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
But this isn't just someone, is it.
On some level that Peter wouldn't at all be aware of, there's movement within himself. A thing shifts, a thing that is strange and lost and with no direction — suddenly having something to focus on, a tether to reach for, countless eyes all opening up wide. This place has tempered the entity down, padded it under thick layers of this city's strangeness, but even through that haze it can sense... something. Something Else.
The lights overhead suddenly flash as bright as they can possibly go, blinding white, and a drone rises in pitch, like a screech. The boy's head turns, slow and intentional, towards the stranger. Blown pupils have turned the warm browns of his eyes into inky pools of black, and Peter stares. Several cereal boxes on the shelves are rattling, a byproduct of the thing's white-hot energy, the air crackling and buzzing like static.
Peter (and everything that Isn't Peter) doesn't know exactly what this man-shaped thing is, only knows that he's feeling something he hasn't in this place yet, and conveys this confusion by....... growling at him. It's soft and rumbling more than outright confrontational, but it's a growl nonetheless, throat rippling with movement. ]
no subject
[Crowley doesn't look impressed, but then again, the bar is unreasonably high on his end, so it's nothing personal.]
Right then, first order of business. Up here, we use words. Snarling and growling is going to bring every exorcist in the vicinity down on your head.
[He pauses.]
Which I, admittedly, only counted the one so far, but that's still trouble no one needs. So, uh, word to the wise, shape up fast, or the humans are going to take notice.
[He pauses again, a thoughtful look passing across his face.]
...Or, you know, keep the kid in the driver's seat until you're past the glaring vacantly and drooling stage.
[Which could, admittedly, take an entire human lifetime. Even Hell's finest were rarely brighter than the average Christmas (pardon his French) light.]
no subject
And the entity that looks like a man on the surface.... is confusing; the thing that stares back ripples with an unpleasant surge of its own energy. The growl moving in Peter's throat expands, widens, demands more from him. The boy's mouth opens and parts wide, a yowl rising, almost catlike.
.....Then he drops. To the floor, long limbs bent at angles, like a giant spider crouching there. He stares, tense and strange, and then (maybe it's inevitable), he begins to scuttle.
.....Right at the man. This is fine. There's no real hostility to the act, at least; he isn't attacking. Just kind of rushing at him (which might be alarming enough to most normal people, not that the stranger is one of those), and unless stopped or dodged, he'll just sort of bump against the man's legs and continue to scuttle around close by. Peter-slash-whatever-is-in-there is mostly just extremely confused! ]
no subject
The thing is, Crowley isn't sure if the presence inside the boy is even there entirely of their own volition. Things aren't how they used to be back in the olden days; if someone is due a possession, Hell doesn't just send anyone topside anymore. There were some sweeping policy changes after the Exorcist came out and mortals started wising up; these days, most demons slipping into a human's skin would have some semblance of an idea of what they were doing. They'd be too conspicuous otherwise. There's courses and seminars now. How to pass as human in public so you don't get drowned in holy water, and all that. Crowley would know, he'd been consulted on most of them, even if things were now about forty-five years out of date.
The boy did look like he was trying to emulate disco-chic. He, in fact, looked quite like a normal lad from the late twentieth-to-early-twenty-first century. So what the Heaven he was doing housing a demon was anyone's business.
This whole display is really quite baffling.
Crowley kneels down, one hand on the other's shoulder to put a stop to the skittering for a moment while he puts out his feelers for any other signs of life. Satisfied that there are no humans about that might overhear, his eyes flare sulfur yellow behind his shades, and he speaks low and quiet in the blackened Tongue of the Fallen, each word carrying with it a diabolical inferno, each syllable echoing the lamenting wails of the Damned.]
Right then. You've got the spirit, but I'm afraid it's two legs, not four.
apologies that this is so late, no obligation to reply / we could handwave the rest if you want!
Yellow, yellow eyes — the demon king deep within Peter's spirit doesn't have much awareness of who, what, it really is, not just yet, but the colour still speaks to its spirit. King Paimon is a being of gold and of yellow, and perhaps in some of his own forms, when he chooses to reveal them, his eyes may burn with a similar colour. But for now, the knowledge is kept locked way deep down in the dust-coated archives of himself. Recognition is only a vague concept, but oh, when the Being speaks... the boy's head slowly tilts, bird-like, and every ounce of his attention is fixed on that thing, that voice.
