The doctor's office is hardly the funnest place in the world to be. Children crying, adults bickering in hushed, stressed tones, the receptionist looking incredibly bored...
Wait. How did you get here? Weren't you watching a powerpoint a second ago (or enjoying your time in your cozy apartment in Cerealia)? Well, now you're in ViViD, and in an attempt to concentrate on healthy living, CERES has released a new level: Health and You: A New Way to be Healthy. Sure, you could log out at any time if you're a ViViD pro and used to this whole experience, but now that you're here, why not sit back and enjoy it? Indulge in some easy level grinding or something. Besides, it'll take a little while for the game to let you log out without calling you a spineless quitter, and who wants that added to their ViViD rep?
So instead, take a look around the tiled hospital. Visit the receptionist and say hello (she ignores you, go back to your seat). Pick up a snack at the vending machine (except every single one only has these gross things in stock). Maybe you should just test the truth of that old idiom, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away", especially with that weird doctor over there. Is he staring at you? He might be staring at you.
Seriously, go find an apple before he comes over here.
 Well,
well,
well...
isn't it time for your c h e c k - u p?
|
PHASE I [ 08 00 ] If you're a new arrival to this fine city, you will find yourself waking up in a bed after suffering through that unfortunate powerpoint. The sun streams through the window, the bed is uncomfortable but not terrible, and everything is quiet and idyllic... wait. Where are your clothes? You'll suddenly find yourself dressed only in a medical gown (yes, complete with back open) and you seem to be... in a hospital? That's new.
If you take a look at the medical chart attached to the bed, you’ll even find your chart, name on it and everything. That can’t be right, can it? You're the picture of health! You're welcome to wait around for the doctor to dispute these claims but no one's showing up anytime soon (aside from the possible roommate you might have, in the same situation as you). There’s nothing stopping you from leaving the room or looking around at least (except for the lack of clothes), but it’s all hospital as far as the eye can see. Try and be careful what rooms you poke your head into; there are some strange aliens getting their check-ups in there. They don't seem like they want to be bothered.
If you’re not a newcomer, and go into ViViD searching for riches and grand prizes (or just stumble in there by happenstance), the receptionist will stop you and hand you a stethoscope, lab coat, and name tag. Congratulations, you’re a doctor now, and you have free reign over the hospital. Go nuts. Or don’t, because there are still those aliens waiting for their check-ups. Now it’s your turn to get dragged away by a frazzled nurse to administrate a tentacle massage to a patient, as she's now on break! Have fun and don't get the hospital sued.
PHASE II [ 1000 ] Just don’t end up in the basement.
If you end up in the basement by some weird twist of fate (or via trapdoor, which could happen because let's be honest, this is ViViD), you’ll find yourself in a long, empty, blindingly white hallway. The floors are white, the walls are white, the ceiling and the flickering lights are white, and you have the odd feeling you're being followed.
If you turn to see who it is, you’ll find that it’s your younger self. They’re not solid. They’re not real. You can stick a hand through them, and it will go right through. But they are you, whether age 4 or age 14 or anywhere in between, and they’re covered in blood and holding an equally bloody knife. Quietly, as they follow you, they'll mumble, over and over and over again, “It was you, you did it, you killed them, you’re the murderer.”
And they will follow you until you get out of that blindingly white hallway, and away from those blindingly white lights, and if you tried to touch them, there will be blood on your hands. The younger you won't respond to anything you say, just following behind you like the frightening apparition they are. At least nothing else is stopping you from returning to the main hospital, no matter how surreal this experience might be. Just find the stairs.
PHASE III [ 1200 ] As soon as you’ve managed to escape the clutches of that frazzled nurse who still refuses to come back from break, you’ll find that the atmosphere has turned very dark indeed. There’s rain pounding against the windows, and as lightning flashes and thunder booms (it’s all ambiance, you see), there’s the tell-tale Mwahahahaha of an evil, mad doctor at work. What a sinister guy.
Turning a corner will lead you right to his very, very evil doctor's office. He's repurposed one for his sinister deeds and some nurses are looking very put out about it. There's someone attached to the medical table who might need some help and of course, it could be one of your friends that he’s snagged. You might want to help them before that very evil mad doctor tries to add an extra limb or two to your poor friend. Honestly, who needs three elbows?
Or maybe it’s you who’s been grabbed by him and attached to the medical table by strong, metal restraints. Hopefully someone follows the “Mad Scientist: This Way” signs all over the hospital and saves you because really, three elbows?
