the coming of STRAYS

[capemods]

WHAT IS HAPPENING?

Oceans are retreating, evaporating. Temperatures slowly rise. The tides cannot push landward. Metal material has swirled from the earth skywards. Local authorities do what they can to keep the peace, but the layers of events have driven many citizens to forgo their usual behavior. There is a spectrum of reaction: from those who treat these terrors as a reason to hitch No Man’s Land mentality, to those who band closer together as human beings, hoping to survive together.

But just beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, near where the moon used to be, forms a more daunting terror. All that metal pulled from Earth burns and molds into a gigantic feature. Asteroids as pulled off their normal course and slam into this growing structure, giving it shape and more substance. Solar flares that explode from the sun thin out and gently swirl towards this growing mass.

Atropos, the third sister, is exactly what Clotho alluded to: vindictive, powerful, and unforgiving.

And she has come.

WHAT IS ATROPOS?

She is not like her sisters, and she is the most removed from humanity. She was the first of the sister, she was the idea that inspired Lachesis to become, and she was what Vulcanus wanted to model Clotho off of, she was the being they borrowed power from to give Clotho life -- but they fell short of their ambition. Because while Clotho was forged by mortal men and Lachesis (in her murky origins) used mortal beings to construct her physical circuits, Atropos has nothing to do with mortality. She is the sentience of this universe itself, the avatar of this universe’s mindset. And she is hungering for a change. She is thirsting for a reincarnation.

Vulcanus has been the implement of that change, much to their soon-to-be demise -- at least, their demise in this form. Through their more rudimentary foray into transdimensional travel, Vulcanus had come across Atropos. It is Atropos, with her power of a million black holes, who enabled Vulcanus to expedite their technology. But whether Vulcanus accepted it or not, she was never working with them. Vulcanus created New Vesuvius to test what they could have, with Atropos’s power, and she had communicated that she could change this universe from what it is.

WHAT HAS ATROPOS DONE?

Atropos has altered the particle density of the top quarks, thus ushering in the destabilization of the energy that suffuses the vacuum of space. The microscopic bubble ravishing the universe is the manifested effect of that: what that bubble devours is subjugated to a change in physical laws. It’s as if an alternate universe was opening its mouth to consume an already established universe, if the former was incompatible with the latter on a basic structure. The consequence is destruction.

WHAT WILL ATROPOS DO?

At 9PM tonight, she is about to take a bite out of the Big Apple. Quite literally. Her gigantic and growing physical form will create jaws to bite off the City and its inhabitants from the Earth, and she will punch the world into bits, resulting in the death and destruction of an entire planet. What remains of the planet will swirl around her, enchanted by an invented gravitational pull, and cling to what is forming her increasingly long, snakelike body. Then she’ll illuminate her “veins” by pulling solar energy from the (still red) sun. When this solar energy enters her, it will resume its usual yellow light, so her form will shine like normal sunlight.

WHERE IS THE CITY NOW?

Inside of Atropos, and it’s relatively okay given the circumstance. Of course things like electricity and internet can’t exists inside of Atropos (unless she wanted them to), but any imPort’s communicator can work. This indicates that Lachesis is also still functional. Despite being inside Atropos, there is eternal sunshine of a spotless kind -- she did just pull into her “veins” a lot of the sun. It’s relatively pleasant, warm weather.

While Atropos grows her serpentine apocalyptic body and proceeds to use that to ravage the rest of the universe, the City will slide from her mouth, down her throat, and into her stomach. It will reach stomach levels on Wednesday evening.

WHAT ELSE IS INSIDE ATROPOS?

Dying star mass, chunks of asteroids and plants floating, and a Vulcanus spaceship that might seem familiar to those who were around Februrary 2012 and is perfectly usable. You can also explore off the City chunk without space gear: the entire space within Atropos is breathable, even if gravity is in flux. It might be normal Earth-like gravity one minute, then zero the next, then a world of pressure pushing down on you. It will always feel pleasantly warm, never too hot or cold. The pressure will never explode you, or invoke permanent damage. Atropos makes the rules of space within herself, after all.

IS VULCANUS GONE?

Not quite. Vulcanus and the troops they harvested from Metricog and TíraFórsae are on the lookout for imPorts. These beings are not true natives of their respective universes, they’ve been genetically harvested and imposed on Metamen -- or spliced vice versa. These are Metamen who are half human, half machine or half human, half insanely agile fish being.

HOW CAN IMPORTS SURVIVE?

As a few imPorts have already suspected, you have to find Lachesis. You cannot teleport to her, just as you cannot teleport out of Atropos (nor would you want to, outside is only empty space). You’ll have to look for her.

WHERE IS SHE?

Like with all matters of sibling rivalry, Lachesis is kept close to the heart.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN ONCE IMPORTS REACH LACHESIS?

Organize parties to find her, and she will show you a whole new world.

WHAT IS HAPPENING NOW?

The initial reaction log begins here.

New threads with different prompts will feature during the week, and all players are free to start their own threads within the overall log.

The Network is still functional, as mentioned above.

Atropos will address imPorts, and sometime after that Lachesis will contact imPorts.

Please feel free to ask any questions here!

Comments

[smarterthandad]

Ha, after all the narration about bubbles, I was wondering if you were going to use vacuum collapse as the explanation.

Is it something the brainiacs will have time/resources to figure out?

[capemods]

I am quite fond of that avenue of science, I must admit.

And yes! This can certainly be deduced and indulged in by any science-prone individuals.

[glowsferatu]

as they can't teleport to lachesis, how would this affect characters with teleportation or other forms of space manipulation as their power?

[capemods]

Teleportation isn't possible within Atropos, as she dictates her own physics. Any telekinesis, or tangentially related space power, that accompanies space manipulation won't be affected however.

[glowsferatu]

no portals, then. understood.

[waiting]

The open log's description mentions that "there are other floating pieces of worlds" within Atropos -- are we free to make up details about those as we wish? If teleportation isn't an option, how about mechanical means (like flight, etc), and how difficult is it to get from one to another?

The way I'm picturing it is like a series of floating world 'platforms' that can be jumped to with a little effort (so if you walked to the edge of the City's chunk and looked 'down,' you'd be able to see other worldbits floating by and so forth) but I'm not sure that's accurate, so clarification on that point would be great, thanks! :D

[capemods]

Yes, you are definitely free to make up those details! The skeleton is there and you can flesh it out however you would like. While there are prompts in the log that further detail Atropos's interior, her body is literally a different universe of its own: the possibilities are endless. What is established about the foundations (that Atropos has a serpentine body, that her veins are sunlit, that she has planets within her) are canonical details that you can work off it. Have a ball with it!

And yes, platforms are quite suitable!