EVENT 035

[sticksandbonesmods]

EVERY SUMMER HAS A STORY

As is the case with every April, a certain skeleton wanders his way out of the woods to party. For some of you, this is an expected occurrence. For others, no one has warned you that Mr. Bone-Jangles typically likes to play and concoct whacky adventures to take everyone on, ranging from a funny grocery store trip to going to a whole new city covered in neon. He intends, as always, to drag you somewhere fun. He intends, as always, to stop Suri from interfering with this.

You’d think by this point Mr. Bone-Jangles and Suri would realise that when their magics clash, the results are often hilariously catastrophic. To that end, late-nighters may very well see sparks in the distance as a skeleton wars with a fallen God, bolts of dark magic from Suri and waves of magical pumpkins and glitter coming from the far shorter spirit. However climactic or cliche, the bursts meet in the middle, pushing against each other until they’re forced to explode outwards.

Everyone wakes up the following morning at 6am to the tune of sharp whistles and camp bells, climbing out of bunk beds in log cabins that smell heavily of dust and sweat. It almost, almost masks the overwhelmingly floral scent in the air bleeding in from outside. Spring has sprung and the flowers are boinking, and somehow you’re at summer camp.

You do not need to understand why you’re at a summer camp in April. That is for Mr. Bone-Jangles to explain, except he won’t.

Your cabin-mates are probably as confused as you are as they all wake alongside you. A camp counsellor in red will accompany your stay and make sure you kids don’t get lost in the woods, though they largely also look like they don’t want to be here — save for Mr. Bone-Jangles, of course, who is delighted that this worked out after all. You and your cabinmates are all wearing the same colour, T-shirt and shorts in identical tones; those of you who are adults are unfortunately (or fortunately, if you’re feeling zesty) wearing customizable booty shorts with differing text on the ass instead, and yes, that includes old men like Stan. And no, you cannot change into other outfits unless they’re appropriately-covering swimsuits or pyjamas in the same exact colours as your assigned attire.

TEAMS, COLOURS, & COUNSELLORS

Team Sticky	Orange	Ydalir
Dipper	Varka	Muichiro
Ras	Shinobu	Stan

Team Greasy	Yellow	Zonari
Joshua	White Lily	Ain
Ryan	Zoey	Wolfwood

Team Crunchy	Green	Zahliya
Senjuro	Shadow Milk	Till
Corbeau	Pure Vanilla	Nicole

Team Fuzzy	Blue	Heimr
Faust	Mystery	Akaza
Kanda	Genya	Luca

Team Goopy	Purple	Renard
Stardust	Allen	Link
Tengen	Flamebringer	Kyojuro

Team Velvet	Pink	Suri
Mephisto	Lodi	Mizuki
Urbain	Pavlova	River

Team Crispy	White	Mr. Bone-Jangles
Ezell	Aira	Vildred
Min-Gi	Kiera	Jing Yuan

As the procession of tired, unhappy campers shuffle outside, sorted into cabin colours like a box of crayons and dressed according to Crayola standards too apparently, a sign sitting by the lake billows in the breeze. “CAMP DIAMOND LAKE, WHERE BECAME THE FIRST EVER TO HAVE AS IN THE ERA OF THAT WHEN. CONGRATULATIONS!”. You think whoever wrote this had a stroke. But apparently they were the first ever, so jot that down.

Before you rests a sparkling, enormous lake. The cabins sit in a U-shape around it, and the mess hall across the way takes up most of the real estate — perhaps, you think, it’s a bit too massive for a cafeteria. The shower blocks sit close by on the west side between the clinic and the Sticky cabin, open-air and only with a single curtain for privacy. The first-aid building looks to be unmanned on first glance, but in fact, a single oversized moss squirrel runs the joint and runs it quite well. Since this is a vacation, they insist you don’t help with any of their tasks and leave them to their tinctures and brews. The same is true of the mess hall as you’re led there by one very enthusiastic skeleton — it is manned by Ms. Bone-Jangles and their skeleton kids, and they’re serving breakfast now, so you may as well have a bite and stay out of her kitchen before she swats you with a ladle. This is a vacation!

Welcome to Camp Diamond Lake. Population: 42 of you, 6 tired counsellors, and 8 happy skeletons.

