Event № 1 : January 2024

[silentspringmods]

Event № 1 : January 2024
Part I; Chapter 2. Silence tells me secretly everything

universe/setting information, role assignment, and FAQs

I. A Thought Is Haunting Me

January 1st.

CWs: nonconsensual memshare/receiving of memories, flashbacks to combat zone and injury, blood, hearing loss/burst eardrum, panic attacks.

Just in time for New Year's Eve, the town square that held a magnificently decorated 15-foot Christmas tree last week now has a glittering silver ball to rival New York's own waiting atop a flagpole rooted in the same spot. Strings of lanterns illuminate the snowy brick courtyard, lined with stands offering hot cocoa, ciders, and various warm snacks, or perhaps characters are more interested in obtaining a pair or two of silly New Year's glasses that allow them to look through the numerals 1961. Eventually, though, all goes quiet for the exciting countdown.

'Five... four... three... two... one!

The ball drops, and confetti streams down onto the square (and the people standing in it!) as the Sweetwater High School Marching Band picks up a jaunty rendition of the New Year's classic Auld Lang Syne—but characters will likely find themselves distracted by the dark spots that appear in their fields of vision, gradually expanding until everything is eclipsed entirely by soft blackness. They feel less and less of the world around their bodies, numbness starting at their fingertips and toes and creeping up their extremities until they feel touchless, floating, completely absent of sensation. Then something replaces it: fragments, or perhaps all of what follows.

The world flashes black, then returns, hazy and doubled, half obscured by smoke as you lie face down on the hard, rocky earth. One ear shrieks, a whine that grows higher and higher. Hot blood streams down the other earlobe and drips onto your neck, washing off sweat and grime as it trickles toward your collar. Pain slices through what you think must be your eardrum like a jackknife shoved into your skull. You cough, throat burning, ribs protesting the movement. A coppery taste, a warmth, fills your mouth. You check with your tongue and all of your teeth are there; the blood is coming from your broken lip. The hair on top of your head feels hot and wet. You know your cheek is scraped open from the gritty sting taking up most of your face.

The doubled image of a medic gets into your face, his lips silently moving. You try to shake your head, to communicate that you can’t hear him over the shriek of your own tinnitus, but your neck is too stiff. Your brain slams against your skull and your head feels like it’s been hit with a brick. Blood drips off of your brow and into your eye.

The medic squeezes your shoulder and pushes off, scrambling across the debris until he disappears in the gray-brown smoke. There’s a moment of irrational fear: he’s leaving you here to die. You’re hit somewhere and you’re last in triage. You’ve heard about soldiers not feeling the gunshot until much later. When he and his buddy come back with a stretcher, surprise mingles with the dread of being lifted.

You shut your eyes tightly, trying to recalibrate your vision, but it still swims with the pitch and yaw of the rocky earth beneath you. When you open it, he’s trying to look into your eyes, hand on your shoulders, his lips finally moving in a pattern you recognize: Going home. Going home.

Going home.

You close your eyes.

*

You stare at a long tawny finger as you wind it into the red plasticized cord of the phone set, doing nothing when it begins to throb against its tethers, the single physical sensation anchoring you in reality.

“Listen to me. I need you to be calm and handle this. Someone will be there in thirty minutes, Ron. You need to keep it under control until then or we’re going to be in a world of shit you can’t even imagine—Put up roadblocks. Say a convict got loose. I don’t care. Do what you have to. Don’t call me unless it’s resolved or someone’s fucking dying, Ron, do you understand me?”

*

The door opens as the emergency light comes on, flickering. The room fills with the suffocating stench of diesel. A candystriper’s golden-brown hands wrap around your thin wrists, pulling you as she rocks back on the heels of her wet tennis shoes with all of her might. Tears stream down her cheeks, strands of relaxed hair hanging in her eyes. She chokes her words out around sobs of her own, eyes wild with terror, screaming: Miss Ruby, you have to get up! You have to get up, Miss Ruby! But your legs won't move. Your breaths shudder ragged in the air just like the volunteer's.

