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etrayamemes2025-03-28 09:16 am
etrayamods) wrote in etrayamemes2025-03-28 09:16 am
Entry tags:
TDM 007
content warnings for this TDM include: violence, potential death, body horror, physical transformation, loss of senses, loss of autonomy  ⏵ arrival⏴ Arrival does not happen as Aurora usually plans for it. New characters are introduced to the AI, then informed of a mission that they are required to participate in before they can return to their home base of Etraya. A world called Aphaia is falling apart, and while there is nothing they can do to resolve this broken world, they can participate in the Gamerunner's Stratagem. Their mission is simple: step through the glowing purple portal that Aurora creates once they've had time to listen to her, and survive until a similar portal reopens in front of them, allowing them to return to Etraya. The Gamerunner's Stratagem is something they have been working on building for quite some time. She informs all newcomers that they will not be present on this world that long: their exit will appear to them exactly when it's meant to, allowing them to meet the others who have been recruited to save their worlds. She provides each and every arrival with an earpiece, allowing them to communicate with the other Etrayans. Aurora suggests taking a bag full of supplies along with them, which she will fill with a few generic items as well as any specific items they may need: synthetic blood for vampires, protein bars for those who may burn through calories faster, medication for anyone who requires it.  ⏵ aphaia ⏴ Aphaia is a neon-lit, chaotic planet. Cameras are everywhere, every action and inaction is judged by the 'audience'. Towering holograms advertise upcoming events while flashing leader boards track the most "popular" players. Contestants are thrown into challenges, many of which are games of skill, survival, and deception all to keep the viewers entertained. Not participating is an option! However, avoiding playing along and not putting on a show will quickly cause participants' score to go down, and scores that reach zero? Well. Unfortunately, there are only so many resources left on Aphaia. Their wildlife has died off, their planet is falling apart, and most others in this galaxy were either destroyed from the inside out, or warring planets trying to gain control of remaining resources destroyed them to avoid others getting involved. Their natural resources are depleted, and only those who manage to keep their scores up are given the luxury of having any supplies. As soon as one steps foot on Aphaia, as soon as they breathe, they intake nanotechnology which tracks their oxygen consumption, their food, everything they do or need. As soon as their scores reach zero? They disappear. There one moment, and completely gone the next. Their communicators go offline, and while everything they were carrying will be left behind, no one will be able to find them. They are simply--gone, erased from existence. This is a death and counts as a death as outlined in the game FAQ! Please keep this in mind. "Points" that go towards their total score will be assigned to contestants from the moment they drop down on planet. This will be visible using the HUD on their earpiece, and will be randomized at the beginning. For the sake of the TDM, we ask that no one be assigned Paragon initially, but you're free to use other ranks! The possible rankings are: 100: PARAGON 99-80: LUMINARY 79-70: CHAMPION 69-50: CONTENDER 49-30: UNDERLING 30-0: SHADE Ranks may change daily, or even hourly depending on the kind of situation one has found themselves in. Are they having a very public break up in which it comes out that they wronged their ex? They may go from a Champion to a Shade before they can even blink. Did they save a defenseless reporter from the big bad villain of the week? They may find themselves quickly elevated up to Luminary and given all the benefits that comes with being upper class. The world is their oyster, they only need to figure out how they'd like to utilize it! Aphaia is broken up into four districts. The Colosseum is a dynamic battle arena where combatants fight for entertainment, with shifting environments controlled by the audience. Victories earn points, while losses depend on performance. The Symposium is a lavish social hub for top contestants, where alliances and betrayals are made under the audience’s watchful eye. The Agora is the public center of Aphaia, where contestants engage with the audience through polls, interviews, and challenges to maintain popularity. It also houses the contestants in high-rise apartments. And Backalleys provide hidden spaces with intentional blind spots for secret dealings, though the Gamerunner is always aware of what happens there.  ⏵ st★rlight soirée ⏴ Something special is happening in the Colosseum. Lights flicker as the arena shifts, rearranging itself into a grand, glittering ballroom - if a ballroom had stadium seating, paparazzi drones, and an ever-changing floor plan designed to disorient those within it. Silver chandeliers pulse with artificial starlight, their glow refracted through the crystalline floors. Music swells, but it sounds - unnatural. It thrums through your veins, setting your blood alight with the urge to dance. Why is the ballroom designed as if intentionally put together to throw off one's balance? Well, it's time for the Panopticon Prom, of course! The Panopticon Prom isn't just an adventure in dancing and impressing your most recent crush. It's a test of endurance, cunning, grace, and charm. The floor beneath your feet moves as if it has a mind of it's own, shifting to the beat like a living creature all of it's own. It tilts, undulates, even vanishing in sections to keep dancers on edge. After all, it's difficult to keep up one's pace if they're falling through a hole in the floor to the foam pit below. Drones zip through the air, catching every stumble, every misstep, and every attempt to throw off others on the dance floor. This is a competition, after all; and what fun is a dance battle without having the freedom to thwart someone else on their road to victory? The rules are simple:
 ⏵ casino royale ⏴ Out in the Agora, another popular quarterly event is being set up! The Casino Royale has been destroyed countless times, but it seems as if the Gamerunner just can't let it go - every time it gets knocked down, it gets rebuilt. There is one rule. One must take a turn at the revolving wheel just inside the door as their entry fee, and whatever the wheel lands on, they must maintain until they exit the building for the night. Sometimes, this is easier: an effect they have no control over and cannot undo even if they wanted to. Sometimes, this is more difficult: an assigned task they must complete. Failure to abide by the wheel once means receiving a penalty. Twice? Certain death if caught by any employee. The wheel's effects are as follows:
The casino is alive with the hum of conversation, the clink of glasses, and the steady whirl of the roulette wheels. Golden chandeliers cast a warm glow over velvet-lined tables, where fortunes are made and lost with the flick of a wrist. But something feels. . . off. The dealers never blink. The cards never seem random. And the house always wins - always. Maybe it's just paranoia, or maybe this casino is something more than just a den of chance. Tonight, you're not here just to play; you're here on a mission. You've arrived dressed to kill, blending into the sea of bodies filling the casino's floors. But you're not here to win points or boost your social standing - you're here to win intel. Somewhere in this casino is a single flash drive containing information on just how Aphaia maintains their system. The only problem? The House knows someone is coming for it. After all, they're well-aware of the game: whoever retrieves the flash drive will obtain information on how to flip the script, to change the rules of the game to fit their wants and needs, rather than following the current Gamerunner. After all, this is the Gamerunner's Stratagem that Aurora has sent them out on! Many apply for 'employment' within the Casino Royale in hopes of getting insider information on where the flash drive is hidden and what it looks like. However, it seems that even the employees have no clue where it has been hidden. This is an extension of our Aphaia Mission! We have included enough information in this post that catching up to current in game logs isn't necessary to play with it, but you are welcome to use any part of the Aphaia setting in your prompts as you'd like. Current players are also welcome to bring the events from this TDM into their in-game threads. This mission can happen outside of time as needed! Incoming characters will find themselves introduced to Aphaia as they arrive. Current characters may find Aurora calling on them to visit Aphaia after the current mission for the Gamerunner's Stratagem. Characters already in game are welcome to post to the TDM, too! Please mark them as current characters in your header. Threads can be kept as game canon as long as both characters get into the game! Please direct all questions relating to this log to our mod queries comment! All other questions can be directed to our FAQ. |
Starlight Soiree
Normally it is, anyways. Accelerator is showing up to beat the shit out of some idiots, not dance, but it's kind of his own fault for not checking the Colosseum's schedule of events before walking all the way here from the apartments (a pain in the ass given his ambulatory state with the crutch and all the ever-present crowds). He's hearing the fancy music as he approaches one of the entrances, watching people swish by him in equally fancy clothing, and there's a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach before he confirms it with his own eyes.
He stops near her, staring into the Colosseum. "They can't be serious," he says aloud, mostly to himself, though since she's right there and he feels the need to get this frustration out he glances over at the girl slightly younger than himself. "Oi, they can't be fucking serious with this prom shit, can they?"
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She offered a small shy smile, shrugging a little. The swearing didn't bother her, she just wasn't used to interacting with a lot of people close to her own age.
"From what I understand I think it's some kind of dance competition more than an actual prom." She said finally, tugging nervously on a strand of blonde hair. "I-I don't have the stamina for something like that so....I thought to listen to the music from out here."
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"A dance competition?" He repeats incredulously, and though he doesn't say it aloud from his tone that sounds even worse than just some stupid fancy party. It's unlikely that with something like that going on there won't be any fighting matches going on today, which means he walked all the way here for nothing. It's annoying, very annoying, but he there isn't anything he can do aside from complain, and complaining is childish. This isn't worth getting worked up over, so he draws in a deep breath. He's really going to go have to get a coffee, even though it's expensive in Aphaia.
Glancing over again, he tries to shove his annoyance down. "You're not the only one who isn't any good at dancing," he adds, waving his free hand at his crutch. "Why's your stamina fucked? Not every kind of dancing needs you to be really athletic, right?"
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"I deal with Neuro-immune Deficiency Syndrome." She explained with a small smile. "There's no cure yet and it's terminal. I was assured that while I'm here it would be in remission and wouldn't escalate, but relapses can still happen. So I just have to be careful with too much physical activity." She looked down at her folded hands, not keen on seeing his face at all that. She wasn't necessarily ashamed, but various people had different reactions to this sort of thing.