CAMP HAIR, DON’T CARE

This is the one and only time you’ll see Suri looking so put-out.

Mr. Bone-Jangles is a big fan of activities. Of fanfare. Of doing things. But somewhere along the lines of having his magic overpowered by a stars-damned skeleton of all things, the old campground had grown a bit cursed and wild, as if all of the efforts to re-stabilize the magic in this forest was for naught. Not that it affects you as much as it should; it’s too kooky, too silly, and does no harm. Suri is, of course, the type to want to be in charge… which he is not. Because his boss is a skeleton. And this skeleton requires, again, doing activities.

A fair few of your counsellors try to make the best of it. Renard, Heimr, and Ydalir are continually trying to keep the mood up. Zahliya simply treats it as another task to be done, devoid of many emotions except “I gotta”, as is his default. Zonari continually gets into trouble by refusing to accompany her cabin on their mandated activities and is in additional trouble for cutting up her shirt to ribbons; when she acts as a lifeguard by the lake during her shift, she barely blows her whistle and simply sits there chewing on the end of it. Suri is exclusively here to stare weirdly from the sidelines and frown deeply because, thanks to whatever barriers Bone-Jangles has put on him and all the other counsellors, they can’t hurt each other. Nor can you hurt them, nor can he hurt you. He came up with such a nice vacation for you by putting you in the hotel with sirens that want to eat you. Mr. Bone-Jangles is a chump.

He does not say this, because his pay has already been docked. He didn’t know he was getting paid.

For everyone, the time here is cyclical and predictable, scheduled down to the mere minute. Breakfast is at 6:30am to 7:30am; lunch is from 12pm to 2pm due to some activities stretching long; dinner occurs from 6pm to 7pm and you’re expected to get the fuck out at exactly 7:01pm or face a disappointed stare from Ms. Bone-Jangles. Despite this, the food at the mess hall is genuinely delicious, served up on fancy plating and with a strange four-star restaurant quality to it. If you ask nicely, Ms. Bone-Jangles will slip you liquor, despite her husband’s adamant insistence that liquor does not belong at summer camp. He may be the boss, but she is his wife. The sole issue you have to deal with doesn’t come from the food, but from the fact that the mess hall is enchanted with truth magic, compelling chatty campers to blurt out the truth. No lies can be told. This is, expectedly, the only way Zonari can entertain herself here, by maintaining this Zone of Truth so that you fuel her gossip. Perhaps the gossip club would appreciate this, were it not from her.

You can shower whenever you want, as much as you want, without it being restricted. A block of free time to do non-camp-mandated activities occurs from 7:30 to 9:00 in the morning, at which point everyone is rounded up to do a before-lunch activity before an after-lunch activity occurs. Another brief bit of downtime occurs after dinner before Bone-Jangles gathers everyone up to roast marshmallows in a bonfire that’s a little Too Large, make s’mores, tell campfire stories and sing songs, and wind down for the evening. Curfew is at 9pm, and although you’re free to stay up later than that, wake-up is at 6am and you will be dragged out of bed regardless. Sneaking off to other cabins to sleep also doesn’t work; whatever sleepytime magic is cast over you by the point you get tired makes you automatically return to your assigned one.

Goodnight! :) And good morning. Hi. It’s another day.

MUDDY SHOES, HAPPY HEART

Speaking of wild magic and activities…

Tug-of-war is played at variable times throughout your campground experience. The losing team, or person or people — perhaps participants is the word — go into the lake with a grand splash and the realisation that they can breathe underwater. You can choose, if you want, to swim in it at any time, explore a little under the waves and collect shiny rocks and be accosted by fish who don’t mean to bump into you. The longer you stay in the water, the more you transform into a kelpie; luckily, this enchantment is easy to undo by simply getting out of the water and staying on dry land for about half an hour.

There is a catapult behind the mess hall. None of the counsellors are truly sure why it’s there, but if correctly armed, it will launch you harmlessly into the lake. If incorrectly armed, it will launch you harmlessly into the forest, a building, or right at the ground. The enchantment on it prevents you from becoming a splat ball and dying, but that doesn’t mean it won’t hurt. Ydalir earnestly insists no one use the catapult; Renard has, unfortunately, already armed it. Good luck.

