Mar. 17th, 2021 at 9:43 PM
MARCH EVENT: TWISTS & BLOODY TURNS
MARCH 18TH - 23RD
► INTO THE MAZE
The sky is a crisp, clear blue on the morning of March 18th. The breeze brings the pleasant aroma of flowering topiary, and the early spring sun warms your skin rather pleasantly as you wake.
Which is kind of a shame, since none of it should be possible if you're still in your bed where you fell asleep.
You aren't, as it turns out. In fact, you aren't anywhere recognizable at all - you lie on a well-trod layer of grass, framed to your left and right by hedge walls tall enough that it's truly a wonder the sun managed to filter down to you at all. With minimal investigation, you discover that though the hedge corridor you've awoken in does indeed end in a bend, turning it does little more than present yet another corridor just the same. The good news is, you're not alone! Others, too, are waking or soon to wake in this very same labyrinth, perhaps even nearby. With luck, they'll be even angrier and more confused than you are. Nothing like being the rational one in a crisis to boost your self-esteem a bit.
► AMIDST THE MAZE
The bad news is that you are not alone. Beasts roam this maze, some massive and others deceptively innocuous in size, and none are quite what you see on the surface (unless what you see is 'a goddamn problem'). Worse yet, they all seem quite interested in you. It seems like it's been a while since they've had-... no, 'prey' sounds terribly alarming. Let's say 'esteemed dinner guests'. That's not so terrible, right?
Well, at least there's a way out! A nice little courtyard sits at the center of the maze, one lined with benches but otherwise quite clearly designed to hold a little stone building with a barrier-protected archway. And beside that archway, an engraved plaque-... What? No plaque? Forgive me, it seems that because "we're already over budget, Conrad, stop being so fucking aesthetic all the time", the 'engraved plaque' bit has been replaced by a pair of carefully-laminated notices pinned to the archway. They make it pretty clear that the only way out is through that barrier and the only way through that barrier is to kill a fellow maze abductee - and yes, you sissies, a mercy kill does count, so maybe consider not trying to save your buddy just this once.
If you need a little more incentive, the beasts seem to be getting bolder as each day goes on. Bolder and closer until not even the courtyard sanctuary is truly safe anymore. All the while you're getting thirstier, hungrier, increasingly angry that you skipped dinner the night of the 17th because ~it's fine, you'll eat a big breakfast~. Y'know what's great for venting anger? Murder. Just something to think about.
► SAY GOODBYE TO THE MAZE
On the morning of the 23rd - day six of this godforsaken foliage hell, if anyone's counting - those still trapped inside will find that the labyrinth itself seems to be collapsing around them. Crumbling right to the ground, falling segments of shrub-covered brick and everything, in a terrible ruckus that kicks up enough dust to burn at your watering eyes and to make you choke and cough.
But when the dust settles, things make even less sense than they did when you were still trapped. Around you is the totally ordinary statue garden, with entirely mundane normal-sized hedges forming what very much seems like a joke of a maze at this point.
One thing seems for certain: The ordeal is over, at least for now. It's time to haul yourselves home, have a good meal, and sleep off this nightmare.
► MOD NOTES
- This is a catch-all log for top-levels pertaining to March's Twists & Bloody Turns event. Go ahead and utilize
vestigenet for any event-related network posts you'd like to make.
- This event takes place between the IC dates March 18th and March 23rd.
- All event information can be found on the Twists & Bloody Turns Infopost! The logs are largely flavor-text to supplement the information offered in the infopost.
- Please take care to label your top-levels with identifying information like the IC date and location (e.g. inside the maze? in the courtyard? scouting around the outside of the statue garden?), so that others can see at a glance if their character can hop in!
- Those who begin the event outside of the maze can enter the maze later on - consult the above-linked infopost for more on that!
- A reminder that phone service does work and those inside the maze can communicate with the outside, though signal is scratchy for audio/video messages.
- Any questions can be directed to this top-level or, for a quicker response, to Trace on discord/plurk.
Nov. 28th, 2020 at 1:15 AM
PLEASE ACCEPT THESE ROASTED BIRDS
NOVEMBER 27TH
► TRYPTOPHAN MAY BE A MYTH, BUT WE'VE GOT YOU COVERED
On the morning of the 27th, every claimed phone in the containment zone once again emits that terrible sound for the third time in as many days. This time, however, it comes with what amounts to a GPS navigation map set to guide each person to a location near the center of the available section of town. With it, a message:
In light of the last 48 hours, a Thanksgiving feast will be provided at the marked location at 4 PM. No tricks. Just alcohol and food.
And they mean it, too. It's one of the few things the Technicians will offer with no actual chance of death - unless you choke on your food or murder someone over their jukebox music choices, and honestly, that's on you.
The navigation leads you to a building labeled 'THE BAR' (creative, right?), which those who've spent any real time in town might notice looks... a little less run-down than it used to? But the real change is inside - which many of you will discover at precisely 4 PM, when the plywood covering the door falls away to the sidewalk, revealing an unlocked wooden door.
