Thought Punks

Tag: Fear

  • Secrets in the Static: The Ghost Town of Wavelength

    Secrets in the Static: The Ghost Town of Wavelength

    This entry is part 4 of 4 in the series Free Games

    Crowdfunding completed! Preview version now available.

    A TTRPG idea inspired by Lynchian horror, embodying surreal suburban dread and the unsettling blend of media and reality. Pulled from my playtesting slush pile in memory of David Lynch. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 license. Credit “Rev from Thought Punks”. This was a beta playtest module. The formatting and presentation style reflects that. This also stands out as an example of minimalist worldbuilding.

    Core Concept

    Abandoned vintage TV on a park bench surrounded by greenery, with artistic lens flare effect.

    The town of Wavelength exists in a strange limbo, an idyllic Upstate New York town that vanished from official records and maps in the early 1990s. Its existence has become a half-remembered myth, whispered about on long road trips and crackling through static on AM radio. Some claim to pick up ghostly broadcasts near where Wavelength supposedly stood, hearing fragments of soap operas, weather reports, or personal messages from those who lived there.

    For those inside Wavelength, the town remains suspended in eerie perfection, a postcard-perfect snapshot of 90s small-town life. Quaint diners, artisanal crafts, and warm neighbors project an air of nostalgia… but the town has secrets.

    Recently, televisions and radios have been infected with an omnipresent, enigmatic signal. Cryptic ads interrupt every broadcast, whispering impossible truths and surreal commands. Music swells out of nowhere, quelling any thoughts of leaving the town. Cryptic commercials, haunting soap operas, and surreal PSAs suggest the Static’s growing control. Some residents are even rumored to have vanished, replaced by eerie replicas speaking only in disjointed TV dialogue.

    Players, each tied to the signal in a deeply personal way, must navigate Wavelength’s shifting reality, uncovering its secrets while holding onto their crumbling identities.

    Player Hook

    Each character has a personal connection to the signal, making their investigation deeply intimate. These connections could include:

    • Hearing a lost loved one’s voice in a garbled ad, pleading for help.
    • Seeing impossible depictions of their own future in soap opera snippets.
    • Receiving unsettling, tailored messages through radio jingles.

    The signal lures players in, offering tantalizing truths and supernatural powers. But the closer they get, the more it rewrites their memories, relationships, and even their physical forms.

    Key Themes

    • Identity Erosion: The signal corrupts characters’ self-perception and memories, forcing them to question who they are.
    • Surreal Suburban Dread: Wavelength’s small-town charm contrasts with growing paranoia and uncanny horrors.
    • Media and Reality Bleed: Broadcasts shape reality, and characters must interact with these phenomena to uncover the truth.
    • Ambiguous Agency: Is the signal sentient? Malicious? Or just a reflection of their deepest flaws?

    Gameplay Framework

    Core Mechanic: The 3d6 Roll

    Three red transparent dice stacked on a dark surface, highlighting their reflective surfaces and dots.

    Every action involves rolling 3d6, with each die serving a specific purpose (called “flavors” or dice labels):

    • Degree Die: Measures success (1 = partial success, 6 = overwhelming success).
    • Cost Die: Determines complications or costs (1 = severe, 6 = none).
    • Static Die: Reflects distortion by the signal (1 = surreal, 6 = mundane).

    Modifiers are added based on traits like Nature, Profession, Hobbies, and Quirks. After rolling, apply modifiers and interpret the results based on the fiction.

    Character Creation

    • Hook: What draws you to the Static? What do you see or hear in it?
    • Nature: The core of who you are. Examples: “Survivor,” “Protector,” or “Dreamer.”
      • When in alignment: Add +2 to die of choice after rolling.
      • When in conflict: Add +3 to the Cost Die.
    • Profession: Your role in Wavelength (e.g., librarian, mechanic, bartender).
      • When relevant: After rolling, rearrange the dice in any order.
    • Hobbies (pick 3): Passions or skills unrelated to your profession.
      • When relevant: Add +1 to any one die after rolling.
    • Quirks (pick 2): Unusual traits, some mundane, some supernatural.
      • At the start of a scene, roll 2d6, assigning one die to each Quirk. On a 6, that Quirk activates (examples: eerie theme music plays, your body distorts to walk on all fours, or you compulsively spout jingles).
    • Background Details (write 3): Relationships, memories, or personal details grounding your character.

    Mechanics of the Static

    Static Exposure

    When exposed to the signal, the GM determines the intensity of the interaction:

    • Minor Exposure: Roll 1d6.
    • Moderate Exposure: Roll 2d6.
    • Major Exposure: Roll 3d6.

