TRAVEL LOG #2

[synfluxmods]

TRAVEL LOG #2

CONTENT WARNINGS: natural disaster, acid rain, vehicle crash.

▶ 001. WINGING IT.

In the early morning hours of the 1st, Outsiders will receive a rude awakening blaring through their implants. No matter what they do, the alarm will not stop sounding until they are forced to get up. A message will flash through their vision:

ALL OUTSIDERS ARE TO REPORT TO THE HANGAR IMMEDIATELY FOR DEPARTURE

Get up, get dressed in your plugsuit, and it’s time to go! Once they report at the hangar, they will be met with a huge spacecraft, large enough to fit at least 80 people. This will be their mode of transport to their next location.

"My Angels of Lilith. You are needed once again. We have received distress signals from the neighbouring country of South Korea. Unfortunately, since we have not established data portals in that country, we require you to embark via air. Your aircraft is ready for you and your seats have been assigned. I bid you a safe journey."

True enough, there are more than enough seats on the LILITH SKY CRUISER to accommodate every Outsider, and to get everyone organized quickly for departure, all Outsiders will receive a seat number. Like any plane, seats are rather cramped and there isn’t much leg room. Once the seatbelt sign is off, Outsiders are free to stand up and move around the cruiser, but they might have to climb over other people or make the whole row stand up to give them room. The aircraft is serviced by robotic stewards serving light snacks of nuts and crackers, and coconut crab kimbap and seaweed soup at meal time. Any characters who use a cloaking device will be instructed to use it during the flight to accommodate the aircraft. Also, any characters who rely on a weapon or anything else (such as a Gundam), it will be loaded onto the cargo of the aircraft.

The flight will take about 2-3 hours. Outsiders may take a nap, chat or try the inflight entertainment available. This inflight entertainment is delivered through a virtual reality headset. Outsiders may pick a selection of AI movies of questionable quality, along with several virtual reality games. There are single player or multiplayer options available for every game.

Available games include:

• The Sims 30: One player gets to become the ‘god’ of a world and build houses or dictate the lives of other players and NPCs within the game as they see fit.
  
• Farm Crossing: A farming simulator game where players get to build and manage their own farms. Harvest your crops and tend to your animals! Impress the friendly villagers in the town with your beautiful ranch!
  
• Tales of Heroes: A fantasy game where players are reborn into a world of monsters and magic and have to level up by fighting monsters and slaying demons.
  
• And many more … (Feel free to design your own VR games.)

Eventually, the sky cruiser will touch down on Incheon Airport. There’s no need to be stuck waiting in line at immigration... it appears as if the Incheon Airport has not been used in decades and seems completely abandoned with the exception of the Outsiders. The old scanning machines and luggage belts are simply collecting dust. Outsiders will be ushered immediately to the nearest train station, where they will continue their journey by train.

▶ 002. WELCOME TO SEOUL.

Once descended from the train ride, they will have arrived in the city of Seoul, South Korea. Similar to Neo Tokyo, a lot of the people on the outskirts moved to this area in order to receive shelter and the benefits of being amongst civilization, rather than fending for themselves. As such, there is a certain hustle and bustle, but considering the state of their dilapidated airports and most of the other cities falling to ruin, there definitely is a more somber vibe to the city. Despite that, the residents carry on and there is no shortage of shopping, food stalls (mostly with foods that are not easy to perish), cafes, pojangmacha to have a late night food or drink at, and many more smaller businesses. The people are resilient and have every single desire to continue making a living. As such the prices here are competitive and Outsiders will find if they look hard enough, there are some fairly good deals to be made. Currency exchange is no issue, as KRYPTOS is the universal currency.

Since a lot of efforts were made to keep Seoul intact, there are still some important sights that were kept up and can be visited if desired. While LILITH urges people to keep their eyes peeled out for any clues to the next kaiju’s whereabouts, Seok Dang may or may not have sent each Outsider a map of the best sightseeing amongst many other not-so-innocent suggestions. He calls it the difference of experiences and “doesn’t want anyone missing out!” If people check back on the message a day later, they will find it was almost as if it didn’t exist at all. On the list, however, includes sights like the Gyeongbokgung Palace, COEX mall and aquarium, Seoul Sky, and many others. However, some of them may or may not exist anymore. How long was he out of the country for? For an extra “freebie” he throws in, Outsiders will find an odd message on their style upgrade saying there is a new outfit available, when opened, it will download a hanbok that they can wear at any time.

