Wellstone Post 5.3

[wellie]

The Wellstone Post

Issue 5.3, Wellstone, Middle of Nowhere

EXTRA EXTRA

TOWN OF WELLSTONE DISSOLVED TO NOTHING? NOT QUITE

Welcome to a very special edition of the Wellstone Post! Read carefully for an announcement that will affect cycle 6.

End of Cycle 5

The town, by now, is near nothing: pools of thick, bubbling acid swirling in the bowl the town sits in, with the peaks of buildings and trees remaining dotted with infected who've climbed up to see off the end. Rain falls thick and fast, dissolving everything it touches. The town is a swirling morass, more lake than place. Overhead, thick dark clouds blot out every hint of light, but thunder booms out every few seconds: a boom, followed by an awful gurgling rumble.

Anyone trapped in the Staywell will find themselves with fewer and fewer places to go as the tide rises and the building dissolves. Floors collapse wholecloth, plunging everything on them into the acid, until the building is no more. By 9 pm on the final day, the building and everything in it are gone.

Huddled, damp, and protected by leaves, anyone sheltering in the fort in the bathhouse gathers to wait out the end. This shelter lasts under the bombardment, though rain starts to seep through cracks in the leaves near the end, hissing down onto any exposed stone to eat away. The thunder rumbles louder and louder. The ground begins to soften to a boggy mess. It shakes, begins to crumble bit by bit, and falls with a massive boom into a velvet darkness and a sense of nothing.

Those in the graveyard, trapped in a dry bubble, experience something similar: the ground turns to boggy mush, the rain picks up, hammering at the swirling patch of sky overhead. At the stroke of midnight, the bubble bursts: rain hammers in thick and fast. At the same instant the ground splits with a rank exhale hot and sour enough to burn your eyes. Into it collapses the graveyard, and everyone, and everything, in it.

The town is gone.

Again.

Welcome back to Wellstone

When characters wake from dying or falling into the big pit, they will wake up per the TDM's arrival prompt. This time, no one comes to right in the entryway.

When characters manage to make their way through and back out into the Staywell, they'll emerge, blinking, into old-fashioned, washed stone reception, airy and bright, if a little stark and... uncomfortably warm.

The receptionist, dressed in a old-fashioned vest and white button-up, wearing cowboy boots and a shiny belt buckle, smiles his same old bland smile.

“Welcome to Wellstone. We’re so glad you’re here with us! What’s the name on your reservation?”

Welcome back to the desert.

Kind of.

The Staywell itself is most immediately changed. While the layout is precisely the same as the manor house, with the parlor where it was and staircases wrapped around like arms leading to the higher floors, it's back to white stone and no carpet. Airy hallways with rooms on one side open onto a cactus-filled central courtyard with a fountain that looks like it was once very nice, but is currently full of dust. Through the parlor is the pool, penned in and open to the air, also full of dust and dried plant bits and what, alarmingly, seems to be dried blood in massive flakes.

The town's layout is still more or less the same. While the Staywell is no longer on a hill, it still sits back away from the town itself, which is a confusing hodge-podge of desert and medieval that's been flattened onto a single plane. The buildings are still close-crowded and made of stone, but all the plants climbing them have died, and cacti swell from the shadows. The cobblestones are caked with dust and sand, and the sun is once again high, hot, and angry.

Endwell Baths is still firmly in place of the jail, and the tavern, pub, and general store all look sumptuously medieval, if a little dusty and worn-down.

In the distance, desert stretches out dun and shimmering with heat, ringed by high, distant mountains. A dying wood marches up to the walls around the town, full of the skeletons of trees reaching dry fingers up toward the cloudless sky. The hedge maze is still present, fading from a lush green to a crumbling and spiny brown, choked with cacti and full of gaps. The graveyard still lurks out there, the same as it ever was.

OOC notes
Check out the redone locations page and updated town FAQ for more information about the changes, including what’s happening at the various establishments around town. The town looks like a strange patchwork, trapped between medieval and western.

All the NPCs clothes, and character closets, are still an odd mix of western wear and clothes that would fit at a renaissance fair, but with once again a slight tilt in favor of western wear.

The changes are “permanent”—as permanent as anything is in Wellstone (ie. will last through cycle 4).

Calendar

Apps open on April 26th and there are 4 player slots available. Here's what we're looking at for May:

6.1: May
1st: Event plotting
Apps close
15th: Mini-event
25th(ish): Wellstone Post
27th: Apps open

And now, the weather

With the desert comes the heat. The sun bakes the town to a crisp simmer during the day. It's a dry heat that settles like a blanket by evening, and without any wind to temper it, it lingers even while the sun sinks.

As soon as that sun is fully gone, though, the cold sets in, sharp and insistent. Winds pick up and whip through the streets, blowing dust, sand, and tumbleweeds in along with it. Desert animals and forest critters alike lurk in the streets and the dead forest. You're just as likely to come across a rattler as a wolf, a rabbit with strange antlers as a spiny hedgehog.

There's not a cloud in the big blue sky, and at night, there are a million stars.