theafflicted | 3.0 - week three

3.0 - week three

WEEK THREE

Last night might have been exhausting for any number of reasons - maybe it was the emotional

toll of dealing with those ghosts, or maybe you stayed up too late after watching Jim Shrok. Who knows, but Saturday is over, even if some of you haven’t quite left it behind and half spirits that are still hanging on, tethered to you and weighing you down…

But that’s not going to stop a new week from starting. There’s no breaks in an eight week course.

There’s very little fanfare to the start of your third week of the course, though it does seem like the fog has lifted even more. It’s a bit more of a trek down the abandoned streets of Estelline, but surely a mile is walkable? Or you could grab a bike or try to hotwire one of those cars in the mall parking lot… Whatever you plan to do this week is up to you. All you know is you've got some new locations to explore.

As always, Florence and Lorelei are available.

SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY

TASK LIST

( OOC Note: Luci, Mutsu, and Mae will each receive a small roomba! Congrats on the successful egg drop. It's a tiny little friend that cleans extra well, though this also means its trash compartment is a little smaller so it'll need to be cleaned more often. )

FULL NAV

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ you know, this is fine? sabo will muse quietly to himself about how mutsu is pointing t-rex costumes and calling it a "lizard". he's not entirely aware of the costume that he got from the gacha either but one thing at a time. ]

I'm not sure if you should call it a "lizard".

Guess it's pretty big for a lizard...

(Tap, tap, taps his chin and thinks...)

Maybe something like a dragon?

(恐竜 (Kyoryuu)....... A fearsome dragon.)

[ oh. there's irony here with the dragon reference but sabo won't point it out and instead just chuckle some more. ]

I'm pretty familiar to a fair number of different kind of dragons but I'm not sure if I've seen one like that. Dragons tend to be a bit more majestic than that, wouldn't you think?

[ does mutsu really not know what a t-rex is...or a dinosaur?? ]

Maybe ya just haven't seen enough dragons.

(I DO NOT THINK HE KNOWS WHAT A DINOSAUR IS, OKAY.)

Sometimes dragons are just normal guys like you and me.

[ i'm in tears but this is also fine because sabo has no idea if mutsu is doing this on purpose or not but he's going to let out a good laugh. he'll raise a hand up to do the whole "nya" thing except for "nya" its... rawr? or.... ""rawr"" ]

You're right. You certainly have a point there.

[ he shouldn't play along but he is. ]

So, if this is a dragon, what would you call it?

(Sometimes you are just very good at getting people to the point you don't even realize how good you are....)

Ah... let's see. It's pretty big and it's got a real big head and li'l arms. It's kinda weird, right?

(Thinking.)

Kaijuu.

(A strange beast.........)

Kaijuu.

[ sabo's going to go real quiet about that as he stares at the t-rex and mulls over the word. i hate how one piece world has actual japanese words mixed in with its other one piece langauge?? closes eyes but either way. ]

I suppose...you're not wrong. [ he'll tilt his head to one side then to the other. ] Maybe something like King Kaijuu? It's one of the larger skeletons in here.

(Kaijuu!!!)

King Kaijuu, then! (He nods!! Yes, they can work with this,) The most fearsome dragon in this collection!

Wonder what else is around here... there're a bunch of other creatures.

[ who needs to be named the lizard king when you can be the kaijuu king, amiright?? either way, sabo is going to laugh it up. sorry anyone who is here hoping he would correct mutsu but he is too amused to not quite frankly.

that also said: he apologizes to anyone who he has offended. ]

There sure is a lot here. Much more than we saw on Saturday—if this is even the same place.

[ which is something that he has been wondering. is this the same place as where they had their lesson??? though, where to first chief? sabo's fine with letting mutsu drive this bus. ]

(No one ever corrects Mutsu and no one ever should. Let him be wrong but right.)

I'm pretty sure it's the same place but... maybe this world's "alive" and can change.

(It wouldn't be his first time running into a place like this. Hm. Interesting.)

Museums're s'posed to be places for learning though so why don't we check it out? Maybe we'll learn something about this world.

[ What part of the third floor are they looking at, or what are they looking for? ]

I don't recall seeing a third floor on Saturday but, well, I was sort of disposed of after a certain point of time.

[ frowns. ]

So, if there are differences, it'll be good to note them should that happen again.

[ well, i guess we can start with dioramas of the worlds. do they look like earth™ or do they look like something different than that? how many moons do we have orbiting? he's just getting an idea of what kind "assumptions" we're dealing with here.

(let it also be known that if it's like earth™ then he won't understand it bc the earth of one piece looks very different. :pensive:)

though, he'll probably move on to see if there are any signs that indicate for areas that are restricted. you know, "employees only" and all of that. ]

The last place I visited before here was a world that could change how it looked. Even though it was my hometown, the streets and everything'd change depending on if things were ready or not.

