citylogs | EVENT: A Moon Without a Sky to Hold It In (February 2024)

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EVENT: A Moon Without a Sky to Hold It In (February 2024)

A MOON WITHOUT A SKY TO HOLD IT IN

WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST? THE DARK.
» HOTEL — INTRODUCTORY NOTES

You wake up.

You aren't in your room. The mattress is soft, much softer than your own, and the bedsheets are buttery soft and tucked in tightly at the feet. The ambient air of the room is cool, but you're perfectly cozy, curled up in a nest of warmth you've made for yourself. You feel good… but you aren't in your room.

When you open your eyes, you find yourself in an unfamiliar space, but judging by the luxuriant decor, you think you must be in one of the rooms at the newly-opened hotel in District 5. Your bedclothes are in your favorite colors, and the art on the wall is somehow both eye-catching and understated. The bedframe itself is solid and made of real wood, as is the bedside table, and the other furniture in the large room looks equally expensive. The curtains hanging over the walls are thick and absent a single speck of dust, and inside them, there's a gauzy inner lining barely visible. Both the clock on the nightstand and the late morning light streaming in through the slightly-opened curtains tell you that you've slept in quite a bit, and you feel well-rested, refreshed, and ready for what the day has in store for you.

As you roll over and start to think about getting up, you notice a scarlet envelope leaning against the lamp. It's addressed to you—personally, at that, although in a handwriting that doesn't strike you as familiar. When you open it, you find an invitation to that evening's masquerade ball. Your outfit awaits you in the closet, and your dance partner awaits you at the ball, the invitation says. There's something else in the envelope, too—a dance card, you find when you tip it out into your hand. It has three empty slots, none of them yet filled.

Once you manage to pull yourself out of bed, you make your way across the room to the closet where the invitation promised you could find clothes for the ball. And wouldn't you know it—there they are. The closet contains nothing but the clothes you were wearing when you arrived (oh! look at that, you're in pajamas) and a single outfit of elegant formalwear, exactly tailored to your measurements. The mask on the shelf just above is a perfect complement. It's up to you which you choose to put on, but there is to be a masquerade, and it wouldn't do to be the only one who isn't dressed for the occasion, don't you think?

However you choose to dress for the afternoon, you'll find your own hotel key—not a key card, but a proper key—awaiting you on the glossy surface of the writing desk. It'll be a while until the dancing starts, you think—maybe it's a good idea to spend some time exploring first?

On the morning of February 19, characters will awaken in a room at the newly-opened hotel located in District 5. They may awaken alone, or may awaken with a roommate, either someone they know or someone they don't! Either way, characters will find an envelope (or multiple envelopes, depending on who is in the room) on the nightstand; that envelope contains a card inviting them to a masquerade ball that evening, as well as a dance card with three open slots. These open slots can be filled prior to the masquerade beginning, or will be filled automatically based on the first three people the character dances with when the ball begins.

Characters will also find two outfits in the closet of their hotel room. One is whatever clothes they wore yesterday when they checked in; the other is a set of formalwear, perfect for a masquerade ball, tailored to exactly their measurements and in their preferred colors and styles. There is also a mask that goes perfectly with the formalwear. Characters are of course free to wear whichever of these they want as they explore the rest of the hotel. There is also a key to their room sitting on the desk. Once this key goes into a character's pocket, it cannot be lost or given away; even if it's handed over willingly to another character, it will simply find its way back into the original owner's pocket.

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DO YOU LOVE THE NIGHT?
» HOTEL — EXPLORATIONS

Once you're dressed, you head out into the hallway to see if there's anything interesting to be explored. The hallways are just as luxuriously appointed as the rooms are—the same soft, low-pile carpet, the same tasteful but eye-catching artwork. The real lights are hung unobtrusively high on the walls, allowing your eye to be drawn first to the elegant sconces decorating the walls at even intervals between the hotel room doors. At one end of the hallway is a window that looks out over the city, although the view varies widely, considering that this hotel is nine stories tall. At the other end is the elevator bank, a small waiting area with a single table decorated with a lovely vase of real flowers.

