EVENT #8: ADVERSITY 678545

[expiationmods]

EVENT #8: THE TOWER IN THE SAND

THE AD
On May 5, an ad begins to pop up on tablets across the city. Strangely, it only seems to be available to the Chosen… The text reads as follows: DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO WIN THE GRAND PRIZE?

There is a button below that says “sign up here!” Tapping anywhere else on the screen will cause the ad to go away, though it may return intermittently over the course of the next few days. By the 10th, the ad stops appearing altogether.

What happens when you tap the button? Nothing. How strange.


MAY 20
It’s been over a week since the mysterious advertisement stopped appearing on tablets across the city. Maybe you’ve stopped thinking about it altogether. Maybe you’ve dismissed it as a prank. Oh well.

Wherever you went to sleep, on the morning of May 20, you wake on a stone floor. The room you’re in is circular and empty, except for a winding set of stairs that seems to travel upward as far as you can see. How odd…shouldn’t there be a door? Or a floor to stop on? Anything? You seem to be alone, but your tablet is with you, at least. It buzzes in your pocket, and when you turn it on, it shows the opening screen of an app you are certain you never downloaded–you’ve never seen it before in your life.

TOWERCHALLENGE
The application has three tabs. The first says Introduction, and it says: “Welcome to TowerCHALLENGE. Climb the tower and learn more about yourself in the process! Making it all the way to the top will win you the GRAND PRIZE. Start climbing, and you’ll be one step closer to rehabilitation…”

The second tab says Rules. When you move to this tab, it states the following:

RULES

Winning. Careful with terms and conditions of each challenge! Read the fine print, conquer, and get ready for the next one!

Three strikes. Everyone has a loss now and then, but losing three times will kick a participant out of the competition. Not everyone can emerge a winner!

Knockouts and death. A knockout does not necessarily mean you lose your challenge! Depending on the win conditions, even death could earn you a victory.

Forfeit. You can decide to leave the competition at any time, but think very carefully about this! You will not be able to return if you forfeit.

Draws. No one will collect a win for the category, but you’ll live to challenge another day!

[Note: please see the OOC event post for more details about rules.]

The third tab is labeled Status. This tab offers no explanation, simply has the following graphic:

STATUS

As characters progress in the tower and win challenges, the icon for that challenge type will turn from gray to black.

OOC: If anyone needs any help with ideas for challenges, a player made a pretty big list of ideas here!

THE TOWER

THE STAIRS.

The only way forward is up, apparently, but the stairs seem practically endless. You walk, and walk, and walk...but you never seem to get closer to the top. Finally, after what feels like an eternity, you find a small landing, just wide enough to stand on, and you see a door there just waiting for you to open it. It has one of four symbols on it, the same symbols you saw in the app. You may choose not to go through this door and continue upward, of course; after what feels like many more sets of stairs, you may find a door with a different symbol.

If you turn and go back down the stairs, they seem to go on forever in this direction, too. Even though you started at the ground level, you never seem to get any closer to it… Either way, the tower seems to go on and on until you either attempt the challenges or give up.

THE CHALLENGES.

You step through the door and into a challenge room. If you’re the first one inside, the room seems to shift around you, becoming whatever size, shape, and appearance is required for your challenge. Your challenge, because this was built for you, to test some aspect of yourself. It may even look like your home, or like the outdoors. The possibilities of how this room could be arranged are endless, and we leave it at your discretion how you set up your challenges.

And the next person who enters the room becomes your challenger.

Your tablet buzzes, revealing to you the nature of your challenge. Whether you choose to share this information with your competitor is up to you. But after a few minutes, you hear a bell ring, loud and clear, signaling the beginning of the competition.

As a refresher, here are the four categories of challenges. We encourage you to get creative with challenge design and to find different ways of incorporating whatever effects or themes you’d like!

The different challenge types:

Wands. Challenges in the wands category focus on will and creativity. This includes creative solutions to problems, tests of resolve, examining accomplishments, and exploring what is important to your character.
Swords. The swords category centers reason, logic, wisdom, and intellect. This category also emphasizes adversity and problems, feeling trapped, and situations of oppression/cruelty.
Cups. Challenges in this category might pertain to spiritual matters, emotion, love, and examining your past or your feelings. Cups can encourage characters to face feelings head-on, or to focus on memories, whether accurate or not.
Coins. Emphasizing material matters and possessions, this is a category that focuses on physical, tangible challenges. These don’t have to be related to money; anything with high stakes (tests, games, etc) as well as challenges of physicality can fit into the category.

THE FLOOR BETWEEN.

