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?

---

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

Comments

the take's over the break's over

[inconsequence]

[They're used to this. That's the thing.]

[They're used to being the passive observer, watching the distraught panic of others, utterly unable to interfere but not particularly inclined to do so. Several of the faces dotting the gaggle of children stand out to them, familiar. Eddie. His friends. The bend of an arm at an angle so contorted that it almost draws their eyes to it, to that twisted limb, instead of the thing responsible for it.]

[He said It looked the way It did. He was right.]

[A clown, teeth like needles, perfect-painted face and a frizz of fiery hair. Its eyes aren't right. Nothing about It is right. Richie's panic, his overwhelming desperation to keep It away from his friends burns in every vein; because he sees it, because he feels it, so do they.]

[But they have to get out. They have to get out, because they would not be in Avagi if they didn't. Right? Right?]

[The memory snaps aside to the crack of realigning bone.]

[Their heart drums a sickening tattoo in their chest.]

[beeped]

[Richie doesn't like experiencing this again. It's cruel, to have gone through all he had with his friends, to have this too-real reminder. The memory fades along with the fog and it's only then that Richie realizes he's not alone.

He doesn't recognize Chara, if only because so far he's only interacted with him through text, and Richie's ignorant enough about this new technology that he doesn't fully grasp that there's a person on the other end when he can't see their faces. Even if he recognized Chara, he'd still be guarded.

This isn't the sort of memory he likes thinking about, or talking about at all. His vulnerabilities are completely exposed, out in the open, as he stares at Chara with wide eyes. He struggles to build the walls up.]

Did you see that?

[Please say no, please say no.]

[inconsequence]

[Flex their fingers. One, two, three. In and out. Draw the fingers out, crook them back into a fist. Pull it all together. Breathe. One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two ]

[Who are you?]
[I am Chara.]

[Who are you?]
[I am Richie Toz-]
[I am Chara.]

[Break it apart. Pack away the white-painted faces, the breaking of bone, the sound of a knife snicking into the back of something else with the give of flesh - or, perhaps, something else. Not you. Not him. Remember me.]

[That's right. It's me.]

I saw. [But the words are still whispers.]

I saw It.

[beeped]

[Richie's eyes are wide, and he nods slowly. Even now, far far away from Derry, the mention of It still makes him tremble in fear. It doesn't help that he's just relived one of the encounters that got to him the most. He contains it well enough.

Deep breaths, adjusts his glasses. Keep everything at bay and be normal. He can do that.]

Ugly fucker, isn't he.

[inconsequence]

Eddie said that It -

[Their throat closes. Remember. Remember that this is not your life, demon. You are the demon that comes when people call its name. The increase of a number. The abandoned memory hidden in a coffin with a name engraved on a plate, deeper than bone - but not so deep that it cannot be overwritten in an instant.]

[You are whatever people deem you to be.]

[Their voice is low and hoarse.]

He said that It went after children.

[beeped]

[He swallows thickly.]

Yeah. [Maybe that wasn't always the case, because It existed for such a long time and maybe there weren't always enough children in Derry. It's a guess, more than anything. Ben's the one who was so much of a nerd to take the time doing local history research.]

It feds on fear, liked childrens' fear best. [They scared more easily, maybe, or noticed more.] It got our friend Bill's kid brother Georgie, and a bunch of other kids who went to our school.

[inconsequence]

Is It here?

[Soft, rasping out, a low and fervent prayer. The shine of whitened knuckles curling around the hilt of a Knife strapped to their side, tightening their jaw in preparation for a FIGHT that may never come. Is It here? Is this merely some web-spun memory - or is it something more?]

[Can they be certain as to what is coming?]

[beeped]

No.

[The word is firm, but he wavers in the moments following. It can't be. That would be too much.]

It's always been in Derry and we're nowhere near Derry. [Could It leave if It wanted to? Richie doesn't know, and that scares him.]

[inconsequence]

That doesn't mean anything.

[It didn't move, didn't...didn't react in the natural sense. Nothing about It was natural. There was just enough to the look of It, just enough to the way It moved, to cement that It was more than just a man with silly clown makeup. Something else entirely, something wrong, a stain eager to blot itself onto young things' souls.]

You've always been in Derry. Until now.

[beeped]

But--

[This challenges everything the Losers have said to each other since they were all here. That It couldn't get them, that they were safe and away from everything. The nightmares are just that.]

If it came here, I don't know if we can stop it a second time.

[They'd already come out of it broken in scarred in different ways the first time.]

[inconsequence]

How did you stop It before?

[That wasn't clear in the memory. There was the visual of seeing one of them - Bev, they can remember from his memories, from his stolen thought - take a swing at It and draw It to a halt, but it was clear that the attack was by no means a way of destroying It permanently.]

[Can It be destroyed?]

[beeped]

We stopped being afraid of it and beat it up.

[It's amazing what they were able to accomplish together, when they had no other choice.]

It went back into the well. We stopped its feeding cycle early, but I don't know that we stopped it permanently.

[inconsequence]

Then if It comes?

[Fun fact about Chara: KNIFE.]

[No, really. That’s a Knife they’re drawing from the sheath at their side, its blade a strangely glossy red, shimmering with a vaguely menacing light, emblazoned with curious white crescents worked into the steel.]

We stop It permanently.

[beeped]

[Richie likes the way that Chara thinks, and he nods earnestly.]

We'd have to.

[His gaze falls on Chara's knife after that, eye widening.] What kind of knife is that? It's...

[Magic, maybe? He's never seen anything like it.]

[inconsequence]

It's the most powerful weapon of its universe.

[They can't help but brag about it. 99 ATK, capable of cleaving the entire world to dust - they know that, now, having seen it in their own future's eyes. In terms of how it works, they really couldn't say; they simply know that in anyone else's hands, it's little more than a Worn Dagger at 15 ATK.]

Capable of destroying whole worlds.

[beeped]

What the fuck! [Richie shrieks at that. He's all about playing with fireworks, cherry bombs. Naturally the knife is really cool. But it's also hard to imagine something so powerful--]

How? Is it like a nuke?

[inconsequence]

It can cut through almost anything.

[They say almost because, apparently, its function is somewhat reduced in places such as this one. Possibly so they don't end up destroying the world. Though, granted, it is not as though they've reached the ceiling of LOVE.]

[...yet?]

Including, I suppose, reality.

[beeped]

Are you shitting me?

[His eyes glitter with excitement. He's sure if anything can kill It, it must be something that powerful. But more importantly--]

Can I try it?

[inconsequence]

I'm afraid it isn't that simple.

[Because they have at least six other sharp and pointed objects on their person at the time, because he is a child, because they are confident in their capacity to overpower him should he try to cut and run - regardless of whether this might be true - they flip the Knife around and offer it to him, hilt-first.]

[The instant it changes hands, the blade goes from red to dulled gray silver, the handle from dark and ornate to worn and scuffed at the edges.]