You Wake Up In A Bar

PFFFT! It's totally a bad ideia. But honestly I just think that if we wish the drink to "Kill" her, the plan is going to backfire in a positive effect and boy oh boy, I'm hoping for the backfire alredy. If the drink was 100% intended to kill her, I would just poison it pff.

>Whatever happens, don't kill Nadezda or offer them potentially harmful drinks!

>Do your uttermost best not to murder anyone.

Time is a free-floating construct.

You are Greene. For Greene, this moment is a blip. For all else, this moment has lasted long enough to be palpable. How can these moments not be felt? Laren has been with you since December. It's been nine months already. It's been nine months already. It's been nine months already.

The bar sits in a void of coldness and blank fever. You hold your grassy, mossy self still for a moment, take a long breath through your leaves, and realize your place in the universe. Then, as the lights flicker with wavering power, you awaken again from a dream that lasted centuries.






Yes! You are. And based off some compiled recipes, and a lot of guesswork, you think you can get it done quick. Having gained some familiar with the Unshaken, you've got a plan about how to use it as the simplified base of a much more complicated recipe. Nadezhda's rather zoned-out state is really worrying the heck out of you at this point, and there's always the potential that more drink on top of everything could make it worse, but anything's better than this... rather hallucinogenic stupor. The Night Drider may have been a delicious, aesthetically-pleasing misstep.






The ingredients mix together beautifully. Water boils in seconds on the Unshaken's "PANIC SERVE" setting. You feel like you're getting more adept with this thing!




She swings her head weakly from side to side, as if drifting on a boat.




The finishing touches. With the gently crackling drink complete, you place a pair of Justice Cherries on the rim, as well as the centerpiece-- a four-leafed Heavenly Mint, which gleams and pulsates.

The bug begins scarfing it down immediately. She takes a large bite out of the mint, and one of the cherries, and continues, as if hungry for whatever clarity she might be able to find inside.









She glances off quietly for a moment.





There's a tinge of uncertainty which hangs in the air, but she begins to pick up her things and leave, regardless.








crc overflowNadezhda has left the bar quietly.






Laren nods without a hint of enthusiasm about the ordeal.





She perks up a little, offering a weak smile.









You glance out of one of the dust-covered windows at the nothingness which exists outside your ev.






Laren looks down a bit, unwilling to stand but unwilling to keep sitting, either. Her voice is dampened, but more from exhaustion than anything, it seems.






She gives you another nod, this time with more firmness.




Laren turns around, takes a long breath in, and exits.

Laren has left Starwood Bough.

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There are no more patrons.

The stillness and dimness of the bar looms above like it's utterly alive. Your presence feels small against the complete absence of... anything else.

Is this what being alone feels like?

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You give it a few minutes. The stillness doesn't feel good.

Being alone doesn't feel good.

But you don't know what else you're supposed to do.

You suppose you could try sleeping-- that experience with the chloral hydrate was... calming, if a little strange. Well, it was a lot strange. But it's what everyone else is doing. And that place you went to wasn't so alone, was it? It wasn't quite as alone.

There are dishes to be washed, too. But you have a feeling you'll have time for that anyhow. The night hours drag on and on, and you've only penetrated the dimness partially.

Cup status:  5 dirty (Bright and Air-ly, INTY, Iced Haze, Night Drider, Lilac Dreamer), 1 broken, 3 free
Meloncup status: 1 dirty (HH)
Plate status: 2 dirty (The Sate Catsberry, Mutually Shirred Deconstruction), 2 free
Mug status: 1 dirty (Mulled Again Mulligan), 1 free

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Abilities



Scavenger: Unavailable (0/1 uses)
Gain a cup and plate every day, on command.

Intrusive: Enabled
Introduction cards show a bio for a given character.

Intuitive: Enabled
Introduction cards show somebody's ingredient preferences.

Phytochemist: Disabled (too dim)
Create drinks/meals automatically (at half speed) during sunlit hours.

Collaborative: Enabled
Attach any length of Cabinet entry to an ingredient suggestion at will.

Perfectionist: Enabled
Gain a hint about quintessential ingredients for drinks/meals. Succeeding makes that quintessential ingredient limitless.

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Orders
Nadezhda wants to find SYLG.
Status: Drinkmaster Greene is fated to find SYLG.

Thanks to the Collaborative-assisted assembling of the Lilac Dreamer, you've gained some new finished entries to peruse in the Cabinet.

We could... We could use something to relax. Not sleep per say, but something to ease through the night.

-Cocoa powder (optional)
-Honey
-Cherry Grenadine
-Oranʒ Blood
-Elder Tea Concentrate
-Morerett Syrup

And a few drops of... uh.
-Nox(?)
The bottle seems to, ah. have a note attached: "Good for seeing stars for a few hours", whatever that means.

Gonna want to do the dishes first, though. probably gonna be too conked out to do much for a while after.
Maybe find something to read during the experience, and see if we've a few pillows to get comfortable with while we're at it.

>Use Intuitive to check our own ingredient preferences, so we can make sure we like our drink. Remove any ingredients that dont fit.

EDIT: Also, checking the new entries, I dont think we should have done that. A Heavenly Mint can become a parasitic consciousness, Poc can cause people to become devoutly religious to a deity called Lilac, Justice Berries can induce massive bouts of guilt depending on the person, and Accan's Boil causes the previous ingredients to be spread throughout the body quickly. This doesn't sound like a very good combination for stability of mind.
I don't want to be a wet blanket, but I'm going to be voting against any new ingredients that are likely to be weird that we haven't defined from now on. So I do not want to put any 'Nox' in whatever drink we're having.

