monstertruckers: (Default)
monstertruckers ([personal profile] monstertruckers) wrote in [community profile] route666rp2025-05-06 05:39 pm

MAY EVENT LOG




Out of the thorn brush, the land still looks twisted and broken. And it turns a lot more jagged as rocks burst up and out of the ground like teeth… And keep reaching upwards, in defiance of all the gravity that should be pulling them down. The further up the rock spires reach, the more they splinter until the stones are free floating. The same happens to the threadbare trees, their branches and leaves breaking off and hovering in empty air. The nature of this place becomes clear: reach too high, and eventually gravity gives up.


















01: BATTLE GROUND


The ground grows rougher, pockmarked with craters and rents, like the landscape is scarred. A little further up the road is the source of those wounds. Curious Drifters will find a tangle of rock and metal reaching high up to the sky. It’s a snarl of wrecked vehicles, rock spires… And bodies.

Robotic hunters are half melted into the bones of a giant monster, and the lights have long since gone out of their lens eyes. Many of them still clutch weapons; swords, guns, and bullets by the bag-full. The hunters and weapons remain locked with the corpse of a horn crowned monster with arm length teeth, and it’s clear this tangle is the only thing that keeps the hunters or their weapons from floating off. Drifters can potentially loot the weapons… They just have to be careful about not floating off while they salvage equipment. The footing here is uneven, and the ground looks ready to break with a wrong step.

These hunters also carry prayer screen beads, but the data on them is horribly scrambled. Any attempts to tamper with them cause them to repeat a single message: “I STILL LIVE” before shorting out and shutting down.
02: HEALTH INVERSION
A building grows out of the valley; a hospital that has been turned upside down, and its foundations reach for the sky like weird tree branches. The hallways inside are all sorts of twisted up, and the building can’t seem to decide if Drifters should walk on the ceiling or the floors.

Twisted as the building is, ruins gutted by time and overgrown with vegetation… There is salvage available. Medical supplies, healing potions, healing herbs, all of it is bountiful in the hospital. The hospital is also rife with Husks, but all of them are inert… Or have already been broken apart long ago.

Then there’s the matter of the hospital screens flickering on in the wake of the Drifters. Warning lights try to flicker on, as old electronics try to scan the Drifters. The machines give up flickers of data, declaring Drifters to be “infected.” The old restraining systems of the hospital are still active, as manacles and straps alike shoot out, trying to restrain Drifters. The bonds keep them inert until they can be sedated and enclosed in what look like holding pens for violent patients. Best hope there’s someone around to help break a Drifter out.


03: SHARED THOUGHTS
The valley is overgrown with strange plants that glow with eerie light. Sometimes in camp stray glowing tumbleweeds roll through… And any contact has interesting side effects. Drifters will find they’re more aware and capable of picking up on unsaid things. These powers can the month. Each glow confers different abilities:

Blue Glow: Makes Drifters more empathetic in a psychic sense. They can register the emotions of those nearby, and may start to feel those same emotions.
Green Glow: Makes Drifters capable of projecting their emotions to other people.
Purple Glow: Gives Drifters telepathy, to hear and send thoughts to others.
Orange Glow: Grants Drifters limited psychometry. (Object reading.) Using it in the hospital or the battleground will yield unique visions and messages. Please comment to the mod/NPC thread below if your character wishes to do so!

Drifters can stack these effects, but this can overload their minds and force transformations. Those with Swarm traits will find it easier to handle psionic abilities. Additionally, ALL DRIFTERS who experience psionics will find themselves susceptible to Events 4 and 5.
04: MONSTER SHIFT, HIVE-MIND
Worryingly, extra contact with the glowing plants can not only stack mind abilities, but also force Swarm traits. The more a Drifter is overwhelmed by psionics, the more likely this is. Drifters will have access to all Swarm traits for this event, and the following:
+Psi Hunger. A need to eat psychic energy in the form of dreams, psi-infused objects (like sage brush) or even psychic minds.
+Psi Senses: luckily, Drifters can glimpse heavy psychic energy in the brush through enhanced senses, and pick out strange brain monsters. These are good eating for Swarm monsters… And there’s an unnervingly high number of them.
+Group Mind: compelled to link thoughts with other Drifters, to share emotions, memories, and achieve cohesion.
+An increasing reliance on telepathy/empathy/etc in place of speech.
+Increasing collectivist mindset. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few; this becomes more evident during high stress situations.
+Compelled to spend more time in the wilds, absorbing power from plants and hunting prey in wilderness. May also be compelled to share this prey with others.
+Gravity Affinity: If possessing wings or the ability to wall climb, may freely hunt/traverse corrupted gravity areas.
05: WHAT DREAMS MAY COME
On several nights the wind picks up, and sage brush is uprooted and sent tumbling into camp. The plants trade their prior glow to something more baleful and crimson. With the wind whipping through the camp, it’s almost impossible to avoid unless a Drifter is already secure in the Convoy.