    Gain 1 Static Point for every die that rolls 4 or higher.

    • Minor: Listening to a cryptic ad on the radio or stopping briefly to watch a flickering TV broadcasting surreal images.
    • Moderate: Watching a full broadcast that seems to address your concerns personally or deeply analyzing a broadcast for meaning or clues.
    • Major: Being the focus of the signal’s direct attention, such as being spoken to directly by an anchor on a TV or being caught in a scene that is completed distorted into TV reality by the Static.

    Powers from the Static

    A man in eyeglasses and suit surrounded by floating books in a dramatic, dimly lit setting.

    Characters with Static Points gain access to the hidden signs in the signal. These powers come in minor and major categories, reflecting their risk and scope.

    Minor Powers (2 Dice)

    Minor powers unlock at 3 Static Points. These are small, reality-bending effects that grant brief advantages. Roll 2d6 when using a minor power. Gain 1 Static Point for every die that rolls 4 or higher.

    Examples of Minor Powers:

    • Alter a Small Detail: Change a single object or memory in the immediate area (e.g., a flickering light turns solid red, a door briefly becomes a wall, or someone remembers an argument as a cordial conversation).
    • Daring Insight: By bravely facing the signal with full attention for a second, you can glimpse unnoticed clues, hidden areas, torrid affairs, and other secrets in a location.
    • Eerie Influence: Convince someone to act out of character using subtle, surreal persuasion.

    Major Powers (4 Dice)

    Major powers unlock at 6 Static points. These allow significant manipulations of reality at a cost. Roll 4d6 when using a major power. Gain 1 Static Point for every die that rolls 4 or higher.

    Examples of Major Powers:

    • Rewrite Reality: Change a large element in the environment, like turning a road into a river, erasing or introducing an NPC into a scene, or completely change the dynamic of a family feud.
    • Erase or Implant Memories: Target one person, radically altering their memory of an event or relationship.
    • Surreal Projection: Create a temporary illusion or construct that others perceive as real.

    At 9 Static Points, only roll 1d6 for minor powers and 2d6 for major powers. Also ignore minor exposures and roll one less die for moderate and major exposures. The Static has begun to embrace you and it flows easily, too easily, through you. It constantly whispers in your mind, even far away from any screens or speakers, a portion of the signal finding its way directly to increasingly distorted soul.

    Spending Static Points

    Players can spend Static Points only during interludes between scenes to deliberately rewrite aspects of their character. This process represents an attempt to resist, or embrace, the signal’s influence, but it comes with risks.

    • Determine Spending Limit: Roll 1d6. The result is the maximum number of Static Points you can spend during this interlude.
    • Choose Rewrites: Spend points based on the following costs:
      • 1 Point: Change one Hobby or Quirk.
      • 2 Points: Change your Profession or a Background Detail.
      • Nature: Cannot be changed unless the character hits the Static Limit and is fully rewritten.

    Roll a d6 for each thing chosen to be changed. On 1-3, change it to reflect growing closer to the Static. On 4-6, change it to reflect your personal will or what you think more truly reflects who you were before the Static trapped and rewrote the town. For signal-influenced changes, they are also accompanied by physical changes, initially simple things like hairstyles and clothing choices but eventually escalating into radical differences, almost becoming a different person.

    Static Limit

    If you reach 13 Static Points, you must rewrite your entire character, even your Nature and complete appearance. Everything but one background detail, a tenuous tie to the previous you, is altered. When rewriting your character, change things to what you think the Static wants or what is further away from your true self.

    Assorted Advice

    Spending Static Points

    Treat spending as a chance for characters to direct their transformation. Frame it as a double-edged sword: while they can resist, they can never truly escape the signal’s grip. There is a random chance whether the transformations follow their will or lean into the mysterious goals of the Static. Use rewrites to develop surreal or thematic elements that deepen the story.

    Using Powers

    Encourage players to experiment with powers early, reinforcing the temptation to draw on the signal. As powers escalate, introduce moral and narrative consequences. For example, a small illusion might merely confuse a bystander, but a major reality shift could incidentally rewrite someone else’s identity entirely.

    Exposure Rolls

    Use exposure rolls to emphasize the dangers of interacting with the signal. Minor exposure should feel subtle and unnerving, while major exposure should be dramatic and unrelenting.