At 12:01, characters return to consciousness: but there are little changes, twinges that make this a bit realer than a dream. Perhaps their index finger twinges as blood returns to it and the impressions a tight phone cord left on their skin fade, or maybe they find themselves wiping a few droplets of blood from the corner of their jaw. Perhaps their ears ring, gradually giving way to clearer sound—or maybe they awake sitting on the ground with their arms around their bent knees, face wet with tears, overcome with a raw panic unlike anything they’ve ever felt. How very odd.

Notes:
—Characters can experience all of the memories, or players can pick and choose.
—Characters do not have to be in the square to receive the memories.

II. In the Valley of the Dolls We Sleep

January 13-15th.

CWs: violence, entrapment, hypnosis, living mannequins, dismemberment.


'New year, new you!' the cheery saleswoman on the radio and television ads for the local two-story department store proclaims ad-nauseam, becoming more and more of a regular guest in characters' homes as time marches on toward the 15th of the New Year. There are great sales to be had, and would you look at that, characters have a few gift cards to this very store in their respective purses and wallets! Over time, the voice of the young woman in the advertisement almost seems to grow more insistent, even though the same ad plays every time: surely it's just familiarity altering one's perception of her voice, right?

On the morning of the 13th, characters wake up to the sound of every radio and television set in the house turned on and blaring the ad. The saleswoman reminds them that time's running out, and that the sales will only last for another 48 hours before they're gone. If characters can't hear, they only make it as far as the living room before the television screen comes into view, the same message scrolling across the bottom of the screen in large close-captioning... even if they haven't turned it on. This time, something feels different, and characters find themselves compelled as though by a supernatural force to go check out the sales being advertised.

Characters may notice once they're inside of the building that it's only new arrivals here: the townspeople of Sweetwater seem to have already done their shopping! Fortunately, there are still some great items left. It may be when looking at that cashmere sweater or a nice pair of snowshoes that characters catch a tiny flicker of movement out of the corner of their eye: but when they turn in that direction, there's nothing except a faint, nagging sense that something's not right. It happens again as they pass through the store—and then, with no warning, the faceless, eyeless mannequins throughout the store burst into motion at the same time as the sales associates collapse to the floor unconscious, attacking characters with inhuman strength and whatever items they have at their disposal with the intent of bludgeoning them to death.

If characters try to escape from the way they came, they will find that the automatic doors and fire doors are all locked as though from the outside. The windows cannot be opened or broken, nor can the glass of the doors—they're trapped here. Really, truly trapped.

To make matters worse, the mannequins, unlike the salesman, seem truly impervious to... everything. Guns can pierce them, but they have no blood to lose or brain to damage. They can be dismembered, but they're strong, and hard to pull apart; even if a mannequin's head is removed, the body will still function. Characters have one advantage, however: the mannequins are not as intelligent as human beings, and seem to mostly lack object permanence. If characters can stay silent and out of sight after finding somewhere to hide, the mannequins will drop their pursuit after about fifteen minutes of trying to get to them.

The mannequins stay alive for 48 hours, and the doors stay locked for the same amount of time. Characters who do not find a way to sleep risk sleep deprivation symptoms similar to the ones detailed in the explanation of modes of torture in Sweetwater, and will be slower, weaker, and less able to fight off or escape from the mannequins. 48 hours is also a very long time to go without water, which can only be obtained from the sinks in the bathrooms... both of which feature nicely dressed mannequins in one corner.

