i was following the pack all swaddled in their coats

[singmod]

MAY 2025 EVENT

PROMPT ONE — THE SHUDDERING EARTH: Quake activity in the area, paired with decaying infrastructure, reveals a way for Interlopers to make their way to the coast.

PROMPT TWO — THE LONG ROAD: Interlopers can now embark on the long and dangerous journey to Silverpoint, and make some grim discoveries on the way.

PROMPT THREE — TRY HONESTY: A dream leads to Interlopers being a little more honest with one another, in different kinds of ways.

THE SHUDDERING EARTH

WHEN: Early May, onwards.
WHERE: Everywhere, Carter Hydrodam.
CONTENT WARNINGS: themes of natural disasters; earthquakes; potential avalanches; themes of exploration/survival; potential injuries, potential cold injuries/hyperthermia risk.


Seismic activity is well known within the Northern Territories. Both last year, and over the last month or so, Interlopers have felt intermittent tremors — the ground quaking beneath their feet, enough to upset some objects around homes but never quite enough to cause some serious damage. Interlopers have been fortunate, but the damage caused by these quakes have long left their scars over the years in this world: railroads and roads buckled and crumbled, bridges destroyed and tunnels and pathways caved in, cutting off access. The quakes can cause some serious damage.

Interlopers will find that out in the late evening of one otherwise calm day in May.

Animals will notice the signs of the impending quake before humans do, growing restless and agitated in the hour or so before the shaking starts.

A low tremor that makes items in homes quiver, the ground vibrating beneath your feet. It quickly grows more violent — items can be sent flying if they’re not secured. Light fixtures sway overhead, furniture will shake and topple over, dust and debris could rain down from above — some places worse than others, depending on the building.

Diving for shelter is the best thing to do, out of the way of windows and objects that can fall over. Finding something sturdy to take cover under. The shaking grows intense, especially in the Lakeside area. There is a strange and terrible churning of metal and stone, a crash, something giving way. Roars and crackles of noise.

In Lakeside, where the quake is far more intense, the sound reverberates around the area, but the sound can even be heard so far as in Milton — distant but noticeable. It comes from the direction of the Hydrodam.

The quake is fortunately short-lived and finally dies down. Interlopers will be able to come out of hiding and assess the damage and check on one another for injuries. Within Milton and Lakeside, some buildings that have never been inhabited by Interlopers and remained empty for a long time (and thus in states of disrepair) will be found severely damaged. Water pipes may burst, causing flooding in some unused buildings — ultimately rendering them now useless and uninhabitable.

Generally, it looks like large swathes of the area have come out unscathed — but there is a risk of avalanches in some of the more remote locations near to the mountains. It might take several days for Interlopers to take stock and assess properly, even check further afield.

Interlopers who choose to investigate the Hydrodam will come to find that sections of the dam itself have given way, the metal burst open and water spilling outwards and down the river towards the coast. The huge gorge which separates Lakeside and The Coast is a raging torrent. In time, these waters will eventually calm but it looks like the previously flooded sections of the dam that had meant it was completely inaccessible might be now free to explore with the fact the water had .

The Hydrodam has been in a state of disrepair for some time. Before The Flare, it barely had a skeleton crew running things. Now, with no one to maintain the dam itself following previous quake activity — it looks like this quake has been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Traversing through the dam will reveal that the lower levels are now accessible and can be entered. But Interlopers should take caution: while the lower dam is now free to explore, this section of the dam still contains freezing cold water that can reach knee deep on the average person. What’s worse is these sections are filled with debris: equipment, furniture and even random junk and industrial supplies that had been once stored there. Some are broken, and can can injury to the unsuspecting traveller.

Travelling through the dam through an Aurora would be incredibly dangerous due to damage in the building, with exposed wiring and partially flooded areas not mixing great companions. The utmost care should be taken when exploring and finding the way through, or it may spell trouble.

But what it will lead to is a way out. On the other side of the dam.

And a way out to the coast.

