memestertrucks | MAY TDM

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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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Patience is a human girl whose mind has been rendered into "a being of pure thought-energy" and attached to a borderline sapient Acrocanthosaurus, a large theropod dinosaur. She's got some kind of harsh-textured dark brown covering that looks a little like stiff fur from a distance but might be quill-like feathers or just modified scales up close. Brighter amber spots are visible and longer quills sprout down the length of her spine, standing or bristling at times. When she talks, you 'hear' the voice of a teen girl ('tough jock' edition) but it's a psychic overlay over the sounds an acro can make - chuffs, growls, clicking etc, which can be perceived under it if you pay enough attention.

...to make things a little easier, she's also 'only' about neovenator size.]
Summoning circle
[you've always wanted to see a dinosaur flailing in the air making frustrated huffs and hisses, haven't you?

Patience can't get her feet or tail to the ground, regardless of kicking and gyrating, and that's taken precedence over the sight and smell of this very un-Cretaceous setting, until she catches sight of you. Then she goes still, moving her head to stare dead on out of both round red-orange eyes. After a long moment:]

Oh, this is bullshit.

wildcard
[I gotta go. If you wanna encounter Patience wandering around outside or having a harder time in the enclosed environment of inside, attacking stuff etc, feel free! Should she see something (someone?) weird and threatening she tries to deescalate first with lines like 'Okay, look, if we gotta rumble we'll rumble, but we can talk this out']

Edited 2025-05-19 01:57 (UTC)

[A talking dinosaur. Well then...

Akechi himself is quite the sight. Large, black wings and matching feathers covering his face and neck (and likely anything concealed by his clothes). Crow-like talons poke out from the fingertips of his black, leather gloves. Large, hooked horns curve out of his forehead, big cat-like ears flick, and a scorpion-like tail lays at his feet.

He brings a hand to his chin, a crease in his brow.]

I may be able to bring you down, though it would help if we were somewhere more spacious.

[yeah, that's weird. She's more struck by how small he seems though. In Marcia's body she doesn't feel any bigger than usual - yeah, there's the tail and totally different arrangement of mass, standing is only really comfortable when her body's held horizontal as if half bent over etc, but she feels normal.

So this weird guy seems about the size of a toddler. It's one thing seeing Mr. London all little, he's a kinda salamander-like running dinosaur. But the additional features still leave Akechi a lot more human-shaped than anything in the Cretaceous. The smell of him is also different, not that she knows what 'human' should smell like through an acro nose.]

Right, well, we can't get everything we want. Just do it.

[It's funny, really. For a Japanese boy, he's rather tall, at 5'10'', but compared to a dinosaur... well, that's an entirely different matter.

Still, true to his word, he steps back, when leaps into the air, using his wings to maneuver through the air. He's had time to practice, to adjust to the gravity here...

So he circles behind her, trying to push her toward the ground.]

[Patience holds very still, suppressing the urge to snap at flying too close thing. This is not dignified but it's better than Zane's 'girly lessons'. She guesses. Little dude isn't obviously laughing at her anyway.

She's covered in a dense coat of flattened integument that could be keeled scales, or else heavy quills. It's not painful to the touch but not soft, either, almost like rough, shaggy bark. She twitches at any contact, the tip of her tail flicking.]

Ugh, baby hands...

[Once she's safely grounded, Akechi lets go and drifts back to the floor. Best to respect boundaries, at any rate.

Still, he gives her a curious look.]

Were you not always a dinosaur, then?

[Once her feet are on the concrete, Patience shakes herself off with a dry rattle of quills and scales.]

No, and I wasn't planning on being a dinosaur for any longer than I had to be. It's for a stupid reason and let me guess: whatever nonsense this is, it's going to draw it out.

Regrettably, you may accrue further changes.

[His wings partially unfold for emphasis.

Really, he's quite the sight, between the horns, the talons, the feathers, the ears... to say nothing of the scorpion tail he recently obtained.]

Almost everyone here has grown more... monstrous, for lack of a better word. Even nonhuman inhabitants are subject to the moon's so-called blessings.

[Patience sighs deeply. Her breath smells like carrion]

So you've not always been a... what are you? [now she inhales audibly through her oblong snout] Sphinx... bug... man?

[she's not totally ignorant of mythology but not up on all the monsters either.]

This is such bullshit. I'm a basketball player. I used to do track.

(no subject)

undyingcrow - 2025-05-24 16:51 (UTC) - Expand

[The sight of the flailing, floating dinosaur was very surprising to Levi, so he's got his rifle in his hands without even noticing it. But then she speaks and the dog-eared, dog-nosed and moth winged boy relaxes (kind of, people were scary in a different way). That was a person, though he's not going to bother to try and figure out if she's already changed or if people just look like that wherever Patience is from.]

...Uh, yeah. H-how did you get up there?

Edited 2025-05-23 18:18 (UTC)

[there's a mutant toddler pointing a gun at her. Or, well, he seems like the size of a toddler. She doesn't feel enormous in Marcia's body and it's not like she's had a lot of things she could check scale against. Trees, but lots of trees aren't all that big. Long-necked dinosaurs, but not all of those were - are? - looming behemoths, there probably were ones with bodies as big as horses.

