it must be that old evil spirit

[singmod]

SEPTEMBER 2024 EVENT

PROMPT ONE — PAINFUL REMINDERS: An Aurora briefly connects the Interlopers to their homeworlds, and with it are able to receive items from home — but these ones will bring no comfort to them.

PROMPT TWO — THE ENEMY WITHIN: Strange and familiar occurrences begin in Milton and Lakeside, growing in frequency and danger for the Interlopers. Who can truly be trusted among their numbers?

PROMPT THREE — BAD BLOOD: The Forest Fighters finally come to Milton, and with it: they bring the yawning grave.

PAINFUL REMINDERS

WHEN: 5th - 9th of September.
WHERE: Everywhere.
CONTENT WARNINGS: potentially upsetting themes; themes of loneliness/isolation.

For many, the sight of the Aurora is now one they have become used to. There have been plenty of them over the year that has passed since the Interlopers first came to the Northern Territories. Often, they have been a sign of great danger, with plenty of unsettling and unnatural things happening when the skies light up. Other times they have been the herald of aid — a link between Interlopers and Enola, gifting them with abilities to help them survive in this world. There is no real knowing what kind of force the Aurora is, truly. And there is a tension that holds amongst the Interlopers as the day turns to night and there is the soft sound that grows louder.

The ethereal, high-pitched chorus of sounds, is difficult to place. Perhaps it sounds like voices, or discordant strings. And with it, the low-drone of electrical buzz — punctuated with the echoing pops and sharp cracks. The sky is alive with sound, and with it comes the swirling streaking of colour against the inky black of night, growing brighter and brighter as time goes on — greens, blues, pinks and purples shifting and dancing across the night. And much like every Aurora before this one, the electricals of the world come to life too. Homes, streetlamps, cars long-stranded in the snow. Man’s world comes alive, buzzing and flickering precariously.

But there are no ghosts like there once was a year ago. No terrible weather, no poisonous fog. If one could call it a ‘normal’ Aurora, that’s what it appears to be. But there is something else in amongst all the light and noise. Snatches of things: whispers of conversations, names called, laughter and tears.

You realise you recognise these voices. They are the voices of home. Perhaps you hear your mother, your siblings or friends. Whoever they are, you can hear them. And although they might not be able to hear you — for one brief night, the Aurora has connected you, bridged the gap between your world and this one. You may sit for a while, simply listening to the voices, relishing in hearing those from back home. If others join you, you will find yourself compelled to speak of them: to share in stories about those from back home — the connections you share with them.

It’s strange, though. These voices do not fill you with comfort or joy. Instead you are left with feelings of sadness, anger, and isolation. The Aurora has connected Interlopers, but now you feel so cut off from home, cut off from friends and loved ones — reminded of everything left behind. Everything you long for. Everything you have lost.

Something strange skips through the sky, a warping of the sound. It’s unsettling. Something feels... wrong, somehow.

It’s not just the voices that will remind you of this. Something else comes through the Aurora after that night. A small token will be brought through. Whatever the item may be, when you go to sleep and next wake, you will find said item. It may be placed on your bedside, on your desk or dining room table.

The item, you will find, will bring you a reminder of pain. Of sadness. Of horror. Perhaps it’s something you haven’t thought of in some time. Maybe it is something that has lingered in the back of your mind. Perhaps it is a part of you, waiting to be uncovered. A sign of something to come. A painful reminder of your past, or an ominous omen of your future.

THE ENEMY WITHIN

WHEN: The month of September.
WHERE: Everywhere.
CONTENT WARNINGS: kidnapping/attempted kidnapping; attempted murder; murder; vandalism; arson; assault; animal mutilation; corpse mutilation/manipulation/desecration; themes of peril/terror; possible character/npc injuries; possible character/npc death.

It starts with strange happenings at night, things left to be found by the next morning. Those within Lakeside many find themselves unsurprised by it, given their location, but the scenes found in Milton are a foreboding sight.

Mutilated bodies of animals: rabbits, ptarmigans, even deer — mangled and strewn about the streets, blood upon the snow. Some may awaken in the middle of the night to the sounds of their windows breaking, with houses on the Outskirts being targeted more than those in the middle of town. There is… a kind of unrest in the world.

