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!
JUMP TO TOP ↑ | ↓ JUMP TO COMMENTS
WILDCARD.
The city is by no means small, and there are plenty of things for you to see. There's no rush in exploring, so feel free to take your time looking around and peering into various nooks and crannies and alleyways—and don't worry, you're not very likely to find anything peering back.
If none of the above prompts appeal, feel free to check out the Locations and Maps pages and write your own freestyle prompt using one or many of the available locations.
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citylogs2023-07-01 11:00 am
Goro Akechi | Persona 5
[Goro Akechi starts awake, and immediately knows that something is wrong.
After all, dead men shouldn't wake up. It rather goes against the whole concept, wouldn't you say?
Even with the phone, it takes him a while to accept that this is happening, and when he walks out onto the train platform, there's a complicated frown on his face and a powerful distraction in his eyes.]
...what total bullshit.
[He knows he's being ridiculous. But he really can't bring himself to put on a show again after everything.]
II: Graveyard
[If Goro Akechi were someone else, someone with a dashing smirk pulling at his lips and darker hair, he might make a quip about how he ended up stumbling upon a graveyard. All he has to say is that it's fitting.
In any case, he explores the graveyard with a bored frown. Nobody told him the worst part of purgatory would behaving nothing to do. Idly, he crouches down and checks one of the headstones, a toppled over cross.]
...!
[His face pales, and he squints at it, leaning closer to try and make it out but...
He sighs and stands, dragging a hand across his face.]
Ugh. This place is getting to me.
III: Restaurant
[Apparently, dead men need to eat. Strange, right?
With this revelation, Goro finds himself sitting at the bar of some cute little café, nursing a cooling cup of coffee and some trendy-looking, half-eaten slice of cake (mille-feuille, so fashionable). He can still feel his brain analyzing it, thinking of which angle would be best for his social media. Some things you can't train your brain out of.
He turns to the other person in this establishment, regarding them with the same analyzing he gave to the cake. It's a decent amount of analyzing.]
The coffee is fine, if you're thinking about it. An impressive selection, for a mostly abandoned city.
IV: Wildcard
[Akechi can be found more or less anywhere in the city, exploring with a weirdly resigned kind of purpose, so if you have your own idea, go for it!]
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It's not Sojiro's. Or Akira's.
[In other words, it's worthless.]
Maybe you can put it on your stupid food blogs. Give it four stars.
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An astute observation. But until he gets here, I'll have to make do without.
[It's probably pretty clear which of the two men she mentioned he's referring to. Fate seems to hate Sojiro Sakura a fair bit less than Akira Kurusu, who should probably consider getting a restraining order against it.
He takes his spoon to his slice of cake, and scoops off another section. It's ruined for photos, now. All his idle work of strategically cutting off pieces of it to make it more presentable, ruined with a single movement.
Haha.]
Maybe, but I don't think this place needs former-celebrity endorsements to help with tourism. They seem to have it handled.
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[At least he's ruined his stupid pretentious social media cake. Good.
It probably shouldn't make her feel better, the idea that Akira being sucked into this is practically inevitable. But it does. It's probably selfish. Maybe she just doesn't want to be stuck here with Akechi as her only "friend."
What a joke. She's sure he'd laugh too.
She came here because she was hungry, but now she doesn't want to eat anything out of spite for... something. Regardless of what she wants, one way or the other, a platter of sushi appears in front of her, causing her to grimace in displeasure.]
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He rolls his eyes, and his voice briefly pitches upwards, a beautiful smile gracing his face.]
Really? Whatever could've given you the idea that I might have had any motive other than genuine recommendation?
[It melts away, back into honesty. He stares at the mystery sushi, not quite grimacing himself but clearly vaguely offended by its existence. This place is fucking bizarre.]
What a joke. Does this place even have chopsticks? [It's a western-style café. Goro is betting on no.]
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Like I said. American.
[Except the food doesn't seem distinctly westernized, so she's not even sure it matters. She picks up a fork anyway, holding it up and examining it.]
