THE GRAVEYARD

[divus]

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."

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!

full navigation.

locations ♦ taken ♦ profiles ♦ weekly curfew ♦ murder proposals
ic rulebook ♦ temple offerings ♦ private convos

Comments

MINI-EVENT | WEEK 4

[divus]

FIRST TASK

Everyone gets a pack of magic chalk that allows them to draw walkways and markings, as well as features to add into the graveyard. Like a game of hot and cold, everyone gets a ring that tightens as they go too far and need to change directions in the darkness of the void.

Another day of quiet, bell-droning misery stretches on in The Landing. Patience, stretching, appears from the confessional booth as she often does--as if it’s a much bigger space than the small, curtained room would suggest.

“Oookay, I have something fun for us to all do today,” she announces, cutely resting her masked cheek on the back of her pressed hands. “Well, okay, so really, I need your help. I hate to ask and make you do some work, but I’m having a real lot of trouble getting this place fixed up. You know how totally boringly sparse this place is? Yeah, it totally wasn’t supposed to look like this...working with the afterlife is a whole lot tricker than I anticipated--it’s not just some of you that got fractured off.”

From her voluminous robes she produces items in both hands: in one, she holds a pack of white chalk, and in the other, a handful of silver rings.

“I’m stretched really thin with what power I have available in this realm just making sure I can move the others over to us, so in the meantime, you can go find everything else! Or, at least a little bit, for now. As an added bonus, I’ll even let you design any furniture or features that are totally missing. Juuust let me know if you have any questions. Oh, and try not to get lost out there, or it might be hard for me to find you.”

In this mini-event, characters will be given the ability to draw themselves a pathway forward through the void to discover missing features of the graveyard and expand upon it to add what never would've been available in the first place. Each character receives a single stick of chalk that doesn't run thin and a ring that fits cozily on any finger of their choosing. The ring will tighten if they stray too far away from their target destination, while the chalk creates whatever is drawn...at least, in outline form. It's a work in progress. Patience will fill in the details later.

QUESTIONS

[divus]

[Talk to Patience for clarification! Characters can always double back on their drawn pathway to ask her questions they think of later.]

[goatsongs]

[After having drawn a few bookshelves' worth of blank books...]

If I write the title on the spine of a book, will you fill in the contents?

[divus]

Nooo, you'll have to write it out by hand...

[She pauses, laughing and waving a hand.]

I'm just kidding! Of course I'll fill it out for you.

[goatsongs]

And here I was thinking I'd have to recite the entire book to you first.

[he would absolutely be down to do that.]

[divus]

Maybe that can be our second date!

[goatsongs]

For the third date, should I sketch out some bedrooms?

[Please smack him.]

[divus]

You're gonna make me blush!

[She giggles, putting her hands to her masked cheeks.]

But maybe you should.

[I hate that you can hear the wink in her tone.]

[goatsongs]

I'll make it top priority after the library ♥

[I hate everything about this]

[hymned]

[ listen this is probably during a break from exploring the squiggle and if it's leading to a viewing room I'm just going to laugh but- ]

If one of us drew, say, a TV here. Would we even get any reception on it?

[ or would it just give them, rimshot, the static fuzz of dead tv? ]

[divus]

Good question! We can certainly see what happens?

[hymned]

Here's hoping we don't just get channels full of infomercials, huh.

DRAWINGS

[divus]

[Please report here with anything that your character draws to add to the setting! All submissions should be made before Sunday, and afterward Patience will fill in the details lacking from the chalk-outline versions of all character creations. The new additions to the setting will be added to the official writeup of the Graveyard at this point.]

[goatsongs]

Chuuya is immediately drawing a room with bookshelves, a writing table, and pens and paper, because Chuuya knows what he's about.

Also he's going to draw in a mailbox because that seems as plausible a way to get messages to the living as any??

and some rooms with beds and doors with locks because he's terrible and so is patience!!

[hymned]

Julius is at least going to try to make the landing a little more livable first, esp considering Chuuya's got the writing and bedroom parts covered? Goddamn it's depressing and bleak in the void. So we're getting some simple and neat furnishings around the 'edges' of where the room would be, railings and industrial/modern-looking blinds/draperies and some form of general light sources.

To also double as a warning to not uh, fall off a cliff, and all. Has he learned this by experience? Who knows.

If there's room enough for it off to the sides of the landing somewhere, he's also drawing in a piano as well as stocked sheets of blank staff paper. In case.

