THE THINGS I GAVE YOU.
» THE BANK — INTRODUCTORY NOTES
District 2 is open, bringing with it access to new and interesting locations—including the city's main bank branch. The bank is a large building with a stone exterior, wrought iron grating on the windows, and large, heavy metal doors that take surprisingly little effort to open, their hinges silent and well-oiled.
Early in the day on July 19, characters in the vicinity of the bank will hear first a low, metallic creaking sound from inside the building, like metal straining against metal. This is followed by the sharper noise of locks disengaging, and then the large, heavy doors on the front of the building swing open slightly, enough to let a person through.
Directly inside the doors is the bank lobby, and beyond that is the main banking floor, with elegant marble flooring and dimly lit chandeliers. It would appear that this was once the main commercial bank of the city, although it is now completely empty, with no tellers behind the counters and no cash in any of the drawers.
You may rifle through the tills and filing cabinets to your heart's content, but similar to the files in City Hall, there is no useful information to be found—all the papers are blank, or are empty forms without any personally identifying information. There are no monetary devices to be found either; this is, after all, not a city that operates on a cash system, so there are no coins or paper bills in any of the tills or, indeed, anywhere within the bank.
What you might be able to find, though, is a rack of delicate, burnished brass keys on a wall toward the back of the main banking hall. Each of these keys is attached to a stamped metal keychain bearing a name on one side and a number on the other. Some of these may be names you recognize, and some of them may not, but they are all names belonging to current residents of the city, and each key corresponds to a safety deposit box within the vault at the back of the building. Can you remember what you stored in that box for safekeeping? Maybe you had better go find out.
At the back of the main banking hall is a vault secured with a large circular metal door. The door is currently unlocked and propped open; it can be closed, but cannot be locked (intentionally, anyway) from either the inside or the outside. The vault contains row upon row of safety deposit boxes, each locked. Participating characters who are in possession of a key can open their own safety deposit box, but it is not currently possible to force open any safety deposit box that does not belong to them. After August 1, players will be able to use their safety deposit boxes to store their own belongings, and break-ins will become possible with prior player permission and appropriate consequences.
Below sections detail the safety deposit boxes for both choose-your-own-adventure players and randomized players! Please see the randomized matches for this event HERE.
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IT'S TRUE, PEOPLE TAKE THINGS BUT RARELY.
» SAFETY DEPOSIT BOXES — A SELF-GUIDED TOUR
For some of you, getting into your safety deposit box is quite straightforward.
You take your key from the rack behind the teller's counter and make your way back through the building and into the vault. It's cool inside, the temperature well-regulated and the air dry. On the walls are rows upon rows of safety deposit boxes, and it may take you a moment to find the one that corresponds to the number stamped on your key. Does that number mean anything to you? It may, or it may not.
When you find your box, it takes very little effort to open it. A slide of your key, a quick turn, and the safety deposit box's door springs open to reveal the metal container within. You remove the metal box from the wall and bring it over to the table in the center of the room, clearly placed there for this express purpose. Maybe there are others around, or maybe you're alone. Do you remember yet, what it was you put in here? Well, there's no time like the present to check.
You open the safety deposit box to find—something that shouldn't be there. It's yours, that much you're sure of, but you didn't bring it with you to the city. You reach into the box to pick it up, and the surge of memory is immediate, sending your mind back to your strongest memory associated with the item in your hand.
Then the vault door swings shut, trapping you inside with whoever else has the misfortune of sharing the vault with you right now. No matter what force you try, the door won't open again. There doesn't appear to even be a mechanism that unlocks the door from the inside, and from within several feet of metal and stone, no one on the outside will be able to hear you shout. It seems hopeless—how long can anyone last, trapped in a place like this?
Should you turn back to the open safety deposit box, you might notice a slip of paper resting on the bottom. The paper looks aged, like it's been in the box for quite some time, and in printed text it reads: "Nothing is yours. It is to use. It is to share. If you will not share it, you cannot use it."