The elevators take you down to the main floor of the hotel and let you out just inside the double doors leading to the lobby. There's plenty to do in the inner areas of the hotel, the areas you previously weren't able to get to through the closed double doors: there's a proper library, with comfortable leather chairs and warm reading lamps; a restaurant serving only the finest cuisines; and a swimming pool, the water heated to the perfect temperature, although you aren't sure you brought your bathing suit.

When you pay a visit to the lobby, you find that it's largely unchanged from what you saw last, if you decided to stop by sometime before renovations were complete. There's still a sitting area with plenty of books for borrowing, still a hotel bar with a seemingly unlimited supply of top-shelf liquor. The rack of keys behind the reception desk is much emptier than before, thanks to the hotel's much fuller registry—and speaking of the registry, you are now able to make out names on the guest list. Every resident in the city appears to have checked in yesterday evening. Their names are there on the list, written in their own handwriting, including your own.

A quick peek at the hotel's computer shows that the room registered under your name is indeed the room you woke up in—and you're also able to see all the rooms belonging to all the other residents. As you scroll through, though, you begin to notice something interesting: it doesn't appear that a single resident has a room on the ninth floor. This is something of a boutique hotel, you think; it would be difficult to house as many guests as there are City residents without putting a single guest on the ninth floor… Unless it was done that way on purpose.

You get back in the elevator and sure enough, there it is, a button for floor number nine. And yet, somehow, every time you press it, it doesn't seem to want to stay pressed—the elevator keeps depositing you at the eighth floor, no matter how many times you try to get it to take you to the ninth. That's odd. Maybe renovations aren't quite finished up there, and the elevator has been programmed to ignore requests for that floor?

There are plenty of areas in the hotel that can be explored or utilized by guests! As well as the lobby area previously described in the February newsletter, characters are now able to access the hotel's restaurant, its fitness facilities including both a gym and a swimming pool (no tentacle monsters in this one), and a proper reading library with nice leather chairs and individual reading lamps. Characters can also access the maintenance area under the hotel, either by going through the restaurant's back of house area or by entering the staff-only area through a staff door in the changing rooms attached to the fitness facilities. The maintenance halls are labyrinthine (in fact, they are a literal labyrinth), but characters who persist in solving the maze can find their way to an emergency exit, a set of stairs that will take them up to a ground-level exit. This is the mechanism by which players can get their characters out of the hotel if you don't want them to participate in the masquerade.

Those who do choose to stay and explore the hotel will be able to find some additional information at the reception desk that wasn't there before. Namely, they will be able to find a handwritten log of guests with city resident names on it (including their own) in that character's handwriting; further digging into the computer at the reception desk will allow them to find the room numbers associated with each character. Especially keen-eyed characters might note that despite the hotel having nine floors, none of the guests are in rooms on floor nine.

Characters who decide to make a trip to the ninth floor to figure out why that might be will find themselves unable to get there by stairs or elevator, at least during the daylight hours. The elevator will deposit them at the eighth floor no matter how firmly they press the button for the ninth; characters who take the stairs up will find themselves arriving at the landing for the eighth floor repeatedly.

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WHAT KEEPS THE BODY FROM OTHER BODIES?
» HOTEL — THE MASQUERADE

As the sun begins to go down outside, painting the sky outside the hotel in brilliant color, the doors to the ballroom swing open and string music begins to float out into the hallways of the hotel.

Much like the rest of the hotel, the ballroom itself is grand. Its hardwood floors are polished to a shine, and its walls are painted a luxurious white and gold; overhead, crystal chandeliers hang from the ceiling, the faintly flickering lights in them giving the impression of genuine candlelight. Around the edges of the ballroom are a collection of round tables with chairs at them, for guests whose feet are tired after too much dancing, and at one end is a small collection of hors d'oeuvres and refreshments, finger foods mostly, as well as several options for beverage.

The music above is lovely and orchestral, despite there being no orchestra in sight. It seems to come from everywhere, even outside the ballroom; it can be heard in all the hallways, in the restaurant, even down to the maintenance hallways beneath the hotel. It cycles through several songs, each of them more or less familiar, always a two-step followed by a waltz followed by a two-step. What each song has in common, though, is that it makes you want to dance.

