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THE GRAVEYARD
THE LANDING
You’re having an out of body experience. That’s how it starts, dying. There isn’t any pain anymore, and for a moment, not much of anything else. Your thoughts are a dim hum in the back of your brain, the tips of your fingers seem miles away. Despite that, you find yourself moving, moving, moving from the last place you were in your own body and forward, until you reach a door that you haven’t seen since the beginning of the game. A door that wouldn’t open. A door cold to the touch and seeping with mist. It opens before you, and as if of someone else’s design you walk through it. As it closes behind you, you get the distinct feeling that if you turned around, you’d find it vanished.
What takes up most of your attention, however, is the tolling of church bells. They clang in rhythmic, almost maddening persistence--seems you’re just going to have to try and ignore them, as they show no signs of slowing or stopping, wherever they are.
Once the cacophony becomes easier to manage, the bong, bong, bonging evening out to a pulse inside your ears, you realize that where you are seems to be a world that's incomplete. The floor is nothing but a landing of invisible matter, a spooled red carpet leading you to a few rows of pews and a lone confessional.
You will notice, immediately ahead of you, a cute little mailbox fit for a suburban home. It bids you welcome, though the cheery paint job is a bit muted in this dark place.
Simple and neat furnishings dot the edges of where the landing seems to be: railings mark the unseen edges and draperies and sconces float in the void, giving an illusion of walls. Be careful, however, because they can easily be fallen through if leaned against. Fortunately, someone seems to have kept that in consideration, as a helpful sign warns just this.
On one side of the confessional, a room with bookshelves, a writing table, and pens and paper has been provided: a minimalist study for when you need a bit of privacy to think. On the other side, a wing of dorm-sized, lockable bedrooms provide another bit of space to oneself. There may not be enough for everyone, but nobody really has to sleep--so just take turns!
To the left of the pews, it looks like a miniature bar has been crafted with a small but decent selection of drinks. There's a small television seated on the counter, but it only seems to ever work two times a week: the week's opening announcement on Monday mornings, and Saturdays, tuning in at the beginning of the trial and tuning back out again at its conclusion. There's also a piano to one side of the bar, allowing anyone to provide musical accompaniment to their drinking.
Perhaps most interestingly, an ornate black doorway at the far end of the room leads to a curving hallway that ultimately leads to what appears to be a temple. It's similar to the altar room they'll remember from the living side, but there are no power inscriptions, and the only furnishings are wavering, grayscale candles on the walls that never seem to burn low and great sculptures of leaping rams. The two black-marble statues meet in the center, curved horns joined above a platform, decorated with nothing but a lone offering bowl. The dark marble of the item is cracked, but it seems like it'll still get the job done. Try sending something, if you wish!
Maybe this place is meant to be more. But for now, Patience is the only notable figure you have to place your attention on, and she comes forward to welcome you immediately.
"Welcome to my dominion," she greets in her usual, cheerful candor, and points at your hand, where you hold your godly token. "Now that you've been eliminated, I'll take that back and return it on your behalf. Don't worry, though, I'm not leaving you empty handed."
What takes up most of your attention, however, is the tolling of church bells. They clang in rhythmic, almost maddening persistence--seems you’re just going to have to try and ignore them, as they show no signs of slowing or stopping, wherever they are.
Once the cacophony becomes easier to manage, the bong, bong, bonging evening out to a pulse inside your ears, you realize that where you are seems to be a world that's incomplete. The floor is nothing but a landing of invisible matter, a spooled red carpet leading you to a few rows of pews and a lone confessional.
You will notice, immediately ahead of you, a cute little mailbox fit for a suburban home. It bids you welcome, though the cheery paint job is a bit muted in this dark place.
Simple and neat furnishings dot the edges of where the landing seems to be: railings mark the unseen edges and draperies and sconces float in the void, giving an illusion of walls. Be careful, however, because they can easily be fallen through if leaned against. Fortunately, someone seems to have kept that in consideration, as a helpful sign warns just this.
On one side of the confessional, a room with bookshelves, a writing table, and pens and paper has been provided: a minimalist study for when you need a bit of privacy to think. On the other side, a wing of dorm-sized, lockable bedrooms provide another bit of space to oneself. There may not be enough for everyone, but nobody really has to sleep--so just take turns!
To the left of the pews, it looks like a miniature bar has been crafted with a small but decent selection of drinks. There's a small television seated on the counter, but it only seems to ever work two times a week: the week's opening announcement on Monday mornings, and Saturdays, tuning in at the beginning of the trial and tuning back out again at its conclusion. There's also a piano to one side of the bar, allowing anyone to provide musical accompaniment to their drinking.
