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pluviooc2024-01-23 10:00 am
pluviosamods) wrote in pluviooc2024-01-23 10:00 am
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Test Drive 01
TEST DRIVE
Hello, and welcome to the first Pluviosa Test Drive!
Rather than a series of prompts that are set after arrival to the game, this Test Drive is instead more of a soft open for the game. That is to say, not only are Test Drive threads game canon, but the Test Drive should be regarded as the "start" of the game chronologically and contains arrival-related events and information.
Or lack of information, as the case in fact is, because there is no greeting party waiting to reassure characters that everything is fine back in their worlds and that they'll get to go home again. (On the flip side, there's no one telling them that their worlds have been destroyed, either.) There is only the ship, the things inside it, the raging storm outside, and what characters can figure out for themselves.
It is advised that potential players familiarize themselves with the Premise page, the Rules/Session Zero page, and at least the first few paragraphs of the Setting page. As Pluviosa is a horror game, we especially encourage players to be aware of the content warnings that will be major themes of the game.
(cw: minor blood, visions, storm weather)
The first thing you become aware of is the sound of dripping. Your mind is fogged, as though woken from the wrong part of your sleep cycle. In your daze, you're convinced that the sound of dripping is blood. Yours? Someone else's? You can't be sure. It's dripping from somewhere. It's your fault, whichever it is.
Good. One way or another, you'll be free of this nightmare -
And then, in response to the sound of a crack of thunder outside, clarity returns.
Characters come around as though disturbed from a deep sleep. Once they have shaken off the (vision? impression?) of blood, they will find that the dripping sound, at least, was real. Fortunately, it's only water - rainwater, more than likely, judging from the occasional booms of thunder and flashes of lightning overhead. One hell of a storm, quite possibly the worst characters have ever experienced, is raging outside.
Outside where? Well, outside the ship, of course.
As a general rule, characters wake up in a random room of the first level of the ship below the main decks. Theoretically, this should be a relatively safe, dry place - but with the age of the ship, its state of disrepair, and the number of plants above that have dug their roots into the deck above, leaks are plentiful. Thus, the sound of dripping water is a constant even in enclosed areas - and, of course, the outside of the ship is being pounded by rain in shimmering sheets, adding to the cacophony of noise accented by the thunder.
Even the protective bubble over the deck itself and the balconies of the rooms is having trouble working to keep the rain out - the rain isn't terrifying hurricane levels, but it is steady and water floods steadily down the stairs and over the edges of the gap down the center of the ship. The worst of the wind, too, has been kept out, but occasional gusts send ripples through the rain.
There is no power inside the ship right now and barely any light besides the flash of lightning - although characters may arrive while it is nominally day, the clouds stretching from horizon to horizon have blocked out the sun almost completely. The motion of the ship is also far worse than usual due to the storm winds - it's easy to believe that you are in fact at sea, unless you manage to get close enough to the exterior windows or balconies to be able to see the ship's legs in motion through the cascade of water that runs down the exterior.
(cw: hallucinations, thinking things that are real are hallucinations)
In the dark, you have to rely on your other senses - hearing, sound, smell. Smell is giving you the best information to start out with - rain, of course, but also mildew, plants, and old metal. (Is that a whiff of blood at the bottom? No, it's because of that bad dream you had messing with your head.)
No one comes to greet you. No one comes to find you. Instinctively, you know - no one is coming. You'll have to save yourself.
Characters will be fully convinced that they are alone until they actually run into another character. Even things that seem like they should be indicative of another person's presence, such as hearing voices or seeing someone shine a light down a hallway - your character will be convinced that that is just a hallucination until they can definitely lay eyes on another person, hear their voice clearly (ie: not half-drowned-out by the rain) or otherwise be certain of their presence.
That isn't to say that hallucinations aren't occurring. All characters, but especially those who are alone, will periodically hear murmuring voices, smell blood, smoke, and other scents reminiscent of destruction, and see what appear to be the flashes of flashlights, flickering lightbulbs, and the shadows of people walking around. These hallucinations fade in and out in intensity, but they always clear up for at least a little while when a character notices the sound of thunder. Given that the thunder is very frequent during the storm (every few minutes), most hallucinations won't last for long.
For most characters, the voices will be unintelligible murmurs. However, if your character has experienced an event of mass destruction at some point in their life (apocalypse or near-apocalypse, destruction of a city, volcano eruption, being the only survivor of a town that was slaughtered, etc), or has a connection to the dead, they will be able to pick out that the voices of the hallucinations are talking about either attempting to rescue people from something similar (eg: a distant voice shouting "there's someone still alive over here!") or, alternately, talking about how everything is lost, everyone is doomed now, etc. They may hear one type of voice or both at different times, at player discretion.
