Feburary Spirit Realm Log

[kaisoumods]

February Spirit Realm Event Log
Dominant Element: Fire
Waning Element: Wind

Full Moon: February 11th - 13th

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With the arrival of February, the worst of winter is finally past. In the sky, the Spirit Vein will take on the colors of fire, blazing across the sky in hues of red and orange. As such, the temperature will begin to warm to much more bearable weather. While it's still winter, as the month moves on it'll step closer and closer to spring with rising temperature and melting snow. Most of the days are sunny and bright, bringing much needed warmth to the town.

The Train

♪- Running Away

ALERT: SPIRIT REALM ANOMALY DETECTED
Element Classification: Fire
Danger Level: Various
Designation: The Train
Zodiac has detected a Spirit Gate at ????? Further investigation shows a number of missing city residents - contact has been established with them. Please visit the Zodiac offices for more information.

After that unsettling announcement, you head to the Zodiac offices to find the place in confused chaos. You can find some employees desperately speaking or typing on phones - worriedly asking for locations and "no, tell me exactly what you're seeing right now". The Professor (Barbie) doesn't look any less frazzled when you find her. She explains that the latest spirit gate keeps inexplicably moving - it doesn't seem to have any set entrance in the entire city. The Zodiac employees who keep track of spirit realm movements say that it will pop up in one location, and then blink away again, leaving only a faint magical sense that something was there.

Worse still, people all around the city are disappearing in the exact spots the gate moves to. Thankfully, they are still able to be contacted over their cell phones. What they're getting from these people is that they're trapped on some sort of train with no means to get off it. They keep rambling about numbers and talking animals and it's all a little confusing. Professor Barbie admits usually they have a means of finding a way to get app users into a realm to help out, but this time they have no idea how people are getting onto the train in the first place- she just asks that you please wear a Zodiac tracker and keep an eye out for anything unusual to report back.

Eventually, something unusual does happen to you. Perhaps you've hit a particularly low point in your day, perhaps you lashed out at someone or felt a dip in your mood. Something in you felt unsettled, unhappy, and that is when The Train comes for you. You hear a train whistle, and no matter where you are, a long train pulls up in front of you. It doesn't seem to matter if you're near any train tracks or not. You could be inside an office for all it matters. But The Train comes regardless. It looks differently to everyone at first-perhaps you see a subway train, perhaps you see an old steam locomotive, perhaps it's a bullet train or elegantly decorated transport for the super rich. Regardless, it's inviting. The doors open to a swirling yellow light- and despite yourself, you feel drawn to it. You step through the doors and everything goes white.

The Cars

♪- Cracked Reflection

The next thing you know, you're waking up in a white pod, which splits in half to allow you outside of it. You find a green, glowing number on your hand - generally at most these are triple digits, but some people might find they have a much, much higher number. These higher numbers can come off a person's hand and start to snake around their arm- sometimes reaching the rest of their body. You might be pretty confused about what's going on with you, but luckily, help is on the way!

A video overhead you in the pod plays- where a robot scatter-brainedly tries to explain to you exactly what has happened to you. The whole experience is fairly confusing and likely leaves more questions than answers. What you do get to glean from the terrible PSA is that you're on a train filled with cars that hold their own little worlds within, designed to help you "grow as a person". It also explains the number on your hand is "numerical algorithmic judgement"- it tells you the only way to leave the train is to get the number down to zero. What the video does not do is explain how you're supposed to do that. Seems like that is up to you!

So now it's time to look around you. Like the insane video said, you'll find you're inside a little pocket dimension. The car you wake up in can be anything, as can any of the cars that follow it. The train truly is infinite. The world you find yourself in can be fairly large - taking the better part of a day to traverse. Some are pretty small, only about thirty feet in length. Regardless of the world you find yourself in, at the end of the car you will find a door. Sometimes it seems to be sat in a wall, or in a tree, or just floating out in the vast nothing- but you cannot travel past the door, it is the end of your car. Turning the infinity symbols in the centre should open it- letting you out of the car and into the next (see "the outside" section). However, it might not always be so simple.

Some cars expect you to solve puzzles. Perhaps you have to convince a literal squabbling family tree to resolve their differences. Perhaps you have to put yourself through a debutante ball. Perhaps you need to work together with someone else to make a perfect meal for a giant anthropomorphic piglet. Whatever the puzzle, it is designed to help you understand yourself and your hangups better, to help you grow as a person. Simply beating the puzzles and traversing the train is not what will bring the number on your hand down - this isn't a competition. Understanding what the train is trying to teach you about yourself and starting to make steps towards bettering your own emotional hurdles is what does it. You start figuring yourself out and trying to grow as a person? That number trapping you here goes down fast. Conversely, if you continue to lean into your worst habits (or pick up new ones) the number will rise, keeping you trapped here. Should your number come down to zero, a new door will appear before you, filled with the same swirling yellow light that brought you onto the train. Step into it and that light pulls you into it, depositing you wherever you were when you first entered the train. Time has passed - however long you were on the train collates to the time passed outside of it. Luckily, your phone has been working this whole time, so unless you left everyone who cared about you on read, people should have known where you've been.

