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

[fussiest]

[ magic plant man. kaveh finds himself startled once more, but summarily propelled into a whole new set of emotions entirely.

the surprised laugh that comes is like finding an unexpected well hidden in the desert, the kind that, at night, would reflect the silver of faraway starlight. ]

Magic plant man! [ ah, fuck, there goes two more blocks. kaveh's delight, however, is immeasurable. ] Oh, there's a proper name for him. They used to call him the Lunatic of the Akademiya for a title, and never to his face or in proper company, but this one's much better and I'm going to be using it for some time.

[ magic!! plant!! man!! ] Well? Are you the type to mollify everyone you spar with with faint praise, or was he really not bad?

[kampfgeist]

[ it's sort of rare that heine can actually startle a laugh out of anyone, let alone on purpose—after all, his sense of humor is about as dry as the proverbial desert and his sense of comedic timing is terrible. the fact that kaveh seems to find the comment amusing makes heine like him about ten times more. ]

Lunatic of the Akademiya? [ in the course of their fistfight alhaitham hadn't had reason to mention the akademiya, but heine thinks he can guess by its name what sort of place it might be—an institute of learning, he assumes, for plant magic and everything else besides. it just has that capital-a Akademiya sound that makes it seem fancy. ] For what?

[ although their interaction had been brief, alhaitham hadn't seemed that much like a lunatic. (granted, heine's frame of reference is... well, himself, so maybe a little skewed in one direction.) ]

He wasn't bad. But it also wasn't exactly a fair fight, I heal fast. [ much faster than any human does, that's for sure. that was probably the part more interesting to alhaitham than the sparring itself, which seemed to be more an exercise in understanding whether he could hold his own without weaponry or powers. ] You friends, then? Roommates? There's a bunch of you, huh.

[ people from where kaveh's from, he means—heine's now on number three. ]

[fussiest]

[ heine, by virtue of being the only person who's gotten kaveh to laugh since arriving in the city, is automatically the funniest person alive. it's the understated delivery, kaveh thinks, as he manages to untangle three rows of tetris blocks that had been blocked earlier by his own missteps, input by input slowly bringing down the level of blocks to a more manageable height; it gives the sense that the man has a dry sense of humour and perhaps an equally dry way of viewing the world.

the mirth slowly fades however at the puzzling question of identity. it isn't bad, per se. but it also isn't something kaveh knows how to quantify at this moment in time, and that makes conversations about it complicated. ]

No, we're... well, we're not friends, and we're not roommates either. [ what did gregor say about it? not-buddy, not-roomie. something like that. kaveh's free hand scratches at his chin in an awkward lull, and then, because he is kaveh, he lets his lips curl into something wry. ] It's complicated. It's not a bad kind of complicated - it just is. The easier question to answer is the one about him being a lunatic, but in all honesty I'd rather let you find out yourself. Tell me in a month if he is or isn't a lunatic, and I'll tell you about the time he toppled a government because he wanted a little more reading time for himself.

[ a thoughtful hum. ]

Don't worry about the fight being fair or not, though; Alhaitham wouldn't have picked it if he thought it wasn't reasonable. What do you mean by healing fast? Is it something you were born with, or something you were granted?

[kampfgeist]

[ that's an extremely relateable consternated pause, to which heine immediately relates. not exactly friends, but also not exactly just colleagues? not entirely roommates but also closer to each other than to anyone else? been there, done that, got the cigarette-scented t-shirt to boot. heine nods, because to him the complication makes sense. ]

Sure, I'll give you the verdict. [ assuming he and alhaitham ever have cause to speak again. then again, if heine recalls correctly (which he might not), alhaitham might have said something about sparring more regularly... is that lunatic behavior, in and of itself? ] But I respect the level of insane you have to be to topple a government in the name of your hobbies.

[ there are a couple of things heine would topple governments for, but definitely not reading. sorry to y'all academics out there.

the line of questioning is funny, because it's exactly what alhaitham had done when heine mentioned it after their fight, but given kaveh's complicated feelings on the subject of their friendship heine feels that maybe pointing out the similarities might not be prudent. ] Not born with it, but "granted" is a pretty gentle word for it. It was given to me.

