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

Re: why are they like this, cw injuries

[flambeaux]

Scars. Strange life for a rich boy. Jury's out on the polar bears.

"My endorsement as a businessman, not a farmer. But I can advise you in my areas of expertise where applicable."

He'd wish for Bricktop to be here, a strong management right hand, but he wouldn't want to subject her to a hard life in the snow after she had gotten her first taste of an easier one in New Orleans. Managing the club, counting money, and not getting called names... it was more than many people in her position could have dared to hope.

"There is something you can do. You don't want to do it, though. I will have to manage," he forces himself to say while he can almost taste human blood from memory. He likes light and warmth; that didn't change when he became a vampire. But he's isolated himself and his particular problem.

[ployboy]

Tim nods.

"Okay."

And that's that, isn't it? He thinks about it, and a frown is now well etched on him. There's nothing but more wasted time in store if he lets himself bristle and dare Louis to enjoy being told what he'll do or not. With his breath coming as if he's run a 5k (what, do you think Tim has any idea of what running a marathon is like oh hell no), it's best to call it quits while he's ahead.

And make no mistake, he is well ahead.

He even stumbles over his words, "Is there anyone else who has the cond... actually-- no. You don't have to say it. I can keep a secret. So don't worry about that. Not even Anubis can get it out of me."

And then he's standing, and he misses standing, and he even wants to stretch his arms over his head like a lanky and old tom. But he can't. Because Anubis. Tim kicks lightly at the white bucket that started this... conversation, and he looks at the blanket over Louis more so than at the man himself. (It's always weird to be looked down on, literally having someone over you. Tim can't do it to someone else, not if he's not beating the absolute crap outta them.)

"Hey. If you find... plaster, PlayDoh, or bubble wrap," he says, "holler for me. Cool?"

cw: reference to racism, vampire biting, and self-hate, the Louis trifecta

[flambeaux]

He's relieved Tim doesn't press him more. He's disappointed Tim doesn't press him more. Maybe Louis wants an excuse to bite him, because he can't just commit to being a killer, a vampire. Maybe Louis wants to protect him.

Louis would rather die (again) than be told what to do by some nervous white kid. Maybe this is why Lestat calls him a library of confusion. Lestat never had to pretend to be someone's valet just to be allowed in the opera house uptown. Tim's actual sentiments have nothing to do with Louis chewing his lip again. Louis knows this, but it doesn't stop the need to cross his arms and wrap himself tighter in the blanket.

He hates himself when he's like this.

"Careful what you say. Faux Anubis might kill you, and then your little bunnies would be down a father."

It might be a little superstitious of Louis to tell someone not to jinx themselves, but there are things in this world and his last that are beyond even his understanding. And, think of the bunnies.

"I'll have a look," he says, looking like a man who should be in bed. But if he naps in his coffin, he feels like he won't want to get out, he's that tired. He wants to be able to shuffle around the floor and rifle through supplies for plaster of Paris before he lies down.

cw animal death because of course, some abandonment, unreliable narrative

[ployboy]

Faux Anubis has a connection to the barn which has a connection to the slaughter which is connected to lies, the idea of Crying Wolf comes to mind because Tim saw the paw prints in the snow of large dogs, and of course there's the whole werewolf situation, but he thinks over alarmism and the natural hold it has over the Church, and he figures the churchyard is all buried under snow again and that sucks but it's inevitable and when Louis brings up fatherless bunny rabbits, Tim is supposed to quip something witty about the tragedy.

Instead he face falls and he freezes in place just long enough to say, "Oh."

Sheepish, he explains, "You know, I never had any pets. Then I got a tank, and, uh. I had some fish at home. I'm not always there, so I automated a feeding system, got them a great filter and all that. But they're probably all dead now."

Tim thinks about temperature regulations and salt in the water, nitrogen, and other stuff he had to cram into his head before buying the first fish. He'd figured it would make the apartment less lonely, and he could totally keep the fish alive.

But he's been gone, he left no instructions for their care, and even automated--

he sighs, tired and impressively fed up with the fucking fish he just mourned, and it's not even really about the fucking fish, because they were cute and a pain in the ass but they were confined to their neat little space-- but nobody has gone to knock on his door to check if he's even still alive, huh? Tim carves out his space the way a castle does a moat, but he's not even a damn castle he's like the garbage heap by Robinson that is always the last one to get swept up by the trash collector and just accumulating trash and that means that corner is just always a stink.

He wonders how long it'll take them to wonder is something is wrong with Red Robin, for having not reported to duty in so long.

And it hasn't even been that long!

And Tim, brows furrowed and eyes narrowed, yammers on because he might as fucking well.

"I probably shouldn't tell anyone I haven't had a pet, huh? What do you think? How hard can taking care of rabbits even be? There's a podium up on the stage, and-- you know, I'll bet you anything that I can get at least five people in on the Rabbit Ranch just by standing behind that podium. Because obviously anyone who stands behind a podium has t'know what they're talking about."

The cold is making his arm hurt, but, newsflash: water is wet. Louis gives him the heebie jeebies. And Tim can't shut the fuck up to save his life

and he still goes through life effortlessly disregarded.