The nature hike occurs during the daytime hours only, and takes campers through a mushroom forest. The hike itself isn’t too steep but isn’t too gentle either, and the mushrooms can be climbed to your heart’s content. Being kind to the mushrooms will yield gifts from the native mushroom men in the form of jewellery and trinkets people dropped out in the woods eons ago. Being mean to the mushrooms means that you will instead be blasted with spores, and inhaling them means getting extremely high for several hours.

Back at the campground, a 40ft rock wall that no one saw until it became plot-relevant can be climbed freely. While it’s recommended to use the safety gear and have someone spot you, you don’t have to do this — most camp counsellors will not stop you from being your worst self if you want. Ydalir and Heimr, who hate fun, really insist that you please be safe and use the damn equipment. Either way, as you climb the rock wall, the handholds will wiggle and come to life under your grip, licking your hands and feet as you ascend. The fastest climber — and no cheating if you can fly! — will ring the bell at the top and win absolutely nothing.

Every Wednesday are art classes, held in the mess hall before dinner. Any medium is available to use — popsicle stick art, painting, sculpting, you name it, it’s happening — and every camper is required to participate in some form of macaroni art or their feet will be glued to the floor and they will be unable to leave. Adding a single macaroni to whatever you’re working on will fix this issue.

Thankfully, there isn’t much odd shit you can be wrangled into at night. Technically. Kind of.

MAKING MEMORIES UNDER THE STARS

Sometimes when you stare into the rift, an eye stares back.

Constellation-finding (or making, rather, as the Grove lacks known constellations) is an activity that gets held some nights, when the sky is particularly clear and the weather is particularly nice. In the night sky, however, it’s difficult to discern the sky rift from the rest of the pitch-black environment; the stars shining in the rift blend in too easily with the stars in the sky, and it’s only the occasional glance of a moving eye overhead before it disappears that signals where said rift even is. Something is looking in at you. Something gently sings.

No one knows what it is.

Regardless, playing constellation-maker with your peers is encouraged and even pushed for a little bit, as no one wants to talk about the goddamn eyeball that floats in every couple hours. No thanks, nuh-uh. But if you stare long enough into the wrong part of the sky, into the rift itself, something in you will change until you manage to tear your affixed gaze away. Sometimes it’s as simple as turning into a toad or being able to only speak in rhyme or your skin and eyes turning starlike. Sometimes it’s as harrowing as growing extra eyes that all want to continue to look into the rift. Sometimes everything you say comes out backwards.

On future constellation-making nights, Mr. Bone-Jangles henceforth uses a bright emergency flashlight to try to keep people aware of the edge of the rift, instead of, you know, calling off the activity. Because why would he do that when there’s the whole rest of the sky to look at?

As the days drag on and the weather gradually starts to get warmer and warmer, the campground times come to an end. You go to sleep in your cabins for the final time, fall asleep, and dream of waking up in your own goddamn bed. In the morning, you don’t wake to the sounds of those awful campground sirens, and instead open your eyes to your own bedroom.

Oh, thank fuck.

Spark Notes (Click to Expand)

summary

EVERY SUMMER HAS A STORY: Welcome to Summer Camp (in April)! You're stuck here for the month. You're also stuck in attrocious outfits with funny booty shorts. Feel free to pick your own shorts text. Good luck. :)
CAMP HAIR, DON’T CARE: Your days are scheduled down to the minute, and your counsellors are somewhere between "doing their best in the circumstances" and "wanting to strangle a skeleton". Enjoy the nightly bonfire!
MUDDY SHOES, HAPPY HEART: Look, a list of Activities to do! Hooray! Yay! You're free to also make up your own and add onto this. Lots to do at summer camp.
MAKING MEMORIES UNDER THE STARS: Don't stare into the rift. If you do, you'll be hit with various effects. At least you'll be able to go home by the end of the month, though.

out of character

It's April! That's all I have to say. Please go crazy, this is a "make your own fun" event and I largely do not care what you add to it as long as it doesn't break my setting. It's supposed to be Funny, please keep it funny, but otherwise uhhh go insane I love you.

updates

Any potential updates, such as characters damaging something important or whatever else, will be put here.

submissions

❖ Questions
❖ April Plotting
❖ Past Life Plotting (Closed to Game Members)
❖ Investigations

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