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

[firstsoldier]

Not for the first time, Sephiroth's forced to consider that there are others with an even narrower instruction focus than he'd had growing up. Serph should be aware of what he's implying, hadn't there been plenty around the convoy?

Or something else is afoot, and he can't quite put a finger on it. "Vegetation," he concludes after a drawn out pause to consider how to explain something that should be obvious. "Any form of growing thing. Even if this is a desert, there should be something other than buildings, vehicles, and statues, however sparse."

But there's only more of the same. Dust, dust, and ruins for good measure.

He ignores the part of his thoughts nagging at him to return to where that warm red smell lingers on the air and do something about the itch of hunger reminding him he'd skipped three meals already. The longsword disappears in a swirl of violet energy, leaving hands free to work on testing nearby doors one by one. "Have you seen anything at all alive besides ourselves and the monsters?"

[bufudine]

Vegetation... An image forms in his mind. Plants. Bushes, scrub-like. Trees. Somehow, he knows what those are, despite not having seen them before.

Serph keeps watch while his companion tests the doors. He hadn't seen much else alive. That in of itself is not that unusual to him. But he hadn't expect that trait to be present in whatever land he's found himself in.

"The monsters were humans. They transformed into demons to attack me." Serph thinks about the sword that had simply disappeared. "Are you not the same?"

[firstsoldier]

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."

[bufudine]

Serph can agree with that; demon, AI, dead human... he is more than any one of those things. He is himself. Though he understands intuitively that it's not the type of answer people are looking for when they ask him what he is.

But there's a certain amount of practicality to be had. Because he is a demon, then he must take action to ensure he and his Tribe lived.

"When I was forced to change, I adapted to it. The was no other way to survive." The world influences the person and the person influences the world. "What makes demons uncivilised?"

[firstsoldier]

"In this specific context, morality, or the lack thereof." One black gloved hand rises, makes a so-so gesture. "It has other meanings in other situations."

Others could explain the nuance of it better. He struggled with articulating things on a good day, here, it was harder yet. "If one must kill, then it is important to be quick, kill no more than necessary, and select targets more carefully than the first thing to blunder past."

It's clearly a struggle to explain this, with pauses and hesitation that suggests he's more used to acting on it than speaking of it. "All life devours life, but what separates us from the monsters, the demons, what makes us civilized, is how we choose to inflict the price of our ongoing survival."

[bufudine]

While in this strange (dream) land, without conscious memory of the waking world, of the blue skies and the monsters that yet live beneath it, the words strike him as from someone of the Junkyard who has given a great amount of thought to the nature of their existence. There is a kind of mercy in the way this stranger describes it. A mercy that others would fail to recognise unless they, too, knew what it was like to be steeped in blood.

He is reminded of Lupa and the quick, efficient slaughter he left in his wake before Lupa lost his sensibilities to his demon's hunger.

Serph nods. "Nirvana is meant to be a land without fighting." He hopes it to be a land without devouring, too; otherwise, if he brings everyone to Nirvana it will only be a matter of time before they will need to devour each other. "Until then, there is no shame in doing what we must."

One of the doors leads to a long staircase that goes down, down, down. It's too dark to see where it exits, but it does at least seem to bring them far from this scorching heat.

[firstsoldier]

All he's known is fighting, since he was old enough to hold a weapon. Once he dreamed of something else, of anything else, but Shinra beat those dreams out of him long ago. The idea of a land without fighting ... was a dream.

A pleasant dream, but nothing more than fiction. Human nature - or monster - would win out eventually. Greed alone would see to it. "Nirvana. 'The Promised Land'. A place where all needs are met, and only happiness exists. A precious thing to hope for, when all there is is war and death."

And greed propelled its search too.

The stairs down offered reprieve from the heat and glare of the dark sun, and Sephiroth considers the dusty street for a long silent moment before proceeding into the blackness. It'll take his eyes a moment or two to adjust but not long. "There is a reason, I think, that hope was at the bottom of Pandora's box. Of all evils, it is the cruelest. Do you have good night vision?"

