monstertruckers: (Default)
monstertruckers ([personal profile] monstertruckers) wrote in [community profile] route666rp2025-05-06 05:39 pm

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











hexrot: (pic#17857984)

[personal profile] hexrot 2025-05-22 02:45 pm (UTC)(link)
[ in these crevices, jayce has been alone for too long. he's been deprived of touch, company, everything he's been so accustomed to receiving even if it depleates his social battery from time to time. what jayce used to have was at least a bit of choice in when he needed the solitude of the forge, but being stripped completely from the world made him . . . skittish. wanting to swallow it before it could escape from his fingers like water. he shivers at touch, sweltering with fever, grips back perhaps with an uncomfortable tightness, because in his mind it's the first time in months someone solid has been around that wasn't a fever mirage, or a wall, a rock, a roach or other scurrying creature— ]

Food— I've been trying, trap the piximanders, but I— [ his hoarse voice, from screaming or not even using it much at all cracks. his throat snaps tight, and the strain makes his words quiver: ] I can't get up.
bufudine: (come with me :|)

[personal profile] bufudine 2025-05-24 06:35 pm (UTC)(link)
[Serph's gaze slides to Jayce's leg. The leg that he's so accustomed to seeing in a brace. From his observations, whatever injury that necessesitated the brace's use left Jayce needing to rest it periodically, like the times they were standing and talking, before Jayce requests they sit.

But... that leg doesn't have the brace now, does it?]


How did you injure yourself?
hexrot: (pic#17857968)

[personal profile] hexrot 2025-05-28 09:52 pm (UTC)(link)
[ no, there's no brace, only a hammer off to the side that does not look as strange and corrupted as the one jayce carries about when they're waking. its metal edges are eroding with some kind of . . . rusty rot that might be familiar in patterning and color, but it hasn't been overtaken. just too heavy to even move, now with its hex-powered mechanisms destroyed.

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


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

[personal profile] bufudine 2025-06-03 03:36 pm (UTC)(link)
[Serph winces. That hammer Jayce held in the waking world had seemed incredibly heavy, except when it was activated, corruption humming through its core. But this hammer looks near pristine in comparison. Like Jayce, it looks like the wear and tear of time has been peeled back.

His gaze stays on Jayce's injured leg, can't quite help the subconscious swallow of saliva as hunger gnaws at the edges of his consciousness more insistently than usual.]


Why do you regret making it?
hexrot: (pic#17858002)

[personal profile] hexrot 2025-06-04 11:05 pm (UTC)(link)
Why?

[ jayce scoffs, saliva spits past his teeth, hungry as the irritation bubbles on an empty stomach. his anger is not for serph— it is because, this thing, this very thing that destroyed him destroyed other lives beforehand. jayce doesn't seem ready to talk about it, not directly, but he sees that child nearly every night. sees the ire in his mother coming to rip him apart for what he did. ]

Hextech was supposed to help lives, not— destroy them. Viktor was right.
bufudine: (come with me :|)

[personal profile] bufudine 2025-06-16 04:45 pm (UTC)(link)
[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?
hexrot: (pic#17857961)

[personal profile] hexrot 2025-06-18 03:17 pm (UTC)(link)
Of course not—

[ he's quick to snap that out, and all too quickly remembers viktor all over again— he was the one to spur jayce into discovery, breaking an entering, running the risk of getting prison time or even worse, banishment? and they still did it. because you don't ask the damn world for permission to change it. ]

There's taking risks— and there's . . . Ignoring the signs.

[ he feels . . . unfocused. brittle. his stomach makes a terrible noise and he's once again, realizing he's starving out of his damn mind. jayce presses hands to his temples, but next time he looks to serph, his eyes linger too long on his neck. ]

We're scaring off the piximanders.
Edited 2025-06-18 15:18 (UTC)
bufudine: (don't say that... :|)

[personal profile] bufudine 2025-06-23 12:51 am (UTC)(link)
[The abrupt change in topic brings his hunger back into awareness with hyper clarity. As Jayce looks at his neck, Serph's gaze is drawn to Jayce's injured leg.]

Your leg.

[He swallows. When did he start salivating?]

We can't leave it like that.
hexrot: (pic#17918393)

[personal profile] hexrot 2025-06-23 08:20 pm (UTC)(link)
[ jayce snarls back with wild eyes, furious, as if to ask what? what can i do? smacking the gravel at his sides that just about finish scaring the piximanders off. ]

What do you suggest?

[ nothing, if he still wants any rate of success when considering get out of here. when the fever passes. when the bone sets. when his leg heals. it will heal—

until jayce's thoughts sputter like a dying engine. until the cogs come together and turn in a direction that is quick enough understanding the implication. he's that hungry, and he knows serph enough— or call it a shared instinct, now he can only shake his head, sweating cold. ]


. . . N— [ he shakes again, ] No. No—
bufudine: (Default)

[personal profile] bufudine 2025-06-24 05:12 pm (UTC)(link)
[Serph remains calm in the face of Jayce's fear, gaze steady and sympathetic.]

It's infected. It will spread to the rest of you.

[Even though the hunger gnaws ever more insistently, Serph doesn't move. Doesn't dare to move, lest he is unable to resist the siren's call of simply tearing into Jayce.]

You want to survive, don't you?
hexrot: (pic#17857973)

cw: suicide ideation

[personal profile] hexrot 2025-06-26 03:00 am (UTC)(link)
Serph—

[ yes, he wants to survive. he does, he's realized it in the worst of ways. he needs to, despite thinking a few times too many about what it would've been like, if he'd jumped those years ago. he thinks if it might just be best, to end this all here before the present caught up to this devastating future. how easy it would be to take the sharpest stone he could find, tear his wrists open and watch the bleak future go dim in his eyes. he'd die and no one would find him. the world, perhaps, would only miss his presence, the image they've built of him, and realize in his cruel absence what they've done to drive him here.

but the rational part of jayce agrees. he's right. you'll die before you get out of here. that depressed, defeated part of him thinks maybe i should just rot, but— jayce's irrationality shrieks so much louder, as does his actual will to live. to survive. to get out of here and reach those who mattered more than all of this. he shakes his head again, his rack of antlers following, his eyes swelling with tears as the lower eyelids rise halfway up and his lower lip hanging into unconforming shapes, of could-be words before he can finally answer, a shaken: ]


No[ it's natural, to refuse to amputate. to be without a part of you. to be terrified of the prospect. ] I'll sign my death sentence, I'll— [ his eyes climb the terrible incline he fell down from, ] I-I won't be able to climb, when it heals— It could heal.

[ but for all they knew, he was babbling right through a fever that may take him first. ]