001. Test Drive Meme.

[sphererpmod]

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Welcome, welcome, welcome.

The Council is well aware of how hard it is to get used to that whole kidnapping being brought to a new place you don’t understand is, and because of that, each month they host an open welcome party for all residents both old and new. The party and its theme and location vary by month, and November’s theme is funnily enough Thanksgiving. The location is in the market dome, and all of the stalls have been closed in favor of long, large and communal tables for sitting around and eating and talking. The Market dome is large, roughly three city blocks would fit comfortably inside of it. The stalls themselves are lined with bright lights, giving the activity within more of a carnival atmosphere than that of a normal shopping experience. Around you, the air hums almost, teaming with life and vibrancy among all sides. The way that the tables are seated encourages some intimacy despite the space, offering a large family sort of feeling versus something like a restaurant.

The people there are happy to see new people, that much is evident. People who one doesn’t know are greeted with smiles for the large part, and questions are eagerly answered, even if there is a slight ‘no one really knows’ vagueness to them. For the most part, of course. No city is ever a Utopia, and there are those who give newly arrived people flat looks, and answer questions with short and curt monotoned responses.

There are conversations happening at some parts of the table that aren’t meant for you to hear; they’re just whispered snippets of something about ‘Cruz doesn’t know what she wants.’ Or ‘Tearing is keeping it all under wraps of course, because that’s what she does.’ More common are grumbled complaints about ‘that bastard Tinder won’t stop just because…’ When they notice someone listening, they definitely glare at the listener. But whatever else, and however many secrets they may be keeping from the newcomers, the people complaining seem honest about it.

There’s a huge food table on one side that’s completely loaded with everything one could want. Turkey, and all of the fixings, including vegetarian and vegan options for those who would require them. (Though, someone leans over to mention, “the meat’s not really an animal anyway.”) The food is definitely sort of a potluck, given the variety of types of food in various sorts of serving dishes and states of presentation. Some of the foods include some weird stuff that looks terrible but is delicious. Probably. There are foods thee colors the likes of which only would be found on Earth if someone added an insane amount of food color to them.

Do try the grey stuff though. It’s delicious, ask the dishes. The blue milk? Less so.

However, food isn’t the only thing at the meeting. On the opposite side from the food, there are smaller tables set up with people sitting behind them. In front of the tables are homemade brightly colored signs that advertise things like jobs and clubs. The people and interests here in The Sphere are hugely varied and people are just so earnest to tell newcomers about them. They’re earnest to the point where they may just actually reach out and grab a person in order to force them to stop and to listen to whatever spiel they happen to be working on. Booths that are in attendance for jobs include: Agriculture: “help grow the food that feeds us all! Farming is life!”, The library: “No skill needed! We’ll teach you what you need to know!” The school system: “Teachers wanted! Education is the right of everyone!” Maintenance: “Help keep the domes clean!” As well as various restaurant booths looking for help for both servers and chefs.

For the hobbies involved they are even more varied. Book club: “we live in a multiverse, let’s read the books from it! With wine!” Garden club: “we want to grow stuff on our terms!” Sprinkled among are various skill learning clubs, among them: woodworking club, smithing, robotics, technology, first aid. It seems that despite the fact that no one is required to work in the City, people are still offering skills as needed.

As the night progresses, music starts, and there’s dancing and more adult fare. Liquor is broken out, of various sources from various worlds, including some that offer the Sphere’s own label on them. If discrete enough inquiries are made, a passcode to the Black Market hidden behind some of the stalls is offered. The entrance is hidden enough that someone needs to be looking for it, and there is a rather large bouncer guarding the door and asking for the proper passcode. The passcode of the day happens to be turnips.

Inside the black market is large, but much more dimly lit than the regular market dome that the welcome party was held inside of. There are various pockets of people clustered under bright neon lights. The lights, someone confides to you, are code for what they’re offering. And nearly everything is on offer if a person has the ability to make a trade. Things from home, character skills and even favors tend to be the currency here, but watch out: the hawkers within are shrewd and sharp. If they make a deal with someone, it’s nearly always going to favor them. Eventually.

