quietplacememes | TDM #002

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test drive meme!

TDM #002

TEST DRIVE MEME
You wake, standing. A thick, muddy red dust coats your skin and clothes - it sticks to your tongue and blocks your vision. Inhale and it chokes you, exhale and your breath puffs out in front of your face in a transparent maroon cloud. It tastes of copper, tangy and harsh. Movement is difficult, every limb tingles and aches. Look to your left, your right. Evenly spaced in each direction stands another person indistinguishable in every way from the next. You're disoriented and lethargic, unable to grasp onto a single thought. A pinprick of light blooms ahead and grows steadily larger; a door has opened.

Hands grip your wrists, push at the small of your back and guide you out of the darkness into a room with four walls and a thin, sagging ceiling. The plaster is peeling, the air is musty, and the floor is slick. White plastic piping juts up from the center and curves into multiple spouts, clean water flowing in uneven streams. Those hands pull your clothes off and clear the dust from your body, redress you in handsewn jumpsuits.

A finger is pressed to your lips. Kind eyes meet your own and a single word is whispered - hush.

Led out of the room in a line, you’re taken down a short hallway and into another, much larger room. There’s a woman waiting for you there, a child hugging her leg, and a cloth bag in her hands. She reaches in and pulls out a device, passes one to each of you. Once finished, she begins to move both hands in graceful gestures, a language. One of the people who helped you lifts their device and the screen lights up, tracks the woman’s hands. Letters appear on the screen and you understand the device’s purpose. She tells you what she knows and it’s not much.

This world is haunted. Noise attracts them, so it is not allowed. Communication is through body language, soundless writing, and the device. She tells you that your feet must be light and your mouth never used. There is a community outside these doors, where you can survive together, but only if you agree to one thing: complete and total silence. You'll have time to talk it over. Acceptance allows you to journey outside. The ground is marked in pathways of sand, lining the paths to each building and everywhere in between. You notice that the locals hold their devices always, aloft and glance to it often. It will not vibrate or make a sound to signal a message.

Notices appear. Rules. Guidelines. Feet on the sand and never anywhere else. To open a door you brush your fingers along the hinges - oiled and you may enter. If not, take the brush from the can sitting nearby and coat the metal with the dark liquid. You're to settle into your new home.

And I, and Silence.
Content Warnings: Nightmares, sleep-paralysis, memory-alteration
Themes: Survival, exploration, shared dreams, horror

Reims was beautiful once. Vibrant and bustling. The scent of fresh baked bread each morning and the soft crooning of a local band singing residents and visitors to sleep every night. But that's not the Reims you've come to know. Nor is it anything the natives have known. The city is in ruins. Buildings have crumbled from age, weather, and lack of upkeep. Graffiti is etched onto walls and nature has begun to take over streets and everything in between. The community you've been accepted into is peaceful, for the most part, and unbearable in other aspects. Quiet, always. Not allowed to make even the slightest noise.

You remember falling asleep curled up by the window - looking out at the stars and wishing that you could hear even a single cricket chirp. But, when you wake, it's no longer just you and silence. There's a person sitting across from you. They're blinking awake. You're both sitting up. You're not in your house and it's so dark that you can't see anything else but them. You can't move. You can't lift your hands to sign or reach for your device. If you choose to speak, your lips are heavy and the noise you make won't attract Sound Eaters - but do you take that risk? The only way out is for both of you to acknowledge, aloud, that you think you might be dreaming and when you wake ( for real this time ), you'll be laying beside them in the Reset Room.

Dead Man's Hate
Content Warnings: Hanging, death, minor hunger and dehydration
Themes: Survival, horror, native death

His lips were writhed in a horrid grin like a fiend's on Satan's coals, And the men that looked on his face that day, his stare still haunts their souls. Such was the fate of Adam Brand, a strange, unearthly fate; For stronger than death or hempen noose are the fires of a dead man's hate.

Earlier in the month, the natives begin what they have dubbed 'spring cleaning'. This is where all trash and waste products are carried to the bridges near the Seine and stacked there. Everyone is required to help and after everything is stacked and piled according to what it is, the natives rig the piles up so that they can set them on fire after they're far away. This way - nobody gets hurt. The process is smooth and goes off without a hitch. Characters are paired up randomly and sent, each hour, to go check and make sure that the fires haven't spilled out and spread anywhere they're not supposed to.

When you and your partner arrive, you'll find that everything is as it should be except - hanging from the arch to the entrance of a building near Place Saint-Paul is one of the natives. You've seen them around. Their face is twisted up into a horrific smile, eyes open and somehow, they're pointing right at you. They're high enough up that it's hard to imagine how anyone could have done it. You have two choices, ignore what you've seen and go back to the community, letting the next team find the body or tell the natives what you've found. The latter results in accusations where you and your partner are locked in the reset room for three days with no food or drink until it can be discerned that neither of you were involved and the former results in the same treatment to the team assigned to go after you.

ooc: Characters will not know of the results until they've made a decision ICly about what to do. The team that would have followed yours would be natives and they will remain suspicious of your characters afterwards for the duration of your character's stay in game.

