cursedrp | IC INTRO #1

IC INTRO #1

A Blood Offering

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

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

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

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

» blood & rats (previously on—)

( original prompts for A Blood Offering and Mallrats are over on the TDM. i'm happy to continue any or pick something up from those if you're interested! )

» mallrats (extended cut)

[ After slowly oozing back together while sitting in the food court - only mild, trauma-induced dissociation while consuming an icee, no big deal - Daryl has reconciled with the reality that he needs to appear more like a regular weirdo and not a "might need to call the police" weirdo. He is not anyone's favorite customer in the reasonably priced clothes store, despite his stoic demeanor; he buys some tolerable shirts and a new pair of jeans, and changes in the dressing room. There's nothing to be done about the state of his kutte or jacket, and he still definitely smells like weeks-old sweat and crusting-over gore, but any improvement at this state is a huge one.

He still looks out of place. Dirty and exhausted, sullenly allowing a perplexed co-ed sell him a pair of boots. You'd never know it by the blank look on his face, but he's actually incredibly amused by this; Timberlands are affordable again, in the 1980s. This $100 is doing some work.

Later, he does a few rounds, awkwardly carrying a shopping bag and checking out every available store without walking inside. A strange lurker. He even does the same outside, potentially making at least one rent-a-cop nervous, but he never drifts near access doors or anyone's cars. Just looking, gaze towards the perimeter. ]

» back at the ranch (saturn motel)

laundry—

[ A new day, waking up in almost the same place. Alone in his assigned room, and with no self-harm requirement to get out. He feels something cold sink in his stomach with how settled and real it seems.

Tough shit, he tells himself. Daryl has things to do. His most intense impulse is to fuck off immediately, but he can't— if one of his people shows up, this'll be where. He doesn't even know if he's done a proper headcount of everyone here, yet, or if there's more information to be gleaned about the "Mayor" (ugh, like he needs another one of those, leaving an awful taste in his mouth thinking of the Governor). He has to at least try to stick around and not get kicked out. And so, freshly scrubbed, he drags all of his gross clothes to the laundry room.

Then he just stares at it for a while.

Cut to: Daryl walking back to the front desk to ask for quarters to use the washing machine. Daryl walking back to the laundry room. Daryl walking back to the front desk to ask for more quarters to get detergent out of the vending machine. Daryl walking back to the laundry room. Daryl walking back to his actual room, then back to the laundry room, having forgotten his shoes, which also have to go in. Looking increasingly murderous the entire time (or, depending on your point of view, like an increasingly despondent basset hound).

He has not removed the long, skinny sizing sticker from the back of his new forest green plaid shirt. ]

poolside—

[ At last free of the clutches of laundry, Daryl has posted up in the pool enclosure on the shady side. On one lounge chair, he's laid out his jacket and vest, out of direct sunlight. It'd be better for them to dry inside, but it's not like he keeps his shit in museum-quality condition anyway, and it just... really needs to air out. His pre-outbreak habit of deep cleaning his leathers every year or so has fallen off sharply. There may not be anything he can do to fully restore the kutte, at least— it may bleed forever, each time it's wiped down.

The man himself sits in an adjacent lounge chair, fully dressed, cheap gas station sunglasses perched on his face. He's also acquired cigarettes and a packet of Twizzlers, and is making headway on those while he finally inspects the Walkman from the roller rink. (A straggler, late in the evening; he can skate just fine, what do you take him for. He just didn't want to be in a crowd.) He'd grabbed it blindly on his way out the door, and now, its mild color surprises him. The yellow hue reminds him of lemonade or banana splits, instead of the eye-searing highlighter tone he might expect.

Daryl taps his cigarette to one side (nary an ash tray in sight) and flips the case open to look at the cassette inside, wondering. ]

» special features (wildcard)

( ooc; if you're interested in anything different, hit me up! i'm equally fine with prose or action. )

Edited 2022-09-03 03:17 (UTC)

( blood offering, continued. )

Might as well.

[ The floors are clean, the lights aren't threatening to dim or flicker. Someone's left the remains of room service lunch outside their door on the floor, waiting to be picked up by a custodian. It doesn't look like there's thirty shambling corpses waiting for them, but it also doesn't look like an elaborate prison game.

Very suspicious.

They get to the doors leading outside, and Daryl slows. Waits for a moment with his shoulder to the opening side, before carefully pushing it open with his offhand, so he has a clear shot with the knife in his other. Quick, quiet, ready.

But it's just a courtyard. He flips the knife, blade tucked behind his palm, auto-pilot as he takes in the utterly ordinary sight of picnic tables and the other wing of the building's many rooms. Further out, parking spaces, and cars that aren't beat to shit. To their left is the front desk entrance, and the sound of someone laughing with the clerk. ]

[She spots the tray, and takes a few steps over toward it. There's a steak knife, one she quickly grabs. It won't do much, but it's better than nothing. She keeps it out.

But she nearly drops it, when she follows him out into the courtyard. She actually gasps, stepping out from behind him to look around. This is... Well, not England. And those things? Those brightly colored small trains?] Daryl? [She asks softly, keeping her eyes on them. They look like wagons. Individual wagons on trains. Or she didn't want to discount, that it was some sort of animal with an odd shell. Who knew what was out there in the world beyond London. Regardless, she needed to know.] What are those?