PHASE IV [ 1400 ] Of course, while the ambiance is still dark, grim and creepy, and the rain still beats upon the glass of the windows, there is a murder...because why wouldn't there be?
The director of the hospital has been found murdered, slumped in a seat in his office, hand in hand with his secretary. Oh no! You’re welcome to investigate the crime scene if you want, but it’s not a very good one; there aren’t any clues, and the director and his secretary actually seem to be alive if you prod them hard enough. They're a bit put out by your interruptions and might ask you to "go solve this somewhere else" the more you bother them. How rude of you to muck up their death scene.
But there’s a new quest for you, and it says this: Pursue Justice or Pursue the Truth?
If you choose to pursue Justice, you will find yourself dropped into a new ViViD level, this one a straight hospital hallway with no doors and alternate routes. Some posters line the hallway but most of the detail is lost in the dim light. Not far ahead of you, The Suspect can be seen running away. (Naturally, you can tell that they are The Suspect by their poorly scribbled out face and black silhouette.) If you should follow them all the way to the end of the hallway (and it is a long, long, long hallway), you can grab The Suspect. Of course, that's if you make it there without falling through any of the trapdoors, tripping over medical supplies or stumbling into less fortunate player characters. If you're successful, you’ll hear a jaunty tune and you’ll receive a bonus of 50,000 ViViD points. Congratulations! You may now log out and continue with your daily life.
If you choose to pursue the Truth, you will find yourself dropped into another ViViD level. This level is a maze; there are filing cabinets stuffed full of papers making up the walls (though the papers are all blank) and they seem oddly impossible to move. You will need to find your way through the maze while avoiding more trapdoors, more scattered medical supplies, the occasional angry cthulhu patient and the occasional player character who has been grabbed by the occasional angry cthulhu patient. Eventually you will be able to find the end of the maze and there you will find a scrap of paper with a clue on it, signed Bellona Recreare. You may now log out and continue with your daily life.
Strangely enough, you can’t seem to access that quest again once you’ve completed it once. Oh well.
BONUS [ xxxx ] There are plenty of sexy nurses wandering the hospital (yes, everywhere) and they know your shots aren’t up to date. Should they manage to catch you and jab you with one of their needles, you’ll have some of the following side effects:
➟ Unstoppable urge to hug the nearest person
➟ Unstoppable urge to kiss the nearest person
➟ Unstoppable urge to dance with the nearest person
➟ Hiccups that last for 20 minutes
➟ Uncontrollable laughter that lasts for 20 minutes
➟ Hallucinations that everyone around you is dead, which also lasts for 20 minutes
You may pick and choose which effects happen at which times or if there is a combination of them. Have fun!
[ Remember to apply proper warnings on threads with sensitive or inappropriate material and do let a mod know if your thread careens off into maiming or canoodling so we can lock the log. ] |
Welcome to Cerealia's July intro log! For your convenience, we have compiled the characters' arrival experience here, and should you have any questions, feel free to ask them here! You can also check the FAQ for more general inquiries. Should this event log hit Captcha, there is an all-purpose overflow here.
Regarding phase IV, should your characters tackle the alternate ViViD levels and make it all the way through, please PM the mod account to let us know if they picked Justice or the Truth, as that will have an overall impact on the game! You will also receive your plot clue at that time, should your character have gone down the Truth path. Please PM the mod account by July 29th with the decision your character has made; the thread does not have to be completed, that just will allow us to tally up the choices for August's event.
Thank you! |
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no subject
Fine.
[ Did that come out vaguely threatening... self-sabotage, thy name is Adolf. But before she can move to the next room, he stops her with an arm, green eyes flitting to a shadow cast from a nearby cabinet wall. ]
...Stay here.
[ His electric eel senses are tingling!!! And sure enough, when he tosses a rumpled piece of paper towards that shadow, a cthulhu patient jumps out and starts...chattering at them angrily.
What the fuck is this. ]
no subject
Oh, here! Some pepper spray-- and she tosses it at Adolf. IT COULD WORK, OKAY. ]
Catch!
no subject
It also hits the nearest cabinet wall, conveniently finds a trapdoor, and falls backwards onto the other side.
Ah. ]
...This game is a complete joke.
[ Stay strong, Adolf. ]
no subject
I suppose it is, but where is the trust here, if it's the theme?
[ Scissors... she grabs those, too. And some other kind of spray: antiseptic. ]
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It is, for him. And if it relieves her any, he seems pretty comfortable with handling sharp objects. ]
...Either we interrogate the others here for the truth [ morbid. ], or it's given to us when we reach the end.
no subject
I think it might be the latter. This is a maze, after all.
