(event) TWISTS AND BLOODY TURNS

[vestigemods]

MARCH EVENT: TWISTS & BLOODY TURNS

MARCH 18TH - 23RD

► THE BASICS

Hello, my delightful murderfriends. It's time for the event infopost! First things first: You'll notice that the event has been pushed two days later (18th - 23rd rather than 16th - 21st). This is to account for the timing of the infopost + log, so that folks still have a day or two to get their ducks in a row.

This month's event is a problem-solving event (or at least, that's how it's presented by the Technicians) with heavy notes of monster horror which in turn offer some body horror and psychological horror. Is murdering your homies considered psychological horror? If not, we've got some of whatever kind of horror murdering your homies is, because that's (supposedly) the only way out of this mess.

This event is opt-in, and there are ways to get your character involved even if they aren't a part of the initial opt-in abduction.

THE MAZE

ARRIVAL.

On the morning of the 18th, a number of characters wake somewhere distinctly different from their bed. Around them is an alarmingly tall labyrinth, the walls made of lush green foliage, the sky overhead an idyllic blue where it peeks down between the maze walls.

Unfortunately, between characters and that very sky is a barrier just like the one surrounding the containment zone itself. Characters who have the means or willpower to reach that high, they'll encounter it no more than a hand's-width above the uppermost reach of the maze walls, presumably to prevent cheating by climbing from one path to another. And while the walls themselves may appear to be manicured shrubbery, any attempts to dig through will find cold and unyielding brick a few inches deep.

If anyone is decent at guesstimated measurements while navigating winding pathways, the maze is roughly square-shaped and seems to span about a mile in each direction from end to end.

COURTYARD.

Why are they here? How do they escape? The quickest way to figure these things out might be to venture to the center of the maze. There sits a small courtyard, paved with mossy brick and containing a number of run-down decorative garden benches. The most notable feature, however, is a round single-room brick building with an ornately-arched doorway, beyond which lies what looks like a spiral staircase leading downward. Is this an exit, or a trap?

Survey says 'exit' - or at least, the laminated notice thumbtacked to each side of the arch sure does. It explains that it's the only exit, and that if you kill one (1) person within this maze, the barrier over the door will let you pass through it. Sure enough, no manner of trickery seems to convince that barrier to do anything but precisely as the notice says.

Those who kill someone and pass through the barrier will find that the spiral staircase leads to an underground tunnel lit with hanging lanterns, walking roughly a mile to emerge from under a drainage grate in the courtyard of the school. The grate is closed, but can be pushed open with little difficulty. Congratulations! You're free.

Those who don't kill, on the other hand, have quite a bit more to deal with here in the labyrinth than they may have bargained for.

MONSTERS.

They aren't alone in this maze. Trapped in with them are monsters of three different types... Monsters which those who frequent the town might find familiar, not entirely different from some of the stone figures within the statue garden - except these versions are (of course) much, much worse.

They keep to the outer parts of the maze for the first day or two, perhaps not ideal for anyone attempting to find an escape along the outermost walls (or for those who try to mount a rescue... more on this later), but generally easy enough to avoid otherwise.

But over the course of characters' stay in the maze, they make their way closer and closer to the courtyard. By evening of the 22nd, not even the courtyard is safe from attack or whatever else that particular monster might have in store.

Generally, the monster population is dense enough that if someone is in a monstery part of the maze (as described above), they'll at least be in the vicinity of a monster about once per hour. That said, these monsters can be evaded with vigilance and careful efforts not to draw attention. If you don't want your character to have to deal with any of the monsters, it's infinitely more likely that they carefully evaded the notice of the ones they encountered than failed to encounter any at all.

A note that all monster 'effects' (the 'fuckery' sections below) end when the monster which inflicted it is dead and/or when the individual leaves the maze.

THE MONSTERS

① THE BASILISK ( PICTURED HERE )

• SPECS - The basilisk is basically a three-headed snake with four lizardy legs up near the front. It is, however, about 30-40 feet long, able to lift each head to glare down at you from about 10 feet in height. All four feet are clawed. A double-set of fangs protrudes from each hissing mouth. (At least they aren't venomous?) The basilisk seems to have the approximate intelligence of a particularly intuitive dog, though each head does seem able to think independently as well as in tandem. It's the most aggressive of the three monsters, with the general demeanor: Hungry.