THE LONG ROAD

WHEN: Early May, onwards.
WHERE: Carter Hydrodam, The Coast
CONTENT WARNINGS: themes of exploration/survival; potential injuries, potential cold injuries/hyperthermia risk; corpses; dead npcs.

Coming out and down from the other side of the Hydrodam will bring Interlopers to the destroyed Connector Bridge and onto Coastal Highway — the main road that leads to Silverpoint. There are a few extra outbuildings on this side of the dam which are dry but not particularly comfortable — but it’ll make do in the face of recovering from getting through the dam itself.

But after that? The world is far more open compared to Lakeside and certainly less sheltered than Milton, meaning winds are incredibly biting and difficult to contend with whilst travelling. There is little in terms of cover, and thus Interlopers may need to really plan well in order to keep themselves alive. Hopefully Interlopers have come well prepared for the journey ahead of them.

A great deal of the landscape has been damaged by quakes, making the terrain difficult to navigate: with huge, icy ridges and gorges in the earth and roads — providing ample danger to travellers. But sticking roughly to the road means a straight-forward way down but it will take several days to walk down, given the difficulty.

There is nowhere indoors to shelter on this journey save for a single garage and gas station about half-way through the trek south. Interlopers will need to brave the outdoors, even sleeping out doors or in the shallow, sheltered caves that may be seen just off the road. Interlopers will need to huddle for warmth, keeping an eye on one another to make sure they make it through the night. The gas station will provide decent shelter and warmth, however, and even boasts a few supplies left of food, water and fuel. Some one has definitely been here, but with it being so remote, it’s no wonder it’s generally been left alone.

The reasons why will soon come to light.

On the road down, Interlopers will make grim discoveries: frozen, partially mummified remains of people, half-hidden in the snow and ice. Many of them appear poorly dressed for the journey, and look to have died from hypothermia or some other kind of cold-induced injury. Some may be found as if they had simply collapsed in the snow and died. Others may be found in small groups, huddled and slumped together — having succumbed to the cold. Suitcases and bags will be littered around with them — sometimes luggage will be left abandoned alone, as if someone just gave up carrying it.

Some Interlopers will realise: these are the remains of Milton’s original residents. The ones that made it out of Milton and Lakeside, only to die on the way to the coast. Dozens upon dozens of bodies, making you wonder if anyone ever made it out alive at all.

One long road, a graveyard.


And then, in the distance, where the ocean stretches out before your eyes: the outline of a village can be seen before the land meets the water. Civilisation? People?

As twilight falls, more curiously, a light blinks slowly on the landscape. It may be easier or hard to spot, depending on the time of day. What… is that?

Silverpoint.

TRY HONESTY

WHEN: May and into June.
WHERE: Everywhere.
CONTENT WARNINGS: themes of honesty/forced honesty; potential body horror.

It begins with a dream. You stand in the atrium of a large cave, lit by a large campfire — the smoke drifting out an opening in the cave’s roof above. Someone sits by the fire with their hands covering their face and as you draw closer and closer to the flames, you realise it is a woman who sits on the opposite side of the flames. For some, they will not know who this woman is but some will recognise her: Enola.

She does not speak, does not look at you. She keeps her face hidden behind her hands, almost-childlike as she sits. The light is low but it’s a pleasant, peaceful kind of ambiance — even if Enola’s actions are a little strange, almost troubling. If you listen carefully, you’re almost sure you can quietly hear crying.

Across the campfire, on your own side of it, there are three stones laid out on the floor, each of them carved with a rune of sorts. It’s hard to tell what the runes mean, exactly. They don’t appear to be in any symbolic or runic language you’ve seen before. Even if you don’t understand them, you find yourself drawn to one of these runes.

You move to kneel on the cave floor and you reach forwards. Your hand hovers over it — a strange thrum in the air, like you can feel some kind of energy of vibration coming from it. You reach for the stone, Enola doesn’t move. As you move to pick up the stone, you feel the sharp burning sting of pain—

The dream ends.