It's like it's built off cognition, right? But this isn't a palace.
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[She's proved herself reliable in the past, so Goro's not about to condescend as much as he would to another member of the Thieves. She was instrumental in taking him down, after all.]
Until we can conclusively prove that this really isn't just a heavily modified and non-standard cognitive space, I say we should see how much of your established praxis still works. Find the ruler, find the treasure, get out before everything collapses.
[Slightly different from his method, which is find the ruler, shoot them in the head, get out before everything collapses. Academic, really.]
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akechi! :D
[ much to her chagrin, clarice had woken up still in the strange apartment she'd squatted in the day she arrived here. did that make it hers for now? there was a key inside for her to lock and unlock it, and come and go as she liked. it needed some redecorating but having it come furnished was helpful, albeit disconcerting. if there had been people living here before we started arriving, where did they go? and how did resources keep replenishing themselves? were they all truly meant to improvise and adapt to living here full-time?
an overwhelming amount of questions and hollowness in her stomach led her to rise, shower, dress casually and wander a few blocks from her apartment to a cozy looking cafe. needless to say, their coffee was much better than what trainees had been stuck with at quantico, and even whatever homebrew her roommate ardelia would make them with her french press.
she'd been sitting with her thoughts for some time before she noticed the young man also dining at the cafe was scrutinizing her in a way that felt similar to how she assessed people. she clocked a familiar vibe, but he looked to young to be a recruit, much less some sort of officer. clarice gave a polite nod in agreement and a soft smile. most expressions were learned or forced, but managed to seem authentic.
starling may in many ways come to remind him of sae nijiima, even the same age, although clarice is perhaps more expressive of her fears and vulnerabilities (and starling would not be pleased with that realization). ]
Oh, it's much better than what I've become used to at home. The uncertain source is a cause for concern, but it's hardly the top of the list.
only the kechiest
[His tone is mild, but his eyes remain sharp. He really can't be bothered to play pretend anymore.]
I think more concerning than the source itself, per se, is what it allows us to infer about our kidnapper's motives.
I, I'm so sorry
She just had to if she wanted to solve this mystery by herself!
That said, as she heard someone mumbling some rather colorful words? All she could do was immediately cover her ears!]
You know I'm right here! [Language mister!!]
never apologize
That sure is an actual child, covering her ears as if he told her Santa isn't real. Great.]
Yes, you are. [Isn't she a bit old to be reacting like that, actually? Ugh, he's not going to start beefing with some sheltered brat over his vocabulary. That would be insane.] I take it you're a new arrival as well?
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[Narrowing her eyes, she raised an eyebrow as she approached him. He certainly doesn't seem like an adult that she could probably trust. However, that doesn't stop her from befriending him!
With that, she gave her hand out.]
My name is Mabel, what is your name?
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What the fuck is even going on anymore, honestly. Goro takes her hand and nods.]
Crow. It's nice enough to meet you, considering the fact that it appears we've both been spirited away. [And brought back from the dead, as far as he can tell in his case. He wonders...] Would you mind telling me what the last thing you remember is before you woke up on the train?
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[Not that Mabel can fully blame him when he probably didn't want to give his name out. But okay then!]
But anyway, the last thing remember I woke up? I was supposed to be on a bus with my brother to go back home but then I ended up here. Not too sure why they thought that was a good idea when I was in the middle of a really good dream with a bunch of rainbow colored mermaids....
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[Well, unless that bus crashed and burned, she's probably not also dead. It's not exactly a pleasant thought anyways, so Goro will put it aside for now, to interrogate at a later date.]
My last memory isn't too different. I can't say my dream was half as pleasant as yours, though. [There's the ghost of a smirk on his face for a moment, but he shakes his head and its gone. A thousand practical and impractical concerns are flying through his mind, but he's not about to share them unprompted.
Alright, he might share them unprompted to someone else, but not a kid.]
I wonder if we're even really awake at all right now? It's an odd situation.
