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EVENT

Reverted
The city of Recollé...have you looked beyond the city lately? It may be time to do so.

I.

The good news, perhaps, is that everyone is back in their original bodies. The last few weeks may have been trying and embarrassing for several of you, but never fear! You're all in this together.

The nice thing about returning to your original body is that everything else seems to disappear along with the unintentional swapping. Your dreams on the evening of the 16th and the 17th are unoccupied and you're blissfully alone. Hallucinations fade away and the city almost feels brighter and cleaner. The messy paint job from May and June slowly flakes off to reveal a sparkling almost-new landscape below. All buildings, landmarks, flora and fauna are back to their original colors. The sky, however, is still painted a strange wash of colors and symbols.

The other nice thing about returning to your original body is that it's much easier to feel the sudden, sharp pain on your palm at midnight on the 18th, a needling high-pressure pain that lasts for all of 30 seconds. Upon looking at your hand, however, you'll notice something new.

In bright red font there's a new marking that reads: 13 Days:23:59:59.

58. 57. 56...

The timer steadily counts down, each second synced with each beat of your heart. As the days pass by the timer will slowly shift from the red to a dark, ominous purple. The glow of the mark becomes harder to ignore, and there doesn't seem to be a way to remove it. Good luck with that.

II.

The Retrospec app doesn't seem to be much better. The scrambled messages and posting errors seem to have stopped and users are no longer receiving messages and pictures about themselves.

In fact, the app seems to be quiet for a while.

As users continue to use the app they will find that any post, comment or message that they send via the app will be tagged with a different ID. Instead of their name, all messages will be from Alpha##### or Beta#####. The string of numbers will be unique for each user and cannot be changed at any time. Individual mailboxes will be attached to your name, but the Alpha/Beta ID has made its way there, too.

Over the course of the rest of the month, Alphas (those who have had the app for at least a year from August 2017) will find that messages to other Alphas are sent more easily than to Betas (those who have had the app for less than a year from August 2017) and vice versa. Messages to anyone from the opposite "faction" may drop out half-way or appear blank entirely. It might be wise to find a better mode of communication in the meantime.

III.
Even if you're alone in your dreams, you're not alone in the waking world. No one is free from the timer on their palm, though they may come to find that it impacts some users more than others.

Some users will experience a steady pulsating in their hand as the timer counts backwards, each second ticking by. Standing still just long enough will send the pulse out of their hands and through the rest of their body, over their arms and through their feet straight into the ground.

The earth begins to shake under these unlucky users, little quakes and trembles that spread out and seek out anyone else nearby. Whether you know this person or not, whether you're alone or several of you are impacted by this earthquake, the ground beneath you splits open and you're pulled straight down into the crevice, falling aimlessly. Instead of finding your own life flashing before your eyes, you'll find yourself witnessing events, faces, and memories that are important to the user the pulses came from.

On the outside of things, the user will promptly collapse into a coma-like state no matter where they're at. Inside their mind, however, a scene begins to set itself to welcome you as you land. It isn't a memory and it isn't a hallucination. It's a construct of someone else's innerworkings that have trapped you and blocked you in.

As the haze around you dissipates, the puzzle you received earlier this month floats in front of you. Whether you have finished building it or not it is now fully completed and all of the words have faded except for "Gordian Knot."

Your cell phones will not work in these dreamscapes, and even Retrospec seems to be disconnected. It's up to you to venture further into someone else's mind and help them untangle whatever mystery is hidden within themselves.

IV.
So about that timer. As time begins to run out, more and more people begin to experience dream dives and encounter the knots of others that they must fix. Even inside the dreamscape, the timer glows just as brightly as it had out in the real world and it continues counting down.

At least it gives you a sense of time and just how many minutes, hours, or days you've been stuck inside someone's subconscious. You might even realize that the timer is directly tied to just how much time you have to unravel the knots of your friends, loved ones, and strangers.

Easy, right? Take caution, citizens. The monsters and demons lurking in the corners of someone else's psyche can manifest to something quite powerful. You will not wake up and be booted out of someone's dream if you are attacked, but your physical body and mind will shut down and remain unconscious for one week.

Be careful how you approach these knots, however! Should you change any part of them too much, the host will find themselves rejecting this new information. Too great of a change will result in the loss of an important memory to them and no way to recover it inside the dive.

Even with these possible losses divers are responsible for fixing what's gone wrong and relieving the knot wound tightly in the host's mind. Venture forward, explore, and break it apart to awaken then. You will be greatly rewarded for your effort.

Failure to break the knot and save the host from this comatose state will result in all parties suffering a loss. At first it may not be obvious, but over time it will be clear an important memory or item has left your possession.

Is it just limited to dives though? Some users will feel that even with successful diving they don't quite feel like themselves. It seems as though there's some further self-evaluation they must meet in order to fully recover who they are...or were, as it may be.

Tick-tock, Retrospecters. Mind the time.

BONUS.
Ever since he moved in back in February, the lights have always been on in Zee's office and home at the top of the Towers. Office hours are whenever he feels like making them and he's usually reachable by phone, email, or app.

However, beginning on the 18th, messages to his inbox begin to go unanswered. Checking the inbox itself will reveal a change as well.

Delta#02018329 is no longer receiving messages.

On the 19th, the lights go off permanently. Beginning on the 20th, anyone who ventures to his office will find the building empty and locked, no sign of Zee at all. Reaching out to him receives a bounce-back error message.

Any previous correspondences with him will remain, though his name has been replaced with his Delta ID.

It's hard to say what's happened, but after some time, all users will finally receive a message from Delta#68422.

Stop him.

No other messages will be sent or received from this account.

Welcome to

recolle's August event, part 2!

