route666rp | MAY EVENT LOG

Entry tags:

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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There's a wolf trotting through the high school in Buffy's hellmouth hometown. A wolf with blue-gray fur streaked with white, and six tails.

He can smell Faith here, but he doesn't know where she is. He keeps stopping, sticking his nose in the air, and scenting deeply. He's not sure if it's safe to call for her, if she's in hiding or not. There's definitely a feel or pursuit and fear to this dream. He's had plenty of those, he knows it well. But if he can find her, maybe he can pull her to a better dream?

He is an eternal and intentional optimist, okay.

There's always something calming about slaying. The stress, the tension, it all melts away. It's just you and a monster that needs to be put down. Like, for instance, a werewolf.

Something inside her nags suddenly, tugs at her, and there's a moment of something like static flickering through the dream.

She remembers laughing dismissively at the werewolf's admission. 'Hey, long as you don't go scratching at me or humping my leg, we're five-by-five.'

She sneers silently, continuing to stalk through the halls of the school. Just another enemy. Just another person the in the boss's way. Just another one of Buffy's friends. The nagging voice in her head shuts up.

And she thinks she sees movement down the hall. Not a wolf she knows, but he'll probably bleed just the same, right?

She considers her approach. Could just go for the open fight. Punching something to death sounds kinda fun right now. Or maybe she could just try to end it quickly, throw the knife, go for the vitals. Or she could toy with him a little.

He's sniffing at the air. Tracking something. He thinks he's hunting her.

Yeah, definitely toy with him.

"Sorry, Fluffy, I'm fresh out of milk bones."

Her voice echoes through the halls around them as she slowly begins backing away toward the library. She knows this school, and she's betting he doesn't. This is gonna be fun.

Come and get her.

Jack's ears perk up and his head turns in the direction of the voice. "Faith?" he calls, not loudly, lest there's actual trouble, but loud enough that she can still hear him. That definitely sounded like Faith, and her smell is everywhere. She had been chagrined the last time she made a dog joke, though... maybe she doesn't know it's him?

He starts padding in her direction, adding, "It's just me. It's Jack."

The weird white noise flickers through the dream again when he says his name, and she pauses for a tiny, fractional moment, long enough for Jack to see her more clearly. She's definitely not the Faith he knew. Younger, for one thing, clearly still just a teenager. Heavy makeup, flashy attention-grabbing clothing designed to be provocative rather than practical.

And then the pause passes, and her face and voice take on the same arrogant sneer.

"Last guy I played with wasn't so chatty."

She spreads her arms, as if inviting him to attack, as she starts slowly backing away again. When the sneer fades, what he glimpses beneath seems... tense. Twitchy. A totally different beast from the Faith he's familiar with, like she's only barely keeping a handle on something volatile.

"Just try to put up a better fight than he did."

"Er, well, I don't actually know how to fight," he says, pausing at the sight of her, ears skewed in confusion. She looks wrong. She definitely sounds wrong. She still smells like herself, though. Less dead, but still her. "I certainly don't want to fight you. So I don't think I'll put up much fight at all."

"Not feeling up to it, huh?"

Oh, bullshit. How stupid does he think she is, exactly?

"That's fine with me, baby, I can do all the work tonight."

As soon as the blunt innuendo leaves her lips, the strange static-like distortion flickers through the dream again, and this time she visibly looks conflicted about something. Then she grunts in frustration, the static vanishing again as she does so.

On second thought, screw this cat and mouse bullshit.

The grunt turns into an aggressive snarl as she whips the knife at him in a swift, fluid movement. Better dodge, Jack.

"Well, that's a bit much," Jack complains. "You're really much younger than-- oh!"

He leaps back just in time, but only just. His supernatural reflexes have followed him into the dream, but she's also a slayer. Her reflexes are pretty good, too.

"I would really rather not fight," he says, backing hastily further away, tails drooping. "Faith... You're my friend, remember?"

The strange distortion flickers through the dream again, but this time she doesn't pause. She just flashes a dangerous smile belied by wide, unhinged eyes.

"Friends, huh?"

And then her face contorts into a snarl again as she sprints toward him, moving far faster than he ever would have seen her move in the waking world. The hissing and distortions in the background don't fade this time, but they don't seem to be affecting her anymore.

Jack backpedals rapidly, tails tucked down unhappily, then bolts to the side, hoping to avoid getting slashed. "Faith, please-- I am not going to hurt you! Even if you hurt me, I won't do it."

But he would really rather not get hurt, if he can avoid it! So he's running for now, getting around a library shelf and ducking down in the dim light and slinking along on his belly as quietly as he can. He has no idea what kind of night vision she has, on top of everything else, but if he stays close to the ground he ought to at least be safer, right?

When he ducks aside and flees, the snarl subsides with eerie swiftness. She smiles almost playfully as she retrieves her knife.

"Not even if I ask real nice?"