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ii
[ He runs his hand along one of the gravestones as he passes along. It's difficult to say whether he's being serious or not when his eyes are fixed on the one before him, but no matter how long he stares no name appears. It's something one sees in stories, a premonition shown to the hapless protagonist. They approach and, ah, there it is - their final place of rest!
Hiyori doesn't mind the idea. He's already seen his grave, not here, but back home. It's there for him to visit any time. There's a soft sigh as he takes his hand back and takes a step away from the headstone and closer to the stranger. He looks young, perhaps six or seven years younger than Hiyori - just enough for him to make note of it. ]
You shouldn't linger here too long. There's nothing to be found, and you'll only upset yourself.
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[It probably wouldn't even faze him if he found it. It'd almost come as a sort of relief, a confirmation of what's really going on here.]
Or that I'm even really looking. [He crosses his arms, properly taking the newcomer in. A bit taller than him, older too. Nothing too interesting there, but anyone who asks a question like that is at least a little interesting.] Thanks for the concern, but who are you?
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[ He waves a hand to signify that he's not being serious now. The actual answer is that the mind pulls on the familiar to fill in the gaps as best it can, but that's a bit boring by comparison. Either way, this person is looking closely enough. ]
... Please excuse me, people tend to linger here overlong, and it does worry me. I am Sou Hiyori, I'm a doctor and engineer for ASUNARO...
[ Which he assumes will mean nothing to present company, but it's some mix of habit and curiosity to see if there's any overlap. He loses nothing if not, but gains something if they do. ]
And you are?
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Crow. A pleasure to meet you, doctor. [Actually, it's decidedly neutral. Slightly unpleasant, even.] Are the other residents really that fond of, what, frolicking about a graveyard? Really?
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[ If he takes issue with the rather callous question, it doesn't show on his face. He watches instead, the faint smile still there, not unlike a teacher waiting for their student to answer. He's here, others have been here, the reason why people visit would be obvious to even a single-celled organism.
Still, however little others care, Hiyori does - it's his job to care for others above all else. ]
Do you have some reason to linger here that others don't?
[ He's not answering the question, but that's unlikely to matter to somebody so moody and resigned... Rhetorical questions hardly require an answerr. ]
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II
Still, upon hearing a voice some distance away, a robot peeks out from behind a grave, a ways behind where Akechi is. An orange humanoid but long-faced robot currently in a greenish-grey jacket and camouflage trousers, used to conceal knives and to help him conceal himself.] I know, right? This place is weird.
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Is that... a robot wearing camo trousers? That's not the weirdest thing he's seen, but still. There's something fairly jarring about this meeting happening in an abandoned graveyard.]
...it certainly is, you won't catch me disagreeing with you on that. [He crosses his arms.] Everything about this place has been utterly bizarre so far, from how I got here to the various locales I've explored. Have you been here very long?
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In any case, he hopes he's being asked how long he's been in the City, not how long he's been hiding behind a gravestone.] They're not still bringing in more trains with people in them, are they? I thought that stopped a while ago.
Everything about this place is weird and creepy, but this graveyard is the place that really solidified that impression for me.
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[He tilts his head, a bit to the right and back. His eyes are sharp, as he's not bothering to conceal his casual analyzing. He was super asking how long he's been hiding behind the gravestone, but he won't clarify.]
Any tips for the newcomer, then? Places to avoid, tricks I should know? Unpleasant people?
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[Moving on to unpleasant people, his tone goes sour again.] Well, there's Kromer. Actually, they probably won't have a problem with you. I'm not actually sure they have a problem with anyone; I haven't met them. But from what I can tell, if you have any cybernetics, it would be a good idea to avoid anyone called 'Kromer.'
[Then the sourness ends as he changes to what he'd rather talk about. A more positive direction he can give.] Now, if you want to know the productive people, I'd direct you to Setsuna F. Seiei. Of the people I've met here, he's the one I've seen try to get the most done.
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