∎ ETRAYA MODS ∎ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
etrayamods) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
etrayamemes2024-11-11 03:04 pm
etrayamods) wrote in etrayamemes2024-11-11 03:04 pm
Entry tags:
TDM 005
 ⏵ arrival ⏴ Arrival goes as anticipated. Characters awaken in a sterile hospital bed in a clean, white room to the hum of machines under the unnatural lighting common to well-kept institutions. Every bit was designed to be comforting and calming, even with the jarring undercurrent of this situation. The first face they see is Aurora's: her smile appears to be warm, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes. She might offer a quick explanation, or leave characters to figure it out for themselves depending on their approach. The door to the room swings open, revealing a hallway that stretches out ahead of them. There’s noise from outside and strong pumpkin spice scents coming from the lobby. Ah, muffins and tea. Grab one and head into the crisp, sunny fall morning ahead.  ⏵ potluck ⏴ Cutthroat Iron Etrayan Bake-Off As you step out of the arrival holding area into the main thoroughfare, the entire street has been turned into tents and chef stations to accommodate the activities of thirty people at once. There’s seats, trailers, and robots bustling about to make sure everyone is ready. A couple of cheerful robots in aprons and colorful sweaters approach and redirect you as you step towards the cooking area. There’s gas ranges, ovens, grills, blast chillers, mixers, and set walk-ins and pantries with just about every ingredient you can imagine. There are cameramen (also robots) patrolling the area to capture all your best moments and to broadcast them directly to your fellow citizens’ devices. Your instruction? “Make your signature dish. You have one hour, chef.” It can’t just be straightforward, can it? The land itself is held together with pure chaotic energy. If you’re lucky, all goes as planned. If you aren’t… well…
* All kittens disappear at the end. ** These however, stay.  ⏵ share a meal ⏴ As all the cooking concludes, you will be invited to plate your meal into one of many casserole dishes, regardless of what was made. A ladle will be tucked into the corner and placed on the table with a folded bit of cardstock declaring the chef’s name and the name of the dish. A helper camerabot will come around to each participant and ask for their thinking and their process. Even if you got away without having to cook, even looking towards the table of dishes will spur a helper bot to start making you a plate with one of everything. The helperbot will insist that it is rude to not at least try what their peers have made. In fact, if you are to fill out the score card for each person, you really must taste everything! The robots can’t try the food, so it’s up to you. The cards look like so. The grading system is opaque. Is it meant to be numbers? Stars? Letter grades? Well, you’re the judge. You figure it out. Chef: ___________ Dish:_____________ Judge:___________ Overall Rating:_______
 ⏵ tummy ache survivor ⏴ No matter how well your compatriots cooked or baked their dishes, there are… factors. You see that carrot? It’s really just condensed chaos in the shape of a carrot. No matter how powerful you are, these particular ingredients may not mesh with your being. …And even if it is truly a carrot, do all the chefs know the proper cooking temperature of chicken? Even chickens are aliens to many. (Optional) Roll a Die
Please direct all questions to our mod queries comment! |
no subject
"I think most people around here are halfway decent," he replies, setting the musubi down and looking for stray score card on the table to fill out. He's just a very big outlier, which... yeah, he was an outlier back home too, so this is nothing new for him.
"None taken. No, only simulacrums made by Echo, and I don't think they count." Hopefully they don't count. Grabbing a card and a pencil, he starts writing down some numbers. "I'm trying not to do the whole killing thing anymore if I don't need to. It isn't responsible."
no subject
The whole killing thing isn’t responsible, this guy is saying. Responsible.
“Well, glad you came to that conclusion all on your own. After, uh. Ten thousand or whatever.”
But it’s at least good news this guy hasn’t killed anyone here — or so Hank thinks, anyway. He doesn’t look like the sort to just randomly stab him with a knife here out in the open, but then again, Hank wouldn’t have thought he’d killed thousands, either.
“I like to think as long as someone’s not hurting anyone else, it’s okay. But obviously... shit, ten thousand? That’s a lot of someones.”
And a lot of grieving families, regardless of whatever excuse — and yet here Hank is, trying to weirdly justify this in his head, because what? This guy doesn’t seem so bad? Because he makes him think of kids back home around the same age who haven’t gone on murder sprees?
“Gotta say, first impression: you don’t seem so bad. Seem decent, even, maybe.” Although Hank has misjudged people on first meeting before. “Would be nice if our pasts didn’t follow us here, but I suppose they will eventually. In some way. Just... would hope I’m not high on your ‘to kill’ list if you ever change your mind about the whole murder thing.”
He goes in for a second bite of his chocolate donut, tragically sans the bar. Eyeing this alleged self-confessed murderer with a bit of a confused stare, because how the hell couldn’t he?
no subject
Making things worse is hearing Hank go on. His face twists into a familiar scowl, and he's quick to shake his head. "You don't know a fucking thing about me, so don't start making charitable assumptions," he growls.
