(july intro log) WELCOME TO THE CONTAINMENT ZONE! (for real this time.)

[vestigemods]

JULY INTRO LOG

► PROMPT 1 ► WAKING UP

Whenever you're from or wherever you were, you awaken now with the mildest of headaches in-... oh, this is new. For some people, you wake in a cabin - in a bed, on the floor, amidst boxes in the basement - and for others, you wake up somewhere else entirely. Off in the woods. Between aisles in a run-down gas station. Lying on a branch ten feet up a local tree. Perhaps even on a leaky boat out on the middle of a lake. It's mid-morning, and across the nine square miles of containment zone, a little under two-dozen people are waking up just as you are. I'm sure you'll run into some of them soon enough.

This might be your first time waking up where you don't expect to be. If it is, consider yourself lucky to have missed what came before. For those have been through a Loop or three (or five or twelve), you'll find that waking this time feels different. It's as though you've woken from a dream - and that's what those memories feel like, trapped in the semi-tangible realm between dream and reality, though if pressed you can probably discern that they were undeniably real. (Or perhaps you can't - or perhaps some of the memories are missing altogether. This is hardly a precise science.)

Somewhere in your vicinity (in your hand, in your pocket, on your chest) is a smartphone, if you're able to recognize it as such. The models tend to vary, but they all share the capacity to connect to what seems to be an overarching network, able to connect to others with similar devices via text, voice calls, or even video messages.

But the phone is likely the least of your concerns, at least for now. More pressing is where exactly it is that you've awoken and whether or not you've woken up alone.

PROMPT 2 ► THE CABINS + LAKE

As many as a dozen cabins sit in the general vicinity of the lake, some along the shore and some a bit farther back in the woods. Perhaps you awoke in one, or perhaps you're stumbling into one after dragging yourself out of the lake or through a couple of miles of woods. Either way, you're in perhaps the best place you might have ended up. The cabin's amenities are sketchy but functional, and the kitchen is stocked with food...

And let's not forget about the pamphlets.

On at least a couple of nearby tables or countertops sit a handful of them, fanned for display. They're vividly colored, depicting what you might recognize as the landscape outside, and the title reads: THE CONTAINMENT ZONE AND YOU! Within these pamphlets, a conversationally cavalier voice explains a bit about the Containment Zone, which (as it turns out) you're stuck in right at this very moment.


"THE CONTAINMENT ZONE AND YOU", summarized


• Where am I?
  Earth. Well - an Earth. Definitely not your Earth. if that creates more questions than it answers, glance to your left and right and ask any follow-up questions to whomsoever seems least confused.


• Why am I here?
  To feed the elder gods with your death and/or suffering in order to prevent any more of an apocalypse than we already had.


• Can I leave?
  Voluntarily? No. Involuntarily? Probably not.


• What do you mean, 'death'??
  Oh, calm down. You'll come back.


• I have very important shit to be doing/people to be saving/weed to be smoking back home!
  Lucky for you: If you go back, we'll put you back right where and when you left off. You won't miss a thing.


• Isn't that how you break time!? I'm pretty sure that's how you break time.
  Only if you remember this place and/or what you've learned here when you get back. Which you won't.


• Supplies?
  Cabins and gas station.


• Cabins?
  Yours. Pick one.


• Lake?
  Safe. (For now.)


• Moon?
  Haunted.


• Who even are you?
  Call us the Technicians. Individual identities don't matter. We may give you sweets and toys but we're not your friends.


• Do you at least negotiate?
  We'll consider it. Depends on what you're asking for. And, of course, on what you have to offer.


• Wait! I'm (insert emotions) and have more questions!
  How unfortunate. Expect your next pamphlet in 4-6 weeks.




Well, that certainly is... something. Lots to discuss, lots to consider. If you're the get-right-to-business sort, that could easily occupy you for a good long while.

Alternatively: It's a hot day, and you've just ever-so-conveniently learned that the lake is 'safe (for now)'. Why not go for a dip to clear your head? The water is actually impressively clear, offering visual reassurance of the lack of abject horrors lurking below.

Those who do swim find that the lake is, as promised, mostly innocuous. 'Mostly' being the key phrase, as anyone who swims out close to the center will find it getting more and more difficult to stay on the surface. As if you're getting heavier and heavier, or your limbs are getting weaker and weaker. It isn't enough to drown you (probably), but you certainly might find yourself considering how peaceful it might be if you let yourself sink.

These thoughts are simple enough to push away in much the same way you might push through the heaviness of your limbs. One could consider it more a warning than anything: Even that which is 'safe' should be treated with proper caution. (Quick and senseless deaths are junk food to the elder gods - tasty but unsatisfying.)

