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

"Mental illness does tend to be messy," he agreed. "Just think the collateral damage's on a lot smaller scale."

It was true that with great supervillains there were equally powerful heroes to stop them but there was certainly a difference in one person with cyberware having a loose wire sparking the wrong bits than someone who could pick up and throw an eighteen-wheeler like it were a kid's toy. While that may not be too large an issue for the richer parts of wherever the hell Wren came from, he imagined the poor parts - the parts that V would have been from in their world - were never really cared for or repaired.

"Guess you're right, though. People survive their circumstance." Usually, anyway. V had survived his for 28 years, then (apparently) was here to survive some more.

He hesitated a moment as he waffled over asking his next question. He decided to just go for it. "...Were you one?"

While there were certainly some corporations with farther reach than they reasonably should have, they were nowhere near the megacorps that V was used to that had a strangle hold on everything. The odd hero or villain might be 'sponsored', but it wasn't common and those that were were rather looked down upon by other masks on both sides.

This also meant of course that for some masks, their 'superpower' could be best summed up as 'access to money'. That was as good as a superpower anywhere, though, Wren figured.

Only that they had to spend several years hiding their secret identity made it so they just looked blandly at V for asking rather than looking squirrely or evasive.

"Oh, yeah, I'm actually the secret identity of Justice, the leader of Supergroup, don't tell anyone," they said with enough sarcasm that it was practically dripping off every word. Of course, right after saying that they realized the whole comment was utterly lost on V who had no context for that. "... Justice is probably around my dad's age, black, and taller than you are."

They were met, once again, with a blank and emotionless expression that meant he had no fucking clue what the fuck they were talking about. He was glad for the explanation but a joke wasn't funny if it had to be explained.

"You're boring as fuck, got it," he returned with a little bit of snark, though he intended it as a joke. If there was anything he'd learned from this conversation it was that they were not boring. At least, as far as he could tell. He's been wrong before.

V couldn't doubt them for dodging the question: he hardly wished to share anything personal about himself. He imagined that being a superhero would require a certain level of secrecy - when V grew renowned in Night City and his rep heavily preceded him it became more and more important for him to keep his real name and personal details secret.

"Good thing that's not you 'cause otherwise I'd have to give you shit for pickin' such a gonk name."

Wren did take it as a joke - same as their comment about V's taste in music being shit. Even biting at the inside of their lip didn't do much to hide the quick flash of smile as they pretended to study the music tapes.

"Hey, I am given to understand that Justice is a real stand up kind of guy and a truly decent person," Wren said, having only met the man once, briefly, in not the best circumstances. Still, he had a reputation for being super of morals as well as powers. "...the name seriously makes him sound like a tool though, huh?"

The last part was added quietly, under their breath, like a secret shared.

"No, I have a totally normal not weirdo superhero identity name. I'm Wren."

That he'd made them smile seemingly against their better judgment was a little victory to him. Even through another death, he was still funny so at least he had that going for him. He'd lost everything else waking up in this godforsaken place.

"Yeah, it does. Good marketing, though. Easy to remember. Strong word." Maybe marketing wasn't as important there but being easy to remember and having a good public image was the sort of thing that would always be important.

"Thank god," he said quietly back. "Was afraid I'd have to try to call you Liberty with a straight face," he teased. "Got a real easy name, definitely tool-proofed. Name's V."

The comment about being called 'Liberty' got another stifled snort of a laugh out of Wren that they quickly had to cough down. It was a little easier after V gave his name. Wren didn't pale exactly, but... it was very clear that much of their good humor drained.

They were silent for a moment, trying to figure out how to phrase what they wanted to say. If they should.

They should. They should try. It'd just get weird sooner rather than later if they didn't.

"... Do you ... uh ... have ... anything else I can call you?" Wren asked, slowly at first, before quickly continuing. "I'm not trying to pull some bullshit 'ok but what's your real name' kind of deal and if it's just V I'll - I'll make it work it's just that's also kind of what we all called my ex and it ... didn't end so good? We're still friends but she cheated on me at like the worst time and- okay now I'm getting into too much information territory."

The way Wren's laugh died and the way the air between them changed was something V caught on to immediately but he was ready to just ignore it and break up the conversation and move on in an attempt to avoid any particular confrontation. The longer the uncomfortable silence lingered the closer he was to this but they started to talk.

V's response was, at first, silence. The first question - if there was any other name he went by - he registered easily thanks to how slowly they initially asked it. The rest of it he needed a moment to work through - adjusting to not having subtitles in his vision for everything everyone said was tougher than he'd expected. He never realized how much he'd relied on it until he didn't have them.

He was of a notion that he should tell them to fucking deal and call him V but his expression softened a little as the reasoning for their request settled in. He could understand. If their name had been Gabriel or Gabe he would have asked to call them literally anything else, even Liberty, to avoid dealing with that ghost of his past.

"Vincent," he finally gave. His inflection was carefully neutral, trying to avoid his discomfort with giving out his real name. "Don't got any other handles I go by."

Not without deadnaming himself, anyway, but even as a kid he used V with strangers he'd never worked with before.

"I get it, though. Don't worry about it. Just appreciate it if you don't shorten it at all."

If V hadn't wanted to give a different name, Wren would have made it work. They would have made themself make it work, no matter how difficult. They were also just ... trying to think of Vivienne as little as possible, here.

Her powers were only really a burden to her. Even trapped, how free would she feel, being able to rest easy for once and not have the literal demon that was plaguing her? To not have to worry about losing control and manifesting nightmares? She wouldn't settle, she'd work on a way to free them, but for a little while she would get to be free.

"Thank you," Wren said, picking up how much he really didn't like to use that name, the generosity of giving it anyway to help Wren with their discomfort. They didn't know who they could trust yet, who could be listening in, but- Wren resolved that as soon as they thought they could trust someone here, they'd tell V at least about the superhero thing. Not that it did much good or was much of a secret here without any powers, but. Truth deserved truth. "Vincent. Got it."

IC INTRO #1

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