vestige ooc + memes.

• What remains of last month's seeds.


• A particularly robust assortment of chapstick, for those feeling a bit more conscious of their lips thanks to certain dreams.


• A renewed supply of camping gear - basically anything you might find in the camping section at Walmart is fair game.

• ASPHODELUS - ( 📷 ) This flower will cause the feeling of soul-crushing regret and guilt. What's the one thing that you regret the most? The one thing you would change if you could turn back time? It's time to have that thrown back in your face for the next twelve hours, assuming you're not exposed to this pollen again. The funny thing about it is, you're feeling even worse about it now than you ever did before, even if the issue has long since been resolved.


• BEGONIA - ( 📷 ) Suddenly you're aware that everyone is conspiring against you. Not just your enemies, but your friends and family as well. Even that raccoon over there. Look at the way it's looking at you, making those weird chittery sounds and scampering up and down that tree. It's up to something. Exposure to the begonia pollen will cause intense paranoia for up to twelve hours after initial exposure (assuming you don't come in contact with it again).


• EDELWEIß - ( 📷 ) Oh, Edelweiss. A beloved and simple flower from the Alpine region of Europe. This one will cause you to become extremely reckless, possibly to the point of death. It goes beyond developing or exacerbating a hero complex. It's like experiencing l'appel du vide for twelve hours and actually listening to it. Good luck.


• GENTIANA ANDREWSII - ( 📷 ) When's the last time you had a good night's sleep? A few days? Weeks? Prior to ever showing up here? Here, let's help with that. The pollen from Gentania andrewsii, commonly known as a closed or bottle gentian, will instantly put anyone who comes in contact with it to sleep. It doesn't matter if they're sitting, standing, driving or swimming. They will fall into a deep sleep, varying anywhere from twelve to twenty-four hours. For the duration of that time, some will have a dreamless sleep, while others will experience vivid nightmares and will only awaken after experiencing sleep paralysis.


• GLOXINIA - ( 📷 ) This flower can have one of two main effects, depending on how it is that you're exposed to the pollen. If you touch the pollen with your hands (picking the flower, holding onto it in order to reach in to smell it, etc.), you'll discover ~5-10 minutes later that you're quite allergic to it, and your hand + everything you've touched with that hand since begins to redden and burn like a terrible rash. But some might argue that this is the preferable option, because if you receive the pollen via airborne exposure, you'll find yourself either blinded or deafened instead. Don't worry - both the loss of senses and the burning rash are entirely temporary, wearing off in anywhere from 2-6 hours.


• POPPIES - ( 📷 ) I mean, what do you expect from poppies? This shit gets you high. There's a low but persistent level of opium in the pollen of these bad boys, so buckle up.
  

• This TDM takes place in a shared dream for all participants, so as not to interrupt in-game continuity. Characters already in-game may experience this dream at literally any time between now and the next TDM, and new characters who TDM here will have this dream as their vivid introductory experience, which they're free to remember/not remember upon joining the actual game. Players of current Vestige characters, feel free to fudge when your characters experience this nightmare and/or when something inspires them to remember it.


• In Anomaly Type 2, you're welcome to fully improvise whatever room shape and/or traps and dangers your characters encounter. Go nuts. (Also, while we're talking about it - characters still retain vocal chords and mouth cavities, and are still able to hum/grunt. It's just like someone took the Clone tool and photoshopped more cheek where their mouth is supposed to be.)


• In Anomaly Type 3, you are literally just 100% free to decide what power you want to inflict on your character and those around them. If you're at a loss, ask the Discord for ideas!


• Unless otherwise specified, characters arrive with all powers intact and carrying all items that they had with them on their canonpoint.


• Vestige will be lifting its invite-only rule on a trial basis beginning on April 15th! Folks without direct invites are welcome to TDM in the meantime, but no-invite applications won't be accepted until the 15th.
• I recommend checking out our New Player Guide (specifically the 'for characters' drop-down) or the FAQ before you TDM, even though this isn't set in the Containment Zone proper.


• Feel free to hop into our Discord server if you aren't there already! You're welcome even if you aren't in the game just yet.

• A variety of green decor and clothing, many of which feature gold accents or four-leaf clover designs.


