TDM 010

[etrayamods]

❬ Arrival ❭

Arrival goes normally! Hooray! 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.

The door to the room swings open, revealing a hallway that stretches out ahead of them adorned with framed photographs of Jack-o-Lanterns. There’s noise from outside and the enticing scent of autumn coming from the lobby. Today the welcome buffet has mulled cider in a hot drink dispenser and mini-loaves of pumpkin bread.

❬ Shake it, Shake it. ❭

Outside the hospital, a weird fog is clearing. For those who have just arrived, this doesn’t meant much. But for everyone else, this is the hard-earned success after two weeks of blindly groping about in the spooky fog. The pollution is steadily clearing as it is being cycled out of the air. The people of Etraya should be getting back to normal physically, though surely the lingering feelings are no fun. For newcomers, there is just a weird energy in the air. Perhaps an activity as diversion would help?

As everyone tries to gain their bearings, Aurora asks everyone through their earpiece, new and old, to survey their surroundings for odd goings-ons.

It is a little unclear if this is something Aurora needs done dressed up as an activity, or if this is an activity dressed up with enough mystery and urgency to warrant involving all the people of Etraya. Either way, there is a task to complete.

So what sort of odd things are occurring? Just look around! Everything from homes suddenly subject to mundane, harmless poltergeisting to full blown bizarre weather phenomena and creature sightings. It seems that although the fog is leaving, it left some souvenirs behind, and Aurora needs help cataloging what's happening around Etraya for the bots to address.

Maybe you just think you’re really unlucky today and stuck in an episode of the X-Files. Maybe you catch sight of a bizarre creature that shuffles off into the woods. It might be raining upside down from the lakes, or the electricity in your home just won’t work for whatever reason.

Or maybe you’re particularly personally unfortunate, and your powers are working again, but not as expected.

In any case, you had better capture it on film. At your feet will be a regular old polaroid camera, a stack of film, and a sharpie to explain the photo and note the location.

Go to each of the islands and survey your surroundings. If anything seems strange, snap a picture! Though it seems some things about the geography have changed, so you might want to check with the HUD map to gain your bearings first.

❬ Bingo was his Name-o ❭

To encourage the people of Etraya to go out a little further than they ordinarily might -- and maybe to help ease them out of the terrible fog -- Aurora has presented this task in a light-hearted format: bingo-based raffle prizes! Available in your HUD is a bingo board! Listed are the 21 islands to explore as well as 4 main anomalous areas to look at.

If you open the HUD, it looks like so:


It seems someone tried, but not very hard, to make it fun.

✨RULES✨

• Each square is completed with a thread taking place on that island that includes 5 or more comments from your character. In character, it's completed by them documenting an anomaly on that island.


• For every completed bingo line, the character gets one ticket entry for the raffle prizes, up to a maximum of 5 for a full card.


• Each bingo card can only win one prize, and we will draw in order from grand prize down sometime after apps are processed this round.


• Teaming up is allowed, but if you share a card you have to share the prize!

✨PRIZES✨

• Grand Prize (1): Place and name a new trolley stop!


• Runners Up (6): Notes related to the meta plot like the ones seen here. Each is unique.


• Consolation Prize (3): A small item that will assist with the next mission.

❬ Tra la la ❭

Whether it’s coming to a new land suddenly or trying to reattach a sense of reality to your surroundings, exploring as buddies or a group is highly encouraged. After all, you might need a hand out there. Depending on who you are, getting all around might be tricky. However, this should be doable over a couple weeks, especially as a team.

Apart from the islands themselves, four bingo squares are for the big anomalous areas that just appeared:

The Farway Craters: It looks like meteors struck the land here. Narrowly missing the bounce castle, a new lake has formed in its place. Each of the craters does something different. One might be highly magnetic, making a miserable time for a robot or someone wearing armor. Another might be full of alien sea life. The largest crater hosts a little hurricane whipping about, throwing objects that may have mysteriously gone missing as of late.

Nevergrey and Ochreward: Where two lands were once separated, they now meet in a steep hill. Should you climb one side to go down the other, a powerful gust will blow you back the way you came with echoing laughter.

Alcyone’s Sandening: Heading south from the hospital, past the forest and the campgrounds, it seems the peninsula has gone missing. Or that Seasands has gained a new island. It seems both can be true. The space where some land once was is now engulfed in a thunderstorm, roughly 30 feet wide and 50 feet long.

