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thecrossinglogs2024-11-09 11:57 am
thecrossingmods) wrote in thecrossinglogs2024-11-09 11:57 am
TEST DRIVE #1
TDM # 1
Welcome to The Cavern, wayward souls.
It's good to see you again.
The TDM is game canon and will be active NOV—JAN. For further details about the setting, please reference our current setting page. All the information there is fair game for this TDM.
It's good to see you again.
The TDM is game canon and will be active NOV—JAN. For further details about the setting, please reference our current setting page. All the information there is fair game for this TDM.
arrival
— THE RIVER
The River is wide, black, and deep. It is so deep, and so dark, and so cold, that when you wake deep beneath its surface you may, for a moment, think that this is all there is. An abyss, a vacuum, a void. Nothingness in all directions.
It might even be what you expected, coming from wherever you were Before. The blackness, at least. Perhaps the cold. Maybe even the pain: all-encompassing, all-consuming. If a mortal wound brought you here, it might feel like it's being torn open anew, over and over again.
The current is simply slow, however, not non-existent. And you can swim. (Or, even if you can't, that's more of a procedural problem than anything: you don't need to breathe down here, it seems. Perhaps you don't need to breathe anymore at all.)
It hurts. It hurts so much. But if you can just concentrate long enough to pull yourself up onto the rocky shoreline, or even enough to get your head above the surface of the water, that pain will dissipate, almost as if it was never there at all. When you have the presence of mind to examine yourself, you'll find that you are actually hale and whole, with your body exactly as you expect it to be.
There are others in your same predicament. Maybe they can help you; maybe you can help them. You're all in this together, after all.
— THE CAVERN
Once you do finally pull yourself free from The River, you'll find that there was never any abyss at all. On the contrary, there's quite a lot to see — though your eyes might need a minute or two to adjust.
The Cavern yawns around you, the main chamber alone large enough to house a small town, and the ceiling too high to make out through the darkness. There's some light: you can see the eerie green glow of bioluminescent plants lining far-away walls, and tracing the underside of the land bridge that extends over The River. There are pinpricks up high on the cliffs above The River that are organized enough to suggest intervention, or at least planning.
There's something else, too — something orders of magnitude brighter than anything else in the chamber. Its glow is dim on this side of The River, and it's difficult to discern where exactly the light is coming from, just that it isn't coming from anywhere outside the cave. You feel as though you might be safer if you got closer, but maybe that's just because any light at all is comforting in a situation like this. If nothing else, you'd probably find whoever is holding it.
Either way, whether you follow the light or don't, there's plenty of time to be alone with your thoughts. Or to share them, if you're so inclined, with the others that are here with you, emerging one by one from the depths of The River.
Perhaps you've already accepted what's happened to you. Perhaps you need time, and it will take some discussion with the others to arrive at the one thing you all have in common. Perhaps even after that it's still too much, or you still aren't ready. However you get there, though, there's no way around it: you are dead.
If you have questions, The Ferryman is available to answer them.
KEEP TO THE LIGHT
— THE LANTERN
The source of the light is a lantern — specifically, it is The Ferryman's Lantern, an ornate metal lamp hanging from the end of a tall wooden staff. It's large, weathered from use, and despite how improbably far its glow casts — from the land bridge over The River, where The Ferryman is holding their vigil, up the cliffs above and into the subterranean city's many tunnels — it isn't so bright that it can't be comfortably looked at. The Lantern has an unmistakable aura of comfort and safety (maybe because of, or maybe in addition to, the light it casts), no matter how close or far you are from it.
It's only at the very far edges of the glow, where the last bits of light are swallowed by the darkness, that this sense of safety begins to fray. It's here that you can see them, prowling the boundary: wisps of something that you can barely see. Many somethings, in fact.
They can't cross into the light, it seems. All they can do is wait for you to leave it.
— THE SUBTERRANEAN CITY
Maybe you'd rather stay for now, though. There's plenty still to explore within The Lantern's shroud: to start with, the network of tunnels you can see built into the cliffs above The River.
The biggest hurdle is figuring out how to get into the city. You can spy the entrances, marked by dimly glowing torches set into the open mouths of tunnels, but they're so high up! Surely you're not meant to climb?
Well, yes and no. Some investigation reveals a series of wood-plank catwalks leading up to the lowest tunnel entrances, but it's a long climb. If you're feeling impatient (and brave), there's also a system of pulleys, ziplines, and simple rope elevators connecting the higher levels to the lower ones. The ropes have clearly been here a while, but they're probably safe, right? What's the worst that could happen, you die all over again?
(Too soon? We get it.)