Perhaps most interestingly, an ornate black doorway at the far end of the room leads to a curving hallway that ultimately leads to what appears to be a temple. It's similar to the altar room they'll remember from the living side, but there are no power inscriptions, and the only furnishings are wavering, grayscale candles on the walls that never seem to burn low and great sculptures of leaping rams. The two black-marble statues meet in the center, curved horns joined above a platform, decorated with nothing but a lone offering bowl. The dark marble of the item is cracked, but it seems like it'll still get the job done. Try sending something, if you wish!
Maybe this place is meant to be more. But for now, Patience is the only notable figure you have to place your attention on, and she comes forward to welcome you immediately.
"Welcome to my dominion," she greets in her usual, cheerful candor, and points at your hand, where you hold your godly token. "Now that you've been eliminated, I'll take that back and return it on your behalf. Don't worry, though, I'm not leaving you empty handed."
OOC NOTES
Hello, eliminated competitors, and welcome to the graveyard. Although it isn't much to look at, now, this area will be growing and expanding in time with the help of your characters' actions and participation in weekly events. What they unlock will have an impact on the living side, overarching plot elements, and ways to communicate between both planes!
When it seems like there isn't much to do, there's always one option left: gathering information. So sit back, enjoy the afterlife, and put on your thinking cap!
When it seems like there isn't much to do, there's always one option left: gathering information. So sit back, enjoy the afterlife, and put on your thinking cap!
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[ Wow, that's unfair??? What's he being called dumb for now??? ]
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[...well.]
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Or do the words 'Origin's Trial' hold meaning where you come from as well?
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[it was a thought.]
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[ another soft laugh, but it's not unkind. ]
... If it really was that easy, maybe we'd have been spared a lot of trouble over the past years.
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...If you went to another world, would you get better? Or not get worse, I guess.
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But in the end all he says is: ]
I doubt running away from it now would accomplish much. It's only a matter of time, really. You could say it's something that runs in the family, but regardless of whatever it roots from, the nature of it is as an inherently degenerative process.
[ A pause, and then, deliberately light and offhand, despite the measured weight of his words: ]
... Besides, where I come from, all worlds besides the Prime are inevitably doomed regardless. It would be only the most fleeting of dreams in the end, especially if Origin's Trial is left unattended to.
To allow oneself to shirk that responsibility... is selfish at best, and callous otherwise.
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[Chuuya is not the softest of people, as Dazai would tell you - but he can't just listen to someone say they're going to die and not try to fix it.]
Good luck.
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That said, it'd be rude not to thank you for the sentiment regardless. Here's hoping, right.
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...was that your wish?
[To survive, to clear this Trial thing, whatever.]
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I only wanted for a world where he could live and be happy. Whatever it took to make that sort of reality, whether it be a world where both Elle and I survived, or a world without sacrifices... a world without the Trial at all? Or perhaps one where the issues leading to it in the first place never were.
[ He sighs his way through a half-hearted shrug and shakes his head, a little self-deprecatingly. ]
There are others here with wishes more grand. It's a selfish wish, after all. He's already yelled at me for not thinking of myself first, our first night here, but he couldn't be more wrong, really.
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[Softly. Chuuya's rarely soft-spoken.]
It's not such a bad thing to be selfish.
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[ Said in the faintly wondering tone of someone who has condemned that sort of trait for all his life, and thought any regard spared had to be earned. ]
Maybe it's all a matter of perspective in the end, and what the cost is for others.
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...Or you could wish for your loved ones to have a little more time.
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... And then, besides that, there are people like us. I wonder: is this all simply a matter of who wants it the most... or who deserves it?
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There's no point in a peaceful world that my sons don't get to see.
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[ A slow, pensive glance into the nothing surrounding them. His head doesn't turn for it, no, just that his eyes slide down and away from meeting Chuuya's gaze. ]
I went into this thinking I would have been willing to do whatever it took. And yet, faced with the others here, I really do have to wonder at my resolve, and how fragile it was in the end.
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[He doesn't count himself among that group, but he still has some limits.]
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[ Julius Will Kresnik, a good person. Pull the other one, maybe, it's got bells on it. ]
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[People like Julius are not very good judges of themselves, Chuuya thinks.]
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... That isn't fair. You know full well our answers will likely differ. Even so, it isn't as if Ludger does, or ever might, know the full scope of who I am and what I've done.
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[big brother calling out big brother here.]
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That so, huh. Guess some things just turn out to be universal after all.
A compromise, then: don't think better of me than what he would. And I'm sure he has plenty of words for me by now.
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And then I might try to punch one in the face while he's not looking.
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