TDM #2

[rhodosmods]

TDM #2: OCTOBER

Jump to: Arrival · Somewhere Under the Rainbow · The Bells of Saint Ioannis · Into the Fog · Waking Up to a Nightmare
OOC Notes · Questions · Manifestation Workshop · New Characters

ARRIVAL

Upon arrival, characters awaken in one of the main plazas of the town, lying on the paving stones around a central fountain. Your pockets are empty and you have nothing with you but the clothes on your back. It is a bright sunny day and pleasantly warm but not hot. A light breeze brings the scent of the sea, but there are no cries of sea birds to be heard.

The buildings of the plaza are all medieval stone construction, but they all have modern awnings and glass fronts. Tables out front display tourist wares: little plastic statuettes, postcards, t-shirts. Among these, it's easy to identify Greek lettering, Greek gods, photos of Athens and Crete. Predominant among the souvenirs are items marked with the name Rhodos.

But there are no vendors selling their wares. Even if characters wander into the shops, they are all empty as if their owners just stepped away for a moment. Lights are on, and some of the larger and nicer shops even have the whirr of air conditioning. Food stands waft the aroma of freshly grilled kebabs, and a gelato cart is cold to the touch and the ice cream inside is frosty and delicious.

The plaza where you arrive is set on a slope, and the direction of the sea breeze and the faint sound of waves against a shore indicates pretty strongly that down-slope is the direction of the sea. But looking down the slope from the main plaza, you can see an open archway in a tall stone wall, and beyond it is nothing but mist. Despite the clear sunny day in the plaza, the mist is a dense fog with barely three feet of visibility. If you enter it, you can see your own arms in front of you, but nothing beyond that. The breeze has gone still and the waves no longer sound so much like waves--the sound is warped through the mist so that it almost sounds like sobbing. After about five minutes of determined walking across what feels like flat ground with no other landmarks, you find yourself back at the archway.

Housing can easily be scavenged. Doors are unlocked and the interiors are clean and welcoming, beds freshly made, as if it is a hotel that's been prepared for you rather than anyone's personal residence. And yet, once you've settled upon a place to live, you start to find little signs that you have lived here all along. The photographs on the wall (which weren't there when you first arrived) depict you and your family and friends, even if you came from a world without photography. Upon arrival, you have only the clothing you are wearing, but within a day the closet begins to fill with familiar outfits from home, and within the first week you may find up to five of your own possessions around your new residence.

SOMEWHERE UNDER THE RAINBOW

CONTENT WARNING: DRUG ADDICTION

There's an old clock tower near the center of town, very visible from many locations on account of it being the highest point in Rhodos. It's set up on its own little acropolis, with a ramp leading up to stairs around the squared-off fortress sides of the tower. Like most of the doors in town aside from the opened locations and housing, the door has been locked since arrival, and the walls are impossible to climb without magical ability or specialized equipment. The clock faces on each side are all operational, but never in agreement as to time, and some of them seem to run faster than others. Even if you set your watch to a particular clock face, within an hour your watch and the clock will disagree.

One evening mid-month, the clock faces begin to spill out some kind of iridescent liquid. It cascades down the sides of the tower in a glimmering waterfall and then rushes down the stairs and ramp, quickly flooding the streets of the town. Though it eventually drains out through the gates of the town, disappearing into the mist, the flow continues at a steady rate, so that all the streets in town and the first floors of apartments are flooded one foot deep with shimmering goo. It's only a little viscous to the touch, and seems harmless aside from evoking immediate drowsiness.

Within seconds of touching the liquid, you will begin to yawn, and within a few minutes it's difficult to walk a straight line or keep your eyes open. No matter your determination, you'll be asleep within ten minutes, so you'd better find a safe place to sit or lie down.

The first dreams you experience are beatific. You may be drawn into someone else's dream, or they may be drawn into yours, but the first two or three dreams are wondrous, breathtaking experiences, showing your hopes and dreams come true, your fondest memories, or an imagined paradise just for you.

After experiencing one of these dreams, it is irresistible to seek out another one. You may touch or drink the strange liquid without experiencing ill effects aside from the need to sleep and the shared dreams that follow. But the original transcendence has quickly begun to tarnish, and the next handful of dreams will be complicated things, showing secrets and mistakes, the what-ifs of your life that you wish had gone differently, or the perfect version of your life with some kind of awful twist at the center, something dreadfully wrong.

