MAY EVENT LOG

[monstertruckers]

code

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

Comments

[discolouredwings]

[Why would you do this Akechi? Because his sudden movements and looks made her look just in case even if she couldn't hear anything. Natsuhi's hearing and instincts might have gotten better with her changes, but with her inability to defend herself she was wary.

She paused for a moment, silently looking before turning back to him. Her fox ears remaining focused behind her. ]

They are, we'll always need medical supplies. Especially if those bandits come back. [She'd like to not nearly be eaten by a robot dog again.]

...What did you see?

late with starbucks to the terror hole

[becomerobot]

[other visitors to such a scenario might dream of falling, but in Viktor's nightmares, he's swimming up through terrible dark and pressure. Slow, tired, and seemingly futile. His body too heavy and too weak. Failing him, unable to just float on its own. He's running out of air. The surface never gets closer. He's running out of time-

Gasping, his head breaches up out of contaminated water. Liquid burns into overworked lungs, struggling to not burst from his chest. His body feels so, frustratingly human again, the dream giving him no strength of monstrous form. He is the man again who spent too long in the lab, didn't get enough sun. Who grew up in these pits, both literal and figurative. Fingertips dig into muddy ground pulling himself onto the shore of the pool. How had he been drowning there? It's such a small pond. Shouldn't be so difficult to swim in, should it? Viktor heaves and coughs up all he can, punching his own chest to try and help it along. Mucous comes up indistinguishable from blood.

When he looks up, his eyes focus on walls of scrawled formulas. Somehow, he knows this is Jayce's work. He can recognize it anywhere. Even without a signature on every page.]

... J, Jayce-? Jayce-! Are you here? [he's caught up in another fit of coughing, echoing all through the caves, scattering any curious lizards interested in the new guest. The puppets won't be watching. They know their master no matter his form.]

[tokencanadian]

Well, that might be! But, I probably should've noticed when, er... Yang had wolf ears?

[She mimes two triangular ears poking out the top of her white hair.]

Please tell me you noticed them too, right?

[purplexing]

That's...awful.

[Donnie falls silence at that, brow furrowing as he looks back at the kid, and then out at the stars again. His fingers curl into fists at his side.

When does this happen? Or is it an alternate reality? Either way, it sucks.

He forces out an exasperated sigh.]

Go figure. But I guess it tracks that if it's not some external force ruining things, it's from within.

[His tone seems about the same, sarcasm being the default, but there's a bitter edge to it. He and his brothers had risked so much to save the place they called home, after all. He'd almost lost two of them in the process. It puts a lot of things into perspective when you go through something like that.]

...yeah, sure.

[Donnie pulls himself away from the window, nodding at the boy.]

[x2bet]

[An obvious deflection on his part, but well, so what? Plenty of fellas out there who don't like to take a compliment. Benny ain't one of them. But why the guy glanced at his hand and then to a bandaged 'nother, then looked away quick-like as if he was caught doing something he shouldn't have - maybe the man's just cautious, looking to see if a stranger who startled him had anything to mug him with. It's the kind of sentiment anyone's familiar with, back in Vegas.

Benny waves his comment away, as if he's dissipating a bad smell in the air.]

Sorry about the grooves - it ain't exactly on purpose, dig? Besides, whoever heard of 'too much of a good thing'?

[He steps closer, looking sidelong at the bottle blondie almost dropped.]

You a big fan of ol' Dinah? Heard her on the airwaves all the time back home, but I ain't run into anyone else here who can belt out all the words yet.

[androidvictoriam]

...Understood.

[ He can read between those lines well enough to know he wouldn't want to hear further details even if Arcade wanted to give them. The Commonwealth might have its scattered raider gangs who try to outdo each other with horrors; he remembers the smell of burning flesh at the Saugus Ironworks keeping him up at night for longer than usual, and god only knows what's going on at that theme park he keeps hearing about on the radio, but these things are by nature isolated cases. Not a unified and growing army. ]

I apologize. I didn't really mean to initiate a conversation this heavy before anyone's even had coffee yet.