It escalates.

Some may leave their home for the day and return in the evening to find the place trashed: items broken, precious foodstuffs thrown about the place and destroyed. Those within the Outskirts are once again particularly vulnerable, as are those within Lakeside. Fires are started in some of the abandoned buildings of Milton. Something, someone is targeting the Interlopers.

It is hard to pin-point who exactly, and it only puts the Interlopers on high alert. Nothing like this has never happened before. This is new, especially in Milton.

As the month progresses, the acts become more serious. Fires may be started in the middle of the night in Interlopers’ homes while they sleep. Some are attacked in the night, others are taken from their beds. Some killed within their very homes. Of the Interlopers that go missing, their mutilated remains may be found days later out in the wilds.

In Milton, soon enough, someone is bold enough to come out from the darkness, out from the gloom of the night. Interlopers may be attacked in broad daylight — by those they may recognise as newer Interlopers of the community, who appeared from the wilds: lost and shivering, with nowhere else to go. Some of them have been within Milton for a few months now.

Those in Lakeside will face something similar: Forest Talkers are making a move, rogue and isolated incidents — done with sabotaging attempts at hunting and taking a more direct approach.

They have no qualms about being captured or killed, only determined to get rid of as many of the Interlopers as they can. They whisper, they scream: “You don’t belong here. You should never have come here. It wants you gone, it wants us all gone. The end is here, it’s too late for any of us. Nature must run its course. The yawning grave has been opened.”

The attack is on two fronts: the first of Forest Talkers in Lakeside amplifying their actions. The second in Milton, enemies within the ranks of the Interlopers, Forest Talkers hiding as Interlopers.

Within Milton, newer Interlopers will likely be met with suspicion as being some of the Forest Fighters as a result of these individual acts of violence. As the numbers of Milton have been infiltrated, and it’s easy to have mistrust amongst those newer to the community. In-fighting is likely, and the entire town is stuck in some terrible, tense state — unsure of who to trust within their own numbers. In the days and weeks that follow, it remains like this. Acts of violence and vandalism — chaos and disorder.

BAD BLOOD

WHEN: The night of 27th - 28th September.
WHERE: Milton.
CONTENT WARNINGS: attempted murder; murder; vandalism; arson; assault; mentions of blood; themes of peril/terror; possible character/npc injuries; possible character death/npc death; actual NPC death.

Towards the end of the month, the moon is full. They call it the Harvest Moon, but colour seeps into it — oranges and reds: a blood moon, partially eclipsed. The night is calm and cloudless, but there’s an uneasy feeling in the night.

The earth groans, the rumble of another quake that’s plagued the Northern Territories since the beginning of August. It is the only warning Interlopers will get — if they may realise it as a warning. To some, when they look back, it’s a omen, a starting pistol.

They do not come through the Mines. Thanks to the efforts of Interlopers to guard the entrances of the Milton Mines, they know better. They come to town from the south, not the north.
The quakes of August and September have opened a new way from Lakeside to Milton. They are led by their Leader: a man dressed in white, a large deer skull upon his head. And while their numbers are small in comparison, they come armed and with the determination to get rid of the Interlopers once and for all. As they come into town, they launch their attack.

More fires will be set, Interlopers will be attacked with abandon. Shot at, stabbed, beaten. It is a mass execution. They will not stop until the Interlopers, or them, are dead.

Well, the majority of them. There are just under a dozen teenagers and younger people amongst their ranks who have shown hesitance toward violence in the past. Perhaps they can be reasoned with. Perhaps there may be a way to convince them to abandon their cause. There is fear in their eyes. Some of them do not want to die. They fear the yawning grave.

What will do you then, Interloper? Are you willing to fight for your life? Are you willing to take another’s to save your own, or a friends? Will you hide, or run? What choice will you make? The Forest Talkers have long since made their own choice. Now you must make yours.

