That was the title of a thread I was using in a game. It'll work. I'm going to need your character sheets and let's go. I've got the world.
So, you're sitting at home, talking on your new "Scriff Inside" telephone, and a bolt of freak heat lightning hits the outside telephone wires. You're electrocuted and black out. When you awaken, you're laying on your back on cracked, dirty pavement. Looking around, you're in the middle of a city. Downtown. Plants are overgrowing the ground, the windows in the skyscrapers are busted for the most part. It looks like it hasn't seen maintenance for years. Maybe decades.
Gathering your gear, you feel a few other scriff senses off in the distance. One of them is moving rather slowly.
This is a modification of a story I've been trying to write for almost 20 years.
(Doing Therapy)
I have no idea where I am or what in the world this pulling sensation I have is, but I giggle insanely to myself as I think "How long was I asleep for?" Get my things together, then go towards this pulling sensation. Light a cigarette. (18 left.) If there are no people around, I want to look for a business on my way; if I were to see a guns and ammo store, or a hunting supply store, those would be the first choices (cause right now I'm feeling paranoid as (expletive)), corner deli or supermarket or other place that sells cigarettes would also be nice, and a bank would be good too.
I need to correct. I thought you felt scriff in other verser's gear as well as the verser. You only feel a single scriff sense, that one which is moving.
I still need your character sheet, BTW
The city is decaying, but there is no indication of anything which happened. It just looks like it's not been maintained. So you're heading towards the other scriff sense? There are no other people around at all as far as you can tell.
My character sheet is on the first page of the thread "boredom", it was made a month ago at the outside and not enough has changed since then that I'd say I'm significantly different.
Yes, heading for the one pulling feeling; just for a lack of options. I'm looking for a place that carries (or, rather, did carry) cigarettes or weapons.
I'm going to place on you the same restriction as I placed on Glantri. Wait an hour after I reply before replying yourself.
You find a gas station that has signs advertising cigarettes. Going inside, the place is more or less untouched. There's a thick layer of dust on everything, cobwebs in the corners, but other than that, it might as well be open for business. Nothing disturbed. There's a large selection of cigarettes and no one to stop you. Everything in the store is as it would be if people were running around.
Well, I'll grab a couple bags and fill them with cartons of newports and other mentholated cigarettes, then look around in here for weaponry or items that could qualify; even places that don't specialize in weaponry will often have dangerous items, knives or axes or heavy/sharp non-power tools. I'll also take (of these things your roll or decision says I can have) all the cans of food thickener, a (1 bottle of) liquid plumber, a few lighters (of which at least one will hopefully be "windproof" with a decent size flame), and if they've got bags that aren't plastic or some other container thing to make my life a bit easier (like a shopping cart!) that will certainly help. Once I've got what I came for, spark up, ((play some badass muzak)) and head back outside.
My assumption of course leans towards a gas station with more than just cigarettes; failing that I'm looking for a gas can so I can at least take some gas with me, which I will try to get anyway. In the poor case still looking for some kind of storefront to round out my repertoire.
I've seen the movie 28 days later, and I don't intend to be caught with my pants down in case the zombies come out to play. ((Yes these are my IC thoughts, but what would you be thinking? =P))
GE roll 20
What is food thickener?
Of the items you mentioned, all you find are the lighters, but there's a lot of them. The bags too, of course. Nothing else you mentioned. This seems to be a gas, candy, pop and cigarettes kind of store.
GE roll on weapons 14
Heading towards the pulling feeling, you start to notice piles of clothing on the ground. Shoes, socks, pants, skirts, tops, laying in piles as though the people wearing them had vanished into thin air. There are stalled cars all over the road. These too have plies of clothing sitting in the driver's seat and elsewhere, where passengers had been. You see a police cruiser, stalled in the road. The shotgun is still locked in its place, and the officer's uniform is propped up at the wheel, as if he had disappeared. The keys are in the ignition, and the car is turned on and in drive. One of the keys will unlock the shotgun. The officer's gun belt is in place. A 38 caliber revolver, 2 sets of reloads, a can of mace, and a nightstick can be had. Checking the glove box, you also find a box of 25 shotgun shells.
(Doing Therapy)
Turned on and in drive?! As in... the engine is running and the battery is not dead?! This makes absolutely no sense judging by the rest of my encounters in the world, the staleness of my cigarettes, the dust and general disrepair of the world...
Anyway, I need this shotgun more than the car does, so I'll be taking that. If he has a bulletproof vest I'll be putting that on. Revolver, check, bullets, check, if he has some kind of backpack satchel or bag that's check too, shells check. Take the nightstick and mace too.
Locked and loaded, light another smoke, look around, and walk looking for a supermarket.
Turned on and in drive?! As in... the engine is running and the battery is not dead?! This makes absolutely no sense judging by the rest of my encounters in the world, the staleness of my cigarettes, the dust and general disrepair of the world...
No, I meant the key is in the on position, and the car's gear shift is in drive. It looks like the officer was on patrol and vanished. The car just coasted to a stop.
GE roll 18
No bulletproof vest, but you do find a duffel bag with an emergency first-aid kit inside.
GE roll 19
No supermarkets as far as you can see. There are small convenience store type markets here and there, but no supermarket. Whilst walking, you see more plies of clothing. It's starting to approach dusk. Still heading towards the scriff sense, you see in the sky, in that direction, three spotlights come on. They are moving. Two in a figure 8 pattern, and the middle in a circle. After a few minutes of looking at this, you realize that what you're looking at is a huge S-O-S written in the sky by the spotlights.
I'm going into a building, finding a room with only one entrance and no windows, preferably with a good strong door, a lock, a clock, and a deadbolt, and sitting down facing the door with my shotgun poised on it and the handgun out in front of me. I'd rather not see what's going on here at night and if it's something nasty I'd rather be some place I can defend myself. I'm too wired from nerves to sleep.
(bump)
Whatever it was that overwhelmed the entire population of a city probably won't be stopped by a heavy door, deadbolt and a shotgun, but so be it.
You go inside an office building and find a room like what you're looking for. The desks are exactly as they were. Clothes sitting at the desks. No electricity. Do you have a flashlight? Lighters, so you can see.
Stamina check 15
So you're sitting there in a chair with the shotgun pointed at the door, determined to stay awake, but after a few hours, a combination of lack of food and utter boredom makes you pass out.
You awaken hours later, apparently nothing has happened in the night.
Oh well, fell asleep. At least I've survived the night. I'm going to head towards where I saw the searchlights the night before.
You head outside. It's daytime.
Stalled cars, unmaintained buildings, piles of occupant-less clothes. After half a day, you come across a residential district. Mansions. Huge houses. Probably cost more than most folks make in their lifetimes. The grass is overgrown in these yards. (Like a yard of grass in the yard.) Then you come to one. The grass is trimmed, and there are three spotlights in the street right in front of the house. This is where the errant scriff sense seems to be coming from.
(Doing Therapy)
((I still have no idea what scriff is or what versing is or any clue of the fact that where I am is mostly irrelevant, right?))
I'll go up to the door and knock on it.
((I still have no idea what scriff is or what versing is or any clue of the fact that where I am is mostly irrelevant, right?))
What do I call it if not a scriff sense, then?
You knock on the door. From inside you hear someone yell "What the hell?????" then crashing, knocking around, and then the door flies open. A man is standing before you. His eyes fix on you.
"Oh my God!!!! Where, where, where did you come from???? I haven't seen anyone since that accident. That was, how long ago was that? Twenty years? Thirty years? I've lost count."
The man hardly looks old enough to have been alive that long, barely into his twenties from the look of him.
I look down at myself, thinking, "Really? Do you really think somehow I could have been a four year old or younger, have survived this long here, and look like I do?"
But that's not what I say. I say, "I was talking on my new phone and it exploded, and I was knocked unconscious by the blow. I woke up on the street and this place doesn't look like anywhere I've ever heard of. Can you tell me where I am?"
At this point, I finally know that this isn't some complex dream. If it was, this guy would have known who I was right away, and I wouldn't have thought it strange that I knew him, too.
"I was talking on my new phone and it exploded, and I was knocked unconscious by the blow. I woke up on the street and this place doesn't look like anywhere I've ever heard of. Can you tell me where I am?"
