thespherelogs | (no subject)

Who: The People making the Left Choice: The Air Filtration System.
Where: The tunnels the room housing the air filtration system to the agricultural dome.
What: The Choice plot.
When: ICly: August 1st or so.
Warnings: Death, violence, creepiness, fire, drowning, being attacked, ghosts. (I will add other warnings as they come up in threads.
Important Notes: This is the first log of two for the Choices plot. This log only covers The Air Filtration System. The other choices will have their own logs going up. Please remember to warn for things that need warnings in these threads.

Departure

The door that Enis opened is large and dark. It’s something that’s more likely to be in a warehouse than a normal kind of door. What little emergency lighting that is present is weak and flickering and seems to peter out after a hundred yards, leaving no way to tell what’s beyond that dark stretch.

But with a creak, the door starts to close, rolling downward like a shade. Now is the time to make your choice: are you in or out? Once the door closes, it’s not going to open again until the power is fixed.

Encounters: Environmental

Once the door is shut behind you, and you’re moving towards the single path, you start to realize just how old all of this around you is. Where as things in the Sphere normally seem bright and sparkly and new this is ancient and rusting and crumbling. The light here is a sickly barely there orange that creates more shadows than something that you can actually see by, which makes the way the metal grating floor incredibly perilous. Water drips constantly here, making everything wet and slick and slippery. There are places where the lighting seems to have burned out. Or has it? Sometimes it has, and sometimes it’s just that the grating has no walls to hand hold across a chasm that you can’t tell the distance on. Hope you’re getting creative.

But needing to walk over epic heights isn’t just something that you need to contend with. There are places where the flooring just gives way below your weight suddenly, and places where there’s none of it all together. Better tread softly and be fast on your feet--it’s an incredibly long way to fall, and not something that you can live through.

Every so often, the pathway will end with a door with a rusted hatch, the window of it coated with grime and rust and dirt (and is that ash?!) that need to be forced open, and then closed behind them before the next door will even budge.

Sometimes these rooms are large, wide and deep enough to be storage spaces like in the back of stores, and some are so small that the largest among the group barley can squeak through them sideways. The temperature of the rooms varies as well. Some of them are freezing cold, and some are burning hot, so hot that the metal is scorching.

There are places where the rooms themselves are sealed because they happen to be on fire or flooded. In those areas, alternatives can be found in the floor and ceiling or in the walls. It’s just a matter of being crafty with discovering them.

Encounters: Creature.

The Sphere is something that has access to every universe and every timeline, so the things that they encounter can be varied. Some can only be defeated by magic, others by brute force and some much be plotted against. Basically, you can bring in whatever kind of creature your heart (even humanoids, aliens, fae etc) desires so long as they can be killed, destroyed or somehow trapped so that the characters can get to the next room.

Encounter: The Air Filtration System

As you approach the room that houses the Air Filtration system, the hallway becomes newer, more clean, more scifi. There is more lighting here, and after so many days of travel, it’s almost blinding. Additionally, after so long with your comrades and the relative quiet of them, there’s the buzzing of voices speaking a language that no one here can speak and the Sphere doesn’t translate.

Upon entering the room, it’s huge. There are people—or at least what look like people—wandering around. Some are seated at stations in front of complicated-looking stations, some are standing in front of others, some are holding clipboards. But whatever they’re doing, they don’t seem to notice your approach. Nor do they seem to notice if you try and talk to them.

Anyone with any sort of psychic ability, or some other way ability or way to see ghosts can tell that they aren’t alive. They aren’t people. All they are is ghosts. Indeed, some of them might even look familiar to you from when the ghosts invaded the Sphere. But they aren’t attacking you or anything. Yet, anyway.

Looking around the room will reveal that whatever those stations are labeled as, you don’t understand. That doesn’t translate either. But the screens are blank when you look at them. They have the dim red glow of power being on that the rest of the room has, but they don’t show anything other than that. It’s almost like a television caught between channels. When you stand there long enough, it’s easy to see that the ghosts are stuck in a loop: it’s a long one, but eventually it repeats in its entirety.

But you are here with a job to do, after all and you need to try and figure out which of these stations happens to be the one that restarts the air filtration system. However, when you touch them and break the illusion, it becomes clear that these are entirely in disarray. They spark and they stroke and there are pieces scattered around. There is hope: each of the scattered parts only fit one type of station, so they can be put right.

But it’s not as easy as all of that. As you start changing the environment around them, you become more and more visible to the ghosts, and they become more and more angry at what you’re doing. At the halfway point of putting the parts together, the ghosts will attack. It’s now up to people to defend those who are reassembling the stations: if they don’t sacrifice themselves then everyone will die.

The air filtration system is the last one assembled, no matter what order they are done in. As soon as it kicks on, the ghosts will disappear, leaving just the other dangers that were already faced on the way back. But you already know what they are, don’t you?

The door will only open if both tasks are completed.

photo inspiration

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Rey looks to the ghosts around the room, and how they seem to be heading in their direction once more. She curses softly, below her breath and then she looks to Enis again, the concern evident. Whatever else happened, Enis had been the one to open the door in so she needed to be the one to open the door out. Honestly, she can't just die.

Keeping her voice very calm and soft.]

I can heal your arm, using the Force. So you can keep doing this while I'm protecting you.

[Enis looks up at Rey and after a moment's hesitation she nods.] Alright but there are nano machines in my blood stream. They allow me to heal faster. [Sadly not fast enough.] Try not to damage them or it could kill me.

[She pulls out a handgun from her holster and begins to shoot beams of electricity out from its tip. It's one of her inventions and thankfully, it seems to work on the figures approaching them.]

I'm going to take their interest in me as an indicator that I'm on the right track of fixing this mess.

I think you’re right. I think you’re on the right track.

[For a long moment, Rey just closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. She can see the nanites in Enis’ blood and she works around them to heal her arm as quickly as she can. ]

[Enis fires off a few more shots but she tries her best to remain still for Rey to work. That means that a few of the shades get a bit too close for comfort but they're safe, at least for now. Her gun isn't able to stop them, only slow them down.]

That feels... better.

[She flexes her hand and looks up at Rey.]

Think you can hold them off long enough for me to get this?

I can try. I’m going to go to one of the others and draw them away from you. If that doesn’t work, I’ll be back, alright?

[There’s a pause as Rey just ignites her lightsaber and slips it into the ribs of someone behind her before she adds:]

I believe in you, Enis. You can do this.

[Her mouth tugs into a smirk.]

I'm glad that you think so.

[She turns back towards the panel and gets to work. It takes moving around the room but Enis is mindful of Rey and the state of the encroaching figures. She won't be caught off guard again.

There was a click and the unmistakable whirling sounds of something turning on as Enis turned away from the panel she was standing in front of.]

I think we're almost there.

[Rey is keeping as much of an eye on Enis as she can as wave after wave of the ghosts come after her. The force seems to have no effect on them and she’s fighting staff to bullets to people.]

Keep going!

[Rey is still fighting. She’s fighting hard and fast, but the lightsaber is just a blur amid the ghosts.]

[Enis continues though her attention is split so it takes her a little longer than it should have had. It's for the best, there are a few times that her divided attention saves both her and Rey's life but in the end, she gets the last piece of the puzzle in place.

And when she's done, she collapses to the ground to just breathe.]

[As the last piece slots into place, Rey just looks around as the ghosts vanish. She’s definitely wounded more than a little bit but she’s okay. Looking around she just asks softly. ]

Does that mean we fixed it?

[Enis glances around as she remains slumped against the floor. She'll try and stand later... when she's sure its over.]

Hopefully. I don't know what else we can do.