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
sorry for being so late, life did some things
"If that is the case, then it doesn't particularly answer the question as to why we were picked. I personally am no city planner, government official, or even someone that would be particularly good at keeping any order. I'm a media, and I can't even say I'm a particularly successful one." His voice tapered and grew softer as he admitted that the wasn't particularly talented, a little embarrassed, but clearly being honest. He stopped a moment, taking a breath.
"What I'm worried about is that the answers aren't out there. There's not much on the net here, there's no official documentation, and everyone I run into - few and far between as we all are - has their theories but none of us seem to know what exactly is going on." The internet and the actual paper records were the only ways Emerick knew how to search, outside of trying to dig through people's living spaces (which was on the to-do list).
Emerick was the type of person to dig until he found the answers or until things grew too dangerous to continue. The lack of direction on this made him uncomfortable but he would keep trying.
Absolutely no worries. Life happens to me all the time.
Loki had no idea what a media was, but he was too wrapped up in his own thought process to bother asking. He doesn’t really notice Emerick’s mood change either. Or at least, did not react to it. “No, so far I am seeing no reason as to why who was selected has been selected. Except that perhaps the randomness was a part of the selection process. The more randomly they do things, the hard it is for us to figure out. It is certainly a tactic I have seen before.” Despite what people had thought of him back home, Loki knew he was an adept leader and he had proven it, even if he had done it in a less than upfront way. Still, none of that gave him any insight into why any of this was happening now.
Humming thoughtfully, Loki nodded at that. “Yes, and there does seem to be quite a lot of information that does not seem to be out there. Whatever is going on here, they do not want us to know.” That was the truly concerning part. If whomever had done this required assistance, then surely telling them what they were helping with and why might be a better plan. The fact that it seemed much was being kept from them had Loki wondering if they weren’t supposed to go the same way previous inhabitants had.
Loki also had his ways of investigating, but mostly they were to do with manipulation. Investigating without having anyone to manipulate had him at a bit of a loss. And he really didn’t like that.
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"As much as I dislike the implication of what you're saying, I agree." Emerick fell quiet for a moment, his gaze turning to the trees to look upon the fading shadows of each tree in this little forest. He felt as if he were one of the trees he couldn't see, lost in the haze. He half expected to see a shadowed figure shift between two hazy trunks, or a pair of eyes start to gleam and find him. There was a lot of this conversation he disliked, many things that he'd thought of, and that Loki had suggested that sat in his gut like rocks. "I've had to research the most ridiculous stories with scant evidence but, with enough time, the truth always comes to the forefront."
Emerick's gaze shifted away from the haze, a little intimidated by the tangle of trees and the fog hiding whatever lurked beyond even though the silence promised nothing was there. The silence and stillness were still making his skin crawl. "Something will have to come up eventually, whether it's a pattern between all of us, or we uncover something that whoever brought us here missed. Secrets don't stay hidden forever."
He meant that with every bit of his heart. Even the most careful people eventually slipped and would show at least part of their hand. Finding and following these little slip-ups were Emerick's entire livelihood. There was an element of luck to it, but there was also an element of patient tenacity while waiting for everything to surface.
no subject
“It does seem that the truth always comes out in the end, but I am unsure if we are working with the same rules at all. I do hope I’m wrong about that. It seems like a fundamental truth of life in general that eventually the truth will be known.” Loki just hoped they were all there to learn it when it did. The only thing he knew for sure just then was that he knew nothing at all about this place. Much of what he was putting together was based on his very little experience on Midgard and his own trickster ideas. What would he do, if trying to pull off something like this. It didn’t lead to anything good, that was for sure.
Loki nodded. What Emerick’s was saying was everything he’d been thinking. There must be some reason, some bit of truth that they just hadn’t seen yet. Of course, they’d all just been there a few hours so that wasn’t surprising. Still, Loki hoped to find out something sooner rather than later, even if he did have nothing to go back to. He had to try. In his last moments in his world he had been letting down his brother again, a relationship he’d actively been trying to repair. If there was any chance at all, he should take it, even if the idea that he was no more back home terrified him.
