MONDAY AUGUST 1ST, 2011
(Don't Speak Its true Name I: Peace)

1:03 AM
Along the forest road, we walk at an uneven pace. There's five of us now, each with different understandings and different speeds. Danny's excited to have more boys to talk to. Donnie's looking nervously around and finding any excuse to not have to talk. Fentzy and I are leading the pack, or trying to. We don't really know where we're going now?
Whether we encounter zombies, wild wolves, or cloning shadows from worlds beyond, there's too many of us now for any idle threats. And Donnie and I still have our hammer and sword, still stained with alien blood.
Of all the adventures we've had, that last one feels the most like a dream.

1:39 AM
Bones came up to the front, with us.
"Hey, so. Next time we find a Door, I wanna show you something."
Oh, sure. Like, a house, or a rabbit hole door?
"Right, you call them 'rabbit holes.' Yeah, those."
What do you call them? o:
"Doors of Oblivion."
Fentzy looked at him in surprise and then tripped over a tree root NOTHING HAPPENED, I DID NOT GET PUNCHED IN THE ARM

2:00 AM
"There! Between those trees! It's a Sears!"
dammit Danny we're not looking for a Sears we're looking for a--
oh
between those trees is a well-lit superstore aisle of kitchen appliances
Yeah, that's a rabbit hole.
derek "By the Nine, it's Oblivion."

2:02 AM
He set one foot in the rabbit hole, and now we’re surrounded by shifting swirly purple.
How the hell did he do that? :D

2:03 AM
I can feel faces looking down on us with what I hope is sympathy.
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dawn, I still wait for my god
despite the self-help of my faith
I see the Final Battle of good and evil.
The Lamb versus the Beast.
In one corner, standing tall and thin, is one contender, scarf of blood and hat of shadow. His sanity dissipated long ago along with what some would call a soul. would you, Jordan? call it a soul?
In the other corner, standing everywhere at once with strange headgear and a weapon crafted from the bowels of the Planck level itself, stands another contender. I sense great evil buried deep within.
Only one contender still waits for his God.
Both contenders have drawn their stairway, and some of us may go up one and some down the other. Our souls may separate from us as we do so.
As the movements flow, as John Petrucci paves the background way, as the Harlot suffers a fate unimaginable, the Beast nears his goal. The Lamb lies down on Broadway, the Eldritch's Broadway, where puppets dance for the sake of the Harlot’s trance.
No man can save us from the world’s two apocalypses.
Cloud’s Rebirth and its Red Repercussions will have come and gone, leaving a dying dawn on the lawn of Babylon. All that remains is the untrue spawn; insanity’s fawn fades with its pawn.
Something like feeling
leaving your nerves trembling in their cosmically hard battered scream.
Ready to end, ready to dissolve into atoms that are no longer your own.

2:13 AM
Purple cave. A mirror figure leads me on.
It is Bones. Behind me are Fentzy, Donnie, and Danny.
We unearth back on Earth in yet more woods, but at least the trees are a different sort here.

2:39 AM
Fentzy was wise enough to get a flashlight in Los Angeles, so we're not entirely in the dark here. Plus the moon's pretty, seen through the canopy!
But every so often, there's laughter from afar, and from up above.

2:45 AM
There's birds up above. They're the ones laughing. But it's just like birdsong. Danny says maybe they're lyre birds or something.
Where the hell are we?

3:03 AM
One by one, houses crept into our environment, until we were undeniably in a suburban setting. The road came after, and we stepped onto the sidewalk pavement, cracked in places and sometimes wobbly.
This is a town.
a bevelled caution draws each foreigner, ground high, into jurisdiction:

The buildings look like a beautiful mixture between European and American. Reminds me of Savannah, but this isn't Georgia. Where are we?

3:08 AM
A scattering of houses have lights on inside, which only draws attention to the most that do not. It's three in the morning. This is normal behaviour for a normal suburb.
The sky is still red. Derek insists we're not in a rabbit hole.
Why is this place untouched?

3:27 AM
A long walk past residences, and now we can see different architecture ahead. A town centre.
We'll cut through a cemetery to reach it.

3:30 AM
"Why is there a grave for a guitar?"
What
"FRIEND OF JORDAN
GAVE HIM GOOD THINGS TO REMEMBER HIS ISOLATION BY
HERE LIES TIGER STRIPES,
PROOF OF THE VALUE IN INANIMATE PLASTIC."
What???
Who did.. how did???
And why do I.. need a minute now?

