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ph_memes2024-12-13 12:53 pm
TDM #9 - The Weather Outside is Frightful [FIRST EDITION]
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Pumpkin Hollow Gazette
12/13/24 | TDM #9 - The Weather Outside is Frightful [First Edition]
WELCOME TO PUMPKIN HOLLOW
By Yorick Aberdeen
The crop for which the town is named.
Hello and welcome, one and all! As time marches on and the ferry continues bringing newcomers to our fair land, we start our newest edition of the Pumpkin Hollow Gazette with a warm welcome to anyone who has just made landfall in our accursed but cozy little town. It’s winter, which can be a challenging time of year for a secluded place like Pumpkin Hollow, but you’ll also be able to join us for beloved traditions such as Mourner’s Night, Givingstide, the New Year, and Merrymeet! Local experts have also reported to the Pumpkin Hollow Safety Board that we should be in for perfectly normal and utterly harmless auroras this winter, barring any complications. The night sky will most likely not try to kill you this year. What luck!
We invite you, as with all those who came before you, to enjoy your stay at the Oak & Iron tavern inn while you settle in. Please stop by Town Hall to discuss opportunities for work and more permanent housing! All newcomers get 100 Brass in their pocket upon arrival as well, so we encourage you to take advantage of this as well. Reach out to your neighbors for help if you need it, and don’t forget to pick up your copy of the Pumpkin Hollow Gazette whenever you need the local news!
WINTER WEATHER REPORT
By Phil Connors
The Paring River looks gorgeous this time of year.
Wrap up in those winter cloaks, plug those drafts, and stock up on the oil and wood. It's frost season, and it's only getting colder from here. These nights will be the longest nights. Keep your toes warm and your rooftops clean; when we get snow, we're getting inches of it. The end of the season will get a little warmer, but prone to temperature drops and refreezes, and the wind will still be just as chilly. There will be ice all season long, so be careful on the streets, because there won't be any wet floor signs to warn you. Because it's ice.
Snowfall means roads blocked, and roads blocked means roads need clearing! Town Hall is recruiting volunteers to help shovel the walkways in public spaces. Shovels not mandatory for those of you with powers that can clear snow, or perhaps a machine like a snowplow, or perhaps machine snowplow powers. (No heat-melting allowed; we're not making a skating rink here.) Inquire at Town Hall to sign up!
WINTER ACTIVITIES AROUND TOWN
By Timothy Stoker
A peek at the Winter Market.Speaking of snow, it turns out shoveling and falling face-first into a mound of snow on your way to market aren’t the only things you can do with all this fluffy white stuff falling out of the sky! All throughout town, there’ll be opportunities to take advantage of this weather’s unique charms all winter long.
The Safety Board is happy to report that several of the lakes and ponds around town are now thick enough to ice skate on. Ice skate rentals will be available at the Oak & Iron for 5 Brass a day. You’ll find that the safe places to skate are marked with a notice from the Safety Board, so make sure you check, unless falling through the ice sounds like your idea of fun! One of the safe locations, to the shock of everyone involved, is Lake Sal-Co-Penn, so take this opportunity to enjoy its scenic location while it’s completely free of horrible visions of dead loved ones. Just don’t look too hard at what’s in the water under the ice.
Additionally, check out the Winter Market all season long on Main Street. It’s a great place to check out deals on artisanal crafts for Givingstide (or whatever else you might celebrate) and will also feature baking, cooking, and crafting contests of various kinds every weekend from now till the end of February. Grab some hot cider or cocoa at the refreshment booth, and consider taking a friend or date on one of the horse drawn sleigh rides available.
And last but certainly not least, head on out to the farmlands in Northwest Hollow to take part in the Neighborhood Sanctioned Snowball War. No sense letting those big plots of land sit empty all season! If you enjoy frozen architecture, have applicable tactical experience, or just want to throw stuff at other people, the Snowball War is the place for you.
