singillatim | nature offers a violence

nature offers a violence

NOVEMBER 2023 EVENT

PROMPT ONE — WHITEOUT: Methuselah makes an unexpected early return to Milton to warn Interlopers of an impending monster storm, and boy does it surely come.

PROMPT TWO — A CHOICE: Following the storm, sightings of a mysterious stag prompts a hunt down in the Basin and out in the Outskirts.

PROMPT THREE — REST MY WEARY BONES: While the storm causes a great deal of mess, it also uncovers some far more pleasant surprises. Hot springs.

WHITEOUT

WHEN: Early to mid-month.
WHERE: Milton.
CONTENT WARNINGS: extreme weather; storms; blizzards; themes of survival; possible character cold-related injuries; possible themes of peril.

In the times that he is no longer occupying the Community Hall in the center of town to help tend to the newcomers, Methuselah is out in the wilds. Despite his growing age, he is a hardened survivor, and has been more than accustomed to life living as a nomad, out in the thickest, deepest parts of nature. Sometimes he can be encountered, sheltered in a cave or out in the woods, huddled by a warm campfire, or busying himself with his latest game catch. He seems to be always on the move, never staying for too long, and never coming into town — unless it’s to begin preparations for the latest batch of new arrivals.

To see him returning to Milton outside of these times is a curious sight, and the grim expression he carries is enough to make anyone wary. Even his voice is grave. The warmth and kindness usually found in his expression is gone, replaced with a deathly seriousness. He doesn’t speak in jest.

"I am long used to this world and its weather, even with the changing times to more bitter nights." he will say. "I have seen the years rise and fall, too many to count. Please, I beg that you hear me with this— a storm is coming. Greater than some of you may have ever known. It is in the air, and we must prepare to see it through. We do not have much time. Three days, perhaps. But no more."

He will tell anyone and everyone; encouraging the word to be spread around. He will instruct on what needs to be done, what needs to be gathered. The storm will be long and hard, and will last for some time. With that, Methuselah will begin to prepare the Community Hall as a place of refuge with a stock of food, fuel and water to get through the storm. Interlopers will be free to join Methuselah and bunker down together, or can choose to bunker down on their own in their own homes, or with others.

You have only three days.

And sure enough, the storm comes. Maybe you can notice the signs too: the sudden updraft, the slow gathering of clouds, the drop in temperature, the changes of pressure in the air.

Halfway through the third day, the storm rolls in: a ferocious snow-storm unlike anything you’ve seen before. Even with the fading amount of daylight as mid-winter approaches, the sky turns as dark as night as will stay like night for the duration. Strong howling winds batter the town, and even the sturdiest of buildings creak and groan under the weight. Trees will be felled, some buildings might not fare the storm.

Relentless snow that falls so hard it’s a complete whiteout, and will be impossible to navigate if one were to step outside. Even then, it isn’t advisable. The temperature is bitter, with a frigid windchill. Going out in this kind of storm would be a death sentence. Staying out in it for longer than a half-hour will certainly kill you.

It would be best to wait it out, to huddle around warm fires in the darkness. It may certainly be a test of patience, depending on your choice of place to stay. The storm will last a full week, a stark reminder of what you are, the words you have heard in your arrival: thrown to Mother Nature’s mercy, the Interloper in her design.

But will you persist?

A CHOICE

WHEN: Mid-month, onwards to end of month.
WHERE: Milton Basin, Milton Outskirts.
CONTENT WARNINGS: survival themes; themes of hunting; possible animal death.

After the storm passes, there’s a certain kind of hush that falls upon Milton and its surrounding areas as Interlopers are left to pick through the wake. While the temperature certainly doesn’t get that much warmer, there’s days and nights of clear, calm weather — short afternoons of weak sunshine and nights of chilly peace, the moon hung high in the starry skies. Winter is drawing ever-closer, but it’s still for a little while.

In the early evenings, before the sun sets, there’s strange sightings of a particular white stag that can be found roaming the area — particularly down in the Milton Basin. It seems quite elusive, but there’s plenty of Interlopers that have been able to capture a glimpse over the coming days. Even Methuselah himself has seen this beast before, remarking there has long been tall tales of a ghostly stag that roams the Northern Territories and is said to bring good fortune to those who manage to hunt it down.

