The Legion [Mods] (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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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
Not with that chill in the air, or the frozen crunch of metal shrapnel under their heels. Scattered wiring. For a while Sombra imagines it's the nightmare digging at her again— but when one of the fallen bodies is still distinctly recognizable, she realizes that might not actually be the case.
Not with so many lifeless omnic bodies in various states of decay strewn out in the mist. A wet, fleshy sound echoing off in the distance.
"Try not to pay attention to it."
Said like it's an annoying solicitor and not the product of a psychological horror show.
no subject
So instead of acknowledging it, she stuffs it deep down in her stomach and moves as quietly as possible, listening for anything that sounds out of place while they head toward a safer location.
"Less breathin' walls and all that, but--" She waves her hand, like it doesn't even matter. It does.
no subject
It's as though the pathways are narrowing. Thinning out alongside their numbers.
"You didn't find anyone else while you were out there, did you?"
no subject
Or those she'd been forced to fight.
"I did."
Its quiet, her tone suggesting that -- whatever had happened during her meetings, it hadn't ended well. Dwelling on it wouldn't help them now -- not if they wanted to survive, and avenge the others.
no subject
Eventually her clawed fingers settle on a door that gives when she rattles it, frozen edges shedding frost in clean sheets that slough away like skin. Sometimes this place separates you from the people you're standing right beside; more often than not, it just takes them from you, Sombra's come to realize. Which sounds exactly like what Lena's been living out on her end, too.
Who knows, maybe she found Jack.
"Lo siento, Lena." Pressing the door open the rest of the way (and peering into the pitch black darkness beyond it, thick as poured ink and impossible to see through) Sombra flicks her hand forward to coax her companion into following. "This way. Should be a shortcut out of here."
And, to keep them from being immediately divided in it, Sombra creates a little cube of virtual blue light from one of her internal files (who says a UI can't have multiple purposes?).
no subject
But as long as she can see, trying to argue won't help anything. The awful fleshy sound of breathing walls makes her spine crawl. Without a doubt, she would rather be out there fighting omnics than in here listening to it.
She doesn't voice her displeasure, but every now and then, she'll swallow down some discomfort. "How far we goin'?"
no subject
"We're forcing the scenario to reset." One thing she's learned about this place, after all, is that each little pocket only goes so far: walk long enough in a direction it doesn't expect or want you to, and it'll try again. "Could take another few feet, could take the equivalent of a few blocks."
That absent breathing rattles with the sound of air passing through tissue, as though from a deep wound - reverberates off the walls. Fleshy tendrils drape from what passes for a ceiling above them, listlessly catching light as they draw closer.
How charming.
no subject
"That's barmy," Lena grumbles, messing with the straps of her accelerator underneath her arms. After they continue along in silence for a few more moments, another thought comes to her. From what she'd been able to tell, this Faceless creature was set on keeping everyone still sane isolated from one another. "Hang tight, love. Got an idea."
Without waiting for a reply, she's gone in a flash of blue, ahead of Sombra and down the hall. Sure, there was the risk that her accelerator would fail again before she could recall, but that was just a chance she would have to take. Just a few seconds after, the walls start to move again.
And like the passing of a breeze, Tracer reappears in a wisp of blue, looking slightly bewildered as she checks all of her limbs with her hands. Something about that recall didn't quite feel right -- but it worked.
no subject
For once, Sombra sounds entirely serious when she snaps it out, concern so evident she can't even bother to mask it. Clawed fingers left curled idly in midair before that flash of blue disappears entirely. Regardless of the vitriol between them, there's no guarantee that darting around at the speed of light won't somehow sever the fragmented reality they're currently occupying— and Sombra stands at a disadvantage when she's alone.
Thankfully she doesn't have long to wait with her breath held (frustratingly) high in her throat before there's another snapping blue streak of light, Tracer suddenly right back where she was before.
And their surroundings entirely shifted.
This time there's pale light overhead. High. As though somewhere sunlight— or something like it streams in from the height of an entire building away. The scent of rotting flesh in the air, the ground beneath their feet just as wet and marked with jagged spines that look like....teeth. The far off skittering of something soft. Damp. A disjointed amalgamation of a setting.
"...well it worked." Judging by the way it's said, Sombra doesn't sound entirely happy about that fact.
Somehow— for reasons she can't exactly pinpoint— this feels worse. And familiar.
no subject
Something crawls down her spine, and Lena's body shivers for a moment, eyes squeezed shut while she tries to collect herself.
"Ugh. Let's just get out of here already," she practically spits, shaking out her limbs and forcing herself to walk forward in the first direction she can find that's clear.
no subject
There's a slick snap, something rearing back like a tripwire in the shadows where sunlight doesn't reach— before tentacles composed of knotted, bleeding flesh lash out like a cracked whip, trying to latch onto Lena before she has a chance to dart away.
no subject
Slap go the tentacles, engulfing one leg entirely. She can't rewind again so soon, and she can't blink when she's rooted in place, and she isn't strong enough to surpress the surprised shout that bubbles out of her as she's forced to the ground by gravity.
Lena turns to fire into the dark to try and force release, but with the amalgamation already dragging her down and back, none of her shots connect.
no subject
It isn't quick. There's a surplus of the things, and despite her solid aim, they're fast enough to make things difficult. By the time Sombra's cleared the worst out, she realizes they're at the bottom of that steep slope leading inward, paused in the proverbial belly of the beast beneath streaming sunlight.
If she wasn't in a hurry before (she was), something about this place has her anxious beyond reason, gripping Lena by her arm and pulling upright to help her back on her feet sooner rather than later.
"Come on, back on your feet. You can nap later, amiga."
no subject
There's more important things to worry about. She holds her pistols close, pivoting in place to make sure nothing else tries the same stunt.
"--nevermind. You got a better plan?" she offers, glancing up at where the sunlight streams in.
no subject
It's a painful confession: there's no guarantee things will stay the same as before, but it's obvious now— seeing what'd latched onto Lena— that she's tapped into the echo of Cortana's memories.
And knowing that the Gravemind might lie in wait ahead means this is a path they shouldn't walk, real or not.
no subject
She'd just tried to waltz out, and was met with tentacles. They were surrounded by darkness, and she couldn't recall herself back to where they had been until the accelerator recharged. Every second that passes feels like the dark presses closer and closer to them.
"I can't just walk time all willy-nilly, you know. Doesn't work like that!"
no subject
Her expression— aside from the wrinkles across her nose— is stern, committed. They can do this.
Or they'll face something much worse.
no subject
"Ok," comes her uneasy reply, a careful reload of her pistols triggering so she's prepared for the next attack that comes for them.
"Let's get to it, before it tries something else."
no subject
It's a quick turn back up that steep, fleshy slope: Sombra darts ahead, expecting Lena to follow, footsteps padding upwards in a rush. It's darker, where the light doesn't reach, but judging by the system that's been tracking her orientation, so far nothing's been altered.
Yet.
But in the shadows she hears it again, that digital scuffling. Whispering. Flickering violet.
"Lena, ahorita! Hurry up!"
no subject
"No, no, no--Azúcar!"
This wasn't going to work. She couldn't close the gap. Instinctively, she blinks forward--
--but she never comes back out.