route666rp | MAY EVENT LOG

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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

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I don't think they geckos are the ones judging me.

[ Len might, though, if he looks particularly ungainly and gawky, like this. Which he feels like he does— At least right up until Len wraps a hand around his arm. Then he just feels warm, too much so for the soft chill in the night air. ]

I'm relaxed. [ He's not relaxed. And Len sliding closer to him isn't exactly helping. ]

[ Arcade is not relaxed, he's about as taut as he always is, but Len doesn't bother correcting him. The instruction is as much a way to pass the time as it is an excuse to be - selfishly - closer to him. It isn't difficult to concentrate, but the proximity does lend itself to all the heat that comes with being practically on top of another man.

Len lets him focus on the scope hanging in front of his dominant eye, sliding down leisurely onto his stomach next to him. His palm shifts away from forearm to stock, cradling the hand wrapped under it for support and guidance. ]

See the camp down there?

[ He murmurs, shifting the barrel ever so slightly to secure a decent view for Arcade, giving him the moment to adjust his eyes. ]

They're a little over two klicks away. Leader's got a dumb helmet on.

[ Arcade mutters a sort of vague, indecipherable affirmation to that, more concerned with the feeling of Len's hand folded over his than speaking clearly. It's not as if he needs to, anyway; Len knows exactly where he's aiming his rifle, seems to know exactly what Arcade is going to see, even before he sees it. Like a tidy little magic trick (only at the end of this one, the audience members haven't volunteered, and he never un-disappears them).

Dumb is an understatement, he realizes, squinting through the surprisingly clear scope. And it momentarily distracts him from the weightier part of this demonstration, the less pleasant thoughts of what, exactly, it is Len does with this rifle, beyond the not so casual, long-distance voyeurism. ]

Is that a plunger? [ A soft laugh breaks his brief silence, and he lifts his head without thinking, turning into the scant space left between them. ]

Do you think he really goes around committing atrocities in that, or was it a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing?

I think his IQ's just low enough he thinks it's threatening.

[ And maybe it would be, were either of them high of their fucking rockers like every other raider down there. Idiots probably flip between Jet and backwater swill like it's the answer to all their prayers, and speaking from experience with combining those substances, Len can say with confidence that the right freak wearing the wrong hat might scare the piss out of him, too.

His head turns after his professional assessment, meeting Arcade's gaze in a space substantially smaller than their usual professional distance. The last time they were this close was when they had to squeeze into an offshoot of a slot canyon to wait out a deathclaw tearing apart a small band of Fiends, and he is extremely aware of the proximity.

It isn't subtle, the way Len's eyes drop briefly to Arcade's nose, his mouth, before refocusing. ]

Could just send you down there. [ He flashes a toothy grin, bright in the moonlight. ] You'd scare the piss out of 'em.

[ The last time they were this close, it was a matter of life and death - chiefly, avoiding the latter while eavesdropping on a bunch of fiends'. It wasn't enjoyable, not even in that guilty way Arcade sometimes enjoys these moments of unintended proximity between them - or used to, anyway. Knowing Len's reputation, he's made concerted efforts not to let himself linger on the courier's more charming aspects. But this isn't then, and it isn't reality, either. And the lines are always a little fuzzier in dreams, aren't they?

Arcade doesn't mask the twist of his lips into a lopsided, answering smirk. Nor does he prevent himself manfully from mirroring Len's not brief enough glance downward to study his mouth. ]

Ha ha. [ There's more genuine amusement bleeding into his deadpan sarcasm than there should be, but being convincing obviously isn't his highest priority, as he drops his hand from the rifle, shifting closer. ] No, keep it up. You're hilarious.

You think so?

[ He quips smoothly, noting the way that Arcade shifts his already waning interest in the weaponry to the scant space between them. Len has never outright had the privilege of seeing Arcade flirt with anybody before, largely because he seems to spends the large majority of his time tearing somebody a new asshole instead of hitting on them, and who could blame him? Slim pickings out here in the Mojave; even Mr. New Vegas would agree. ]

I got jokes.

[ The deft hands of a surgeon fall from his rifle and Len just as carefully reaches for it, grasping around the stock and gently maneuvering it out of Arcade's arms. He places it at his other side, behind him, measured and deliberate the way that he always is with his tools. It feels oddly rote, shifting it out of the way to remove any potential barrier between them. When he settles again it's on both elbows, bumping shoulders and considering him carefully. ]

Three men walk into the fort. One of 'em is nursing a wound, the other is lookin' for work, and the third is there to cause trouble. What's the one thing they have in common?

[ ...Of course he does. But Arcade can feign interest in a most likely terrible joke, if he has to. (He does actually find Len's sense of humor endearing, and that's one small guilty pleasure he does allow himself.)

Crossing his arms in front of him, where he's leaned on his own elbows, Arcade sighs a breath out through his nose and pretends to consider an answer he knows he has no hope of ever coming up with. (The truth will be infinitely dumber, he's certain.) ]

All three of them are you?

[ This time, the deadpan is convincing. ]

[ It's not a bad answer. In fact, it's probably the most logical answer, so he can't even be peeved about a joke being made at his own expense when each part is applicable to their first meeting. Hard to forget the expression of shock, then incredulity, then ire on the face of a man that was needlessly tall, emerging from a tent to verbally tear him to shreds.