• COMBAT - Honestly, this is just a big fuckin' monster to hack and slash at. Destroying one head kills that head but not the beast - killing all three heads is one way to kill it, as is a heart-wound if you can penetrate the hard scaly flesh. The heads seem aware of some manner of strategy, tending to work together to watch multiple enemies or to protect its throats/heart area. It will claw if necessary, but much prefers biting as far as attacks go. One thing to look out for is letting it swat you (with a clawed palm or a swing of its head) into something that might knock you unconscious - the basilisk makes quick work of swallowing down immobilized enemies, and the inside of its throat has the muscular strength to crush most people to death on the way down. Speaking of immobilized....


• FUCKERY - It's critically important not to make eye contact with the basilisk. This may be tricky, because this fucker knows what it can do and it absolutely will try to duck a head into eye-contact range while you're distracted trying to fight it. Anyone who does make eye contact (whether up close or from afar) will find that their joints will slowly begin to ache and stiffen, eventually rendering them as stiff as a statue, though they're still entirely conscious and otherwise intact. This process can take as little as ten minutes or as long as half a day, depending on how direct the eye contact was and how close the basilisk was at the time.

② THE VOID ( PICTURED HERE IN INITIAL FORM )

• SPECS - The void looks like a seven-foot-tall shadow enshrouded in a tattered black cloak, curved horns protruding from the top... If you notice it. In picture form, this monster may seem pretty hard to miss, but the void has the uncanny ability to linger just outside of conscious recognition. Most every character who spends any time in the maze will be able to think back once they've escaped and remember a time in which they walked right past this ridiculously ominous figure but somehow didn't even notice it at the time - and it'll seem so obvious to them in retrospect, but they distinctly recall not seeing it. At least not until it was (nearly?) too late.


• FUCKERY - This is where the voids get their name. Those who come within three or four yards of a void begin to feel less... well, feeling. Anger, fear, joy, hope, sadness, fondness - all of it seems to dull, not quite numbing the person so much as leaving them feeling neutral and pragmatic and efficient (or however it might translate for each individual). Maybe they notice it happening, maybe they don't. But the void needs for this to happen, both in self-defense (an adaptation after noticing that subconscious 'something's wrong' fear responses were what alerted most people to their otherwise-unnoticed presence) and because a void is very much as void as their name implies. If they feed on the emotions of enough people, they'll theoretically be whole. (Note that if/when the void is killed, the emotions all come back in a potentially-overwhelming rush, and will probably feel more intense for an hour or so.)


• COMBAT - I swapped these two points because combat depends entirely on whether the void was caught before it finished feeding or after. The more emotions a void drains from others, the more substantial and noticeable they become, until they achieve their ascended form and shuck their cloak. In this state, they basically fight like a humanoid would be expected to, but with enhanced strength and very sharp teeth and claws. Their skin is thick and tougher to penetrate, almost like leather. They seem confident (perhaps even delighted) and entirely ready to engage in combat, though they don't speak or communicate in any way. If they're caught before they ascend to wholeness, that's a whole different ball game. The goal for these voids is to a) ruin your day for ruining their day, or b) get the fuck away if it seems like they're outmatched. Their claws are horrifically long and their bite is pretty unfriendly too, and they're ready to unleash both on whoever was rude enough to notice them. Stabbing and slicing doesn't work nearly as well on the voids in this form - you kind of have to hack it to bits before it'll die. However, if it seems like you're able to hack the void to bits, the void will unleash one final self-defense mechanism on the biggest threat to them in the form of a harrowing tide of emotions in their most extreme forms (misery, fury, elation, terror, love - all at once in an overwhelming barrage). While the person is ideally debilitated by this maneuver, the void will attempt to flee into the maze where it can start again from scratch.