Energy crackles around him again, but not wild and fretful — swells of sparks, like a pulse thrumming. Overhead lights dimming and brightening, dimming and brightening, slowly. Almost hypnotically.
The Voice.... is more than simply a voice; it's something ancient and powerful, and though Paimon isn't an entity belonging to the same world as this being, he is a thing that knows all languages, all tongues, and this particular one is of importance, so powerful, each syllable containing multitudes of sound and shape. He understands, is held captivated by those words. For that long moment, he stares and sees the man, and is kept in some state of solemn calm by him.
....It's Peter to ruin things. As the demon's fluctuating energy calms, the boy's spirit emerges again, and, naturally, in quite the panic. The liquid black of his blown pupils constricts to the usual browns, and he's gasping as though for breath, gaping up at the man in confused horror. ]
What the fuck?! Who the fuck are you?! What're you doing to me?!!
[ ...Sorry, Crowley. This is an entire mess. ]
no worries i'm perfectly happy to backtag o/
He's not even sure how the other got into the boy; it clearly doesn't seem to know what it's doing which, while not unheard of, is a bit more uncommon these days.
What did you step in this time, eh Crowley? he mockingly asks himself as he patiently waits for the boy to end his tirade in accusations levied at him.]
I am picking up some terrible supermarket wine. You're the one having a fit on the floor.
[Because you've got a fucking demon in you, he mentally adds, but they'll have to work up to that. Baby steps. Don't lead with the possession angle, because even if some part of them knows it's true, humans go straight into denial.]
Are you alright? You look like you've been through Hell and back.
[Haha. His little joke. Hilarious. Fuck, what a disaster.]
no subject
'having a fit on the floor'
He gapes widely, stricken with a new wave of horror, a different kind (—the call is coming from inside the house—)... the concept isn't unfamiliar to him, that's the horror of it. How many times now has he had... "fits" is a good word for it. Waking up somewhere he doesn't remember being, losing track of moments, time. He remembers being in the supermarket all right, but he doesn't remember.... what's happened in the past several minutes. How much time has passed? Why is he on the floor?
The boy squirms uncomfortably, making no real purchase against the linoleum beneath himself, long limbs just kind of shifting around helplessly. Fuck. Fuck. ]
I'm sorry— [ he gasps, staring widely at the man. Did he... did he hurt him? When he had his.... fit. ]
Fuck. I don't know, I just— I don't know what happened. [ Shaking hands move back through his hair, threading into tangles of curls, unkempt. He hasn't exactly looked in any mirrors, not in a really long time. ]
Did I hurt you? Fuck.
no subject
No harm done, no need to apologize.
[He grabs a bottle of Gatorade off the shelf, twists off the cap and offers it to the kid.]
Here, take a breather and drink up. Have you been having these episodes for a while...?
no subject
(What if he hurts people like that, too? What if he does something horrible, again? He can't. He can't deal with this. It's too much, too much—)
But the man's saying no harm was done, it's okay, and although Peter's hardly at ease, all he can do is cling onto those words like a lifeline. He's giving a few more soft gasps as though for breath as he nods quick and obedient and moves to sit up a little more, reaching for the offered Gatorade. ]
....I don't know. Maybe? [ There's a sharp, pained wince, and he pushes the drink to his mouth, forces himself to take a sip. Calm down, Peter. Calm down, calm down. He swallows, sits there not wanting to think about it, but knowing he has to. He just spazzed the fuck out at this poor guy, probably seems like a complete basketcase.
Has it been happening for a while? The first time he can really remember was... back in the classroom, and it wasn't that long ago. It was like his body was.... wrong. Twisting; it hurt the way nothing's ever hurt before. He remembers so much pain, and then blood, and more pain. ]
....I think it's just started happening... recently. Like... right before I came here? I kind of... freaked out or something. Broke my fucking nose.
no subject
[Crowley's brow knits in worry. Of course the idiot inside the kid would do some damage, it had no idea how to human. The boy is lucky it didn't smash his face to a pulp in its thrashing.]
Did you experience anything strange in the lead-up towards your first episode...? Any sudden upheavals? Peculiar social gatherings?
[Messing around with ancient tomes of forbidden arcane knowledge? Weird rituals at a sleepover? Day trips to a cult's secret hideouts?]
no subject
(But how the fuck can he even begin to touch on it? Put any of it to words?) ]
....I guess so.
