TDM #2 - Down in the Underground [REPRINT]

[pumpkinhollow]

Pumpkin Hollow Gazette Issue #3 [REPRINT]

[Moderator Notes]

Since our TDMs go out bi-monthly, this is a test run of reposting the TDM at the beginning of "off-months" in order to optimize visibility for toplevels in the second month of a TDM's lifespan. If this turns out to actually be helpful, then brand-new TDMs will be labelled "FIRST EDITION" and reruns will be labeled "REPRINT" going forward! If not, we'll just go back to posting bi-monthly. Let's give this the ol' college try and make sure to look out for new toplevels so that we can figure out how helpful it is!

Pumpkin Hollow Gazette

8/5/23 | TDM #2: "Down in the Underground"
Content Warnings: [Article 2] claustrophobia, caves, drowned corpse
[Article 4] Various violence by monster

We're glad you're here!

WELCOME TO PUMPKIN HOLLOW!

By Yorick Aberdeen

JACK'S MARINA - Reports from the Pumpkin Hollow Port Authority indicate that arrivals by otherworldly newcomers to Marrow Isle are continuing at a steady rate. The first batch of new arrivals, which had been the very first travelers to Pumpkin Hollow in at least five years’ time, began in early June of this year and have already proven to be an incredible boon to both our economy and our overall quality of life. We now have a new farm on the island for the first time in years, as well as clever new members of the constabulary, a few helpful craftspeople, and even our own brand new local musical act. Not only that, but the prestigious Ms. Dahlia Leeds has taken a personal assistant, which this reporter is pleased to announce has gotten him out of a number of mundane tasks. (No offense is meant to Ms. Leeds, of course--- the Pumpkin Hollow Gazette certainly harbors no ill will toward its most consistent donor!)

According to interviews with a number of these newcomers, they appear to all come from realms far beyond our own, to the point where they have homelands with unfamiliar names and have never heard of the Emerald Isles at all. Those willing to share more details report that they each met with a strange woman in a bland-looking office building who offered them a chance at a new life, then found themselves on the ferry here. None of them seem to know anything further, as far as the Pumpkin Hollow Gazette is aware. Curious circumstances indeed.

That said, we are beyond pleased to welcome even more new neighbors to our fair town. Any newcomers should feel welcome to come to Town Hall if they are in any need of assistance. Mayor Poe and any member of Town Council would all be more than happy to lend a hand.

Additionally, the Temple of Sacred Roots will be holding a small gathering on temple grounds to welcome any wayward souls who could use a bit of help adjusting. Reverend Degas Clayton would also like to remind everyone that he is always available to offer guidance after any of his Sunday sermons unless otherwise stated. He has expressed an interest in personally welcoming as many new residents as he is able.

Hopefully things will continue to look up for Pumpkin Hollow as more arrivals land upon our docks. This will be of particular importance as we draw ever closer to Autumn. October in particular promises to be an especially difficult time, as usual. The Pumpkin Hollow Gazette will report further on our paranormal forecast as the season of spirits draws near. We hope to keep local casualties to a minimum this year after last year’s record high.

In any case, best of luck to our new residents, and welcome again!

NOTORIOUS 'RIVER WALKER' SPOTTED AFTER LONG ABSENCE; EXTREME CAUTION ADVISED

By Yorick Aberdeen

The Paring River Bridge in Lockwood Forest.

LOCKWOOD FOREST (Paring River) - Woodland travelers beware! And not just for all of the usual reasons, either. This past weekend, local shepherd Joseph Peterson reported to the local constabulary that he had an encounter with a creature that had been presumed to have moved on from our fair isle. Peterson, 37, allegedly came across the beast colloquially known as the “River Walker” while crossing the Paring River bridge near the entrance of Lockwood Forest, where he was grabbed and knocked out. Once he regained consciousness, Peterson then reported being lost in an underground cave system whilst being pursued by the monster for an unknown amount of time estimated between six and twelve hours.