Maybe it means you should let another hold the item you've retrieved from the box… or maybe it means you should share the weight of memory. Try to interpret the meaning in whatever way you can. But should you decide to unburden yourself, and share with someone else the weight of the item you're holding in your hands, you may find that there's a means of escape after all.
Once you free yourself from the vault, for the next several days you find yourself feeling rather honest, like you may not be able to stop yourself from confessing the truth about the item you now carry…
Characters who wish to participate in the event, but who do not wish to randomize the contents of their safety deposit boxes, can open their safety deposit boxes to find an emotionally significant item belonging to the character—player's choice as to what the item is. The only guidelines are that it should be small enough to fit reasonably in a pocket and may not have any magical or weapon properties. Similarly, players are able to choose the memories associated with the items in the safety deposit boxes. The vault door will remain closed until the characters in the vault explain to each other the significance of their items and the memory associated with them, at which point it the vault mechanisms will disengage and the door will swing open as if it had never closed to begin with. However, for the four days following the event, characters who carry their safety deposit box item on their person will feel oddly compelled to tell other characters about its significance and meaning.
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A CRASH-SITE IS SACRED, WE'RE FAITHFUL.
» SAFETY DEPOSIT BOXES — A JOINT VENTURE
For others of you, the contents of the safety deposit box may be considerably more disconcerting.
You also take your safety deposit box key from the rack behind the bank teller's counter and make your way back through the building and into the vault. It's cool inside, the temperature well-regulated and the air dry. On the walls are rows upon rows of safety deposit boxes, and it may take you a moment to find the one that corresponds to the number stamped on your key. Does that number mean anything to you? It may, or it may not.
When you find your box, it takes very little effort to open it. A slide of your key, a quick turn, and the safety deposit box's door springs open to reveal the metal container within. You remove the metal box from the wall and bring it over to the table in the center of the room, clearly placed there for this express purpose. Maybe there are others around, or maybe you're alone. Do you remember yet, what it was you put in here? Well, there's no time like the present to check.
You open the safety deposit box to find—wait, what is that? It certainly doesn't belong to you. Tucked inside the safety deposit box alongside the item is a slip of paper with another name on it, as well as a cryptic message: "Nothing is yours. It is to use. It is to share. If you will not share it, you cannot use it." The item isn't yours, but it does appear to belong to another resident of the city. Maybe your safety deposit boxes somehow got mixed up? It seems like it would be a good idea to find this person and return their property to them.
Whether you encounter the owner of the item in the vault or elsewhere in the city, when it comes time to hand the item over, two things happen. One—the doors are locked tight, refusing to allow either you or the item's owner out until you both understand what the item is and what it means to the other. To unburden your heart is the only way to free yourself.
And two—as the owner of the item explains its significance, you find yourself oddly captivated, resonating strongly with whatever emotion the item's owner most closely associates with it. You may not be able to see the memory that the other person describes, but you can certainly feel the emotions they felt—after all, the easiest way to unburden oneself is to share the load with another. Isn't that right?
Once you free yourself from your enthralled state, and once you have your own belongings returned to you, for the next several days you find yourself feeling rather honest, like you may not be able to stop yourself from confessing the truth about the item you now carry…
Characters who opted to randomize the contents of their safety deposit box during the plotting post, or who plotted a joint experience with another character, will open their safety deposit boxes to find a small, non-magical but emotionally significant item belonging to another player character in the city. They will need to find the owner of that item and return it to them—this can either be inside the bank vault or in another location within the city. Regardless of where the meeting takes place, the character holding the item will find themselves unable to leave until the character who owns the item explains its significance; as they do, the holder of the item will find themselves swept up in the emotional highs and lows of the memories associated with that item, allowing them to share all of the feelings, regrets, joys, griefs, and rages that the owner experiences in the telling. Additionally, for the four days following the event, characters who carry their safety deposit box item on their person will feel oddly compelled to tell other characters about its significance and meaning.
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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.
This month's event headers come from "The Things" and "The Gatherer," two poems by Brendan Constantine. The text of the paper slip comes from Ursula K. LeGuin's The Dispossessed.