    Dynamic Worldbuilding

    The town of Wavelength evolves alongside the characters’ investigations. GMs should introduce surreal events tied to the signal’s influence, such as:

    • The Laugh Track Incident: Characters hear sitcom laugh tracks during conversations, even in empty spaces.
    • The Soap Opera Shift: Players reenact scenes from the signal’s broadcasts, with scripted lines and actions.
    • The Product That Doesn’t Exist: A commercial compels a resident to build or sell a nonsensical item.
    • The Uncanny Broadcast: A news anchor appears on every screen, reading out the characters’ secrets.
    • The Repetition Effect: Players relive the same scene repeatedly, each iteration growing more distorted.

    Collaboration and Mystery

    Encourage players to work together to piece together clues, but introduce conflicting memories and perspectives to create tension. The truth should remain ambiguous, with players shaping its interpretation through their actions.

    Gameplay Toolkit

    This is a toolkit to help you craft a surreal, Lynchian experience in Wavelength. It includes templates for the town’s evolution, pacing advice, key events, escalating exposure scenes, and sample NPCs. Use this to guide the play through the town’s eerie descent into the unknown.

    Templates for Wavelength’s Evolution

    Wavelength begins as a nostalgic, picturesque town, but as the Static’s influence grows, it fractures into a surreal nightmare. Use the following phases to structure its progression.

    Phase 1: Postcard Perfection

    • Tone: Idyllic and welcoming with subtle undercurrents of unease.
    • Environment: Pristine sidewalks, smiling neighbors, cheerful radio hosts.
    • Signal Presence: Minor and eerie, like brief ads with strange phrasing, static interruptions.
    • NPC Behavior: Friendly but slightly off, as if reading from a script.

    Event Examples:

    • A TV plays an old soap opera where one character eerily resembles a player.
    • A commercial for a product the players owned as children plays on every screen in a diner.
    • An NPC starts speaking only in television and radio quotes.

    Phase 2: Fractured Reality

    • Tone: The charm cracks; paranoia grows.
    • Environment: Familiar locations subtly shift, streets curve impossibly, clocks show contradictory times.
    • Signal Presence: More pervasive, NPCs speak in advertising jingles or reenact full scenes from TV.
    • NPC Behavior: Neighbors act erratically, forgetting recent events or treating strangers as family.

    Event Examples:

    • A pedestrian repeatedly crosses the same intersection in different outfits.
    • A weather report describes exact player actions happening as it airs.
    • Reality’s color become over-saturated and everyone is dressed like a 50s sitcom.

    Phase 3: Full Static Takeover

    • Tone: The town becomes a surreal, shifting maze.
    • Environment: Familiar landmarks melt into distorted landscapes, streets loop infinitely, diners stretch into hallways.
    • Signal Presence: Ubiquitous, broadcasts directly interact with players and reshape reality.
    • NPC Behavior: Most NPCs behave like TV archetypes, repeating lines or freezing when not “on screen.”

    Event Examples:

    • A sitcom laugh track loudly plays during a tense argument.
    • An anchorperson on every screen reveals players’ private thoughts.
    • The “channel changes” and the scene abrupt shifts completely in location, action, and tone.

    Pacing Advice

    • Establish Normalcy: Spend time grounding players in Wavelength’s initial perfection. Let them connect with NPCs and locations to make later distortions more impactful.
    • Introduce the Signal Gradually: Begin with brief, eerie phenomena before escalating into more overt reality distortions.
    • Create Interludes: Allow quiet moments between scenes for players to process changes, strategize, and rewrite their characters if desired.
    • Escalate Tension Slowly: Build unease steadily, reserving major distortions for climactic scenes or critical narrative beats.

    Key Events

    Intersperse events like these throughout the campaign to maintain momentum:

    • The First Broadcast: A character hears their name in a commercial or sees an unsettling reflection on TV.
    • The Looping Scene: A day or interaction repeats with small, chilling changes each time.
    • The Uncanny Anchor: A news anchor delivers a message addressed directly to the players, predicting their actions.
    • NPC Vanishing: A well-known NPC disappears, replaced by a scripted replica or a memory gap no one else notices.
    • The Static Ritual: TVs across Wavelength broadcast a synchronized, incomprehensible ceremony.

    Escalating Exposure Scenes

    Use these examples to reflect the growing influence of the Static and its effects on characters.

    Minor Exposure

    • Hearing one’s own voice on the radio, finishing sentences the player hasn’t said yet.
    • A flickering TV shows a childhood memory in grainy black-and-white.
    • Static floods a nearby screen when a player approaches.

    Moderate Exposure

    • A commercial plays, tailored to a player’s fear or desire, offering cryptic advice.
    • A player’s reflection on a blank TV begins mimicking their inner thoughts.
    • An NPC freezes mid-sentence, then resumes, as if nothing happened.

