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

[purplexing]

[Donnie sprawls forward onto his face, wincing as he folds his wings in close.]

Ow...

[He pushes himself up, eyeing the computers.]

The system's still active. This one changed when you went past- it read 'Infected.' And then that's when those shot out.

[While he's still crouching, he has a better look at what had grabbed him, frowning as he looks towards the wall they'd come out from.]

[constantvrunning]

V can read between the lines.

"Don't be afraid to call for me if there's trouble; I'm always willing to lend a hand."

... Or paw.

[solitarysoul]

"Turn to stone?" That was weird...sunscorching, he guesses. He doesn't feel like anything is happening to him, but when he looks down at his hands his finger tips have turned a stoney grey. That wasn't good.

Levi looks around for the closest building, "Where should I go?"

[constantvrunning]

V tries to keep calm, failing because what is this landscape, and takes a half-step towards Serph instead.

"... They were. I can't tell if they're here."

The sounds of gunfire aren't too far away, despite the lack of visible life.

Re: General

[constantvrunning]

"A few days."

V's tone is grim. "There's no sign anything is going to hatch, but it isn't a good idea to get close."

SecUnit wouldn't want them hovering close anyway, if it had any say in it. Really, it wouldn't want anyone hovering at all, but it's not conscious at the moment to prevent that.

[solitarysoul]

[He lands and pulls a curved blade about the size of his forearm out of his satchel.]

It was made for tree branches, I think.

[He eyes the raider for a moment before bringing the blade down on its arm, a few inches above the crossbow, with a much strength as he can muster without falling over. It easily slices through.]

But it works pretty well for other things.

[solitarysoul]

"Okay. I can handle a lot, but if I need help I'll find a way to let you know."

[solitarysoul]

"The tower said it was made from a moon shard. I wonder if people made other things out of those."

[purplexing]

"...it was?" Well, now he regrets trying to get a sample of the things for study, but then he'd been more than a little preoccupied at the time.

"Well, if pieces from moon are already enough to trigger effects, then it'd make some sense that anything made from it might do the same. That's...concerning."

a

[taediosum]

[ Unfortunately, the music is to Arcade's liking. It's familiar, sounds like home, and he knows the lyrics almost as well by heart as anyone who's spent more than a brief stint in the Mojave, and any of it anywhere near a radio.

It's also so thoroughly ingrained in his own mind that he thinks nothing of it, at first. Not even when he unconsciously starts singing along, his tired and preoccupied brain filling in the presence of a seemingly ever-present radio where one is absent.

It's doubly unfortunate that his singing voice is top notch, the kind of smooth, rich sound one would expect to hear in some smoky, crowded lounge. Even when he's only carrying on half-heartedly, distracted by the work of sorting through salvaged medical supplies outside the convoy's small medical bay. He's missing the long white coat for the moment, the shirt underneath temporarily re-tailored to accommodate for the extra set of scaly arms he's sporting to make him a little too noticeable, instead. ]

5

[soldiernoclass]

Somehow, the confusing mishmash of Nibelheim and Midgar feels appropriate, even when that's all it is - no hint of disaster or oncoming death, but just an uneasy, eerie backdrop to a tense yet seemingly mundane dream. Not that anything about it feels mundane to Zack, who feels instead as if he's following some thin trail of dread, slowly building, as he winds his way further through the maze of cluttered slum streets and winding mountain trails.

It'd almost be a relief, when things do finally, abruptly, take a turn for the worst - only he knows too well where this is going. Or he thinks he does, at least, a wave of terrible deja vu overtaking Zack as he starts to run, avoiding flaming wreckage and rapidly collapsing homes as he scans desperately for survivors in the sudden chaos.

"Tifa!" He nearly drowns out her plea with his own shout, but before he can even begin to run toward her, a great, sprawling body of - something collapses in front of him. It looks like a wooden beam, it looks like a metal girder, fire bursts upward from it and he throws up an arm to shield his face as he recoils.

[solitarysoul]

"It said something about the first impact...or I think that's what Akechi read." He shrugs.

"It might be...both times moon rocks were falling from the sky things got pretty weird."

new reno

[androidvictoriam]

[ Another strange thing Danse is learning about dreams is the way they can be inconsistent. In some of them, he's lucid enough to feel out of place, to recognize that something isn't right, to know things are different in the waking world even while he's bound by the rules of the sleeping one he's in.

But in others, the seams are much harder to see. He's never been a gambling man, never seen the inside of a casino like this one, but his mind doesn't have trouble supplying a comfortable reason for him to be here. There's good music, after all. He doesn't care if people are throwing their money away on the gaudy things around him; that's their business, and they can do as they please as long as he can still hear the singing over the sound of the slots. Maybe he's come here before, maybe he's only heard about it through word of mouth, but he's dressed like anyone else in the crowd, worn soft jeans and boots and brown checked flannel. He could be a regular.

But he doesn't think he is. He knows the song, but not the singer, and he would remember this singer. He's leaning back against the bar, glass of neat scotch forgotten in his hand as he tilts his head for a better glimpse of the man's face through the fence--there's the faintest whisper of a thought that it's missing something, some feature he's admired curiously before, something he would want to ask about, but it's gone before it even coalesces. There's no space to chase that dissonant little note when he can be soaking in the pleasure of that voice instead, and he switches off his racing thoughts to give himself over to that.

