cancry | introductions

introductions

It comes to you suddenly, at the end of an unravelling thread of thought. A sudden, piercing sense of wrongness stops you in your tracks and sends you tumbling through rapidfire questions that you realize you have no answer for. How long have you been here? How long have you been doing the same things, over and over, blindly going through the motions of a routine? Just who are you, anyway?

Questions beget more questions and answers prove illusive until you arrive at the only things you know for certain: the first is that this place is Purgatory.

The second is that you're here because you're dead.

Oddly, this doesn't feel like a surprise of any sort. You don't remember how or why it happened, but it did and that's that. It feels rather as though you've been slapped awake and everything around you has come into sharp focus. You're in Limbo, where you've been wandering since you arrived here in Purgatory alongside all the other mindless souls who are acting out what little they remember of their original lives.

Still lingering is that horrible sense of something being terribly wrong. It hasn't dissipated with your realization of the truth – if anything, it's intensified. There's no way to tell what it is, but there's something going on here.

Maybe you should investigate – or at least see if there's anyone else here who's had the same realization as you...

[ OOC: Welcome to the very first log of Can Cry! For the first few hours, Executors will be free to explore and mingle among themselves. Mod replies will come in a few hours. If you're planning to investigate, please indicate that you're doing so in the subject line as your comment. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Everything changes in an instant, and his entire perception seems to go distinctly sideways.

He is dead. He's been dead for he doesn't know how long, but he's been living(?) some kind of mindless existence in this terribly strange place, his manner of dress seems odd and haphazard and yet seems right and yet not right, the town itself seems to be almost but not at all right at the same time, and he--

--he is relieved.

No. That can't be right. He's alarmed. Confused. Wary. On edge. And relieved. Like he's been waiting to exhale for days, for weeks. Longer? Oh, something is terribly wrong with everything, that he knows for certain. It's about the only thing he does know with any certainty. But the idea of being dead (and being somewhere after being dead) does not alarm him.

Mostly he seems tired. But he soldiers on anyway.]

Ah--well then. I wonder what changed...

[Because clearly something Changed. The man does not go rushing about, taking his time as he feels like he's seeing the town for the very first time, and the people, too. He's a bit wary to actually approach the near-mindless souls(?) wandering about who don't seem to have come to the same sudden conclusion he has. But perhaps someone else has. He acts, in fact, much like he's some kind of outsider looking in, like maybe he can't be seen by these other people, because they just seem so...unenlightened.]

Doesn't anyone see what's going on here?

[...Perhaps not. Somehow he just isn't surprised, and that itself is surprising. Also surprising is if/when he does run into other people who seem to have awakened from a mindless stupor.

Along the way, he is struck in his investigation by the fountain. There's still water in it, and all manner of coins slowly rusting away at the bottom of it, but no water flows. He walks around it, walks along the raised lip of it, peers at where the water should flow out from. There's rust, certainly, and if it's this bad where he can see, it's little wonder the mechanism is all stoppered up. He slips off shoes and rolls up his pant legs to go wading to the mechanism to give it a closer inspection, in case there's something on the outside that seems fixable somehow. He doesn't know why he might be able to do anything about it. Clearly not. And one would likely have to rip up the fountain itself to get to the piping.

At some point he leaves for the conbini only to return with paper and chalk. There's a plaque, and it's hard to read, but he kneels down to rub the chalk overtop the paper, hoping he can lift words from the damn thing to perhaps glean something from it.

He does not take any of the coins. The concept of some kind of place to throw wishes seems familiar enough that he dare not disturb or disrupt that sanctity. (I mean apparently he's fine walking all over it but that's different!!!)]

See, yes, but I doubt they've the presence of mind to care.

[Says a teenage girl, crossing her arms and leaning against a building, with a German accent. She rolls her eyes.]

They haven't been the slightest bit helpful.

[He hesitates for only a moment before deciding...well, surely this is someone like him, then. He is seen for what he is (and...what is that?), so he comes strolling over.]

Perhaps we aren't asking the right questions. Surely something has brought us around, and so should something bring them.

Even if that does happen, all we'll have are more people who've got no idea what's going on.

[...wow sir you are tall]

[they grew 'em tall back in the old days]

Quite right, but then there'd be more people to investigate the goings-on of this place. And I daresay it'd be a touch less lonesome.

Yes, unless they're all useless, and then we're nowhere. Not that that's much of a change. Have you seen this place? The corner store alone is maddening.

[He frowns lightly at the idea of them being useless, but...he can't bring himself to contradict, so he doesn't.] It does appear something like...the idea of a city. Recognizable on the surface, until you become aware of what's around you, and then things...skew.