(cw: dead loved ones, hallucinations/delusions, violence, potential death. THIS PROMPT CONTAINS PVP OPTIONS.)
You're not supposed to be alone. There was someone with you, only a few hours or years or minutes or lifetimes ago. You weren't always alone, and you have to find them.
You'll find them. You do. But not in any kind of condition to keep you company. This lump of flesh is empty now. The plants are already growing over it, reclaiming it. There's blood in the soil, and there's the sound of someone else coming up behind you.
Someone is coming. You'll have to save yourself.
There are various heaps of organic debris that characters can stumble across when wandering around in the dark - piled up leaves, rotted plants, heaps of ferns, moss, and so on. Even solid wood, sometimes - the trunks of small, twisted trees that took root where they might and have grown out from balconies to the exterior or inwards down the jungled crevasse between the two halves of the ship. In the low light, it's easy to literally stumble across them, or mistake them for something else in the brief light of a flash of lightning.
It's the mistaking them for something else that could be a problem. Characters may find themselves absolutely convinced that these heaps of leaves are the body of a loved one - especially if they were wandering around looking for someone in particular. They may or may not accurately perceive leaf cover on the outside of the "body," but unless they dig their hands in enough to be sure of the heap's contents - but who would want to go digging their hands into the body of someone they love? - or they see the shape in clear lighting (which would have to be provided by another character), it will be near impossible to convince them that the pile is just that, and not a corpse.
But that's not the really dangerous part. The dangerous part of all this is that if someone unexpected approaches while the character is in the same room as the 'body,' they may become convinced that the new arrival is responsible for their loved one's death. It doesn't matter how illogical it is on the surface - fear, or rage, or whatever it is that might fuel them will turn on the stranger. And whatever it is that convinces them of this has also turned their fight-or-flight reflex solidly to fight, whether it's for revenge or the last chance at survival for a cornered rat.
Characters so affected will fight until one of the following occurs: If they are led out of sight of the 'body,' they return to their senses (given that they may be inclined to chase the 'perpetrator,' this may be the best non-violent way to resolve the issue). If they are convinced that the 'body' is fake (through physical contact or clear lighting as above), they also return to their senses. And finally, if they kill the 'perpetrator' or are themselves killed or knocked unconscious, the effect ends. In all of these cases, it ends with the sharpness of a rubber band snapped against the skin, and the character is fully aware of their altered mental state and what occurred as a result.
If your character dies as a result of this prompt (and you want that thread to be game canon), please give the mods a heads-up if/when you are accepted into the game. Although this will not count as an 'official' death and will not consume a character's "freebie" revival, there may still be consequences for your character's death.
(cw: worms. many worms. not parasitic. just worms.)
It's easy to take a wrong step in the dark. Of course, tripping and falling isn't the worst thing that can happen.
This isn't the worst thing that could happen, either. That doesn't make it any better in the moment - the split-second when the ground erupts and a writhing mass of something slimy doesn't so much crawl out as jump out - but maybe it will make it better later.
You know how worms come writhing up out of the ground during a rainstorm, when the soil is absolutely saturated?
Well, that's true of the soil on the ship as well, except the worms here aren't just common earthworms anymore. They've learned to climb, the slime that they use to wriggle through the soil modified such that they can cause it to turn sticky and squelch their way up walls, ceilings - and anyone they happen to come across. If you step in the wrong place, an entire cluster of them will respond, by clinging to your clothes and body, squirming upwards in a desperate bid to escape the wet soil and the continuous rivulets of water caused by the storm.
Or perhaps you sat down to rest somewhere and felt them creeping - or didn't, until there was suddenly something wet and cold on your bare skin. Or maybe you encountered the worms not through their climbing, but afterwards, when they drop off the ceiling and fall down on your head as the enzyme that renders their slime sticky wears out. However it happens... worms.
Fortunately, they're harmless - aside from being a bit larger than the earthworms a character is likely to be familiar with, and their strange ability to become sticky, these are largely indistinguishable from normal earthworms. Unfortunately, it's hard to tell that in the dark and the wet - this is their native environment, not yours, and anyone would panic at the sensation of worms trying to crawl up them or into dry places in their clothes.
