EVENT 023

[sticksandbonesmods]

TAKE ME BACK TO NEO EDEN

CHAOS IN PARADISE

The more problems get solved, the more others start to pop up. Sure, some heroes saved the children in the manor — who are no longer children — but those siblings are now comatose, and the manor is on permanent lockdown, black briars blocking every possible entrance and Corrupting anyone who tries to get in. Sure, some sneaky hopefuls hid a magic circle to help maintain the fog barrier (and keep the Forest out) in a secret location, but now the magic in the Grove feels off. Your spells come out more powerful as intended while the world is out of balance, and it seems like they will for some time.

Maybe in your haste to fix all the Grove’s issues, you forgot about a certain skeleton spirit who shows up every April in some attempt to help you cheer up. Perhaps you remembered, and were hoping he’d arrive. Either way, Mr. Bone-Jangles clatters into the Grove in broad daylight, waves hello to those of you lingering in the centre of the Grove, and snaps his phalanges.

Immediately, a magenta-coloured, swirling portal opens up underneath your feet, and your friend’s feet, and that friend’s feet, until most of the centre of the Grove is consumed by it. Those of you on the outside, free of the portal’s reach, may witness it: everyone caught in it gets pulled into the rift, Heimr and Ydalir and Mr. Bone-Jangles included. In the next blink, the portal is closed and they’re gone, leaving behind flowers where each of them fell.

For those of you who got caught in the portal, you’ll find yourself at the entrance of a city, where a sign reads: WELCOME TO NEO EDEN.

4 C0LD W3LC0M3

Trying to turn around and walk outside the city causes your nose to crinkle as you slam facefirst into an invisible barrier. You can see other buildings outside this barrier, natural as a landscape could come, and yet you can’t progress. The skies are a somewhat odd purplish-blue, though you can’t tell if that’s because your eyes are straining against the bright neon of the city lights or not. Underneath the arcing city sign, a police car labelled “NEO EDEN P.D.” passes by, the robotic simulacra of human law enforcement inside giving everyone a friendly wave before it keeps driving, seemingly having come from beyond the barrier and thus warping into the space, as far as your eyes can tell anyway.

Mr. Bone-Jangles helpfully guides you further into the city, past the holograms of normal humans in neon-glowing techwear going about their business. They don’t respond to anything you do or say, seemingly on a set path, living their daily lives. The city is packed enough to be claustrophobic, cars and holograms rushing past, a stark change from the small-town vibes of the Grove. Those of you who fish in your pockets as you wander will find that your magic notebooks have been replaced with cellphones, and all prior notebook correspondences are there, as well as any new ones. The cellphone does nothing other than connect to group chat, but this one is clearly cooler — you can send emojis, stickers, and GIFs without drawing them.

…those on the other side, however, are getting each GIF drawn out frame-by-frame in the notebooks. Please don’t spam GIFs at your friends.

Additionally in your pockets is a small plastic card — a debit card, for those of you who are familiar with them — containing 1,000 Credits, the currency here. You didn’t think your shells would be useful, did you? Simply tapping the card at any facility that takes payment will subtract the necessary amount… but 1,000 Credits isn’t much. It’s enough to buy a thousand candy bars, but unless you’re frugal, it won’t last you the month. Luckily, it looks like every store on the nearby shopping strip is hiring! From restaurants to clothing stores, to empty buildings that you can make your own business out of… surely this capitalistic nightmare will be tenable!

The lack of animals is noticeable as you head further into the city, toward what signage says is called “Mania Square”. The birds, instead of being your typical Grove plantanimals, are robotic. There’s a severe lack of any pests despite the garbage in the alleyway dumpsters — no bugs, no rodents, no raccoons. Mania Square itself contains a fountain big enough to swim in, the centre focal point of the public plaza, but Bone-Jangles hooks a sharp left and leads you to the apartments instead. Up three stories are small studio rooms for each of you, your names written on the door placards in your own handwriting, and the insides are customized to your exact preference already. A notice pinned above your kitchenette tells you rent is due by April 30th… you hope you aren’t here for that long.

