Fourth Wall Month!

[sphererpmod]

Who: Everyone and visiting Characters!
What: The Fourth Wall log!
When: The month of September!.
Where: All over.
Notes: If you have any questions about how this all works, please head over here to the Fourth Wall info post!.

Fourth Wall Log!

Company's coming!

So the Sphere is malfunctioning and there’s new arrivals here. In order to give them somewhere to sleep and rest, the Sphere has given them all temporary housing in dorm dome number two! That means sunken beds, three squares a day that are already prepared for you and clothing in the closets that just happen to be to your character’s taste. (And you know if they happen to die then you’ve got a nice space to Rez.) All and all it’s a nice little home base for people to have. There’s several common areas for mingling, and all though there aren’t individual rooms for the characters who are staying there, the domes also provide screens for privacy. Don’t worry, no one’s spying on you or something. Probably.

John (one of our resident NPCs here, who is a doctor and also a ghost but shush) knows the importance of family, and she knows how tough it can be when people arrive in a place they don’t know. The visitors haven’t really had the same experience as people brought in the traditional way, so John has stationed herself in the dorms with a sort of ipad thing, and she’s offering to take people’s information and to show them how things like the network work. She’s also there to hold hands and deal with any medical issues that these new arrivals may just happen to have. If people don’t want to talk to her, that’s totally fine! She won’t push. But she’ll also provide directions to places if people need them. Or at least point them in the general places that they need to go.

Speaking things out into the void.

This is a prompt for visiting characters to be able to put out a network post without actually joining the network community! Upon waking in The Sphere, each character (even temporary ones!) are fitted with a small golden circle behind their right ear. This is how they are connected to the network through a neural link. Touch and hold the button to create a broadcast of one of three types:

1. Audio. Your character thinks audible words onto the network.
2. Writing: Your character thinks text into the network.
3. Video. Your character projects a broadcast of a video of themselves onto the network.

Replies are determined by the player. The network needs to be accessed by choice, so character broadcasts are not automatically beamed directly into people’s heads. The Sphere isn’t that rude.

Private messages are allowed by pressing and holding and pressing and holding again as you picture the person in your mind. This can be an image or a name, err more on the side of things being more accessible than less.

God let people have their pumpkin spice lattes, Karen!

It’s September, and that means that fall has hit the Sphere hard. Well, as hard as any place can be without having actual seasons or sunlight. So, in the artificial sun of the Sphere, what there is instead of colder weather and leaves changing is a new festival. The festival, which if you ask someone who’s been there for a while is in celebration of the most fall thing in the entire world: pumpkin spice. That’s right, there’s an entire festival just centered around pumpkin spice flavored things! Of course, the people of the Sphere do try and make an effort to invoke the spirit of the season, with large garlands of fake brightly colored leaves lining the street. The scents of pumpkin spice fill the air and there are small fire pits near Adirondack chairs that are clustered together with all the things to make s’mores.

For those not pumpkin minded, there are also a fair amount of apples picked from the Sphere orchards, and a few small knives. Some older women promise that if people can peel the apples in a long spiral and throw them behind them, then the peel will form the initial of the person that the thrower is destined to marry. Of course there is also bobbing for apples and pumpkin carving.

In both the merchant dome and the agricultural dome there’s massive tables brimming with enough pumpkin foods to make Harry Potter jealous. There’s all sorts of pumpkin baked goods, pumpkin ravioli, roasted pumpkin and vegetables and there’s even roasted meats with pumpkin sauce! There's also drinks of both the alcoholic and non alcoholic sort: pumpkin beer, pumpkin spice wine, pumpkin spice vodka, apple spiced whiskey and so on! At each place is a coffee cart with a poor overworked barista who is doling out every sort of pumpkin coffee, hot chocolate and tea imaginable including yes pumpkin spice lattes.

We're waiting for the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

There’s even a pumpkin carving contest in the agricultural dome! Pumpkins of different sizes ranging from small sugar ones to ones that could comfortably form a children’s fort are stacked around, and there are picnic tables set in newspaper and with things like knives and scoopers and nails and even drills for those people who want to remove the pumpkin guts or use them to do some carving. Everyone who participates receives a ribbon as well as a bag of toasted pumpkin seeds to take home.

They hope you really like pumpkin seeds. There’s a ton of them.

When the dark comes, people hunker down between the false stars above, with blankets all around them, the scent of pumpkin in the air. Flashlights and small lanterns are distributed by people, and when asked what’s going on, they’ll say that they’re waiting for The Great Pumpkin. Children whisper the name excitedly, and even some of the more inebriated adults do the same. Either way, at midnight the largest pumpkin rises above the crowd to gasps of shock and awe before it just magically changes into the types of candy and small toys that one would expect to come from an excellently stocked pinata.

The color of magical bounty.

In the rec dome, some magically gifted people have conjured up massive piles of dried leaves for people to frolic in. And when I say massive, I mean massive. It’s almost like an entire forest of leaves that’s thankfully free of all of the problems that come with jumping in leaves. With no animals in the Sphere, there’s not any of their presents hiding in the leaves and anything sharp hasn’t been created! Which means that it’s great for things like jumping in, burying things in and of course leaf fights.

