MAY TDM

[monstertruckers]

code

Things are a little stranger than usual at the gas station and garage. Namely that gravity just isn't working as it should. Objects float, pieces of the floor float... Even unlucky new arrivals can also find themselves floating! It's going to be a challenge to get around without any scrapes or scratches... Though at least there's what looks like a hospital nearby? Granted, it's an upside down hospital, but it's better than nothing.

01: SUMMONING CIRCLE

Drifters come to with an odd floating sensation hooked into their stomachs, and instead of laying on the concrete find themselves drifting a foot or two above the floor. An unfortunate few may be stuck on the ceiling. Whether they crash down hard into the floor (and the various vials, daggers, and broken glass scattered about) or remain floating in the air is a coin toss.

Still, it might be best to lend a hand with pulling them back to the ground, and hoping gravity will work as normal in another breath or two.

Once they make their way out, they can see a gas station and garage located in the midst of strange, floating rocks… And an upside down hospital close by, for those who had a rougher landing.

02: START UP

New arrivals will have a similar experience to before; a Convoy waiting for them, and a collection of vehicles, one of which feels like it belongs to them. The key to the vehicle may already be in the ignition, on the dashboard… It may have even been on their person, ever since they woke up in that garage. Either way, Drifters have the keys to the vehicle now.

…But there’s a few rough edges on these vehicles. Flat tires, cracked windows and mirrors, maybe some stuck doors and locks; all of them the sort of thing that requires two pairs of hands and supplies. The garage can take care of the (sometimes floating) supplies… Now it’s just a matter of finding some extra hands.

And hopefully no one's vehicle has decided to float. But one can never be sure in a place like this.

03: HUSKS AND HAUNTS

The inverted hospital seems to have trouble deciding the exact formation of its hallways, whether the new arrivals should be walking on the ceiling, floors, or walls. But one thing that is certain: this place isn’t entirely deserted. Warnings of “Beware the Husks” have been spray painted on the walls. Metallic bodies line those same halls, some of them broken open. A wet trail leads from the broken Husks to the rafters… Where several odd monsters wait to drop down. Some look like they’ve merged with the hospital equipment, while others look like they’ve been cobbled together from different body parts. And all of them look ready to turn the newcomers into a corpse, or part of a specimen collection.

Strange, malformed chimeric creatures that are Unknown stalk the hallways. Unknowns come in three different colors, red aligned with fire, green with poison, and purple with lightning.

Adding to that are the various screens flickering on, and diagnose new arrivals as infected. The screens declare the infection seems to be contained, but requires further study… And if the monsters aren't enough to worry about, there’s also the restraint systems trying to activate and tie the new arrivals down.

04: TESTING (CW: Needles)

The deeper someone plunges into the hospital, the more the building reacts to them. More defenses are deployed, treating them as thieves or intruders. Traps and monsters alike wait for them, with syringes melded into the forms of attackers, or lining places where someone might step or reach for. The syringes make a quick bite on skin… But it’s only a few minutes later where the effects become clear. Something in those syringes is now in the blood and forcing monster transformations. There might be an antidote amongst the supplies… Or the newcomers might need to rely on each other, in order to stay anchored.

The needles can also force temporary Swarm traits, along with:
+Group Mind: compelled to link thoughts with other Drifters, to share emotions, memories, and achieve cohesion.
+An increasing reliance on telepathy/empathy/etc in place of speech.
+Increasing collectivist mindset. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few; this becomes more evident during high stress situations.
+Compelled to hunt and share their prey with others.
+Gravity Affinity: If possessing wings or the ability to wall climb, may freely hunt/traverse corrupted gravity areas.

05: LONG WAY DOWN

A portion of the gas station breaks away with groan and a rumble. And it is slowly pulled up and up, taking a portion of new comers with it! They (and anyone watching) will need to act fast, as gravity starts to go weird the further they rise. They’ll need to find a way back down, taking any supplies from the now-floating garage that they can grab.

