//EVENT031.EXE

[reparator]

//event031.EXE

Lightning flashes. Thunder booms and rain patters on the roof. It’s all about ambience here in ViViD, of course. You gotta set the mood! Welcome to the Pleasurable Super Youthful Caring Hospital Stage, PSYCHward for short. It works, shut up. It’s a stage created for your well-being, health and happiness. Be careful, though. The first step you take in the dilapidated asylum carries you right into a puddle. Look down, and the puddle is red. Ah. Of course it’s blood. It’s only going to get even more fun from here. Good Day. I Am The New Introducer For ViViD Levels. Mosley? Who's That? Anyway, Please Have Fun And Remember To Be Safe. Safety Is Our First Priority At CERES. Thank you. Enjoy.

//SCENARIOS.EXE

PHASE I [ 400 ] The first room any people familiar with the ViViD song and dance routine will find is one that is...wonderfully full of body bags. Body bags everywhere -- on the floor, on the shelves, uncomfortably tossed over the back of a chair...and each body bag has a helpful tag. Handy. Of course, within each bag is a newcomer; they won’t be able to escape the body bags until someone else unzips them. They’re dressed in little more than hospital gowns, toe tags still attached to bare feet. Welcome to ViViD! Enjoy your stay. Of course, there has to be an element of surprise to it. Some body bags contain living, breathing newcomers, yes. But the others? These contain corpses. The toe tag on them indicates a loved one or someone important to you -- or someone you hate beyond all else. You open the bag, and there is their face, achingly familiar and frozen in death...but blink and suddenly they’re the corpse of a nondescript stranger. PHASE II [ 600 ] Step out of that room and now it’s the asylum proper. Lights flicker. It’s dark, but it’s still more than clear to anyone with ears -- something’s stalking everyone in this place. The shadow flickers on the wall, the lights go out -- you turn a corner and there it is, jumping out at you with an unearthly cackle -- A puppet. It hangs there limply, utterly harmless. All around the facility, these harmless puppets lurk. In lockers, behind doors, in dark halls… But they’re all literally inanimate and harmless. Whose dumb idea was that? PHASE III [ 1000 ] But slowly, the atmosphere changes. Go in deeper, and the sounds around deaden until there’s nothing left but the dark all around and the sound of your own breathing. And yet, irrevocably you know, whether as an aspect of the level or something else entirely -- Something is actually hunting you now. It makes no noise. It can’t be seen. But it’s stalking, and it’s on the hunt. To make matters worse, now the asylum seems to have become a proper maze, with dead ends everywhere, and practically no light to see them by. And the only other souls you’ll see are the other people stuck in the maze -- but there’s something not quite right about them either. You can see...bits of their code, lurking under the surface of their skin, and as you watch, it’s being corrupted, bit by bit, the longer they’re in the dark. If you look down, it’s happening to you too. Better hurry. There’s only one way out. PHASE IV [ 1400 ] And then you step through a doorway into light. You escaped the maze, but this is an asylum, and you’re about to see why. There are rows upon rows of cages of aliens. They cry out and reach out through the bars with webbed or clawed hands or tentacles, begging for release. Let them out, or don’t -- the exit to Cerealia proper is right there at the end of this room, inviting and safe. But if you do elect to let them out, the entire room suddenly goes silent. And there, in that cage you opened, there is no longer an alien, but instead a doll. And it’s watching you. Stay any longer, and the doll with start to move, reaching -- and if it touched you, suddenly you’re the one locked away behind bars. On the plus side, when you take the exit to Cerealia, it’ll deposit you in the Pleasure District, where massagebots will reach for you to try to drag you in for a sensual massage. Welcome! PENALTY [ ???? ] You were caught in the maze. It’s hard to say even now what it was that caught you, but now you’re strapped down to an operating table, and there’s a flat-faced doctor standing above you. The restraints can’t be broken. There’s a prick of a needle, and you fall unconscious -- and that’s probably a mercy. When you wake up, you’ll be back in the asylum somewhere, but missing a sense -- the one from your character’s application will be gone. A character who is sight will have been blinded, for instance, and a character who is touch will feel nothing. This will last until they log out of ViViD and get into Cerealia. [ 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. ]

//RUN.EXE

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. Thank you!

Comments

[truedetective]

[If you're a mage, Naoto sort of assumes you're squishy. No offense.] I see. How long is an 'arrival cycle'?

Or, given that we're in space, what sort of time system do we use? Days, weeks, months, and years would be different for people who didn't grow up on Earth, I imagine.

[They reach a door at the end of the hallway, heavy and metal, and Naoto reaches forward to test the handle. It's unlocked.] Are you ready?

