voidtreckermods: (train)
VoidTrecker Express Mods ([personal profile] voidtreckermods) wrote in [community profile] middleofsomewhere2022-02-12 07:08 am
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No Place Like Home: Outside

NO PLACE LIKE HOME: OUTSIDE

HOME SWEET HOME
You find yourself not on a wide station platform, in the clothes you last remember, holding what you were when you went through the glas door. There's no longer a train behind you, no sound of its whistle, with no other passengers around you in similar style of clothing to your own.

You're somewhere familiar, or just - the last place you remember being before your life became tethered to the Voidtrecker Express. A field, a city, a kingdom, or perhaps even a space station. You should be nowhere, yet you find yourself somewhere, despite all odds.

People - if there are people - don't at first notice you; but attract enough attention to yourself, and that will all change. Friends, family - are they near, a phonecall away? It's either everything you wanted or everything you imagined (for good or worse), and it could seem unbelievably real. But it is real - you're off the train, back somewhere you know.

Finally - the journey is over...


...If only.

You're moving away from where you arrived, for whatever reason. Who wouldn't? You may be far from home, have business elsewhere, or want to go sightseeing. It's time to return to - and live - your life, and that doesn't include sticking to one place.

But you'll find that when you reach a point, the world becomes...foggy. A fog that you hadn't seen in the distance before it appears, and when you walk through it, you'll find yourself in a place some have already found themselves in.

Because for some passengers, there was nowhere for them to return, and so the barriers lead only to fog, and then straight back onto the platform. The Voidtrecker Express may be stationed, or there may be a blanket of fog where it should be; sometimes, it can be caught trying to leave the station, only to come back a few minutes later. The doors are shut tight, and the windows are obscured, showing nothing inside.

Those who came from somewhere can go back, should they go through the turnstiles again. And if they want, they can take people along with them, too...


But sometimes, they go to a world no one knows. They go through the barriers into nothing, a black emptiness. Not space, for those that know space, and it doesn't seem to be the void either. But it is a void, devoid of anything at all. Just a darkness so complete they will not be able to see anything at all, they will only know their companion is there through touch and sound. How they are breathing, how they are living at all, is a mystery; one probably answered only by the SCA on their wrist.

Being there brings an unease deep down inside them. This place is not natural, not somewhere that they should exist in. Not a place that should exist at all. Luckily they are never there for more than a few moments before they return once more to the station, fog covering them like a safety blanket.




A DIFFERENT CORNER: LOCATIONS

In the first couple of days (whatever that means, when time doesn't match up between most places), the only way to move to another's tethered location is by them leading another there. But after that, individuals will show up in other locations when they reach close to the distance limit. Indeed as time goes on everything gets a lot less stable. They may know their five miles perfectly but still one step to another leads them back to the platform. Attempting to return to their world leads them somewhere else entirely.

And there's quite a few places to end up.

SETTLEMENTS
COMMUNITIES
CITIES & KINGDOMS


OOC NOTES
OOC post. Ask questions here.

LOCATION TOPLEVELS: Since it'll be easier for players to engage with settings presented by those offering them, when we see a toplevel for one of the above locations put up, we'll add it to the list! We've also included the OOC comments for settings to the side, so any questions can be left with the player, as well as extra details. Please always speak with the player first if you intend to do anything drastic to the setting!

A REMINDER: Time of log is Poi 22-25, but time within worlds can last up to a maximum of two weeks. Minimum is whatever you want it to be.

During Poi 22 and 23, characters will need to be led to a location to be able to access it. From Poi 24, people will show up in locations regardless of invitation.

The second half of the event will go up during 20th to 25th February (Poi 26-28). But as always, play around in here and do as you like!

If your character's setting isn't above, link us to it in the Questions post, along with your toplevel! We'll add it.
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flatteries: (you gotta pull it together)

[personal profile] flatteries 2022-03-02 06:47 am (UTC)(link)
Safe is a very, very subjective term here.

Granted, Inigo has experienced worse than a hurricane moving overhead. At least it isn't the wind and destruction caused by the wings of Grima, so you know what, he'll take it. At least enough to at least try to move when he can, emerging from his spot behind Jingyi to also look at the train.

At that very unresponsive train.

".. It can't be."

Inigo's expression falls for a moment. He can't quite hold it back - not when this entire situation feels so utterly despair-inducing. It's something he'd hold back around Taiki or Senku, the people so worried about their worlds that they don't need his worries on top of it, but at least it's a little easier to display it around Jingyi when they are on the same level of not having planned on bothering to go home just yet, but having been kicked off the train together.

"It can't not have noticed that." And yet it seems like it. "That's just impossible! That was such a wild storm!"

It doesn't make sense. None of this does.
jingyeets: (srs | so you could breathe)

[personal profile] jingyeets 2022-03-02 11:25 pm (UTC)(link)
Jingyi's tail swooshed back and forth, before curling around to the side and attempting to curl around Inigo. He knew what he just threw at the train, and the only escalations he could manage were too unsafe for handling collateral damage. He wasn't even un the class of the most powerful person on the stupid train, but that should have had an effect.

Then again, this was all fucked up. His expression went from disbelieving to sour, glancing toward Inigo and gesturing to the Voidtrecker Express.