The effects aren’t immediately obvious, until the Convoy sleeps for the night… And that sleep is different. Namely the sleep is connected, showing both memories and dreams from other Drifters.

Memories from their pasts can blend together to form a strange dreamscape, that connected Drifters can travel through. But those dreams can easily turn into nightmares. Those who were exposed to the fear toxin in February will trend towards nightmares and may have their old fears make a reappearance.
If those nightmares are vivid and unsettling enough, they can force a transformation. (This may be either current monster traits, or a Swarm monster!) And then…



06: BRAIN ATTACK
It happens just before dawn, during the blue hour… Or perhaps it might be more apt to call it the red hour, with how the sky is stained crimson. It’s just bright enough to distinguish something moving in the hills. Drifters can pick out a rustling in the brush; something that isn’t wind. There’s something moving, crawling on claw tipped legs… And looking less like sage brush and more like a brain.

The Intellect Devourers numbers in the hundreds. Their claws scour the ground as they race towards the Convoy and smash into the shield. Numbers start to overwhelm the generator, along with the chaos the brain brush has sown with their psychic echoes.

The psychic echoes increase as they swarm the campsite, trying to drive Drifters into a frenzy with nightmares, fears, and strange visions. The brains are also ready to use those long sharp claws to tear anyone disoriented enough into ribbons, and start feasting on them.

06-A: BRAIN BRAWL
Hallucinations: The Intellect Devourers try to whip up more terrifying visions. Anything to disorient the entire Convoy, or drive the Drifters into a madness that leaves them transformed and too wild to easily counterattack. These hallucinations may be past trauma, or something a Drifter fears happening; the ultimate goal is to leave Drifters panicking, changed, and vulnerable.

Rally: Still, there’s one thing the Devourers didn’t anticipate: and that is how sharing a mental link has given the Drifters an anchor with each other. With all the psychic echoes spreading through the camp, any and all mental links from before can easily flare back up. Drifters who have shared dreams or some form of mental connection may still transform, but their mental link can keep their minds stable and coherent instead of growing feral.

Scars: Whether through brute force battles or mental link resistance, eventually the Convoy is able to shrug off the attack… But there is still some damage done. The shield generator has shorted out, and the Convoy itself has taken a few gashes and gouges. Not to mention any transformed Drifters will still need to be talked down. Luckily the mental links are still in place to help with that, and there’s a truck full of medical supplies to help with patching up any hurts.
MICRO ENCOUNTERS:

PLEASE NOTE! These are small bits of set dressing for players to include in threads if they wish, rather than full fledged prompts or events. You may handwave your exploration of these areas, or thread them out.

Disorientation: When wandering through the brush, Drifters may experience a swarm of disorientation: their thoughts suddenly scramble, they forget where they were going or what they were doing. They may also come to with a set of gashes along their legs, and a sense that they may have seen something in the sage brush move… Or maybe it was just the wind.

Float: Occasionally, parts of the road just give up their hold on the ground and go drifting skywards. Hopefully those chunks of road don’t take Drifters and their vehicles with them. Tough vehicles can likely survive the drop, while Fast vehicles can speed away before they float too far upwards. Drifters caught outside their vehicles will have to hope they have fast reflexes… Or are either good fliers or good jumpers for the leap back down.

Raining Down: On occasion, gravity will flicker and warp oddly… And that means that other odd things can fall where they used to float; rocks, plants, not to mention the odd bit of hardware and buildings. Watch for falling objects of various shapes and sizes!


NAVIGATION











definitionofcrazy: (Anger)

[personal profile] definitionofcrazy 2025-05-20 05:44 am (UTC)(link)
[She frowns a little, but she takes the alcohol.]

The hell's a novel infection?

[She rips off a piece of cloth from the cyborg's body, douses it with the alcohol, and then hands the bottle back.]

I'd trade you a smoke for it, but all the smokes I got are Apricot flavored.

[She's not going to inflict that on him, she likes him too much.]
purplexing: (what a town)

[personal profile] purplexing 2025-05-20 05:50 am (UTC)(link)
Donnie makes a face at that, but doesn't deny anything either as he pulls his other arm around to properly cradle his head.