There is an easy solution to this: Because the worms are fleeing the rain in the soil, they won't climb up anything that's just as wet as the dirt they left behind. All a character has to do to become worm-free is get thoroughly soaked, such as by stepping out into the reduced-but-still-pouring rain on a balcony or deck protected by the ship's bubbles. Unfortunately.... Well, then they're wet. And there doesn't seem to be anywhere to dry off any time soon...
For information on the general shape and state of the ship, please see the setting page. Please note that mods will not be running investigations during the test drive period.
Q: Do our characters still have their powers/items?
Generally speaking, yes. Characters have their powers intact (with certain exceptions, largely for potential-gamebreak reasons) and whatever items they were carrying at their canonpoints. Please see the FAQ for more details.
Q: My character is dead and/or dying at their canonpoint!
Well... Now they aren't. Specifically, dead characters come back as their most recent 'healthy' state of being (unless they're a type of character that is playable while dead, such as a vampire or a Bleach shinigami, in which case they continue as normal for them); they also arrive already soaked through by the rain, regardless of the location they wake up. Characters who are mortally injured find that their wounds have healed; in place of whatever blood was soaking through their clothes/dripping from their bodies/in their mouth from a Cough of Death, they instead find pure water.
Q: Can my character(s) explore the ship?
Your characters are welcome to explore as much as they're willing and capable of doing in the wet and the rain! However, getting between floors is a challenge in the current weather - with the power off, the elevators do not work, and the stairs are consistently flooded by a cascade of rainwater. However, mods will not be running any official, guided explorations until after game opening.
Q: Is there anywhere dry to rest?
Nowhere is completely dry, but the aft portion of the ship is significantly drier than the middle and fore. The reason for this is that there is a series of partial decks (the residential decks) over roughly the last third of the ship. The rain is fully blocked by the roof overhead, in theory, but in practice the wind and the flooding leave this space only sort of dry. It's possible to find your way here on your own and find some place to sleep that doesn't blow mold spores into your face when you sit down, but it's also darker here, since the lightning's light is also blocked out by the roof.
Q: BATHROOMS?
Unfortunately, the lack of water in the pipes means that the toilets (which can be found relatively intact in most suites, though many are full of standing water) are also not running. Characters get to deal with this issue as they see fit, whether that's using the dilapidated toilets or using a more fertilizer-like strategy.
Q: Is there anything from the game's main info pages that doesn't apply to this Test Drive?
Given that the power is currently off, the Ship (as in the entity) cannot be interacted with on the Test Drive (and characters have no reason to think it's there). Anything else that would require power, such as the elevators or water from the faucets, also does not work.
Q: How long does the storm last?
ICly, it begins to lighten up on the evening of the second day after the first characters wake up, though it is still raining steadily with occasional thunder throughout that night. (Characters will continue to trickle in throughout the duration of the storm, though most arrive before the end of the first day.) The characters will be able to see the sun starting on the third morning - which is also planned to be the game's formal opening, so we won't say more until then!
Q: Do our characters receive anything upon arrival?
Not a thing! Nor do they encounter any kind of informational NPC or anything that gives them a solid idea what's going on. The only exception to this is that all characters experience the dripping-blood related vision/dream/impression detailed in the first prompt of the Test Drive. Additionally, characters who have a unique tie to their world (such as Aerith's connection to the Lifestream in FFVII) will be aware that they're not in their own world anymore.
Q: What are our characters eating?
Since the power hasn't come on yet... Whatever they're adventurous and/or knowledgeable enough to find that doesn't kill them! This can include edible plants and limited amounts of things brought from home (please don't have your character bring 99 casseroles even if your game's inventory system allows it), but mods are not tracking this specifically. Most characters will be expected to be hungry and unhappy but not literally starving come game open. At least there's plenty of water.
Q: I have some specific question I need to ask about my specific character on the test drive!
Please post your question in response to the header comment QUESTIONS below!
Rather than a series of prompts that are set after arrival to the game, this Test Drive is instead more of a soft open for the game. That is to say, not only are Test Drive threads game canon, but the Test Drive should be regarded as the "start" of the game chronologically and contains arrival-related events and information.
Or lack of information, as the case in fact is, because there is no greeting party waiting to reassure characters that everything is fine back in their worlds and that they'll get to go home again. (On the flip side, there's no one telling them that their worlds have been destroyed, either.) There is only the ship, the things inside it, the raging storm outside, and what characters can figure out for themselves.
It is advised that potential players familiarize themselves with the Premise page, the Rules/Session Zero page, and at least the first few paragraphs of the Setting page. As Pluviosa is a horror game, we especially encourage players to be aware of the content warnings that will be major themes of the game.