"A verser. You're a verser. That exact same thing happened to me. Phone exploded, and I woke up on this world with orange grass. There was a guy there. What was his name? The Architect? He taught me some ESP tricks. How to move stuff with my mind. He taught me how to teleport. I got pretty good at teleporting, then I tried it and ended up here. Don't know how I teleported myself here. Then I tried teleporting again when I got here. I did it to get to work and stuff. Then one day I tried to teleport to work and nothing happened. So I thought. When I went to work, everyone was gone. Everyone everywhere was gone. Just gone. Like the way you see it. It's been like this ever since. I don't teleport anymore. I think I may have caused this."
He botched on teleporting and teleported everyone on the planet into outer space. Although he doesn't know that. He being in the eye of the storm wasn't affected.
"Come inside if you want to. I haven't seen anyone in so long."
Yeah, I figured ooc. IC I'm highly confused.
"Uh, sure, I'll come in. A what? Verser? What exactly does that mean?"
((You wanted to know what a scriff sense feels like. It feels like the feeling when you have parked your car in a parking lot or garage and don't remember exactly where it is, or put down your keys somewhere, and you aren't exactly sure where, but have a general notion of what direction. With scriff it's a little different, because the vectors stay the same if the object or person is unmoving, and you can't very well be wrong, so I sometimes describe it also as something of a vague mental pulling sensation.))
"Uh, sure, I'll come in. A what? Verser? What exactly does that mean?"
"I'm not sure. The Architect, he said something about dying and jumping to another universe or something. You got infected with this stuff. What did he call it? Scruff? Scridd? Scriff? I don't remember. All I do know is you're the first person I've seen in a very long time. You felt something pulling you this way didn't you? I felt that yesterday. I thought I was dreaming. Another thing. You don't age. I was 21 when I got here, and I'm still 21. I should be collecting Social Security by now."
The inside of the house is huge and luxurious. Expensive, comfortable looking furniture. There's a radio transmitter and receiver leading to an antenna in the backyard.
"I've been broadcasting nonstop on every AM and FM radio channel for years. If there's anyone left out there, I want to find them. Same with those spotlights. They broadcast SOSOSOSOSOSOSOSOSOSOSOSOS all night long for all the world to see."
The story I tried to write was I wake up one morning and I'm the only person on the planet. This is that story, modified. In my story, no explanation.
I'm pretty confused, but I've got the beginnings on an idea. "I've really got very little idea what you're talking about; do you mind if I smoke here?" If he does, I'll step outside; I would guess he's following me. "Alright, so we don't age? At some point in the next several hundred years, the buildings are going to collapse, and before that all the books will be destroyed by mold. Before the books are all made worthless, we've got to read as much as we can about subjects pertinent to survival without reliance on others. We'll need to gather everything we may need to make a sustainable farm and defend ourselves and try to survive as long as we can; renewable resources are a must. We might have to consider moving somewhere closer to fresh water, because the plumbing won't last for as long as we're alive. I'm sorry; I was assuming you'll be coming with me, but you can always stay here...eventually, the preserved, canned food will not be safe for consumption, and twinkies and pickles won't be enough to keep you alive forever."
"Yeah, sure, smoke. I haven't seen anyone in so long, that's the least of my worries. As far as feeding yourself and power. I'm way ahead of you."
He leads you through the house to the backyard. The backyard goes on for acres. There's windmills set up to generate electricity, and beyond the yard is a huge forest.
"Great hunting ground. People are gone. Animals are still here. There's a river running in the woods. The windmills also pump water to the house from there. All the comforts of home, except you gotta take cold showers. The water heater uses too much power."
"Wow... that's fine, though, I usually take cold showers anyway. Electricity is good, but we'll still have to farm for vegetables and fruits; and hunting is well and good, but we may wish to have domestic animals to fall back on in case our hunting doesn't turn up anything.
"Have you looted all the gun stores? Hunting will be best if we don't have to worry about ammunitions; we should at least get books related to making such things, so that if we ever run out we have the knowledge base to make more."
"There's all kinds of wild fruits and edible plants in the woods. It's a veritable Garden of Eden out there. How do you think I made it this long on my own?"
"That's excellent, we can make a real garden out there from what's already there; hopefully we don't hit any serious natural disasters. As for ammunition, eventually we're bound to run out of gunpowder, so we'd better learn to make it.
