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

[mylawn]

[Well. 76 doesn't really know what to say about that--if he should apologize, or otherwise comment, or not acknowledge that entirely, though none of those options seem terribly appropriate. For a moment, he seems to be at a loss.

In the end, it seems better to clarify, and focus on the mission.]

An entity that called itself Mother.

[Though he can't be sure if it has other names, depending on who you ask. That's what she'd been known as to the team who helped her strike back against the intermediaries.]

She destroyed the Ingress complex back on Thisavrou.

[magneticfields]

[ Well.

That's awkward. ]

What a very Freudian choice of an alias.

[ He looks behind 76, trying to get a glimpse of what is going on with the rest of the deck. ]

Interesting. I wonder why she's just lurking here. Surely she could destroy the station if she wished.

[ So could he, it wouldn't be that hard. ]

[mylawn]

[Just a little, but 76 shakes it off, clearly ready to move on to the issue at hand. Erik says approximately what he's thinking--no matter what's going on here, it's bound to be bad news if she's involved.]

I'm wondering if she's really here.

[Because surely if she was, and knew that there were others here with her, she'd be taking steps to destroy them sooner rather than later.]

Or if we are.

[It wouldn't be the first time he's experienced vivid hallucinations of this caliber.]

[magneticfields]

[ Erik is quiet for a long time, thinking through the implications of what 76 just said until he starts to get a headache.

He eyes him warily and finally speaks. ]

You aren't having some sort of existential crisis, are you?

[mylawn]

No, I mean, this crew has experienced vivid mass hallucination before.

[That has all been before Avagi, however, so he's not sure why it would be happening now, except for the fact that the Ingress seems to be great for these kinds of multi-purpose shenanigans. He offers a shrug.]

It's not out of the realm of possibility.

[magneticfields]

[ Erik huffs in frustration. ]

And is useless speculation. All of existence is essentially one mass conglomeration of completely separate, subjective experiences with no real truth. We still have to act on what is, as far as we can tell, reality.

[ He looks back in the direction of where this thing apparently is. Unless he's in some elaborate simulation. ]

If you distract her, I can probably get rid of her.

[mylawn]

I'm not really interested in alerting her to us.

[He imagines that if she is here, and they're here as well, and it's not all some elaborate hallucination, then the last thing he wants to do is let her know they're still alive.

Still, it leaves them with few options, and no good ideas about how to extract themselves from all this.]

You want to go kick the hornet's nest, be my guest.

[magneticfields]

[ 76's hesitation is almost enough to give Erik pause. Almost, but not quite. Whatever enhancements the other man has had, he's still a human, after all.

Erik is not. ]

I'll take care of it, then. You can stay here.

[ Is he condescending? Yes, but isn't that natural when one is naturally superior? He strides down the hall, not bothering to hide his approach. He raises a shield, like he used in Cairo, and lifts his hand to feel for the hull. Parting the metal and sucking the thing out into the storm.

A whisper of movement, a breath of warm air on the back of his neck, is all the warning he gets. His shield does nothing. His brain is set on fire with pain, his skull is cracking open. The sound of the fire roars in his ears, he doesn't hear himself screaming. He doesn't feel it when he hits the floor. ]