We Are Awakened With The Axe [Open to All]

[applesaucemod]

The city has been abandoned.

Its infrastructure has been slowly deteriorating for quite some time, now. Traffic has long since ground to a permanent halt, taxis and trucks rusting by the curbs or abandoned mid-intersection. Most of the ground-floor windows have been shattered. Electricity is spotty, if it can be found at all. The eerie silence is broken only by the wind, the calls of crows, or the gentle collapse of some structure or other. And, of course, the occasional screams.

The city has been abandoned, but it is not empty.

What caused the various outbreaks hardly matters. Viral infection, fungal infection, some new or ancient bacterium suddenly released into the general populace - who knows? What does matter is that the city has become home to thousands if zombies, some slow, some fast, some mindless, some retaining a savage kind of intelligence. And they are all so, so hungry.

There are weapons to be found or improvised, and places to hide if you're lucky enough to come across someplace well-fortified and otherwise empty. Others have clearly had the same idea, leaving hastily constructed barricades in some places. You might even take those as a blessing, if the conspicuous absence of the original builders doesn't bother you. They're probably living on a nice farm somewhere.

One thing is certain: if you don't want to succumb to whatever plagues have ravaged this place, you will have to fight for your survival.

[OOC: usual dream party rules apply; all are welcome to participate, and characters can remember or forget at the players' discretion. Also, usual zombie rules apply: if you get bitten, you'll be turned into the sort of zombie that bit you. Whether your characters deal with comically dim shamblers or the terrifying sprinty variety is up to you.

Finally, let's just go ahead and say tw: violence and gore for the post as a whole, because it's gonna get messy, folks.]

Comments

[eliotwaugh]

Eliot breaks off trying to remember the formula for transmuting steel--it keeps slipping out of his head in this damn dreamlike fuzz--at the sound of someone else. Someone not a zombie. Well that's a relief.

He turns sharply but keeps his makeshift weapon low. Eliot's startled at the girl's appearance, assuming she is a girl. She looks grey or blue in the dark, it's hard to tell but that definitely isn't a human skintone. And she's barefoot, what the hell? How did she even get here.

"It's not safe," he hisses, beckoning her over. "Keep your voice down, there could be more of them around." This is no time for pleasantries.

[phthalo]

"More of who," she says, drawing the words out skeptically.

He doesn't seem to recognize her. His expression - shocked, undeniably. So. Just some human. He probably has no idea what she is. He probably has no idea what a gem could do to him. Maybe that's what he's hiding from.

She thinks of the Homeworld gems, and shivers.

Well, fine. She lowers her voice in accordance to whatever silly human ritual this could be. "Who are you hiding from?" she asks testily.

[eliotwaugh]

"The zombies," Eliot huffs, looking past her out at the street in the hope that she wasn't followed. "Do they not have those in whatever world you come from?" They don't even have zombies in Eliot's own world, that's way too complex a magic. Okay theoretically you could reanimate a corpse but not for long and it certainly wouldn't be this kind of ridiculous pop culture flesh eating stereotype, and it doesn't even bear thinking about right now.

He sighs. "Okay they're super dangerous, even if some of them are slow, and, I don't know, maybe they got everyone else in the city but I need to find a way out, and if you want to stay alive you're probably going to need some shoes, to start with."

[phthalo]

Zombies. What does that even mean? He's talking like he has some conception of where she might have come from, but that's ridiculous. Humans wouldn't know about Homeworld, or any other worlds. All they know about is their little blot of blue, Earth.

Lapis wrinkles her nose at the human.

"I don't need those," she says, the air of obviously singing clearly in her tone. "I just need water."

He would know where water is, wouldn't he? The geography of this planet is mostly water, and humans should know the general idea of where things are on their homeworld. That just makes sense.

[eliotwaugh]

Okay...She seems to know what she's doing, Eliot can say that much.
"Water, huh? Well I guess with all the blue, it makes sense..." He waves his free hand at her hair and her dress and her general everything. Maybe she's some sort of naiad? Stranger things have happened.

Eliot looks around at the buildings, the rubble, the general air of decay. He frowns. "Well it looks like the city's been like this for a while, I thought it was totally abandoned before you showed up, I haven't seen another...alive person, so, I'd guess the water mains are shut off, that'll do you no good. The river is...hm." Eliot's gotten turned around, none of the familiar landmarks seem to be present in this dream, and he's had other things on his mind, like surviving. "The east river would be closest but I think it was pretty teeming with zombies, I don't know. I could...there's one thing I could try, I can't guarantee it'll work here but if you really need water I could try to make some."

[phthalo]

"Make...water?" She looks at him oddly. "But you're a human." She couldn't care less what he seems to think it would be for; her appearance must have made it seem obvious. It's subtly alarming that he's choosing not to be alarmed, as presumably humans aren't terribly familiar with gems.

Though Lapis supposes, briefly, that she wouldn't know. She doesn't spend much time contemplating humans, or their miserable planet.

Still no explanation as to what 'zombies' might be, or why she should be afraid of them. They must not be people. Or...alive?

"You still haven't said what those are," she says, looking at him obliquely. Nothing outside of the qualifier of 'dangerous' which, if she's honest about it, is not much of a qualifier at all. Most things are dangerous. Including her.