The longer you listen to the music, in fact, the more it feels like you can't quite help yourself. Your feet just want to move, and who are you to deny them? So up you get from your table, or from the wall where you've been lingering and observing, and off you go to the dance floor to find yourself a partner. You don't really know how to dance, but that doesn't stop you, and once you give yourself over to the music it doesn't seem to matter much anyway—your feet know the steps, even if your mind doesn't, so you can just let go and enjoy.

It's only once you've danced with several partners—three, to be exact—that you decide your dance card has been all filled up. Finally, the urge to dance passes and you make your way back to one of the tables, where you take a seat and look at the dance card that was included with your invitation. Unsurprisingly, all three slots are filled with the names of the partners you danced with. Funny how that works, isn't it? But at least now you've gotten your kicks, and you're content to take a breather and watch your fellow guests dance.

There sure are a lot of people here, aren't there? In fact, you're fairly sure that there are more people in this ballroom than there are residents in the city… but you're a little too worn out from dancing to worry about that right now.

After sunset, the masquerade ball will begin in the hotel's main ballroom. It's a luxuriously appointed ballroom with plenty of space for dancing, but also seating around the edges and a space for refreshments and finger foods at one of the ends, for characters who may not have visited the restaurant beforehand. Once the masquerade ball begins, the emergency exit through the maintenance hallways will no longer be accessible, and characters will be trapped in the hotel until the sun comes up again.

The longer a character spends listening to the music, which can be heard anywhere in the hotel regardless of distance from the ballroom, the more they'll feel like dancing. At a certain point, in fact, the desire to dance will become a compulsion. Characters who are seated at tables will feel themselves pushed up out of the chairs, and characters who are lingering against the walls will feel themselves pushed away toward the dance floor. Once they start dancing, they'll find themselves unable to stop until they've danced with at least three partners, the same number of partners as empty slots on their dance cards. This compulsion will be strong, but not entirely impossible to break if a character is self-aware and strong-willed enough.

Once a character has danced with three partners, they will feel the compulsion to dance lessening until they're able to leave the dance floor and take a seat once more. Observant characters may get the sense that there are far too many people on the dance floor than there are residents in the city, but because everyone is masked, it would be difficult to tell for sure.

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WHAT ELSE WILL SAVE ME?
» HOTEL — THE NINTH FLOOR

Around 10:00 PM, the masquerade's music begins to slow. You're already worn out from dancing, so the gentler pace is a welcome reprieve, a sign that the masquerade itself is drawing to a close. And good thing, too—it's getting late, your feet are sore, and you're about in the mood to retire to your room for the evening.

Or are you? As you make your way to the elevators, you're reminded of that mysterious ninth floor, the topmost level of the hotel that had been so difficult to reach earlier, either by lift or by stair. Something tells you to try one last time, now that the night is almost through—maybe you'll be foiled again by the strange mechanisms of the hotel, or maybe this will be your lucky break that lets you make your way up and explore what there is to explore up there.

So you get in the elevator. You press the button for the ninth floor, and up the lift goes, past the second, third, fourth floors, past the fifth, past the sixth… You keep your eyes firmly trained on that lit button for the ninth floor, watching in your peripheral vision as the numbers tick higher. The seventh floor, and then the eighth… And then the ninth floor, where the elevator pauses and the doors slide soundlessly open, revealing a long, dark hallway ahead.

The entire hallway is nearly pitch black all the way down. No elegant sconces and pleasantly unobtrusive overhead lighting here—in fact, the only light at all, it seems, is light from the elevator spilling out and illuminating the hallway just ahead of you. But no, that's not quite right, is it? There are other sources of light, too: the fire exit signs at the end of the hall, for one. The faint light coming out through slightly-cracked doors, for another. The doors to the elevator slide closed behind you and your eyes struggle to adjust to the darkness, but once they do, you can see that there are a number of doors along each side of the hallway that are just slightly ajar, lit from within as if by the light of a single lamp.

As you make your way down the hall, you feel a strange sense of being watched. Through the cracked doors you can see the suggestion of shadows, as though someone has just passed between the door and the light, but when you throw the door open, you find no one is there. Still, the rooms feel… occupied, somehow. It's strangely like you're invading someone else's privacy when you let yourself in, because there are things in each of the rooms—suitcases full of clothes, backpacks with personal items, books on the nightstand and toiletries in the bathroom.