(Sabo chan check out the dioramas! He's going to check out some of the displays/descriptions with his tablet to see what can be translated? )

[There's just one moon, and also just one sun while we're at it. Totally normal number of celestial bodies! Unless One Piece has more suns and moons than I thought...

The dioramas seem to be scenes of different biomes throughout different times in what you could assume are "ancient" history, with recreations of dinosaurs walking around, humans hunting large beasts, so on and so forth. Nothing too wild in the actual environments of the dioramas - everything seems to have normal Earth weather or environments, no weird mushroom forests or whatever, but there is a map posted as a centerpiece to all the dioramas, with "Our World Throughout Time" written on a banner above it.

The descriptions can all be translated, but are also relatively mundane. There is a heavy emphasis on the emotions of the people in the imagined recreations of their lives and on how feelings have shaped the world, but everything else is very broad strokes generalizations.

There's no restricted areas in the diorama hall, though! Unless you count the "Do Not Touch The Displays" sign. You might have better luck looking elsewhere.]

[ one piece only has one moon and one sun, thankfully, but when it comes to landmasses that's a whole other can of worms which means that sabo will take a great interest with the landmasses if only because there is only one continent in one piece and it divides the world into halves.

maps have been wild to look at while he has been here. ...actually, is there a sign anywhere to indicate what year that is considered "current" or present day? or, dunno, any kind of date range? ]

A world that could change how it looked? That sounds pretty exciting; I'd worry that most visitors might be concerned about if they were in the right place if it wasn't didn't appear as what they could be expecting. [ he'll make note of the matter of emphasis on emotion. ] The last place I visited was a country that exists above the clouds.

[ though given that there are no restricted areas in the diorama hall, just how many other halls are there on this floor? or, is it like, one big open area. ]

Edited (icon) 2022-06-07 19:17 (UTC)

(He'll snap a picture of the descriptions and the map to share later!?)

If ya think about it, feelings can change a lot of places. Revolutions don't start 'cause people are bored, y'know?

(Just wondering, how far to date do the dioramas and things go? About what year do they stop at? The newspaper Shizuku found had stopped at 926.)

[There is a date range! All of the dioramas are mentioned as being from different ages, each with a different descriptor. The Age of Fury, the Age of Sorrow, so on and so forth, with ranges for each of these ages that seem to make each of them a few centuries. (Except for the Age of Confusion, which only seemed to be about fifty years. Something happened there, but it's not important.)

There's thousands of years of history condensed into just a few scenes, with a note that the current age has been going on for over 900 years, but has not yet been named... so it's reasonable to assume that, yes, Sage was right on the money with it being 926.

As far as the floor goes, there are two exhibition halls made up of multiple rooms each, all connected by open doorways. One side seems to be dedicated to paleontology and geography, while the other side covers archaeology and major historic events leading up to the present day. That's the side Mutsu and Sabo have found themselves on.]

[ age of furry....

but actually that's kind of interesting that the ages are named after emotions than other more typical(?) conventions. normally they're based on events but hmm. curiously, in any of those ages do they make any kind of reference for some sort of yearly event similar to what was reported in the newspaper? orbs!??

that's probably too on the nose, but how about what seems to trigger the next age. are there any kind of commonality between all of them? or are they just, you know, ""generic"" world changing events. ]

No, no they certainly do not. I would say that it takes a lot of people who want change and are motivated to act to start a revolution.

[ hmmm. the other hall intrigues him because sabo likes geography for nerd reasons but—he won't leave yet. ]

(Whispers is it the Age of Fury or the Age of Furry....... what a mood.

But he makes a note of the different ages. Interesting that we have thousands of years of history but we're only in 926 which seems to maybe be the entire current era? Does this sound like a reasonable assumption to make, mod-chans. This is the part where I confess I am an actual historian and have museum training but I'm trying not to be niche lmao.)

Huh, don't think I'm seeing anything about orbs or a regular event but... can't really read either.

(And living that Google Translate life is a struggle.)

Dunno how much we're really gonna learn about recent stuff too. Museums are usually for old things.

(People were worried about the person who was uploading videos online before. Any sign that things have been unrestful in recent years? Something that could have led up to the state of things?)

[Yes, that being the current era is a very reasonable assumption! Also, I hate myself, so here is an unnecessarily amount about how the ages work considering this is basically completely unimportant to the plot:

Each age in this world is named after the end of it, to encapsulate significant events and the feelings those events invoked in the population of the world at large. Some ages seem to end for completely arbitrary reasons, but it’s hard to know if those reasons were as nonsensical as they seem without going back in time to see what the world was like and how it was changing.

That is mostly what the start of a new age represents - a change from the status quo. The Age of Fury was marked by near constant war all across the globe, leading into the Age of Sorrow - defined by the famine and harsh living conditions left behind as a result of those wars. Each age has a reason behind it, and most of them seem to be the natural conclusion to the one before it. (Except for the Age of Confusion. Shit was wild there. Some ages also have some unofficial names, like the Age of Elation is also sometimes referred to in some online circles as the Age of Furry. Don’t worry about it.)

