Vice Director (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
vicedirector) wrote2016-01-04 12:57 am
vicedirector) wrote2016-01-04 12:57 am
setting
Lebensbaum is in a perpetual state of winter. The temperature is an unwavering 20°F/-6°C, as any thermometers will always say. Patches of snow dot the ground and buildings,
The center of the town is the bonfire pit, which will be lit at nighttime and during investigations. It sits in the middle of the street, looks crude, and doesn't seem professionally made, unlike the other structures in the town. It's also incredibly large, taking up the entire width of the street.
Here is a map of the currently revealed setting.
The hotel sits north from the bonfire pit and is where all characters must sleep at night. Everything within it, from the counter-tops to the beds, is covered in a thin layer of dust--although still perfectly usable and in working order. In the lobby of the hotel is the front desk, a few chairs, and some plastic plants. To the west of the front desk is the corridor that leads to the staff hall. To the east is the hallway where the stairs and elevator are located, as well as the door to the pool room.
Living quarters are appropriately compact and somewhat dated; each room contains a single window, two twin beds, a dresser with extra clothes, a bedside table with a lamp, a personal bathroom stocked with appropriate necessities, a small closet, a clock, and a TV. Pads of paper and pens are provided in the table drawers, should anyone wish to write. The closet contains bare metal coat-hangers, a foldable ironing board and accompanying iron, and a working safe that will only open to its corresponding room key. See the rooming page for hallway layouts and assigned rooms.
Along with the clothes on their backs, characters will be supplied with a wardrobe that matches their personal preferences, albeit in Western, old-fashioned styles ranging from the 1920s to the 1950s. Warmth is emphasized, so all skirts and pants are ankle-length, sleeves reach the wrist, socks are woolen, and the only presented footwear are sturdy, thick boots. Heavy coats, scarves, mittens, and hats are also available, as well as a swimsuit for the pool.
The televisions can be turned on, but they will only display static. As such, the power outlets in each room do work.
The staff hall holds the kitchen, the laundry room, the manager's office, and a set of stairs leading down the basement. The manager's office and basement are locked at all times, and the doors are unable to be broken down.
The kitchen is basic, containing a stove, a fridge, a pantry, etc. Breakfast will mysteriously appear in the mornings, ready to be carried out, but characters will have to prepare lunch and dinner themselves. Speaking of breakfast, it seems the kitchen is only equipped to make certain breakfast items--plain oatmeal, french toast, bacon, and scrambled eggs, with orange juice in the fridge. Hope you like breakfast for all 3 meals of the day! Later supplied by Miata, the kitchen also contains ingredients are very based in Western cuisine: rye and wheat bread, potatoes, cabbage, beets, onions, cucumbers, assorted mushrooms, and the like. In addition, there are also miscellaneous spices, eggs, milk, and an abundance of fish and pork, and spaghetti noodles and sauce. Various dishes made with the above ingredients will also be set out for anyone to take during lunch and dinner.
The laundry room is slightly bigger, containing a few washing machines, dryers, cabinets for cleaning supplies, and so on. After characters leave their rooms in the morning, they will return to find their linens washed and beds made, except on investigation and trial days (Friday, Saturday, Sunday). Characters will be required to wash their own clothes, however.
A note on room cleaning: cleaning will occur after the characters leave their rooms and close the door. If they do not leave their rooms in the morning and do not put a "no room service" sign up, it will happen some time before noon, with the room having been restored while they are not looking. Along with washed linens, this includes the bathrooms being washed, coat hangers and ironing board being put back in the closet, etc. All for a given value of "clean" however, as the thin layer of dust coating the rooms is "put back into place" as well. Character personal belongings and clothing will not be effected, items being in the same spot they were left in. Even if a "no room service" sign is used, however, the TV and the clock will always be plugged back in come morning.
The pool is to the left of the stairs and in slightly poorer condition than the rest of the hotel, being that the water is dirty and the filters are turned off. They can always be turned on, but they will turn off again at 9PM, leaving any, ahem, evidence, to sit in the pool overnight. Its deep end stops at 9 feet, and various obligatory pool equipment is provided (life savers, pool net, lounge chairs). The pool room will be designated a restricted area at 10PM each night.
To the east of the hotel lies the chapel, an older building with only two rooms. The main room is the largest, and contains the pews and the altar. The second room lies behind the altar, and is locked--except during executions. To the left of the chapel's main entrance is a confessional booth with two doors, the first of which is also locked. The second is the space where voting will take place, with a register of the current suspects laid out. The chapel is able to hold every participant, but is undeniably cramped at full capacity. It has little in the way of decoration, and there are no holy books or materials of any sort. The chapel will be designated a restricted area at 10PM every night.
