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Post by raz on Sept 8, 2016 8:43:35 GMT -8
Around the ship and through the skies above the planet intangible aurora spread, space gaining an overlay of gently shifting gradient colors. Through the vastness of space similar phenomenon appear, arcing rainbows or erratic paths at a gently, calming clip.
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Post by mystery on Sept 9, 2016 15:20:14 GMT -8
Travis looks up at the rainbow submerging the sky.
Who's idea was this?
Is he hallucinating from the cold?
Did Initia slip drugs onto that heat tag?
Whatever this is, Travis wants to be somewhere else right now. Somewhere with palm trees and a tropical breeze, and white sand between his toes...
Wait.
How did that appear around him? Is this apart of the drug trip?
If anything else, it's the best one he's ever experienced.
He doesn't even feel the chill of the ice layer surrounding him anymore.
Wait a minute... it's gone!
Travis wiggles his fingers and sure enough, there is no ice holding them in place. It has all melted.
He's free.
He's soaking wet, but he's free.
Travis immediately uncaptchas his phone and calls a number.
"Hey, Travis here. Can you pick me up? I'm at... well I was at bandit ridge, 15 years before the boom, but it looks like I'm back in the southern reeflands. What am I smoking? Honestly I wish I knew. One moment The First Temporic was sparing me from an icy death, the next I wind up here. What's that? Check my pulse?"
Travis checks his pulse. Sure enough he's still alive. Surprisingly.
He slaps himself to make sure he isn't dreaming.
His face stings from the strike, but the tropical surroundings remain.
He picks up the phone again.
"Ow... I'm alive alright, and I'm sure I'm not dreaming. What!? You're not taking me back to the future!? You know I can't make the leap on my own! You need me to run our new civilization! You need me. There's no two ways around it. Well fine then! I'll find and contact somebody else! Go ahead! Sow the seeds of doom for our race! I will be waiting for your decision." Travis hangs up and heavily puts his phone into his pocket. In his anger, the palm trees recede and a mirage of an empty diselpunk throne rises, decorated with the horned skulls of the fallen.
"They'll see how far they'll get with out me... THEY'LL SEE!"
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SJmun
Eggministrator 
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Post by SJmun on Sept 11, 2016 15:01:18 GMT -8
It has been few years since the meteors have demolished and destroyed all of temporic civilization. Only the decaying vestiges of the past remain.
The grand hourglass, and the ancient city built atop it's sun facing platform, is but a shadow of it's former self, no longer a standing testament to time. It has languished in the sands, glass and broken walls alike.
Canyon city, with its long sprawling history, has been abandoned long ago, when the massive spaceships loaded up as many passengers as they could hold to rescue them from their world's end. The remaining husk is a sad sight to see, demolition widespread from above.
Overall however, the desert hasn't seen much change. It's still thousands of miles of sand, just the structures built are no longer how they were before.
Despite this however, there is life amongst this harsh and unforgiving terrain. It is very sparse, but it is in fact there.
Where exactly?
Well, maybe you should take the time to search for them.
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Post by mystery on Sept 17, 2016 21:18:31 GMT -8
The maid of time suddenly finds herself in the wreckage of what used to be the ground floor lobby of an office building.
What just happened? Just moments before, she was surrounded by merry bar patrons in an ancient tavern.
Now she's... here.
How much did she drink again?
Getting sloshed on booze from another era isn't enough to make this happen, is it?
She tries to check her time traveler's companion watch to see what time it is.
It's nine years after the Reckoning, just an hour before sunrise.
Is it even possible to accidentally to another timeframe? Maybe she blacked out "a while ago" and thought it would be a good idea to leap to the future?
That can't be right... not only does it feel like only mere minutes have passed since she got here, but she would never consciously choose to return to this time.
The echoes of panicked masses can be heard, if only in amplified memory.
So many lives lost on that fateful day... Not everyone could make it onto the ships. They could only hold so many people before they reached capacity. Those left behind responded in riots and terror.
The maid's name is Enrich and she was one of the many not chosen to leave her doomed world with the rest of the elite.
She remembered it clearly.
The scenery around her changes in response.
She's too drunk to care.
Suddenly, she's back in her room, where this cursed adventure all started.
She decided that she would spend her last hours alive playing an online game with some friends.
Something to distract her from the inevitable.
But, the game, aptly named STOMB, whisked her and her house away from this world.
Away from the meteors, and away from everything she ever knew and loved.