The River Walker, a spider-like creature with the face of a human corpse, is so named because it appears to exclusively use the Paring River as its hunting ground. The creature is apparently completely unique to Marrow Isle, as the Pumpkin Hollow Historical Society was unable to uncover folklore or recorded sightings of anything matching the River Walker’s description in any of the texts they have access to. However, through collecting data from resurrected residents who were its victims, the Town Hall Safety Board was able to glean information about this menace that should help citizens avoid yet another timely demise.

Firstly, all residents traveling in the Lockwood Forest should steer clear of the Paring River if possible. While it is true that the Paring River cuts directly through the forest near the entrance and arcs through the majority of the woodlands, and also that the main path through the woods which goes over the Paring River bridge is the only way through to Crane’s RIdge or any of the hunting areas, the river should still be avoided whenever residents are able. This will minimize potential contact.

Secondly, be aware of your surroundings when near the river. Data indicates that the creature will make a soft chittering sound before reaching up to grab a victim. Many prior victims also report the surrounding area seeming “too still” when the creature was in the area. If you experience any of these phenomena, it would be wise to run--- though most reports suggest that outrunning the River Walker aboveground is impossible. But still, it is important to do your best.

And lastly, should you be taken below ground with this monstrous creature, it will transport you to tight underground caves where you will be forced to crawl, squeeze, and climb for your life. All the while it will follow you, taunting and toying with you. Utilize these long, grueling hours to your advantage! Studies have shown that the River Walker struggles to attack groups of two or more effectively, so while you are being tortured, search for a traveling companion!

If you do encounter the River Walker, please report the sighting to the Town Council or the Historical Society regardless of whether or not you die. Those killed by the River Walker are encouraged to stop by the Oak & Iron for a copy of the Safety Board’s Advice Pamphlet for the Recently Deceased after resurrecting. And remember, quitters are tastier prey, so don’t give in to despair! Even if you are caught and killed, you can at least say you persisted out of spite.

BLUE ISLAND CRAB HATCHING SEASON BEGINS AS SUMMER HEAT PERSISTS

By Yorick Aberdeen

A little sketch by yours truly.

TAWNY BEACH - If you’re out on the beach enjoying the last month of warm sea water, be mindful where you step! Earlier this spring, the local Blue Island Crab population had their mating season. Males of the species came up on the shore with clusters of tiny but durable eggs bundled up in their claws and buried them in the sand, and they’ve been warmed by the summer sun all season. As we enter the last month of summer the new crabs are finally ready to emerge from their birthplaces and begin their lives.

It is worth noting, however, that newborn Blue Island Crabs tend not to go directly back to the sea. In fact, it is common for them to spend the first few weeks of their lives searching for food and nesting materials such as seashells, driftwood, broken pottery, or small pieces of metal roughly the size of the average piece of valuable jewelry. They are also very adept climbers and are capable of scaling stairs and countertops with relative ease. Additionally, they seem to be able to communicate well with others of their species and are capable of collaborating. Many townsfolk have even gone so far as to describe their behavior as “scheming.” Blue Island Crabs are also notorious for not being very picky about what they eat. All this is to say, expect to have your food, personal items, and practically anything that is not tied down stolen by small blue crabs.

An unfortunate side effect of the hex has been that the beloved and highly anticipated Cucumber Festival, which normally takes place in early June, had to be canceled due to a lack of cucumbers. This has earned the ire of a great many residents who have cited the festival as “their last source of a modicum of joy on this goddess-forsaken island”, among other more colorful statements.

But there is good news! Hatching season and the subsequent early life of the crabs, all told, will not last more than a few weeks before the crabs mature enough to return to the sea with the rest of their kind. And of course those lucky enough to catch some will report that they make for a fine meal. There is no finer party dish than a Blue Island crab boil!

INCREASED PINE DEVIL SIGHTINGS SPELL BAD NEWS FOR LOCAL PEDESTRIANS

By Yorick Aberdeen

A painting of the Pine Devil provided by Mayor Poe

ISLAND-WIDE - In more concerning news, reports have been coming in from all over the island that there have been an uptick in sightings of the Pumpkin Hollow Howler. Otherwise known as the Pine Devil, this extremely dangerous man-eating beast has been a staple of Marrow Isle’s rotating cast of horrors for at least the past 15 years. Much like the aforementioned River Walker, the Pine Devil has a tendency to come and go and sightings fluctuate with some regularity. It seems that as we draw closer to prime haunting season we will be faced with increased appearances from the island’s least-favorite celebrity.