[winparadise]

[Something about that reaction seems to improve the boy's estimation of the stranger a little, because he says:]

I'm Nai.

[He can be polite...ish. Sometimes. Maybe his personality also needs time to defrost from the cold sleep chamber.]

The best part of the ship isn't far. [He turns to lead him up ahead, down another nondescript corridor. There are some side doors, some with locked access and others unlocked, but he's still keeping an eye on his guest to make sure he doesn't get sidetracked. He still doesn't know where his brother is right now, and it's better if he stays out of the way for as long as possible.]

[hexrot]

[ jayce manages to breath away the horrid wretches of his inhales as he goes through it, trying to steady, trying to keep it together. there's a sardonic twinge to his word when he replies, with exasperation: ]

I don't see any. [ but that's not her fault, or theirs. the crevice they're in has no way out but up from where they came from. that and a little puddle of murky stalactite water, but it doesn't exactly look like it leads to a larger body. ] I— We need to put it back.

[ he's been putting it off for a while, with reason, but . . . it's the only way to help himself if he doesn't want to die. ]

[hexrot]

[ doubt and uncertainty swells from within the creature. he doesn't know how to answer that with confidence. it would be a damn problem of many facets, if he was stuck like this for the rest of his undead life. actual death just may be better.

i could only hope not, jayce adds. i was scared. this is the next thing i knew. ]

[hexrot]

[ hah. dead jokes. they'll be natural at this . . . if anything a way to process actually being dead. or avoid it. jayce would rather be taking it than crying about it. if anything, jayce takes the offered hand but tries not to let his weight fall too much on her; he'll allow for the help, there's no shame in accepting it. relearning to walk, well . . . ]

Second time's a charm . . . [ the first time he had to relearn walking was when he fractured his tibia. never properly healed, now a permanant disability. ] Are they fully functional?

[hexrot]

[ the beast's great head hangs with an eerie stillness, but through the link of mental conversation it's a hint of melancholy that steers it. the reminder of warm meat and vegetable broth in his hands, cooked rather than the raw he'd mentioned earlier. if there's something he misses when it comes to real, human-made food, it was this simple dish. the kind that would be served to him by a woman with a sweet face, grey streaks in her hair, pulled into a bun.

it's not much of a choice. he adds. it's my biology, now. ]

[purplexing]

[Oh, a name. It takes the turtle a moment before he nods, offering his own.]

Donatello. But most people call me Donnie.

[He follows along again, head tilting as he wonders what makes for the "best" part of the ship.]

...do if those humans have been frozen for two hundred years, how long have you been here keeping an eye on them..?

[winparadise]

A few years. The adults wake up every now and then, but I can handle things when they're asleep.

[Multiple more lies, but he certainly talks with much more confidence than an ordinary boy his (apparent) age.

They soon enter through a huge automatic door into a scene that's like a dazzling burst of colour after all that white: a huge glass dome of blue sky, warm artificial sunlight, grass, and trees. It's like being transported to another world -- the old world, or what little is left of it.]

This is one of the gardens. We're growing things here to take to whichever new planet we settle on.

[hexrot]

[ no, there's no brace, only a hammer off to the side that does not look as strange and corrupted as the one jayce carries about when they're waking. its metal edges are eroding with some kind of . . . rusty rot that might be familiar in patterning and color, but it hasn't been overtaken. just too heavy to even move, now with its hex-powered mechanisms destroyed.

jayce takes a moment fixing his frown before he bitterly brings a gaze to sweep in the hammer's direction. ]

The Mercury Hammer . . . Fell on my leg. [ given the lack of exit, the only one was up. so the only way down here was . . . down. the guilt that wracks his head makes it pound, and his hands cradlw his head. ] I never should have made it. But I— I didn't know . . . What else to do.

[solitarysoul]

"It-I-it got me. A-and..." He holds up an arm, showing off the chitinous plates that have formed along it. He starts trying to pry them off but its not easy as they're attached.

