STAY WITH THE GROUP DAMNIT ...oh. you already got lost. whelp. [open exploration log]

[saveournpcs]

Date: 18th-24th of August
Characters: Open!

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Like every year, there are tours of the tunnels under the cliffs. They are free of charge, but you need to sign up, as group sizes may not exceed twenty persons and only three tours per day are available. While that limits the number of people who can go down, there are waiting lists, and sometimes certain times and dates don't fill up because they're mid-week and one might be able to squeeze in at the last moment.

Before the groups enter the tunnels, the guides give a stern speech about staying with the group and the dangers of not doing so. They'll also hand out helmets and flashlights and explain that there is no phone signal down there, that the floor may be slippery, that the tunnels are in very varying condition and that sometimes cave-ins might lead to steep drops.

And then they go in.


[OOCly this logs works as follows:

• Characters who enter the tunnels will be given information about their tunnel surroundings through brief mod tags.
  
• If they manage to lose their group (accidentally or by choice) we'll rng fun and interesting trouble that they may run into. But you can of course also just follow with a guided tour and get out safely on the other end - some interesting things might still cross their way.]

Comments

[spaghettimonster]

Ohh, he had forgotten this part. At the time he'd been so busy panicking about the fact that he wasn't panicking, wondering if he'd suddenly awakened memories of some ancient incarnation caveman, that he'd hardly noticed when the lights went out and people marveled at the shapes their minds made to fill the darkness.

Russell tucks his phone away again, complies with putting out the light, and leans back on his heels as he looks around them.

[blueskying]

Ah. Yep, here we go. Sky pushes his prosthetic hand into a pocket. He'd strapped a watch to it and the watch has tiny glowing elements, enough to detract from the darkness. Their route was too convoluted for the sun to reach where they are now, so the only light is what they carry with them.

Normally, in the cave tours he's been on, he thinks about how bewildering it is when there's no difference between eyes closed and eyes open, when you want to touch your face just to check, and the phantom not-image of your own hand which your brain supplies. Now, instead, it's easier to perceive the people in the group. Sky listens to them. There are some insects here too, he's suddenly sure, wandering in from entrances and living on bat droppings and not a lot else.

[saveournpcs]

There also is a bat or two, and... something else.

It is very diffuse, but in the darkness, Sky can feel a faint presence, distant, close and far away at once, of indistinct size but feeling somehow much more encompassing than the humans around, the insects, or any other living being that he can narrow down.

[spaghettimonster]

Occasionally interrupting the sounds of cave silence are the more immediate sounds of life, like nervous shufflings from the humans. There's nothing familiar about this darkness, between the last trip and the not-so-foreign memories, and Russell finds himself shaken to the bone by how he can't see anything down here.

Oh, his mind supplies a blob around where his arm feels, guessing from experience where it's at. But when he moves his hands in front of his face, the brain blobs just can't keep up with the exact shifting of his fingers.

It's enough that one hand keeps to the comforting feeling of the phone in his pocket, the knowledge - fading into mere hope, the longer this darkness lasts - that he could pull it out and banish the dark at any moment.

[blueskying]

Well. That's new. Is it new? It's somehow... almost... Trying to focus on it is at once comforting and disturbing. Years ago he'd smoked weed and watched Contact and laid back to the happy, enveloping thought of being a child of the stars, one part of a fantastic vast whole. The sense of that, in a sober form, is part of why all his life he's been attached to spirituality.

This is like that, but it's not, all the same. The hairs on his arms and the back of his neck bristle and stand, and he feels his breath and pulse quickening with something between apprehension and excitement, the darkness and the tour and the others here with him falling clear out of his mind.

Sky feels somehow that he should know what to do, but all he can think of is to bow his head and listen.