    Major Exposure

    • The signal addresses a player directly, calling them by name or revealing secrets.
    • Time loops, forcing players to repeat actions while the environment changes around them.
    • The characters find themselves in a TV show set, complete with laugh tracks and canned applause.

    Sample NPCs

    Populate Wavelength with eerie, Lynchian characters who evolve alongside the town. Examples:

    Donna Whitfield, the Diner Waitress

    Donna is cheerful, chatty, and knows everyone’s name and favorite dish, even visitors who’ve just arrived in Wavelength. She seems to embody small-town hospitality, always smiling and ready with a pot of coffee. As the signal spreads, her behavior grows increasingly unsettling: she begins repeating phrases verbatim from old sitcoms, her expressions freezing into unnatural, static smiles. When players interact with her late at night, she might serve invisible (but real) food or speak in voices that clearly aren’t hers, like a television switching channels mid-sentence.

    Mr. Stanton, the Radio Host

    With his warm, folksy voice, Mr. Stanton is a constant presence in Wavelength. His AM radio show is equal parts town gossip, classic hits, and quirky commentary, making him beloved by locals. However, as the signal intensifies, his broadcasts take a darker turn. He begins sharing cryptic messages that seem meant specifically for the players, warning them of dangers, revealing their secrets, or hinting at the signal’s origin. Occasionally, his voice is overlaid with static, or the broadcast cuts to chilling advertisements for products that don’t exist. By the time the players uncover more about him, they may realize that no one has ever actually seen Mr. Stanton in person.

    Hank and Betty Rosewood, the Retirees

    The Rosewoods are Wavelength’s quintessential elderly couple: inseparable, amiable, and endlessly curious about others’ lives. They love hosting impromptu garden parties and sharing stories of their travels (despite never leaving town). As the signal grows, the couple becomes increasingly surreal, sometimes speaking in perfect unison or finishing each other’s sentences with eerie precision. Eventually, the players may discover them standing in their living room, completely motionless, as if frozen mid-conversation. Later still, they might encounter them as life-sized mannequins, their features disturbingly lifelike. If “activated” by the signal, they resume speaking, but their dialogue loops unnervingly, repeating old conversations.

    Mrs. Lindley, the School Librarian

    Strict but kind-hearted, Mrs. Lindley always seems to be shelving books when the players enter. As the Static grows, the books in her library start whispering secrets, and she begins to speak in riddles, referencing events that haven’t yet occurred, or that never will. Eventually, she seems to vanish, leaving the library eerily empty, yet somehow always open. However, anyone making too much noise or disrespecting the space will be hushed by a disembodied voice, or worse.

    Caleb Fischer, the Town Drifter

    A quiet man with a perpetual cigarette and a knack for appearing wherever he’s least expected. Caleb knows things he shouldn’t and shares cryptic warnings that feel more like prophecies. As the signal intensifies, Caleb begins to glitch, flickering like an old TV image or speaking in overlapping voices. Eventually he begins to randomly appear and disappear in places, a full staticky flickering image of a man who increasingly ceases to resemble the original Caleb.

    Kelly-Ann Fletcher, the Realtor

    Bright and relentlessly optimistic, Kelly-Ann insists Wavelength is the perfect place to live. She tirelessly promotes homes, even those now clearly abandoned or inexplicably distorted. Over time, her “For Sale” signs start appearing in impossible places (inside locked rooms, floating in midair), and her smile grows unsettlingly wide, as if stretched beyond human capability. She begins to promise “brand new homes” available in “The Hidden Vistas”, with home viewers vanishing with Ms. Fletcher promising with 100 voices of a choir they’re “forever happy in their forever home”.

    Clarifying Endgame Options

    The endgame of Wavelength is deliberately ambiguous, allowing the GM and players to shape the resolution collaboratively. Here are four possible outcomes, each with variations, to inspire meaningful choices while maintaining the surreal tone.

    Escaping Wavelength

    The players discover a way to leave the town, severing their connection to the signal. However, escape comes with heavy consequences:

    • Memory Price: To leave, the players must give up key aspects of their identities, such as memories of loved ones, their professions, or even their Natures. They will need to abandon all their loved ones and any chance of recovering their true self.
    • Reality Divergence: Upon escaping, players realize the world outside Wavelength is subtly wrong: unrecognizable landmarks, altered history, or loved ones who claim the players never existed.
    • Lingering Static: The signal has permanently marked them, manifesting in small, surreal glitches in their lives. They might see brief flashes of Wavelength on their TVs or hear its broadcasts late at night.

