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.
JUMP TO TOP ↑ | ↓ JUMP TO COMMENTS
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.
JUMP TO TOP ↑ | ↓ JUMP TO COMMENTS
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!
JUMP TO TOP ↑ | ↓ JUMP TO COMMENTS
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.
JUMP TO TOP ↑ | ↓ JUMP TO COMMENTS
WILDCARD.
The city is by no means small, and there are plenty of things for you to see. There's no rush in exploring, so feel free to take your time looking around and peering into various nooks and crannies and alleyways—and don't worry, you're not very likely to find anything peering back.
If none of the above prompts appeal, feel free to check out the Locations and Maps pages and write your own freestyle prompt using one or many of the available locations.
JUMP TO TOP ↑
|
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
citycenter) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
citylogs2023-06-01 12:00 am
no subject
He has enough wives at home he could barely give a wet fart about, he's not about to start a collection here.
He knows now that it was... a mistake. One of many. If he has found this kind shizun, in a world away from his seat of power, away from the concubines and courtiers, he has no intention of making the same mistakes twice.
(He's going to make all new ones!)
"They ride these for fun...?" he asks, somewhat incredulous. What's so good about rickety old mine carts, however brightly painted...?
"Laoshi's world is, indeed, a strange one."
no subject
Shen Yuan gives Luo Binghe a surprised, slightly skeptical look at that, but decides not to comment on it. Perhaps Luo Binghe simply wants a break from the drama of managing so many women, it's not surprising. Even the happiest of married men want time off from their spouses now and then, and Binghe's married life was...not exactly harmonious.
(Does this technically mean more potential girlfriends for Shen Yuan? Pffft, as if! Who's going to look twice at him while Luo Binghe's in the world, whether their interest is reciprocated or not? It's fine though, this old man has already been single for over thirty years now; he's used to it.)
"In a world without monsters, people have to make their own excitement, I suppose." He puts the photo back on the mantle and turns to survey the apartment, filled with signs of other's peoples lives. In one sense it's less creepy than the open, unfurnished apartment they visited earlier, but in another...
"Would Binghe like to know what I think we should do?" he asks rhetorically.
no subject
Actually, Binghe may partially be a culprit, but not because he's more handsome or desirable.)"We don't know if this world is without monsters," he remarks. "Just as they pull other people, and likely rooms and buildings, they could very possibly pull other creatures as well. If there aren't already any that are native to this place."
He doesn't think there's anything native to this place though. There is a sense of sterility, even outside, that he cannot recall feeling even in the cleanest of cities back home. No, he thinks, any life that exists in this place surely is brought here.
Binghe puts his ever-turning thoughts on pause, and gives Shen Yuan a teasing smile.
"What does laoshi, in his infinite wisdom, think we should do?" he asks, leaning once more into the other man's space. "Please don't leave this poor lord in suspense."
no subject
He teases Luo Binghe by batting his eyelashes at the other man. "That is, if my dear friend Binghe doesn't mind helping this poor laoshi move furniture?"
no subject
When has he ever blushed...? Not since he was in his late teens, surely.
And certainly not from a little push, and a coquettish bat of eyelashes! His harem contains hundreds! There is no sex act he hasn't engaged in! But here is, jade white cheeks flushed a fetching shade of pink and his brain trying to keep itself back into gear.
It... isn't going so well. Something's gummed up the works.
Our space. Our space. Our space.
Does Shen Yuan know what he's doing, inviting this (not so) little beast to share a space with him? Does he...? Is he really so trusting? How can he be, knowing what he does about Binghe...?
Binghe's jaw clicks shut, and his expression transitions smoothly into an easy smile.
"Of course not," he says, pulse still drumming in his throat. "This lord is, of course, happy to oblige."
no subject
And then Binghe smiles again, and all is well. "We'll use one of the two or three bedroom units, of course," Shen Yuan says, grabbing the throw pillows off the couch to use as stake markers once they've picked out a unit. "Does Lord Luo have a preference?" he asks, that teasing lilt returning to his voice once again.
