EVENT: That Stuff Never Winds Up in a Pocket, Honest (July 2023)

[citycenter]

THAT STUFF NEVER WINDS UP IN A POCKET, HONEST.

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. JUMP TO TOP ↑ | ↓ JUMP TO COMMENTS 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. JUMP TO TOP ↑ | ↓ JUMP TO COMMENTS 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. JUMP TO TOP ↑ | ↓ JUMP TO COMMENTS 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. JUMP TO TOP ↑

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Comments

Must Not Be a Bank Holiday

[strongroots]

He's not an early arrival to the scene; not to avoid the mess of searching for anything, but Robby expects much of the place as the City Hall had turned out to be: a whole load of nothing. And it kind of seems that way when he does turn up: some scattered mess of papers show their blank state, the same as anything around here. Another building more like a movie set than anything else.

Still, he figured he might ask, have a look around, shoot off a few texts to some people about the nothing it was; and getting confirmation about how much of a nothing it is might mean asking someone for the confirmation.

--except, the guy that Robby thinks to approach and ask speaks first. Wait, one for everyone...?

"What for? Wait, what do they say?"

Names?

[abit_ofboth]

Loki doesn't turn around as the other man approaches, but he is aware of his proximity. He keeps his eyes on the keys, noting a few names of people he's met a long with plenty more. "I suppose some could be false, another trick to make us think there are more here than actually are, but I have no way of telling for sure."

Picking up his own key, he turns it around in his hand as he turns to face the young man that stands there. "I do not know what for, but I must guess there is something here that each unlocks. It has a name on one side and a number on the other. Have you seen keys like this before?" He holds it up. It seems like a standard key to him, if a bit small, but his lack of knowledge of banks has him at a bit of a loss for its use.

[strongroots]

Robby wonders about a trick, or the phrasing, but when the man turns around and sees the specific key, he guesses there's some relevance to that one. But to the actual question, he's a furrowed brow, thinking. He's never really visited the inside of a bank himself, but...

"Yeah, but... maybe they're for clients? Client documents." Didn't they used to leave wills with banks, or has that always been with lawyers? It takes a second for it to click, and for Robby to recall, raising a finger. "--I think banks have safety deposits for belongings. Family jewels, that kind of thing. Land deeds."

Right? Isn't that a thing in movies?

[abit_ofboth]

The boy standing there seems much younger than he had anticipated when he turned. It seems this place is rife with children, or at least those young enough that Loki would assume them to be children. He’s seen a few scattered around. And this one looks as confused as he feels.

Wonderful.

“I am not a client,” Loki replies flatly. It’s really not the boy’s fault, Loki is just tired and that makes him irritable. Actually lots of things make him irritable, but that is the number one cause in that moment. But knowing the child doesn’t deserve the rudeness and actually admitting to such a thing are two very different things so Loki simply stares at him for a moment until he continues. Finally, he says something useful. “Is that how it is done for humans? Interesting. I suppose that makes some sense.” Loki sincerely hopes this isn’t how he needs to store items, once he has anything worth storing. The thought of having to come to a specific building just to retrieve a needed object seems so tedious.

[strongroots]

The tone and prolonged stare only receives the equivalent look back of Yeah? And?--not hostile, but baffled in what the other guy is expecting, given their circumstances (or even in another, far more normal situation--what is he supposed to do about it?). What about this place is supposed to make sense?

The mention of humans doesn't, to Robby's ears. Or the exclusion of this guy from them doesn't, but there's some oddities a person doesn't want to immediately touch, this is one of those that Robby would rather like to dance around. It does nothing for the perplexed look he wears, though.

"If you're a client," he comes back around to; let's join those two points. "Here? If all these keys are named after people here, it means they know that much about us, and they might know more if these actually open up to anything belonging to us."

A beat, and then he gives a small shrug. "Or they're gonna start making us pay for everything here."

Could be money waiting for them, too.