4R3N’T Y0U H4V1NG FUN?

Despite the standard day and night cycle, some of you may notice this place still doesn’t feel quite right, a bit outside of time. That shouldn’t stop you from having fun! And should you need to go back to the Grove — or if you’re someone looking to get into Neo Eden in the first place — you need only to gaze into a mirror placed in each of your bedrooms or apartments and wish to go home… which may lead you to fall catastrophically through it to the other side. Try not to hit your chin on the ground.

Life goes on regardless. In this city, there’s a lot to do. You could go shopping at the strip mall near Mania Square, where Heimr and Ydalir have set up a temporary shop to continue to provide for everyone’s needs. They’ll still take shells, but there’s nothing much they can do if you run out of Credits — both will gently suggest you find work in Neo Eden. You guys own businesses back at the Grove, it can’t be that bad, can it?

The good news is, Mr. Bone-Jangles and his entourage of skeletons who you swear weren’t originally here 12 hours ago are happy to help you get a job, where the interview process involves simply “showing up and asking your holographic boss if you can be employed”. Starting your own business is more difficult — you’ll need a loan from the bank! — but not impossible. Any hologram humans that come in to buy things will ignore you, get what they want, and leave. The only time you can interact with your fellow neon-coloured humans is when they’re making a purchase, at which point their items will digitize and they’ll leave. All very odd, but at least the customers aren’t rude to you… or your skeletal coworkers who have joined you for back-breaking labour.

After work, perhaps you want to head to the amusement park — Thrill Point is an utterly massive one to the far northeast of the city past the river that cuts through the digital roadways. With drop towers, roller coasters, rides for little babies who hate heights and fun, and tons of food stalls to stop at, you could feasibly spend all night here and almost forget that you have to be at your next shift in the morning! If you seek a different thrill, Arcadia is a nightclub southwest of Mania Square, where the music plays all night, the liquor flows freely, and anyone under 21 who enters gets marked with an X on the back of their hand by a harmless laser beam. Just outside Arcadia is a small photo booth named “The Swap”, and if you enter with a partner, both of you hitting the “TAKE PHOTO” button will bodyswap you for 12 hours. It will also print out a funny photo of you as a keepsake. Enjoy being someone else for a while!

Head to the Rent-a-Ride, where you can rent any vehicle on wheels — electric scooters, cars, motorcycles, hoverbikes — as long as you can pay the expensive fee. Speeding will get you a ticket from your local robopolice; breaking standard civilian laws will get you arrested and thrown into the unmanned city jail. And try not to tailgate or crash your ride — not only will you be on the hook for vehicle damages, but you’ll be shafted with a ludicrous hospital fee. Seriously, people live like this?

But, if a calm walk through nature is more your style, City Park and its digital trees to the north may suit your needs. The fish in the river here can be fished up by hopeful anglers, though all are wiggly, inedible robots. Hm.

WELCOME BACK

By April 30th when your rent is technically due, a text message goes out to everyone’s phones… and consequently the notebooks, too, from two different senders:

REMINDER: YOUR RENT IS DUE TODAY! PLEASE PAY 3,000 CREDITS OR FACE EVICTION.

DONT WORY. I WIL RESKYEW U

The messages from the second sender will get slightly more ominous as the day goes on.

GRAB SUMTHING U WANT 2 TAKE WITH U
I WIL REETORN U HOM

HAS ANY1 SEEN MY WIFE
FOWND MY WIFE :)

R U REDY 2 GO?

By evening, hopefully you’ve grabbed something to take back home — something you can feasibly carry without a struggle — because a portal is yet again opening under your feet. In a split second, you’re back in Aldric’s Grove, holding whatever you came with, your cellphones reverted back to notebooks. Mr. Bone-Jangles is nowhere to be seen, but he reappears a few hours later to hand out personal apology notes to everyone reading: “SORY, TRIYD 2 SAV U :(“ before he and his merry band mope back into the woods. He hopes you had fun while you were away.

