[?MODERATED? - we may slip into this memory] [CRITERIA: minimum 3 players, minimum 12 replies] [METAPLOT]
Water laps against a pebble beach. In and out. In and out. Waves climb up shore and retreat again. The stones at your feet are black and sharp, so shiny they look like hunks of glass. Some fine as frit, others as large as a human head, all of them glittering. The water rushing toward you is thick and inky blue, smelling not of algae or salt, but of something faintly sweet, unfamiliar. Above, the sky is gray. You know it's night, though it doesn't look like it. Focus long on it, and your eyes begin to hurt. You realize: it's not gray, it's just densely packed with stars. So innumerable they make a solid tapestry.
Debris litters the beach. Blankets, baskets, overturned boats, what looks a bit like a chaise lounge split in two. There are drying pools of gray goo in places, tide pools that smell faintly of chocolate. But those aren't tide pools. And that's not ocean water.
All around, vines are growing, creeping up toward the sweet indigo sea. Massive purple flowers, bigger than you are, sit dangerously every dozen or so feet, drinking in that endless starlight and singing it back in pulses of purple light. This is a battle lost, but the war still rages on.
Snap.
One approaches, a being of many limbs, many tendrils, many frills. Strangely beautiful, its body all the colors of an exotic fish, but unsettling to behold. It wears lovely adornments, metal bangles, colorful threads woven into nets, a wreath of red crystals in its hair, each one as delicate as the petal of a flower. When it moves, it moves like a spider, pulling itself forward, toward the memory's owner.
Click, click, clack. Pop. Snap snap snap.
Though the sounds have no meaning to your ear, that feeling is unmistakable. Loyalty, devotion, adoration, fear.
The two beings set to work moving pebbles about until a strange glyph has been drawn in the beach. A circle rimmed by symbols unfamiliar even to the top Symbology students at Peckenpaugh. The memory owner walks around the circle, their partner keeping pace beside them, putting their backs to the ocean and looking further ashore. More of these beings are gathered, ready with what little they can carry to flee to somewhere new.
Three of these waiting beings approach and from tendrilly limbs present items: a satchel of fine white powder, a vial of something gray, and a cube of faded gray metal. Everything freezes.
MEMORY: A Distant Shore
[CRITERIA: minimum 3 players, minimum 12 replies]
[METAPLOT]
Water laps against a pebble beach. In and out. In and out. Waves climb up shore and retreat again. The stones at your feet are black and sharp, so shiny they look like hunks of glass. Some fine as frit, others as large as a human head, all of them glittering. The water rushing toward you is thick and inky blue, smelling not of algae or salt, but of something faintly sweet, unfamiliar. Above, the sky is gray. You know it's night, though it doesn't look like it. Focus long on it, and your eyes begin to hurt. You realize: it's not gray, it's just densely packed with stars. So innumerable they make a solid tapestry.
Debris litters the beach. Blankets, baskets, overturned boats, what looks a bit like a chaise lounge split in two. There are drying pools of gray goo in places, tide pools that smell faintly of chocolate. But those aren't tide pools. And that's not ocean water.
All around, vines are growing, creeping up toward the sweet indigo sea. Massive purple flowers, bigger than you are, sit dangerously every dozen or so feet, drinking in that endless starlight and singing it back in pulses of purple light. This is a battle lost, but the war still rages on.
Snap.
One approaches, a being of many limbs, many tendrils, many frills. Strangely beautiful, its body all the colors of an exotic fish, but unsettling to behold. It wears lovely adornments, metal bangles, colorful threads woven into nets, a wreath of red crystals in its hair, each one as delicate as the petal of a flower. When it moves, it moves like a spider, pulling itself forward, toward the memory's owner.
Click, click, clack. Pop. Snap snap snap.
Though the sounds have no meaning to your ear, that feeling is unmistakable. Loyalty, devotion, adoration, fear.
The two beings set to work moving pebbles about until a strange glyph has been drawn in the beach. A circle rimmed by symbols unfamiliar even to the top Symbology students at Peckenpaugh. The memory owner walks around the circle, their partner keeping pace beside them, putting their backs to the ocean and looking further ashore. More of these beings are gathered, ready with what little they can carry to flee to somewhere new.
Three of these waiting beings approach and from tendrilly limbs present items: a satchel of fine white powder, a vial of something gray, and a cube of faded gray metal. Everything freezes.