The Shimmer

[maskormods]

WHO: Everyone Interested
WHERE: De Chima
WHEN: July 20th - 27th
WHAT: The Shimmer modplot - OOC Info Here
WARNINGS: Body Horror, loss of control, disorientation, monsters/monstrosities, creepy shit in general. This is a horror plot based on the movie Annihilation, please continue at your own discretion.

DAY ONE

It happens like an explosion in slow motion. One moment, De Chima is peaceful, and quiet, the morning slowly chugging along at a leisurely pace. The next, bubbling broiling mass that looks like oil slick is suddenly expanding out wards, engulfing everything it touches. Those that are caught in the initial wave feel very little, despite how terrifying the actual moment might have been. There's no heat, no force. If feels like passing through air. After that, they remember nothing. Time passes with no memory, and by the time they are cognisant, they are so disoriented they have no idea where they are, or how to get out. Any time they get near the edge of the shimmer, they lose memory again, and later find themselves somewhere else.

Outside, the expansion of the shimmer slows down to a crawl once the radius of the bubble is around five blocks wide, the wall of shifting colour and gas arching high up into the sky. The city goes into lock down, the police in a panic, and a massive evacuation is declared around the edges. Emergency services send several teams into it - some in full hazmat suits - to rescue people inside, but none of them come back out again. No cell phone signals, no wireless, and no radio seems to penetrate the haze. Everything within seems to have been locked out from the rest of the world. Other than a couple garbled signals as heard, nothing escapes.


INTO THE SHIMMER

When you first step into the Shimmer, it looks like you're about to pass through a moving, shifting wall - only it doesn't block your way. It feels like nothing tougher than gas, despite the fact that you know even radio signals don't come out of it. The next moment, you don't know how far you've walked, or where you are - you've lost track of time completely. You check your communicator - no connection to the network outside the Shimmer, but there are strange posts from within. And it gives you a time. You've been here for a whole day. Why don't you remember it?

Within the Shimmer, the world is beautiful. What used to be drab grey buildings and streets are filled with vegetation that has grown far too fast for you to understand how it got there in the first place. The sunlight refracts into rainbows, all the buildings are overgrown, and the animals don't seem quite right.

Everything is growing too fast - if you stand and stare at one of the rapidly mutating plants for long enough, you'll actually see it grow in real time.

You're changing. Small things at first, but the longer you stay in the shimmer, the more you change. And you don't know how to stop it.


THE CENTRE OF THE SHIMMER

( ooc: Sign-ups now closed, chosen characters: Will Solace, Nico di Angelo, Ruka, Laurie, and Kirie. This thread will be partially GM'd. Please feel free to use the OOC post to make a plotting thread for this. )

It's hard to tell, now, what the building once was. A warehouse, maybe. Low, one storey, but now looks like the laws of physics have completely abandoned it. Tendrils snake out from the brick walls like stone branches, swirling in impossible shapes before they plunge into the ground. There are trees, here, only they are sprouted straight out of the surrounding tarmac and glisten like melted oil. The doors resemble doors, still, for the most part. Only around the door frame are large pointed spikes, somewhere between thorns and shark teeth. It is not an inviting place. For the five imPorts that somehow manage to survive long enough to reach this threshold, it is not an inviting sight.

However, there is a strange power that hums in the air. Almost throbbing with energy, like a heart beat that vibrates through the very stone of the Earth. There's something  here, deep within. Something that must be stopped.