Many of the rooms contain things that are totally unfamiliar to you. Others, much like the dorm rooms at the University, contain things you recognize, either things that belong to you (or did, back wherever you come from) or things that belong to someone you know. But these things can't possibly be yours, can they? None of the guests have rooms on the ninth floor, after all, and besides that, everything in these rooms seems coated with a fine layer of dust, as if these rooms haven't been used in quite some time. The rooms on the floors below are utterly pristine, but in these, the dust coats everything from the curtains to the counters to the desk, the greyish dust left undisturbed. Undisturbed everywhere, that is, except one of the pillows, which bears an indentation and an empty spot in the dust, as if someone was laying here and just recently got up.

At any point after sunset, meaning after or even during the masquerade ball, characters may make another, more successful attempt to get up to the ninth floor. This time, provided that they pay careful attention to the elevator number pad (or the signage on the staircase landings, should they go by stairs), they can get themselves up to the ninth floor.

The hallways of the ninth floor are entirely dark except for the light coming from the emergency exit signs and from a number of rooms which have been left open. Characters who make their way down the hall will feel a sensation like they're being watched, and they may see shadows move in the lit rooms (or the unlit ones) as if someone went into the bathroom or moved in the hallway, but should they choose to push open the doors, they'll find that no one is there.

Much like the dorm rooms at the University, the rooms on the ninth floor contain personal belongings. These may belong to a character themselves or may belong to someone they know. Characters can take these items with them, provided that they are small and non-magical. Characters may notice that all of the rooms seem as if they've been unused for a very long time; all of the surfaces of the rooms are dusty, with one exception: a head-shaped indentation in one of the pillows, absent of dust, as if someone was recently laying there and only just now stood up.

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YOU WANT TO KNOW IF YOU'RE SAFE.
» HOTEL — OVERNIGHT (HOTEL ROOMS)

Well, you're stuck here anyway, so you may as well get some sleep. That's what you tell yourself as you make your way back to your assigned hotel room, the key to which hasn't left your pocket all night. If you've checked in, it would be a waste of a luxurious hotel room if you didn't at least spend the night in it. Right?

Once you've undressed and hung your formalwear back up in the closet, washed your face, and put your pajamas back on, you get in bed and turn out the light, intending to get at least a little sleep before check-out tomorrow. You close your eyes, snuggle into the warm hotel sheets, and begin to let yourself drift off… And that's when the tapping starts.

It's light, at first. Just a gentle tapping as if against the wall at the other end of the hallway, a sound you can barely make out even when you strain to listen to it. It's just barely audible enough to interrupt your attempts at sleep, and you think for a second about getting out of bed to go see what it is—maybe give whoever's making that noise a piece of your mind for keeping you awake at this hour. But then the tapping starts to get… louder? Closer? Maybe both. It's certainly more noticeable, and it seems to be moving down the hallway toward you, little by little. Closer and closer, louder and louder. And faster, you notice, no longer a tapping as much as it is a rapping as if of knuckles against the walls as someone walks down the hallway toward you. Louder and louder and closer and closer, until it's three doors down—two doors down—one door down—

And then it's at your door. The rapping stops all at once, leaving a hush to descend over the room. The sound of your own heartbeat is a loud rush in your ears, and you can't even make yourself breathe.

All at once, a real racket breaks loose. Someone—or something—starts hammering at your door, banging on it so hard you think it's going to fall off the hinges. It seems too loud and too fast to be a noise made by just fists, but you can't be sure and you certainly aren't going to check. The handle rattles, the hinges squeak, and whoever is out there just slams against your door again and again, with such force that you begin to fear they're going to break the door down entirely. It sounds angry. It sounds terrifying, and it goes on for what feels like hours, although when you look at the clock on the nightstand you can see it's only been a minute or two.

Just as quickly as it came, the noise vanishes. Once again, that same hush descends over the room, leaving no sound but your own pulse thundering in your ears. It's almost an expectant pause, as if someone has just knocked and is waiting for you to come open the door. Then the tapping begins again, on the wall just next to your door; it moves away from you, further down the hall, growing quieter and quieter as it goes until the sound fades away entirely. Maybe now you can finally get some rest.