Across the street from the hotel, on the other side of the bonfire pit, is the clinic. The building is in a slight state of disrepair, with loose floorboards and chipped paint. Inside are four examination rooms, with plain walls and thin beds. Storage cabinets in these rooms contain basic first aid supplies such as bandaids, ice packs, latex gloves (2 packs), compress dressings, medical tape, gauze pads, scissors, antibiotic ointment, thermometers, and tweezers. A Snellen chart, and rusted blood pressure meters, otoscopes, rhinoscopes, stethoscopes, and scales are there as well. There are two doctor's offices near the back of the building, which contain medicines and more dangerous tools: painkillers, decongestants, cough medicine, cough drops, antihistamines, eye drops, stomachache medicine, scalpels, forceps, medical thread and needles, syringes, and trauma shears.
The 3 chains used to tie up Sisuca are now sitting in a basket, cleaned and polished.
In a set of shelves is art equipment, compasses and rulers and tape and glue and construction paper and legal-size sketch paper and watercolor paint sets with thin brushes, and plenty of extra pencils, colored or not. The classroom is a little smaller. A big line of hooks on the wall would probably be for coats or bags but they're all empty. The dozens of chairs are behind desks that are mostly bereft, with only a few misplaced jacks or marbles or cat's-cradle strings. There's a chalkboard with erasers and chalk. Right above this board is a roll-down world map. Characters from Earth will see familiar continents marred with not so familiar lines and names. Additionally, in the teacher's desk is a register of names and ages.
Hanging on the wall are handmade pictures. The three pieces nearest to the desk show finely-sketched headshots of several children, in three tiers sorted by age. The youngest each have one or two stickers of psychedelically colored animals; the ones in the middle get more varied flowers and hearts and cars; the teenagers receive larger numbers of smaller, simpler stars. There is also a large handheld bell on the teacher's desk that could easily be heard from outside.
A small blacktop behind the school has faint remains of chalk marks for hopscotch, four square, and the like. Overall, the school building is in less-than-stellar condition, also coated in dust, a little dirty, and with occasional busted floorboards and shingles.
A ways away, though on the same side of the street as the chapel, is a two-story house, painted in dark blue - or rather, repainted, though the peeling coat is the least of the building's structural integrity problems.
There's an office type area on the left of the staircase. There's a desk with blank writing material and implements, as well as an album of black and white mugshots. The desk itself doesn't contain drawers. Within easy reach is a filing cabinet. It's locked though and there's no key nearby. Further in the back is a water cooler area with seating and wall-mounted cabinets over countertops covered in powdered sugar donut crumbs that get "put back into place" similarly to the dust in the hotel rooms.
On the right side of the staircase is a jail cell area separated by bars but the gate has been left open and the keys are hanging in a ring off the hook close to the staircase. A set of handcuffs has been left in here that may be opened by another key on the ring. (None of those keys open the filing cabinet though.) Inside the room are a few cots. There's a small window to let in light and a poster with a title in blockbuster font - "From Lorelea With Love". A hand-drawn advertisement for a movie, then, starring a woman in a militaristic red jacket holding a gun, and a man with glasses in a stiff white coat.
The second story hosts a small bedroom and a smaller bathroom. (The roof is gabled so this floor is smaller than the first floor.) The bedroom's main features: a bed slightly nicer than the cots, a nightstick on a table easily reached from the bed (with an oil lamp), and a display rack for some guns that don't contain bullets.
Across a vacant lot to the West of the general store is an old clothing shop. This building has a marquee that's fallen apart but suggests the shape that would announce a storefront. Full-height glass shop windows show off four mannequins in the front, a variety of figures, all wearing the same red fatigues and ankle-length jackets, with a lion emblazoned on the breast pocket like a military insignia.
Go through the doors and see racks of more clothes, similar to the sensibilities reflected in the hotel wardrobes: wintery, early-mid twentieth century Western, but there are a few outfits that would not be out of place in the 80s or 90s. Don't breathe in too close to the clothes unless you want lungfuls of dust, though no moths flutter around. There are a few gaps in the clothing on the racks. A couple of the especially free-standing structures have just plain fallen down. From the ceiling hang a variety of elaborate glass light fixtures, but some are broken, and the electricity is disconnected.
Along one wall is the checkout area. Supplies are in drawers behind the counter: dyes and bleaches, thread and yarn, pins and needles, seam rippers and one big pair of fashion shears. Rolls of fabric are in shelves affixed high up, arm level, on the wall behind. Besides neutral hues, quite a bit of the colorful fabrics are the same red, with multiple rolls freshly cut on the leading edge.
In the back of the store are two adjacent doors. Both of the small rooms contain a total of three benches, each underneath a full-length mirror, separated by curtains. One more set of double doors leads to a walk-in wardrobe, where they densely packed the garments of less frequently requested types.
Next door to the clothing store is the record shop. Colorful, faded posters mostly block out the glass windows of this brick building next to the clothing store. Open the single knobbed door to find a record store. Along with electric fans on the ceiling, up top there are large, flat glass light fixtures, providing evenly distributed, fairly dim illumination, though flickering a lot. A couple of classic discs are taped up freestanding high on the walls; one or two have fallen down, be careful not to step on them! At least the checker-tiled floor has taken the dust valiantly.