These dreams should be a lesson, but the liquid is a drug. Anyone who experienced those initial good dreams will be driven to try again and again, but each time the dreams grow worse. Soon, you'll be drawn into someone else's nightmares, or they will be drawn into yours, and you will see your worst outcomes, your greatest regrets, your deepest hells. Your Manifestations may or may not star in these dreams, or there may be terrors far worse pursuing you through the depths of your subconscious, vast cosmic horrors chasing you no matter how fast you run or how far you flee.

After a few wretched nightmares, characters will do anything to avoid sleeping. The drug craving of the liquid still itches under your skin, whispering to you that perhaps the next hit will bring back those original perfect dreams, but your better sense knows that sleep will bring only more of those nightmares, even if it has been hours or days since the last time you touched the tainted liquid.

THE BELLS OF SAINT IOANNIS

Around the fifteenth of the month, or as near to it as anyone is capable of keeping track of days, the flood of dream water finally stops, and within an hour the liquid has all drained away through the gates. A few shimmering puddles remain here and there on the paving stones, but they're easy to avoid, and an afternoon rain shower washes away the last vestiges of the iridescent liquid.

One day of fresh air follows, and that night you are able to sink into dreamless bliss--for at least a few hours. In the depths of the night, you are knocked out of slumber by the tolling of a bell, loud and reverberant enough that you can feel the shockwaves of it vibrating through your bones. Twelve head-spinning repetitions later and it finally stops, leaving you dizzy, ears ringing with echoes of the sound.

No doubt you're exhausted after the past week of restless dreams, falling easily back to sleep, but you're only just sinking into a deep sleep when another toll of the bell slams you awake again. Just one this time, but an hour or so later and it's two, then three. The clock tower is telling the hour, but no one will be able to sleep through its vigilant time-keeping.

Sooner or later, sleep-deprived characters will head to the clock tower in desperate determination to find some way to stop the ringing of the bell.

This time, the tower door stands open.

Making your way up the winding stair within, perhaps you stop to admire the view across the city, and this may is the first time you find yourself at a height that allows you to see over the city walls. The mist beyond the walls is like a solid thing that surrounds the town on all sides, fading to blue in the distance so that you can't quite tell where the horizon line is between mist and sky and whether there's any glimpse of sea to be found in the middle.

You climb the steps to the top floor of the tower, and then ...

You find yourself back outside the tower, soaked through by the drizzling rain and shivering with cold. Something happened to you up there, at the top of the tower, but your mind skitters away from remembering it, and you grow increasingly nauseated the more you try to remember.

Through all that physical disorientation, it may take you some hours or someone else's reaction before you realize that something is wrong with your body. You're smaller than you were, or taller, or frail and wizened. The experience in the clock tower has aged you. You may be as young as six or as old as ninety-nine, and your memories may be intact or may be altered accordingly to suit what you knew at your age. If you gain years, you will gain memories as if you had lived to that age in your life back home, even if you should have died before that.

No matter how you feel about your age transformation, you are now mercifully unable to hear the ringing of the clock tower bell.

INTO THE FOG

CONTENT WARNING: CRUELTY AND VIOLENCE AGAINST (MONSTER) DOGS

After the characters have been in Rhodos for about three weeks, a heavy fog rolls into town. Unlike the mist that surrounds the city, the fog smells of smoke. Visibility is reduced to a mere ten or fifteen feet.

The electricity goes out, and shops are no longer replenished. Food may still be scavenged, but the food in shops and restaurants will slowly rot and may run out. Battery operated items will continue to work as long as the batteries still have a charge. Running water inside the houses continues to work, but it is sluggish and smells stale, leaving an unpleasant film on the skin.

While out on the streets of the town, characters will begin to encounter the monster dogs of Rhodos. The sound of a dragging chain precedes them, and then the hazy outline of a dog comes into view. It's walking oddly, however, with a sort of staggering limp, and the sound of the chain is underlaid by a low, feral growl. Furless gray skin peels away in patches to reveal bloody muscle. The heavy iron collar around the neck is studded with long black screws, the ends of which pierce the skin of the neck. Hazy eyes are clouded with decomposition, and yet that doesn't seem to prevent the dog from making its way straight toward you.

The dogs are not very fast, nor very smart. They can be outpaced at a brisk walk, and they will lose track of any character who gets more than twenty feet away or behind a closed door. But they are vicious. If you get within a few feet, they will lunge at you and attempt to bite. If two or three of them manage to corner you in a blind alley, you could be in real trouble.

In addition to the dogs, characters will begin to catch glimpses of Manifestations, both their own or those of others. At first you might just catch sight of them through a break in the fog, but after a day or two they can be spotted standing outside of apartment windows and staring in. In either case, they will not approach or attack characters unless you're foolish enough to get within six feet of them. Then, they will attack, and they will pursue at a fast walk until they lose track of you in the fog.