What’s more, they are drifting closer to the broken moon, and that seems to be having a strange effect on those stranded on the new floating ruin. They may start to feel their control fray, and their forms shift, the higher they rise.

In terms of getting back down, there’s a handful of tow lines in the ruin that might work as ropes. There’s also a few pieces of rock that are floating up more slowly, and could work as stairs back down… Or there’s just jumping and falling fifty feet and hoping for the best.

06: PSYCHIC ECHOES

There's one last quirk to this area; a few scattered bits of odd plantlife, and the odd dead brain monster. While these things aren't a threat on their own (beyond being unnerving) they still pack a psychic punch; mainly in the form of temporary psychic abilities.

It's possible that after coming in contact with either plants or corpses, newcomers will find themselves gifted with either empathy (projecting or receiving emotions) telepathy, OR the ability to share their dreams with others, and having their dreams influenced by others in turn. This effect fades in just a day or so, but is still capable of causing mishaps.

MICRO ENCOUNTERS:

PLEASE NOTE! These are small bits of set dressing for players to include in threads if they wish, rather than full fledged prompts or events. You may handwave your exploration of these areas, or thread them out.

Broadcast: The garage contains a few burnt out monitors. But a handful of them are playing a message over and over again on loop, filled with static. It’s a recording of important looking people in lab coats advising people to remain indoors and avoiding all objects falling from the sky. Especially “moon shards.” They insist that they are working to contain and cure the infection, but the safest action is to remain inside.

Warped Air: As seen in Long Way Down, the air overhead has strange warped pockets in it. There seem to be slightly different shards hanging suspended in the air, looking more silvery than the surrounding rocks. Almost like it could have fallen from the broken moon overhead.

Medical supplies: Most of the medical supplies found in the hospital seem to consist of healing salves and potions, a handful of healing herbs, and a few antidotes for poison or sickness. As for reverting transformations… It’s advised that new comers be careful of taking any experimental medicine. It may revert a change. It may also leave them hallucinating nightmares and fears, and they’ll be wanting someone close by to help administer the drug.

NAVIGATION || RESERVES || APPLICATIONS

Comments

[serialmurderbot]

That's enough to bump the certainty up to 98% - this man has some sort of tie to Serph's digital junkyard, which probably means another AI implanted into a human form. Potentially another rogue, given everything. But SecUnit remembers what Serph said about breaking from the Law in order to not have to devour the weak, and this asshole doesn't seem bothered by that.

So SecUnit turns its stare on Heat. The strange buzzing sound that echoes its voice gets thicker, more hair-raising. It shoves up one of its jacket sleeves, deliberately deploying the energy weapons in its forearms. The skin around it is strange, the edges of it going grey and platelike, seamed like it's some kind of automaton.

"That," it says, "would be a bad idea."

[iron_stomach]

Heat's as close to being a rogue as an AI can get without actually being one. He still acknowledges orders .. at least from one very specific source. One that happens to be in the vicinity, somewhere, in theory.

How much of his abrasiveness is nature and how much is some effort to provoke others so he can freely tear them apart is a very, very good question. As SecUnit deploys what looks awfully like little guns from its forearms, the latter might be working; the buzzing reminding him of the second encounter with Beelzebub. Does this guy turn into a fly too? ..Then again, they'd never seen Beelzebub's human form. .... Naaah.

But the smirk that crosses his face isn't even remotely friendly, leaving the view of the blue sky and its wisps of white clouds for later in favor of something more edible. "Sounds like you made your choice already. Hope you've got more to bring than those little pea-shooters, if you're gonna be stupid enough to start something." The smirk widens. "Last chance to do the smart thing and pick the right side while you can."

[serialmurderbot]

The more Heat smirks, the more SecUnit's expression goes deadly still, its eyes actually fixing on his - it might hate eye contact, but it makes exceptions for proving how serious it is. "I'm not making threats," it says. "I'm telling you the reality of the situation. You're the newcomer here."