"Those seats were not meant for sleeping in, long-term," he grumbles. At least Raph's is big enough to kind of curl up in. "Pillows would be a game-changer." A big ol' pile of them to snuggle into, woven in with blankets...

Okay, that's a weird thought, but it still sounds way comfier than what he sleeps on now.

He smiles when Leo makes the suggestion, hoping the next place is ideal for such. "I was talking with Ruby about whether we might find an old mall sometime. Find an old arcade... bedding shop..."
bufudine: (they're used like that?? :|)

[personal profile] bufudine 2025-05-20 05:52 am (UTC)(link)
Whatever Jack had been intending to do, Serph doesn't expect this. His eyes fly open in surprise... but he doesn't push Jack away.

John had breathed life back into him. So he will trust Jack in this, too.

Closing his eyes again, he simply allows things to run its course.
Edited (oops typo) 2025-05-20 07:06 (UTC)
definitionofcrazy: (144)

[personal profile] definitionofcrazy 2025-05-20 06:04 am (UTC)(link)
[Trapped?

And then the restraints lash out, and she snaps out a hand to catch one and rip it from the wall with sheer brute strength. Unfortunately, it's far from the only one, and she's forced to back away again.]


Got it. Gimme a sec.

[She flips the knife and goes back in, hacking at the restraints with her knife. Apparently she just needed to know what she was dealing with, because she's certainly not being any more cautious now than she was before.]
definitionofcrazy: (pic#17735186)

[personal profile] definitionofcrazy 2025-05-20 06:27 am (UTC)(link)
[The changes are there, but they're a little subtle, a little hard to see at night. There's a corpse-like pallor to her skin, a blue tinge to her lips, and the new scarf snug around her neck- something she never used to wear.]

I gotta introduce you if we can find 'em.

[She reaches for her pack of cigarettes, but doesn't actually take one out just yet. She just idly turns the pack over in her hand repeatedly.]

Stopped checking cars because they don't have food and clothes, those seem like the big ones. Medicine, weapons. Guess I should start hunting down jeeps 'case I need parts for mine.
definitionofcrazy: (Chat)

[personal profile] definitionofcrazy 2025-05-20 06:58 am (UTC)(link)
The punch is a little harder than she expected, but hey, a teenage girl punching her in the palm is still better than a giant rock-skinned demon throwing her around an empty warehouse. She's more appreciative than anything.

"Not bad. Straight wrist, hit with the knuckles straight on. Knuckle might hurt, but you won't break your wrist."

She lowers the hand and nods.

"Little tip. You can swing like that if you want, but it's not gonna hit as hard. Lemme show you something?"
bufudine: (hey. a naked girl :|)

[personal profile] bufudine 2025-05-20 07:16 am (UTC)(link)
Serph nods, agreeing. Yes, it's nothing like what he pictured Nirvana to be. "This is the world that created mine."

He closes his eyes and briefly, their surroundings return to void. But quickly, dream-reality smears back into existence and Serph casts his gaze over their surroundings. His expression softens as soon as he recognises it. "This... is the Nirvana I seek."

A sky of brilliant blue, the occasional white, fluffy cloud in the vast distance. An ocean that reflects the sky, sparkling in the light. On the horizon, a cruise liner. A perfect, sandy beach, waves gently rolling in to lap at their feet before rolling back out. A mansion, nestled in the land further up the shore.

Closer inspection reveals the incomplete nature of Serph's vision. He doesn't know what lies in the spaces between these landmarks, so there is a kind of void that his gaze simply slides over, as though he's unable to perceive the gaps in his knowledge.

The sun appears to be normal. It bathes them in warm light, akin to the sun in Revan.
tokencanadian: (Crying/sadness)

Pyrrha Nikos | RWBY | Celestial Angel

[personal profile] tokencanadian 2025-05-20 10:30 am (UTC)(link)
[A: 1 - Due to the dead]
[Pyrrha's better at dealing with the destruction around her. Somewhat, compared to the road attack last month, the sight of strewn cyborgs and their armaments sets a roil in her stomach, but she keeps it all down.

While others go about scavenging the battlefield - there's much to find and Pyrrha will join them - the huntress spends a good moment standing stalwart over one of the fallen bodies. Long stuck in the earth, a rifle still gripped in stiff fingers. She hoped there was some peace here.

It's a surreal image, the young woman whose hair was rapidly losing its red shades over the past weeks. Replaced by a soft white that almost seemed to glow in the dark. If one were to squint, you might see a shimmer of light just behind her head.
]

[B: 2 - Hospital Level]
[Pyrrha glanced upwards - down from the ceiling where she had been picking herbs. Up to the floor, where someone else stands. Thankfully, her long hair wasn't hanging down in their face.]

