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etrayamemes2025-01-02 03:19 pm
etrayamods) wrote in etrayamemes2025-01-02 03:19 pm
TDM 006
 ⏵ arrival ⏴ Arrival is absolutely not normal this month. Instead of a hospital bed, you wake in a tunnel with a large group of other people. These are the residents. A woman’s voice in an earpiece hurriedly clues you in with an apology. I apologize; I had not planned to introduce you this way, but we are low on time. Please proceed down the hallway. For everyone else, coming in is much the same. The instruction goes out to head to designated areas immediately, where companion bots will escort the residents of Etraya down into the depths, the area beneath where much the same is explained.  ⏵ disrobing ⏴ The tunnel eventually opens directly into the foreroom of an expansive library, painted in marvelous hues and patterns with skylights far above. There are wizards milling about, bearded and holding tomes, quietly chatting amongst themselves. The reception area of the library has tall ceilings with equally tall doors Before you get too caught up in the scenery, a voice directs you forward. A gentleman, hunched and bespeckled craws out. "Make a line! Make a line, everyone! You cannot enter the library dressed as you are... Come forward and give me your name." The receptionist asks your given name and then hands over a box from underneath his counter. You can give him any name you want, he doesn’t seem to mind. It is tied with a tagged ribbon- labeling it accordingly. “The _____ robe of _______.”
As you read what the contents of the box may be, they form inside- Looking and behaving as your character expects them to. After all, magic is all in the wielder’s mind. Don your robes and enter the library.  ⏵ unfamiliar familiars ⏴ For those without a familiar (like one hatched from an egg not too long ago) you may borrow one from the library counter. They all have strengths and weaknesses, but they will all assist in the very important mission. As you roam the library, they will make little indications that you are closer or further from finding a piece of the pearl.
 ⏵ the task at hand ⏴ With robes donned and creature in hand, you must now complete your mission. Find the pieces of the shattered pearl. As you enter the library, you may notice that it’s all very dim. There’s oil lamps around the place that may be moved with you to assist in your journey if your robes do not already emit light. Break off and search the library. There is a directory at the front to point guests to all the different sections.
Each section looks enough like the last, though the books within have immense power. Pick up the wrong book, and you might conjure a dragon or a historical figure! You must persist and avoid making too much noise or breaking too many things. Or else the Librarian, a tall mass of knotted fabric will confiscate your robe and usher you back outside. Your name will be struck from the list, and you must pick a new one to re-enter the library to continue the search. You can try to fight back against him- he may be set alight with the lamp. But should you be starting fires in here? Any thread with 15 comments between you and another may be submitted to find a piece of the pearl. There are 20 pieces altogether, and we will determine if the mission was successful by March 28th. A post will go live on the OOC comm for this! This mission occurs out of time, similar to how the spaceship had. Meaning, those currently in game can experience these events any time between now, and March 14th. Please direct all questions to our mod queries comment! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
the task at hand; it's a jheyyyyyy
Look, despite the things he's done back home he's still a complete newbie when it comes to magic, and without Qliphah Puzzle 545 to act as a magical fountain of knowledge he has to get this information on his own. Of course he's going to use a magic library when he's presented with it.
He noticed the other boy out of the corner of his eye when he first made his way over to these stacks. Unsure of what he's just... standing facing the wall like that... he elects to ignore the behaviour and pick a book - something on the basics of alchemical symbols - off the shelf. Leaning on his crutch he spends several minutes flipping through it, and when he looks up again to see that same kid completely unmoved, he kind of wonders if he's actually dead or something.
That's nonsense, and he goes back to his book.
Unfortunately, after another minute his owlet perks up and starts flapping her little wings, looking over in that direction. Accelerator scowls, not really wanting to get involved with whatever the hell that is, reluctantly tucks the book under his arm and walks over. It might lead to a pearl shard, he tells himself, and not the owl spotting the toad and wanting a meal.]
Yo, if you're having some kind of fucking medical episode, don't do it in some corner where no one's gonna notice you until after you're dead.
YOOO great to bump into you again!