Danse hasn't expected the man to come over once he's finished his song, though of course he probably should have, seeing as how he's at the bar--and he certainly hasn't expected that look that takes the already-present little flutter in his stomach and amps it up. His mouth feels suddenly dry and tongue-tied in a way he doesn't think another sip of scotch will help. ]

I just arrived in town. [ He knows that now, with easy dream-certainty. ] I'm not really one for games of chance, but I heard the music from outside and thought I might come in to listen.

listening post bravo

[soldiernoclass]

[ An old army bunker filled with smashed robots and crumbling ruin isn't all that weird, in Zack's opinion. Sure, everything looks a little off, a little different, but he's watching their surroundings with a kind of obvious curiosity, rather than open trepidation or fear. He doesn't seem to mind the cold, either, even in a sleeveless uniform that doesn't seem particularly well suited to it. The only thing that does get to him is that stifling atmosphere, the weight of something he doesn't understand and doesn't know to expect closing in on him, making him antsy to get moving. Get out of here, wherever here is.

If that means leading the way out, he's more than willing to do it. Finding the way conveniently, abruptly blocked puts a damper on that fleeting moment of half-desperate enthusiasm to find the exit, though.

Zack jerks back a step - and then straightens up reflexively, the vague air of military about the guy blocking their way enough to trip up that learned soldier behavior. He's wondering when exactly he forgot who the commanding officer on this mission was, when the guy cuts in with what sounds like an order.

Just as much on reflex, Zack looks around behind him, expression turning briefly, hopefully imploring as his gaze lands on Danse. (C'mon, man, help him out, here. Aren't they in this together?) ]

Uh, what thing...?

[purplexing]

Donnie frowns at that. First impact... "I'll have to bother that guy to see what all else he's been holding back information-wise," he says, not particularly annoyed despite how his tone might sound. He always sounds like that.

"They're called Moon Warps, is what I heard. Which is when people can completely lose it. Most of the changes experienced during it fade once it's over, but some..." He glances back at his wings, giving a brief flutter.

[solitarysoul]

"W-well, it was just written on the tower." Akechi probably assumed other people read it. He would have. "Its not like he hid it." Why does he feel the need to defend Akechi? He doesn't know and isn't going to worry about it right now.

"That's what the warnings call them. We've lived through two so far and they've both been crazy. I think most of us lost our minds in the first one. The last one seemed to be more the area changing."

[purplexing]

Judging from the confused look on the turtle teen's face, it seems he hadn't been aware of that. But after things started exploding upon contact, who can blame him for not wanting to risk getting closer?

"Two seems like enough. I hope this isn't a consistent occurrence. When did the last one happen?" he asks. "Did the landscape change with the other one you went through?"

[solitarysoul]

"I don't...I'm not sure. I don't remember much. I know a lot of us transformed and lost our minds and some other monsters attacked. I mostly remember trying to protect the convoy."

[wereperrito]

Jack gives his face one good slurp with his tongue, then just nuzzles his cheek and ear a moment before sitting back, forepaws on his knees so he can sit up at least. "Sorry. I didn't really mean to knock you down," he admits. "But look! I'm an actual wolf! Isn't that so much better than the wolfman thing I am for the full moon?"

[purplexing]

That's not very reassuring, but Donnie remembers how hard it had been to keep his focus once things started getting more intense. It had been harder still the more he'd taken on injuries, and the monsters that came from the tower did not give them a break.

"...what do you know about the shields for the Convoy?" he asks.

[wereperrito]

It would certainly have to be a wild request, or at least one Jack didn't honestly think he could fulfill. He's already nodding agreement, albeit slightly nervous agreement, as Serph's hands start to glow. "Oh wow," he says, mostly under his breath, because he also doesn't want to distract Serph from his magic.

His hands both hover in the air around Serph as he gets clearly more and more exhausted, not wanting to grab him if he's still working but afraid of what might happen if Serph just keeps going right until he collapses. Thankfully it doesn't quite go that far, and Jack surges up to catch him before he can actually stagger or fall. "Are you all right?" he demands, there's more worry in his voice than anything else.

[solitarysoul]

"Nothing, really. It took them a bit to power up that first night but when they did they seemed to work perfectly. For now at least."

[purplexing]

"Oh."

Donnie looks back at the dead cyborg before hesitantly reaching out to tap a finger against the gun it clutched, letting out a breath when nothing seems to trigger.

"...my brother and I were a ways from the Convoy when things started happening at the tower. Or we went farther, I'm...not sure- but anyway, I flew us back towards it. The shields were straining, but they weren't completely out. Passing through it as we were...hurt."

[bufudine]

Serph leans heavily on Jack and closes his eyes, assurance in his voice. "The vertigo will pass."

It did, the other few times he's used it. If he keeps his eyes shut, the lack of additional sensory input helps him stabilise more quickly. But the inconvenience rankles and chafes.

"Magic is not meant to be like this," he murmurs. It's not useful for combat.

[solitarysoul]

"I wasn't at it either time there was a warp. And I never tried to get inside the shields. Well, not during the moon warps, at least. But I've seen monsters, like, bounce off them."