OOC
From your mods:

Please remember to mark your content in your starters or subject lines as material comes up. The threads on this meme can be used as game canon. Feel free to thread out arrival style meetings as well! If you have questions, pp the mod account, use the faq or comment below. Have fun!

NAVIGATION

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Arrival
[This is not the North Pole. This is not his room. He wasn't even asleep, for God's sake! What the hell is going on?

He's disoriented and sluggish enough that struggling is useless; Noël can do little more than slur out a few swears and stagger in the direction he's guided. He can't even fight the indignity of being stripped out of some very Victorian steampunk-ish clothing and washed as though he can't even take care of himself. At least the cold water brings him back to his senses a little.....

By the time they're sat down to receive an explanation, his sour mood has at least partially given way to bewilderment. He knows Reims--he visits France frequently enough, at least once per year. The people here don't act like this. He's never even heard of this kind of monster. And what in the world is that strange glass object translating the movement of the woman's hands into words?]

What kind of monsters could reduce France to this in a matter of months?

Dead Man's Hate
[Is that.....?

It is. Noël takes an abrupt step back, eyes wide at the sight of the body swinging. Who would do this? Why? Possibly most importantly,
how? It should be impossible for a normal human to get up there, and if they wanted to commit suicide, there were far easier ways to do it, in a place like this. Heading far out of town and screaming, for example, would be much quicker and easier. So what's the purpose here? Why is the body arranged like that? Was it suicide, or foul play?

Noël looks from the body to his partner, before typing:]

What do you think they're meant to be pointing at?

Lost pet poster (network, username TBD whenever the hell I think of one)
[It's kind of a struggle to understand how to use these devices, to be honest. Noël has never used a typewriter before, though he has seen them advertised--the letters on (inside?) the glass seem similar to the keyboards those are supposed to have. So is this some kind of..... miniature magic printing press? He's never seen anything like it.

Really, it's lucky for him that nobody can see how embarrassingly long it takes to figure out how to type and send out a message over the network.]

Anyone who can see this, listen up! I'm looking for a reindeer with a red nose or a tall guy with long silver hair and green eyes. He answers to Rudolph.

You can probably get the idiot's attention with candy or cakes if you need to. He belongs with me, and he's going to be in big trouble if he's here but hasn't tried to find me yet. You'd better have a good explanation if you can see this, Rudolph, or I'm cutting you off from sweets for a whole week!

Wildcard
[You know the drill. Hit me up with anything you want that isn't on here!]

(arrival)

[Reims has been buzzing with the news all day today. An announcement linked from the bulletin board to all their devices: new arrivals. A month after they've been here, almost to the day, and Kara isn't the only one finding herself loitering around what's been dubbed the "reset" rooms throughout the day instead of doing their jobs or stalking any long-legged, black-haired P.I.s.

She's following a sandpath just outside the reset rooms, intent on getting something accomplished today, either for herself or for Kilgrave, when she hears the question spoken from inside the room, above the din of mindless chatter, the instructions that she had received being repeated.

She pauses, backtracks a few steps, and then slips into the room, feeling out of place amidst all the fresh jumpsuits in her pink dress and cardigan. Still, she soldiers on, following the direction of the voices until she quite literally bumps into the guy.]

Oh! Sorry! Um... I couldn't help but overhear you a second ago... have you been here before?

Gh--!

[Maybe it's lucky for Kara that she bumps into Noël; even that wordless little noise of surprise is enough to confirm that it's the same voice she heard. (A clear Cockney accent, if she knows enough to place it.) He takes a few steps back to reclaim something like a space bubble, raising an eyebrow at her. Why does she get real clothes, when they're stuck with the sort of outfit prisoners might wear?]

I go all over France at least once a year, and usually a lot more often. I've never heard of anything like this, in Reims or anywhere else.

[Kara tilts her head. Darnit. He's not from here - or, well, hasn't been to this version of Reims, at least. She had hoped he'd have more information, having been here before maybe.]

I think you've been to a different Reims. Like, a different dimension of Reims.

[Have an eyebrow raise. Dimension? What do measurements have to do with whether or not Reims is destroyed and haunted by monsters?]

I only know of one Reims, but maybe so.

Noël Christenbell | Noel la Neige/Holy Glory | OTA

hey boo remember that time Kara almost killed you

of course he does~

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Network; UN: MadMax

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un: unseen

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lost pet poster. | un: sigerson

Re: lost pet poster. | un: sigerson

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dead man's hate

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Arrival

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username : rudolph

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