As notated in the plotting post, the dreamdives are now live! Players are in charge of creating their own unique dive experiences for characters to explore and play through. These can be as harmless or as dangerous as you'd like. However, please be sure to let us know here if your character will be failing a dive and what memory/item they will be losing!

For Prompt II, characters IDs will be comprised of the following: The date your character first appeared on Retrospec (so in Zee's case, that was 02/01/18) and the last four digits of your character's IC inbox as found in the HTML (in Zee's case, 8329.) These IDs will be more relevant in September, but for ease of playing/making sure no one ICly overlaps please use these numbers!

Friendly reminder that if your character will be keeping their new AUs, please reply to this comment on the OOC plot post! As per Prompt IV, characters who are failing to recover their original AUs will begin to notice something is off and will not be able to accomplish what is needed to regain their original AUs. What this is is up to you!

As per the plotting post, threading out successful dream dives will earn you a free memory! Qualifying threads must be at least five comments from you and can be from you either hosting a dive or participating in one. Please note that failed dives will not be eligible for freebies.

Any questions you have regarding this event may be directed to the mod comment here. Be sure to review the mods' question thread on the plotting post for important information as well!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[--Crap, was someone there all along? He looks surprised for a second before calming to something just... worried.]

My little sister. She was with me just a second ago, but then I looked away for five seconds and now she's gone. Have you seen her?

[no he was in another theater before you RAILROADED him

Shinji's expression turns serious. If there's anything he understands, it's worry for your family.]

I haven't, but I can help look. What's she look like?

[You gotta unlock the path first god Shinji haven't you played a video game before.]

She's small, about this tall [and here, he bends over to indicate her height.], red ribbon in her hair, white cape, blue shirt, and red shorts.

[She wasn't totally visible in that poster, but it did at least have her face - and that ribbon.

As he stands up straight once more, Shinji may catch a fleeting glimpse of the scar along his face before it's hidden once again behind that scarf.]

[Shinji has just enough tact not to comment on the scar. At least until later.]

I haven't seen her [or anyone else] but I can look around? Where'd you lose her exactly?

She was with me until just now. She must've run off when I looked away.

[He scratches at his head, part embarrassment, part irritation. Damn it, where did she get to...?]

Does she run off a lot?

[Kids... sheesh. He was never that bad at that age. ~~He was worse.~~]

[Shinji you ran to another heckin country]

Just when she gets distracted.

[And boy does he look annoyed about it.]

[It wasn't a real country it doesn't count!!]

So all the time, huh.

More than she should.

[Anyway.]

Shouldn't leave her on her own for too long.

Yeah, I'm going to go look now.

[What directions are there to go looking? NORTH, SOUTH, and DENNIS?]

I'll come with you.

[Quickly said, because he doesn't in fact trust strangers with her.]

I was looking down the street this way, so she had to have slipped off somewhere else...

[Which leaves Shinji with the broad street heading north, or east into a tighter alleyway stacked up with various crates and that ilk.]

[The broad street seems like the safer location, which is why he heads into the alleyway.]

Might as well check this way first, kids always get themselves into trouble places like this...

[Plus he doesn't trust any dream to end without something going horribly wrong.]

Wish I could say you were wrong...

[But he'll follow along like a good party member. Press Z to see your menu, stats, and equipment--

The alleyway is more cluttered than unkempt. It gives off less ominous vibes and more a sense that the shops adjacent are really making use of the extra storage space. The crates aren't especially worn, and with the way they're stacked, you could even probably climb them if you wanted. The barrels are trickier business given they're empty, especially since they aren't all lined up perfectly side by side - there's gaps between some of them, enough so that one could conceivably assume a child is hiding among them.]

[Shinji, not being a sprite that takes up a fixed amount of space, can squeeze in between some barrels if he tries hard enough. ~~This would still be easier if he was a kid.~~]

How far in does this go...

[~~Pity about that, huh.~~

As he walks, he does see a red ribbon up ahead! In fact, it bobs at the sound, before disappearing behind a box.]

Eep!

[Theo, meanwhile, was hanging back a bit. But at that sound...]

...Was that...?

[Red ribbon making an 'eep' noise sounds about right. Shinji takes a step closer.]

Hey, it's okay, we're not gonna hurt you. Can you come out?

[Yeah, it's pretty easy to figure out...]

Hey, it's me. [A beat. And then:] It's Al. You can come out.

[Oh! That gets her perking up, peering over the barrel at the two.]

"You found me!"

You worried your big brother a bunch, you know that?

[Shinji sounds relieved to have found her, though. Even if she's not his sister and may not actually be real, she's still a lost kid.]

"Allllll!"

[With a wail, she squeezes between the barrels, hurrying to his side--

Only to receive a flick in the head for her troubles.]

We still need to find a place to stay. Don't run off like that.

"Waah..."

[But now the scenery's beginning to fade, and the scent of popcorn is beginning to fill the air once more...]

[And let Shinji guess, one of the other movies is playing now?]

[It sure is! This one features another image. The girl is definitely recognizable; but the man could be a wholly different person, if it weren't for that matching scar.

Gonna enter the theater, or is it time to putz around some more?]

[Better enter the theater! He recognizes linear plot progression when he sees it.]

[He can always try losing to the boss fight and see where that gets him.

Entering the theater instead leads him to a large hall of what appears to be a resort. Once again, the pair from the poster movie poster can be seen, the man scratching at the back of his head with annoyance.]

Where is she...?

[Let's not, actually, I've played these games.]

Lost her again?

[The 'again' just slips out, though it's probably been longer for this dude.]

[Oh shit there's a person. He looks over with a mildly puzzled face, like slipping on a mask.]

"Lost?"

[But this time, Efi pops her head out from behind him, peering at the "newcomer." Seems it's not her this time.]

I'm just looking for the manager... Hey, if you're inside, does that mean you work here too?