Perhaps you’re a little low on luck. Perhaps you’re feeling lucky. You’re going to find that stag.

Hunting down the stag, however, will take a great deal of patience and time. You might find yourself waiting several hours to wait for it to appear. Building a snow shelter, or hunkering down in some old shack might be needed in order to keep warm. But if you’re patient enough, and able to withstand the cold for long enough — the beast will soon make an appearance.

In the dying light of the day, it is there. It’s unlike any deer you’ve seen before: tall and majestic, with thick, soft fur of brilliant white. It almost looks ghost-like in some angles, it’s an incredibly beautiful creature. But it seems to have also noticed you, just as you have noticed it. It doesn’t dart away, however. Instead it stands before you, waiting for you to act.

You have a choice: slay the creature, or let it go.

It will not move until you make your decision, holding your gaze until you raise your weapon or until you lower it and give up your hunt. But there is a consequence to either action: if you choose to kill the stag, you will be rewarded with a sizeable bounty of venison. Eating said meat will help you feel fuller for longer, and the meat will keep for far longer than any other deer slain.

However, if you choose to spare the stag, the creature will lower its head, as if bowing to you. Then, it will disappear with a swirling of powdered snow. When you return home for the evening and go to sleep, the next morning you will find a gift at the foot of your bed: a pair of deerskin boots, or a deerskin blanket. These boots are supple, tough and waterproof — allowing for a great balance of mobility and warmth. The blanket is incredibly toasty, and will provide a great deal of comfort in the long nights ahead.

REST MY WEARY BONES

WHEN: Mid-month, onwards indefinitely.
WHERE: Milton Outskirts.
CONTENT WARNINGS: n/a.

The storm has blown in plenty of snow to make traversing the area much more difficult, but there’s something else of note that comes with its passing. While the storm has brought much devastation, and some places have been buried in snow drifts, plenty of snow in areas has been blown away, uncovering otherwise lost secrets within Milton. Clouds of what looks like steam can be noted not too far from town, towards the mountains of the north.

If Interlopers head to explore the clouds, they will find old trails leading up towards the mountains. It isn’t a particularly difficult journey, for once, and they will soon discover that the storm has blown away the previously blocked access to a cave. It appears that this is the right place.

The air is warm here, pleasantly so. Warm enough that hats and mittens and coats seem a little unnecessary. One might wonder if someone lives within, and that a great fire is stoked to keep the place warm. But there’s no one in sight, no sounds of life: human, animal or otherwise. If they press on, they will discover that the cave floor is well worn with footfall: plenty of people have come here before, and the reason why is soon revealed.

The air grows even warmer, and more humid. The space opening to reveal small pools of slow-flowing water, warm water. The stone houses a natural hot spring, and following the cave out the other side will lead to another space in the rock open to the air, where there are even larger pools of warm water, perfectly sized and deep enough to bathe in. It seems that this place was frequently used by the people of Milton, where their life of hardship could be forgotten for an hour or two.

The water is pleasantly hot, and incredibly inviting. After so long in the freezing cold without modern appliances and utilities, a natural hot spring sounds like an absolute luxury.

FAQs

WHITEOUT

1. Characters are free to play around with this prompt how they want. Maybe they're dumb enough to go into the cold and get injured or sick. Maybe they're stuck in the Community Hall for the week. Fights might break out as tensions run high whilst everyone's stuck together, or maybe you're actually having a nice time.

2. For those stuck in the Community Hall: there are board games and old school textbooks stored in cupboards. There is also a piano.

3. A floorplan of the Community Hall can be found here.

A CHOICE

1. .... Yes, you can pet the ghost stag.

2. Characters will get one choice only with the ghost stag, meaning they can't keep going back to find it to get extra gifts.

3. If characters can't agree on a course of action, whoever acts first will get their gift. The second character will have a chance to try again another time.

4. If both characters agree on sparing the stag, but players want different gifts (ie. one player wants the boots and one wants the blanket), characters will get the gift the player wants their character to receive.