The distortions in the dream become more intense, the already-low light dimming and graying, the spatial relations not quite lining up. The younger, more unstable dream Faith clearly doesn't notice, or at least doesn't act like she does. She follows him slowly, knife gripped loosely in her hand.

She flicks the light switch at the entrance to the library, but nothing happens. She shrugs and continues slowly pursuing him, but apparently the darkness is indeed slowing her down. She starts off playing "fair"- or what seems to pass for it in her mind- ducking around shelves and trying to find him, but it doesn't take long at all- maybe a few shelves and a few misses- for her impatience to get the best of her. Her grip on the knife tightens, and she begins irritably tapping the flat of the blade against her other palm.

Finally, the smile runs out. She rips a shelf free of the anchors holding it to the floor, books flying in all directions, and effortlessly hurls it across the room toward the door. Not even trying to hit him, just looking to get it out of the way.

"I'm not great at math, how many shelves we still got?"

And then she grabs the next one and throws it as well.

"There are many things I would do for you, Faith," Jack calls, trying to do it in a place where his voice will bounce a bit, making his location harder to triangulate, and also to keep moving as he does. "Fighting with you is not one of them."

When she starts throwing shelves, though, he thinks he probably ought to get out of here before he finds out whether dying in a magic shared dream means dying when awake.

He has an idea, but he has to time it right...

"Faith, you're dreaming," he tries to say, "just think for a moment of how you met me."

And then he flickers an illusion to life moving away from him, another six-tailed wolf peeking around one of the tables nearer the back of the library, while he moves quietly towards the door, trying to keep the circulation desk and the remains of that first shelving unit between them.

"See, you say stuff like that..."

And there it is. She sees the wolf peering at her behind the table, and she charges it down, flipping the table abruptly aside.

"You're gonna hurt my feelings."

And that's when she lashes out to try to grab the wolf, only to have it slip through her hands.

She looks around the room wildly, her face contorted with unbridled rage and frustration, and then she struggles again to force the fake smile back on.

"Guess your head is in the game after all. I can work with that."

"I am turning into a kitsune, apparently," Jack allows. "Maybe I have a trick or two. But nothing to hurt you with!"

Jack throws up a second illusion of himself behind her, bolting for the other end of the library, while he runs for the door. With luck, she'll go for the wrong one. The sound of his speaking comes from first one image of himself, then the other.

She glances from the one Jack to the other, teeth gritting in frustration again. She takes only a moment to consider between the two before turning and throwing her knife at the one behind her.

And once again, it passes harmlessly through an illusion.

She lets out a grunt of annoyance. For a moment, she considers retrieving the knife- but screw it. She doesn't need the knife. She wheels around, empty-handed, and runs after the fleeing werewolf.

Jack tries to pick up speed, skidding around the corner into the school hallway outside the library door. Then it's just a very long, straight corridor, and if he doesn't get out fast, he knows Faith is likely to get him. And he really doesn't want Faith to get him. She'll regret that so much when she wakes up.

So he all-out runs, even though there doesn't even seem to be an end to the dream-hallway.

This is, unfortunately, far more Faith's battlefield. For all that she played at the cat and mouse game before, she's never been as good at that as she is at applying brute force to a problem until it goes away.

And she is, it turns out, really really fast when she can just sprint in a straight line.

There's a sizeable head start that puts Jack well ahead of her, but it still takes her very little time to catch up and tackle the wolf to the ground.

"C'mon, lover, you can't quit now, we're just getting to the good part."

She punctuates the end of the sentence with a brutal backhand, and the static-like distortion ripples through the dream again, the last of the color leaching from the world until the two of them are the only ones that aren't in greyscale.

Jack gives a sharp, short, canine yelp of pain and tries to wriggle away, out from under her. He doesn't, pointedly, try to bite or claw or even kick. A little phantom fire flickers up around him, as if trying to cushion him against the next blow. "Faith, please--"

"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.

Jack gives up on even trying to wriggle away when she slams him against the wall, a little stunned but mostly aware there's nothing he can do without actually hurting her, and he refuses to do that. The phantom fire doesn't even hurt her when it flickers around her hand on his throat, it just cushions the blow, like a barrier of soft air between her and the muzzle she tries to smack.

His tails tuck up against his legs at the second hit, and he looks back at her with ears pinned back but no teeth bared.

And then suddenly she's-- herself again. He drops to the ground, tongue lolling out a little as he tries to get his breath back. "Faith?" he coughs.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

MAY EVENT LOG

III

You know she's evil in the dream because she's making dog jokes on purpose!

Re: You know she's evil in the dream because she's making dog jokes on purpose!

GOD FAITH'S FACIAL EXPRESSIONS IN B3/B4/A1 ARE SO DIFFERENT FROM THE ONES IN A4/S7

no subject

God why did younger-Faith always have to be Like This?

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject