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nolandmod ([personal profile] nolandmod) wrote in [community profile] vault662020-06-01 08:17 am
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MONTH 2 LOG

WHO: Everyone
WHERE: Vault 66
WHEN: ???? – Day 1, Month 2
WHAT: The second wave of pods open
WARNINGS:Reference to suicide, TBD

AWAKENING



You awake laying on your back in an, admittedly comfortable, pod. You can't move anything but your eyes, can't even feel your body yet. How you got here or why is a blank. You may have been in the middle of your day, asleep, or even- for what you remember- should be dead. Then a screen directly in front of your face flickers to life and in crisp, black and white displays: DON'T PANIC. The following video then plays:





The screen flickers again and reads: CONGRATULATIONS ON PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE! WELCOME TO VAULT LIFE, CITIZEN. WELCOME TO YEAR: [ERROR]. YOUR PERSONAL BELONGINGS ARE LOCATED IN [FILE CORRUPTED. SEE SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR]. ENJOY YOUR STAY AND THANK YOU FROM YOUR FRIENDS AT VAULT-TEC.


The pod then unseals and you are able to, unstably at first, climb out of the pod. Your body may feel foreign for a moment- perhaps entirely foreign if you suddenly find yourself a human, ghoul, or super mutant for the first time. But whatever your form, you have two items on: a bright blue jumpsuit with the number 66 in yellow on the back, and a mechanical device known as a Pip-boy sealed onto your arm. If you click on the buttons it takes you to an instruction screen.


You look around to find yourself in a room of other pods. Some are just opening, other people looking as confused as you climbing out. Others remain closed with the status of 'STASIS' on the screens attached to the pods. The rest of the room is less than impressive. Computer systems that seem out of place compared to the technology level of the pods are scattered across the room, apparently running the chambers. Trying to access them, even for the most talented hacker, will simply result in SEE OVERSEER being displayed. There is large metal door leading to the rest of the vault, a lever on the wall next to it that will cause it to open.

Welcome, dweller, to vault 66.

 



THE VAULT EXPANDED

In the month following the first pods opening, Jiro and Elizabeth DeWitt enlisted the help of the Mr. Handy ‘Louis’ the clear the debris and create a stable passageway to the rest of the testing area. Slightly smaller than the rest of the hallway, there is still plenty of room for people to move in and out of the area without discomfort.



This portion of the vault, if possible, is even dirtier and more decrepit than the rest, having been cut off from even the most basic maintenance for an untold period of time. The emergency lighting has been cut off to this area, leaving the whole zone in the dark besides what little light comes through the newly formed passage.

Those willing to venture into the area will find this isolation has allowed a handful of more intimidating creatures than radroaches to establish a home (though there are still roaches, just fewer than are found in the rest of the vault). Several breaches in the metal walls along the hallways open into small tunnels, which the occasional mole rat will venture out of. Though usually only appearing alone or in pairs, these creatures are even hungrier for fresh meat than the radroaches and will attack with their huge, sharp, pointy teeth. If killed, they could supply a decent (if slightly irradiated) source of meat for a while, along with hide to make more reinforced clothing. But taking one down without proper weapons will likely require some teamwork.

There are several important (and often concerning) areas to find in this zone. First are two firmly sealed doors, one at the upper corner of the new area and one at the lower middle. Each door has a very helpful (currently unlit) sign over it: ENTRANCE and OVERSEER, respectively. Next to each is another of the computer terminals characters have grown used to seeing around the vault.

Next are Testing Areas 1, 2, and 3. Each of these testing areas has an observation room with a smaller containment chamber attached to it. The doors to the observation areas can be pulled open with enough effort, allowing entrance to the small room filled with chemistry glassware, lockers, and tables covered in long since rotten scraps of paper and books. The doors to the containment chambers, for the moment, remain sealed shut with yet more computer terminals next to them. These doors look weaker than the ones sealing off the entrance and overseer area, and can possibly be broken down with time and effort. But characters will want to think long and hard before doing that. Each observation room has a bullet proof, reinforced one-way window that allows characters to look into the containment chamber without whatever is in the chamber being able to see them. And the chambers are occupied.

