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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

[After going down what probably feels like an eternity and a half. You reach the bottom and there are two things you can see.

1) A shit ton of black crystals EVERYWHERE in this massively empty dome, that could have been a cave once.

2) A blue light bright enough to illuminate said crystals, but you can't exactly make out what it is.

The closer you go to it, the more it looks like a knot, a giant ice knot, inside of which another Al crying, holding a young woman's body. The same dark haired one as before.

And apparently, there is a small fire inside the knot with them]

[ What a place, honestly.

That's... god, this is strange, but it's actually pretty neat. Natalia tries not to to get lost in the sights here, heading towards that chilly center and licking her lips a little bit once they get there. So... Well. Huh. She could just cut this, but that might not be smart while there's people contained within... ]

[You can hear muffled echoes coming from it, if you get closer, you can hear more clearly.]

Mama...I'm soo sorry...

Please stay with me mama...please...

... This already happened.

[ She mutters, more to herself than anything, and brushes her hand over the crystal. Man. ]

[Al holds her tightly, the knot seems to get tighter as he does so.

The crystal feels incredibly smooth to the touch, and looks exceptionally pretty, especially underneath the blue light where you can actually see the other side of the crystal. The inside of each crystal has fascinating patterns. Seemingly unique]

I'm sorry for playing soccer mama...

I should have stolen more...I thought we had enough...

[The fire inside the knot fizzles, it appears that the ice...might be alive somehow.]

Edited (Tots forgot about the crystal lol) 2018-09-29 00:25 (UTC)

[ Should have stolen more.

... Crime.

Crime as some sort of legacy?

... Chee.

And Natalia makes to take out her rapier! You know what, she's going to cut this knot! ]

[When Natalia tries to cut it with her rapier, it is a VERY thick living moving ice knot. But one side of the ice knot is loosened before it curls up even tighter. If she is persistent after this point, the knot will shatter and they will fall several feet. In which point Al will crawl to his mom to hold her again, not caring what just happened]

[ No, when she can't do it in one thrust, she just sort of sighs and leaves the rapier there, trying to embed it in the thing before crouching down and tugging a bit at it. No way she can untangle this...

...Mm ]

Look, we need to get this done.

[Suddenly Al looks around, his face a mess of tears. As if he heard you. Since you are RIGHT there, front row seats to the centre of the knot. Which holds them]

Hello?

[Al says sobbing and confused]

[ . . . ]

This already happened. It's the past.

[He looks down at his mom]

She is right here...

I am seeing her, holding her...

Edited (tense change) 2018-09-29 01:13 (UTC)

Because you're stuck in the past here. This whole house is a labyrinth of memory, isn't it?

[ She says this lightly, not really moving closer, but also not really pulling his hand back... huh. ]

Yes...

[He sobs]

and it's all my fault...

Edited (Cut a bit) 2018-09-29 01:32 (UTC)

Is it really?

[ It might be, who knows. She kinda doubts it, but... ]

[He looks at his mom's face sobs and cries fresh tears]

Yeah...If I just stole more money instead of playing soccer that one week.

We would of had enough to barely scrape by and she would still be alive.

Since then, I see her in my nightmares, like a curse for not helping enough.

Or her spirit haunting me while I'm awake

... You're not accountable for that. Not really. The whole thing was abusive, cruel. You're all over the place, and that's expected, but still...

[ Sigh and she makes to start to take off her left (prosthetic) arm. ]

[The knot slacks a bit, and the ice gets thinner]

All I wanted, was for mom to be happy. I got greedy trying to find my own...

[After you take the arm off, he looks at you, tenderly. He remembers a bit of a dream when your arm fell off, protecting you.]

Your...Your arm again...Wait..wasn't...wasn't that just a dream?

Of course not. You've seen me in person, of course this thing's a prosthesis.

[ It doesn't even look real. But she sort of sets it down on the ground there in front of Al. She narrows her eyes, considering spelling it off... but there's no reason to, well, say it. There's no reason to compare what they've gone through.

She tilts her head. ]

That's not greedy, though.

[He quickly realizes that is true, he had been hallucinating so much recently he was actually having some trouble holding to reality. But some of those feelings from the dream seep over and looks a bit confused at these other feelings.]

Yes, your right...I have seen you for real...

[He then takes a deep breath, then points to everything defeatingly]

What would you call it then?

Because it looks like greed to me.

This is something dad would have done. Do something, at the cost of mom suffering...

Edited (Rewrote end...getting tired, hopefully it makes more sense) 2018-09-29 06:00 (UTC)

Is it? It's not one to one. Things just happened, and it's not like you going to do your own things resulted in it.

[ Probably. She still doesn't have a clear idea of what happened in full detail. But she says it with some confidence. ]

She took so much for me...too much

If I had just stolen more, we would have never been there, then the drug bust wouldn't have mattered.

She wouldn't have become "collateral damage" when she was just looking for me, a coward just hiding, praying for it all to be some nightmare.

Children can't be accountable for that... is what most adults would say. And truthfully, I would say that, so perhaps I'm getting closer.

[ She glances at the arm she deposited and, ]

It's silly.

You're the second one to basically say I'm innocent.

How, is any of this right?

[He sees the arm and cocks his eyebrow curiously]

What's silly?

It's not right, not really. And you're not innocent, per se, but you also can't be accountable for things that were far beyond your control. [ She presses her lips together, ] The silly part is how hard it is to accept that there were forces beyond your control. To admit that is, to me, far more scary than living with guilt or anger or whatever.

[He nods his head slowly]

Oh? So what part did I play in her death? Or...well, this entire shit show I guess.

It just feels like, fate keeps punishing me for her death and everything else.