ARRIVAL
(cw: minor blood, visions, storm weather)
The first thing you become aware of is the sound of dripping. Your mind is fogged, as though woken from the wrong part of your sleep cycle. In your daze, you're convinced that the sound of dripping is blood. Yours? Someone else's? You can't be sure. It's dripping from somewhere. It's your fault, whichever it is.
Good. One way or another, you'll be free of this nightmare -
And then, in response to the sound of a crack of thunder outside, clarity returns.
Characters come around as though disturbed from a deep sleep. Once they have shaken off the (vision? impression?) of blood, they will find that the dripping sound, at least, was real. Fortunately, it's only water - rainwater, more than likely, judging from the occasional booms of thunder and flashes of lightning overhead. One hell of a storm, quite possibly the worst characters have ever experienced, is raging outside.
Outside where? Well, outside the ship, of course.
As a general rule, characters wake up in a random room of the first level of the ship below the main decks. Theoretically, this should be a relatively safe, dry place - but with the age of the ship, its state of disrepair, and the number of plants above that have dug their roots into the deck above, leaks are plentiful. Thus, the sound of dripping water is a constant even in enclosed areas - and, of course, the outside of the ship is being pounded by rain in shimmering sheets, adding to the cacophony of noise accented by the thunder.
Even the protective bubble over the deck itself and the balconies of the rooms is having trouble working to keep the rain out - the rain isn't terrifying hurricane levels, but it is steady and water floods steadily down the stairs and over the edges of the gap down the center of the ship. The worst of the wind, too, has been kept out, but occasional gusts send ripples through the rain.
There is no power inside the ship right now and barely any light besides the flash of lightning - although characters may arrive while it is nominally day, the clouds stretching from horizon to horizon have blocked out the sun almost completely. The motion of the ship is also far worse than usual due to the storm winds - it's easy to believe that you are in fact at sea, unless you manage to get close enough to the exterior windows or balconies to be able to see the ship's legs in motion through the cascade of water that runs down the exterior.
SEEING IS BELIEVING
(cw: hallucinations, thinking things that are real are hallucinations)
In the dark, you have to rely on your other senses - hearing, sound, smell. Smell is giving you the best information to start out with - rain, of course, but also mildew, plants, and old metal. (Is that a whiff of blood at the bottom? No, it's because of that bad dream you had messing with your head.)
No one comes to greet you. No one comes to find you. Instinctively, you know - no one is coming. You'll have to save yourself.
Characters will be fully convinced that they are alone until they actually run into another character. Even things that seem like they should be indicative of another person's presence, such as hearing voices or seeing someone shine a light down a hallway - your character will be convinced that that is just a hallucination until they can definitely lay eyes on another person, hear their voice clearly (ie: not half-drowned-out by the rain) or otherwise be certain of their presence.
That isn't to say that hallucinations aren't occurring. All characters, but especially those who are alone, will periodically hear murmuring voices, smell blood, smoke, and other scents reminiscent of destruction, and see what appear to be the flashes of flashlights, flickering lightbulbs, and the shadows of people walking around. These hallucinations fade in and out in intensity, but they always clear up for at least a little while when a character notices the sound of thunder. Given that the thunder is very frequent during the storm (every few minutes), most hallucinations won't last for long.
For most characters, the voices will be unintelligible murmurs. However, if your character has experienced an event of mass destruction at some point in their life (apocalypse or near-apocalypse, destruction of a city, volcano eruption, being the only survivor of a town that was slaughtered, etc), or has a connection to the dead, they will be able to pick out that the voices of the hallucinations are talking about either attempting to rescue people from something similar (eg: a distant voice shouting "there's someone still alive over here!") or, alternately, talking about how everything is lost, everyone is doomed now, etc. They may hear one type of voice or both at different times, at player discretion.
TO RUN ITS COURSE
(cw: dead loved ones, hallucinations/delusions, violence, potential death. THIS PROMPT CONTAINS PVP OPTIONS.)
You're not supposed to be alone. There was someone with you, only a few hours or years or minutes or lifetimes ago. You weren't always alone, and you have to find them.
You'll find them. You do. But not in any kind of condition to keep you company. This lump of flesh is empty now. The plants are already growing over it, reclaiming it. There's blood in the soil, and there's the sound of someone else coming up behind you.
Someone is coming. You'll have to save yourself.
There are various heaps of organic debris that characters can stumble across when wandering around in the dark - piled up leaves, rotted plants, heaps of ferns, moss, and so on. Even solid wood, sometimes - the trunks of small, twisted trees that took root where they might and have grown out from balconies to the exterior or inwards down the jungled crevasse between the two halves of the ship. In the low light, it's easy to literally stumble across them, or mistake them for something else in the brief light of a flash of lightning.
