Rhodos Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rhodosmods) wrote2030-07-28 11:09 am
rhodosmods) wrote2030-07-28 11:09 am
Entry tags:
Setting
SETTING
☞ Appearance
On days 1-20 of every month, Rhodos is a pleasant seaside tourist town. The weather tends to be sunny and clear, with rare thunderstorms in the summer and frequent storms in the winter. The town seems empty of all signs of life except for the player characters.
The buildings of the town are all medieval stone construction, but shops and restaurants have modern awnings and glass fronts. Everything is lit up and operational as if the owners just stepped away for a moment. Lights are on, and some of the larger and nicer shops even have the whirr of air conditioning. Food stands waft the aroma of freshly grilled kebabs, and a gelato cart is cold to the touch and the ice cream inside is frosty and delicious.
☞ Food, clothing, and other supplies
Any food or supplies you take are restocked when you look away, as if someone has just brought out a fresh tray of pastries, or replaced the spit of gyros meat. It isn't as if you never took anything, but more like the shopkeeper refilled the stock that was running low. If you stand and watch something that you have just emptied, it will remain emptied for as long as you keep staring at it, and the moment that you look away it is replenished.
There are plenty of food stalls and shops with ready-made meals, though the overwhelming majority of these are gyros stands, so your diet may get a bit boring if you rely on those alone. The sit-down restaurants have no servers and nothing is pre-cooked, but behind the kitchen doors the oven is hot and the food is chopped and sorted, so you can easily cook your own. If you scavenge food from the restaurants and shops, it will go bad at a normal rate in your cupboards, but the stuff in the shops and food stalls it is always fresh.
Similarly, it is easy to find a variety of shops that supply basic clothing and supplies, but all the shops in the main town are very small, rarely more than 200 sq ft, and there are far, far more tourist shops than practical stores. If you're looking for gift boxes of turkish delight, plastic keychains of greek temples, or t-shirts that say "I ❤️ Rhodos", the selection is vast. If you're looking for practical things you'll have to do some searching. There are two clothing boutiques that have a small selection of cute outfits beyond basic pants/skirts/shirts, but they're all unexceptional 90s fashion. You can easily acquire make-shift weapons like crowbars, hammers, and kitchen knives, but more serious weapons or specialty equipment can only be sourced through the regains mechanic.
☞ Technology
Televisions and radios can be turned on, but they provide mostly static. Occasionally you might imagine that you catch a glimpse of something in the television static. The radio is only little better — now and then you can hear scraps of some old folk songs, grainy and faint. All of the televisions are old cathode ray models. Aside from the network devices, all technology in town seems to be from the 1990s or earlier.
☞ Beyond the walls
Outside of the town walls is a thick mist. No matter what the weather is in town, the mist is a dense fog with barely three feet of visibility. You can see your own arms in front of you, but nothing beyond that. It is colder than the temperature in town, but it smells and feels like normal seaside mist. Eerie sounds can be heard in the mist, most frequently a sighing or sobbing noise. No matter how cleverly you try to keep yourself in a straight line, after a few minutes in the mist you find yourself back at the spot where you started. The town walls are high, and there are relatively few gates, but the mist is reliably outside every single gate and sits atop the edge of the walls, stretching up for at least twenty feet above the top of the walls.
There are a lot of towers in the town, and while many of those are still inaccessible locations, a determined person could still manage to climb up to a height that allows you to see over the city walls. The mist is like a solid thing that surrounds the town on all sides, fading to blue in the distance so that you can't quite tell where the horizon line is between mist and sky and whether there's any glimpse of sea to be found in the middle.
☞ Appearance
On days 21-27 of each month, a thick fog rolls into town. Unlike the mist around the city, the fog smells of smoke. Visibility is reduced to a mere ten or fifteen feet. There are still perceptible day and night cycles which seem feel like normal 24-hour cycles, and the time of year can still be felt: summer days are long and humid, winter days are short and tend to add a cold drizzle to the fog.
☞ Supplies
The electricity goes out, and shops are no longer replenished. Food may still be scavenged and any food stores you previously took will remain, but the food in shops and restaurants will slowly rot and may run out. Battery operated items will continue to work as long as the batteries still have a charge.
☞ Monsters
Monsters emerge in the fog and will pursue and attack player characters, but most of them are slower than characters and can be outrun. Please see the Bestiary for which monsters are currently active in the fog. Predominant among the monsters is always each character's personal Manifestation, the monster that represents their own sins and fears. You can usually outrun your own Manifestation and you can hide from it, but it will pursue you tirelessly until it loses track of you. Manifestations stalk the town day and night hunting characters, but they are intermittently active, so only 3-4 Manifestations may be in the town at once.
☞ Appearance
Day 28 through the end of the month, the entire town descends into the Nightmare World. Heavy darkness fills the city, and no stars are visible in the sky. A few lights glow despite the lack of electricity, but they only provide a sickly, red-tinted light. Streets are slick with something that looks like blood, and the stone walls in many places have been transformed into metal or grate. Through the grate, characters can catch glimpses of black metal hooks and gory, dripping meat that looks human in origin. Regardless of time of year, the temperature shifts to a sticky 81F/27C unless stated otherwise in the event. In the heat, the smell of blood is cloying, thick enough to coat your tongue.
☞ Monsters
Monsters move faster and are more frequent and more vicious. It's difficult to outrun them without being swarmed, so you may have better luck fighting the minor monsters.
☞ Food
There is no palatable food or water. Anything you have saved has rotted or changed unnaturally into what looks like rotting human flesh. Liquid has turned into blood or black water. The only mercy is that symptoms of hunger, thirst and fatigue stabilize after 24 hours and don't get any worse. Don't worry, it won't be the dehydration that kills you here.