It is another night of chaos on a town already scarred by the events of June. Interlopers will note two familiar faces in the fray: at some point during the night both Methuselah and Young Bill will arrive. While Methuselah will concentrate on aiding the wounded and trying to shelter Interlopers the best he can, Young Bill will help protect Interlopers from the Forest Talkers with his rifle in hand. But fortunately, it is just for one single night. Ammunition runs out, sides are switched, and people are killed. As dawn approaches, Forest Talker numbers dwindle. Either killed, incapacitated or defected. In the early morning light, bodies lie in the snow both Interloper and Forest Talker alike.

Those trying to hunt down the leader will see him slipping inside an empty cabin, heavily wounded. Following after him, they will find him settling himself down to kneel on the floor. The white of his tactical gear stained red with blood as it blooms from his wounds. Slowly, he removes the deer skull from his head to reveal a clean-shaven man in his late twenties with a shock of white-blond hair. His eyes are blue, calm.

He sets the skull down, panting and sweating. He is dying. He is not afraid.

“My name is Mallory, not that it matters now. We are dead, you and I.” he says softly. “We exist in a dying world.”

He is in much pain from his wounds. He moves again to sit cross-legged on the floor. A hand touches the bloodied fabric of his front and he laughs humourlessly.

“You don’t understand, do you? The end must come. That is the order of things. The end must come so the world can be reborn. That is how it’s always worked. When the world is swallowed, it will grow again from the earth.”

It is a story. The story of the Darkwalker. Some believe it to be the end of the world, but Young Bill had once said there is another telling of the tale. A creation myth. The Darkwalker swallows the world and returns to its slumber within the earth. Within it, everything its swallowed grows again and the world returns.

“We fought against man’s actions to ruin this place, not knowing our true purpose. The Devourer has shown me the truth, and I sought to put that into action.” His head tilts to one side. “The yawning grave is opened. Does new life not grow from the decay? It is a cycle. The grave and the cradle.”

He finds it difficult to breathe, but he presses on.

“You fight to live. You come here and you do not see what you are. You are only delaying the inevitable, perverting the true course. Prolonging the suffering. You are the Interlopers, you are not part of nature’s design. The Darkwalker does not want you here. And where it fails, we have tried to succeed.”

There’s another laugh, something catching in his throat. He coughs, blood bubbling from his lips.

“And failed. For now. The First Cursed cannot hold it forever. She, too, delays the inevitable." Even as he is dying, he still have the energy to sneer. He speaks of Enola. "A woman who plays at being a god. What right does she have? All must go into the Long Dark. ... As will I. Return me to the grave.”

Mallory’s head dips, his body sagging. He inhales once more and then stops.

FAQs

PAINFUL REMINDERS


1. Players must sign up for items. See the toplevel on the plotting post.

2. Items will face the same warps/nerfs as everything else that is brought into the game.

3. Items can be no bigger than something your character can reasonably carry.

4. While items do not have to belong to your character, there has to be a good reason why they’d receive such an item — ie. something related to your character.


THE ENEMY WITHIN

1. The Forest Talkers within Milton are a number of NPCs that have been pre-selected from NPCs who arrived in April and August. Not all of them will show their true intentions as the month goes on but will continue to stay hidden.

2. Two NPCs killed in the June Event were also Forest Talkers. … Good… job?

3. The following NPC Interlopers will out themselves as Forest Talkers at this stage: Devon Busswood; Rita Yee; Realm Lovejoy.


BAD BLOOD

1. Following the events of this prompt, Interlopers now have an additional way into Lakeside. It’s still rather dangerous: it’s through a partially collapsed cave system that ends into abandoned bunker on the Lakeside side. The game map will be marked accordingly in due course.

2. Some Interlopers may recognise a familiar face in the Forest Talker ranks: the man who was kidnapped by Interlopers previously in July has returned. Looks like he made good on his promise. He's come back to cause problems.

3. The following NPC Interlopers will out themselves as Forest Talkers during the attack: Jackie Blackmore; Ross Huguet; Jennifer Kitchen; Daniel Kresco.

