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pluviosa2025-01-31 10:10 pm
pluviosamods) wrote in pluviosa2025-01-31 10:10 pm
Entry tags:
EVENT - Ripple and Warp IC log (part 1!)
ripple and warp
Hello and welcome to the IC log for Pluviosa's Fourth Wall event, Ripple and Warp!
In addition to providing information about how characters arrive on the new deck (whether they're existing passengers or not), this post also serves as a place where Fourth Wall characters can post top-levels without joining the game community.
Further information on Fourth Walls in general and the other accompanying OOC updates to the game can be found on the OOC information post here. This post also serves in lieu of a regular between-events Test Drive.
Finally, you may now start sending in your applications to keep your AU, CRAU, and so on characters around after the Fourth Wall! Be sure to note the minor changes to the Applications page (namely, the addition of an "AU information" section).
Without further ado - How did you get here? And more importantly, where is 'here' anyway?
Whether or not characters remember falling asleep on the evening of Day 37, they wake up somewhere different on Day 38, lying on a couch in an almost-familiar room. The couch is similar to the ones in the lounge, though those with keen noses will note that the cushions don't smell the same - there's no scent of your fellow passengers, or of the faint hint of an unknown, arid place that first accompanied the clean furnishings the Ship dragged out.
The room isn't one you've been in before, either, but it's still clearly on the Ship somewhere - there's the familiar motion of the legs moving, and the overhead emergency lights (the only source of light initially in the room) are the same as the ones in the hallways on Fern that the Ship has been working so hard to restore. However, that doesn't mean that it's hard to see - indeed, considering the contents of the room, the low lighting might be a blessing in disguise.
It's full of mirrors.
Not only the sorts of mirrors that character would expect to find, the ones that have been missing from the Ship's bathrooms and other expected places, though there are certainly plenty of those in the room - but the walls, the door, and the ceiling are also all mirrors. Mirrors hang on a portion of the larger furniture in what appears to be the living room of a suite. It's not as dramatic as it could be, but aside from the couch characters wake up on, it's pretty close. The floor, at least, is not reflective mirrors, though it's not much less shiny - instead of the usual hotel-esque carpet of the suites, there's seamless stone tile in stormcloud grey, slight variations in the color indicating marble. And all of those reflective surfaces are perfectly clean - although it's possible to find dried spots of decay on the backs of the mirrors, overall, it seems as though time doesn't have claim on this part of the Ship, much less the Growth.
And of course, where there are mirrors, there are reflections.
Some of them - probably the majority - are normal, perfect mirrors of the person the character expects to see. Some of them are distorted, but in a normal, mundane way - funhouse mirrors among the panels on the walls, making you wide or skinny or warped.
And then some of them show reflections of you that are distorted, not as in bent, but as in there being something different about the you that's in them. Different clothes; different hair; different age; different species. Added scars, or missing ones; limbs missing, or replaced with something else. A completely unknown you in the mirror.
For the most part, these altered reflections act the way you would expect, imitating the movements of the rest of the reflections in the room. But sometimes they don't. Sometimes they climb out of the mirror - and whether they're friendly or not remains to be seen.
There's a note on the mirror-topped table next to the couch. In backwards writing that needs to be held up to a mirror to be read easily, it says:
For those who are new around here, the method of arrival is... a bit different. This applies equally to characters who are just here for the fourth wall (alternates of existing characters etc) or those who will be apped as permanent residents - there isn't a distinction to these categories until the end of the event.
These characters arrive with a first sensation of being pressed against a hard, glass surface - not unlike the whispers of sensation that haunted the existing passengers over the last few days. The difference is that this time, the glass you're pressed against isn't a horizontal floor or bed - it's vertical or at least mostly vertical, and you can tell which way is down.
Or, put another way: Newly arrived characters start their boatride on the wrong side of the mirrors that are packed away into the unknown deck. They are facing towards the real world side, the way they would if they were reflections made physical, but turning around and looking behind them is nearly impossible.
Indeed, there's a growing pressure forcing them against the glass barrier. It grows harder and harder to breathe, almost like drowning, or being crushed by water pressure -
Until, just when you think you can't survive any more, something gives way, and you stumble out of the mirror into the real world. It's not the glass breaking - it's more like forcing your way through a soap bubble or the membrane that sits inside an eggshell that separates the hard pieces from the white. Water, too, cascades down out of the mirror with you, splattering all over the floor, but it's just water, and it doesn't seem to have left more than a bit of surface dampness on you.
