EVENT #1

[collectedmods]

EVENT #1

JULY 15TH - JULY 17TH

Time in the mall thus far has been ripe with tension - between the silence, the lack of resources, and the worrying conditions outside, it’s normal for morale to be less than high. But on the early morning of the 15th, things will truly take a turn for the wicked.

Starting on July 15th, and continuing on until the following Wednesday, characters will find that there are doppelgangers of them in the mall.

The first sign of this will come on the first day they even appear: in the early morning of the 15th, just as the radioactive sun is starting to rise and characters begin to stir from slumber, they’ll find a smoking heap of… bodies of mall residents with matching clothes to boot outside the mall’s front doors, cooking in the radioactive sun. And with them? Most of what was left of the frozen rations from the food court’s freezers. No more philly steak and cheese hot pockets!

On the First Floor, much of the remaining furniture that had not been in immediate use by characters has been torn apart and thrown into the toxic waters below. Floating amongst these dismantled furniture pieces are what appear to be drowned bodies of mall residents.

Doppelgangers found on the first day of this event are more likely to resemble characters whom have survival experience, or have adapted well to the mall thus far. Inspecting any of these first bodies discovered will reveal that they are identical to mall residents down to the fingerprints. Characters may retrieve the bodies from the First Floor and even the outside (if they work quickly enough) for inspection.

JULY 17TH - JULY 21ST

Throughout the rest of the week, characters can be expected to be dealing with a myriad of trouble from these doubles:

» Witnessing doppelgangers sabotaging survival efforts. Most commonly, doppelgangers will be doing things throughout the week like destroying food, cutting power lines, ruining water piping - you name it. They are difficult to catch, as they flee whenever seen, and can contort into impossible shapes to evade capture. If captured, they will either continue struggling until they escape or are killed, or they will try to convince their captor that they are the original - and if threatened, will begin to beg for their life (convincingly.) See below for more information about the doppelgangers themselves.

» Hearing screams for help identical to the mall residents' voices. Doppelgangers will be extremely convincing actors, and will attempt to lure away and confuse resident characters by any means necessary.

» The doppelgangers become more similar to their “originals” as the week goes on. Doppelgangers will be able to act increasingly in likeness to their originals towards the end of the week. Each day they continue living, they become smarter, more convincing, more advanced at impersonating their originals. This means that if they are witnessed apart from their “original” in the latter parts of the week, they may be capable of carrying on simple conversations and acting as their “original” in order to create confusion and plant seeds of doubt over who is the “real” one.

JULY 22ND

Almost as abruptly as they’d come, the doppelgangers will meet their end on the following Wednesday: those who had not already been killed by characters present in the mall will be found dead on the morning of the 22nd.

Corpses will be in every inch of the mall, and killed in a bunch of different ways: some look to be freshly killed, as though they had been ambushed by surprise (throat slit from behind, pushed from a high area, etc.) Others seem as though they have been dead for days - and are beginning to rot. These corpses will not disappear, and will need to be cleaned up or disposed of by the characters, unless they’d like the mall to start smelling a whole lot worse. Get to work, shoppers!

More than anything, their sudden appearance and equally sudden demise does beg the question - can you trust the ones around you?

NOTES

Welcome to Collected’s first main event! We’re going to provide some additional notes about the doppelgangers here, so everyone will know what they’re dealing with:

» Doppelgangers are identical physically to their originals.

» Doppelgangers DO NOT have the magical or supernatural abilities of their originals. They will retain only the skills and abilities related to their physiology (like physical strength), as they are biological duplicates (or mechanical, in the case of androids).

» Doppelgangers will be wearing clothes identical to the ones characters arrived in.

» There is only ONE copy of each character in the mall. This means that if you would like to have your character among the first ones discovered by characters, they won’t find another copy of their doppelganger doing things throughout the mall for the remainder of the event.