[faithfulflame]

A cycle happens every few weeks, and lasts for the duration of a single game. After this ends, you'll be in Cerealia proper, the actual colony. [Sorry she can't be more specific than that.] We've tended to go with an Earth calendar and time system since the vast majority of people among the colonists are from Earth. Some of the locals may have other methods, but I'm afraid I don't know much about them.

[Basically, there's a date on the CEREVice they all assume is right.

When they reach the doorway, Rei nods.] Yes. I am.

[truedetective]

Hm. All right. [That's fair. She's curious about other people not from earth and the 'locals' (though really, getting used to the existence of aliens on top of everything else is its own beast) but that can wait.] I'll open it. Be on your guard. [Naoto pulls down the lever, holding her handgun in her free hand and putting her body flat against the door, pushing it open and stepping into the next room. She immediately raises the gun, sweeping it carefully around the room...] It seems empty.

[faithfulflame]

I will.

[She's focused, her fingers clenched into claw-like hooks, ready to release her will.

And then there's nothing. Anticlimatic, but a relief. Sighing, she steps closer, sweeping her gaze around the room.]

So it does. And there's little reason for there to be traps or anything in what's presumably a medical facility.

[truedetective]

You said it yourself. They're doing it to unsettle us. [She lowers her gun, pointing it at the floor again and taking her finger away from the trigger. Always practice good gun safety, folks.] There's little reason for anything in here to be like this, to be frank.

Those fires you created earlier. Can you do that again? It would help to have some light in here we can use to look around by.

There's a place like this at an abandoned asylum near me.

[faithfulflame]

[It's important to, yes! Safety first.] I can, yes.

[That's like asking her to breathe, Naoto. And breathe she does, taking two short inhalations and holding out her palms to send several orbs of light floating into the room. They grow, illuminating the whole of it, revealing what looks like an office. At least, what was once one. It's something of a trainwreck, covered in spiderwebs, broken furniture, and strangely...four rusted hulks that were once bicycles, a few deflated basketballs, and a mattress.]

How...strange.

i would freak out lmao

[truedetective]

Bizarre. [Naoto mutters to herself, as she slides her gun back into its holster inside her coat, flipping on the safety.] Some kind of office? Now it's a storage room... storing things with no easily identifiable relation to one another. [Bikes, basketballs, and a mattress... if not for the last one it could be some kind of gymnasium, she thinks?]

Let's see if there's anything in the desk. [Naoto says, moving around the desk to the front side, and tugging on the drawer...] It's locked.

Do you have a hair pin I could borrow?

Meh, it's not so bad in daytime. At night though...

[faithfulflame]

Well it's an abandonment. It could be things left in storage and forgotten about. The mattress may have been from a squatter. [All possibilities, she figures.

As soon as the question is asked, Rei's already reaching into her pockets and pulling out a swiss army knife. There's all sorts of tools on it, one of those 52 object jobs.] I don't but you can probably get it open with this.

[truedetective]

Were that the case, I would expect a greater variety of things. Still, it's possible. [She says, looking up as Rei holds out her Swiss army knife. Ah, yes, that'll do it.] Though, given that this is a simulation, it's entirely possible that these are simply things that the creators feel would be unsettling.

Thank you. [She says, taking the knife from Rei and opening the tools, looking for something that she can use as a lock pick. Why does a detective know how to pick locks? One can never underestimate the skills an ace detective might need.

Is this a... fishhook remover? Why would anyone need a fishhook remover? Oh, maybe they fish. It'll do.] A hair pin would be easier, but this should be sufficient.

[She crouches down and begins to get to work, gently working the lock open.]

[faithfulflame]

[There are a lot of things on that Rei has never once used. The fishhook remover, however, is something she looked for specifically. After the flood a few months ago, survival training felt necessary. Don't knock it!]

Sorry, I don't really pin up my hair. [It's a bit too heavy for that.]

Here. A little more light. [She wills another orb forward, casting away the shadows around the lock so Naoto can get it open. It shouldn't take long, though the tumblers are rusted a bit. When she does manage it, the light suddenly dies, casting the immediate vicinity around Naoto into shadow and a cackle echoes from inside the desk.

And then, all of a sudden a puppet hops out of the desk, coming right at Naoto!]

[truedetective]

[Naoto has never had long hair in her life. The relative tensile strength of hair pins isn't something she spares a lot of thought to.] Thank you. It should just take a little more, and--

[And as she pulls it open, the room grows dark, and there's a cackle, and something flies at her face. Naoto shouts in surprise, grabbing the offending puppet with one hand and pulling it off her face, tossing it to the side and grabbing the gun out of its holster again, and--] What is with the puppets?! [She says, exasperatedly, her heartrate slowly falling.]