"Well, well. Unfortunately, whatever fun could have been planned will need to be halted just a mere two and a half days to get settled. Once again, a message will be produced on everyone’s oculars suggesting an emergency is on the horizon. Guess we better get to that instead of showing you my home country!"

And Seok Dang wonders why he is the Commander's least favorite.

Beep! An alert pops up on the Outsiders' ocular devices. According to the information LILITH just received, there is not just one large kaiju occupying this region, but two. In order to chase both of these leads, Outsiders are split into two groups in order to chase these two kaiju. They have described these kaiju as being very agile and fast, but resembling a serpent from the few sightings that have been spotted. As for the rift that it originated from, there is no sign of a rift in South Korea. Did it migrate here from somewhere else? More details will pour into the Outsider's devices as soon as possible, but for now, Outsiders are called to pursue the hunt.

▶ 003. TEAM SEOUL.
_{EVERLIGHT & REDEMPTION}

Within the next hour, rain will begin to fall upon the city, but this is far from the average summer shower. The precipitation doesn’t seem weather-related as much as it does seem to be a proponent of the kaiju’s abilities. They find this when studying the rain itself, which is acidic to the touch. While the buildings and other structures will remain sound, the people will need to evacuate quickly in order to avoid any lingering effects to the skin. Skin contact with the acid rain will cause both minor and severe burning, depending on how quickly it is rinsed off with normal water. At the first discovery of the acid rain's danger, Outsiders will be commanded to press a button on their plugsuit on the left shoulder, activating an invisible helmet to keep their heads and faces safe.

The Outsiders’ plug suits prevent them from receiving any damages from the rain, but that’s certainly not the case for everyone else. The first team, made up of the members of Everlight and Redemption are to prioritize the initial evacuation of the people, especially those who live slightly outside of the city limits of Seoul. They are the most vulnerable during crises like these and will need to be pulled from their homes, and those who live in the basement shelters will need to be pulled to one higher ground in case of potential flooding with the acid rain. Individuals who have skills in healing will also be called forth in order to tend to the injuries of those who are saved.

Between evacuation, there will also be tidbits of information provided to those on the team that remains in Seoul to check out specific locations in order to figure out more about this kaiju. The first location listed is Gyeongbokgung Palace. Outsiders that remain in Seoul will be utilizing that as their base. They are set to look at any remains the kaiju may have left behind. Any findings are commanded to be surrendered to LILITH. Emergency response of South Korea will use this palace as a safe haven, providing cots for sleeping overnight and other emergency supplies.

▶ 004. TEAM BUSAN.
_{BRIMSTONE & REVELATION}

The second team will depart via train on a journey to the city of Busan. The journey is expected to take 2 hours, and while there are comfortable seats available on the train, any luxuries beyond that are minimal. At least LILITH has brought along a few VR headsets for whoever wants to kill time with games or bad movies? Anyone can sit where they'd like for this ride.

An hour into the trip, a loud crash is suddenly heard, with the entire train rocking and falling to its side. This causes a complete blackout throughout the train and it stops functioning completely, leaving Outsiders stranded within the pitch black tunnel. The train system is completely inoperable in this condition. Outsiders will need to make their own journey to the city, following the rails by foot and helping any Outsiders who happened to be injured in the crash. It’ll be dark within the tunnel, but light will soon emerge once they exit it, and they will find themselves at the foot of Mount Geumjeong.

