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thecrossingooc2025-01-11 06:39 pm
CROSSING PLANNING #1: LIGHTS OUT
Title drop! ๐ป It's here, our very first Crossing event! The Ferryman gave you their offer, and now the toll is coming due. It's time to choose.
The event log will go up at 12PM ET on Saturday, January 18th. This is to give everyone plenty of time to thread out their Crossing trials before the formal setting changeover in February (which will have its own separate announcement/world-building post later in the month). Don't feel pressured to wrap up all your adventures in The Cavern before next week, though! What's time to an afterlife, anyway?
The Ferryman said that you would all feel it when the time was coming, and they weren't being metaphorical. Those who took a stab at the river quest already got a preview; as time goes on, that feeling only gets stronger and more widespread. It's a metaphysical draw, pulling everyone to follow the flow of The River out into the darkness of The Cavern. It starts as an inkling, noticeable only if you wade out into The River, but it grows until it's a nagging urge in the back of every mind: it's time.
You feel it in your body, too. You've always felt real, as solid and corporeal as you've ever been -- but, maybe, there are some things you don't notice are missing until they're back again. Again, it starts small: maybe you get an itch that just won't scratch, and when was the last time you were itchy, anyway? Maybe you get the hiccups for the first time since your tragic demise. Maybe it's heartburn, or nausea, or dry eyes.
Last to come, at about the same time the pull towards The River starts to get impossible to ignore, is pain. Aches in your bones, scraped knuckles, a stubbed toe: did they all really hurt this much, before? Or has pain just been duller since you first broke the surface of The River?
The Ferryman sends a call out, the same way they did before: the time is now. If you're traveling with them, gather at The Lantern.
And then...
The lights go out.
Specifically, The Lantern's Light goes out, and it becomes very clear very quickly just how much literal light it was providing. The darkness is sudden, and it is crushing; if you've ever been in a cave with no artificial light, you have an idea of how claustrophobic it can be. The only saving grace is the dim glow of the bioluminescent plants that have been helping you out thus far, and anything you might have scavenged from the city on your own.
Keep an eye out for any reflections off the surface of The River... you don't want to fall in, not at a time like this!
From this point forward, characters will be separated into two groups: those traveling with The Ferryman, and those making the journey on their own. They will not be able to interact face-to-face until The Crossing is complete, but will still be able to write messages to each other via the "network" if they want to keep tabs on each other. Provided you can figure out how to see down here...
The Ferryman said they would guide you, and it's time for them to make good on that promise. Provided you're willing to pay the toll, of course. Have you made your peace? Are you ready to let go?
Here are the IC parameters for the toll, as a refresher:
from the cavern to วษนวษฅสวsส ว
Hear a voice that causes you pain
words spoken with rage or grief or envy
fueled by hate or love or suffering
offer it to The Ferryman
and let go
We're leaving the interpretation of this open to player discretion. Some OOC guidelines:
- The offered memory must fit with the theme of the toll. In this case, there must be a voice or words associated with the memory, and it must be something that causes the character some kind of distress. This could be the memory of a particular person's voice (but not the memory of the person themselves, or any specific memory associated with them), it could be a specific incident where someone said something painful to the character, or you could go full ham and wipe out the entire memory of someone in particular! Similarly, this could be the voice of a hated enemy, someone beloved who it's painful to think about, or anything in between. If you're unsure, just let us know! We're happy to workshop with you.
- The memory must be offered willingly. The Ferryman will not take anything beyond the exact cost of the toll. Characters might not fully appreciate the consequences of losing this memory, which is completely fine, but nothing "extra" or "unexpected" will be taken. (For now, anyway. ๐ป)
- This also means that The Ferryman will not take more than what's asked for. Characters can't wipe everything out at once; stay on topic!
- Remember to update the memory bank with whatever it is you've chosen. If you can do this in advance of the log going live, it's helpful for us, but not the end of the world if you need some more time to decide!