    Confronting the Signal

    The players pursue the source of the signal, uncovering its true nature. This ending offers closure, or deeper mystery. Possible natures of the broadcast to discover and confront:

    • Government Experiment: A covert project designed to manipulate reality via media went out of control.
    • Sentient Broadcast: The signal is alive, seeking to reshape the world in its image.
    • Forbidden Family Ritual: The signal stems from an ancient, familial pact to preserve Wavelength at the cost of its residents’ humanity.
    • The Incomprehensible: The signal is a manifestation of reality’s underlying fragility or some unknowable Thing From Beyond, offering no clear answers.

    The Choice:

    • Shut It Down: Attempt to destroy the signal, but at the cost of their own existence or trapping others in the process.
    • Fuse With It: Embrace the signal, merging with it to become its new stewards, spreading its influence further.
    • Compromise: Negotiate with the signal to stabilize Wavelength, but allow its continued existence at the edges of reality.

    Embracing Transformation

    The players give in to the signal, allowing it to fully rewrite them and their environment.

    • Sublime Union: The characters become one with the signal, losing their original identities but gaining a surreal, godlike understanding of reality.
    • Wavelength Rewritten: The town stabilizes under the signal’s control, transformed into a surreal utopia or dystopia.
    • Sacrifice for Others: The players stay behind, fully consumed by the signal, but in doing so, they protect the rest of the world from its spread.

    Bodhisattva Vow

    The players discover their true original identities and a way to escape Wavelength, but instead, they choose to remain in the town to awaken and free others from the Static’s grip. This choice comes with significant consequences:

    • Self-Sacrifice: The players give up their chance to escape, staying behind to help those trapped by the signal. Their own identities and memories begin to erode further as they fight to free others, risking becoming part of the Static forever.
    • Transformative Struggle: As they try to awaken others, they face increasing distortions to their reality and personal selves, potentially losing their original essence in the process.
    • Lingering Hope: Despite the risks, their actions might lead to moments of clarity or breakthroughs, where some residents momentarily escape the signal’s control, but at the cost of their own stability.

    Additional Guidance for GMs

    Establish early on what motivates each character to engage with the signal (finding a loved one, escaping Wavelength, or uncovering the truth). Use these motivations to shape the endgame conflicts.

    Introduce dilemmas that force players to weigh personal goals against collective outcomes. For example, escaping may require sacrificing an NPC who is too deeply tied to the signal.

    Keep the truth about the signal flexible until late in the campaign. Allow players’ theories and actions to shape the final reveal.

    Offer answers that resolve immediate questions but introduce new mysteries. For example, players might destroy a device broadcasting the signal but find evidence of a second, more sinister source.

    Encourage players to discuss their goals and weigh the consequences of their choices as a group. Use interludes to highlight individual transformations and their impact on the team.

    Present multiple paths in the final session, but make it clear that every choice carries irreversible consequences.

    The endgame should feel surreal and emotionally charged. Use shifting environments, cryptic NPCs, and nonlinear events to heighten the tension. Allow scenes to loop, merge, or collapse into chaos as the signal reaches its peak, creating a dreamlike sense of inevitability.

    The endgame of Wavelength is less about providing closure and more about forcing players to grapple with transformation, sacrifice, and ambiguity. Regardless of the chosen ending, leave enough unanswered questions for players to linger on the experience long after the final scene fades to static.

    Crowdfunding completed! Preview version now available.

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  • Diary of a Deacon Part 3 (a NEVER Stop Smiling novella)

    Diary of a Deacon Part 3 (a NEVER Stop Smiling novella)

    This entry is part 3 of 3 in the series Diary of a Deacon

    The prose version of a NEVER Stop Smiling solo playthrough. Read Part 1 and Part 2.

    Entry 8: Laughter With Wrong Echoes

    Silver Throat shone with the artificial brilliance of a dream realized, or perhaps a nightmare cloaked in gilded light. As we walked its gleaming streets, the weight of our task hung heavily behind us. The laughter that filled the air, bright, almost too bright, was the sound of a city reborn, or so it seemed. The buildings, once broken and dark, now shimmered with vibrant hues as if the city itself had been repainted by unseen hands. The walls were alive with color, a feverish carnival of radiant reds and blues that almost burned to look at.

    Music bloomed from open windows, the sound of flutes and strings weaving together into a chorus that joined the humming pulse of a city resurrected. The connections to the rest of The Happy Place had been restored, and with them, the pulse of joy that defined this fragile, feverish paradise.

    The people lined the streets, their eyes alight with something almost manic, their voices singing praises to us as though we were miracles incarnate. “Bless the Deacons!” one woman shouted, hands clasped in prayer-like reverence. “The First Oracle’s miracle lives on through you!” Their cheers were loud and effusive, their smiles wide enough to crack their faces in two. The worship was almost sickening in its fervor, like the city itself was drunk on its own revival.

