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 west of City Hall, you will find a small building that houses the tourist information kiosk. The kiosk is not currently operational, but you may want to remember its location...
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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A WASH, ANYONE?
The coin laundromat is tucked into the first floor of one of the tall apartment buildings. Soap is complimentary, and while the machines say that they cost a quarter per load, in reality they are fully operational without any money being exchanged at all. If you have any clothes that need a wash, perhaps items that have been dirtied by your explorations (or your travels before arriving in the city), you may want to take this opportunity to wash them for free.
From the soap dispenser, you can retrieve packets of detergent in different strengths. There's plenty of stock of for mild to moderate grime and for heavy-duty stains, but there are also a handful of packets with slightly less obvious purposes. For things remembered, says one. For unhappy accidents, says another. Feel free to use whichever seems most suited to your needs.
When your laundry cycle has ended, the buzzer sounds and the door pops open so the clothing can be retrieved. You grab a laundry basket and reach in to start pulling fabric out of the machine by the handful. But wait a second–the more clothing you retrieve, the less familiar the items seem, and by the time you've retrieved the last bundled sock from the depths of the dryer you're absolutely positive: These clothes don't belong to you.
You're sure that you put your own clothing into the machine, but these are someone else's clothes entirely. Did someone sneak in while you weren't paying attention and swap out your laundry? Or did you accidentally open up the wrong dryer to retrieve the wrong load? Maybe you'd better look around at whoever else is in the laundromat with you and have a go at trying to find the owner of these clothes.
Whether the characters have had their clothing swapped or simply opened the wrong machine to grab someone else's laundry is up to the player's imagination, but one thing's for sure: you have someone else's clothes in your basket. Maybe these are clothes that belong to another character in the laundromat, or maybe they're garments that belong to someone that character knew back home. Players are encouraged to mess around with the premise and use it to get to know other characters!
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COME ONE, COME ALL...
Have you ever noticed that flickering sign hanging in the window of that little building around the corner from the parking lot? The one that says PSYCHIC READINGS in bold neon lettering?
You step inside the shop and immediately smell a powerful combination of aromas: herbs, candles, incense, something spicy and warm underneath. It's a small space, cluttered with objects. A crystal ball covered in velvet sits in the center of a table, and there are tarot card sets and drawers full of dried herbs and flowers. On the shelves are various remedies with labels printed so neatly it's impossible to tell whether they're typed or handwritten. Headaches, or hemophilia, and also irascibility and fits of sighing. There are also jars full of less easily-identifiable contents, but a close examination may show you frog legs, fish eyes, rat tails. For some reason, it feels like sticking your hand in one of these jars might not be the best idea.
Toward the back of the shop is a glass case that holds the bust of a woman. As you approach, your movement triggers a light inside the case to illuminate the woman's face–or where her face would be, if she had one. The normal human features of her face are smoothed out until they barely resemble a face at all, with slightly hollowed divots for eyes and a faintly raised bump for a nose. The closer you get, though, the more strongly you feel that despite the absence of eyes, the woman is indeed watching you.
The lettering at the top of the case states FORTUNE TELLER, and a sign affixed to the front of the glass says, Ask for anything, but be careful what you wish for.
You form a question in your mind, then ask your question out loud. The woman shifts, straightening up, and you hear the faint whirring of clockwork and pneumatics moving inside her. She gathers her hands in front of her, cupping them like she's holding water, and strange light emanates from her palms, casting harsh illumination on the blank space where her face should be. Although she has no mouth with which to speak, you nonetheless hear a vaguely female voice intone, "Your fate has been read."
A paper slip emerges from a slot in the front of the case, your freshly-printed fortune, the ink barely dry.
Although the crystal ball will not actually show the future, characters with any kind of herbal knowledge may clock that the herbs and remedies in the drawers and shelves of the shop are legitimate. Characters can ask anything they want of the fortune teller, or make as many wishes as they like. They'll get as many fortune slips as correspond to the number of questions they ask. Players are encouraged to come up with whatever vaguely-accurate fortunes you think work for your character, but if you're low on ideas, you can always try an online Magic 8 Ball or fortune cookie generator.
