acatalepsy_logs | welcome to the horologium.

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welcome to the horologium.

I ▫ main	IV ▫ premise			XI ▫ applications	XIV ▫ activity
II ▫ logs	V ▫ rules	VII ▫ bestiary	IX ▫ canon updates	XII ▫ taken	XV ▫ drop/hiatus
III ▫ ooc	VI ▫ faq	VIII ▫ setting	X ▫ mods	XIII ▫ reserves	XVI ▫ players

welcome to the horologium.

Some of you know it is coming. The World Jump, the chaotic thrust into a new universe. But some of you are new, and though you know what the mission is, it is a bit . . . troubling, sitting around and waiting for something to happen. But eventually, you get a message on your watch. It shows Astoria . . . dark hair framing her features, her voice light and musical. She sounds like herself, for the first time in some time . . . that spark of determination back in her eyes.

A MESSAGE FROM YOUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD WITCH.

"It is time, my beloved Travelers, to go to our new destination . . . and I want you to know that I have the utmost faith in you. Akvos' loss has hurt us all, and I know that many of you doubt our mission. But please believe me when I say that you have done the best job anyone could ask of you. Akvos' destruction was not your fault . . . and to our newest members of our Circle, welcome to our journey. I can only hope that your journey here will work out to the benefit of us all."

That being said, you are journeying to the Horologium . . . it is a ship that has sent out a distress beacon. I am not sure when, or where, but I can feel great darkness, emanating from that place. I believe you all can combat what is done there, without interacting with the Void . . . so please, be safe, and I will see you all when you return."

And, just like that, there is a pull in your stomach . . . your vision blacks out and you feel the sudden sense of vertigo, a sensation of falling, and then . . . nothingness. You open your eyes, and you are suddenly waking up in the midst of . . . fog?

THE AWAKENING.

When you wake, you are greeted by metal — there’s an expanse of silver all around you. The cot you’re laying on is somewhat rigid, like a flattened wedge of cotton more than anything, encased in a capsule-like structure. Should you inspect your surroundings, you’ll find that there are three more cots in your room..or more notably, another person in the room in of itself. Depending on where you’ve been roused from your slumber, however, you’ll find that your circumstances differ.

➜ If you’ve woken up in the northeast wing of the ship, there seems to be a pool of saturated pink goo at your feet. It sticks to the bottom of your heel and collects at the very center of the room, oozing from the cracks and crevices within the metal lining of the walls. And even more notably, the goo has a particularly saccharine scent, as though it’s meant to be...consumed. Looks like you had the misfortune of waking up in the wing adjacent to the kitchen.

➜ In the northwest wing, the ship is functioning at an all time low. When you wake, the room is illuminated for a brief moment...before flickering out, only to leave you in pitch darkness. Power returns to the room intermittently and only for a few seconds at most, but it appears as though you and your newfound roommates will have to navigate the darkness if you want to leave.

➜ In the southwest wing, the fire alarm in your room has been activated for some inexplicable reason. It’s an obnoxiously loud siren that slices right through the whirring of the machinery around you — and it goes as far as to trigger the sprinklers hanging from the ceiling. Water sprays from above you, hopefully ensuring that you’ve woken up if nothing else has. It doesn’t seem to be draining either, so it may be for the best that you escape with some haste.

➜ In the southeast wing, your circumstances are for the most part rather unremarkable. An untouched room, mostly intact...until you try to open the door. It won’t budge — unless you have some form of super strength, your muscle power is rendered useless on its own. You might just have to commission someone else to help you...

Beyond your room, the word “Horologium.” stretches across the wall.

Welcome to your new home.

WHISPERS IN THE DARK.

In a way, it feels as though you’re suspended in time.

The ship is always humming, always whirring as it makes a haphazard attempt to function. The noise comes to a halt every so often, leaving you with nothing but silence and the idle creaking of the floor beneath you.

There are remarkably large, bright white doors that divide each and every wing. A circular window is positioned at the center of all 4 of these doors: but nothing can be seen through it. It’s likeness is that of a black hole’s, like someone had gone as far as to paint over it.

On every door, the same word is emblazoned in black lettering: EXIT.

Except the word itself appears to be scratched out to some degree — as though it were scrubbed out in a fit of desperation but remained no less.

When you see the door, you might be overcome with excitement. Or perhaps not. Regardless of what your reaction is like, the lights around you will dim and flicker at an alarming frequency. For a moment, it’s almost as though the gravity around you has slowed, and the hallways are becoming narrower by the second.. Voices and faces from the past emerge in your mind. You see someone you shouldn’t; they’re calling for you. They’re here with you right now, beckoning you to come closer...

If you reach the door and attempt to open it, it won’t budge. And the further you walk away from it, the more the effects will subside.

But there’s no telling if you’ll sleep well tonight.

INVESTIGATIONS

The ship is fitted to house approximately 500 people — it’s a bit of a ghost town, however, lived in but abandoned no less.