There is no one particular entity or organization in charge of deciding when an age has ended and a new one has begun - nor is there a consensus on ages to begin with, as every nation will insist on something different, but we don’t have to go into that because it’s hard for them to find non-local information to begin with anyways. This is just more flavor. Anyways, it seems like age differences are proposed and subject to approval at a world summit, though people who lose the vote will sometimes still insist they’re wrong. As it goes.

The current age has yet to be named or stopped as it seems there hasn’t been much to disrupt the status quo. It's been quite peaceful, and there hasn't been any major modern advancements in technology or the like just yet. There's also no mention of orbs to be found in the museum. Those seem to be a very, very recent development...]

[ and yet despite none of this being relevant to the plot, it sure does make things feel more alive, and honestly, the fact that all of the other events have occurred but the orbs being something that recent is very :nyanhmm: it's good for context and sabo will gently file all of this information away in his head. ]

Sometimes museums have information about things that can be a bit more current like within the last decade. The newspaper did refer to it as something that happened "yearly", but there's really nothing here that seems to reference them.

[ which is interesting in itself. nothing nation wide. nothing global. nothing seen in previous periods of time. the orbs were already sus from the start but now they're even more sus than normal. ]

If it's a localized event then it's super localized. [ more hmm. shame there isn't any kind of local news in a museum but it also makes sense for there not to be any. ] Looks like the other hall over there has more bones on display and...maps?

[ assuming he can only see so much from where he's standing. ]

(It might not be plot relevant but it sure is world relevant. It makes the world feel more real and it really drives home that whatever happened here recently is weird. Mysterious orbs, missing populations, bizarre events, and strange forces being able to kidnap people from other worlds isn't normal! Something is up here! )

Looks like whatever is going on is too new for this place.

(He snaps a couple more pictures and nods,)

Let's see what we else we can learn here.

(He kind of wishes he had Konnosuke here to help out but oh well. Paleontology and geography, let's go! First things first, how is this exhibit hall laid out? Are there any paleontology displays that might stand out at first glance? Is there anything they can immediately grasp from the geography panels? How's the first look of things when they enter?)

[♥

The paleontology hall is incredibly spacious, mostly to fit in the sweet dinosaur skeletons, and the displays are mostly to show off those skeletons or like. Especially nifty crystals or pictures of scenic landscapes. It has a few displays that are cross-sections of the world, but the actual physical makeup of this world does seem to align with Earth. All the different kinds of rocks are represented, and there's nothing too wild here. Plants, animals... It's all pretty similar to Earth, so at least Mutsu is in his element.

There are a few displays of what seem to be bizarre geographical formations, with plaques talking about how humans have shaped the planet, and if they stop to read they will find out that is actually completely literal. The humans of this world can influence the environment around them through their emotions, which has shaped the geography of some places beyond what nature can do. It does seem to be a trait unique to humans, as animals are incapable of such a thing. Or at least that's what the museum says.

There are - and this is actually relevant hoo boy - mentions of a time each year where emotions are heightened, and as a result have a more significant impact on the world around them.]

[ POINTS TO THE BOLD TEXT!!! however before sabo can get to that part he will be distracted with the skeletons and cross-sections of the world because wow! is he not a nerd who loves this stuff. if there wasn't a bigger mystery to figure out, he'd probably spend way more time just vibing and reading every word there was to read.

or, well, ""reading"" because even though he has been practicing learning the native language here with the aid of the tablet, he's not perfect. some descriptions escape him and the meaning can be a little weird. you know, where you understand every other word or something like that. nevertheless, those short comings don't stop sabo from immediately waving mutsu over to the plaque. ]

Mu, you better get a picture of this and check the translation for it. I think it's referencing emotions again.

[ give him a moment as he tilts his head to a side. (please be translating it faster than him trying to read this, mutsu.) ]

I think it's describing how emotions can change the environment..? [ squints. ] Or humans can. There's some mention about a time?

[ help. ]

(It's like an alternate earth or something and not One Piece land where 99% of the world is water or something nice...... IDK one piece.

He's coming over to check the displays with Sabo! Likewise, he's been trying to learn the language but he's pretty basic. He holds up his tablet and has to wiggle it around a bit to get the translation to really line up,)

It says... Emotions can change the environment. Sometimes it even changes the land. Literally.

(I just assume some of these translations are a little awkward and need a wiggle here or there to really make sense so give him a sec,)

And... it says each year, there's a time where emotions are real strong and can have a bigger effect.

(Sabo is welcome to come over and look over Mutsu's shoulder to see for himself! But Mutsu is going to scan some more. Is there any sign that these things happen at the same time each year or is it random/not specified?)

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3RD FLOOR/NATURAL HISTORY INVESTIGATING...

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