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
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We can still make a potluck by ourselves, if we find some willing companions. I'm sure that's going to be an ongoing project. We don't even know who else is here. [ dimitri pauses before he adds, ] Or when will it end.
[ he can feel sylvain shifting beside him restlessly, and when the other boy decides to sit up again, dimitri shuffles to his side - to keep him steady. ]
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It'll be nice to have a break from doing all the cooking, probably.
[Because, yes, they're going to live together. Even if they haven't discussed living together, they're living together. It would be stranger not to. He's saying this like it's a fact, because it is.]
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[ like, vending machines exist, that's so amazing. ]
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Yeah, you and me both. I can't imagine the sort of people who'd build a place like...this, and it's not like it's ruins, or run down, or there's any signs of them leaving. It's like they just...were erased. You know?
[The nice thing about being this close is that he can nudge Dimitri, and, so, he does.]
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But I've seen none of that, and you're right ... 'erase' is a good word for it.
[ he is Nudged. if one is nudged, one responds with being nudged, and so dimitri nudges him back - ] Though I have to say, this world is rather sedentary. They don't have a lot of places to be training at, or exercising, or something to that effect.
[ dimitri counted a few Gyms. that's not Training and Exercising and Working Out. it doesn't count. ]
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He is nudged and nudges back, knowing that he's stuck accepting his fate as Dimitri's training partner to some extent and hating this.]
You're lucky we're friends, you know that?
[That nice park is going to become the scene of so much violence. Calming? Absolutely not.]
Anyway, only you would say that. [...] Well, no, I guess Felix and Ingrid would agree with you. Probably Ashe as well.
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So it's not just me, then.
[ so he admits it! he admits it's important. (did he? didn't he? it doesn't matter what sylvain said.) dimitri stretches his arms and limbs. sylvain seems to be feeling happier, and so ... maybe what they need to do is walk off their feelings. be faerghan men, devote the rest of their analyzing to distracting them from the issue at hand. ]
Are you feeling better? Want to go for a walk, or do you want a bit more time to rest? [ he'll give him space if need be, he just wants to check in first. ]
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[That's his prince, always has his eyes on the bigger picture. He stands! He offers Dimitri his hand.]
We need to figure out where we're staying. I'm thinking something with two bedrooms, but not too big? It's just the two of us and we'd have to keep it clean. Too big and we're spending too much time on that and too little on anything else.
Think we can get a place with a view? [Of what? He doesn't know.]
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... well, that's mighty ambitious from having just arrived here.
But also - [ also. what's a polite way of saying this? also. ] - are you not concerned about having your own place? I feel like there's enough opportunities here to seek out single accommodations .... without neighbours. [ WITHOUT! NEIGHBOURS! ]
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Everything.
The fact they haven't seen another person pass by them in the last few minutes.
The strangeness of the situation, and the newness of the world?
And yet, there's Dimitri looking at him and clearly believing in his ability to get laid and, wow. Wow? What is this feeling? Sylvain knows he shouldn't be flattered. But he is? He's very flattered? And is going to take advantage of this?]
So I'm off the hook for training too, then?
[Is this truly the best end for him? Is he really going to be cut loose to fuck and relax and slack on his training? What is this feeling? Dimitri's being so generous. Wow. 10/10 new world, there might be horrors, later, but there's horrors back home, plenty of horrors, so that's nothing new. Man! Gosh! What a vacation!]
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[ sylvain keeps finding different ways of annoying him. dimitri looks sour at the realization. he folds his arms over his chest and glares at him in a disapproving manner. him and his lack of ... crown, him and his no throne-ass having prince. ]
- I would be disappointed if you don't keep yourself in shape, but this is hardly our world, and I can't really tell you how to live your life. [ especially when the rules of this modern world are probably more different ... it is a sobering thought. his conservative ass doesn't like it! ]
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So that means you'll go have fun with me, right? [Right?] You're not a prince and I'm not a knight. We're just two guys in some strange new world. Why not enjoy ourselves?