[ Great answer, bud. But there's so much, too much, and so many things blend together, nightmarish. It all feels like it's happened to somebody else. (He kills his little sister in a freak accident and her body doesn't look like a body anymore, and his mother loses the rest of her mind and does a séance one night to try and contact Charlie, and there's strange people following him, calling to him, shouting strange words at him, and then one night he finds his father's corpse and his mother chases him like an animal up into the attic and there's candles and a photo of himself with the eyes burned out, and strangers are waiting for him in the shadows, smiling, loving, hungry, and he can't wake up no matter how much he tries, the nightmare won't end, he can't fucking wake up—)
.....How much of it even really happened? How can any of it be real? He's clearly lost his fucking mind, same as his mother.
Peter sits there, restless, uncomfortable, staring down at the ground. ]
—Um. Some shit happened, in my family? Um. My sister died. [ That doesn't begin to explain the reality of it, the severity of it — what he'd done. But it's the one thing he knows to be true in all of this, a "sudden upheaval", as the guy says. Maybe he's thinking that a huge source of stress like that could cause a kid to go fucking nuts. ]
Everything went.... everything fell apart after that. [ He says it quietly, still not able to look up. But after a moment, he lifts his head, unsettled by all of it, but something the guy said feels.... ]
What do you mean like... peculiar social gatherings? Like a funeral?
[ (Funnily enough, unbeknownst to him, his grandmother's weirdo funeral was chockful of demon-worshipping cultists, if that counts...!) ]
no subject
[Demons, contrary to popular belief, are not all that dangerous unless you're due a temptation, infestation, or possession. Most, in fact, are not all that interested in the affairs of mortals outside of filling their own quotas. Sure, you get the likes of Hastur and Ligur who are real nasty pieces of work, but it's not like humanity and even Heaven are without their occasional weirdos. A hands-off approach is the rule of the day, standard operations, etc. It all comes down to free will.
Can't really choose properly between Right and Wrong if you're stuck between a rock and a hard place, can you?
The point is, when a demon's involved, it's rarely ever anything particularly personal.
Peter is painting a picture here, and it sounds very, very personal. Dead sister, things falling apart... that kind of collateral has got humanity written all over it. What end the boy's passenger happens to be a means to, he doesn't know, but he has a feeling that the both of them have been played.]
I've, uh, seen these kinds of episodes before and there are people here who might be able to help.
no subject
—hearing someone say I'm sorry, it means something. Even if Peter can't verbally respond to those words, he's clearly affected by them, and manages to give a shuddering nod, quick and unable to lift his eyes from the floor. ]
There were a bunch of weird people at my grandma's funeral. She died not long before..... [ The words trail off, but the meaning is there — before his sister did. ]
....My mom said they were her friends. People she kept hidden. ...She was weird.
[ It almost sounds funny to say, calling one's grandma weird, but something uncomfortable pinches in the boy's chest, and his frown is almost a wince. She was weird in a way that scares him. Scared? Is it past tense now? Then why does he keep having nightmares of her bedroom? (And sometimes in them, he's facing a window, and it seems important that the window opens up to a certain direction. He's afraid for it to be opened up. He's afraid for her pale hands, reaching towards him.) ]
Like doctors? [ Peter finally manages to move his hands again, lifts them both up and runs them over his face for a moment. ] I'll take any help I can get. I don't want to... hurt somebody.
no subject
It seems a bit too personal right now.]
There are doctors here, yeah. Definitely should have someone look at the whole -
[His hand circles his own face as he eyes the bandages over Peter's nose.]
- situation. But uh -
[How does one broach this subject? "Your blackout was because you've got a demon in you" won't exactly go over well. And while there is a known exorcist in town, Crowley's not so sure how that would go down. Exorcisms were as likely to kill the human host as extract the demon. And where would it go for that matter? Another body? There's no Hell for it to return to. Just picturing it, it would be the weirdest game of hot potato imaginable.
He wants to talk to Aziraphale about it, but Aziraphale isn't a doctor and Crowley doubts the angel could pretend to be one.]
- look, I'm more worried about you hurting yourself, yeah?
no subject
......I know. I should probably be in a padded room somewhere.
[ He tries to say it with a sardonic edge, but it just comes out with a note of obvious upset, voice hollow and hoarse. Yeah. He's just like Mom. ]
But it's— there's a guy here who helps me out. Usually he's with me, I don't know why I came here by myself..... stupid. [ He furrows his brow, upset with himself. ]
I uh. Maybe I should call him. He can make sure I don't facesmash into any other innocent people on the way back to the apartment.
[ That is definitely not what you were doing, Peter ]