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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
my job is done
( ...huh. Would you look at that. No fish, still. If this ace is the bee's knees, might as well call the entire hive arthritic. Far from Claire to complain, squinting — but not even some chub? It's a river of corpses, dearly deceased or soon to be, isn't it? So, flesh sent to sleep with the fishes? Surely, there's an entire fauna going to waste here, because buddy's throwing a fit of incompetence.
Youth these days. No hard work. No respect. If Claire himself weren't barely graduated from his halcyon days, he might complain well past the light grip of his hips, bow of his back deepening. Staring, unblinking, unfailing, taking the sad sight in. )
What, picky eater? Your mother raised a prince?
( ...sure. That's what's happening here, and it's not the slow drip-drip of agonized cadavers (?) slinking by them, one casually stumbling by Claire's foot, before he shifts his shoe away just in time to avoid a hand that clutches, beastly, to the shoreline for dear breath. He should help the fella. Nah. )
What're you doing, then? Training swim for the draft?
no subject
You stupid or just in denial?
[He stoops to clasp the hand that Claire narrowly avoided, hauls the poor idiot to their feet, and sends them off with a clap on the shoulder, all without saying a word. This is what he's doing, not that he'd say so directly.
Instead, he gives Claire a hard, evaluative look. No way this guy actually thinks that some light exercise before dinner is anybody's priority in this place, right?]
Where d'you think you are, man?
no subject
( A beat, unhurried, wooden: ) Family vacation.
( Then, as if his punchline's just nailed the landing after a swan dive, grin sharp and vast like wildfire. ) Just without the family.
( The world, your oyster. Death only the great beginning. And didn't he always suspect as much? If they are — if this is what he anticipates it to be, a respectably bland if tenebrous purgatory, and his mind is entirely woken and his own: then the afterlife too only persists as a symptom of his sick will. At his gleeful, still smiling largesse.
Teeth are devilish weapons, aren't they? Show them off long enough, you turn base hostility into manicured civility. He's not carelessly drifting down to crouch — then bolt up, standing — when the beleaguered civilian's wrested from the waters. He's spectating with a positive attitude, bringing the tomb of their current premises alight with his joy.
To think, he even joins in to pat the idiot's back, after the young man's done the same — send him off warmly. Then, charitably, to his dinner-that-never-was companion: )
Name's Felix.
no subject
Felix. He'll remember that.]
Urameshi. [A beat of consideration, and then:] Yusuke. You ain't about to jump in there looking for dinner now, are you?
[You see, it's only stupid when people who should know better do it. He's already stupid so when he does it it's fine.]
no subject
( Urameshi, sure. Fancy name. Italian? It's got that edge. He thinks, for a moment, to offer a shake — but there's the distant moist cold edge to Urameshi's presence, a foreboding certainty that he must be slippery, slick and drenched.
The arc of his held-out hand cuts off, slanting. He whistles aside, where a bundle of rubble synchronizes, tumbling down. )
Nah. Think my appetite's gone out the window. No offense. ( To the fisherman and his valiant efforts to keep them mean, lean and dissatisfied. ) It's the view.
( This, with a nod of utmost courtesy to where the cavern sprawls vast, dark, unfathomable and unending. Crowded entrances, tight interstices. Hard, jutting edges. A sight for sore, squinting mole eyes. He clicks his tongue. )
You've gone in or... getting your exercise in first?
no subject
Ain't much of a nature guy. [Do weird Underworld caves count as nature? To him they do. He glances back to Felix again.] Why, there something worth seeing?
no subject
One way to find out.
( Half a dozen, by the look of the strangled inroads and choking entry points. Whatever this bundle of speleological joy, someone's taken a needle to it and pricked and pricked and pricked. Least it spreads out more exploration ground for Claire and his new fish-meddling frie —
Wait. He turns, loosely, in the indistinct direction of where a logistical problem might present itself. )
...you sound young. ( More telling than shapes in ink-dark. ) Are you?
( It makes, at the end of a particularly long day (?), no difference in practical terms. The natural resistance of still pliant, growth-hollowed bones over the counter-push of settled ones. Less blood for the spilling, true — but less for the wipe. Kids are great.
They just need a little more treatin' with love and care, when you're lugging them through cavernous hell. )
no subject
What's it to you? We both bit it either way, didn't we?
[Didn't even make it to his sixteenth birthday. Lotta good that first resurrection did.]
no subject
( It's always the little'uns getting mighty frisky. Bona fide firecrackers, aren't they? Imagine the endless consternation of raising them on the knee, only to end up getting a telling once they can piece their words, pop by pop. Parents sure have it rough in this life.
Unlife.
That part seems to sting, fleetingly quieting him, forcing him to look — feline-like, pupils wide, thick-black, piercing. Kid, right. Kids should be seen, not heard. )
I'm only asking to be civil.
no subject
Maybe this makes him an asshole, but— whatever. Not like he didn't know that already.]
If you think I need a babysitter, don't bother. [worse than a kid, he's a teenager] Just try to keep up, huh?
no subject
( It's the attitude, it's the cheek. It's the God damned nuisance of them, children. If Claire didn't know his origin story included a sad episode of infancy, he'd riotously advocate to skip that entire decade.
...and whatever year Urameshi's in, after.
He should nudge the little guy or trip him down. Isn't that how dogs teach dominance? Exercise your bite, show a bit of teeth? Not that Claire's got his hissing down pat, but — no. Air's punched out of him, sigh like the tepid release of incremental pressure. Breathe, breathe. )
You know, on a train, the worst passengers are always kids.
no subject
[Here's a game: try to guess how many times he's been scolded for causing a ruckus on the train. or a bus. or literally any public space.
He's still pretty soaked through, wet hair flopping onto his forehead and shirt clinging to his ribs, but he's not about to let that stop him. He brushes past Felix to head out into the cavern, a light but pointed shoulder check.]
You coming?
no subject
( Don't break his teeth.
In this house of screams and silence, a (fledgling) man's got to live by something. His bite. Bit of a brawler in the boy, sit of his shoulders squared, the way he carries. As if he'll break a fight or bring it, come hell, wall or high water.
Then there's Claire, seeping after him like a summer storm, with practised congruity. Steps light, languid. As if he might perish or pounce but never linger. Until he stops, dead in his track, coming to a crouch to fish through a massacre of gritty gravel and chipped stone, and pick out a choice collection.
One, three, eight, a dozen pieces, two dozen, sharp. )
Just a moment. ( Muttered ahead, before he kicks one rock to snag obediently on the right wall. A few steps along the way, another thrown. ) Insurance. Like... Hansel and Gretel. You know that one?
no subject
But— no. He's seen this before. This is the second time he's been fortunate enough to be wandering into a cave with someone who will think further ahead about things than he does.
Does he know the story, though? Ehhhh...]
So you can follow it back if you have to, right? [He shrugs.] Sure, man. Whatever makes you feel better.