idolpro | Eclipse's Heart Game ☉ Session #1

Entry tags:

!heart games

Eclipse's Heart Game ☉ Session #1

You drift like you're floating in water. It's almost relaxing, actually. As long as you don't think too hard that what you're floating in may be bottomless, because under you lies only a deep darkness that only the ocean can provide.

Then, something grabs you and drags you deeper, down, down, down into the abyssal depths. You can't breathe, but that's not on the forefront of your mind now, is it?

There is a mounting sense of anxiety and dread.

Who do you want to become? Will you even get to see tomorrow? What if all roads lead to ████████? Can you still stay '███'? If people see the ████ you, will they think less of you? Will they feel cheated?

You want to live. Even if it's a ███, even if your hands must be covered in █████, you want to live. You want to be '███'.

Finally, a voice pierces through the darkness. It's a woman's voice.

"My, how unfortunate. Your journey ends before it even begins.

"... Just kidding. That would be terribly boring! I suppose I can do the boy a favour just this once."

You feel someone grab your arm and pull you up to the surface.

...

When you come to, you are standing somewhere else.

Threaded | Flat

You are standing on an elevated broadwalk made of wood and stone. In front of you is a view of the sea. Behind you, the city stands tall and casts its long shadows over you and the port. It's not pitch darkness, but dark enough that you probably wish you had a little more light to see a little better, even with the distant glow of sunlight in the horizon.

In the sky above hangs a solar eclipse. Strangely enough, the sun does not seem to be reflected in the water.

There are a set of stairs that seem to let you head down to the beach. Further down along the broadwalk, the glow of blue lanterns outside a blue building catches your eye. In the opposite direction, you can see there's a path from the broadwalk that leads you into the city.

You could probably sort of tell from where you were at the waterfront, but actually walking into the city gives you a better sense of its scale. Everything seems to tower over you. Shops and houses are piled onto one another, as if the city decided that rather than build outwards, it should build upwards. There are doors accessible only through exterior stairways and catwalks. The buildings seem to drunkenly lean together, with rickety ropebridges on different levels connecting them.

The streets are fairly narrow, and you might realise that you aren't so much walking on ground as you are walking on floorboards. There's clearly more of the city under you that you cannot see. The shop signs and lanterns have a neon glow reminscent of Tokyo-F's, bathing the street in some light.

Around you, people are going about their business. There are a lot of completely foreign faces, but there are also various random people in Imeeji mixed in, albeit dressed in a manner more befitting the setting.

There are some very conspicuous signs showing the way to several places:
"ARCHIVE, 3F"
"MUD, DOWNWARDS"
"WATERFRONT, THAT WAY"

It seems that if you follow the corresponding signs, you'll end up at one of those places.

The signs lead up the stairs of a building to the third floor. Down the corridor, where a shop would normally have been, there are two signs in different languages hanging above a door. Even if you don't know the languages, you understand that they both say 'The Archive of Principles, Perceptions, Competencies and Miscellany.' A green lantern hangs by the door.

When you walk in, it's immediately apparent that the inside is bigger than the small outer facade would imply. There are shelves of books, going almost all the way up to the ceiling. If you check them, they seem to be different sections, such as Skills, Tokyo-F and Creation. The Tokyo-F section in particular has a sub-section called Units.

A little further back in the room, there are two whiteboards, with things written on them.

There are three exits: The door you came through, a doorway on the western side of the room ('Principles'), and another door a little further up ('Perception') next to it.

The signs lead you to a ladder that goes down beneath the floorboards. The climb down feels more like a descent into darkness.

... Or it would, but as soon as your feet touch the marshy ground, you can see the glow of a lot of lanterns on a cart nearby. The light lets you see that you are right outside what appears to be a labyrinth of alleyways, somehow more claustrophobic than the streets above. Perhaps it's because of the ceiling above you. At least upstairs, you could see the sky through the buildings.

There's a tall man with flaxen hair and green eyes nearby the cart. Around his neck is a red bandanna. He perks up when he notices you, and waves you over.

"Oh, hey!"

The shelves here are fewer and shorter compared to the main library room, and there are several tables, but they're filled and covered with various books and scrolls. One table in particular has some blank, wooden slats, brushes and inkstones.

(Yes, inkstones. If you want ink, you're going to put in some elbow grease.)

Some of the wooden slats on the table already have something written on them, though you'll need to take a closer look to read.

On a wall is a wooden board with more wooden slats hanging on it. These ones seem to have things written on them too.

Oh, and there's also a ... boy (?) in green robes sitting at a table against the wall. At least, he looks younger than Eclipse, but even with his back turned towards you, you get the sense that he's much older somehow. There are books and scrolls opened up around him on the table, and he seems to be busy with something. Quite grumpily, if the mumbling under his breath tells you anything.

There are two exits: The door to the main library, and the door to 'Perception'.

The alleyway is narrow, lit up by the occasional torch on the wall and lanterns hanging from ropes above you. To one side there are some shops, or at least the back doors to what are presumably shops, but they're all locked or sealed.

You can go straight on ahead south, or go around the bend east.

The light of the torches and the lanterns bathes the alley in a red, neon glow. Light reflects off some puddles in the ground. The stench of stagnant seawater permeates the air.

There are paths west, south and east.

There are no torches in this stretch of alley ways, only blue lanterns lighting the path for you. There's a stall to one side, unmanned and empty.

The path splits to the east and west, here.

((OPTIONALLY, if you still have a lantern, you may roll a d10 and share your results in your comment. If you roll a 4 or below, a thing will happen that will cause your character to lose their lantern. If you roll a 5 or above, your character will get to see something that isn't entirely awful. You may do this only once in this area.))

The smell of the seawater is stronger here, powerful enough that it's almost choking. The stone path is starting to become more sparse, leaving the mud to get all over your feet. The flames of the torches burn in a way that you could swear seems a little menacing.

There are only two exits: west, where you came from, or make a turn south.

Here, the stone path practically disappears, leaving you to walk through the marsh. You can feel yourself sink in the ground a little, like the ground could swallow you up if you linger too long, but that's surely not possible, right...?

The purple lanterns have an eerie glow to them, less like the neon lights of Tokyo-F and more like ghost lights.

There are only two exits: north, where you came from, and a single yellow door to a building west.

Threaded | Flat

INFORMATION

The Waterfront

The City Streets

The Archive

MUD

Principles

MAZE