Piper 90: Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
goneawaymod) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
goneawayworld2021-04-10 09:37 pm
goneawaymod) wrote in goneawayworld2021-04-10 09:37 pm
3..2...1...CONTACT!
Who: The New Hires
What: Sudden Memory Share
Where: Their Memory Palaces
When: After "Don't Touch That Dial"
Warnings/Notes: Possible in every memory, warn in subject lines.
Contact.
It's during a pause in their day. A nap. An idle moment looking across the Top Deck. Taking a slow breath between reps in the training room.
The New Hires are connected. Mental pathways locking together, they're forced into one another's innermost beings. Thrust into one another's memory palaces where the mind collects and stores everything that makes them who they are. The core of their beings are only a few steps away and no one can help the violation.
To make matters worse, it comes with no explanation or no ability to pull out and stop. Once they're through the first memory, perhaps they can find a way out, but they're already witnessing some event from their host's past. And, if they left, who knows whether or not they'd end up accidentally invading another memory palace?
And if they were there, who was in theirs?
[[So, how this works: the memories can either be viewed in spectator mode or the guest can be experiencing everything themselves. The person whose memories are being shown, the host, can watch as their current self or take the form they had of their past self. They can talk about the memory with the "guest" that's visiting.
They cannot control the first memory shown, the player decides that, but they can control any other memories they'd like to show people after. Of course, there's also always the option of an extreme emotional reaction bringing up other memories unbidden.]]
What: Sudden Memory Share
Where: Their Memory Palaces
When: After "Don't Touch That Dial"
Warnings/Notes: Possible in every memory, warn in subject lines.
Contact.
It's during a pause in their day. A nap. An idle moment looking across the Top Deck. Taking a slow breath between reps in the training room.
The New Hires are connected. Mental pathways locking together, they're forced into one another's innermost beings. Thrust into one another's memory palaces where the mind collects and stores everything that makes them who they are. The core of their beings are only a few steps away and no one can help the violation.
To make matters worse, it comes with no explanation or no ability to pull out and stop. Once they're through the first memory, perhaps they can find a way out, but they're already witnessing some event from their host's past. And, if they left, who knows whether or not they'd end up accidentally invading another memory palace?
And if they were there, who was in theirs?
[[So, how this works: the memories can either be viewed in spectator mode or the guest can be experiencing everything themselves. The person whose memories are being shown, the host, can watch as their current self or take the form they had of their past self. They can talk about the memory with the "guest" that's visiting.
They cannot control the first memory shown, the player decides that, but they can control any other memories they'd like to show people after. Of course, there's also always the option of an extreme emotional reaction bringing up other memories unbidden.]]
Rowena MacLeod
I. Fergus (cw: infant neglect/abuse)
[The building is old in that it's not modern, and yet so clearly not build to withstand the test of time. It's a brick home and stone home with holes in the grout and no windows, plain, much-abused wooden furniture and a clumsy fireplace. A mangy dog is sleeping on the form, affixed with wriggling, fat puppies sucking at her teats. All the light appears to come from a fireplace choking the room with oil-smelling smoke.
A teenage girl in clothes used to the point of ruin is trying to nurse a baby. Her long red hair is stringy and tattered; her figure is bony and malnourished, with pale, blotchy skin covered in scrapes and scabs. The infant is large and fussy, hiccuping and beating at her deflated breast with its tiny fists.
"Why would you take it? Why can't you make anything easy?" The girl holds the baby up and shakes him by the shoulders; its blocky head wobbles around and it wails. She tries again, and then wrenches the baby away from her chest. "You bit me! You evil little spawn of the devil..."
She squats next to the dog by the fireplace and shoves the baby in with the wriggling puppies. The baby continues to cry, and the girl's face falls as she curls up on the floor by the fire, burying herself in her hands to weep.
It's nearly impossible to identify the pitiful, weeping teenage girl with her baby as Rowena, the woman standing to the side who's dolled up her New Hire uniform with a homemade belt and a bow in her bouncing, curled hair, fingers laced over her stomach as she watches with a troubled sneer.]
II. Spellbooks
[Rowena's at a massive table in what appears to be a cavernous dungeon-cum-library, or library-cum-dungeon. Ancient books the size of planks written in all matter of languages surround her. Rowena's writing with a pen among reams of notes; every time she moves to the next line, there's s clinking as the iron chains around her wrists.
