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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citylogs2023-06-01 12:00 am
Anthony J. Crowley | Good Omens
Graveyard
( graveyard )
He's not quite sure how he ends up at the cemetery, but he imagines it's because it manages to be one of the places that couldn't possibly disappoint him. Unlike the city hall where he had made a sporting attempt at gathering more information about where he had seemingly ended up, only to be met with endless blank pages. Pages and pages of nothing.
Aziraphale notices Crowley first, kicking up moss and dirt as he wanders around the area. There is an immediate and honestly fairly intense wave of relief at the sight of him, most of his sour mood quelled by the knowledge that he hadn't ended up here alone.
. . . Shouldn't he have felt him?
"Do you now?" he interjects from the entrance of the graveyard, folding his hands together. Behind him stands a large angel statue, its wings spreading out wide behind him.
"And what's your idea about all this?"
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His grin might actually stretch wide enough to drop the top of his head off.
"Angel," he greets, clearing the distance between them with a few swift strides, arm around his shoulder as he beckons him towards the patch of graves.
"Good of you to put in an appearance. C'mere, have a look at this for me, will you, and tell me what you see."
It hasn't escaped him that he couldn't sense Aziraphale; not even in these close quarters. And it's not like he didn't put his feelers out for him! He's always been able to get a read on him, even half a galaxy away (not that he'd ever admit that, because it's probably some kind of weird that he does that).
He gestures -- well, flails a hand at the graves, eager to get his friend's read on things.
"...Weird, innit?"
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Bright, bright, bright.
Aziraphale thinks it's a charming look on him, but it is a degree overwhelming. Particularly the arm around him and the abrupt way that Crowley guides him over. The freedom do even this much is still fresh for him, still novel and (quite!) exciting. This sort of thing didn't come to him as naturally as it did Crowley—which is a fascinating thought considering their natures—but he's grateful that one of them can seem to move without feeling weighted down by a mountain of boulders.
"I see this . . . debacle wasn't enough to dampen your spirits any," Aziraphale remarks with a small smile and a fond little huff. He's already forgotten about the empty books, instead looking out at the graves ahead of them.
He begins to speak, ready to give a proper answer to the question before it occurs to him that Crowley had failed to answer his initial question.
How sly!
Aziraphale turns his head, looking over at the demon beside him.
Then very matter-o-factly says, "I thought you said you have an idea."
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"I do," he insists, gesturing (flailing) again at the tombstones. "Just look first though, tell me what you see. I promise I'm trying to do this all -"
A wave of his hand, like the flapping of a crow's wings.
"- sciency first, and not for dramatic effect."
He pauses.
"...Well, mostly not for dramatic effect."
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Then he takes a second look at the graves. Mostly to confirm his already forming suspicions. Before him there are gravestone upon gravestone of old, familiar names. Names of some of the humans that Aziraphale had gotten the chance to know during his time on Earth. A scholar from Rome, a king that most only believe to be fiction, a young lady blacksmith who carried so much weight for her family, a famous author. . . None of which could truly be there.
Neither were some of them buried with a gravestone.
"Well," he begins, but then takes a pause. A part of him thinks that this is some kind of jest in poor taste, but most of today has felt like an upsetting joke. Why not humour this in all seriousness?
"This all appears to be very particular to the observer."
Because Crowley wouldn't be asking otherwise.
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"Can't imagine why, but this whole place is an enigma wrapped in a whatsit."
His wide grin drops, a frown creasing his brow, his fingers drumming anxiously on Aziraphale's shoulder as the gears in his head turn.
"It's clearly meant to be unsettling, right? But the thing that gets me is that it's messing with our perception - usually that shouldn't be possible. Makes you think, doesn't it?"
He casts Aziraphale a sidelong glance.
"What else am I seeing that's different to what you're seeing and all that."
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With a careful sweep, Aziraphale brushes the nervous fingers off of his coat shoulder before he could be transformed into an angel-sized worry stone. Briefly, he wonders if Crowley even knows he's doing it or if it's an automatic tic. Perhaps he should ask him once this all settles down.
Then a thought occurs to him.
Aziraphale gestures back towards the various gravestones.
"Do you see my grave?"
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arrival
"Q-Questions? W-What kind of questions?"
This entire situation is terribly confusing. How he'd gotten from his comfortable bed to such a strange place is already beyond his understand and he is being flustered further by a gangly fellow flailing about with all the grace he himself possesses when he's out of sorts. The youthful-seeming man fidgets a little with his hanfu, snaps open his paper fan, and starts fanning himself in an effort to soothe his own nerves.
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"Sorry, sorry, didn't know there was a convention on."
He's seen how nerds get with the costumes, though this one looks like it was done by an actual tailor - historically accurate fabrics and everything.
"Look, I might've gone on a bit of a bender last night --"
He hadn't. He was dead sober and putting away a fresh supply of Emergency Holy Water, in case his ex-employers decided to come knocking and he'd need to do something desperate and stupid.
Again.
"-- and woke up on the train. You mind telling me where I've wound up...?"
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"I'm sorry but I really don't know. I just woke up in that metal carriage over there."
He points toward the train with his fan.
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"Fine, I'll bite. That's a train. This is the underground. Can you please just tell me where I am...?"
Because his usual innate sense for these things is giving him the equivalent of static which, on further consideration, should be the first clue that something has gone terribly, dreadfully awry.
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Nie Huaisang sulks a bit, fanning himself. But at least, he knows what the metal carriage he woke up in is called down so there's that.
"What do you mean by 'in character' anyway? I'm just as lost as you are."
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But the man isn't having him on.
He can usually tell when someone is lying - being able to sniff out sins is among his vast resume of tricks of his infernal trade and there is just. Nothing.
"...You're not kidding are you...?"