    I should have felt pride. I should have felt relief. The task we were sent to complete had been accomplished. The promise had held true. We had restored joy. Death had been unraveled, and Reine had returned. She was whole again, alive, her smile gleaming like the sun that bathed the streets of Silver Throat.

    Yet, when I looked at her, standing beside us, smiling with the rest of us, I wondered.

    Is she really her?

    We nodded and smiled, our faces painted in the same veneer of joy, though I could feel the tremors under my skin. Isaiah’s voice rang out, warm but too steady. “The joy is eternal.”

    “All is well now,” I echoed, the words spilling from my mouth with the practiced ease of a mantra. “And it will be forever.”

    The crowd’s cheers followed us like a blessing, or a curse, as we boarded the tram back to the heart of The Happy Place. But as the bright voices faded into the distance, a shiver curled its way down my spine. The weight of what we had endured lingered, just beneath the surface. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could outrun. It was a shadow, always in the periphery, always waiting for you to look away.

    I should feel reassured. I should feel… something. The truth had been proven, after all. Death is a fleeting illusion for those who follow the law, for those who believe. We had saved Reine. We had defeated Death herself, and now Reine stood beside us, smiling like the rest of us, shining like a doll in a showcase. But still… my face aches. The smile feels like a foreign skin strapped to my skull. My soul trembles, shivering in some place deep beneath the flesh, where the surface joys cannot reach.

    When Isaiah and Reine ask me about my past, I lie. Not because I mean to deceive, but because the past feels so far away, like a dream I can’t quite touch. I tell them easy lies about tinkering with toys, about little things, the kind of shallow memories that don’t demand too much thought. But it doesn’t feel like my past anymore. It feels like something, someone, else’s. A life I have abandoned, or perhaps a life that has abandoned me.

    Is this how it happens? Does it always happen here? Does the Happy Place take you, reshape you to fit the mold it has made? Why is memory so… fluid here? Maybe, for me, it’s a mold that fits the Deacon’s role, the one where there is no room for anything but joy.

    The tram slows as we near our stop. I can feel the weight of the citizens around us, eyes on us, too many of them, too intent. Are they watching because we are Deacons? Or because they see the cracks in me, the hollow that I have become? I can feel their eyes crawling over my skin, pressing in on the parts of me that are too soft, too broken, that I cannot hide.

    I want to run. To escape. To find somewhere where I don’t have to smile, somewhere where the weight of it all can fall away. But there is no place like that here. Not in The Happy Place. Not for someone like me.

    I can feel my heart clenching, a tightness in my chest that refuses to release. But no tears come. There are no tears in a place like this. Not for Deacons. Not for those who serve the First Oracle’s eternal promise.

    When we finally reach the Counselor’s office, I can feel the gaze of the city still on us, even though the cheers are long past. They linger, heavier now, like something they want to keep hidden, but can’t quite grasp. What do they see in us, the ones who return from the deep places? Do they see a gleam in our eyes, or do they hear the whispers beneath our smiles?

    Reine stands beside me, still smiling, still perfect. But as she looks at me, as I look at her, I wonder… Is she still Reine?

    And I wonder… Though joy is to be eternal, how long can we keep the mask from slipping?

    Entry 9: The Hollow Beneath the Smile

    A black and white photo of a man's eye

    The Counselor’s chambers were a vacuum, an emptiness so profound that it seemed to swallow all color and sound. The walls stretched endlessly in all directions, their smooth white surface gleaming with a sterile coldness that suggested no reality could truly settle here. The air hummed with the quiet, omnipresent buzz of unseen machinery, as though the room itself was some kind of living system. It felt as thought it were alive in a way that we, the people of The Happy Place, could never be. And yet, it was not quite alive. It was the kind of sterile precision that only machinery and gods could afford.

    The room held no warmth, no personal touch, only the vast, looming desk at its center, a physical and symbolic barrier between us and the Counselor. Behind it, the figure sat motionless, a creature so still it might have been carved from stone. The Counselors always felt like something other, something that had transcended normality, grown too far removed from humanity to be fully understood. Their robes shimmered in the light, bright and immaculate, covered in gold-threaded patterns that seemed to shift when they were not being looked at directly, an optical illusion, or perhaps something stranger, like the ripples of reality itself folding and bending at their command.

    Their smile, perfect and unwavering, filled the space like a blade held at the ready. There was no warmth there. Only the cold precision of absolute control.

