reparator: (Default)
C E R E A L I A ★ M O D S。 ([personal profile] reparator) wrote in [community profile] estoria2016-07-14 06:00 pm

//EVENT031.EXE

//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

[ 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

[ 6:00 ] 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

[ 10:00 ] 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

[ 14:00 ] 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!

succeeder: (70)

[personal profile] succeeder 2016-07-23 03:34 am (UTC)(link)
I have a knife. [ But since that's short-range, he doesn't mind agreeing to stay in the back. He just points to one of the random directions. ] There, then.
truedetective: (11)

[personal profile] truedetective 2016-07-23 06:58 am (UTC)(link)
As good an option as any. Come. [She begins to lead the way. Boy, she's actually pretty short, huh? He'll have no trouble seeing over her cap.

They come to a crossroads, an intersection of two corridors, and Naoto steps into the middle, carefully sweeping all three other options with her gaze and her revolver.]
Were there any logic at work here, there would be signs indicating parts of the hospital...
succeeder: (26)

[personal profile] succeeder 2016-07-27 03:43 am (UTC)(link)
They can't be bothered to put that much thought into things. I often feel as though much of ViViD is randomly generated gibberish. [ Hmmmm. He looks over her to study the three options. ] So, it may be pointless to attempt to pick based on any reasoning other than eliminating paths we have already traveled.

[personal profile] truedetective 2016-07-28 06:23 am (UTC)(link)
That's mildly annoying. [And it sounds exactly so in her voice, oops.] I don't see anything indicating that there's any particular logic to the layout. We may as well just pick another direction.
succeeder: (68)

[personal profile] succeeder 2016-07-29 03:49 am (UTC)(link)
Then we're going that way. [ He points to the right. If it's all arbitrary, he may as well railroad them onto whatever path suits his own whim. Though, the confident decision-making rings more false than usual when he's open about the fact that he doesn't have a real plan. ]
truedetective: (11)

[personal profile] truedetective 2016-07-29 04:45 am (UTC)(link)
I don't see a better option. [It is all arbitrary.

But wow, dude, that was way more decisive than this moment called for.]
This isn't your first time in here, I imagine. Have you encountered anything like this before?
succeeder: (32)

[personal profile] succeeder 2016-07-29 10:36 pm (UTC)(link)
Pointless mazes? Yes; they were dull and tedious from the start, and repeated exposure hasn't changed my opinion on that. I try to avoid them whenever possible.

[personal profile] truedetective 2016-07-29 11:30 pm (UTC)(link)
[She gives him a mildly irritated look.] It's good to know you're not an enthusiast of dull mazes.

I was more referring to the type of scenery.
succeeder: (17)

[personal profile] succeeder 2016-08-01 03:46 am (UTC)(link)
[ Hmph. At the specific prompting, he does take the time to look around at his surroundings more carefully. ]

...As far as I am aware, there are not repeats of specific settings, but the general aesthetic isn't entirely new. Though, the horror elements are more likely to be found in the world proper, rather than in ViViD.
truedetective: (11)

[personal profile] truedetective 2016-08-01 10:40 pm (UTC)(link)
Interesting. Can you elaborate on what you mean by 'horror elements'? I hadn't encountered anything particularly frightening in the presentation.
succeeder: (6)

[personal profile] succeeder 2016-08-02 03:07 am (UTC)(link)
Laboratories with experimentation on deadly local monsters... Well, when we were out in the jungle, that was a wide-scale mess of strange monsters and psychological assaults. There are ruins with mirrors that reflect past trauma, and strange invincible robotic monsters. There was an infestation of "ghosts" that rendered me physically unable to sleep for days.

That sort of thing. Not what you put forward as the company's public face in presentations.

[personal profile] truedetective 2016-08-03 05:50 am (UTC)(link)
[Yeah, that sounds about right.] Describing those as horrific would certainly be apt. Indeed, they do sound reminiscent of typical horror fiction, as well.

[Which is interesting.] I wonder if that's on purpose.
succeeder: (46)

[personal profile] succeeder 2016-08-04 04:05 am (UTC)(link)
When you ask about horror elements, you'll hear about horror elements. I assure you there have been other events that seemed skewed towards other unsavory genres of fiction.

[ ...Though, the idea of things being "skewed towards genres" is intriguing in itself, even in a more broad sense. ]
truedetective: (01)

[personal profile] truedetective 2016-08-05 04:20 am (UTC)(link)
[And it does catch Naoto's attention.] When you say that these events are reminiscent of genres of fiction, how exactly do you mean?

I doubt that's coincidental.
succeeder: (83)

[personal profile] succeeder 2016-08-06 04:39 am (UTC)(link)
[ The downside to this being potentially relevant is that now he has to actually acknowledge some of the more embarrassing things that have happened to him. ]

...Such as, proms with ridiculous vines that would not let go of you until you had kissed someone else, or library books that caused you to act like you were part of an agonizing romance novel, or that made you see everyone as mythical creatures.

Sci-fi goes without saying given the general everyday setup.

[personal profile] truedetective 2016-08-07 02:11 am (UTC)(link)
I see. [She says, frowning in thought.] Those do sound like standard tropes found in a variety of genre fiction.

The implications of that are somewhat unsettling.
succeeder: (25)

[personal profile] succeeder 2016-08-07 05:24 am (UTC)(link)
What implications did you have in mind?
truedetective: (08)

[personal profile] truedetective 2016-08-07 06:22 pm (UTC)(link)
That we're meant to be fictional characters in someone else's narrative. If the people with power over this world are intent on throwing us into situations resembling genre fiction, it makes it all the more likely that they're using us for some form of entertainment.
succeeder: (49)

[personal profile] succeeder 2016-08-09 05:15 am (UTC)(link)
[ He huffs, bitter as he looks back on everything that's happened to him here. ] No doubt they are deriving entertainment from all of this. Though I am not convinced that is their primary goal. Why would their cover story be quite so dramatic, in that case? People will sign up to participate in trite reality TV of their own free will.