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ph_memes2024-03-08 12:39 pm
TDM #5 - Paradesium
[Find our plain text version here!]
Pumpkin Hollow Gazette
3/8/24 | TDM #5 - Paradesium
Content Warnings: individual CWs found per prompt in "Further Details"
Forecast: Partly cloudy with a chance of rain
WELCOME TO PUMPKIN HOLLOW!
By Yorick Aberdeen
Apparently the ferryman needed a bigger boat!
ACROSS TOWN - Since June of 16:53, a steady stream of new arrivals to our sleepy little town has flowed in by ferry, emerging from the fog. And it seems this trend is due to continue, as this March is due to be on record the highest number of new residents in a single month!
We are incredibly grateful for all of you coming to our home and filling it with life once more, even though the dangers of our local curse have significantly increased since all of you began arriving. This reporter isn’t complaining--- additional harm to my own person notwithstanding!
If you are a new arrival, please report to Town Hall at your leisure so that we can help you find work and permanent lodging. Or don’t! The Oak & Iron is happy to rent you a room for as long as you need. Best of luck to all of you, and as we say in Pumpkin Hollow, may your lanterns always be lit!
CHARITY DRIVE ENCOURAGES CULTURAL EXCHANGE
By Cecil Gershwin Palmer
One of the charming toys created during last year's Doll Picnic.
FESTIVAL GREEN - Preparations are underway for the upcoming annual Doll Picnic. A charity event sponsored by the Artisan’s Guild, this picnic is an Anwyllic tradition that was brought to the island and continued with love. The first Doll Picnic was organized by Dame Meredith Idlewild of the town of Glyn Rhuthun on Kora’s Haven, with the toys being donated to the local children’s hospital after a massive landslide engulfed a local school.
The Artisan’s Guild has baskets of material available for making dolls, including fabric, yarn, stuffing, buttons, and the like. However, tradition states that sourcing materials from the natural world (for example, acorn husks to use as buttons or deadwood to carve for doll arms and legs) results in the toys being blessed by Serrenai, who will watch over the children who play with them. The toys will be donated to local children after the picnic, including those who are ill or whose families can only afford necessities.
Newcomers are explicitly invited to join in the making of toys, and the resulting picnic. As a personal note: the locals have never heard of a teddy bear before. This reporter expects to see several, as we introduce our traditions to their traditions.
PLANTING SEASON BEGINS!
By Yorick Aberdeen
After a difficult winter, the appearance of spring's sprouts lifts our spirits.
NORTHWEST HOLLOW - The spring thaw is in full swing! That means it’s time for our local farmers to begin planting. Town Hall is offering a small reward to any of our newest arrivals who would be interested in assisting with planting season for farms less than a year old.
Anyone fresh off the boat interested in making 100 Brass should seek out Eddie and Angel Kasbrak, Arthur Morgan, Cèsar Salazar, Mairi Miann, Ylva Wolfsdottir, or Muriel and offer assistance with tilling and planting. We look forward to rewarding you for your contributions!
HOT SPRINGS OPEN FOR RELAXATION
By Yorick Aberdeen
Photograph provided by the Safety Board!
CRANE'S RIDGE - After a recent earthquake opened up a hot spring on the lower portion of Crane’s Ridge, a small portion of the Pumpkin Hollow Damage Claims Assessment Corps has been working to get the area cleaned up and safe for use by the general public.
Following its recent approval for compliance by the Safety Board, we are pleased to announce that Porter’s Spring is now available for public enjoyment! It can be accessed by taking the train to the North Station or by following the central trail out of Northwest Hollow, though the Safety Board does not recommend making this journey on foot due to its proximity to Lake Sal-Co-Penn. Enjoy!
STRANGE CAVERNS DISCOVERED BENEATH CRANE’S RIDGE
By Yorick Aberdeen
A small glimpse into this world beneath our own.
CRANE RIDGE - In addition to the hot springs, the earthquake can also be credited for a major cave-in in our Crane’s Ridge mines. A large tunnel was completely buried in rubble by the inexplicable natural occurrence. For the past several months, our mining team has been chipping away at the cave-in to try and regain access to the blocked tunnels in the lower area of the mountain.
In one of these tunnels, however, the team discovered a shocking surprise as the rubble was removed! Apparently, just beyond the mine walls, there has been an entrance to Hepogaia--- a subterranean nation running below our own fair country and many others. It seems that this particular portion of Hepogaian territory is also trapped within the barrier. Brief attempts at scouting by the Safety Board have noted a plethora of subterranean wildlife, both familiar and unfamiliar. This incredible new environment, hiding just out of sight beneath our island, is so full of wonder and splendor that it has earned a fitting name--- “Paradesium.”