REST MY WEARY BONES

1. The hot springs will now be a permanent fixture in the Milton Area, enjoy!

PLOTTING POST

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It's a particular horror he still isn't sure how to process, deal with. What happened to those men. What they were capable of. And he's only learned more of those capabilities in the time since — here, in Milton, exposed to the stories of some of the others. Horrors the likes of which Edward could never have.... imagined. Men, butchered like animals. Fed upon by their fellow man.

So the other's words affect him, deeply, but not with surprise. No, it's with recognition, familiarity, though none that he wears with ease. His face sags in a frown, as though he has little strength to keep his mouth anything but a deep frown, wounded, saddened. Haunted.

'Even among friends.'

They were his friends, he thinks, even if they'd never quite referred to one another as such. On the ship, men were not necessarily friends as much as they were colleagues and co-workers, and divided further by the differences in rank and duty.

But.... yes, they were his friends. Perhaps during what horrors they'd been through, they became much more than only that. And all of them were his responsibility. He feels the weight of all of them, always.

"Yes... I know now that it is easy for men to turn.... strange, when they need to survive."

He'd clung so hard to those rules of society, but he'd been one of the few. In the end, the last. And what had it done to help anyone? It had only made him weaker; everything slipped through his fingers before he could attempt to catch it.

"...But I mean to make sure that such a thing does not happen here. That is why I'm keeping watch over things. Stock of them." Why he's down here, guarding the food stores. It may seem silly. To him, it's not at all.

"I will not allow anyone here to become hurt. I assure you."

If someone told a younger Louis he would fall in love with someone who liked to play with his food, and that food was human, Louis would have been greatly disturbed. It goes against nature to be so cruel to his fellow man. Louis could never see them as his tasty inferiors. Lestat would hurt people like a cat, for fun. Louis hurts people like a man, with all the messy human emotions it entails.

Louis watches Edward's face lose anything that held it up. It's like a heaviness he knew only in his deepest despair. Louis thinks of the last vestiges of his humanity, as he often does when faced with trials. Here was an instance where not even humans could cling to it. It makes Louis more melancholy than he already is. He debates whether to dance with the savage garden of the world or attempt to balance the scales.

"If I should succumb to the madness of which you speak, I may shut myself away. Do not try to find me, do not allow anyone, including yourself, to be near me. It will pass. All things do."

The other man's words give him an odd pause. Uncomfortable, tense, as he sits there in the flickering lamplight, and in the face of words that are surely not natural to hear.

It isn't natural, to speak of such things. To imagine them at all. It isn't natural to have to prepare men for their doom, to watch a man suffering from poison and ache and confused, fever-dream horror plead to die.

It isn't natural to wonder if he will fall to that same degree of suffering. If someday he, too, might beg for mercy; if this strange place with its strange, impossible effects, might saturate him with it. Draw out what's already there and make it worse (a suiting punishment, of course). He feels what he now knows to be lead poisoning in his joints and in his stomach, in his head, behind his eyes. Not as bad as some of the men got, never as bad as that. But he wonders. He dreams of Morfin, and Commander Fitzjames, and Jopson. All of them, like living corpses. All of them, suffering. So many more men suffered, too. Temperaments made hostile. Minds addled, decisions strange. He forgets things, often.

'It will pass', Louis says, but what Edward had witnessed did not pass. It only grew worse, and worse. There was no relief to that madness. It was a death sentence.

He watches the other man with brows knit, features tight, confused, unsettled. Louis says it with such assurance, as though he can predict how such a thing will go. This, too, feels... unnatural. Strange. He isn't sure how to react, how to respond, mouth open and then closing a little, then opening again.

"I fear it would.... consume you. It consumed them all." He swallows against a fresh tightness. "I do not think any of us survived that madness. My... companions who have arrived here.... and myself.... we are likely all dead men."

Oh, he'd had hope, up until the very end. Hope was what he, perhaps alone, clung to. Up until he'd actually begun that march South, with the still-living corpse of Thomas Jopson behind him, and those scattered tins of food. The hope was gone, then. He walked only because he did not know what else to do. Edward Little — the decent man, the good man, the man loyal to his Captain — had died.