3:32 AM
Good game, Tiger Stripes.
Six Guitar Heroes together. So much DragonForce, so much Megadeth. “2112.”
Three Rock Bands together, DLC to the heavens and beyond. The Epic Symphony in A Flat Minor, “Obfuscation,” Ten, Rust in Peace, “Free Bird,” “Roundabout,” “Antibodies,” “Panic Attack,” “Visions,” and everything in between.
Two and a half months of Hell, it took. You were strong, you were sturdy. You kept going through the fire and the flames, you killed so many spidercats. We made it across the Atlantic together, we made it across the Divided Countries together.
Now we have to end our playthrough. We couldn’t FC this one, friend, but I’m sure we passed. .w. And I’m sure we could never do it without you.
Cold figures laugh at themselves
The ultimate practical joke
They see skies fading
Their faces regret nothing at all tonight
Still, they think once of
The last sunset bitter.
September 2010 - July 2011.

3:48 AM
On we go.
Walking into a land of normal here where it shouldn't be,
What can it mean but the return of the shambling dead?
Jordan leads the pack this time, gangly teens on the prowl, and he
Summons wit he never had, someone's grit he's always said.
Through Hapsburg Court, his friends keep up.
Treasure Street, Danny starts to trail behind.
"Does he know where he's going? What's up?
"I'm feeling doubts creep into my mind."

4:03 AM
Into the George.
It's a bar! Or, a pub. We're in Canada. I worked it out! (There were posters on the way.)
The George isn't normally open this late, but with the Rapture, it helps to have a nightwatch.
Oh hey, the others have caught up! Hey guys! Check it out, it's a pub!
...they're winded. :3 Let 'em sit down, let 'em chill a bit.
I'll talk to the locals.

4:32 AM
Okay, so! I've gathered my friends, let me tell you what I've learned!
This is Dominiere, a township in Alberta! Established in 1953 by the Social Credits or something! It's a fairly big town! The apocalypse didn't really hit them, but they send money to their neighbours where they can! Neighbouring towns and.
What.
Donnie "Are you okay?"
Yeah, I'm fine!
Bones "Hey, uh, Danny's gone out to check out the town."
Oh shit! Good on him!
So anyway, these guys know what's up, they have their heads on their shoulders, this looks like a place where we can settle and not worry.
…
So yeah! We're here! Let's go!

6:50 AM
Donnie here. Someone ought to update the journal, and Jordan's not going to since he went to sleep.
Danny went off on his own to check out the area two hours ago and never came back. I asked Derek why he took us here, and he said that he doesn't really have control over the purple faces, that he just follows where they take him. As if to prove this, he tried to return to the rabbit hole and get us a path out of here, to keep our options open, and.. we couldn't even find the Door, honestly. Whenever we went far enough out into the forest, we'd hit a crowd of zombies in a line, holding hands, blocking our path.
I don't like it.
I don't trust it.
I think Derek just led us into a trap.
And Jordan's not even recognizing any of it. He found a bed, first chance he could, and went to sleep.
We're gathered in the same hotel he picked. The Coach Motel. The others are going to wait up for Danny to come back, but I'm going to join Jordan and talk to him in the morning.

11:49 AM
Woke up next to Donnie. :)
My journal next to my bed.
The birds are singing, someone's mowing a lawn, the sky is a peaceful red, and I feel... safe.

11:55 AM
Hi Donnie.
"Mngh.. baby, are you okay?"
Yeah! I'm grand. I'm happy today.
"Did you read my entry in your journal?"
Yeah. I think you guys have this one covered.
"..baby, I don't trust this place. And I don't know what's happening to you."
Nothing's happening!
Hey, do you want to take a walk with me? We can see what's here in Dominiere.
"...yeah. Yeah, let me put some pants on."
:)

12:03 PM
Outside our room, sitting in chairs in the hallway, are Bones and Fentzy! Bones was asleep but Fentzy woke him up when we came out.
Hey guys!
fentzy "So you've had some sleep. Are you gonna help us look for Danny?"
Oh, is he still out? Sure, we can have a look. Donnie and I were gonna have a look at the area anyway!
"Then we're coming too."
Great! :D

12:08 PM
They've been filling me in on stuff.
They see people coming in and out of the hotel, in and out of rooms, and it all looks totally normal.
They say it's like there's no apocalypse outside, but I think it's more like this is a town that's gotten used to it and thrived! This is humanity, man! This is what we can do!
And a circle of zombies on the outskirts of town? Sounds to me like the townsfolk have pushed the zombies out.

12:10 PM
The barkeep saw me and waved! Asked if I slept okay.
Like a light! I love this place!

12:21 PM
Immediately outside the Coach Motel are vendors in stalls selling sausages, selling bedding and pillows, selling hard candies, selling coasters with all kinds of popular fictional characters on them, selling CDs, selling fresh strawberries and grapes!
We're not far from a square where the real market is out, where there's a hairdresser, a keyfob, a watch repair shop, an antique store, and some cafes!
Such a charming little town!