The chairs are in the mess hall aren’t aligned perfectly. The tables are a bit crooked. The lounge is lofty, but not pristine. The rooms may be barren, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that they were somehow someone else’s before they became yours. There’s an array of locked doors, varying in sizes and shapes, all of which withhold something potentially useful to you. You may be inclined to visit the lounge, the mess hall, rifle through the bedrooms . . . the ship is yours to explore.

However, how you interact with the ship is….entirely up to you. There is something to be found everywhere. Regardless of what you do, where you investigate and how, you might be tempted to look behind your shoulder.

After all, every decision you make matters...right?

(Every Player’s investigation prompt has the potential to differ greatly as your investigation will require mod input. We encourage you to ask as many questions as you would like, we are here to help and provide you with the information necessary.)

Additionally, please feel free to write up and work with your own prompts! These areas of the world are presented as jumping off points for your characters, not limitations. The idea of this world- as with all the others- is to explore -- you may use as much leeway as you want in order to come up with what your character will do.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask them back on the various threads back in the OOC post from before!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

((ooc: also one of the prompts involves him having trouble eating, mostly because of withdrawal symptoms, partly because goo. I wasn't sure what to call that but it gets a content warning too.))

Intro, if something here strikes you feel free to hit this up but it's mostly to set the scene.

[The only thing that gets him out of the bedroom is the pink shit. Sumo slips out of his little cot to come over to him and gets sidetracked by it, and stopping his dog from eating what could be some freaky space poison is about the only thing that could have gotten Hank up and into this brave new world they're supposed to rescue. And once he's up, he might as well wander around. That's what drives him right now; Sumo's going to need food, so he might as well hang out in the kitchen. Once he finds out Connor's looking for the ship's electricity they might as well look in the one room that's still got any. When a day passes and they still haven't found anything, Hank might as well keep at it. It's easier. He doesn't even have to decide anything. Connor's determined enough to do this that Hank can just float along in his wake, and going over the same patch of wall for the twentieth time doesn't even bother him. He might as well be doing it. It's pretty much the same thing as sitting back in his room at the temple, spending all day drinking and carving trite optimism into the walls.

Well. Not exactly the same thing. 'Good things ~~never~~ happen,' that was the latest one, and it actually kind of bothers him that they all got yanked here into this shit before he finished it. Now it just says 'good things never' right there on the wall next to his bed and it's going to stay like that, too real, until he gets back and finishes it. He keeps thinking about it today, staring at the same spot he's already checked and thinking of himself sitting there, getting all zen with it, taking a drink for every line he manages to carve deep enough into the stone. This is like that, mostly, minus the one thing.]

closed to Connor

[The longer the day gets the more he thinks about it, and by the time he heads off to try and get some sleep he's too keyed up to make it happen, coming back less than an hour later with a couple more goo stains, a frown, and an urge to move that won't leave him alone. His searching's a little less thorough, a little more urgent, until he falls asleep sitting against the wall for a fitful hour and a half and wakes up, mutters 'motherfucker' in a pained, cracking voice, curling over and pressing the heel of a hand to his head.]

1. goo

[The day goes on. Or maybe it's a different day; it's hard to tell, and it's honestly hard to care. When he gets sick of looking for nothing he tries to fix the leak of all the goo into those bedrooms. It's not like the bedroom goo's not edible, if they get desperate, but it's gross enough without having to scrape it off the floor.

His shaking hands pull at a wall panel in exactly the wrong way that makes some of the goo squirt out at his face and Hank jerks back, cursing and pressing a hand to one eye. Then he feels himself starting to laugh. It's a surprise, that noise, and it doesn't last long, but he means it, because-]

Well shit, that's not the worst thing I ever got shot in my eye.

2. dinner

[It'd be nice if the good mood lasted. It doesn't. Around the time Connor finds the door and starts working on the lock Hank tries to make some of that pink bullshit for Sumo. His hands won't stay still and spill the fucking powder all over the counter and he takes a deep breath, scrapes it back together, and feeds his fucking dog. Then he makes some for him - not much, but some - and goes into the room outside so Connor won't be around for whatever the fuck happens when he tries to eat it.

So. He tries to put something in his fucking stomach. Then he turns away from the tray and its tiny spot of pink bullshit, leaning over the corner of the table with his head bowed, hair hanging sweat soaked and limp over his face. He presses a hand against his stomach, swallowing as many times as he needs to.]

Motherfucker...

[He's been saying that one a lot. It doesn't sound like a real satisfying motherfucker should; it's weak, wavering, but it's better than anything else that could of come out of his mouth.]

3. sleep is for the weak

[He doesn't come back to the kitchen after that. He ends up outside one of those bedrooms where the sprinklers are going off, sitting against the wall with a folding chair next to him. After dragging it from outside the kitchen and he'd had to stop and sit down, and yeah he knows that shouldn't of tired him out, he knows that, and now he jerks awake with a sharp breath, and digging his fingers into his eyes doesn't make them any less bloodshot, doesn't make them burn any less and doesn't make the bags under them go away. But it's okay for a second.]

