The Crossing Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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thecrossinglogs2025-04-19 09:44 am
thecrossingmods) wrote in thecrossinglogs2025-04-19 09:44 am
THE CROSSING #2
THE CROSSING #2
It's that time again.
For more detail on the particulars of the event, be sure to refer to our info and planning post!
For more detail on the particulars of the event, be sure to refer to our info and planning post!
always keep moving
— CLOUDS ON THE HORIZON
The Desert is sprawling. If you've ever gotten turned around in the rolling dunes, it may have once felt endless. But in the weeks and days before the descent of The Crossing, something appears on the horizon: first a dark smudge of storm clouds, not unlike the others that have rolled through before, then growing — wider, darker, and more threatening.
You feel it, too. For some of you the feeling is new; for others it's a reminder of a trial you've been through before. It's a weight in your body, a solidity of your self, a vulnerability to whatever is approaching.
The storm overtakes the oasis. As the first drops of rain begin to fall, The Ferryman speaks in your mind.
It's time. Those who are prepared to pay the toll are instructed to gather on the bank of The River. As for the rest of you... we hope you have a plan.
taking refuge
— THE RIVER OF MUD
The storm hits hard and fast. Even as you gather around The Ferryman, the rain grows from spitting droplets to a desert monsoon. The Ferryman's protection only goes so far: even if you're promised safety from danger, you'll still have to cope with the cold, the wind, and the water.
As before, The Lantern's Light grows dark. As before, The Ferryman gathers memories one by one, consolidated into a mote of light in their palm that becomes the new center point for the growing temporary bubble of safety. But this time— what it was too dark to notice in the Cavern before— you realize that The Ferryman themselves is changing, too. Their form fades as the light in their hands grows, becoming as fuzzy and insubstantial as mist... not unlike the wraiths, outside of The Crossing.
The sparkling white salt flat before you begins to melt and grow murky, exposing the sticky, grasping mud beneath. The Ferryman glides out over the roiling muck of The River, and so do you, your steps as light as if there were still a crust of salt to separate you from the mud before.
You must keep moving, though. Linger too long, and you'll start to sink... and the mud might not let go, this time.
— A HAVEN FROM THE WANTS AND ILLS OF LIFE
The journey is arduous, and the storm is unrelenting. The Ferryman, unfamiliar as they might be in this form, leads confidently through the blur of lightning, wind, and rain. As before, the mote of light created from your memories follows in their footsteps, illuminating the path to follow along the wide expanse of The River.
Even with The Ferryman's protection, it is exhausting work. It's as mentally taxing as it is physically draining. As such, when the path forward begins to shudder and shift, it may come as a reprieve. The wall of wind and rain finally breaks, the Desert around you replaced by... somewhere else. A place you may recognize, or may not.
Whatever stress or fear you may have been feeling from your journey wanes, replaced by feelings of calm, peace, or joy. If the place you are in is unfamiliar, the feelings are muted, as if they don't quite belong to you... but surely this is better than returning to the monsoon? Perhaps you can rest a while. Play a game, recover in shelter, or take a meditative walk through a maze. What's a few minutes, anyway? Time hardly means anything anymore.
Just don't forget: if you linger too long in any one place, the mud of The River will start to suck you down. It's best to stay alert— and to keep an eye on those traveling with you, as well.
storm chasers
— SWEPT AWAY
The Desert isn't designed to weather a storm like this one. Beyond the pounding rain and cracking lightning, those of you who have decided to travel without The Ferryman must also navigate the environment itself. Flash floods sweep through lower-lying places in the dunes, where the sand isn't able to absorb water quickly enough. Creatures that may have been docile before are now panicked, and might impede your progress, or even lash out themselves.
And, of course, there are the wraiths.
They're easier to spot this time around, across the rolling dunes. It's easier to make out just how much they've changed as well: the claws, the teeth, the exaggerated proportions... and the unmistakable pain and fury in every movement, in every shriek and wail.
You are vulnerable to any and all injury during this time, whether from the wraiths, the wildlife, or the elements. As long as you follow your gut, you'll know where to go — but we hope you have a strategy, all the same.