12:35 PM
Farther out from the town square are furniture stores, with moving vans coming to and fro, and there are small shops selling fresh produce and tins, and..
donnie "No sign of Danny anywhere…"
fentzy "God, where did he go? How does he just vanish?"
donnie "Did he ever go out on his own before? When you were traveling with him?"
fentzy "He's a bit of a bonehead and does this, yeah, but he only ever takes this long if there's trouble."
Oh man, there's a model railway?
…
fentzy "What the fuck?"

12:38 PM
Donnie's pulled me aside.
"Jordan."
Yes?
"Jordan, you're being really weird right now."
I am?
"You're not even.. I mean, these are your friends, not mine. Why am I more concerned about Danny than you are?"
He's out seeing the town! Like I want to be! He's fine!
"Jordan, we don't want to stay, we want to get out of here."
What? Really? This place is exactly what you and I have been looking for! It's precisely a place to stay!
"What?"
Do you.. not think so? Is this place really so suspicious?
"It's surrounded by zombies! Where are the people getting all their produce from? What's the economy? Are they using Z?"
These are things we can just ask, Donnie!
"..."

12:39 PM
Donnie's asked Fentzy and Bones to go on ahead.
She's sat us down on a bench.
"Please help me understand something."
Okay.
"You.. remember the last few days, right?"
You mean. Do I remember the writhing nightmare world that was King Real's castle, blood and faces awakening my every phobia? Do I remember the fight that threatened your life and got me to feel grief and adrenaline that sucked my stomach out of my throat? Or do you mean the sheer tragedy that was San Francisco?
"..yeah. You still remember, you're not having some kind of memory trouble."
We've seen a lot of Hell. I feel like I've found somewhere more peaceful, and all that distress is leaking out the back of my head.
"But, honey. We don't want you to lose your distress. You clung to this town as soon as we got in here. You didn't have any doubt whatsoever. And I don't think you've earned the trust you have in this place."
..okay.
"Yeah?"
Can I.. ask something?
"Please do."
Can I.. go back to my room?
"...are you.. sure? That's what you want?"
Maybe I'm just.. feeling the exhaustion catch up with me? Maybe I just need some more time.
"Well. Alright. I'll tell the others you just need more rest."
Thanks, Donnie. .w.
"But can I ask something?"
Yeah?
"Give me your journal?"
.......yeah, sure.

12:41 PM
He's gone back to the hotel.
I think he was being honest with me. That conversation was the most "normal" he's sounded today.
I don't know if he's aware of the change happening to himself.

12:44 PM
I've caught back up with Rauri and Derek.
They're confused by Jordan's behaviour, and even if they were his online friends or whatever, they've still only really just met him, so I have to assure them that he's not normally like this. I mean, Christ, we wouldn't have gotten this far if this is what he was like.
But I can't.. worry about this now.
We've got to get to the bottom of this fucking town.

12:57 PM
It's so strange. There's cars, there's traffic. There's a postman. There's police officers. Dominiere has everything but the blue sky, so at least we're not dealing with Ants.
It's a regular Canadian town, but just with a red sky.

2:23 PM
We stopped a policeman and asked him some questions.
"How does Dominiere stay safe from monsters?"
"We don't let them in."
"What about the Fears?"
"They don't mess with us."
"Don't you fear the coming of Rapture?"
"We don't fear many things here."
All rather vague, noncommittal answers. Much like anyone else we ask.
No one had seen Danny either.
We were making such little progress that Rauri started losing her temper, and I suggested we all get a little more rest. As Rauri stubbornly refused this, I just.. asked her to come and have a drink of tea with me instead. Derek came along, not wanting anyone else to go off on their own.
We found a cafe, I don't remember the fucking name, it doesn't matter, but they were decent enough to let us make the tea ourselves (as we still don't know what to trust). I agreed to wash up after, in lieu of payment.
I want to be able to say here that we found some staggering evidence, something out of place, but, no, everything has been completely normal. The cafe owners were put upon and polite. The seats were slightly dirty, not spotless. The tea was.. just... tea. A store brand, Safeway brand.
And Rauri and I just.. talked. Derek was there too, drinking silently, but he had nothing to add.
I've learned that Rauri is sixteen, she was raised in Connecticut, before all this she wanted to grow up to be a digital artist, she loves PaintTool SAI and Wacom tablets, and she had the most to say about video games, and something called Homestar Runner.
She knows Jordan from their web chat client, where she started talking to him.. actually almost a year ago? And she spoke highly of his Sonic... chao... fanfic thing. She cares deeply about Sonic. And Zelda. And something called Ar Tonelico.
When she started talking about anime, she lost me a lot more. I grew up with Cowboy Bebop and FLCL, not much more than that. She was telling me about this new one that had only just finished before the Rapture happened, Pulla... um, something about Magical Girls and Witches.
I tried to find out more about what happened to her sister, but she's the most guarded about that. She's mad at a lot of Fears more than she's scared of them. Only when I mentioned the slender man did she get evasive. I found that interesting.
After a point, I was able to get Derek to talk too. I think he feels guilty for leading us here, even though it doesn't sound like he has control over his strange rabbit hole travel. (What did he call them? Oblivion...? What Fear is that?)
These two are warming up to me. Maybe they already were okay with me, but.. I wasn't sure. I don't do too well with new people.