[ There's a lot of staring from him, too, but for different reasons. It takes him a second to inhabit the current moment properly, briefly dumbstruck by finding such a surreal setting. ]

Cars, [ he says, and grapples internally for an explanation. ] Uh.. you travel in 'em.

[ But cars are going to be the least of her questions, probably. He tries to elaborate, clumsy: ] A machine inside a shell, 'cause... machines get smaller and more complicated, and people make machines that do all kinds of shit.

[ Caveman simplistic. Potentially not helpful. ]

Oh! [That makes sense. She knows machines. Or the concept. Look, I once saw an attempt at a steam punk Oliver! and it half succeeded. Point is: she understands.]

So it is an ommibus, of sorts. [Now she's even more curious.]

I'm going to be awfully annoying with my questions, I apologize. [her knife is tucked into pocket of her dress. Long ago she'd learned to sew them into anything she could, hidden. But you try picking the pocket of Bill Sikes' girl and see what happens.] But I guess chances are if I see something strange it's a machine?

Uhhuh, [ he agrees, about whatever she says it's like. He doesn't have a clue, but it can't hurt to be encouraging, right? Right.

Still visually scanning the area, still completely out of sorts. He tells himself to get a fucking grip— doesn't matter if this is just a facade, it's actually completely fine if there's nothing horrible leaping out to kill them.

But this is a facade, he's sure. What the hell was the blood about, otherwise? ]

It's a good first guess. [ Of machines. ] I'm no expert either.

[ So, they are Conscious Knife Crew now, with their funny outfits and blood. Great. Daryl takes a moment and stows the knife in its holder, tucking the whole thing under his jeans. Welp. ]

... Guess we should check in.

Right. [Okay. So they're all machines, and Daryl is a bit confused, too. Alright, they both need to find someone who is much, much better at figuring out what everything is.]

Check-in? [She blinks her green eyes, glances toward where he's looking.] Oh! Hotel, right. How posh! [She smiles, almost excited at the idea.] I've nothing to pay for a room, of course, but...

[Well. Daryl really didn't look like he did either.]

If we have to pay for getting abducted, I'll be even more annoyed.

[ Everything else looks like it's operating normally. There's even a sign for a cafe, cheerily letting them know it's open. What kind of hotel has a wing set aside for creepy abduction experiments? Did someone just book out a whole bunch for their project?

Well. He's not much of an investigator, so walking right in and asking will have to do. And if shit goes down, he's killed so many people this week that a few more won't hurt his conscience.

Probably.

He leads the way (still wary) across the courtyard and into the office, and some tiny useless thought marvels on the shiny clean glass of the door and pristine sticker decals. A world of the past. How much has he forgotten?

Inside, a bored-looking twenty-something with permed hair tied up in a neon scrunchie is chewing gum and flipping magazine pages. Her canned welcome is clearly rehearsed, clearly desperate to go back to her issue of Smash Hit. Daryl says hello, offers their names, and she sighs as she opens a reservation book.

A minute later— ]

Yep. [ She pops a bubble as she digs jangling room keys out a tray, sorting through number tags. ] Here you go. Room service has a last call at seven but the cafe's open 24 hours. Enjoy your stay.

I second that motion. [SHe doesn't have any money, to begin with. Second of all, she doesn't really pay for anything. Ever.

She follows Daryl close by, looking around. She smiles, to see the bright colors- London was so dingy, comparatively. There's so much to take in, she's likely to spend the next few hours down here, just absorbing and exploring.

She hangs behind him as they enter the office, the girl's hair and whatever she's chewing fascinating. Nancy leans forward to watch her, see the brightly colored glossy photos in the very thin book or very exciting newspaper she's reading.

She accepts the key.] So we don't need to bleed on the door every time we want to leave now? We actually get keys?

[She looks at Daryl for confirmation.] And, ah, miss, I've no way to pay for this.

[The teenager rolls her eyes.] It's free, don't worry about it. [And literally waves her hand before going back to her magazine. Nancy glances back to Daryl.]

Well, then. This is a hotel. I don't think it's too dangerous?

[ The receptionist must think they're here for some kind of nerd convention, to not be reacting to the way they look and to questions about bleeding on the door. Either that, or she's the world's most talented upcoming actress holding it together in the face of either being a hostage or in on some weird torture game. ]

Courtesy of 'the Mayor'? [ —a guess, to which the girl with the scrunchie confirms with an 'uh-huh' without looking up.

Daryl doesn't like that. But he doesn't like any of this, so. Big surprise. He flips the diamond-shape keychain over in his hand, and the little silver key jingles. Ordinary, like dozens of other motels he's stayed in, before and after. (No fancy hotel living in the apocalypse; electronic locks with keycards are miserable to work around without power. Shitty motels, meanwhile, are immortal.)

He moves away from the desk and towards a hallway going to the cafe before responding to Nancy. Uncertain if he wants anyone listening in, even though Scrunchie appears to be wholesale ignoring them. Then he shrugs. Everything's dangerous, life is fucked up that way. ]

Guess it'd look weirder if we ended up homeless. Think there are more people like us?

daryl dixon | the walking dead ( ota 💚 )

for maritorious.

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continuing! (some Danganronpa spoilers)

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more spoilers, whoops (for real this time)

laundry!

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