TDM 005

[etrayamods]

⏵ 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… Roll a Die 1 Your leg is now tied to another chef’s 2 Your meal is continually un-cooking itself. 3 All of your ingredients are pickled now 4 The longer you touch an ingredient, the bigger it gets. 5 Every time you lift your pot lid, a component changes. 6 The aromatics are glowing and flashing like LED lights. 7 Your knife has been replaced with a cheese grater. 8 The ingredients are now magnetically stuck together. 9 Your meal is becoming deep fried. 10 Kittens are multiplying out of the cupboard. * 11 All of your ingredients have become incredibly heavy. 12 Your cook pot moves burners whenever you turn around. 13 Eggs scream when you crack them 14 The kitchen has become incredibly slippery. 15 It’s soup now. 16 All utensils have been replaced with crustaceans. ** 17 Your knife has a mind of its own. Watch out! 18 Your fridge catches fire. 19 Your pasta is trying to escape. Go get it. 20 Any ingredient not in the pot starts to float away. * 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:_______ Flavor Presentation Stackability Wet Originality Rizz ⏵ 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 1 Tummy Ache. Go lay in bed. Complaining alleviates symptoms. 2 That plate of food has energized you. You feel compelled to race or spar. 3 The food has reminded you of home. You must tell someone a detail of your childhood. 4 That food was so horrible that it simply must be washed out somehow. Spicy peppers? Booze? Gravel??? You’re going to over do it. 5 You have now discovered your new favorite dish. Make them teach it to you or you’ll lose sleep over it. This is all you want to eat for the next week. 6 The oddity of the ingredients has transferred to you. You start floating away. 7 The range of food and textures have inspired you. Acquire an annoying new hobby or habit. 8 You are now haunted by the digital souls of chickens. ⏵ NOTES ⏴ Please direct all questions to our mod queries comment! ⏵FULL NAVIGATION⏴

Comments

share a meal

[pethetic]

Don’t be so polite. I know it’s garbage.

[Till is leaning rudely on his elbow, sat in front of his abomination, his chin propped against his palm.]

They wouldn’t let me not cook, even though I’ve never done it in my life. Sorry if you barf later—I didn’t know people’d be eating it…

[redsquares]

["Sorry if you barf later" is not much consolation, but hey, it's something. He's hoping that he doesn't need to eat much more, at least, having "taste tested" enough.]

I wasn't trying to patronize. If it helps, mine wasn't much better.

[It sure was something.]

Are you new here, too?

[pethetic]

[Till finds James's consolation more patronizing than his polite bullshitting, but Till lets it alone. just seems he's a nice dude.

somehow, Till hadn't considered that there's other people in the same boat as him—at least this very day. he blinks, straightening up curiously.]

—Oh! Uh, yeah. Showed up earlier today.

[Till takes one of the tester spoons, jabbing it idly into his failure of a dish as a fidget.]

Got mixed feelings about it...

[redsquares]

[A fellow newbie. It makes him somewhat guilty to take comfort in the fact that he's not the only one here, stolen away from his world, wheeling a bit useless in a new situation, but he can't help it. It's a small reassurance in its own way.

James just nods, sympathetically.]

What a way to welcome us, right?

[It's not what he would've planned for everyone if he were in charge, but what does he know?]

Mixed feelings... What do you mean by that?

till it's. not better. don't envy him

[pethetic]

Yeah, no kidding... Just put us to the dumbest task imaginable...

[Till recognizes he's lucky he spoke to who he did; it made sense, the lot of them being forced into social tasks for the purpose of measuring temperament and similar things like that. being measured and weighed in these capacities is so familiar that it almost makes Till feel like he's just in some adjacent reality to the one he's come from.

he wishes he was still dead.]

I dunno...

[curiously, Till looks James down; like the last man he spoke to, Till notices his...age. not with any animosity, but with great curiosity. he's never seen humans that look like this. most don't live that long. this is an enmeshment of different worlds, isn't it?

Till...wonders what kind of world James must be from?]

The place I came from sucked. It was brutal, and miserable. Just...subjugation. Always smothered under someone's thumb.

[Till pushes around The Meal a bit more, scowling.]

Feels like this is just a dumber version of that, so I dunno how I should feel. You know?

[this is asked earnestly; curiously, Till's eyes roll up to James.]

wheezes. well. it's a different kind of bad probably

[redsquares]

[James is indeed a full grown man, his appearance indicative of someone in his 30s and Quite Tired, though a majority of the latter can be blamed on his recent stint in Silent Hill. If he notes the way Till looks him up and down, he doesn't comment on it. Everyone is an unusual stranger by someone else's standards when they've all come from every end of the, what? The universe?

Listening to Till's explanation, though, James can't help but deepen his frown. That sounds awful; dystopian.]

I can't imagine how awful that is.

[And though James can empathize with being torn from one's homeworld to here, the circumstances sound wildly different. He could offer sympathy, but he gets the feeling it might not be appreciated, so he continues-]

You definitely don't have to like it. Being dragged here, I mean. It's not like any of us were given a choice, so why would we be happy about it? Especially on the first day.

two different hells

[pethetic]

[Till childishly props his chin up against his hands, fingers curled against his squished cheeks, and elbows on the table, posture curled in a bend. Till ignores James's sympathetic offering, mostly because he just...doesn't know how to respond to it, so he lets it be.]

Yeah...

Some human with hairs on his face told me that the whole purpose of this was to measure our temperaments and stuff... which I guess weighs into whether or not we save our home universes. Or something.