TOWNSFOLK BEWARE - SNOWSTORMS MAY HOLD SINISTER SECRETS
By Yorick Aberdeen
Friend or foe?
Stay alert during inclement weather, neighbors--- and not just because of the fall risk! Locals particularly around the Prague Mill and Bluffs area have been reporting that, during low-visibility snowstorms, insidious-looking figures have been appearing in the snow.
It’s unclear what exactly these mysterious figures might be, lurking in the roiling blizzards throughout town, but they’ve been known to vary in size and in shape. Tread with care when the weather begins to turn, and keep your lanterns lit!
GINGERBREAD CURSE DEEMED UNLAWFUL AND UNSAFE
By Cecil Gershwin Palmer
A most dastardly dessert, indeed.
Town Hall would like to remind all citizens and denizens of Marrow Island that gingerbread is not on the list of approved construction materials for buildings zoned for residential, commercial or farming purposes. Whoever is turning local homes and other buildings into gingerbread, complete with candy decorations, is asked to put it back, and not coaxingly, like when you try to get a cat to come down from the ceiling fan, but demandingly, like when you’re telling a dog to spit out the clearly-not-food item they have in their mouth. No, stop chewing. Do NOT swallow that! Come here, spit it out!
Local candymaker, Ambrose Macarius, had this to say on the matter: “I worry a bit, you know, that with the abundance of candy made available with this gingerbread house hoo-hah, that no one’s going to come visit my shop for the stuff I make by hand. I don’t use magic in the candy, you know?” Meanwhile, local ice cream parlor Gourd En Glace is selling a gingerbread sundae to commemorate the occasion.
Citizens are advised to be particularly careful with liquids in gingerbread buildings for the time being, until this matter is resolved.
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Winter Fun!
The bit about Lake Sal-Co-Penn is mostly a joke and it is genuinely safe to ice skate there. However, if you would like to do something spooky with it, feel free! It is functionally SCP-2316 but frozen. You can have a totally safe visit or a terrible one, your choice!
The costs of hot cocoa/cider and sleigh rides are negligible, don’t worry about taking them out of your Brass. Winter clothing sets cost between 100-300 Brass depending on its complexity, and pricing at the Winter Market will be comparable to the normal pricing we have on items. To avoid an absolute onslaught of price check questions, we’re more than happy to let you use your best judgement on pricing for Winter Market items based on previous pricing. Our Buyer’s Guide and this simplified Pricing Menu are great resources! Existing characters can modify their ledgers without mod approval, and new characters can wait until they app in to worry about it. Givingstide, our winter gift exchange holiday, takes place at the end of December, but the market will be open all through the Winter!
The Snowball War will be centralized around Cèsar Salazar’s farm, per the player’s request, but the whole farmland area of Northwest Hollow is free game. Have fun!
Shapes in the Snow
We give you the winter gift of creative liberty for this one! Rather than have a set creature or person lurking in the blizzard, you can have whatever you like! It can be an existing monster like the Tristitia, a Brutok, or the River Walker. It can be an eerie doppelganger of someone from your home world. It can be an opening for another player character or an Infernal Servant. It could even be a creature you make up! If you make an excellent monster, we’d love to incorporate it into the game’s canon! But whether you’re looking to have a run-in with the Pine Devil, you’ve devised a new menace to stalk our fair town, or you’re about to attack your neighbor who has innocently come to ask for a cup of sugar, remember that communication is key and feel free to get as weird with it as you like.
Gingerbread Curse
The gingerbread curse is pretty self-explanatory and is basically exactly what it seems. That one witch who turned all our crops into turnips that time probably did it. Gingerbread buildings can appear fully formed or gradually transform over time, or just take up chunks of your home or workplace. They will eventually change back on their own (the timeframe in which this happens is up to you) but if the cookie gets softened by liquids or eaten, the architecture may come back looking a little funny. Good luck!
Shapes in the snow
"Hay is for horses. What the hell are you doing out here? Trying to get yourself killed?"