Notes:
— The departments of the store are as follows:

- Women's Clothing
- Men's Clothing
- Children's Clothing
- Furs
- Baby/young child supplies
- Home appliances
- Kitchen
- Decor
- Furniture
- Toys
- Hunting, Fishing, and Outdoors (hunting-style guns, ammunition, snowshoes, fishing rods, flies/fly-tying equipment, dog beds, hunting blinds)
- Tools ( Limited. There aren't any electric saws or more specialized tools like bolt cutters to be found, but simpler "Little Joey picked this out for you, Dad!" wrench/screwdriver sets, branch loppers, lawnmowers, snowblowers, etc. - in general assume that there aren't any power tools player characters can use to bulldoze the mannequins with, but there might be some tools that could help with other things... )
- Fine Jewelry/Watches
- Ladies' Gloves

— Deaf characters and characters who wear earplugs to bed will be awoken by their spouse moving, or will randomly wake up even though they can't hear the ad.
— Players who wish to opt out can say that their character simply slept through it and woke up after the doors to the department store had already locked.
— The mannequin limbs are inert after they've been removed, but the mannequins can still operate without a head.
— Characters may try to investigate at the risk of leaving cover. If a character is able to get close enough to the service desk on the second floor, they may also notice that one of the customer service associates, a teenage girl, lies slumped over the counter as opposed to on the floor with her coworkers, an unlabeled, recently installed button depressed beneath her shoulder—she was leaning forward before she lost consciousness. If her body is moved, the button stays anchored in place. If characters check it again, hours later, they'll notice that it can't be depressed or lifted, but seems a little higher—almost as if it takes a set amount of time to return to resting.

III. Drill it in like J. Paul Getty

Throughout January.

CWs: torture, non-fatal electrical shock, restraints, medical/psychiatric abuse, nonconsensual drug administration, altered states of consciousness, needles/injections, gaslighting, brainwashing, sleep deprivation torture, antipsychotics overdose, smoking.

Should characters discuss the horrors of the month on the network, over the telephone, or in places where townspeople can hear, they’ll face the consequences. They go to bed the night of the offense as usual—and come into consciousness in a dark room, a basement of some sort, bound to a chair with leather restraints buckled onto their wrists, their ankles. A leather strap runs across their chest, holding it to the back of the hard wooden chair they’re bound to. A few feet away, the static electricity of a television box provides some measure of light as noisy waves ripple across the screen.

Upon further examination, there’s one more thing on characters’ left wrists, directly north of the leather straps holding it to the armrest: a set of electrodes and thin wires that run down and across the room.

“You’re awake. Good morning.” None other than the town’s private practice doctor, Norman Pollock, greets them, with the same matter of fact tone he’d use during a standard physical exam. “You seem to have lost sight of what makes Sweetwater so special, so we’re going to watch some videos, get your head on straight. We can’t have this kind of subversive behavior when the country’s already under attack, Sweetheart.”

He presses a button on the television remote—which characters might notice has a second, less refined one taped to its side—and a program comes on: What Communism Will Take From Us.

For the next 36 hours, the hour-long video plays on repeat, showing idyllic scenes right out of a Norman Rockwell painting, detailing the joys of the American way of life, emphasizing all of the ways subversive thoughts and actions undermine it, and how they hold the door open for the Red Menace. This is what’s at stake, what little towns like Sweetwater, Maryland have to use. Norman sits in a chair nearby, smoking cigarettes, reading issues of the New England Journal of Medicine, the remote never leaving his hand. The moment characters’ eyes close for longer than a single blink, the electrodes on their wrist deliver a nasty shock to help them wake up, growing in intensity with every additional offense. His never do for longer than a regular old blink.

By the end of the 36 hours, characters can expect reality to begin to blur at the edges, and may be experiencing auditory hallucinations, paranoia, and their minds wandering in ways they haven’t before. At 36 hours of sleep deprivation, the body cries out for it, desperate to rest. Maybe they erupt into hysterical laughter, or weep uncontrollably, or panic. Norman is unphased by all of it.

If characters try to fight back, or prove too argumentative and unwilling to learn, Norman will produce a glass syringe and draw up a thick fluid from a dark glass bottle, which, if characters have the necessary visual acuity to see, reads haloperidol. He jams the needle into their gluteus and injects; within 10 minutes, characters will feel very, very sedate, almost catatonic in their stupor. Effects vary from person to person, but it is not a pleasant experience: in addition to the deadness it brings on, hearts race and mouths go dry. It gets harder to swallow, or maybe a character’s vision begins to blur. The limbs contract in fits and jerks in the immediate and for the week the drug lasts. The face twitches uncontrollably, muscles ache in their rigid stiffness, and it becomes hard to stay upright throughout the week as the drug interferes with the character’s balance, making them dizzy and confused.