[fussiest]

[ heine, kaveh thinks, has a way of accepting somewhat ludicrous requests with the straight-edged face of someone perfectly meaning to acquiesce to them. the ease of his manner is like stone, kaveh thinks, which begs the question of the whole thing with the sparring, because there aren't that many sane people about who would take time to spar with alhaitham, of all people. and then, kaveh remembers that he can't use teyvatian guidelines to judge the people of other words, and the thought peters away, as the lopsided grin that kaveh affects fades away a little.

kaveh is no haravatat. the kshahrewar deal with technology and mechanical operations, they deal in lumber and stone and clay, and kaveh in particular excels at taking with both hands ideas that reside solely in the realm of dreams and wresting them kicking and screaming into the realm of reality. the haravatat, in contrast, split words and semantics, argue etymons and phonology, and draw from the spoken and written word what kaveh bleeds from lumber and stone. kaveh is no haravatat graduate with twenty languages under their belt, but he hears the careful choice of wording in heine's explanation, and something of his heart drops down to the soles of his feet. ]

Given, but not a gift. And if someone had given it to you, then they would have tested it. [ kaveh says, and the emotion that he wears on his sleeve falters, because any academic would know the rest: to test self-healing - well. so it goes.

kaveh shakes his head. in case the topic is an unpleasant one, he adds: ] I used the word 'granted' because anything outside of human capacity is typically granted by the divine through Visions. [ he taps the little colourless bauble that hangs at his hip, still, clear as glass as about as colourful as a bleached christmas ornament, ] This would have been green when it has connection to its power source, and if it had been, I would have been compelled to tell you that I also belong in the 'magic plant man' category. [ with a bit of rue: ] As it stands now, it hasn't got any use safe for looking pretty, but I'd feel odd not carrying it around.

Ah - but please only call Alhaitham 'magic plant man'. I rather think he deserves it more than I do.

[kampfgeist]

[ something about being in a place like this—far away from home, surrounded by strangers—that has made it easier for heine to admit to things about himself that back home, he would sooner die than say aloud. something about the fact that none of these people know him, or that so many of them also have powers of their own, gotten gainfully or less so. but one thing about the telling has remained fairly constant, and that's the expression of realization that comes once it becomes clear how heine came by his constitution. ]

Yeah. [ tested it good, too. his speed, his agility, his strength, his healing—his killing intent, once he was big enough for that. not that kaveh needs to know that part.

his gaze drops briefly to the ornament hanging from kaveh's clothes. it looks similar to the one alhaitham was wearing at his shoulder. (presumably tighnari had one, too—heine hadn't noticed.) the vision, the source? focus? of the elemental power that so many people from this world seem to use. alhaitham had said it felt strange, not having access to it the way he's used to, but heine is once again just thankful that such a thing doesn't exist in his world—he can only imagine the ways in which it would immediately be abused. ]

Not too much divinity where I'm from, [ is what heine says instead. ] But no plants, either, so it'd be lost on me. Assuming it only works on plants. [ and not other types of elemental energy, that is. heine has, somehow, managed to only meet dendro users so far during his stay in the city.

he leans back in his chair, legs stretched out in front of him and hands tucked behind his head, and gives kaveh a considering look. ] Want me to come up with something else for you?

[fussiest]

[ heine glosses over it, the odd beat of sympathy, or concern, or perhaps even something like pity. it's odd that kaveh's grateful for it. kaveh ought to be the one offering some measure of sympathy over the revelation, but something in kaveh tells him that this isn't a topic which kaveh has any right to speak up about, nor breach the comfort which the man's built in addressing it. that must have taken time, and thought, and grief. it isn't kaveh's place. but it makes kaveh think that the akademiya had these laws for a reason, that one ought not research into human evolution because the knowledge gained from that endeavor no longer benefits humans.

but it makes sense. kaveh, who has only known divinity to be tangible individuals sharing that same walk of life as those with mortal bounds, thinks that if there were divinity, what already sounds like a fairly complex situation must've been further complicated. it's the lack of plants that has kaveh startle, considering, as he tilts his head towards this new and unusual tidbit. sumeru had been as green as it comes. they say it was a land that is constituted by three seas: the great sand sea, the great sea of the rainforest, and the saltspray of the sea that leads to fontaine across the dunes. ]

You're going to give me a nickname. [ this is bad idea, if alhaitham's impression on the man is 'magic plant man', but kaveh suddenly finds himself charmed, if a little cautiously so. this is definitely worth hearing out. ] Now I have to hear this. My only ask is that 'plant' isn't a part of it, given that it's already being used, and to be entirely honest there's someone else who's a better fit for that sort of thing.

[ kaveh grins. ] So? What do you have for me, Heine?