Re: Shapes in the snow
Whoever this man is, Ripley looks as though she might chomp his head off.
"Horses-" A huff of unamused disbelief. Her nose crinkles. She swats a hand in the direction of the woods. "I'm-- I saw a thing out there. Didn't you see it?"
God, she's starting to sound like Ash, propelling herself into danger to investigate some creature not worth her time. One that'd probably kill her, if she got close enough.
no subject
"I don't see it right now, but there's plenty of things you could have seen and most of them won't be friendly. I'm not exaggerating when I say we aren't the highest thing on the food chain around here."
He puts his arms down so he can shrug out of his long leather duster and offer it to her. "Here, would you at least put this on? I can't leave you out here like this, it doesn't feel right. Let me take you back to the inn to warm up and get some hot tea?"
no subject
A jacket is offered to her. She regards it like it's a shed of stinking, putrid skin.
"And why should I trust you? You could be a monster yourself."
But her teeth have started to chatter. Enamel threatens to crack. A minute longer and her fingers might start going black. Ellen clenches her jaw and, grunting, steals out a hand. She slips the jacket over her shoulders. Her hands shoot out of the armholes, one after the other, like fleshy flowers coming up out of a horizontal dirt-bed.
The leather is warm from his wearing of it. Fits her nicely.
"Fine- you can take me there and that's it."
no subject
"We've got all shapes and sizes, that's true, but most the monsters that want to eat you don't stop to say hello first."
Now that she's wearing at least one more layer, he finally offers her his hand to shake. "Commander John Crichton, science officer before you get too excited about the title. I'm also an Enforcer here but I'm on the bottom of that totem pole." Can you tell he's had mixed reactions to introducing himself this way? But, dammit, he earned that title and he gets to keep it.
"I don't know what else you think I want with you, but those terms are fine with me. I'm just trying to keep you from freezin' your tush off. Come one; it's this way." He'll start to lead on, trusting her to follow.
[CW Mentions of physical assault]
He extends a hand. Introduces himself. The title of science officer unnerves her more than she'd like to admit. A flash of alarm clinches her features. Tugs her eyebrows up and sends the hair at the back of her neck standing on end. She'd like to think that her own science officer's actions were no more than a hiccup in her experience aboard the Nostromo. Would prefer to encompass all of her trauma into the smooth, rubbery shape of the alien she'd encountered. But the terror she'd experienced at the hands of him, that newspaper shoved with unfathomable force against her teeth, still haunts her. A robot. Fucking unbelievable.
A betrayal, really.
His titles do inspire some intrigue, though. Commander, officer, enforcer. There's an air about him she recognizes. Indistinguishable from her colleagues.
She clasps his hand in her own, giving it a firm, authoritative squeeze.
"Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley. Space or Earth travel?"
What a ridiculous ice-breaker. And she's falling for it, god damnit. Follows him through the snow and onto a grey-bricked path toward wherever he intends on bringing her, feeling slightly more at ease than she had a second ago. Slightly. She still maintains her guard like Fort Knox. Puts a few feet of distance between herself and Crichton as they walk the well-tread path.
no subject
Her reaction to his explanation is... odd. Alarming, even. Usually, that's what people look like when they think he's military. First time he's had the reverse. One of these days he'll give up starting with it but, dammit, he didn't do all that training and work for nothing. Even if he didn't use commander the proper term would still be 'Doctor' and that's even more confusing here.
Then her name actually sinks in and... OH. Holy shit. He's shaking hands with a legend?
Yeah, now that he's really looking at her. Yes, he thought she looked familiar. Well, he'll be damned. Now it's taking all he has not to fanboy about meeting an honest-to-god hero from his formative years. But he knows the first rule of alternate universes is don't tell people you know them from movies or books, it's always a bad time. So he's going to do his utter best to conceal the fact that he knows exactly why introducing himself as a science officer was, ironically, the worst idea. Sorry, Ripley.