— AN EYE IN THE STORM
At least in the Cavern, you had cover. Nooks and crannies, branching tunnels, rocky outcroppings... But out here, beneath the wide-open sky of the Desert, there's very little in terms of shelter. The odd plateau, or cave entrance, or inexplicable feature might grant you some reprieve, but there's always more sand to cross in-between.
On occasion, however, you may spot a strange sort of wraith watching you at a distance. Some of you may even recognize it: an eerie, dissembling creature that some have dubbed the Smart Wraith. Its form, like the others, has solidified into something grotesque and painful, as if its body has been plucked like clay by a particularly spiteful child. Unlike the others, though, it does not attack, or even approach. It simply watches, as it always have.
If you have the presence of mind to notice, however, you may find that there are occasional reprieves from wraith attacks, especially across longer stretches of dunes. They're brief, but often crucially timed (such as when someone is significantly injured, or when a flood has just rolled through), and always correspond to a moment when The Wraith can be found watching from some far-flung vantage point.
It's odd, certainly. But do you have the luxury of looking a gift horse in the mouth?
stormbreak
— CLEARING SKIES
Eventually, the storm calms. Your body lightens. The atmosphere realigns.
The Crossing ends.
The thick, sucking mud of The River has become shallow and waterlogged. It's easy to wade through now, if a touch... unpleasant. Fibrous plants and reeds line the sloped banks, inexplicably dotted with bright orange flowers. Light is low, though the sky has cleared, as if wherever you are now lingers in perpetual dusk.
If you were traveling with The Ferryman, the mirages that dogged your journey finally fade and stay gone. If you were traveling on your own, any wounds you sustained heal rapidly on their own. As before, the healing is natural, but on fast-forward, and thus may not always resolve perfectly.
For both groups, memories bleed away from you - perhaps literally, perhaps not. Anything you found in the Desert, unless given to you by The Ferryman, is gone from your pockets.
When you look again, The Ferryman appears just the same as they were before The Crossing began. Let's take a break, they say. It's been a long journey.
It certainly has.
Image credits: 1, 2 + OMORI'S STORY, and stock imagery unless otherwise noted
The Desert is sprawling. If you've ever gotten turned around in the rolling dunes, it may have once felt endless. But in the weeks and days before the descent of The Crossing, something appears on the horizon: first a dark smudge of storm clouds, not unlike the others that have rolled through before, then growing — wider, darker, and more threatening.
You feel it, too. For some of you the feeling is new; for others it's a reminder of a trial you've been through before. It's a weight in your body, a solidity of your self, a vulnerability to whatever is approaching.
The storm overtakes the oasis. As the first drops of rain begin to fall, The Ferryman speaks in your mind.
It's time. Those who are prepared to pay the toll are instructed to gather on the bank of The River. As for the rest of you... we hope you have a plan.
taking refuge
The storm hits hard and fast. Even as you gather around The Ferryman, the rain grows from spitting droplets to a desert monsoon. The Ferryman's protection only goes so far: even if you're promised safety from danger, you'll still have to cope with the cold, the wind, and the water.
As before, The Lantern's Light grows dark. As before, The Ferryman gathers memories one by one, consolidated into a mote of light in their palm that becomes the new center point for the growing temporary bubble of safety. But this time— what it was too dark to notice in the Cavern before— you realize that The Ferryman themselves is changing, too. Their form fades as the light in their hands grows, becoming as fuzzy and insubstantial as mist... not unlike the wraiths, outside of The Crossing.
The sparkling white salt flat before you begins to melt and grow murky, exposing the sticky, grasping mud beneath. The Ferryman glides out over the roiling muck of The River, and so do you, your steps as light as if there were still a crust of salt to separate you from the mud before.
You must keep moving, though. Linger too long, and you'll start to sink... and the mud might not let go, this time.
— A HAVEN FROM THE WANTS AND ILLS OF LIFE
The journey is arduous, and the storm is unrelenting. The Ferryman, unfamiliar as they might be in this form, leads confidently through the blur of lightning, wind, and rain. As before, the mote of light created from your memories follows in their footsteps, illuminating the path to follow along the wide expanse of The River.