A recent ecology study and expedition run by Pumpkin Hollow’s own Dr. Elias Coldwood has redirected their efforts to this new location, but those interested in exploring and scouting out this fantastical new discovery independently are encouraged to pack thoughtfully and travel in groups of two or more! Any information obtained during excursions into Paradesium would be appreciated by the Pumpkin Hollow Board of Safety.
Page 1
Charity Drive
The Doll Picnic Charity Drive will run throughout the next two months during our TDM, and there will be an event later on involving posing the dolls for a picnic. Once a photo is taken, the children will be allowed to come picnic with their new toys and take them home after!
There is absolutely no way this could possibly go wrong. Absolutely no dollmakers will be jumpscared or attacked by possessed dolls. None at all. (Okay, maybe some of them. But it’s fine. It’s for a good cause.)
[Mod Note: you can just make a doll without it coming to life and trying to kick your ass, that part is optional. Also the dolls will be blessed at the picnic and rendered unable to attack children.]
Planting Season
Any brand-new characters will get 100B extra on their stipend if they submit an AC-length thread with one of the existing farmers on their first Activity Check! This will be available regardless of whether the character qualifies for normal bonuses, but can only be redeemed by those who app in.
For reference for new players, threads are considered AC-length if they are ten tags in length (meaning 5 of your own tags and 5 from your partner.)
Hot Springs
Porter’s Spring is a perfectly normal and safe hot spring! However, you can encounter any number of perils on your way there if you decide to travel on foot, allowing new players to revisit some of our earlier events.
Check out our bestiary (pending update to new format) for more information on creatures such as Brutoks, the River Walker, and the Pine Devil, or stumble on Lake Sal-Co-Penn for a nasty surprise! Brutoks may also steal personal items from spring-goers on occasion. Don’t chase after them alone unless you want to be turned into a tree!
The Tristitia
In addition to the creatures in the wild, in town after dark characters may also encounter the Tristitia, Pumpkin Hollow’s newest cryptid.
She is a wraith-like spirit which haunts the island. Wearing tattered black clothes and colored all in shades of gray, she appears as a woman who walks around weeping with a caved-in chest, covering her face with her hands. Harmless if given a wide berth, but if she is set off, she will take out her desire for empathy for her grief on her target. She does this by embracing them and drawing out their own grief and trauma, leaving the target catatonic before she fades away, temporarily assuaged.
Into Paradesium
Crystals, golden with light and raw magical energy, cast what looks like sunlight down into the cascading cave. For every foot lower that the ground curls down from the entrance, the trees stretch ever-higher, carrying the raucous cries of animals unlike the surface of Marrow Isle had ever heard.
A jungle, so lush with life, sprawls ahead of any brave enough to venture into it. But what is there to see?
For Paradesium specifically, the bestiary has received a significant update. Creatures featured in prompts have their links to the accounts by Dr. Coldwood and his team marked with stars for easy location.
Below are multiple prompts for some encounters to be had in the jungle, but feel free to create any of your own encounters with any of the creatures listed! If the descriptions are short, feel free to write the creatures' behaviors however makes sense.
Welcome to the Jungle
Swallowed by dense canopies and noise, the jungle is quick to swallow any who travel within it whole.
Eyes are quick to find you, however. Perching in the treetops are a variety of small wyverns in vibrant colors, heads tilting as they try to comprehend what you could be. They squawk, chatter, and some of the bolder ones draw closer - if you sit anything aside and leave it unattended for too long, some even bolder than that will pilfer it, taking the object into the trees to admire with its companions.
Reptilian hunters with bright, keen eyes, the Plommon, consider you with much of the same interest. This interest increases tenfold if you happen to feed them.
If the prying eyes are no bother, then the forest's bounty is ripe for tending and taking. Bananas hang off trees, colorful citrus fruits catch light on their waxy peels, and bulky cocoa beans are jostled by movement in the branches above them. Even the broad leaves of the plants prove extraordinarily useful, whether you're looking to come in and quickly leave, or intend to push further within.
Wherever you go, those curious eyes follow you. Perhaps even out of the cave, should your attempts to shoo an adventurous creature away. What an odd way to gain a new team member.
Down a Few Notches on the Food Chain
(CWs: Potential for death, gore, or animal death)Unfortunately, not all can be pure bounty and new friends in a place like this.
