expiationlogs | { event 7 } A▒ E█SI▓Y ░▒▓25░9.▒░█

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{ event 7 } A▒ E█SI▓Y ░▒▓25░9.▒░█

IT'S A BEAUTIFUL DAY

March 11. The sun is shining, streaming in perfect sunbeams through uncovered windows. Birds and animals twitter outside, basking in trees that are verdant green and full of life. Outside, the town begins to wake, stirring to life with the sounds of ordinary everyday happenings. Footsteps, carts rolling down the road, the distant sound of friendly neighbors greeting each other.

And you–you have lived here your whole life. Or maybe you’re a visitor to this fine town. Either way, you’re a neighbor here, too.

Aldrip is having another beautiful day.

i. OUR TOWN

The town square is a bustling place to be for locals, and this week is no exception. Aldrip is a vibrant swell of activity: stores, stalls, and stands all open their doors precisely on time, welcoming the new day. Things are quiet, theoretically, while the local school is in session, but anyone playing hooky won’t get a second glance. Everything is fine! It’s too nice a day to be inside, anyway.

(Just like all the other days before, all too nice to waste.)

That being said, Aldrip is not without its own brand of nuisance. Fairies are rarely seen in town, these days, but this week, they seem to be in fine form. They can be found playing harmless tricks on people: taking things from them and moving them somewhere else, rolling carts when no one is holding onto them, mostly-unscrewing screws that hold together mechanical parts… They avoid magical pranks, for now, but these mundane tricks are such a nuisance! They even pull all of the wares out of a local vendor’s stall: dozens and dozens of colorful, patterned scarves. They had been on “deep discount,” leftovers from some “Day of Devotion” event, but the discount is about to get even deeper, on account of how dirty they are.

ii. TEMPTING FATE

A recent expedition to the Lorentia Caves uncovered a hidden gem–literally. Enterprising rock enthusiasts have brought back wheelbarrows full of round geodes, and have made a game out of cracking them open. Geodes that are green inside will get a lavish prize: a stay at a local spa or a gift card to a fancy restaurant. Purple or red inside will get a free drink at the local coffee shop, or a small gift card to use at a local shop. Brown or clear gems get nothing special–but you get to keep the rocks! They hold no special properties, but can be nice to look at and make great paper weights, and some of them almost seem to

g̵l̶o̶w̷

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…

ERROR: MULTIPLE REDUNDANCIES DETECTED
RECALIBRATING
LOADING UPDATES...
PLEASE WAIT

Occasionally, very occasionally, breaking open one of these rocks causes it to crumble, becoming little more than gray ash. Static pops across the surface before it disintegrates.

ERROR: DATA CORRUPTED
PURGING CONTENT

Those who have found these ashen geodes will find that memories of them disappear just as soon as they turn away from what they’ve just seen.

.̸.̷.̵.̴.̷.̸.̸.̶.̴.̴.̸.̷.̵.̵.̷

…

Anyway.

No one quite knows where the pop-up casino came from, but it’s doing a bustling business at night. Now, this establishment is small, nowhere near the size of the one in the past, and is not nearly as expansive. Nonetheless, it helps create a thriving nightlife in town: there’s games, drinking, dancing, and all sorts of fun. Locals are encouraged to participate either by attending or working, or even performing in some way!

It’s a beautiful day in Aldrip. Just like yesterday. Just like tomorrow. Just like every day s̴h̵o̸u̶l̵d̸ ̶b̸e̵.

iii. LOST AND FOUND

You wake in a maze surrounded by fog. You have no memory of entering the maze. You have no idea which direction you might have come from. You are simply here, and there seems to be no exit above. So. The only way is forward.

You may be alone, or have company. Either way, aside from you and any other characters you may find, the maze seems empty. Without end. Without purpose.

Whatever twists and turns you take, all will eventually find themselves in the center, in their own time. There is nothing here, either, except for an overwhelming sense of aloneness. There is nothing here. There is nothing there.

There is nothing–

ERROR: REDUNDANT PROCESS FOUND
PURGING CONTENT

...

You wake up.

It’s another beautiful day in Aldrip.

Like all the days before and all the days after, your morning proceeds apace. You start your morning, you say hello to friends and neighbors. You…

… you find something unusual in an area you frequent. An item. It’s small, and somehow, it’s something you think you should know. Some will feel compelled to pick these items up. Some will feel a deep sense of unease when looking at them, and refuse to interact. Turning your back on these items will cause them to disappear. You won’t have to worry about that anymore. Not on this beautiful day.

Picking up the items causes a rush of information to flood your mind. Something like a memory plays in your head: the person in this memory looks and sounds like you. But…you don’t remember living that life, or doing those things. So how does it feel so real?

Throughout the rest of the event, these items will continue appearing. Characters are free to interact with them or ignore them as you see fit. Regaining more memories means they may regain their powers, as well, though whether they remember how to control them is another story.

