GUIDELINES.
This is the OOC plotting post for the February 2024 event! Here you can find brief summaries of the various event prompts which may help you engage in plotting with other players. To participate, utilize the code at the bottom of the page. This is not mandatory! Feel free to plot here or in private with other players, or simply wait to be part of the event.
NOTE: This is NOT the event log! The event log will go up on the 19th of this month.
WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST? THE DARK.
On the morning of February 19, characters will awaken in a room at the newly-opened hotel located in District 5. They may awaken alone, or may awaken with a roommate, either someone they know or someone they don't! Either way, characters will find an envelope (or multiple envelopes, depending on who is in the room) on the nightstand; that envelope contains a card inviting them to a masquerade ball that evening, as well as a dance card with three open slots. These open slots can be filled prior to the masquerade beginning, or will be filled automatically based on the first three people the character dances with when the ball begins.
Characters will also find two outfits in the closet of their hotel room. One is whatever clothes they wore yesterday when they checked in; the other is a set of formalwear, perfect for a masquerade ball, tailored to exactly their measurements and in their preferred colors and styles. There is also a mask that goes perfectly with the formalwear. Characters are of course free to wear whichever of these they want as they explore the rest of the hotel. There is also a key to their room sitting on the desk. Once this key goes into a character's pocket, it cannot be lost or given away; even if it's handed over willingly to another character, it will simply find its way back into the original owner's pocket.
DO YOU LOVE THE NIGHT?
There are plenty of areas in the hotel that can be explored or utilized by guests! As well as the lobby area previously described in the February newsletter, characters are now able to access the hotel's restaurant, its fitness facilities including both a gym and a swimming pool (no tentacle monsters in this one), and a proper reading library with nice leather chairs and individual reading lamps. Characters can also access the maintenance area under the hotel, either by going through the restaurant's back of house area or by entering the staff-only area through a staff door in the changing rooms attached to the fitness facilities. The maintenance halls are labyrinthine (in fact, they are a literal labyrinth), but characters who persist in solving the maze can find their way to an emergency exit, a set of stairs that will take them up to a ground-level exit. This is the mechanism by which players can get their characters out of the hotel if you don't want them to participate in the masquerade.
Those who do choose to stay and explore the hotel will be able to find some additional information at the reception desk that wasn't there before. Namely, they will be able to find a handwritten log of guests with city resident names on it (including their own) in that character's handwriting; further digging into the computer at the reception desk will allow them to find the room numbers associated with each character. Especially keen-eyed characters might note that despite the hotel having nine floors, none of the guests are in rooms on floor nine.
Characters who decide to make a trip to the ninth floor to figure out why that might be will find themselves unable to get there by stairs or elevator, at least during the daylight hours. The elevator will deposit them at the eighth floor no matter how firmly they press the button for the ninth; characters who take the stairs up will find themselves arriving at the landing for the eighth floor repeatedly.
WHAT KEEPS THE BODY FROM OTHER BODIES?
At sunset, the masquerade ball will begin in the hotel's main ballroom. It's a luxuriously appointed ballroom with plenty of space for dancing, but also seating around the edges and a space for refreshments and finger foods at one of the ends, for characters who may not have visited the restaurant beforehand. Once the masquerade ball begins, the emergency exit through the maintenance hallways will no longer be accessible, and characters will be trapped in the hotel until the sun comes up again.
The longer a character spends listening to the music, which can be heard anywhere in the hotel regardless of distance from the ballroom, the more they'll feel like dancing. At a certain point, in fact, the desire to dance will become a compulsion. Characters who are seated at tables will feel themselves pushed up out of the chairs, and characters who are lingering against the walls will feel themselves pushed away toward the dance floor. Once they start dancing, they'll find themselves unable to stop until they've danced with at least three partners, the same number of partners as empty slots on their dance cards. This compulsion will be strong, but not entirely impossible to break if a character is self-aware and strong-willed enough.
Once a character has danced with three partners, they will feel the compulsion to dance lessening until they're able to leave the dance floor and take a seat once more. Observant characters may get the sense that there are far too many people on the dance floor than there are residents in the city, but because everyone is masked, it would be difficult to tell for sure.
WHAT ELSE WILL SAVE ME?
At any point after sunset, meaning after or even during the masquerade ball, characters may make another, more successful attempt to get up to the ninth floor. This time, provided that they pay careful attention to the elevator number pad (or the signage on the staircase landings, should they go by stairs), they can get themselves up to the ninth floor.
The hallways of the ninth floor are entirely dark except for the light coming from the emergency exit signs and from a number of rooms which have been left open. Characters who make their way down the hall will feel a sensation like they're being watched, and they may see shadows move in the lit rooms (or the unlit ones) as if someone went into the bathroom or moved in the hallway, but should they choose to push open the doors, they'll find that no one is there.
Much like the dorm rooms at the University, the rooms on the ninth floor contain personal belongings. These may belong to a character themselves or may belong to someone they know. Characters can take these items with them, provided that they are small and non-magical. Characters may notice that all of the rooms seem as if they've been unused for a very long time; all of the surfaces of the rooms are dusty, with one exception: a head-shaped indentation in one of the pillows, absent of dust, as if someone was recently laying there and only just now stood up.
YOU WANT TO KNOW IF YOU'RE SAFE.
Characters who don't go to the masquerade at all, who do go to the masquerade but resist the compulsion to dance, or who dance but with too few partners may find their sleep that night interrupted by an extremely persistent knocking in the hallway outside their door. It starts as a tapping at one end of the hall and then slowly moves down the hallway in the direction of the character's room, until finally, whoever or whatever is making the sound reaches their door and pauses… only to begin hammering on the door with such intensity that it should make characters feel as if the door is going to break or the hinges are going to come off. Although the duration of this hammering will feel quite long, in reality it will only last two or three minutes before abruptly ceasing, after which the tapping will continue its way down the hall until it finally fades entirely.
Characters who made an escape from the hotel entirely before the masquerade ball began, by using the maintenance hallways under the hotel to get out the emergency exit, may also find their sleep similarly interrupted even if they go to sleep in their own home or that of a friend.
LONG ENOUGH TO SPLIT THE FIRST ECHO.
Characters who either choose to wander the hotel's hallways instead of going to bed after the masquerade, or who choose to leave their rooms after experiencing the knocking and banging mentioned above, may find themselves coming face to face with… themselves. The doppelganger might look exactly the same, or may have slight differences in hair or scars or fashion, but will otherwise be immediately and obviously identifiable as an alternate version of the same character. (If a canon AU of a character exists, this doppelganger may be that canon AU.)
These doppelgangers are versions of characters from past iterations of the City experiment. They are essentially data ghosts, incapable of holding a coherent conversation or communicating in any significant way. They are vestiges of that iteration's data leaking through into the current iteration. They cannot be reasoned with and cannot be stopped—they will come for your character and will kill them, if your character doesn't kill their doppelganger first. Not all characters will by necessity have a doppelganger! This is by player discretion. However, unlike the ghostly knocking noises, doppelgangers will only appear for characters who are currently located inside the hotel.
It is also possible for a character to hide from their doppelganger long enough to survive by waiting out the night. Once the sun rises, the doppelgangers will disappear and the front doors of the hotel will unlock, allowing characters to make their escape.
CODES.
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cityooc2024-02-17 09:24 pm
