TDM #10 - Wither and Bloom [First Edition]

[pumpkinhollow]

Pumpkin Hollow Gazette: Spring Issue

We ask that all toplevels include the age of the character (or at least a rough estimate) for TDM posts, to ensure that players both old and new can quickly make informed decisions about how to interact with a given character. We also ask that if someone lists a prompt as having an age preference, that it be respected. This is specifically for TDMs unless otherwise stated. Thank you!

Pumpkin Hollow Gazette

12/13/24 | TDM #10 - Wither and Bloom [First Edition]
Spring Pokémon Types - Grass, Fairy, Ground, Bug, Normal

WELCOME TO PUMPKIN HOLLOW

By Yorick Aberdeen

The crop for which the town is named.

Greetings, Hollowites, old and new! We are pleased to bring you yet another riveting issue of the Pumpkin Hollow Gazette. Or perhaps this is your very first one?

For nearly two years now, the mysterious ferryman has brought new and interesting faces across seas and stars and dimensional planes to reach our fair island. Since then, our community has grown larger and infinitely more interesting--- and we’re glad you’re joining us! Just in time for the weather to be just lovely.

This time of year tends to be a bit lighter on town-wide events due to this being a vitally busy time for our local agriculture industry, but we urge you to get involved with planting season and spend some time in nature. Who knows? You might even catch sight of our goddess of Land and Spring if you spend enough time among plants! Just don’t look into the trees--- they look back.

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!

SPRING WEATHER REPORT

By Phil Connors

The breeze will make your clothes smell great!

Start dusting those homes and beating those blankets! The days are getting longer, and with it, the winds are getting warmer. Spring is here! We’ll see some days that are still chilly and windy, but the more warm and temperate phases will get more common later in the season. We’re also entering the rainy period, meaning flowers are springing out of the ground and we’ll be seeing some very beautiful sunrises on misty mornings. Color is coming back to the isle, the frogs are in the rivers, and the insects and lambs are in the fields. It’s a good season to be outside.

Which means it’s also a good season to do laundry! Join us for our Community Laundry Day, where we all do our much-needed chores together and hang-dry our laundry in the warm and breezy weather! Join us on the green for some team washing. Water provided. Bring your own tubs, soap, and of course, clothes!

COMMUNITY EVENTS KEEP TOWN LIVELY ALL SPRING

By Timothy Stoker

The gazebo in town square, beside the festival green, is the place to be this season.

Legend has it that this time last year, a packed ferry arrived with a mass influx of offworlders, and an emergency potluck dinner was held to welcome the crowd. Now, this reporter wasn’t here just yet when that happened, but stories tell of a gathering of epic culinary proportions that heralded a new age of prosperity for Pumpkin Hollow. Sounds like something worth celebrating! Now that the weather has turned lovely once more (as elaborated on above by our own Phil Connors), the town has decided to celebrate the anniversary of the newly dubbed “Harbor Day” by revisiting that potluck idea. Drop by the Temple of Sacred Roots every other Friday from now until June to sample the cuisine of your new neighbors and local businesses. New residents need only bring themselves!

Also, in the spirit of spring cleaning, residents will also be selling or giving away their old items every weekend, weather permitting, in a series of mass yard sales. Some of our more modern residents supplied the term “yard crawl” for the event, which was deemed to be fitting. So come out on Saturday and Sunday mornings and afternoons to see what useful used items you can take off your neighbors’ hands! It’s a great way for new residents to decorate their new homes cheaply and get some new clothes.

And finally, on Wednesday evenings the Festival Green will be hosting “Swift Social” events (to be held in the Oak & Iron in the event of rain). A reimagining of last year’s popular charity speed dating event, this new Swift Social is expanded to include individuals seeking platonic relationships as well--- though that doesn’t mean romance is off the menu! The 10 Brass will be used to support the town’s medical community and the Autumn Leaves Dormitory House for Young Residents. So come out and make a friend or meet someone cute--- it’s for charity!

Fearsome Fae Antics Cause Town-Wide Trouble

By Melanie King

Up to no good, probably.