4. As a reminder of numbers: around fifty Forest Talkers will show up for the attack.

5. There is an OOC vote on the fate of the remaining Forest Talkers, the link is here.

PLOTTING POST

Comments

bad blood

[cactusy]

The thing about this particular brand of chaos is that it's impossible to tell aggressor from victim at first glance, especially when you're new and you mostly don't know anybody yet. From Louis's perspective, a terrorist set his home on fire, and he acted to defend himself. It's a reaction and motive that Shaw could easily understand, if she were privy to it.

Unfortunately, she shows up late, and from her perspective, some rando has just brutally murdered a man and is tossing his body into a conveniently burning building.

She doesn't announce herself. She just charges, fully intending to get Louis's arms pinned and knock him to the ground.

cw: mention of lynching and homophobia

[flambeaux]

It's only when he's attacked again that he spares a thought to what this tableau might look like. He thinks, absurdly, that he didn't even get to finish his cigarette. If this person had appeared alongside the first, he'd have killed her too. But as it stands, he doesn't know where her allegiances lie, and he could really use some answers.

He's out of the firelight and several houses down the street before his dropped cigarette can hit the snow. The Free Runner ability has more downsides compared to his old vampiric speed. It makes him very hungry, and the full meal he just had diminishes in satisfaction. He draws his cane knife—fancy, little-used, but still sharp—without hesitation.

"Ain't enough some fool burns my house with me in it, now you want a piece too?!" he hollers, Southern accent rising and falling melodically even in anger, with no thought for the sleeping schedules of his neighbors. "Who the hell are you?!"

So it's finally happened, and they will come with their torches and pitchforks screaming about his vampirism, or perhaps the homosexuality he tries so hard to hide.

[cactusy]

In the blink of an eye - the literal blink of an eye - he's out of her reach and fifty yards down the street, and that destabilizes her far more than the violence had. The simulation's glitching, her brain whispers to her. You've seen this before. You know what's coming.

She doesn't lower the gun.

"How did you-- you were just--"

She pauses, her brain warring over which line of thinking to go along with first. It ends up landing on the easier, more concrete issue at hand.

"Your house?"

[flambeaux]

Louis mastered this ability because he had one like it back home. It's too useful not to. It is known that people sometimes get abilities on aurora nights, and that became a good cover.

"Yes, my house!" He jabs at his own chest with his free hand for emphasis. "The one I live in! Want to tell me who you are or will I just assume you were workin' with this damn fool?!"

[cactusy]

"The way I see it, I just found a burning building and a guy tossing a body into the flames," she calls out - unrepentant, but still lowering the gun. "And then you--"

Should she even bother to mention the super-speediness? If it was a glitch, then he'll deny any knowledge of what she's talking about, and coming off as crazy is a bad way to get any intel here.

[flambeaux]

Half of him just wants to kill her and get it over with. Vulnerable as he is in this world, a gun only serves to escalate the situation. He's relieved when she lowers it, but he doesn't let his guard down. He does keep the knife down at his side.

"Yeah, I—ran real fast. We don't know where these powers come from. People here do that sometimes. You know, because they don't want to die." It's not weird or suspicious at all! He knows he looks so suspicious... "I defended myself against that man because I don't want to die." At least that's the truth, most nights.

"I live here, and for the last time, who the hell are you!? Please tell me you're not another damn cop, Bigby's always up my ass, and I don't care how charmin' Fraser is, his dog scares me." Wolf, Dief is a wolf.

[cactusy]

An acknowledgement, and an explanation. A crazy explanation, to be sure, but still better than either cagey deflection or a flat-out denial. Nothing in Shaw's expression changes, but her shoulders relax, just a little.

"Sameen Shaw," she says. "Newcomer. Not a cop, just somebody who doesn't like innocent people being hurt. So if that guy really did set the building on fire with you in it..."

Her eyes track, briefly, to the now-burning body.

"Then good riddance."

[flambeaux]

He briefly lifts his eyes to the sky and chuckles hollowly. He can't believe his bad luck.

"A vigilante. With a gun. How nice for you."

He shakes his head as he sheathes his knife. That's not so different from a cop in his experience, who are also just one step away from joining a lynch mob. Law enforcement doesn't really exist here anyhow. All he sees is someone with a gun willing to point it at him, and he has yet to see if she has any of his friend Wynonna's charm.