It's all about expedience, he thinks, as he leads Binghe back out into the hall. Of course he knows that Binghe is a master actor, and can conceal deadly malice behind the sunniest smile. But why would he bother, when they both know he's stronger than Shen Yuan and possesses the power to make him do basically anything Binghe wants? It would be a waste of effort -- so at least when it comes to their personal life, Shen Yuan thinks, it's probably fine to simply take Binghe at his word.
And he does so want to be the person Luo Binghe trusts the most.
no subject
Still, he needs to block any avenue for potential interlopers. Shen Yuan is a treasure, and it won't be long until the men here are banging on his door just to get a taste.
Binghe has to stake his own claim quickly. Especially if there's the possibility of Shen Yuan's actual disciple showing up.
"Two bedrooms should be fine, but if you'd like the extra room, perhaps we can turn it into a library...?"
no subject
unless...?"Come to think of it, how does Binghe want to style himself while he's here?" Shen Yuan asks, leading them back into one of the empty apartments they'd already visited and dropping the pillows down in the center of the floor. There, they've staked a claim and the place is theirs now. He immediately moves to open the windows, so they can get a look at the natural light before they start moving more things in here. "Introducing himself as the emperor of the two realms might attract the inconvenient kind of attention," he notes over his shoulder, meaning it as a simple and neutral statement of fact. Of course Binghe is always free to do what he likes.
no subject
And good calligraphy practice. Thoughts of his laoshi guiding his hand while he feigns poor calligraphy fill his head as he trails after the other man. (Had that other one not done something similar for sword practice...? Ah, but Binghe couldn't get away with that could he? Laoshi probably already knows he's a master swordsman. But even without feigning poor quality, his own calligraphy has only ever been passable and never anything special.)
He's not too fussed about the light, or whatever. When he was a child, such things were the options for the rich or the powerful, and when he joined that group, he had servants to figure out such matters for him.
"I'm not going by Luo Binghe, Emperor of the Combined realms or any other such titles," he explains. "I'll be using one of my aliases; Liu Feiyu. What of laoshi...? Will he continue to go by Shen Qingqiu...? Or would he prefer to be... himself?"
no subject
"A wise decision," he says happily, mentally blocking out the dimensions of the room with his hands. "You can be Mingyan-shizhi's younger, prettier brother. And I'll be reverting to Shen Yuan, I think. I never actually earned the Qingqiu courtesy name, anyway."
no subject
"What sort of furniture does laoshi want to get...?"
Binghe is fully prepared to feather this nest to Shen Yuan's liking. He doubts he can replicate the bamboo hut here, but he certainly wants to recreate that... comfortable feeling it had taken, the way it never had in his own world.
He wants to see inside this man, figure out how his mind works, because it's hard to wrap his head around the fact that, not once, but twice Shen Yuan has taken on the charge of Luo Binghe - fully knowing what a monster he is, even!
Maybe he's insane. Finding him skittering among the debris of wrappers is evidence enough of that, but beyond his little snack binge, he seems... normal?
It's an enigma. Of course Binghe wants to pick it apart. This is the epitome of Binghe enrichment.
no subject
"I'm sure Binghe is eager to put all those kitchen tools he's been hiding up his sleeve to the test." Shen Yuan grinned. Yeah, he saw that! "But it's silly not to make use of the food this place is so kindly offering us, as long as it lasts. We should make sure we have a comfortable place to sleep tonight, before everything else." He taps his chin for a moment in thought. "Did Binghe see any beds he particularly liked, while we were exploring?"
no subject
"Oh? Did laoshi notice that...?"
He tries to look innocent. It really, really doesn't work.
"I'll save them for later then. As for beds, you know I can sleep anywhere. Let's find one for you first."
no subject
He knows it didn't, not really. Luo Binghe's palace was loaded with doting beauties, beautiful music, sweet scents and extremely comfortable beds, but he never really seemed to stop and enjoy any of it. It was more of a place he stopped to sleep between grand adventures, a lifestyle Shen Yuan had never entirely understood even if he supposed he admired the manly grit of it all, in an abstract sort of way. But he still strongly believed that Binghe deserved a comfortable place to rest.
