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

[redsquares]

[He's more than happy to leave the cooking and judging all behind. This is far more important, suddenly so.

Once they find somewhere a bit more departed from the main event, James just kind of blinks at her.]

Vincent...? [He'll meet someone named Vincent later, when he's in tummyache hell, but we'll just say he never got a last name and the pain wasn't making him think straight to put two and two together yet--] Okay. My lips are sealed. But who's he?

[ingestion]

He's a member of a cult that resides in Silent Hill, 'The Order'. They use this weird symbol as their logo to put it bluntly.

( she isn't going to tell james to avoid him or that he's a bad person per say because her own feelings about him were mixed. she had empathy for what he had gone through, and in a past life, she knew how the cult treated the members.

they were all brainwashed victims in her eyes. additionally, being here together, and vincent being her only 'ally' so to speak, made her closer to him than anyone else. )

It sounds like you never ran into them, which is strange. However they've been after me my entire life...

[redsquares]

A cult?

[-he parrots back, his brows knitting. Did he see a weird symbol while trying to survive Silent Hill? He saw a lot of strange things, it's hard to pick out one over the other. (Maybe, just maybe, he can recall a crimson-red emblem peeking out from behind the peeling wallpaper of a motel room-)]

I didn't run into anything or anyone touting 'The Order'. [Thank god, because he sure did have a lot more on his plate at the time...] I think I've read something about a cult in town, but I didn't put much stock into it. Maybe I should have.

[If they've been after a teenage girl her whole life, that sounds like utterly bad news. And since when is a cult good news, anyway?]

Why are they after you?

[ingestion]

( this was a lot for a stranger to take in, and she felt a deep sense of guilt over sharing this with him. however he knew of silent hill, he could understand what she had been through right?

maybe, in a naive way [because despite her real age], she wanted to be his friend. to have someone who could sympathize and understand the turbulence that came with being viewed as a vessel. yet she felt a hesitation-

could this man even care about her struggle? did he have the capacity? he had been drawn to silent hill, and while heather didn't know the town could do that, she did understand and see the symbolism that was shown to her. did he experience that too?

with a deep breath she shook her head. )

I have...very deep connections to that town. To make a long story short, essentially they were trying to birth their religion's God to bring in paradise, using the town as a breeding ground for it. Before I came here....their God was born.

That's why I thought you had seen it, it happened in Silent Hill. If the God is born, then our world is doomed but you're here...

So maybe it isn't?

[redsquares]

[What... the actual fuck. This is a lot to take in; James didn't expect anything good when it came to cultists, but this sounds like something out of a horror novel.

...Of course, he could say the same about his own experience in the town. But at its core, his visit had been to find Mary—and ultimately, learn the truth about his own delusions—and had nothing to do with rebirthing gods or anything of that scale. His was a far more personal journey, and maybe as a result, it seems like he was oblivious to many things going on in Silent Hill.

To say the least.

It takes him a moment to reply, because he's both digesting this information and all that Heather's trying to tell him.]

I... that's insane. Not that I don't believe you, but I'd never known about Silent Hill being used as a breeding ground for a god.

[He shakes his head.]

So that's all to say, no. The world wasn't falling apart based on what I last remembered. I hope that's a good sign.

[Not the world as a whole, anyway. His own world was shaken to the core, but now's not the time for that.]

[ingestion]

( all she can do is sigh in relief, even if she still is unsure of what he was saying was true. after all, he did seem sucked into his own world, his own journey in silent hill. it was entirely possible he was pulled from a time before the god was born-

or maybe he wasn't even from the same world. it was possible he was from another world with its own silent hill. these were the many thoughts that lingered in her mind as she offered him a gentle pat to the shoulder. it was a lot of information, she gets it. )

I hope so too but I guess it doesn't matter. We might not even be from the same world in the end, but if Echo brought you here...and me and that guy I was telling you about.