Sometimes it's more difficult to bring him out of these odd spells, but this time he almost immediately reacts, body jolting as soon as someone speaks directly to him, eyes flying open wide. Lucidity is slow to set in, his pupils still weirdly swollen, and his eyes look wildly around at the boy without truly seeing him for a few seconds. ]
What? What's happening?
[ (The toad in his palm gives a nervous glance upwards to that owl.) ]
Where am I?!
[ Finally seeming to comprehend the other person standing there, Peter's eyes lock on, seeming to have no memory of where he is. Oh yeah, he's out of it. ]
no subject
Accelerator remains calm as ever. He's seen some weird shit, so a kid snapping out of whatever fugue state he's in is unusual but not enough to freak him out. Which... is probably a good thing, given how freaked out the other kid seems to be.]
A library.
[His tone is flat as he gives a short gesture with his free hand at the stacks of books nearby.]
How the hell did you wander in here without realizing that?
[Really, given he would've had to stop at the main desk to get robes that seems like an accomplishment.]
no subject
[ Peter's eyes snap around, and his body language hunkers in a little, defensively, like he's afraid of some oncoming attack. A library? Why the hell would he be in one of those? He doesn't read. ]
I don't know, I—
[ His mind's some strange static blur, thought and memory skewed. He vaguely remembers standing in a line, but the rest is too strange to pick through. He blinks down at the toad in his hand, whose fat body gives a purposeful little swell as it looks back up at him. Why does he have this?
Then, remembering a vague thought he'd had earlier— ]
This is a Comic Con thing?
no subject
No. It's a real magic fucking library like out of some kid's book.
[It's total nonsense. His robe is garbage and the rules surrounding those things are the worst. The only saving grace, in his opinion, are the books. Those seem useful.]
The faster you can wrap your head about this bullshit the easier it'll be to deal with.
no subject
...Or it's real. The other boy says it's real. And Peter is slightly more inclined to believe in the possibilities of such things after some of the wild stuff he'd seen back in the City. Still... it's a lot to take in. He casts a slow, anxious look around the library again, still looking like he expects something to jump out and kill him any second.
But the more he's talking with someone, the more and more lucid he becomes, some of that cloudiness clearing enough that more of those memories of actually getting in here start trickling in. He'd gotten some nerd-ass robes.... gotten this toad... ]
Is everything magic here? [ Wherever the hell "here" even really is. ]
no subject
He shrugs casually.]
No, there's a lot of technology, too. [Something he's far more comfortable with, being what he is. Artificial intelligence, robotics, the usual.] I guess some of it's gonna come off like magic depending how advanced your universe is, but it's still just scientific shit.
no subject
What universe are you from?
[ He has to wonder, giving the other boy another look over, this one a bit more focused. ]
no subject
(Doubtful.)]
One with an Earth. I'm from Academy City in Japan, specifically.
[His tone is casual. He doesn't expect the name of his home to be familiar, since he hasn't run into anyone else who's recognized it.]
no subject
Anyway, "one with an Earth" is familiar enough at least, as well as Japan in general, even if not the specific city. It's enough to settle just a tiny bit of the anxiety in Peter's stomach. ]
I'm from Utah, [ he says in response, a little lamely. Utah's not that great... ] Uh, in North America.
[ But there's a pause after that. He's not sure where The City is. This place... has to be part of that, right? ]
This is all... part of that experiment, isn't it? The simulation?
no subject
Not that it matters much. Utah's a lot less important than mention of a damn simulation. Accelerator raises his eyebrows, confused.]
Wait, simulation? The hell are you talking about?
no subject
The uh... the shit going on in that city. The one we all got brought to.
[ Even now, he has no real idea how to describe that place. It was like one bad dream. A lot like how this library feels right now; he's assuming this has to be a part of all that stuff. But he's not entirely sure on that, and now he's watching the other boy with a fresh wave of trepidation. ]
Apparently it's some kind of fake world created to... I guess experiment on us or some shit. We're not the first ones, there were others before.
no subject
But they aren't in Academy City, they're in Etraya. The thought of Etraya being one big simulation isn't out of the realm of possibility, but this kid is sounding certain and Accelerator knows everyone here is still very much in the dark as to what's really going on.
