SWEAR-IN NIGHT AT THE IMPORT MUSEUM

[maskormods]

WHO: Everyone!
WHERE: The newly completed imPort Museum in Nonah
WHEN: August 21st
WHAT: This month's swear-in
WARNINGS: Tag your threads, please!

ARRIVAL:

Attendees of this month's swear-in will arrive at an equally imposing and intriguing location. The new ImPort Museum, funded by government grants through the initiative of Darth Nox, features a pair of enormous sculptures carved from dark volcanic rock flanking a massive entrance ramp that's great for paparazzi snaps.



With the announcement of America's Top ImPort coming up soon, the crowds outside the event are even bigger than usual. Or is it the personal appearance Melon Husk will be making? There's definitely a large group of fans waving printed-out electric car schematics and pens for autographing them. Popular topics in the crowd includes excited betting on who will win the award, what the newest imPorts will be wearing as they walk the red carpet and who's smooching who, but it's not all fun frivolity. There's tension in the air as well, with some local attendees attempting to get the attention of newly arrived imPorts only to demand to know what they intend to do about the recent crime wave - or accusing them of being responsible for it.

INSIDE THE MUSEUM:

Holographic projections of various imports- randomized and changing hourly- line the dimly-lit hall leading into the museum proper. There are fewer such displays in the similarly dim main lobby, but here in the cavernous hall of the pyramid's ground floor, the holocrons compensate by displaying much, much larger images of various features from the imPorts' home universes: capital ships, space stations, palaces or sprawling cityscapes. There's plenty of room. Too much for most visitors, made minuscule in comparison to the sheer scale of the museum's architecture... unless they happen to be 35 feet tall. In which case, this may be the first time they've never been at risk of hitting their heads.

Tonight, of course, is a special night, and as such the large hexagonal island of the admissions desk in the center of the lobby is serving a selection of softly glowing beverages in tall glasses rather than selling tickets. Behind it, the gift shop is staffed and stocked with a modest selection of souvenirs.

Aside from the museum's usual offerings, the following events are advertised:

East Auditorium
Swear-in Ceremony. Here, unsettled and undecided imPorts are invited to formally register their commitment to serve and protect the citizens of the United States.

West Auditorium
ImPorted Innovations, a special presentation sponsored by Rainforest Inc. Tech giants Melon Husk and Beff Jezos offer rare insight into the impact of the imPort community on industry, engineering and technology.

EXHIBITS:

Of course there's much more to the museum than the strangely oppressive grandeur of its oversized entrance. Visitors attending tonight's swear-in have full access to the various exhibits. Those housed on the museum's upper levels can be accessed via a pair of what appear to be heavy-duty cargo lifts. While the shafts of each are enclosed, the platforms themselves are not— which will make the ride comfortable for someone the size of a Cybertronian, but mildly nerve-wracking for anyone with a fear of heights.

Given the variety of worlds the imPort community hails from, the museum has been divided into broadly themed exhibit wings by floor:

Ground Floor: imPort-ant Individuals

A collection devoted to individual imPorts. The holocrons on this level serve more as an introductory primer than an exhaustive account of the imPorts' lives, though the gatekeeper may direct guests to any other associated holocrons housed on other floors if they're interested in accessing more in-depth information or experiencing memories an imPort may have donated.

Second Floor: imPort History & Society

Dedicated to those imPorts who'd been inclined to share information regarding the history and culture of their world(s), from the more traditional topics- such as political/military histories or even art, if an imPort had vivid enough memories of it- to the decidedly more mundane and trivial such as sports, playground games, different forms of gambling, fashion and so on.

Third Floor: imPort Homeworlds & Natural History

Focused on the flora and fauna of imPort worlds. On this level, a series of large platforms and holoprojectors allow for guests to see life-sized (or as close as possible) representations of the many fantastical creatures that imPorts are accustomed to, as well as their behavior and even what they sound like.

Fourth Floor: imPort Experiences

Here, after a helpful explanation of how to mentally connect with the holocrons (for those who need it), visitors may have a seat in any number of smaller, individual rooms dedicated to a specific imPort and the specific memories they saw fit to donate to the museum.

(Players are encouraged to provide holocrons for the exhibits in the relevant threads below! Details of the kinds of information that can be donated and accessed can be found here.)

...AND THEN, THE DISRUPTION...

It's difficult to be certain, at first. The museum is dimly lit, and there are plenty of rational explanations for the vaguely paranormal. Guests might catch movement in their peripheral vision— but with the evening's attendees milling about the exhibits, the flickering light of activating holocrons and the sound of their displaced voices are only to be expected. imPorts with a particular sense for disturbances in the natural order of things may begin to feel uneasy as the evening progresses, but isn't that just the general ambiance of this eerily grandiose structure?

But the hallucinations intensify. Between one blink and the next, otherworldly scenery overlays and replaces the expected, then melts away. Somehow, parts of the boundary between this reality and its infinite parallels have stretched thin to the point of transparency.

WHAT'S GOING ON?

Basically, characters will be encountering windows into alternate realities. These are highly localised pockets of dimensional instability— take a step or wait a few seconds and the hallucination will fade... for now. The longer the disruption continues, the larger each window seems to become. An evacuation will be called before any individual instability grows larger than a few metres in diameter or persists longer than ten minutes.



WHAT CAN CHARACTERS SEE THROUGH THESE WINDOWS?

Anything that could be occurring at this point in space and time across the multiverse.

This includes the people living there— and as these alternate realities also have their own versions of the Porter, characters may see copies of themselves, their friends, their enemies, the dead and the lost... provided those people could be standing in the equivalent place in their own reality.
Try as they might, however, characters will be unable to interact with anything or anyone belonging to another dimension— and it doesn't appear that anything on the other side can see them.

imPorts on the upper floors of the museum may find themselves standing on solid air with the scenery of another dimension stretched out below— it seems there aren't many realities where a massive pyramid has been built in the middle of downtown Nonah. Thankfully, enough of a boundary remains to prevent anyone from falling through to the reality below... for now.
Which is a blessing, considering that in at least one of these alternate worlds, the floor really is lava.



WHAT ABOUT OUTSIDE THESE AREAS OF INSTABILITY?

Characters not close enough to an instability to be affected will see nothing unusual at all. Affected characters will appear to be hallucinating, and their reactions to whatever they see while inside an instability will affect the reality they are actually in, rather than the one they are seeing. If Goku tries throwing a kamehameha at a Frieza who isn't actually there, it'll be the museum and its visitors who get hit.



EVACUATION

Once they determine what's going on, Darth Nox and the museum staff will order a full evacuation of the structure... and curiously, once the crowd disperses, everything will appear to return to normal.