• A rack full of seed packets, but rather than being professionally-printed and labeled, they're plain brown with handwritten labels ranging in specificity from 'carrots' and 'lotus' to 'maybe zucchini?' and 'no idea'. Most of them are fruits or veggies of some sort. Godspeed.
• A more diverse range of questionable foods, like fresh stargazy pie in the deli, Manwich (in original, bold, and thick & chunky), jars of Vegemite, and ambiguous potato snacks.


• Huggle hoodies in a variety of colors and sizes.


• A few one-pound bags of caltrops.


• What looks suspiciously like a vial of actual blood amidst the goods in the freezer section??

• Valentine's Day candy! Heart-shaped boxes of assorted chocolates in varying sizes, none of which have the cheat-sheet which tells which shapes are what flavors (a true evil), are pushed to the backs of the shelves and hidden behind a truly godawful number of boxes of candy hearts. Some have the phrases you might expect, some are kinda insulting, some are not appropriate for Naminé's eyes, and some... well, some are like this. It's pretty much impossible to tell what kind are in each box, so godspeed.


• Paper valentines of varying sorts, like the kind kids give each other in elementary school. Mostly. Some of them have questionable text (whether lewd, confusing, or outright threatening). Feel free to make shit up, whatever suits your fancy.


• Lederhosen.

• Necrotic spots are larger and more numerous across the carcass, oftentimes up around the throat and head. Necrosis is also much more advanced, likely the cause of death. No further damage.


• No necrosis whatsoever, but an assortment of wounds. Most of the wounds look like they were inflicted by some manner of claws or talons, though some sport what look like small impalement wounds ranging in size (some shallow and about the width of a pencil, some deep and the approximate width of a silver dollar at the entry point but tapering smaller). These appear to have been... eaten somewhat? Or more specifically, large pieces of them have been clawed away for some reason or another, and consumption is the simplest bet.

Since Lana wished for phone apps, we've got 'em! I'll be migrating this list into the FAQ soon, and will continually update it as I get new phone app suggestions. (So like, hit me up if you want a new app and I'll see what i can do.)

• YIKES - Basically Vine/Tiktok meets Snapchat. You can make 30-second videos of whatever stupid ass shit sounds good to you at the time. You can overlay it with songs, filters that make you pretty or change your face, voice-changers, etc. You can re-film your video as many times as you want, but it automatically posts to the network or a pre-specified recipient when you click 'done', so. Godspeed, you crazy filter-loving bastards. (To utilize OOCly, feel free to just.... make a regular network post or inbox tag-in and specify somehow that it's a Yikes app pic/video.)


• CHICKCHUCK - A mindless phone game where you throw cute animated baby chickens at things, Angry Birds style.


• SAUSAGEFREE - A ladies-only gacha with plot, character-leveling, weapons, accessories, and very strong (often overt) lesbian overtones, but not in a creepy male-gaze kind of way. Blame Luusi. (If you end up bullshitting any of the story elements, please let Trace know so she can cobble together whatever stupid ass adventure story y'all make up for this.)


• NEF (NOT ENOUGH FISH) - Because 'Plenty Of Fish' is taken, Christian, and also a straight-up lie. This is basically Tinder except the Technicians wrote your page for you. (To utilize OOCly, we actually now have a Not Enough Fish page for everyone to link their bios. Feel free to ask any questions on this top-level!)

(any of these can be experienced if a visitor is within 20 feet, regardless of walls/obstacles between them )


• mild to moderate disassociation; feeling outside of/apart from their body or feeling disconnected from the world around them
• deja-vu
• synesthesia (especially chromesthesia or mirror-touch synesthesia)
• the perception that they or those around them are moving either too fast or too slow
• distortion of sounds (everything sounds muffled, or echoed, or tinny, or distant)
• low buzz of anxiety (nothing sharp or urgent, more of an undercurrent)
• dilated pupils, possibly eyes going unfocused
• mild aphasia (swapping of words/inability to find correct ones)
• (in rare cases) prosopagnosia (face-blindness)

( anyone affected by the visitors to any degree may experience whichever of these you feel are applicable! most last for just a couple of days, but you're welcome to play with some of them lasting longer if you want)


• fatigue, partial numbness (physically or mentally)
• mild oversensitivity of one/more senses
• lingering anxiety or unease, possibly even flashes of panic (nightmares an option)
• occasional mild resurgences of synesthesia
• those who experienced the fuckeries may have trouble sorting out which memories/feelings were theirs for a bit

(these effects begin directly after the person regains proper consciousness post-touch, no need to wait for the event to be over. aside from the one mandatory effect, the rest are entirely optional. in general, all of these fade away over the course of the week following the event, some faster than others.)