There's plenty to see once you reach the city itself, even if there isn't much in way of a population. (Until now, at least!) The lamps and torches lining the walls are packed with the same bioluminescent plantlife that can be found elsewhere in the cavern, so there's no risk of them spontaneously going out. There are signs placed strategically throughout the tunnel system to point you toward major landmarks, using only simple iconography.
The city itself certainly appears lived in, even if it's currently empty; in fact, if you pay close attention to the signage and the decor, there appear to be layers of activity not unlike the rings of a very old tree. Older tapestries covered with newer ones with entirely different patterns; boxes of radically different table trinkets carefully stored in apartment closets, to make room for new ones on a shelf; evidence of the stone market stalls having multiple different usages, many of them apparently in sequence.
Some of those tapestries or trinkets might even be familiar to you, like they came from a culture of your homeworld. Strange, though, since you didn't arrive with anything similar on you. Where could they possibly have come from?
VENTURE IN THE DARK
— THE WRAITHS
The Cavern is big, and The Ferryman's Lantern only reaches so far. If you want to explore, you'll need to brave the darkness— and whatever else might be waiting out there for you.
You'll have some light, at least, even if it isn't much: the luminescent plants grow throughout the cave system, including its winding tunnels and cramped smaller chambers. As for whatever else might be lurking out there, well... without The Lantern, there's not much you can do to keep them at bay.
The Ferryman calls them "wraiths", if you were curious enough to ask beforehand. They're more what you might typically expect from the idea of a ghost: pale and insubstantial, like mist struggling to take and keep a shape.
And they certainly do have shapes; those shapes are just incomplete, sometimes blurry, like a pencil drawing that has smudged and faded over time. They have faces that seem to have been stretched too long or too wide; they have eyes with no color, unblinking, always staring back; some of them have mouths that never close, while others have no mouths at all; some of them have hands with wispy tendrils of grasping fingers; others' limbs seem to have lost their shape entirely.
There are dozens of them lingering just outside the boundary of The Lantern, and many more roaming throughout The Cavern. They do not speak, or otherwise make any sounds at all. They do not swarm, either, even when one of The Ferryman's souls crosses the boundary. They simply watch, and, seemingly at random, some will choose to follow you anywhere you go throughout The Cavern.
Annoying, maybe. Creepy, certainly. But that seems to be all. Just remember: The Lantern is the only thing that keeps the wraiths at bay. They can't hurt you, out in the darkness, but they will notice you, they will follow you, and they will remember you.
If your exploration takes you to the catacombs, you may find that your wraith shadows get lost just as easily as you in the tunnel system. Perhaps they get distracted? Or maybe they have some curiosity about the tunnels that outweighs their curiosity about you? Either way, it's possible to lose them for some amount of time there— but the wraiths aren't bound by petty things like physics the way you are. They will find you again eventually, either by floating through some wall, appearing at the dead-end of a tunnel, or even just waiting at the entrance for you to emerge again.
If, on the other hand, you find yourself stumbling upon the whispering pools, you'll discover that wraiths gather in droves there, circling the pools, sometimes trying in vain to press their faces to the water. The wraiths that followed you here seem to be the only exception; whatever the pools are saying, it's apparently not interesting enough to draw them away from you.
Aren't you lucky?
Image credits: 1, 2, 3 + stock imagery unless otherwise noted
The River is wide, black, and deep. It is so deep, and so dark, and so cold, that when you wake deep beneath its surface you may, for a moment, think that this is all there is. An abyss, a vacuum, a void. Nothingness in all directions.
It might even be what you expected, coming from wherever you were Before. The blackness, at least. Perhaps the cold. Maybe even the pain: all-encompassing, all-consuming. If a mortal wound brought you here, it might feel like it's being torn open anew, over and over again.
The current is simply slow, however, not non-existent. And you can swim. (Or, even if you can't, that's more of a procedural problem than anything: you don't need to breathe down here, it seems. Perhaps you don't need to breathe anymore at all.)
It hurts. It hurts so much. But if you can just concentrate long enough to pull yourself up onto the rocky shoreline, or even enough to get your head above the surface of the water, that pain will dissipate, almost as if it was never there at all. When you have the presence of mind to examine yourself, you'll find that you are actually hale and whole, with your body exactly as you expect it to be.
There are others in your same predicament. Maybe they can help you; maybe you can help them. You're all in this together, after all.
— THE CAVERN
Once you do finally pull yourself free from The River, you'll find that there was never any abyss at all. On the contrary, there's quite a lot to see — though your eyes might need a minute or two to adjust.
The Cavern yawns around you, the main chamber alone large enough to house a small town, and the ceiling too high to make out through the darkness. There's some light: you can see the eerie green glow of bioluminescent plants lining far-away walls, and tracing the underside of the land bridge that extends over The River. There are pinpricks up high on the cliffs above The River that are organized enough to suggest intervention, or at least planning.