It's truly a shame that no one yet bothered to break inside in the past couple of months, because only they could truly appreciate how much The Bar has changed. Though still quite dimly lit, it now looks more like a well-worn alcoholic haunt than a desolate broken-down waste of perfectly good booze - and speaking of booze, the shelves are lined with it. The bartop itself, meanwhile, is covered with an array of food, the rich aroma of which welcomes new arrivals in the moment they enter the door. The spread is quite diverse, with cooked turkeys and various Thanksgiving side dishes, some traditional and some a bit more offbeat, and a number of non-alcoholic drinks can be found refrigerated behind the counter.
As for the ambiance, it's festive but not overwhelmingly so. The Bar seems to have bought into whatever Foodland is selling, with a few recognizable decorative items scattered here and there to make it look appropriately fall-themed. A faintly-glowing jukebox sings out from one end of the room, cycling through various classics from the 60's, 70's, and 80's (it particularly seems to like Elvis, the Beach Boys, and Motown hits). A peek through the offered albums, however, will find a variety of other options on tap - Christmas music, heavy metal, banjo-laden hoedown music, who knows what you might discover (and force everyone to listen to) at one wrong press of a button!
All in all, the atmosphere is... weirdly uplifting, considering the month and the recent days' visitors. There's a distinct chance that there's a teensy-weensy artificial mood-enhancer in the food - but it's not much! Just a little! The Technicians are just trying to help. It's not nearly potent enough that anyone starts acting unlike themselves. Just... maybe the tiniest bit less weighed down for a couple of hours, y'know? It wears off naturally after five or ten minutes of fresh air, and it's generally mild enough that you likely don't even think twice about your good mood. The festive environment put a little distance between you and the chaos the visitors wrought, at least for an evening.
► MOD NOTES
- This is a catch-all log for top-levels pertaining to November's Please Accept These Roasted Birds event, taking place on the IC date of November 27th (the day after Thanksgiving). Go ahead and utilize
vestigenet for any event-related network posts you'd like to make.
- The original event briefing can be found on the November Bulletin, but most of the concrete info is here on this log.
- A note that not only does the mood enhancer enhance mood, but it also dulls the event after-effects briefly while characters are at the feast. They're still present, but not nearly as intense/potent as they are outside of the bar.
- As of this mingle, the bar, #9 in the 'town' section/map, is now an active location within the game and can be revisited at any time. Alcohol remains stocked and the jukebox continues to play. It'll be added to the Locations page when I have a minute.
- Any questions can be directed to this top-level or, for a quicker response, to Trace on discord/plurk.
Nov. 22nd, 2020 at 7:43 PM
H̸̠͉͖͌̓̋̽E̵͐Ļ̵͛̕̚L̶̨͈̪̗͑̀̀̚Ơ̵̢̠̣̐̏̚
NOVEMBER 25TH - 26TH
► WHERE DID THEY COME FROM, WHERE DID THEY GO?
Though November is, overall, a fairly dreary and nondescript month, one thing of note has certainly occurred: For the first time since characters were first turned loose in the containment zone, one month has rolled into the next and the increasingly alarming tree hasn't moved any closer. It still sits 50 yards from the barrier, creepy as hell, fucking your brains.
Until suddenly, it doesn't.
On the 25th, at the godawful hour of 5 AM, a ripple wakes everyone from whatever level of sleep they may or may not have been previously enjoying. It's not a sound nor a sight, nor is it even really a sensation that can be felt on the skin - and anyway, it's gone by the time most characters are properly conscious, leaving them wondering what exactly woke them. But everything... seems pretty ordinary, to be honest. They may even decide to settle back in to steal a few more hours of sleep. Wouldn't that be nice. What a shame that things have only just begun.
Five minutes later, with the obtuse buzzing of an emergency alarm, a senderless text alert arrives on every phone:
Do not leave your home. Do not draw attention. Remain unnoticed.
Wait for follow-up alert that situation has been contained.
That's definitely reassuring in no way at all. It's entirely up to characters whether or not they listen to it, but those who don't might be in for a bad time. You see, that creepy ass tree is now 50 yards closer, planting itself firmly in a brand new hole in the middle of the road in front of the gas station, asphalt uprooted and crumbling aside. And now, for the first documented time since the tree was first sighted, the figures perched on the branches begin to move.
They climb down from the tree, and over the course of the next day and a half, they wander the containment zone. Where are they going? What do they want? What even are they? All good questions, but unfortunately, no one seems to have (let alone offer) any answers. All you really know is, it's best to stay away from them. Things get a little bit fucky, if one of the visitors happens to be too close at hand.
Luckily, late on the 26th, the Technicians do indeed contain the visitors with a spectacular lack of subtlety, delivering one further message to the masses:
The situation has been contained.
But the absence of the mysterious visitors doesn't necessarily mean everyone is out of the woods just yet, and their impact on those trapped within the containment zone will likely be felt for days to come.
► MOD NOTES
- This is a catch-all log for top-levels pertaining to November's H̸̠͉͖͌̓̋̽E̵̯͐ͅĻ̵͛̕̚L̶̨͈̪̗͑̀̀̚Ơ̵̢̠̣̐̏̚ event. Go ahead and utilize
vestigenet for any event-related network posts you'd like to make.
- This event takes place between the IC dates November 25th and November 26th.
- All event information can be found on the H̸̠͉͖͌̓̋̽E̵̯͐ͅĻ̵͛̕̚L̶̨͈̪̗͑̀̀̚Ơ̵̢̠̣̐̏̚ Infopost! This log (unlike most of the others) is pretty much just poorly-concealed infopost copypasta just to fill the space.
