utried | bus

BUS? A BUS???

The wheels on the bus (don't) go round and round...

You wake up on a bus.

It's a very nice bus, though. Luxurious, even! The seats are comfy and can be used as beds, with pajamas also available for you to change into. It's stocked with enough food and drink to last a week or so, along with a bathroom that also has a shower and free toiletries to use. The downside, however, is that apparently you have to share—as you're not alone when you awaken.

It seems like you're not where you should be, either. The bus comes equipped with TV screens, but rather than any movie or show, it's reality TV in the most literal sense. You might even recognize a few faces over there in the terminal, but either way, you can watch the participants go about their day. You're as equally confused as they are, after all, even if miles (?) separate you.

For that matter, that's pretty much all you can do. You're stuck on this bus. You can't access where the driver's controls would be, and there's no driver to begin with; in fact, the bus isn't even moving. The doors are shut, and any attempt to break the windows will send you bouncing back. Opening the shutters will treat you to the enticing sight of... outside airport scenery. You're on airport grounds somewhere, but you can't tell anything other than that. If you do some digging around, though, one compartment on the bus contains a random assortment of card games and board games for you to entertain yourselves with.

Better get cozy, because you might be here for a while.

RUNDOWN

This will be your one mingle post until next Friday.
You do not have any personal belongings on you. Unlike the other players, you also don't have a phone. Sad.
The W0 weekly effect, once revealed, will apply to you as well.
Your characters are able to see anything that takes place on the public mingles, including network posts, via the bus TV screens. You may also handwave them being able to see the initial notification that the players all received on their phones.
We will have a small, pseudo-mini-event for you on W0 Wednesday at 12pm PST/3pm EST.

NAVIGATION; (FULL NAV)

INFO

PLAYER STATUSES IC PROFILES MURDER PROPOSALS CYOA SIGN-UPS

SETTING

NPC AUDIENCES LOCATIONS ROOMING CURFEW

REPORTING

PC TURN-IN MOD REPORTING EVENT TURN-IN VOTING

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Maybe. ...I know the hosts of these things usually can't show their faces for a while, but I wish we could see them. It's easier to tell if people are being truthful or not when you can actually see how their expressions change as they talk.

Have the hosts ever turned out to be people you knew?

Umm, well... The hosts in the camp were people that some of the participants there knew from their original experiences. I didn't know them myself, but that's the one I was more of a hostage for - I didn't wake up until the end of it.

It was similar for the hotel. The original hosts were people who had experienced previous "games" as well. One of them was also someone I knew from mine, but he cooperated with us so we didn't replace him... It's kind of a long story.

[me desperately trying to remember if there were any npc-player castmates in non-crau games that were represented in crau2...]

[ sorry to do this to you britt ]

Good to know.

[ has he managed to deduce anything from what she's told him, absolutely not, but maybe it'll come in handy later. for now, back to the tv! this part in particular. ]

Speaking of telling the truth...how truthful do you think they're being here?

[this is on me for putting a crau2 npc here...]

...it's hard to say. Nobody knows them well enough yet to know what their tells are. [they've got no baseline for if they're being truthful or not...] It's true that even the hosts do have rules they can't get around following, especially early on.

As for the challenges... they've been upfront about the fact that killing will be involved one way or another - [looks at jonas's thread] so it would be a little silly for them to lie about that. The teams probably won't be made to kill together, but I imagine the individuals may find their hands forced in some way.

[ he sighs. ]

Makes sense. [ and then, because he needs a momentary break from all the depression, he leans back in his seat to ask: ] So why do you think they picked a trip to Australia as a prize?

[ guy who doesn't know what australia is ]

[the way sei learned about france and italy so she could pretend to be lila rossi as an npc but didn't have any reason to learn about australia so i can't have her make a joke about it being a perfect vacation destination for murderers since it used to be a penal colony]

Not a clue. But maybe it tells us something about them? If they think it's appealing enough to work as a prize, then...

[she shrugs.]

Or maybe they just looked at a list of countries in alphabetical order, got bored early on, and picked whichever one they'd read last when they stopped.

Edited 2025-06-01 02:06 (UTC)

[ huh. speaking of australia....unsure if they can see the tiny phone screen but maybe they can hear some of the tinny narration. ]

It does sound pretty different from most other countries, if the narrator is to be believed.

[ or is just because he's not sure what half the words being said mean? hard to say. ]

[oh! huh.]

...it sounds interesting, I suppose, but definitely not interesting enough to entice most people to sign up for something like this, I would hope.

I would hope a simple trip wouldn't be enough to entice anyone to engage in murder.

[ listen, he can turn a blind eye to many things but murder is not one of them. ]

It had better not be. But at least from what I'm seeing on the screens, nobody seems tempted to take the bait for that reason.

[preserving the outcomes of their previous games, though...]

We'll just have to hope things stay that way.

[ but 8 weeks is a long time. ]

What do you think about us though? There must be a reason we're here instead of there.

...well, um.

[she doesn't want to say this. but.]

In the last place I was, there was one person who was brought there a little early and ended up... getting killed by one of the original facilitators of that "game". [...] I don't remember dying, though.

[ hm. unfortunate. ]

So you think we might also have some kind of role to play in this competition?

I doubt we're here for no reason. Even if there's no formal role meant for us specifically to play, if this is where people end up - there's still bound to be something we can do. Many of the escapes from these experiences have relied upon cooperation from both sides.

There has to be a way of communicating with each other then, if that's the case.

Most likely! Some methods have been more straightforward than others, but in my experience there's usually been some way to get things across.

I hope it's not via carrier pigeon.

...there was one where they communicated by owl.

[ WHAT THE ]

Seriously?

[she nods]

Mm-hm. The castle. One of the people I worked with to infiltrate the hotel was there in his first experience, and one of the participants from the hotel was originally from there too.

I'm surprised the owl knew where to go.

[ ... ]

Unless it was some kind of magical owl.

I think it was, um... the owls coming from the living side knew how to find where the dead were? But the owls from the dead side didn't know how to find the living.

They could only write back if someone wrote to them first.

Edited 2025-06-04 01:15 (UTC)

I see. How'd they figure that one out anyway? Or was it something the hosts told them about?

I think it was... someone wrote a sentimental letter to someone who had died? They must have been so surprised when they got a reply!

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frostfist - 2025-06-04 02:21 (UTC) - Expand

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