Testing Chamber 1 (WARNING: SUICIDE) contains the corpse of a super mutant splayed on the ground. The walls around it are dented, and its head caked in long dried blood. Anyone with passing medical knowledge can observe the super mutant apparently killed itself through repeated blunt force trauma, banging its own head against the walls and door until death.

Approaching Testing Chamber 2 causes character’s pip-boys to start crackling a warning of increased radiation. Standing in the observation chamber the levels are low enough that it isn’t healthy, but no one is going to die without prolonged exposure. The source of the radiation is clear, inside the chamber is a corroded barrel of radioactive waste. Along with it, a grotesque creature that is very clearly alive, moving around and around its small, enclosed space.

Testing Chamber 3 also crackles with radiation, though the source of this isn’t a barrel. Rather, a walking, emaciated corpse shambles about the containment chamber. Other than the walking corpse bit, there’s two characteristics which stand out: the corpse is glowing an eerie yellow-green with an inner light that pulses as it walks and it’s wearing the torn remains of what is very clearly the same blue and yellow jumpsuit all characters arrived in.

GENERAL EXPLORING

Whether you venture into the new area of the vault or not, the rest of the vault awaits. This includes the three Mr. Handy’s floating around, as well as more radroaches wandering around the many corpses/blood splatter patterns.

OOC NOTES

To talk to a specific NPC one-on-one, leave a comment on their thread below.

Looking for loot in a specific area? Looking for a specific item/kinds of item in general? Ask here and we’ll let you know.

If you have any OOC questions, please leave a comment here!

wildguardian: (well shiiiii--)

[personal profile] wildguardian 2020-06-01 05:05 pm (UTC)(link)
awakening

Zhao Yunlan opens his eyes on darkness. For a moment, he holds utterly still, mind racing as he feels down every nerve, searches for memory that could explain: nothing is burning. Nothing hurts. His last memory is still the flame of the Guardian Lantern, igniting as the world fell away in pain, and now he's... here.

A tinny recording jolts him out of the pit that those memories threaten to become, and he stares at it.

"Okay," he mutters to himself, as a puff of stale air washes over him and dim hazard lighting brightens through the cracks in a shell. He's in a shell.

He trips over the edge of it on the way out, but manages to avoid cracking his head on an ancient green-letter computer display. One point to the (Vault?) technology, one point Zhao Yunlan. He can already tell he's going to need to hoard those points.

A few of the other egg-pods around the room are shivering and cracking open. Yunlan brightens, plants his hands on his own pod and hoists himself back up to sit on the edge. It's a bit too high for a chair, and his feet swing childishly above the ground for a moment before he props one on a strut and slouches back into a proper sprawl.

Works better on a couch, but a man only gets one chance to make a first impression.

"Hey there," he calls. "Welcome to the waking world!"

And-- a few of the other pods are already open. His brain must have frostbite. He ruins his careful sprawl by jolting upright and turns to look around the room for the others. No telling if they're friendly or not, no telling whether they expect to be here or are just as lost as he is, but he really doesn't like not knowing where they are.

exploration (1 - reactor)

The crackle of his wrist Geiger counter is ticking up, slowly, as he passes a monumental slab of air-exchange equipment. From the hollow roar it's giving off, something in it must still be working. Backup power, right. Lights, air, water: that's what he'd prioritize in an emergency.

Stasis chambers too, apparently. Not that everyone was in those. There's a twisted skeleton, shreds of long-decayed cloth sticking to the brown bone, tucked back among the machinery to his left. It's barely visible in the emergency lighting.

Yunlan takes a deep breath, and taps the flashlight button on his wrist monitor. The beam's going to draw those cockroach things, if there are any down here, but at least with it on he won't walk into them.

Something shifts behind him -- settling? A footstep? Wildlife? One of those octopus robots? -- and he whips around, flashlight sweeping through the dimly-lit corridor.

He probably should've brought a pool cue.

exploration (2 - testing, East Wing)

This time, Yunlan has sensibly armed himself with one of the bloodied pool cues from the rec room. He'll replace it, he tells himself, especially if it gets damaged -- but it's not a completely terrible substitute for a nightstick. Weighted towards the butt, solid: yeah. It'll do.

