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

[aufsassig]

[** Please refer to Schuldig's permissions post re: his telepathy! Thanks in advance!]

▶ A — I THINK I'M DROWNING, ASPHYXIATED

[The nice thing about malls is that they're made to house people, which means that there are some things that will almost always reliably be the same. Bathrooms will never be in short supply, for example; that's just simple vendor psychology. You sell less if your would-be patrons have to bail on your store because it came down to a choice between those novelty coffee cups and pissing themselves waiting in line. They're also pretty open-air; no real risk of bottlenecks or dead-ends anywhere, because why would you want to inhibit the flow of traffic? Keeps people from reaching the stores. Less people, less revenue. Simple.

And one of the other things that you can always count on about people is that they have a knack for getting themselves hurt at the strangest times in the stupidest ways, which is how he knows that somewhere around here in one of these kiosks, he'll find at least a basic first-aid kit.

It's a good thing, too, because the residual water left over from that nasty swim though the first floor probably isn't doing any favors for the thin horizontal cuts across his palms or the shallower, narrower ones bitten into his throat.

He breaks it open without preamble, riffling through until he finds some kind of disinfectant and some miraculously still-intact bandage, and gets to wrapping.

His head is bent, his wet hair hanging in stringy clumps around his face, and he's not looking up from his work — and yet, regardless of how quietly or how unobtrusively you try to approach, as soon as you get within ten feet or so of where he's sitting, he'll pipe up: ]

See something interesting?

[If only his clothes were as dry as his irony.]

▶ B — I WANT TO BREAK THE SPELL THAT YOU'VE CREATED

[Once he's got some bandages covering his hands and neck, and has therefore become at least halfway functional, Schuldig sets off to take stock of the new surroundings. An abandoned mall is assuredly not where he'd expected to end up after the...everything...but hey, maybe he lucked out and it turns out hell really is consumerist America after all.

He's picked up one of the maps from the kiosks, making his own notes with a stub of a golf pencil he found abandoned on a shelf somewhere. Department store, bathroom, escalator down into the hell waters, food court, another bathroom, electronics store, tweenybopper apparel store...

You know, he was hoping for a sporting goods store, but fine, the Teen Poseur shop will probably have what he needs.

Sure enough, ransacking the place eventually produces a pair of fingerless gloves, which he pulls on to help hold the bandages in place — and hide them from view. More strangely, it also winds up producing a bottle of wine, which he naturally takes because, uh, why the hell wouldn't he.

So the afterlife has booze, maybe. Okay, that's not so bad.]

▶ C — YOU'RE SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL, A CONTRADICTION

[Things get a lot weirder in a hurry when he starts to realize that some of this stuff he's finding? It's not just average stuff. Some of this is looking mighty familiar, which is to say that at least some of it is actually legitimately his. It shouldn't be here; there's no possible explanation for why it is here, and yet there it is: his knife, the one that slides just right into his palm and fits like a charm, even with the bulge of the bandages in the way. And there, too — his lighter, which is frankly a big asset because it seems like there aren't any heating elements around, for all that there's frozen food.

So, okay. If that's here, then what else is?

Well. Maybe it's about time he started scoping out the local population, which is why he heads to the food court and starts rummaging around to see what's available. Eventually, he unearths a can and some paper garbage, which means soon enough he's got a little fire going, and boy, you know what that means.

It means he sure is going to be sitting here with a bag of long-stale nachos and a brick of frozen cheez product, melting the latter down into a heartwarming mass of thick yellow sludge because honestly, why the fuck not.]

▶ WILDCARD — I WANT TO PLAY THE GAME, I WANT THE FRICTION

[Want to see Schuldig around the mall somewhere? Want to prearrange a thread? Hit me up and let me know, or just drop me a starter!]