"Don't worry," he said, and patted Binghe's arm one more time before turning to leave the apartment. "Laoshi will take care of it. By the time I'm done Binghe will have the most comfortable bed in the building."
***
An hour later, the master bedroom of their chosen apartment may not have had the most comfortable bed in the building, but it certainly had the largest on their floor. And Shen Yuan was glistening with sweat; he kind of wanted to lie down and die just a little bit.
"Okay, hydration breaktime," he announced once the mattress was in place, and immediately made a beeline for the en-suite bathroom. He turned on the sink and immediately tried to stick his face under the faucet; cold, cold water! Please help him feel less hot and sweaty and tired!
no subject
No, he has little taste for the luxury he lives in. If he had known what a trap it was when he was young and foolish and chased the allure of perfumed silks and palace life, if he had known none of it would mean actual power and security, he probably never would have pursued the role of emperor.
***
It's sweet how Shen Yuan goes between the rooms, testing mattresses and declaring that only the best and softest will be suitable for the Emperor Luo Binghe. He's touched, really he is.
He also knows that when Shen Yuan declares a mattress suitable that it will not be Luo Binghe's bed. He has every intention of keeping his laoshi in the highest luxury this place can offer.
Shen Yuan even insists on helping carry the thing back with them. This gets a chuckle out of Binghe. He may be at 20% power, but he is still Luo Binghe - at this pace he can carry anything in the complex back to their little flat. But he humours his laoshi, letting him take some of the mattress's weight.
...Just to test a theory.
Shen Qingqiu is not, by a long shot, a particularly powerful peak lord. Binghe still isn't sure how he got the title - he was awful as a teacher and his cultivation was spotty.
But this sort of exercise should not have him breaking a sweat, let alone doubled over the sink.
Wordlessly, Binghe wets a washcloth, pulls aside the curtain of Shen Yuan's hair, and gently dabs the cool water against the nape of his neck.
"Laoshi's power is compromised," he states, not sure whether to be pleased about this prospect, or concerned. "You should rest and let this lord pass you energy."
no subject
After a moment he laughs and adds, "At least I still have Shen Qingqiu's muscles and his lungs. If I'd tried to do this in my original body, now that would have been a pathetic sight."
no subject
It seems Shen Yuan barely has that.
The smile and then the laughter throw him for a bit of a loop. It's... very strange to see Shen Qingqiu's face make those expressions (he's surprised the muscles for them hadn't atrophied, to be honest) and knowing that it's another person in that man's body just makes the whole thing very surreal.
He can't help his curiosity.
"...What did you look like before?"
no subject
"I was shorter, for one thing. A little tubby, honestly -- my diet was pretty terrible, and I never exercised. If I'd been a young master in Binghe's court, I doubt he'd have ever given me a second glance -- unless he'd wanted something from my parents, I suppose. Our family was pretty rich." And even then the lion's share of Binghe's attention would have been for the Shen family's pretty daughter... For some reason, Shen Yuan finds himself forced to suppress a grimace.
(He definitely didn't get a brief emotional insight into what it might actually be like to have someone like the demonic emperor for an in-law. It definitely wasn't horribly unpleasant, thinking about how he might feel if someone like that tried to woo his little sister! And anyway even if he had, it never happened and it's never going to happen, so what's the point in wasting time thinking about it?)
(Anyway in-story Binghe was always good to his in-laws, whenever Airplane bothered to remember they existed. The Old Palace Master certainly made out like a bandit, for instance!)
cw for - god i don't even fucking know. Binghe's manipulitive little bingbrain I guess?
Behind his back, his knuckles are white, and his claws have sunk deep into his palm.
Deep breaths, Binghe! The plan is still very much for this lord to slow his roll - to not simply try to grab and take what he's owed, but rather coax and seduce. In the meantime, he can fend off any possible interlopers - that shouldn't be a problem, even without the lion's share of his power. Shen Yuan even looks at him like he hung the stars - it shouldn't be hard to convince others his little laoshi already spoken for without having to so much as actually say the words.
Plausible deniability and all, in case Shen Yuan wises up.
"Oh, I don't know, I think I would have found laoshi's presence in my court rather refreshing."