    “Sit,” they commanded, the word not a request but an inevitability that resonated with an unspoken weight. The air thickened as the syllables settled around us, suffocating in their finality.

    We obeyed, our bodies stiff, our movements clumsy in the presence of something so alien, so far removed from what we knew. The smile stretched on our faces, as artificial and forced as it had ever been. I could already feel the ache in my jaw from holding it.

    The Counselor’s voice, smooth as velvet yet sharp enough to cut glass, began its ritual. “Describe the resolution in Silver Throat.”

    Isaiah, ever the composed figure, spoke first, his words flowing smoothly, his tone as measured and rehearsed as the finest of orators. He recounted the mission with the precision of a man reading from a script, each detail perfectly in line with what the Counselor wanted to hear.

    Reine followed next. Her words were halting, her voice a little thinner, but still steady, the practiced sheen of a survivor not yet fully tempered by this life. Her account was clean, composed… far too composed, given the chaos we had faced.

    When it was my turn, I offered a concise and sanitized report, stripping away anything that might have disturbed the sanctity of the narrative we were building. I left out the screams, the ones that rattled our bones long after the noise had stopped. I left out the transformations, the creeping horror of that unfathomable machine, its pulsing, organic mechanics leaking dread into the air like a poison that we had swallowed without truly realizing it. I kept my words pure, as they were supposed to be. The image of victory. The triumph of joy.

    The Counselor’s gaze, unwavering and cold, swept over us like a scalpel. “Did you uphold the joy of The Happy Place throughout?”

    “Yes,” we answered in perfect unison, as though the response had been programmed into our very cells. Our smiles were flawless, even as our minds betrayed us.

    The Counselor’s gaze sharpened, dissecting the smallest of movements. Their next question came with an edge. “And what of doubt? Did you feel any?”

    Isaiah, without hesitation, answered first. “None.” His voice rang with certainty, his conviction so solid it might have shattered the very room around us.

    I hesitated, just for a heartbeat too long. The words caught in my throat as the pressure of the Counselor’s stare bore into me. “None,” I forced out, my voice a little too stiff, a little too rehearsed.

    Reine faltered. Her lips parted, but no sound emerged. It was an unspoken confession in its own right, a silence louder than any words could have been. Her hesitation hung in the air, thick with something unnameable. The Counselor’s eyes glinted with an almost imperceptible flash of something like satisfaction, before the smile returned to its perfect, unwavering state.

    The Counselor leaned forward, just a fraction, their presence swelling to fill the entire space. It was as if the room itself bowed to them, as if the very walls bent and shifted under the weight of their being. Their voice dropped, soft but somehow more insistent, each word like a nail driven deep into the silence. “Doubt is a sickness. But it can be cured.”

    Their smile stretched then, something unnatural behind it, something chilling. It was not comforting. It was not kind. It was the smile of something beyond us, something far older, far colder than we had been prepared to face.

    “You have done well,” they continued, their tone shifting to one of almost parental warmth, a veneer so thin I could almost see the predator beneath. “The work of a Deacon is demanding. The body and mind must align with the joy of the city to function properly. I sense… tension in you.”

    I wanted to speak, to protest, to claim that I was fine, that I was joyful, that everything was as it should be. But the words turned to ash in my mouth. The smile on my face became a hollow thing, a lie too tired to keep up the pretense. Reine stirred beside me, a brief murmur of dissent escaping her lips before the Counselor’s gaze fell on her like a weight that cracked her resolve.

    “This is not a flaw,” the Counselor murmured, their voice taking on the clinical precision of someone diagnosing a malfunction. “It is an opportunity for growth. I am recommending therapeutic recovery before your next mission. The First Oracle’s joy is endless, but you must allow yourself the grace to reconnect with it fully.”

    Their words, though laced with the promise of care, felt hollow. This was not the warm embrace of a leader tending to their people. It was the impersonal touch of a technician calibrating a machine. Their care was a function, a cold, methodical solution to an unwanted anomaly.

    “Thank you,” I said, bowing my head, my smile now rigid and unyielding. I dared not let it slip.

    The Counselor’s gaze shifted away from us, their attention already moving to whatever was next in the sterile procession of their duties. “Continue to bring joy to The Happy Place. You are dismissed.”

    We rose, stiff and mechanical, our smiles as fixed as the world around us. As we left the room, the door slid shut behind us with an unsettling hiss, sealing us back into the vibrant corridors of The Happy Place.

    But out there, where the streets still pulsed with life, the light seemed to lose its warmth, as though the radiance of the city itself had dimmed. The air felt thicker now, like something had shifted, and the illusion of joy, so carefully constructed, was beginning to strain under the pressure of whatever lay beneath it.

