dramatispersonae | ♫ carnelian ♫

♫ carnelian ♫

You're in a sumptuous room, with rich brocade in your team colors and fine appointments in copper and marble that should look bright and beautiful -- but everything is dusty and grey, with a furtive, abandoned air. This is a place that's been locked away for a long time. It feels as if it would be sad to linger here for long.

Fortunately (perhaps), after one good look at the room, you catch a brief, pained snatch of melody. Your vision goes dark, and you immediately find your mind somewhere else-- ♫

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

For the first round, your character will be locked into a vivid waking nightmare (with which they can hopefully identify) for three comments! Your character will know to some extent that it's a dream, as one does sometimes in lucid dreams -- however, this shouldn't prevent the character from being affected by and reacting to the scenario. Our goal is a deeply unpleasant experience rather than outright trauma, so please use your judgment on how much immersion versus a sense of unreality from being in a dream you need to play with to get that outcome!

You can play with characters reacting to the scenario any way you want - have them interact with each other as if they're all going through what's being described together as a group, or have each person interact with it separately, or whatever - as you and your team prefer. (If you’re coming in late, you can just react individually to the scenario comments and then jump in wherever your team is playing! The rest of the game won’t make much sense otherwise.) After your team has finished reacting to each comment, let your gamerunner know that you're done so the next one (and then the next round, when the dream is over) can be unscreened.

Once the nightmare is over, teams will be free to discuss and answer a series of questions.

Teams will be running at their own pace without inter-team interactions, so please pace yourselves accordingly as a group to make sure you don’t run overtime! We’ll be cutting off all teams at the 5-hour mark (9:30 PM PST/12:30 AM EST).

You’re racing through the halls of an empty castle, grand stone and crystal carpeted in red, heart fluttering faster and faster towards panic in your breast. You’re looking for someone, anyone -- friends, teammates, those whose faces linger in your memory, moving faster and faster, throwing open doors on empty rooms and abandoned furniture. Everything seems distorted. Shadows creep in at the edges of your vision; and you can’t catch your breath around the lump in your throat.

[She thinks any second now she might trip on that carpet, and yet she can't stop running, because there has to be someone, just inside one of these doors, and then it will be- what?

She leaves the doors open as she runs, to keep track of all the places that they're not.]

Re: first

dissorder - 2014-04-14 00:37 (UTC) - Expand

You’re still running, still searching. Even the rooms are unfamiliar now as you run on, dark and windowless, full of threatening shapes and shades; you begin to recoil back when you throw them open. Questions crowd into your mind, blurring and overlapping: Where are they? Did they leave you? Why? You could have guided them! Did they not trust you to guide them? Will they remember you?

No, they didn’t trust you. They didn’t want you to stay with them when they left. That much rings true in the hollow pit of your stomach. But why? You can’t remember. Why can’t you remember? Your thoughts are jumbled; you feel pulled in multiple directions, dread roaring in your ears. Why is your own voice in your head unfamiliar? Why are you here? Who are you? Who are you?

[ Why. . .

He tries to slow down -- because it's too confusing. Too many whys and not enough answers. Who what when why -- it was too confusing. ]

Re: second

scarygirl - 2014-04-14 00:52 (UTC) - Expand

Re: second

dissorder - 2014-04-14 01:03 (UTC) - Expand

Re: second

scarygirl - 2014-04-14 01:07 (UTC) - Expand

Re: second

dissorder - 2014-04-14 01:10 (UTC) - Expand

Re: second

scarygirl - 2014-04-14 01:14 (UTC) - Expand

Re: second

dissorder - 2014-04-14 01:15 (UTC) - Expand

Re: second

scarygirl - 2014-04-14 01:18 (UTC) - Expand

Who are you? What will you do now? What will you do? You twitter and fret but to no result; the castle fades and darkens, and so does your memory. Their faces and names are already fading; your own is already gone. In a moment the memories will slip away entirely. You sink down onto the floor of the hallway, any brightness left in you and the scene fading. You are alone. You do not even know who you are now. It does not matter. You do not matter. You will stay here until you turn to dust and ash and small, dull, yellow feathers.

[Of course. It was always going to end this way, wasn't it? You can't outrun your own inability to be anything real. To be an actual person, and of course she never was one. Just- something- pretending to be a person for a little while.

It would be better if it hurt. But pain belongs to people who are real.]

[ (but is nothingness that bad, really?) ]

You wake up sitting securely in one of the luxurious abandoned chairs. You're feeling sore and ill, pained from the affereffects of whatever happened -- but it's all the ghost of a reaction, fading slowly.

Firebird's voice floats through the air on another brief melody. She sounds exhausted, as tired and sick as you are.

"So what would you do, if such a thing came to pass? After all of your fears came true?"

[Face in hands. Just for a moment. She only needs a moment to pull it together.]

It already did.

♪ instructions ♪

round 1 ♩

first

Re: first

second

Re: second

third

Re: third

Re: third

round 2 ♩

discussion

Re: discussion

decision

Re: decision

round 3 ♩

discussion

Re: discussion

decision

Re: decision

round 4 ♩

discussion

Re: discussion

decision

result ♮

...