2:30 PM
After we had finished our teas, and after I had washed up after ourselves, Rauri allowed herself to feel vulnerable, feel the bags under her eyes. So I took her back to the hotel and got her a room next to ours.
Now I'm going back out into town. Derek thinks he can still try something. I want to back him up.

4:44 PM
We found our way back to the forest surrounding the town. Harlequin Forest, it's apparently called.
When we reached the layer of zombies, I pulled out my hammer.
I'll clear a path.

4:47 PM
It.. was trivial.
Equally trivial was finding the Door where we came in, leading right back to the purple bioluminescent cave.
Derek is walking in, swirls of wisps flowing around his legs. I'm following behind.

4:49 PM
Hanging above us were hollow glowing faces imprinted in the void, eerily large and subtly expressive. We had seen them on our way in, and Derek is much more familiar with them, as this is the process he uses to navigate the Earth via rabbit hole.
But on this occasion, the faces frowned on us, shadowed from the eyes up.
Derek says that's new. It's never happened before.
And it means we can't go back out this way.

4:50 PM
"I'm sorry. I trusted the faces, and they brought us here. Me, I'm used to traveling alone, and if I'd have ended up here, I'd.. probably just bypass the zombies and keep walking? Go until I found another Door. But this was my first time traveling this way with others. I wanted to be of use to all of you, and instead I've made things more difficult."
It's not your fault. You were useful, you moved us hundreds of miles. This isn't the first time we've found a town that's tried to trap us, either. We'll make it through this. I'm not too worried.
"Evidently, we can get through the zombies. So we're not really all that trapped in that sense."
Yeah. It's just…
"Jordan."
Yeah.

7:11 PM
On the way into town this time, we noticed several trucks, all identically labelled ("Genera Transit"), parked in the square in a circle. No one was coming in or out of the trucks, they were all shut, just idling there.

7:15 PM
I half-expected to find Jordan seated on a stool in the George, drinking pints of beer.
Instead I found him in our hotel room, playing on an N64 that was hooked up to the TV. A "hotel model," apparently.
Paper Mario. He had made it to Chapter 3.

7:18 PM
Baby, do you want to stop for a moment?
"What's up?"
I want to fill you in on what I've been up to. And I'd.. kind of.. like to...

10:02 PM
We had sex! :D
Until Derek came in WITHOUT KNOCKING
"Sorry. Didn't mean to disturb you two. I just wanted to tell you that I found a blacksmith in town who was interested in making you a new weapon."
What's wrong with my sword?
"Oh, nothing, like literally nothing, it's a fine sword. Just, you only picked that thing up out of an armory, yeah? It might not be.. uh... tailored? To your specifications. Whereas a blacksmith can... look, sorry, this is really weird, you're not wearing pants."
Sorry!

10:03 PM
He's gone.
He delivered the message, at least.
I mean. Having a weapon that's completely my own is really nice.
And I do like the businesses around here…
Okay! Yeah. A cool thought. Maybe I'll check that out sometime.
donnie "But not tonight, right?"
Of course not. :3 It's just you and me tonight, the way it should be.

(Attached: “Dominiere, a place by any other name.
I remember coming to Jordan with the blacksmith news. Honestly, it was a long shot, I was trying to see if I could get him to come for a walk with me and I chose a really passive way of communicating that. And it was actually on the way out of the hotel then, by myself, that I discovered the strangest damn thing. Everything else about the town so far had been at least harmless, and maybe Jordan was just having a freak episode, nothing pointed to Dominiere literally being a dangerous place.
But then I stood in the street, at 10 PM, a wind threatening to blow my hat off my head, when a group of drinkers walked past me. They stepped out onto the road, and one said, and I remember his exact words even now:
---It's such a good night, not even Candle Jack could scare me!
Followed by his group trying to shush him.
And then a figure, in the night, bashed in his skull with a steel baseball bat.
And the rest of his group ran away, screaming, as Genera officers came to move his dead body into a truck.”)