It's the mistaking them for something else that could be a problem. Characters may find themselves absolutely convinced that these heaps of leaves are the body of a loved one - especially if they were wandering around looking for someone in particular. They may or may not accurately perceive leaf cover on the outside of the "body," but unless they dig their hands in enough to be sure of the heap's contents - but who would want to go digging their hands into the body of someone they love? - or they see the shape in clear lighting (which would have to be provided by another character), it will be near impossible to convince them that the pile is just that, and not a corpse.
But that's not the really dangerous part. The dangerous part of all this is that if someone unexpected approaches while the character is in the same room as the 'body,' they may become convinced that the new arrival is responsible for their loved one's death. It doesn't matter how illogical it is on the surface - fear, or rage, or whatever it is that might fuel them will turn on the stranger. And whatever it is that convinces them of this has also turned their fight-or-flight reflex solidly to fight, whether it's for revenge or the last chance at survival for a cornered rat.
Characters so affected will fight until one of the following occurs: If they are led out of sight of the 'body,' they return to their senses (given that they may be inclined to chase the 'perpetrator,' this may be the best non-violent way to resolve the issue). If they are convinced that the 'body' is fake (through physical contact or clear lighting as above), they also return to their senses. And finally, if they kill the 'perpetrator' or are themselves killed or knocked unconscious, the effect ends. In all of these cases, it ends with the sharpness of a rubber band snapped against the skin, and the character is fully aware of their altered mental state and what occurred as a result.
If your character dies as a result of this prompt (and you want that thread to be game canon), please give the mods a heads-up if/when you are accepted into the game. Although this will not count as an 'official' death and will not consume a character's "freebie" revival, there may still be consequences for your character's death.
CONTENTS WORMING
(cw: worms. many worms. not parasitic. just worms.)
It's easy to take a wrong step in the dark. Of course, tripping and falling isn't the worst thing that can happen.
This isn't the worst thing that could happen, either. That doesn't make it any better in the moment - the split-second when the ground erupts and a writhing mass of something slimy doesn't so much crawl out as jump out - but maybe it will make it better later.
You know how worms come writhing up out of the ground during a rainstorm, when the soil is absolutely saturated?
Well, that's true of the soil on the ship as well, except the worms here aren't just common earthworms anymore. They've learned to climb, the slime that they use to wriggle through the soil modified such that they can cause it to turn sticky and squelch their way up walls, ceilings - and anyone they happen to come across. If you step in the wrong place, an entire cluster of them will respond, by clinging to your clothes and body, squirming upwards in a desperate bid to escape the wet soil and the continuous rivulets of water caused by the storm.
Or perhaps you sat down to rest somewhere and felt them creeping - or didn't, until there was suddenly something wet and cold on your bare skin. Or maybe you encountered the worms not through their climbing, but afterwards, when they drop off the ceiling and fall down on your head as the enzyme that renders their slime sticky wears out. However it happens... worms.
Fortunately, they're harmless - aside from being a bit larger than the earthworms a character is likely to be familiar with, and their strange ability to become sticky, these are largely indistinguishable from normal earthworms. Unfortunately, it's hard to tell that in the dark and the wet - this is their native environment, not yours, and anyone would panic at the sensation of worms trying to crawl up them or into dry places in their clothes.
There is an easy solution to this: Because the worms are fleeing the rain in the soil, they won't climb up anything that's just as wet as the dirt they left behind. All a character has to do to become worm-free is get thoroughly soaked, such as by stepping out into the reduced-but-still-pouring rain on a balcony or deck protected by the ship's bubbles. Unfortunately.... Well, then they're wet. And there doesn't seem to be anywhere to dry off any time soon...
FAQ
Q: Do our characters still have their powers/items?
Generally speaking, yes. Characters have their powers intact (with certain exceptions, largely for potential-gamebreak reasons) and whatever items they were carrying at their canonpoints. Please see the FAQ for more details.
Q: My character is dead and/or dying at their canonpoint!
Well... Now they aren't. Specifically, dead characters come back as their most recent 'healthy' state of being (unless they're a type of character that is playable while dead, such as a vampire or a Bleach shinigami, in which case they continue as normal for them); they also arrive already soaked through by the rain, regardless of the location they wake up. Characters who are mortally injured find that their wounds have healed; in place of whatever blood was soaking through their clothes/dripping from their bodies/in their mouth from a Cough of Death, they instead find pure water.