Len's mouth twitches in a small smile as Arcade makes a real show of his delivery, focused on the sharp edges of his profile in the moonlight. There are plenty of things he never declares out-loud because they're not worth saying, they're not worth receiving, or he thinks that - overall - it's much too soft a subject to play around with so flippantly.

Under normal circumstances he would demur to an equally stupid comeback or admission of his own propensity to being a nuisance, but that warm, comfortable, and dreamy quality to their surroundings means that he almost doesn't think when he says it. ]

None of 'em wanna kiss you as much as I do.

[ That's not the response he's expecting, one that seems a little too earnest for the moment - for Len, really, at all. But because this is only a dream, and it isn't even the first of many, nowhere near it, despite his best efforts to pretend there isn't anything substantive to be attracted to, in Len's perpetually charming facade— Arcade doesn't shy away from it, hedging back toward the middle ground he was expecting Len to drag them back toward, reliably.

Instead, he shrugs, feeling the dirt shift beneath his elbows, the cool air on his suddenly too-warm skin, all of it and none of it, because there is nothing here that matters (no matter how much some small part of him might wish it did). It's just a pleasantly passing fantasy. ]

What do you think I'm waiting for? [ He tips his head toward Len, that faint blush more visible in the moonlight, and gestures toward the distant camp beyond the rise they're resting on. ] One of them to come up and do it?

[ Part of him feels like it shouldn't be this easy - either to admit to something to this effect, or to have someone respond so favorably so fast - but the oversaturated quality of the ground beneath them, of each other, is easy to sink into. Never mind the fact that he's never said anything like this to Arcade, that they've never ventured this close, and that they probably never will.

The arm nearest to Arcade shifts between them, settling gingerly along the man's back, fingers at his nape. His hand feels like it's buzzing with the kind of desperate challenge he's been offered, not adept enough at finagling his own dreams to not lean into the path of least resistance. ]

Please shut up.

[ He says fondly, tenderly, reeling him in until he can cover Arcade's mouth with his own. ]

[ He isn't quiet, exactly, but he doesn't interject again before Len's lips are on his. It's the way he always imagines it, warm and sweet and not exactly soft, Len's lips a little chapped and his stubble a close kept but slightly unkempt bristle framing them. Perfect, really, as far as imaginary first kisses go.

Arcade reaches for him blindly, because by now his eyes have slipped shut, his hand missing Len's shoulder by a mile as he accidentally hooks his fingers in the open collar of one among many rumpled and perpetually half-unbuttoned shirts. He adapts, though, pressing the momentary advantage and pulling Len closer, rolling back onto a hip and slipping his other arm under Len's and around his back. ]

[ They've never done this before, something Len registers distantly, accompanied by the errant thought that it feels like they can't do this - either due to his own admitted reservations or Arcade's tendency to roll his eyes at every pointed gesture of flattery. They play around the subject but never commit. For these reasons it's easy to assume that what this is is Occam's Razor: a fantasy. Len has entertained plenty of those already, and will entertain plenty more in the future.

Arcade pulls him closer and Len leans in without hesitation, humming pleasantly as a hand fumbles over his chest and wraps tightly into the fabric of his shirt. He goes easy and slow, warmed by the contact and tugged onto his side, palm curling around the back of Arcade's neck to prevent him from pulling away even for air. The raiders in the valley might as well not even be there, entirely forgotten when Len licks into his mouth with obvious relish. ]

[ There are lines you don't cross, knowing what's on the other side - but that never really stops you from wondering, just the same. The wondering just usually isn't this vivid.

Arcade stifles a soft sound against Len's mouth as his tongue slips past his lips, eager and insistent. The hand holding him close is an unnecessary precaution; he doesn't think for a second of pulling away, ending this pleasant dream before he even has the time to properly luxuriate in it. Here, at least, and just for now, it doesn't feel so much like a betrayal or a profoundly foolish move. He can be selfish for a moment, blame it on his lonely subconscious drumming up something obvious to soothe the homesickness.

His hand is gripping Len's shirt a little too tightly, the hand at his back curling into a similar fist. Suddenly, the tension running through him is more anxious than anticipating, uneasy - but not because of Len. ]

[ Sex dreams aren't rare occurrences but they always feel a bit like they happen halfway through the act, and this is different. It seems to come naturally, fluidly, even if there are fewer barriers to entry and Arcade is suspiciously amenable to his attention. The fingers around the collar of his shirt, curling against his back, hold him securely in place and Len feels like he doesn't have to chase down the contact, complemented by eager reciprocation.

Warm, almost normal, before an undercurrent of anxiety shoots down into his stomach like an electric shock. The kind of sensation he hasn't felt in years and one that comes across as uniquely specific to the man currently exploring his mouth, who has professed, at times, a propensity to worry. Len leans back just enough to duck his head, pressing his mouth to the sharp line of Arcade's jaw. ]

You okay?

Yeah.

[ It's quick and kind of defensive, caught on a shuddering exhale as Len's lips find his pulse, just below the line of his jaw. When he tenses further, this time, it's only a result of fleeting surprise, the shiver that stubble scraping gently against his throat elicits carrying most of it away in its wake. ]

I'm fine.

[ He wants to be fine, anyway. He can't really help it. Usually this sort of dream is more a mirror of his more recent love life (before it died entirely). Decisive moves, little talking. Certainly no gentle touches or careful checking in. It's not a disappointing change from the norm, of course. But he isn't entirely sure how to handle it, either. ]

It's not because of you. [ Though Len probably already knows that. ]

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MAY EVENT LOG

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