[bufudine]

Serph doesn't understand the reference. Why would hope be at the bottom of someone's box? How could hope have a tangible form?

Serph nods in response to the question. If anything, he's more accustomed to dim to low light, as well as darkness. The light of this world, this sun, is so painfully bright to his eyes he welcomes the prospect of going somewhere darker. It would also take time for his vision to adjust to the darkness of the stairwell but he doesn't hesitate to take point as he enters.

It is simply a long, long stretch of stairs that eventually lead to a pair of double dours opening into a room that is clearly used as light storage as well as functioning as a bit of a dumping ground for unwanted furniture. Once the coast appears to be clear of hostiles, Serph asks, "What is the significance of Pandora's box?"

[firstsoldier]

The position Sephiroth takes as Serph passes is just enough room to put Masamune to work if necessary without risk of hitting the other silver-haired man. It also gives him opportunity to observe, and wonder what happened to the changes he'd seen at a distance, now entirely absent.

Nothing lurks immediately below, but that didn't mean something wouldn't be out there; he remains listening and watching for signs of something hiding in the dark. "It is a story passed on to instruct against unchecked curiosity, disobedience to orders and its lethal consequences. The short version is a woman was given a box that somehow contained all the harm in the world, and told never to open it. She, being curious, opened it anyway and unleashed death, war, pestilence and so on. The very last thing to escape the box was hope. ... As the box is described as holding all evil, not all evil and one good thing, one must infer from the tale that hope too, is an evil."

Although Sephiroth's voice stays quiet, in both stairwell and storage beyond he's not hard to hear, echoes working in his favor. "Pandora and her box are fictional, but the symbolism slips in regardless."

If he takes a minute to investigate the furniture it might be forgiven. It all looked modern enough.

I thought I had done my tags to Sephiroth but apparently not??

[bufudine]

Serph mulls over that idea. Hope... The word is unfamiliar to him, but somehow he already knows what that is. It is the belief that things will get better. The belief that hell is not all there is.

It is the belief that Nirvana exists and can be reached.

"If it is evil to live in hope, then what purpose is there in life?" Serph's voice is quiet, even, but not subdued. He doesn't yet have an answer to the question, but he persists regardless.

it's a sneaky tag. hiding in the bushes.

[firstsoldier]

"Philosophy is not my strong suit, but.. I will do my best." The meaning of life is not exactly a light topic for idle conversation.

But there's no immediate answer, because he has to weigh it against his entire existence, as nothing more than a weapon and puppet for the company. It takes him a couple of minutes to compose an idea. "Life doesn't have an inherent purpose. It doesn't need one. A rock doesn't have a purpose, nor the air nor water nor sunlight. We are the same. We exist. Like the rock, we may be made useful by others, or as we are thinking creatures we may choose to be, but it is not built in."

In the darkness, they are perhaps melancholy words. There's a dull, distant ache to it, like it's an old hurt struck again. "I do not find life pointless because of that lack of inherent purpose. Quite the opposite. You may choose your own purpose. You are free to do what you wish, in the end bound only by the chains you choose to place on yourself. If you have a goal, pursue it. If there's something you want, make it reality. You don't need empty hope, you need conviction and action."

It would matter more, if they weren't becoming inhuman monstrosities with a taste for blood. Part of him yearned to backtrack before the sun spoilt the meat left in the sun.

[bufudine]

A purpose that one makes for themselves...

His pursuit of Nirvana may have been one originally programmed into him, but he can say with that conviction that the goal is now his own. As others turned away from the Law or found it held no allure, the vision of the blue sky and sandy shores remains burned into the back of his eyelids.

As if summoned by his thoughts, the stairwell and storage room melts away, concrete fragmenting into sand as darkness gives way to soft light. Gentle waves lap at their feet and a cruise ship floats in the horizon. The sun is no longer black, looking normal and bathing them in warm but gentle rays. Behind them is a large mansion, but there's a strange void in the gaps between that one's gaze tends to slide over; those are the incomplete parts of Serph's vision.