Uketon: Heading south in Dewpoint, someone familiar may notice the abrupt break in the island. Should you wish to cross this way, you will have to content with large rocks floating up from below the water’s surface, rising high until they’re out of sight.

❬ NOTES ❭

📌 — The above prompts are just there to get you started. Feel free to play with the setting and concept beyond what we've suggested here! In particular, we encourage everyone to add to the new world-building threads on the location page for each region as they explore!

📌 — Turn in your bingo cards here and edit the comment with thread links as you complete them. Bingo prizes are available for current characters. We will wait to draw prizes until after apps have been processed, so new characters on the TDM can also participate if accepted.

📌 — For all questions relating to the TDM specifically, please use the mod queries comment below. All other questions can be directed to the FAQ.

🔵FULL NAVIGATION🔵

Comments

[ukan]

[Arrival]

[Lark feels safest as a wolf in this new place; certainly if there are dangers he'd rather have his teeth ready. But what he pads into seems harmless enough, a Halloween spread, and he trots over to the food.

He sits next to the first person he sees nearby and paws their leg, asking for a treat. He has a feeling if he tries to stand on his hind legs and serve himself from the table he'll get kicked out. Better to look cute.]

[Shake it, Shake it]

[He's glad for the camera, actually. Even if it's old tech, he likes the simplicity of wandering around taking pictures of this place. He does focus on things that are odd but with plenty of film he takes pictures of people, too. Anyone with an interesting smell.

Maybe it's a little intrusive, though, having a camera pointed at you.]

[Tra La La]

[It's recommended to go in a group, to use the buddy system, but Lark has no buddies. In general, he doesn't have close friends, he has packmates who do what he says. That's not going to fly here.

So he approaches the first reasonably competent looking person and smiles]

Hi. Feel like exploring together? Maybe one of us will actually win at this Bingo thing.

Tra La La

[will_chase_balls]

[Dwayne's scent might get Lark's attention when he approaches him, since he smells rather distinctly like a wolf as well. Immediately perking up with a smile when asked if he'd like to explore together, Dwayne answers,]

Yes! Absolutely! My name's Dwayne, by the way. Nice to meet you!

[He offers a handshake in greeting.]

[ukan]

[Well this is unexpected. He shakes that hand with all the professionalism he has perfected over the years, but inwardly he's all wolf thought right now.

He tilts his head, breathing in a little deeper through his nose, trying to get a sense of Dwayne's age, of who else he's been around recently.]

I'm Lark. Good to meet you, too. Where should we start?

[will_chase_balls]

[Dwayne is likewise taking in all the information he can through scent without making it overly obvious he's doing so, excited to meet another wolf for the first time since he's arrived here four months ago. Lark will likely notice that Dwayne's much younger than him, easily less than half his age, and while he's been around plenty of other people they've nearly all been human. The ones who weren't were some other species that was nothing like them. He also might catch a faint trace of the deer Dwayne caught the night before, even though he'd cleaned up since.]

Um...I guess it doesn't matter, since we're supposed to look at a bunch of these.

[His eyes fall on Charronway. That area is largely forested and, figuring it might be an appealing area to show off, he decides to go with that.]

How about Charronway?

[ukan]

[Lark, on the other hand, smells like other wolves, smells like soap which claims to be unscented but never quite is, smells like the desert from the night before running in Death Valley. He can smell emotion; for his part, Dwayne's enthusiasm is contagious and he smiles slightly]

All right. A little fresh air before we deal with the crowds.

[will_chase_balls]

Yeah. And honestly, if we're supposed to be looking for weird phenomena, that could happen anywhere, right?

[And the woods are a more fun place to look for that kind of thing. Sure, there's the bigger anomalous areas, but they can worry about that later.]

We'll want to take the trolly, since the city's made up of a bunch of islands and I don't want to swim, but we're close to a trolly stop so it shouldn't take too long to get there. Especially since Charronway is only a few stops away using the north loop...I've been stuck here four months so I know my way around pretty well now.

[ukan]

[He nods, grateful that Dwayne has the experience. He motions; they can take the coming trolley.]

Where are you from originally?

[will_chase_balls]

Eberron. And you?

[He's learned that most of the people here are from this 'Earth' place, so he's started giving people the world he's from and he figures he can get more specific from there if anyone else actually shows up from Eberron.]

[ukan]

Los Angeles. Have you heard of it?

