( OPEN ) GAME START.

[monstermasher]

▶ WHO: Everyone.
▶ DATE: July 9th, 2015 (Day 1)
▶ WARNINGS: Blood, violence, general zombie horror.
▶ SUMMARY: You've met with a bad... however that line goes. Welcome to Earth.

GOOD MORNING!

---

Please try and ignore whatever it is that you just heard. It should only last for up to a minute... maybe.

It... it is morning, right?

There are no windows.

There's a light, but it's barely considered one. The compound runs on a solar generator, but that doesn't mean it has a lot of power. The light seems to be hanging from the ceiling, swinging precariously. That's when you might actually start to wake up, sit up, find the things that are familiar to you... and then some of the things that aren't. It'd be wise to explore the small room you're in before leaving through the steel door, but there's nobody around to tell you that.

Outside is a tightly knit compound, just as dark and metallic as the room. The hallway you're in houses dozens more doors identical to yours, and if you're unlucky there may be more people poking their heads out through them, just like you. There's a dull glowing sign that reads MEDICAL BAY but not all of you remember being hurt. Some of you may be just fine, apart from the memory of the sound you heard when waking up.

The Medical Bay is stocked with enough medicine to last a couple of months. There's almost everything that can be found in a hospital. Somebody was thinking ahead.

Outside of the Medical Bay are more doors, some are even locked—many aren't. There are living quarters, a food storage, a kitchen, some laboratories; even a room full of computers and nothing else, all with a screen asking for a password. There's only two doors out of the compound, a vehicle bay with what appear to be a few military jeeps and trucks, and the front doors. It's on the inside of the front doors that something is painted in bright red, flecked with what smell like blood:

DO NOT GO OUTSIDE WITHOUT A GUN AND WATER.
GUNSHOTS ATTRACT THEM.
HOLLOWS IS 1.3 MILES NORTH OF HERE.
GOOD LUCK.

And on the outside of the doors, if you choose to open them:

THE WORLD ENDED JULY 3RD, 2015.

Now... how long ago was that? And where is this place? Luckily for you, Hollows is a small town that can be raided. It hasn't been too long since the apocalypse—surely you'll be able to find something there. Batteries, food, weapons, maybe some people—and what you're guaranteed to find. Them, whatever that means.

Outside of the compound there's a fence with a single gate. Nothing can get past this unless you let them in for tea, so be careful. There's a shooting range and a large shed full of weapons and ammo, enough to last two months if you're careful. Guns, knives, anything that would be used by the military and police is hidden away in the shed. There are even a few hunting bows with arrows.

If you climb up the ladder to the top of the wall, there's enough room to walk along the top. There's definitely something moving in the distance, something you should definitely be worrying about. Maybe it's time to get a good look with a sniper rifle...?

Oh.

It's gone.

Maybe it was just a trick of the light. Regardless, it's impossible for everyone to stay in the compound forever. There are nefarious things at work! The choices are to go to Hollows, stick around, or go somewhere else. Really, the world is almost a blank slate. Maybe more of a used slate, but still yours to explore.

When the night comes, you should be hiding. The screamers, the ragers, whatever the hell they are, are running full tilt through the streets and across the landscape, running through anything in their way, ripping apart anything alive. If you don't make any noise, they won't notice you. Especially since they're stuck listening to each other. But if you get noticed by one, it won't be long until a horde forms... you might be able to outrun one for awhile, but they don't seem to let up on their breakneck pace. Maybe someone should have told you how to kill them.

OOC NOTES.

---

There will be zombies in Hollows. Whether you meet them on the way there is up to you. Apart from the undead and the animals (maybe somebody should let those poor creatures out of their houses) the town is completely deserted. In fact, the closest thing you can find to a human are the bodies of those who died without being bitten, and there's even few of those. You can find anything you'd find in a normal town here, and are free to loot and raid the houses and stores—the cops won't be coming, after all. The power is OFF apart from what you can find that is solar powered or still has a charge. If you're lucky and find another town while exploring the first few weeks, you might find an area that still has power—thank hydroelectricity.

Just keep in mind travel time... and travel expenses.

You have creative freedom over everything else. The world is open. The only stationary places are landmarks and cities—if you want to go to Texas and talk to the poor astronauts stranded up in space, it's there. (Might be a long trip, though...)

If your character can figure it out by geography before getting to Hollows, the compound is located a few hours from the west coast, in California.

The way to kill a zombie is blunt force to the head. The head doesn't need to be removed, but significant damage needs to be done to it. This does not include the throat—it needs to be a headshot.

There's also a glaring hint. The computers in the compound, asking for a password. It is impossible to hack at this time. There will be more on this later!