If your character is missing nature, the area smells exactly how one would expect a late September walk in the woods to smell: it’s almost as if you’re there! The sunlight in the dome has also been altered a bit where the leaves are located, so it’s cooler, and a slight wind seems to be in the air, stirring the leaves every so often. It’s enough to encourage sweaters and scarves, that have been provided by people if they’d like them. The scarves and sweaters all seem to be of the handmade variety, and just the tiniest bit irregular, with one sleeve longer than the other, or the fringe on a scarf being slightly askew, that sort of thing. But they’re still lovely and soft and warm and smell of dryer sheets and leaves.

And we're flying, flying far beyond...

So the Sphere saw that everyone just loved the fireflies last month so this month it decided that what the city needs is to fly for real! So in the Rec dome, there’s a marked pad that people can step on that lets people fly around this particular dome for 30 minutes at a go using the same sort of controls that the communications behind your ear has! Press quickly once to go up and twice to go down. The clearance in the dome clocks in somewhere around 400 feet so there’s plenty of room for flying and even going up and touching the top of the dome and staring out into the abyss of water.

Be careful though because sometimes if you stare too long into the abyss, things just happen to stare back at you and then there are things in the deep water that you may not expect. Or that you might. Giant fish and squid may just find all this unusual activity quite interesting. But don’t worry the dome won’t crack. Guess what! You are now the fish in the aquarium for them! Or you know the bird flying past the cat in the window.

Wanna go to a real party? (CW: Mentions of drugs and alcohol.)

If people are looking for more illicit entertainment, and discreet inquiries are made, a passcode to the Black Market hidden behind some of the stalls is offered. The entrance is hidden enough that someone needs to be looking for it, and there is a rather large bouncer guarding the door and asking for the proper passcode. The passcode of the day happens to be I hate pumpkin.

Inside the black market is large, but much more dimly lit than the regular market dome. There are various pockets of people clustered under bright neon lights. The lights, someone confides to you, are code for what they’re offering. And nearly everything is on offer if a person has the ability to make a trade. Things from home, character skills and even favors tend to be the currency here, but watch out: the hawkers within are shrewd and sharp. If they make a deal with someone, it’s nearly always going to favor them. Eventually.

There’s also a large and loud party happening inside. Think of a rave with a large amount of people who happened to be a bit out of their minds. Drugs aren’t given freely here, they’re too valuable, but should someone want to figure out what they’re rolling on, eventually someone will ask or offer. The drug that they are currently using is called ‘self’ and it’s something that affects your character in an intensely personal way. For some, it’s an experience like your favorite cocktail mixed with vicodin, and for others it’s just like being drunk. For still more people, it’s like ecstasy without the side effects.

The drug has no physically addictive properties. It does however cause a hangover. The Sphere doesn't want to take all the fun out of imbibing too much.

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Real party.

[threshes]

If there's a party, let's be honest Persephone will find her way there. Parties were always her thing and they help to chase away everything that's harsh and jagged inside of her. They remind her of life, and are a way for her to store up all of them feelings to try and make it through the winter time, when she's alone in the confines of her office. Today, though, Persephone is there out in search of an escape, of findin' a way out her conflicted feelings about the leaves changing and the fact that it's fall here and she's here. Here, not at home, not with her husband, not with her life, and how she's been here for an entire season already.

Oh, she doesn't bother with the drugs, because they're not familiar and what she's after, but long pulls from the never ending silver flask of hers are an all too common sight. In fact, Persephone is in the middle of one when she hears music that sounds so familiar that it makes her heart twist, and yet something that she seems to remember almost like it's a dream or something like that. For a moment, things almost seem to superimpose themselves on her vision: a bright blooming garden, an underworld that's too damned bright, and the bar that her brother runs up top that is sort of her defacto home base when she's bringin' up that suitcase full of summertime, even more than her Mama's house had ever been.

Without allowing herself time to think, Persephone just moves through the crowd her movements dream-like and fluid. She follows the sound of the music to a stall there, and for a moment, Persephone just stares at what almost seems like a shade before her, playing his guitar. Orpheus looks like he did just before she'd tried to plead with her husband, just before she'd arrived here. She's even wearing black, with black flowers in her hair, but the dress ain't the same sort that she'd worn before. When she speaks, the word is choked, almost as if her disbelief is a hand wrapped around Persephone's slender throat. "Orpheus?"

[singmetolife]

Orpheus and his guitar got caught up in the music, like he has a habit of doing. This style isn't entirely familiar to him, but that doesn't matter; he can play most anything he hears, and finds it easy to just join in. He gets swept up in it, distracted from everything else by the way it feels to play, to sing.

But he's not so distracted he can't hear a familiar goddess's voice say his name, or rather, barely say his name.

His half-closed eyes open with surprise when he looks at her. He wasn't expecting to see her, after all. He'd asked for Eurydice (and he'll keep asking in awhile) but it had never occurred to him that Persephone could be here. Hades wouldn't have let her go during the wintertime, would he? That seems impossible. But here she is, dressed in black but different from the last time he saw her.

