etrayamemes | TDM 008

Entry tags:

TDM 008

content warnings for this TDM include: gambling references, mild horror themes and suggestive content

⏵ arrival⏴
Arrival does not happen as Aurora usually plans for it. Newcomers generally find themselves waking up within the hospital, are given a brief overview of their situation, and sent on their way. Now? They wake up immersed in a game within The Gold Saucer. But it doesn't quite feel like a game: whether it's snowy mountains, riding a chocobo as you listened to the wind quickly pass by your ears, or in the middle of a battle with a beast, it feels utterly real.

It's only after the game concludes - either by winning or losing - that you find yourself back in the main game area. A bot, dressed as personnel in this lavish playground, approaches each arrival with an earpiece allowing them to communicate with those in their same situation. It also serves to inform them of their goal: collect enough gold saucer points (or GP) by playing the games to acquire a card fashioned to their own likeness from the game counter. Then, they must trade it for someone else's. Seems simple enough, right? Hopefully the cards aren't too expensive...

⏵ the gold saucer ⏴
The Gold Saucer is an ode to the very idea of fun. It’s huge, labyrinthine, colorful, and lively. Everywhere you look, there’s something to do. At the same time, it’s also impossible to tell what time it is. There are no windows to the outside, there are no clocks. This place is beyond such a thing.

There are games everywhere you look, ranging from the pseudo-gambling to sports to pixelated video games in cabinets. Yet no matter which boxing game, pinball machine, or skeeball machine you look at, the same creatures and themes arrive. Cactuars, chocobos, the fiercest Behemoth, the cuddliest Moogle… For those from the realms of Final Fantasy, this will feel natural- homey even. Everyone else will simply understand that there is a fairly strong central theme here about magic, machines, and monsters.

It’s hard to tell how long you spend here, and it seems to sit outside of the very concept of time. Still, there are many restaurants, lounges, and vending machines. There are shops and costume rentals. There are even little pharmacies with headache remedies if the partying gets out of hand. And when you grow tired, there is a hotel- though it is made up like a haunted house, you can count on getting some semi-restful sleep.

⏵ playtime ⏴Interdimensional Games

At first, stepping through to play any of these games may make participants wonder if they have been teleported somewhere else entirely. But on closer inspection, all the skies above are merely well-constructed interiors with painted ceilings. After all, it always seems to be daytime during these games.

Snowboarding - Race to the bottom of the mountain, but avoid obstacles and complete as many tricks as possible!

Chocobo Racing- Race on Chocobo-back around a treacherous outdoors race track which can either be taking place in a desert, a swampy forest, or upon an island beach. Work in tandem with your rented bird and against your competition by throwing hazards in their way or utilizing buffs garnered on the track. Different colored birds will yield different advantages.

Yellow - Good All Rounder
Red - Fast, but hard to steer
Blue - Slower, but very easy to steer. Much easier to pick up items from them.
Green- Resilient against traps and sabotage

Colosseum Battle- Face off against the fiercest beasts around. Pair up with friends or rivals to Collaborate or Compete to do the most damage and deliver the final blow. These battles are synced to the comparative power of the one entering the competition.

We wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt unnecessarily, after all. And indeed, no one will get seriously, gruesomely, or permanently injured in these battles. Those without fighting capabilities can rent weapons outfitted Materia to assist them in their trial. These will allow anyone to cast spells, though not guarantee any better wielding of weapons. There are a hundred rounds, starting with fairly simple Spriggans, ranging all the way up to blood-thirsty Behemoths to challenge even the most battle-hardened hero.

Gold Saucer Games

Leap of Faith- Players are presented with an obstacle course that stretches a hundred feet into the air upon floating platforms and islands. Both are held aloft by magical crystals. Powers are entirely nerfed, though falling and hitting the ground is strangely painless. Those who collect the most silver and gold statuettes of cactuars placed at random throughout the course will be awarded proportionate GP; though there is a bonus for those that reach the very top first.

Triple Triad- Everywhere you look, people are playing this game on little 3 by 3 boards, or any surface with enough space. You will be given a loaner deck to play with. Are you clever enough to defeat your fellows.

Fashion Report- Theobold, familiar to some, stands by himself in a little booth with a dressing room and an incredibly expansive walk-in closet. He is a robot of distinguished fashion and strong opinions on those fashions. Do you dare subject yourself to his scrutiny? Come prepare in his wondrous closets to make the best outfit for the chance to win a prize. Please submit your fashion here!

There are Arcade Machines and activities galore. If you can think of it, it’s probably there- Just with that Final Fantasy pastiche on it, of course.

⏵ the beehive lounge ⏴
There are other places to eat at the Gold Saucer, but the vending machines and cafés all pale in comparison to the dinners at the Beehive.

For all the rave reviews, there is a dress code at the Beehive, and this is literal. If you step inside and are not currently wearing a dress, you will be ushered into a sideroom and appropriately made over.

However, this is only for those trying to go in through the normal doors. Around the side there happens to be an employee entrance, manned by a bot. He will only allow those in who seem like they intend to work— and therefore must be wearing at least one piece of the Bunnysuit Collection to trick the guard.