Things have been getting tricksy around town as, apparently, the fae population are staging the prank war to end all prank wars—or so local experts are telling us. If, like this reporter, you thought you were just having terrible luck with forgetting where you put things down or waking up with horrible bedhead, surprise! You've actually been caught in the crossfire of the fairies' games and may be entitled to financial compensation. (Not really. That's a joke.)

It looks like their antics are escalating significantly over time from harmless inconveniences to active dangers, so beware of any unusual sounds, behaviours or visual phenomenon you may encounter. Alluring or pleading voices from the woods, ghostly lights, critters acting oddly—if it's out of the ordinary, think twice. Or it might be the last time you think at all (at least, until tomorrow morning).

Fiendish Floral Figures Take Root Around Town

By Yorick Aberdeen

How eerie!

Spring is a time of year characterized by new life and by fresh floral blooms. It’s said that the land is Serranai’s canvas, and flowers are her paint. There is no debating that watching the Spring goddess’s artistry come to life in her season of power is an activity beloved by all! However, the Department of Supernatural Affairs is currently investigating some strangely behaved plant life.

While sightings have been somewhat rare, locals have been reporting eerie structures made out of flowering vines or woven flower stems that take the shape of hollowed out humanoid silhouettes. The poses seem to indicate motion and appear capable of springing to life at any moment, but the strange figures never seem to actually move --- at least, not that anyone has actually seen. However, many have cited that upon looking away from the figures and looking back, they appear to be closer. Those who have had direct contact with these floral armatures of people are also reporting some kind of ongoing allergic reaction from the encounter. Symptoms include severe shortness of breath, unpleasant itching that feels like it is coming from beneath the skin, and intense bouts of emotion which vary from person to person.

The Pumpkin Hollow Board of Safety is currently investigating long-term effects of contact with these beings and advises residents to avoid them. They seem highly resilient to fire, impact, and tearing, and while cutting with a sharp implement seems to have some success, it’s inadvisable to get close enough to the things to use such tools in the first place. Local alchemist Aeryn Sallek and local non-magical chemist Sally Boyle are currently working together to develop an herbicidal blend that is safe for human skin contact and potentially consumption to try and deal with the flowery menaces, which the Board of Safety has begun calling “Hanahilators”. But don’t let the name frighten you--- steering clear of these freaky floral followers should be a more than sufficient safety measure until the threat can be dealt with. Probably, anyway!

Page 1

code

Further Details...

Yard Crawl

Participate in the Yard Crawl as either a buyer, a seller, or both! When you take on a job in Pumpkin Hollow, you are supplied with permanent housing outside the Oak & Iron as part of your start-up kit, and most of them are full of old and worn furniture and clothes left behind when they were abandoned. Get rid of some of it or find something new at the Spring Yard Crawl! Plus, some of the native residents will also be selling or giving away their own old things.

Here’s how the Brass shakes out:

• Buyers can spend 50 Brass and get a haul of their choice of used or free clothing, furniture, or small decorative items. All of it will be of decent to low quality and relatively unremarkable design, so nothing extravagant. (Although a lone exciting knick knack could be considered passable!) Reminder that newcomers are given their first stipend of 100B upon arrival, so new characters are welcome to participate--- you’ll just need to mark that on your ledger if/when you app in. Ask for help if you have questions about this!


• Sellers can make 50B off of their participation but must make a toplevel. Only apped-in characters that are not Laggards can participate as a Seller.


• Those who are both buying and selling end up with a net zero of Brass, but all the aforementioned rules apply!


• Transactions related to the Yard Crawl can be applied to a character’s ledger three times --- once per month for the duration of this TDM!

Swift Social

Under the Swift Social toplevel posted from the mod account, join the fun by posting a starter with the provided code to create a profile card! Then comment on someone else’s starter with one of the following icebreaker questions to get started:

Which would be more surprising to see on your doorstep, a unicorn or a walrus?
If you could commit any crime with no consequences, what would it be?
If you were caught in a trap and the only way to escape from it with your life was to do something genuinely impressive, what would be your approach?
If you had to live on only one food for the rest of your life, what would you choose?
If you were held at knife point and instructed by your assailant that you must call someone on their sending stone, and if they do not answer, you die, who would you call?
Which would be most frightening to encounter in a dark alley: a ghost, an alien, or a horse?
If you could have any wish granted for you, no matter how big or small, what would it be? (Cannot ask for more wishes, that’s cheating!)
What’s a subject that you could confidently teach an hour-long class on with no preparation?
If you could instantly become an expert in any skill, what would you choose?
Make your own!

