TDM 007

[etrayamods]

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: You must dance with a partner. This can be an ally, an enemy, or someone you intend on using as a stepping stone to victory. It matters not, as long as you have one hand (or limb) on them at all times. The longer you last, the better your chances. Endurance is the name of the game, meaning one must pace themselves on the dance floor. While epic twirls and impressive moves will garner more attention, it may also hurt your chances in the long run. You may sabotage others by throwing them off balance, but keep in mind: everything is televised, and it won't stay secret for long. The arena adapts to the chaos. Expect sudden obstacles, environmental shifts, and sudden changes in the music's tempo. Gravity may shift, walls may close in, but participants can't let that stop them - they must continue to dance, if they wish to win. The audience is watching. Who will make the final cut and become Prom King and Queen? Everyone is vying for the titles: it doesn't matter what rank you started at when you joined the Panopticon Prom. Whoever wins becomes a Paragon until their points drop. There aren't many opportunities to sail through the rankings, but this is a sure way to do it. As long as they can keep up. ⏵ 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: 1 You must speak entirely in rhyme. 2 Your body has become unnaturally delicate. The smallest injury hurts like a fatal wound. 3 You must avoid stepping into any sources of light. Doing so causes massive burns to appear on any area of your skin where light has touched. 4 You have been transformed into an animal! You can still think as you had before, but you cannot speak or communicate easily. 5 You have been cursed with supernatural strength, but cannot control it. 6 Time doesn't flow normally for you anymore. Each mistake you make makes you visibly younger, slowly erasing your experiences, skills, or even memories. 7 You can no longer form your own words, but only repeat what others have said to you. 8 You cannot meet another person's gaze. 9 You can no longer turn around, physically or metaphorically. If you try to return where you came from, you'll find that the pathway no longer exists. 10 You are given a specific letter that you must avoid using out loud entirely. "A"? Better hope you know enough words without one. 11 Every time you speak, your words come true - but never in the way you intended. Trying to control this is futile; the monkey's paw curls with every new sentence. 12 Within the casino, you lose the ability to feel anything. No pain, no pleasure, no warmth, and no cold. At first it may feel like a blessing - until you realize you cannot feel hunger, or tell if you're injured. 13 Regardless of if you've drunken anything, you still act inebriated. The effect only gets worse the longer you stay. 14 No one can see you. You are invisible, even if you are still able to reach out and touch or converse with those around you. 15 Any special ability you have is gone. You are reduced down to what an average human being is capable of - regardless of if you are human. 16 Violent impulses become impossible to ignore. You are rage incarnate, and you will be heard. 17 Every time you make a decision - to walk into an area, to start a conversation, anything, a small thread pulls loose from your clothing or your skin. Keep making choices, and you may become entirely undone. 18 You may speak freely, but for every syllable you say, your ability to hear slowly fades. You may want to watch your word count - too many, and you may not be able to hear at all. 19 Perhaps you arrived with a friend, or beside a stranger. It matters not: whoever came in either just before or just after you, you feel a powerful urge to protect them to the point of aggression. 20 Love is in the air - at least it is for you. Every time you meet someone's gaze, you feel the need to try and make them fall in love with you, through whatever means necessary. 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. ⏵ NOTES ⏴ 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. ⏵FULL NAVIGATION⏴

Comments

[querulus]

[She what??]

/Uh./

[Quentin blocks her out of his head for a minute to process, because he's, well... he's annoyed, honestly. And worried and dismayed and a little stunned, but also just frustrated.

Julian? She told Julian of all people?? The guy least likely to take the news of Krakoa's fall with poise and... you know, not breaking a bunch of shit in a fit of rage? Why would she do that? And what does she mean by she's "got" him??]

/No one's asked. You... think he's gonna go tell everyone else?/

[Assuming when she says she's "dealing with it" she doesn't mean "erasing his memory".]

[sophielicious]

(Quentin. Quire. Quentin blocked her. Quentin?? Quire??? Blocked??? Her??? Sophie had come into this conversation a little heartbroken, a little uncertain, and now she's both irritated at the audacity and honestly, 0.05% impressed he can have it.)

/I think I have to tell everyone else./

(Listen, she's gonna do what she has to do, okay!!! She's figuring it out!!)

[querulus]

[UH.