• ( MANDATORY ) for the next 2-4 days, those who come within proximity of your character (5-10 feet, you choose the specific threshold) begin to experience some of the milder side effects within the 'early signs' list above.
• none of the disorienting effects of the visitors' presence seem to have any disorienting effect on your character
• a prevailing low-key feeling of warmth or acceptance (nothing cult-y, just like warm fuzzy vibes)
• everything seems a little bit richer (smells and flavors have brand new facets of nuance, they can see colors which they never knew existed, etc)
• more vividly synesthetic or generally impossible sensory capabilities (being able to touch something and feel what color it is, for example, or tasting emotions in the air and naming them correctly, etc)

• All of the Autumn items listed in the October Bulletin are still in stock! (Underwear are back, though. In case anyone was worried.)
• Food items that one might recognize as 'Thanksgiving-themed' - sweet potatoes and/or yams, cranberry products of various kinds, the fixings for apple pies, etc.
• Thicker jackets! These won't even let the hail in! On the downside, the colors or patterns are not aesthetically pleasing and they make you look like a marshmallow with legs. (e.g. this, for a more merciful option)
• Thought the bears have gone into hibernation, there seems to be an odd surplus of bear mace. I bet it works on wolves and cougars, too?

• NOVEMBER CATCH-ALL LOG, NOV 12 - This month's catch-all log will go up. It'll be pretty short, but it'll do.


• EVENT INFOPOST, NOV 16 - An event infopost for "H̸̠͉͖͌̓̋̽E̵̯͐ͅĻ̵͛̕̚L̶̨͈̪̗͑̀̀̚Ơ̵̢̠̣̐̏̚" will go up, providing more details to work with!


• EVENT LOG, NOV 19 - The event log for "H̸̠͉͖͌̓̋̽E̵̯͐ͅĻ̵͛̕̚L̶̨͈̪̗͑̀̀̚Ơ̵̢̠̣̐̏̚", which spans the IC dates of November 23rd - 25th.


• THANKSGIVING FEAST LOG, NOV 22 - A post-event holiday feast, taking place ICly on November 26th (Thanksgiving).


• DECEMBER CATCH-ALL LOG, DEC 1 - Your typical monthly catch-all. This will probably include prompts for December's events rather than a separate event log, since there's nothing too intense over the holidays. (All relevant info for December's happenings can be found in the above drop-down + the elaboration in the catch-all.)


• DECEMBER NOT-BULLETIN, DEC 3 - Around the same time as the bulletin would usually go up, I plan to put up a tiny mod note with any last-minute updates for December + a link to this bulletin.


• 'MERRY SHITSCRAM' NETWORK POST, DEC 9 - See the description in the event drop-down for more on this.


• 'WHAT SHOULD POTENTIAL PLAYERS KNOW ABOUT VESTIGE?' POST, DEC ??? - This post (as mentioned above in the announcements drop-down) is basically for those who might app in uninvited to hear about the game's slightly unusual pace/style/mood from the players themselves. Participation isn't mandatory but is deeply appreciated.

As Autumn sets in, the containment zone begins to settle into all of the trappings of autumn. Chilly weather, bundled clothing and hot drinks, the turning and falling of leaves... It really just goes to show that life goes on in a place like this just as it does anywhere else.

No horrifying curse or dangerous monsters plague the containment zone at large this month, nor is there any dire emergency from which anyone needs rescued. In fact, for some, October is a blissful month of recovery, perhaps even domesticity. But others - those who get caught in the crossfire of one of the more localized happenings, especially - may find it quite a bit more difficult to relax into the reprieve(?) you've been afforded.

October is wet. While it isn't quite frigid just yet like you'll see around wintertime, three or four days per week offer moderate rainfall, and at least one or two of those rain heavily enough that a simple trip to your neighbor's cabin will leave you halfway soaked. The few rain-free days offer enough sun to dry up most of the puddles and whatever else is soggy by the end of the day, only for everything to get soaked again the following day.