"That... is a harder question to answer than you realize. I'll try to explain. On my version of Earth, we don't have interstellar travel yet. I was in space conducting an experiment that was intended to help us get there but I got sucked into a wormhole instead. I'm the first Human from my world to go further than the moon."
no subject
"So you're a pioneer." She says, shrugging her-- his-- coat closer around herself. Leather lapels press against the sides of her face. A quiet, disbelieving 'God' expels outward into cold air.
Phrases like my version of Earth unsettle her, and she isn't afraid to let this show on her face. Thin brows come together to cut a crease at the center of her forehead.
"And how'd that go? Poorly?" Her voice is an unsurprised drawl. He's here, so it couldn't have gone well. What manner of space horror did this poor man fall victim to? Or was his life stolen by the caustic hand of something different? Asking feels impolite, but the words come anyway.
She knows a little about wormholes. Knows that most of the vessels from her time are equipped with clever navigating systems to avoid them. That doesn't mean no one's ever been siphoned up into one. Destroyed utterly, then spit out in a million pieces. On rare occasions ships come out in one piece, the crew inside like a cluster of cancerous cells-- changed for the worse. Whatever he'd experienced, it couldn't have been pretty.
no subject
"The wormhole was a surprise. That alone should have killed me. But on the other side...I became the first human from my Earth to make contact with alien life."
This is only the start of the story. For as many close calls as he's had, it goes on a surprisingly long time. Ultimately, he wasn't even in his own universe when he finally died; if he could only remember how it might have happened.
"It was intelligent life."
no subject
If she had any sense of humor she might have laughed. How funny-- to have her own reflection pitched back at her. Taking shape as a man who had, in some remote fold in the universe, experienced precisely what she did. Aliens. First Contact. Intelligence. Violence, she's certain.
Two sides of the same intergalactic coin.
How awful.
She glances at him.
"...What were they like?"
no subject
"They were people. They were both exactly like us and wildly different. Hell, none of them were even the same species. They came from different colonies, different cultures, different times in their lives. They were my friends and my enemies. Some of them became my crew and my family. Couple of them became my worst nightmares."
They were everything a human could be and more. There was violence, but there was also love.
no subject
Its graceful movements, humanoid limbs and the intelligence with which it stalked seemed to suggest a development she'd rather not think too hard about. A kinship.
To think in fifty, maybe one hundred years, she might have called such a creature her friend.
She scowls. Resents the idea.
"We haven't reached that mark, not where I come from. Not by a long shot. It was animal. The first discovery of alien life-- and it was us who found it. A couple of oil haulers with no goddamn clue what we were doing."
Anger steams up from her shoulders.
"I think it liked that it made us afraid."
no subject
"I'm sorry it went down like that. If it was hunting you then... you might be right. Should'a never happened, but it still did. I'm sorry." He can't blame her for that anger. Not at all. God, the way he'd raged against his own luck for so long. Wrong place, wrong time doesn't feel very satisfying as an answer to 'why me?'
"I want to let you know that there might be dangers like that here, too. I don't want it to blindside you. Whatever happens, you can call on me if you need backup any time, day or night. That's both part of my job and... something I'd personally like to do for you. As, hopefully, a new friend?"
no subject
His apology takes on more meaning than perhaps he's aware of. Not simply instinctual kindness but coming from a place of understanding. It shouldn't have happened, but it did. He doesn't sugarcoat the truth. Doesn't erase her hardship in an effort to be gentle. It did, and she'd sooner be back in the Nostromo's gut than forget her peers. What a disservice that would be. To Dallas, to Parker, to everyone.
A new friend.
Maybe that's what she needs, no matter if she resents it.
"Depends," Ellen tips her head toward her shoulder wryly. "You still offering tea?"
thoughts on fading this one here and starting a new one?
"Always," he says with a boyishly lopsided smile. "I'll even throw in honey and lemon."