THE TOE TAG
If characters fight Norman, however, they may find that he backs against the nearby metal filing cabinet–knocking loose a piece of paper hanging from a half-open drawer when he does. It’s recognizable as a photocopy of a toe tag, the kind affixed to corpses in a morgue, but characters have seconds before their vision doubles and blurs too much for it to remain readable. Characters who are injected with haloperidol for subversion, either for talking about the murder or a different offense, may comment to the event post under the designated mod comment to take a shot at reading the tag. Remember, though, it’s probably best not to advertise that they saw anything out of the ordinary, or to even mention what happened to them, on a publicly visible communications channel…

They wake up in their own bed shortly after losing consciousness, and spend the next week corpselike.

IV. It's Freezing and I Am Watching You Shovel Snow

January 7th onwards.

It's a cold winter for Maryland, characters will hear their neighbors complain, and within a few days of the New Year they have reason enough to complain too: the snowstorm everyone's been talking about in the neighborhood clubs comes on the 7th of January, dumping a foot and a half of snow. Better grab that snow shovel, or find someone to help you if you can't! A snowstorm like this takes multiple visits outdoors to keep up with, so maybe now would be a good time to practice divvying up responsibilities with characters' new spouses or children—or for bachelors to seek out the help of a neighbor. Characters may also have to deal with a power outage lasting up to 14 hours—better visit a house that has power if they need anything, but at least this is the kind of experience that brings a parent and child or a new couple or even two members of the same community closer. At least in theory.

It’s not all near-death experiences, psychological torture, and power outages, though! Characters who find themselves in need of some R&R will be pleased to know that the local fire department has tested the municipal park’s pond and found the ice is now suitably thick for ice skating. Characters will find lace-up leather ice skates in their size hanging from their tied-together laces in the garage, though this probably isn’t the best way to learn to skate if they haven’t before, given the lack of rail to hold on to–unless they have a friend to help them balance?

navigation

Comments

[spaghettimonster]

People like the mannequins...?

[The question is confused but earnest, as Papyrus is uncertain whether these aggressive mannequins are people or attacks, but without doubt that some mannequins are. He catches himself after a second, and forces a smile.]

Uh, that's a joke. As for camping, or outdoors... Yeah, I saw tents. And fishing rods.

[The tents in particular stood out to him - a little way to make an indoors in any outdoors situation. Incredible the things humans get up to, on the surface. Things like the nearby camo supplies hadn't registered to him as anything in particular, with no reference point for their use underground.]

[puzzleking]

[ Peculiar joke, but of much less immediate interest than the idea of— ]

Fishing wire! [ Strong, lightweight, and he presumes they must sell it in considerable lengths. Less cumbersome than rope, a good gauge of the idea's potential. There's stirring somewhere, a display being knocked over. No human scream, Edward notes. A mannequin on patrol (are they intelligent enough to do that?), or some other unfortunate shopper yet to be caught. He's silent, counting to ten before he dares speak again. ]

Don't suppose you'd want to lead the way?

[spaghettimonster]

I'd love to lead the way out... But the doors didn't work.

[It was, he's a little embarrassed to even hint at admitting, one of the first things he tried doing. They'd felt locked tight, and even the glass had felt particularly inflexible. (The first thing was a reflexive attempt to summon bones for a fight, even after all these weeks without so much as an inkling of magic showing up. Just goes to show, you don't need literal muscles to develop muscle memory.)]

So... leading the way to wire, is the next best thing. Of course I will!

[Of course, his reflexes also include a tendency to talk too loudly pretty much all the time. So he has to shush and hold still in turn, when there's an obvious sound of too-steady footsteps approaching and searching around. A few minutes before it moves on, if neither of them draw its attention.]