....And so how could Louis hope to survive it? The madness, the degradation of self? The hunger to harm fellow man for one's own survival? That question lingers in Edward's expression, confused and questioning even if he doesn't outright say it.

Everything about Louis and his unlife are unnatural, he believes. No matter how many times Lestat insisted Louis simply follow his nature as a vampire, Louis was always at war with himself. He longed to be loved and accepted by his fellow man, while indeed he was not a fellow man.

Louis often wonders if this place is a kind of Purgatory. While Louis did not take his own life, he did ask for death, and Lestat gave it to him. Then Louis the vampire gave it to many others.

"I am already dead." Louis contemplates his hands tipped with pointed nails. "Events transpired and rendered me a dead man walkin'. I am already consumed."

Metaphorical? Perhaps. "I cling to this life and this body because... I'm not sure why. I do not know what else to do. I want to be... loved. I want to have a conversation and feel enriched by it. I want to find the answers to questions of my existence. But that can't happen if I kill."

Louis has never had the pleasure of starving to death as a vampire, but he assumes it starts with an almost pleasant lightheadedness and ravenous hunger and ends in weakness and then death (a second one). He would pass. He would die like a monk, like a saint, and restore what dignity he could to his wretched existence while sparing the lives of those around him.

He thinks it's a nice thought, anyway. Starving to death actually terrifies him.

"I don't know how I would comport myself, but I wish for it to go the way of peace. If no one comes near me, then I will have it."

This man is a mystery. Parts glimpse through, like so many eyes peering out from a darkness, but they shut themselves quickly before Edward can make contact with them.

Some things make sense, are relatable, even: 'I am already dead.' So he, too....? Edward stares at him, that empathy once more leaking from him, mouth a deep frown as he listens.

('I want to be... loved.' Oh, it feels like a knife. He doesn't think "love" is what has ever really driven him, and even now isn't necessarily what he seeks, what he moves forward and keep going for, but the most lonely parts of himself do understand. For a very long time, he has felt a cold aching emptiness. He has felt so alone.)

....But the more Louis continues, once again, Edward finds himself baffled by the mystery to his words. He speaks as though... (again,) this is not a new concept for him. As though he's given it much thought. Has he truly? Through this storm, wondered if he may fall victim to... unruliness, indecency? "Madness", as they both keep referring to it as. The fear of becoming a mutineer of sorts — of losing one's humanity in a harrowing situation... is it a common fear? Edward would never have presumed such, and yet here this man speaks of it as if he has always feared it.

His frown deepens, confused and disturbed and pained by it all, but he's nodding all the same.

"Then.... you have my word. If that should happen here.... I'll make certain you're left alone."

It feels a strange vow to make, unnatural, alien (and yet on the other side of things, so painfully relevant.) Edward is, as he is so often, torn between two places, two states of mind. Two perceptions. But through it all, is the poignant awareness of a man wanting to decide for himself how a thing should go, and it's...been such a rare concept for him and for those he knows. He couldn't imagine denying someone autonomy whenever they're able to have it.

"....But I will do whatever I can to avoid that happening. And.. if you should feel something coming on, any strange... thoughts, or compulsions, I hope that you could come to me. Perhaps I could help you before they became unmanageable."

He.... has no idea the scope of this, of course. Of what this man truly means. Even so, the offer is genuine.

Often Louis feels the need to appear strong and immovable. He wants respect, the good regard of others (and love). On rare occasions, he confides his struggles in another man, and his eyes are green pools of sorrow. He would lament to Lestat that he would never get control over his bloodlust, never prevent himself from killing when the need became great. Lestat didn't understand why a vampire had such human concerns.

Louis places his hand fleetingly over Edward's. Affection is always a gamble with other men, but right now it feels right... even if he doesn't know if he would take him up on his offer. That could reveal his secret and destroy what little trust there is between them. It could even kill him.

"Thank you, Mr. Little. You're a good man."

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nature offers a violence

cw: mention of cannibalism

going to be unwell: vampire edition (cw: starvation)

cw: mention of lead poisoning / effects

cw: suicide mention

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