These memories will feature prominently in the event poll that goes up after this, and your choice of how many memories they regain (or don’t) may have a lasting effect on your character. Not filling it out will also have an impact on them. So please make sure to fill out the poll!

iv. MISSING LINKS

As this strange memory phenomenon takes over Aldrip, other odd things begin to happen. It’s small, at first, and barely notable except that it renders Aldrip slightly less idyllic than usual. There are a few clouds in the sky. You may get caught in a passing rain shower, or maybe sleep through your alarm…

It gets worse.

The end of the month crawls ever closer, slow and steady. As it does, things begin to go missing. Small things, at first: personal possessions, the lunch left in the break room, flyers that look like maybe they were torn down in the town square. Is someone thieving? Here? In Aldrip?? You’ve never known Aldrip to have a problem with crime. Everything is so…

…

Pleasant.

Everyone becomes a suspect. It could have been your neighbor who took your wallet, or a coworker. Maybe your friend took that bracelet from the counter while you weren’t looking. But close to the end of the month, this starts getting bigger. What happened to that tree along the path you walk every day? Wasn’t there a butcher shop on the corner there? Where have all the birds gone?

ERROR: DATA LOST

Things go missing.

They keep going missing.

Why have they disappeared?

And…where have they gone?

v. THE COUNTDOWN

Sunday, March 31.

It’s raining.

It never rains like this in Aldrip.

Characters wake in the morning to anxiety twisting in the pit of their stomach, inexplicable and impossible to trace. As the day wears on, this sense of foreboding ramps up. Characters may even see significant numbers throughout the day that seem to count…down.

Twelve. Morning. How funny, to see these recurrences. Odd.

Eight. Seven. Around noon. This must be a coincidence, and yet, you cannot help but wonder if it is meaningful.

Four. Late afternoon. Wonder and curiosity are replaced by dread. Whatever is at the end of this countdown–it feels like a finality. Terrifying and unknown.

Two. Night. Those going to bed will find their sleep restless and filled with bad dreams.

UPDATES INSTALLED
RESTARTING…

One. Midnight. The clock strikes twelve, and whatever your character is doing–sleeping, waking, etc–the whole of existence seems to blink out.

(Info about what happens after this will be forthcoming in the event poll results and April’s SOTG.)

vi. WILDCARD Go wild! We know that you all have plotted extensively for this event, so go ahead and do what you'd like with it!

♡

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

maybe

[Levi usually isn't this cagey, but this memory thing has him paranoid.]

i guess you did?

Man, what's with the 'maybe' response?

Would it help if I said yes? To everything?

[He feels like he's slowly going insane, but maybe they can be weirdos together.]

...yeah. something is weird lately.

[Not right, he wants to say but is afraid of doing so where people can over hear--or read--it.]

Yeah, obviously.

Have you noticed other weird shit happening in Aldrip too? Went to the park the other day and my favorite bench was gone, along with all the birds.

[He doesn't want to say it, but... Aldrip isn't really feeling like home anymore. It's a little scary to even think about, because he loves it here?? Maybe that's why he's trying to look into this in the first place.]

yeah, all the

nevermind.
the shop that used to be down the street from my apartment is gone. there's no way that just happened overnight, but it did.

[He can't be hallucinating THAT much, can he?]

Nevermind? Dude, if you have something to say, say it. We need to work together when something bad could be happening to our town.

fine.

let's talk in person. where can I meet you?

[Levi got paranoid sometimes, but this is a bit extreme even for him. Maybe he has a reason to be scared...or maybe he's just having a bad trip of some sort.]

How about the park? Away from people and still a source of weird while talking about all this crap.

fine.

[Not long after sending the message Levi can be found in said park. He's pacing and smoking, generally looking twitchy. He might just be high on something, though. It wasn't a secret that Levi was a junkie.]

[Maybe Levi isn't someone that he normally hangs out with, but right now, Scott doesn't care about those things. They're dealing with their entire reality being messed up, from the missing objects-- locations, to those unsettling memories that feel so real, maybe even realer than anything here.

That... that doesn't make sense. He's lived in Aldrip his entire life.

Scott gives a half-hearted wave when he sees the other teen, nose scrunching just a little when the smoke hits his noise, but Not Caring right now. Maybe on a different day in Aldrip, he would gently recommend Levi to stop smoking, maybe that will stop with the weird visions, but Scott's getting them too, so.]

Okay, I'm here. [...] And I'm listening.

[Levi would normally be apologetic about the smoke or at least notice that Scott didn't like it, but right now he was chain smoking like is life depended on it. His sanity just might.]

Remembering weird shit, right? Stuff not in Aldrip, maybe not even in this world?

Edited (wrong icon <<;) 2024-03-15 19:00 (UTC)

...Yeah, that's been my experience.

[Which doesn't make sense at all. He knows his life, growing up in an orphanage, getting adopted by the local family sandwich shop. Were they all abducted by aliens at some point and got their memories erased? Something straight out of a movie.]

Hey, when you remember weird shit, are they... all red? Those visions or... whatever, they always come in that color for me. [He frowns.] It's weird.

Red?