Let's keep walking, making sure we mark where we've passed.
no subject
[ Not much of the smalltalk type, this guy. But he's 100% sincere in wanting to get out of this with the both of them intact, and even despite the fact that he's acting like a Total Jerk (TM), he remains steadfastly in front of her as they navigate the maze, in the line of fire should something pop out and try to cut off their heads. Or something.
The last thing he wants— even if he won't say it out loud— is for her to get hurt. ]
...Do you think the trap doors are significant?
no subject
[ She pauses and taps the floor with the tip of her shoe, activating a trap door. She noticed that something might have been up when the sounds they were making with their footsteps grew softer.
They need to jump over that. ]
They're important because we can't fall for these trap doors, that much is certain. But I don't believe that these trap doors will lead us anywhere helpful.
no subject
[ His electrical radar doesn't extend towards inanimate objects, so he's fine with letting Akane tell him where the trapdoors are. He'll steer the both of them away from impending creatures, though, because he's not sure he wants to deal with more squidface (octopus...?) monsters.
Alright, hopping over this trap now. Once he's done, he offers Akane a hand.
Just in case, you know, she can't hop three feet. Stop being embarrassing, Adolf. ]
Be careful. I don't want to be stuck in here looking for you if you fall. [ tsun translator: 'I'll look for you if you fall but don't do that'. ]
no subject
Adolf, you are a weird man??? But the gesture is appreciated, and just in case Akane's luck turns back on her, she takes his hand and hops over to the other side of the maze. ]
Please don't worry. That won't happen.
no subject
Good, then.
[ He jerks a thumb at the split path. ]
If we go right, there's another lifeform. The left is clear. Which way?
no subject
We'll need to take care of all threats first, [ It makes everything safer. Who knows if they may have to get chased by a ton of cthulhu patients towards the end of the stage?! Nobody wants that. ]
We'll go right first, and inspect what's on that side.
[ Hopefully a dead end, or clues, or an exit. ]
Would it be too much to ask you to take care of the monster?
no subject
No. I'll take care of it. [ hm. ] ...Have you never been in combat before?
no subject
[ her eyes already look droopy as is, but they droop even more when she frowns. ]
I'm sorry.
no subject
Stay behind me, then. Keep your head down, and you'll be safe.
[ And with that, here he is, turning the corner to the right. ]
no subject
[ WHAT A WOOBIE. CALM URSELF ADOLF.
Akane just nods, and does what she's told. She sticks close to the wall before turning, her head still down. Here we go... another monster battle. ]
no subject
But okay, he's being tasked with fighting, and that's easy enough! Sorry cthulus, you truly never had a chance to thrive; Adolf throws those scalpels like fucking ninja stars and they all stab neatly in the targets' vitals.
His fingertips spark, again, but without his meds he can't unleash his true Pikachu potential. So that's that, there are two cthulu docs on the ground with knives in their throats now. One seems to be holding something?! A clue?! ]
—If you're afraid of bodies, don't look.
no subject
How is it?
no subject
[ He crouches down next to one, pries its hand open for the slip of paper it's holding. Hopefully it doesn't say something like "u suck" on it?
He hands it to Akane, though, just to keep her included. ]
no subject
"of what happened to Julius Vincere, Elias Sergej and Lucius Octavii. This information is coming," [ she reads it out loud. ] And the note cuts off there.
... [ She starts to think-- those names aren't familiar, but they could mean something to this place. So she types up the note in her wristcom - something similar to a watch, but with holograms. ] How strange.
no subject
As cryptic as the rest of this place.
[ And, well... that seems to be it, this seems to be the end of the road. ]
—Are you satisfied?
[ With the 'truth', he means. ]
no subject
[ And she nods. So yes, she is satisfied, even ever so slightly. ]
And it looks like we can log out, now. Thank you for your help, Sir.
no subject
And there's a long stretch of silence where he just. Looks at her, flatly, almost intimidatingly—
—before he breaks the silence with a blunt, rushed: ] Adolf. Adolf Reinhardt.
[ and then he promptly turns his back and
starts logging off...HE CAN'T DO THIS... THIS IS TOO HARD FOR HIM. ]
no subject
She's left alone in the stage when he logs out, and she does the same. She's alone now, but what??? That was his name, wasn't it? And why was he so... distant?
Hopefully they'll meet again, because Akane would like to get to know him better. Maybe he needs to be saved from something, and that she could help. Meeting people isn't just coincidence, it's destiny at times. ]