[puzzleking]

[ Making himself scarce and silent to avoid harm is nearly a reflex at this point, but never had he felt so certain that capture would mean death. He's only spotted their pursuers for seconds at a time, but he's paid careful attention to the fallout. The size, weight, materials they're crushing far surpass any resistance he could offer. Even the Batman, for all his prowess, was so pitifully human in the end, and the plan had inadvertently kept him at a safe distance.

He's also never had an accomplice, let alone one so loud. He's snap, on a worse day, but the consequence of being the one to pinpoint their location keeps Edward silent. Tense, a tremor running through his limbs, but silent. It's one instead of a crowd, Edward notes, clawing for optimism. It paces their aisle, back and forth, so near he can't bring himself to count the laps. Instead he tenses, readies himself to sprint. Then it's gone as quickly as it came, disappearing into some other segment of the greater area. Muffling a very long, staggered sigh into a coat, Edward turns to meet Papyrus' eye, canting his head this way and that. A silent question to ready himself: which way are we going?

And then an audible suggestion, another whisper. ] Now or never, seems like.

[spaghettimonster]

[Papyrus nods, having covered his lower face with both hands while keeping cover. His hands aren't quite in the best places to muffle sounds from his mouth, but it still seems an incredible option to him - one of the conveniences of the human body, lips and hands being able to muffle a voice that has to rise through a throat to emerge into the air properly. He parts two fingers to stage whisper between, like the small gap will help keep it quieter - but he is at least successfully keeping quiet, this time.]

This way.

[His footsteps are carefully slower than he'd like, too. One of the incredible inconveniences of his body now is how heavy it is, and stepping quietly takes a kind of step he's been practicing for pranking purposes. Good to know it'll go to good use now.

He leads down a different aisle than the mannequin disappeared to, head on a swivel of looking this way and that for signs of more motion. The occasional sound of destruction or distress echoing through the enormous building is both stress and guilty relief - at least they're not the only ones being hunted, at least there's others they might help and be helped by eventually.]

[puzzleking]

[ He follows, muscles taut and eyeing Papyrus' feet as if he's expecting every other step to land like some kind of bomb. Not his fault, really, Edward knows. A hardwired instinct to expect failure inevitably results in searching it out. At each distant crash he tenses further, spurs himself to move faster until he's all but treading on the other man's heels.

Light glinting off the floor captures his attention, and he pauses only long enough to look over a toolbox. Out of place amidst the clothing they're leaving behind, likely someone lightening their load before being chased. Nothing dazzling on offer, but he secures himself a wrench and shuffles faster, tapping Papyrus' arm with the handle of a screwdriver. ]

Waste not. Maybe if we're lucky they've got sensation somewhere. Eyes, maybe.

[ They're at least crafted to suggest the presence of them, certainly more than they are hearts or spines. Maybe they're some kind of robot, some centralized unit that could be dislodged...

Wishful thinking, anyway. ]

Much farther?

[spaghettimonster]

[For all he heard the slowed steps and then shuffling to catch up, Papyrus jolts at the tap of the screwdriver. His eyes are wide as he turns to look at it, and he grimaces. The implication that they're grabbing tools to use in place of attacks is... off-putting. So close, so personal. Not at all like the artistic distance of tossing around bones and maybe a blast.

Still, he nods grimly and accepts it with one hand, then tests the weight and balance of it. He's not sure he can muster the lethal intention to kill one of the mannequins, on such short and unsettled notice... But at the very least, lodging it in a mannequin's leg joint could make the pursuit far less fearsome. Hopefully.]

It didn't seem far away...

[His mutter is partially muffled by his hand, as he leans to squint down the aisle. Trying to balance speed with quiet makes a slower pace than his usual. But he recognizes a few displays ahead, and points to one that leads around a corner.]

Past that.