WAKING UP TO A NIGHTMARE

CONTENT WARNING: BLOOD IMAGERY

On the 28th, characters will awaken to find that the homey, quilted bedding has been soaked through with blood. Once you leave the bed, you may notice that the mattress continues to sag in the center with the outline of a human body.

When you make it out into the streets, you'll find that the entire world has changed. Heavy darkness fills the city, and no stars are visible in the sky. A few lights glow despite the lack of electricity, but they only provide a sickly, red-tinted light. Streets are slick with something that looks like blood, and the stone walls in many places have been transformed into metal or grate. Through the grate, you can catch glimpses of black metal hooks and gory, dripping meat that looks human in origin.

There is no palatable food or water. Anything you have saved has rotted or changed unnaturally into what looks like rotting flesh or lumps of bile. Liquid has turned into blood or black water. The only mercy is that symptoms of hunger, thirst and fatigue stabilize after 24 hours and don't get any worse. Don't worry, it won't be the dehydration that kills you here.

Your Manifestation pursues you tirelessly, and the monster dogs are faster, smarter, and moving in packs. Your home is no longer safe, and staying on the streets is deadly.

OOC NOTES

October 1: Arrival and Monthly Reset
October 10-15: Shimmering rainbow flood, shared dreams
October 16-20: Clock tower bell and de-aging event. All de-aging will expire before the fog event starts on the 21st.
October 21-27: Fog World
October 28-31: Nightmare World

The TDM is game canon. New and existing characters are both welcome to treat this as a mingle log, create top levels, tag around. (We got mixed responses when we asked how players would prefer TDMs so we're trying this! Feel free to give us feedback on how this goes and what you would prefer.) The Fog World and Nightmare World aspects of the TDM will almost always be generic, featuring currently active monsters, to allow prospective characters to play with these elements but not including spoilers for the main game Event Part 2 which will be released on the 20th.

Also! Big news, by popular request applications will now be open permanently, and you may begin playing in game immediately as soon as you're accepted. The October Event Part Two will be posted on the 20th and it's going to be bloody good fun, so get your apps in ASAP if you want to get in on that.

For the nerds among you who are enjoying this sometimes-accurate tour of Rhodes, all location images are accurate to real-world Rhodes.

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stephen strange . mcu

[rehandle]

ARRIVAL

a)

[ There's nothing like waking up to too much light and a stiff back. Stone underneath him, sunlight too warm to be anything other than direct... he's outside. What happened? Heavy night at Kamar-Taj, passed out in the courtyard? A groan and crack of one eye says... no, actually.

This isn't Kamar-Taj at all.

There's a merciful stretch of seconds spent taking in the beautiful tourist trap in which he finds himself where the whole thing is still just weird. Funny, almost. Go to sleep in his own bed and wake up in the Med? Sure. Why not? A week or so ago he was piloting his own corpse across a mountain range, shit happens. But then he swipes up with a hand to change from street clothes into his robes and— nothing.

He tries again: nothing. The last fog of sleep slips. Dread, stone-heavy, drops somewhere in his stomach, and his hands dart through a simple pattern. The shaping of it hurts more than it should - none of the usual passive support for his crooked joints from channelled ambient magic. Even before he's finished he knows it's just movement, just gesture.

All at once he realizes he can't feel the world beyond the boundary of his skin.

Stephen totters the few steps to the fountain, leans heavily against it, surroundings rendered irrelevant as he coaxes his hands through spell after spell. He tries everything: mutters incantations, tries complex and simple and so easy a child could do it. Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

No. No. Consequences he understands, consequences of course, but not this. Surely not this.

Distracted as he is, he won't notice he's not alone until someone's presence gets too obvious to ignore. ]

b)

[ Sometime later he stands by the archway looking out into dense mist. There's a beer in his hand, a crate with a further five bottles and an opener at his feet, and this time he doesn't need an introduction to sense somebody else's approach.

He doesn't turn around, just bends down to grab a bottle by the neck and the opener by the handle and hold both out for whoever it is that's wandering down the hill. ]

SOMEWHERE UNDER THE RAINBOW

[ After his third horrid dream he'd learned something close to a lesson. That's how he ends up sitting at his first floor window instead of asleep when a straggler trudges by through the endless shimmering sea, drowsy and fighting for consciousness on their way to somewhere it doesn't look like they'll have time to arrive.

The window opens and Stephen leans out to raise his voice for the ears of the person below: ]

Hey. In here. Before you drop.