Here’s what we know:

The Howler’s primary motivation is to eat and he prefers larger prey. This includes pigs, cattle, deer, and humans. He has no known den and is apparently nomadic. No one has ever been able to locate the Pumpkin Hollow Howler when he is not actively hunting. At full height, he stands a whopping eight feet tall on unguligrade legs. He has clawed hands and large fangs which are its primary method of attacking and is capable of flight, and his eyes glow blue in the dark. He is a strong, fast creature who has no qualms about coming into town if necessary. Surviving encounters with the beast is notably rare.

If you have any encounters with the Pumpkin Hollow Howler, report to Town Hall or the constable’s station at your earliest convenience to make an incident report. The constabulary is taking reports 24 hours a day, so please make your report either immediately after the incident or upon resurrection. May your lanterns stay lit, and be safe out there!

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Captured by the River Walker? Click here…

Perhaps you didn’t read the paper. Perhaps you didn’t take the warnings seriously. Or maybe you simply had no other choice. Whatever the case may be, the Paring River Bridge lies before you, and the world around you is unnaturally still. The sounds of chirping birds, burrowing mammals, and chittering insects have all died and left the air uncannily silent.



You attempt to hurry across, hoping to make it before anything unsavory catches your scent. But the moment you place your foot upon the stone pavers of the bridge, it is already too late. Behind you, you can hear the scuttling of much too large insectoid legs and a soft rattling sound, almost like the sound of a woodpecker drilling into a tree but somehow… wetter.



Instinctively, you turn to look behind you. A bulbous, lumpy abdomen drags the ground, and from it extends a set of eight black legs, chunky and irregular, as if they were wooden stakes hewn into rough points with a careless knife. Long, spindly fingers extend from thin arms on either side of an emaciated torso covered in shiny black insect carapace. And on top, the face of a human woman who looked as though she’d been drowned, bloated and rotting. White eyes, matted brown hair, and a wicked smile framed by patchy blue lips.



You black out before you even have the chance to scream.



When you awaken, your head is pounding as if you’ve just woken from a bender. You are on a dirty, irregular stone floor. The beginnings of stalagmites jab into your back. In the distance, you can hear dripping water and the shifting of something moving. It is dark, but light enough to see by, allowing you to see plainly that the ceiling above you is significantly too low for you to stand.



Then, you hear a laugh, hoarse and cruel. “Rise and shine, little morsel. Oh, how I do love to play with my food…”



That’s your cue to get moving.



For the next several long, grueling hours, you crawl your way through this tight and unrelenting fortress of stone on hands and knees as rocks cut into your hands. In caves that are tall enough to stand, you have to walk sideways to proceed or even hold your breath in order to make it, and all the tunnels look more or less the same. The River Walker’s raspy voice echoes off the walls, making its location imperceptible… but it’s close.



You need to find a traveling companion. And soon.

Interested in encountering the Pine Devil? Click here...

The Pine Devil is a mod-run NPC and we can only handle a certain number of encounters at once. For this TDM we will be favoring new characters on a first-come, first-served basis. However, you may still handwave or summarize the encounter by rolling a D20 with 15+ to survive and 18+ to walk away unscathed, and write out the aftermath. You do not need a mod’s permission to do this!


You also do not need to fill out a Death Certificate if you're not fully apped in, but can if you want to. Your character will resurrect as normal either way!

Comments

The Forest

[thelatechrisfreeman]

[[ OOC: I am entirely canonblind but intrigued! Hello! ]]

The question, when it comes, seems to come from above him.

"What are you doing?"

There's no one in the same tree, but up in the branches of a different tree, close by. They are dressed in an old-fashioned blouse with slightly puffed sleeves, and light-colored linen pants. (With those pale clothes among the greenery, how did you miss them? Focus can be a bane, sometimes.) And they are hanging upside down, knees hooked over a sturdy branch, just looking at Sam.