- Please take care to label your top-levels with identifying information like the IC date and location, so that others can see at a glance if their character can hop in!
- There will be a separate Thanksgiving Feast log, so keep an eye out for that.
- Threads involving the after-effects taking place once the visitors are gone can go on the November catch-all!
- Any questions can be directed to this top-level or, for a quicker response, to Trace on discord/plurk.
Oct. 26th, 2020 at 11:08 PM
WELCOME TO THE MASQUERADE
OCTOBER 31ST
► THE ARRIVAL
Whether you'd like to admit it or not, some part of you couldn't quite take your mind off of this so-called Masquerade Ball. That part may have been buried deep down under layers of introversion or party-pooping, but it was there. Something about it fascinated you, as if a choice not to attend would be one you couldn't help but feel you'd regret for months to come.
Or perhaps you weren't reluctant at all. Perhaps as soon as the flyers went up, a thrilled gleam flickered across your eyes, and you made tracks for Foodland to scrape together some kind of costume for the occasion. Learned to dance, maybe. Even asked your friend or your sweetheart or that passably-attractive stranger on the street to be your date for the evening. Hey, we're not here to judge.
For some, this is your first time visiting the tent in the brand new clearing. Others may have passed by it sometime since it the night it popped up nearly ten whole days ago, stealing a glance but never quite recognizing that the arrival of such a thing might be odd (or perhaps even ominous). Either way, the lifeless polyester husk has come to life on this night, the formerly drab-looking purple now rich and glowing through from inside. The tent flap sits unzipped, catchy dance-worthy music trickling out from inside. This might just be the best shindig since the @cock.licking.idiot's lake party. (Or it might be an absolute fucking disaster. You know how these things go.)
THE PARTY
The tent flap unzips of its own accord at precisely six in the evening, and already the sounds of a sort of era-neutral dance beat trickle out of the dim. Assuming you have a costume, you'll be able to stroll right inside. If you've tried to cut corners by simply dressing nice, your feet will stick for a moment just before entry, but it seems to merely be a warning. An 'I know what you're trying to pull and I'm letting it slide just this once', but from who? It's impossible to say. If you've not dressed up at all, well, you'll find your feet stick fast just outside the entry flap, unable to move in any direction but backward. That's alright, really - you can run quick to fetch a costume if you'd like, any costume will do.
From the inside, the tent is even larger and more grand than it seemed, and is decorated with subtle but eerie Halloween decor. The lighting is dim but not nearly enough to strain your eyes, coming largely from the scattering of old-fashioned lanterns dangling from the ceiling on near-invisible chains. Touch the walls of the tent, at least in the main ballroom, and you'll feel a nearly unseen layer shift under your fingers, feeling entirely too much like a layer of sturdy cobwebs for many's comfort. The music itself comes from out-of-the-way black speakers in various corners of the ballroom, along both the floor and the ceilings. There's no 'deejay station' or any kind of stage. There is, however, a small tablet halfway up the wall next to the refreshments tables to allow you to queue up a song through a rather simple-to-use interface or even voice command. It even responds to vague requests, like "something less stuffy" or "gimme a slow jam".
Speaking of refreshments, there are plenty. Two tables large enough to seat at least eight are covered in plates and bowls of various snacks and finger-foods, from sweet to savory. The food is absolutely fresh, more so even than what you'd find at foodland - the veggie tray is crisp and well-stocked, and the chunks of various meats and cheeses taste almost artisanal. Next to the food sits a similar table with two large punch-bowl centerpieces - one bowl of 'Blood Punch' (like regular punch, but darker red), and one bowl of 'Kicky Blood Punch' (the same, but with alcohol in it). The punch is almost definitely the best refreshment on offering, the absolute perfect mix of tangy and sweet, complete with floating and submerged chunks of fresh pineapple. The plates and cups both are a sturdy transparent plastic, the one break from the otherwise uniformly festive gathering.
Near the refreshments are the only other furniture in the room (beyond the occasional bench along the wall), a handful of lightweight faux-cast-iron tables, each with a set of matching chairs. It's a place to sit while you catch your breath from all that dancing, or even just to kick back and mingle.
A couple of hallways shoot off from the ballroom, one at each side, and while they each lead to a bathroom, wandering past the bathroom may very well get you lost. The tent wasn't this large from the outside, was it? Unless you're looking for somewhere to be alone, you may want to consider heading back.
THE PANIC
This Masquerade Ball's been quite an occasion... Music, celebration, and plenty of good food and drink. But once the clock strikes nine, it all begins to unravel.
Not blatantly, of course. It may even take a few minutes for the partygoers to realize quite what's occurred. One lantern burns out, then two, then three, enough to dim the room even further but not plunge it into darkness altogether. The slow zip of the entry flap is nearly inaudible over the sounds of the music, but once it's zipped, it's stuck hard and fast and not even inhuman strength can budge it - nor can you slice a new exit through the wall of the tent. Even the music itself begins to distort, from clear to scratchy, or from quick to slow as if toggling the fast-forward key. By twenty minutes after nine, whichever half-mutilated tune it's playing degenerates to a single long screech, like feedback almost but much too raw. And then the speakers are silent... But by now, most of you have your own troubles to deal with.