Next time anyone heads out into the woods, all seems normal… minus the amount of fungi that have started to sprout in absolute droves across the forest floor, unwilling to be torn up from their roots or killed in a way that matters.

Spark Notes

summary

Chaos in Paradise: Mr. Bone-Jangles is back and here to kidnap you to a new location. This is a cyberpunk-esque city known as Neo Eden. No, he does not ask if he can do this first.
4 C0LD W3LC0M3: Further in Neo Eden are your apartments at Mania Square, where rent is due by the 30th. Your notebooks have been turned into cellphones, and you have a debit card with 1,000 credits on it for your shopping expenses. Seems like you'll be here a while.
4R3N’T Y0U H4V1NG FUN?: If you need to move to and from the Grove, there's a portal accessible in everyone's bedrooms via a mirror. Here, you have the freedom to do whatever you want: Rent a car, ride a roller coaster, get a job, start a business - the city is your oyster!
WELCOME BACK: And then all of a sudden, the neon paradise is ripped away from you as you're transported home. You can take back an item with you to remember your time here, if you want. The forest itself has started to grow mushrooms in droves, ones that can't be pulled up or killed. Hm!

out of character

It's already April! What the heck! We hope everyone enjoys this event; please feel free to make up businesses/buildings/things to do, you aren't constrained to what's been written in the post.

updates

- A small shrine close to the inn has appeared in the Grove. Affogato's spirit is tied there, to a black raven figure carved from smooth stone.
- The spell strengthening the Grove's fog wall is buffed.
- Sinann has been powered up, and therefore can enter its human form and go on land. It will largely still be by the river.
- Suri's creations are now and forever weak to poison.
- Pearl has made a terrible rainstorm back in the Grove.
- In Neo Eden, Add has enhanced the jail and made Jail2, which has far more security measures and functions as an escape room of sorts. Please see Add's toplevel below for further details.
- Jail2 has partly collapsed due to White Lily Cookie.

submissions

❖ Questions
❖ April Plotting
❖ Past Life Plotting (Closed to Game Members)
❖ Investigations

code

Comments

[succiduous]

i. a nerd starts a business

[The second the tour finishes, Gnosis veers off immediately from the rest of the group, expectedly. One wonders where the lab he's going to hole himself up in is... but worry not, because he'll find one. A shopfront for sale with ample working space in the back... hmm...

Thank God nothing here works properly, or he might be SOL for a bank loan to make this storefront his. In a few days time, the neon sign hanging above the door will read "Quantifi", and Gnosis will set to work. It'll be another 4 or 5 days before he's seen again, standing on the sidewalk in a pressed suit and with an obnoxiously neon-glowing tie (thank you techwear city very cool).

He waves you down, whether you're on the opposite side of the street from him or the same.]

Are you interested in an upgrade to your phone? I can promise it'll be totally free, if you allow me to use it as an example for my portfolio.

ii. gnosis is in his steve jobs era

[Halfway through the month, every digital billboard and display screen in the city will be filled with a streamed... tech conference? Screens without speakers are subtitled, but others out on the streets are playing sounds. Gnosis is on a stage showing off a host of new tech products, ranging from new hologram-capable phones (that are unfortunately constrained by game mechanics sorry for your lack of DMs still) to robotic assistance shaped like various small animals made to assist with daily tasks and quality of life improvements. It's very much the product of a man who got So Excited to play with the cool shit here that he just went off.

Whether you watch the whole conference or not (the holograms are clapping and cheering, WHAT is that crane DOING living his life like this), Gnosis will emerge out of a tall skyscraper eventually. Maybe he'll run into you on the way out, or maybe you'll catch him later. Either way, he offers a smile and a wave.]

Whether you watched my conference or not, [he starts, looking more energetic than he's looked in the last two years of existence,] I need you to tell my husband that I'm going to win our competition.

[...yeah of course he's doing all this to beat Enciodes at capitalism, of course he fucking is.]