It's possible we're all here for a reason. To work together to save our world because our world isn't quite doomed yet.

[redsquares]

[It is a possibility, yes, that they exist in a separate world that happens to have both Silent Hills and Happy Burgers, but... James will not tread that deep into the rabbit hole of hypotheticals just yet. He's spending enough energy wrapping his mind around what he's been told already.]

That seems to be what they're touting. To judge if we're all good enough people to... save our universes.

[A pause. A roil of anxiety in his chest.]

But I don't know. I'm a bad pick. That Vincent sounds like one, too.

[ingestion]

( there's a bit of empathy in the way heather looks at james, taking in his demeanor and the way he called himself a bad pick. she wasn't aware that the town drew in people who had guilt or something to hide-

to her she had gone in out of her own volition, and the other world, despite harming her and also showing her messages, kept her alive. it wasn't outright to kill or punish her, but rather to fester hatred in her and bring her to the point where she would birth the order's god. )

Trust me...I've been here long enough to see that Echo doesn't really have a moral stance on things. Good or bad, it just wants us to prove we're worthy.

And you can't be too bad, you let me talk without judging me too harshly.

( all she can do is offer him a soft smile. )

[redsquares]

[It'll be hard to convince him otherwise, that he's suited to be here. To represent their world as something worth saving — he has too much guilt still wrapped up in his insides, like knotted bramble, to believe the opposite.

And he still feels guilty when Heather spins it a little differently. But he can appreciate her attempt, and more importantly, he can align himself with the stance more easily.

Instead of being here because he's worthy, proving himself to be... is more palatable. Doesn't that align with his intentions, anyway? To live, to be better, for Mary?]

...Thanks, Heather. [And he means that.] I'll do my best. Since there are others counting on me to be better.

[ingestion]

( with one last nod to his words, she took a step back and looked around to make sure no one had been watching them. when the coast was clear, she looked back at james and held her hand out to him to offer a more formal greeting. )

Listen, we have to look out for each other while we're here. This place...it does things to you. I thought this place would be a break from Silent Hill but-

not always. So what do you say? I look out for you, you look out for me? Shake on it?

( she had been told to make friends, to have people who would look out for her and she should do the same. so while it seemed a bit advantageous of her propose such a thing after a deep revelation, she felt this man could use all the support he could get. )

And uh...sorry about the soup.

[redsquares]

[Not the break from Silent Hill that she had wished for. Yeah, James hasn't even been in Etraya that long, but he's already starting to get the same feeling. They never asked to be here; what good can really come from any of that?

Well. That of some decent company, at least. Maybe he can allow himself even that much.]

That sounds like a fair deal to me.

[He reaches out his hand to complete the handshake, still smiling, though faint.]

Please. Don't worry about the soup. It doesn't even register in the top ten worst things I've seen. Maybe once all this stupid "cook-off" winds down, we can find something actually edible later down the line.

[ingestion]

( with a firm, but gentle grip, she shook his hand and released it. she finally took a step back, deciding this was a good place to part ways-

but then he had to mention that. she wasn't too trusting of the food here overall, and while she wanted to warn him about being cautious, she also didn't want to distress him further. he seemed rather apathetic about things if she thought about it, or at the very least, he needed things to go a bit slower considering everything that had happened so far.

so she kept that to herself for now, shrugging as he said that. )

There's normal stores here and what not, take a look when you're done here. You can also go to the apartments and pick a place out for yourself if you want.

I guess for now I should get going, I'm a little worried about the weird food here still...if you need anything, just reach out, okay?

[redsquares]

[He nods. Heather has a good head on her shoulders, giving him advice like that. He had planned on looking around, and finding a place to lay his head, but her suggestion only underlines how important it is to actually get it done. To not be so dazed by the new situation around him and to find some focus.]

Thanks. Same to you; I'll let you know where I end up, too.

[In case she needs to locate him some other time.]

I guess we'll get back to our "cookoff" for now.