Well OOC comm

1.3 Plotting & Happenings

Calendar

Activity Check

1.2 Plotting & Happenings

OOC announcements

New this month

It’s hot out there! This month, Wellstone is sweltering during the day, like high summer. It cools off at night, but is still warm except the wee hours of the morning. In the distance, sandstorms darken the horizon occasionally, but they don’t get too close to town.

The diner’s special for the month: spicy bean chili, a thick, hearty stew that’ll really knock your socks off! When it says spicy, it means spicy. Milk is also available for post-chili chugging.

When you first leave the hotel this month, the receptionist will give you a canteen, on the house, to stay hydrated.

The pool is working again! The water’s cool, and little lounges line the edges. Floaties are available in a variety of novel shapes. Swimsuits appear in everyone’s wardrobe.

There's a new NPC in town! A coyote standing on its hind legs, wearing a sheriff badge and a stetson hat can be seen around town. During the heat of the day, he's at the jail, sitting behind the desk. At night, he can be found at the saloon. The old jail has been fixed up, seemingly overnight. It’s on the edge of the inhabitable town, and consists of two rooms: a front room with a big desk, and a backroom divided into cells with bars separating them.

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: “It’s beautiful when it’s hot, around here. You can see the heat haze on the sand.”

Owner of the General Store: “Running a special on cactus juice! It’ll really quench ya.”

The bartender: “We serve all kinds here.”

The waiter: “Boy, it’s a steamy one! How about a nice sweet tea to cool you off?” And he serves you a sweet tea, whether you want one or not.

The gravedigger: She’s nowhere to be seen during the day. At night, she’s digging graves.

The sheriff: He looks at you mournfully, like he's already disappointed in you.

The General Store is running a special on bottled cactus juice (two for one! It’ll let you explore the desert for just a little longer. It might also make you mildly hallucinate. You're fine). You’ll also find pellet guns in the back, marked down to 25% off, and labeled “just in case!”

Wanted dead or alive

Content warnings: N/A
The sheriff puts up wanted posters around town, each with a drawing of a character and a supposed crime they're wanted for. There can be as many wanted posters as you like, and as many crimes as you like. The crimes can be real, or made up. They can be serious, or not. The drawing of your character doesn’t even have to be very good.

Your wanted posters could have your given name, preferred name, or it might give you a new outlaw name, reminiscent of criminals in the Old West.

When you look at one, you’ll feel a very strong urge to confess to whatever is on the poster to the first person you see. You may even feel the urge to turn yourself in. If you turn yourself in to the sheriff, you'll be locked in the jail for 24 hours before he releases you.

tl;dr:

• There are wanted posters of characters around the town. They show real or fake crimes that your character committed.
• When you see one of your own posters, you feel the urge to confess to the crime, and maybe even to turn yourself in to the sheriff.

This town ain’t big enough

Content warnings: Guns, potential violence, both comedic and serious
The hotter it is outside, the more irritated you seem to get, and at every little thing. Somebody jostles you, or snorts right in your ear. Was that an elbow in your side? Did your friend really just say that? Even if you don’t usually have a temper, you sure do now: you’ll be more and more prone to snapping. You don’t have to put up with this!

The heat of high noon is the worst. If you find yourself outside on the main street at noon, it’s nearly impossible not to give in to the heat. You find yourself with your thumbs in your beltloops, your hat pulled low over your eyes, confronting the next person (or persons) you see. This town ain’t big enough for the two of you.

In your hand is a weapon–or is it? It might be something useful like a sword or a gun, or it might be a pie, or a rubber chicken. You can choose your own weapon, or comment to be assigned one, with the random chance of it being a silly one.

You want to fight like a cowboy, have a standoff, make this town yours.

The effects will fade if you cool off, literally or figuratively, or your standoff ends.

If you die in this prompt, follow the death mechanics.

tl;dr:

• On the main street at noon, you’ll transform into a cowboy having a showdown.
• A weapon appears in your hand, either dangerous or funny, or both.
• The effect fades when you cool off, or one of your wins, or surrenders.

Oasis of memories

Content warnings: N/A
You look out into the desert, and you see something you recognize. Or you think you do. It’s something so familiar, that you may be drawn to seek it, like seeing an oasis when you’re dying of thirst. You can fight it–but why would you?

But it’s not quite right, it’s not exactly as you remember it (or don’t), because someone else is there too, running toward the thing, or away from it. Your memory is merged with theirs, forming something new. The more you engage with the memory you see, out in the desert in the heat of the day, the more you remember of it. Talk about what you see, what you remember, and more of it will appear. Share your experiences with your partner, and you’ll see theirs too. Get through this experience together, and the memory sticks in your mind. The mirage will fade eventually, when the memories come to their conclusions.

If you don’t engage with the memory, or ignore it entirely, your part of the memory will fade, and you won’t be able to recall what you saw.

If you engage with the mirage, regain one memory point. You may regain up to three memory points from this prompt.

tl;dr:

• You see a mirage of memories in the desert: a strange combination of your memory, and the memory of your thread partner.
• The more you engage with the memory, by talking about it, or believing in it, the more physical it becomes.
• The memories will fade when they draw to a conclusion, or the sun sets.
• Gain a memory point if you engage with the memories.

