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.
midway, maybe around #15?
...well, from everyone, technically, but there was one absence that took precedence in Ken's mind over all of the rest, because even when the rest of his team (his old team) graduated, moved on, left him trailing years behind him like he'd always realized was inevitable, Koromaru had still been there. Koromaru moved back into the dorms with him when they reopened. Koromaru waited for him to get back from school every day. Koromaru trained with him so they could both stay sharp, because someday, everyone was going to need their help again.
Koromaru was always there. Until he wasn't.
Tartarus had done this a few times, when he thought back on it. It had worked out. It had just been the place trying to mess with them, but all they had to do was regroup and keep going.
So he started walking, and when he finally saw a mess of shadowy figures moving a ways ahead, he picked up his pace. Koromaru used darkness. Maybe -
"Hey! Wait!"
no subject
They scattered at the sound, hiding badly behind whatever was handy, including Robbie's legs, and peeked very obviously at the approaching person. Rob was far more relaxed about it - the first thing he saw was a glint of the Legion medallion. He remembered that that, and not shadow children, was what he was looking for. He stopped walking.
There was a gap, though, between Robbie halting and responding. He wondered what to do about all the tiny conversation elephants surrounding him. Should he start out by mentioning them? No, he wasn't sure they were really... there, when he thought about it. It was easier not to think about them. Robbie decided he would wait and see if the other Legionnaire acknowledged them.
Mommy says don't talk to strangers.
The promise of real company, with actual eyes and coherent thoughts - he can't say how long he's been trying to find his teammates, only to have one sneak up on him when he's distracted. Good thing he's been working on what he'd say since he woke up alone. "Have you seen anyone else? Where are we?"
no subject
"I haven't," he said, planting the butt of his spear on the ground and leaning on it. Just to catch his breath. How far had he even been walking before he found anyone? "I...I think we're still on the ship? I don't know where else this would be, but..." He glanced at their surroundings. "Nothing looks right. Before I got this far everything looked like...like the halls were made out of meat."
That was stupid, of course. Or cliche. Or both.
"But then I saw the shadows, and I thought maybe Koro-" He shook his head, probably better to just cut to the chase. "Have you seen a dog?"
no subject
He's also not the only one at a loss to explain where they are and what the where is. "Halls made out of meat..."
Shooting a glance in the direction Ken's come from, Robbie shook his head and tried not to think about what that would look like. "Definitely not going that way. And that way,"
He jerked his thumb towards where's he's been, which he didn't know what to call. Another Legionnaire shouldn't have been sent back through time and space with him, so Stamford seems like a mistake. "Post-apocalyptic city. I thought I was outside, but..."
Now that he paid attention, the sky looked like a roof again. Robbie shrugged as he looked up at it and returned to the conversation. "I haven't seen a dog. Is there a dog, besides Victor's?"
no subject
He shook his head. He'd been wrong, but any company was good company, in a situation like this, so he wasn't about to complain too loudly. "Is that your power? Or is this just...part of here?" Wherever here meant.
no subject
"I haven't seen a dog." He rushed to say it, trying to speak over whichever shadow was making the noise. More than one of them, actually, because puppies are a very popular topic. Even Robbie can't discern all of the dog names being whispered around them. "And they're not - I don't have shadow powers."
Rob doesn't say they aren't his, because ... they are. "It's part of here."
We're all part of here. Koromaru is part of here.
Robbie looked at the shadows, deeply unsettled by that. "I swear, I haven't seen any dog."
no subject
It was definitely unsettling, even to a kid like Ken who'd spent a chunk of his formative years dealing with the shadows of the Dark Hour. It wasn't like the weird horror movie stuff was actually all that new to him, but this...
It was the voices, he decided. They'd fought all manner of shadows back home, but most of those didn't speak.
But finding Koromaru was at stake, so unsettling didn't really matter as much as figuring this stuff out did. He leaned over a little, to put himself closer to eye level with one of the smaller shadows - the one he'd heard Koromaru's name from. "What do you mean?"
Sorry! This notif got eaten by spam! Also feel free to NPC the ghosts.
"Careful. I don't know if it tells the truth." He had to throw shade on them now. If they're what he thought - the ghosts of kids that he arguably got killed and inarguably didn't save - there was no end to the ruin they could bring down on his head. How would it feel to be a leper in another world?
Around them, most of the shadows spoke in schoolyard singsong. Robbie rolled his eyes at them.
Don't listen to Robbie. Everybody knows Robbie Baldwin lies!Everybody.
The little shadow with the whispery voice tried to poke at Ken.
There's a doggie here. He can play with us, but you can't yet.
"See? They don't make sense. They just insult you or talk about playing that never happens."
np! I...suck at creepy but if I think of anything good o7
He straightened up, looking to Robbie again. "If you haven't seen him, though..." He glanced around. "You were coming from that way, right?"
At least it told him which direction not to look in.
no subject
It's hard to ignore them when they're angry and circling, but Robbie focused on his teammate and nodded, specifically pointing out his route. "From there, and then to the left - no, right. I turned left, so if you were tracing the way it would be a right. But you're the first living thing I've seen."
I used to be alive.
That was a really creepy way to put it. Robbie wasn't making this any less weird. "Do you need help finding him?"
no subject
"Yeah, that...that'd be good."