The windows change from red to a dark blue.
She was saved from the fate most of her people were submitted to... but at what cost?
The illusion of her room fades, leaving her once again in the wreckage of the office lobby.
She is alone.
Everyone is dead.
Even Chronos has abandoned her.
She has no home, no friends, no family.
All she has is the now illegitimate ability to swim against time's arrow, and the unending second life she had been tricked into pursuing as an ultimate test of her faith.
She wonders if there's any way she can even die.
She hopes there is something out there that can release her from the living hell of being the last grain stuck on the top of the hourglass.
Maybe then she can finally know peace.
She sobs into a tattered leather chair, covered in dust and sand.
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Post by mystery on Dec 9, 2016 6:52:52 GMT -8
A single room of a house shifts into view from the rubble.
A young woman enters the room from a rectangular hole in the wall, cut from a magic marker.
It's... just as she remembered it. Searching for her once prized tome, she immediately searches underneath the bed. It's right where she left it. Upon opening the book however, something is missing and wrong.
The pages are all blank.
Examining closer around the room, much if the text on posters and such are unreadable, even a little blurry.
This room isn't real.
Seeking the truth, Fannie rushes to the door of her room that leads to the rest of the house. She opens it...
...and the rest of the house simply is not there.
There is nothing but ruins.
Where there would be a home, where there would be a neighborhood, dirt and rubble lay undisturbed before her.
The rocks are real.
Upon realizing what she has seen, an unshakable sorrow washes over her.
Her home is doomed to ruin.
She returns to her false room to cry upon her bed, as she used to many times before. This is so much for her to handle...
As Fannie wallows in her sadness, the scene around her shifts.
Outside of her room, the rest of the house and neighborhood has reappeared. If only in memory. Most of the houses are quite blurry, but sure enough they have enough of a presence to change how the area looks from a distance.
Soon enough, a soft drink falls out of a small portal and onto her bed.
She looks up at it.
It's faygo.
She's never heard of that drink brand, but maybe it'll help her calm down. Or something.
She grabs it and tries to take a drink. It winds up spraying fizzy drink at her. It's just soda. Fannie drinks the now mostly flat soda. It tastes good enough.
Having drank her fill, and being mostly done with crying, Fannie tosses the probably fake bottle (it actually isn't, but disappears through a portal anyways) and walks back through the magic marker doorway.
But not before snagging a picture of her family off the wall.
A little while later, another saddened individual, not too far away in the same city, discovers the imaginary neighborhood. Seeing it gives her a little false hope. Maybe there's somebody out there.
Making her way to the area of greatest detail, she finds the house, and the room, with the magic marker doorway still intact.
Confused, she enters it, not knowing what will happen next.
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Post by mystery on Feb 7, 2017 0:40:12 GMT -8
Travis has been very busy. It didn't take too long for him to figure out the nature of his predicament. It wasn't long before he began building something big with all the tools her could ever imagine. Knowing not to trust the stability of imagined structures, He used only real materials for his construction purposes. Thankfully, imagined tools can be very versatile, and instant access to faraway resources was but a portaljump away. In an unmeasured span of time, Travis, with the tireless efforts of countless imagined automatons, had built a grand fortress in the desert. Vast stores of precious resources stolen from abandoned locations locked behind its walls. And not only that, but a few of his trusted partners (who had been in the same timeframe as him due to the effects of the Grand Dreamscape, as they had come to call it) had joined him here, with any survivors they could find amongst the dunes. Unfortunately, most of them were actually just exiled carapacians from the session. In terms of actual temporic survivors that were found... well, you're gonna have to investigate that for the answer. However, as of late, not all is well here. A growing black splotch upon the prismatic sky has begun to take shape, eating away at it like a tumor.  The Royal Band, comprised of the thief, the bard, the knight, and the prince, has been keeping close watch on it, yet none can decide on who should investigate it, fearing too much for their individual safeties. What can they even do about the darkness upon the horizon? Anything at all? |
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lunarLunatic
DEATH EGG
All your moons are mine!!!!
Posts: 1,486
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Post by lunarLunatic on Feb 7, 2017 18:01:09 GMT -8
It seems that the fortress, as well as the black splotches that threaten to consume the prismatic sky, has been noticed by another individual.
A temporic in a witch's garb stands in front of said fortress, her arms crossed and her face bearing an expression of contemplation.
She's almost impressed by how quickly they've managed to build this thing, though they had probably had some dream constructs to help with it. Were they wise enough to make it out of real material, she wonders.