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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)
citylogs2023-06-01 12:00 am
i
Excuse me, but you can't just enter a new room without permission.
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So as he doesn't look particular apologetic as he glances over his shoulder at Lan Xichen. ]
Is it your room?
[ The tone isn't really accusatory, but there is something about how he asks that suggests he already knows the answer. ]
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Someone should look after it. I have become its caretaker for the time being.
[ He tries to reason with the stranger, to give an acceptable answer even if it's not an official one, but he still waits for Broca as if he can't think of a way to stop his progress. ]
Are you looking for something? I can help if you lost something...
no subject
[ The tone in his voice isn't amusement, not exactly, but there's some irony laced in there as he mimics those words back. He wonders just how appreciative the original owners would be if they ever came back to find a squatter.
Big if though, given how unnatural and overly orderly the abandonment of this city has come across so far. ]
Just looking around.
[ Which he is still very actively doing. ]
Is this the only place you're the caretaker for?
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Have you been searching every room this way?
[ Following after, he's trying to keep everything in place the way it was. If the owner does come back, he wants the room to look right. ]
For now... I think we should look after them. Until someone comes back.
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He's doing that right now to a photo frame that looks like it's begging to have a family on vacation nestled right in the middle of the otherwise empty park scene. ]
You think someone is coming back?
[ He puts the photo down, twisting his head to look over his shoulder at the other man. ]
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[ He looks a little startled by Broca's question. The implication of what will happen to them if someone doesn't return is chilling, and he hasn't yet really let himself consider how stranded they all might be. ]
It looks like someone was living here recently. It's clean and there are still nice furnishings. Doesn't that mean they don't intend to leave these rooms empty?
[ That could very well be wishful thinking and Lan Xichen's own strict upbringing tying him down to propriety despite the circumstances. He doesn't know how to act any other way, so he falls back on courtesy and gentlemanly conduct. ]
If no one comes back, won't we go hungry?
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Who knows.
[ Whether they plan to come back or not, though as for the food situation. ]
We might go hungry if we stay here though.
[ But right now Broca is working under the assumption that all cities have eventual ends to them, and they have the ability to leave. The truth is going to be sobering once he figures out how wrong that assumption is. ]
no subject
Well, in the meantime, I think we should take care of these places and wait for their return. That way if the owners come back they might be more inclined to help us and answer our questions.
[ This seems logical enough, right? He looks satisfied with himself, like he's resolved some potential dispute that, realistically, is very likely to never happen. But his simple assessment of their situation doesn't account for that. ]
I suppose we should try to find out where the food comes from? That way we won't go hungry...
[ But while he's thinking of that, his attention keeps drifting back to Broca. Or, rather, Broca's head. ]
...Are those real?
no subject
Maybe he's just cynical. Either way, he'll find one that looks comfortable enough for himself and crash there until he can figure out something better. No reason to pass up the comfort and convenience.
As for food, well--
Wait what? ]
Are what real?
[ In an entirely unconscious move, his ears to move to perk up as he turns to look at Lan Xichen, kind of answering the question without even really understanding it. Where he's from guys like him are normal enough, but there are still enough people without ears and tails that he's not really questioning anyone else here. ]
no subject
And then he ends up getting distracted by something trivial, but he's never seen anyone like Broca before. He does stare a bit, trying not to be too obvious, but when Broca's ears turn, he has to cover his face with his sleeve to hide his expression. ]
A-ah. Are you, perhaps, some kind of immortal? Forgive me, but you don't appear completely human.
[ They look so soft. Can he really keep a straight face with this intruder when he has cute ears like that? ]
no subject
And this all means it takes him a second to figure out what Lan Xichen is talking about, blinking slowly, brow furrowing, and ears perking up.