...Alright. This is a bit nauseating.

[C: 5 - When It Falls CW: Trauma, manipulation]
[Rampant psionic effects swept through the convoy, and Pyrrha was no less susceptible than anyone else. When she couldn't stand guard in the night any longer, she laid her head down to rest.

And Pyrrha Nikos dreamed against her own will.

Pyrrha stands alone in the center of a grand stadium. Although, it would be wrong to say she was truly alone; the moon, shattered in her memories and here as well, hangs low. Bathing the stadium in its uncaring glow.

At Pyrrha's feet, lay the crumpled and mutilated remains of a girl. Instead of gore, though, there were just electronics. A facsimile of a girl; a puppet cut down from her strings, her eyes dull and bereft of that life, that joy.

Pyrrha hugged herself. She was unable to decide where to look. At the body, or the sky. So, she shut them tight.
]

I'm so sorry... I didn't... If I'd known, I wouldn't have done any of this...!
undyingcrow: (wtf)

[personal profile] undyingcrow 2025-05-20 01:36 pm (UTC)(link)
"...Two sigils." Akechi's eyes slowly widen with the realization. It's another layer upon layers of parallels.

His left hand rests over his chest, and he looks down. "I only have the one sigil, concealed beneath my clothes. No other transformations to speak of.... but I do have my Persona, weakened though he may be."
undyingcrow: (closed eyes)

[personal profile] undyingcrow 2025-05-20 01:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Apologies.

[For a moment, he focus his attention on the stolen sword. It needs polishing, given how long it's remained here, but as he shifts it in his grip, the weight seems more or less comparable to the sabers he's used in the Metaverse.]

It may be best if I avoid the blue sagebrush, and you may have better luck avoiding the green. The question is, is it worth tempting fate with the remaining color?
undyingcrow: (smug)

[personal profile] undyingcrow 2025-05-20 01:51 pm (UTC)(link)
[Heh. Her blunt honesty earns a quiet laugh from the real Akechi.]

So you've been in my position? My. How the tables have turned...

[It's a good question, really. Fighting the cognition, or his memory of such, would bring a form of catharsis, perhaps, and yet...

Akechi shakes his head.]


I shot the damn thing, and it still came back. Tempting as it is, I'd rather not give it the smug satisfaction my ire would bring.
fists_of_funny: (yang3)

[personal profile] fists_of_funny 2025-05-20 03:21 pm (UTC)(link)
The theme song does drop off a bit as Yang examines the combo strings Ruby is examining in her head...

Da da da da DA...oh, nice combo string. Remember that one can chain into an anti-air if you can bait your opponent into jumping. Da-da-da...i-frames on that one are good...da-da...be careful with that one, you'll take off a third of a healthbar with it, but if you whiff, you're wide open to a punish. Da-da-

And then something whumps against the side of the van and Ruby cries out in pain. Yang immediately leaps out of the back and is scrambling around the side to check on her little sister.

"Ruby! Let me see your hand." She sighs. "You really got into it, huh..."
hexrot: (pic#17858105)

[personal profile] hexrot 2025-05-20 04:17 pm (UTC)(link)
God of the gaps.

[ . . . he's 100% certain serph wouldn't know what that is, actually. anyway— ]

—It's what we say when someone can't explain something scientifically. "God" fills in the gaps of understanding.
purplexing: (this is me disbelieving you)

[personal profile] purplexing 2025-05-20 04:52 pm (UTC)(link)
[Donnie frowns.]

Personally, this is not the kind of experimentation I want to participate in.

[He's had enough emotional roller-coastering as it is.]

Maybe someone else has experienced it. We can just crowd-source the answer.
solitarysoul: commisioned art (Default)

[personal profile] solitarysoul 2025-05-20 07:51 pm (UTC)(link)
"R-right." He enters the doorway, takes a few steps and then pauses to look back at Serph. Was he coming?
solitarysoul: commisioned art (:|)

[personal profile] solitarysoul 2025-05-20 07:54 pm (UTC)(link)
No...these just showed up not long ago.

[He looks back at them.]

I had wings once before but they didn't stay after the storm. Its not so easy to fire a gun in the air. At least not something like my rifle.

[Recoil with no ground to brace against was tricky.]
solitarysoul: commisioned art (Look)

[personal profile] solitarysoul 2025-05-20 07:55 pm (UTC)(link)
"Yeah." Levi gets a firm grip on the drawer and tugs it. "I just hope this doesn't happen again. Or it doesn't somehow get worse."
flowersnjunk: (sex makes babies!?)