From then on, they’ll need to put their trekking skills to the test and cross the mountainous, forested region, where they will encounter various local fauna such as snakes, deer and black bears. They will also spot many destroyed villages and temples on their way to Busan. However, evidence of the Kaiju can be found in both the subway tunnel and throughout the mountain trek, suggesting that the kaiju has moved through here. This encourages LILITH to keep Outsiders in this area. The Outsiders will need to make a campsite in one of the destroyed villages, though emergency response will also pay them a visit several days later with sleeping cots and emergency supplies. In the meantime, hopefully they brought enough food with them or know how to forage and hunt for food in the wilderness. Some of those berries out there are poisonous....

The team here will be encouraged to explore the area to find further traces of the kaiju and help any villagers who are still alive.

▶ 005. STATUS REPORT.

Promptly, at the same time, all Outsiders will receive a text message and be put in an encrypted chat-room: OPERATION: RED/BLUE
CODENAME:
LOCATION:
STATUS:
FINDINGS:
Outsiders are instructed to fill out this information and send it into the chat to communicate with one another.

▶ 006. AFTERWORD.

Welcome to our second travel log!

Characters do have ASSIGNED SEATS for the duration of their flight to Incheon airport, though there are just enough empty seats that some characters can move around if they really don't like their seat buddies. Teams BRIMSTONE and REVELATION will be traveling to Busan, while teams EVERLIGHT and REDEMPTION will be staying in Seoul.

RNG below to discover what your character will find in both Seoul and Busan respectively. For the STATUS REPORT Prompt, treat it as an open chat room for all Outsiders and respond to the HEADER COMMENT. Feel free to threadjack and discuss among yourselves. You may also include this as a text prompt in your top level if you would like for people just to reply to you instead of using the header comment.

All tags on this log are worth 2 points and will count towards August AC.

EVENT BREAKDOWN/RECAP (CLICK TO EXPAND)

1. WINGING IT: Characters are told to head to the hangar for DISPATCH to SOUTH KOREA where reports of a kaiju have been seen. Characters sit in their assigned seats for a short air travel ride.

2. WELCOME TO SEOUL: We arrive in Seoul and are given orders to split into two teams: Everlight & Redemption in Seoul, Brimstone & Revelation in Busan. Seok Dang has tried to sneak in some sight seeing in between mission briefs, but it looks like there won't be much time for that, as two kaiju have been found in South Korea.

3. TEAM SEOUL: Everlight & Redemption deal with acid rain in Seoul, ushering civilians to refuge, tending to acidic burns and using Gyeongbokgung Palace as a makeshift base. Investigation hints at the kaiju being somewhere in this area as Outsiders find claws, teeth, droppings and other things that belong to a dragon-like creature.

4. TEAM BUSAN: Brimstone & Revelation board a train to Busan which has an outage, trapping them to travel along the tunnel in the dark. They arrive at the end of the tunnel at the foot of Mount Geumjeong and create a makeshift base in the village there. Investigation hints at the kaiju being somewhere in this area as Outsiders find claws, teeth, droppings and other things that belong to a dragon-like creature.

5. STATUS REPORT: Outsiders are encouraged to share their findings and speculations on the kaiju in an encrypted chat room.

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Comments

Makima | Chainsaw Man | Brimstone

[kubricks]

[001]

[Like she is with so many things, Makima appears to be the picture of unbothered on the plane. She’s not terribly interested in switching seats or moving around, but she’s happy to make conversation with her row buddies or the people behind her if they’re so inclined. It’s a long flight and while she never seems to be terribly chatty, she’s not going to sit here silent the whole time.

Or maybe she mostly will be quiet? That Sims 30 game is going to her attention, she’s not normally much for video games, indifferent to them for the most part, but she can see the appeal of this one. For the most part Makima’s turn is fairly boring, she sets them to go to work and do other extremely mundane things. It’s like watching paint dry.

Except occasionally, she’ll do something out of the ordinary for her. Removing a pool ladder, trapping someone in the basement. No doubt others are doing the same thing, but hers seem more deliberate. She can spend quite a while playing through the most normal day before deciding to introduce some hardship into one her Sims’ lives.

There's no real rhyme or reason to it either, both PCs and NPCs can find themselves the target when she's in control. And after that, she just goes back right to monitoring their boring little routines.]