He needs to nip this first impression in the bud before Hank comes to the conclusion that he's a good person. "Just because I'm not actively trying to kill people around here doesn't mean I'm suddenly a good person."
no subject
“Didn’t say you were a good person. Said you seem decent. It’s not like you’ve gone and poisoned me.”
Or so Hank is assuming, anyway. Halfway through another bite of his delicious chocolate donut — is this the one thing here that is actually palatable? The one thing? — and he pauses mid-chew.
“You’ve had ample opportunity to do all that. So, unless I keel over dead in the next few hours, I’m gonna say you’ve treated me decently. That fair?”
The number still doesn’t feel real somehow — it’s too big and this guy looks so damn young — but Hank isn’t going to press further. He’d have his hackles raised if someone were poking around his business, too. Can’t blame the kid.
Hank does note, though, that there is no mention of him being low — or high — on any potential kill list. He has to hold in a smile at that.
“How about you tell me how long you’ve been here,” Hank says, trying to de-escalate, but hell — he’s not Connor. He’s not good with people. Living here is going to be a nightmare, isn’t it? “Seeing as how I just got here, and — what do they expect? We plop our asses down and wait to be judged by the AI overlord?”
no subject
At least Hank is taking the bodycount seriously? Which does not make Accelerator good, per say, but understanding the horrific scope of it inevitably draws more sympathy for the Sisters, and that is good.
".... Aurora isn't running things, Echo is, and we don't know what the fuck they are. Aurora's more like an admin assistant," he clarifies, at least not explaining that much. It's important to him that people know the difference between the roles of Aurora and Echo - since Aurora is the one they can talk to, he doesn't want people getting unreasonably angry with her over things she can't control.
He continues, "I've been here for about eight months. Other people have been here a little longer or shorter. People disappear and get brought in pretty regularly. The only real information we've gotten on that is that Aurora's told me Echo loses some of themselves every time they bring someone here, so who knows how much of themselves they've got left."
no subject
Hank is piecing bits of the story together, little by little. And it’s all messed up, but... it could be worse. There could be no sense of familiarity. They could have been forced out into a literal hellscape — but they haven’t.
Yet.
“I wasn’t too kind to this Aurora when I first woke up, but — suppose that wasn’t her fault. Just unsettling, y’know. Waking up like that.”
He imagines she probably gets a lot of people coming here like that, swearing up a storm — and worse. Hank probably didn’t even make her top ten worst arrivals. Maybe she doesn’t even remember Hank with all the people who are in and out of the hospital.
Hopefully.
“Eight months, huh.” Hank whistles. “Quite a while. You learn anything interesting? Any weirdos I should steer clear of?”
Hank doesn’t really think he’ll really get an answer, but he’s gotta ask. He’s trying to keep all the details organized in his head — like it’s a case from back home, except this is his life for now. And it’s dangerous in a whole new way.
“Echo losin’ parts of themselves... sounds unstable.” Not that Hank can do anything about that. “Suppose we’re just here for the ride, then.”
no subject
There are people here who don't agree with that, and people who treat her poorly, and from the scowl crossing Accelerator's face when Hank mentions his first encounter with her he isn't thrilled to hear that. As far as he's concerned she gets a lot of shit over something she's had no control over.
"Not really," is his unhelpful reply. People are annoying or they aren't, and there are a lot of weird jerks, including himself. He doesn't really care either way.
"There's got to be something we can do, but as far as I know no one's made any real headway," he adds. "Our only connection to Echo is Aurora, so we're limited that way. And a lot of the missions have been dangerous or fucking deadly, so we're dealing with that on top of things."
no subject
His lips twitch, though. Can’t help that.
“Deadly, huh. Well, that’s just fuckin’ great.”
He lifts his donut and gestures to the people around them. If Hank didn’t know better, he might even call this weird smorgasbord a merry little affair. Most of the people he’s seen so far seem to be adjusting okay, albeit dazed. He hasn’t spotted anyone trying to jump someone else. No knives — or knives turned into lobsters — have been turned on someone else, from what he can tell.
It’s been oddly quiet for a place so apparently deadly. Like the calm before a storm.
“Between these missions, do you just... live? Mingle? Wait till the next time you might die?”
It feels like a stupid question, but this whole situation is weird. The waiting around seems hard, like sitting on the edge of his seat with teeth clenched, until finally... what? An opportunity to prove himself? To die?
A final bite of his donut, then: “What if someone refuses to do the missions? Just plops their ass down, and... nothin’?”
no subject
"Nothing. But usually there isn't any way to opt out -- when we had to go through that damn labyrinth, people couldn't just hang back because Aurora was redirecting the oxygen from here," he waves his free hand at their immediate surroundings, "into the maze. So you didn't have a choice if you didn't want to suffocate. Same with going to Eos' city, we all had to go."
Then again, it's not as if he tried very hard to opt out of any missions. Despite his own skepticism, he doesn't want to take the chance that Echo is being truthful. He's got too much responsibility back home to turn his back on his own universe.
He thinks a bit more on this. "I guess with the stuffed animals you could've just shoved it into a drawer and left it alone. Someone could've done that and skipped all of that bullshit entirely."