel in their present time. He doesn't really know what happened that required them to be summoned in the first place. He only knows that the population has suffered a great loss. He'd always imagined this meant cities had fallen... but what if they were just abandoned instead?
... Well, he'll keep that to himself.)
Never.
(He's never been in a world like this before.)
In this situation... your experiences may be closer than mine, Nansen-kun.
no subject
Hehe, it's fine, it's fine! As long as there's no people around attacking us, and the place isn't about to close off, I think.... it's fine if we just go at our own pace, right?
[He stops in front of the entryway to an apartment building overlooking the long avenue. Was it this one...? Oh well; even if it's not, maybe it'll be worth exploring.]
[Nansen pokes his head inside the doorway and glances around the foyer, spotting one of those lone buttons on the wall. Not as many blinky lights as before, but... all there is to do is press it!] Nya. [He jabs enthusiastically, and..]
[Waits...]
[...]
[Ding!]
--Aha!! [He turns to Tsuru and points excitedly as the doors open into another of those strange little rooms. Oh, this one was all metal, instead of the wood from before...] Let's go inside! I bet it'll take us somewhere again.
no subject
Ah.
(He sees what Nansen is doing now and he thinks he understands. It's been awhile since he's last seen one but... this is what they call an elevator, right? So the room Nansen was talking about was more like a moving corridor.
He steps inside and... taps at the floor. It feels hollow underneath and he looks up, trying to understand how this thing works from the inside. He can only guess that it's some electric system that they can't see. It makes it feel magical like this.)
Then shall we go?
(There sure are a lot of floors to decide from.)
Seven sounds good.
(A lucky number to try.)
no subject
[Nansen watches curiously as Tsuru tests at the floor, wondering if perhaps he understands something else about the workings of this box. After all, that guy was a shrine sword, so he should be able to sense magic and things like that, right...?]
[Oh! The doors are closing. It takes all of Nansen's willpower not to hit all the buttons again, gripping his hands back as he instead trains his eyes upward, watching the counting light go through each floor in order. 2, 3, 4.... Maybe the higher up floors would be the fortifications and the stronghold? And perhaps he'd been in the servant's quarters before. In anticipation, he holds his breath as they reach 7, and the elevator dings as the doors open.]
This hallway is pretty similar to the one before, [Nansen nods, though he's pretty sure they're in a different building entirely this time. He tiptoes out like a suspicious cat, glancing around at all the silent, closed doors lining the walls.] ...Should we try going inside one? [He's already pushing on one of the door handles... And it opens up! No problem.]
Meowrning! Anybody home...?
no subject
He can feel them rising slowly and he wonders if this thing can go faster. He also wonders if he they can get something like this on some of their other missions. It would make climbing stairs so much easier...
The doors open and Nansen is the one who steps out first. Tsuru follows, stepping confidently into the opening. It's quiet save for the hum of the lights above them. He can't sense anything. It's the same empty feeling as the rest of the city but instead he focuses on--)
Ah, how convenient! I wonder if we can get something like this back home? I'll makes sure to have Konnosuke request one.
(Imagine missions with elevators!!
He follows Nansen, stepping into the apartment and calling out,)
Pardon the intrusion!
(He's not really sorry. He stands in the foyer area and looks down at the carpeting and kicks off his shoes, continuing onward.)
H'oh! It really is a home!
no subject
[Imagine all the buttons he'll be able to press...!]
[Nansen's struggling his dress shoes off in the foyer while Tsuru wanders in, but it takes no time at all for him to spot the best thing in the room: the couch.] Uwa!! Look at how fluffy those cushions are--!
Nya!
[He trots up to it and flops into a sprawl immediately, burying his face into a throw pillow. So soft, and squishy... He giggles to himself as he curls up, rubbing his cheek into it.]
Western-style furniture is soooo soft, nyaa.... ah?? [Lifting his head as his eyes come to rest on something next to him, he reaches over the arm of the couch and picks up a picture frame, turning it over in his hands. That's right, humans take these photograph things with cameras instead of painting portraits, now.] Mm, it's a beach. [Kind of strange, though. It was mostly blurry... Not a very good picture.]