extinction is the rule

[singmod]

SEPTEMBER 2023 EVENT

PROMPT ONE — THE AURORA: AFTERSHOCKS: The Aurora comes, bringing chaos to the town of Milton. Electronics go haywire, and the Interlopers learn of the original citizens of Milton.

PROMPT TWO — THE HOUR OF THE WOLF: Tainted by the Aurora and attracted to the noise of people inhabiting the town, several packs of wolves descend upon Milton.

PROMPT THREE — IT SPEAKS: A voice comes to the Interlopers, one that knows them and their darkest fears and deepest insecurities, persuading them to fade into the Long Dark by any means necessary.

THE AURORA: AFTERSHOCKS

WHEN: Sporadic nights over the next month.
WHERE: Milton area.
CONTENT WARNINGS: supernatural horror; ‘ghost’ horror; hauntings; death of npcs in various ways including suicide, murder or exposure to elements.

After the feast, and making sure the newcomers to Milton are seen to, Methuselah packs up. He will explain to others that while he will return to check in, he is no resident of Milton and will not stay. He is a nomad, something he has been all his life. He lives in nature. That is where he belongs. But he does assure that people are welcome to remain sheltered in the Hall if they wish to. And sure enough, the old man leaves, wishing the newcomers well. He can still be found out in the wilderness, and will shelter and feed those out exploring should they come across him.

And so the days and nights of this world roll on. The initial time of those who have come to be stranded in this world is unsettled. The weather is always changing, even if it remains bitterly cold. On some nights throughout the next month, however, the snow clouds clear and Interlopers are given a rare, clear night. At first, it’s beautiful: without the light pollution, all the stars can be seen, the moon casts an eerie glow upon the snow in the dead silence of the night. One might even say there is a kind of peace that comes with it all. And for some of these evenings, they pass by: uneventful and silent — the long darkness of an endless winter’s night.

But on others, it isn’t so uneventful. The noise starts: faint at first, but then growing louder. Something in the heavens above. An ethereal, high-pitched chorus of sounds difficult to place. There’s a kind of electrical buzzing with it all, a low, endless hum punctuated with cracks and pops that echo. The sky is alive with sound, louder than anyone could ever expect it to. With it comes the swirling streaking of colour against the inky black of night, growing brighter and brighter as the night goes on: The Aurora has come.

And it isn’t the sky that comes to life too: the whole town does too. Streetlights, illuminating the town’s roads; lights in stores and homes will come alive, buzzing and flickering often. Previously abandoned cars will turn on, their headlights blaring but faltering. Electronics that had previously seemed broken flick on — and whilst there are no broadcasts available on televisions, and the radio waves only drone on in static, both only occasionally blaring standard emergency broadcasts. Any computers and phones will turn on, but will have no internet or reception. Instead, Interlopers may find texts and emails — many of them unsent. The everyday lives of their users stored within, now readable.

But there’s something else too. The Aurora doesn’t just awaken the electronics of the town. Dotted around, in the streets, in homes, in stores, the lights of the Aurora begin to take shape: spectral-like forms of people, their faces hard to make out, details difficult to define. They move in glitching patterns, they speak with voices distorted by static. Eagle-eyed Interlopers may recognise the forms of some, a body or an action:

These are the residents of Milton, in their last moments on this earth.

The forms act out short scenes on repeat: a desperate fight between two men over a vehicle, a murder in a store during a riot, a suicide alone in one of the many houses. An argument over the communication lines going down. A sobbing teen curled up on his bed. A child stares up at the skies, their hands over their ears, crying in fright. A woman begs for her father to leave his home and head to the coast with her, to try to make it to the mainland, but he refuses to leave. A man succumbs to the cold walking alone in the outskirts of town without proper clothing for the elements. Several of these ‘ghosts’ are people fleeing before they stop and simply gasp, staring off into the distance for a few seconds before they drop dead on the spot.

There is nothing that can be done to stop these endless loops. Nothing to help these poor souls. Each of these moments are captured by the Aurora: final, desperate and tragic moments in some unknown, chaotic time. Some of these ‘ghosts’ maybe stop after so many loops — flickering out into nothing, others will last all night. But all will be gone by the morning and the Aurora comes to an end. There are answers, and there are none.