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citylogs2023-07-19 08:45 pm
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[He exhales, then holds out his human hand expectantly. Might as well just get it over with, even if he's probably nowhere near as good a source of comfort as a Good Mom Who Has Totally Not Been Distracted By Her Boyfriend.] ...And the tendency to run away, haha...It's easier, right? Than letting people see or hear.
It's easier to just stay in bed and pretend that nothing else exists, because if you share, what if people think you're awful for it? Or disgusting?
[A beat. He shoots Will an apologetic grimace.] Maybe that's just me. But the point I was trying to get at is that you're definitely not alone. And it's not-- it's fragile, but what else can we be?
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[ Some of the weight on his chest leaves. He feels less guilty for all the times he’s hidden in bed trying to stop feeling like he doesn’t fit his own skin anymore.
Maybe it will be okay. Maybe. ]
So I guess what it’s trying to make me share starts with getting kidnapped to a hell dimension when I was twelve. I only remember bits of it, but I know I died and I don’t know how I came back from it other than really messed up.
Or it starts when I was a kid and my dad hated me because I wasn’t the perfect sports playing, tough and manly kid and he used to constantly call me queer for… basically anything he didn’t like and it was a really small town so when people heard they believed it so I’ve spent my whole life seeing it as this thing that I can’t be, that needs to be stopped, that I deserve to be made to feel terrible about. [ He has to stop there to try and swallow the lump in his throat and push out the memories it dredges up. ]
Sorry, I never talk about this.
no subject
But a hell dimension is different to a lab altogether. Not something used lightly, he figures, not with actual monsters involved. But monsters are expected to act cruelly, beyond understanding, with no humanity.
It's when Will talks about his father that Gregor's nose wrinkles in disgust, and he squeezes his hand without really thinking.]
...It's okay. Parents like that, you'd never be good enough without losing yourself. And they don't care if they have to tear you apart to make you something better, in the end. Doesn't matter if you weren't 'manly' enough; no matter where you would've been, he would've found something to stick on.
Makes it something wrong with him, in the end. Not your fault your father-- [Ah, how to say it...] Arschloch.
no subject
He’s the worst, and I know he’s the worst, and it’s not like my mom and my brother aren’t super supportive and have always told me to ignore him and everyone else but it’s really hard to put into practice.
And when I got kidnapped people in town said some really awful stuff, like that it was probably another queer and that I probably deserved it and it’s like… [ he hesitates trying to find a way to articulate the feeling ] How do you hate people you suspect are queer so much that a twelve year old could get murdered and you’d think they asked for it and think you’re still good people?
And how do you not internalise that to the point that when you figure out that their suspicions about who you are were right you don’t feel disgusted with yourself? And how do you trust anybody with it just in case they’re one of the ones who’s okay with you because they think people are wrong but they’d hate you if they knew?
[ Will sighs and shrugs to indicate that he doesn’t actually expect Gregor to have the answers, he doesn’t expect anyone to have the answers really. ]
Add figuring that out to the PTSD from the hell dimension and something else that happened the year that photo was taken and it was just all a huge mess.
no subject
damn. Deep breaths. Starting a transformation now would be worse, would only agitate things when Will seems to still be doing very well, all things considered. No need to ruin that good streak.]
That's the thing. You can't figure out who to trust until you're forced to show them that ugly part of yourself. You'll never know. They could be the best person in the world, but if they see that part, that might ruin a good thing, right?
What a year, though. For you. No wonder it's such a heavy load for you, bud. And...The photo's torn because one of 'em at least couldn't handle it, am I close? So you went through some horrifying stuff, figured out some stuff that everyone's used as a weapon against you, lost someone because of it, maybe...
I'm not scared of that, though. Not of you being queer or whatever. 'm not going to tell your secrets, either. For what that might help. [Maybe it's safe, just for a few minutes. Safe is good. Safe takes the pressure off.]
no subject
[ Maybe it is easier to say to a stranger what he couldn’t tell Jonathan even though he’s sure his brother has it all figured out. ]
The guy on the other side of the rip is Mike, he’s my best friend, or he was. We’re still trying to fix it but I’m not sure we can.