[puzzleking]

[ Finding the flinch entirely forgivable given the circumstances, Edward pays it no mind, clutching his own weapon close and peering over his shoulder. He spots the other man's gesture and perks, pace quickening again. To be so close and not beeline feels like jinxing themselves. He doesn't pass his companion, hardly so brave, but he glances to him as an invitation to accelerate alongside him. ]

Oh, I see fishing poles— it's got to be near those. We could set up... [ He looks upward, checking the ceiling for beams, narrowing down potential applications. ] Mm...wondering how we'll get it around them without getting in, er, crushing range. Set up some kind of tripwire to start...

[spaghettimonster]

[The idea of tripping the mannequins up before they can get into fight range just makes him nostalgic for his magic again, and Papyrus gives a muffled sigh. Right, stop thinking about real fights, and think about ways of being annoying and avoiding fights.]

...Something slick, for extra slipping... Maybe ice. Or, uh, oil puddles.

[On reflection, they probably couldn't get a bunch of spilled water to freeze properly in here, not with how heated the interior of the mall is, and how remarkably impenetrable the windows seem. But between kitchen and tools, there's sure to be various oils.]

And, maybe, fishing rods? To drop... a bag around their heads. [Almost hopeful, in between moments of secondguessing the idea.] If that's how they see... Tying one up tight might cut down on the crushing time.

[puzzleking]

[ Edward's head shakes at the suggestion of ice, but oil is sound thinking. Even if it's only marginally effective, every second counts. ]

I'm not sure I've got good enough aim to try that, [ Said of the fishing rods, which leave him thinking faintly of Scooby Doo. ] But if we can get them off their feet, more oil in the eyes should do just as well as a bag. Or soap, paint, anything like that. Should be easy to find, too.

[ Satisfied with this and now craning his neck to eye the departments for anything home improvement or automotive-adjacent, he streamlines this aloud: ] Tripwire, slick the ground, get them in the face while they're down.

Slim odds, but humor me: have you ever seen anything like this before?

[spaghettimonster]

[Papyrus makes a faintly disappointed sound, because - while he wouldn't know Scooby Doo to know the reference - it's the kind of trickery that could work somewhat effectively, with magic to back it. But oil or paint on the face would probably have as good of odds, if they're guessing right about how the mannequins sense things, and splashing them could serve the purposes of tripping and blinding hazard at once.

He's starting to like this idea when the question comes up, and he startles like he's been caught out.]

L-Like this?

[Not nearly as loud as last time, but louder than he's trying to be, so he rushes to half-cover his mouth to better muffle the sound before continuing. If he exaggerates the way he does so, buying for time as he uses the idea of danger to deflect attention, or if there's something conflicted and careful in his face now... Well, there's a lot going on, and there could be any number of reasons for that.]

You mean, uh... Trapped in a shopping center... unbreakable windows, besieged by silent, violent mannequins? No, that's... new. [Mostly.]

[puzzleking]

[ The jolt draws further interest. This other man hasn't generally made himself out to be skittish, the leading of this very charge enough evidence for Edward he's either less bothered to begin with or doing a fine job of overcoming it. Perhaps his impression was formed too quickly. Suddenly he's hoping he won't be party to some nervous break at a critical moment.

He shrugs, ultimately, at the provided answer. There's a beat before he replies, body tense at a scraping sound in the distance — one that passes, ultimately. No sign of immediate danger, but he lowers his whisper further regardless. ]

I mean more... high pressure. Danger. You're handling it well.

[spaghettimonster]

Oh, that. [That's not what he started expecting, so it's a relief to hear. One that shows in his voice, at least until he wonders and worries if that's a different kind of suspicious - but nerves are easy to shift into nervous amusement.]

Danger is my middle name... And, this, uh, isn't the first time I've been in danger. There was this salesman... And this scared child... But, both of them were human.

[Probably. Inwardly, that means those encounters felt more dangerous to him. At least those had only been one-on-one, who knows how many mannequins are roaming around breaking things. Quite a few, by the sounds of it.

But the seemingly unbreakable glass does make this situation feel legitimately dangerous too. He hopes the comment sounds more like he's a human saying they were just humans, and thus 'normal'. For some kind of normal.]