You awaken. Not the sharp snapping of sleep to waking. Just the simple, natural waking that comes when one wakes up. But you feel… different somehow.

Honest. But honest, how exactly?

It all depends which rune you picked in your dream.

HEART RUNE: Interlopers who chose this rune will find themselves more emotionally honest. How this manifests is an aura of colour that surrounds the Interloper which will reflect their current emotional state — ie. golden for happy, shades of grey for exhaustion/tiredness, pinks for romantic feelings. The aura is dynamic and can shift with colours and even have multiple colours in play, depending on the complexities of the emotions.

MIND RUNE: Interlopers who chose this rune will find themselves with an honest mind, and will feel compelled to speak it. They are honest with their words: blunt and to the point, avoiding lies or bending truths. They may even feel compelled to reveal things that have been playing on their mind for some time — choosing to clear the air, and potential dirty laundry.

FORM RUNE: Interlopers who chose this rune will find themselves physically honest. Their previous hurts and injuries will become visible on their skin. This can be previous injuries or sicknesses the Interloper has sustained over the course of their life — even if they are now long since healed. It could be a physical manifestation of emotional or mental pain in some way. Your body no longer holds it secrets, they’re now plain and open for the world to see.

FAQs

THE SHUDDERING EARTH

1. Players are free to destroy their own homes/make them uninhabitable if they wish. Please amend the Housing Spreadsheet to reflect this. Commercial/Public buildings are off limits for destruction but players can handwave any other random buildings/empty homes in Milton that have been destroyed in the quake.

2. THE HOT SPRINGS ARE OKAY. Just a little snowed in.

3. The Hydrodam (and it's hot showers) will have seen damage done to it and will require repairs/maintenance.


THE LONG ROAD

1. The Coast is now accessible to all players. Please see this page for further information.

2. Beach.....................

3. As a reminder. It takes about 24 hours to get from Milton to the Carter Hydrodam. Once out of the Dam, travel down to Silverpoint will take a number of days.

4. Three minor NPCs have been introduced! Molly, the owner of The Frozen Angler; her teenage son Jace; and Father Thomas of St Christopher's Church. There will be an opportunity to ask them questions, a top level of which can be found below!

5. Marra will not be open for interactions just yet.

TRY HONESTY

1. The durations of the effects are down to player choice, but will last at a minimum of three days or can last up to a full month or so and even continue into June.

2. The Form Rune's effects are purely cosmetic and will not actively harm the Interloper.

3. The Heart Rune's effects will only be visible to Interlopers.

4. Players can only play with one rune, they cannot choose to go with more than one.

PLOTTING POST

Comments

[m1895]

[ In the instant Konstantin speaks up, Vasiliy isn't sure why his face has changed, why his voice is suddenly so stricken, his skin so pale. And then another half-second passes, and he feels the single hot trickle down the nape of his neck at the same time as Kostya's large, broad hand catches his shoulder in a vice grip.

He knows what it is without looking. Without being told. From where the blood emanates—a clean gunshot wound at the base of the skull, severing the brainstem. The blood in his veins feels as cold as a dead man's, like it's stopped moving entirely as the world freezes around him, and maybe it is a dead man's—always has been. He was always on borrowed time. He's almost 35. It dawns on him now, finally, like the sun abruptly rising over the eclipsing peak of a mountain that he doesn't have a single gray hair to show for it. A single cavity for all of the packs of cigarettes he's run through over the past four years. A single new crease. The horror is sublime. Surreal. Wouldn't it always have made more sense that this was all just a last burst of neuroelectric activity in a dying brain?

A dream?

Wouldn't that explain all of the impossible things that have happened far more realistically, in a far more rational, scientific, logical way than some Pagan notion of reincarnation, the very same the backwards people of the countryside had to be taught to abandon in favor of the science that says none of this was real?

His eyes burn with welling tears. His throat feels tight.

He never deserved to come back. He hadn't thought he wanted to. He always deserved to pay for what he did, always, and they always deserved to come back.