[300kgbackpack]

[[Likewise but who doesn't like a weird mailman?]]

Sam's head snaps up, hands gripping on the branches just overhead and one foot braced against the trunk, eyes darting back and forth as he searches for the source of the voice and lands on, amid other branches, someone in what he might classify as fancy cloths. A mental shrug, and he continues on his way up until he's perched on a pair of branches thick enough to support his weight.

His voice is gruff and quiet enough to likely be a little bit lost in the susurrus of the forest. "Getting the lay of the land. What're you doing?"

[thelatechrisfreeman]

"Climbing a tree." (Well that's absolutely fucking obvious, thanks Chris.) After a beat, Chris elaborates, "I'm exploring more of the island. I arrived here a few days ago."

Chris puts themself right side up on the branch, just looking at the man curiously.

[300kgbackpack]

A subtle furrow of the brow. "Island?" He lifts his wrist and the dimly glowing blue cuff on it, but the projector doesn't come up the way it normally would. It's just a pair of funky handcuffs around his wrist. He turns back toward Chris. "Where is this?"

[thelatechrisfreeman]

"Marrow Isle, in the Black Jade Sea," Chris replies, parroting back what the locals say. "There's just one town here, called Pumpkin Hollow. And now that you're here, you won't be able to leave."

[300kgbackpack]

"No." Immediate reaction. "No, that's not right." What about Edge Knot? What about Amelie?

What about Lou?

"Have you seen a BB unit around here?"

[thelatechrisfreeman]

Chris is visibly confused, even though they are some distance away in the other tree. "...is that like a BB gun? Air rifle that shoots pellets?"

[300kgbackpack]

They're both bewildered at one another in their respective trees here.

"A baby," he replies quietly. "In a..." He gestures with his hands, making a pod-like shape against the bracket strapped to his chest. "Thing that keeps her alive."

[thelatechrisfreeman]

"Oh!" Chris leans closer, perhaps to a dangerously thin part of their branch. "You wouldn't want her to be here. Being here means you're dead or dying, in the place where you came from."

[300kgbackpack]

Okay. Okay so she really was still with Deadman. While that still presents its own problem, it's not as dire as it could be. Right? He'd going to hope, at least. Sam doesn't look particularly bothered about the idea of having died, though.

"Okay so...what does that mean? My Ha's here, my Ka's there? Or...or vice versa?"

[thelatechrisfreeman]

Chris knows 'ka' as one segment of the soul, from a passing interest in Ancient Egypt and such funerary text, but 'ha' is not part of that context. It's probably not the same thing.

"I don't know what 'ha' and 'ka' mean, the way you use it. How we got here is a mystery, really. My theory is that our souls were moved from the worlds we came from, brought here. And that the bodies we have here are new, with the original body back where we came from. I can't prove the theory, though."

[300kgbackpack]

Huh. So the way that it was explained to him doesn't necessarily apply to everywhere. Multiverse theory getting applied in real time here.

"Ka's the soul, connected to the body's Ha by a strand, like an umbilical cord," he explains, though it almost certainly doesn't explain anything at all. His eyes narrow though, and he pulls at the velcro holding one of his sleeves down snug, pulling it up to look at his arm briefly. Again with that furrowed brow. "So, by your logic, our Ka's here, in new bodies."

[thelatechrisfreeman]

"A soul disconnected from the flesh is much easier to move than... 'the whole package', as it were. Souls and ghosts aren't limited by physicality." Chris hums thoughtfully. "Some people say the white-haired lady who spoke to us, offered us this new chance, is a goddess. I don't know for sure."

[300kgbackpack]

"Goddess?" There's a note of bewilderment about that one, too. "Far as I know, gods aren't real. Or if they are they don't give a shit about us down here."

[thelatechrisfreeman]

"The main religion here believes in goddesses. They may be making assumptions based on those beliefs." Chris shrugs, and the branch they're on sways. "Like I said, I don't know for sure. But whoever and whatever she is, she apparently has the power to send us here. Like she thinks we can help this place."