Characters who don't go to the masquerade at all, who do go to the masquerade but resist the compulsion to dance, or who dance but with too few partners may find their sleep that night interrupted by an extremely persistent knocking in the hallway outside their door. It starts as a tapping at one end of the hall and then slowly moves down the hallway in the direction of the character's room, until finally, whoever or whatever is making the sound reaches their door and pauses… only to begin hammering on the door with such intensity that it should make characters feel as if the door is going to break or the hinges are going to come off. Although the duration of this hammering will feel quite long, in reality it will only last two or three minutes before abruptly ceasing, after which the tapping will continue its way down the hall until it finally fades entirely.

Characters who made an escape from the hotel entirely before the masquerade ball began, by using the maintenance hallways under the hotel to get out the emergency exit, may also find their sleep similarly interrupted even if they go to sleep in their own home or that of a friend. While characters who failed to fill their dance card will be more likely to experience this knocking sound, any character may hear it. Opening the door in the middle of the knocking may bring a character face to face with… nothing, or a startled-looking friend, or with a copy of themselves as discussed below.

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LONG ENOUGH TO SPLIT THE FIRST ECHO.
» HOTEL — OVERNIGHT (OUT AND ABOUT)

Or maybe you don't want to sleep. Maybe you're too keyed up with excitement after the masquerade, or maybe you're just nervous about going to sleep in new places. Either way, you don't feel particularly like you want to go back to your room—you would rather spend time in the hotel, maybe taking advantage of the hotel bar, or reading something in the library, or having a late-night swim in the pool. Many of the amenities are open 24 hours, after all, and they welcome guests who may not feel quite like sleeping.

It starts, at first, as glimpses from the corner of your eye. A bit of a familiar hairstyle, a familiar shirt that you just barely see before it's gone, and when you turn your head you can't quite find it again. You think it must just be a trick of the light, something caused by too much dancing and too little sleep… But it keeps happening, again and again. You start to feel a little paranoid, actually, because twice is coincidence but six times is a pattern, and this particular pattern is starting to get to you.

The last time it happens, you turn your head fully expecting to see absolutely nothing, just like you've seen all the other times before. Instead, you turn your head and you come face to face with yourself.

Well, it both is you and… isn't, somehow. It looks like you, to be sure. Just like you, in fact, although maybe that's an old haircut of yours, or you have a scar that your real body is missing. Either way, it's an extremely good replica, right down to the style and the shoes and the expression of mixed fear and rage on your face as you look back at yourself.

That's when you notice the weapon in your (its?) hand.

You run. Dripping wet from the pool, or half-drunk from the bar, you sprint away from yourself as quickly as you can, casting your eyes around in search of anything you might be able to use as a weapon. You can hear your own footfalls behind you—they're unbearably familiar, you've heard them every day of your life—and you know that you won't be able to run forever, but at least for now you're able to maintain a little distance. You look for a statue you can use as a club, or a chair you can use as a shield, or a knife you can use as, well, a knife—and once you find something, you get yourself into as defensible a position as you can manage, and you wait.

Who knows your own thought patterns better than yourself, after all? It won't be long before you find yourself, and something tells you that this hotel isn't big enough for the both of you.

Characters who either choose to wander the hotel's hallways instead of going to bed after the masquerade, or who choose to leave their rooms after experiencing the knocking and banging mentioned above, may find themselves coming face to face with… themselves. The doppelganger might look exactly the same, or may have slight differences in hair or scars or fashion, but will otherwise be immediately and obviously identifiable as an alternate version of the same character. (Doppelgangers can come from any canon point; additionally, if a canon AU of a character exists, this doppelganger may be that canon AU.) There may be more than one doppelganger, but each will be a unique version from a different iteration.

These doppelgangers are versions of characters from past iterations of the City experiment. They are essentially data ghosts, incapable of holding a coherent conversation or communicating in any significant way. They are vestiges of that iteration's data leaking through into the current iteration. They cannot be reasoned with and cannot be stopped—they will come for your character and will kill them, if your character doesn't kill their doppelganger first. Not all characters will by necessity have a doppelganger! This is by player discretion. However, unlike the ghostly knocking noises, doppelgangers will only appear for characters who are currently located inside the hotel.

Doppelgangers can be interacted with by any character, but initially they will only attack the character of whom they are a copy. However, should another character attempt to interfere in their attacks, that character may also become a target for their aggression.