He doesn't have Dixing night vision -- he stamps down on the flash of pain that thought brings (Shen Wei, gone forever) and moves on. No better night vision than your average nearly-thirty-year-old modern man, so he's forced to rely on the flashlight. It doesn't show any signs of running down, at least, and his frequent nervous glances down at his Geiger counter dial show the radiation up here's not in dangerous ranges. Yet.

The movement to his left doesn't make a noise at all. He swings around: too low to the ground for a human, too bulky for a giant roach, it's --

-- A mutant naked rat? Its teeth are huge, and bared in a gape as it lunges for his leg, and he changes the spin into a full roundhouse kick that catches it in the side. Its head swings around with terrible speed to send those teeth scraping over his boot, leaving a long scar in the leather as it goes flying.

It's heavy. Yunlan's shin aches from impact. He drops into a crouch, feral smile unfurling as he weighs his pool-cue club.

"C'mere, rat," he invites aloud. It gets up, shaking off the blow with an ear-rattling shiver, and bares its teeth again.

"Your timing is shit," he adds, and begins circling to the left, watching the rat watching him. "You have no idea how much I need an ass I can kick today--"

New discovery: naked mutant rats can jump.

[personal profile] cicadashell 2020-06-01 05:59 pm (UTC)(link)
I. Testing Area

a. mole rat tunnels [closed to Sandy]

[The hallways past the former cave-in are in even worse shape than the rest of the vault. It's something Jiro didn't expect, thinking it's been sealed off so it should be less disgusting and more preserved. He shines the PipBoy flashlight at a small opening in the side of corridor. A distant squeaking noise sounds from within. He turns to Sandy, jerking his thumb at the hole.]

You wanna use these stupid things to chat, you can go in there and tell me what you see.

[He will admit that the PipBoy may be a little useful at this point.]


b. testing chamber 3

Holy shit.

[A glowing half-skeleton. How long has it been down here; long enough for the cave-in and the place to go into disrepair. The Geiger counter's already making noise, but Jiro taps on the glass anyway, wondering if the... thing can hear it. If it's actually alive in the sentient sense and not just some mindless zombie scenario.]


c. entrance

[Jiro doesn't know what he's doing, but this is clearly the way out. He examines the door for any signs of easy opening, but it's going to be a problem.]

Think we can get mole rats to chew through it?

[They ate the walls, so why not?]


II. Wildcard
/ Anything goes, or plot on plurk/discord.

exploration (1 - reactor)

[personal profile] cicadashell 2020-06-01 06:18 pm (UTC)(link)
"Fuck!"

Yunlan manages to flash the light right in Jiro's eyes. There's a clattering noise as he drops a pile of bones to try and shield himself from the light. He's in a constant state of irritation anyway, and he growls in annoyance. Once he gets a look at Yunlan, he pauses in his retrival of the bones.

"You're new."
wildguardian: (what what)

Re: exploration (1 - reactor)

[personal profile] wildguardian 2020-06-01 06:43 pm (UTC)(link)
"I am! Don't sneak up on a guy like that." His shoulders sag, relaxing back from combat readiness to their baseline level of nervous tension, and he flashes the light around the area once before bending to help the other man collect the armful of bones he'd been carrying.

"Zhao Yunlan," he adds, stacking a couple of femurs and handing them over. "Chief of the Special Investigation Department, but I'm going to toddle out on a limb and guess that doesn't mean a damn thing down here! And who are you, friend?"

[personal profile] cicadashell 2020-06-01 06:55 pm (UTC)(link)
He takes the femurs without a thank you, and doesn't apologize for sneaking up on Yunlan.

"Everyone fucking works for the government, what the fuck..." it's murmured to himself mostly. "Jiro Azuma. Bureau of Espionage."

He doesn't know if he technically had a title or not, and who the fuck cares. It's getting ridiculous.
wildguardian: (uh huh then what)

[personal profile] wildguardian 2020-06-01 07:02 pm (UTC)(link)
Espionage? Now that's interesting; Yunlan files it away. Spies -- or analysts -- can have useful skill sets.

"I'm a cop, you're a spy, what other government workers do we have around here?" he inquires, dusting some of the corpse dust off his palms. "Tell you the truth, I think what we really need are sanitation and infrastructure. As a murder scene this place is ice cold."