Even with The Ferryman's protection, it is exhausting work. It's as mentally taxing as it is physically draining. As such, when the path forward begins to shudder and shift, it may come as a reprieve. The wall of wind and rain finally breaks, the Desert around you replaced by... somewhere else. A place you may recognize, or may not.
Whatever stress or fear you may have been feeling from your journey wanes, replaced by feelings of calm, peace, or joy. If the place you are in is unfamiliar, the feelings are muted, as if they don't quite belong to you... but surely this is better than returning to the monsoon? Perhaps you can rest a while. Play a game, recover in shelter, or take a meditative walk through a maze. What's a few minutes, anyway? Time hardly means anything anymore.
Just don't forget: if you linger too long in any one place, the mud of The River will start to suck you down. It's best to stay alert— and to keep an eye on those traveling with you, as well.
storm chasers
The Desert isn't designed to weather a storm like this one. Beyond the pounding rain and cracking lightning, those of you who have decided to travel without The Ferryman must also navigate the environment itself. Flash floods sweep through lower-lying places in the dunes, where the sand isn't able to absorb water quickly enough. Creatures that may have been docile before are now panicked, and might impede your progress, or even lash out themselves.
And, of course, there are the wraiths.
They're easier to spot this time around, across the rolling dunes. It's easier to make out just how much they've changed as well: the claws, the teeth, the exaggerated proportions... and the unmistakable pain and fury in every movement, in every shriek and wail.
You are vulnerable to any and all injury during this time, whether from the wraiths, the wildlife, or the elements. As long as you follow your gut, you'll know where to go — but we hope you have a strategy, all the same.
— AN EYE IN THE STORM
At least in the Cavern, you had cover. Nooks and crannies, branching tunnels, rocky outcroppings... But out here, beneath the wide-open sky of the Desert, there's very little in terms of shelter. The odd plateau, or cave entrance, or inexplicable feature might grant you some reprieve, but there's always more sand to cross in-between.
On occasion, however, you may spot a strange sort of wraith watching you at a distance. Some of you may even recognize it: an eerie, dissembling creature that some have dubbed the Smart Wraith. Its form, like the others, has solidified into something grotesque and painful, as if its body has been plucked like clay by a particularly spiteful child. Unlike the others, though, it does not attack, or even approach. It simply watches, as it always have.
If you have the presence of mind to notice, however, you may find that there are occasional reprieves from wraith attacks, especially across longer stretches of dunes. They're brief, but often crucially timed (such as when someone is significantly injured, or when a flood has just rolled through), and always correspond to a moment when The Wraith can be found watching from some far-flung vantage point.
It's odd, certainly. But do you have the luxury of looking a gift horse in the mouth?
stormbreak
Eventually, the storm calms. Your body lightens. The atmosphere realigns.
The Crossing ends.
The thick, sucking mud of The River has become shallow and waterlogged. It's easy to wade through now, if a touch... unpleasant. Fibrous plants and reeds line the sloped banks, inexplicably dotted with bright orange flowers. Light is low, though the sky has cleared, as if wherever you are now lingers in perpetual dusk.
If you were traveling with The Ferryman, the mirages that dogged your journey finally fade and stay gone. If you were traveling on your own, any wounds you sustained heal rapidly on their own. As before, the healing is natural, but on fast-forward, and thus may not always resolve perfectly.
For both groups, memories bleed away from you - perhaps literally, perhaps not. Anything you found in the Desert, unless given to you by The Ferryman, is gone from your pockets.
When you look again, The Ferryman appears just the same as they were before The Crossing began. Let's take a break, they say. It's been a long journey.
It certainly has.
Image credits: 1, 2 + OMORI'S STORY, and stock imagery unless otherwise noted
no subject
I'm glad you got to know him. It's good to care and be cared about, regardless of the form it takes.
[The feeling of her embrace - I see what you went through and did and you made some choices I can't countenance, but you've suffered and struggled and I love you for making it so far - wanes to calm energy and a more background warm regard, as in the timeline of the memory Darkwind pulled a deep breath and was ready to go on, and Need-who-was furled her wings away.]
no subject
You know, it's really very unfair to make me talk that much about Hinata-kun when I was feeling like that.
[He isn't really that bothered, though; there are a lot worse things he could have babbled on about.]