Deep breaths, Crowley.
"Right. Uh. First things first. Welcome to the twenty-first century. Now to figure out how you bloody well got here. ...How I got here too, but I'm at least not out of time, just place."
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"It was late and I fell asleep in bed?" he offers helpfully.
Then after a moment, he adds:
"If this is all a dream, it's a weird one. I didn't think I could imagine anything of the likes of this. And thank you?"
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Arrival
And that's just not what this is. At least that's what he'd guess, but even his own sense of what's going on is on its head right now.
The knot that's formed in his stomach loosens barely at the voice echoing from behind him, though he's already made it a few paces down the street he turns. The red-haired dude who appears seems to be giving Tyler a reason to gawk. Maybe it's just his brain clutching for the kind of unfamiliarity he can handle, but--
"Huh. British?" He asks in his own accent, haunted by the Pacific Northwest.
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That would explain why everything feels off - there's nothing normal in that -- this country. They call soft drinks things like sody-pop and drive on the wrong side of the road. He got a whole commendation for Wisconsin. He didn't even know what Wisconsin was until he went to have a look.
They have absolutely no right calling that slop cheese. He'd brought some home for Aziraphale to try, and the angel wouldn't talk to him for a month.
Crowley has a moment. There's a lot of sputtering and flailing of limbs. It's fine, he just does that sometimes.
Eventually he gets his corporeal form under some semblance of control, takes a deep calming breath, does not ask the nice young man how he got here, because he's sure he's just going to get a bewildered "I don't know" and be left at square one.
"You wouldn't happen to know where in America I might've ended up?"
It's a big country. He could be anywhere.
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One - this stranger isn't having a stroke. Two - they also have no idea where they are. An inkling of relief leaks into cracks in the tension Tyler's holding in his gut. At least he's not the only person without any clue.
"I'm not from here either, just showed up down there and got bored of waiting," he gestures back down the stairs briefly before looking over his shoulder at the station at large. Or what he can see any of it, anyway. Wherever here is, he definitely doesn't recognize it and it certainly isn't any place he's ever been to. He's never been out of Alaska so this is... yeah, weird. He turns back to the man and frowns, bemused.
"Did you-- get off the same train as me?"
He hadn't seen anybody else and yet the train he'd miraculously woken up on never left the station. In the end he'd given up just waiting impatiently for something to happen and let curiosity get the better of him.
"I sat waiting for like... 20 minutes."
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He trails off, because just saying that sounds... wrong. He knows American public transport is a wreck, but it can't be that bad.
There's a rumble of movement, the clacking of wheels on tracks and the loud roar of rushing air, and Crowley turns on his heel, skipping several steps in his hurry to reach the bottom, but the train is already disappearing into the dark of the tunnel at the opposite end of the station.
He can feel his pulse drumming in his throat, and he swallows, now taking a real look at the station.
"No postings for incoming trains," he remarks, words ringing distant to his own ears. "That's weird. That's really weird."
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He doesn't understand how there's no announcements, no instructions to passengers on why the train was held at this station to begin with let alone why it finally just left.
But the news about no further incoming trains isn't as weird as it might've been. He's from a backwater enough place that they don't always have more than one train a day. So incoming trains being more frequent is a novelty, even though this station seems to be serving a much bigger place. Just from the look of it, it's the biggest station Tyler's ever been to.
And what's weird about that, is...
"Have you seen any staff?"
A pause, and then...
"Have you seen anybody else?"
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It's like a lightbulb goes off in Crowley's head.
A cloud of worry passes over the demon's face and he starts pacing around, peering into the shops and restrooms.
"Can't be - Aziraphale said it's a load of rubbish. I mean, wouldn't put it past Her, seems Her style, right up there with the flood --"
He leans over a counter, calling loudly into the back. When there's no reply, he only looks more put upon.
"The boy put a stop to that whole mess," he protests to no one in particular. "Besides, there'd be... clothes and such left behind, in little piles."
He rounds on Tyler, looking at the young man imploringly. "Right? You're American, you'd know all it that, yeah?"
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graveyard
The voice is soft and very faintly French-accented, the question gently wry.
Louis looks like he belongs in a graveyard himself, deathly pale and dressed in black from head to toe. The stranger's demeanor intrigues him; there's a certain nonchalance there that Louis is drawn to all the more due to lacking it himself. Under the current circumstances, he's willing to listen to anyone who seems to have the slightest inkling of what's going on.
Or perhaps it's only the fact that wearing sunglasses at night is the sort of thing Lestat would do, and Louis is searching for something familiar amidst all of this.
"I thought I recognized some of the names," he says, casting a long glance around the dilapidated cemetery. "But I couldn't be certain."
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He waves his hand towards the graves, acting more flippant than he really feels.
"Tombstones evoke all sorts of funny little associations, and slapping faded names of lost loved ones to get - I don't know - feelings of guilt? Nostalgia? Regret? Whatever."
He shrugs it off, instead leaning against the slowly crumbling stonework of a mausoleum.
"The name of the game is manipulation; plain and simple."
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"I believe I agree with your premise," he says with a slow nod. He frowns, a small furrow forming between his eyebrows. "But if this is something that was done intentionally... why? And by whom? I despise the idea that they know me well enough to plan such a thing, but if they have the ability to bring us here without our consent or knowledge, surely that is a trivial matter."
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The more he says it, the more he deflates, because it sounds ridiculous, even to his ears.
"...About dead people."
Or people he thought had died. Well, one of them technically did, but it doesn't count of Mum got them back on their feet three days later, and discorporations are not the same as death, however much the ensuing paperwork has him longing for its sweet embrace.
"Anyway, haven't got any answers about the six other deadly sins of who, what, where, when, why and how. Whatever brought us here is beyond me."