He looks pretty human as far as he's concerned...? ]
No? I have a normal lifespan.
[ Actually, that's not entirely true. Thanks to a disease he has (unrelated to the ears) he's on the fast track to an early death, but this stranger doesn't need to know he's an Infected. ]
no subject
[ He can feel the confusion in their interaction, but he can't understand why. It doesn't feel like Broca is really avoiding his question. If anything, it feels open and blunt, like Lan Xichen just asked something strange and thus made the inquiry uncomfortable somehow. But is it normal for a man to have those ears and tail? He shifts his weight uneasily, wanting to press for more information, but also bound by the rules of courtesy and good behaviour. ]
My name is Lan Xichen, from the Gusu Lan sect. I came here on a strange machine that abandoned me once I moved away from it. Could I ask where you are from?
[ Maybe this will help him clarify things! ]
no subject
Lan Xichen has Broca's undivided attention now as he looks at him like he's some kind of puzzle that Broca's trying to decipher. ]
Siracusa. Ever heard of it?
[ There's doubt in his own tone already, because he has a feeling he knows the answer to this one. ]
no subject
I don't travel too far. There are many places I likely have not heard of, and I apologize for my ignorance. Is that your country? If there are many people like you there, I would like to see it. I have been to some of the territories near my home, but I still have little knowledge of the rest of the world. This place has taught me that.
no subject
Still, it seems almost unbelievable that someone is so sheltered that they'd be this surprised by seeing a Feline. ]
Sure, most people are like me.
[ Well, no. Most people where he's from are Lupus or Vulpoes, but wolf and fox features being more common aside... ]
Can't say I know about your sect either.
no subject
[Almost like a fairy tale or some city of yao in a far nicer way than he is used to. Imagining a sect of people with animal features delights him in a silly, frivolous way that he's not used to feeling. Wangji would love this man!]
Ah, our sect doesn't have anyone like you. We're all raised the same...
[He trails off as he remembers Wei Wuxian, who definitely isn't the same and would probably be compared to a rogue cat or stray beast by some of the elders in a far less generous way. And yet Xichen can't help but laugh a little at the ridiculousness of his own thoughts.]
No, no one like you at all. Perhaps our cities are truly far from each other? If so, I feel at a great loss. I have missed many chances to meet interesting people.
no subject
Though some of his particular issues should be somewhat world wide, even if every country does handle its Infected population a little differently. Just like guys like him should be pretty worldwide, even if some countries have less fur represented than others.
So what does that mean here...? ]
Yeah... But I've been a lot of places, and most people aren't that different from me.
[ In terms of what Xichen seems to be noting as different about him at any rate. So either this guy is more isolated than he thinks, or it's something else entirely. ]
no subject
I'm sorry. I don't have much business outside of my own home. You seem like a good man and it does not matter where we are from. We are both visitors together now. Perhaps we can find ways to work together?
no subject
Then again, Broca's about as blunt as his two friends when it comes down to it. ]
Sure.
[ He crosses his arms, giving that some consideration. ]
If you figure out anything about this place, let me know. I'll do the same for you.
no subject
It's actually exciting. ]
I will be sure to tell you if I find anything. Thank you, gongzi. Ah- Who do I call upon if I need to reach you?
no subject
It's just not always easy to read that way, especially when they're only on their first meeting here.
Though his expression does soften slightly into curiosity at that "gongzi". ]
Broca.
no subject
Broca-gongzi, I appreciate your assistance. I will be sure not to trouble a busy master like you too much, but hopefully you will allow me to invite you to a meal some time?
no subject
Balance is important.
Like a guy who is very sociable verses a guy who is struggling to keep up with the friendly pace of this conversation. ]
You want to take me out for food?
no subject
Of course! You've been helpful to me, so I should repay you as well. Ah, although our restaurant options are limited.
[ As far as he's seen, and he still doesn't understand how they work. ]
Unless there is anything else I can do for you.
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