THE HOUR OF THE WOLF

WHEN: Sporadic nights over the next month.
WHERE: Milton.
CONTENT WARNINGS: (wild) animal attacks, altered wildlife, possible character injury/death, possible (wild) animal injury/death.


The growing presence of people within the town of Milton has meant more light, more warmth, more noise. The Aurora has created great change, but people are not the only thing the ethereal lights in the sky has brought down upon this old mining town.

When the sun slips below the horizon, and the clear skies of burnt embers and inky blues alight with stars, they come.

A lone howl, long and haunting. It is the first signal, which carries on the air. You can’t seem to place from which direction it comes from, it feels like it encompasses you. Then another voice joins it, and another, and another. A chorus of them. As the sound echoes off, another fills its place: a strange feral chittering, snarling and snapping — the drumming of feet upon the snow, heading right for you.

Wolves.

Unnatural, glowing green eyes in the dark — tendrils of light seeping from them as they rush in and encircle those they come across outside. They come in packs of three or more, and they are clever. They’re quicker than any wolf you’ve ever known, bigger and hardier too. They will try to strike fast by zipping in when you’re distracted, snapping and nipping at legs or trying to take quick bites out of arms before drawing back. They work together to bring their prey down, a solid unit of noise and teeth. They will hunt down those who hide inside, try to claw their way inside of homes and buildings — dead set on finding you and tearing you apart. There is no hiding from them. They will find you.

But breaking the pack can send them back. If they’re broken, their morale is depleted. Fire is your biggest friend: torches, campfires and flames will keep them mostly at bay and only the bravest of these packs may attack. Striking them with flares or flames will actually send them into brief retreats. Bullets and arrows are effective with both noise and injuring the wolves, and although hitting one will be difficult due their speed, it’s possible. Killing one of these wolves will dissolve the pack’s morale entirely, and the rest will flee off into the night.

Until next time. Maybe it’s best you don’t stick around. They do hold a relentless determination.

IT SPEAKS

WHEN: Over the next month, possibly longer.
WHERE: Milton.
CONTENT WARNINGS: psychological horror; mental manipulation; themes of suicide; themes of depression; potential self-harm; potential feelings of isolation; potential attempted suicide.

There are whispers. Small, at first. Distracting. Perhaps it is only the wind you hear. Milton is so quiet, even with the new hustle and bustle of the new people to this place. Wood creaks and the trees rustle, there are plenty of sounds you could mistake it for.

‘Interloper.’ It is an old voice. Something deep and dark and ancient. Something impossible, older than the earth itself. It floats into your ears and nestles there, sending an ice-cold shiver down your spine. Even to the most stoic and unshakeable souls, it is a unnerving voice. It feels wrong. It feels like an ending. To hear the voice is deeply unsettling... and yet... you recognise it.

It comes to you, in the dead of night when sleep is far. In the long stretches of day as you go about your business, as you travel across the frigid landscape or gather firewood or try to pass the time within whatever home you’ve made for yourself. For some the voice will be clear as day, for others it may be some distant whisper — something gently murmuring in your ear. But the voice will be heard, no matter the person.

‘Interloper. Do you know what it means?’ It asks. ‘It means one that involves itself in a place it does not belong. You do not belong.’

That it isn’t the only thing it tells you. For everyone, it’s different. It knows you. It picks up on any weakness, any insecurity. It makes you feel small, insignificant. It tells you all the quiet, terrible things you hide down within yourself. For days, weeks, the voice is there. Speaking to you. It will wear you down, insist you are not wanted, that you do not belong here.

... And wouldn’t it be better if you weren’t here at all?

The voice seeks to break you. It will push you to your limit. Sleep will become hard to find, your spirits low and hollow. In time you might seem to believe it. Maybe it’s better if you weren’t here. You don’t belong in this place, why should you stay?

‘Disappear, Interloper. Go into the Long Dark.’

Perhaps you next find yourself atop the steep cliffs, looking down into the Milton Basin below. Perhaps you find yourself with a gun in your hand, or a rope. Perhaps you find your feet carrying you out into the snow. You’re going to disappear. You’re going to go into the Dark.