However, when characters turn around, they will find that while the glass is still in place and unbroken, the mirror will no longer reflect anything - not even the shine of light cast on the glass - rendering these mirrors completely black. This reflectivity stays on the puddle of water around your feet instead, which aggressively reflects the area around it even if taken elsewhere - even if poured into a cup. In motion, it's too transparent to be taken for mercury or silver, but when pooled undisturbed, it does not ripple in response to the motion of the ship. Only the actions of characters or other forces can cause ripples. Otherwise, it appears to be normal water.
Characters who are alternates of each other might come out of the mirrors while they're literally being reflected (a certain surprise for those who are on the normal side of the mirror doing the looking), but they might also just appear in rooms all by themselves, or in the presence of someone else they know (or think they know). Those who don't have any immediate connections among the current passengers are more likely to appear in some empty room, but ultimately this is left to player discretion.
Not all reflections are as potentially friendly as those played by those of us on the player side of the screen, however. In addition to the "deeper" reflections played by real humans, who have or at least appear to have personalities and histories of their own, there are also "shallow" reflections. Unlike the Fourth Wall arrivals, shallow reflections can't be of characters who aren't present at the time - they only appear in response to characters looking into mirrors (whether those characters are existing residents or new arrivals).
The shallow reflections come out of the mirrors just like the Fourth Wall arrivals, but there's always something a little off about them. Some of them stay reversed like a reflection; some of them don't make any noise when they move and cannot speak; some of them come out of the mirrors with the funhouse-esque warped reflections and stay that way. Like their more 'real' counterparts, the mirrors the shallow reflections come out of turn completely flat, unreflective black; unlike their counterparts, they don't really hesitate in striding out, much less stumble and potentially collapse.
What do they want? To shove whoever they're a reflection of into the black mirror they came from. What happens if they succeed?
You die. I mean, probably. There's no way of knowing unless one of them does succeed, after all. If you want your character to die in this fashion, please let the mod team know. While we cannot guarantee that interesting things will happen to all characters (and those who are only here to visit for the Fourth Wall are not eligible), this may have permanent consequences for your character, take them out of play for longer ICly than a typical death, or impact other characters in the game beyond the typical levels of emotional harm. Or some combination of all three.
Fortunately, the shallow reflections only have physical strength on their side - they do not possess any powers of those they take the shapes of, and they can be killed in largely the same way as unremarkable flesh and blood humans. A killing blow causes them to collapse into the same hyper-reflective water as described above; the mirror they came out of remains black.
The deck itself is open fully to character navigation. Like the lab specimen storage of Zinnia, this deck - whose name is not posted anywhere for characters to find easily - is clear of any signs of Growth, and manages to feel chilly even if you get up to the top deck where the sun is shining.
Or... Should be shining. Regardless of the weather on other deck dimensions, the skies above this deck are
always, at best, a cloudy, half-stormy grey. The air above hangs tense, like the clouds are waiting for something to happen. Unlike the other instances of Ship weather, you don't need Neuvillette's particular affinity with water to sense it - any character with empathic or telepathic powers will be able to feel the sense of looming, helpless frustration in the clouds.
The most notable feature of this deck, of course, is that it's full of mirrors. Indeed, it's not only the mirrors that are missing from the suite bathrooms, the public restrooms by the cafeteria, and so on - there are far more mirrors than the Ship would reasonably need to outfit the decks it has, even including the multidimensional nature of it. Mirrors hang from the walls, and then more mirrors lean against those, or against the other furnishings, or even against each other (since some of them are standing mirrors), and the groups against the walls are often five or six panels deep with the largest at the back the side of the glass panels of the Ship's sliding glass balcony doors. (Yes, those are also replaced by mirrors, reflective in both directions.) Tabletops are reflective in their own rights, and then littered with even more, antique-looking hand mirrors and makeup compacts and those little circular mirrors sold in bags by the dozen at the craft store, only an inch across.
Considering all the reflective surfaces, it might be a good thing that there is only emergency power supplied to this deck - enough to keep the guide lights on and ensure that the sliding doors (though not the elevators) are working, and that whatever system pumps water through the faucets and showers is still going. The water is all cold, however, and there isn't any food available on the deck so far as characters are able to find. In the place where characters are used to finding the cafeteria, there is instead a terrifying mirrored bar filled with empty bottles and glasses as well as - well. Take a guess.