"You'd think the stupid Voidtrecker would stop for a moment and realise maybe there's a reason it can't leave the platform any more than we truly can! It found a way to let us through the fog, okay, sure, but that's the problem, we're not following our tethers back, we're just traveling, which means if it leaves, we have to be with it. Or we die, it has to remake us, our tethers might snap—this is such shit!"
flatteries: (i heard the piledriver waltz)

[personal profile] flatteries 2022-03-04 06:54 am (UTC)(link)
The tail will definitely be able to wrap itself around Inigo like this. The boy gives absolutely no resistance to the action - he just stands there, letting the tail do what it wants. It's one of the few comforting things he can have in the middle of this situation, anyway.

This situation that Jingyi, so aptly, is labeling as 'such shit'. Thanks, bro. Really summed it up.

"We're basically halfway to ending up like the people who disappeared, right?"

It's what it feels like. They're still tethered to the train, or they wouldn't come back here like this, but the tether must be weak for the train to somehow be entirely unable to sense them. Even though they're right out here, causing chaos.

".. maybe the tether snapping will happen first if it does manage to leave." With how flimsy theirs are right now. At least the other people who tried staying behind on the platform had a full tether to count on, but what do they have? "Then we'd just.. be gone."

It's an awful thought. Especially since Inigo wants to be present. He told Tidus just before he was thrown out that he wanted to stay and help people.

And here? Like this? He can't do a single thing. He can't even pull the train's attention. Neither of them can.
jingyeets: (distraught | until we say goodbye)

[personal profile] jingyeets 2022-03-04 12:01 pm (UTC)(link)
"Honestly, I don't think so." His frustrated sigh before he spoke was a testament to angry strangulation noises, but his tail didn't follow suit by turning into an angry strangulation tail. It kept nice and loose.

"I think their tethers were properly severed. The way they don't react to us, we're the ones they can't see, they're getting pulled back, I think. I think we're all supposed to be like them, hearing a call back to our bodies if we have them, or an afterlife if that's the thing. Only we're not. We're a whole other fucked up thing."

It is not, sadly, Jingyi is an uplifting person filled with positive considerations moment, though it is a very... different... silver linings one.
flatteries: (away from all the fears and)

[personal profile] flatteries 2022-03-05 10:14 pm (UTC)(link)
"But they're not going back home either." That's the common thing. Sure, they went home, but they weren't really home either. Inigo might have bounced out of his world as quickly as he could, staying away from anyone he knew, but he's heard enough stories of people from other worlds by now to know that most people don't even notice them in other worlds unless you really try to make them notice you.

And from the information the ministry gave them - well, it didn't exactly sound like it was as simple as those people being returned to their bodies.

"Sure, we're not there yet in our current state. But I feel that's just because the train is still here, or.." He pauses and frowns, looking down before glancing across the platform again. "Well, because it still seems stuck on this platform."

It feels like that's what's keeping what remains of their tether in place. And while Inigo thinks it's entirely possible that it's what's keeping the train here too, there's no saying what would happen if the train did manage to leave. It does feel like it'd have to cut something between them for that to happen.

"It always sounded like those people's tethers were lost. Ours will be as well if the train manages to separate itself from us as we are now." Trust him, Jingyi, he's not saying this stuff on purpose! He'd rather not be thinking about this either, but it's really hard for his thoughts to not go there when it's quite literally a moment-to-moment risk in their current scenario!
jingyeets: (distraught | until we say goodbye)

[personal profile] jingyeets 2022-03-07 04:37 am (UTC)(link)
"They were lost, yeah, but not snapped. Ours? Ours would be snapped."

If the Voidtrecker Express manages to leave. Or so he feels, the whole of its mechanics a headache he's been wrapping his brain around anyway since information first started truly coming their way. Thank you, Ten-Nank.

"I kind of think it's why they can never hear us. We're still tethered, yeah? Only fully tethered. And they're following their loose tethers back someplace only they see, like when I was carrying people across the void chaos on Diagad." The exhaustion of Anchoring, such as it was. "We got thrown out, to where we were taken, but the tether's still got the knot called the Voidtrecker Express in the middle of it. Unlike them, nothing's calling us. Our spirits are still fucked."

Jingyi, failing at being uplifting, though also pointing out he believes the ones who leave aren't as fucked as they, presently, are fucked.
flatteries: (away from all the fears and)

[personal profile] flatteries 2022-03-08 07:29 am (UTC)(link)
.. Inigo doesn't know, honestly.

He doesn't know if he's right. He doesn't know if Jingyi is right. And neither of them can know for sure what's going on anyway, because if there's anything the train ever refuses to do, it's to provide them with an instruction manual when it comes to anything at all.

It makes this feel so hopeless.

"I don't want to argue about this. We don't know for sure anyway," Inigo just says, suddenly his voice sounding much more empty as he's stepping away from Jingyi, like he is now trying to escape the tail after all. He takes a step or two in the direction of the train, and then just stares at it.

"I don't want to go to Ylisse either." He didn't want to be there in the first place, and fled away from everything he knew there the moment he was able to do so - so of course he has zero reason to go back there now. "I'll just stick around here on the platform and see if there's anything I can do."

Even if the possibilities when it comes to stuff that might work are rapidly shrinking here. But maybe it's just about endurance. Maybe the train will notice something if he just keeps doing it for long enough. It's the only thing he can do here.
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