The middle of the month sees stronger winds, never gale-strength but nonetheless sharp enough to sting. And... draw blood? See EVENT BRIEFINGS for more on this + the mid-month thunderstorm!

The animals no longer seem to be as scarce as they were - sometime in the last couple of weeks, the containment zone has been repopulated with an appropriate number of woodland creatures. These new arrivals are fairly easy to pick out, if it occurs to you to do so: Regardless of species, they seem a bit lost, a bit unsure. It's an odd season to have to acclimate to a new environment, to have to figure out where to scavenge for food and what dangers to avoid.

These new animals do seem wary and skittish of people... But as the month goes on, many of them (especially the smaller ones - raccoons, opossums, foxes, coyotes, birds of various kinds) take to the manmade structures as shelter from the biting wind, especially those structures like the farmhouse and the unclaimed cabins which see little foot-traffic compared to the occupied cabins. If you're claiming a cabin this month, don't be surprised to find a host of woodland creatures inside!

As for plant life, the possibly-hemlock is still going strong, and the rest of the flora seems to have revitalized from summer's heat by now too, with the grasses around the lake and in the various clearings growing a vibrant well-hydrated green again.

A batch of new slow-growing flower starts have sprung up in the most broken-down of the town's three greenhouses, as if the town's discovery has awoken their seeds from slumber in hopes of proper nursing and care. They'll be dead by mid-November if nobody discovers and cares for them... Are they dangerous? Are they helpful, or useful? Or are they simply baby flowers trying to survive in this world like the rest of you?

Foodland is here for all of your autumn needs! Find a restock of fall-related items, including:


• Supplies for various hot drinks - cocoa, cider, and a few different hot teas.
• A host of new squash varieties in the produce section.
• What looks like an additional produce section full of fall gourds, corns, etc. - but they're all just plastic decorations. Other autumn decor is present, too.
• Autumn clothing! Lots of plaids and flannels, lots of scarves and mittens. Sweaters in general see an influx this season. Hopefully nobody needs new underwear in October, because the ONLY UNDERWEAR to be found are long johns in various shapes and sizes.
• Costumes. In the latter half of the month, a costume section pops up, and you can basically assume that your character's able to find whatever costume they want for Halloween purposes (or that they can't and they're stuck with something awful).
And then, of course, there's the gas station. It's trying a little harder this month. I'd probably still go to Foodland. Gas station finds include:


• Halloween decorations, so many. Anything from spectacularly tacky to actually kind of cool, but... mostly the tacky kind.
• So much Halloween candy, too. The trouble is, it's full of literally all of the the things that chain e-mails and conservative news channels warn parents to look out for hidden within their child's candy: Razor blades, needles (not the drug kind), edibles (definitely the drug kind). The rare candy is even laced with cyanide! Luckily, you'll only find something Alarming in about one out of every twenty pieces.
• The hot roller (y'know, the one that handed out 7/11 flautas back in July?) seems to have something new on the menu... and it smells delicious. Every Saturday and Sunday, come on down to the gas station for some dessert egg rolls! They come in apple, chocolate cheesecake, and pumpkin pie flavors.

That fucking tree is now just 50 yards from the barrier, and at this point it's impossible to ignore. But while looking directly at the tree last month caused you to black out, now you find that it's entirely impossible to look directly at. Characters who try are seized with a primal and mind-numbing avoidance reaction, as if some part of them recognizes something in that tree as beyond the scope of what they're prepared to handle or comprehend.

Regardless of how courageous or daring or foolish they are, 100% of characters are now unable to directly look at this tree. Beyond that, the threshold is variable - some characters find that they can't have it in their peripheral without discomfort too severe to ignore, while others can't even bring themselves visit the gas station at all.

Those who can stand to observe the tree in their peripheral will find that the figures seem to vibrate so strongly in place that their outlines distort... while also giving the illusion of stillness, of not moving at all. It's impossible for both to occur at once, and yet that's what characters seem to be witnessing in the indirect corners of their eyes. Additionally, all who go to the gas station find that something feels wrong about it + the road, clearing, and immediate woods surrounding it. As if they've stepped into a plane slightly detached from their own, or as if the world itself has tilted just fractionally and gravity tugs them accordingly, or as if they've been here in this exact time and place once or twice or a dozen times before. They may feel the dizzying and disoriented sensation typically associated with being upside down, as if hanging upside down from the ceiling would right things.