A man with a gravely voice in a trenchcoat comes in and places some more books on her table. "These are all the ones I could find in that Sumerian dialect. I'm sure I don't need to remind you again that time is a little bit of the essence."
"This is very complicated magic, Feathers," she says. "I'm not the sort of witch you contact when you want spell that comes in a box with a price discount."
'Feathers' frowns. "You're stalling."
Rowena takes a long moment before she responds to that accusation, closing a book so heavy that its cover makes a thump against the pages. Her shackles clank.
"And why wouldn't I stall, dear angel? After all, don't I just have it made here in these iron shackles, eating Sam Winchester's leftover fruit shakes and earning nothing but grudging respect for my talents, while minute by minute the opportunity to help our merry band of thieves and murderers shrinks? Why..." Her voice turns into a low snarl. "Why in the universe's name wouldn't I be stalling?"]
I
[she clears her throat, politely. not looking too closely at the scene, also politely.]
If you focus a bit, you can change the memory. Usually.
no subject
She takes a deep breath, shimmies her shoulders, and resets before she even begins addressing her rescuer. When she speaks, it's with a thick Scottish accent Saturday certainly didn't get back in Darlington.] Ach, they could not have warned us?
no subject
[Saturday's discipline is good - she's an adept, after all - but this place is sensitive, and hungry. The same old nightmare memories spring up for a moment, fully alive around her: Maggie, throat slit. Herself, screaming. Bit, hitting the detonator. World going white. She pulls her mind away as hard as she can]
Man, fuck this place.
no subject
But Rowena's discipline is strong, too. Disposition determines execution is one of the tenets of spellwork; an otherwise perfectly recited incantation over the highest quality materials will backfire on the user in catastrophic ways if they haven't emptied their mind. She crams the devil back in his box, so to speak.]
No, get someone else to fuck this place. It doesn't deserve the warmth of a woman. [She sneers and folds her arms.] When does it end?
no subject
They both sleep like people who aren't getting enough of it, and rarely in this kind of security. The Saturday of now hangs on to it, and the peace it brings.]
No idea. It just happens, probably the Stuff - dunno how to make it stop, it just ends on its own.
I
As soon as the teenage girl comes in the room with her baby, it's like a brick hit her in the face. The red hair, the way she talks, the thin figure. It reminds her a lot of Diana. That is, if she got to grow up.
So many times she had to think over her memories from the orphanage to truly comprehend some of the things she saw. If Diana had a baby, it would be the headmaster's, and she would treat it like this.
In light of such similarity, Jennifer wonders what did Rowena go through to achieve such resemblance, what horrors did she live.]
no subject
Well, I mean...can you blame me? He bit me. That area's quite tender, and I always suspected his canines were closer to fangs than most people's.
[There's a wistful expression on her face, something almost proud at the idea of her child being fierce, and yet she sounds defensive, too. She anticipates castigation.]
no subject
Wasn't there anyone that could help you?
[She asks regardless, because she has to say something. She's afraid that it sounds insensitive, but not speaking and just watching without reassuring her that there is no silent judging on her part sounds crueler.]
[cw: child abuse, animal death]
[You may have ended up like me, dear.
The scene begins to dissolve around them, almost as if the home is burning up like paper. They're in the dark and humid now, outside, and there are dots of torches in the distance. A version of Rowena who's a bit older drags a chubby boy of around eight years old by his wrist; he's protesting and whining in the same thick brogue she has.
"But mummy! I told Berta I would play with her at the river tomorrow, why are you making us leave?"
"Shut up, Fergus!" The young Rowena, probably around the legal drinking age by today's standards, slaps her son across the cheek, even though he's just about as big as she is and looks liable to hit her back. "Shut up! If they catch a peep of you, we'll both be dead. You understand what dead means, don't you, Fergus? Dead means-"
The young Rowena looks around and sees a salamander minding its own business on the ground. She drops her son's hand and scoops the little creature up, shoving it in Fergus' face with a scowl. She grabs him by the back of the hair and forces his face into it, until a smear of the salamander's mud is on his pug-like nose.
Then, so close that the pops of oil burn his small face, she ignites it in her hand in a small, quick blaze that incinerates the creature. She smears the ash in his face with her palm.
"Dead means this!" she hisses, butting her face up into his to intimidate him into silence as he starts to cry. "Now shut up and follow me before you get us both killed."]
Re: [cw: child abuse, animal death]
Why did you do that?