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7.3 Event Plotting
7.3 Event Plotting
OOC info
Ah, October. Time to paint the town red! With blood.
Use the happenings form to report on what your character’s been up to!
Post any bulletins to the bulletin board and bother your fellow guests with your walkie-talkies!
Fill out as much or as little of this form as you like:
New this month
At the Staywell
The dining hall features one long table and the same meals every day: a nice, continental breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, and steaming hot corn soup for dinner, extra-spicy.Throughout the month, new books appear on shelves in the hotel lounge:
Heart Attack! A Love Story
SOON
Beats: Making it Through Life, One Heart Beat At a Time
HEART
SOON and HEART are incomprehensible, but there's an energy to the writing. When you hold the books, you get a sense of urgency, a sense that something is happening, well. Soon.
The pool is pretty messed up. It's fleshy and full of blood, the pulse still thrumming after the pool party.
The General Store
The General Store's stock is still not in the right place, but you will find new items around town. They're strangely practical: utility knives, small flashlights, duct tape, carabiners. They are all weirdly sticky.Around town
The diner’s special for the month: spaghetti! Yum! Why is the sauce such a dark red..?When you visit the few other locations in town, you’ll find the employees friendly and welcoming, although they may say some strange things, in addition to the handful of phrases they usually say:
The receptionist: Greets you with a voice that sounds like static, and hands you an umbrella.
Owner of the General Store: "Where do vampires deposit all their money? The blood bank!" And he laughs heartily at his own joke, then repeats it. Again and again and again.
The bartender: Doesn't serve drinks this month. She's shining a glass. Eternally, she is shining a glass.
The waiter: Has a frenetic energy, and repeats, "Hi! Hi! Hello! Hi!" over and over again.
The gravedigger: Is standing by the edge of the well. She does not move, she does not speak.
The sheriff: Sitting at the reception desk in the baths, staring at the door, unmoving.
The catacombs
The catacombs are cooler than the rest of town, and are surprisingly waterproof. This will come in handy.AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN
Content warnings: blood, flooding, massive destruction, death
It starts with the rain: thick red drops, heavy and metallic, coating the town in spasmodic bursts for the first week or two, staining dust and buildings alike. Between the bursts of blood rain, the weather is clear and hot and the sky is pink no matter the time of day. All that blood bakes in the heat to a crisp dry coating that flake off onto heads and boots.
Water too flows in fits and starts.
Every bit of water that does eventually jet out from the taps in Wellstone— spraying anyone unfortunate enough to have turned one on—is tinged pink. The water in the bathhouse stays clear a little longer, but you might want to ration it and stock up early on whatever you can get, because after the first week, the taps flow freely again with thick, deep red, and the baths start to stain red right along with them.
To find a drink this month, stop by the saloon or the diner, and drink something that doesn’t require water: alcohol, juice, milk. Those are still in supply. Coffee and tea are too, but the waiter is still using the “water” to make them, so they’re simply steeped in blood.
On Tuesday the 29th, two days before the end, clouds gather thick and fast. Wind blows through town, tossing blood-red dust into the air. Shortly after lunch, in a massive crack of thunder that shakes through the town and breaks a few windows, the real rain begins.
It comes down thick and fast, like a fresh-cut wound foaming out over the town of Wellstone, lashing against buildings, running red through the streets.
By mid-morning on the first day of the storm, several older buildings are gone, washed into debris, and the blood has formed standing pools in the town where they used to be. The only dry place left is the catacombs, and even they're full of dripping blood running red down the walls. All the NPCs seem to be noticing for once. They're shifting and fearful, and can be found pressed up against windows and doors, watching. The sheriff whines. The waiter is particularly panicked, and will frantically ask anyone who makes it out to the diner what to do.
It'll be worth your time to figure out the answer to that question.
As the town floods, on the final day, something worse happens: the ground starts to rumble, low and ominous. It's hard to see through the still-falling rain, but there's something huge and dark on the horizon, getting larger and closer as the day goes by. As it does, the rumbling intensifies until a few minutes to midnight when a churning mass of blood and desert sand turned to vivid red mud slams into the town, flattening everything within seconds and battering the Staywell until it collapses into itself. If you're in the upper town, you're toast.
It's an awful way to die, so it's probably for the best if you get out of there.
tl;dr:
It starts with the rain: thick red drops, heavy and metallic, coating the town in spasmodic bursts for the first week or two, staining dust and buildings alike. Between the bursts of blood rain, the weather is clear and hot and the sky is pink no matter the time of day. All that blood bakes in the heat to a crisp dry coating that flake off onto heads and boots.