    And as we walked away, I couldn’t help but wonder: How far had the Counselor transcended, and what of the Cardinals they served, those whispered shadows of even stranger evolution? How far had the Oracles stretched their existence beyond human comprehension? And how long could we, the last vestiges of humankind, keep up the pretense of joy and humanity before it shattered completely?

    Entry 10: Eternal Smile of the Forgotten Self

    Back in my quarters, I stood before the mirror, where the silence wrapped around me like a shroud, fragile and thin as a breath. The reflection staring back felt familiar, but distant… an echo, a fragment of someone I thought I knew. My smile stretched across my face, immaculate, flawless, but it was hollow. The city’s smile, not mine.

    The eyes in the mirror gleamed unnaturally, their brightness cold, as though the warmth had long been stripped away, replaced by something that glimmered without ever shining. I reached up to my face, tracing the curve of my mouth, pressing into my cheeks. Flesh that felt soft, pliable, alien and unyielding all at once. I wondered, for a fleeting moment, if I could feel anything beneath this smile. It would not waver. It refused.

    I thought of Reine. Her return, what should have been a miracle, a testament to the First Oracle’s joy, to our mastery over death. Yet the memories of her transformation clung to me like something sharp, something jagged. The way her body had contorted, twisted and unfurled, bones cracking like dry branches, only to rethread into something too perfect, too smooth. It wasn’t Reine who had risen from that quivering cocoon of flesh, it had been something else, wearing her face, too wide, too still.

    I tried to push it away, but it stayed. The machine. The heart of Silver Throat’s sickness. The pulse that was not life but an imitation of it. Its surface writhed, veins glowing with a heatless fire, a song not heard, but felt, a vibration that burrowed beneath my skin, deep into my thoughts. When it stopped, there was no sound, only an all-consuming silence, as though the world paused to ask: What have you done?

    The city had cheered our return. The streets had swarmed with citizens, their faces radiant, voices a hymn of gratitude, as if they had been waiting for salvation. Their smiles stretched wide, laughter breaking through the air, infectious. I had smiled back, laughed with them. I had felt the joy. A tide that swept everything else away. For those brief moments, I had believed. I had believed in the miracle. I had believed that I was whole, complete.

    But here, alone, that tide receded. And what remained beneath it? The gaps. The fractures in my mask, widening with every passing breath. I had nearly frowned, just for a flicker, long enough to feel the cold hand of mortality slipping around my ribs, squeezing, pulling at the strings of my fragile human form.

    I willed the smile wider. It hurt. My teeth ached with the strain. My cheeks throbbed, as if the flesh was too thin to hold all the joy that was meant to be there. But still, it held. It was perfect. The reflection in the mirror smiled back, an endless, unchanging echo of the joy that was supposed to define us all.

    Never stop smiling. The First Oracle’s joy is eternal. NEVER stop smiling. NEVER.

    This is what I tell myself. This is what I must believe.

    I thought of the Counselor’s words. Their voice had been soft, soothing, like a lullaby… or maybe like a whisper through static, their smile so perfect, their eyes too deep. “This is not a flaw. It is an opportunity,” they had said. Opportunity. They had said it with such certainty, such clinical precision. No room for doubt. And there had been no kindness in their words, just a cool efficiency. I wasn’t a person to them. I was a part, a cog, a vital part of The Happy Place’s great machine, a malfunction to be fixed, a gear to be calibrated.

    My reflection flickered, warping, the edges of my vision swimming like oil. The image in the mirror shifted, twisted. My face stretched, my smile grew impossibly wide. The teeth inside it gleamed like rows of needles, sharp and wrong. My eyes… hollowed. The spark, the light… it vanished. What was left was just an abyss. I blinked. And then, it was gone. Just me. Just the smile. Always the smile. Forever the smile.

    I tried to remember. To recall anything of myself before this. My favorite toy, a little thing I had made. I remember giving it to someone. Who was it? Who had I given it to? The memory is… gone. There’s nothing. Just a blank space where a moment should be. It slips further away, like sand through my fingers. A forgotten gift. A forgotten me.

    I want to believe. I want to believe the Counselor, to believe in the citizens’ joy, in the songs rising from the walls, in the promise of eternal happiness. I want to believe I am whole again, that the wounds in my mind and soul aren’t flaws, but opportunities to be perfected.

    But beneath the surface, beneath all the smiling, something is unraveling.

    How long? How long can I keep smiling? How long before the smile begins to fade, like everything else?

    I cling to it. I have to. The alternative is unthinkable. I cannot let go.

    Never stop smiling.

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