As Emerick looked out at the trees, Loki’s brain started catching on something. “Is it odd,” he began, now also looking around them even as Emerick’s gaze shifted back to their present location. “That there is still plant life? I do not pretend to know the ecosystem of Earth, but the plants I know of are alive. So is it odd that plant life has survived or at least is present when no other life form native to the area is?”
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"I don't mean to ignore your question, but what do you mean that you don't 'pretend to know the ecosystem of Earth'? If you're not from Earth, then where are you from?"
And truly, Emerick didn't mean to completely disregard Loki's question. The ultimate truth was that he wasn't sure. Plants were alive, yes, but it was different than animals. Emerick could feel a thousand excuses for why plants were still here while animals needed to go churning in the back of his head. It ranged from something as simple as plants were easy to control and didn't move, to some discussion about ecological systems that Emerick only had a very, very high level, loose understanding of.
Whatever reason the plants were still here paled in comparison to the possibility that Loki himself was some alien that may not even be human.
no subject
"I am from Asgard. Or at least that is where I was raised. I was born on Jotunheim though." For the briefest of moments Loki considered showing the man his true form, but if he was shocked by meeting someone not born on Earth, he would likely be terrified by seeing a giant with blue skin and red eyes. Though the thought of doing just that did amuse him.
Loki understood that it was a different lifeform, but it was still life native to the city. Quite possibly the only native life form to this place. That had to mean something, didn't it? "It is strange though, is it not? It is clear that this place can sustain it's own life, or else there would be no plant life either."
Turning to Emerick, and still teasing, he asked, "are you quite alright?"
no subject
He wasn't ignorant to the fact he was talking to some being of lore, though. An actual god. Emerick wasn't sure what he was feeling, or what he should be feeling. He had an idea that he should maybe be impressed, perhaps even throwing himself at the others' feet. He had no desire to do any such thing. All he saw before him was another man, just as clueless as he was. What good were gods when they left him to the childhood he had, anyway?
"Being told that I'm speaking to a figure from Norse mythology is a lot," he admitted. "If I may be so bold, I admit that I am trying to decide if you're telling the truth or not." He tried to keep a brave face as he gave his honesty but it was clear his muscles tightened with restrained anxiety - whether it was because he was being bold, or he was possibly talking to a god was impossible to tell at the moment.
"I, um. I guess it's more strange to me that there are so many plants to begin with. Where I am from, plants are a luxury." He gave a thoughtful pause, considering what little he did know. "Where I'm from, there's a corporation that has reference forests that they use to track things such as soil erosion, test their genetic splicing... It could be something like that."
"It could also be as simple as enrichment for us, or something that was here before whatever caused the city to become empty." Which was to say: Emerick didn't know. Plants were treated so differently from animals (outside of the premium price, of course) that he really hadn't given it a second thought outside of the fact that there were so many trees, and the way they twisted and looked like fingers or disfigured bodies as they faded in the mist.
no subject
“Yes, I suppose that could be a lot,” Loki replied thoughtfully. Honestly, he’d never really thought of it from the other person’s point of view before. Of course, the first time he’d really ever been to modern Earth he had been half insane and ready to conquer. What his conquests thought of speaking with a god had hardly mattered to him. “Well, you have nothing to fear from me. I wish you no harm.”
Really, Loki was actually quite impressed that Emerick was so honest with him. “I do not blame you for not believing me. I am well known as a liar and a trickster, after all. And though I assume this means nothing considering that, but I am not lying now.” He hoped that would be enough to calm the clearly tense man, but if he had to, he would perform some feat of magic if that would help.
“I see, has your world experienced some sort of catastrophic event then?” Loki was genuinely curious. The only world he’d ever experienced with that little plant life had been Jotunheim, but that was merely due to the climate. “Is it eternally winter there?” He considered what Emerick said and nodded. “I suppose that is true. This whole city could be some sort of experiment. Perhaps they figured out how to grow plants, but not mammals?” That was a disturbing thought, but one Loki thought had to be considered.