Water too flows in fits and starts.
Every bit of water that does eventually jet out from the taps in Wellstone— spraying anyone unfortunate enough to have turned one on—is tinged pink. The water in the bathhouse stays clear a little longer, but you might want to ration it and stock up early on whatever you can get, because after the first week, the taps flow freely again with thick, deep red, and the baths start to stain red right along with them.
To find a drink this month, stop by the saloon or the diner, and drink something that doesn’t require water: alcohol, juice, milk. Those are still in supply. Coffee and tea are too, but the waiter is still using the “water” to make them, so they’re simply steeped in blood.
On Tuesday the 29th, two days before the end, clouds gather thick and fast. Wind blows through town, tossing blood-red dust into the air. Shortly after lunch, in a massive crack of thunder that shakes through the town and breaks a few windows, the real rain begins.
It comes down thick and fast, like a fresh-cut wound foaming out over the town of Wellstone, lashing against buildings, running red through the streets.
By mid-morning on the first day of the storm, several older buildings are gone, washed into debris, and the blood has formed standing pools in the town where they used to be. The only dry place left is the catacombs, and even they're full of dripping blood running red down the walls. All the NPCs seem to be noticing for once. They're shifting and fearful, and can be found pressed up against windows and doors, watching. The sheriff whines. The waiter is particularly panicked, and will frantically ask anyone who makes it out to the diner what to do.
It'll be worth your time to figure out the answer to that question.
As the town floods, on the final day, something worse happens: the ground starts to rumble, low and ominous. It's hard to see through the still-falling rain, but there's something huge and dark on the horizon, getting larger and closer as the day goes by. As it does, the rumbling intensifies until a few minutes to midnight when a churning mass of blood and desert sand turned to vivid red mud slams into the town, flattening everything within seconds and battering the Staywell until it collapses into itself. If you're in the upper town, you're toast.
It's an awful way to die, so it's probably for the best if you get out of there.
tl;dr:
- There's no water in town except for blood, running out of the taps.
- Small, infrequent blood rainstorms coat the hot town until one catastrophic storm at the end.
- The NPCs notice and are, for once, upset.
- A blood-and-sand lahar crashes into town on the last day, flattening everything above ground.
TAKEN
Content warnings: abduction, tentacle torture, blood, body horror.
The receptionist is acting strange. While the other NPCs around town are reacting to the oncoming storm with fear and worry, he's aggressively normal, even cheerful. That's normal for him, but the bursts of static coming into his words certainly aren't, and he keeps stopping mid-sentence with a rictus grin plastered on his face, hard enough the bones of his cheeks stand out against his skin. After a moment, it passes, and he's back to bland platitudes.
This keeps up for about five days at the beginning of the month until, one morning when the lobby is empty and the rain is falling, something changes.
An awful sound echoes through town, reverberating through walkies and making them static and fizz, breaking several. It's a scream of something like rage, high and awful and modulating, coming from the lobby of the Staywell, followed by the crash and break of stone and wood.
The doors are smashed from the inside-out. The lobby itself is a mess of wood and blood and splintered chairs, smeared to the ceiling and pulverized to bits. The receptionist is nowhere to be found.
That would be that, except that people keep going missing. It can happen anywhere any time that you're alone, no matter what you're doing: a warm, fleshy thing wraps around you from nowhere, squeezes the breath from you until the bones in your body crack. You feel the whip of wind and hot sour breath, and then you feel nothing at all.
You wake strapped to a table. Your bones ache. The table is cold and rough-cut and maybe familiar. The air is hot and red and sour, and the things holding you down are fleshy and warm and squeezing tight. Maybe they're already pressing into your mouth and your nose and your eyes. Maybe they're just starting.
Either way, this time? You can get free.
It's up to you how long it takes. The things pressing into you will press into your brain and your mind if you let them go, but they can be ripped out. You could wrestle yourself free before this happens or midway through, wrench yourself off the table and onto the oddly-squishy floor, chased by tentacles.
A dark opening yawns in front of you, and you know on instinct that you have to get out or they're going to pin you back down, and so into the darkness you go. The ground is slippery and fleshy and hot, and you are being chased by fleshy things. Time dilates around you. You have no idea how long you're in what seems to be a hot dark tunnel before you're being spit into a room in the catacombs where the air is cool and sweet.
You made it. You're free.
For now.
If your character experienced this before, there is a high chance they will get that memory back during this time. This can happen any number of times, and you can run into each other in the escape tunnel, or even wake up several people to a slab and have to escape together. There's no rhyme or reason to getting caught but being in the catacombs seems to make it less likely you'll get nabbed.
