{ 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

[entreats]

"Well, that just means I'll have to stick with you for the rest of the--"

Ange is midway through that sentence when she notices that clearly his attention is shifting to something else. The girl puffs out her cheeks a little, like she's looking both huffy and embarrassed all at once, and then raises her arms a little to put her hands on her hips.

The typical image of an Offended Teenager.

"Hey, I was saying something to you!" Okay, she doesn't necessarily sound angry. More just.. embarrassed.. "Aren't you even paying attention?"

APOLOGIES I keep falling asleep writing tags

[strength_of_will]

His head jerks back around and he half-raises his hands to try and placate her. "Sorry! Sorry, I just thought I saw something again."

But when he glances towards the spot again, there's nothing there.

Disquieted, he focuses his attention on Ange. He's somewhat grateful for the distraction really. It's easier to ignore the strange happenings.

"What were you saying? Something about sticking with me?" He gently pinches her cheek while speaking in a playful, teasing tone. "That's really sweet of you, Ange."

oh gosh it's fine, don't worry about it!! <3

[entreats]

"Wha--"

She lets out a half-surprised, half-offended noise by the time he reaches out to pinch her cheek like that. It's a gentle gesture, but she still seems to be attempting to pry herself out of it all the same, likely more out of embarrassment than any real sense of pain..

"Come on, stop it!"

You can't distract her by teasing her, William! .. except you definitely can. At least for a few moments.

"Don't suddenly focus on me when it's convenient to you! If you're having weird hallucinations, then we should be talking about that instead!"

[strength_of_will]

"Ahaha..." He laughs sheepishly, raising his hands in surrender. She's always fun to tease. The way she flares up and bristle like a cat, As his humour fades, his expression grows more troubled. More sombre.

"Alright, fine. I keep seeing something out of the corner of my eye. Sometimes it's a spear, sometimes it's a shield, sometimes it's something else. I picked them up at some point and a lot of images came rushing into my head."

[entreats]

Ange is still frowning. Partially because she's still being fussy and embarrassed about what he just did, but there's a little bit more to it than that too. After all, the things he's saying now, the part he's actually serious about.. That's entirely troubling in its own way. (Though she's not going to admit she's worried about him so easily, of course. Even though it shows on her face for sure.)

"What do you mean?"

Apparently it hasn't happened to her yet, since she sounds actually surprised by what William is telling her here.

"What sort of images did you see?"

[strength_of_will]

"I'm not sure I understand them myself."

He crosses his arms, growing pensive as he thinks back.

"The first one I felt like I was...imprisoned somewhere. I was being made to help someone do what had been done to me. The second was completely different: I was being raised by three undead creatures as their son."

A self-deprecating laugh as he shrugs. "They both felt real. But they can't be, right? Especially the second one."

[entreats]

".. undead creatures?"

Yeah, maybe she could have made something out of that first one, but.. the second thing he tells her about sure throws her off the right track entirely. It feels so strange. Too strange. If it wasn't for the fact that she's pretty sure William isn't lying to her right now, she would have told him to stop trying to trick her.

But since she knows it isn't some active trick on his part, Ange just frowns, seeming to figure out how the hell he could ever think that.

Well, there is.. one possible cause, right..

"You haven't been doing any of those weird drugs that have been going around in town, have you?" Look, to her it's the only thing that could explain imagining you were raised by three undead creatures like they're your parents! That's just too weird! Ange looks fully ready to scold him for this, if it is the case..

[strength_of_will]

"W-what? Of course not! Just because I ate weird mushrooms that one time, doesn't mean I'm taking drugs, Ange!"

Oops maybe he said that too loudly? He glances around again but people seem to be ignoring them again.

"Wait, what drugs? There've been drugs going around?" That's concerning.

[entreats]

Sorry for the accusation, William.. Even though Ange doesn't seem too sorry in this moment. The gaze she's shooting at him right now is mostly still just worried, despite his initial denial. It's like she's trying to scrutinize him to see whether he's telling the truth about this..

"Yeah. I ran into some other guy on the street yesterday, and he was talking about all sorts of weird hallucinations too, and he told me he usually does drugs. That's why I figured this had to be the same thing."

[strength_of_will]

"Well, you know I don't. I'd never do such a thing!" He shakes his head in denial. He may not be the most scrupulous guy around but he's not an idiot. Drugs are a good way to reach a low place real quick.

"Have you not noticed anything strange going on?" Is he really just imagining things?