Finally, if your character is exploring outside of the compound (or extensively inside of it) there's a comment here for linking me the thread. You can also PM me! I'll be ducking in with what your character may or may not have found, via a response to the actual RP thread.

IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS please direct them here!

Comments

Catherine Halsey | Halo | OTA

[oplourgia]

[Catherine Halsey knows she's surrounded by enemies. Even Captain Lasky's courtesy will disappear if it becomes inconvenient, and then there'll be nothing standing between her and Palmer's short-sighted spite...nothing but Halsey's wits, that is. So much the worse for Palmer.

It's the awareness of being alone in hostile territory that causes her to lie still when she wakes, eyes closed as if in sleep while the atrocious music echoes in her ears. It's nothing she chose. The OSDT guards? Those sad excuses for SPARTANs infesting the ship?

No. Something is even more wrong than it was when she went to sleep--and she doesn't remember going to sleep. This isn't the hard cot of her cell, and the ever-present hum of the Infinity's systems is absent. Her eyes snap open and she sits bolt upright.

...Odd. This is no UNSC facility, nor the sleek Forerunner one she might expect to find after such a strange translocation. Pushing aside endless currently unanswerable questions, Halsey rises from the bed to search the small room top to bottom, turning up her data pad, a museum piece of a radio, and, inexplicably, a picture of Cortana. She doesn't need that reminder, but nonetheless tucks it into a pocket of her lab coat before venturing into the corridor.

It soon becomes clear she's in a building that's gone undisturbed for a good five centuries, at least if the wiring in the access panel she levers open is any indication. No way to tap into the computer system there...since there is no system. It explains why her data pad can't find any network to talk to, at least.]

Ridiculous.

[...Huffs the 60-something woman dressed like a Star Trek extra and crouching next to a maintenance panel, glaring at whatever lies within as though it's personally offended her.]

[kamikaze]

[Machinery. He loves machinery, and there is a menagerie of strange and weird new things in every inch of the building. Nux has already lost hours inspecting everything he can. When he sees another person who's entered this lovely afterlife, he perks up a little and approaches. But he's very quiet when he does it, as he walks slowly, carefully.

When he leans down behind the stranger, he says, with great curiosity:]

What are you looking at!

[His voice is not particularly loud, but given how he unintentionally snuck up on her and how silent the rest of the room is, it might be a little... unexpected.]

[oplourgia]

[Halsey jerks upright with an undignified yip she doesn't quite manage to suppress.]

I beg your pardon.

[Glaring. She has a really impressive glare.

She'll get around to scrutinizing his appearance in a moment.]

[kamikaze]

[This stranger does not look pleased. Stern, that's what she looks like, and Nux's expression falters. She begs pardon and Nux only kind-of knows what that is, ain't a phrase you heard too much back at the Citadel. So:]

Eh-- pardon?

[Yeah?]

[oplourgia]

[Wait, what?

Off-balance and unhappy about the fact, Halsey takes refuge in waspishness.]

Do you sneak up on everyone, or am I merely lucky?

[kamikaze]

[The sarcasm is utterly lost on him. He blinks, tries a perplexed little smile.]

I didn't sneak up on you!

[oplourgia]

[There is no satisfaction in being snippy to someone who doesn't realize that's what's happening, and Halsey deactivates her social autopilot, her frown turning more curious.]

Identify yourself.

[He's certainly not UNSC--small mercies--but she wouldn't be much safer around an Insurrectionist.]

[kamikaze]

[Simply:]

Nux.

[That's it. That's all he is. Now he's dying to know who she is, but he won't ask 'cause for some reason she seems very important. Higher-ranked than him. Superior, even in death. Something about her demands respect so he just shuts up.]

[oplourgia]

[Thirty years of running a spacefaring empire's shady science division does give a girl a commanding aura...not that Halsey wasn't plenty arrogant before that, mind you.]

Well, Nux, I don't suppose you know what's going on here.

[She rises to her feet, dusting at the knees of her pants. Her clothes easily shed the grime from the floor, and she looks quite out of place in her tailored lab coat and clean ONI civilian uniform.]

[kamikaze]

-- Oh, I do! We're in Valhalla!

[He can't stop the beam from spreading. Can't believe it! Except he can, because how else would he be in some strange new place right after the crash? No possible explanation except afterlife and that's synonymous with Valhalla.]

I thought you were one of the heroic slain... [Did she recently die too? Must've, why else would she not know where they were?]

[untodawn]

[ When John called meandering up and down the corridors a patrol it detached him from the idea of this all being invented busy work. Armed and moving he could do some; he could prevent another raid on the medical facilities, or even find someone with the technical acumen to answer questions he could not.

