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

1-2 yeehaw

[bestaround]

[ Duplicates are not an oddity to a YoRHa unit. They were a fact of life, multiples of any given unit deployed as seen fit, created over and over again as their lives were taken time after time on the battlefield; 9S is intimately familiar with being slain dozens of times over the course of only a few years. Simply put, the act of looking upon his own face was far from strange.

However, as the week goes on, 9S is well aware by now that near everyone else was experiencing the same, and their doubles had less than good intentions—nevermind that he hasn't a clue how anyone here would be capable of slapping together another YoRHa model to begin with. There's no explanation for where these copies are coming from, but after witnessing their destructive acts—his own included, horrifying as that is—9S knows he can at least do something about his.

It takes days longer than he would've liked, but eventually the deed is done. When Harrowhark approaches, he's tugging a katana out of the chest of a slain body identical in appearance to his own, a rusty red staining the clothing; there's a peculiar scratch as he does, metal grinding against metal. The explanation that follows is met with a frown (in part because of what she asks, the other... is that appearance), but it's difficult to tell with half his face covered up. ]

If you're looking for bones, you're not gonna find any here.

[ Both he and the corpse 9S stands over appear quite human, though, so it's reasonable to assume any stranger would think there's any to be taken. There's yet to be anyone who's looked at him and saw him for the android he is. ]

[skeletonize]

( once she had dragged it out of the seemingly-corrosive waters of the ground floor, harrowhark had pondered over her own doppelganger's corpse, testing it for veracity. she was no sheltered scholar of the sixth — she could not touch the body and peer into its cellular structure, so unfortunately, she is limited only to her immediate senses. what she finds is that if this is some trick, it is a devilishly convincing one. as far as she can tell, the dental print of the double was identical to her own, so... what did that mean? is there a necromantic solution to the production of a copy like this? there is the manipulation of the soul, there is the building of a flesh-and-bone body, but even if one could create a vessel that was identical to a person, how could a revenant be coaxed into it and controlled?

at the end of the day, it's all conjecture. perhaps the other bodies will provide more clues, but with as little information as she's been able to draw from this place... it's doubtful.

the new profusion of bodies (and the welcome bloom of thanergy that they release) offers opportunity for her, however. being limited in resources for her necromancy is an unwelcome inhibition, and so she makes her offer in order to remedy it however she can. as she speaks to 9S, however, there's a falter in her explanation as he wrenches (in the very literal sense of the word) the sword free from the double's chest, and as she finishes her point, it tapers off in the way of a person who has discovered they have wasted breath on something pointless.

at his response, she doesn't immediately answer. instead she steps forward in a swift, clipped movement, reaching out without hesitation or concern to touch the arm of the so-called corpse, testing. her expression clouds over as she confirms what he'd said herself, and she stands, sighing a short breath through her nose. )

An automaton... ( she says it with derision — there's something in her tone of voice that seems to imply, how dare it have the indecency of being made of something so useless as metal. the deathless Emperor and his Houses had never invested much in such things — necromancy ran in stark contrast of them, and the cold, unpliable material was off-putting. at the end of the day, harrowhark does not trust anyone that would not produce a useful corpse in the event of their untimely demise. )

Then we are of little use to one another. ( she looks back to the automaton, dark eyes sharply scrutinizing in the painted pits of the skull-like mask. the band wrapped around his eyes isn't something that is too odd to her, considering she wears something similar in bright light — were he not inorganic, she might suspect he more likely than others here to be from a familiar universe, but that is certainly not the case here. )

Unless you have discovered any information about these. ( she indicates the deactivated body with a glance. )

[bestaround]

[ Likewise, there is no quick response from him, his mouth pursing into a thin line instead. She's clearly disappointed that he cannot provide her with what she desires; a small part of him briefly feels guilty for this, but in the next moment he realizes how stupid that is, given how baffling her request is to begin with. Were she in any need for bolts and wires would be understandable, as they could serve many purposes, but bones? 9S can't imagine one useful thing about them.

Unless it isn't about usefulness at all. One look at her makes it evident she has a... fondness, or something, for the skeletal look. Being around humans somehow made them make less sense.

9S' posture slacks as his head tilts toward her, hilt of the sword gripped loosely around his fingers, though he appears scuffed enough that it shows this was no simple task taking down his opponent. Luckily, he had a weapon whereas his copy didn't; it may still be wreaking havoc around the mall otherwise. ]

Besides what we already know?

[ Which isn't much, beyond the obvious, but 9S hasn't had this personal a confrontation against the more human of the doubles. He doesn't think he could if he wanted to; the programming in YoRHa units were not made to discern between "good" and "evil" humans, and so raising his weapon against any of them would take a tremendous amount of willpower. He can, at least, shoo them away from causing more problems, but that's hardly useful when it comes to gathering information. ]

Hate to disappoint, but not really. Turns out there's no use trying to hack into the body of another Scanner, so I didn't get anything out of them before this.

[ He hasn't actually tried before this week, but it comes as little surprise. They're designed to be experts when it comes to taking control of another mechanical being's self, and that means fending off the same attack done on themselves. Figures it'd go down like this. ]

What good is a human body over this, anyway?

[ She's seeking them out, so clearly there's something to them he's missing here. Other than the bones. ]

[skeletonize]

( oh, but it is entirely about usefulness. fondness, yes, of course, but seldom few would criticize harrowhark nonagesimus of sentimentality without swiftly thereafter punctuating it with raucous laughter. she was, much like the skeleton itself, a severe embodiment of form following function. even her taste in accessorizing was functional, at the end of the day. each shard of bone in her hands was a deadly weapon, and she liked to be very sure she was never unarmed.

her expression is as dry and brittle as kindling at his highly unnecessary question. there is a very painful beat, and then she replies, articulating each syllable, ) Obviously.

( but if he is a machine, perhaps there was a different lens with which he could use to examine the synthetic remains before them — it was a long shot, surely, but she believed it had been worth asking. unfortunately, he wasn't any more enlightened on this subject than she was. she leaves the subject of "hacking" alone — sounds like some drivel from one of the comics gideon was always wasting her time with — but it further underlines something which she had already come to realize by her own power.

he had offered what little information he had readily enough, so after a short hesitation, she offers some of her own. ) I am no bleary-eyed scribe of the Sixth House, but from my own cursory examination, these bodies are identical to their original down to the cellular level. ( she hates how this makes her wish that she had palamedes sextus at her side. the two of their egos would crowd a room, but he was damned useful. certainly he would have found something more specific or interesting.

she is drawn from her fretting over the warden of the sixth house by the question. it's so banal she doesn't even want to bother with an answer, but this place has forced her to bend on this standard impulse of hers — and even then, it would be considerate to even call how she responds an "answer." ) Is it necessary for you to know? They are of use to me. And I can make them of use to all of us, but it is more difficult when I am limited in supply.