INTRO LOG #1

[collectedmods]

INTRO LOG #1

Welcome to Collected’s first Intro Log! The information we’ve provided about the setting is not exhaustive - feel free to interact with the setting as you see fit. Rather than have specific prompts, our event posts throughout the game will generally have information listed out like this and players may come up with their own prompts.

If you have questions about the setting or the intro log, please ask them HERE in the comment thread! And most of all, have fun, shoppers.

PROMPTS

The first thing anyone does is gasp for air.

It’ll feel like the first breath you’ve taken in years. That’s right; before you can even become aware of your surroundings, the most immediate thing they’ll process is that you’re in water. Foul smelling water - like rotten eggs and decay. It’s pitch black, and you’re swimming in it with only your head above the surface. If the smell doesn’t deter you, the longer you stay in will; the water stings to have on your skin, chemical in nature.

So - you need to get out. This water can’t be okay to stay in. Once you’ve gathered enough about your surroundings, you’ll see that you’re inside a mall, of sorts. There’s a large (non-functioning) escalator in front of you that will lead you to the semi-safe havens of the second floor - but be careful, because everyone’s going to be gunning for that only exit.

» Once on the second floor, exploring will lead you to a few notes of interest: Long windows and tall glass doors show the conditions outside. The sky is a burnt orange, and there is a thick sort of fog on the horizon. Nothing for miles in every direction - just an empty parking lot, completely devoid of life or any sign that anyone has come across this place in many years. Even so, you’ll find the windows and doors unlocked, so getting outside is easy… the problem is what’s out there.

A trip outside will make it instantly clear why you see no life outside the mall’s walls: exposure to the radioactive sun outside causes your skin to bubble with welts, and the thick, toxic air of the outside is impossible to inhale without keeling over. It’s blistering hot, too. Even non-organic creatures would melt or be eroded by the sun’s radioactive qualities. One thing is abundantly obvious: you cannot survive outside. Not now, at least. Those who receive a burn or other damage from the conditions outside will discover that strangely enough, upon returning inside the mall, the wound begins to heal up on its own. Slowly, and extremely painfully, but it’s healing. That’s strange…

» Another thing of note is that there’s a food court on the second floor. There, you’ll find a variety of abandoned restaurants that have varying amounts of non-perishables inside - canned vegetables and preserved meats, as well as dusty old jars of sauces and the like. There are a few walk-in freezers with hefty locks on them, but if the locks are broken or picked, there’s actually some frozen rations, as well! Many of them are not labelled, so the dining experience will be pretty hit or miss. None of the stoves or cooking appliances in the food court work anymore, either, so you’ll have to get creative when it comes to cooking up these ingredients. (Or just, you know, eat them cold.)

» Throughout the mall’s bathrooms, water fountains, and gym showers, you’ll find that all the water in the mall is suspiciously clean. Like, way too clean to be normal in a place as run-down and clearly abandoned as this. You’ll find that toilets flush completely fine, and shower water heats up (eventually). Should you be grateful, or concerned?

» There’s an electronics store on the second floor, as well, along with a internet cafe. Should you try to turn on the computers in the internet cafe, you’ll find that it only opens to the same forum page: a site called Mall Watch. It’ll prompt you to make an account and password if you try posting to it. In the electronics store, you’ll also find that any phone you forage for and try to boot up will also only open up to this forum page. Weird!

» If you’re looking for a place to sleep, the department stores of the mall still have a variety of furniture sets collecting a lot of dust. Then again, no one’s around to tell you where to sleep - and maybe you don’t trust all these new faces you arrived with. If you’re okay sleeping on the floor of a random store, more power to you.

» You’ll probably want to do something about your clothes that were stained by the black water on the first floor.. try foraging for some clothes! Looking around, you’ll find that some clothes stores have some stock left over, though everything’s generally a mess in clothing stores - it’ll take you some time to find anything that’ll fit you. Looking around enough on this second floor, you might end up stumbling across some of your own belongings or clothing, or those of your peers.

More than anything, the longer you explore and scavenge the mall, you’ll recognize how eerily silent it is. If not for you and your peers here, this place would be totally desolate. Clearly, there’s no one around for miles, and as far as you can tell, you’ll only be able to survive here for as long as the supplies here last. No one’s coming to save you - no one even knows you’re here. In every sense of the word, you are alone.

For now.



NAVIGATION

Comments

[skeletonize]

( she couldn't be bothered to memorize menial, personal facts about each individual that had her collective oss had comprised. necromancers had particular views of the self, of the body and its relation to it, and of death. they had, after all, charted death — she had known before her age had reached double digits of the River which contained the vast, seething masses of departed souls, so many driven senseless and mad with nothing for company but time and hunger. she was well-acquainted with the moment of death, having presided over final rites for scores of the Ninth's ailing and elderly, of the thanergenic bloom and the osmosis of the spirit from the tangible world past the banks of the River. and she knew just as any necromancer did that once the spirit had flown and the soul had departed that the body was no longer anything to tie sentimentality to: it was meat, fat, offal, bone, and little more.

though she would leave the majority of the lot for the flesh magicians of the Third.

her expression doesn't budge — whether or not she is a crazed murderer isn't of his concern, of course, though all of the bones she currently wore had been by donation, thank-you-very-much — though she seems perhaps a bit ... peeved by the sudden interest? oh, how harrow hates to have to explain anything. largely self-taught, she had never inherited a teacher's mien.

her gloved fingers curl around the worn column of the linea aspera, lips pursing slightly when he doesn't relinquish it entirely to her. she could try to pull it away from him, but... she preemptively saves herself from any embarrassment. as gideon might say, she has "fuck all upper-body strength."

at "doctor," her lip curls slightly. she either thinks very lowly of doctors (somewhat true, though palamedes sexuts' skill with medical necromancy was something she would begrudgingly have to acknowledge as extensive) or thinks very highly of herself (absolutely true).

all it proves to her is that he is no denizen of the Nine Houses — she could guess as much, but no one would make such a bone-headed conjecture (indeed) if they were. )

Do I look like a doctor to you, fool? ( her tone of voice is acerbic. she gives a light tug on the bone. ) I am a necromancer.