There’s also a large and loud party happening inside. Think of a rave with a large amount of people who happened to be a bit out of their minds. Drugs aren’t given freely here, they’re too valuable, but should someone want to figure out what they’re rolling on, eventually someone will ask or offer. The drug that they are currently using is called ‘self’ and it’s something that affects your character in an intensely personal way. For some, it’s an experience like your favorite cocktail mixed with a vicodin, and for others it’s just like being drunk. For still more people, it’s like ecstasy without the side effects.

The drug has no physically addicting properties.

Welcome to my nightmare.
For anyone within the architecture dome, the library dome, the sunlight rec dome and any personal dome that people chose, around midnight people will have a curiously tired sensation. They just need to rest their eyes for a moment, or some may fall asleep for longer. No matter the length of time that the character is out, the nightmare infects them, and when they wake they will be filled with a curious but urgent sensation.

They have lost something. The loss can be a physical object, an emotion, a memory, a person or perhaps a sense of self. If the lost person is currently present in the game, they will be unable to be seen by the character who is experiencing the waking nightmare. Urgency will grip the character, because the longer the sensation goes on for, the worse it becomes. Characters can search and scrounge for their loss everywhere, but until the nightmare is over, they will not find whatever it is. Even if it is themselves. Instead, they may be frantic, angry, or just play old scared to death. They need to find this at whatever cost. Where they may find it is something that their own brains will settle on, but of course until the nightmare is over, they will not be able to.

The nightmare ends with either the character falling into a normal, restful sleep naturally or through some other means (someone might mention the infirmary has sedation medication just for the is purpose, or that there’s always a brick) or when they are woken with the intervention of someone else. The intervention of someone else is entirely up to you, and can come from a player character or a NPC, depending on how the player is feeling with the thread. By intervention we mean someone who is able to talk the person out of the nightmare, or to slap or shake them out, or to use some sort of trick that shows them that they are indeed inside of a nightmare. The knowledge that someone is affected by a nightmare must come from an external source, and should come from a character that your character would trust. After all, would you believe someone who told you that you were in a nightmare if you didn’t know that? That said, the best way to deal with waking someone is to remove them from the affected domes. Too bad you don’t know which domes are affected.

Harvest time

The Council hopes that you enjoyed the party the other night, because now it’s time to put out the call for volunteers to come in and help with replenishing the city’s stores from the fields and orchards in the agricultural domes. Your friend neighborhood councillor in charge, Annie Cruz has sent out a message that volunteers who come in to help out will be given payment in the form of lunch and beer and wine.

The jobs involved are varied, and involve harvesting crops such as corn, picking apples or grapes and handing out water or the boxed lunches provided. People will be assigned an area and given a bucket or basket in order to put the fruits of their labor inside of. Either way, there’s a festive atmosphere, and most people who have been there longer than your character seem to be old hat at this.

There’s even a large tub of grapes for people to smash with their feet (“but for fuck’s sake make sure they’re clean first!”). If asked about it, someone will explain that the city makes its own wine and brews its own beer every season! A good chunk of the things picked, you are told slyly, will probably end up drunk rather than eaten, “once the off the top happens.” If asked to explain it, a character will just touch their nose slyly and not say any more. It’s also explained that the grapes crushed with people’s feet don’t actually end up in the general bottles of wine: they’re not savages here!

So, jump in and help with something, or sit down and have lunch and just get to know the people around you with a glass of wine or beer. You’re all here for the foreseeable future, might as well!

Network!

In the Sphere, the network is neural, and accessed via touching the glowing golden circle behind your character’s ear. They can identify themselves with a screen name if you so desire, but messages should be one of three ways or a combination of them. 1. Audio. Your character thinks audible words onto the network. 2. Writing: Your character thinks text into the network. 3. Video. Your character projects a broadcast of a video of themselves onto the network. Replies are determined by the player.