Characters who decide to pay the toll won't need to do anything except show up when The Ferryman calls, and follow where The Ferryman leads. Even without The Lantern's Light, all wraiths will still be repelled from anyone under The Ferryman's protection, no matter how far they might straggle behind, and no physical harm can come to them, from any source. Not that there would be any in-fighting among you guys, right? We're all aiming for the same goal here.
That doesn't mean the journey will be easy, though.
As The Ferryman has suggested, The Crossing is a trial. Paying the toll ensures your protection, but it isn't a free pass from doing the work.
Characters journeying with The Ferryman will hear all of the voices given up to the toll speaking to them from the darkness. They will heckle and harass the group all throughout the journey, bidding them (directly or indirectly) to stop, go back, or otherwise let themselves be separated from the group.
(You don't want to do that, probably...)
As a final note, the chosen memory will be fully lost at the conclusion of The Crossing; in other words, characters will still recognize the voice speaking to them during the trial -- the one that belongs to them, anyway.
As for the rest of you... You've got a trial of your own.
Characters who traveled with the Lantern shard saw a glimmer of what's waiting for you in the darkness. Just as you have been settling into the less-than-comfortable aspects of your renewed corporeality, so have the wraiths -- and they aren't happy. Their wispy bodies have partially-solidified into something resembling dry ice: ghostly and ill-proportioned, but solid, and with newly-grown claws, teeth, and (apparently) unrelenting rage.
The good news is, you know where to go. Even in the darkness, you can feel the same pull guiding you to follow The River. There's no telling how far you have to go or how long the journey will take, but as long as you don't panic and keep moving, everything should be fine. Right?
Again, the scope of consequences here is largely up to player discretion, but some OOC guidelines to help out:
- The longer a character has spent outside the protective bubble of The Lantern since pulling themselves out of The River the more aggressive the wraiths will be during The Crossing. If you've just been chilling in the city this whole time, good for you! It's not safe, but you'll fare better than someone who spent a little too much time getting lost in the Catacombs.
- If you'll recall from the TDM, some wraiths may have taken a particular liking to your character; they would have followed them around for longer periods of time than other wraiths, and sought your character out again the next time they ventured beyond The Lantern's Light. These wraiths will be the most aggressive toward your character in particular during The Crossing.
- Characters traveling without The Ferryman's protection are susceptible to all types of physical harm during The Crossing, which will translate to memory loss when The Crossing is complete. You can see the FAQ for more detail on how this works, but in general losing memories this way is unwilling, uneven, and unpredictable. You are not constrained by the parameters of the toll in this case; this type of memory loss can be whatever you like.
- You can plot out how your character fares during The Crossing yourself, or if you'd prefer you can comment here & the mods will roll severity for you and give you a prompt to start with.
- As above, remember to update the memory bank with whatever losses you decide on!
Lastly, we want to welcome our newest players from the most recent app round! They can use this post to introduce themselves -- and everyone can use it to start planning for the event! Here's a form to get you started, but feel free to tweak as necessary for your particular needs.
๐ฑ OOC INFO ๐ฑ
NAME / PRONOUNS:
CONTACT:
ETC?:
๐ฑ IC INFO ๐ฑ
CHARACTER NAME:
CANON & CANON POINT:
FIRST TOLL:
CROSSING HOW?:
CR WISHES:
CR OFFERS:
ETC?:
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I do want him to EVENTUALLY accept it but it's going to take a lot. Def people arguing with him about it will help chip away with the shell as it were.
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It does help that he had a friend in a religious man who also happened to be a doctor, and has seen that the two can work in tandem to some degree, but even that will only alieviate Daniil's stubbornness so much. But I do want him to be pushed to confront his own cultural misunderstandings!
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He's at least practical when it comes to the day-to-day, and he's got a friend who's a doctor too, so the more practical parts of medicine do make sense to him. Those doctors are just also priests because that's how things work where he's from, every social service is a particular god's thing
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