Q: Can my character(s) explore the ship?
Your characters are welcome to explore as much as they're willing and capable of doing in the wet and the rain! However, getting between floors is a challenge in the current weather - with the power off, the elevators do not work, and the stairs are consistently flooded by a cascade of rainwater. However, mods will not be running any official, guided explorations until after game opening.
Q: Is there anywhere dry to rest?
Nowhere is completely dry, but the aft portion of the ship is significantly drier than the middle and fore. The reason for this is that there is a series of partial decks (the residential decks) over roughly the last third of the ship. The rain is fully blocked by the roof overhead, in theory, but in practice the wind and the flooding leave this space only sort of dry. It's possible to find your way here on your own and find some place to sleep that doesn't blow mold spores into your face when you sit down, but it's also darker here, since the lightning's light is also blocked out by the roof.
Q: BATHROOMS?
Unfortunately, the lack of water in the pipes means that the toilets (which can be found relatively intact in most suites, though many are full of standing water) are also not running. Characters get to deal with this issue as they see fit, whether that's using the dilapidated toilets or using a more fertilizer-like strategy.
Q: Is there anything from the game's main info pages that doesn't apply to this Test Drive?
Given that the power is currently off, the Ship (as in the entity) cannot be interacted with on the Test Drive (and characters have no reason to think it's there). Anything else that would require power, such as the elevators or water from the faucets, also does not work.
Q: How long does the storm last?
ICly, it begins to lighten up on the evening of the second day after the first characters wake up, though it is still raining steadily with occasional thunder throughout that night. (Characters will continue to trickle in throughout the duration of the storm, though most arrive before the end of the first day.) The characters will be able to see the sun starting on the third morning - which is also planned to be the game's formal opening, so we won't say more until then!
Q: Do our characters receive anything upon arrival?
Not a thing! Nor do they encounter any kind of informational NPC or anything that gives them a solid idea what's going on. The only exception to this is that all characters experience the dripping-blood related vision/dream/impression detailed in the first prompt of the Test Drive. Additionally, characters who have a unique tie to their world (such as Aerith's connection to the Lifestream in FFVII) will be aware that they're not in their own world anymore.
Q: What are our characters eating?
Since the power hasn't come on yet... Whatever they're adventurous and/or knowledgeable enough to find that doesn't kill them! This can include edible plants and limited amounts of things brought from home (please don't have your character bring 99 casseroles even if your game's inventory system allows it), but mods are not tracking this specifically. Most characters will be expected to be hungry and unhappy but not literally starving come game open. At least there's plenty of water.
Q: I have some specific question I need to ask about my specific character on the test drive!
Please post your question in response to the header comment QUESTIONS below!
no subject
[It's pretty decent. He whistles to Bob who flies over and lands on the branch with some of them, clipping a few of the stems with his beak. Casper catches them easily and hands two to Childe, tucking the other one into his pocket.]
Here. For later. We should leave the rest for other people.
no subject
Childe takes the offered fruits happily, tucking them away into his own pockets. They were... Probably safe.]
Thanks.
[If anything, it'd be a good reference point of what not to eat.]
Yeah. No doubt everyone else is hungry, too.
[It leaves him wondering exactly how long it'll take for those fruits to grow back. Eh... With the rest of the plants thriving here, he's sure it won't be an issue.]
I'm surprised there hasn't been... Anything else. No animals at all. Monsters? Nothing? It's weird.
no subject
[He feels bad whenever he has to kill one of those, but it's him or them, so...]
And the ghosts... like, there's definitely some kind of remembrance of an event here, but I haven't seen or smelled any sort of death that isn't plant-based. And that's not my department.
no subject
He knew the fear fluttering in his heart as a pack had stalked him, as he stepped over an edge that should not be. The feeling of falling and drowning were very similar, he'd found, both forces out of one's control. One couldn't choose when their body would take one last desperate breath, just as one couldn't choose to stop hurtling towards solid ground.]
I'm used to there being way more monsters. This is a bit disappointing.
[Casper's reading of the ghost-vibes seemed to match his own. That it might be an event haunting the place, rather than a specific person. Childe had been on battlefields both before and after war, haunted by the blood that stained the ground, great acts of violence still in the air, some of them his own.]
Yeah, I feel that it's an event, too. It feels too broad to just be... a handful of people. Too many different voices. Whatever happened here was rough.
[Many people feared him, but they tended to displace the fear they had for him: Killing people was not something that caused him to laugh the way he did, it didn't wholly bring him joy unless it was a great beast of some kind.