Because fears have begin to manifest - not just any fears, but your deepest and darkest, the ones that terrify you and plague your dreams. Some, you'll recognize right away. Others may be the best available interpretation, foreign to you but for the visceral fear it elicits in your gut. Some go away in a few short minutes. Others will haunt you until the very instant midnight strikes.
It wouldn't be Halloween without a few good scares, now would it?
Once the clock strikes midnight, all remaining fears disappear back into shadows or obscure corners, or even through the newly-unzipped flap of the tent, never to return. Has it really only been three hours since that started? It feels like much longer, enough so that it's jarring to see by the moon that the night has just barely begun. By now, it's painfully obvious that attending the Masquerade was a shady idea at best - why didn't you see it before? You can't imagine how something so obvious slipped past you, but it did.
As soon as the last shaken partygoer steps out from inside, the tent collapses in a formless heap on the grass. There it lingers, a deflated shell of both the vibrant party and the den of terrors it was just minutes or hours ago. In fact, it's still there even as the last person leaves the clearing, but should you return for another glimpse even sixty short seconds later, you'll find that the tent (in all of its immensity) has disappeared altogether.
At this point, weary partygoers are free to drag their tired, potentially traumatized, and generally hungover asses back to wherever they call home. Into bed, most likely - if they can even fall asleep, after a nightmare like that.
► MOD NOTES
- This is a catch-all log for top-levels pertaining to October's Welcome To The Masquerade event. Go ahead and utilize
vestigenet for any event-related network posts you'd like to make.
- All event information can be found in the Event Write-Ups tab of the October Bulletin, as well as the Masquerade FAQ.
- Please take care to label your top-levels or prompts with either which segment of the event it pertains to (the party or the nightmares) and/or what time it takes place (before 9 or after 9), so that folks looking for either fun party stuff or horror stuff can see at a glance where they might hop in.
- The network does still work during the fear portion of this event, and characters are able to post to it and/or contact others within or outside of the tent.
- Reiterating that it is possible for your character to resist the inclination to attend the Masquerade - it's more of a shove in the party-ward direction than any sort of compulsory thing.
- Any questions can be directed to this top-level or, for a quicker response, to Trace on discord/plurk.
Oct. 8th, 2020 at 12:21 AM
IS THE DOCTOR IN?
OCTOBER 8TH
► SEMANTIC OVERVIEW
This mini-event takes place in the hospital (town location 5), also featured in the dreamscape of the latest Test Drive Meme. The hospital supposedly has three floors + a basement:
FLOOR-BY-FLOOR OVERVIEW (DROP-DOWN)
- 03 - This uppermost floor appears to be a regular modern hospital wing untouched by apocalyptic disaster, with various tidy patient rooms + an empty nurse's stand. Further down the hallways sit various offices. At a glance, it's difficult to tell from this floor that the hospital is run-down at all... Aside from the way the stairs have crumbled away, at least.
- 02 - Good question. you can't even fucking find the second floor. The elevator doesn't stop there, and there's no door on the wall in the stairwell where a second floor entry should be. What a shame - the signs say that's where you'd find the cafeteria.
- 01 - Basically what you see in the header pic: a very run-down hospital floor, consisting of messy/dirty patient rooms, abandoned nurse's stations, and a check-in/check-out desk (with the corresponding front door, currently jammed but not locked). This floor also has a trio of operating rooms, but these seem to be locked up tight... A fact which some might consider a blessing in disguise.
- B1 - Primarily of interest is the morgue / autopsy room (powered + in functional condition), but this floor also contains locker rooms, a laundry room, a break room, and a handful of other rooms with locked doors and covered windows that Trace doesn't want to make shit up for just yet. Each end of the hospital has an emergency exit door, unlocked from both the inside and outside.
Aside from 02, all floors can reach one another via the stairs (aside from the gap near the top) and the elevator (once someone has brought it up to 03 the first time, it continues to run as normal).
Exit/entrances include the main entrance (floor 01, unlocked but jammed and needs to be opened via strength) and the emergency exits (floor B1, unlocked and unimpeded).
FLOOR 3 ► LEAVING SO SOON? YOU HAVEN'T BEEN DISCHARGED
WAKING UP
You wake in a clean white bed to the overly-hygienic scent of fake wildflowers and the morning sun filtering in through the windows. You're in a hospital room, a visiting chair at bedside, a television hanging on the adjacent wall. Perhaps you're in a private room and can wake at your own leisure. Perhaps your room is shared, and someone else is waking up in their own bed on the opposite side of the cloth divider.
You have no memory of how you arrived here in this room, nor are you entirely sure where this is. For most, a glance out the window is all it takes to get some semblance of a clue - the town's skyline stretches out before you, landmarks recognizable but unfamiliar from what appears to be your third-floor height.
At the end of the bed, you might just find your file. At least, it seems like your file - it lists your name, one or more injuries you don't recall ever having (or perhaps injuries you suddenly have but don't recall ever receiving), and a brief but alarming summary of the cause of the injuries. That's the worst part, the summary. It's almost always something you don't want to hear - you're careful and the injury was borne of recklessness, you value your mother most of all and were stabbed by her hand, or any number of possibilities all written down in carefully clinical terms. If you've woken up alone in a shared room, you might also find a loved one's file attached to the adjacent bed, similarly concerning in content and with no loved one in sight to reassure you that the tale the document tells is a lie.