(Assumption, but a well-grounded one - it has a good facial recognition index for every Drifter, by now, and it would absolutely have a profile on this asshole.)

"Your Tribes don't exist here." (Technically true, given that it doesn't know how Heat might be connected to Serph and it isn't going to throw the AI-turned-human under the bus.) "There's the Convoy, and then there's the entire planet that wants to tear us apart. And if you want to threaten to eat anyone here, I'll do to you what I did to the last person who tried to threaten me."

Cw: ableist language

[iron_stomach]

There's a certain fearlessness that comes from either being incredibly overconfident or simply incredibly oblivious, and either could fit Heat well enough. He is indeed terribly new here ... but so far he hasn't seen any evidence things didn't work the way he expected it to. Case in point, in a paradise where nobody needs to hurt each other, someone's already drawing weapons.

This pleases him. "Then everyone who's come here before now is a moron." It's slow, when he begins closing the distance between himself and SecUnit, step by casual step. "Sounds to me like turning into 'monsters' and devouring each other is still on the table. How do you know which ones to shoot and which ones to protect if you're not part of a tribe, if you don't have tag rings and aren't even wearing your tribe's colors? Guess and hope you don't kill someone you like when it's dark and demons are everywhere?"

This place is the same.

It's just brighter. There's a sun. There's plants and things. Little scurrying creatures. A bug. He's sure he saw a bug, he's still pretty sure he's hearing them. "No wonder your own guys are threatening to eat your candy ass. Who knows what side you're on."

[serialmurderbot]

SecUnit would love to say that Heat started it, by declaring he would eat it. (Yes there was an option there, but 'join my team/company/tribe or I'll kill you' isn't much of a choice. It's very familiar with that kind of "bargain.") It could argue any number of things - that the last people that had threatened to kill it were alien remnant-contaminated humans, not any of the people trapped here. Or that there's no feed any anyway humans couldn't read the ID markers without interfaces, which very few of the humans here even seemed familiar with. It could argue that it knows exactly how to keep track of the humans under its protection, thank you, it's not a fucking amateur.
All rational, all feasible. All potential paths to deescalation. Hell, it could even admit that some sort of marker for Convoy members would be a good idea.

But SecUnit knows the kind of person who does this, throws around their weight because they know they can get their way by force, if the first answer isn't the one they want to hear. And it doesn't have to put up with anyone talking condescending shit to it because they think it can't/won't fight back.

Instead, it says, "No one ever gets to brand me ever again." It doesn't even twitch, as Heat comes closer. It doesn't raise those gun arms. The only thing that moves are its eyes, still boring holes into Heat's face - metaphorically, because unlike the shit in Valorant Defenders it doesn't actually have laser beams in its eyes. "And definitely not you or your 'Tribe.'"

[iron_stomach]

"Guess that means you die then." The red haired man shrugs as if it's not really a big deal if SecUnit joins or not, and maybe it isn't. Eating comrades is strictly forbidden, reinforced by every single surviving member of the original tribe, followed by most of those conquered. "If you're not one of us, you're the enemy."

He's working on starting it. There are rules for this kind of thing, ones he's spent a lot of time working around as much as he had to, like 'don't kill the weak' and 'don't attack unprovoked'. Without any bead on SecUnit's power, it could well qualify as one of the weak for all its bluster, and thus ... he waited, and prodded a bit verbally and with presence to see if it would fire first. That would count as provocation, and he could retaliate as he wished, to any degree he wanted.

Heat wouldn't bother, if he didn't think his tribe and leader were here, if he believed that the laws handed down by Serph didn't need to be obeyed (...to the best of his ability, within reason, while he wanted to).

Unless SecUnit steps back while he approaches, it's not going to be much longer before Heat is in melee range, where he fights best and ranged capabilities become less reliable. He is counting on SecUnit being willing to fight back, and being able to be prodded into hitting first.