All in all, 'patrol' was a safe and distancing word from directionless abandon. John wasn't made to be useless, but he was built to keep moving. Luck would out, whether he subscribed to predestination or not he always managed to stumble where he was needed.

Here, he literally nearly tripped over where he would be needed most. ]

Dr. Halsey.

[ John shifted where he stood into parade rest. Arms held tight behind his back, feet firmly apart and weapon held securely down the length of his spine. Stock straight, and prepared to stay that way until told otherwise. Halsey was last seen during Operation: WHITE GLOVE and the deliberate destruction of CASTLE and SWORD base. He is relived she is alive, and yet readily accepts her presence as an inevitable

There was so much to tell and truth would out. ]

[oplourgia]

[Halsey tenses at hearing her name spoken by the voice of a dead man. Her head whips around, gaze automatically tracking up to where she knows the golden visor should be, her face etched with a naked shock that's deeply uncharacteristic--at least when it persists longer than it would take that lightning-quick mind of hers to govern her expression into something more dignified.]

John?

[She sounds like she's been punched in the gut, her voice a barely-there gasp.]

[untodawn]

[ I'm your greatest achievement and you detest me!

Those lost few nights were so, so angry. John can almost taste the burning ozone from frayed wires just as he could close his eyes and feel the heat from the remains of the Covenant Lich ship fall apart in flames around him on the floor of the Ivanoff Station hangar bay. She didn't pull the ship up even when he pleaded as nanolaminate hull plates torn in ribbons out from under his feet. The wasn't the last time it all just broke apart around him.

It's okay., John thinks even though no one is listening. Trying to placate dead echoes reverberating in the back of his mind buried too deep to unstick.

Since Halsey had whisked Kelly away to parts unknown with and John is none the wiser to her eventual return to the UNSC and arrest the last four years came back down on him all at once. The last traces of color were drawn out from her hair that sat light below the ears framing her pale face. John sees how the strongest woman he'd known all his life stands like she's lost weight; frailer but not weaker. He thinks she knows.

Then, John does something thirty years of training tells him not to. His shoulders buckle and he falls out of attention, taking one step into the room. Slouching his massive armored body to clear the door but not rising back up again when he enters. All the IIs had been crumbling in increments for years, and only now was it all catching up to him. ]

Ma'am.

[oplourgia]

[Questions die unasked as John does the SPARTAN equivalent of dropping to his knees, and Halsey's shock turns to alarm. She springs to her feet, and even at her full height, even with John slouching, she still barely comes up to his chest. In the moment, a slight old woman somehow seems to fill up more space in the room than a SPARTAN in MJOLNIR, and it frightens her in a way no threat of death ever has.

She does what few dare and fewer get away with, and lays a hand on the breastplate of his armor, the energy shielding in its idle configuration feeling slick beneath her fingers. From Halsey, only slightly more physically demonstrative than the SPARTANs themselves, it's a major gesture. She'd adjusted, unhappy but aware of the necessity, to the unavoidable reality that her SPARTANs could and would die, but until now she hadn't believed they could crack. Looking at John's unreadable visor for a long moment, she compiles a mental list of things that could conceivably break a SPARTAN, could break this SPARTAN, and it's both short and terrifying.]

John, what's wrong?

[untodawn]

[ It was all over, and even after making it across that finish line - John still didn't have an answer for Cortana. Which one of them was the machine would be a question that hung in the air. Echoing back and forth without anyone to confer with; without the voice in his head that saw every corner of his mind for the last five years. A psyche with a party of one suddenly felt unbearable lonely. There were maybe a thousand questions left hanging after seeing Halsey again after so many years, and yet he couldn't focus.

As if spurred by the thought both Halsey and Cortana would find his current state lacking in some way, John pulled himself back up. Even though brought up to full height he felt dwarfed by Halsey closing the distance between them; hand against his breastplate. Too much like a goodbye than a gesture of concern. He doesn't like it even as her hand lingers with the thought of removing it nowhere in his thoughts. Almost as if he wants to be a gangly fourteen year old again, letting Halsey help him put on his first helmet because he couldn't control his own strength to do it himself.

His helmet.

John feels washed out; the strength in him gone like he stood with his legs buried in a strong ocean current for hours where the constantly still hadn't left him muscles. Arms mechanical, he races his head and with a hiss of the hermetically sealed helmet coming off his shoulders he almost winces at the sudden sensation of a dead breeze across his pale face furrowed with lines. ]

She stayed behind.

