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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!

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[Well, she wasn't doing a very good job, considering the papers are everywhere. Freya takes another step back.]

Right. What's your name?

[A glance downwards, at the papers spilling into the hall.]

Name?

[The creature fumbled with the word.]

Name. Name? No...name. Anymore. Don't rememb--

[It saw Freya look at the papers, and its rambling answer cut off with a screech. It lunged off the cabinets, scrabbling forwards on four spindly limbs to snatch the papers back into the room.

They were mostly newspaper clippings, or looked like them. The dates were all different, but they all seemed to refer to the same set of events. A family, killed in their house. A suspicious number of heart attacks and strokes in a certain part of a city. Another dead family, a heavily armed man found dead on the beach.]

[Freya darted back until she was almost against the hall wall, thinking that rush was for her. Huh. She hadn't been expecting the Creature to hoard the papers like that. That scream kept putting her on edge.]

[Time to keep acting like everything was normal then.] Head a right mess, then? Alright, you know who I am? [As she spoke, Freya continued looking around, scanning the rest of the hallway.]

[The gaunt thing dragged the clippings back with long fingers until they joined the mess of paper on the floor, fussing and fidgeting all the while. It seemed reluctant to leave the room, however.]

You? You are...important. You...shouldn't see.

[The creature scratched at the floor, dragging the newspapers further back into the room.

The rest of the hallway was quiet by comparison. From the door where the worst of the bloodstains came from--nothing, no sound, not even any new blood. The other, nondescript doors said nothing, and seemed to be locked. The elevator was the only thing that showed signs of life, its indicator light flickering on the down arrow.]

[...Important, huh?]

[Whatever. She'd seen enough to fill in the blanks. The mood this weird place was setting wasn't doing anything favorable, either. Freya still wasn't entirely sure what was going on, but antagonizing the Lucy-faced creature didn't seem to be getting her anywhere.]

I get it. Don't you worry, I'll go.

[Freya turned to leave, but paused. Not-Lucy as she might be, it didn't feel right walking away like that. For some reason, the Creature brought to mind that scared child, hunkered in a too-large, dark hallway from long ago. She spoke over her shoulder,]

...you need anything, you come find me, got it?

Edited 2018-09-26 02:47 (UTC)

[The gaunt creature mumbled, raking the newspapers into the rest of the pile.

Then it stopped, both its mutters and its movement. It looked up at Freya, blinking for the first time in this entire encounter. Both jagged-nailed hands settled to the ground, and it regarded the taller woman quietly as Freya turned to go.]

...will you kill me then?

[It wasn't a fearful question. It was almost hopeful, and the clearest thing she managed to say.]

[That sure made her halt. Freya turned to look back, brow furrowing a bit.]

...And why would I go and do that?

[It raked its nails over the ground and the rustling scraps of paper.]

If...if. If I hurt people. Then...then I asked, then...

[...just like this whole place was implying, then. Freya wasn't expecting her intuition to be wrong, but her gut still twisted unpleasantly at the oblique confirmation.]

[Lucy had always been tight-lipped about her memories around her.]

[She looked up at the ceiling, propping a hand on her hip, humming casually in a way that Freya didn't feel at the moment.] And if I hurt people, too? Sounds like that'd be kinda hypocritical.

Edited 2018-09-26 03:27 (UTC)

[The creature was quiet and still. It didn't have an answer, and didn't know what to do with this information. That wasn't part of the script.]

[Freya looked back to the Creature one more time, regarding it quietly in return. Then, she nodded, continuing down the hallway.]

[She tried the doors as she went, but they all seemed to be locked. That just left...]

...the big, flashing "follow me I'm trouble!" sign. [She says to herself, staring at the utterly conspicuous elevator. With a sigh, Freya jabbed the call button, trying to ignore the pulsing countdown on her palm.]

[After Freya got far enough away, the creature shut the door to the paper room. It went back on its rustling, muttering way.

The elevator at least arrived promptly, and the door opened to...nothing. Just an empty elevator. The only floors it seemed to go to were down, endlessly down--the numbers gave up after ten, with just an arrow pointing to the ground after that.

Once the doors closed, though, the elevator started to move without prompting. It was a long way down.]

[Oh. Cool. Basement No One Will Find Your Body it is. So glad of you to volunteer.]

[Freya just sighed as the elevator started on its own, but otherwise didn't move much aside from watching all corners of the car. She was genre-savvy enough for that one.]

[Nothing stirred in the elevator. There wasn't any cheap canned music, but the overhead light was steady. Nothing pried open the access hatch or crawled through the vents either. It was a well behaved and civilized horror genre elevator.

It ground to a stop soon enough. The door opened to something entirely incongruous with the research facility above.

Its ceiling was vaulted and dimly lit, though it was illuminated just enough to make out specifics in its structure. Rather than spartan and sterile white like a hospital, the atrium's walls were carved and engraved with artistic lines climbing up to a geometric symbol where an altar or pedestal would have been, the columns lining the side walls more ceremonial than practical. There was no one here, but a presence hung heavily here, like there had been people in the room just a few moments before.

Instead of a proper altar, though, there was only a pile of broken chains. Something was attached to the wall here. It's gone now.

There's a much smaller hallway leading away from it, half hidden and discreet behind another pillar. There was a door at the end of it, half-open and leading out further into the dark.]

Edited 2018-09-27 21:02 (UTC)

[Huh. Not what she expected. Freya stepped cautiously out of the elevator car. The eerie, still silence was more disquieting than she wanted to admit, but that might have been the heartbeat thudding of the timer's countdown against her palm.]

[Nothing leapt out at her, but the broken chains whispered that something might--unless that was the not-quite-Lucy she'd seen upstairs that had resided here.]

[That would explain a lot.]

[That thought stirred up anger in her chest as Freya continued meandering through the impressive... structure? Structure. The whole alter-below-a-facility thing was a disturbing archetype.]

[She paused, regarding the tucked-away hallway. It screamed 'bad idea', but it was the only way forward.]

Can't be the worst idea I've ever had.

[And into the dark she went, idly following the wall with her hand.]

[Beyond the door was a cavern, lit by the doorway and a faint light filtering down from far above, like faint, dispersed starlight. Stones and lifeless gravel lined the floor, devoid even of moss. That feeling of someone just-here-but-not-now was worse now, almost a background hum. The place looked empty, but it didn't feel empty.

In the center of the cave was a small lake, its surface glasslike and still. The water was too dark to see what was in it.]

[Normally, places like this soothed Freya; she always enjoyed caverns and tunnels. But that ghostly feeling lingered, and the temptation to glance over her shoulder was increasingly difficult to ignore.]

[Freya kept forward, stopping several paces away from the lake. Dead end?]

[The lake was calm and quiet, like it didn't know she was there.]

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