[Lark himself is pretty good with places, with geography, and he's never heard of Eberron so presumably it doesn't exist in his own world.]

[will_chase_balls]

I haven't, no. Most of the people here seem to be from different worlds, though, so I'm not surprised.

[ukan]

It's a large city. Larger than this place seems to be, although the public transportation here seems to be better. What's Eberron like?

[will_chase_balls]

Well, Eberron is the name of the world I'm from, so it depends on where you go. Karrnath is the country I grew up in, and there's not much public transportation there and it's mostly pine forests, but a few months before I ended up here I went to Sharn. That's a city in Breland, and the public transportation is great there. Sharn is a much bigger city than you ever find in Karrnath, though.

[ukan]

How many people there are also wolves?

[He asks this only when he's sure no one is going to overhear.]

[will_chase_balls]

Not a lot. I heard there used to be more before the Silver Crusade, but that all ended before I was even born.

[Dwayne is much less concerned with being potentially overheard, since the existence of his people is general knowledge in his world.]

[ukan]

There aren't many in my world either. Humans hunted us down over the centuries.

Were you born a wolf or were you made?

[will_chase_balls]

Born. There's two different...uh...I guess varieties? Where I'm from? And my line can't turn people. Which is probably a good thing, because I'd hate to have everyone I fight end up with the same advantages I have next time I run into them. Turning people you bite just seems really inconvenient.

[It wouldn't be so inconvenient if he just stopped biting people, but that's not happening, so it's great that it doesn't spread.]

Oh look, we're here!

[He points over at the trolly stop which is just a little bit ahead, picking up his pace to lead the way there.]

[ukan]

I'm glad that's not how it works for my kind either.

[Although he's happy to let myths spread misinformation. The less people know about his people, the safer they are.

He jogs along with Dwayne, and they manage to catch the trolley before it leaves.]

Have you explored all the places we can get to? You'll recognize what's 'odd' enough to document?

[will_chase_balls]

[Meanwhile, Dwayne has told pretty much everyone he's met what he is, and will actually break down the fine details of how it works to anyone who asks, because the idea that someone might then use that information to harm him has not yet crossed his mind.]

Not everywhere, but I've been running through the wooded places a lot, so I know what the woods are usually like, at least.

[ukan]

[Lark watches the scenery]

I'd love to run through them on all four legs sometime. When we don't have to document everything.

arrival!

[nimbuster]

Huh?

[Cloud glances down to see a dog - no, that's a wolf - clearly angling for food. For a split second he thinks it's Torgal because he doesn't know of any other wolves here, but no, this is one he hasn't seen before.]

Hey, buddy. Not sure canines should really be eating this much sugar, but if you're hungry, you're hungry, right?

[He takes another mini loaf of pumpkin bread and half-crouches to offer it to the wolf with the sort of relaxed caution that someone familiar with wolves and dogs would know to keep. Unafraid but unthreatening.]

Re: arrival!

[ukan]

[Another perk to being a wolf: you find better people that way. If someone likes dogs chances are they're decent at heart. He wags his tail eagerly at the man and gently takes the loaf. He's well-behaved, see?

He spins in a circle, doing a trick to get another treat.]

[nimbuster]

[The wolf really does seem to be well-behaved. Either it belongs to someone, or it's smart enough to have figured people out on its own. It doesn't yet occur to Cloud that it could be people, because the only sapient animal he knows so far is Nanaki, and he talks.

Cloud chuckles quietly, setting a hand on his hip.]

You know this Halloween thing is supposed to be trick or treat, not 'and,' right?...fine, one more, you earned it.

[And that's another mini loaf for the wolf, before Cloud offers his hand for sniffing and potential pets. If this wolf is into pets.]

[ukan]

[He devours it in two quick bites, and then he sniffs Cloud's hand and bumps his snout against the man's palm. There are few things he likes as much as he does a good ear scratch.

He'll look this one up when he's in human form, he decides. See if they get along as well without so much tail wagging to smooth the way.]

[nimbuster]

[Then a good ear scratch is what he will get!]

Heh. You're pretty friendly.

[Cloud glances around, but he doesn't see anyone who looks like they might be searching for their lost wolf buddy.]

Guess you're here all by yourself, huh.

[ukan]

[He grumbles and presses closer because yes he is alone and it's a terrible thing for a lycanthrope to endure.

He wonders who Cloud is with, looks around, sniffing for people who have his scent on or near them]