...if you watched it, can I ask for your opinion on the presentation, while I have you?

iii. wildcard

[hi you know where i live]

ii.

[outofsynth]

[It had been sort of hard to avoid the presentation (there are so many screens in this city), so even though he hadn't intentionally been watching he knows exactly which presentation he's talking about.

He has no idea who this is, no idea who his husband is, and no idea what competition he means. Which of course means he has no idea how to respond. Thankfully (?) he also gives him another hook, though given he only paid attention in passing he feels eerily similar to the way he did when he thought he was about to flunk a test in school.]

It was good?

[That should probably sound less like a question.]

[succiduous]

[Love first meetings that are "a crane accosts you about his tech presentation", truly. Also he's sorry, it takes him a second to wake up out of the fugue state of conference to realise that he's just pestered a perfect stranger. Er, sorry.

Gnosis' headfeathers fluff up a tiny bit.]

I appreciate it. Sorry for not introducing myself. [He holds his hand out to shake.] Gnosis Edelweiss-Silverash. I'm normally in the lab all day every day at the Grove.

[outofsynth]

[Min-Gi regards him cautiously, but does ultimately take his hand to shake.]

Min-Gi Park. I haven't been in the Grove that long.

[It's a small place, but he's still found there are a surprising number of people he's yet to encounter. Even if Gnosis hadn't been holing himself up in his lab it still wouldn't feel that strange to Min outside of being accosted like this.]

[succiduous]

It's nice to meet you officially. Sorry for failing to do so earlier. I'm not usually good at socializing, as I'm sure you've gathered by now.

[He lets go of Min-Gi's hand, then nods towards a small cafe in the distance.]

Do you care to walk and talk?

[outofsynth]

It's fine. You just caught me off guard a little, that's all.

[He still doesn't know how he'll answer if Gnosis asks more questions, but he nods, unsure how to brush him off without being rude.]

Sure. We could do that.

[succiduous]

[Min-Gi could brush Gnosis off, and Gnosis would just take this on the nose like yeah okay. He's pretty awkward for a 37 year old man. You'd think he knows how to socialize but... no.

Anyway, a walkin they will go!]

About how long have you been here? I realise time is weird, so your best guess is fine.

[outofsynth]

A couple of months.

[Not long, but long enough that Min can probably tell Gnosis' claim to spending a lot of time in his lab is probably true.]

It's been tough, but I think we're starting to get used to it.

[Or, if not used to it, how to adapt to the things the Grove seems to throw at them on a regular basis.]

[succiduous]

[...oh god yeah he really Did spend all of his time cooped up indoors, huh. Maybe this whole thing is good for him, he's getting some sun and is moving around more.]

It's quite the change. I'm not sure what sort of world you're from, and you're free to tell me if you'd like, but the lack of technology in the Grove very much reminds me of Kjerag, my home country. I have a particular interest in technological advancements, and losing all of the work I put into Kjerag's infrastructure upon coming here was quite the blow. Regardless, at least there's no shortage of work to do.

This, however, [a vague motion to the city around them,] is far beyond even modern Terran capabilities. This in itself has been another adjustment, not that I'm unhappy for it.

[outofsynth]

[The café is drawing closer now, bright and hard to miss even as a simpler establishment.]

There's more technology than the Grove where I come from, but it's so much more advanced here. You wouldn't even see some of this stuff in movies.

[It surprises him that someone who'd compare their home to the Grove wants to advance the technology here, but he won't say that.]

[succiduous]

Ah, really? If I may ask, what's the strangest thing you've seen here? For me, it was definitely the hovercars. We have all sorts of military airships, cars, and things like that — but not hovercars specifically.

[As they reach the cafe, Gnosis holds the door open for Min-Gi, strolling over to the counter to stare at a neon-glowing menu. God, his eyes hurt looking at it. Momentarily he slides his glasses off and rubs them before squinting blindly up at the letters.

Does no one design menus for people with astigmatism anymore...]

