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.
|
PHASE I [ 4 00 ] 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. ] |
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! |
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
no subject
[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.]
no subject
[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.]
no subject
[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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.]
no subject
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.]
no subject
no subject
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.]
no subject
no subject
Either way, it's the only direction that feels even remotely right.
no subject
no subject
Shirogane-san, have many of your cases ended up in places like this?
no subject
...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.]
no subject
[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.
no subject
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.
no subject
Who is your Persona?
no subject
That there are timeline issues in play here never actually comes to mind.] Currently? My Persona is called Yamato Sumeragi. It's been through several variations at this point in time, however.
The mind isn't a fixed thing, after all. Are you ready to open the door?
This can be an exit if you want to do stuff outside ViViD?
[Rei nodded in reply, reaching into her pocket and drawing out an elaborate scroll covered in archaic characters, preparing it like a weapon. It stiffens in her fingers, growing rigid.] The spirit of the Emperor.
[She understands the words and meanings at least.]
And I'm ready when you are.
sure!
She grabs her revolver in her right hand, and reaches out to grab her half of the door with the left.] Ready. On three, then. One, two, three--
[She pulls it open.]
no subject
Oh. Well...that was fortunate.
[Rei just steps out, and that's enough to log her out of ViViD and deposit her in CERES Gardens. Lucky!]
no subject
She's also not expecting what happens next. From her perspective, Rei keeps walking onto the green grass in the simulation. But when she steps through the threshold and consequently logs out--
--her feet are on the ground, and there's no asylum anywhere in sight.
Give her a moment, Rei. That's a little disorienting.]
no subject
After a few moments though, she speaks up:]
We shouldn’t linger too long in the garden. The local plantlife is sometimes hostile.
no subject
no subject
no subject
(no subject)