"Persephone," he says, spoken, fingers no longer moving on the strings of his instrument. The few spellbound people around him look at her like seeing a dream, but he ignores them for the moment. He takes a step towards her and continues, "What are you doing here? How did you get here? How did we..." he trails off, realising he's asking a lot of questions.

[threshes]

For a moment, it's all Persephone wants to do but to laugh or to cry. There's a piece of home standing in front of her, and it's as familiar as familiar could be. Well, not quite as familiar as familiar could be considering the new scratches on his face (even if she'd been there when the workers had beaten and kicked them into him. Even if she'd failed to stop it when it was happening) but still familiar enough for her heart to tattoo itself more firmly against the goddess' ribs.

"Come along, brother. Ain't no sense in talking about this here where we can barely here ourselves think." Granted, the two of them were good in loud situations, but this isn't really a conversation that Persephone really wants to have happen out in the wild where anyone could just so happen to hear it. There's already too much information about her life out there thanks to the thing putting memories on the network.

"We ain't gonna go far, and we can talk on the way. Just rather'd talk to you in my dome than here with all these people around." Which is saying something, especially considering how half the year, Persephone has too many people around her, and the other half, she ain't got damn near enough.

[singmetolife]

“Okay,” he says. He follows, because who is he to deny her? He rails against Hades because he has to, because his heart drives him to. Persephone isn’t Hades. He likes her. He’s sure everyone does.

“What is this place?” he asks her as they go. He’s heard an explanation, sort of, upon arriving. But he wants it from her, from a familiar enough face. The people around them don’t bother him, but he’s fine moving along too.

[threshes]

"It's a place called 'The Sphere.' Some sort of intelligence keeps kidnapping folks from different universes and trappin' em here under the sea. Whatever it is, it's got enough power that it can hold us. Can hold me even." Even when she really ain't supposed to be here anymore. Or at all. Her world is certainly too complicated for that sort of thing, after all. Especially with everything that the two of them were in the middle of when they were taken. (From what she'd heard, it don't seem like it was much different from when he was taken as well.)

But when Persephone adds the next part, her voice is softer and sadder than anything he'd ever would have heard up top. It's more private, the sort of thing that isn't colored too much by anger. There's only pain in it, sharp and raw and a little shocked. "I've been here for two seasons now. Got here in the Spring, was here all summer, and now we're about to be going on Fall. They say that we're supposed to be returned home to the moment that we left with no memories but..." But if they were wrong, then Persephone's disappearance is going to have farther ranging repercussions that she doesn't want to think about. That is probably the one thing that she fears the most: that without her, ain't nothing would grow.

That without her, there ain't gonna be nothing left of the human world.

[singmetolife]

"You've been here for months?" he asks, surprised but not exactly disbelieving. That doesn't add up in his head, of course; he's not sure how long it took him to get to Hadestown. It wasn't an instantaneous journey by any means, but time sort of lost meaning in the underground. Orpheus isn't good with time anyway; the seasons don't change normally and the days can run together. He gets wrapped up in his music, finishing his song. He's an artist, a musician. He doesn't live in the world in the same way some people do.

"But I just saw you," he says, and it's true. He may not have a good grasp on time, but he knows he just saw her. It was still winter at home, as far as he could tell. She had been gone months, but for him it had been moments. So maybe what she'd been told was true, and no matter what happened here, it would be no time at all back home.

She doesn't seem to know exactly who or what pulled them here, or how it did it. The sadness in her voice surprises him; mostly, he saw her in the summertime, laughing and drinking and dancing. The summer could be too hot, and so much was uncertain, but her presence was always a light for everyone around. He doesn't like to see her sad. He moves as if he might reach for her, but then he remembers himself. How could he comfort a goddess with a touch? He surely couldn't. But he offers her a smile anyway.

"Far as I can tell, they haven't missed you at home yet. Maybe there's some truth in that returning to the moment thing."

[threshes]

"Yeah, I've been here for months," there's bitter all mixed up into the sadness of it, tones of which are as familiar as the heated winds of the summertime. Well, at least for her. Normally they're the sorta tones that Persephone uses when she's addressin' her husband, or when she's talking about him but here they saved for something that's managed to invoke her ire more than that old man of hers ever could. Hades may be stupid as hells, but she also knows that he loves her. It's the same sort of intrinsic thing about her as the Summertime, and of the Underworld. The two of them may be killin' their world with his love for her.

But she can't think about that now, and when he goes to touch her Persephone just offers him up her flask instead. If someone touches her at the mo' she's gonna come flyin' apart at the seams and she ain't rightly sure if it's going to be in tears or if it's going to be in fury. The boy who'd lost so much in the war between her and her husband? Well, he sure don't deserve that from her. And no matter how much her husband is bendin' all the rules about him being fair, Persephone ain't about to be doing that.

And perhaps somewhat contradictory, Persephone does reach out for him, her soft fingertips touching along the skin below the wound on his cheek. She ain't got her brother's gift for healing, of course but she wants to see if she can feel how new it is or it ain't. The gentle touch is coupled with words in just as gentle a tone of voice. "What's the last thing ya remember there, brother?"