Outside of your room is a hall with many other such rooms, their occupants stirring now just as you are. A nurse's station sits nearby, thoroughly abandoned. Just beyond that is the doors to the elevator and the stairwell.
But leaving this place isn't quite so easy.
Calling the elevator earns a polite ding! before the elevator doors open to reveal an empty shaft, cables extending downward to indicate that the actual elevator lingers far below. The stairs aren't much better - you have six, maybe seven stairs attached to the stairwell landing before a section seems to have crumbled away, picking up again against the opposite side of the stairwell a good fifteen feet farther down.
Those who can fly or even hover may have no trouble at all. For everyone else? Perhaps you can set to work on figuring out a way to climb down... Or maybe, with luck, someone who woke up in the basement might elevator their way up to your rescue.
THE HALLWAYS
Or, rather than beating your head against the metaphorical wall that is finding a way down from the third floor, perhaps you decide to explore the hallways. Maybe you think there might be another way out! (Hospitals don't just have one stairwell right? That's a fire hazard.) Or maybe you just want to know what else exists on this floor, for the sake of scavenging or even for your own curiosity.
The hallways are, for their part, all very much the same - but those who may have experienced this place in a dream will at once notice the differences. These hallways are well-lit, the room doors are largely unlocked (mostly rooms like the ones you woke up in, with the occasional supply closet), and no matter how far you walk there's no strange sense of distortion driving you to turn back.
At the furthest reach of the hallway in each direction (the points of the H that makes up the hospital's shape), you'll find a host of small offices. Most are unlocked, and the filing cabinets within contain a number of patient files... Some of which you may even recognize, the information within matching that which you gleaned from one of the spirits last month, were you the sort to try to chat. Many of them, it seems, were once patients here, though this is hardly the morgue and none of these files list any sort of cause of death. This is true of each of the third-floor wings except the northwestern-most branch - there, the offices have long since been emptied, cabinets empty of files, desks void of any long-abandoned signs of life. A single locked door sits at the end of the hall, shades drawn across the small door-window. A dim light glows inside.
FLOOR 1 ► THAT'S A YIKES FROM ME
WAKING UP (CW: NEEDLES IN ¶2)
Those who woke on the third floor woke somewhere clean, somewhere adjacent to peaceful. Those who wake on the first floor, however, have no such experience. Though you wake in a hospital room, arguably even on what was once a hospital bed, that's where the resemblances end.
In sharp contrast with those awakening almost pleasantly two stories up, you wake exhausted and sore in the joints, as if gripped by the early signs of some sort of flu. And that's those who are lucky. Many wake into a world made hazy by anesthesia which has only just begun to wear off, or perhaps even still linked to an IV filled with a questionable unknown substance. Yikes. Might want to hurry up and deal with that.
The condition of the room itself is far different than those upstairs, too. It's dusty, even smelling of mildew - or perhaps that's just the bed on which you've awoken. The room looks almost ransacked, cabinets half-open, medical supplies and utensils strewn about the unwashed floor. Rust dots any metal surface in sight, and no wonder, considering the various points of visible water damage along the ceiling and walls. If the lights in your room function at all, it's just one flickering fluorescent... Otherwise, the only light washes in through the dirty window and (much dimmer) from the dim and similarly-unsteady fluorescents lining the hallway outside the door to your room.
It's hardly a place that anyone would wish to stay in for long. In fact, you may be on your way out the door before you notice even the half of the health code violations in your immediate vicinity - but one item might catch your eye before you go. A file, dusty but conspicuously undamaged in contrast with the rest of the room. Perhaps it's on the countertop nearby, or on the floor next to an upturned medical station nearby. Some may not have files at all, a mercy considering what's inside: Uncensored procedural pictures of some sort of invasive surgery you don't recall ever having. No, wait - the memory is filtering back to you, extremely hazy but present, as if you woke briefly during that procedure before falling unconscious again. A search of your own body shows no sign whatsoever that such a surgery ever occurred. Was it real, or are you imagining it?
Either way, it's time to get the hell out of here.
THE HALLWAYS?
The hallway outside of your room is in similar ruin, covered in dust and dirt and mold, furniture upturned, wallpaper peeling and in some places even ripped away. A nurse's station sits abandoned, leaving you and (by the sounds of it) any number of others to wake up in alarm and distress and sort through your surroundings alone. Or... not quite alone, I suppose. You do have each other.
Follow the hallway in one direction and you'll find the main hospital entrance. The front door itself seems to be unlocked, but the automatic-opening mechanism isn't really functioning and it's... a little bit jammed into place. Might need a bit more arm strength (or a helpful co-abductee) to get that open. Otherwise, the area has an intake desk in predictably poor shape, next to which sits a stairwell and elevator. The elevator sits on your floor, waiting to take you either up or down... And believe it or not, it's the better choice, what with the stairwell missing about fifteen feet of stairs just below the third floor. You might also notice that neither the stairs nor the elevator seem to stop on the second floor. Huh. I wonder what's up with that?
Venture further into the array of first-floor hallways and you'll honestly just find more of the same thing you awoke to but often in even worse shape, walls crumbling away between rooms, floors stained with dried blood. Down one branch of the hospital's H sits a trio of operating rooms, but the doors are locked, the rooms inside entirely dark.