[kampfgeist]

[ would that the akademiya's influence extended to heine's home city! laws were slow to catch up to the advent of bioengineering, only really taking a strong stance once things had gone far enough to breed an entire generation of fetish mutants—not that heine's mother needed the permission of something like the law to do what she did to all those children hidden away underground. illegality would never have stopped her.

more importantly: a nickname. heine narrows his eyes a little, regarding kaveh, and then shakes his head slightly. ] Nah, it's no good if I force it. Has to come naturally.

[ probably he'll need to get to know kaveh a little better in order to decide what a good nickname for him would be. re-using the topic of plants wouldn't do, either, because then it just seems uncreative. there's already the impression of kaveh's character floating around heine's mind—his attention to detail, artistry, something bordering on shamelessness (complimentary) in the way he approaches other people—but a good nickname requires thouught!

really, super serious, there's a science to it and it's not just heine stalling because he's suddenly been put on the spot. ]

[fussiest]

[ kaveh's lips curl. ]

I'll give you that time to make your judgment, then, so long as you don't forget what you are meant to do. You're the man who bested Alhaitham in single-combat, you've earned the time.

[ it's that laissez-faire attitude, kaveh thinks. a little like a man who knows his own measure well enough to also know when to pick his battles. kaveh rises with a tilt of his heel. his hand stretch above him; the joints of his elbows crack, once each, and then the popcorn crackle of his knuckles like miniature fireworks. kaveh winces. ]

Anyway, I'm going to go and take a look further inside. The majority of the larger group seems to have moved on, so it ought not to be as busy. What will you do? Watch over the exit?

[kampfgeist]

[ heine doesn't smile easily, but that does earn a little quirk of the corners of his mouth, and he offers a slightly exaggerated bow from where he's still sprawled in one of the desk chairs. ] Who knew that'd buy me such prestige?

[ heine still maintains it wasn't exactly a fair fight, given his biology and alhaitham's lack of experience with close-quarters, weaponless combat... but he's not going to belabor the point.

an eyebrow quirks at the series of joint pops, and heine can't help but say, ] Damn. [ either a game of tetris is enough to have kaveh this stiff, in which case he almost definitely needs to stretch more, or the man carries more tension than he lets on. in heine's estimation, it's probably the latter. ]

Most likely. [ heine's gaze slides briefly around the bank—it certainly sounds quieter than it had before—before coming back to rest on kaveh. ] I'm waiting for someone. Let me know if you find anything interesting, though.

[fussiest]

[ there's that quirk of a smile, kaveh thinks. it's not a bad thing. heine looks like the sort who is either terribly difficult to make smile, or ought to smile more - or both. behind him, the rest of the tetris blocks fall like stilted rain. game over flashes in stark, monochrome letters. kaveh, evidently the nosiest man alive, turns the sanguine of his gaze back to heine.

he doesn't even have the grace to look embarrassed by being a walking popcorn bag - instead, the considerable weight of kaveh's curiosity falls. ]

A friend?

[kampfgeist]

[ on today's episode of real housewives(?) of the city, indeed heine is waiting for a friend—reluctant though he can be to put that word to their relationship. ] Something like that. Friend. Roommate. Someone from home. [ he echoes kaveh's words from not too long ago: ] It's complicated.

[ complicated like badou is probably the only sure thing heine has ever known; complicated like he's afraid to care in case that's the death knell that brings his sicko mother calling. complicated like heine still has blood on his hands from the last friends he made and he doesn't want badou's added to the mess. (heine doesn't know yet what the next couple of days hold for them.)

but one thing's for certain: ] He's no lunatic, though. Badou's probably the most normal person I know. [ heine says it with a flat affect like he can't decide whether it's a compliment or an insult, which is how he often delivers his commentary to or about badou. ]

[fussiest]

[ it's complicated, heine says, and suddenly, kaveh understands why heine had accepted his earlier deflection on his status with alhaitham so easily. the well of empathy in kaveh feels for the description itself. at the very minimum, it sounds like they are roommates. kaveh could envy the lightness which the man admits to it, as if the word isn't anathema in kaveh's throat - but in reality, what he feels is something like liberation. you can get that, when you think someone's understood something so fundamentally messy and inexplicable.

badou. kaveh will remember that name. kaveh's lips quirk at the flat affect which heine delivers his line - very good friends, then, he thinks. though he's not certain if he believes in the normalcy of it - this is, after all, from someone who had probably not seen normal in some time, not with the revelation regarding potential experimentations. ]

I hope he comes around soon, then. [ kaveh says, earnestly. ] He's really made you wait, and that's given some architect leave to bother you this entire time. You ought to complain about that. It'd be your right.

[ kaveh raises a hand. ] I'll see you around, then, Badou's Friend.