He was the person who I could always turn to when I was upset, he never once judged me for being too emotional or having messy feelings after all the bullshit up until he got a girlfriend. But right before that I thought maybe…
[ Stupid. Complicated too. ]
And we had a big fight and he said something stupid to me, I don’t think he meant it because his face when he realised how he sounded… [ It’s not my fault you don’t like girls and Will likes to believe there was an unsaid “yet” ] and when I ran he came after me to apologise immediately but it was bad timing. Monstery bad timing.
But then we moved and I didn’t speak to him for months and he says he called but by that time my mom had adopted his girlfriend, which is a really long story, and he wrote to her all the time so I’m not sure I believe him. But he visited and we made up but him and El had a huge fight and he still treats me like… I don’t know, like I’m different from his other friends.
[ The fact he hasn’t actually let the anxiety take over is pretty amazing and hell he’s stuck here might as well continue the honesty ]
I’m not sure it matters now, everyone is mad at everyone else and the guy behind all the monsters is coming for us, for me. And I’m really not sure I can fight my way out this time, like it might be game over, used up all my lives getting this far and at this point the only thing I know is if I die the guy behind it is coming with me.
no subject
[He tips his head back, and then-- jerks their hands, looking for a cigarette, before remembering that they're holding hands in the first place. Ah well. Probably wise to not smoke, and not go blasting nicotine down Will's lungs.]
So your time feels like it's running out, but there's this weirdness with Mike...That's gotta hurt. Insult to injury and all.
We've talked before, for what it's worth. You're the kid with the really good mother, right? I'm the internet guy who told you to find out how those monsters breed, but it definitely sounds like you know exactly what you need to do. It's just the how, now, and then...Maybe Mike'll realise how good a friend he's got in you, and stop being weird. Maybe it'll all seem so small once you can all rest.
no subject
[ Will is plenty used to a lung full of smoke in both traumatic ways and also being in the 80s where everyone does it everywhere with no regard for anyone’s lungs. Also the part where he was stuck in a van with two stoners for days on end.
Still now that he’s not actually on the verge of shutting down he does let go and wipe his slightly clammy hand on his jeans. ]
Sorry, didn’t mean to gross and clammy on you… [ He runs warm. Consequences of having the possession burned out.
Will looks at him, finally, and a small, tentative grin forms. ]
Yeah that was me, I maintain that she’s the best mom but if it helps I’m sorry for the paper soup thing, I was surviving on sugar and about two hours sleep.
[ he glances over to the door as the lock finally clicks ]
no subject
[Pff, what's clamminess to a bug man? He just scoffs softly, wiping his hand on his knee with a loose shrug and tilting his head towards the door.] And really, it's no trouble at all. None of this, and not even the paper soup. I mean--
If you need it, in the future, I'm happy to be a sounding board. Least I can do for you, really. You're a good kid, and I'm rooting for you. Here and at home.
[A beat, where he looks like he might get up and get out of Will's way, before deciding to reach over and ruffle his hair instead. ...Even if Will's taller than him. Look, Gregor's used to being short and to being the weird bug uncle. He's gotta.] You get out first, and I'll come out after. Just in case this place changes its mind.
no subject
I thought it would be worse, it feels a lot less significant when someone isn’t immediately like “ew” about it… [ which isn’t the worst of the fears, the worst is that somebody will one day find out and he’ll die because of it but he’s not sure how to articulate the relief that this wasn’t the worst case scenario.
He laughs a little when his hair is ruffled, it’s comfortingly reminiscent of the way Jonathan acts with him. He hadn’t actually noticed that he’s the taller of the two until he stopped defensively trying to make himself small. ]
I can’t offer much back but my inbox is open if you need to ramble about conspiracy theories about this place, I want to know what’s going on and the best way to figure it out is to share ideas usually.
[ he stretches out and shakes his tense clammy hands before making his way to the door, holding it open with his full weight, just in case it tries any funny business lime slamming shut again and gestures for Gregor to follow him out. ]