BASEMENT ► DOES IT HELP IF WE THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD?
THE FRIDGE
Here, you wake in the dark and the cold.
The dark is absolute, and unless your eyes are especially keen, you'll need to use your hands to get a bearing on your surroundings - and once you do, well. The news isn't great. You've awoken in what feels like a coffin-sized metal container, cold against the inexplicably bare skin of your back. If such a thing exists in your world, you might recognize that the container is chilled artificially.
Maybe you're trapped altogether, with no choice but to shout and bang on the walls and hope someone outside is close enough to hear - because unlike in the warped version of this very building that some walked in a dream, each and every one of these cells has been diligently sealed. But drawing attention may not be so easy... As you begin to bang and shout, you'll hear similar banging from your left and your right, from above and below you, the room outside your cell filled with a cacophony of fist-against-metal with nothing but your muffled shouting to guide whoever is nearby to the correct cell.
With luck, a rescuer (whoever that may be) drags the floor of your cell out into the open air of a dingy run-down morgue. You were trapped in cold storage, and here in the light you find that you've been dressed down to nothing but a flimsy backless hospital gown, a tag tied to your toe. Upon closer inspection, the toe tag lists your name, where you're from, and... a cause of death? Since when were you dead? Or perhaps you already knew you were dead and the cause of death isn't quite what you recall. Either way, the contents of your toe tag are disconcerting at best, abjectly alarming at worst.
Around you, the other locked fridge cells have gone quiet. It's almost as if their residents were raising a fuss specifically to keep your rescuer from finding you, giving up once their cause proves fruitless. Opening these cells will find corpses in varying stages of decomposition... Certainly in no state to make such a ruckus.
But on to more practical matters: Your clothes and belongings can be found in the laundry room next door. Let's see if you can make it that far without showing a friend or stranger the entirety of your bare ass.
THE TABLE (CW: MEDICAL/SURGICAL GORE)
Or perhaps you don't wake in cold storage. Perhaps you wake on the autopsy table itself, one of three or four spaced evenly under the flickering fluorescents of the hospital morgue. A thin layer of paper covers your otherwise nude body, and beside the table, a tray of autopsy tools (some bloody, some supposedly clean) on a rusty cart within arm's reach.
An eight-inch-long rectangle has been cut from the front of your paper gown, and you're quick to see why: Some of you have a 6-inch-long, clumsily-stitched surgical slice down the center of your chest, almost as if an autopsy was attempted but quickly patched up before it could be finished. The rest of you aren't fortunate enough to have the stitches - your surgical slice is still open and bleeding mildly. Whether stitched or unstitched, the wound isn't any kind of life-threatening, having missed all vital organs and arteries... Not that it's terribly pleasant regardless.
If you (or a helpful friend or stranger) want to patch that shit up, there are plenty of supplies to bandage the area for now, or even a needle and surgical thread to stitch that up properly. Shame there's no anesthetic.
Once you've achieved enough relative chill to actually care about your prevailing near-nudity, your clothes and belongings can also be found in the laundry room next door. Maybe try not to bleed on them?
MOD NOTES
- This is a catch-all log for top-levels pertaining to October's Is The Doctor In? mini-event on the 8th. Go ahead and utilize
vestigenet for any event-related network posts you'd like to make - characters inside the hospital are welcome to find their phone on their person, at bedside, or somewhere nearby.
- You're welcome to have your characters visit and explore the hospital on any other day henceforth, since this is now an unlocked location and will be added to the Locations page, but this is the only day on which people will be waking up here. Please utilize the October Catch-All for all non-event hospital threads!
- Characters who don't wake up here can still get involved if they have some reason to come join the fun. Maybe someone from inside texts them for help, or maybe they're walking down the street and see movements in the window of a building they know is supposed to be locked. Go ahead and wing it re: why they're there, honestly.
- Most of the accessibility obstacles are meant to induce drama, not limit threading capability - as such, feel free to (for example) assume that someone has already brought the elevator up to 03 or pried the front doors open on 01 if you don't want to fuck with those obstacles in your own threads!
- A few bits of exploratory intrigue have been peppered through these prompts. One of them is specifically what I was referring to when I mentioned 'exploratory subplots' back in the August Bulletin. If your character would poke around in suspicious places, by all means, hit me up on the questions top-level for more info!
- Being ambiguous about this since the prompt itself was under a CW, but if you opted into the 'questionable unknown substance' aspect of Floor 1's waking-up options and actually want something to come of it (as opposed to it just being some sort of alarming fake-out), hit me up and I'll toss you some side effects.
- If you want to have your character wake up via the fridge prompt in B1 but either don't want to fuck with a rescuer or want them to be able to get out and help someone on the table, feel free to say that the morgue fridge cell doors open on their own after a while, averaging on an hour but I'm not picky.
- Any questions can be directed to this top-level or, for a quicker response, to Trace on discord/plurk.
Sep. 21st, 2020 at 11:15 PM
GHOSTS & HOSTS
SEPTEMBER 22ND - 28TH
► WAS THERE ONE YOU SAW TOO CLEARLY? DID THEY FEEL TOO REAL TO YOU?