③ THE MUISTIVARAS ( PICTURED HERE AND HERE )

• SPECS - The muistivaras are about man-height atop their gangly limbs, though it's rare that they'll stand still for you to compare. These creatures are extremely quick and nimble, navigating just as easily across the walls of the labyrinth as they do across the ground, leaping impressive distances with little apparent effort. This makes it quite easy to do what they do best: Fucking flee. They often trail quietly along after a person for as long as it takes that person to notice, then do their best to disappear into the twists and turns of the maze.


• COMBAT - Why are you fighting these things? We'll get to that in the next section. First, how to do it. It's simple. If you can catch it, you can kill it. They're pretty kicky, but they otherwise don't really have much combat capacity at all.


• FUCKERY - Now, why exactly would you choose to fight a muistivaras when it seems all too ready to fuck off and leave you alone? It's because it hasn't left you alone. Not really. Above, it mentioned the creatures trailing along behind a person for as long as it takes that person to notice. As it turns out, the damn scavenger took a nice big bite out of each and every memory that person thought of while they were being followed. You'd be surprised how many memories cross your mind that you don't actively stop and dwell on... But the muistivaras certainly wouldn't. :') This actually brings us to the only real difference between the two types of muistivaras - one of them eats from good memories and one of them eats from bad ones. (As the monsters encroach on the courtyard, characters may begin to find that the memories woven into their dreams have bites taken as well - unless someone is standing guard to watch for these pesky little fuckers.)

THE OUTSIDE

DISCOVERY.

Very little is known at first to those left outside on the morning of the 18th. They may not even know something's amiss, unless their partner or housemate has disappeared. In fact, the network will probably be the first sign a lot of people have - cell signal is unsteady but intact within the maze, allowing texts as well as poor-quality voice/video to come out from the maze and to reach into the maze from those outside.

No signs point directly to the maze being the formerly-innocuous statue garden in town, especially since it still very much appears to be the same size from the outside, but it can be pieced together. It is the only maze in the entirety of the containment zone, after all, and the monsters are arguably a little familiar to those who've spent any time in the maze as it typically is. Anyone who's killed and escaped can place the labyrinth's location as 'somewhere in town' at the very least, just based on how far they walked. On top of that, the statue garden is... acting a bit strange from the outside.

STATUE GARDEN.

Those who approach the statue garden will find that a barrier seems to stretch from the top of the hedges (which look like the usual 10-foot tall ones) to some indefinite point in the sky, preventing anyone from flying overhead. Those able to jump/fly high enough outside of that barrier to peer down into the garden will find below the tops of the hedges enshrouded in a thick fog, blocking visibility.

But they're only hedges, right? You can cut through hedges. In fact, you can even cut through these hedges, opening a path from the outside for long enough to get inside before it quickly grows over again, and any attempts to exit there find the same brick wall as everywhere else. Congratulations! Now you're stuck too. (If someone else cuts again at that same spot, it opens up to an entirely different part of the maze. This shit's tricky that way.)

(It might be a good idea to take some food in with you if you do make your way inside. All anyone really has to eat in there is dead monster, and that's raw unless someone can build a fire.)

THE ENDING

On the morning of the 23rd, those trapped in the labyrinth find the walls around them beginning to shake and crumble. It's terribly ominous, not to mention dangerous if they aren't careful to watch out for falling rubble. All the while, the crumbling of walls kicks up a dust so thick they can't see their hand in front of their face, thick enough to burn their eyes and probably even get them coughing.

When the dust settles, however, it reveals... the statue garden, entirely intact, just as it has always been. Their fellow labyrinth abductees still surround them, likely just as confused about what they've just experienced.

None of this is perceived from outside the statue garden. No sound of crumbling walls, no cloud of dust, none of it. All they know is that one moment the garden's airspace is walled off by a barrier and the next, it isn't. (And, of course, they'll probably hear the sudden presence of bitching from various points amidst the hedges.)

It's literally 8 AM as I finish this so I'm sure there will be questions - ask them in the top-level below!

Comments

MOD QUESTIONS

[vestigemods]

[cryingforever]

Would it just be the characters teleported to the maze sans equipment/weapons if they tend to put it away for the night or keep it close by?

[vestigemods]

Up to you! They can be all by their lonesome, they can have their weapons etc., or they can even have literally 100% of the loose items from their room if you feel like being a little chaotic about it.