Example Cars

Each car is designed specifically to help you with your own personal problems, and as such can be anything. There truly is no limit to what you might find in a car; OOCly, players are encouraged to get as creative as they want with them. However, here are some cars you might find on your travels:

The Crossword Car - This car is a giant crossword. To escape this car, you need to fly a mobile stamper around, completing the crossword. If you're smart enough, you might find the words reflect things that have happened in your life, and the emotional state they have left you in.

The Cat's Car - Appearing as a room filled with knickknacks, with little ladders scattered around the towering bookcases, as if designed for a small animal to clamber around them. There is no puzzle to solve to escape, though you might a tape with your name on it, along with the means to play it. That's... probably safe to do, right? (It isn't: see "the memory tapes" section). As the name suggests, this is the primary dwelling place of The Cat.

The Art Gallery Car - This car is an art gallery. There is no obvious exit door, though eventually, you will come across a hanging perceptual art piece- look at it at the right angle and you will see they form the shape of a door, letting you out. This is also the realm of The Docent - a monster made out of painted severed hands and arms, which will attack you if you linger overlong in the car.

Corginia - AKA the BEST car. Here you'll find an ancient roman town populated entirely by talking corgis (plus one golden retriever named Ugly Irwin). There is no puzzle to solve, and it will only take about two hours to travel the whole car, however the corgis inside will LOVE it if you played ball and perhaps gave them a belly rub! This is the kingdom of King Atticus.

The Toad Car - A small, completely blank room, with only a toad sitting next to a sign stating you have to kick him to escape. The toad will ask you to please not kick him. If you're the sort of person who struggles to do what's needed to be done, or tends to people-please above your own mental well-being, it's likely you will end up in this car. You really do have to kick the toad to get out. He won't thank you for it.

The Chrome Car - A car filled with metallic surfaces. While seemingly a straight-shot to getting out of this car, you will soon find your reflection is another version of you. Your reflection will do everything in their power to switch places with you, to try and be free while you're trapped in the mirror dimension forever. You're going to have to do your best to ignore their promises and sometimes all-out begging and cross the reflective car to get out.

The Denizens

♪- The Cat That Knows The Conductor

As the introductory video told you, you will find residents of the train known as denizens. These beings can be as varied as the train cars themselves, and while some genuinely want to help you, some might be more a hindrance than anything else. Some key denizens you might come across are:

The Cat - Also known as Samantha, this cat is a traveling con artist. She can traverse the train in her own personal shuttle craft. She will pretend to be your friend and will offer aid in your journey. She has lived on the train for hundreds of years and is quite possibly the most knowledgeable being on board. However, her help always comes at a price. Be it a precious trinket you carry with you for her "collection" or for a favour she will call in later (which usually involves having to deal with someone else she's conned) her help will cost you.

King Atticus - The elected king of Corginia. Atticus is a regal, loyal corgi famed for uniting the cardigans and the pembrokes. While he is unwilling to leave his kingdom (the last time he did that, he had a rather traumatic experience and he'd rather not repeat that, he explains) he has a whole wealth of information in what you need to be doing in order to get your number down, and is happy to provide a listening ear and pointers to what's keeping you trapped here. He's a Good Boy.

Randall - Sometimes water is just water and sometimes it's Randall. A liquid being who can split himself into many, and exist as a liquid, gas or solid, Randall (or splits of him) can be found all over the car. He's excessively cheerful, if not extremely dim. He can't help with any big thought problems (or any thought problems) but if you need gas, water or ice/snow for something, he's your Randall!

Amelia Hughes - A human woman in her 60s. Amelia is not a true denizen, but rather a passenger who has been trapped on the train for decades. Her body is covered in numbers. She is brisk of temperament and carries the air of someone who is just exhausted from her situation. If you ask her about the train, she will sigh tiredly and pull out flashcards, and in a monotone voice tell you that you are important and the train is designed to help you. She will explain she works for "One-One" the train's conductor (she will confirm that is the insane robot from the video) and that she is trying to get her number down after making a lot of "bad choices" on the train. She will gruffly point you in the right direction you want to go, but don't expect much from her in the way of camaraderie. She just wants a goddamn nap.