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Tell me you wouldn't in my place.
[Really she would have liked to have taken more advantage of the situation but isn't as quick to improvise as she'd have liked. The only things she'd thought of - testing, would he be receptive to a hand on his shoulder or back? asking, what's made you feel this way? saying, I like you better like this - well, she knew he'd remember and she can't read him enough to gauge the risk. Without any of her powers she also can't obviate the last few minutes of his memory and she is still going to have to keep existing in proximity to Nagito so it's better to be cautious and not potentially make an enemy of him.
...Of course, with her powers she wouldn't have to do any of that, she could just reach in like a pickpocket and find out what she wanted to know and not casually screw with the head of someone who probably doesn't deserve it. Need's trying not to constantly think about what she'd do differently if she wasn't laid low like this, though.]
no subject
Ah, I guess I shouldn't lie and say you're wrong, should I? [Nagito would absolutely take advantage of a situation like this. And he knows Need could have prodded at much worse.] But I'd appreciate if you didn't gossip to everyone else, regardless!
[Not that Need seems like the type.]
no subject
Strange boy. Not a lot of fear in him, unless he's just that good at hiding it.]
You can just ask, you know, and the worst that's likely to happen is I won't answer. At my age not a lot shocks or offends me.
[She'd used to say 'When you get to my age' about that kind of thing but it'd be cruel to use a phrase like that to a bunch of dead children and barely-adults.]
If the stakes are high enough I might tell someone, but it's hard to see how 'you have someone you wish well' will ever be essential. [Deliberately downplaying it.] Otherwise, no. Not my business to brut about.
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I doubt my memories of Hinata-kun will manage to be that important. [If Hajime himself were here, then surely he would be that important, but-- Well, he can hold his tongue now, so he's going to exercise that skill. Anyway, Hajime will definitely never show up here.] Sounds like I'm pretty safe, then!
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He might have done something that actually would set her off, she thinks. Nagito is definitely some kind of fanatic and she has little sense of what he's capable of, so she's erring on the side of 'a great deal'. But she's confident it wouldn't be enough to break her self control. She hadn't snapped finding out exactly what Nyara's father did to her and her sisters and it would be genuinely difficult to do worse. She had had to not speak for several days and that kind of thing would be more obvious here, but she'd been able to discuss the man calmly after that.
Still seated on a bench-like fallen menhir, Need stretches her legs out before her.]
So, what has this [she lifts her chin and turns her head in to indicate this situation] suggested about me?
no subject
Well, your world must have very large birds! [Or something big with feathers, anyway.] And you might have a softer heart than you like people to think.
[Nagito isn't great with interpreting emotions, but he did get hit very hard with them here. He can at least form an opinion on them.]
no subject
[She wonders how Nagito's interpreting the emotional contagion given his inexperience with empathic powers. If this seems different from the other scenes they've all wandered through. Should she tell him? Would he believe her if she says most of her memories incorporate other peoples' emotions? What would he think, if he did?
Better not. She really unsettled Celehar by being too forthright, earlier.]
Some of the feathers would be Treyvan's, some Hydona's. You can't always tell, but Hydona is larger, and Treyvan's got more color and shine to him. They're gryphons. This is the home they had a few years back.
had to make the joke, you understand
no subject
[a little bitterness there in the sarcasm, Need?]
Nowhere belongs to me, kid.
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[by Need's standards anyway.]
At a high enough level they're the same. A scientific understanding of magic gives it more options, more predictably. Not that the intuitive approach isn't valuable, but when someone was creating a whole species that's supposed to live on after their death, predictable, replicable results were important so the whole team could use them.
It started with just modifying animals. Then someone - don't remember the name - had the bright idea, hey, what if grasswolves had brains modeled after humans? and making a new species of people who loved you as their creator became a fad.
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[She's aware of some 'modern' people, like her final bearer Firesong, who struggled with the idea that magic could be understood with numbers and formulae and felt it was cheapened by the effort. Need had felt like that herself once, a long time ago.]
Hah. One very powerful mage can warp an animal this way and that and maybe the changes will breed true for more than a generation, but 'uplifting' animals to make new species that reason and talk takes a lot of cooperation. Maybe a few names get famous off it but the actual work takes dozens, hundreds of people to help, working for years. Or it took. I don't know if anything like that will ever be possible again.
