+ TDM 001.

[luxflowmod]

Welcome to Luxflow's first TDM.

Let's get into it.

ARRIVAL

— You wake up encased.

It’s dark, naturally, but a few tendrils of light slip past the — vines? Why are you tangled up in vines? It gives you panic — why can’t you remember — breath quickening, in and in and in again. Your frenzied movements against the vines let in more light, more air.

And you breathe.

As you exhale, a shaky but sure breath against the rough foliage, a light flows out of you. It’s just a little orb that pours out, past the greenery and into that unknown.

The vines melt away into ash, and you’re left standing in a clearing, trees impossibly tall and swaying in the night breeze. Your breath comes in deep and steady, now, and it occurs to you that you should be panicking still … But then as you look around the clearing, you see more vine cocoons, like yours, and others climbing out of them …

There’s people in the center of the clearing. They’re armed but they’re friendly, and they tell you in short and sweet sentences about the place you’re in now …

“ You’re in the Feeding Forest. ” says one, “ This place’ll eat you alive if you can’t break out of the vines. You must be special, huh? ”

Special?

“ C'mon, we’ll take you back to the city. You’re probably here for a while. We’ll fill you in … ”

SPIT SHINE YOUR BLACK CLOUDS

You're trying to get your bearings, but this City stops for no one.

On the next morning after your arrival, there's a festival! It's near the hole, Heart and Center, in the middle of the place. When you arrive there, you're fooled for a moment, and the place doesn't seem so scary; the colors are bright and the citizens are so cheerful as they dance and cheer on the new arrivals to strange music.

No one really knows why they're celebrating, but the arrival of the strange ones feels like it's heralding something good. Maybe there's unheard prayers that are being answered! Maybe their prayers will be answered! There's drinks and food and song, so why not join in? You can get drunk or high or just chill and take it all in.

Yet as the festivities burn on, the locals all hush at some point late in the evening. Words ripple through the throngs, and it reaches you fast. They're going to heave prayers up to the Setting Sun. But first, the great chasm needs an offering from those praying.

They throw in valuables and invaluables alike; drinks and food and clothes and jewelry and weapons and boomboxes are thrown in without a second thought.

What will you offer? If you choose to at all, you'll feel bereft; if it's a memory or power, a light will flow from your mouth and down into the chasm ...

They're silent thereafter in their prayer. Do you pray, too? If you do or you don't, you can't help but feel intense shame, like someone is laughing at you ... Still, after all that, the party continues on.

You're just a little more unsettled, now, a little more uncertain.

SILHOUETTE SALOON

The Silhouette Saloon is open! Or so the signage around town says. Excessive and garish, these signs point characters down a winding path into a place called the Silhouette Saloon. When you enter, everything goes white and everyone appears merely as shadows ... Pretty on the nose, but it provides a strange anonymity.

The fixtures of the saloon are all shadowed out too, stark black against the misty backdrop of white. You can drink here and be free to tell your secrets to anyone who'll listen. The bartender or maybe one of the dancers just finishing their set will tell you that this place keeps secrets.

If you were to tell someone a secret, or hear one, you wouldn't remember it exactly. You would, however, feel a strange nagging sensation about the person who told it to you. Once on the outside, you might not be able to get through a conversation with them without thinking they're hiding something ...

If you don't tell someone a secret, you'll feel compelled to tell someone one once you're out of the Saloon, where the secret won't be so hidden ... It might be better to tell one in the safety of anonymity then, hm?

But the longer you're in there, the more you lose of yourself. You'll forget your name, your purpose, everything about yourself until you pass out on the dance floor. You'll wake up outside the Saloon, stricken with amnesia. It'll wear off after a few hours, though.

PITY'S GOT AN UGLY PRICE TAG

Besides the Drifters and Givers, a new group has popped up. They're called the Pleading, or called plain annoying. They beg for anything you've got from the roadside, calling you over. If you hear them out, they'll hypnotize you in a way; they plead for anything you can possibly spare their poor soul -- the shirt off your back, a memory, an ability. Their sob story goes from believable to something horrifying and personal to you. They'll tell you your mother won't forgive you if you don't, or they'll tell you that the fate of your very best friend hinges on you giving them your wallet.