Mostly the store contains records in bins as well as racks mounted on the walls. Even the counter, supporting a cash register and a record player for sampling, doubles as a glass case containing several more rows of records. Any other products are confined to a large set of shelves in the back: spare parts for record players, cheap jewelry and watches, sunglasses, guitar picks, band-themed tote bags.
The record players themselves are also in the back. Turntables in a variety of colors are lined up on a shelf. Below these, freestanding on the floor, are a few closet sized speakers. There's also a speaker flush with the surface of the checkout counter, hooked up to a bolted-down record player intended for playing samples.
None of the records are familiar, but fairly obvious genres emerge - traditional and classical and foreign pieces occupy a couple rows each; most of the store has a broader popular appeal, whether light or heavy. Take one for a spin?
- Traditional A - One half of the "traditional" music section has a lot of overlap between this material and the songs in the schoolhouse - though nothing familiar from before the game. Children's songs and the like.
- Traditional B - The other of the section is larger and has strong patriotic themes. One seems to be of Lettland's national anthem, with red-coated soldiers on the slipcase.
- Classical - It's a lot like earth classical music but none of the names or tunes are exactly the same.
- Light popular - You find a lot of "hey, hey, hey" and "la la la" type crooning at the beginning and end of the single "As You Walk On By" - keyboard and synthesizer heavy alongside a fairly basic bass/guitar/drums setup. There are many copies in stock.
- Heavy popular - "Veiled Pork Snouts" by "Earth" comes in a case with a trippy blurred photograph of a guy who looks like a Hun soldier. The title track has a very harsh rock sound - no keyboard, just the standard four man setup, snarled vocals and drums with heavily downtuned guitar and bass that get extended instrumental playtime and almost fade out at the end only for the last fifteen seconds to climactically crash, cataclysmic.
- Foreign - this section is even smaller than the classical one, confined to racks, some with multiple labels because there are countries that don't even fill an entire row by themselves. Though there are some slipcases that are very plain with the title handwritten in marker.
To the West of the clinic, stretching across the entirety of the street to its end, is a large park and playground. The majority of the field is an open, empty field of grass, with a few scattered picnic tables here and there. In the middle of it sits a small basketball court, its markers nearly rubbed off and weeds growing in the cracks of the asphalt.
Close by is a primarily-wooden playground, situated inside of a shallow pit filled with woodchips. There are various pieces of equipment there, such as a swingset, teeter totter, a merry-go-round, a couple of slides, monkey bars, and a jungle gym. The equipment is not in the best shape, paint chipping and wood splintering. Too much weight will make it shake and quiver. Careful not to get hurt!
Behind street the hotel and other stores lay on is a small stretch of grass, followed by a 2-lane road. Judging by the speed limit sign, it's intended for cars, though there are none to be seen. Following a back road a bit north leads to a dilapidated boathouse sitting on the edge of a lake.
The building is made almost entirely of wood - there is no glass window or marquee sign left, as the entire upper front half of the building has caved in. Nevertheless upon entering the presence of a wooden counter, with a large tin can for money, makes it fairly obvious this place is another store. For "sale" are knives of various widths as well as small mallets for smashing shellfish. Nets, sails, and general use tarps are strung up on the wall behind the counter. A set of shelves near the entrance contains boxes of strong spices that go well with fish, small white child-safe bottles of chemicals like atropine sulfate or bromine, and books about the care and keeping and catching of nautical creatures. In another corner is the fishing rod display, originally vertical but now fallen down across the floor. Nearby, more stable, are also entire box of hooks and lures.
The lake itself is frozen over as far as the eye can see, though the void cuts off in the middle of it. The ice near the docks is sturdy, but gets weaker the further away one goes. If the ice is broken, present are a few scattered fish species that can survive in the winter--but not nearly as many as this large a lake should reasonably have.
The trees on the edge of the lake continue a little further than they did before they give way to a couple of stumps. One is host to an actual hatchet, slightly rusted from being left outside, and on the adjacent ground are some small pieces of wood chopped, probably for a fire.
A little further than that, the ground is mostly cleared, in a square area with wooden poles at each of the four corners, holding up a big tarp; however, the fourth pole has caved in a little. Underneath this is a pile of timber trunks from felled trees. (The other stumps line up with these.) Then another, larger pile of processed lumber boards.
In the middle is a steel set of shelves. These contain several boxes of tools and parts - hammers, nails, wrenches, screws, nuts, bolts, drills, clamps, and rope. On the other side of the shelf are hooks hosting goggles and kerchiefs. (Most of these are plain, a few have stylized logos suggesting an origin in the record store.) There are some stools near this area, and the ground underneath is littered with bottlecaps.
West of the park is a four-way intersection. Following the intersection even further west leads to the residential district, even bigger than the rest of the town combined. Rows and rows of houses and apartments line these streets, most of them partially or fully collapsed. Weeds grow through the cracks of the pavement, and any houses with plants on their porches have been long overrun by them. Abandoned cars sit here and there and there's even a rack of rusted old bicycles near the entrance to the district. A few houses and buildings are accessible, though still in shaky condition. Be careful when investigating!