Fuck.

[flambeaux]

Louis has no great love for animals. He couldn't have any, didn't want any, and regularly sucks fresh blood from them, inferior though it is to human. Louis's qualms involve humans.

He cares about the effect animals have on humans, though. The look on Tim's face unbalances him and lances through his chest. It's like Claudia's face whenever she found something that threw the life she couldn't have in her face. A dress she could never grow into, a boy she could never have, an unhappy family she couldn't leave. They've been isolated by vampirism for so long, Louis forgets about concerned friends and neighbors who might come to call, and he doesn't think of this possibility for Tim either.

"Some of them dyin' is part of the reality of farm animals. Pets too. We're supposed to outlive them," he says quietly.

Good job, Louis, very uplifting, not at all relevant to being unable to return home... He takes a breath and rises, and he feels like a creaky old house. Damn this cold. He just wants to reach out and touch Tim's good arm, and it's a hesitant attempt at a gesture. Humans are his weakness, they always have been.

"I'm sorry about your fish. I think your rabbits will appreciate the warm shelter. Their environment's changed with the disaster, and food's hard to come by."

cw v mild survivor's guilt, named mental health condition

[ployboy]

"God, I bet vampires think everyone's a pet," he whines, apropos of nothing.

Okay, apropos of the remark of outliving. He's trying hard to keep Ra's out of this; you're just going to have to believe it's true.

Tim's immersing himself in a plastic storage container, bent at the waist, fiddling with useless crap and welp, it looks like he found the Christmas decorations. He tosses some shimmering silver tinsel that outlived the last person who dared hang it on a tree.

He's tired of outliving people. No wonder Alf never let him keep the cat. Tim woulda likely spontaneously combusted back then, at its demise.

(Sometimes he wonders about the OCD thing and why he can't just stop himself from like

like he knows he won't find plaster. Goodsir already gave a perfectly valid solution to the problem of encasing the broken arm. But it's something to do. And Tim can't stop. And like with so many things, Tim just finds himself sighing again- oh well.)

Oh well, back to talking about rabbits. Tim resurfaces and combs a stray curtain of hair from his face as he nods at Louis, who is probably as confused about Tim as Tim is about Tim. Always keep them guessing. "See, that's the plan."

It's not the worst plan, half-baked as it is.

"Gotta take advantage of the- when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. There's going to be a lot of material thrown around town, too. I don't think my house- number 16? I've been staying there but it's honestly probably all gone by now. Half of the Hall's roof is probably gone by now, jesus, we're going to need... to throw someone up there to patch up the holes. Anyway-"

He's not manic, you're manic.

"Hey, you find any coffee yet? There's some brewing in the kitchen but I swear it's watered down a good... 99 percent. It's gross."

[flambeaux]

There are two wolves inside him. One goes very still at what Tim says, and the other wants to demand to know what he means by vampires. Or ghouls. He doesn't. Hollowly, he says,

"They feed off blood. I'd think less of pets and more of food."

Louis peers inside the box. Of course the Community Hall would hold Christmas events of some sort, in the times before. Louis does Christmas--which, he's aware, many people don't. He's a lapsed Catholic himself. It's complicated. He likes the sense of warmth in the cold, the lights, and the tree. People in Europe were doing it long before the Christians arrived.

It's a myth that vampires prefer the darkness. Louis is just allergic to the sun. He loves lights. Louis remembers Lestat lighting so many. Really livened up the place. They would have parties...

It's a wonder Louis doesn't buckle under all the baggage he carries, but being confused and confusing is a distraction. On the subject of food,

"I don't drink coffee."

He doesn't drink coffee. Or wine. Or liquor. He does, when he's pretending, and it tastes like nothing. He remembers standing on his balcony watching New Year's revelers, an untouched martini in his hand.

"And I think you should lay off of it. You speedin' through road barriers when you should be restin'."

He doesn't think coffee is the only thing wrong with Tim. Louis has had his manic spells, lashing out at the world that lashed him. Of course it couldn't be just a case of the coffees.

[ployboy]

"If you're not riding the waves of A-Fib, are you really living?" He deadpans. In some parallel universe he's on billboards in big cities same as he is back home, except in those unknown worlds he's the face of some Emergency Department or other agency giving pro tips on how not to live.

Youth is wasted on the young.

He doesn't even like coffee; Tim thinks he's circled that train of thought already. Instead he asks, "Was Christmas a thing you did back home?" With all the polite distance of interest befitting the... relationship, with Louis.

[flambeaux]

He doesn't know what A-Fib is, but if it's a new slang for coffee, he's not using it.

"Yes. That's... next month, isn't it?"

Louis already looks tired, sad, and wistful, so it is a minor miracle he manages to look even more so. His calendar is mismatched, and he has to remind himself what month it is here. When he left home, it was February. Now, according to various written paraphernalia around town, it's winter for him again. One long winter...

His last Christmas was spent enduring Lestat and Claudia's many spats. They had a beautiful tree. It didn't matter.