There's something else, too — something orders of magnitude brighter than anything else in the chamber. Its glow is dim on this side of The River, and it's difficult to discern where exactly the light is coming from, just that it isn't coming from anywhere outside the cave. You feel as though you might be safer if you got closer, but maybe that's just because any light at all is comforting in a situation like this. If nothing else, you'd probably find whoever is holding it.
Either way, whether you follow the light or don't, there's plenty of time to be alone with your thoughts. Or to share them, if you're so inclined, with the others that are here with you, emerging one by one from the depths of The River.
Perhaps you've already accepted what's happened to you. Perhaps you need time, and it will take some discussion with the others to arrive at the one thing you all have in common. Perhaps even after that it's still too much, or you still aren't ready. However you get there, though, there's no way around it: you are dead.
If you have questions, The Ferryman is available to answer them.
KEEP TO THE LIGHT
The source of the light is a lantern — specifically, it is The Ferryman's Lantern, an ornate metal lamp hanging from the end of a tall wooden staff. It's large, weathered from use, and despite how improbably far its glow casts — from the land bridge over The River, where The Ferryman is holding their vigil, up the cliffs above and into the subterranean city's many tunnels — it isn't so bright that it can't be comfortably looked at. The Lantern has an unmistakable aura of comfort and safety (maybe because of, or maybe in addition to, the light it casts), no matter how close or far you are from it.
It's only at the very far edges of the glow, where the last bits of light are swallowed by the darkness, that this sense of safety begins to fray. It's here that you can see them, prowling the boundary: wisps of something that you can barely see. Many somethings, in fact.
They can't cross into the light, it seems. All they can do is wait for you to leave it.
— THE SUBTERRANEAN CITY
Maybe you'd rather stay for now, though. There's plenty still to explore within The Lantern's shroud: to start with, the network of tunnels you can see built into the cliffs above The River.
The biggest hurdle is figuring out how to get into the city. You can spy the entrances, marked by dimly glowing torches set into the open mouths of tunnels, but they're so high up! Surely you're not meant to climb?
Well, yes and no. Some investigation reveals a series of wood-plank catwalks leading up to the lowest tunnel entrances, but it's a long climb. If you're feeling impatient (and brave), there's also a system of pulleys, ziplines, and simple rope elevators connecting the higher levels to the lower ones. The ropes have clearly been here a while, but they're probably safe, right? What's the worst that could happen, you die all over again?
(Too soon? We get it.)
There's plenty to see once you reach the city itself, even if there isn't much in way of a population. (Until now, at least!) The lamps and torches lining the walls are packed with the same bioluminescent plantlife that can be found elsewhere in the cavern, so there's no risk of them spontaneously going out. There are signs placed strategically throughout the tunnel system to point you toward major landmarks, using only simple iconography.
The city itself certainly appears lived in, even if it's currently empty; in fact, if you pay close attention to the signage and the decor, there appear to be layers of activity not unlike the rings of a very old tree. Older tapestries covered with newer ones with entirely different patterns; boxes of radically different table trinkets carefully stored in apartment closets, to make room for new ones on a shelf; evidence of the stone market stalls having multiple different usages, many of them apparently in sequence.
Some of those tapestries or trinkets might even be familiar to you, like they came from a culture of your homeworld. Strange, though, since you didn't arrive with anything similar on you. Where could they possibly have come from?
VENTURE IN THE DARK
The Cavern is big, and The Ferryman's Lantern only reaches so far. If you want to explore, you'll need to brave the darkness— and whatever else might be waiting out there for you.
You'll have some light, at least, even if it isn't much: the luminescent plants grow throughout the cave system, including its winding tunnels and cramped smaller chambers. As for whatever else might be lurking out there, well... without The Lantern, there's not much you can do to keep them at bay.
The Ferryman calls them "wraiths", if you were curious enough to ask beforehand. They're more what you might typically expect from the idea of a ghost: pale and insubstantial, like mist struggling to take and keep a shape.
And they certainly do have shapes; those shapes are just incomplete, sometimes blurry, like a pencil drawing that has smudged and faded over time. They have faces that seem to have been stretched too long or too wide; they have eyes with no color, unblinking, always staring back; some of them have mouths that never close, while others have no mouths at all; some of them have hands with wispy tendrils of grasping fingers; others' limbs seem to have lost their shape entirely.
There are dozens of them lingering just outside the boundary of The Lantern, and many more roaming throughout The Cavern. They do not speak, or otherwise make any sounds at all. They do not swarm, either, even when one of The Ferryman's souls crosses the boundary. They simply watch, and, seemingly at random, some will choose to follow you anywhere you go throughout The Cavern.