He can tell she's mad he blocked her, and normally he wouldn't, but uh, look, it's a really unique situation right now, and he's managing as best as he can! If she's still mad later, he'll apologize. And she definitely will be, because what he's about to say will be almost as bad an experience for her to hear as it is for him to say.]

/No./

[sophielicious]

(Since when does Quentin say 'no' to her. Up is down, left is right, this place is taking a huge toll on her right now, and she isn't appreciating this at all. Hope he can enjoy her fuming at him, because she is.

Not because of the argument, or anything like that. It's not the situation.

It's just.

NO??????)

/Excuse me?/

[querulus]

[Well, being in Sophie's semi-good graces was nice while it lasted. A whole... what, 3? 4 hours? Strike a match and watch that shit burn, Quire, because you'll be lucky if she ever even thinks in your direction again after this.

But also... he can't back down. This isn't about Sophie walking all over him. This is about any mutants around who still live on Krakoa, before the whole thing crashed and burned. They deserve to keep that home for as long as they can. You know, be happy. For all the good it'll do them later.]

/Anyone who doesn't know will find out eventually, right? Why do they need to know now?/

[sophielicious]

(There are a few angles to it, which is why she is coming to the one person she knows watched it crash and burn as she did. Do they lie? Omit? Which, sure, fine.

Her moral compass doesn't even beep at that part.

It's the right to know that she is bugging at, because...

... Don't they have it?)

/So, you want to pretend nothing happened. So, if someone asks, we're all living great, just amazing./

[querulus]

/That's not what I said./

[Ugh, that was. Snippier than he meant it to sound. He's really crashing and burning over here.]

/If someone asks, we tell them. If they don't... Eh. The whole mess sucks anyway. No point in pissing in anyone's Cheerios unless we have to./

[sophielicious]

(He is.

That must be a record, because she was lovely! So pleasant. She even held his hand and everything, and now he's giving her attitude?

Sophie's silent for a little while, and she cut him off from her thoughts right back through it. One because she wants him to squirm, but that is the lowest point in her list of reasons. The main one is that he is right. She's witnessing what it is doing to Julian, and... She doesn't want to go through it again.

After a painfully long amount of time, she'll reopen his access and respond.)

/Fine, Quire./

[querulus]

[He's well past squirming. Squirming was before he told her no the first time. By now he's just slumped on some bench in the city with his head in his hands.

He fucked it, didn't he? She's going to go off and tell everyone anyway and not talk to Quentin ever again and make him deal with all the fallout of everyone's damn depresson. It's a whole net fucking loss, and maybe he should've just agreed to keep the one slightly good thing he had going on, since it's not like any of the Krakoan mutants are going to thank him. Hell, Julian's probably going to punch him a few more times just for lying to him. But then Sophie replies finally and 

"Fine, Quire."

...

He'll take it.]

/Thanks./

[JUST GETTING THAT OUT OF THE WAY. He pauses briefly and then asks:]

/Is... he okay? Hellion./

[sophielicious]

("Slumped on some bench" is still way nicer than what Sophie wanted him to be doing. Sophie's definitely not forgiving this anytime soon, and while she might appear to in the future, it will definitely come back to haunt him.

She's unfortunately petty like that.

The question, however, is... Seriously? How does he expect Julian do be doing?)

/Either his not-okayness makes the news, or we have infrastructure damage to pay off. Or both./

[querulus]

[Come back to haunt him? It's already haunting him. This whole stupid mess will haunt him until the day he dies, which, if Sophie and Julian have anything to say about, will probably be pretty goddamn soon. That is, unless Julian doesn't blow up the whole fucking city first.]

/You think he's going to go all "Krakoan" on us?/

[sophielicious]

(She said she was dealing with it, Quentin. She is, somehow, in a way she doesn't even know how yet, but she's going to figure something out.)

/I told you I got him. You don't trust me?/

[querulus]

[UH.]

/No, no, that's not it./

[That's exactly it. Does he trust her? No. Not even a little bit. Quentin knows the Cuckoos, and he knows how they use their powers. It's why he has his surface thoughts shielded still. He also knows how much Julian likes people in his head. Which is to say, not at all. Based on the memories she showed him, she should know that, but, well... See: the trust thing.]