It was the heat of battle itself, the effort, the fight, that interested him, that sent his blood pumping and heart soaring. It was the action, the trading of blows, putting himself and his body to the absolute limit. He chased a high, a recreation of a formative experience in his mind, the months he'd spent in a state of hyper-vigilance. The violence of becoming.
He preferred it when his opponent didn't die: It meant an opportunity for a rematch.
The Harbinger let one of the giant mosquitoes land on his shoulder. It had no interest in either of them, just looking for a momentary place to rest. The fatuus makes a bit of a face at it. Childe glances at Bob. Did he want a snack?]
Just bugs here, huh. Your little guy hungry? I think this thing has his name on it.
no subject
[Hm... the other guy can hear it. But why? He's... probably not death-connected?]
He'll eat just about everything. He prefers berries, but... you hungry, bud?
[Bob eyes the mosquito.]
... Yeah I'm not sure if he's eager to eat a bug he's never quite seen.
cw: insects / eating insects . he's gross i'm so sorry
Maybe it was nice to have a little downtime, where he wasn't fighting for his life. Sometimes.]
I get that. I think. I'm a bit of an adrenaline junkie, myself.
[Childe laughs, as Bob didn't seem keen on eating a massive, strange bug. Preferring berries.]
Smart guy.
[More for him. Childe would yank the bug off his shoulder, and use his delusion's electro energy to zap it, good and hard. It would curl up, dead in his hand. Childe would then just. Pop it into his mouth.
No questions asked, no further thoughts about the whole thing. Free protein!]
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[... Interesting. He tilts his head as Bob does.]
You... uh. You've had to survive on a lot of random things, haven't you?
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To be fair: Zhongli was a god, too.]
Pretty tough for a nerd, then. But I get it. I have a few hobbies myself that most people wouldn't expect of me.
[Cooking. Dancing. He'd filled in for a member of a theatre troupe once or twice in his homeland.
The two of them tilt their heads at Childe as he eats, unbothered by the taste or by what he's eating. He's tasted worse. He shrugs, thinking very little of it. It was food and it was free. What more was there?]
You wouldn't believe. I learned real quick that being picky wouldn't get me anywhere. Whatever I reached or killed first was fair game, usually.
[Of course... He didn't always act this way. But in times like these, yeah, he leaned into it a bit.]
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[Again.]
I don't really like... killing for food, but I will if I have to. I just feel kind of bad for the animal. ... And I don't know how to prepare one properly. I mean... just because I can live off of whatever doesn't mean that it tastes good going down. It's usually been the others doing the hunting, but if we can't find any sort of... anything to eat... I don't know. I don't want other people to go hungry.
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[Childe is sympathetic. He remembers how afraid he was, back then. He wonders if Casper had a similar experience. The Harbinger doesn't ask. It was just how things were.
Casper's concerns regarding a possible scarcity of food here are... understandable, for the most part. Childe's had to gut and skin animals here and there (never with much finesse) to help keep himself and the other troops fed on longer missions (and in wilderness survival training), but give him a fish and he was in his element. The redhead had few moral hangups about eating animals or monsters: if he could kill it, then it was fair game, he felt.
A bear didn't feel guilt for feeding itself and its young. The fact that its prey was alive and fleeing would not bring it pause. Why should he? He was a weapon, stained red with blood.
What was one more death?]
I guess that makes sense. I'm used to having to really fight for a good meal in these conditions. I don't really feel bad about it. If it was hungry, I'm sure it'd do the same to me.
It's hard to know how many of us are here, and how many are going to be willing to eat whatever plants they can find. If we can find animals, we might have an easier time feeding everyone.
[If they could get some cover and airflow, maybe they could set up a fire.]
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... I guess that sounds stuck up of me but it's... a whole industry designed so that people don't have to think about where their food comes from.
But you're right. Finding out how many people we need to feed is going to be a task in itself. We need to gather people. And hope that at least most of them are reasonable and not adrenaline junkies who leap into fights. Or if they are, hope that they can be reasoned with, too.
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Eh... I don't think it's stuck up. Just what you're used to. I come from a little fishing village and used to have to camp out in the wilderness as part of my military training. I'm a bit more in touch with these things than you might be.
[And also... if there were more people than they thought, they still needed to find a place to gather them. And maybe the others might have already thought similarly and were already putting that idea into motion. It was hard to say.]
If they aren't reasonable and just wanna fight, I'd be happy to deal with them.
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[He chuckles and shakes his head, stretching a bit.]