Characters who are killed by their doppelgangers will wake up on the train the next morning, but will not suffer the memory loss effects of death. If a doppelganger kills a character, the doppelganger will continue loitering around the hotel until sunrise unless killed by another character (they will not resist injury or death after their goal is complete). It is also possible for a character to hide from their doppelganger long enough to survive by waiting out the night. Once the sun rises, the doppelgangers will disappear and the front doors of the hotel will unlock, allowing characters to make their escape.

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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.

This month's event headers come from the poem "Self-Portrait as Monster Dating Sim" by Natalie Wee.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

As a reminder, there is a thread of questions (and answers) available on the OOC plotting post here. However, any additional questions not answered there can be asked here!

Couple questions!

1. Is there anything compelling characters to wear the formal wear and masks to the masquerade, or can they wear their street clothes and go unmasked?

2. Based on the experience of the mall and the haunted house, Johanna is very specifically looking for graffiti throughout the hotel, but especially on the ninth floor and in the rooms. Will she find anything?

1. Characters are only compelled to attend the masquerade, they are not compelled to wear the formal wear (although it'll look a lot fancier if they do)!

2. She would not find any graffiti, per se, but if she were to find a room that looks like it might belong to her or her doppelganger, she might be able to find notes left in what appears to be her own handwriting.

✦ i.

( displaced from her bed yet again..

at least this time it is to another bed rather than a display at the museum. a softer one even, albeit with less pillows than the one she keeps at the apartment, with linen sheets at some thousand or so thread count and pillows stuffed with goose feathers. all in all excessive and luxurious and definitely not where she fell asleep the night previous.

which is where the problem begins.

this one has a propensity for clinging, and it wouldn't be too unusual to find her cozied up and continuing on with her sleep with her new pillow. wake her or don't. one will have to if they'd like to escape her clutches and start figuring out how either of them got here, but she'll surely come to sooner or later and release you herself?

maybe. )

✦ ii.

( at the masquerade itself, fearne will be in attendance, naturally. her mask is that of a fox's, it's likeness made with plumage. the floor-length dress she has this time lacks her favored slit up the thigh, as if some attempt at veiling who she might be; as if her twisted horns and seafoam hair wouldn't give the little trickster fox away if they've met her even the once. to tie the theme together, a fur stole sits just barely off her shoulders, reminiscent of a tail curled around.

there is always the possibility that she'll approach anyone that catches her eye with a fittingly mischievous grin for a dance, or,

by now she's made a game of attempting to figure out who is who from afar. she's grown a talent for watching crowds over the course of her life, people are ones she reads better than books. but something seems a little strange. while she might not know everyone from the city, she does know that their numbers have been fewer.

so.. she's poking around, getting just a little too close to squint for details. it's possible that she simply doesn't recognize you but maybe! she should back off juuust a little. or you're watching her do much of the masked others who seem set on ignoring her. )

.. Do I know you from somewhere?

( ... )

✦ iii.

( and now she's running!

encountering her in the hallways at this time will definitely be a bad time to chat. she has a glass of water (now empty from running all this time), seemingly caught out of sorts and a little frantic. so, forgive her, she's not thinking very hard when she catches whoever she runs into by the wrist or the scruff or anything she can grab. so congratulations, now you too are running for your life!

what comes through first is the smell of smoke despite the lack of it, of wood burnt black to naught but crumbling ash. of scorched earth and seared flesh and no reprieve of a fresh breath. the laugh that rings through is a soft mellow, a mirror of hers, sweet and bell-like. but it's less playful. colder. more self-assured. )

Where are you going?

( another faun. one adorned with a thorned crown of dripping ichor, the ends of her hair a perpetual ember, the tips of her fingers a clawed black as if glimmering obsidian. she carries a blade of flame with her, unflinching, dragging the tip across the carpeted hall to singe the strands as she walks.

fearne isn't going to gawk. she's met her before, knows what she's capable of, so she's more worried about trying every door until she finds an opened one before she finally thinks to shake her new comrade-in-running. )

Is your room close to here?

