citylogs | TDM: JUNE 2023

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TDM: JUNE 2023

TEST DRIVE MEME

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?

▶ YES
▶ 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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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

welcome to the neighborhood A (southwest/park)

Hmm. Well-maintained, despite the lack of people. [that sort of cut on the grass can't be done by a grazing animal. those were made with a blade wielded by a person with intent.

with a little difficulty and some finagling of his crutch, nehan manages to crouch down and examine the soil a little more, patting the ground, rubbing the leaves of various bushes, so on and so forth. he's so dedicated to this that he even removes the glove on his right hand, revealing a thin hand full of old scars that he pushes against the damp grass. he's really not paying attention to his surroundings, despite his large, wolf-like ears suggesting excellent hearing.]

Healthy-looking soil, despite the lack of maintenance or animals to provide dung... Hmm. [this is a mystery, and one that nehan can't contemplate. then he rises to his feet again, patting his hand clean with a bit of vigor-- enough that some dirt might just fly onto anybody walking close to him. though, he just gives them a look as if to ask "why are you so close?" or "personal space, please".]

Excuse me. [those two words are entirely grumpy.]

welcome to the neighborhood B (southwest/graveyard)

[he makes sure to lock eyes with the first person he sees in the graveyard, as he's standing before one particular headstone. then he points at it with his crutch.]

I'll owe you a favor if you read those markings and tell me what they say, if they're still legible to you.

[and why would this wolf-man ask that? anyone would be forgiven for assuming that it's because of the cloth on his face, covering up one eye, which may make his sight weak. but, on the contrary, nehan just wants to make sure that his sight isn't weak, that this is a quirk of the world and his one good eye isn't getting weaker for one reason or another. but he just thought he saw some familiar name, and he can't get it out of his head, even if his vision tells him that the markings on the headstone are almost completely eroded.

he has to be sure.]

And even if you can't read it, I'll just owe you a favor for trying.

come one, come all

That's bullshit. [nehan says that of a label on the shelf, particularly that of a jar with some sort of herb in it, before moving on.] This, too, is bullshit. [another herb. and he goes on to say the same thing about more labels and jars-- and every single one of them has a plant of some sort in it, or a plant-based product, like incense.]

A forest hermit with strange ideas might as well live here. [his tone, normally so bland, is now quite grumpy. growly. he huffs, and shakes his head in dismay, before trudging back to the middle of the shop.] Every label is wrong, as if they were making up names and effects.

I would not trust anything in this place, if I were you. Especially whatever fortune you're about to ask. [and from where, honestly.]

wildcard
[[ bring your own prompt! feel free to send me a pm if you want to hash things out first, but i'm very easy about most things. nehan's journal has info pages on him, but i encourage you to read his permissions at the very least, since he's a walking CW for many uncomfortable things. ]]

You know, if you don't know how to read you could just say so.

[ his tone comes off as only a little condescending, gentle in the way that one might speak to a particularly stubborn kid. while Childe had his own reasons for being in the graveyard - nothing so important, just another stop in his wanderings - the headstones had earned only a cursory glance since he'd decided right away not to trust anything in this place.

the buildings were familiar and yet unfamiliar enough in a dreamlike, ethereal sort of way. he's certain he's never been here before and he could only liken it to a few passing similarities in Snezhnaya, but it was probably a bit of a reach even then. ]

But I wouldn't mind being in the business of a favor, so... [ a few dead leaves crunch under his feet as he moves in a little closer. his fingers catch over the top of the headstone, then sweep over the surface of it to try and clear off any stubborn bits of moss clinging to the words like that would help him be able to read the faded letters better. ]

... huh. I think that's an A. Or a 4? But that's all I can really tell.

[there's no need to be condescending, little shit. but nehan finds his payback not too long after the insult, when the young man can't confirm or deny any of the erune's assumptions, the etchings on stone indistinct to him as well. they're all weathered, aren't they?

nehan may know a few people whose names have an A, but he has almost no cause to be worried for them, given how they rule the skies.

but the erune merely huffs, and raises his brow at the human.]

If you don't know how to read, you could just say so.

[ oh he's sassy. it reminds him of his coworkers from back home - not that that's necessarily a good thing, considering they couldn't really stand each other even on their best days.

he laughs, the sound bright, almost delighted - a stark contrast to the look he gives him, expression wry and provocative in the bad kind of way. it's almost like he's trying to goad him on. ]

I'm not the one standing in the middle of a cemetery asking strangers to read tombstones, am I?

[one of his ears flicks, as if attempting to rid itself of a speck of dust that's alighted on it... or a particularly annoying fly. that's as much expression as nehan will be giving, simply because he doesn't have the energy right now. he put it all in throwing back the comment in the human's face.]

Yes, I did. [he sees no reason to not own up to it, or even be ashamed.] Is there something about it that you don't agree with?

[rather than say is there something wrong with that.]

Relax, comrade. I was just messing with you!

[ can't you just rib complete strangers in the middle of a spooky cemetery for no reason? is that so wrong? it's not like he was looking for a fight, but if a good bout came out of it that was just an added bonus. ]

You're not one of the locals, are you?

nehan | granblue fantasy

B

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arrival

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come one, come all

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welcome to the neighborhood B

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graveyard

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