Every so often, when you leave a challenge room (whether you’ve won, lost, or tied), you find yourself not on the stairs but on a separate floor. This floor has tables, chairs, and some simple food offerings. Strangely, while no one seems to come stock these offerings, they never seem to run out… This seems to be a rest area, a floor between challenges where you can recover some strength and mentally prepare yourself. You may even run into someone you know…whether you want to or not.

LEAVING THE TOWER

There are three ways to leave the tower: by winning, of course; by losing; and by choosing to give up. This first way is simplest: those who lose enough challenges will find themselves back in Aldrip, back in the same place where they first went to sleep before the tower. A quick look at the clock will tell them that no time has passed at all…

Those who choose to leave will find a door appearing before them with no symbols. This is the second way. Touching the doorknob, you feel a great sense of finality. You are absolutely certain that once you step through this door, you will not be able to come back. If you’re sure, you can step through the door–it closes behind you, and will not reopen.

The third way...

WINNING!

THE WINNER'S DOOR.

The app buzzes again once you have completed one challenge of each type, darkening all four shapes in your status section. Congratulations, you’ve won! But isn’t something supposed to happen…? Better keep climbing.

The next door you encounter has all four symbols on it. Opening this door will bring you to a rooftop. Strangely, the outside of the tower doesn’t seem as endless as its interior…

You may choose not to step through this door just yet. Maybe you want to see what other challenges there are waiting ahead. Maybe you just want to see if you can knock off some other winners. Whatever the case, you may continue climbing the stairs for as long as you’d like. The winner’s door will be interspersed between other doors of various symbols. Be careful, though: just because you’ve won doesn’t mean you can’t still be eliminated for losing enough challenges.

THE ROOF.

No matter when you step onto the roof, it seems as though anyone else there, any other winners, have also just arrived. From this rooftop, you can see the area of the tower clearly: it seems to stand at the edge of a vast desert. The sun bears down on you from a cloudless sky. For a little while, nothing happens. Then, all at once, you’re surrounded by a warm feeling–not physically, but mentally. Like your spirit is being wrapped in a warm hug. You’re about to receive something precious, and a sense of pride wells up within you. Whatever has designed this tower, it is congratulating you for making it to the top. It is so proud of you.

And now, your reward will—

The warmth disappears all at once, as if your connection with it has been severed. Instead, you see a white void surrounding you; the tower is gone. A rip in the void appears before you, rupturing in slow-motion, and at first all you see is a single eye looking through it directly at you.

“I did it,” comes the gasp from within the rip. “You have to help me.”

A hand reaches through the rip in reality, pulling it wider. The face that emerges may be familiar to some. He stares at you, wild-eyed with desperation that is uncharacteristic of him, for those that have met him before.

“I’ve been trapped here for so many cycles— I’ve lost count of them all. I can’t leave. It keeps bringing me back to—”

The void erupts into static, and he gasps, as if pained, as if it’s taking all of his energy just to be here. You see something simmering beneath his surface, as if he melts into transparency for a moment, and all that’s left is the wireframe of his body. It flickers back and forth, solid to wireframe to solid again, and he grips the void-tear with violent desperation.

“I shouldn’t even exist anymore. I can’t keep doing this, watching this, watching all of you— You have to free me, erase my code, something! Anything is better than this. Even death is better than this!”

He’s said it, finally, the things he’s wanted to say, and now he seems to have a spare moment before the void collapses. He fixes his eyes on you with a strange look; some odd mix of longing, resentment, and nostalgia. In this moment, he looks less like a fairy and more like an ordinary person. A creature without glamour; an actor without makeup.

“I was like you, once,” he says, with uncharacteristic softness. Then, with a bitter edge, he adds: “Don’t let it ‘save’ you, the way it ‘saved’ me.”

The void collapses in on itself like an implosion, and your vision, your hearing, both fill with a cacophony of static.

ERROR: PROCESS INTERRUPTED.
DATA LOST.
RETRYING...........................
RETRY FAILED.
THIS APPLICATION MUST BE SUSPENDED.

You wake in Aldrip. Looking at the time and date—May 20, still? really?—it seems as if no time has passed for you at all.

Wildcard

Just because it’s not in the prompts doesn’t mean it can’t happen. If you have any questions, let us know in the comments below! Otherwise, get to tagging!

♡

Comments

[finalfrontiersman]

Jim almost laughs, surprised, when Sandry catches him out, but he has enough wherewithal to hold it in - it's not that he's laughing at her so much at himself, for being so obviously transparent. He shakes his head, raising a hand peaceably as Sandry lists her credentials - yeah, he was right, none of these kids were normal, it seemed. "I'm sorry, I meant no offense. I didn't meant to imply that you would."