These effects can be mild, moderate, or severe, and will disappear as soon as they put distance between themselves and the gas station. Hope those egg rolls are worth it.

• Held in the aforementioned tent on the 31st, beginning at 6 PM. No specified end time.
• Costumes (or at least masks) are absolutely required. No entry without!
• Partner recommended.
• Food and beverages will be provided.
• Dance music of all kinds will be featured.

• The only real mandatory feature is that they were once human in some shape or form.

• Their degree of visibility is variable - they can be anywhere from 10% to 90% opacity, and you're welcome to say they're able to change how visible they are at a given time.
  
• They can still look just as they would have when they were alive, or they can be changed in some way.
  
• If they are changed, you have a lot of creative liberty there - their features or bodies can be distorted and/or uncanny, they can have wasted away or eroded, they can have grown Extra Spooky (demonic/dark), etc. The only real guideline there is that their changes would have matched their general theme in some way, but if you're making up generic random ghosts there's no need to fuck with theme shit for that.
  
• They can still carry their death injuries, or an exaggerated version thereof.
  
• How they sound is variable. They can sound fully normal/human, they can have the wrong voice for their body (e.g. creepy man ghost with little girl voice), their voice can be distorted in some way, they can open their mouth and animal/otherwise nonhuman sounds come out, go nuts.
  

• The only rule is that all spirits seem to have wants/needs which lead them to target the living in some shape or form.

• They want something all living can offer, indiscriminately - your soul, your memories, your eyes or other such body part, your body heat leeched from your body, for Literally Anyone To Understand Their Pain, etc.
  
• They want something specific living can offer - maybe they latch onto someone who fits the general age/gender of their long lost relative and get yandere about it, or find someone who reminds them of the person who murdered them and try to make them regret that murder, etc.
  
• They want something irrelevant to the living, but the living are interrupting that and need to be fucked with/chased off - maybe they want some goddamn peace and quiet, or for a certain building or landmark to be left alone, etc.

• Spirits are not fully tangible, and while they can interact tangibly in some ways, they don't have a physical presence which interacts consistently with the world around it. (e.g. maybe it can grab and throw a book, but also walk through a table.) This is mainly to establish that spirits can't pass seamlessly as a living being, even if they give it a convincing try.
  
• Many spirits can accomplish things without regard toward their aesthetic form - for example, their strength when lifting/pushing/pulling doesn't need to match the strength a human of their apparent shape/size would have, and a spirit may not need to tangibly reach out and grab someone in order to hold them in place.
  
• Spirits do not seem able to possess the living. This is the one thing that none of them display the ability to do, universally across the board.
  

• They might interact with the environment. (e.g. throwing furniture, wielding a weapon, setting a fire, making the air around the character freezing cold.)
  
• They might interact physically with a character. (e.g. shaking hands to appear benign, grabbing/restraining a character, pushing/pulling a character, etc.)
  
• They might take control of a character's body part. (e.g. reach into the character's arm and make him punch himself or something, idk.)
• They might harm a character. (e.g. biting or clawing them, stabbing them with the aforementioned weapon, etc.)
  
• They might read a character's mind. (e.g. a spirit might work like a boggart and take the shape of one's worst fears, or take the form of a lost loved one to lull the character, or maybe just cruelly jab at the character's biggest insecurities.)
  
• They might lure/hypnotize a character. (e.g. whispering in their mind to call them to a certain place, or lulling them into a complacent daze so they hold still for whatever harms the spirit plans to inflict.)
  
• They might induce hallucinations. (e.g. showing the character how they died, adjusting the character's perspective of the current reality they're experiencing, etc.)

• 'I want someone to know how I died.' (viewing/maybe feeling horrible memories, possibly following them to the site of death)
  
• 'I want to be buried with my family.' (moving a corpse from one place to another)
  
• 'I want to be tucked into bed and kissed goodnight [or insert other sentimental activity] one last time.' (you just gotta do it. take one for the team. kiss that spooky uncanny little shit right on the forehead.)
  
• 'I want revenge against this character who first trespassed in my building.' (your character would have to hunt down this other character and harm them somehow. maybe the ghost just wants a little blood, or maybe they want the whole ass murder.)
  
