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]

( any child of the Nine Houses born with a necromantic sensitivity and trained to harness it develops a sense beyond senses of thanergenic signatures — a necromancer needs thanergy, after all, to perform their art, and it was imperative that they be able to know it in its blooms, its streams, its trickles, and its seethes. to harrow's senses, this entire place had the faintest tinge, going through its own slow decomposition both organically and metaphorically, though it was old. far too old to be of much use to her, in any case. but she tracks the other traces of more concentrated thanergy. this is what brings her to the linoleum mausoleum of the food court and to where the young man sat on one of the abandoned tables: not for her own journal, which he held in his hands, but for the twisted disc of what she knew intrinsically to be bone that rested at his side.

it holds a lot of interest to her, to be sure, but for now her attention is fixated sharply and irately at the stranger. there is something oddly and horribly revealing in someone you didn't know flipping through your own private journal — she says a silent prayer of thanks to the Locked Tomb that she had the forethought (read: paranoia) to write anything sensitive (read: almost everything) in crypt-script, which one would find near-impossible to crack without her prayer rosary and roughly two hundred years of spare time.

she knows from roughly ten seconds of having her eyes on him what type of creature this is; she didn't even need the devastatingly obvious clues of the swords to help her in that. cavalier. even more reason for her to get her journal back from him, before he found some creatively stupid way to destroy it.

she has less than zero interest in his new treasure trove of slim jims™ — the faintly chemical smell of processed meat (??) is nauseating, even as faint as it is. )

My journal. ( she indicates it by flickering her gaze to where it was in his hands before returning to staunchly lock with his in altercation. ) Someone like you would derive nothing of use from it. So return it.

( too late for the not bossing you around, felix. she's half-extending a gloved hand, palm-up, expectant. )

[brothered]

[Ooh, Felix hates prolonged eye contact? Sends his hackles raising, really, but he resists the very real urge to look off to the side, choosing instead to hold her gaze as he snaps her journal closed. He's not nosy by nature; he has, like, no real interest in digging through someone's personal affairs once he's aware that they're someone's personal affairs, and yet he doesn't immediately hold it out to her. Rude recognizes rude...

...Except that he's definitely the ruder one here, but that's par for the course! Nothing he's too concerned about as he raises her journal a tad higher, pointedly bringing it closer to eye-level.]

Someone like me? You don't know me.

[We're doing this now, punk. Elaborate.]

[skeletonize]

( harrow seems to show no propensity to shy away from eye contact; if anything she returns it combatively, as a cavalier might step their weight forward into an interlocking of blades, jockeying for the upper-hand. when he raises the book, it almost seems as though he might hold it over her head — seeing as though she is no longer seven years old, she would not be standing for any childish keep-away. luckily, he merely holds it at eye level, and he avoids a hastily-summoned skeletal construct from attempting to grab him by the throat.

she seems offended that she has to explain, but she does so, albeit annoyed. ) I don't have to. It's obvious enough. A cavalier. ( perhaps a few weeks ago she would have said the word with derision, having a typical Ninth opinion of cavaliers — only worth as much as how many bones they could carry on their backs. but now she merely feels disarmed in saying it. in many ways she had hated admitting to herself how necessary a cavalier was to her — how necessary her cavalier was to her — and it rankles far worse now that she is seemingly missing. )

A sword-arm has no use for necromantic theorem. ( she gestures again with her awaiting palm. )

[brothered]

[Felix may be a pain in the ass, but he's not so childish as to dangle anything above anyone's head? Unless it's, like, Annette he's dealing with—but this strange girl is so far away from Annette it isn't even funny, so. Here we are! Felix continuing to hold this journal just out of reach as he listens.

Which leads to Felix raising a brow, because hey, that's a lot to unpack right there. Necromantic sounds vaguely... magical? Reason-adjacent. He doesn't quite know; he's only delved far enough into Reason to give himself an edge in battle, but he wouldn't be surprised if it was some particularly dangerous branch of dark magic. The people who favor that sort of thing do tend to dress... eccentrically...

...Whatever. Not his problem.]

It's obvious that I prefer swords to Reason?

[A quiet snort. An unspoken sort of, like, I'll grant you that, just before he leans forward to place her journal in the palm of her hand. She could be lying about this being hers, but he doubts it? He doubts it. Who wants a greasy-feeling book...]

Then it should be obvious that I'm not a cavalier. No spurs, [he says, dryly, as he settles back, turning a foot to show her the back of his water-stained boot.] No lance.

[skeletonize]

( there is a small part in the back of the grey matter of her brain that senses that something is amiss with the way that he says it — a proper noun lying in wait, like a camouflaged predator poised for exactly the right moment to spring. but as it is, it's funny. harrow doesn't really have much of a sense of humour (one might say she doesn't have a single funny bone in her entire body...), but there is the faintest upward tug in the corners of her mouth when she hears him say it. she senses perhaps a half-dozen razor-sharp retorts, perched in single-file line along her tongue, but she decides to be diplomatic.

in this case, it means "not immediately and insufferably rude:" ) ...Yes.

( but that's mostly because of two things: 1) he seems to have some martial bearing, meaning in her mind there are only two possibilities, and 2) he does not have a necromancer's build. having recently seen all of the necromantic scions of the other houses and seeing that it was fairly common for all of them to leave the building of muscle mass to their sworn swords, she feels fairly confident in this assessment.

she jolts forward immediately when he extends the book out to her, her fingers curling greedily around it as he relinquishes it. she pulls it close to her chest, and for a moment the mask (the metaphorical one — the face paint is still very much present) slips: she is merely a girl relieved to have something of seemingly vital importance back to her. her gloved fingers trace over the cover, the binding, finding the place where the metal needle was hidden in the spine. she breathes out, satisfied it's all there.

she looks up, finally piecing together what he had continued to say after the initial inspection of her property. her brow furrows, and she speaks before thinking, ) What use would a cavalier have for spurs? ( or a lance? it would be a truly odd off-hand to use alongside the traditional rapier, though she supposes there was probably some eccentric out there who used one (spoilers: there totally is). )