[Levi stops pacing and puts his entire attention on Scott.]

No, they've just been, um, normal colored? J-just not Aldrip. A-and not...uh...not like here.

[Neither nice or perfect.]

[Great, so that part is definitely just him. Now he feels like an even bigger... freak or something. At least Levi's other admissions match his own experience, so he's not fully losing his mind here.]

Some other place that you've never seen, right? But it feels like we've been there for a while. Almost like we've lived there. [What the hell...]

And it always happened after I touched some object. Stuff that I felt... drawn to.

Yeah...its like I remember it but I don't remember it? Its always after I touch one of those...weird things. They almost look like normal things, but they feel off. Like something's wrong with it. Like I shouldn't look at it or touch it.

[He does, though, because fuck whatever force is trying to tell him what to do.]

...you feel drawn to yours?

Sounds like my experience, except... yeah, I do feel drawn to them.

[Glasses, this strange mirror. Rubies. Other objects. It was all pretty weird. None of those things feel like they should've been connected, but they were, somehow. They called to him like a siren, before flashing him that weird vision-- that memory.]

Then they disappear, right? Thought I was freakin' losing my mind for a while.

[Weird. Why would his be different? Because they weren't red? That didn't make sense.]

Yeah, like it was never there. I don't know if anyone else can see them or if they just see me...freezing or something.

[Freaking out. But he'd stopped doing that so obviously after the first few.]

[Scott nearly groans when Levi brings that up. He honestly hasn't thought about it now, how other people may have saw them just freeze up in the middle of the road.]

I hope not, everyone's probably going to think I'm a huge freak now.

[Does it really matter though? When all this crap is happening around them? No, it doesn't. This is like some big mystery that they probably need to dig into and Scott's willing. He doesn't want to just leave this alone. Besides, when it's all over, he'll feel better and like himself again, right?]

But okay... besides our weird memories, did you remember anything else?

[...that was right, Scott was always the good boy. Seeing him freeze up somewhere probably looked bad. People seeing him hanging out with Levi would possibly even cause rumors. Maybe if they put two and two together they'd think Levi was drugging Scott? He's not, and he's pretty sure Scott really doesn't want people to think that, but if whatever this is was dangerous? Then maybe its better if Scott has a possible alibi of sorts.]

No...only weird memories of...another life? Or something. Outside of the memories...um, well, you've noticed the things going missing.

[He'll get to the other weird thing shortly. Maybe.]

[So, the stuff they've already talked about. Memories, how things around town are missing... he thought Levi had something else he wanted to bring up, that's why they're meeting in the first place, right? He hasn't forgotten, the statement honestly standing out to him.

His gaze looks at Levi, something about him serious and a little different from the easygoing demeanor that he usually has. He's just... really worried and confused.]

Thought you wanted to talk about something else too.

[He doesn't know if its something he wants to talk about, but he got Scott all the way out here so he might as well tell him what he didn't want to say in the open. He looks around just to make sure they're alone, though, and lowers his voice.]

...I think something else is wrong with me. I thought I was hearing voices, but I-I'm pretty sure I can understand crows and rats.

[Of course all the crows were gone now, but the rats still talked.]

[...That's definitely an odd thing to hear. But honestly, with all the weird shit going on, between various things disappearing and odd memories coming back, Scott's willing to believe him. It's not like Levi's that high, right? It's not a joke he wants to toss right now, doesn't seem appropriate.

He wouldn't have brought Scott all the way out here to tell him that if he didn't fully believe it himself.]

...So you can talk to animals? [...Okay, saying that out loud is a little silly, but he's taking this seriously. There's a little frown on him, his arms crossed with one hand raised to his chin.] I mean, that's kind of cool if you can.

Yeah, but not all animals. I can't understand dogs or cats or horses or choco--well, I guess the chocobos are kind of gone anyway. Its...really weird. I don't really know if there's a way I can prove that I can really understand them or if I'm just going crazy or having some weird bad half-trip.

[The last few days/weeks could just be a bad trip on its own, couldn't it? There was too much downtime where things weren't fucking him up, though.]

Is...can you do anything weird? After seeing those...whatever they are.

For the sake of everything going on, I'm just going to believe you.

[Sometimes it's just nice to be believed anyway, even if it means they're all going crazy in the end. Part of that whole feeling less alone, which is kind of the worst feeling one can have, at least to Scott. He could've tried to pretend that he was fine and everything, but he's past that stage and so all he has left is bond with others that are dealing with things similar to him.

Even if they're people he normally wouldn't hang out with. It's fine. His arms fall back to his sides as he gives Levi a look that's a cross between a smile and a grimace.]

Although, you'll have to believe me when I say that whenever I had those visions, I felt like I was afraid of blowing things up. With my eyes.

Blowing things up with you eyes?

[He's not disbelieving, just not sure how that works.]

Like you look at something and it explodes? I've seen some crazy shit in mine, I guess that tracks.

{ event 7 } A▒ E█SI▓Y ░▒▓25░9.▒░█

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