{ event 7 } A▒ E█SI▓Y ░▒▓25░9.▒░█

[expiationmods]

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

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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!

♡

Comments

cw: mentions of drinking

[entreats]

She shakes her head. Pretty quickly too, like she's just being honest about this.

"Nothing at all." Granted, maybe she was just too late to see what he saw, only seeing the aftermath.. But Ange figures that if there really had been something there, surely it would have stuck around for long enough for her to see it too, right?

"You haven't been drinking or something, have you?"

.. maybe kind of too blunt a thing to just ask someone so plainly..

But then again, it's a more logical way to explain this than anything else in Ange's mind. Hence why she goes for it so quickly.

i rase your cw: drinking with cw: drug use

[solitarysoul]

"No, I haven't, uh..." Well he hasn't been drinking and he didn't think he took anything that'd cause hallucinations. Especially ones that felt as real as that. "Nothing that should have done something like that. People don't usually just trip out in the middle of somewhere unprompted."

He didn't like hallucinogenics anyway. His mind seemed to only be able to picture horrible things.

[entreats]

...

Okay, Levi. She heard that pause there. That mighty suspicious pause.

There's no way Ange won't raise an eyebrow at that, definitely giving him a suspicious look to go along with it.

"Did you have anything?" Specifying that it was nothing that should have done something like that does kind of imply there was something, after all. Maybe it was just stronger than Levi anticipated. Ange knows a lot of other people in general are idiots who overestimate themselves.

[solitarysoul]

Levi just assumes everyone knows him as the loser drop-out junkie that he is, thus eliminating the need to pretend to be anything else or try and make people respect him. He just looks at her for a moment, "Cigarettes and pot. It wasn't laced, that's not how that usually works."

[entreats]

"It could still cause something like this though, right?"

It might be obvious that Ange has never partaken in either of those things herself.. She's saying this so confidently, but she actually has no idea whatsoever what she's talking about here. If anything, it's more likely that she's parroting other people's talking points.

"You should lay off on those if they're making you fall down in the middle of the streets. Before it gets even worse."

[solitarysoul]

"No. Nothing I've ever come across gives anything as vivid as this was." He has tried quite a few drugs, so he speaks from experience here.

He might want to watch where hes going better, but she's got him on the defensive so he won't admit to anything.

[entreats]

Dang, Levi. What a thing to admit to while being on the defensive. Ange is definitely - if not momentarily - making a bit of a face when he says that, because she reads the implication that he must have tried a whole lot of stuff loud and clear. Seems like Levi's reputation really isn't lying, huh...

"Well, it was inevitable that this would happen sooner or later."

It's a convenient thing to blame whatever is happening to Levi on. Especially when Ange has no idea what it's like to use drugs, other than in the 'they're bad and don't do them whatsoever' stories she's heard. This fits right in with those.

"Maybe stop touching that stuff, and then you won't get bothered by weird visions again."

[solitarysoul]

Please, his knowledge of ways to fuck himself was being called into question. He knows how these things work...usually.

Levi rolls his eyes and sighs, "Whatever you say Ms goody-two-shoes straight edge."

[entreats]

"At least I'm not falling on my ass in front of the entire town," Ange says with a shrug. She doesn't really sound annoyed, even in the face of his eyeroll.. Though it's mostly because Ange knows (read: figures) that she's the one in the right here.

And having the moral high ground is giving her quite some guard against getting annoyed over being called this.

"Consider it a tip. Do with it what you want."

[solitarysoul]

He just scoffs. "Thank you so much, I never would have figured that out." The most line of line faces.

[entreats]

It's a fitting answer, really.. Though it doesn't seem to bother Ange all that much.

And considering she's figured out the situation now - or so she thinks, anyway - it doesn't feel all that interesting anymore either. Nothing she can do to help someone if they're taking drugs, after all.

So when she spots that lineface, Ange just shrugs, and then moves to continue walking on, leaving him to his trouble.

[solitarysoul]

He waits until she's turned away from him to flick her off, then heads off in a different direction.