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

There's another moment of hesitation. A moment which they can't afford, all things considered. But it can't end like this.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Simon spent far too many nights awake and aching. Sleepless, remembering Ebb, agonizing over the things he wished he'd said, rehearsing what he should have -- or shouldn't have -- done, rehashing everything to absolutely frustrating lengths. Even if he couldn't have saved her, even if the outcome were the same, what would he have told her if he'd had the chance in those final moments?

What do you say to someone who's about to die?

Simon's eyes are stinging when he falls to his knees behind Tommy, and he wraps his arms tight around the other boy's shoulders. It's all he can think to do, to offer some bit of comfort. Maybe it's unwelcome. Maybe it's not enough. But it's the best he can do.

"I'm sorry," Simon's voice cracks, and he swallows hard. "And thank you. I'll keep them safe. Everything will be all right.

"And you'll come back, right? People come back here, after they-- So you'd better come back. I'm not asking. That's a demand."

Simon gives Tommy a gentle squeeze, and he swears that just letting go is one of the hardest things he's ever had to do. There’s a soft sob, barely audible, as he scrambles back to his feet. Then he grabs his sword and runs back down the passageway.

What did you say? Hell if Tommy knew. He had all the time in the world to think and never had an answer to that one. But, as Simon pulls away Tommy whispers a few weak words before stumbling to his feet. It’s all he can offer.

“Watch out for Wanda and Gar for me.”

Bev could take care of herself. With that he stepped, stumbling, toward the oncoming threat. This battle was his.

He didn’t need to say the fact that he feared there wasn’t any coming back with the way the Sphere was right now. It didn’t matter. If Simon and them didn’t complete their mission... Well, there would be nothing to come back to.