[oplourgia]

[John of his own accord takes off his helmet in an unsecured location, and when she looks into those familiar eyes for the first time in years, Halsey's blood goes as cold as her enemies in ONI accuse her of being. Set deep against the pallor of his face, John's eyes are as blue as hers and always have been, but now the sharpness they also shared is gone. SPARTANs aren't the emotionless machines of UNSC propaganda, far from it--Halsey has seen those eyes fierce with determination, lit by joy and anger, clouded with confusion--but this is the only time they've ever been darkened by despair.

"She" can of course mean just one thing, and it explains why only Halsey and John are speaking. Her hand curls into a fist against John's chest, nails digging into her palm. It's anger, but not at him. Never at him. So much must have happened in the four years since he'd disappeared, so much she could have prevented or at least minimized if only she'd had the freedom to act instead of pacing the cage Parangosky had thrown her in to get the last word in their long-running argument.]

Cortana? She stayed behind where? The Forward Unto Dawn?

[untodawn]

[ The air was stale and John could smell trapped water under the poured concrete that gave the room a humid smell that reminded him of rainfall after it dried into the tarmac on an airfield. Only he didn't like this - it was stifling, more claustrophobic than when he had his helmet on. Blue eyes shadowed into the dull, gun metal grey collar of an empty rifle chamber dart around them and for the first in years John feels deeply unsettled to be out of armor. Outside where he could feel rather just read meteorological data off his HUD and how the sweat chills down the nape of his neck.

He absolutely hates this, but nothing is shown but for the shadows bruised under his eyes and the tight line he pulled his mouth in. ]

Have you heard of the Didact?

[ The response might seem glib to anyone else, but his gaze anchors on Halsey's; onto something familiar. He wants to know because even in his crumbling emotional state he would be reticent to waste her time with inessential details. ]

[oplourgia]

[Halsey knows more about the Forerunners than any other human and most of the Covenant, but instead of the acidic "of course" the question would have earned him at any other time, she just cocks her head and says...]

Yes.

[...encouraging John to continue without fearing that he's annoyed her. He wouldn't be prefacing like this if it weren't important.]

I strongly suspect he or a personality imprint of his was behind New Phoenix.

[She might be very much out of grace right now, but Halsey's mind remains as sharp as it ever was, and ONI can't keep her under house arrest on a station orbiting Earth without her being able to piece together a few things.]

[reginaprocacis]

[Enter Regina, walking down the corridor, magical fireball still in one hand. She doesn't pay especial attention to the technology -- it about matches the status of things in Storybrooke, so she isn't particularly thrown.

Stumbling about another (maybe) human being is both welcome and annoying to Regina, who has always preferred to go on her own. Still, in a place like this she needs to know who's an ally.

The woman's utterance amuses her when she catches them. It's enough to send a lopsided smirk Halsey's way.]

I feel we can agree on that.

[oplourgia]

[Halsey looks up, and her gaze flicks from quickly from Regina's face to the fireball. It's comfortably within the capabilities of the technology she's used to, and she reacts with no more than a raised eyebrow, her mind automatically designing the rough outlines of the system that would be necessary to charge and maintain a plasma ball in one hand without an explosion. Not terribly effective as a weapon, granted, but impressive from a psychological perspective, she suspects.]

Is that really necessary?

[It's not rhetorical. Halsey wants to know if there's something in the neighborhood that rates tossing around plasma charges.]

[reginaprocacis]

[Interesting. This woman seems unsurprised by her fireball. Someone from a land with magic, then.

Regina quirks an eyebrow.]

The light conditions here are terrible. This helps.

[oplourgia]

[A land with sufficiently advanced technology, anyway.]

It seems like overkill.

[Says the woman who designed humanity's most effective killing machines.

It's not a serious objection on her part, however, and Halsey rises from her fruitless scrutiny of the electrical junction, glancing down briefly to make sure her pants and the hem of her lab coat haven't picked up any dust or grime from the floor.]

You're not local, I assume.

[reginaprocacis]

Indeed I am not.

[No harm in admitting that. She considers the woman.]

And I would assume neither are you.

[oplourgia]

Hardly.

[If tone of voice could do damage, the building would be collapsing under the weight of her disdain.

Halsey looks Regina up and down once more, then offers a hand to shake. Congratulations, Regina, she has decided your existence is worth acknowledging.]

Dr. Catherine Halsey.

[reginaprocacis]

[Oh, the woman has attitude. Regina doesn't know if she's pleased or annoyed, to be honest. She suspects it's going to be largely the latter, but who knows. Certainly, she's hardly intimidated.

The outstretched hand makes her pause briefly before she takes it. Her best Mayor Mills smile glides on effortlessly.]

Regina Mills.