"I'll leave whether he deserved to die to God, thanks, if He exists." Spoken like a lapsed Catholic. "Admittedly, I did not need to burn him. The ground freezes too hard to bury most folks, but there's plenty of scavengers out in the woods. Nature's cycle and all that. My anger got the better of me."

He casts a dark look at the burning house. "That's all my things, mine and my daughter's. House I fixed up for better part of a year. I don't care, it doesn't matter."

He feels numb. He chews his lip and fingers his walking stick. For a vampire, food and shelter are top concerns. Blood must be fresh, and he's allergic to the sun. He's not thinking of any of that now. He's only thinking about how just a few minutes before, he was lying on the couch in his living room. The rest of his thoughts are too scattered like birds.

[cactusy]

Unfortunately, anyone looking for charm in Shaw is unlikely to find it - unless she's putting on an act, or they have a very loose definition of charm. As it stands, she just looks at him flatly - without hostility, but also without any visible simpering or sympathy. I don't care is probably a lie, she knows. People say it all the time. Very few of them actually mean it.

"That sucks," she offers, because, well, it does. "And I'm fine with not feeding dead human bodies to the wolves. Angry or not, burning was the right choice."

[flambeaux]

Wynonna's "charm" is like strong whiskey. Louis is sure it's what gets her through the wilderness alive. But she's his friend, for better or worse. So Louis tries to be charitable here, even if in his opinion he's the one with the charm, gruesome murder and vampirism notwithstanding. Louis de Pointe du Lac turns hypocrisy into an art.

"The wolves around here are... they're insane. They attack people just for lookin' at them wrong, prey too big for them to usually bother with—if I'm readin' the magazines right."

It couldn't be more obvious he's a city boy out of his depth. He's also prepared for this person to view him in a suspicious light for a while, but some things are just too hard to hide. There is a man burning in the remains of his house. The air smells like charred meat.

"They're mean and starvin'. I can't tell which is better, allowin' them to get a taste for human flesh at the benefit of stavin' off the attacks, or waitin' till they die... or we do. Nighttime's dangerous. You'd best leave. I'll find my own way."

Louis rubs his upper arms to stave off the cold. He doesn't have a plan where to go. He never anticipated this. Chloe lives across the street, Wynonna might find him a place for the day, there's the Community Hall... and Lestat. It's complicated.

[cactusy]

I'll find my own way is only barely more believable than I don't care, and whether or not he's telling the truth isn't her biggest concern right now: if he's an enemy and he turns on her, then she'll deal with it as it comes. Her own health and safety, while technically important, tends not to be something she's excessively concerned about.

"You got a friend I could escort you to?" she asks - partly because it's probably not the best idea for either of them to be out alone this close to dark, and partly because she's curious to see if he can name another townsmember off the cuff. "Like you said, it's dangerous out here."

[flambeaux]

"I should be askin' you that, but you're the one with the gun. I just run fast."

Lestat would complicate things. Lestat is right out. But Louis wonders if he wouldn't just come here upon seeing the fire. Lestat is like a hurricane, but Louis contrives to contain him anyway. Chloe is their mutual friend, and maybe Lestat would curb any wanton murder if he found Louis safe and sound nearby.

"It's very far, I don't know..." Louis drawls, but he points to... a house across the street. He twists his mouth wryly in a strained smile, because what else can he do in this situation? Yelling and crying are private things for him.

"My neighbor lives there. I don't think she'd mind. But tell me—did you pass by the general store? Is it still standin'?"

He can't quite affect the wry tone here. He desperately needs to know if he still has something left.

[cactusy]

"Yeah."

But Shaw isn't one to sugarcoat things, and the whole town is a mess. When she'd passed by, it had been in one peace, but that doesn't mean she can make any reassurances about the future.

"For now."

[flambeaux]

"For now," he repeats. Just run, a man warned him during the riot in Storyville, and for all his vampiric powers, Louis could do nothing to stop what was happening. He acknowledges, numbly, that he may not be able to do much here either.

"Be seein' you, Miss Shaw, and hopefully I will still be general store proprietor, Louis de Pointe du Lac."