Be advised that you must post a comment with your profile card so that any Swift Social partners you have can reference it for your age and preferences.

Fae Pranks

It’s a fairy prank war! A few of the local fae courts are using Marrow Isle as their battle ground, since the demons made it trendy. They’re mostly out to prank each other--- but they’re also happy to practice their tricks on you! And fairies have some very odd ideas about boundaries when it comes to pranks. Here’s a few examples of some of the tricks you might encounter, ranging from silly to genuinely dangerous:

• A truly outrageous amounts of butterflies


• Sightings of Edwin the Headless Postman, a Dullahan (this is a played character that a mod will tag out with, please leave an OOC note if you’d like to opt out)


• Will-o-wisps that lead you in circles or into danger


• Fae dance parties that will have you dancing yourself to death!


• Missing objects


• Mysteriously spoiled milk


• Your hair got braided or extra tangled while you were asleep


• Weird sounds in Prague Mill after dark. Is it haunted?


• Strange women crying in the forest or by the Bluffs, but when you approach them to try and help, you find yourself suddenly in life-threatening danger!


• Create your own! Have fun with it, get spooky or goofy as you see fit.

Floral Fiends [cw: body horror, death]

Loosely inspired by the Hanahaki disease and the film Annihilation, Hanahilators are uncanny figures made out of flowers that move when they are not being watched. If they catch you, they will grab you, but seemingly have no interest in harming you as they will relent as soon as they’ve touched you.

However, once you have pollen on you, the effects begin to take hold, and flowers begin growing within your body, first in your lungs and then pushing into the rest of you. These parasitic blooms feed off of your strong emotions and are influenced by the emotions which define you. (Feel free to use the Victorian flower language to determine what kinds of flowers you get!) Once strong enough, the vines begin feeding on your body, destroying it and leaving behind a brand new Hanahilator. But don’t worry, you’ll be back to your old self tomorrow, so enjoy the opportunity to explore the island as a ghost! Apped in characters should remember to fill out a Death Certificate! It’s a relatively rare encounter, so don’t worry about running into one if you don’t want to.

Pokémon

Each season, new types of Pokémon can be found in nature around the island! They cannot be captured as the technology does not exist on Marrow Isle, but they can be befriended and kept as pets. Since there is no PC, each person can have no more than six. You can befriend any Pokémon whose primary type matches the list at the top of the newspaper. (Eevee can be caught in any season.) Legendaries are off limits for obvious reasons, and mythicals can be encountered for fun but not kept! Evolutionary stones can be found in Paradesium, the magical subterranean jungle beneath the mountain to the North. Every type will be available at some point throughout the year, so if you don’t have access to your fave yet, check back next season!

Comments

[coolhatluvr]

"Right." Patty takes the lead, senses and tail held high as she carefully pushes the door open and peers around. There weren't any mills in Drain, but they had lots of warehouses and manufacturies, so she immediately looks for a path up into the rafters. "Here," she whispers, holding her hand back out for Pokey to take. "How are you at climbing?"

[elvaquerito]

Pokey gives her a wobbly hand-gesture. Passable. Probably nothing compared to her. But they take her hand, trusting her climbing skills to guide them. "I'll be fine with you in charge."

[coolhatluvr]

"Darn skippy you will. Just follow my lead." She leads the way up to the rafters, offering a hand or her tail whenever Pokey needs a little boost, until finally they can crawl out onto one of the big crossbeams and Patty's so excited that she has to use both hands to muffle her giggles.

"Sorry," she whispers after a minute. "I'm just so -- I bet you didn't think dating me would involve doing stakeouts together, did you?"

[elvaquerito]

Darn skippy. Listen to her. She's so cute.

Pokey trusts her completely, willing to be surprisingly daring for someone relatively ill-equipped for climbing. Knowing Patty is there gives them confidence, especially as she grows increasingly excited. She's so cute when she laughs!

