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

[hexrot]

[ jayce's relationship with weaponry is a little complicated, but he awkwardly stiff-smiles this one out, anyway. he knew ruby by glance, and they've spoken a few times through the convoy network. i'll be sure to keep it, uh. hidden, is what he thinks to himself, but that is ironic. can't really hide a giant hammer. ]

More than I'd like to admit, [ he was no fighter, and yet, he still gets caught in monster fisticuffs, either because his research led him there or his stomach did. the raiders were the only half-anomalies. he fought because there was no choice to; getting a meal out of it along with scraps was just an extra. rather than looking for ammo, jayce gets right to salvaging actual metal parts from the cyborg cadaver. you never know when you'll need parts (although in jayce's case, he knows he'll need a lot of metal). ] they just keep finding me.

[ the raiders did not like the way he looked enough to target him more than the others, which . . . alright. might be best if he can take the damage. ]

[taediosum]

[ The longer he's stuck like this, the easier it is to maneuver, and for once Arcade is grateful for that. Slithering so that he can clean the mess from his scales as he goes, washing it away through the hard-packed dirt, alleviates some of the grotesque discomfort of it all, after that last round. Even if they were still being overrun, he isn't sure he could do that a third time, with or without his sanity intact.

He slumps into a loose coil, as close as he can get to sitting down, and drops the ripper beside him, patting down his sides and the few patches of skin he has left to feel for the scrapes and gashes the devourers left on him. Nothing serious, at least. ]

It was ugly enough.

[ A pang of irritable pain accompanies the thought, as he finds the worst of the cuts, just above the scales banding his midsection, putting a bit of pressure on it with one of his extraneous arms. ...But that testiness subsides just as quickly.

He clears his throat, opting to speak aloud, this time. ]

Thanks. That... definitely could've gone worse for both of us.

[wereperrito]

Well, it's true that Jack has determinedly weeded out every potential cruel bone in his body. But not every selfish one, and sometimes being selfish hurts people when you don't mean it to. "Serph," he says with a little sigh, "You have emotions. Clearly. So you can be hurt. And I would rather not do that, if I can help it. I just am not sure what you want, or what I want, or what John wants for that matter."

[hexrot]

[ i wouldn't, thinks jayce, but that's far too ironic now, considering the hunger incident. jayce chews on the inside of his lip before speaking, stepping away from the broken doll salo had become. ]

Wasn't senseless. [ he'd apologized, even though he'd summoned all of his rage into the swing to get it done. regrettably, jayce still sighs through his nose. ] I hope you never had to choose between one or many.

[hexrot]

I didn't think you were separate entities.

[ he always had the feeling they were one in the same. ]

[solitarysoul]

Huh, okay. Probably for the best Serph didn't know, there's no way he'd understand something like that. "And then you ended up here, and later on Revan?"

[hexrot]

[ thank god he's not actually person shaped right now because then that would look weird. luckily, jayce is tactile by heart, and these little gestures are comforting for him.

jayce thinks of what else he does with his hands; precious things. his preferred tools. they create. little images of brief memory flash as he attempts to see them himself, through his minds eyes as his actual hands, palms up, begin to gently flex and rub against fingerpads. of forging, hammering out impurities as a smith. engineering, solding parts together. creating. for embracing, remembering the touch of his palm flat against his mother's back as she squeezed him tight. the way his hands curled around mel's with his head in her lap, her face framed in beauty and bittersweet remembrance, where he'd kiss her wrist with profound gentleness. he missed her, even when they've grown apart. accepting vows, tight around the hilt of a hammer that both was and wasn't his. jayce keeps thinking and thinking until each fleeting memory begins to pile, one on top of the other. until he is using his pinky to gently hook into the cuffs of viktor's current golden-metal decor. jayce.

he is doing a good job so far, at keeping focus. if i had a favorite part of me, jayce starts, incredibly soft compared to his current exterior, they'd be my hands. ]

[bufudine]

[Serph lets out a sigh through his nose.]

