A Spacemas Carol: December's Mod Event Log

[savmods]

Who: Anyone and Everyone
When: December 19 onwards
Where: Avagi... and beyond?
What: Your past, someone's present, and potential futures.
Warnings: Body horror and an associated image in the second part. Otherwise, label your content.

While the Ingress may have been destroyed, the energy powering it remains alive and well. The residents of Avagi know this intimately: from their own arrivals, from the portals that have appeared, and the short-lived changes (as well as longer-lived possessions) that have cluttered the station over the last few months. Recently, whatever force is manipulating this has even gone so far as to revive the dead—demonstrating, perhaps, an unwillingness to relinquish those it has brought to this place. To say this entity is seasonal would probably be a mistake. In the heart of Avagi's storms, there are no stars to mark the seasons, much less connect them to a certain planet's holidays—or the literature thereon. Still, from luck or from intention, the current fluctuations comes with a certain theme...

Past

It starts at the turn of the station clock's midnight. Flickers at the edge of one's vision. Indistinct whispers, ghosting through walls and down corridors. Those who are sleeping will be untroubled, but the wakeful and wary can watch the light build: from flickers to pulses, from pulses to pools. Over several hours, silver mist fills rooms and corridors, varying from a thin veil to dense, obscuring fog. If you step into the mist, you'll feel a sense of displacement; of sound and color, energy and a shift of life. Ingress travel. Except... not quite. Shortly after entering the mist, you'll find yourself free of disorientation and apparently free of physical form, unable to interact with your surroundings. As a quasi-ghost, you've been transported to somewhere and somewhen—a location from the past, back on a world of someone’s origin or from any place you've been since first arriving through the Ingress. While these experiences can vary wildly, some things remain consistent: The past matters: These visits to the past are not repeats of idle afternoons—each has emotional significance to someone currently on Avagi. The past cannot be changed: As real as any given scenario seems, you're fundamentally incapable of altering it. The past event will play out as it did in real life and dissipate when it reaches an ending. Trying has consequences: Attempting too hard to interfere increases the emotional significance, and will consequently draw onlookers further into the scene. You may find yourself anchored to any participant in the scene: first physically (experiencing the scene through their eyes) and then emotionally (experiencing their emotions and thoughts). If drawn in too deeply, you may lose track of your own nature during the experience, drowning in the sense of being someone else.. You are not alone: While immersed in a scene, you'll see nothing but the history playing out. However, at the its conclusion, the fog will once again displace the world around. As it melts away, you'll find themselves back in Avagi's halls—and face to face with whoever else was also viewing that piece of the past.

Present

Whether through one memory or several, eventually, the fog disperses. Only a faint mist remains, gathered in corners of the station's halls. It's simple enough to avoid, and nothing obstructs efforts to return to your rooms, your friends, or any other destination. Nothing, that is, except finding them. The layout of the halls has shifted. The clutter you so painstakingly cleared is back. The GPS on your ACE mistakenly reports that you are floating off in space far outside the station, and any efforts to locate or call your companions results in glitchy static. Something is interfering with your calls—more effectively than the distance between worlds. Inference and intuition are all you have to put together the pieces. The layout has changed, but the construction stayed the same. You're still on the former Ingress station. But not the same area that you called home. This is a different section of Avagi. An inhabited one. Dank, warm air pulses in and out of the vents in odd rhythms. Water damage stains the walls, and some seep dark liquid. There's an odd symphony in the distance: four notes, hummed to a pattern that buzzes in the back of your head. It's possible to wait it out. But if you do explore, you might come across your friends. And together, you might find the source. Further in, a wall of flesh fills the pathways, rising and falling with intermittent, massive draws of air. A fluid wash of features glues it to the bulkheads. Claws and eyes, hands and faces: half-made bodies shifting in and out of recognition with each pulse of breath. And always with the same gold glow beneath the skin. It's a familiar shade, to those who witnessed Thisavrou's destruction. It's the being who destroyed it. Those who flee will escape her notice. Those who wait may watch in secret for a time. Mother's focus seems to be elsewhere...or, perhaps, something else is hiding your presence here from her. Any attack on Mother's flesh shape, or any overt effort to draw her attention, will meet violent, immediate reprisal. You'll experience an immobilizing psychic force before the flesh consumes you. But whether you hide or fight or run, your time on this section of the station will end in the same way: a burst of brilliant, clear light providing transport back home.