With the cavern sprawling widely and massively, there are many significantly larger creatures in this space, and some seem to be keen to take up opportunity for new prey. As you explore, there's a new feeling of eyes upon you, and the silence that overtakes the surrounding trees spells nothing good to come.
Any one of the massive predators in the wood has you in it's sights.
Escape is difficult, but manageable, as is fighting back. Creatures can be challenged, and hides, bones, and other spoils can be claimed from them, should there be success! If not, this is a good opportunity for familiarization with the Death page.
The silkhide chimera specializes in persistence. The longer and further you go, the more exhausted you'll get. A break is an opportunity that it will be keen to take.
The greenstalker excels at ambushing and high-speed pursuit. At top speeds of 30MPH, your party will need strategy and skill on their side to keep this beast at bay. (Or, alternatively, a source of fire.)
The elephant raptor does neither of these - the beast's sheer length of reach does all it needs to. Water and mud soften the sounds of the gargantuan creature's approach. Stay alert, and be sure that you hear it before it's upon you.
Safe travels become more difficult to manage, the further in you go. Deep, rumbling snores tell you that there's a chance you're just getting to the greater threats this paradise has to offer...
Fragments of the Past
Through great distances traveled, this "uninhabited" cavern begins to show signs that may speak to that not having always been the case.
Ruins of homes, crumbled bricks and tiles, can be found at the deepest reaches of the cavern. These dilapidated buildings, though worn with time, tell a story: the people who left his place, one that could be identified as a stenholm to any familiar with dwarvish culture, did not leave it on good terms.
Essentials were clearly taken with them, as the ruins of this place lack tools or clothing. Valuables are still scattered throughout, however. Large objects with too much history to have been left behind by indifference dot the collapsing homes. Ritual circles still waft radiant energy from them.
In the remains of a temple, an altar stands, cracking with age and covered in plants as the cavern reclaims it. Old candle-stands have rusted with age, but still stand, undisturbed.
Just before the altar, folded onto its side (as best as one can be, when only pieces remain), lies a skeleton. The clothes are tattered remains of stained whites and dulled blues, and the wildlife have cleaned flesh from bones, but it's remained undisturbed by time.
There's a quiet sadness to this place that lingers, even with the people who inhabited it so long since lost.
Should you linger too long, however, there comes the distinct feeling of not being alone.
Clair de Lune
(CWs: Long-term isolation, extinction)Golden eyes of a human face follow your every moment, and the moment you lock your gaze onto them, the face emerges from the darkness, partially covered by spilling dark hair.
What follows this face, however, is not a human face - but, rather, a feline body with sprawling, grey-flecked wings.
There's a long, tense silence, as it emerges fully. Standing easily at eight feet tall while on all fours, the size of this creature becomes more and more apparent as it emerges from the dark of the collapsed wind.
Unlike the other animals of the cavern, though, there seems to be an anxiousness to its look. The lion's chest rises and falls with short, nervous breaths.
And then, in a hushed, woman's voice, hoarse from disuse, it speaks.
"Who are you? Why have you come here?"
-------------------
The Sphinx is a new NPC available for characters to interact with, should they delve deep enough into the caverns to find the stenholm. She's wary of all the new faces, and tends to be somewhat flighty, but seems cautiously interested in what new humans being in Hepogaia have to offer. For the sort looking to understand this place, it's people, or intend to trade, she can be communed with.
To interact with her, comment on the TL provided from beastsofthehollow with her icon, and if the initial introduction isn't your speed, feel free to encounter her however you like!
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"Are you- are you hurt? Why are you out here?"
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She's long viewed herself as a liability amongst her allies. Her ultimate failure to protect any of them now fully realized, that in the end she truly proved nothing. But she doesn't feel the right to be caught crying about it, just further evidence of her weakness. She roughly swipes a dirty sleeve against her cheeks to dry them.
"Hiding," she nervously whispers. "You-" her heart pounds, remembering the request asked of her. To get Darcy and Fio out, if given the opportunity. "Sorry, I should've-" what, she has no idea. Done everything differently.
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Darcy crouches, offering a hand out.
"Hey- c'mon. Have you... eaten? Had a bath? Slept?"
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Fingers pass through Darcy's hand, several swipes of static. Ava whimpers in frustration, before grabbing on as if she's been caught falling. ... Somebody had fallen. Her heart races and she breathes out, holding tighter.