"I'm Maria by the way. What's your name? Were you sent here by Aurora too?"
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"... Accelerator," he replies bluntly. From her question he figures she must be new. "Yeah. It's a mission. Everyone who arrives in Etraya has to go on them, unless you get yourself a get-out-of-mission free card. I don't think those things are cheap."
He isn't totally sure, having only learned about them recently. John had gotten one for Harold, and he's fairly certain that John would have no problems spending every single point on Harold if given the option.
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"I was told to 'survive', but surely there must be more to it than that." Maria mused. "I mean, she said that I was brought to Etraya to have a chance to save my world from being destroyed, but this one is already on its path to destruction. Why would Aurora bother sending us here?" Though she was the type of person to believe that everyone should have a chance to live and be happy. She just wasn't sure about all this mission business.
"I'm still trying to figure all this out." She admitted with a small smile. "And why I would even be summoned." She looked over to Accelerator. "Have you been in Etraya long? I get the impression you aren't a fresh arrival like me."
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"I'm not. I'll have been in Etraya for a year next month," he says with a sigh. Time sure flies when you're a multiversal kidnappee. He continues on, trying to answer some of her questions. "Someone had asked Aurora if Echo could send us to a universe that couldn't be saved, that's why we're here. A lot of people are skeptical about whether the whole 'saving our own universe' thing is true or not, which is what led to all of us going on this mission. Aurora does her best with what she's given, but Echo doesn't give her a hell of a lot to begin with. Shit like mission instructions are always vague, so get used to that."
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"Hm...that someone would request this is odd. But...from a scientific perspective I suppose it makes sense. It just provides more data to work from." She laughed a little. "I'm not scientist myself, but my Grandfather is one, and I spent a lot of time around researchers." She pouted though at something he had said.
"The fact they don't give us proper instructions on these missions though. That sounds like they are either just trying to make it challenging, or setting us up to possibly fail." She mused. Aurora did say that they would all be tested to see if their universes were worthy to be saved.
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Accelerator watches her muse over this new information quietly. She looks like the type of kid who had to grow up too face - not uncommon when you're this young and with a serious medical condition. It might make her more resilient to all this bullshit, though it's still unfair she has to go through any of this to begin with.
"Either of those options are equally likely. Who the fuck knows how alien Echo's thought processes are," he replies with a shake of his head. Echo is described as a god, and he thinks combining that with whatever losses Echo suffers when they bring in or kick out an Etrayan, it's questionable whether they have any kind of humanity within them. It's possible they're so completely different from humans (and human-adjacent people) that their way of doing things is beyond the understanding of the rest of them.
"Anyways, if you've picked up shit from the scientists you've hung around you'll be in good company," he continues. "There are a lot of people like that in Etraya."
Nerds. He means nerds.
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"I suppose that's one way of looking at it. Back home, I lived a pretty isolated life. But here, at least I get to meet lots of new people." She gestured around them. "See new places." She laughed again. "I just wasn't expecting anything like this!" She tilted her head slightly as she gazed at Accelerator.
"Have you made lots of friends in Etraya? Any favorite things you like about it?"
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In fact, it's likely better that she's being optimistic, because those questions make him pause and firmly trudge into stick in the mud territory. That first one is particularly thorny for someone who's always had an impossibly hard time admitting he has friends.
"I don't do friends," he's growling that out, his voice relaxing a little as he keeps going, "I've got a fucking city I need to be running back home, so I'm not a fan of being stuck here."
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"I see." She murmured thoughtfully. Though she was genuinely curious too. "I hope you can get back home soon then. What's your city like? Are you like a mayor?" Running a city sounded like a pretty big job. She could understand why that would make him snappy if he was concerned about his duties.
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"A sovereign city-state." She repeated, clearly curious about it. "What's your city like? Is it a nice place to visit?" She chuckled a little. "Forgive my curiousity, I've just spent a lot of time in space since I've been sick. So I haven't had a lot of chances to travel the world."
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What a way to start. It's his honest opinion and he doesn't see any reason to sugarcoat it. Having grown up in the absolute worst parts of the city, he can't justify making Academy City out to be better than it actually is.
"It was made only a few decades ago specifically for scientific research, so it's a hub for all of that. Even though it's younger than most other cities, it's a few decades ahead of the rest of the worst when it comes to science and technology," he explains with a sigh. "But its main area of research is the creation and development of espers. For that you need a steady supply of kids, since adults can't be made into them. There are a lot of fucking morally questionable scientists who've taken advantage of the situation, and not enough people care."