[personal profile] cicadashell 2020-06-01 07:14 pm (UTC)(link)
"I dunno, really. Peggy's a secret agent," he snorts. It was her preferred term to 'spy'. "There's a kid around, though. It's not all government types."

Jiro doesn't consider himself one either, having only worked for the Bureau for a month before getting here, and only under duress.

"I think we got sanitation covered. Chocolat likes to clean things."

There's a woman with at least some infrastructure knowledge around too, but no one has a definite plan of what they're doing down here yet.

"You really think these people were murdered?" he sounds very skeptical. "They just fucking died of radiation or some shit. Anyway, we're collecting the skeletons and leaving them all together."
wildguardian: (working it out)

[personal profile] wildguardian 2020-06-01 07:22 pm (UTC)(link)
"Peggy, Chocolat -- what's the kid's name?" At least there was someone here who knew their way around a mop. And enjoyed it, alien as that thought might be. Yunlan was just as happy to clear the corpses and leave the sanitation to someone else. "Sounds like we're a cozy little group so far."

He swept the room with his flashlight again, then returned his attention to Jiro. "I've spotted a few funky bloodstains, plus, you think radiation sickness would kill them all at the same time? People don't like corpses hanging out in their living spaces. They'll stick them in a morgue if they can. Speaking of, where're you keeping the bodies? I can give you a hand with that."

[personal profile] cicadashell 2020-06-01 07:42 pm (UTC)(link)
"Sandy. And there's a couple more. Elizabeth, who might be your infrastructure person, and Jill. Moving the skeletons was her idea."

Jiro's not exactly sure what Jill does, but she seems capable. He internally cringes at the description of their group as cozy. even the new guy already seems like he wants to make this place a home or a headquarters instead of getting the fuck out.

He raises an eyebrow. He's not a detective in the least, and he never thought about survivors leaving the bodies out. Yunlan's right. People wouldn't do that.

"In a storage room near the dorms, I guess." Until it's full. "There's some robots around, by the way. If you wanna interrogate them on the murder thing."
wildguardian: (Default)

[personal profile] wildguardian 2020-06-01 08:05 pm (UTC)(link)
Sandy, the kid. Elizabeth, maintenance and infrastructure. Jill... the idea person, it sounds like, if she's already organizing these others. He'll have to talk to her.

"Are the robots AI? Those answers aren't just pre-recorded?" All right: he'd never enjoyed handling bodies, but if they were going to clear the skeletons, he might as well work on making a good impression. Jiro seemed to have his armful of corpse bits handled. Yunlan headed for the body he'd spotted earlier. The tendons holding it in shape were brittle-dry, snapping as he tried to shift it from its slump. Armful of disconnected bones it was.

"Sorry, pal," he muttered under his breath, gathering up limbs and ribcage into a messy bundle. There were bits of spine poking him in the side. Ugh.

"...anyway, lead the way to that storage room. I can always ask the robots about it once we've got the victims tidied away."

[personal profile] cicadashell 2020-06-01 08:14 pm (UTC)(link)
"No fucking idea," Jiro shrugs. He's not a tech guy, and the amount of intelligence or sentience the robots possess isn't something he can really remark on. "Louis, the French one, is an asshole and I haven't talked to the others."

Jiro is the asshole in probably everyone else's opinion, though.

"This way."

Out of the reactor room, it's not far to the room of skeletons near the male dorm. Whatever was in there before has been moved out and it's stacked high with bones in various states of connected.

"There's... a lot."
wildguardian: (distance)

[personal profile] wildguardian 2020-06-01 08:28 pm (UTC)(link)
"You're not kidding." The cheerful grin falls away from his face as he surveys the stacked skeletons. Theorizing about murder is one thing around the occasional mysterious long-dead corpse; but all of these? Plague? Battle? The scale of the threat in this dusty old cave looms up and up over him, a wave that could sweep away their few living souls in an instant.

Despite his cranky companion, he feels very alone.

The fear lasts a few seconds before he gives himself a mental shake -- the best way to get swept under is to stop treading water, after all. No stopping allowed. Not until he's worked himself into being too tired to dream.

"Good news if they built this place to hold that many people," he tosses off, setting down his armful of remains on the nearest stack. The skull rolls to its side, jaw sagging from weakening hinges. "There'll be plenty of capacity for us. Anybody found the door out yet? Or is that still on the agenda?"