Grace Monroe - Another human and long-term passenger on the train. Grace is 18 and has been trapped on the train since she was around 9 years old. Unlike Amelia, Grace is a lot more personable and happy to help you. She runs a car that looks like a mall, where the younger children on the train reside. She explains once upon a time, they'd lost their way and were a destructive group on the train, she is trying to atone for everything by making sure these kids get their numbers down and finally get home to their families. She will give plenty of emotional support if you need it, coming from a place of understanding that the mistakes of your past should not define your future.

The Outside

♪- Wheel The Void!

So! What's the world like outside of the train? Stepping through a train door will bring you to the outside world, as you have to cross a metal bridge between the cars to move onto the next train car. From out here, you can see the train really does seem to stretch on forever- with no end in sight from either the front or the back. You see the space around the train is a vast lifeless desert under a deep red, never changing sky. There doesn't seem to be night and day here. Just a constant state of red. A few black withered trees crop up from the ground here and there, seemingly the only life outside the train. On occasion, the train lurches to a stop, and you might see a swirling white vortex coming out from one of the clouds, dipping down to the train and scooping up a person, taking them up into the clouds- once they're gone, the train starts moving again. While terrifying at first, this is how people exit the train- something a Denizen will helpfully explain.

You might decide to make a run for it into the desert. After all it can't really stretch on forever, right? And it has to be better than the endless games and expectations the train offers. While the train only stops to allow people to leave via the vortex, it's not going too quickly if you want to jump off. You will only make it a few feet form the train, however, when the ground starts to tremble nearby. Black, otherworldly creatures, which look like a strange mix between a dog and a mosquito burst through the ground and give chase. These are ghoms and will feed on any living thing that they sense. They can fly frighteningly quickly and use long, slender feelers from their mouths to sniff out prey. Should they catch you, they will consume your soul. This is an agonizing process, as the ghom uses it's tentacles to suck you essence out of you. When it is done, you will crumble to dust. Being killed by a ghom WILL result in character death, and you will need to fill out the death form and accept the normal death consequences if you choose this route. A ghom will follow you onto the train, so your best bet is to use the car against it or attack it with your own abilities. They are fast, and seemingly don't die, but if you make yourself enough of a problem, it will retreat back into the wasteland.

The Memory Tapes

♪- Tulip's Tape

Perhaps you found it in The Cat's car, perhaps you just stumbled upon it on your adventures, but if you're unlucky enough, you might come across an old tape with your name on it. They are always found near and old player and TV for you to watch these. Any Denizen with you will vehemently advise you not to watch your own tape (except for The Cat, The Cat is a dick), that it's what was used to determine your number, and watching your own tape is exceptionally dangerous. Should you decide to ignore their warnings (or don't have a Denizen nearby at the time) you can put the tape into the player and hit play. If you're watching your own tape, your body will become stock-still, as you stare unblinking into nothing, catatonic. Anyone else with them will be able to view the tape and be unaffected by it.

Inside the tape, you will find your memories. Specifically, these are memories which caused whatever emotional turmoil brought you onto the train in the first place. AU characters can find they have a mixture of memories from both their current and past lives. You will be able to walk around your memory as if you were there again, watching your younger self. Anything outside of the memory is just static, preventing you from leaving it. If there are jump in memories, this happens with a bust of static, like a skip in a VCR. You cannot interact with the people in your memories- that same static bursting up onto your hand if you try to touch them. All you can do is watch them play out. Anyone with you will be able to walk around the memory space too - heck of a way to learn something about your friend, huh?

Sometimes, memories lie. Perhaps you rebuilt how the memory played out in your own mind as a defence mechanism. Maybe you tried to take a much more optimistic outlook on something that was pretty dire to ignore the severity of it. Perhaps something small was made into a bigger deal than it was with your deteriorating mental state. Should you notice a memory is incorrect, you can call it out as such, and the memory will automatically reset itself to play the truth. You need to be able to understand what these memories are telling you, what the train is trying to teach you, in order to free yourself from them. If you don't, you will remain trapped in them, the cycle of memories going on and on. So best start figuring yourself out.

Aftermath

Should you make genuine attempts towards a better understanding of yourself and start making better choices, your number will slide to zero. You will be able to exit the train and go back to living your life. You don't need to be cured overnight - even the train knows that's not possible. You just have to start trying. If you don't mange to grow from the train, it will spit you out as it leaves Kaisou's spirit vein on the 28th February. You will be left with a feeling that you failed something important here. Regardless, by the time the train vanishes away again, everyone is free of it and can move forward with the lessons they have learned... or try and understand why they didn't.

OOC plotting post can be found here.