nature offers a violence

[singmod]

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

Comments

Whiteout

[ployboy]

Well. The first meeting is simple. Tim watches the designated first aid table, glancing over far too often and even occasionally offering a dry, tiny, polite smile when caught looking. Any residents who are in need of medical care... so, he figures, this must be the guy.

Then he makes himself scarce, like a rat in a trash heap.

The next day, he still can't make up his mind if he oughta lead with What's our protocol for Ebola, or What's a spleen do anyway, or Are mental health services included in your offer.

Tim, keeping a good enough distance when he eventually musters the courage to approach, says, "If I find Plaster of Paris, d'you think you can get me a cast?" And with his right arm held (fatigued) across his middle, Tim thinks he doesn't have to elaborate. "I tried to set it a few days ago but it's. Uh."

How do you say hurts like a female dog without looking like a lil female dog. Asking for a friend.

Re: Whiteout

[bestsir]

Goodsir looks him over and then just stares at the arm.

"You tried to set it yourself?" Honestly, he's aghast. "Let me see it. I can splint it—there's no need for plaster, not unless you wish to be all but immobile."

Goodsir's native era is about three to five years too early for plaster bandages, and while the idea of immobilising a limb in plaster is not new, in his day it's done by putting the limb in a sort of box and pouring plaster on top ... not exactly the cast that Tim probably has in mind.

[ployboy]

Goodsir stares. Tim stares back.

"Yeah, I tried. It didn't turn out... great," he repeats dumbly. He holds back on the sass. He isn't feeling so sassy what with his tail tucked between his legs and everything.

As for letting the good doctor take a look-- Leslie does the same thing in her clinic. Tim's not falling for this trick.

He's smart.

(Debatable.)

He thinks back to curvy cursive writing.

He stays put, annoyingly far from the guy he's conversing with. Apologies to the innocent bystanders.

"It's fine-- I'll walk you through it. It's just--"

With his good hand, he mimes... fuck if I know, like, pouring an ooze on his broken arm. Slime. Splat.

Hell.

"So I'll go find the plaster, then?"

Hell.

[bestsir]

"I can splint an arm," Goodsir says, just managing to keep a testy note out of his voice. "And I don't see the need for—oh!" It finally hits him—of course, the box of plaster bandages that he'd nearly left in his cabin. "Of—of course. No, you needn't—I have some. I've not used them before, but perhaps with your help—" a sardonic lift of the eyebrow, "I'm sure I can manage."

[ployboy]

He's not chickening out of this. A broken arm isn't just a hindrance to him- the all around inconvenience and, frankly, danger that comes from not being in good health affects everyone. Chains, communities, weakest links--

Tim's just not, like. In love with the idea of crying again.

He nods, absolutely listening to the bare minimum and transparently so.

"If I can find the plaster then we don't have to use the bandages right now."

Impregnated bandages are beginner-friendly. Therefore, important.

Tim nods again, lifting his good hand to give this good sir a (mock) lazy salute. "Cool! Then-- I'll have my people call your people. Nice chatting with you!"

He's not chickening out except he's absolutely fucking chickening out are fucking you kidding him he's not that much of a masochist.

---

Uh.

---

And then the day just kinda gets away from him. Oop. It's Louis' fault, and it's the rat traps' fault, and Tim rides the wave of anxious hyperactivity to the stage where he gives his address to unwitting cellmates. And then it's the next day and Tim is still scowling over Hickey being a son of a bitch and when he slides up to Goodsir like there's nothing the matter in this great, snow-white world

he still doesn't have plaster mix.

Fuck.

Fuuuuuuuuck.

"I was thinking," he ventures. "How about... you have a box of plaster-banages, right? Then, if you need to learn your way around them, because they really do get messy and sticky, it's honestly kinda gross, there's no better teacher than life."

Shoot him.

[bestsir]

As it happens, Goodsir spent a little time the night before working out how to manage those bandages, and though he did very nearly get his fingers stuck together at one point, he's figured them out.

And so when Tim shows up the next day, he's ready.

"You really shouldn't go much longer," he says, and there's a certain sternness that wasn't there before. "Or else we might have to re-break the arm to set it properly, and I very much doubt that you want that."

Goodsir is not above putting the fear of God into a reluctant patient.

[ployboy]

Why the fuck would you say that though.

Like, out loud.

Tim indulges in one more childish moment, his eyes growing wide in reluctant and deep understanding. He doesn't need to break his arm a third time in ten weeks, because third time is most certainly not the charm. Ask him: he's third. He should know. The intimate knowledge of pain floods through him; reinforcement history begs him to listen to the doctor.

Which, kudos for the having the patience of a saint. Leslie would've tranq'd his sorry ass already.

"Yeah," Tim sighs, throwing away the childish things and yadda yadda and whatever. It always helps to fit problems into their respective boxes. To shove those boxes deep down and make it happen, that you'll never see them again. His face is the least obvious of changes into docile defeat, his body growing less and more tense with every passing second.

--huh.

Halfway to peeling off his (ugly as sin) yellow hoodie (he loves that yellow hoodie), Tim hesitates. Actually hesitates, not just feigns it. "Guess that means I need to take off the shirt too, huh?"

Probably, when it's a fitted buttoned Givenchy.

[bestsir]

Sometimes you just have to use the metaphorical big stick, Tim.

"Unless you want plaster on that very fine shirt, yes." Goodsir may not know Givenchy from Adam, but he can see that it's a well-cut garment.

