IC INTRO #1

[cursedmods]

IC INTRO #1

A Blood Offering

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You wake up cozy in bed at the Saturn Motel. As you observe the room you may realize that it looks a little dated. Or, perhaps from your point of view the lamp and TV are wildly futuristic. Or, like Goldilocks, it may seem just right: close to the world you just left behind. Either way, you just had a very strange dream (see the arrival scenario) and now you're here. And you're not alone: there's a bed next to yours and someone else is waking up just like you are.

You can chat for a while if you like, but if you try to leave you'll find the door is firmly locked and no amount of kicking, punching, or hitting it with an object will do you any good. Instead, there's a letter on the nightstand which reads:

"Good morning and welcome to your new home!

You may be wondering why you're trapped in this room. Fear not, the door will open easily if you offer a bit of blood. More than a few drops but not enough to be a serious wound. A handprint's worth will do, let's say, and it only needs to come from one of you.

I'll let you sort that out yourselves. See you on the other side.

Sincerely,
The Mayor"

And indeed, a handprint's worth of blood pressed against the door will unlock it and let you out into the world. Do you volunteer your own blood? Do you take it from the other person by force? It's up to you! But there's no food in here, so you better figure it out eventually.

Roller Rink

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As a celebration of your new lives here (and an apology for the whole blood offering thing - they were just testing something out, really) the Mayor has invited everyone to the Crazy Eight Roller Rink for a private, after-hours party.

Attendance isn't mandatory, but it is heavily encouraged so that you can meet your fellow Cursed and know who's in on the whole secret. It'll help you down the line at some point if your Curse gets out of control and you need someone to wrangle you.

As a reward, everyone who shows up and completes at least one lap around the roller rink (you must be wearing skates, but you can crawl the lap if you can't get the hang of them) will receive a free walkman with a mystery tape inside. The color, style, and mystery tape your character gets are up to you.

Mallrats

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Everyone loves the mall! Right? Right! And this group of newcomers is lucky enough to be here for the White Pines Mall Grand Opening celebration! Feel free to walk around the mall and partake in sales galore, check out the attractions, or just get to know the layout of the place.

The Mayor has given everyone a gift card for $100 that can be used anywhere in the mall as long as they attend the Grand Opening.

They also strongly suggest that you familiarize yourself with the mall and its layout, just in case you ever get stuck there for a while and have to compete with others for food and resources. But that probably won't happen.

Extra Info

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All the same guidelines from the TDM still apply. You can continue your TDM threads here or start new ones! And of course, you can start making your own prompts in the log or network communities at your leisure.

Our first event will be going up in about a week!

Please do not add character tags to any posts just yet, we'll add them to this post manually.

Comments

[m1895]

[ Vasiliy furrows his brow. At this rate they're never going to get the door open. ]

No. I am EMT.

[ There's an irony to the fact that he's speaking the truth—just not for the ascribed reasons. Somebody like him had reason to carry a gun, not use it: more than anything, it was a prop, something for him to relinquish and disassemble on the interrogation table to make a point of being different from whoever had beaten or pressed the same prisoner before his arrival.

There was never any real risk to letting it leave his close possession, of course. None of those people would dare shoot an officer, halted as they were by the knowledge that it wouldn't mean their swift death but their torture. ]

I lived in Chicago and St. Petersburg. There is a lot of mugging.

[nauseam]

[ Being an EMT and having shot a gun before aren't mutually exclusive, but Deely just purses her lips at him rather than wasting time pointing it out. He's either stupid or he's playing stupid, which means he's deliberately avoiding giving her straight answers, and they both know it. So she just lets those statements hang in the air between them for a little while, and then disappears behind the wall again. ]

Okay, do whatever you're gonna do. But if your bullet ricochets and hits me and I die, I will haunt your ass.

[m1895]

Ghosts are not real.

[ It's the last thing he says before he walks to the door, slow and careful, hugging the wall with the gun angled downwards. He looks through the peephole: nothing, or at least nothing in his field of view. Anything or anyone in the fisheye's blind spot will just have to be dealt with when he opens the door.

Which he finally does, carefully, pressing his hand to the wood with his fingers splayed. The deadbolt clicks out of place. He turns the knob and opens the door to an empty breezeway overlooking a parking lot and a few trees. Evergreens, so they must be somewhere up north. ]

There is nobody there. You can come out.

[nauseam]

Not as far as you know. Maybe I'll be the first one.

[ Excellent, she got the last word. Always feels so good. Deely's stomach twists up a little as she watches him give the peephole a peep; it's definitely just the way he's treating this whole thing, but he's got her feeling nervous, especially waving that gun around the way he is. She even holds her breath as the door swings open, and it isn't until he announces the all-clear that she puffs it out.

She waits a few seconds, just in case there are to be any final scares, and then steps out from behind the wall. ]

That was so disappointing. Not even a little ghoul or weird beast to scare us? This escape room sucks.

[m1895]

Be thankful.

[ Again, this Deely woman shows just how much of an out-of-touch American she is, even if he does get the sense that some degree of fear is probably veiled under the humor. And, speaking of out of touch, it's probably in her best interest for them to not split up. His too—with few exceptions, people are always stronger together, collaborating. Even if the other collaborators are annoying.

The coast is clear for now, but Vasiliy hardly feels much of a change in the tension and heightened alertness lighting up his entire body. This is a very dangerous situation they're in, of that much he's certain. ]

We need to find where and when we are. We are in America, the electrical outlets in hotel room are American style. But beyond that, I do not know. Somewhere north, maybe.