[ The door to the street is open. Downstairs is a wash, but the height of his window promises the refuge of another floor. ]

WAKING UP TO A NIGHTMARE

[ They've been running for what feels like hours. Darting from building to building, hiding, darting again when the dogs catch their scent or the sounds of something worse drift in on the wind. For the last five minutes, this space between buildings has given them refuge from a chase that had felt like it would go on forever. Back pressed to the wall, no longer concerned for the blood that congeals on his clothes and matts in his hair, Stephen takes what precious seconds he can to fully catch his breath.

Somewhere beyond the alley's mouth, hardly any distance at all, a voice calls, the sound of it reaching out like ripples over water. Or maybe it's a chorus of voices. So gentle and well-synchronised that it could almost be just the one. ]

Please. Let me help you.

[ It's his voice. All his voice.

Wide eyes search for his companion, blood-stained palm lifting away from the wall to gesture sharply back the way they'd come. They'll have to risk the dogs. ]

WILDCARD

( anything else you want to try out just hit me up with a starter and I'll dive in! or if you'd like to chat it through first, feel free to find me at miscreates )

Arrival: B

[midsommaring]

Oh -- [Dani wasn't expecting to be handed a drink when she approached someone she hadn't seen before. But what the hell, right? There are worse ways to be greeted.

She pops the top and hands the opener back over, studying the man with a curious expression as she sips her beer.]

Did you, um. Did you just get here?

[rehandle]

What gave me away?

[ Dry, but not without humor. Would that be the crate of beer, the resigned stare off into an impossible mist, or the fact that the population of this island appears to be no larger than a fledgling commune?

He breaks his fruitless staring at what lies beyond the archway to glance at present company. ]

You?

[ The question she'd chosen implies her answer, but he asks anyway. Best to start with the basics. ]

[midsommaring]

I've been here a few weeks. [She feels bad for the man, the way he's staring into the fog. The grip he has on the bottle. It's clear the arrival is a shock to him, as it had been for her.]

I um, I was the same way, when I got here. Sort of... wandering around aimlessly.

[rehandle]

[ A few weeks. Not a surprise, exactly, more a grim confirmation of circumstances. A small scoff of laughter at his own expense and he takes a swig of drink through half a smile.

Wandering around aimlessly. He likes to think he's been wandering with purpose, but he's been stood here staring at nothing for approximately thirty minutes. So that's about the size of it, isn't it? What else is there? ]

When in Rhodes... [ ... not his worst joke, but not his best. To take the edge off of his attitude, Stephen tilts the neck of his bottle toward the young woman in greeting and acknowledgement. ] Dr. Stephen Strange.

[midsommaring]

[The scoff along side the drink sort of sums up everything about arriving here, doesn't it? She grimaces slightly but nods in sympathy.] It's hard -- more than hard. Being here. Being pulled away from your home and dropped in some random place like this.

Dani Ardor. It's nice to meet you, Dr. Strange.

Waking up to a Nightmare

[messageforyou]

[Hermes--but he hadn't given that name when asked, he'd said to call him Outis, and who knows if a doctor remembers that small detail of the Odyssey if he'd ever read in the original Greek--may not have his power or his wings, but he's still effectively at the fitness level of an Olympic athlete. Even hungry and thirsty, he can keep up with the grueling pace of running and hiding, resisting the urge to run ahead and find safety at the cost of his new companion.

Hermes stops when his companion stops, wiping sweat from his brow with the hem of his chiton.]

Hand on your chest and belly, breathe in through your nose, hold, and out through your mouth, breathe with your stomach, there's a good man-- [If Hermes knows anything, it's how to run effectively. Part of that is knowing how the best athletes catch their breath fast in between sprints. It may be redundant to say this to a doctor, but one never knows.

But then he hears... something. Somethings? And his companion is gesturing for him to back it up. Hermes curses softly.] Malakas. Do you know what that is?

[His head is already whirring with ideas. Go up. Go up and barricade the stairs. But he doesn't know what's lurking and speaking with all those voices.]

[rehandle]

[ Shit. Shit shit shit.

Stephen's voice is mostly free of breath-drawing pause when he replies, whether through the help of advice that he may or may not have taken or his own tried practice, but that doesn't do anything to rid it of the hushed tension as he replies in a murmur, ] I can take a wild guess.

[ He hasn't seen it yet. Somehow he's ducked away at every turn, kept himself busy with other terrors long enough that this is the first trace he's caught of his own. And there's still no knowing for certain that it's his, no telling that some shapeshifting, voice-stealing thing in the bloody night isn't out there twisting his fear to its own ends—

That's when the knowledge hits. It comes for both of them as the creature in the road ahead stands in quiet waiting, still some way out of sight: the undeniable dread of death. Death is waiting for them up ahead. Death, inevitable and terrible, final even in impermanence. And for any prone to laying down their life for others, another whispering feeling creeps along on the belly of death's great beast: Whatever it takes. This is the only way.