[004]

It’s not the worst train ride I’ve had…

[That’s not to say she enjoyed the abrupt ending to their train ride, but she’s not really any worse for wear, disembarking to look around at where they are. That they’ll be going on foot from here is obvious, she won’t comment on that, so she does have something to say about it.]

And at least this beats the desert.

[Probably. So help her if there’s some giant worm monster out here...well, if there is, it’s not like she can file a complaint or something. Or turn in a resignation citing multiple worm incidents as her reason for leaving. Still, she’s going to just assume this is going to go better than the desert, there’s no reason it shouldn’t.]

Still, I wish we could’ve stayed in the city longer…

[Okay, so she’s got another complaint.]

[Wildcard]

[Feel free to message me either if you want to go with something else. I’m over at opticblast or PM!]

004

[sensehispresence]

You've had many before?

[ This? It was his first train ride and it hadn't been ideal. Not with how things had happened. How they had ended up in pitch blackness and then at the bottom of a mountain. Going on foot, however, wasn't going to bother Kadaj.

When she mentions the desert, however, those cat-like green eyes look over toward her. ]

What was in the desert?

[ That? It definitely caught his attention, far more than the complaint of wishing they could've stayed in the city longer. ]

[kubricks]

A giant worm that could hypnotize and control people.

[Her unhappy tone is an indication that he should be glad he missed that one.

The train is a better subject though so she'll push her annoyance about the Vegas mission aside.]

And yes, I've been on a lot of trains. They're a good way to get around where I'm from. Usually they go better than this.

[sensehispresence]

[ A giant worm that could hypnotize and control people. He, himself, knows about controlling people. The idea of a giant worm doing something like that was a bit weird.

Hopefully, they wouldn't have to deal with another controlling worm incident then. ]

Where are you from? As for going better, wouldn't any place have one that went better?

[ Where the train didn't toss them into darkness. ]

[kubricks]

A similar world to here, just not as advanced or as in poor a state.

[Not that it's without its own troubles, but it's still better off.]

Very similar in fact, we have the same cities and countries it seems. And I wouldn't say any, the last train I took back home was hijacked, I think that would be considered worse.

[Though she was about as unbothered by that after as she is right now.]

[sensehispresence]

[ Where she was from was in a better state? That's what it sounded like to him. This place, however, he was not familiar with. He didn't have a city like this. Though, Midgar did have its ups and downs. ]

What was it hijacked by? You consider that worse than crashing the way that this train did?

[kubricks]

Armed criminals. And yes, we're all mostly in one piece and there's no causalities among us, so it's better by default.

[Plus someone quit over that train ride and that seems unlikely here. It's never great losing good employees.]

[sensehispresence]

No casualties that we know of.

[ They didn't know if others had been injured yet or not. Though, if others had been then they'd hear about it soon. ]

[kubricks]

I wouldn't worry too much. It's a tough group.

[She's relatively sure they'll all be mostly okay. Maybe a little worse for wear, but if they've gotten through giant whales and electric lizards and all the other kaiju, a train crash probably isn't going to be worse than those.]

001

[cranekin]

(So this is how the game is played... In comparison, Tsurumaru had approached the game fairly normally. The goal was to give these little virtual humans good lives and he's happy to try to make their lives comfortable and good. It's always surprising when they set themselves on fire or ruin a relationship suddenly but he doesn't even consider the possibility deliberately trying to ruin these artificial lives.

So maybe he's playing with Makima, minding his own business when he watches one of her NPC players swimming in a circle in the pool, their energy levels lowering,)

Eh? You forgot a ladder.

(He'll send her a message through the game's chat. Clearly it was on accident right.)

[kubricks]

Did I?

[She doesn't think she did, but she's not much of a gamer. Maybe there's something she overlooked? She'll take a moment looking through the map while things are looking more dire for that poor pool Sim.

Oh, she thinks she spotted the issue.]

There.

[A ladder is placed by the side of a house now? Maybe that's what the issue was.]

[cranekin]

(The poor sim is still swimming... It's simming.)

You did? He's still trapped in the pool.

[kubricks]

Oh you mean that one.

I wanted to see if they would climb out.