[abit_ofboth]

Loki maintains an unimpressed look as the boy stares back at him. Were children always so obnoxious? He knew he had been, though he would hardly admit to such a thing. Still, he's actually a bit impressed that he stands his ground. Also something he would not admit to.

Narrowing his eyes almost imperceptibly, Loki tries to read the boy. He appears human and he's always looking for a reaction from those who are not aware of other species living in the universe around them. Loki just manages not to smirk at the boy's confusion. He does enjoy how he attempts to skirt the issue though.

"At very least it means they are aware of who they have taken." Loki will admit to that much. Though perhaps part of the reason he does not want to open his own box is because the kid might be right. It is bad enough that whoever took them had affected his magic, it was worse that they might actually know things about him. That isn't something he currently feels like dealing with.

Loki huffs out a laugh, his expression finally breaking slightly. "Well, I certainly hope not." Not that he would comply with that. If they start charging, he'll resort to stealing without thought.

[strongroots]

If there's room, Robby will approach where the keys hang to look for one of his own. If it's there, he wants to see it; though he isn't saw what he intends to do about where it goes, at least confirming he has one for himself is something. Saying, like something off-hand, not to be taken serious, "'Pends what you think's going on here. Could be nothing. We could end up stuck in a city that opens up random parts throughout the months, and we have to try and stop dying from boredom."

--Ah, there's his key. He takes it into his hand, looking at the nametag hanging from it in a way from his palm, that doesn't make it immediately visible. He bites on his lower lip slightly, briefly; uncomfortable with the item, with its possibilities, but he manages to keep it to himself--or so is the effort--when he looks at the...man.

"Or it could be a trap," he adds. A test.

[abit_ofboth]

As the boy moves towards the keys, Loki steps back enough to allow him more space. He has no reason to keep anyone from looking for themselves, even if he is quite hesitant himself. “Unfortunately, there is not enough information available for me to know much about why we are here or what might be wanted from us. It could be nothing, of course, though I doubt that. No one exerts this much energy for nothing.”

Loki watches carefully as he takes his key and looks it over. He’s clearly hesitant, even if he does put up a valiant effort to not appear so. The boy need not be so concerned. Loki would only think lesser of him if he did not seemed concerned about such things.

“Oh yes. In fact I think it is likely some sort of trap, though I am unsure if it is a particularly deadly one. More so I suspect they think they will learn more about us and how we deal with such situations rather than trying to harm us.” Not that he thinks it’s beyond possibility that they would want to hurt them, it’s just not what he thinks the current objective is.

[strongroots]

Learning more about them. Robby doesn't know if that's really avoidable, no matter what they do; if they're the type to resist, and then finding what might eventually make them break. He looks at the key again--really, it's a decision itself; if he'll go and find what it belongs to, or not--and he's compelled either way.

Play their game, don't play it (as directly). Fear a factor before curiosity, though one key and whatever it unlocks isn't going to rid Robby of that. He takes in a quiet breath, looks at the guy again.

"I'll play," he says simply, a tip of his head towards the shrugged shoulder he gives, and turns to start looking, figuring out where it might go. Walking past the drawers and cabinets on their way (they obviously don't go into any of those), and he'll surely spot that very giant obvious vault door soon enough.

[abit_ofboth]

Sure, it is unavoidable, but only if they are willing to wait or do not need to learn anything specific. By putting them in certain situations or whatever you wanted to call what was happening with these keys, they might be able to control the data or find out something specific that simply waiting and watching would not necessarily procure.

Loki has to admit he likes the curiosity of humans. Not all that long ago he hadn’t much cared for anything about them. They seemed so insignificant to him. Now it’s a bit different and he’s unsure if it’s just that he has more of an open mind or if there really is more to the humans than he had initially thought.

Possibly both.

He’s been there long enough, contemplating his own key, that he knows about the vault and the boxes, but he doesn’t say anything. Loki is starting to become much too fascinated with simply watching humans figure things out. “Do you want any hints? Or would you prefer figuring this out on your own?”