PROMPT 3 ► THE GAS STATION

At the south end of the containment zone sits an old gas station, run-down and overgrown at first sight. It sits alongside a cracked asphalt road, one which (as you might discover) bisects the containment zone from the east wall to the west without a single other building in sight.

You may have woken up here, or perhaps you found it at the pamphlet's behest. Either way, it's a discovery that you'll thank yourself for many a time as throughout the next few months here, for reasons that become apparent the moment you step inside.

In sharp contrast with the outside, the inside of the gas station looks... well, like a functional gas station should. Floors and surfaces seem recently-wiped, shelves seem stocked and organized... It's enough that if you're familiar with gas stations as a concept, you might find yourself reflexively glancing around for an attendant.

But no attendant seems to be present. Just shelves and shelves of goods - perishables and nonperishables, first aid supplies and whatever else one might expect to find at such an out-of-the-way pit stop, all ready for the taking. You might even find an extra surprise. Oh, and let's not forget a nice array of THE CONTAINMENT ZONE AND YOU! pamphlets on the check-out counter, in case you missed them back at the cabins.

Maybe you encounter someone here - are they friend, or foe? Maybe they're as lost and confused as you are. Maybe they're reaching for that last fucking can of Spaghetti-Os and you're serious about your fucking Spaghetti-Os. At least one person is definitely waking up in a gas station fridge... Maybe you're lucky(?) individual who spots them and has to decide whether or not you've discovered a corpse where the soda should be. The world (or, at least, the gas station) is your oyster.

PROMPT 4 ► THE WOODS + BARRIER

The vast majority of the containment zone is covered in evergreen forest, populated with wildlife that look and act disarmingly normal. It may, in fact, be a nice quiet place to stroll in order to clear your head. While large swathes of the woods are moderately dense, there are a number of paths to make your way along should you choose to. Birds sing overhead, deer occasionally bound across the path ahead... If you didn't know any better, you might be able to forget that this isn't a normal stretch of woods somewhere not far from home.

But nothing in the containment zone is truly harmless. The blackberry bushes that line many a cabin (you remember, the ones that make your mouth and tongue go numb?) are out in force in the woods, and out here they're even more of an infernal menace: While the cabin variety only cause havoc when ingested, so much as a scratch from the woods variety's thorns will induce a tingling numb in the affected area that lasts for the better part of an hour.

And let's not forget the lovely field of "wildflowers" that definitely aren't not infested with poison ivy. It's a shame, really. The flowers themselves are quite pretty, an array of pastel blues and pinks and oranges. It's almost like a painting, if touching that painting happened to make you itch, burn, and blister for one-to-two weeks.

But why are we talking about flowers? What you're truly interested in is the containment zone barrier, aren't you? That's fine, you're bound to encounter it out there somewhere. It's invisible until you touch it, at which point a honeycomb pattern ripples out from the point of contact. As a general rule, the barrier gives back what it gets: Place your palm on it and you'll receive a faint uncomfortable buzz. Run headlong into it, and it will ricochet you multiple yards back into the woods.

The barrier stretches all the way around the containment zone without a single break or point of yielding. No further buildings can be seen beyond the barrier, nor any real sign of civilization at all save for the gas station's road stretching past the barriers and out of sight. The only thing of passable interest is the somewhat concerning tree sitting at the far end of the field across the street from saud gas station, at least two-hundred yards past the barrier. At this distance, it's a bit tricky to make out what flocks in the tree's branches. Those have to be birds... right?

► MOD NOTES ►

• This log takes place from July 4th onward, arguably through whenever the event goes up - though you're welcome to toss up your own logs in the meantime. I'm gonna troubleshoot the HTML to leave a space for IC dates, but I didn't want to waste any more time on that right now.
  
• Vestige is now open for business! You're welcome to post logs + network posts of your own, post memes on vestigechat, whatever you want.
  
• This log is functionally intended to be a tour of the containment zone for new characters and players, with dashes of mild horror or discomfort along the way. Don't worry: The actual horror is rolling in later this month. (I'm tagging this under 'event' anyway, just to keep track of it.)
  
• You can literally have your character wake up wherever you want within the containment zone, even if I didn't list it. Go nuts.
  
• It's worth noting: None of the cabins are recognizable as the precise one from the TDM loop, nor is the forest fog still present. The forest is recognizably the same flora/fauna, but that's about it.
  
• You're welcome to include a network post with your top-level (or to put it up on vestigenet as per usual) - but don't forget to consult the NETWORK: USERNAMES ARE FUCKY drop-down of July's Infopost before you do!
  
• Direct any and all questions at Trace on plurk/discord or (for slightly slower answers) this top-level.
  