I feel like they probably want our obedience for something else, though...

[Till's distrusting gut tells him that the universes they're taken from might be sort of a collateral damage and red herring at the same time. but it's not by any feat of intellect—really juse a baseless gut instinct. either way, Till is intolerably fed up with this continued lack of agency. he died, for fuck's sake!]

[redsquares]

It's definitely a test of patience, this whole ordeal.

[He can see how those who show far less temperance would probably fail, and almost immediately, having to cook under these circumstances, not to mention having to taste the dishes after.

Of course, it could also all be a play towards something else — and though that's obviously not the ideal, it's no more convoluted and difficult to believe than the first notion, so James really isn't sure what to think. He doesn't want to be here; he doesn't want to be tied up in any of this.]

"Human with hairs on his face..." [He echoes. What a weird way of phrasing it?] You mean a beard? [ ... ] Wait, are you... not human?

[pethetic]

[Till turns

beat fucking red.]

What!?

[he's legitimately never seen a human with facial hair, to be fair... when any "odd hairs" started cropping up as Till entered puberty, they were lasered off as they came in. it's mostly because it's just industry standard; there's probably breeding humans and others that require less show maitenence who have beards... he's never even really seen a human over age thirty, even.]

W-what do you mean!?

[Till leans back, mortified and defensive.]

Of course I'm fuckin' human!! Why would you ask that?!

[Till doesn't even realize the...insistence might make him seem even less human.]

[redsquares]

[H-help, this reaction? The sudden volume is starting, and James' eyebrows hitch up enough to wrinkle his forehead.

On one hand: fair, why would James ever ask if someone is actually human? Till looks human-shaped enough.

But on the other: he's seen Some Shit even before he arrived here, and now that he's been stolen from his universe, all bets are off. Not to mention the other's very odd verbiage.]

I mean, I'm human and I don't go around calling other humans... human. [use the word human 3 times in a single sentence challenge completed]

[pethetic]

...Oh.

[Till's shoulders drop their tension. he still looks embarrassed, but a little more...deflated about it.]

Where I'm from, that's normal.

[Till tries to think about it—why another human might not do that, and why he does it in the first place.]

I...guess—where you're from... are humans the dominant species, or something?

The only time I was ever around a bunch of other humans was when I was in schooling.

[if it's true that James comes from some world where humans are not subjugated as pets, Till's going to be...kind of ashamed, or self conscious, even though he knows he shouldn't be.]

i lost this notif sorry!!

[redsquares]

[More and more, details about this young man's world feel all the more concerning.]

Yeah. They're the only species? I mean, not including plants and animals.

[Very astute explanation, James Sunderland. He tries again, trying to not come across as awkward, but more focused on figuring out what the deal is, here.]

What's the... dominant species where you're from, then?

nw! it happens

[pethetic]

[Till glances up at James, then at his disaster dish, which he goes back to petulantly stabbing with a lack of enthusiasm.]

...Segyein. More of a catch-all than a specific species, I guess. Basically all sentient beings not from Earth.

Humans are their pets.

❤️

[redsquares]

Their pets?

[Oh, it's more dire than he thought.]

Are you saying there was some kind of alien invasion that happened?

[silent hill 2 ufo ending real???]

[pethetic]

[ufo ending real........ kind of...

the tone in James's questioning gives Till's heart and spirit a bitter stab of envy and curiosity both. the idea of humans being pets to other lifeforms sounds shocking, to him. it makes sense. he's beautiful with the honor of aging, though Till reminds himself he doesn't know his life.]

Yeah. Like...hundreds of years ago, or whatever. It was an invasion at first; Earth was demolished and humans were taken as commodity.

[with his free hand, while making eye contact with James, Till tilts his head, and he taps his fingertips against his neck, across the chrome, raised scar-brand of his name given to him by his purchaser. with his other hand...the plastic fork snaps, and Till jumps.]

Whoops...shit.

[now he's just kind of sourly picking it out, muttering.]

And now here I am... Doing stupid shit I'm not even good at because some bigger authority's telling me to. So lame...

[redsquares]

[That poor dish, getting stabbed to death by Till. James understands there's nowhere else for the awkward anxiety to go, and this must be hard to talk about, so when the fork breaks, it's hardly worth noticing in lieu of being shown that brand. That scar? How fucking awful.]

Jesus Christ.

[He has it a lot worse than him. And that's saying a lot, coming from James Sunderland.]

The people here have at least been treating you better, right? [Than a pet. Surely there's some silver lining to all of this, comparatively to what Till came from.]

[pethetic]

[Till thinks about it. he hasn't been treated—poorly. he's just obstinate as a reflex, his nervous system fried. he isn't being beaten blue and bloody for it like his Guardian used to do, nor thrown him in restraints or gags until he cooled down. he'd tried for a very long time to control Till, and it had never worked.

so in comparison...yeah, it's better—but his handler was just one person, who was uniquely terrible, and Till hates all Segyein anyway.]

Um, I mean...sure. They're captives, like me.

[his cheeks pink a little, glancing off as he leans back, crossing his arms.]

I think people've been pretty nice, mostly...

[like James, too. it's nice to be around so many other humans, even if he feels kind of estranged of their experiences.]

[redsquares]

[Well, he certainly hopes people have been nice to this kid. He's been through... way too much, James thinks.]

Good. It helps that we're all in the same crappy situation. But if you ever need anything, just let me know. I'm not all that special compared to some of the others here, but I'll do what I can to help.