If you're abducted, whatever was in your brain or trying to get there seems to have unlocked something. Getting abducted once gives you five memory points.
tl;dr:
The receptionist is acting strange. While the other NPCs around town are reacting to the oncoming storm with fear and worry, he's aggressively normal, even cheerful. That's normal for him, but the bursts of static coming into his words certainly aren't, and he keeps stopping mid-sentence with a rictus grin plastered on his face, hard enough the bones of his cheeks stand out against his skin. After a moment, it passes, and he's back to bland platitudes.
This keeps up for about five days at the beginning of the month until, one morning when the lobby is empty and the rain is falling, something changes.
An awful sound echoes through town, reverberating through walkies and making them static and fizz, breaking several. It's a scream of something like rage, high and awful and modulating, coming from the lobby of the Staywell, followed by the crash and break of stone and wood.
The doors are smashed from the inside-out. The lobby itself is a mess of wood and blood and splintered chairs, smeared to the ceiling and pulverized to bits. The receptionist is nowhere to be found.
That would be that, except that people keep going missing. It can happen anywhere any time that you're alone, no matter what you're doing: a warm, fleshy thing wraps around you from nowhere, squeezes the breath from you until the bones in your body crack. You feel the whip of wind and hot sour breath, and then you feel nothing at all.
You wake strapped to a table. Your bones ache. The table is cold and rough-cut and maybe familiar. The air is hot and red and sour, and the things holding you down are fleshy and warm and squeezing tight. Maybe they're already pressing into your mouth and your nose and your eyes. Maybe they're just starting.
Either way, this time? You can get free.
It's up to you how long it takes. The things pressing into you will press into your brain and your mind if you let them go, but they can be ripped out. You could wrestle yourself free before this happens or midway through, wrench yourself off the table and onto the oddly-squishy floor, chased by tentacles.
A dark opening yawns in front of you, and you know on instinct that you have to get out or they're going to pin you back down, and so into the darkness you go. The ground is slippery and fleshy and hot, and you are being chased by fleshy things. Time dilates around you. You have no idea how long you're in what seems to be a hot dark tunnel before you're being spit into a room in the catacombs where the air is cool and sweet.
You made it. You're free.
For now.
If your character experienced this before, there is a high chance they will get that memory back during this time. This can happen any number of times, and you can run into each other in the escape tunnel, or even wake up several people to a slab and have to escape together. There's no rhyme or reason to getting caught but being in the catacombs seems to make it less likely you'll get nabbed.
If you're abducted, whatever was in your brain or trying to get there seems to have unlocked something. Getting abducted once gives you five memory points.
tl;dr:
- The receptionist is acting strange until five days into the month, something bursts across the walkies and destroys the Staywell's lobby. The receptionist disappears.
- After that, characters are abducted and taken to a tentacle torture pit where they're strapped to a slab.
- Characters can escape through a fleshy tunnel and will gain memory points.
CONTACT
Content warnings: audio distortion & unreality
If the rain and the abductions weren't bad enough, the network seems like it's on the fritz this month. Walkies fizz and screech and buzz, broadcasting at random like they've been doing, except this time it's not thoughts you're hearing at all:
It's memories.
Among other things.
When you hear a memory, no matter where you are, you stop what you're doing and listen, entranced. If it's your own, you might remember it as it's happening. If it's someone else's, you have a strange nagging sense that you know whose, and an urge to seek them out.
Use this post to submit memories, which will be shared out in snippets across the network all month long, or post your own. If you submit a memory, the mod account will post it at random. The post is screened, so it will only be seen once posted. Keep on eye on the network this month.
tl;dr:
If the rain and the abductions weren't bad enough, the network seems like it's on the fritz this month. Walkies fizz and screech and buzz, broadcasting at random like they've been doing, except this time it's not thoughts you're hearing at all:
It's memories.
Among other things.
When you hear a memory, no matter where you are, you stop what you're doing and listen, entranced. If it's your own, you might remember it as it's happening. If it's someone else's, you have a strange nagging sense that you know whose, and an urge to seek them out.
Use this post to submit memories, which will be shared out in snippets across the network all month long, or post your own. If you submit a memory, the mod account will post it at random. The post is screened, so it will only be seen once posted. Keep on eye on the network this month.
tl;dr:
- The network is full of strange distortions and broadcasted audio from character memories.
- Hearing a memory makes you want to seek out the person it belongs to.
- Memories can be submitted anonymously for mod broadcast later in the month.