• My deepest most heartfelt apologies for the lateness, I failed to factor in my own godforsaken attention span.
  

Comments

[kingish]

[ eliot, in the interim, has remained almost completely totally positive there's no way he has a twin sister, in large part because--well, because she's so much like him where she's not the appealing opposite. like an anchor to hold him steady. (despite how intrinsically uh, wobbly they both inherently seem to be.) surely he'd know if a connection like that was out there?

then again: his counterpart apparently didn't either; maybe in one of those 39 very short lives, there's a twin. shit, maybe eliot ate his in the womb more than once, that sounds like something he'd do.

........................... moving on from that

he talls into her immediate vicinity by sheer twin osmosis radar, which he has now decided they have because who gives a shit if it's real? the only family he's ever had who didn't see him as skid marks on the saggy briefs of the illustrious waugh lineage is--is either dead, or unreachable. at the very least gwen and he can stick together and pool their remaining cigarettes. so:

eliot spots her much tinier figure on the grounds that she is the other best dressed person here, perhaps, and beelines in that direction, reaching down to grab her by the shoulders and look into her face as if they have been separated for years. YEARS, gwen!!! (is it scary that he doesn't have to fake this? that it's so easy to fall into the idea that they need each other?) ]

There you are. I thought I was going to have to live with one of these...these other people.

[ please imagine how snobby he was pre-canon character development, if this is what he's arrived at now. ]

[hedoniste]

( wh—oh.

no, wait, back up: what. her first reaction is an embarrassing lack of one, taken off-guard and slightly disoriented by the fact that now she can't really gauge which eliot is which based on recognition of her. and the fact that there are two, maybe, is still an issue, but it's—

she has relaxed before she's aware she's going to into the relief of reunion. he's glad to see her. it's such a little thing to ask for. )

No, ( automatically, when her mouth catches up to the emotional experience the rest of her is having and bypasses it entirely, ) I found one for us.

( well, for them now. it was for her about thirty seconds ago.

it's probably too hot for hugging, but she shrugs her shoulder out from under one of his hands just so she can use its momentum to lean into the front of him, exhaling. this is fine. this moment right here is okay. )

[kingish]

[ what is a more than fair reaction, considering eliot changed his entire mind in one single tag. he thinks--he likes her, and shit, he got married with no more social basis than that.

so yes. this moment right here is okay. it takes him just a beat to return the hug, but when he does it's with totally unforced enthusiasm, chin tilted down to prop the side of his face in the crown of her hair, which it is most definitely too hot for, especially since gwen can probably like, literally feel the literal heat on his all black clothes. (technically speaking he could change out of those, but he's been to the gas station and no fucking thank you to hilarious graphic t-shirts. fuck those forever; he wasn't a fan even before he spent several months watching his own body be vandalized by such choice sentiments as sorry for what i said when i was hangry. why.) ]

Look. You know this sucks, I know this sucks. Whoever's running this place is the Grand Marshal of suck. But we're gonna be okay. We're survivors.

[ is this like, wildly presumptuous uhhhhh ]

I mean, you'd have to be. Right?

[ a] of a literal apocalypse and b] any twin of his, one who clearly does not fit in with a family of soy bean farmers, would, as stated, have to be. ]

Now, where's our house? [ a pause, mingled horror and resignation. ] And whose dick do I have to suck to get clean sheets? Thread count preferably in the triple digits.

[hedoniste]

( the sound that she makes into his chest loosely translates to you don't know the fucking half of it and skirts a sufficiently hysterical edge as to indicate it's better that she just make a noise, for the moment. give her a second, and then maybe the words. surviving is the only reason she knew eliot existed in the first place, in a very real and very terrible way, and

mm.

the point is, if it's presumptuous, it's also not wrong. )

I don't like the odds, ( she says, eventually, ) of any dick here having laundry skills.

( for starters, if they themselves are a remotely representative sample. she loops her hand around his elbow— )

It's this way. And my dog is there.

[sybaritic]

[ eliot's first instinct runs toward rampant curiosity, but because he understands so well the need to give being picked apart such a wide berth it's only visible with a high powered telescope, just lets the topic die quietly. if she wants to Words at some point they can do it over very, very strong drinks.

never mind what's at hand here; he's a fucking magician. to quote someone he ...does not feel he has high odds of every seeing again, but he's going to dwell on that audibly as much as gwen is her survivor status. he pats her hand, companionably, matching what would be ginormously long strides with seemingly zero effort. ]

Let's not write off the possibility yet, dear sister.

[ totally. totally sister! ]

Exhibit A: the many surprising abilities my silver tongue has inspired over the years.

[ a pause ]

As for dogs, are we talking purse sized here?

[ hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha no ]