• 'I want this character I think is my mother to join me in death.' (legit gonna have to die, sorry fam)
  

Spirits happen! They can do a wide variety of things but ultimately all fuck your day up in some way and with varying levels of proficiency. Each spirit has a beast they're tethered to (the spirit's heart is inside the beast), which you can kill to get rid of a spirit or just for fun. You can also negotiate with or banish the spirits, but ultimately they all whisk off to god-knows-where at the end of the event regardless.

If you happen to encounter and kill a beast without having hunted it down for specific 'this beast holds the heart of this spirit I hate' reasons, it's safe to assume that a spirit somewhere in the containment zone just kind of dissipated with no real explanation.

You're welcome to play with this element - for example, if your character kills a beast and another character needs a reprieve from a spirit but has no viable means to escape it, you're welcome to say that the dead beast held that spirit's heart, thus saving the character from the spirit's wrath with no... real... explanation for why the spirit stopped.

If the spirit was banished/destroyed, the beast will collapse as if the heart has been destroyed. Investigation will find that the heart inside is deeply rotten and reeks terribly.

If the spirit was given peace, however, the beast will make its serene path back to the nearest source of water, mud, muck, or loose soil and disappear back down from whence it came.

I can definitely see how it might be tough for them to connect the puzzle pieces on this one (especially the beast-spirit connection and the effectiveness of iron), so if you'd like something to at least vaguely spell it out for them:

New illustrations have been revealed in the mostly-indecipherable books detailed in Shatter & Decay, which now reappear on the coffee table of each cabin and apartment regardless of whether or not a character has previously put it away or discarded it.

A couple of rune-filled pages after the Shatter & Decay diagrams lies a page which previously had a thick blank row across the page, as if space has been left for a picture that someone forgot to add in. Well, now it's here, in the form of two new illustrations - one larger, one smaller. The larger of the two depicts what could passably be a spirit (a humanoid figure, but not colored in like the rest are) with its arms extended. In the air in front of those arms, what looks roughly like a human heart floats, as if being given to a gangly and ill-proportioned creature on the right-hand side of the page. The smaller image depicts a man swinging something long and distinctly some sort of metal (the grey has a metallic sheen to it, perhaps from lead) through a spirit, who appears to be waving its arms in dismay.

God, there are just. So many gosh damn spirits, between the larger/more problematic ones and the smaller ones which barely have identities and only have the strength to fuck with people a tiny bit. It's possible to get rid of all of the spirits in a small area (e.g. a decent-sized building) if it's maintained with vigilance, and it's also possible to get rid of all of the larger/more problematic spirits in a section of town/around the lake/etc., but not to get rid of them from the containment zone altogether.

Which is to say: You can make an area safer, but not entirely safe unless it's a very small area and you're protecting it with vigilance. Or wards. Wards are good, too.

⬛ ENVIRONMENTAL + MILD PSYCHOLOGICAL HORRORS.

⬛ ENVIRONMENTAL (PARANORMAL?) HORROR.

⬛ PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR.

⬛ BODY + PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR.

⬛ENVIRONMENTAL HORROR.

• This TDM takes place in a shared dream for all participants, so as not to interrupt in-game continuity. Characters already in-game may experience this dream at literally any time between now and the next TDM, and new characters who TDM here will have this dream as their vivid introductory experience much like the first batch of characters had The Loop. Players of current Vestige characters, feel free to fudge when your characters experience this nightmare and/or when something inspires them to remember it.
  
• Please leave the top-leveling for new characters - this isn't the last time we'll see this hospital, and veterans can take a crack at it at a later date. (And, in fact, much of the hospital has been sectioned off via ambiguous dream mechanics in order to make sure there's lots of fun fresh shit to do when the game at large gets ahold of it.)
  
• The elevator does work - it just can't be called specifically from the third floor to keep in line with the feeling of being somewhat trapped. If someone brings it up from the basement, they can rescue people from the third floor at leisure. If you want your character to escape via elevator to the basement, feel free to assume that someone has brought the elevator up to the third floor and left it unattended.
  
• Unless otherwise specified, characters arrive with all powers intact and carrying all items that they had with them on their canonpoint.
  
• I recommend checking out our FAQ before you TDM for any further game info, even though this isn't set in the Containment Zone proper.
  
• Feel free to hop into our Discord server if you aren't there already!