Still, it's not as impressive as the base she has. Then again, she's had more time making that than they had with this, before they had even entered their game session. Though the interior could be...
She shouts, hoping someone in there would hear her.
"Anyone in there?! I can't help but notice that someone's managed to build something in this wasteland, and I would like to know who it is!"
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Post by mystery on Feb 7, 2017 20:20:26 GMT -8
A group of prospitian sentries, armed with crossbows, spot the visitor down below. One of them pulls out a walkie talkie and begins talking on it. A short moment later, one of them yells a question, loud enough for the visitor to hear.
"State your name and mission, trespasser! The prince wishes to know!"
Most of the sentries up there at the top of the fortress wall have rested their weapons, though careful observation may reveal a hidden guard aiming from a thin slit window. While the visitor below appears somewhat familiar, one can never be too careful in the Grand Dream.
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Post by mystery on Feb 7, 2017 22:37:56 GMT -8
The sentries scramble and hide from the sudden noise. The hidden one shoots, but the arrow misses, sticking into the ground before disappearing in a puff of smoke.
In the silence, the walkie-talkie's call beep can be heard.
The walkie talkie guy yells out from behind a large spike.
"...uh, welcome to the oasis citadel, Gretchen. Travis is awaiting your arrival in the grand palace. Just go forwards, can't miss it."
It doesn't take too much longer for the gates to be opened.
A path flanked with elegantly crafted iron torch poles lights the way to the "grand palace". Other buildings can also be seen, including a lookout tower, a mess hall, a stable (though there's currently only motorcycles parked there), and a dorm building of some sort.
A pair of dersites can be seen tossing rose petals upon the ground, to cover the path with. A prospitian half-heartedly plays a tired old fanfare on the trombone. You could probably find a dead guy that could play the trombone better than this dude.
But that's not important right now.
The "grand palace" awaits.
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Post by mystery on Feb 8, 2017 0:44:34 GMT -8
Inside of the "grand palace" is incredibly decadent looking, to say the least. Gold leaf trim layered upon carefully sculpted pillars and walls. jewel-studded chandeliers hang from the ceiling, catching the rays of a sun not seen. A long, tacky, crimson shag carpet cuts across the room, leading to the far end where the throne lies.
At the far end of the room, a total dweeb, decked out in a much fancier version of the average prince class outfit, sits in his lavish cushioned throne. It should be fairly obvious who this douchebag is.
It's Travis.
Nearby, Gararl, the bard, is presenting print-outs of old Numblr shitposts, and seems to be enjoying their job. They're wearing an oversized fur coat, similar to Mackelmore's (How does Gararl not overheat in that thing?), along with the standard bard attire... modded to be even more ridiculous than usual. There's not just one codpiece on there, but like, 8 of them. Tacked on without regard for location nor style.
Somebody with private anatomy that actually resembled those things would maybe be weirded out at this, but in this case it's just another layer of weird to the wardrobe. But really, it's not like anything else would be expected from Gararl. They practically revel in the absurd aesthetic.
"...if two guys were on the dirtball and one killed the other with a rock would that be fucked up or what- oh hey Gretchie, took you long enough!"
Gararl laughs and waves. They haven't changed a bit.
Travis clears his throat, cutting off any idle chatter in the room.
"So you've arrived. What brings you here to my domain, Gretchen?"
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Post by mystery on Feb 8, 2017 23:40:26 GMT -8
Travis blinks, more shocked looking than he probably should be. Gararl looks over at him with light concern. A couple deep breaths later though, he regains his composure.
"...You ask as if you do not know, Gretchen. What we have upon us is a windfall opportunity for our grand cause. Just, look around at what me and my entourage have built here! everything you see here, despite being built upon the scaffolding of dreams, is all real! We have been using this phenomenon to its greatest potential, and with time, and the resources we have already amassed, we shall build for ourselves a new civilization!"
Gararl rolls their eyes. "again with the motivational speeches, Travis? We've got a single fort out in the middle of nowhere with barely even a handful of stragglers."
"My dear fool Gararl, your thoughts are far too small. This fort is but the beginning of our enterprises, don't you know?"
"of course, as if you didn't remind us every fucking day."
Travis seems to be dodging talk about the dark splotches.
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Post by mystery on Feb 9, 2017 17:16:04 GMT -8
Travis drops the facade. Even a ham like him can't deny the foreboding black cloud above them all.