With the exception of the sliding glass doors in the suites, the glass of windows and so forth seems to be what it should be - though it's more reflective than seems natural, too. Like Zinnia, the cleaniness of this deck means that characters have full run of it, all the way down to the lounge on the bottom of the Ship - which is the only place that isn't completely clean on this deck. The super-reflective water that pours out of the mirrors seems to have flowed down here at some point, where it sits, unaffected by the motion of the Ship, about an inch deep across the entire floor. This water is the only feature down in the bottom lounge - there is no furniture, in contrast to its Zinnia counterpart.
And on this floor, at the very bottom, and only this floor, the reflective water has the smell - only the smell, not any other qualities - of fresh blood.
The Ship will not answer characters here - although the terminals in the residential deck that can normally be used to communicate with it (in whatever limited capacity) are present, their screens are (of course!) mirrors, and unresponsive. There's also no signs of drones about, not even the basic roomba-like cleaning drones; there's no evidence that they've been here recently, either.
A follow-up log, in which the Ship manages to make contact with characters wherever they are, will be posted later (mod goal time is 2-3 weeks from now). That log will take place on Day 40 and will bring with it food (for everyone who has gotten very hungry by then) and drone assistance, but whether characters actually manage to escape at that point or later on on Day 42 is left open to the opinions of you, the players! Both current players and visitors will be able to vote in a Discord poll on the matter, to be posted in the Discord announcements channel tomorrow (after you've had the chance to sleep on this post and let it cook in your brains a little).
Happy playing! Questions can be asked on Discord or added to the usual questions header below this post.
In addition to providing information about how characters arrive on the new deck (whether they're existing passengers or not), this post also serves as a place where Fourth Wall characters can post top-levels without joining the game community.
Further information on Fourth Walls in general and the other accompanying OOC updates to the game can be found on the OOC information post here. This post also serves in lieu of a regular between-events Test Drive.
Finally, you may now start sending in your applications to keep your AU, CRAU, and so on characters around after the Fourth Wall! Be sure to note the minor changes to the Applications page (namely, the addition of an "AU information" section).
Without further ado - How did you get here? And more importantly, where is 'here' anyway?
existing characters
Whether or not characters remember falling asleep on the evening of Day 37, they wake up somewhere different on Day 38, lying on a couch in an almost-familiar room. The couch is similar to the ones in the lounge, though those with keen noses will note that the cushions don't smell the same - there's no scent of your fellow passengers, or of the faint hint of an unknown, arid place that first accompanied the clean furnishings the Ship dragged out.
The room isn't one you've been in before, either, but it's still clearly on the Ship somewhere - there's the familiar motion of the legs moving, and the overhead emergency lights (the only source of light initially in the room) are the same as the ones in the hallways on Fern that the Ship has been working so hard to restore. However, that doesn't mean that it's hard to see - indeed, considering the contents of the room, the low lighting might be a blessing in disguise.
It's full of mirrors.
Not only the sorts of mirrors that character would expect to find, the ones that have been missing from the Ship's bathrooms and other expected places, though there are certainly plenty of those in the room - but the walls, the door, and the ceiling are also all mirrors. Mirrors hang on a portion of the larger furniture in what appears to be the living room of a suite. It's not as dramatic as it could be, but aside from the couch characters wake up on, it's pretty close. The floor, at least, is not reflective mirrors, though it's not much less shiny - instead of the usual hotel-esque carpet of the suites, there's seamless stone tile in stormcloud grey, slight variations in the color indicating marble. And all of those reflective surfaces are perfectly clean - although it's possible to find dried spots of decay on the backs of the mirrors, overall, it seems as though time doesn't have claim on this part of the Ship, much less the Growth.
And of course, where there are mirrors, there are reflections.
Some of them - probably the majority - are normal, perfect mirrors of the person the character expects to see. Some of them are distorted, but in a normal, mundane way - funhouse mirrors among the panels on the walls, making you wide or skinny or warped.
And then some of them show reflections of you that are distorted, not as in bent, but as in there being something different about the you that's in them. Different clothes; different hair; different age; different species. Added scars, or missing ones; limbs missing, or replaced with something else. A completely unknown you in the mirror.
For the most part, these altered reflections act the way you would expect, imitating the movements of the rest of the reflections in the room. But sometimes they don't. Sometimes they climb out of the mirror - and whether they're friendly or not remains to be seen.
There's a note on the mirror-topped table next to the couch. In backwards writing that needs to be held up to a mirror to be read easily, it says:
Thanks for visiting! I'm sorry I couldn't be there to meet you, but there's just so many people here today!
I wonder if you'll get a chance to meet the real you?
Good luck!
new characters and visitors
For those who are new around here, the method of arrival is... a bit different. This applies equally to characters who are just here for the fourth wall (alternates of existing characters etc) or those who will be apped as permanent residents - there isn't a distinction to these categories until the end of the event.