Another job... uh... done, I guess.

As for this crippling loneliness, try uh... meditating or something, might help, I don't know, shit, might make it worse, but we won't know unless we try.

Get yourself a nice tall glass of dilute diammonium phosphate

Start washing cups, plates, and that one mug. We'll need some more free when patrons start flooding in again, and we happen to be currently free of them.

All we need right now is a cup of water and some time to think. Also we should probably put a "CLOSED" sign outside our door

The stillness is overwhelming. The radio slowly blips to a stop as it runs out of songs to play, and people to play for. The noise of the day echoes one more time against the weak wooden walls of the Starwood Bough, and then all sound, all of ev, is now yours and yours alone.

You shuffle like a corpse to the sink and begin washing the heap of dishes in solemn silence.

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The glass of Bright and Air-ly is clean. You set it aside. The bar gently hums with the heartbeat of your sacred moss.

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The glass of It's Not Thyme Yet is clean. You set it aside. As you exhale oxygen, the last bit of heat in the bar interior finally leaves as the heater shuts off with a soft 'click'. Even the world is sleeping, now. Even the world. But you don't feel tired, not a bit-- not a single bit.

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The glass of Iced Haze is clean. You set it aside. It seems funny, for a moment, how much effort you poured into these drinks. They were presented as best as you could manage for each and every one, and now the remains slink down the watery pipe like nothing ever was. Down it goes, you think. Down it goes.

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The glass of Night Drider is clean. You set it aside. A beautiful thing only half-finished from Nadezhda. A beautiful thing which you refuse to believe could have had a negative effect. Not with so much work put into such a beautiful thing...

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The glass of Lilac Dreamer is clean. You set it aside. You still don't know what exactly it did to the bug, but...

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The meloncup of Hydra Hydration is clean. Each moment you spend washing, an instinct in the back of your mossy head tells you to watch for another patron at the door, but it is failed each time. The bar is closed. You closed the bar. With a flick of a switch behind your cooking equipment, the light went on, and the bar is closed. But something in you still wants the door to swing open for another time.

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The plate of the Sates Catsberry is clean. You set it aside. A moment of clarity clears out the bad thoughts again. These people you've met are set in routine. Tomorrow can't possibly be more terrifying than today, and it can't not come. No day will be as new and unforgiving as the first one.

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The plate of Mutually Shirred Deconstruction is clean. You set it aside. Today was just the first stop on a train which will run for a long time. You don't know how long, but it can't end. Even if it ended, there's always more after that ending. And more after that. Greene is not a single mind trapped in this world, and Greene is not a mortal consciousness. All the component parts may collapse, and there will always be the whole that they have created. Always. Always. Always.

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The mug of Mulled Again Mulligan is clean. You set it aside. You take a long breath. You begin preparing one last drink for yourself.

Something to quench this emptiness, this loneliness, until the morning hours come again.

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Something like this.

You begin drinking your new creation with a new calm, sitting back against the stove and looking over all that has become your home in the last nine months. It's soothing, this mix-- something specially designed for your tastes. And as you finish it whole, the world begins to come into focus again. But it's a blurry focus. A blurry, tiring focus. You set the glass down, sit back against the counter, and stare off into...

into...

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[box=green border=4]Ha ha... We've been better. Seems our beverage was more potent than intended, though holding off on a few ingredients might have been the right choice. A lesson for the future, I suppose. And how've you been, out... here? Are those stars, in the distance?[/box]

Alright, probably.

Quick question, where, exactly, is here?

We're sadly alone. When is tomorrow?

>We were doing pretty good, but then i think we took things a bit too far. I'm a bit worried we'll have to deal with the consequences of that tomorrow, or however long it takes for it to be day again. Hopefully we can restrain ourselves from being too wildly excessive next time.

>What do you want to talk about?

What do you mean, "talk without the obligation of ever having to get to know you"?

who the hell are you anyway

oh
Oh jeez.

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Author's Notes
So I wanna make it clear here that this wasn't some fictional character's screwup, it was my own shitty thing that I did. I wanted to get all "meta-y" with it and introduce a planned character early but I didn't ask the person first and I played stupid when they initially asked, and that's fucking awful on a lot of levels. We are on alright terms about it but it was really an badly thought-out move and I'm deeply sorry.

I wanted to sort of bring it up because I don't want it to ever happen again, I wanna make it very clear when stuff like that's happening and to discuss it way further in advance, and I want folks to call me out if anything like that happens again. Because as fun as the meta-y stuff is, not everyone wants that out of this adventure whatsoever, and it shouldn't be a blurred line to the point of feeling weird at ALL.

So... yeah.

It's alright! I think!

I don't really know what you're talking about, or even who you're referring to. But if the situation is alright now, you probably don't need to keep making yourself feel guilty about it, if you are. You can move past it without being disrespectful, as long as you acknowledge responsibility and try to act better in the future, which it sounds like you are.

((Also maybe at this point it would be a good idea to have a discussion thread for this adventure, because having this actual forum thread be canonical to YWUIAB's universe is very cool but it might help to have a place to discuss things that isn't canonical, or at least not as canonical, because at least for me, I feel like I need to kind of roleplay a bit when i post here, beyond just the regular suspension of disbelief that a regular adventure requires, and not roleplaying would be spoiling it for other people. Like what I just wrote ^ is personally intended for you, but I also wrote it so that it would fit in-story as well. And like you said, that blurring of the line isn't what everyone wants all the time, so it might help to have a place where its clearer.))

Aight, s'cool.