( poor choice of a hiding spot, probably, given their mutual penchant for fire. )

✦ wildcard!

dummy (me) forgot to post on the ooc plotting because persona 3 reload got my ass. but if you wanna do stuff..... i'm out here. as always, dm or

valentione if you wanna hash some stuff out or hit me with something weird. i'm always down for that. also, for the third prompt i'm assuming that the other fearne has gotten a regain or two so she has her second level spells. maybe third or higher if i wanna get funny.

oh! and i didn't write a prompt for it, but if you wanna explore the abandoned rooms 👀👌

[ Lately, he's become a lighter sleeper. It's not clear whether the recent revelations surrounding the City are the cause, or whether someone's had a little too much caffeine the night before. But maybe it's for the best, given that pesky tapping noise that's been echoing through the halls.

Given his lack of self-preservation, Chesed left his room to discern the source of the noise -- and the sound of hooves accompanying the smell of fire.

This is almost certainly the fastest he's ever had to run. And he has to, in order to keep up with Fearne, now that she has his wrist in an iron grip. ]

It's a little further -- make a right, and it should be the fourth door on the left side.

[ Somehow, he manages to get the words out. ]

[ Something, no -- someone grabs his sleeve and all but drags him along. It's Fearne.

It's Fearne, which means she's much faster than him. ]

The last door to the right.

[ Whoever constructed this hallway seemed to have a penchant for designing incredibly long corridors. Yi Sang's already struggling to keep up with Fearne. If she doesn't let go, he'll only slow her down from whatever fiery monstrosity is after both of them. ]

Fearne, you -- you must let go. I am slowing you down.

[ Johanna was never going to get much sleep in this fucky hotel. Even before things started going bump in the night, she was more inclined to go exploring in the witching hour than to go to sleep.

When the sound of hooves comes pounding down the hallway, she just has time to turn in alarm before Fearne has her by the collar and is dragging her along. ]

What the fuck--!

[ HELP HER LEGS ARE SO SHORT COMPARED TO FEARNE, PLS DO NOT MIRTHFUL LEAP TOO MUCH ]

Jesus -- you want to get cornered in a room? [ Johanna casts a look over her shoulder. Deja fucking vu. She really hopes nobody gets gutted this time. ]

[There Is No Ninth Story. Sorry.]

[Alhaitham didn't attend the masquerade. If anything of importance happened, someone else would let him know. Instead, he spent the time wandering the hotel halls to seek some sort of clue.

It doesn't come until late, of course, when the elevator is finally capable of ascending to the ninth floor and Alhaitham doesn't have to try and figure out if he can scale the laundry chute. He arrives like a normal person and starts the cursory search around the rooms of the floor. The dust. The objects.

The head imprint. His fingers brush from the clear point and through the dust. He rubs them together.]

I'm starting to think all of these echoes have been data leaks. [And then he looks up.] The simulation may be breaking down already.

[Trust No One Not Even Yourself]

[Alhaitham has not slept.

Alhaitham won't get the chance to sleep, he realizes. That thing pursues him with a dogged intensity, incapable of fatigue. But it is him, and so it operates upon the same logic of efficiency: this is a game of cat and mouse. Alhaitham knows where he stands in both positions.

He isn't the only one, and that's the other complication: getting involved in other people's trouble risks him being dragged down by his own. That would be the reasonable approach, to focus on himself. He should focus on himself first.

But Kaveh is in here, and he couldn't get him to stick to his side the entire time. Tsuruno is in here. Yuu, and others, and they're all capable but if it's the same, they're all matched with someone who knows them inside and out. A version of them that might have retained more of their abilities than they have currently. So he gravitates, despite himself, to the sounds of struggle in between moments of reprieve.

There's you, and your doppelganger. And there's Alhaitham, generating a diamond-shaped green projetile, sharp on all its edges, that he fires in between the identical faces.

A warning shot, and a test. It'd be a worse problem if he accidentally killed the wrong one.]

[Wildcard]

((Anything else, you can find my plotting comment here!))

for Kaveh

justscribing - 2024-02-21 03:27 (UTC) - Expand

EVENT QUESTIONS.

Re: EVENT QUESTIONS.

no subject

fearne calloway ✦ critical role

iii.

iii. i fucked up. this is funnier i changed my mind

iii. I too want a Bad Time

Alhaitham | Genshin Impact

Kaveh dying and all of its consequences CW: murder

trust no one

no subject