"Some things aren't meant for anyone's ears." Jim admits, the shadow of a helluva lot of something crossing over his expression; he doesn't try to hide it this time, but hopefully it at least presses home the point that he's serious. "Doesn't matter how old you are, it doesn't make it better."

When Bones, his friend and now CMO, read his medical records (the full medical records and not just the declassified portion), the man had been a wreck. Jim had felt like he was going to crawl out of his skin with the looks he kept giving him. He knows the holos haunt Bones, and why wouldn't they? The kind of shit that had to happen for a 15-year-old kid to get a full osteogenic regeneration? Horror show, especially for a parent.

[threadmage]

Sandry isn't convinced he's not just making excuses for her sake, but she'll let it slide if he is. There's not much purpose in belaboring the point with the answer he gave her just now, she won't get anything more out of him. Still, they are supposed to.

"You can't think of anything? Not one little thing? Not even something like, 'oh I didn't know I was supposed to peel a fruit before eating it'? It doesn't have to be your deepest darkest secret, after all."

Sandry has thought of an important secret that she's going to share, but her point stands.

[finalfrontiersman]

"I'm allergic to most fruit," Jim admits, albeit sheepishly. That's definitely not the point, Jim, but it is kind of ironic. "The instructions said 'a secret you've never said out loud'. Seriously, I don't...have many of those."

To be fair, it is true. There's the secrets he keeps, and the rest of it - there's not much point. Most of Jim's life is up for public consumption; the circumstances of his birth, his family life, his career at Starfleet and all it's entailed. The parts that aren't? He's probably drunkenly rambled them to Bones at one point or another. "...I wasn't sure I could graduate from the Academy?"

His tablet flashes a big red X on the screen - clearly, that didn't cut it.

[threadmage]

Sandry gives Jim a disbelieving look. "You didn't try very hard."

But she'll let him off the hook on this one. Instead it is her turn. Sandry gives a small sigh. "I don't think the way my parents lived was right. They frivolously spent the money they earned from their lands on travel and adventure rather than take their responsibility to their land seriously."

A green checkmark flashes on Sandry's tablet and she gives a slightly sad smile. "I still loved them very much though."

[finalfrontiersman]

"Hey! I am trying." There's no right way to argue with a teenager and not sound like an idiot. Believe him, he knows, he's been through this with Peter already. For all Jim purports to be an adult, however, he's not yet out of his twenties, and can, occasionally, be goaded appropriately.

"I'm sorry," A frown touches the corners of his mouth, but he nods in acknowledgement. "Of course. People make bad choices, but you love them anyway."

"My mom - I still love her, too." An offering, even though it doesn't light his tablet up green. Nothing he hasn't been over before, unfortunately. "Despite her choice to leave, uh, me and my brother."

[threadmage]

It's true, there really is nothing quite so humbling and frustrating as arguing with a teenager. But even though his tablet doesn't acknowledge his admittance (for whatever reason), it shows Sandry that he is at least engaging with her, not just writing her off as a silly kid. She'll forgive him for not (in her opinion) trying very hard at the challenge.

She also doesn't know whether he means leaving in the literal sense or a more euphemistic "leaving" like in her situation. It's not appropriate to ask, either, so she goes with a more generic response. "It's hard when the people we love aren't in our lives anymore, isn't it? I'm very fortunate to have found a new family I love; I hope you've found new loved ones in your life as well."

Lark, Daja, Tris, Briar, Uncle Vedris... even Rosethorn and Niko. She loves them all so dearly, her life has been so full since she arrived in Emelan in her mourning clothes.

[finalfrontiersman]

Jim knows exactly why his tablet isn't lighting up, because this Tower wants something from him. Something he's never said to anybody else, the things he dare not disturb. This place - not just the Tower, but hell, Aldrip - is geared towards rattling the bars of the cages they construct for themselves.

He really does mean leaving - going off planet, leaving them in the care of their shitty stepfather. Choosing her career over her family, because she couldn't bear the reminder of her lost husband - Jim wishes he could have held onto the anger he used to have about it, because now he's just tired. He hasn't seen his mother in years, though they've started calling each other more, since he joined Starfleet. He has no idea where his brother is, though, hasn't spoken to Sam since the day his older brother ran away - since Jim passed him on the road in a stolen car, fourteen and fearless and so hurt.

"I'm glad to hear that. Yeah, I would say that I have." His smile returns, a ghost of a thing upon his lips, thinking of his crew. "I hope we're able to find our way back to them from this place, someday."