I can deal with them too, you know.
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Taking care of the dead?
[Childe had liked stories as a kid, himself.]
Yeah. It's... Not for everyone. I don't think it'd suit you either.
[Casper was... kind. Not fragile, not actively. But there was a sort of gentle humanity about him. He was a good kid. Casper would have had the worst time in a world like that.
The fatuus rolls his shoulders, stretching his muscles.]
Oh, I know. Trust me. But I'll have fun with it. And I've got you pretty beat up as it is.
[His eyes find the wounds from earlier-- and he feels bad about them.]
They still hurt?
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[Honestly the jagged cuts in his clothing are probably worse than any pain from the wounds - oh yeah. He... should take care of those. He doesn't do anything visibly, but the cuts - which had already stopped bleeding - close up completely to leave just thin lines on his skin. After a moment, even those smooth out and he's left with no mark other than some clothes that need stitching.]
I kind of forgot about them? A lot of that stuff itches more than it hurts if you're used to it.
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[Fair enough.
Childe quite literally watches the wounds heal and close in front of him, now that his eyes were trained on one of them. Now that was cool. He understands forgetting them--- He himself tended to ignore his own in the heat of a good fight. It'd buff out.
He could sustain a hell of a lot of damage in his Foul Legacy form, that didn't necessarily translate to his original human state, but Childe hadn't seen healing like that before. He whistles a little.]
You healed it just like that. Nice trick there, Casper.
[As abnormal as his circumstances were, Childe was still very much human. Mostly. His mind of course, jumps to the possibility of a good spar with the other guy. Maybe when things were a little better and he didn't have a head wound.]
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[Huh - oh. Yeah. He's gotten too used to seeing fantastical feats, he guesses. The wounds closing wouldn't be a big deal to his group at home - if they even noticed. Some of them can and some of them can't.]
I guess so. It uh... helps when half your body isn't actually flesh.
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[Death AND ice. Okay, that was cool. They had to team up one day, properly. Maybe if his hydro vision behaved one day.]
Not actually flesh?
[...What was the other half?
(...Normal thoughts to be having here on normal boat, truly.)
Childe supposed it made sense, given that the guy was a demigod. He wasn't wholly sure what Foul Legacy was made of either. It wasn't exactly human. He'd also given a very firm no to Dottore's request to open him up and see what was inside-- that was a little too weird for his liking.]
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[He's never really asked, and he's had more important things to worry about.]
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I understand. It's all throughout. You don't have a magic left side or whatever. I get it, I have my own... uh. Quirk. It's part of my body too, now. Can't really be removed.
[Not that he'd want that. He was endeared to the abyssal corruption that encompassed his being. Childe didn't train for three months, live in a constant state of hyper-vigilance, and get a legacy passed down to him by a swords-woman who walked the Abyss just to be purified.
So, he could relate somewhat. Despite being born human.]
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If - if you want to share, that is. I understand if you don't want to. You don't have to. ... Forget I asked.
[Way to put someone on the spot there and then totally beef the landing, Casper.]
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Oh, uh. I'm kind of... well. Different from most people.
['Corrupted' was what most people would call it, the fatuus thinks. Changed, altered by an environment inhospitable to most natural life. He keeps the information short and brief. He was fine and this was very normal.]
I can transform. It's a whole thing. I try to save it for really dire situations, because it takes a lot out of me. You'll know when you see it. Probably.
[Tall, monstrous, and near-inhuman. Frightening to most people who happened to catch a glimpse.
For all Childe knew, the legacy he'd come to inherit was shortening his lifespan. That wasn't something he needed to speculate on with a stranger, or where anyone could be hearing them.]
I'm not a bad guy. Er... I'm kind of a bad guy. But I mean well.
[Usually.]
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[Don't be like Titanspawn, please. You're too nice to be one of them.]
And you seem to mean well. At least from what I've seen so far.
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Childe supposes the definition of that was up to.. well. Whoever. He was a Harbinger, a man loyal to an archon that sought to overturn the current order of their world. Her soldier, her weapon, her attack dog, her vanguard. The Tsaritsa pointed him at rising conflict, and who was he to say no?
Even Childe's own morals couldn't stand in his way.]
Not... quite ending the world. Conquering it to lay it at the feet of the Tsaritsa, though? That's just part of the job description.
[Childe laughs, something soft. He meant no harm to anyone here.]
But that's got nothing to do with now. No orders to follow.
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Uh huh.
[Conquering the world is generally bad, Childe!]
Maybe you should look for a new job.
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cw: animal death & eating raw meat
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