Stephen takes a sharp breath in, hit so hard and fast by that old familiar conclusion that reason rears up to complain - why? - and he tunes his focus as resolutely as he can back on Outis. ]

We need to go. Now.

[ He'll take suggestions. He's as close to helpless as he's ever been, he knows it, and if that means he has to follow he's happy to defer. ]

[messageforyou]

[The specter of death hits 'Outis' visibly differently than it should. Because to Hermes, death is not a fearful unknown--it's a job, one of many. It's a coworker who despises being out in the sun and is too socially awkward for a full conversation. It's a promise of an embarrassing but safe visit to his uncle and cousin.

So instead of freezing, as most normal young mortal men might, Outis just cocks his head in the beast's direction, taking a deep breath. And when he speaks, he speaks with the tense but casual air of someone at work presented with a pressing but not insurmountable problem.]

Let's see how good it is at climbing.

['Outis' takes Stephen by the hand, tugging him into the nearest building and finding the stairs. This is where all of his restless exploration during the good times pays off.]

We keep going up and barricading each set of stairs. Best case scenario, they lose interest and chase down some other unlucky soul. Worst case scenario, they keep coming and we start running by rooftop.

[Luckily, the architecture in Greece has always set buildings close together. Close enough for someone particularly athletic to jump from roof to roof.]

somewhere under the rainbow ; it's like its meant for them

[kletva]

( the irony isn't lost on her, reflected in the iridescence of the viscous liquid and the inevitability of the dreams that dragged her under the first time she's set an accidental foot in it and she had to watch, again and again, the sum of her errors.

the streets shimmer now, reflecting on old stone walls and if she has to move anywhere, it isn't without trudging in foot-deep liquid.

the fear of her dreams is the only thing keeping sleep at some sort of bay — reminder after reminder of how powerless she is here — as she makes her way through a narrow street in some attempt at finding higher ground. there's some metaphor to be made here, about having the footing give way under you and then there's a voice cutting through her irritation, cutting through the haze of almost-sleep that's jolting her awake long enough to look up and stare near owlishly at the face she sees, recognition suddenly sharp enough to send her ears ringing.

but there's something about this that pushes her to action instead of firing off questions and barbs and anything else that might come up and she pivots herself towards the open door without thinking.

in short order, she stands on the floor of promised refuge some feet away from his perch, breathing shallow and eyes firmly levelled on him. she thinks there'd be a time she would have been more relieved to see him, but even in this place, even with everything she's already seen here, this only feels complicated, painful. )

This wasn't me. ( she says, quietly. )

it is... here they go

[rehandle]

[ It's too late that recognition dawns. Owlish stare meets slack jaw as details come into sudden focus— Wanda. Wanda Maximoff, unmistakable now. How didn't he notice? He of all people should know better than to discount the dead.

It occurs him in the time it takes her to enter the building and climb the stairs that the multiverse remains vast and mostly unknowable, but that in at least one corner of it Wanda still lives. How many more, given infinity? How many Wandas could this be, from how many different worlds? And amidst all of those possibilities, what are the chances she's the woman he knew, and underestimated, and left without a friend when it mattered. The woman he fought with every hypocrite's pike he could find?

She takes the final stairs and the question dies. This isn't the Wanda of 838, or any other Wanda from any other anywhere.

He's silent a moment. Jaw still slack, his own breath vaguely laboured with surprise. His hand is a loose and aching fist at his side, instinctively ready for spells he can't cast. ]

... I know.

[ No more than a minute from first sight to now, no more than a minute to make the assessment, but as he says it he knows he believes it. It isn't that she's dead. Or that if she could've neutralised his magic she'd have done it long before now and America would likely never have made it out of Kamar-Taj. It's her back as a portal closed up before her, sealing off hope. It's a crumbling mountain and the Darkhold, burning up before his eyes, before the eyes of its keepers in every universe with keepers to bear witness. ]

This wasn't you.

[ Slow, a little unsteady, but it's true the second time, too. Not that either of them should be relied upon for great wisdom or to bear unimpeachable truth, but he's taken his own word for graver things than this and lived to wish he couldn't tell the tale. All that's left is to rise to his feet in unhappy quiet, unsure of the ground they stand on, unsure how long it's going to take for iridescence to drag Wanda down into a no doubt tortured sleep.

They never do just get to rest, do they? Not in life and not in death. Maybe that's all this is: Happily Never After. ]