It's hard to say where the demon ends and I begin. Before my infection, I was incapable of feeling emotion; the demon virus carried the seed of humanity with it.

[That kind of existence was easier, in some ways.]

If my demon was somehow removed, I don't know if I would return to that state or not.

[bufudine]

There's a deepening furrow in his brow that's so often indicative of when Serph has heard something he doesn't understand.

...What does John have to do with anything?

Jack seems terribly confused. Is he overcomplicating the situation? Things seem rather straightforward to Serph. "If you knew you unintentionally hurt someone, what would you do?"

[bufudine]

Serph listens in rapt attention, completely fascinated by what Jack is describing to him. Joy for the life that was had? It sounds beautiful. He finds himself mentally revisiting the deaths that had impacted the Tribe the most.

Were it not for Jinana, they would not have the word 'comrade' for that all encompassing bond with each other.

Were it not for Lupa, the idea of honour would never have slipped its way inside their thoughts.

The wings closest to Jack fold around him. "Life and death, hand in hand..." There's a thoughtful lilt to his voice. "It sounds amazing."

[refusefate]

Three, two, one. Go. [He surges out from behind cover and puts three shots into the monsters. He dashes in on the right, drawing his sword. He cuts to the right, further directing their focus.

Leaving their backs exposed to Donnie.]

[purplexing]

[Donnie waits a beat, watching as Zero moves in. The turtle darts in shortly after, cutting to the left.

His weapon looks like a huge glowing disc as he spins the ninpō staff around before bringing it down to slice at one. He's quick to redirect, keeping himself and bladed staff moving, another spin and a horizontal slash to the second. By the time the third is turning towards him he meets it with a thrust of his blade to one of its eyes.]

[androidvictoriam]

[ Danse doesn't know how the hell to go about ceasing to be a twelve-foot-tall monster with teeth the length of ballpoint pens, now that the form is less useful and more "how do I get in a car like this if it doesn't wear off."

Now that the danger has passed, though, and his heart rate has slowed, and he's able to actually think about these things rather than focusing on the heat of battle, his body seems to have mercy on him. He shrinks, gradually, the transformation as inherently painless as it was before, though it doesn't make his limbs less clawed-up. His clothing is more astonishingly intact than the laws of physics would seem to allow, save for some new bloodstains and a zipper that's given up the ghost. His stomach feels like he hasn't eaten anything for a solid week.

He slides down against the truck now that his form is more convenient for it, sitting down on the ground and pushing his sweaty hair back from his face. ]

No need for thanks. We all benefited.

[ His voice is hoarse, oddly rusty-sounding, as if it's been longer since he's spoken aloud than it actually has, but at least it's his again. He tilts his head to scan over Arcade's injuries, predictably ignoring his own. ]

You got those?

[ Looks like it, but it seems worth asking anyway. They've all been lucky enough so far not to have to find out what happens when the sole physician can't heal himself, and he'd like that streak to continue. ]

[firstsoldier]

According to a dear friend, currently not present, not a thing. No dreams, no ambitions. Nothing. It earned him more than one lecture. "The Convoy's destination is not the same? We will not know til we arrive."

There's something wrong with this landscape. It's idyllic, yes, but there's no little crabs climbing through the surf. No tiny birds running just at the water's edge in time to the waves' rise and fall, no scream of seagulls. Even the bubbling of little holes of razor clams, absent.

Even the scent is different. With the tides comes the smell of decaying seaweed along with the salt. This is .. sterile perfection. "It's nearly as lifeless as the city, though."

[definitionofcrazy]

"Well, since you asked so nicely-"

The attempts to squirrel his way free are getting annoying, and she doesn't know what that fire is going to do, exactly. She doesn't want to risk another solid blow. Instead, she grabs him roughly by the neck, hopping to her feet and lifting him with unsettling ease before slamming him back against the wall.

"Last chance, Jack. Gimme something."

She backhands him again for emphasis- But as soon as she uses his name, there's another flicker of the static through the dream.

