WEEK SEVEN: MINGLE

[guestservices]

W̴͍̎E̴̝̊E̸͚͝K̸͕̿ SEVEN: MINGLE

(18 ḡ̴̻u̷͌͜ê̴̯s̶̢͑t̵̻͝s̴̡̐ ̴c̴h̴e̶c̴k̷e̶d̸ ̶i̴n̴)

Good morning, esteemed guests.

Ha. Hahaha.

As you awaken on Monday, you’ll find that things are just as they were the night before. The kitchen will serve piping hot breakfast during the morning hours, the pool’s been stocked with fresh towels and the gardens are open for anyone who wishes to spend some time among nature. However, should you explore a bit, you’ll find that a few new changes have been made to the hotel itself.

Your room service menus are still on your desks if you wish to browse before leaving for the day.

The front door no longer spins endlessly, for one thing. Should you make an attempt to exit the hotel, you will find yourself entering a new location.

In addition, should you enter the elevator you will find...nothing? There are no new buttons. However, if you look on the Mezzanine you will find a few new areas to peruse. These rooms are still locked from the outside, but perhaps you may ask politely and be granted access. In addition, as you explore the hotel you will find that you have now lost access to certain rooms. How odd.

The portraits from the week before continue to hang in various parts of the hallways and in the rooms themselves, continuing to depict innocuous scenes. Like before, if you linger just a touch too long, you'll soon find that you and whomever you're with will be lost in a swirl of shadows and pulled directly into the portrait itself. You will have to find your way out just like before.

Strangely, however, you no longer have that connection with the person you are with. You're no longer in sync, unable to feel their thoughts or movement or really even have to cooperate. Instead, regardless of where you are in the hotel whether it's inside a portrait, a door, or even your own room, you will begin to experience a feeling of numbness. Perhaps it starts in your body, the inability to feel pain or the touch of someone's hand. Maybe it infiltrates your emotions, quieting everything you've been feeling lately to an even, neutral stance. After a while, you may become so numb you feel yourself fading away entirely, a limb slowly being erased, but you can quickly snap back if someone addresses you.

Try to keep yourselves grounded, everyone.

Finally, for those of you with a spare ticket in your pocket, feel free to visit the Starlight Gift Shop, stocked with new items for this week.

N̸A̵V̴I̶G̶A̶T̴I̴O̸N̷.̷

█ LOCATIONS █ STATUSES █ PROFILES █ AUDIENCES
█ REPORTING █ PRIVATE CONVOS █ MURDER

Comments

[feminitis]

Thank you. At the first opportunity, then, once everyone's safe.

[everyone: get to safety
sei: dies stupidly trying to stab the nightman, probably]

[skyagain]

There an actual opportunity, I'll be right there with you.

[ what he wouldn't do to stab ]

[feminitis]

They do say there's safety in numbers!

[bruh]

[skyagain]

We can make it a party.

[feminitis]

I'd enjoy that.

[skyagain]

We'll take turns.

[feminitis]

That seems fair!

[can you please stop discussing how you want to stab the nightman in front of god and everyone]

[skyagain]

[ no. well, he will now that they've agreed to share ]

You gonna be alright?

[feminitis]

...ahaha, well. It should probably be fine. We'll have to make ourselves scarce eventually - whatever the dead are doing to draw the Nightman's attention right now will surely only last for so long.

For now, though, I think we have a little time we can spend with you to sort out what you all are planning to do about checking out.

[skyagain]

... That's kind of been our ongoing question this whole time.

[ what the fuck do they do, help, etc? ]

[feminitis]

[she nods]

...loath as I am to say it, the best way to ensure your safety is to fulfill the contract. That means checking out according to the terms of it - as long as you do that much, even the Nightman can't argue with it, no matter how much he wants to.

The question is how, right?

[skyagain]

Outside of having to be in the lobby for the deadline, we don't have a lot to go off of, yeah.

[feminitis]

You guys have the easy job - mostly. You're already in the hotel, and it can't be impossible for you to get into the lobby, so he can't just seal it off. An impossible contract would be voided.

The problem is it's written with the expectation that once you've died, there's no way back. The bit about "alive, in the same physical form" or however it was phrased covers that, but it didn't say that once you've died, that's it. He just didn't build a way back himself, so he didn't think to be that thorough in the way it was phrased.

How you guys manage it is something you all have to figure out, but... the hotel's not exactly stable. He's provided it with some autonomy so he doesn't have to be micromanaging everything, and that means glitches. Some of the glitches have worked in our favor, and some have worked against us - uncovering where we hid the other guys was an example of that... But I think you all can come up with some way that works for you, too.

[skyagain]

[ he nods, because most of that is what he expected, but; ]

There any chance we find a way and they end up coming back like that?

[ points at ghost hope and claude ]

[feminitis]

...I hope not. That's the result of items the Nightman wanted in the shop; seeing how it turned out, I can only conclude that he was toying with you all. I was hoping it would be a legitimate revival and that the intent was to intensify tensions between everyone by only offering a very limited chance to come back, but...

[she shakes her head.]

He hasn't planned for what you're attempting to do. As I understand it, they were solid enough where they were kept before; it's the act of "summoning" them from a distance that has resulted in that state. So if there was some way to bridge the gap between where you all are solid and where they are, that might work...

[skyagain]

... So hopefully we find a way to make it work, and it'll fix things for those guys too.

[feminitis]

[she nods]

...you're a stubborn, creative group of people, though. This hotel is... the Nightman has increased the danger in the hopes that more of you will die and be kept from the lobby - but that will open up more opportunities for you to take advantage of the glitches.

[skyagain]

... I don't know about creative, but stubborn sounds right. If we can force our way to make the glitches work for us, then it'll happen.

[feminitis]

You all had some pretty... creative explanations for things you found at the trials.

[skyagain]

Half the time it was cannibalism.

[feminitis]

[shudders]

I hate how often that came up! Why were there so many cannibals where we all were before this?! Why was that even a common enough thing to make people think that's what it was if we couldn't find the bodies right away? Argh!

[skyagain]

I don't know. No one ate people in the Realm.

[ it was a normal game with only fun dismemberment ]

[feminitis]

I really hate that that's the sort of thing that I can say "you're so lucky" about. You should not need luck to not have to put up with cannibals when you're already in a terrible situation where you're being forced to kill each other for ridiculous reasons.

[skyagain]

... Guessing that means you guys had one too?

[feminitis]

Unfortunately.

[gazes into the middle distance as she remembers hannibal lecter]