[300kgbackpack]

"Help? Is there something wrong with it?" Something that requires population by people from another reality, at that. And he thought his life was fucking weird.

"You said there's a village. There's just the one here?" There's a note of dread to that. If it's an insular little community, then what does that mean for him? Privacy doesn't seem likely...

[thelatechrisfreeman]

[[ OOC: I will just say here that if Sam disbelieves what Chris is going to say, they are going to do something very stupid to prove it. They're weird like that. ]]

"There is one village. Several farms outside the village. And I've heard talk of some people who live out in the forest, but it's also very dangerous out there and I haven't met any of them yet." Chris sighs, "As for what's wrong with this place -- it's cursed. For the past five years, no one's been able to stay dead. They die, but their bodies vanish when not being observed, and then they are resurrected elsewhere on the island a day later."

[300kgbackpack]

[[And it probably wouldn't even be the weirdest thing that Sam has seen this week.]]

"...huh. Sounds like I'll fit right in." He doesn't really feel like going into it will help at all, but hearing something like this really doesn't actually seem to move the needle all that much. A pause follows that thought. "What's the Beach situation? Do you guys all share one or...?"

[thelatechrisfreeman]

Chris seems pleased that Sam believes them. (Their only real plan for proving that what they say correct was... 'fling self from tree, die upon hitting the ground, manifest ghost for a bit, tell him to look away so the body vanishes'.)

"There's one proper beach on the south end of the island," Chris makes a motion that will look like a backwards letter-C from Sam's perspective, "shaped kind of like that. But it's a big one. From what I've seen of the edges of the island, other places are mostly cliff. Though I haven't seen the whole place yet."

[300kgbackpack]

That...definitely wasn't what Sam was referring to, but he'd accept that there's an actual lowercase-b beach around here too. Might actually be soothing to be around.

"No access to the Seam, no Beach...no BTs? Uh. Ghosts. What's the ghost situation?"

[thelatechrisfreeman]

Chris smiles widely. Their glasses seem lit with a reddish glow, though surely that's just something from sunlight hitting the lenses... must be.

"Oh, there are ghosts everywhere. I assume, since you ask, you're like most people and can't see them. I can."

Chris has been able to see ghosts, talk to them, and summon them for a short time -- ever since their first death, four years ago in their original world.

"But why do you ask? And what does 'BT' mean?"

[300kgbackpack]

"No, but I can sense 'em. Part of having DOOMS."

Sam shifts on his branch, letting his legs hang. One hand goes to where the pod of his BB might have been strapped to his chest, force of habit. It just kind of falls awkwardly through the space.

"Beached Thing. Basically someone's Ka stuck over here instead of moving on. Ghosts."

Just wait until Chris learns that Sam's bodily fluids actively repel ghosts...

[thelatechrisfreeman]

"The Between here is empty," Chris says, like Sam should know what that means. "No recently dead can move on. And like I said, there are plenty of ghosts wandering the island."

Chris watches that gesture, near the same spot where the man indicated when explaining about his BB unit. His baby.

"The baby you asked about... will she be okay if you're stuck here? Are there other people who can find her and take care of her?"

[300kgbackpack]

He can connect the dots at least.

"Huh... Starting to sound more and more like home. I gotta ask though, are you guys able to actually...y'know, live around the ghosts? No explosions or, or craters or anything?" This place looks relatively intact, but he doesn't know what's happened around here before.

At the mention of the baby, Sam's expression tightens. "Worst case scenario she's out there in her pod where someone can pick her up. But there's a guy that was taking care of her for me, Deadman... Resident doctor type out in Capital Knot. Just gotta hope that he'll be able to keep her hooked up." The alternative hurts to think about.

[thelatechrisfreeman]

"I don't know why ghosts would cause explosions. Unless it was a very, very old poltergeist..." Chris considers that, then shakes their head. "No, the ghosts I see haven't done any harm to the living. They mostly just... wander around."

Chris frowns, worried about the child as well, and not the least of which because the man looks upset. "A doctor... should know what to do. I'm sorry for the uncertainty..." pause "I don't actually know your name. I'm Chris, if I forgot to say before."