The Legion [Mods] (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
letsgolegion) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
legionmissions2017-01-03 12:57 am
letsgolegion) wrote in legionmissions2017-01-03 12:57 am
Entry tags:
SILENT HORIZON - [Part 1: The In-Between] [modplot]
Who| Everyone who signed up
What| 2 spoopy
Where| In The In-Between, the pocket dimension inside the Silent Horizon
When| After Valor's Day. Mission starts shortly before "No Sanity Clause" and runs simultaneously in game time
Warnings/Notes| Potential warnings for EVERYTHING. This is a horror plot that may tread a lot of ground. Please keep in mind that you can stumble on disturbing stuff in almost any thread. We advise all players to put warnings in the subjects of threads when they lean towards cut-worthy stuff.
The mission was simple. The team had to board the derelict Silent Horizon, a ship with an experimental stardrive, after it finally reappeared in UP space, many hours after it was supposed to reappear, during its first field test. No life signs were aboard, but the presence of several Roboticans on the crew -- who were undetectable by bioscan -- meant that the ship had to be boarded to make sure the Robotican crewmen were gone, too.
The United Planets government, concerned about the loss of the crew members, asked the Legion to step in, in case the threat on board was of a metapowered nature. Due to the massive danger implied by an entire starship crew going missing, the response team sent on the mission was relatively large, more than enough to handle any hostiles. None of this "we'll just send one tiny team to go alone into a giant starship against an unknown threat" business. No, if there was a hostile force on the ship, the plan was "let's drop 25+ Legionnaires on its head." Safety in numbers.
It was a good idea. In theory. In most cases, it would've given them the edge that would've let them face something very nasty without succumbing to it themselves. But in practice, it just meant that it was a much larger team that suddenly went missing after watching the last video log of the previous crew on the command deck.
Screams poured out of the screen the moment it started to play -- automatically -- when they entered the command deck. Onscreen, they saw the original crew murdering each other, tearing each other apart in a blood-soaked rampage.
"Wait, stop! What's wrong with everyone? Why are you --?" cried out one of the Robotican crew members, clearly immune from whatever was causing the madness, but his cries went unheeded as one of his Coluan crew-mates bashed his head clean off with a chair.
After the video played, the darkness swept in, wrapping around the whole team of Legionnaires, making them feel frozen all the way down to their bones and stealing consciousness away from them. When they woke again, they all found themselves separated, waking up in a realm of nightmares.
The halls breathe here -- at least in the places that have walls. They flex in and out, like the passageways inside the lungs. Sometimes the walls give way to open nightmare-scapes, remote and foggy, or bright and alien and exposed. The landscape bends and shifts around them, reacting to their thoughts and fears. And every so often, far off, there is the pitter-pat of something strange moving through this place. Like the sound of many feet -- or hands -- slapping against the ground or flesh-walls.
At some point, there is always a voice that each of them hears, tinny and robotic and distant, warning them of a being called the Faceless, that rules this realm. They're told not to feed from his blood, that if they do they'll be made a part of this place. If they accept his offer, and change forms, they'll eventually bleed to death, and if the Faceless isn't stopped before they die, those that die in their mutated forms will belong to him forever.
It's not the only voice they'll hear, though. This is a land filled with whispers. And screams. And the sounds of begging sometimes, too.
And for some of the Legionnaires, the In-Between speaks to them, touches something deep and dark inside them -- and it's calling them home.
What| 2 spoopy
Where| In The In-Between, the pocket dimension inside the Silent Horizon
When| After Valor's Day. Mission starts shortly before "No Sanity Clause" and runs simultaneously in game time
Warnings/Notes| Potential warnings for EVERYTHING. This is a horror plot that may tread a lot of ground. Please keep in mind that you can stumble on disturbing stuff in almost any thread. We advise all players to put warnings in the subjects of threads when they lean towards cut-worthy stuff.
The mission was simple. The team had to board the derelict Silent Horizon, a ship with an experimental stardrive, after it finally reappeared in UP space, many hours after it was supposed to reappear, during its first field test. No life signs were aboard, but the presence of several Roboticans on the crew -- who were undetectable by bioscan -- meant that the ship had to be boarded to make sure the Robotican crewmen were gone, too.
The United Planets government, concerned about the loss of the crew members, asked the Legion to step in, in case the threat on board was of a metapowered nature. Due to the massive danger implied by an entire starship crew going missing, the response team sent on the mission was relatively large, more than enough to handle any hostiles. None of this "we'll just send one tiny team to go alone into a giant starship against an unknown threat" business. No, if there was a hostile force on the ship, the plan was "let's drop 25+ Legionnaires on its head." Safety in numbers.
It was a good idea. In theory. In most cases, it would've given them the edge that would've let them face something very nasty without succumbing to it themselves. But in practice, it just meant that it was a much larger team that suddenly went missing after watching the last video log of the previous crew on the command deck.
Screams poured out of the screen the moment it started to play -- automatically -- when they entered the command deck. Onscreen, they saw the original crew murdering each other, tearing each other apart in a blood-soaked rampage.
"Wait, stop! What's wrong with everyone? Why are you --?" cried out one of the Robotican crew members, clearly immune from whatever was causing the madness, but his cries went unheeded as one of his Coluan crew-mates bashed his head clean off with a chair.
After the video played, the darkness swept in, wrapping around the whole team of Legionnaires, making them feel frozen all the way down to their bones and stealing consciousness away from them. When they woke again, they all found themselves separated, waking up in a realm of nightmares.