The network needs to be accessed by choice, so character broadcasts are not automatically beamed directly into people’s heads. The Sphere isn’t that rude.

Private messages are allowed by pressing and holding and pressing and holding again as you picture the person in your mind. This can be an image or a name, err more on the side of things being more accessible than less.

Wildcard!
This can be meeting a possible roommate or dorm mate (if one is choosing to go that route), the use of a communal kitchen, waking up and dealing with the things that you were just told about the City, yelling at the sphere, or anything else that your little heart desires. Go nuts.

OOC note: if you feel that something requires an NPC interaction, please go to here and reply with a link and a brief summary of why you need it and the mod will try and be accomodating.

Comments

Ivar "The Boneless" Ragnarsson (CRAU) | Vikings

[ragnarsson]

Welcome

Strangely enough, the welcome reminds Ivar quite a bit of the festivals he'd experienced back in Riverview. Friendly people, plenty of food, and the booths all seem like they'd fit right in where he'd just come from.

Since he's long since learned to be adventurous with his food choices, considering the food of Norway in 818 is terribly bland, he takes quite a bit of everything until his plate is in danger of overflowing. He plunks down next to you, a questionably large tankard of ale in one of his hands.

There isn't much that's too odd about the teenager, save for two things: both his eyes and sclera are blue, and the fact he's wearing a pair of leg braces that look like they came straight out of some futuristic setting, courtesy of one Tony Stark back in the Quarantine. He starts chomping down on food, occasionally looking at you like he might be considering murdering you. It's nothing personal, really, he just looks like that all the time.

"Wonder if they're all trying to fatten us up for slaughter?" He poses the question to you, and yes, he is serious.

Nightmare

He's lost something. No, someone. He tries to think of who it is in his head, but curiously, all the faces are blurred. He realizes when he tries to think of his family, any of them, they're all just gone. He was always afraid this would happen. That someday, he wake up, and everyone he cared about would be gone.

A sense of dread and panic fill him up, the twin emotions pushing anything else to the side. Maybe...maybe they haven't all left him? Maybe one of them is here. If he can just find one of them, than he knows these emotions would leave him. So he goes off to search for them.

One might want to get him to stop eventually, though that will be hard with how stubborn and determined he is to find his family. His leg braces take a lot of the strain off his legs, but still, going too long is going to end up with him possibly hurting himself. Best not to start things off here by breaking a bone.

Network

[Accessing the network is a bit different than back in the Quarantine, but Ivar's adjusted to worse. After a moment or two, he's got it down. He sends a video message of himself, a nineteen year old who has startlingly ice-blue eyes, and odder, faintly blue sclera.]

Is there anyone here who came from a city on a moon called the Quarantine? If so, contact me. If not, well, it doesn't matter now.

[Really, after getting dragged from his home world once, a second time isn't so bad.]

network; audio (un: obsidian)

[obsidien]

Pray tell, what doesn't matter now?

[ragnarsson]

The place I was in before had the ability to send you to different worlds and pull you back if they so chose. But they didn't always choose to do so. So if this place is very much the same, I am stuck here for the future.

[He doesn't sound terribly upset about it. There's worse things in the world than being stuck in a place that has hot water whenever you want it and cool technology for him to learn about.]

[obsidien]

[Sidurgu's accent is posh, as if he were a noble, a measured cadence... but then he starts cussing.]

Fantastic. Just bloody, godsdamned fantastic. So we are here at the whims of those filthy shites attempting to play god, are we?

[ragnarsson]

Apparently so. Get used to it. But I wouldn't compare them to gods. I have seen true gods and they are far more powerful.

[Such is what happened when Odin was your grandfather and you considered Thor and Loki your uncles. Ivar was a true believer in the Norse gods.]