1.1 Plotting & Happenings

1.0 Test Drive Meme

Put on your dancing shoes

Content warning: Alcohol, intoxication, altered mental state

Something’s happening at the Cactus Pad Saloon. It’s lit up bright against the growing night, and music spills out onto the street. Seems like a fun time that you should check out. In fact, it’s hard not to check it out: the closer you get, the stronger the urge to join the fun. If you’ve been spending a lot of time alone, you’ll feel even more compelled to come get a drink.

The bartender serves up anything you can think of: from whiskey to apple juice to blood, if that’s your preference. She doesn’t blink an eye, no matter what’s ordered. The funny thing is, no matter what you order, once you take a sip, the world feels a little easier to deal with, your worries seem to melt away. You’re flush with sudden confidence.

If you strike up a conversation with the person next to you, conversation flows like you’re talking to an old friend. You feel a sense of kinship, deep and meaningful, good or bad, that bonds you together.

The old record player is playing a fun ditty, and the longer you stick around, the more you’re tempted to join, or start, the dancing. Whether you’re a great dancer or you have two left feet, you find that you feel capable of dancing like no one’s watching. No one knows you here, after all. You barely know yourself, so why not draw a partner into the fray? A party’s better together!

If you end up staying there til closing time, the bartender kicks you out with a gruff “come back tomorrow,” leaving you to stumble home with your new best friend. What was their name again?

Sand trap

Content warning: Quick sand, potential drowning in sand

You step through a door into a room you didn’t mean to enter. You were trying to head into the saloon, or your hotel room, or the bathroom, and instead you’re here: in a small, tight, windowless room in a white-washed building. The air here is old, stale, and thick. Hazy gold light bounces off the walls, but you can’t tell where it’s coming from, since there’s no visible ceiling. The walls just stretch up and up into bright nothingness.

Someone else is there, too, coming through an identical door on the opposite wall. Both doors snap shut, and won’t open again, no matter how hard you try. They won’t even break.

This might not be so bad, except that a sound starts to fill the space: sand, trickling down the walls. It’s just a dusting to start. It comes sprinkling down above, seeping through the cracks in the door. The longer you stand there, the faster it comes: sand flows down the walls in massive torrents, building up on the floor, shifting and thick, trapping you in place.

The only way out is up. When you look again at the walls, you’ll notice it: about 10 feet up the wall hangs a flimsy rope ladder, half-hidden by the waterfall of sand. You’ll have to work together to even reach it, or maybe let the ever-growing pile of shifting, slippery sand lift you up? Be careful, because even if you manage to reach the rope, you both have to get out of here, and the longer you’re here, the faster and harder the sand falls. The ladder seems to go on forever, tens of feet up an endless wall. The better you work together, the closer the top seems. No matter how well you collaborate, they're at least 50 feet high.

When you’ve fought your way through the sand and reached the top of the ladder, you finally see it: the sand is coming in through the open windows of a steeple. You can’t see where it’s from, not really. You can’t see much of anything, but it’s clear: the only way out is, well, out. You have to jump, trusting that yourself and your companion will be safe.

Once free, you land together outside of one of the buildings or rooms you were trying to enter, like nothing happened at all. It’s a calm day, after all.

Memories of the living

Content warning: Cemetery, contemplating mortality

Dusk settles purple over Wellstone. Early stars are out, the moon is thin, and you find yourself inexplicably drawn to the graveyard. You can resist, but the more days you do, the harder it gets. The graveyard is calling to you in a voice you can’t hear.

While it seems small before you enter, once you start walking through the crumbling graves, it seems to stretch endlessly. You pass elaborate dust-covered crypts carved with strange angels; bleached wooden crosses overgrown with cacti; a crumbling old well, long gone dry; worn-down headstones jut at odd angles. Some graves have old offerings on them, brightly colored beads or candles or framed photos, sun-bleached beyond recognition.

You may have been walking for five minutes or fifty, but when you look around, you can’t see to find the exit. You hear howling, and see the flicker of lights from behind the graves, but you can never find their source, no matter how much you look. No matter how long you spend in the graveyard, the sun never seems to sink lower in the sky. An oppressive sense of being watched grows to the point that you whip around, expecting to find someone there until—

You do. You find each other. Others drawn here to the graveyard, walking among the crumbling stones, will end up by the same headstones. Exploring together eases the watchful feeling just a little, but it won’t help you get out. No, you’re looking for something. The exit? No, you’re sure there’s something more important than that.

If you follow your impulses, you may just find it: a gravestone, weathered, old, with a familiar name on it: yours. Your date of birth can be visible, but the date of death is too weathered to read. You may find an offering there, something small and meaningful to you, a small shiny coin or some bright beads.

Once you find your grave, when you look up, you’ll see the exit. You’re really not that far from it, after all, the rusted iron arch barely a stone's throw feet away. Your companion won’t see it yet. You can make a dash for it, get out of this awful place, or help your companion find their own gravestone. When your companion finds their stone, they will also be able to see the exit. Exiting together will alleviate the impulse to come back to this place. Leaving alone will only draw you back, making it more difficult to find your grave again.

You can take the offerings left on your grave if you want, but the sense of being watched will only grow greater until you’re compelled to return them, and leave another offering of your own.