[personal profile] cicadashell 2020-06-01 08:43 pm (UTC)(link)
Jiro watches the skull fall with seeming disinterest. It's more of internally forced desensitization. He's seen monsters eating people and discarding the too-tough-to-chew heads in piles higher than these stacked skeletons. He needs to stay distanced from it all, at least for now. Even if he ends up being more of a jerk to cover any vulnerabilities.

"Not yet. Elizabeth and I opened a cave-in, though, and there's a section that hasn't been explored too much yet. Not sure if the maps show everything either, you know? There could be hidden tunnels or exits only that Overseer person knows about."

He'll assume Yunlan looked at the computers in the pod room and knows who the Overseer is.
wildguardian: (following close)

[personal profile] wildguardian 2020-06-01 09:22 pm (UTC)(link)
"You think the Overseer's alive?" Yunlan blinks at him. "With how long it looks like most of these guys have been dead, I figured he must be toast. Wait-- he hasn't communicated with you guys, has he?"

Or she, to be fair-- but he figures the odds are on the Overseer being one of their skeleton buddies, and skeletons don't care.

[personal profile] cicadashell 2020-06-01 09:39 pm (UTC)(link)
"No, I don't think he's alive!"

That sounds just as crazy to him.

"I meant that things aren't on the map because only the Overseer had that information and not whoever was stuck here."

He should have said knew, but verb tense isn't something he'd think about being picked over by the more observant people, like cops. He's never been the most articulate person either.
wildguardian: (what what)

[personal profile] wildguardian 2020-06-01 09:45 pm (UTC)(link)
"Oh, okay, I get you, I get you." Yunlan laughs easily, brushes some of the grime off his hands on the seam of his overalls, and reaches out to give Jiro a comradely slap on the back. "You had me worried for a minute there. You know -- 'ten people trapped in an underground compound with two hundred corpses and an all-knowing Overseer'? Last time I saw that movie it didn't end so well for the non-Overseer types.

"You're right on about the Overseer probably having some of that info, though. I'd love to find the guy's desk, see if he was one of those sorts who put his password on a sticky note."

[personal profile] cicadashell 2020-06-01 09:58 pm (UTC)(link)
He barely holds back the urge to punch Yunlan after the back slap, but he gets a pointed glare. Jiro cannot be down here with all these horribly cheerful people for another week or he'll scream.

"You think there's just a password that opens everything?"

That would be a much quicker escape than trying to build a bomb and blowing open one of the tunnels. Which is Jiro's escape plan, should they be stuck down here for another couple of weeks.
pride_outbreak: (smirk)

[personal profile] pride_outbreak 2020-06-01 10:10 pm (UTC)(link)
Arrival:

Continued from here

Dorms:

Saya made her way towards the place that would be their sleeping quarters and she was trying her best to not be upset, frustrated or ill all at once. "Okay... You could be dead. You could be undead... This is fine... Oh damnit who am I kidding this is so gross!" she groaned in frustration before sighing and moving towards the closest terminal that was unoccupied.

"This is so bizarre... How can this place have some complicated, sci-fi level tech and then this... this 70's to 80's pc? I don't get what the hell is going on but I intend to find out." And so she began tapping away at the keys in order to try and figure out as much as she could about this place.

Catchall/OTA:

Saya will be wandering the areas which have been deemed 'safe'. Feel free to bump into her at any time!
wildguardian: (know what I mean)

[personal profile] wildguardian 2020-06-01 10:15 pm (UTC)(link)
Ah, that glare at the backslap. It's just like being around old Chu again -- although, of course, he doesn't actually know Jiro. He should hold off on pushing too many of his boundaries until they're good enough friends that he won't end up bludgeoned and stuffed under some air handling equipment.

Say, two or three days.

"This place has to have some way of knowing who the Overseer is," he points out. "Master passwords, code keys -- now that's something to ask the robots."

[personal profile] cicadashell 2020-06-01 10:20 pm (UTC)(link)
"Is a code key different than a password?"

At least now there's someone who seems computer savvy. At that thought, Jiro has a question.

"Okay, this is gonna seem weird, but... what year were you from?"

They've established there's some alternate dimensions and time travel bullshit happening.

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