[faithfulflame]

[Rei's quick to rekindle the lights, more than before now, the second she hears Naoto shout. She is again ready to just start throwing fire when the puppet clatters to the ground a few paces away...and she stops with a frown.] I have no idea.

[Stepping over to examine it, Rei prods the fallen Mickey Mouse with her toe.]

Looks familiar. Which is probably the reason they picked it. Makes it all the more unsettling. [Not that either of them shouted in fright, no sir.]

[truedetective]

Anything would be startling if it jumped out of a locked desk at you with a sudden cackle! The familiarity is irrelevant! [She says, pushing herself to her feet and retrieving the army knife from where she'd dropped it. God, this makes her look terribly amateurish, doesn't it?] Are they really just deriving enjoyment from this?

[She puts the knife on the table, pulling the desk drawer out a little further so she can peer into it.] There's no visible mechanism for how the puppet was launched. I'm guessing, then, that these games don't necessarily have to create an internally consistent reality.

[faithfulflame]

Very likely. [Rei would disagree on the amateurishness of it all. This is a new experience, and nobody is that inflappable. She’d be scared herself, if she hadn’t been through ViViD already.]

And you’re right in that. ViViD doesn’t really have rules. It can run as it likes, without regard for trivial things like physics. We could go into the next room and find that we’re walking on walls, or that there’s no floor, or that we’ve entered a whole new building. Unfortunately, it’s almost completely unpredictable.

[truedetective]

Wonderful. [She says, sounding faintly irritated, as she folds the knife back up and hands it back to Rei.] Thank you for the use of this. If there's no logical internal consistency, then I suppose searching for clues is mostly pointless. [Yep. Definitely irritated. Her logic is her strongest point, and it seems fairly useless here.]

[faithfulflame]

Very likely. But sometimes the game presents a puzzle to be solved before we can move on. This feels like a horror game, though, so that's doubtful. [Pocketing the knife again, she gives Naoto a sympathetic look. She remembers her first time in ViViD and how uncomfortable she'd felt too.]

Shall we continue? I have a hunch that we'll have to go deeper before we find any sort of exit.

[And while she can log out at any time, Naoto? Can't. Not yet. And leaving one of Yosuke's friends alone would be wrong.]

[truedetective]

I'm not really one for computer games, admittedly. Some of my friends from back home would be more familiar with the conventions of the genre than I would. [The tiniest of unprofessional sighs.] There's no sense waiting around, then. Any investigation will just slow us down, unless there's an obvious puzzle ahead of us.

[faithfulflame]

Me either, but I’ve been here long enough that I’ve learned a few things. [And also that she hates horror games.]

It shouldn’t be too much further. I’m…sensing…a pretty strong feeling of release up ahead. [Emotions left impressions, after a fashion, and while this may have been engineered as a trap, it was certainly something she was willing to spring. There wasn’t anything else to do, after all.]

[truedetective]

'Release' in what sense of the word? You mean the exit?

[faithfulflame]

An ending. An...exit of some sort. It's hard to tell with psychometry at this distance, unfortunately.

Either way, it's the only direction that feels even remotely right.

[truedetective]

[Slightly ominous.] Well, considering I haven't the slightest instinct of where to proceed in this case, I'll accept your hunch. Shall we?

[faithfulflame]

Of course. [Rei starts forward again, through the opposite door on the side of this storage room office thing, and moves down a dark hallway.]

Shirogane-san, have many of your cases ended up in places like this?

[truedetective]

If you're asking whether or not I'm used to investigating abandoned hospitals and asylums, I can't say I am. But if you're asking whether or not I deal with murders on a regular basis...

...it's more regular than one might think. [Naoto follows her this time, still keeping one hand where she can easily go for her gun.]

[faithfulflame]

Well, I suppose I meant in a more general sense, places like this rather than something specific. But murders, I guess, could also apply.

[Rei's currently mulling over how best to let Naoto know that she's aware of the Investigation team, Personas, and...more than a few other things. Opting instead to keep it light and let Naoto guess from implications left. It seemed better that way, since she didn't necessarily want to pry, and Naoto was a bit of an unknown.]

Sounds dangerous, in fact.

[truedetective]

Even taking it more general... 'eerie, unsettling places' tends to feel like most crime scenes. [She's scanning the area, looking for anything that jumps out at her as a potential puzzle, but doesn't see anything.]

It can be. Considering you know Yosuke-senpai and the others, I imagine you're aware of at least one murder case I've worked on.