[personal profile] flowersnjunk 2025-05-20 08:03 pm (UTC)(link)
There's no denying that the voice belongs to Levi, but no matter how many times Eunie blinks or rubs her eyes, he still looks like that.

"I think I was having a nightmare. Or I'm still having one. My head's spinning like mad!"
solitarysoul: commisioned art (hmm)

[personal profile] solitarysoul 2025-05-20 08:12 pm (UTC)(link)
There is a lot of damage, but a lot of it should be fixable, he thinks. Lots of injured and disoriented people. Physical damage to the vehicles but probably not anything to keep them from moving, at least not as far as he can tell. He has no idea what to make of the thing that powers the shields, though. For all he knows it might be magic.
solitarysoul: commisioned art (Default)

[personal profile] solitarysoul 2025-05-20 08:15 pm (UTC)(link)
"I think we all did. There were these...brain things. B-but I think they're gone now. Dead. Did you get hurt anywhere? I can bring you to the medic's room."
firstsoldier: (pic#17626940)

[personal profile] firstsoldier 2025-05-20 10:03 pm (UTC)(link)
"I am less caught up in this than it seems, don't distress yourself on my behalf." That shape is wearing armor. Another being out here? Something intelligent, or a monster? .. Or both, he supposed.

Maybe it was the source of this nightmare. He could understand the crushing misery of isolation, he'd endured it most of his life, but this had the feel of something more specific. What he can see is mulled over, as is what he's been told. The whole point-- "Are you the prisoner then, or is that?"

One black gloved hand rises to gesture at the approaching ominous shape.

There is a certain irony he's oblivious to of Leonardo's prison dimension catching more than one alien parasite in it. Or one alien parasite and one hybrid.
firstsoldier: (pic#17626946)

[personal profile] firstsoldier 2025-05-20 10:30 pm (UTC)(link)
Some of the doors are unlocked but what's on the other side isn't interesting enough to bother with so far. It's .. ordinary things. Painfully ordinary things, like life just stopped one day, and was abandoned wholesale.

Some of the statues looked like they'd been fleeing. "Whatever I have been forced to become, I choose not to define myself by it." He casts a brief glance over his shoulder, towards Serph, towards those gradually more distant corpses, once more assessing. It's not true though, he knows what he is and can't pretend otherwise to himself. Maybe what he's always been. He'd never quite been like anyone else, and now ... now there were fangs, and claws, and a shape he couldn't even begin to call human if he let himself get tired enough, hungry enough.

He's hungry now. It's ignored. "And I choose to not let it dictate my actions. Do you do otherwise? You seem civilized, demons are not."
discolouredwings: (pic#14995651)

[personal profile] discolouredwings 2025-05-20 10:55 pm (UTC)(link)
In hindsight, Natsuhi's plan of sticking behind only going into rooms that had been checked might not have been the best idea. Because this place was never normal and the seemingly safe rooms changed. Leaving her trapped while restraints blocked the hallway, with gravity inverted.

Natsuhi wasn't sure how to exit. She'd have to dodge being captured and not knock herself out on the ceiling when it became the floor.

She poked her head out the doorway at the sound of a scuffle, her hair drifting upwards for a second as the gravity shifted. Then Levi nearly bowled her over as he darted in. She jumped back, bumping into an empty cabinet. She frowned, then reached for him before pulling her hand back.

"Are you alright?"
discolouredwings: (pic#14995654)

[personal profile] discolouredwings 2025-05-20 11:13 pm (UTC)(link)
Normally, when Natsuhi voiced her thoughts, she was quickly told to be silent. So the random impulsive(?) thought egged her on. It was a jumble, just an incoherent rush of righteous rage and disgust.

How could he-She was on her deathbed-no wonder his son left- Along with this sign doesn't make sense. But the current, relevant thought was mostly drowned out.
hexrot: (pic#17858112)

[personal profile] hexrot 2025-05-21 01:17 am (UTC)(link)
[ if the creature could snort properly, it would. instead. a sputtering sound, wet and wrong, comes out of somewhere from the faceless void. probably from what was left of the oral cavity, hidden by so many fallen slabs of flesh held by threads of sinew. it's not you i'm worried about, but that came off incredibly hostile, and uncaring. an unfiltered, intrusive thought, perhaps because the reason he hides is from someone and not everyone.

i'm sorry, he follows up, taking a beat of hesitation to encourage him to step out. ugly. massive. absolutely hideous, and using his ears to focus on where the voice is coming from. he has no eye sockets to see with. i'm the problem, not you. ]

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