( she says this like it should answer this and all of his questions (it should). )

[takeroot]

[Constantin makes a face, opening his mouth to speak and then shutting it abruptly with a wry, private little grin— she would, ah, likely not appreciate his saying something like 'What is the difference?' even in jest. At least it seems that they both have a less than spectacular opinion of doctors, although it would be best not to linger on it lest he must admit aloud that her appearance is, hmm...

Jarring? Shocking? Unsettling, in its own special way? He's seen decorations of bone, to be fair, but none of them human.

He is still holding the femur, however, and drums it once, twice with his fingers before he lets it go, apparently satisfied.]

Of course! My mistake! I suppose you aren't much of a crow, after all— none of that irritating business with the beaks, you know.

[He gestures in front of his own face, a beak gesture, meant to signify a plague mask. This clearly needs no further explanation.]

A sorceress, then! I've never met one with a predilection for... death.

[....]

So! How does one learn to judge a man's life from his remains? I was never taught any magic, myself.

[skeletonize]

( no, she would not appreciate something like that being said, constantin, and especially in jest — humour was a fickle plaything of people who had far more time on their hands than sense in their heads (her erstwhile cavalier being a prime example of this). the only thing that matters presently is that he relinquishes the femur to her, and she retrieves it with a short, clipped motion, feeling an odd wave of relief fall over her at having at least one piece of oss on hand should the shit really hit the fan at any unforeseen future moment.

something about his nomenclature and pantomimed symbolism is lost upon her — probably because the doctors he spoke of were something considered prehistoric to her own civilization, and no order of their own ranks had ever thought to replicate the plague doctors of the pre-Resurrection. she lets it go, however. this is not the first nor the last time she will be confounded by someone she meets in this place, she thinks, completely correctly.

"sorceress"... it is not the term she would prefer, no, but if he must. ) That is a narrow view of it, ( she sniffs, yet offering no further explanation. in truth, necromancy was a mastery of not only death but the life which preceded it as well — a complete command over all aspects of the human animal. but harrow is a bone adept, and her art was considerably skewed in the direction of "dead" rather than "alive," so she will let it pass.

she is silent a long moment, brow falling heavily over her near-black eyes at the question. it's not magic, not at all. so she approaches her response from a different angle: )

How does a child learn to speak their parents' tongue? How does an artist learn to replicate an image on the page? Neither are taught. ( she swings the leg bone in a short arc downwards, the lateral condyle making a satisfying smack as it connects with the meat of her other palm. ) Time. Observation. Practice.

( growing up in a glorified charnel house helped. )

[takeroot]

Alright... certainly. Did your mother not teach you to speak? Even my mother spared a paltry few weeks to entertain me before sloughing off the duty onto someone else.

[Is this interpretation too literal? She did say learning to speak isn't taught, which he supposes is almost true, but surely not entirely-- hm!

Well, it doesn't entirely matter to the question at hand, which is the bit about the bones. He waves off his own sidebar there as if to pretend he never asked or started running his mouth about his mother, ah— it's best just to loop back around to the beginning.]

What, then, do you observe and practice with your multitudes of time? You stare at bones until they speak? You told me that man's history with only a glance!

[He wonders then if it is only bones, if she can tell by glancing at him standing here in front of her how poorly his health is, how many times he has lingered on death's threshold only to step back uncertainly into life— but that's not something one asks a stranger about. No, the man dead for a handful of decades is a much more polite topic.]

And what do you need a man's old parts for, anyway?

[skeletonize]

( harrow's brow furrows; the already-beleaguered layer of face paint threatens to begin to scale off altogether. she had been a quick and canny child, but even by the time she had been able to speak, she had been late in learning to read, and by the time she learned to read, she was late in learning the fundamentals of basic necromantic theorems. did a parent ever truly take time to actually hold class on what should come naturally? even griddle had learned to speak the common tongue, and her primary sources had been scolding and questionable comics and magazines.

regardless, she composes her answer, which is a terse, ) She was not a patient woman.

( in any case, what she means is that one does not always attend a class to learn something. sometimes the knowledge merely accumulates over time, like dust on an untended and neglected bookcase. the Ninth necromancers were known for their mastery over bones, and none were so prodigious as their Reverend Daughter.

she sighs another long, aggrieved breath through her nose, eyes growing heavy-lidded as she musters the very limited patience she seemingly inherited from her parent(s). she decides to aggressively kill two birds with one stone (or bone?). ) I've learned what I have from what I do. To become a bone adept of any worth, one must become knowledgeable of the theory but also the form in practice. I couldn't very well conjure a construct worth the oss it cost to create if I didn't understand the anatomy.

As for the owner of this and his history, ( she says, turning over the femur in her hands, ) age becomes simple to tell when most of your house have been dead for decades or are likely to join them soon. Osteoporosis. Arthritis. It's easy enough to see the symptoms in bone when I have seen it in both life and death hundreds of times before. From there, it is merely a ( very ) educated guess.