Future

You flash back to reality amidst a burst of light—but this time, you recognize your surroundings. You have returned to the Avagi you know, and the silver mist that filled the halls has cleared. Over the next few days, most of Avagi will settle back into a state of normalcy. The ACEs are working properly, and station residents will have all the time they need to compare notes on their experiences—and, perhaps, on any plans to act on what they've learned. Avagi is not as empty as it seemed. And one place in particular will remain changed in the wake of the event. The Ingress Memorial, once inactive, has come to life, emitting a swirl of silver light that shifts and flickers, like the light of the portal it once contained. For the next five days, it will offer a vision to anyone approaching it: a single, brief scene from their potential future. Players have the following options: Canon future: Your character catches a glimpse of their future if they were to return from Avagi to their own world. This consists of a canon event. Avagi future: Your character catches a glimpse of their own future on Avagi. This can be a short-term future (i.e. an actual vision of a future scene you plan to play out), or a potential longer-term one in which they stayed on Avagi for months or years. Storm future: Your character catches a glimpse of themselves as a Mirtos—a desiccated husk and incarnation of the storm's hunger. As seen in Thisavrou's destruction, these creatures are carried by the storms and destroy all they come across. The visions can observed by any present when the Memorial is approached. And while the past is fixed, the future is always capable of being altered. What will you do regarding yours?

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[OOC: Check out the OOC post for more information!]

Comments

future

[shiro2hero]

"... Frisk?"

He hasn't seen them in a while. And, honestly, until the vision cleared, he had no idea what he was looking at. Why it felt good. Like something right had happened. Something finally gone well, instead of poorly.

Of everyone, he hadn't expected to see Frisk here, when everything cleared.

But that doesn't change anything. Not to him. He just kneels, trying to look them in the eye, to make sure they were in one piece.

"Frisk? Can you hear me? Are you okay?"

[gainedlove]

It's a few moments before they can shake fully free of the vision, and they turn to Shiro more out of reaction that truly noticing his presence.

"It...it stayed."

[shiro2hero]

Frisk isn't Chara. So he thinks nothing of dropping down next to them. Reaching to grip their shoulders. Just... to try and anchor them. To get their attention. They seem totally out of it.

"What did? Frisk -- can you talk to me?"

[gainedlove]

It helps, somewhat--they blink and focus on Shiro's face, and tears well up in the corners of their eyes.

"It...it stayed. It's all...everything stayed." Their face crumples, and they reach for him to hold on, to bury their face in his shoulder for--what, they don't know.

Aren't you smiling? Aren't you happy?

You're going to be free.

[shiro2hero]

"Stayed--?"

He doesn't get more time to ask the question. They're pressing their face into his shoulder. Which, while a surprise, isn't a bad thing at all. He just loops his arms around them, in answer.

Okay, buddy. He's got you.

"Take your time."

[gainedlove]

Frisk remains like that for a while, each breath shaky as they teeter just on the verge of breaking down in sheer relief. Even if this never happens, even if they never go home...

It was possible. It was, it truly was.

After a few minutes Frisk pulls back and scrubs at their eyes, then looks up at Shiro with a small, wobbly smile.

[shiro2hero]

He doesn't fight them on this. If they need to cry, or hold on, or hide from the world, he'll let them. He'll do this. Long as they need him to.

It ends up making the smile on their face all the more worth it.

"There you are. How're you feeling?"

[gainedlove]

"'M okay." Frisk wipes one last streak of wetness off their cheek, then reaches up to pat at Shiro's shoulder. "'Re you?"

[shiro2hero]

"Good. I'm glad to hear it."

He reaches out, too. Brushing back a bit of their hair. Is he okay? Is he all right...? Well.

Hard not to feel at least a little at peace, when they look so happy. "Yeah. I'm good. Don't worry."