"If you do not have hope," Serph begins, his appearance returned to his many winged form, feathers pointed towards the sun, "where does your conviction to pursue your goal come from?"

[firstsoldier]

That.. is a sudden and very unexpected transition, and Sephiroth doesn't know the thoughts that turn wasteland to seaside paradise. It's jarring, even for him it's hard to hide his surprise, squinting briefly up at the sun and blue sky with a pained wince; full dark to full sun is not easy on anyone's eyes.

"Realistic experience sets realistic goals," he says, looking around more carefully. He still has Masamune, but there's .. nothing hostile here. Nothing feels like it should be a danger, somehow, and the sword disappears in a ripple of dark violet energy. Something's still off, but it isn't in a way that flags as immediately hostile to a lifetime of battlefield experience. "I don't need to believe I am capable of what I wish to do. I know I am, and knowledge is stronger. Where.. is this?"

[bufudine]

If a goal is only ever 'realistic', then is that not a chain? A long length of chain is still a chain nonetheless. Idly, he wonders what personal goal Sephiroth pursues.

Serph shakes out his wings before tucking them at his back, gaze roving over the familiar horizon. "This is Nirvana. Not the Convoy's destination, but the one I seek."

Although the beach is idyllic, there's a distinct lack of wildlife to it. No sign of gulls or other sea birds that might circle both land and ocean, nor of creatures that might scuttle the sandy shores. Serph doesn't know there should be more.

[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."

[bufudine]

Serph considers those words. He agrees, but for a different reason. There ought to be people here. The people he would call friends and comrades.

"These are only the fragments I remember." So the vision is incomplete. But more importantly... "My comrades will be here. Laughing. Smiling. No longer would we need to do battle to survive."

[firstsoldier]

"A life without needing to fight and kill.." He digs a boot into the sand, knowing now there'll be no variance in pebbles and shells. This representation is just that, a representation. Was the earlier place, if this wasn't real?

Was any of it? "Is that what you hope for?" There's no acorn in Sephiroth's tone or stance, he didn't like warfare no matter how good at it he was. He just knew it was an impossible dream. Peace. "An ordinary life.. far from any need of battle."

Maybe that would be a reason to hope, for most. Could they make it reality? Could Serph? "A man I know wishes for similar, believes dreams and honor are the only way we could ever achieve it." There are no little broken shells in the sand. "It would be nice ... If you and he were right, and I wrong."

acorn...

[bufudine]

The waves roll gently up the beach's short, washing back out in a steady rhythm.

Honour... He wonders if the man Sephiroth knows would have much to speak about to Lupa, if they could have met. The concept seems to have resonated deeply with Gale, a kind of earth-shattering revelation that his strategist has come to that Serph isn't quite privy to.

If the hope of a peaceful, ordinary life isn't what drives Sephiroth, then, "What's your goal?"

[firstsoldier]

Sephiroth didn't bother with things like hopes and dreams. He knew their futility. But he could still support his friends' ideals along those same lines, when possible. He didn't have to have Angeal's deep passion for honor to encourage it, he didn't have to share Genesis' love for theater to go with him to opening nights.

"Currently, reach Nirvana and return to my friends' sides." Simple, straightforward. Terribly unambitious. "If they are here, find them first, before either one decides what's been inflicted on us is a good excuse to cause trouble." Something in his tone suggests he's not thinking of the usual sort of monster trouble in murder and destruction.

[bufudine]

Hm.

That kind of answer explains much about Sephiroth's thoughts and responses. Serph doesn't think any less of the other man. There were many who did not have any particular goal of their own, going along with the goals of those around them. In a way, it's a life rooted in the present.

It isn't a bad thing.

Serph nods. It doesn't matter if others do not believe in his dream; he will strive for it regardless. "The path to our goals are the same." The smallest of smiles curls at the corners of his mouth. "When we reach journey's end, we'll see what paths await."