recolle | (no subject)

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

[ Malik is so surprised that James tosses him a knife that he nearly fumbles the catch. Of course, James hasn't been the same person as before, that much Malik knew - but he still can't not see it as weird that his Sworn Rival™ would give him a stabbing instrument.

He's not complaining though. ]

You shot him, he has to be bleeding pretty badly.

[ Or so he presumes. He had no way to see where or if Zee was even hit - he's fairly certain it wasn't him screaming.

There's no time to waste, though, and he climbs down the rope as best he's able. He's no pro - more used to climbing up things, usually over fences - but he manages to make to the bottom without falling on his ass. So that's a plus. ]

[ James doesn't wait up for Malik to make his way down, instead trusting that he'll manage. He's already darted down the nearest shady alleyway, practically leaping over dumpsters and any fences in his way. He does, though, spare some time to look back at Malik to make sure his words are audible for him. ]

In the arm, no arteries. Non-lethal. We can't risk him getting away. And we have to make sure we silence the girl, too.

[ Sure, it's totally normal to refer to your sister as "the girl." ]

We can't let there be witnesses just running around freely.

[ Yeah, yeah, just give him a minute. He doesn't trail too far, though he doesn't have the same stamina as someone who is well trained or athletic. He's still basically an animate scarecrow that has had to dodge cops before, is all. ]

You know, I like this version of you a lot better.

[ Dream, real, fake, whatever-- whoever this James is supposed to be, it's kind of weird to not be at each others' throats, but trying to destroy Retrospec employees is more entertaining and productive anyway. ]

Next you're going to tell me, what? Destroy cameras, ransack the house, skip town...?

[ He ignores the "this version of you" comment because he's really not sure how to interpret it. He knows James is supposed to have some kind of beef with Malik, but he neither understands it nor really cares for it. They have more important things to focus on now anyway. ]

Destroy camera footage, sure, but the rest? There's no need to be that severe. You just have to know how to disguise yourself and blend into the crowd.

[ By now, they've run across several streets and several more alleyways, and are finally closing in on Zee and Becca. Thankfully, Becca's crying is loud enough that he can easily tell where they've gone since their initial position. As he clears one more fence, he can see them, plain as day, a block away on a residential street in Viea. No one else around. Perfect.

He pauses behind a bush and waits for Malik to catch up to do some more last-second coordination. ]

You want to kill a man.

[ Don't tell him that something doesn't need to that severe. Even blending in presents a risk - Malik sure as hell knows he wanted to run away after his little stint of attempted murder. But he doesn't dwell on those particular thoughts, having to focus on keeping tabs on James instead. James, and this... mission? That they're on. ]

Okay, so now are you going to shoot him?

[ 'Want' is a strange way to describe this. James has half a mind to correct him. It's not so much that he wants to kill Zee, or at least not something he personally wants to do. It's just a job. But he doesn't want to waste time explaining all that when they've got moving targets. ]

I need you to grab hold of her first.

[ He points to Becca. ]

Once I shoot, she's probably going to make a run for it and we won't be able to catch her. We need to get a hold of her before that happens.

Just... grab her? Alright. I can manage that much.

[ It doesn't bother him as much as it would a normal person, no doubt. It's more he's questioning James' motives that gives him pause, but he has half a mind to realize this isn't the time.

He's pretty good at sneaking, given that theft is still a pastime for him. He's good at avoiding detection and slight of hand, although the later doesn't matter so much now. He does, however, manage to cover Becca's mouth once he grabs her, so she won't continue to scream. ]

[ Becca struggles, but not enough to be able to wriggle free. Perfect, Malik's got her taken care of and out of the way. Which means this is an easy shot now.

Zee is lumbering around, trying to look for not just the source of the bullet now but also trying to figure out where Becca went. He's still a moving target, but now, James is in such close range, it doesn't really matter any more. He pulls out the pistol, takes a few moments to get the hang of Zee's movement patterns so he can aim properly, exhales, and--

A bang rings out. Even with the silencer on, it's still loud. Zee collapses to the floor in a heap, red beginning to spread cross his chest. Becca squirms, the sound of her crying muffled.

James steps out to do a final check on the body. He nudges it with his foot so the body will roll over onto its back, which is when it becomes apparent that it's not Zee at all--it's James himself. Or, James as he used to be, with both flesh arms. He finds himself staring at his own dead body for far longer than he probably should out in the open. ]

Well. It's done.

[ He sounds far less calm and assured now than he did before. Not quite upset, but not quite collected either. ]

What about her?

[ Malik is a little strained, more concerned about the whole witness issue. It's also a little awkward because Becca is crying, and he's not sure what to do. He has no desire to console her or do really do anything, period, but she's a loose end he doesn't know how to tie off. That's all it is.

The body of The Man Formerly Known as Zee is too far to be distinctly different. Not only that, but Malik isn't really familiar with Zee anyway - he'd think it weird, but not immediately connect the dots as to why James is looking at his own corpse. So it goes. Identity issues sure are a bitch, aren't they? ]

[ Right. He'd almost forgotten about Becca.

He walks over to her and Malik, leaving the body in the street. Better to let the cops just find it than get caught trying to hide it. But he looks uneasy now, unsure how to proceed. He just killed Becca's brother, and yet still looks just like him.

There is literally nothing in the handbook on how to handle this. ]

...I don't know. Lollipops?

[ It's hard to cry when you've got a lollipop in your mouth, right? ]