[outofsynth]

I'm not sure. It's all strange. Maybe the lasers in the club?

[They're definitely one of the creepiest things he's seen.

It takes Min a moment to realize that Gnosis is struggling, but as he glances over it becomes apparent.]

Which part are you trying to see? Coffee? Tea? Food specials?

[succiduous]

The tea, preferably. ...The only thing that bothers me about this place is the way they do menus at every other venue. I have pretty bad astigmatism, and looking at blinding lights doesn't help with making out the shapes of the letters. If they have a normal black or oolong tea, I'll take that.

[Though he doesn't exactly know what it would be called — menu items are always named something funky to match the shop's vibe.]

[outofsynth]

[Honestly, the funky names are almost as much a hindrance as Gnosis' eyesight. The one thing that prevents this being impossible is the fact that the tea section is conveniently labelled as such even if none of the actual teas are.]

Constellation might be black?

[This is based purely on the fact that this is the first tea listed since there are no descriptions of any of their offerings. At least not when it comes to their teas and coffees.]

i.

[charlastan]

[Stan stares as Gnosis gives him his pitch. Behind him at his makeshift stand is a pile of gold-painted bricks and a few boxes of mechanical dogs barking in morse code. He stares...

...And then he laughs, hard!]

Ha! Almost had me there for a second! Didn't realize I was gonna have competition swindling people around here! I mean, it's a little high tech for my taste, but I bet you've gotten a ton of people already with that one.

[Not as many as him of course, but better to make peace now than have Gnosis steal all his suckers. ....Customers. Steal his customers.]

[succiduous]

[Shooting Stan a quizzical look...]

I'm not swindling people. I'm actually engaged in a contest with my husband right now to see who can become the better CEO in the time we spend here, however long that is.

[Enciodes is winning. And will continue to win, honestly, because Gnosis is not sociable nor marketing-brained enough for this... but you know, he's not telling himself he's going to lose.]

[charlastan]

[Sorry Gnosis, Stan's still laughing.]

Right. Like CEOs aren't the some of the biggest con artists out there.

[They managed to talk their way to the top, and get people to pay them to sit around and tell other people what to do! If that's not scamming, Stan doesn't know what is - and he knows a lot of scams.]

So, you winning? I'm gonna guess no since I caught you right away.

[succiduous]

[He's just gonna go with it. Fuck it, sure, he's swindling people. (The fact that he can't mount a convincing argument may very well be why he's losing in the first place.)]

I'm not winning. My husband has a whole office complex to himself at this point. I was never CEO-brained like he is, but it hasn't even been that long.

[HUFFS.]

[charlastan]

Well, no wonder you're losing! It's 'cause you're trying to be CEO-brained when what you really gotta do is be criminal-brained. You need an office? Find an empty one and act like you own the place until you've got enough capital! Get yourself some sucker employees who'll work for next to nothing either 'cause they want to or because you've got dirt on them! And then, get the cheapest possible version of whatever you're trying to sell, something with no overhead at all, and mark it up at least three times what it's worth - or more if you can get away with it!

[Stan's done this so many times that even if he doesn't remember every little scheme he ever pulled, the steps are engrained in his brain.]

Oh! And you can't forget advertising. Get a catchy jingle out on the netbooks and people will buy anything!

[succiduous]

To be honest, I prefer not to scam people. Besides, he's the honest sort — I wouldn't cheat in one of our contests by selling something cheap and flimsy. If I won, it wouldn't count as a true victory, and I'm not much of a fan of deceptive practices when they don't serve me.

[Aka: He won't deceive Enciodes, but he sure as fuck will deceive anyone he views as being a dick who deserves it. Like politicians. And cops.]

I respect the people here too much to pull the wool over their eyes.

[charlastan]

[Stan rolls his eyes.]

Right, I get it. You're "too good" for scamming. Y'know who's not too good for scamming though? Every CEO that's ever actually made any money, ever. Besides, how do you know your hubby's not scamming his way up to the top anyway?