To some, the newfound territory within the containment zone is a blessing. Others, perhaps, worry that it may be a curse in disguise. The only way to find out which is true is, of course, to explore it for yourselves. But while the nature of the miles of new frontier remains ambiguous so far, one thing has quickly become apparent: You weren't the first to find it.
While every ounce of rationality (and all five or more of your senses) may tell you as you step into town or explore the farm's shady orchard that you're alone in this place, not a day has gone by since the barrier expanded that you haven't at some point felt a prickle along the back of your neck, or a subconscious tension inching through your body. Not a day has gone by that you haven't felt inexplicably watched.
Perhaps you told someone. Perhaps you kept it to yourself, for fear of sounding crazy. Either way, your suspicion is soundly validated on September 22nd as spirits begin to manifest all through the containment zone. Some are overtly hostile, utilizing their newfound traction on this mortal plane to wreak some form of harm. Others at first seem benign, but you'll quickly learn that no spirit here is truly harmless.
DID YOU TOUCH THEM, DID YOU HOLD THEM? DID THEY FOLLOW YOU TO TOWN?
You'll also learn quickly that very little that you do can stop them. Fists and blades sail through their intangible forms as if through fog, and unless you're actively working toward gaining them that which they seek (and even still then, sometimes), words do little against them either. So what can you do? Good news, research nerds: The answer lies in a book. A very familiar book, to those who were here when they and others rotted away or turned to glass. A copy appeared on the coffee-table of each cabin that month, and regardless of where it has gone or what has been done with it since, it does so again now with a formerly-blank space now filled in. The diagrams, it seems, depict what seems to be a spirit giving his heart to what seems to be a ramshackle beast. Below it, a figure seems to be waving an iron object through a spirit - insight on how to disperse one, even if not to kill it entirely.
But what are these ramshackle beasts they depict? The answer lies amongst the trees, stone-still and watchful. You may not even realize once you've spotted one - it hardly registers as a creature, a feral patchwork of skeleton and loose fur and misshapen flesh, limbs too long or too gangly, posture far too still to be canny. Very few still have eyes in the holes of their skeletal faces, yet there's no mistaking the way they watch you. It isn't predatory, for these aren't predators, but it's vigilant and unafraid.
It makes no move to attack. Instead, it offers acknowledgment - perhaps a less derelict creature might have offered a bow of its head, but all the beast can offer is a twitch-tilt of its skeletal head, a shift of weight from one forelimb to another. And from here, you may very well seal your fate. Should you choose to walk away, a halcyon truce falls between you and the beast, and it makes no move to threaten or hinder you as you make your way off through the trees. Should you try to approach or so much as flinch in the direction of your weapon, however, and the best is upon you in seconds, far more strong and fast and sharp than such a dilapidated creature has any right to be.
THEY WERE KIDS THAT I ONCE KNEW, NOW THEY'RE ALL DEAD HEARTS TO YOU
Whether you fall prey to your better nature and strive to help each damaged soul find peace or risk life and limb to carve out the beating heart within each beast, the war against the spirits is not an easy one, and few escape it mentally and physically unscathed. It lasts for nearly a week, at which point you may very well have begun to feel hopeless, wounded and sleepless and unable to see any end to it all.
And yet an end does come. As September 28th approaches sunset, the spirits have begun to retreat. Even those who have one of the living in their clutches may stop abruptly, appear to draw in a bracing breath, then turn and step into nothingness, fading from sight right before your eyes. What has drawn or sent them away, and where have they gone? These are questions for another day. For now, take a moment to bask in the first time you've felt truly alone and unwatched in weeks as, deep within the woods, an array of beasts clamber serenely back into the muck from which they emerged.
You've done it. Or... at least somebody has.
► MOD NOTES
- This is a catch-all log for top-levels pertaining to September's Ghosts & Hosts event. Go ahead and utilize
vestigenet for any event-related network posts you'd like to make.
- This event takes place between the IC dates September 22nd and September 28th.
- All event information can be found on the Ghosts & Hosts Infopost! The logs are largely flavor-text to supplement the information offered in the infopost.
- Feel free to use my Example Spirits list to inspire your own ideas, or even steal spirits wholesale from that list if you'd like! You're also welcome to bring me a theme or desired effect/ability for the spirit and have me brainstorm up a spirit idea for you.
- Please take care to label your top-levels with identifying information like the IC date and location, so that others can see at a glance if their character can hop in!
- Also make sure to label content warnings for any troubling subject matter in the backgrounds or present behaviors of spirits you create. Possible CWs coming to mind are for self-harm or suicide, excessive/vivid gore, any sort of abuse, or animal harm/death - but even if I haven't listed it, if it feels like it might need it then slap one on there anyway!
- Any questions can be directed to this top-level or, for a quicker response, to Trace on discord/plurk.
Aug. 10th, 2020 at 7:28 PM
EVENT LOG: WAY DOWN WE GO
AUGUST 14TH - 24TH
► THE BASICS
Not halfway into the month of August, the lake starts to recede - slowly at first, but then in great leaps and bounds until only a foot and a half of sun-warmed standing water remains. The lake going dry is concerning, for certain, but it's hardly the least of our problems... because on the lake bed is a hatch, askew and emblazoned with an unknown but eerie insignia, and beyond that hatch lies nothing but trouble.