He barely notices her touching him, in fact its not certain he realizes she's there at all.

[solitarysoul]

It doesn't seem to be spreading, at least for now. Levi peers at it curiously.

"Oh, is that the, um, other form you have?" He guesses that makes sense, that they weren't alone in being turned into monsters. Not with so many different worlds out there. "Is this where you're from, then?"

Maybe he should wonder about how he got here, but it doesn't occur to him to do so yet.

[solitarysoul]

Its hard to read Levi's expression with his eyes just glowing dots in empty sockets and half his mouth basically missing, but he doesn't seem to agree. "Oh, yeah, a giant dog with a skull for a face is amazingly comforting."

[solitarysoul]

[He thinks he probably wouldn't mind if they stayed, but Levi's not really looking forward to future changes.

He eyes the crossbow.]

Maybe. If you ever find another one. And were willing to show me how to use it.

[hexrot]

[ from hook to grips, jayce secures himself on the wall and— lets out a quip of breath, for two separate reasons. one, because he doesn't need to breathe. the state of his chest is, ugh. the reason it's all wrapped up and behind bandages and a shirt. most of the time.

the second reason was that, despite his bulk (although he's been bigger, had much more muscle mass in the past— lost it to starvation), he doesn't quite fit the role offered. in fact, the implication turns his stomach a bit. ]

I'm no soldier.

[winparadise]

[One of the blades pauses in reforming, and instead hangs around his shoulders, pointed at SecUnit like he's debating whether to to strike, given the way he's being talked to.]

You differ from the rest, then? Or is it an effect of your transformation?

[The blade-appendage shoots out -- and spears the corpse, hooking it so he can drag it through the Convoy. He'll do his own work, but apparently he doesn't mind leaving a nasty trail of monster blood while doing it.]

[solitarysoul]

[Levi looks concerned for a second as Jayce convulses but once the man starts changing he doesn't hesitate to fire his rifle. He fires multiple times, shots which may or may not hit or even do anything. The beast is too close, though, and he doesn't have enough time to figure out what might even be vulnerable.

He steps back, gun evaporating from his hands as his canine features reassert themselves and more. A muzzle pushes out as fur spreads across most of his body, save for a few places where bony plates form instead. His transformation is less dramatic than Jayce, it simply seems he's the boy in the army coveralls one moment and then quickly he is not.]

[discolouredwings]

She was still mentally huffing as the new thought popped in. Then there was a confused pause. Oh, the telepathy thing is real? Brilliant. Though she was mostly dismissive of the reply.

It's not things I haven't said to his face.... This is strange. How are you doing this?

Or is this just another trick of this place?

[guidemyway]

Give her a little. She's due for a huge break down and death like experience.

"Yeah. It's complicated but I left to track down some people who caused some major trouble. Kind of wound up on a world saving adventure after that. Just haven't had the chance to make it back there yet.

I miss him, and my dad a whole lot. But the work's important, you know?"

[guidemyway]

[Ruby can't help but giggle and snort a little as Pyrrha mimes out the ears.]

Wait- She didn't always have those?

[She's joking of course, but it feels like something they need.]

Okay, okay. Even I noticed them popping up. But- While the changes are kind of concerning. I do think we've got bigger things to deal with here.

Plus they're kind of cute, right?

[purplexing]

Guess that wouldn't be fun having to deal with cranky, disoriented adults who will undoubtedly have questions. Or might just overreact.

[He might not buy completely into the few years bit, although it's not impossible either. Maybe the poor kid got stuck being one of the first ones awake. What a responsibility...

Whatever thoughts Donnie might have entertained are abruptly derailed as they step into an area that seems so normal but impossible given what he'd seen out the windows earlier.]

Ohhh...

[It may seem like such a simple thing, but Donnie's always had a special love for plants and botany in general. He knows it takes very specific factors to make such thrive, and he can tell that such care is taken here.]