» Doppelgangers can be killed - they are not immortal and will not heal the same way characters do in the setting. However, they are extremely difficult to capture, and will flee if they are witnessed participating in sabotage, or if they are caught impersonating their original. Of note is the fact that they are strangely able to contort into impossible shapes to evade capture - bending limbs the other way, folding in half, that kind of deal.

» You are free to NPC your own doppelganger (so long as you’re not solely tagging as your double the entire event). If you’d like to handwave other characters witnessing your doppelganger doing things throughout the week, or handwave your doppelganger successfully interacting with your CR while impersonating your character, that is fine as well!

If you have any questions please feel free to ask them HERE. Have fun, shoppers!


NAVIGATION

Comments

02

[oomfies]

[ This isn't the first time Lottie has seen her corpse. She found it when she thinks it was just murdered - or whatever is honestly going on. The only difference is, instead of showing some empathy like Zuko is, she just.. Left it there. Made it someone else's problem until she absolutely had to face it herself. And boy, is she facing it all right - that green hair is hard to miss, even slightly obscured by the corpse beside it.

Her double at least looks like she's sleeping now (if she squints, really squints, the piece of cloth looks like a cute face mask!), looking marginally less horrifying than she did post-being pushed off a ledge. Because of her own staring, she doesn't say much at first either. What do you say to the dude who 'buried' your body as best he could in a modern day mall? ]

Uh.. Cool setup.

[ Oh, no. Fuck. That was terrible. Shit. ]

Not like literally cool. I just mean that it's cool of you to do this.

[fireglowup]

[Lottie's voice manages to snap whatever spell is hanging in the air, and Zuko promptly stumbles into speech.] Uh...

[...And finishes awkwardly arranging the cloth on corpse-Lottie's face, like it will stop being the same as alive-Lottie's if they can't see it.] ...Yeah.

[He scratches his neck awkwardly, looking at the macabre little arrangement. Apparently the intended compliment hadn't registered.] I couldn't just leave them all there. I'm just... not sure what else to do with them.

[In the Fire Nation, bodies are ceremonially cremated. He doesn't know if it's different in other countries. He figures maybe disposal should be left up to the, uh, owners? Is that something that should be voted on?]

[oomfies]

[ Ironically enough, she's been thinking about that for the better part of the day since finding her body. How they would even dispose of it (she says they, only because it's something she distinctly does not want done by herself), what would happen if they just left it. Although, she knows. They'll just rot, like the first batch of bodies. Lottie gives a shrug of her shoulders, sighs quietly. ]

Yeah, I'm gonna be honest. I didn't think I'd have to consider this til I was like.. I don't know, 60 or something.

[ She tries adding some humor into the conversation, as if it'll make the body between them any less real. Just like the other bodies resting peacefully beside it. She scuffs her shoes on the ground awkwardly - ]

You, uh, found yours yet?

[fireglowup]

[That's a weird thing to say. Doesn't Lottie have any funerary traditions? Zuko decides not to ask. He certainly isn't going to tell anybody else how to react to their own corpse. Especially since he can't relate.]

Uh, no.

[He hasn't seen his around--or a live version, either. So either someone else found it or he doesn't have one, and knowing his luck it's probably the latter, and that probably indicates something horrible.

Anyway.]

I haven't exactly gone looking. It's kind of weird. [Which she would know, because...] Uh, I mean, sorry about that.

[oomfies]

[ ..Well, he's not wrong. And, sadly, it'd be even weirder to admit she went on a walk today, finally left her cave, on the off chance she might run into it. Call it morbid curiosity! ]

No.. It's okay.

[ Smartly, she decides not to say that tidbit out loud, instead sounding apologetic in her own way when she speaks. It's not like he had to drag her ass (literally) and lay her to metaphorical and physical rest. Especially when she should've done that, herself. ]

I'm the one who should be saying sorry.. [ She shoves her hands in the pockets of her jacket, eyes flickering down from the body to him. ] I know a working fountain you can wash your hands in?? Not that I'm saying, you know, [ He smells, because he doesn't, ] I just figure.. Germs. Death.