These characters arrive with a first sensation of being pressed against a hard, glass surface - not unlike the whispers of sensation that haunted the existing passengers over the last few days. The difference is that this time, the glass you're pressed against isn't a horizontal floor or bed - it's vertical or at least mostly vertical, and you can tell which way is down.
Or, put another way: Newly arrived characters start their boatride on the wrong side of the mirrors that are packed away into the unknown deck. They are facing towards the real world side, the way they would if they were reflections made physical, but turning around and looking behind them is nearly impossible.
Indeed, there's a growing pressure forcing them against the glass barrier. It grows harder and harder to breathe, almost like drowning, or being crushed by water pressure -
Until, just when you think you can't survive any more, something gives way, and you stumble out of the mirror into the real world. It's not the glass breaking - it's more like forcing your way through a soap bubble or the membrane that sits inside an eggshell that separates the hard pieces from the white. Water, too, cascades down out of the mirror with you, splattering all over the floor, but it's just water, and it doesn't seem to have left more than a bit of surface dampness on you.
However, when characters turn around, they will find that while the glass is still in place and unbroken, the mirror will no longer reflect anything - not even the shine of light cast on the glass - rendering these mirrors completely black. This reflectivity stays on the puddle of water around your feet instead, which aggressively reflects the area around it even if taken elsewhere - even if poured into a cup. In motion, it's too transparent to be taken for mercury or silver, but when pooled undisturbed, it does not ripple in response to the motion of the ship. Only the actions of characters or other forces can cause ripples. Otherwise, it appears to be normal water.
Characters who are alternates of each other might come out of the mirrors while they're literally being reflected (a certain surprise for those who are on the normal side of the mirror doing the looking), but they might also just appear in rooms all by themselves, or in the presence of someone else they know (or think they know). Those who don't have any immediate connections among the current passengers are more likely to appear in some empty room, but ultimately this is left to player discretion.
shallower reflections
Not all reflections are as potentially friendly as those played by those of us on the player side of the screen, however. In addition to the "deeper" reflections played by real humans, who have or at least appear to have personalities and histories of their own, there are also "shallow" reflections. Unlike the Fourth Wall arrivals, shallow reflections can't be of characters who aren't present at the time - they only appear in response to characters looking into mirrors (whether those characters are existing residents or new arrivals).
The shallow reflections come out of the mirrors just like the Fourth Wall arrivals, but there's always something a little off about them. Some of them stay reversed like a reflection; some of them don't make any noise when they move and cannot speak; some of them come out of the mirrors with the funhouse-esque warped reflections and stay that way. Like their more 'real' counterparts, the mirrors the shallow reflections come out of turn completely flat, unreflective black; unlike their counterparts, they don't really hesitate in striding out, much less stumble and potentially collapse.
What do they want? To shove whoever they're a reflection of into the black mirror they came from. What happens if they succeed?
You die. I mean, probably. There's no way of knowing unless one of them does succeed, after all. If you want your character to die in this fashion, please let the mod team know. While we cannot guarantee that interesting things will happen to all characters (and those who are only here to visit for the Fourth Wall are not eligible), this may have permanent consequences for your character, take them out of play for longer ICly than a typical death, or impact other characters in the game beyond the typical levels of emotional harm. Or some combination of all three.
Fortunately, the shallow reflections only have physical strength on their side - they do not possess any powers of those they take the shapes of, and they can be killed in largely the same way as unremarkable flesh and blood humans. A killing blow causes them to collapse into the same hyper-reflective water as described above; the mirror they came out of remains black.
??? deck
The deck itself is open fully to character navigation. Like the lab specimen storage of Zinnia, this deck - whose name is not posted anywhere for characters to find easily - is clear of any signs of Growth, and manages to feel chilly even if you get up to the top deck where the sun is shining.
Or... Should be shining. Regardless of the weather on other deck dimensions, the skies above this deck are
always, at best, a cloudy, half-stormy grey. The air above hangs tense, like the clouds are waiting for something to happen. Unlike the other instances of Ship weather, you don't need Neuvillette's particular affinity with water to sense it - any character with empathic or telepathic powers will be able to feel the sense of looming, helpless frustration in the clouds.