4. Hank no

[He stops just inside the bedroom and presses a hand against his head - that doesn't help either, but he does it anyway - and after a few tries he manages to set the chair under the part of the ceiling where the water's coming from. Getting soaked like this doesn't make him smell any less sour but at least he doesn't look sweaty anymore. He just looks like a big wet moron, grimacing with pain, making repeated shaky attempts at standing on the chair so he can try to do something other than sit here and think about throwing up again. Can he make it up without falling? Is he going to slip and fall and crack his head open once he does get up on the chair? Does Hank give a single solitary shit? All important questions. Maybe. Probably not.

Sumo whimpers outside the door; Hank ignores him.]

5. network, whenever The Big Hole is discovered, I'm assuming Hank would have heard people talking about wanting to go down it

[The watch is unstrapped and sitting on Hank's leg, so the video looks up at a deeply unflattering angle, catching mostly sweat stains and the corner of the hand Hank's got cupping his forehead. He mutters, voice flat, without looking at the screen.]

At least get a goddamn team together before you go jump down into the fucking murder hole. Do you assholes even have weapons? If you want to get eaten by the horror movie bullshit that's living down there, be my- shit.

[Well. His jittering leg knocked the watch to the floor, and Hank seems to decide that's all he wants to say. The view twists as the watch falls, and then cuts off.]

6. wildcard
((I know Hank will be looking at the room with all the bones and clawmarks like what the fuck, so if you want to do something there go for it, and if someone gets sick of his lovely normal-BO-plus-withdrawal-sweat aroma the scented bath stuff plus one of the sprinkler rooms would take care of that, since he's not going to take advantage of the showers while they're still rationing water. Want to talk over anything else? Message me and we can figure stuff out.))

[Barabas has been following his nose, literally, and it's the scent of the spilled goo that has brought him towards this wing of bedrooms. Similar to where he'd woken up, but covered in this mess rather than plagued by broken doors.

In addition to the scent of whatever-the-hell the food goo is, he also catches the familiar sent of someone he knows.

So he slows his hallway stalking and peeks in the door. He may be hard to recognize. He's taken his half-beast form, a seven-foot tall bipedal werehyena, all teeth and fangs and claws. His senses are better like this, and he's stronger.

Arriving just in time to see the panel pop and Hank to wind up attacked by good.]

So is this a common occurence? [A curios question. His voice is mostly clear, a bit off, given that his jaws are the jaws of a beast more than a human, but he almost sounds like himself. Almost.]

Thi- jesus!

[Hank half-turns as he starts talking and then jolts hard, heart suddenly going rabbit-fast in his chest, reaching toward his hip for something he hasn't carried in what feels like a lifetime - it didn't come with him when he got pulled out of Detroit. He tries to play the gesture off by rubbing his hand down his thigh and then onto the ground next to him, leaning back on it. He tries to stop staring, knows his eyes are wide and his expression's probably pretty fucking dumb and this is normal here, he's seen people turn into shit before, animals, this isn't that different. Is it?

Fuck it. People turning into animals on its own is freaky and weird and this is the next step up from that, freakier and weirder, and the hand pressed to one of Hank's eyes moves to press against both his eyelids, so he's got an excuse not to look.]

Uh. [Come on. Think, Hank, you stupid fucker. Pretend this is normal. You know that voice.] Barabas?

[The name comes out sounding a lot smaller than he meant it to. He's got alien goo in his eye, he feels like shit, Barabas told him about all that werewolf stuff and there is no fucking reason to freak out over this.]

[It's honestly a fair reaction, and Barabas can't fault him for it. But he does see the way he reaches for a weapon that isn't there, and he can't blame him for that either.]

Gun wouldn't do much good anyway, unless the bullets were silver.

[Or Hank is a crack shot and reloads fast. Not necessary though since, he ducks his head at the sound of his name.]

Hank. Sorry if I startled you. This form is proving more useful currently, and once I change back I'll be exhausted. And naked. There are several drawbacks honestly.

[A laugh trips out of him. The joke makes it easier, doesn't set Hank at ease but gets him close enough to it that he can inch his hand down off his eyes. He's not watching a horror movie, he's talking to a person, he ought to at least pretend he's willing to look at the guy.

Hank does glance at him. But it's only a glance; he turns his head back toward the floor again, hair hanging limp and oily over his face, and rubs the heel of his hand against his eye.]

You ever thought of practicing that pacification technique? Start with something classic and low effort, like 'be not afraid' or 'I come in peace'. Walking in all teeth and... everything else, and telling me bullets don't work? That was really your first instinct here?

[He laughs again, the sound a little more deliberate this time. It doesn't make him feel much less shitty, having something he can make himself laugh about, but 'much' is a lot to aim for right now anyway, so he'll take what he can get.]

Not comforting, huh? I'll work on it.

[Barabas laughs as well, but given his form, it's the eerie and manic cackle of a hyena. So.

Probably also not comforting.] But I do come in peace, at least. Well, where you're concerned.

[If there are any evil aliens on this space ship, he will have less peace for them.]

[That sound makes him flinch.]

God, that laugh makes it worse. What are your plans, exactly? Violence and mayhem?

content warning: alcoholism, withdrawal

1. goo

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2ish

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4

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2 } sorry if this is late

nah it's all good

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