Or maybe the voice isn’t so loud. You can push it down, ignore it. Perhaps Faith is what keeps you steady, perhaps knowing who you are despite your faults stops the voice from taking over. Maybe you can help those who can’t block out the voice. Words of encouragement, affirmation, kindness, determination, even spite. The voice wants you dead, but you will not let it. You will not fall. You will not let anyone else fall, either.

FAQs

THE AURORA: AFTERSHOCKS

1. While examples are given, players are encouraged to come up with their own ghostly loops of similar loops. The key thing to remember is that the people of Milton have descended into public disorder. Fights, arguments and murders have occurred, as have suicides or other unexplained deaths. People are frightened. They want to leave the town.

2. Ghostly loops cannot be interacted with, only witnessed.

3. There is no way of putting these 'ghosts' to rest. These loops are more like residual memories, as if the energy of the townsfolk remained, and have been reconstructed by the Aurora.

4. The wolf attacks and Auroras occur on sporadic nights over the course of the next month, with the Aurora being the first thing, then the wolves. It's unlikely you'll get both on the same night. While the wolves are attracted to the Interlopers' activity, the Aurora's light and noise will keep them away from the town during Aurora Nights.

5. Sharp-eyed Interlopers may notice that the 'ghosts' of those who are staring off into the distance before gasping and dropping dead are looking skyward, towards the east.

THE HOUR OF THE WOLF

1. Due to the Aurora's influence, these wolves are harder, better, faster, stronger, than typical wild wolves. They do not die as easily, and are much more difficult to wound and kill. But not impossible. Scaring the wolves will be far easier to accomplish.

2. Wolves will return, sometimes more than once on the same night, or on other nights during the month. The only sure-fire way to have them stop coming back is to kill the pack.

3. Wolf meat is technically edible. But not advised due to parasites. Characters are still welcome to harvest the wolves they kill, however. Who would say no to a cool ass wolf cape.

4. The wolf attacks and Auroras occur on sporadic nights over the course of the next month, with the Aurora being the first thing, then the wolves. It's unlikely you'll get both on the same night. While the wolves are attracted to the Interlopers' activity, the Aurora's light and noise will keep them away from the town during Aurora Nights.

IT SPEAKS

1. Characters can be talked down and broken from the voice's influence by others. Genuine connection and empathy will work massively, but even encouragement and affirmations to keep surviving will be powerful enough to break the voice's hold.

2. Players are welcome to play with the length of time the voice can be heard with characters. Some may want to have it over a short space of time, others can have this progress over a longer time period.

3. The voice can come at any time over the next month.

PLOTTING POST

Comments

[m1895]

[ Of course, she thinks he's a civilian. She doesn't know that he's simply carrying out the punishment from which he was spared—doesn't realize that this is a punishment at all. She thinks he's a normal man about to take his own life over something like depression, or a bad life choice. Something temporary and reversible.

His chest aches at her distress; he had wanted her to think he'd simply... disappeared. His intent hadn't been for his body to be found, but now, he knows, she'll come looking for it, turn around and try to give him a proper burial after she hears the gunshot. ]

I have not. There are things you do not know. [ He inhales shakily, the cold air adding to the ache in his chest. ] I need to do this. It is time.

[patchwork]

[ There are always things people don't know about each other. Grace resigned herself to that a long time ago. It's where she lives, among the things people don't know. How she functions. How she holds onto her sanity.

She knows in her soul that for him to take his own life means to damn himself; it's what she was raised to believe, and what she understands about the world. To be flagrant and careless with God's gift of life. But he's not a godly man, and that argument would settle nothing.

Her heart is beating so quickly that she worries she might lose control, fall to the ground unconscious as she's done so many times before. She begs herself not to. She curls her hands into fists, pressing her fingers into her palms as hard as she can, just to hold onto the feeling of wakefulness. ]

What I know or don't know does not matter. Our pasts don't matter one bit in this place.

[m1895]

The past matters. It matters as much as the future.

