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
no subject
by the time he ends up at the counter next to her, her mouth is parted into a soft 'oh' like she can't quite believe his antics. where did that flower come from? does she really want to take it?
with another soft laugh, she reaches forward with one hand to gently pluck the flower from him with a nod of thanks. )
This is actually my first time, so I don't...really know how to help. But!
( she wags the flower at him, offering a mischievous smile. )
Let's see if it works. Abracadabra, five, seven, three! Meat, appear, and make it juicy!
( --there's a ding, from behind the counter, and a plate appears, pushed into the window. it appears to have a nicely cooked steak, as well as mashed potatoes and asparagus; she flicks the flower towards the plate, then back towards the man. )
Go to the window and take it!
sorry for delay, work had me tired yesterday :p
A lady after his own heart. Too bad for everyone else, his already belonged to Xayah, but that didn't mean he couldn't still play! Especially if they're willing to play and have fun with him, too.
She teased him with the flower, and he quite quickly perked up to roll onto his belly, whereupon he could prop his elbows up on the counter and hold his jaw in his palms(this also meant maybe his knees were on the mixing counter behind the bar but what was important here was his utmost attention). The ding that followed her chant made his fuzzy, feathered ears flick back.
Initially, he just glanced over when the smell caught his nose, and there was a split-second where he was about to go back to cheesing it in front of her, but his brain caught up with him in that moment, and he did a double-take, nearly flipping himself off of the countertop from how quickly he tried to spin around and get a proper look. ]
Hold on, what! Talk about a party trick! [ He barked with an exuberant laugh, and dashed over to the plate to scoop it up in both hands. On his way back, with a little boost of a foot-stool behind the counter, he hopped back up to sit in front of the woman, moving himself to let his scaly bird legs dangle over the front. ]
And just where have you been all my life? [ He'd lean forward and take a deep breath of the flower and let out a content sigh. ] To think I had such a handy little flower tucked away in my pocket this entire time.
no worries, take your time!
she watches him, carefully, as he makes his way over the counter for the plate. nothing terrible seems to happen when he takes it--there's no other movement, no one that comes out of the kitchen behind him, and in the end, he gets a plate of good food with no consequences. as he takes a seat on the counter, she beams a smile up at him, pleased. )
Maybe you just have to learn how to use it. ( she wriggles the flower at him again with a laugh. ) Tell me how it tastes, okay?
( her gaze flickers back to the order window, then up to him: and with another flick of the flower, she says-- ) For me, I want.. A glass of iced tea! With a lemon slice!
( eagerly, she leans against the counter, waiting for the telltale ding! before a glass appears in the window: with another laugh, she claps her hands together. )
It really works...
no subject
Rakan's better, though. Definitely. [ He is, at first, watching her use the flower again, this time paying a bit more attention to the process since he heard her start up her chant and flower movement again. The way he held his head stiffened a bit with his curiosity, and his eyes flickered from flower, to counter, to her, to the flower, the floor--but then there was a glass!
His lips peeled back into a toothy grin, and a small chuckle bubbled from his nose, if only because she was so delighted, and it was adorable to see. It, however, faded quickly as he looked from the apparated glass to the warm plate in his lap.
He stared intently at the plate, as if looking for something that he just wasn't finding. ]
Uh-- [ It stumbled out of his mouth, almost as a sputter as he lifted the plate up to look under it and on either side of it. Nope! Nothing. His tail thumped at the counter, making a soft hollow little sound when it bumped gently against the wooden panels. It smelled normal, looked normal. He gave it a cursory lick, and it tasted normal, but as he set the plate back in his lap, his head still cocked back as if he were a child looking suspiciously at a stinky, steaming pile of broccoli. ]
Hey I know you're a human and all, but like. Didn't you just sing to these? [ The term was used...extremely loosely here, but Rakan tended to give humans benefit of the doubt with these things. She tried, and that's what mattered to him. But even so, as he literally saw her singing some strange little melody before the food apparated, he could hear no echo of the play and affection Aerith chanted with coming from it. The steam was supposed to twirl and dance as it rose, not just. Rise like some lame pillar. There was no rejuvenating or homely feeling coming from this food. ]
no subject
with a glance at the plate, and then a glance back to her glass, she shakes her head a little, lips pressed together in thought. at the very least, it's nice to pass as a regular human; no one knows who she is here, which is something of a relief. )
I did, but... I don't think it was me. ( there's a faint smile, and she sets her glass down, firmly, on the counter. one of her hands lifts, pointing gently at the broccoli on his plate-- )
Do you want me to try it, first? Taste test? I don't mind. It does seem suspicious, some strange girl making food appear out of nowhere, right?
( hopefully he won't take that as an insult to his skill or constitution--he might seem like the prideful type, but there's been nothing yet that makes her think it goes into anything particularly egotistical or dangerous. )
no subject
Nope! No take-backsies, it's mine now!
Besides, why would I be worried? If I felt you were gonna hurt me, do you really think I'd be stupid enough to hang around? [ He bubbled with a bright laugh. ] Hardly!
I mean. Maybe. If Xayah needed me to, sure, but she doesn't! [ He didn't know her magic, and it didn't sing to him as it did back home. Even humans had magic within them that sung to him, so while it felt like trying to look at his reflection in a rippling pond, he didn't pick up on any malicious intent.
He picked up a sprout of broccoli with his fingers and held it up, looking at it and cocking his head with furrowed brows, but still popped it into his mouth with a shrug. ]
So how'd you get here? I don't even know where here is.