Annoying, maybe. Creepy, certainly. But that seems to be all. Just remember: The Lantern is the only thing that keeps the wraiths at bay. They can't hurt you, out in the darkness, but they will notice you, they will follow you, and they will remember you.
If your exploration takes you to the catacombs, you may find that your wraith shadows get lost just as easily as you in the tunnel system. Perhaps they get distracted? Or maybe they have some curiosity about the tunnels that outweighs their curiosity about you? Either way, it's possible to lose them for some amount of time there— but the wraiths aren't bound by petty things like physics the way you are. They will find you again eventually, either by floating through some wall, appearing at the dead-end of a tunnel, or even just waiting at the entrance for you to emerge again.
If, on the other hand, you find yourself stumbling upon the whispering pools, you'll discover that wraiths gather in droves there, circling the pools, sometimes trying in vain to press their faces to the water. The wraiths that followed you here seem to be the only exception; whatever the pools are saying, it's apparently not interesting enough to draw them away from you.
Aren't you lucky?
Image credits: 1, 2, 3 + stock imagery unless otherwise noted
no subject
[Amaya repeats the word with a bit of a strange expression on her face, like her face isn't sure what to do with that. Characteristically, the reaction is...dull, but more perplexed than anything as she looks to the wraiths briefly and attempts to determine whether Zvei has completely lost his mind or not.
Even so, Amaya's hands clasp together, and her expression settles back into the dull monotony that is it's usual.]
...I know not if I would agree, but I would not mind accompanying you, if you so wish. There is safety in numbers, so they say.
Are you hoping to find something specific...?
[Let's move while we talk.]
no subject
Something specific... No, I can't say that I am. I am quite curious about this whole "life after death" deal, though. And what better way to learn more than to explore areas off the beaten path?
[The words are light and airy, as if he's talking about the weather instead of the fact that they're dead and dealing with whatever sort of afterlife this is.]
no subject
I suppose I cannot fault you for that. I imagine we're going to need to get used to exploring these areas eventually, if we are to find out more about this place. Strange creatures or not.
[So Amaya can objectively see where he's coming from, but...]
...You seem to be in good spirits, despite all of this.
[It's as much of an observation as it is a question. The 'why are you like this' undercurrent is. Perhaps a little impolite but dulled by Amaya's natural being. And her curiosity.]
no subject
I'm not usually one to be in bad spirits. Besides, you could say I saw my death coming.
[Eh, sort of. It's Complicated. But that's not Zvei's style, so!!]
no subject
Ah, I...see. [If Zvei looks closely, her lips almost seem to...twitch? It almost seems amused, and Amaya herself briefly looks confused for a moment before shaking it off.] ...I imagine that asking about your circumstances would be quite...tactless, but I apologize nonetheless for your fate, my child.
[Amaya's expression perks a bit, noticing something moving in the shadows--a wraith, definitely, and her guard is up.]
...We're being followed; keep your guard up. I know not if physical might can deter these creatures, but I can fight if necessary.
no subject
You don't need to apologize for it. These things happen.
[...saying that about death...?? Anyway,]
It would seem I've been robbed of my magic, but I can still defend myself decently well without it. Still, I appreciate it! It's good to have someone watch my back.
[...He definitely looks more the part of a mage than a fighter.]
no subject
You are not the only one, I imagine. Even here, I cannot feel any of the magic that I would usually have access to. It's...strange, I must confess...
[Amaya seems to discard that subject after getting it out, though, her gaze noticeably averting. She does her best to make it simply look as if she's keeping guard, but...]
...Have you truly made your peace with your fate that thoroughly, my child? You're quite a bit more...chevalier, about this, than most I have seen. Even if one sees the inevitable coming, confronting it so easily...
I cannot tell if the people here should learn from you, or if I should be concerned.
no subject
Oh, were it anyone else, I'd say you should be concerned, but I've been like this for a decade now and I haven't changed a bit!
[Is that something to be proud of or even more concerned about... Eh, doesn't matter to him. Especially not here and now.]
As for made peace with it... Hmm. Well, I've been through worse.
[He says it easily, but his own gaze slips away at that, back to the wraiths following them. They're still keeping their distance, so it doesn't look like a fight's going to break out at any point. That's nice, he supposes.]
no subject
...Worry not; I shall not pry further.
[It's soft, an attempt at gentleness that falls a little too flat, but it's there. ]
I know not if you would wish to train at any point, but I would be...amendable, to teaching you how to properly defend yourself, should you wish it. I had to learn much of it when it was simply my confidant and I living on our own, and I would rather not see you get hurt if you attempt to wander alone.
Be that as it may...I do not believe I have introduced myself. I am Amaya Sasaki; acting leader of Fefello Caelum, and a priestess of Veritas, the universal truth. May I ask for your name?