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

Misaki's presence here is another part of the puzzle, really. Togusa looks back to Misaki, who, for her part, is now patiently waiting, arms folded.

"My former fiance.. Hikari's mother." But Misaki's look gets only sadder when he says that out loud.

"You really are lost, aren't you, Hitori?" Misaki slides her glasses up her nose.

"She was never a part of Retrospec," Togusa clarifies. "And I think that's why she's," he waves a hand at the others, "outside of this."

"Hm," Eleanor really wasn't sure what to make of all this. "But she's here, in the city?"

She paused. "I mean, she isn't someone from your memories of another life."

Oh! Togusa straightens up some when he realizes what Eleanor is getting at. "Oh. No, no. We dated in college, she's in Recolle, just never been on the network." He even holds up a hand and shakes it back and forth.

"Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm tempted to think that's the difference."

"And...the girl. Hikari? She's in the city too?"

This was weirder than she had expected.

Togusa nods. "Yeah, she lives with me." A little quirk of one corner of his mouth up. "Even Retrospec hasn't gone after someone that young."

"And yet you never talked about her or mentioned her before," Eleanor added.

"Why is that?"

"I-" The excuses come to his mind almost instantly. Did he want to keep her out of this Retrospec mess? No, he can't stop talking about her to anyone, Retrospec be damned. Keeping work and home separate? Not to a friend.

"I didn't-" His hand goes to his head. Why didn't you mention her?

"I can't remember where she was. Every time I think of a Retrospec memory. She's- she's not in them." Even benign things. Could he have built a giant-sized sandcastle without his daughter? Where was Hikari when he went to Pesgare the first time?

Eleanor frowned. That was a bad sign. But...

"But you have memories with her too, right? From the last few months?" When everything had gotten weird and Yukiko had forgotten retrospec and everyone else had suddenly started acting like different people.

God that had been frustrating.

That gets a more certain reaction out of Togusa. "Yes. We had a baseball day at the park, I got to take her to visit Pesgare, the last few months are a lot clearer."

But he drifts off again. What does this all mean? Is Hikari-

"..Is there something wrong with my memory? Or is there something wrong with Hikari?" Slowly, horrified even as the words are coming out of his mouth, because he doesn't want to consider the possibility.

"Hey, hey, it's okay," Eleanor could see the panic there, and she stepped closer, holding up her hands in a calming gesture. "A few months ago retrospec did...something...to everyone. Or something did."

"It gave people...new lives, I think." she shook her head. "But they were real, or they seemed to be. I'd remember something different from what someone else remembered, but the evidence was there for both."

"So...maybe she wasn't around last August. Maybe something changed. But she's around now."

The evidence was there for both. That's what starts to snap Togusa out of it. To hold him back before he just gives in to the spiral his mind wants to take. And he is actually listening instead of feeling.

"She wasn't here before..." slowly. "But if she is now."

The whole woods start to lighten, as if day is breaking. And the laughter can be heard again, growing closer. Togusa looks up in the direction it's coming from. His whole expression shifts to one of hope, something that's been gone this entire time.

"If she's here now, then there is a kid who needs a father. Maybe..that's all that matters." Existential crises are no excuse for not being there for a kid.

Okay, that was better. Much better she hoped. Eleanor nodded, letting her hands drop to her sides again.

"If everything is going back to normal or fading, just...try to keep that in your mind. Try to keep her in your mind." She smiled what she hoped was a reassuring smile.

"The way everything works around here...it might be enough."

Togusa's eyes close, and he nods solemnly to Eleanor, a grateful look on his face. "Thank you. I'll do anything I can to hold on to this."

He turns, and a small shape can barely be seen on a hill, holding up one hand towards her father. As Togusa starts to go towards her, the dream starts to dissipate, a much more gentle waking up than could have happened here. Right when Togusa reaches down to take his daughter's hand, is when the both of them will wake up.