Time, or the earth, is here to claim him. The last grain of sand has trickled through the top of an hourglass he never knew was dwindling. And he doesn't want to die. Selfishly, out of base human impulse, finally faced with the end he earned, he wants only to run from it.

What will happen to Kostya? The creature within him? Lyudmila?

What if he comes back?

He'll come back, and Konstantin won't.

Vasiliy stands frozen, stricken, unable to make sound, staring into the eyes across from his own as the stream trails down the soft prominences of his cervical vertebrae. He doesn't remember the feeling of the blood when it happened.

He swallows. He probably has seconds before the last neurons flicker out like dying stars. It doesn't matter that Konstantin, the selfless Hero of the Soviet Union, crafted in the image of everything he'd ever wanted—his brain's final act of self-mercy; wouldn't that always have made more sense than the existence of such a man, such a chance meeting?—is a figment of his mind. What they shared was as real as the reality he's leaving. ]

I'm dying, [ he manages, his voice barely more than a whisper. He doesn't manage to hold back his tears. ] This was a dream. But I love you so much. I don't care if you're real, if any of this is real, it—it was real to me. I love you.

[sputnik]

[ Four decades of a life in which everything made sense, everything had an explanation, logical and rational. The past two years of Konstantin's life have changed that stability completely. It was being infested with a monster he deserved (cosmic punishment, a ridiculous concept he never would have entertained prior), and then it was waking up in this place when he should be dead, and then it was every thing that happened after. Shared dreams and some overarching supernatural presence. Meeting people from impossible worlds, meeting people who aren't even human. Vasiliy, who— died and came back. (Maybe came back wrong, has been the aching thought lurking. Not like Kieren exactly, but maybe more like Dorian. Alive forever, young and beautiful forever, but at a horrible cost.)

He doesn't know how to explain what's wrong in Vasiliy. The creature knows, has known this whole time, that he's not... normal. Konstantin never questioned it too much back then, just desperately counted his blessings that the thing seemed to show no appetite towards his newfound housemate. But now he knows. And he's wondered, and feared, and dreaded, that Vasya's on some kind of borrowed time, or that something will crumble, that any number of unknowns could happen to him, and Konstantin would be fucking helpless to do anything—

He stares at Vasiliy as upset clearly swells in the other man, leaves him frozen and silent for those long few moments. Vasya doesn't seem... shocked. Not the way anyone else would be. Not the way Konstantin would (and will) be when his own old wounds open back up and start leaking. Vasya just seems.... sad.

'I'm dying' — and hearing him say it out loud like that, making it so clear and real, has Konstantin exhaling a sharp, pained sound. No

'This was a dream. But I love you so much.'

No, no no no ]

No. Vasenka.

[ No, he... he can't accept that. Can't accept this. Konstantin moves even closer, reaches out to take both of his forearms, grasping on, holding on — he has to keep him. He peers around him a bit again, and there's a jolting sting when he sees the blood trailing down now, more now.

This is... this is from when he was executed. Konstantin realises it all at once — this isn't some fresh, inexplainable wound brought on by this place. This is the shot that killed him. ]

No, [ he hears himself saying again, feeling lost and dumb and desperate, and suddenly he's wrapping his arms around Vasiliy like a child hugging its parent, abruptly-wet eyes wide as he embraces him fast and tight. His heart is pounding with shallow, rapid beats of upset. He can feel the creature fluttering in discomfort and alarm and knows that both of them are tethered to this man, that the connection can't be severed. Not ever.

He's pulling quickly back just enough to reach up and cup Vasiliy's face carefully with both of his hands, shaking, almost afraid to touch him, to hurt him more, to make it all.... happen faster. Konstantin's voice has never shaken like this before; the words are hard to voice, spilling out and tangling up in themselves. ]

This can't happen. I-it's going to be okay. We'll get you help. There has to be a doctor here— I'll go find someone. I'll help you. [ He nods quickly, eyes saucer wide. He can't accept this, has to fight it, has to save him, but tears are leaking down his own cheeks, fast and cold, because he knows he can't. He never could. ]