Maybe this is a small mutant.]

How should I know, pipsqueak? It was dark, now I'm here. [She inhales audibly through her heavy snout.] Ugh, this place reeks.

Y-yeah...most people wake up on the floor.

[But the talking dragon(???) thing wasn't the only thing floating, was she? It shouldn't be surprising given everything outside, but here we were.

He straps his rifle to his back, careful of the big weird wings.]

I don't know what you're used to, but none of this place really smells great.

La-di-dah. Good for most people. You got any more obvious statements to make?

[The banded quills running down her spine bristle and flatten again. Patience herself smells... well, like mud and carrion and a big animal.]

[Levi frowns and crosses his arms.]

Just that you're not really in the position to back up that attitude. You want my help or not?

[He's not afraid of big fluffy lizard thing. He's fought worse.]

Wow, you're offering? It sounded like you were just going to stand around. Staring at me.

[she's not the biggest fan of being stared at, though she's used to it being for other reasons.]

I dunno, the standing and staring seems to be working pretty well so far. You don't look like you're in danger or anything and there's a chance gravity will flip back on sooner or later. Or reverse. Or something else.

[So SecUnit's first thought is monster.

In its defense, okay: while there have been plenty of people in the Convoy who've experienced changes, most of them are still vaguely person-shaped. Or, in its case, it's been entombed in a metal husk and therefore not exposed to some of the most horrifying and extensive changes. There are plenty of monsters, but everyone in the Convoy has remained relatively humanoid, in at least 50% of their body composition.

Which means that it's powering up energy weapons and aiming them, until Patience speaks and it immediately shuts that shit down. Fuck.]

Yeah, it's bullshit. [No, it doesn't know what it's agreeing is bullshit, but given how much literally everything here is, agreement is a safe option.]

[that's a weird sight but Patience is too distracted by human-scale people seeming like toddlers, see above, to feel threatened. But it agrees and so she's moved to elaborate. She claps her jaws shut on nothing as if she could bite the problem.]

I play basketball. 'Basketball player turns into little-armed dinosaur' is already an amazingly stupid obvious joke. Hilarious. I don't need... [she swings her heavy head back and forth as if having bitten the problem she's worrying it.]

This is going to waste a lot of time before I can get back and do what I gotta do to actually go home, isn't it? [Physically she is distinctly growling, even if her psychic overlay voice isn't:] I hate time travel.

[What the fuck is basketball, it nearly asks, but it doesn't actually care that much, and the ball part makes it obvious through context that it's one of those human games that it's had to break up now and again.

Less important mostly because:]

This place does that. [Beat.] The fuck do you mean, time travel?

[she tries to rub her forehead. Right. Arms too short. Patience is aware that if she crimps her neck down just right she can just about get her cheek but forehead is Not happening.]

So there was a gas leak or something months ago, right? A bunch of kids collapsed and when they got up they acted weird. One started writing about all of them going way back in time but I don't know why, it was intangible or whatever and they all were ghosts and possessed dinosaurs.

[she pauses for a few sullen beats and spreads her arms out to the sides. Her feet are hanging, toes slightly curled and birdlike.] Apparently it wasn't a story.

[Okay, what the fuck.]

You're a human child posssessing a dinosaur.

[This sounds like a great plot for one of its shows, and a really, really shitty lie for real life. Even having lived out the creepy fucking transformations this place puts them all through.]

Fuck no, I'm eighteen.

[she is in fact fifteen. eighteen is a special age, a beckoning point where everything will change and something, finally, will get better and she won't have to rely on and inevitably be betrayed or let down by anyone.]

I'm a human adult possessing a dinosaur, and very aware of how stupid it is.

[Sure. But... SecUnit isn't great at judging human ages, let alone human age in dinosaur, and from its experience with Amena even humans in their late adolescence can sound entirely whiny. ART or Doctor Mensah would be able to tell, but SecUnit just has to try and figure out what that number means in context. Presumably an age of legal adulthood thing, it guesses.]

Sure.

[And now it has to turn its attention to the actual problem here, which is the complete and utter lack of gravity.]

Hold on. [And it grabs a bit of the wall as it moves into the strange bubble of the gravity field, calculating trajectories.]

[Patience knows enough about lying to not get defensive about it. She moves a forearm in some equivalent to a shrug, like, whatever. The quills running down her spine start to bristle as weird smelling thing starts... what?]

Whaaaat are you doing.

(no subject)

serialmurderbot - 2025-05-30 16:08 (UTC) - Expand

[It really was a sight. A dinosaur wiggling on the floor in front of a middle-aged woman, with fox ears and four tails.

Natsuhi had been staring wide-eyed at the sudden appearance, getting ready to bolt because that sure was a dinosaur. And she wasn't a fighter. Then the dino cursed? She blinked.]

Excuse me?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

MAY TDM

Patience McCray | Dinoverse

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Summoning circle