Also? There isn't really a city here. Etraya is more a conglomeration of random buildings on a bunch of island. There's Nova City, but it's mostly empty and no one is brought there.
Accelerator considers all of this briefly, his stare turning hard as he comes to a conclusion.]
You're going to tell me everything you know, right now. What city are you talking about? What experiments? What proof did you get that some fucking simulation is going on?
no subject
I don't know what it's named. I don't think anyone knows. But... some of the people trapped there started looking into it. Finding clues and evidence and stuff. Documents in like science labs.
[ Robby and Tsuruno in particular come to mind, and he tries not to think too much about the worry for his friends. ]
It's something like... every time people were brought in before, some kind of disaster wiped them out. So we were all worried that soon enough, something like that was gonna happen to our group, too.
[ As far as proof that it was some sort of simulation— ]
Nothing was real. Even the food was like... fake. It was like a big fake world.
no subject
None of this sounds like Etraya to him, and he's reasonably confident of that. Regardless, it's interesting as hell to hear.]
As far as I know, nothing like any of that shit's happened here. None of this is a simulation, and no one's found any kind of documents about this place before the first of us arrived. From everything that's been presented to us, Etraya's pretty fucking new.
[What's left to conclude? Accelerator relaxes a bit, leaning on his crutch.]
Not that I've been to Utah before, but I'm assuming that place wasn't there. So it sounds like you were yanked from the United States to this city without a name, then yanked here.
no subject
So this really must be somewhere else.... It's a strange, uncomfortable thought. Peter worries his bottom lip for a moment as the other boy lays it out like that (which is also very helpful, hearing it put into a clear-cut and logical form, even if Peter often hides from looking too directly at such truths...) Yanked from the United States to The City, then here. To this Etraya. ]
Yeah.... yeah, I guess that's how it is. [ He's disturbed by the thought. Who, or what exactly, is doing all this yanking? ]
Has anyone been able to leave this place?
no subject
A lot of questions and Accelerator doubts he'll get much in the way of answers.
Anyways, he shakes his head at that question.]
People disappear sometimes. Not sure if they're being sent back to their universe or what, and Aurora can't confirm anything. Echo is flinging them somewhere, we just don't know where.
no subject
It was like that there, too. People'd just vanish.
[ But— ]
Echo?
[ With the new arrivals being rushed through this month, he wasn't told about that, either. ]
no subject
[That's a strange coincidence. Or similarity? Maybe that means they're connected, somehow.]
Echo's the thing that brings us here. They're some being, or a god or whatever, I don't know. We can't meet them, we can't even fucking talk to them. [He sighs, irritated.] So we don't know anything about them aside from their apparent mastery over spcetime.
no subject
Oh, greaaaaat. Some god thing pulling all the strings. We're all definitely not screwed, [ he remarks dryly. He needs a joint so bad. ]
So if we don't do this mission thing, there's a chance we make it mad?
[ He's remembering, more and more — the mission, some task about finding pearl shards. ]
no subject
At least he can answer Peter's question? That'll probably be slightly reassuring. Sort of.]
I don't think so. So far I haven't seen any punishments for not participating. Sometimes we don't have a choice, but that has more to do with stuff like Aurora having to selectively shut down the technology maintaining a livable environment for us than Echo getting pissed off.
no subject
Shutting down the tech needed to make a livable environment doesn't sound so great either, but it doesn't sound as scary as where he just came from. And this guy seems to be coping pretty okay, at least from a surface view. All of this is still pretty mind-boggling to Peter, and the worry about his friends is a persistent nagging up underneath everything else, but for now... hopefully he can just keep a level head about him and not zonk out again. ]
Shit. Okay, thanks for all the uh, the info. [ Second time waking up in some new weird world. How the hell does it keep happening?? ]
I guess I'll do whatever they want us to do right now. [ Beat, as he glances back over at the other boy. ] ....What exactly was that, again?
no subject
We're supposed to be looking for shards of some pearl that're in here. [He waves his free hand vaguely at the entire library.] I have no idea why, but that's nothing new. Half the time we aren't told why we're supposed to do something on a mission, we just have to do it.