[obsidien]

Hrrrmph. [Great. Some arse who believes in them and doesn't hesitate to extol their supposed virtues. Like he hasn't had enough of that in Ishgard.]

Keep those beliefs away from me, and you shan't be hearing anything untoward from me.

[ragnarsson]

Fine. [And then he mutters something under his breath that might be 'disbelieving Christians', but it's hard to make out.]

And who are you that has also ended up here?

[obsidien]

A heretic. [Meaning, he doesn't give a flying, buggering damn about any kind of religion.]

[ragnarsson]

[That gets a laugh out of Ivar.]

Oh good. Perhaps we shall get along yet.

[obsidien]

I'd not count on that.

[ragnarsson]

What's the matter? Do you hate people?

[If so, welcome to the club.]

Nightmare

[ubbe]

When Ubbe first saw Ivar he would have sworn that it couldn’t be true. At first there was relief, after all, despite Ivar’s behavior and starting a civil war Ubbe still loved him the same as he always had. He still knew that Ivar was dangerous though. Ubbe is anything but a fool despite Ivar’s opinions as such. He noticed nearly right away that something was wrong, Ubbe knows Ivar far too well.

Despite the fact that Ivar is more likely to kill him than anything else Ubbe goes to him, hand on his shoulder and the voice he’d always used to calm down his troublesome brother.

“Ivar.”

[ragnarsson]

After frantically searching for over forty-five minutes, Ivar still hasn't found them. He's never usually mobile for this long and the pressure on his legs has become immense. He really needs to sit down for a while and rest. But Ivar's natural stubbornness and the fear in his mind won't let him quit.

When Ubbe approaches him, there's no reaction from Ivar. It might be Ivar is just ignoring his older brother, as he's warranted to do, until Ivar's eyes slide right past Ubbe like he's not even there. Whatever has happened to Ivar has made Ubbe invisible to his sight.

He just moves past him, oblivious to his presence, and determined to find his family before-- well, it's irrational, but before it feels like it's too late.

[ubbe]

Ubbe can tell the difference, that the other isn't just ignoring him and his hand tightens on his shoulder. Regardless of the possibility of Ivar's wrath he can't let him go and end up hurting himself. His grip is strong a shake as if to try and get Ivar to actually truly look at him. "Ivar," he says again, louder this time and accompanied by the shaking. He has no idea what it is that's wrong with his brother, he hadn't ever seen him quite like this before.

Is it caused by this place? If Ivar doesn't stop, though, he will find himself flung over Ubbe's shoulder.

[ragnarsson]

Ivar's turning to leave and go search another of the spheres when he feels a physical sensation tugging at his shoulder, like someone just gave him a shake to get his attention. He looks around, but still, no one is present in the room with him. What is this place, haunted? After all that Ivar's been through, he's superstitious enough not to rule out ghosts.

"Is someone there?" He asks cautiously. Well, at least Ubbe got him to stop moving for the moment, though he's liable to start again at any moment with how agitated he is.

[ubbe]

It's a step forward at least. Ubbe's other hand went to Ivar's cheek, shaking his head firmly but not rough.

"Ivar, it's me."

Because who else would Ivar confuse him with if he finally snapped out of whatever this ways.

[ragnarsson]

Yep, that was definitely someone or something trying to get his attention. Great, he has to deal with some invisible presence now when he's in the middle of a very big problem that is he's already hard-pressed trying to solve.

"I really don't have time for this," he says irritably. He tries to move to the side, but whoever has a hold of him doesn't seem like they want him to leave. Ivar's going to be very stubborn about this.

[ubbe]

And so Ivar ends up thrown over ubbes shoulder without another thought. Ubbe has had enough experience in lifting Ivar that he knew how to with minimal pain and effort even with an unwilling Ivar. He starts regardless of protest to head out of the library and in thendirecrion of the place he had been settled in to live

[ragnarsson]

Ivar's immediately furious, yelling out to whoever this is to put him down, and cursing hard enough that he would have made Floki likely fall over laughing. But he doesn't struggle because getting unceremoniously dropped and breaking a bone would really fucking suck. He's just fuming and seriously considering stabbing the air around him in hopes of hitting something.