[ Another shaky breath. She would understand, if she knew. The kinds of numbers the voices shared with him: those are incomprehensible in their magnitude to those who weren't there. Maybe forty people would fill up one room of the small cedar-shingled house he's been staying in, if packed in tight. He killed over a thousand.

Not with his own hand. He didn't pull the trigger. But the voice is right: it's still on his hands that the blood rests. Russian blood, Ukrainian blood. He killed his fellow Soviets, his fellow communists. Perhaps that is the ultimate sin. ]

There are things your god cannot forgive. It is same for atheists. There are mortal sins.

[ He needs to make her understand, so that she can have some closure; given that she's Irish, she's probably also Catholic. He speaks using concepts that should, hopefully, be as ground into the core of her being as collectivism is to his. ]

I have done terrible things, Grace. Things you cannot imagine. Things nobody can imagine.

[patchwork]

[ Grace's jaw clenches for a moment. It's a good thing she didn't bring up God herself, since she's right to assume he would only have dismissed Him in an instant. She can understand it, even empathise with it. There are times where she herself has found God's presence lacking, even though it's the deepest kind of sin to think such a thing.

But it means, regardless, that she has to take a different approach. Vasiliy was her first friend here, her only real friend; he's the only one who knows her in a way that nobody else does. She feels connected to him. He's important to her. If it's selfish of her to not want to lose him, then so be it. At the very least, she doesn't want to watch him die. ]

And you think that because you've done these things, then you should be the one to enact your own punishment? That you should decide how you're to be judged?

[m1895]

Yes.

The time for rightful punishment is gone.

[ Or maybe he's just too much of a coward to turn himself in, to take what he has earned. He fled across an ocean to avoid it. All the more reason to stop running. Even as tears dry on his cheeks, there's a perverse sense of relief. The weight will be lifted once he's dead. He won't think about them; the guilt won't bear down on every moment and every thing he does. He'll finally be able to breathe: maybe nothingness is preferable to this.

He knows what she's getting at, of course; while an atheist himself, he's highly familiar with Christian doctrine, or Russia and America's versions of it. God is the only one who can judge, or so they say—but God isn't real. There was no hell after he was shot, no just punishment. Just blankness, and then opening his eyes and staring up at an utterly indifferent gray sky. He lived; they didn't. It's time to correct that cosmic wrong and hope he stays dead this time. ]

Grace. Please.

[ Perhaps it's further cowardice, that he's reluctant to reveal his true colors: even in his moment of death, when it poses no threat to him, he doesn't want to fall in her estimation. It's unforgivably vain for a communist, but he supposes that's just one more sin to add to the list. ]

Leave. I do not want you to see this. Do not come back when you hear the shot. It is horrible to see someone who has been shot. You do not deserve that.

[patchwork]

[ The only thing she has over him now is that he won't do it in front of her, which means she can't waver. So she lifts her chin with a flash of defiance, and instead of turning or even taking a step back, she moves one step closer. Just one. She can feel the tension physically coursing through her body, pulling her taut like a string about to snap. It surprises her that she isn't trembling, but perhaps that will come later. Or perhaps it's that she's trembling so quickly that she can't even feel it.

She doesn't want to go, and she won't leave just because he's telling her to, but in the midst of this kernel of resistance, she's still frightened. That he'll do what he's threatening, that she'll have failed him, that she'll see it happen. She doesn't want to see it happen. ]

I'll not go. There's nothing you can say that will make me go. So either you will have to do this in front of me, or you will put a stop to it. Whatever you've done, this is no way to answer for it.

[m1895]

[ Death is no way to answer it—tell that to the Nuremberg Tribunal, where too few people were killed for what they did to begin with. He needs to do this, before he loses his resolve. He's been living on borrowed time. ]

You have no idea what... There are some things so horrible that you cannot imagine them if you were not there.

[ He lets out a shaky breath. ]

This is one of them. Whatever you imagine, it was worse. I should not have lived to begin with. I was given time I did not deserve. It is time to give it back.

[ Why him? Always the question that's hung over his head, when he wakes up in the morning and when he lies in bed staring at the wall in the darkness, waiting to fall asleep. If there were a righteous God in this world, if there was any real cosmic fairness, He wouldn't bring the perpetrator back and not the victims. ]