spherememing | 001. Test Drive Meme.

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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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Well, that's a bit of a story. My name is Ivar Ragnarsson. People call me Ivar The Boneless. [Nope, he doesn't bother explaining that weird nickname, but it might sound familiar to a history buff.] And I come from 818. I'm a Viking king there. [He sounds very proud of that fact. A kingship isn't just passed down to next of kin. A lot of times, it has to be earned.]

I was taken from my own world and ended up on a city that was on a moon in space. I stayed a long time there, going back to my own world once before coming back again. There was a lot that happened there, but I can scarcely believe half of it now. Or maybe I can, considering the circumstances I've found myself in now.

[Maybe to a history buff, but certainly not to Aaron, but there were a lot more, and far more pressing, points Ivar made there.]

You're...a viking from...the year 818, but you came here from...a moon. In space.

[He tries to keep the disbelieving tone out of his voice as he repeats the story Ivar's just recounted to him, but he's never been a good liar...or actor.]

What are the odds someone was kidnapped from their own world twice...?

Yes. It makes for a good story, doesn't it?

[The Norse did so love their fantastic tales.]

It happens more often than you'd think. Nearly everyone in that city with me had the same thing happen to them.

It certainly does that, yeah.

[He pauses for a moment, thoughtfully.]

Did others from that city end up here?

I don't know. I've been asking, but haven't found anyone yet. It doesn't surprise me. The portal that sent people different places was never very reliable.

[Ivar's accepted it's going to be a while before he ends up fully going home.]

And there are a lot of places to choose from, it seems.

[That was an understatement.]

You must have a lot of skills at your disposal, Ivar. Uh, were you a tradesman too, or a warrior? I'm not very familiar with your people, so I'm not quite sure how the line of rule works.

A warrior king. [He explains. Not bad for someone who just turned eighteen. But then people did have shorter lifespans back then. You were ancient if you got to the ripe old age of fifty.] Every Norsemen knows how to fight, but it takes a special sort to become a Viking warrior.

If all your people are warriors, I can see why.

Hopefully, there isn't much call for that here. That's a lot of ocean water to come crashing down on our heads if we don't play nice.

[He shudders at the thought of a watery grave, thankful he's only using audio so his moment of weakness can't be seen. He doubted he'd be lucky to escape with his life a second time.]

What a dreadful way to die. Vikings who drown don't get to Valhalla.

Exactly. I don't think anyone who drowns does, especially if they're the ones who caused it.

[Ivar. Don't break the ceiling, okay?]

[Don't worry, he'll behave himself...for now.]

Where do you believe you go when you die?

Honestly...I don't know.

[He shrugs.]

I just do my best to avoid getting there, wherever there is.

Norsemen can end up in four different places depending on how you die. If you drown, you're taken to the hall of the goddess Rán by her daughters. I almost ended up there once, but one of her daughters saved me instead.

[It sounds preposterous, but Ivar wholeheartedly believes everything he's saying.]

One of...the daughters of a goddess saved you from drowning.

[All the eyebrow-raising.]

Yes. Her name was Uðr. She saw greatness in me and wouldn't let me die. She dragged me back to the surface instead.

[He says this all in an earnest and matter-of-fact tone like this happens all the time in his world. Which it sort of does. He pauses when he's done.]

What's the matter? You don't believe?

[He raised a hand, a kind of surrender.]

I'm not calling you a liar, Ivar, it's just...hard to believe without seeing it, you know?

That's the beauty of faith. You believe without seeing. And if you find favor with the gods, they reward you for it.

[Ivar believes he holds such a position with them. Why not? He's done great things in his life that no one ever dared believe a cripple would do.]

I understand.

[And he wasn't lying. Aaron had faith in things, after all. Just...normally those things were people.]

I'm glad she was around to save you. Otherwise, we never would have met.

I am thankful as well. But it appears I have a destiny in store for me and the gods will not let me die until it has been fulfilled.

[For it was said Ivar The Boneless would become one of the greatest of Ragnar Lothbrok's sons.]

[In the end, it doesn't really matter whether or not Aaron believes Ivar's claims about the divine. What matters is whether or not Ivar believes in them.]

So...do you think you have a destiny to get back to, or...do you think this is part of it?

[Just wait till Ivar reveals his grandfather was the god Odin. That'll really throw Aaron for a loop. He pauses and sounds thoughtful as he answers.]

That is a very good question and I don't know the answer to it. Perhaps both? It is always possible to have more than one purpose in life.

[Aaron nods, smiling.]

Yeah. So, what if your purpose, and everyone's purpose, is to just live the best life they can, whatever that means? Wouldn't that mean that everyone has a great destiny, it's just different because they're different people?

That seems like an empty platitude to me. Live a good life, be a good person, those things are supposed to give people happiness. So often it doesn't. Life is hard and brutal and anyone who thinks otherwise is too naive to have experienced the reality of it.

[Careful you don't cut yourself on the edge this cynical teenager has.]

[Aaron is unscathed, smiling instead.]

I know exactly how hard and brutal life is, Ivar. I just don't let it define me.

001. Test Drive Meme.

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