What do you do?

If someone breaks you out of the grasp of the Pleading's hypnosis, you'll be free.

If you give in, they'll take, and you'll be bereft of what you gave and that will be that.

If you don't, you'll feel immeasurable guilt, mounting more and more with each step ... You might have to be talked out of that guilt, or you might throw yourself into the chasm, inconsolable ...

DIGITAL VEIL ( network )

A question appears on the network. There's no handle attached.

BRUISES OR ROSES OR CRADLES OR COFFINS? WHY WHY WHY? :'D

Answers to this 'question' will be displayed to all; feel free to comment on others, try to gain some sense of what this could mean ... You can also post to the network freely.

QUESTIONS?

Ask below. Have fun.

Comments

Ellie | The Last Of Us 2

[enduresurvive]

ARRIVAL

Ellie would like to be able to say this is the first time she's completely lost her shit in a forest, but that would be a flat out lie. But this isn't a familiar forest. It's not the wilderness in Jackson where she hunts sometimes. It's not the terrifying jungle of Seattle that she'll never go back to. It's not even the freezing mountain woods of Colorado, somewhere she hopes she'll never see again. This is...different. She fights her way out of the vines, forgetting in her panic to be quiet, not draw attention. Who the hell knows what's out here in these woods? But panic doesn't give a shit if there's infected out there, or yet another group of people looking to kill her for whatever reason.

She's not sure if she's screaming or she's just imagining it. It doesn't matter.

Finally, it clears just enough for her to look around. There are...fuck, are those people in the trees? In...in cocoons? She looks back at the vines she just escaped from and realises that she's not the only one.

"What the fuck," she says, half under her breath, words rushed together. She starts at a noise - a snapped twig, a bird, a rabbit, a shambling clicker, something she completely made up in her head - and forces herself to move away from the creepy cocoons and towards what she (thinks she) heard. She reaches for a gun that isn't there, but somehow these strange (and armed?!) people talk her down and take her back to the city. Once they're reasonably convinced she's not going to start shooting them, one of them hands her a backpack. She recognises it, but she doesn't go through it here in front of them.

Catch her on a bench somewhere mostly out of the way, going through it. The second you approach her, she's likely to turn that handgun on you. Is it loaded? Maybe. Maybe not. As soon as she realises there isn't a threat, though, she lowers it and looks down. "Sorry. Hard to not feel jumpy when I woke up like two hours ago covered in vines."

Alternately, find her wandering around the place, trying to get her bearings. She's less likely to pull a gun on you like this, because she's less likely to spook. But hey, you never know! She's obviously highly on edge, gripping one strap of her backpack with white knuckles.

BLACK CLOUDS

Ellie largely avoids the festival. What the fuck, right, a celebration of people being kidnapped and wrapped up in vines? Yeah, no thanks. Besides, she's just...not sure how to be festive anymore. The past few months bled it out of her. Waking up in that terrifying forest today hadn't done her attitude any favours, either. She still has a sense of humour under there, sure, but this is just a weird thing to be celebrating, feels like.

Someone shoves a drink at her and she hangs around by herself, not drinking it. It's hard to escape everything, so she lingers, not wanting company and not wanting to be alone, either. You can find her like this, staring into her cup, trying to decide if it's safe to drink or not.

Later in the evening, apparently everyone is just throwing shit into a chasm. Ellie can't even manage to be shocked about it, because of course they are! Why the fuck not, at this point. So she just watches them, disapproving scepticism clear on her face.

She catches someone's eye. "What? You don't think I'm going to join in this weird culty bullshit, do you?"

DIGITAL VEIL

bruises because i'm used to them and i'm sick of coffins

ps this is a terrible question

[ I vastly prefer prose but I'll match format. Please see Ellie's opt out page here for possible CWs you might encounter with her. Please lmk if you would like to avoid TLOU2 spoilers! ]

digital veil | un: evil.monk

[sougyaranbam]

yikes. that's kinda fucked up

un:savagestarlight

[enduresurvive]

haha yeah it's pretty grim isn't it?

sorry about that