"I can give you something to lessen the pain," he says. He's trying to save the laudanum as much as possible, but a few drops might not go amiss here.

cw injuries, burns, DRAMATIC BOY, etc

[ployboy]

"I don't even care 'bout the shirt," Tim mutters, and the voice at the back of his head that's always yammering tells him to quit stalling. Get on with it, before the good sir Goodsir leaves him to preserve his own sanity. Like a grumpy little turtle of a guy, Tim ducks his head under the head-hole of the hoodie. Slipping it off the broken arm is easy, though there is some discomfort in having to pull back his wrist.

This is about the time, Tim will later figure, that the background of the world starts to kinda fade at the edges. Turn grayish, dullish, shapeless.

Stupid Givenchy and its stupid buttons.

There's a chair, and Tim kicks his hoodie under it as he sits. His left hand-- y'know, the one that can actually extend to its range of motion without (too much) hurt-- fidgets with the second button on the collar. And then, at fucking last, Tim gets on with undressing. He's muscular, compact-- which actually means the shirt is comfortably snug, the way it should be if he's answering to faces behind microphones about his (ex?) fiancée.

Collar bone, a prominent thin, long scar. Deltoids, this spongy tarrish skin of a recent burn, the kind the skin grafts can't fix in one or two rounds. It wraps around his neck, limp hair obscuring the spotty sight of more. Puckered skin... Tim thinks that one bullet hit him when he was, like, 13? Yeouch.

Stabbed here, cut there. He's been sliced open recently. Both before and after the fire. A fucking kitchen knife. A fancy-ass broadsword. And then there's that one patch of surgeon-precision joining of skin right behind a rib. A sickle. Run straight through.

He doesn't pay much mind to old news printed on his skin; none of them really do. Sometimes ya get trounced by a man-eating crocodile-man who lives in the sewers, and that's OK.

Tim has to strip off the whole shirt to unbutton the cuffs to twist himself into an awkward sort of pretzel. It sucks. He daintily unpeels the sleeve from the red-brown angry swell of a break in the ulna. It's like... a lot of tiny ants, some crawling around his arm, some making good use of their pinchers.

Tim pauses. Wonders about... the whole lack of spleen thing. See, White Ghost hadn't really read him the WebMD after Tim woke up in that cave. Tim glances at Goodsir--

and thuds his head on the table where he says, "I don't want it."

Painkiller.

Not even top 10 stupid shit he has said and-or-done in Milton. It's like a personal best.

"If you're offering more than a tylenol, then I'll just bite a sock. It's fine."

[bestsir]

Some of the older able seamen had bodies that looked to have taken beatings like that, not to mention some of the rougher-living sorts that populated Edinburgh, but it's a bit of a shock to see someone as young as Tim looking like an old soldier. He is full of questions, but also has the sense to focus on the task at hand.

"On the ship we used strips of leather, or a piece of wood," he says, a sort of distraction as he examines the arm. Satisfied as to what he needs to do next, he gathers up the materials he needs to finish the job. Once they're ready, he takes Tim's arm carefully in his hands.

"I'll set the bones into place and then bandage them. Deep breath now. On three. One. Two—"

Somewhere at two-and-a-half is where he actually manipulates the bones back into place, quick and neat. It's a trick he learnt from his father.

[ployboy]

--pfft he said seamen.

And Tim, about to mouth off over the lack of options and the fact that he is not putting his socks in his mouth, he doesn't want to die, sits up the slightest bit straighter. Morbid curiosity wins over the full-body tremor of trepidation, and honestly, even pushing Alfred's no-nonsense button over and over again gets him an insistence on medication, so he wants to say he knows what's coming.

He does not, because this son of a bitch quack doctor didn't even fully count to Three.

Tim can't help the yelp-yell-shout, raw and guttural and the way his whole damn body reacts to acute pain. It's one fire of many, and Tim lets his head thud back down on the table one moment later. He wonders about breaking his teeth by clenching his jaw so tight.

God help the first person to need dental care.

He grits out, "That wasn't fair."

But get this: there's no inspection of the handiwork being made; that means a lot. Tim figures the alternative is to invite more hurt onto himself and he's, uh, not quite in the mood.

[bestsir]

"Sorry," Goodsir says, and he does mean it. Mostly. He offers a consoling pat on the shoulder, at least. "The bone is set now, and there's only to stabilise it. The worst of it is done."

He sets to work again, and if the cast is perhaps not as perfectly tidy as a modern medical professional might do, Goodsir does a solid job of it.

[ployboy]

He's walking that fine line that divides Dizzy from Nauseous. The large room seems to bounce around at the edges of his vision, like he's seeing it through the small window of a boat.

Tim wonders if that's the pain or the humiliation of having eyes turned to them, discreetly, out of burning curiosity or rebuke.

At least he gets a pat on the shoulder.

The plaster is cold and he shudders in silent misery. There's a growing panic as the cast begins to set, as his arm finally gets that much needed protection around it. He won't be able to move... Tim exhales once- sharp and as a reset of sorts before his lungs decide he's no longer allowed to take in air.

Eventually, all's done. Tim is scrambling to cover himself again. His ass is still on the seat, and he's looking like a shaky chihuahua when he mumbles, "D'you mind if I just sit here a while? I'll help cl'n up. Promise. Just give me a sec."

[bestsir]

"There's nothing you need to do," Goodsir says, already cleaning up. "Rest and take your time. There's no hurry."