Necropolis

Necropolis is a (quasi-)post-apocalyptic simulation hosted on CR-3X. Avatars are forced to human appearance, except in autonomous Puppets.

Description

See also: newsletter // #001 to #012 // (07 MAR to 18 MAR)

See also: newsletter // #013 to #026 // (19 MAR to 01 APR)

See also: newsletter // #027 to #035 // (02 APR to 18 APR)

See also: Logs #011, #013, #014, #016, #020, #026, #027 and #028

See also: Logs: #062, #063, #064, #065 and #066

See also: Interlude: Learning Curve

Necropolis itself is a city suspended outside of time. On superficial inspection it just looks as if time for it were halted, but avatar motion is not restricted.

What clearly sets it apart from a mere time stop is the complete lack of biological life. It's as if one had taken a city at a time of decent activity, halted time, but then erased all humans and their pets and fugitive wildlife from the picture.

A perpetual dusk hangs over the city, a hint of fading sunshine drawn as a greenish band at the southern(!) horizon.

It's most notable feature is the central obelisk, having the colour of dark sand, towering a good bit above even the tallest skyscrapers of the city.

Just beyond the city lies what seems like a desert wasteland: a hard, unyielding dry ground is scattered with rocks of all shapes and sizes, and only the occasional bush that's long since died of thirst appears scattered in the landscape, held in place only by its dead roots.

From the obelisk, radiating outward, are four roads, each slashing straight as a ruler through the city, each extending for a footmarch of about a day, each bound for one of the main compass directions:

North

See also: Log #023 [Necropolis]

See also: Log #024 [Necropolis]

See also: Log #025 [Necropolis]

See also: Log #067 [Necropolis]

The landscape following the northern road gradually changes from the mostly uniformly flat landscape to one appearing like a close-up of shark skin, rocks jagged and the pre-dominant feature of the area. The rarity of foliage is at level of non-existence here.

The end of the road seems to dip under a thin, dusty sheet of sand, the black gloss of the pavement quick to lose itself and fade out into nothing. In visual range of the faded end of the road lies a sandy crater, made up entirely as if of dunes, consistency soft, easily sunk into.

The height of the concealing ridges of the crater is at about fifteen metres, making the trek to the top and down again slightly arduous.

Beyond the ridge, however, back down at ground level, is a lake of lava, barely in any motion at all and with a mostly smooth surface not disturbed by bubbling. In the center of the crater's lake is a sandy island, seemingly impossible to reach, given the heat that whafts up from the lava lake to the crater's shores.

Through cracks in its thin cooled surface, the lava illuminates the interior of the crater with a warm light.

East

See also: Log #018 [Necropolis]

See also: Logs: #069 and #070

The end of the road leading to the east is a tarred circle, as if to permit heavy duty vehicles a secured opportunity to turn and head back to the city.

The landscape here doesn't change away from what one saw in immediate vicinity of Necropolis itself, with one final exception beyond the end of the road: A rocky, vegetation-less mountain jags up into the sky here, tapering off to the left and curling oddly off to the right, forming a circle or archway of massive proportions.

The lack of wind from the rest of the simulation does not hold true here. A fairly stiff breeze gusts about most of the environment, increasing toward the arch, as if the wind were being channelled through there at breakneck speeds. It's not advisable to try and approach the archway to anywhere near touching distance - the gales can pick up a human and toss them well into the landscape behind that massive stone circle.

Paradoxially, something maybe an inch wide seems to be glittering at the centre of the archway, presumably some sort of metal scrap; as if turbulence were keeping it firmly rooted on the spot, hovering perfectly central as if by magic hand.

South

See also: Log #019 [Necropolis]

See also: Log #021 [Necropolis]

See also: Log #071 [Necropolis]

The only of the four compass directions to be bathed in sunlight, the end of the southern road lies at a time-frozen beach, waves held in mid-crash against the shore, glittering in their bizarre paralysis in the sunlight.

Travelling along the road itself brings one into a bright afternoon much faster than the distance crossed would allow for, of course - a day's walk does not equate to the longitudes necessary to cross the four approximate hours the sun's position in the sky suggests different from the Necropolis city. Additionally, the scarcity of flora changes gradually as one travels, revealing at first a blotchy, then more uniform landscape of short bushes dominating the brightening area, in particular, fynbos.

A few small, short holiday houses litter the area, the main road splitting into thinner ones leading up and around the same. They're weathered down a bit. The colour of their roofs is a dull, pastel green, fitting to the succulent foliage that the area seems to be littered with.

The most curious aspect of these houses is that they're entirely packed with slightly moist sand. You can't enter them. It's as if they were oddly elaborate props, oddly elaborately forced to be nothing more.

At the beach, which is a fifty-fifty mixture of rocky and sandy, a flat, rock circle of amazing proportions sits on what would otherwise be a large, sandy plane. Even fractionally closer inspection reveals that it is less a rock circle and more a well, cutting down perfectly into the sand and filled with water to the brim.

West

The west road transforms the landscape more noticably than even the south with its sudden generosity toward plant-life. Dwarfing the sense of life everywhere else with ease, at first the outskirts of and then later a full-on jungle develop in the landscape around the road headed west.

The road abruptly ends in a clearing, as if one had abandonned the project to continue it further west. The clearing itself is near-perfectly circular, moist, rich ground undisturbed even by plantlife, as if that circle were magically kept free of anything, be it artificial or natural, except for one thing:

Ominously, the bones of what are probably elephants scatter within the circle, as if perhaps some curse had brought them to fall here, and here alone.

People

Aside from the majority of those who came in during Darkscape ending up here, a batch of people from California ended up displaced into this particular simulation as their first encounter with the Wildcard network:

Willis Ambrose, Jordan Marsden, Michael Andreas and Sirena Blades all connected on 2053-03-23.
Adrian Omdahl, while not from California, connected right along with that same batch on 2053-03-23.

Aside from Willis, who's connected via Aeonis, the Californians are all connected using Monsoon. Adrian, meanwhile, is on halaju.

Later on, when the first batch of people had long left, and beyond the three characters that came in via Azimuth, two others connected here:

Maveney Escarrà technically entered the network through Static on 2053-05-04, but given that it's not a true sim, listing her here is a bit more accurate.
Kyle Haledon connected on 2053-05-15, unscreened.

Both Maveney and Kyle are on Aeonis.

Name knowledge

Maveney Escarrà was briefly given the name of the simulation by Cyrex while being screened for entry [Log #063]. In the interest of their deal, she's not mentioned it to anyone else, yet - if she even recalls it.

Node

Thus far established is that a link from Darkscape leads here. Completing the sim the first time around linked people to Eclipsed. The second time brought them to Dominion, though how much of that was CR-3X intervening with the usual sim rules is hard to say.

Activity

Newsletters and recaps

Sessions

Log #011 [Simswitch], Darkscape → Necropolis
main group's visit's category: #013, #014, #016, #018, #019, #020, #021, #023, #024, #025, #026, #027 and #028
Log #062 [Simswitch], Azimuth → Necropolis
second group's visit: #063, #064, #065, #066, #068, #069, #070, #071, #072 and #074

Interludes

Learning Curve

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