He can't hide it anymore, she already knows.
"...So you're aware of it too."
Meanwhile, Gararl pulls out a large printed out photo of the dark splotch. In picture it looks noticeably smaller than it does outside right now.
"we're freakin out here, man. This is what it looked like just a couple naps ago."
Travis mumbles something under his breath to the tune of "your sleep schedule makes no sense."
"we thought it was just a thing around here. are you sure it's also spread that far away too?"
Travis has his fingers pressed to his forehead. "To be truthful, we've had even less information than you do, Gretchen. This... this just makes things even worse."
Gararl pulls out a crystal ball from their oversized jacket. if you looked close enough, you could see a bunch of bags of water lining the inside of the coat, with goldfish swimming in them for who knows what reason. They flick the crystal ball with their fingers and an image flickers into view upon it. Gararl takes a moment to wince at the very slight fingernail pain from that action.
The ball's vision shows a live view of the dark... thing far above their settlement.
"like, we've tried sending in fake dronecameras to investigate, but they always crap out on us after crossing the threshold. As far as we're concerned, that thing is bad news with a capital β."
Travis speaks.
"You say the Grand Dream reaches further than the confines of our planet, stretching across the cosmos, with more of that black plague trailing upon it, even into the dark recesses of the furthest ring? With that in mind, I might be able to concoct a plan..."
Travis gazes into Gararl's crystal ball and takes a deep breath. This is a lot to take in.
"To believe, we have the wealth of the stars at our fingertips... and yet, with such agonizing peril..."
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Post by mystery on Feb 9, 2017 23:43:01 GMT -8
Put on the spot, Travis tries to give himself some more time to think. It would be apparent to the other time players in the room that he's running at a higher speed than usual for a "minute".
So, it came from the furthest ring? Figures. That's where the horrorterrors are from, the eternal enemy of their kind.
But wait, the Forbidden Curse? How would that be involved here? Isn't that supposed to destroy all that contains magic?
Then again, with the stars drowned in dreams...
Oh no.
Wait, the curse has been dispelled, so it can't be the cause for this. But then what is causing these dark clouds to appear?
It's possible that it could be perhaps, a nightmare? A nightmare is a fearful type of dream, and with reports of difficulties appearing with some in waking up...
But what can they do against the spread of the nightmare clouds? How do you stop a nightmare? Especially one that may claim its victims in an iron grip?
He has to find answers for this, and fast.
Soon enough though, he seems to have thought of something. Maybe not a full plan, but at least something.
"...I believe what we have at hand is the work of a nightmare. If we can find a way to dispel the nightmare by some means, the clouds should hopefully disappear from the sky. In the meantime however, we should be prepared to move the settlement out of the cloud's reach, or find a way to possibly repel it."
"That's reeeal helpful, buddy. It doesn't solve jack shit."
"Well, I'd like you to come up with a flawless plan at moment's notice with fresh information!"
Gararl doubletaps on the crystal ball and begins typing on a keyboard. It looks like they're looking something up on the (somehow preserved) internet. A wikihow page shows up on the crystal ball's display.
"it says here nightmares are caused by stress from the day and increased mental activity during rest hours, as well as negative thoughts. The way to curb them, this says, is to think happy thoughts, imagine better endings, try to tire yourself out more before bed, take your meds, and a bunch of crap like that. So worrying about it ain't gonna help. In fact, it's probably growing from all the worrying we do around here."
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Post by mystery on Feb 10, 2017 20:52:02 GMT -8
"Heh, classy." Gararl remarks on her stylish flop.
Travis's interest is piqued.
"Your sources. What would your sources be?"
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Post by mystery on Feb 12, 2017 0:21:03 GMT -8
Travis realizes exactly who the members of this forum would be.
The ones who made First Contact.
The ones that chiseled (or apparently will chisel, not sure yet) that URL in the ancient slab found by that archeologist.
The one that their group was told about that, if it were revealed to the public, everything would have become unbound. Civilization would have been thrown off-course and doomed to ruin.
It was...
"...that group from the storage facility parking lot! The ones that almost doomed the past with their volatile information! AGH! Of COURSE it was them! Who else would have access to such secrets?!"
Travis suddenly runs out of the room to scream at the sky. Those inside can still hear him to some degree.
"there he goes again... you think he'd settle for screaming into a pillow or something." Gararl remarks.
Travis walks backs inside, huffing.
"Okay... I'm fine now... What were we discussing?"
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