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

[The girl leans in curiously, wondering what he's planning to do with the rocks. When they suddenly sprout legs and start dancing, she gasps, her eyes wide. Within a few moments, she actually recognizes the steps and starts to giggle. Clapping her hands, she straightens up and starts to do the same steps, a smile on her face. The music from the ballet starts playing softly as the scene fades away, leaving Derek alone in a black void with only the music.

After a few moments, a new environment starts to become visible, a small bedroom, that definitely belongs to Li-Na. Welcome to Act 2, Derek.]

[Derek looks around the very small room. A VERY SMALL ROOM.]

OK... where am I?

[He notices the dance posters on the walls.]

My gut is telling me this belongs to Li-Na but... she's not this poor...

[From the next room over, Derek might hear the sound of two people talking. Li-Na, teenaged Li-Na, and an older man.]

Older Brother, I'm going to the academy to practice.

Okay, did you have dinner?

Yes, I got some noodles from Mrs Tong. There are some for you in the fridge.

Ahhhh, Mrs Tong's noodles are the best. Thank you, Little Sister. Don't stay out too late.

You know the South Island Line runs past midnight. I don't have to wait for the N90 anymore.

[Brother? An older brother? Li-Na didn't have an older brother. The only brother she had was Xiaolang. What the hell?

Derek opens up the door to the room a crack and peers out. He sees Li-Na and a guy he definitely doesn't recognize. Crap, what should he do in this situation? He's the stranger in someone else's house!]

[Lucky for Derek... or perhaps unlucky... Li-Na quickly leaves the apartment and the man retreats to another room and shuts the door.

Better follow her quick Derek.]

[Derek waits for the guy to go into the other room before slipping out of he bedroom and then out the the apartment. If that guy was a brother and if he was anything like him, he definitely didn't want him finding out he was in his sister's bedroom.]

[He looks around the hallway for any sign of Li-Na. He doesn't see her anywhere, but he knows the only logical direction is down. He finds the stairwell and starts running down it as fast as he can with out falling flat on his face.

Finally exiting the stairwell, he looks around and sees Li-Na exiting the building.]

Found you.

[Derek stars to follow Li-Na, but tries to keep a distance so she doesn't realize he's following her...he hopes.]

[Good instincts, Derek. Good instincts.

I hope you enjoyed those twenty flights of stairs, Derek.

As he follows Li-Na, she'll lead him down the street to a subway station less than a block from her building. Do you stop her before she goes through the gate, or do you fair jump and follow her down the escalator to the platform?]

[Derek knows he doesn't have any money that would work here so he knows he has to reveal himself. He rushes forward and grabs her hand.]

Wait!

Edited 2018-09-13 21:34 (UTC)

[Normally, this might illicit some concern from bystanders, but the only person who seems to notice Derek grabbing Li-Na's arm is Li-Na herself. She turns around, a look of alarm on her face, as the rest of the commuters pass around them.]

Can I.... help you?

[Derek had in no way shape or form had any idea what to say next. What do you say? "Hey, you're dreaming and I'm stuck in your head?" Sounds perfect... not. Derek thinks for a second and all the random stuff he knew about Li-Na. He said the first thing that came to his mind.]

Do you know how to get to The Peak?

[Of course he wants to go to the Peak. Everyone wants to go to the Peak. So her response is automatic.]

You take the South Island Line from here to Admiralty Station. Then you can take the 15 bus all the way to the top. Or you can take either the 12A or the 23 buses to the Peak Tram and ride that.

[They're straight forward and almost clinical directions, lacking any personal attachment. No suggestion as to which route she would take personally.]

[Shit... now what?]

Which one is easier? The bus or the tram?

The tram takes less time, but the bus is cheaper. Look, I can show you the way to Admiralty at least. Though you might want to pick up your pass.

[she points to the ground where a paper pass sits next to his shoe]

Edited 2018-09-20 01:24 (UTC)

[Derek looks down. Oh, how convenient. He'll just be picking that up now.]

Ah, yes. That is important isn't it? But, uh, yeah, if you could show me part of the way, that would be really helpful.

[As long as I can be near you so I can figure out what I'm suppose to be doing here!]

[Li-Na turns back to the gate and pulls out her Octopus card, swiping herself through so she can access the platform. Once Derek's done the same with his visitor's pass, she shows him where the platform is.

While they wait for the train, she gives glances at him, a little curious.]

So... what are you doing in Hong Kong? Business?

[Derek decides to go with the flow and let Li-Na lead the conversation. Let her think what she wants.]

Uh... yeah. What gave it away?

Someone living here long term would have an Octopus card.

[she holds up her plastic transit car, which is markedly different from the one Derek has]

[Derek looks at the card in his hand and sees that it is indeed different that what Li-Na has in her hand.]

Huh, so it is. Then as a person who lives in this city, what do you recommend I go do on my down time while I'm here?