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

[magneticfields]

[ He keeps his arm around her waist as he leads them down the hall in no particular direction. There's only so many places to go on a space station, after all.

The hardest part about grief is how lonely it is. How all one wants to do is talk about the dead, but nobody wants to hear it. After all these years he is finally able to tell Peter about his parents, his sister, his daughter. Some he can tell to Charles. But not all. He hasn't been able to bring himself to talk about Magda to anybody. Not when she represents so many painful things to them.

He is envious of this man. A man he's never met, a contemporary of his father's, and just as dead. It's a wretched impulse, even for him. And not what Diana needs in this moment.

He tries to be what she needs. With any luck the attempt will be good enough. ]

Tell me about him. [ Speaking quietly, he invites her to break her silence. ] Not just how he died. How he lived.

[monomachy]

[As they walk, a numbness begins to creep over her. She's still trying to process seeing Steve again, feeling the warmth of his hands and the cold of her first snow. It had all been so much to take in, and it's finally becoming clear that it had all just been a memory, that none of it had been real this time. She takes a deep breath in and exhales slowly, trying to calm herself.

His words surprise her, and she glances to the side, trying to figure out why he wants to know. Perhaps he is genuinely curious, and thinks it will comfort her to talk about him. Honestly, Diana doesn't know if it will. But it's worth a try.

She remains quiet for a few more moments, thinking about what to say. When it comes down to it, she doesn't know much about Steve outside the time they'd spent together. It had only been a few weeks, and she had never asked about his family or his home. Just another thing to regret. So instead, she talks about what she does know.]

He was a good man. [She wonders if that's too vague, but dismisses the thought a moment later. It's a perfect way to describe him. The words come easier than expected.] Reckless and brash, but determined to do what was right. [Even against his superiors' direct orders.] We met when I saved him from drowning off the coast of Themyscira. He'd stolen German secrets, and was flying them back to London when he was shot down.

[magneticfields]

[ He runs his thumb along her side as they walk, trying to do what he can to keep her grounded. In his experience, it is far too easy to lose himself in these things, drown in the tide of grief as it washes over him. He smiles softly at her description. ]

That's a remarkable story.[ He laughs quietly. ] Almost like how I met Charles. Although I wasn't doing anything so noble as delivering intelligence.

I can only imagine his reaction washing up on that beach.

[monomachy]

[That's a story she'll have to ask about another time. For now, she's too busy thinking about Steve, his blue eyes and crooked smile. His determination. She stares straight ahead, lost in thought.]

He was confused, I think. I asked him if he was a man.

[Knowing what she knows now, that had been an awkward inquiry. But--]

He was the first I ever saw.

[magneticfields]

[ Erik laughs softly. ]

Yes, from what I observed that would not be a point of confusion he encountered very often, I imagine.

[ He considers her second statement for a moment. ]

So for the first 4,900 years of your life, give or take, you didn't encounter a single man?

[monomachy]

[Diana nods, smiling just a little.]

Of course not. Only Amazons live on Themyscira, and all Amazons are women.