The halls breathe here -- at least in the places that have walls. They flex in and out, like the passageways inside the lungs. Sometimes the walls give way to open nightmare-scapes, remote and foggy, or bright and alien and exposed. The landscape bends and shifts around them, reacting to their thoughts and fears. And every so often, far off, there is the pitter-pat of something strange moving through this place. Like the sound of many feet -- or hands -- slapping against the ground or flesh-walls.
At some point, there is always a voice that each of them hears, tinny and robotic and distant, warning them of a being called the Faceless, that rules this realm. They're told not to feed from his blood, that if they do they'll be made a part of this place. If they accept his offer, and change forms, they'll eventually bleed to death, and if the Faceless isn't stopped before they die, those that die in their mutated forms will belong to him forever.
It's not the only voice they'll hear, though. This is a land filled with whispers. And screams. And the sounds of begging sometimes, too.
And for some of the Legionnaires, the In-Between speaks to them, touches something deep and dark inside them -- and it's calling them home.
no subject
Then there's a whine and unlike the screeching, it sounds human. It's the kind of whine that goes along with 'Mommy why don't I feel good? Do I have to stay here in the hospital?' Dipper tilts his head and peers at Robbie with that burning ember that isn't an eye, as if he finally sees him, and then the cringing expression on his face is pure hurt, like a child that's unexpectedly gotten slapped by a parent.
It makes it clear there's still a boy in there, still something that's a tiny bit human. It's in there with a whole lot of homicidal malice, but it's in there.
"What the heck? All I'm trying to do is kill you," Dipper says sullenly. "Not cool, man."
no subject
The keening is a comfort, as is the softening of that wrecked face into a vulnerable expression. Who could have done that to him? Robbie fumbles around slippery secondhand knowledge. There's that mutant who makes people ugly - is she here? Is she still a mutant? Angel would know.
The only angels here are circling him. "I know you don't mean that. You're a good kid, D. I didn't want to hurt you, either."
Stop lying! You attacked him! He's supposed to be your friend! Robbie doesn't have friends. Speedball beats them all up - he don't care. Robbie only cares about himself.
The shadows haven't been so angelic since he defended himself against Dipper. It was a stupid move, using a superhuman ability in front of kids who were killed by a superhuman. Rude. Callous. Maybe they aren't wrong. He doesn't tell them to shut up. "We're going to get you help, come on -"
He's promising help to a cadaver puppet. Who's he kidding? This is hopeless.
Robbie never saves anyone.
Freaking hopeless - it suddenly clicks. "Doctor Strange! He can fix you! Sorcerer Supreme! He can, he can set you right."
He feels oddly triumphant to have come up with a solution. If anyone can regrow eyes and flesh out those spidery limbs, it's the mage. Robbie clings to the warming life ring, and the panic scrabbling at the edges of his mind subsides slightly.
The shadows quiet.
no subject
He nods towards them.
"You can't ever put them back together again, can you." He looks at him with that unblinking light, as one of the little ash children walks over towards him.
Dipper doesn't destroy it. He reaches out with a twisted hand to brush his too-long fingers against what once had been a cheek, and for a moment, he's not a monster. He's just one damaged child comforting another.
"Little kids aren't made of puzzle pieces. You can't rebuild us from ash," he says gently. "I'm ash, Robbie. I was ash before you even met me."
His voice goes distant.
"The yellow light burned me up inside and just left a shell that looked like a kid. I was fooling myself by thinking otherwise." Which yellow light is the question. Was it the light of the Yellow Lanterns, burning his brain, or the yellow light coming off of him all summer in Gravity Falls? Maybe both. Probably both. "All this place did? Was make the outside look like the inside."
no subject
Too broken. Too broken. Sixty broken china dolls.
Robbie shook his head at Dipper, staring at the light rather than the Frankenstein stitching of the other eye. "I can fix this. This is - this is the closest to making up for it I've ever been. I'm not going to f- I'm not going to screw it up. You're even easier - you've got a body. You're not ash."
We're all ash. The sun exploded and I burnt up into ash. Robbie won't fix Dipper either. Sticks and stones won't break his bones, but Robbie Baldwin killed me.
"No! I didn't!" It hurts to argue, the effort of fighting to be heard over dozens of voices eats up so much willpower. He did, didn't he? He basically killed them. They're right, and the only way to say I'm sorry is to die over it. But he has to get Dipper to the med bay first. "It didn't. You weren't a shell. You're not. I know you're not."
no subject
When he talks again, it's with vicious glee. The Faceless is working through him, after all, making him drown in his fears and hurt, and trying to drown Robbie through him. He dances around him, part of the little crowd of shadow-children.
"They kept Hal close so he'd hear everything, and they made me scream. Then they rewrote my whole life until everything hurt. Even after the telepaths put it all back together again, I would still wake up in the middle of the night sometimes and forget who I was for a few minutes. I'd lay there trying to remember which me was the real one -- but it didn't really matter: either I was the boy had no sister, whose parents locked him in a closet, or I was the boy who was alone during the apocalypse."
Dipper snarls and it turns into an unearthly screech, but his face is still a child's. It's pure hurt. That's what this place has done to him, trapped him in the mental places he's in.
He's not dead like the shadow-children, but still being alive comes with its own suffering. His body's been twisted so he's trapped in a cage of pain, and his mind's been dragged to the darkest place it can be.