+ 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

Narek | Star Trek (Picard)

[snakehead]

Arrival
If there is a less graceful entrance to this place he'd love to see it. Truly, his ego has taken quite the beating over the last forty eight hours, and stumbling into an unfamiliar city on an unfamiliar planet but still damnably restrained in the federation-issue magnetized handcuffs around his wrists? His day could be going better. He could probably get them off if he had the right rools, but who knows what he'll have access to here? Yes, he is special though, thank you, or at least he'd always loved to believe that. So, green blood still trickling from a cut on his scalp with several bruises, Narek tries to not look like a lost tourist as he looks for something to get his hands free.

Spit Shine Your Black Clouds
Narek has managed to get the handcuffs off of himself one way or another, so sure, he'll celebrate, though he looks perfectly relaxed and cheerfully friendly he makes a point of touching neither food nor drink unless he sees someone else try it first and observes them long enough to make certain it's safe. When it comes time to offer up prayers and objects to whatever the pit represents?

Fuck it. There's a certain satisfaction in throwing the handcuffs into that chasm, even if he instantly feels the guilty loss of wasting a potential resource. His mouth is a thin line as he watches them vanish into the darkness along with the other offerings.

Silhouette saloon
Narek is a cagey bastard and he's pretty sure he's in hell. It seemed great at first, exactly his type of place, to sit and listen to other people spill their secrets.

Narek is made of secrets and they're threatening to choke him, vanishing into the same fog a little bit at a time until he finally has to grab someone by the arm and hiss out a whisper he no longer remembers the reason for, but knows it's a terrible truth just the same.

"... I thought I was doing the right thing."


Digital Veil
What a juvenile little riddle.

I've enough bruises for a lifetime and more. I've no need of roses, real or imagined. Cradles are equally useless for me, but coffins I can put plenty of use to.

How about this one? Say my name and I disappear. What am I?

WILDCARD
[Idk throw something else at me? Will match format!]

Silhouette Saloon

[alwayswithscissors]

Dean had been there long enough to hear some secrets, biting the inside of his cheek as the urge to spill his own was being brought closer and closer to the surface. He frowned as he was grabbed, looking the guy over "Pretty sure a whole shit ton of us thought the same thing, pal. In whatever reality we're from."

He sighed, free hand rubbing his forehead a bit. "More I think about it, though, the less I'm thinkin' I was..." He lost both his brothers. No way was that the right thing.

[snakehead]

It's awful and he's hating every second of this. Even as things slip away from him like water through a sieve, he gets the same feeling. He believed he was doing right. But still. But still.

It all turned out so wrong.

"... I lost my sister."

[alwayswithscissors]

"My brother and half brother are both trapped in hell." He responded before looking to the bar and gesturing for them both to go over. Sounded like a drink could do them good, at the very least.

He wasn't sure why he was feeling compelled to share, but the least they could do was have a beer or something over this depressing set of topics, right?

[snakehead]

Certainly, why not? It looked like they probably had real liquor here too, though whether it will do anything for Narek's biology is up in the air.

"I lost my brother last...year? And my sister, she. She just died, I think. I didn't save her," he's fairly certain it was something that she chose that led her to that fate, but he still feels guilt over it. That he lived and she didn't.

[alwayswithscissors]

"Did you have the chance to save her? My brothers are victims of an angel and the Devil himself. The angel of which wanted me but I refused. Constantly. So I kinda screwed Adam over in that regard." He'll get drinks coming for them from the bar. "Not exactly an ideal situation."

Feeding forest

[loihtija]

Standing in the middle of the trees, Grey has his eyes closed, his breathing even and quiet, listening to the forest around him. It doesn't speak the way a forest should, at least in his humble opinion. He doesn't like it. He doesn't like it one damn bit.

Neither does he like the scuffling steps that come towards him. Someone obviously walking in an awkward manner, not quite like he should, halted, restrained perhaps.

His brows furrow. And finally he opens his eyes to stare at the man. Imposing in his dark coat and frown shadowing his gaze, he gives the bleeding, handcuffed man a long quiet stare, then ventures simply: "You're loud."

[snakehead]

For all that Narek is, indeed, bleeding and handcuffed and has clearly been through the wringer, he does maintain an air of forced dignity that would be more at home in his own imposing dark coat and sharp lines.

"My apologies," he says, polite and courteous. "I will endeavor to walk quieter."

[loihtija]

Grey is looking at him now, head tilting a bit to the side as he considers the man. He obviously is need of some help.

"Come here," he says finally and steps forward, face still just as impassive and irritated as before.

( digital veil )

[guitarheroism]

Going heavy on the morbid, aren't you?

Silence, right? That's the answer.

[snakehead]

One man's morbid is another man's realistic.

Yes, it is. Juvenile riddle for juvenile riddle.

[guitarheroism]

Then you'll fit right in. Though I can't say that's a worthy title, mate.

I don't know if I'd call it juvenile. Archaic, mostly.

[ riddle-talk went out . . . 14th century? 15th? douxie loses track of the years. ]