Once you are made over or have snuck in, you are free to relax inside with drinks, dine on a fine meal, watch the dancers, or participate yourself if you feel brave enough. Why would anyone ever dance here? Well, that’s simple. It pays really well. So if you’re sick of games, or terrible at them— you can always come dance for a shift. Though, don't get any unseemly ideas about freeing yourself of your clothing, this isn't that kind of establishment!

⏵ haunted house ⏴
When you grow too weary or drunk from a day of games, you may be directed to somewhere a little quieter to sleep. Up the elevator, and through the doors reveals a modest walk through some woods until a quaint, victorian hotel appears. It is always nighttime here, and the stars and moon twinkle above.

The receptionist, a bot in a rather bedraggled-looking chocobo mascot costume checks you in and shows you to your room. You can sleep here, especially if you can tolerate the hokey haunted decorations strung up around the place. Though sometimes, late at night, there will come a vigorous thumping on the door to startle sleeping patrons awake- Only for the culprit to vanish and be impossible to locate.

⏵ ticket counter ⏴

The prize counter is manned by a bot and has a sign posted overhead. Most prizes will be handed over inside an appropriately sized wrapped box, as the contents are a mystery.

Sparklers & Glowsticks	10 gp
Bunny Suit	300 gp
Bunny Stockings & Heels	150 gp
Animal Ears (Random)	500 gp
Kigurumi (Random)	100 gp
Chocobo Barding (Random)	1000 gp
Classic White Mage Robes	500 gp
Classic Black Mage Robes	500 gp
Plush Toy (Random)	100 gp
Wind-Up Minion (Random)	200 gp
Chocobo Mascot Suit (Random Color)	2000 gp
Triple Triad Booster Pack	50 gp
Triple Triad Card in your Likeness	10,000 gp

⏵ NOTES ⏴

This TDM may be treated as a mini-Mission. Time will not pass inside of it in relation to the world outside - meaning, this can be happening at any time between late May into early July!

This Gold Saucer is a bit of a mix between that of FF7's and FF14's, but it also has some things that neither have as well. Any inaccuracies are entirely intentional, aimed to make this rest within a space of uncanny valley for those who are familiar. While otherwise being a bit of a chaotic fantastical funhouse for everyone else! If there is something unlisted, chances are it will exist if it is in either of the other versions of the Gold Saucer.

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 to our mod queries comment!

⏵FULL NAVIGATION⏴

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He looks at the dog and knows what that means. There were people Leah and Delaney never allowed near enough to the dogs to know their names.

"How'd you come to trust my brother so much?"

There's a way to be honest without sharing personal details that aren't his to tell -- and those personal details that are his, Harold really doesn't want to share. He's too protective of his privacy. But he committed long ago to John not to lie to him, and it's a policy he's tacitly taken on with every traumatized ragtag killer who's joined their merry little band since, to good effect. He's no reason to change that now.

"I suppose I didn't, really. Ms. Shaw asked me to give him a chance and he's done nothing to cause me to regret it."

Over time that just becomes something more than a chance; it becomes a commitment. For Harold, at least. Trust is a big word and not quite something he'd apply here, not yet.

He reads that loud and clear. And it helps, in its way, to get Bossie past the point where he'd stab all these people to death.

"Why did she trust him?"

"I don't know that she did, either," Harold allows wryly. "You'd have to ask her. I didn't ask her reasoning -- we are in the business of giving people chances, after all."

Sometimes they call off the hitmen and repair their marriage, after all.

"Trust that she got her second chance," he points out. "If it was up to me she'd just be pink chum in the middle region. To be added to other programs."

"... I have no idea what that means, but it sounds horrible."

Harold really can't decipher half of that and looks faintly disgusted, but he shakes it off a moment later.

"In any case, believe me, Ms. Shaw does not see us as her second chance." It's hard to imagine she thinks of their little outfit the same way John or Root do, who are more similar to one another in certain ways than they like to think most of the time.

Bossie doesn't clarify, just smiles slightly, eyes a little too bright, too watchful. Bordering on manic. Harold got the core of it, the disgust of it, at least.

He can explain the rest later if Harold proves himself worthy of God.

But that's later. Right now, it's his job to behave.

"So what does Shaw see you as?"

Harold is a normal man from Iowa who has somehow ended up surrounding himself with incredibly traumatized, dangerous people, so he is fairly accustomed to this kind of look. It reminds him of Root just a little, in way that makes him miss her sorely, but also makes him rueful. She'd initiated their relationship by kidnapping him, after all. This is already going substantially better.

"I wouldn't presume to speak for her," Harold demurs, because he loathes sharing personal information of his own or of anyone he cares about, and that includes informed speculation-- "But considering she rejected my offer several times before finally acquiescing, I think it's safe to say redemption was not her chief motive."

"Why didn't you give up after she turned you down a couple of times?" Shaw must be something special.

Why didn't he give up? The question almost doesn't make sense to Harold. It had really never occurred to him.

