towerofanimus | Ad Visitatores

Characters: anyone participating in the event
Setting: floor 56 and eventually other areas of the Tower
Format: either
Summary: Welcome to the Tower.
Warnings: horror/creepiness/potential danger/generally unfortunate things all possible
Notes: PLEASE GO HERE TO MAKE NEW POSTS.

A few minutes before anything happens, Ruana's voice rings out over the Tower's intercom--it manages to be louder than anything the residents happen to be doing. "Hey, everyone, there's something exciting going on at floor fifty-six! Go make sure they don't get themselves killed!"

You arrive, stepping or tumbling, in a surgical suite. It looks abandoned, with dust collecting on the table and floors. The lights flicker, and for a moment blood dripping off the table, puddling on the floor--but no, the lights are back, and surely that was your imagination. It's quiet, eerily so, but nothing hinders you, and you're free to spread out and explore. There are multiple rooms here, like in any hospital, and it's all a bit confusing. Occasionally the lights flicker, and it's a bit frightening as Things appear that shouldn't exist. Shadowy creatures stitched together and reaching for you, doctors brandishing phantom surgical tools, blood splattering the walls or floor or ceiling, how did it get there--but none are real, and all of them vanish when the lights return. Eventually you find the staircase, spiraling up and down into darkness. Approach it, though, and the thing glitters with a barrier that will push back any attempts at climbing the thing.

A girl, a teenager dressed in red and black, appears. And she does simply appear, inserting herself into the space, nearly pushing it aside to make room in it for where she is now. Her face beams with unconcealed excitement, and her words tumble out on top of themselves. "You can't go there! Yet, I mean. You'd all die!"

The girl steps onto the staircase, passing through the barrier as if it weren't there, and sits on the steps to address everyone. "Hi! I'm Ruana. You didn't show up the normal way, so the Tower can't support you yet. We got this one floor ready when I saw you were coming but, well, the Tower's kind've big, so getting all of them set up is taking a little longer than I thought." She smiles, sheepishly apologetic in a carefree sort of way. "I've got everyone coming here to visit you--or at least they know they can visit you--and I'll have someone bring food up for you. It'll be oatmeal, and oatmeal is super boring, but you have to eat it, okay? Then you can have whatever you want! The cafeteria's down on the first floor if you get hungry. We should have everything ready in a few hours. I've gotta go help with that, so you guys wait here.

"Don't worry, the monsters can't get to this floor as long as that barrier is up."

And then she's gone, blinking out of existence. The barrier will remain for three hours.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Ludwig remained cool and collected. "I suppose you could say that. It seems that my brother is here." He finally took his finger off the nameplate, but did not turn to Sephiroth. "Have you seen him? He has white hair and red eyes... it's a very distinctive look."

Upon getting closer, it is quickly noted that Ludwig does not have a collar like all the other residents do. What does that even mean though? Could it be that this person is an illusion actually created by the Tower?

If not, then why not. As far as Sephiroth's understanding goes, collars are mandatory for survival here and that's the only reason why he suffers it - why he will never again miss a collar checkup. It had taken a good couple of months for him to get over the new-permanent addition to his body. Obviously that wasn't now true. His own violet-tubed collar gets a absent-minded rub along the back underneath his mass of silver hair before Sephiroth stops (before it would be seen as a nervous habit) and lowers his hand away.

White hair, red eyes. Sephiroth fancies he's quite likely seen this other resident around at some point before on the 3rd dorm floor, but it's likely they've been just another face in the ever-fluctuating crowd around here. People vanish quite often.

"Not recently. Though he must be here or his name wouldn't be there." Sephiroth gestured to the nameplate. When Porky had vanished, the nameplate on their Dorm had updated so surely a name being there would have some guarantee. "People vanish quite often here, but it's all kept up-to-date as far as I've seen."

"Vanish... do you know what happens to them when they vanish? Do they return to their worlds, or do they go somewhere else entirely?" Ludwig sighed and resumed tracing the letters on the nameplate. "I suppose I'll be waiting here, then... perhaps I'll catch him on his way back to his room."

"Sometimes they come back, people tell of wandering their dead world. Whether it's real, or somewhere else entirely though - there isn't any way to tell. This Tower spins many an illusion."

Sephiroth needed to get his mind away from that precipice quickly. Thinking entirely too much about what he would (or rather would not!) go back to of himself back on Gaia was one sure way to get his trying-to-be patient mood to degrade all too quickly. In some ways it was easy to believe the Tower's claim that all the worlds really were destroyed but that's exactly the problem.

"Perhaps."

"Ah, that's right. I've heard whispers of people talking about their worlds being destroyed." Well, if Gilbert was here, what did that mean for their world? Perhaps it was best that Ludwig wasn't home right now, for a variety of reasons. "Tell me a bit about this tower. What do you mean that it spins illusions?"

"That's just it, how far the illusion goes. The administrators here have great sway over what goes on, or rather what our minds interpret to be going on around us. It's very impossible to know much of anything."

Sephiroth doesn't know very much more really than his own opinions of this place, as twisted as they may be around his own inflated sense of importance. Why he's sharing one of his theories with Ludwig though, well he did ask and Sephiroth is done silently detesting this place keeping him all contained like it does. He couldn't keep his comment about the collars back anymore though.

"Such as the collars. Which you seem perfectly fine without but for those of us here before you it's apparently so vital to survive."

"So the administrators control nearly all the information that goes through this tower?" Ludwig found himself wondering if there was some sort of propaganda division here. It would make sense for such a controlled dictatorship. "The collars... that's a mystery indeed. You would probably know what purpose they serve more than I do. Perhaps the visitors are protected by the force that sent them here."

"As far as I know, no one can leave here. Apparently even if you were to fly out of the open floors you end up dropping like a stone. Whether that really is for our own safety, or just a control measure..."

Sephiroth shrugs slightly, continuing whilst trying not to scowl. "There are whole sections missing in both libraries here that does lead one to believe there is a great deal we haven't been told."

Curious opinion about the collars, though this visitors comment does lead to another question.

"How did you, get here? Or is that another mystery?"

"That sounds very reminiscent of a dictatorship, which it seems this tower is." Ah, censorship of the press. Quite a few nations had to endure it.

"As for how we got here... that, too, is a bit of a mystery. We all shared a dream before coming here, though, and the one who might be responsible does have a name: Philemon."

Sephiroth nods in agreement, having already considered this fact at length himself.

A somewhat blank expression crosses Sephiroth's face. Just who or what is Philemon? He's been under the impression that Ruana has somehow managed to drag new people to the Tower for her enjoyment this month. There was not ever any hint that it might be something else.

"Shared dreams? That does sound pretty sinister. Do you know anything, about this Philemon?"

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