The most notable feature of this deck, of course, is that it's full of mirrors. Indeed, it's not only the mirrors that are missing from the suite bathrooms, the public restrooms by the cafeteria, and so on - there are far more mirrors than the Ship would reasonably need to outfit the decks it has, even including the multidimensional nature of it. Mirrors hang from the walls, and then more mirrors lean against those, or against the other furnishings, or even against each other (since some of them are standing mirrors), and the groups against the walls are often five or six panels deep with the largest at the back the side of the glass panels of the Ship's sliding glass balcony doors. (Yes, those are also replaced by mirrors, reflective in both directions.) Tabletops are reflective in their own rights, and then littered with even more, antique-looking hand mirrors and makeup compacts and those little circular mirrors sold in bags by the dozen at the craft store, only an inch across.
Considering all the reflective surfaces, it might be a good thing that there is only emergency power supplied to this deck - enough to keep the guide lights on and ensure that the sliding doors (though not the elevators) are working, and that whatever system pumps water through the faucets and showers is still going. The water is all cold, however, and there isn't any food available on the deck so far as characters are able to find. In the place where characters are used to finding the cafeteria, there is instead a terrifying mirrored bar filled with empty bottles and glasses as well as - well. Take a guess.
With the exception of the sliding glass doors in the suites, the glass of windows and so forth seems to be what it should be - though it's more reflective than seems natural, too. Like Zinnia, the cleaniness of this deck means that characters have full run of it, all the way down to the lounge on the bottom of the Ship - which is the only place that isn't completely clean on this deck. The super-reflective water that pours out of the mirrors seems to have flowed down here at some point, where it sits, unaffected by the motion of the Ship, about an inch deep across the entire floor. This water is the only feature down in the bottom lounge - there is no furniture, in contrast to its Zinnia counterpart.
And on this floor, at the very bottom, and only this floor, the reflective water has the smell - only the smell, not any other qualities - of fresh blood.
The Ship will not answer characters here - although the terminals in the residential deck that can normally be used to communicate with it (in whatever limited capacity) are present, their screens are (of course!) mirrors, and unresponsive. There's also no signs of drones about, not even the basic roomba-like cleaning drones; there's no evidence that they've been here recently, either.
A follow-up log, in which the Ship manages to make contact with characters wherever they are, will be posted later (mod goal time is 2-3 weeks from now). That log will take place on Day 40 and will bring with it food (for everyone who has gotten very hungry by then) and drone assistance, but whether characters actually manage to escape at that point or later on on Day 42 is left open to the opinions of you, the players! Both current players and visitors will be able to vote in a Discord poll on the matter, to be posted in the Discord announcements channel tomorrow (after you've had the chance to sleep on this post and let it cook in your brains a little).
Happy playing! Questions can be asked on Discord or added to the usual questions header below this post.
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He glances up at the Duke with the ghost of a smirk. "I suppose the mirrors here have allowed you to fix it up before I found you, because it looks as usual to me."
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He raises an eyebrow. "From that angle, sure." He's saying Lyney's short.
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"Do you have another angle you'd prefer me to view you from, your grace?" He can and will climb onto something to be a shit about it. Anyway, being small is convenient for magic.
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He chuckles and waves a hand. "Seriously, just call me Wriothesley. You weren't shy about it when you were yelling at me in my office, I see no reason to tie yourself in knots being polite now."
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He watches Wriothesley make the little ice sculpture, head tilted. "That is strange. I wonder... the Tsaritsa would love to know of such things, I'm sure."
"You kidnapped my sister," Lyney says flatly. "I was entirely justified in yelling at you. You threatened Lynette and Freminet's lives. And then had Sigewinne shoot me."
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And if things had gone as he had planned, saving Freminet would have been a much more useful bargaining chip - but Lyney was too far gone in his panic for anything to be useful. Ah well, even Wriothesley can't pull off a successful ploy every time.
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The reflection moves when he doesn't, reaching for him, and pulls itself out of its frame. Lyney steps backwards in alarm. "...I'm pretty sure mirrors aren't supposed to do that."
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The reflection moving catches Wriothesley off-guard, but he moves in between it and Lyney. "Stay behind me -" His Vision glows and his gauntlets form up around his hands in a puff of cold air, just in case - the way it moves gives him the creeps as it eyes Lyney up. "Hey, you. Stay back."
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The reflection's silence and lack of reaction unnerves him, as does the way it doesn't stop even when it's lit on fire. He dives in, grabbing it by the front of its leotard and spinning around to throw it down the hall like a shotput, following up with two large spikes of ice from his gauntlet.
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Lyney pulls out and unfolds his bow, quickly stringing it, and looses three burning arrows in rapid succession. They skewer the not-him with somewhat alarming ease, the force sending its torso jerking back, and then... it collapses, dissolving into a puddle of reflective water.
"What," Lyney says with great feeling, "the fuck."
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