[Right???]
You can do all the stuff you never got to do as a prince.
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[ what's all this nonsense? dimitri sighs as he walks past him to another street, another random store front with strange lights and screens. ]
... anyway, experience isn't really all that matters in the end, and there is very little that I'd like to change about my daily routine. [ unlike some people! ]
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[Dimitri's walking, and he's walking with. He's admiring the area! He's two steps behind, mainly because of reflex, and also because His Highness is definitely in a mood.]
I'm not the Gautier heir here, and you're not a prince; we're just two guys, completely and totally lost and needing to figure what to do. Besides, you gotta change your daily routine, Dimitri.
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dimitri leans against the edge of a table, staring at sylvain. the electronic sign overhead blares out, make your own adventure in the information highway! and underneath, in block letters, NO DOWNLOADING PORNOGRAPHY. ]
And who I am is a prince. Who 'Dimitri' is, is a prince.
[ he's not a real person! ]
Besides, I am already changing my daily routine. This certainly isn't part of it. [ a sigh. ] And the lack of responsibility isn't part of it, and truthfully, that's more stressful than anything else.
[ what's he gonna torment himself with? his own burdens? he's damn good at that, but he's not sure how to tell sylvain 'i take orders from my dead father, or like, glenn.' ]
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...and Sylvain sighs. Hear that sigh? It's not just a sigh, it's a sigh, with feeling. Feel that feeling? It's there. It's ready to be felt.
Dimitri, Dimitri, Dimitri. Sylvain drapes an arm around Dimitri's shoulders and leans heavily, and then a little bit more heavily, sighing again. Sigh. So much feeling.]
'kay, how's this sound.
[The silver-tongued negotiator, right here.]
We get a place together. If I bring anybody back with me to...you know. [You know!] I'll take them somewhere else - there's plenty of bedrooms and plenty of options. You can fuss over me and be my prince, and I'll be your knight. And I'll go train once a week with you without a fight.
[It's a sacrifice, but it's like making sure a dog gets his walks. It's for the greater good.]
If you want more than once a week, then I'll put up a fight. [Sigh! Sigh the third, with more feeling than the first and the second, because that is a sacrifice right there. He is sacrificing his training free holiday for Dimitri's sake!]
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What if you decide to settle with someone here? [ he doubts sylvain has this in mind, but you never know! ] Permanently, I mean. I'd feel like a third party.
Also, since physical fitness is important in staying healthy and not living a sedentary life ... shouldn't it be more than twice a week? Or once a week without a fight? [ shouldn't it be every day like c'mon. ]
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[Such CONFIDENCE. Holy shit. Saint fucking Seiros. He doesn't have the entire noble thing to lean on here, probably, and yet, here's Dimitri, quite confident that he'd get so much sex, swimming in sex, carrying on like they're in a sex game and getting aphroed every week levels of confidence. That the sheer amount of pussy he'll be swimming in will be a problem, even though, logistically, there's a lack of girls in the immediate area which would make pussy-swimming complicated.
This shouldn't be flattering, but it is.]
I never knew you had that much, uh. Faith? [Is that the word?] Faith in me. Anyway, I'd...not to make this weird...well, weirder. [Already kind of weird, just saying!] But I'd feel better if I knew you were somewhere close by and won't vanish like everyone else seems to have vanished around here.
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I'd rather err on the side of caution and cover my future worries right now! Besides, it'd be strange if it were really the two of us who were brought here. I'm assuming that sometime in the future there will be more people. I don't think that's strange to think about! I don't know how long that'd take, but all I know is that loneliness can do strange things to people; I'm just going off based on what I've seen you done.
[ dimitri stops when he realizes what he just said, staring at him with a deer-caught-in-the-headlights look, if he knew what headlights were, but with pretty big headlights. like a lighthouse's worth of light. ]
Anyway, if you wish me to remain close for security reasons, I'm not going to fight it; I think I've pointed out future issues at length already. [ he'll throw in this much: ] I will contribute to our household chores any way I can.
