rhodos_meme | TDM #2

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TDM #2

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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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

You ruined a wedding? Sounds like an interesting story.

[In the fog, there's a young normal-looking (if very attractive and fit) man wearing a chiton and a messenger bag slung over his shoulder. He has a notebook, and he's in the middle of shoving a window up on one of the houses with his notebook tucked under his elbow. For a guy who's technically in the middle of breaking into a building, he seems very relaxed as he tosses Jen a cheeky smile.]

I take it you're new?

Uh, yeah.

[ were you really breaking into a building in front of a lawyer? really? that's ballsy.

not that she knows that he's breaking in because hey, that could be his house and she's just gotten here and she is so confused. ]

That obvious?

[He slides the window open expertly, vaulting on the sill to throw one leg over into the house. He's apparently so good at this that he doesn't need to look at what he's doing, because he does it while smiling at Jen, a touch of indulgence coming to his expression.]

'Fraid so. Most folks who've been here a bit don't yell into the air.

[He offers his hand to invite Jen to climb into the window with him.] Seems like I'm your welcome wagon for the day. Welcome to Rhodos, Greece. Or that's what it calls itself.

I'm in Greece?

[ she really does not mean to shout that but how in the hell did she get to greece? that doesn't even make sense.

she needs to sit down but there's no chairs anywhere so she just leans against a nearby building and rubs a hand over her face. ]

Well, that was not a vacation I intended to take.

[Hermes stays perched on the windowsill, now folding his hands in his lap as he kicks his one leg in the air absently as he hums.]

Oh, this won't be much of a vacation, I'm afraid.

[He leans against the threshold of the window. If he's breaking in, he's awful comfortable with it.] What's your name, boss?

Jen. Jennifer. Jen's fine though.

[ she thinks about offering a hand or something but instead she just...waves, yeah. she just waves and then shakes her head. ]

You know, you could have started with the good news before you dropped the bad news on me.

[ was there any good news? she hopes so. ]

Jen. [Hermes nods his polite acknowledgement and gives a cheerful wave.] You can call me Outis.

[He says it smoothly, like it's a name like any other. And depending on Jen's background in Greek Classics, it very well could be.]

The good news? Well, the food's quite good around here half the time. And you can pick any house you want to stay in while we learn more about where we are and how to leave.

Well, I guess that is...somewhat good. Free food and a house without having to pay closing costs with a real estate agent?

[ yeah, that's not...bad. she still doesn't like this place but still.

at least she might be able to get a baller house. ]

No one's figured out how to leave?

Nope. No one.

[Hermes gives a little shrug, but his mild smile drops into something more serious.]

There's dark magic about. A lot of people say they used to have powers, but not anymore here. And the place cycles through phases. Sometimes it's a charming place to be, sometimes foggy, and then it becomes a nightmare before it's charming again. Almost feels like the island is alive somehow.

Used to have — powers?

[ oh, now that's interesting. jen hasn't tried to go all big and green just yet but if she can't anymore, that's going to be a thing.

hmm. she frowns, making a mental note to try and figure that out when no one else was around. ]

You've, uh, been here for a little while then?

Been here for a month or so. That's long enough for me.

[And long enough to hear from the others that there's a pattern, and what he went through already happened and will probably happen again.]

You didn't ask, but if you want any advice, I recommend finding a bedroom on the second floor. High enough off the ground that most things can't come through your window, but low enough that you can jump out of the window safely if you know how to land right. I've already had to jump out of a couple windows, so it's nice to plan ahead.

That is...very creepy advice, thank you.

[ creepy but probably good advice. she doesn't really want to ask what could crawl through her window but — ]

God, I am going to regret this but what kinds of things climb through windows here?

Monster dogs. [He says it immediately with no thought put into it.] Very big monster dogs who can crash through first floor windows.

There aren't any about now, but there will be.

[No one can ever accused 'Outis' of not knowing how to spit it out when necessary.]

Monster dogs.

[ and her without the ability to shift. that was — that was great.

she makes a face and laughs even if there's nothing humorous about the situation. she crosses her arms. ]

So, this is a foggy city filled with monster dogs that I can't leave. Anything else?

There are monsters besides the monster dogs, but I haven't gotten a good look at most of them.

['Outis' finally swings his last leg over the sill and stands up inside of the house that is not his, brushing himself off.]

I recommend getting to know the space. Want to come explore buildings with me?

Uh, s...ure.

[ yes, that's probably a good idea. ignore her hesitation, she's just trying to get caught up with all of this.

she rubs her hands over her face and then sighs, straightening her shoulders. ]

Do I need a weapon or something?

For now? No, don't you worry about weapons.

['Outis' is already ducking into the building, vibrating with restless energy. He gives off the vibe of a guy who was never able to sit still in class growing up.]

Perfectly safe for now. You'll know when it's not.

[The inside of the building appears to be a small elementary school. It's still lit up like the kids were supposed to be there a bit ago, and the walls have clumsily practiced Greek lettering taped up--the kids' alphabet writing practice. Hermes stops at one of the papers, a paper where the child put clumsy smiley faces in every circle of the Greek alphabet.]

Aw, this one's sweet.

Good to know that there'll be foreboding harbingers for me to follow.

[ she's gonna have to keep that in mind. ]

God, there used to be kids here? That's frightening. Does anyone know what caused this place to...be like this?

No clue. [Hermes says it casually, wandering to the teacher's desk and pulling the drawers open. Oooh, lesson plans. That could make it easier for him to catch up with all the history in between his time and this time.] It seems like everything is always set up like someone was just there. Like... a hot drink on someone's table and an open book on their couch.

Whatever is happening here, I think it might be playing with time. [Hermes flips the teacher's binder of lesson plans open, humming as his eyes flick across the pages.] Can you read Greek, boss?

Greek? Uh.

[ jen thinks about it when she really doesn't have to think about it and then shakes her head. she does not know greek. she maybe knows some greek letters, maybe a greek guy or two but she doesn't think that counts as knowing greek. ]

Sorry, took Spanish in college. Greek wasn't even offered.

Hmm, too bad. Lucky I speak Greek.

[Hermes closes the binder, tucking it under his arm as he goes to the little shelves of children's books. He hums as he plucks one at random--it's a little Greek kid's book with a picture of cartoonishly happy Olympian gods on the cover.]

Not that you really need it to get by around here, but it does make investigating easier.

Well, maybe Duolingo would still work here and I can get on that —

( yeah, she doubts it. she seriously doubts it. but she laughs, trying to make light of it. )

Anything interesting in there?

[Hermes has no idea what Duolingo is, but he has no idea what a lot of things are from these people's worlds.

He laughs at the book he's glancing into, offering it to Jen.] What's interesting is how thoroughly they've butchered stories of the gods.

[In the book, there is a picture of what seems to be a thinly veiled ripoff of Disney's Hercules in a crib while Zeus and Hera look over him lovingly and all the other gods, cartoonishly exaggerated, celebrate around the crib.]

I don't remember the story of Heracles going quite like that.

Maybe it's just — I don't know what I was about to say. A lot of books and television show take liberties with things to make them more palatable sometimes.

[ she shrugs. ]

So more people buy them and they aren't exposing their kids to horrible, terrible stories of evil and bloodshed.

[Hermes chuckles, tsking softly. Well, this woman most certainly comes from a different culture than he does.] Seems backwards to me to lie to children so they don't hear about normal bad things. But what do I know? I don't have kids.

[He puts the book back on the shelf, moving to the back of the classroom where he sees a map of the world. He taps it, looking at Jen.] This familiar to you? I've met people from other planets.

TDM #2

Arrival

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