She nods. Several days ago, she had accepted a plate of food from Tayrey. That counts as having eaten. She's slept, but clearly not well, nor long. But the lack of bath is rather evident. The nod changes direction into a weak shake of confession.
"Have you seen-" there's no specific name that takes priority over any of the others, right now. A jumble of worry for their shared loved ones.
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"They'll turn up," Darcy says firmly. It's weird, like some part of her is despairing and some part is still upright, still solid, still dependable. Ava needs help. She has to be there to offer it.
"They have to turn up. Come with- we can be sad without being next to garbage."
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"No no it's not the garbage. I stink."
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Ava makes contact with the hug,
"Nope- nope you do, okay- Jesus- come on, we're getting you a bath."
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She continues to inflict it upon Darcy, burying her face against her shoulder for one last second. "He told me to take you with me. If I could."
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A pat on the head, and Darcy then immediately wipes her hand on her pant leg.
"Look-" and the logic comes smoothly for the first time in a long time, "if we lost, then we wouldn't be here, because we'd all be gone with the Captain. I don't... remember what happened, but we have to have won. We have to. C'mon, I need you to
take a breath for me."
And something in the words will make Ava's head feel clearer, somehow.
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She's not sure this feels like having won, but she'll take the assurance that maybe they haven't entirely lost. But not knowing is the struggle. If she doesn't know what happened, if their friends survived or escaped or are still trapped, then Ava can't begin to formulate a plan. She promised she'd come back, she-
sighs out, all at once. The mess of unproductive worrying untangling from her thoughts. There's nothing she can do about any of that right now, she realizes. "You might have to boil the water to get me clean."
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But Ava seems to give up the fight, and it's good for once.
"I'm sure there'll be soap. Gross old timey people soap made with like. Ash and fat. But still soap."
Darcy begins to drag Ava in the direction of the tavern, quietly hoping that they won't run into anyone either of them know.
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"How... old timey is all this?" Ava asks hesitantly, having spent most of her time avoiding civilization as much as possible has made it difficult to estimate. But even more backwards from the technology required for her to live isn't comforting.
But the thought of scrubbing off, even with sad old soap is at the forefront of her concerns that allows her to follow along despite all the other trepidations. She fades invisible by Darcy's side the closer they get to the tavern.
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"Really old timey. Like there's phones and shit but they're all landlines. No showers."
Ugh. She startles for a second when Ava disappears, and quietly hopes that she's still following up to the bathroom.
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Refrains from saying much at all on the way back, though there is an exaggerated sigh near Darcy's left at the confirmation at just how old timey they're dealing with. Occasionally she gives a small bump against Darcy's elbow to reassure she's still there, still following along.
When they arrive, though, Ava fades slowly back into view, relaxing tiredly against a wall. "You know. It's... nice. Just. Being around you, I feel far less freaked out by everything. Like all my worries faded away." Clearly she doesn't suspect anything else at play here.
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She feels somewhere beyond herself, to a thread pulled taut connecting herself to Ava, and snaps it. It's the same thing her Geist used to keep her calm during big fights, but turned outwards instead of inwards.
"Fuck-" she hisses as she feels the Marionette end, "Ava I- I didn't know I could do that again- I didn't mean to- I'm sorry-"
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"Do what? What did you-"
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Oh God oh God oh God she's going to hate her forever-
"Something that my Geist used to be able to do- I'm sorry-"
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"Hey, Darcy, no, it's okay..." Ava insists, still not clear on what Darcy even did. Except. "Did you... take control of my... feelings?"
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"I didn't mean- I was trying to help, I didn't know I could," God she hates this new fucking place she's been dunked into the deep end of, there's nowhere safe to go and too many fucking people that she can hear just out of sight, Darcy starts to ripple like light on water out of visibility.
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So she does the one thing she can think of and wraps her arms tightly around the ripples that make up Darcy as best her own intangibility allows, making small hushing sounds. "I know, I know..."
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It's hard to grasp onto Ava but she tries it anyway, half-muffling a frustrated noise through her.
"I hate- I hate not knowing what I can do. I hate it."
Years of learning their own abilities and limits, and now they're somewhere else and having to learn them all over.
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So she holds on. Invisible and intangible, corpse and ghost, the odd pair of them. A sniff that's less subtle than Darcy hoped, and she nods into Ava.
"Sorry. I'm- thank you, I'm good, it- it won't happen again."
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"Thank you for caring about me."
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"It's okay."
... God she really does still stink though.
"We should probably move before someone comes down this way," and Darcy weakly shimmers back into visibility.
(no subject)
Wrap?
Sure!