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I'll train with you as many times as you want if you stop talking about feelings.
[That little bit about loneliness seemed awfully feelings adjacent! Pretty close! They're supposed to be brave men of Faerghus, not feelings men! Slipping and sliding here, Dimitri, who are you, what are you, what's going on.]
no subject
[ done and done, he'll ream your ass over it, gautier. but also. he's slipping and sliding! bad. call him mr lube with how slick this goes down.
anyway.
dimitri clenches the table firmly as he says, ] I'm not talking about it.
[ not - not talking about it, either - but then his hands immediately fly off, because he was terrified of breaking it, and then he turns around, worried that he'd somehow destroyed the table, and -
- it's not broken. it's intact! ] Oh! That's a relief.
[ wait. ] How - ?
[ dimitri peers at the table. how is it not broken? he just breaks things. he frowns at the table, looks at it from the top, and then the bottom, where he sees it's only reinforced by the joints being made of thin metal and not much else, and then he slams his fist onto the table really hard -
- it doesn't break. but there's a small dent. ]
Oh.
no subject
This shouldn't be happening.
Sylvain stares at the table. Looks under the table with Dimitri, trying to see if there's some secret making the table more durable than normal. No, looks like a table. He stands. Watches Dimitri hit it, makes a surprised noise when Dimitri smacks it and it doesn't break. There's just a dent.
It should be broken.
He immediately plops the back of his hand on Dimitri's forehead like he's going to cast some healing magic, and, see, the problem is that he doesn't have enough faith to heal in the first place, and he definitely can't heal here, so basically, Sylvain's accidentally checking for a temperature.
Which is okay.]
You feeling alright, Dimitri?
[Something is Wrong.]
no subject
[ this is so weird! dimitri turns to the table once more. he tries to lean his weight into it, both of his hands gripping the edge. this is surely something that would've broken a desk and more besides, a while back, but that's not happening. in fact, dimitri is struggling, until finally, the table shows a bit of promise and a crack appears in the surface.
a very small hairline crack. ]
I guess I don't ... have my strength anymore. [ dimitri says, panting, not knowing what to do with this knowledge. ] Not that it matters - I can still fight, if it comes down to it - but .... it's strange.
[ also: he has to be more careful now, because his recklessness was only possible with the type of strength that he has, but now ... ]
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Besides, Dimitri's likely also feeling...things because of this, and, as his knight, it's his duty to distract him. And so, Sylvain says the first thing that comes to his head that isn't related to politics, Faerghus, or Dimitri's safety.]
Guess that means we won't have to learn how to fix doors, huh? And, hey, I won't have to worry about you breaking all our plates when you wash the dishes.
[Look! A distraction!]
no subject
- by the goddess, his uncle and his permanent bid for the crown, to fully eliminate him from the history books, he and cornelia would have a field day with this knowledge, and anyway -
- there's a bit of a pause, as if his body had missed a step somewhere up the stairs to connect from that to sylvain's distraction, and dimitri just ... laughs, belatedly. it sounds so forced and awkward, the reaction so uncanny, like a doll that had just acted off-script. the boar rearing its head, wearing a smile. ]
Doors!
Yes, I can now open doors and wash dishes. Imagine. [ dimitri clenches his fist, unclenches it, and murmurs, ] But yes, when it comes down to it, I can still fight.
[ there's a high and terrible voice in him that roars, can you? and he doesn't want to answer that. all of a sudden, this entire, empty place, is so volatile with its shadows, so stuffy with its walls. if he looked in the screens he will see his father reflected back at him. ]
Let's go outside.
[ not waiting on sylvain's word, he leaves. ]
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brought to u by my friend reminding me coffee is only in dagda/south in 3h
omfg they will DIE
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