The most frustrating thing, Loki was finding, was that there seemed to be so many options as to what was actually happening here. It seemed everyone had a few ideas and all of them seemed possible. “I think I am most frustrated that all these possibilities are exactly that. Possible.”
no subject
"A liar and a trickster would make you Loki? Right?" He mostly wanted confirmation just so that he had a name - he would sort out his feelings about the whole god thing later. (Along with all of the other things he decided he would sort out later. It was a growing list.) "My name is Emerick."
Emerick considered the question. He wondered what on earth Loki would consider a catastrophic event, though the mention of eternal winter started to give him some insight into what may be.
"No eternal winter. People really just fucked everything up. In the 90s there was a social, political, and economic breakdown that led, of course, to war. Once war struck it was hard to mitigate the plagues that came, and what they mutated into. Terrorists got ahold of warheads and started dropping those, and that led to ecological collapse." Emerick shifted his weight from one foot to another uncomfortably, shoving his hands into his pockets as he looked down at his shoes. "Corporations took over the government in a more or less hostile takeover and started to run the show. Everything became commodities. Plants that were engineered to live in the present could easily be mass-produced and planted," he looked back up to Loki, "but why bother when they can sell them to some rich guy for a couple hundred a piece?"
Emerick was quiet as considered the idea that perhaps whoever set this up could figure out plants but couldn't figure out animals and there was something to that, maybe. Emerick could only assume that plants were easier to figure out. Plant them in the right kind of soil, and give them the right amount of water? Should be good - animals were a whole other issue, and Emerick assumed that they probably had a more complex ecology. "Maybe," he responded softly, still in thought. "I really don't know."
As for Loki's frustration, Emerick felt very much the same. He was frustrated that everything he'd thought of and heard was plausible, he was frustrated that there was not enough information to confirm or deny anything. "Yeah, everyone I've talked to that has had a theory has had one that could account for all of this," he said as he motioned vaguely around them with one hand. "I don't think I've been able to stop thinking about each possibility since they've entered my head, and as much as I try to poke holes in them, it's hard to do so without additional information." Which brought them right back to where they had just been: acknowledging the complete lack of context of everything going on.
"The only new information I have at this point is that you're the first person I've talked to who's not human, and I'm not sure if that's actually relevant or if it's just a side effect of random sampling."
no subject
“Yes, I am Loki,” he replied, a grin spreading across his face. Loki really did love it when people recognized him. He’d always been one to enjoy attention, even if he sometimes claimed not to. “It is a pleasure to meet you Emerick.” And for once, Loki found he actually meant that. Actually, he had meant it with the few people he had already met here. He was not used to people being so open minded about meeting him before. Typically if they knew him they were wary of him. It was likely some he had met still felt that way, but it hadn’t seemed so noticeable here.
Loki hummed in acknowledgement as Emerick told his story. It sounded a lot like what he had learned of the humans himself. Though really at the time he had attempted his invasion, he hadn’t really had a choice in the matter, but he had thought with him in power, he might be able to stop such things from happening. Humans were known for their love of money and power in the other realms, though really that wasn’t uncommon for most civilizations in Loki’s opinion. “Well, I’m afraid to say it, but that sounds a lot like what I have heard of your kind. Someone always seems to be looking to profit off of others’ misery.” The Loki of old kind of respected that stance, though he really felt it was going too far when it ruined your whole planet. Even the rich would succumb to the death of an ecosystem.
“Sadly, nor do I,” Loki admitted. Most of what he understood of animal life on any realm was that there was evolution involved, but where did it truly all start? He was sure there was some scientific method to it all, but it really was strange to find a place that hadn’t achieved that at all. Loki had visited many realms in his life and all of them until he arrived here had native animals somewhere. So why not here?
“Part of me wishes I could stop thinking about it. It seems there is no point trying to figure out a puzzle that is missing most of its pieces.” He looked thoughtful then. Even with absolutely nothing to go on, he could not seem to stop his brain from trying to work out what was happening.
“Though I’m sure some won’t admit it, I am fairly certain I have come across others who are not human. I think they might not want others to know.” He was guessing, of course, but it made sense to him. He had almost considered doing the same himself, it would have been easy, but Loki had to hide enough of who he truly was, he didn’t want to hide this too.