NOW THAT WE'VE DISCOVERED A THING AND CHHUYA DREW AN OFFERING BOWL

Julius is going to make good on his attempt in getting some kind of way to watch what's going on outside of the west wing from the first week the afterlife. This is probably going to end up as a series of different TVs of some sort on the same general 'side' of the circular room as the piano, but with a decent amount of distance between them especially accounting for the expanded room now. ... Probably should involve seating too, and Chuuya suggested a bar, so maybe this just gets lumped in with that, like a lounge area divvied away from the main landing a little by a drawn in wall between the original edges of the room and the current edge of the landing. Maybe you'll be able to watch your friends and drink your sorrows away at the same time!

[goatsongs]

[Practically speaking, Chuuya should probably start with bedrooms. There's not much in the way of privacy in this landing. Maybe he could draw a diner, or a karaoke machine, or a bar.

Of course he starts drawing a room with bookshelves becore anything else.]

[hymned]

[ Julius, who probably will finish up with his smaller and less detailed additions to the main room before Chuuya gets done drawing all his bookshelves, is probably just going to be thoroughly mapping out the void for further reference while he's doing all this.

And when we say thoroughly we mean thoroughly. Testing the edges for give even after the rings start tightening a little, for example. Still, given that there's fuckall to get in the way in this place it's probably? easy enough to hold a conversation over a distance of who knows how long? ]

You're certainly a man who knows his priorities, aren't you?

[goatsongs]

[All you have to do is be audible over the church bells.]

Obviously.

[What else would you expect from him, really.]

If I write the titles on, do you think they'll fill in the contents by themselves?

[hymned]

[ Do we want to run with the idea of Chuuya and Julius ending up yelling at each other across the abyss so they can be heard over the church bells, though. ]

I think you'd have to ask Patience about that? She's doing most of the heavy lifting as to filling out whatever it is we sketch, isn't she?

[ Hmmm there's the ring tightening again, he'll carefully step a few feet out more in that direction to test how far he can go before drawing down a line on that side... ]

Might depend on how well she knows the works in that case.

[goatsongs]

[bold of you to assume Chuuya isn't always Loud]

If it's one of mine, or Miyazawa-sensei's, I can recite the whole book to her.

[this is in no way an exaggeration]

[hymned]

[ that's fair, but on the other hand, Julius by default is a fairly soft spoken man so, ]

That's... quite impressive. I don't think I could boast any equivalent feat of memory?

[ in fact it's probably quite the opposite.

doot doot doo mapping out these mysterious bridges in the void. don't be surprised if by the end of the time they have allotted Julius has ended up mapping out the entire walkable area they have in here. it's okay, fieldwork and reconnaissance was also a regular part of his job so this is. fine, probably. ]

Eidetic memory, or are they just that ingrained into you through familiarity?

[goatsongs]

Wouldn't be much of a poet if I didn't know my own poems.

[...Many poets can't recite their poems while falling down drunk, though, so Chuuya's exceptional in that regard.

To demonstrate, Chuuya starts reciting a poem of his, fitting in with the rhythm of the church bells.]

My life, too soon taken in hand
by clumsy gardeners, is sad!
Thanks to that, most of my blood
rises to my head, seething, boiling over.

Uneasy, impatient,
always seeking something in the outside world.
Such behaviour is foolish,
such thoughts are hard to underrstand.

Thus, this pitiful tree,
rough bark, in the sky and wind,
my heart always sinking in mourning thoughts;

my mien is indolent, fitful,
susceptible to others, liable to flatter; thus,
despite myself, I do the stupidest things.

[hymned]

I doubt I could recite to you every line of code I've ever written, but that doesn't make me any less of an engineer or programmer, I'm pretty sure.

[ Julius isn't exactly much of a literature person, but he was properly educated at least. Well enough to pick up on obvious symbolism when he hears it, in any case, and pause just a bit in his very diligent mapping. ]

'Clumsy gardeners,' huh. Quite an angry piece, isn't it? I can't entirely tell whether it sounds more resentful, or regretful.

[goatsongs]

They were clumsy, not intentionally cruel. There's no point in resenting them now.

[there's not much point in a lot of what Chuuya does, he knows.]

[hymned]

A lament for what simply is, but could have been otherwise, then? ... Maybe just the former. You don't much strike me as the type to dwell overmuch on what-ifs, somehow.

[ hm, yikes. looks like that sure is as far as he can go in this particular direction, then. he's probably done a rough perimeter of the entire room already, given that he's sketched in decor to mark the edges for anyone coming in after them, but in that case, looks like the only way left to go is through whatever narrow seeming corridor it is he'd marked out earlier as a possible gap, but didn't follow through with exploring just yet. ]

Then again, maybe that's just projection speaking? I never was much for these sorts of things.