/I just thought you might wanna—/

[And then Quentin is saved from trying to finish that atrocity of a sentence by a deeply unpleasant feedback screeching in the back of his head from Julian's psi-comm as he turns his considerable-if-imprecise psychic resistance towards forcing something out of his mind, followed by Sophie just... vanishing. Well, not vanishing, but he can feel her telepathy go kaput. Ah. Well, then.

Quentin reaches for her psychic signature, because it's still there, it's just... muddy.]

/Sophie...?/

cw violent imagery????

[sophielicious]

(The thing that is crossing her mind right now is...

Just how the mighty have fallen.

She has been betrayed, killed, dead, resuscitated, dead again, but one thing she has never been is alone. She's cut her sisters off, sure, that did happen, but this is different. This is a whole new place, and she can't even reach them if she wanted to. It's not a choice, it's having limbs ripped away from you without notice.

She doesn't know what to do, so out of her element. There's Julian, who won't let her help in the way she can, and there's Quentin. She's not here talking to him for amusement, boredom, any other reason other than need.

To her, that's low. That's so low, and so pathetic. She hates it, and she'd be dragged to pieces for it back home by the others, certainly. They dragged Phoebe for wanting to be around him, imagine needing him. Hell, she just dissed Quentin back home, literally at any chance she got.

She can't even block him out of how distressed she feels. God, she hates this. At least unglitch her powers, give her some peace.

But, of course not. She gets to suffer for trying to do nice things. Why does she try.)

/What./

[querulus]

[Oh jeez.

Fuck.

Quentin is just. So, so ill-equipped to handle this. Any of this. All of it. Sophie Cuckoo is practically crying on his telepathic shoulder and projecting all kinds of loneliness and trauma and shame (at being forced to talk to him, no less) at him, and Quentin is just not good at comforting anyone, much less someone like Sophie.

Shit. Shiiit. Why'd she have to go tell Julian about Krakoa and then go (apparently) try to do something in his head? And most importantly why'd she drag Quentin into this whole mess??

Whatever. Fine. It happened. Shit sucks. Probably karma or some stupid bullshit anyway. Take your lumps, Quire, and figure something the fuck out.]

/I felt, uh... Just making sure everyone's still alive over there./

[sophielicious]

(You think Sophie would do better in your shoes, Quentin??? Her apology to Kamala was only good because of the style and action that came with it, because the script was bad. For two telepaths, they suck.)

/Not my pride, that one is dying as we speak./

(Exactly, Quire, figure something out. Time to shine. Or scream. Or die.)

[querulus]

[Uh.]

/Do you, uh... need help? I mean, can I help?/

[Look, hating everything about his life and this situation doesn't mean he's not worried. He just doesn't know what to do about it.]

[sophielicious]

(Neither does she, honey. Neither does she.)

/I don't know. What can you offer?/

(Not expecting anything, at all, like, zero, zero expectations, like none.)

[querulus]

/Well, I'm not touching Julian's brain until he chills out./

[NOT THAT HE'S JUDGING except he's kinda judging, sorry Sophie he still thinks you're very pretty :(]

/So uhhh... I don't know, I can help with repairs on whatever he wrecked. Smooth things over with any angry locals. Or... something./

[sophielicious]

(Quentin.

Dear Quentin.

Wrong answer buzzer.)

/... Whatever. Just do whatever./

[querulus]

/Wh—How was that wrong? What else was I supposed to say??/

[Be nice to him, Sophie :( ]

[sophielicious]

/I asked what you could offer me, not the citizens of a planet whose entire bid is a Mojoboner./

(Be nice to her!!! :( )

[querulus]

/But—I—What?/

[Isn't offering to clean up Julian's mess helping her? She was the one to make him go ballistic in the first place.

Quentin's just. So lost right now. What is happening why is he getting yelled at for trying to help]

/What, did you want me to lobotomize Keller? I'm not doing that!/

[sophielicious]

/... What's wrong with you?????/

(SHE DIDN'T SAY THAT EITHER. IS IT SO HARD TO THINK 'HEY, SOPHIE, I KNOW THINGS ARE SO HARD RIGHT NOW, HERE IS TAKE OUT AND A BOTTLE OF CHAMPAGNE'??????????????????)

[querulus]

/I'm not bringing you take out and champagne for your date with Julian Keller after you told him our fucking cult island exploded!/

[... Shit.

Fuck.

He did not mean to say that, the frustration just bubbled out of him (ironically not unlike a bottle of champagne) oh man she's going to be so pissed]