They breathe a laugh of their own at the question. "Maybe not. But I was prepared to keep an open mind. Man, we're up high. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you'd be good at climbing, having lived in Drain, huh? I hear it's kind of a prerequisite."

[coolhatluvr]

"Yep, you gotta be good at climbing if you wanna go nearly anywhere in Drain!" Patty giggles again, letting her feet swing freely over the edge of the beam while her tail coils around the beam itself for stability. "We don't got a lotta horizontal space for walkin' around in down there, it's all built up and down the walls. We also put up nets and stuff to try'n catch people if they slip, especially anywhere there's 'sposed to be kids, buuuuuuut it's still pretty tricky to get around if you don't have a good grip."

"What about you?" she whispers, leaning over to gently squeeze Pokey's leg. "What kind of place did you grow up in?"

[elvaquerito]

"I'm from southern Texas, near the Gulf of Mexico," Pokey tells her quietly. Drain and God Grove are such distinct, unique places. It's easy to forget there's a whole Earth, a little to the left of most versions of Earth in terms of how its people look, but still Earth, out beyond them.

(After all, how would Click Clack know what Italian food is, if there's no Italy?)

"Lived in a small community of Batfolk called Brazoria, off the Chocolate Bay in the Gulf of Mexico. Kinda wedged between desert and bayou. It was calm there. Not much to do except go to the beach."

[coolhatluvr]

"That sounds fun though! I've only ever been to the Grove Cove. Did they have cowboys in your part of Texas, and that's why you like King so much?" Texas is part of the part of the US that shows up in cowboy movies, right? She's only seen a couple, mostly with Ban, and he kept picking ones that Alexei insisted were 'weird' and 'atypical of the genre.'

Alexei only likes the cowboy movies where they eat spaghetti, which is like...Patty had no idea it was so important as to spark its own sub-genre! Is that why Vibi thought it was so cool when Styella showed off her spaghetti sauce dress?

[elvaquerito]

"Oh yeah, we had cowboys," Pokey says delightedly, swinging their feet from the rafters. "I like King because I think she's smart, and kind, and really cool. She's someone I really admire. I think she has really important things to say, that help a lot of people, and I really want to be like her in that regard. Plus she kinda was the reason I figured out that I wanted to be masculine in the way that a girl is masculine, if that makes sense? But also yeah the cowboy thing is extremely cool."

Just as Pokey finishes their thought, however, a little scratching sound can be heard. It's probably inconsequential to Patty, with how quiet it is, but Pokey perks up immediately and draws a finger to their lips in a silent "shh." Something's here.

[coolhatluvr]

"Eep!" For a moment there Patty had been so caught up in the elation of learning more about her darling joyfriend that she completely forgot they were on stakeout. She claps her hands over her mouth, peering down at the door. But she hasn't forgotten any of that, and she's totally going to ask Pokey to tell her more about cowboys and the bayou and masculine girls later <3

For now, though, they've got a fairy to catch! ...So what does a fairy even look like, anyway?

[elvaquerito]

Well, there are lots of types of fairy. In this particular case, the critter in question is what is called a hobbe. Short and squat with a sort of block-shaped body where the division between head, neck, and shoulders is unclear. Its grey-pink skin is sparsely covered with eggshell-colored fur, and its wide, expressive mouth takes up almost all the lower half of its face, and its pointed ears are huge, but its flat, scrunched nose and beady dark eyes take up very little real estate. With short legs, knobby knees, and arms so long that they drag behind the thing, it begins lumbering through the mill, turning all the equipment on to process flour from wheat.

The little fellow then hops onto a stool and begins using his huge hands to turn a wheel crank, working on milling a smaller, manual batch of corn meal. From this angle, his back is visible, and a pair of insectoid wings can be seen catching the thin strands of lights coming in from the windows still.

He also appears to be wearing Pokey's spare pair of boots that went missing from the apartment.

[coolhatluvr]

Patty stifles a gasp, nudging Pokey to make sure they saw the boots. This must be the fairy that tried to ruin their domestic bliss! Ohh, she's ready to jump down there and give him a piece of her mind.

But she hangs back for a moment, giving Pokey a questioning look. What's it going to be, galpal? Are they going to try talking to the guy, or jump him first and then try talking?