"I'm thinking along the lines of thousands of years; you're clearly an accomplished electrician to have set up this system. Are you also a plumber and an architect? Eventually the house will fall into disrepair, and if something comes up that we don't know how to deal with, our place to stay may be compromised."
"I was thinking I'd just build a log cabin when the house fell down."
There's a documentary called "Life after people" which is exactly this scenario. What happens when people are extinct? I'm gonna have to get it again and watch it.
Seen it. Very sucky how quickly everything goes to pot.
"Thinking you'll build a log cabin and having read a book on how to do it are very different things. My vote is that we go to the library or a big bookstore and run them for everything worth running, stop by a guns and ammo store and loot everything there, and bring it all back here and commence to reading."
"You know what? You just made me think of something. There's an army base a couple miles from here. I never thought to loot that place, in all the time since this happened. You wanna check it out?"
That could be said OOC as well...
(Doing Therapy)
"Sounds good. Let's get ourselves down there."
(psst... you ignore me...)
Sorry.
He takes you outside to the garage. It's a spacious 6 car garage. Inside are 2 sports cars, 2 off-road 4X4 trucks and several motorcycles.
He jumps into one of the sports cars. It's a Corvette, candy apple red, nice interior.
"One nice thing about no one around is you can get any car you want."
Whilst driving to the army base.
"You gotta keep your eyes open. All of the animals escaped from the zoo. There's Lions and Tigers and Bears (oh my!!!) running loose all over the place."
You get to an army base. It's huge easily a couple of acres, surrounded by a high chain link fence. There are four openings.
"Your guess is as good as mine where to start."
I'm waiting for "Life After People" on DVD. Posts will come more regularly after I watch that again.
(Doing Therapy)
You're making me wait for something that may never never apply to the game? =P
We'll go ahead in, run through the place, fill up on weapons, I'll get that bulletproof vest I wanted, as well as a nice, big, nasty looking knife, and we'll take a non-artillery military vehicle, just so that we can take more stuff back with us.
Did you know that Life After People was a television series as well as a documentary film? It shows how different specific cities would fare without people. Really interesting.
The parking lot is overgrown with plants. The fence is rusty. There's a lot of cars all sitting on four flat tires. He pulls up to a gate and drives in.
Did I say you were driving a sports car? I meant one of the pickup trucks.
GE roll 14
You find windows that are busted. All of the doors seem to be locked.
"Do you want to go in first or should I?"
"You should take point; you're a better shot, I'll wager. I'll watch our backs."
"Do you see any guns on me?"
Indeed, he isn't carrying any.
Not all of my characters are lunatic gun nuts.
He climbs in through the window into an office. A desk, chair, file cabinets.
"Not now, but sometime, we should look through these file cabinets. I bet there's all kinds of government secrets to be found."
I DO have guns, both the shotgun and revolver, so I hand him the revolver. "I'll loan you this one until we're done here. There could be wild animals that decided this might make a good home; dogs, in particular, would be the thought."
We're gonna turn the place upside down looking for decent weaponry and armor as previously stated.
Gunpowder would be nice to bring, too.
Guess we aren't taking any military issue vehicles after all, unless there are any that don't have flat tires, ie ones kept indoors or some such. Probably won't start, anyway.
"I don't go out very much, unless I need food."
He climbs in the window. You follow him. It's an office. Going down the hallway, you find other offices. Occasionally a rat scurries past you.
GE 20
You spend an hour searching. It appears that this building is completely made up of offices. You'll have to go to a different building to find anything of value.
Well, drat. "Not even as much as a flashlight."
We'll head on over to one of the other buildings. Hopefully we'll find better luck there.
Sorry I've not responded lately.
Going back outside, the next building is warehouse looking.
"There's gotta be something in there."
Going to the building, the doors are locked. Looking in through a window, you see a tank, bigger than life, staring you in the face.
"Oh we GOTTA get in there!!!!"
The warehouse door, they're what, wooden? Metal? What kind of lock is on the door, is it like a masterlock with a pin preventing a gate from being lifted or an electronic lock preventing a gate from being opened or just a plain... regular... old... boring lock in a wooden door requiring a key that just needs to be blasted away by a point blank shotgun blast.