Fortunately, before that can happen, Ubbe gets him out of the dome that was affecting him. He pauses, and there's a bit where he just sort of blinks and looks around him, like a person being woken up out of a dream. It takes him a moment to place where he is and what happened. Then it all comes to him. Well, it seems the nightmare is over, and as he awkwardly looks around him, he realizes who has forcefully hauled him away like a sack of potatoes. "Ubbe?"

Well, this definitely wasn't the family reunion Ivar had been hoping for.

[ubbe]

Ubbe is unperturbed by all the cursing that Ivar was doing but when it was clear whatever had held him had broken Ubbe was relieved though he didn’t immediately put him down. Despite his first instinct always being to protect Ivar he was also wary of him after their last direct encounter.

“Ivar,” it’s only a few more moments that he waits before there was a bench and he chooses that spot to carefully deposit his brother.

[ragnarsson]

Ivar was painfully aware of how things had ended between them last time. He'd disowned Ubbe and said he was no longer his brother. In true Ivar fashion, he hadn't truly meant them, just saying what he thought would hurt his brother the most. Now here they are again face-to-face.

There's a long awkward pause. "Thank you for that," he finally says. Who knows how long he would have kept moving about before Ubbe's intervention?

Welcome

[amorea_mortuus_sum]

Eric has mostly been sitting at a table on his own, watching things go on and picking at his plate slowly. He feels out of place at things like this anymore despite the fact that the people are more friendly and open. He's missing his better half- it's been a long time since they've really been apart.

He starts when someone drops next to him, not really expecting it, though he gives the teenager a warm smile as a welcome. The looks sent his way make him rescind that smile just a bit, though he doesn't get the feeling he's about to be ground into a pulp. The question and the expression on Ivar's face make him laugh and he shakes his head in response, taking a sip of his wine.

"They've certainly picked the wrong person if that's what they were thinking when I was brought here."

[ragnarsson]

Ivar ferociously chomps down on the food and eats with the air of someone who thinks it might be taken away at any moment. It's rather like watching a wolf with prey it has taken down. In between bites, he expands on the theory he's been forming.

"Perhaps they're taking the long route. Fatten us up, get us to let our guards down, and then they sacrifice us to whatever gods rule this place." This has yet to happen to Ivar in his adventures, but hey, he's sure it's going to occur at some point in the future. "It's what I would do."

Finding this teen with the strange Norwegian accent comes from a place where they sacrifice people is usually the point people start inching away. Really, though, he's a lot more chill than one might expect a psychotic Viking warrior to be. The only indication one probably shouldn't mess with him is the fact he's got a throwing axe and far too many knives on his person.

[amorea_mortuus_sum]

Eric is familiar with that, being from the end of the world. They've been lucky in Alexandria to still have a decent amount of food around so that they don't have to question where their next meal comes from. The amount of food here is almost obscene in comparison.

"Most people don't have the patience to pull the long route." He casts Ivar a glance up and down. "You don't look like the type of person to let that happen. Least of all to yourself. You're quite prepared."

Look, he's trying to be polite, and inching away isn't that. He's faced down scarier people than him with a gun in his face, so the glass is definitely half-full in this situation.

[ragnarsson]

"Most people don't sacrifice other people to their gods or so I am told." Ivar is a very good Viking, but not a good person in general. Not unless he ends up liking a person, which happens less often than it should.

He pulls out one of his knives and holds it out for Eric to examine. It's a deadly weapon, but with a certain elegance, as the handle is carved into the shape of Jormungand the world serpent. "When I kill my enemies, I make sure they suffer long and hard before being sent off to whatever god they so choose to follow. It makes the rest of them afraid for when I come for them next."