"It's not that we pursued her," he says more slowly, thinking it through. They'd followed her as a number, as someone in danger that they were trying to protect, but Harold wouldn't have dreamed of stalking someone to coerce them to work for him. For all the tricks he'd played with John early on, he'd still had the option to decline.

"We ran into one another again and I reiterated the offer. There are very few people with both the skills and the mindset necessary for the kind of work we do. It seemed remiss of me not to ask."

"What kind of mindset is that?" He asks, thinking that's probably how Pope views the Reapers: as needing certain skills and a requisite mindset.

Harold had tried hiring just based on skills at first and it had resoundingly not worked out, so he'd put considerable thought into this subject in the interim.

"The mindset that saving one person's life matters. That no one is irrelevant."

If they had sacred words on their team, it would probably be those; Harold says them as if they have weight.

That sets off a wave of guilt he's not expecting.

No one is irrelevant.

Pope would argue they all are. They're all enemy; they're there to be torn down in God's name, Amen.

"How...much do you know about Carver? About us?"

Harold hadn't come by this perspective on his own. He used to draw a line, used to perceive an us and a them, categories of people he would and wouldn't risk himself for.

Then he watched Nathan die and he hobbled away from Grace with a permanent spinal injury, and he'd thought the only thing left worth doing with his life was to respect Nathan's wishes. Over time that had become something he truly believed, instinctual, the way repeating something enough can make it learned by heart. Sometimes he wonders if the rest of his little team realize he hadn't started out with this belief himself, just like they hadn't.

But of course he's never told them that. Ironically, the only person he's hinted at it to is Carver.

"Enough, I think," he says carefully. He does have a copy of Carver's personnel file and it's extremely damning. "But if you've done something like that here, I don't know of it."

It doesn't wipe away the past, but for things to change there has to be a point at which change is made possible, and allowed.

It is not an answer he expected.

"We haven't," he admits. No murder sprees so far. "Yet. It doesn't worry you that we might? That God saved us so we could kill for Him?"

He could repeat that he is not very interested in God, but Harold has effectively already said that, so there's no need to repeat it. He straightens, his injured spine ramrod tense with the effort, and meets his eyes steadily.

"That you have killed in the past doesn't mean you will in the future, Mr. Bossie. What is it that you intend to do now?"

It doesn't necessarily demand an answer, but it's open to one, genuinely curious. Asking for his opinion and his decisions independent of anything else.

"I'm going to follow Carver's orders." He's uncertain about how much peace Carver is pushing for, but Carver is in charge. "If he told me to kill, I would."

It's not the answer he'd like, but it's a start, considering Harold now feels like he's on fairly solid ground with Carver. He's not taking anything for granted, but it's been a hard-fought trust and he won't relinquish it easily. After months of slowly building rapport, he won't doubt now.

"I see. I can't fault your logic. You've been with him a long time, haven't you?"

"I enlisted when I was seventeen," he says. "Carver trained me right out of bootcamp." Without Carver he probably would have been discharged. "I've known him longer than I knew my own family."

He cares for you very much, he thinks about saying, but doesn't, because he's not sure if Carver would say that in so many words himself, and Harold respects what people want to leave unspoken.

"I gave Mr. Carver two rules for working with us," he states. "Would you like to know what they are?"

Pope wouldn't care about other people's rules.

But Pope isn't here.

And Bossie, despite his own usual shyness, feels comfortable with Harold. "Yeah," he says, hoping they're rules he can live with.

Harold hadn't really intended to end up with set rules in the way Carver and Bossie seem to think of them, but he's since deduced that Carver at least seems to find it reassuring rather than stifling, so in that sense it behooves him to be more authoritarian than he's usually comfortable with.

And the rules themselves are, of course, very telling of Harold's character.

"The first is that you are welcome to leave -- to break our affiliation -- at any time, but you must inform me of this before taking any action against myself, Mr. Reese, or Ms. Shaw."

Sometimes people end up enemies for authentic reasons. Harold doesn't expect a lifetime commitment, but he does expect them to refrain from outright betrayal.

As far as rules go, this is one he latches onto immediately, finding it reassuring. He nods.

He'll feel conflicted over it later, but right now it makes sense and it cements them all together in a way that soothes him.

"Then you should know I want to work with a guy I met. Kaeya. He's investigating our roles here, you know, and Aurora he mentioned--he's asking questions I think we all want answered."

Initially he's a little confused about why Bossie immediately wants to report this to him, until he pieces it together with Carver's comments about how they'd never had allies.

"It's always beneficial to make connections and establish additional information sources. There's nothing wrong with that, or with making friends. We're secretive by nature and by habit, so I would appreciate your discretion -- but that isn't a rule."

Trust Harold to include making friends as a valid reason to socialize outside of the team. He's not great at it himself, but he understands it as a basic human need and really wishes his little coterie of dangerous killers had more of a support system. He has a professional paranoid's reflexive need to control the flow of information completely, but he will even give that up in deference to someone's need for connection.

He nods, fighting the urge to ask Harold and Carver to vet Kaeya for him. He isn't sure he trusts his own instincts about people anymore; he was never great at making friends anyway.

"I'll be careful," he promises. "I won't tell him shit that would compromise us."

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