Over the next few days, a brave and reckless team of explorers delve into the cave beyond - what is later revealed as a maintenance tunnel, just before the ceiling of that very tunnel caves in and traps them from both sides. Their supplies are limited, and phone signal is shaky at best. And what's worse, not more than a day or so later, the lake begins to fill back up, water pouring down into the open hatch. Can those who remain stage a rescue in time to save the explorers from drowning?
► MOD NOTES
- This log is a general dump for all log threads pertaining to August's Way Down We Go event - and in lieu of the lack of catch-all for August, you can feel free to do non-event log threads here as well! Go ahead and utilize
vestigenet for any event-related network posts you'd like to make.
- The main chunk of the event takes place between the IC dates August 17th (reveal of the hatch) and August 22nd (the latest the spelunkers can be freed before they drown). No rush leaping on this event post, since I know most folks are honestly still plotting about it.
- All event information can be found on the July Event Infopost!
- Please take special care in this event to label your top-levels with identifying information such as the IC date, any prompts specifically pertaining to event roles (spelunker, rescue efforts, etc), and/or 'non-event' for any non-event prompts you may include. Just trying to keep things organized!
- I'm going to help solidify the plotting efforts over the next few days to help make sure everyone's on the same page, but none of it will be set in stone just in case latecomers want in too. If you want in, chime in on the spelunkers, rescue efforts, or support roles top-levels as applicable!
- Any questions can be directed to this top-level or, for a quicker response, to Trace on discord/plurk.
Jul. 20th, 2020 at 7:46 PM
EVENT LOG: SHATTER & DECAY
JULY 21ST - 27TH
► IF THERE'S NOTHING BUT PAIN, PUT IT ON ME
On the morning of the 21st, the sun dawns peacefully over the crystalline lake just as it has every day for nearly three weeks now. Birdsong melodies soften the crisp edge to the morning air, and woodland creatures retreat from many a cabin backyard, unhurried but unwilling to contend with the cabin's residents as they wake. It's... peaceful, more so than one might expect after such a dire fate spelled out in the pamphlets upon your arrival. Perhaps, after many such days, it has managed to lull you into a sense of something like security.
Today we'll be learning a valuable lesson on why that is, in fact, a mistake.
Sometime between the 21st & 22nd, you begin to feel a bit... off. Perhaps the source is apparent at once, the ends of your fingers or toes going stiff and crystalline or swelling and blooming in small rotting sores. Perhaps the source of your discomfort is a bit less clear as your senses begin to sharpen or dull. But make no mistake, this is only the beginning.
As time passes, your situation only worsens. The glass or decay carves a slow but steady path up your limb or limbs. Your sharp senses begin to overwhelm you. Your dull senses muffle altogether. Soon, you may not be alone in your own mind, bombarded by the omnipresent thoughts and feelings of those around you in a way that you can't seem to hide from. Or worse - maybe there's no one around you, and yet you hear whispers in your mind all the same... Whispers which turn to yelling and screams and sharp violent emotions and imagery you can't simply close your eyes to because it exists inside your head.
But there is a solution.
It's detailed inside your new coffee-table centerpiece, a book bound roughly in leather and written in a language none here know or can recognize. All you know is that this book was not here last night. Not far from the book's front cover, you'll find two pages of illustrations with a page of text between them. One depicts humans holding their heads as if in distress, then cutting themselves or one another, then no longer holding their heads in distress. The next depicts much the same, but instead of a their heads they hold a discolored arm or leg... and instead of simply drawing blood, it shows them rubbing one another's blood on their discolored limbs. Skimming the rest of the book will find a dozen or so pages roughly torn from the bindings. Perhaps those were further illustrations. You may never know.
Besides - you have more pressing issues to attend to. Like bleeding, or finding someone else to, in order to make this stop.
You who only suffer the mental effects are lucky, in a sense. Your condition is deeply uncomfortable but it almost definitely isn't fatal. If you've found your limb crystallizing or rotting away, however, you have little choice but to seek a solution or resign yourself to a distinctly unpleasant death.
Regardless of which effects may be lingering, you'll find blessed relief at midnight on the 27th. Over the course of an hour, your senses will fade back into their proper strength, the unwanted guests will evacuate your mind, and the glass or rot will recede from your limbs to leave them just as they were before this veritable nightmare of a week.
Now, it's time to breathe, to recover, and to lick your figurative wounds.
► MOD NOTES
- This log is a general dump for all log threads pertaining to July's Shatter & Decay event! Feel free to utilize
vestigenet for any event-related network posts you'd like to make.
- The event takes place from July 21st - 27th. All characters begin to experience effects by mid-22nd at the latest. Any event effects lingering at midnight on the 27th fade away over the course of an hour, in much the same way as they would if provided sufficient blood during the event itself.
- All event information (in detail rather than the flavortext I've provided) can be found on the July Event Infopost!
- Important semantics reminder! While you can have a character experience both psych and body horror within the event, both must be either rot or glass, not mix and match.
- Limbs lost or irreversibly damaged to this event reappear next time your character sleeps (as early as right when the event ends) unless you OOCly choose for them to retain the loss, in which case they instead regain the limb upon their next death + respawn. (If your character doesn't sleep, they go offline/fall unconscious and return to consciousness with the limb fixed.)
- Any questions can be directed to this top-level or, for a quicker response, to Trace on discord/plurk.
Jul. 4th, 2020 at 10:18 PM
► 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.