[The answer appears to be no as the sim continues simming.]

[cranekin]

They're dying.

[kubricks]

So they can't. Lesson learned.

I could put the ladder back but this one seems too far gone already. Maybe I should just focus on the other ones?

[cranekin]

(And sure enough, the little SIM is drowning, drowning... dead. The grim reaper appears and Tsurumaru can only look at the state of the world,)

Other pools or characters?

[kubricks]

[RIP Sim, the first casualty of Makima here.]

Characters. I left the other pools alone. Removing all the ladders felt excessive.

004

[lifeprice]

[ Aki can't help but shake his head a little, arms crossed over his chest, as he watches Makima. No, he heard about her last train journey - or, at least, the last one he knew about - and he can imagine that one was a little worse. There's discomfort to him even as he stands as tall as he can, picking a little bit of glass from his flesh hand.

He has a sword strapped to his back - not the Curse one - and a dagger on his belt, clearly well-prepared. ]

Are you sure you're alright, Makima-san?

[ They're forced to work together right now, so the least he can do is continue his awkward politeness. ]

[kubricks]

I'll be fine.

[Bounced around a little, no doubt she has some bits of glass to deal with too, but other than that? She's relatively okay, or at least, not shaken up enough that she'd consider it to be an issue. Taking a moment though to inspect her gloves, those newer hammerspace ones. Seems convenient rather than lugging an extra sword around herself. Though she does have that usual darkness one with her. It's never the most effective weapon, but maybe today?]

And you?

[He seems okay from what she can tell, but she'll ask anyways.]

[lifeprice]

Fine.

[ He thinks, at least. His fingers flex a little, and the metal hand is aching - likely from the strange weather lately, but he seems to have avoided phantom pain today. Picking a few more awkward shards of glass out of his palm, he sighs.

Separated from Denji and Tsurumaru with Makima-san for company. It's his lucky day.

Brushing some dirt off his slacks, he stands a little taller, looking around. ]

I suppose we should head for the exit.

[kubricks]

Yes, I think we should.

[She'll take a step in that direction, then stops to deal with some glass of her own. Inside her sleeve somehow, she's not sure how it got there, but she'll take a moment to shake it out.]

We can't and shouldn't stick around here, not that I'm telling you anything I know you haven't thought about already. That's one of the perks of working with you.

[Some praise from her. Kind of.]

[lifeprice]

[ The nature of train accidents... Aki is pausing to send off a message to Denji, before he glances back over at Makima.

Once upon a time, that kind of quietly offered praise would've had him content for the rest of the day. Now, it just feels a little... Uncomfortable. Odd. He's not sure how to respond to it, but she is right; they do work well together, which is a side effect of their long work history.

He had been her subordinate for long enough to know how she works, and vice versa. ]

Whatever caused the accident could still be here, if it's kaiju. [ He picks himself up and begins to walk, looking towards the light. ] I'll keep an eye on other survivors as we go.

[kubricks]

[More reason to offer praise and compliments. It's an uneasy situation but it's one she has some control over, able to move the level of discomfort here and there. So she'll take the opportunity to do so at times. Without lying too, what she said was true, which makes it better for her.]

That's a good idea, I think if it's still here, it wouldn't be waiting.

[For the most part, that seems like a level of intelligence beyond what they've run into so far. Still, Makima won't rule it out entirely.]

But better safe than sorry.

[lifeprice]

[ The problem with trying to stay away from Makima, to follow Denji's commands, is that it's difficult to do that when they're forced to work together. Nodding his head, he picks his way over some of the rubble, frowning. ]

Exactly.

[ Slowly, carefully - he is still human - Aki begins to make his way towards the bright light. ]

I'll help any other passengers if we see them.

[kubricks]

I'll tag along in case it comes back.

[Her movements aren't inhuman, no, just eerily composed. There's nothing odd or off about her except for the fact that she was just in the same crash they all were. But it's like it didn't affect her. Or she's just not letting it get to her, that's more accurate.]

And in case anyone needs more help than one person can provide.

[She doubts that's the case, they're a tough group, but one never knows.]