I'm not saying it wasn't an incredible achievement each and every time. I just... [Need shakes her head, feeling tired. There are a lot of reasons she just, and she's not sure if any of them will make sense to a fanatic who thinks some people are valuable and some are worthless.] It was all very self-congratulatory. Not to mention most of the people who commissioned or helmed these projects and tried to have their names live on like that were forgotten pretty quickly after the Cataclysm.
no subject
(And maybe there are some things in his world--some experiments--that had brilliant results but still probably shouldn't have been done at all. It's not something he can approach consciously, but it swirls, nebulous, in his mind regardless.)] I think your world is very different from mine, Need-san. But you had a Cataclysm, and we had a Tragedy, so maybe it's not entirely different.
[That's about as much as he can allow.]
no subject
She takes off the bandana on her head, revealing thinning gray hair flattened against her skull by rainwater, and shakes it out of its molded-on shape so she can re-fold it and tie it back into place. It's really just something to do with her hands. Need knows she should move on before she's forced to, but that sense of exhaustion is still there.]
Yeah, well. Sometimes it's like that. Anyway.
All this was part of a city once. I don't know which one. There were a lot of cities back then. This would have been somewhere central or industrial, since there's black paving underfoot and there are this many treated pillars. If not for them, nature would have claimed this by now and there'd be little sign anyone was here at all.
Now, people whose ancestors fled west return and build houses in it. There were several, last time I actually saw it.
no subject
They're rebuilding some of the cities in my world. But there are fewer people to live in them now, so maybe some of them will look something like this someday.
[He's--not sure what the right way is to feel about that. It's one seventeenth his fault, right? But somehow that feels far too boastful, to suggest he was anywhere near capable of an equal amount of effort compared to the others, and surely that's not the right emotion at all.
He just has a very strange, vaguely bitter look on his face, as a result.]
no subject
Give it time. Populations tend to rebound and they'll recolonize any ruins that don't obviously harm them to venture into. [this is absolutely not guaranteed in Velgarth, where there are still magic-irradiated regions that warp life, especially unborn life.] Things will be different. But eventually hardly anyone will think of all that was lost and be haunted by it. It will just be the world.
[Yep. Nagito's had something to do with this Tragedy that's not just 'it disrupted his life and killed a lot of people in his orbit'. The best case is that he'd had a chance to stop it and failed. She's not going to bet on that. Need, of course, has had something to do with the Cataclysm, though she doesn't hold herself responsible, exactly.]
The Cataclysm fucked things up to the point where after a couple of thousand years it started to echo. I'm not going into why, it's complicated. I'm here because I was one of the ones trying to stop it.
no subject
[He'd really wanted to die being useful. But he knew that was just him being selfish and greedy again.]
no subject
Kid, the thing I've been sealed into turned to a white-hot mist and just about exploded. I tried warning them but one of the living was blinded. My bearer preserved his sight but he was badly burned. If he hadn't taken up with a nice kestra'chern boy I'd be worried about him.
...But it was a good death, yeah. I didn't think I'd live through a second Cataclysm. If I joined in trying to stop it, there was a chance I'd make it, and if not - I wasn't afraid of dying. I was afraid of going without a fight.
How much warning did you have before you died?
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That's why you're not in denial or squeamish about admitting you're dead.
Any symptoms stuck around? I've got this stab wound from my first death but I think it's because when I made myself a spirit-body to look alive I included it. It left kind of a big impression on me.
[she touches her chest, though her leather apron is intact and hides the wound.]
no subject
[As if that's something to be fondly embarrassed about--a childish mistake, to be so upset about horrible things happening to you.]
And back home people were always saying I was too thin. That seems to have stuck around.
[But he doesn't think he'd recognize himself if he looked any other way, honestly.]
no subject
This does not in any way apply to Need, who struggled tremendously once but became genuinely fine with an existence that she's aware is objectively awful.]
Hm. Do you feel more tired during the Crossing? Are we closer to life generally, or life as we were alive?
[they've been here a good while and at last, the thin soil is showing spots as the first fat drops of rain start to patter.]
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