thisavrou_log | A Spacemas Carol: December's Mod Event Log

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!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[That giant hand reaching for him seems like it... should be kind of scary, probably.

But Ginko stands where he is, only moving to lift a hand and place it on Sideswipe's finger - and to look away, staring at the floor, when eye contact starts to feel... uncomfortable. Which might just be him.]

[It's not trying to crush Ginko, anyway. Just trying for physical contact.]

S-sorry dude. Sorry.

[Because apparently, all of this is something he needs to apologize for. Maybe he's just self-conscious. Or maybe he's worried someone saw something they didn't want to. That no one wanted to.]

[If he'd genuinely thought it was, he probably would have made some kind of an effort to run off.

Probably. Maybe.]

You... didn't do anything, though.

You -- you didn't need to see that...

[No one did.]

[He didn't even need to see it again. To have it all thrown so painfully back into his face. It was all so personal. And it was all so much easier just shoved aside and pretended to be ignored.]

[Like that was going to somehow solve it all.]

I don't mind. 'M sorry if it bothered you, though.

[It's not like he saw anything horribly traumatic, alright. The only question here is whether Sideswipe would rather he not have seen those memories.]

You... You probably should mind, man. It's --

Sorry it's. Personal and stupid.

[It wasn't horribly traumatic, no. It wasn't even that bad. But after the conversations with Shepard, after how many times she'd said he shouldn't feel like this, he's half expecting the same thing to come from Ginko.]

[You shouldn't be upset he's gone, you're better off.]

...Should I?

[He tilts his head slightly, like a confused dog, and stares up at Sideswipe.]

I mean, some of it was kind of gross. [Like the kissing, for example. Gross.] But it wasn't that bad.

Wait -- why's it gross?

[Okay, that bit he doesn't understand. Why would it be gross?]

[At least he's gone from upset to confused. That's... something, right?]

I mean, there was... I saw you guys kissing? And also the other guy... I think threw up. So... that was kind of gross.

[He shifts in place and looks away, his expression almost apologetic. Maybe he really shouldn't have seen it after all. Maybe it was weird of him not to mind more?]

Oh... yeah. Riptide got... he got sick a few times. I guess I got used to it.

[That probably doesn't... sound as reassuring as he thinks it does. But at least he's trying, right?]

[It is super not reassuring, actually, but that's okay because Ginko can't be reassuring either.]

Oh. That's... too bad. But it doesn't bother me; I'm used to seeing grosser stuff.

...

No offense dude?

But I don't really wanna know.

That makes sense.

[Frankly, Ginko would rather not know about some of it, but he doesn't exactly have a choice.]

But - now you know you don't have to worry about me getting grossed out.

Yeah. Yeah, I guess... not.

You mad?

[Because honestly, that's the other reaction people tend to have to him and his memories of Riptide.]

No? What would I be mad about? If anything, it'd make more sense for you to be mad, since I just looked at a bunch of your memories.

[Not intentionally, of course, but still.]

Everyone else is mad. When... they hear about Riptide.

[In reality, they're made when they hear how their relationship went. But that's not how Sideswipe sees it.]

Why?

[Sorry, Sideswipe, he understands absolutely nothing that is happening here.]

[There's a loose shrug.]

"He's bad for you" they keep saying.

...Why?

[Yep we're doing this now.]

I... dunno.

They said because he left. But he like. Had to.

Why'd he have to leave?

He...

He just had to. He couldn't stay. It was ... personal stuff?

[He doesn't actually know. Not for sure. But saying so implies... something's wrong.]

[Well, that sounds fair enough to him. It's not like he really knows what would qualify as 'personal stuff' anyway, so he can only assume it must have been legitimate.

He pauses for a moment before asking,] Was that note all he told you?

... yeah. Yeah, it was.

[Mostly admitting this because... well. Ginko hasn't judged him yet. It feels safe to tell him this kind of thing and not worry he's going to be yelled at.]

[Or lectured.]

And everyone says that's a bad thing!

[Ginko tilts his head and looks upward. His tone is still quiet and thoughtful, without a trace of judgment; it's hard to judge when he doesn't know what would be "right" here to begin with. He's just trying to puzzle out what other people might be thinking.

In a way, though, that's harder.]

I think... they just think he should've warned you first. If he knew he was gonna leave. Then you could've talked one last time.

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