This time, instead of the world itself becoming more distant, her body changes. It becomes older, more tired, and- halfway to a third blow- she stops, her grasp of the writhing wolf in her grasp loosening, her eyes widening in surprise- and then horror, then fear.

She opens her mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. Her lower lip shakes, and she drops him to the floor and takes a few steps back as if she'd been burnt, still staring at him in stunned panic.

[definitionofcrazy]

It better not, I'm gonna be pissed if it is.

[Seriously, dealing with the vampires and demons is bad enough.]

Are we talking, like, little green dudes with rayguns, or xenomorphs?

[taediosum]

[ He should probably be more alarmed than he is, by the sight of that enormous, terrifying wolf-creature gradually turning back into Danse. Instead, it's fleeting jealousy he feels, as simply stuck in this form as he is. He has no idea when he'll be abruptly changed back, and, unfortunately, he values his life just enough not to risk rifling through all the weird new remedies the infirmary is stocked up with in hopes of forcing it. ]

I'm fine. It could be worse.

[ The injuries he sustained just before and mid-transformation aren't all that bad. He's been hurt worse, in recent months, and survived that, too.

The skeptical look he turns toward Danse's still bloodied limbs is equally predictable, sharp and disapproving (if exhausted). ]

Those need to be cleaned and disinfected, though.

[taediosum]

[ Well, that's a relief. Not a needed one, though, because he doesn't actually doubt it. He's seen men he knew better do worse, and not for such grandiose philosophies (not all the time, anyway). ]

Maybe not on the scale you're thinking. But triage is a part of my day job, on occasion.

[faceguy]

Pink. Ugly. Turn everything they touch into a goo zombie.

[So not quite either of the above.]

They're called the Krang. You ever hear that name, well... time to find a bunker, probably.

[coffinturk]

The bird-like motions are studied. Whether or not Vincent shares Tifa's opinion on its appearance, it's not going to stop the former Turk from slowly raising his revolver and bracing it against the forearm covered by metal armor.

The angle and the well of distorted physics are being added to the calculations of the shot.

"Two feet from its position is where the gravity changes," he murmurs. This is for the young woman's information should she need to join the battle and the creature stays on the ground.

It's clear what he'll do as soon as he's sure of his shot. Can he take it down in one hit? ...Unlikely, the monsters here are potent and even if his weapon is powerful itself, few would fall even if it were to hit a seemingly fatal weak point.

If Tifa doesn't try to save the creature, Vincent will open fire.

[tokencanadian]

...Cute?

[Pff, that... brings a full smirk to Pyrrha's face. Her? That wasn't a descriptor she heard too often.

She shakes her head - not of Ruby's encouraging words, but the opposite. Gotta get rid of those cobwebs.]

My, just... I knew you were a capable leader, but where did this Huntress with all of this advice come from?

[definitionofcrazy]

Screw that.

[She scoffs.]

If some nasty pink aliens roll up on my planet, I'm kickin' their asses.

[Beat.]

But if I still remember this conversation seventeen years from now, I'm gonna blame you.

[bufudine]

[Hextech...? Serph's gaze returns to the hammer. The hammer that he knows can shoot lasers. Are lasers supposed to have any useful purpose besides making something injured or dead?

His face is as expressionless as ever, his tone perfectly even as he says-]

Do you only take action when you know what the outcome will be?

[faceguy]

[She doesn’t know what happened; only his brothers know what happened. Still, it makes him flinch despite himself. Yeah, it’s probably fair to blame him…

He shakes his head.]

Fighting them won’t get you anywhere. The best thing you can do is trap them. Trust me, you don’t want to fight them head on, no matter what powers you have.

[hexrot]

[ a demon giving him emotional capacity, which humans are born with. ]

. . . That's one hell of a paradox.

[ one that has jayce rubbing his face. fear not, it's not stressing him out— he's curious, but empathetic. he wants to understand what he would've waved off as superstition at some point. but he's seen it with his own eyes. he knows damn well how real it is. ]

Would you want it removed?