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
no subject
"Love" in reality is too soft an emotion for her to consider, even if she was raised in a safer area where that kind of feeling could flourish... Her work is more dangerous now anyway, so maybe it's nothing she needs to concern herself about, and yet every so often
when she thinks of that vision she saw, that possibility that seemed just within reach, that probably can't come true since a certain someone has forsaken her forgiveness twice already, but she can make an exception, sure
her heart flutters, and goosebumps race across her skin.
Is that love? Or is the way she feels when she sees him normally, the heat that churns in her gut, the desire to stoke his flames and pick at the fraying edges of his mind and get him to react to her, to come to see her, to have him under her thumb and for him to lash back out at her, useless to resist her call...
Is that love? )
Ahaha! Then you and I are the same. I can't say I have either. ( Can love bloom in a hyper-capitalistic society? The answer is "yes but it probably shouldn't have, but it's nice that it did anyway". ) But there was a boy I knew in school that shared the same feelings as me about something, and we got along well. I loved spending time with him, each and every day...
( and then a transfer student started butting in on her territory and he put her off so bad she just never showed up while he was around— )
Hmm~mmm... I'd say maybe it was an infatuation, but I could see a future with him. ( she says it so casually. )
no subject
So she keeps an easygoing smile and flair as she moves to grab a mug for Kromer's drink while listening to her recount her infatuation with her love with the keenness only a barista could do despite being moving behind the counter.]
Well, let's hope the future with him isn't going to be here. Or if it is, hopefully, we get to come and go as we please, hm?
[The hot black coffee is done in no time. Monts pours it into the mug and slides it over to the woman.]
Here you go! Plain hot black coffee. This blend of coffee beans is quite nice though, so try to see if you can taste hints of chocolate, black tea, and raspberry! You might be able to tell more since there's nothing else added to it.
no subject
Probably not, also, but who knows? Maybe enough interactions will warm him to her yet, will make him comfortable with her again... Heheh. Her future with him by her side isn't an impossibility still— )
You certainly know your stuff. Were you a sommelier back in your world? ( She sips it slowly—she doesn't usually take her time to taste all the flavors, but since Monts' gone through the trouble of noting them for her... the least she can do is this. ) Ah... and the love story was related to the item I got, by the way. It was his basement key—we snuck in there behind his parents' backs and had quite the exciting time together... Keheh.
( ...
it isn't as scandalous as she makes it sound. )
no subject
[It looks like they might be here for a long conversation so Monts helps herself to some coffee (with some oat milk and honey added, warm) while listening to Kromer.]
Huh. All alone in a basement while the parents were out? That's a combo.
[And Monts, having had the experience herself... Well, she figures it might mean it went either way. Can't always just assume!!]
What do you like about this person you've been talking about? Like what positive or negative traits do they have?
no subject
After a long moment, she sets it aside and threads her fingers together in front of her, smiling. )
Don't be mistaken, little miss. I don't like him at all. He's too soft-hearted, too soft-headed... He was much worse when we were younger, though. Absolutely pathetic. ( And yet? There's some affection lining those words, condescending and a little cruel; it shifts to something a little more genuine next. ) He's grown up to be more decisive, at least. Less spineless— he doesn't shake like a leaf when he sees a corpse. His bloodlust is unmatched, too... He really is so human.
( ...oh, but she doesn't like him, so don't get the wrong idea despite the delighted curl of her smile. )
If only he'd seen the light when we were younger— what we could be, what we could achieve, the way I saw it, the way I knew— then maybe things would be different.
( No, they definitely would be. She wouldn't have such complicated feelings about a boy who normally wouldn't arise her curiosity at all; she wouldn't want to kill him and in the same breath think his hands around her neck felt like a piece of jewelry she'd longed to have for ages. His touch excites her— it sickens her— his loyalties lie elsewhere, not with her— the way his eyes light up when he sees her, with anger and murder and hatred he restrains so adorably when other people are around, and then barely tempers when they're alone.
It's a fun game. It's an abhorrent game. Nothing delights her more than pushing him to the brink, until he starts to act; nothing disappoints her more when he refuses, instead of relents to, his core desires. )
Ahaha... but we've reached an accord, in a way, so I'll grin and bear it! ( She sounds happier than "grin and bear it," even with the slight sneer beneath her words. ) I still wouldn't say I like him, though.
no subject
... Oh, so it's a, "It's Complicated" sort of matter is it?
[She did ask and although she isn't totally unsettled by the lengthy and quite frankly, thorough response, Monts has enough sense to evaluate it that the person in front of her is on the more complex (to put it kindly) end of the relationship while the other guy in question... Well, good luck to him. The situation does not sound ideal.]
To be honest, I'm not into that love / hate sort of connection. It can be spicy and enticing at first but I find my tolerance for that is lower than I thought.
no subject
Different strokes for different folks, as they say. ( ...she doesn't know if she'd say she likes it, because she'd prefer he'd just completely be on her side, directing that anger where she wants him to? but it is exciting, still. she just likes it when he pays attention to her. it means she's Winning. ) It's more exciting than most stuff happening here, so I can't say I mind it that much.
no subject
Well, that aside, I hope the coffee is good. What do you think of it?
[She would like the feedback!]
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( nothing wrong with a nice latte though, she admits. another slow sip. )
Shame there's no money to be made here. I bet plenty of people'd pay up for a good cup of coffee.