Which explains why the townspeople haven't a care. Of course. We can't be expected to sit like this forever. Isn't Purgatory supposed to be temporary?

...I don't know. Is Purgatory less of a place and more of a state of being? If we are truly dead, surely there's little temporary about that.

Ugh, I don't know. I don't even know which idea I'm supposed to believe right now.

[She punches the nearest lamppost.]

I certainly don't want to be stuck wandering around this surreal dump of a place.

Careful there. We may be dead, but we yet persist in this afterlife, and I wouldn't want to see someone hurt from it.

A great many things are going on here. Which do you mean?

[So inquires a very purple and pink young lady who also seems to have been wandering around.]

[Hmmm, it's likely she, too, has woken up, but given her phrasing, he can't...be sure.] Why, the fact that this city is several forms of strange, or that we all seem to be dead and yet not aware of it, good lady.

[She can circle back to city talk later. First:]

Is that so strange? Even I was unaware I was dead until just a while ago.

So! You, too! Good, I was hoping I wasn't the only one who had come to such a sudden conclusion. Most everyone else seems to still be under the illusion of life. Dull and boring life.

[ So, the fountain is.... weird. There isn't anything on the outside to indicate why it wouldn't be working, aside from all the rust, but even that on closer inspection doesn't seem to be quite enough to completely stop the fountain from functioning. The only thing on the outside that looks out of place is the statue in the middle of the fountain. It's a stone carving of a stone stabbed into the ground, but it's at a diagonal tilt. It looks unfinished or as if something might be missing from it.

The plaque, unfortunately, is still too worn to come up with anything really legible, but by the faint impressions left on the paper, it seems to be the same handful of words repeating in some sort of verse or message. ]

[He hadn't intended to head back to the fountain, but he just got so turned around that it was natural he'd head towards the most obvious landmark.

He also hadn't expected to see the tall man from before inspecting it]

...find something?

[He straightens, shoulders stiffening. It isn't that he's afraid, no, but something about the fountain unsettles him. Something about the statue--the stone perhaps, or the unfinished nature of it?]

Nothing...useful, I'd wager. The message along it is yet too faded from this world, though from the shape of things, whatever it says seems to repeat several times. And perhaps I am no expert at waterworks, but I cannot for the life of me... [He fades for a moment and abruptly chuckles. He's surprised by his own reaction.] Forgive me, life of me, I must watch my phrasing. But I can't seem to find any sound reason that the fountain should have stopped working.

Hm... there's no indication that the town is lacking water as far as I've seen either.

[He's just gonna... haul himself over the edge of the fountain to examinee the half finished statue closer]

This looks like it's either missing a piece or needs to be shifted?

[ Bingo! There's actually a small slot in the top of the fountain next to where the sword is already slotted in. It... looks kind of like a keyhole, actually? ]

[we all just gonna casually disrespect the wish fountain today apparently. His feet are still damp from splashing about in it before, so he has no issue climbing back in to assist in the look-see.]

It does seem to be lacking in some fashion. But, goodness, what could go here? Is it...hm, locked in some way? Surely that can't be the case; fountains aren't operated by locks and keys.

Unless they are in this absurd place. [WHICH IS POSSIBLE LBH]

I've never heard of a foutain made in such a way either but... well, I can't say exactly what is and is not normal, considering.

[Maybe he's seen such a thing and forgot?]

With the sword there... doesn't it almost seem like a figure should be here? Maybe posing with it or pulling it free? Perhaps that is the missing part?

And yet, were it completed, that still should not be what keeps the water from flowing.

It may be that this place operates differently than how it ought to in our...I hesitate to say memories. Fountains aren't new to me, and yet I cannot recall specifically when I've seen any before.

[He reaches up to grab the sword by the hilt, give it a little shimmy in case it, too, could come loose. Frowns. Mostly because he still doesn't like the whole thing, visually. Maybe if it's complete, it won't unsettle him so.] We could go looking to see if the missing part is somewhere among this odd chaos. [But does it matter? ...It mattered enough that he came to investigate, but...]

[ The sword doesn't come loose, but you do here a dull thunk from deep within the fountain and a sound like laboured clockwork straining to come back to life, and then silence once more. ]

[He nods along to Ardyn's words- he too knows in theory what a fountain is, but... how does he know? Who can say.

He's about to agree that they should find the other half, if just so it stops looking so depressing, but then he hears the 'thud']

Ah! Did you hear that? Something like a machine...?

investigation! and also ota

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Re: investigation! and also ota

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject