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sticks and bones. ([personal profile] sticksandbonesmods) wrote in [community profile] sticksandbones2024-07-05 09:23 am

EVENT & TDM 014

THE OCEAN IS ONLY SCARY IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT
WAKE UP
You open your eyes to a peaceful, beautiful forest. Whatever you were dreaming about — be it something happy, something sad, or something nightmarish — seems secondary to the bright wash of greenery and the comforting, cooling breeze that washes over you. It rustles the leaves of the canopy overhead, disturbing a small nest of two-headed birds who chirp as the sticks for their nests are blown away. A hop, hop, hop later, and they return to continue their building, unbothered by your gaze.

As you walk around, you will find that Aldric’s Grove feels… empty. You pop your head into the inn only to find a fine layer of dust on the furniture, and an ever-burning fireplace refusing to be put out. The General Store is unmanned, the door locked, and the lights inside completely out. The house to the south is abandoned, and a building labelled as a clinic sports no patients. The most life you’ll find lies in the church, where the pigeons see you and swarm at your feet, cooing and asking for breadcrumbs.

Flowers bloom, a deer with a halo of horns skips through the clearing, and a small lizard shaped like a leaf climbs the well. You spend several hours alone… and then from the woods to the east comes a giant capybara and a monstrous moose two stories tall. Upon each of them, they carry a hoard of people coming back from what is clearly a summer vacation, if the inner tubes, swimwear, and overwhelming stench of sunscreen are anything to go by.

Maybe the people dismounting the two animals will be nice enough to greet you and tour you around. It’s the least they can do, since you were excluded from the vacation activities.
NOT A MOMENT OF PEACE
It’s still early in the month when a cacophony occurs; an enormous crocodile with too many eyes, known simply as “The Behemoth” suddenly rushes out of the river in a panic as some kind of blue, veinlike latticework covers the surface of it, nearly trapping her within it. It spreads across the entire length of the river from east to west, creeping onto the shoreline up to the church and across the back of the home to the south. When touched, it stings bad enough to paralyse the nervous system, and after making contact for too long while you’re unable to move? Death is imminent, unless someone saves you.

The Behemoth certainly doesn’t try to, too occupied plonking around on land to look for something to do while she can’t go into the water. She won’t attack anyone, but she’s normally searching for a meal, if you don’t mind sharing a snack. As for the other supernatural creatures in the Grove…

Ever since that latticework covered the river, the moose monster — Moder — and the gargoyle that sits on the church’s roof — Zahliya — have only stared and scrutinized. One wrong move, one fight with another resident of the Grove, means either of them are getting up to deal with the problem. It seems that they’re waiting for someone here to show the wrong hand, suspicious of everyone — including those who have been here for over a year at this point. And the second one toe is out of line? Either of them are willing and ready to kill.

Though the suspicion of the Guardians doesn’t wear off and won’t any time soon, the blue gunk covering the river disappears at the end of the first week of July, and it’s anyone’s guess what’ll happen for the rest of the month.
UNDER THE SEA
cw: thalassophobia
What happens is pretty simple if you don’t think about it: Another week passes in peace, and then a disembodied voice somewhere in the woods says, “You guys still smell like seawater and sand, and it’s putting me off of my lunch,” and if you’re new and haven’t gone to the beach yet and have no idea what the voice is talking about… too bad, you’re being lumped in with the crowd. Being lumped in also includes, well… a burst of magic, the sound of fingers snapping, and a loud splash of water. When you next open your eyes…

You’re underwater in some kind of reinforced metal base, one thousand meters under the sea, and something is slamming against the outside of it in an attempt to get in and — presumably — eat you alive. If anyone finds the on-board torpedoes in the command room in time, you might be able to kill the creature before it breaks through the hull and kills everyone inside. And with that hopefully taken care of…

Welcome to your new home for the next two weeks. Your only objective is to survive. There are several rooms here dedicated to underwater research, a bedroom with enough uncomfortable single-person beds for everyone (sadly glued to the floor, too), and a “cafeteria” type room that you can eat in. While the seabase comes equipped with supplies — torpedoes, enough rations to last for everyone but not enough for big eaters to eat big, diving suits and oxygen tanks, and underwater planter boxes growing strange fruits — it may take some effort on your part to ensure that survival is guaranteed. After all, the hungry leviathans know exactly where you are, whether you go outside of the base or not. Water, of course, may pose an issue; there’s no way to filter the seawater here, so the bottled water you have is all you’ll get.

Should you venture out, make sure you’re equipped with the proper gear first. Those of you who cannot swim should probably stay indoors, as there are no fancy vehicles to take you anywhere. Those of you capable of going out may consider braving the danger in search of additional supplies… or perhaps you’re just curious about the ecosystem. You’ll be here for two weeks, after all, there must be something to do. Travel far enough from the base and you’ll find the skeletal remains of something far larger than the Grove itself… and if you’re not careful, a monstrous, snakelike thing who wants you for dinner.

Try not to lead it back to the base for the others to deal with. Who knows how kindly people will take to that?
AN OMINOUS RETURN
As always, when one of the Forest’s “games” ends and you’re returned to the surface when the magic wears off, there’s a reward waiting for you. This reward isn’t as obvious, however. The fog wall is, for the most part, rolled pretty far back. The folks that have been here before may expect to see it revealing more of the trees, or showing off some new area that hasn’t been accessible yet, but the Grove remains quiet upon return. The Guardians, too, have little to say. Normally, they’d be a little more overjoyed at your return… alas.

No, the “reward” for surviving — or blowing up the base immediately and dying, either way — is that the fog wall obscuring the lake ever so slowly rolls back. From within it, something jumps out, a dark black shape, and disappears into the forest.



Perhaps you’ll see whatever it is another time.
SPARK NOTES
CLICK TO EXPAND!
WAKE UP
Welcome to the empty Aldric's Grove! ...oh, here come the people, back from summer vacation! Hey hello.

NOT A MOMENT OF PEACE
The river and shoreline near it are messed up for a week. The Guardians are suspicious of everyone here. The Behemoth is taking big steppies around the Grove asking nicely for food. A week passes, and the Guardians are still suspicious of everyone. Yaaaay.

UNDER THE SEA
And then, everyone was trapped underwater in a seabase, made to survive the horrors of the open deep sea. Watch out for leviathans! And try not to eat and drink all of the rations immediately; that's all you'll get.

AN OMINOUS RETURN
Your reward for playing in yet another of the Forest's games is the fog wall over the lake rolling back. Of course, what jumped out of it and ran off into the woods could either be your greatest boon, or your biggest nuisance. It all depends on you.

OOC
Happy summer! This is a reminder that TDMs are considered game canon. For your threads, feel free to make up your own leviathans/weird fish/whatever you want for spice, or just steal from Subnautica, it's all good. OOC Plotting Lives Here if you'd like to plot anything out!

UPDATES
❖ None yet!

doharm: (2)

Dr. Fritz Ludwig AKA "The Medic" | Team Fortress 2

[personal profile] doharm 2024-07-05 11:18 pm (UTC)(link)
[CONTENT WARNINGS: At the jump, Medic here comes from a canon that, while operating on overtly dark humor/cartoony sort of rules, is grounded in reality in that it deals with some aforementioned Dark Stuff. Medic himself is a mercenary that deals in active warfare and all the bloodshed that entails, so here's a big ol CW for just about everything: war, murder/assassination, gratuitous violence, blood/gore, human experimentation (willing and non), drug use/abuse, psychopathic/sociopathic behavior, etc. If any of this stuff bothers you or you'd like it to be avoided outright in tagging him just lmk. TF2 is ultimately an extremely goofy canon and all of this stuff is not treated with even remotely a heavy hand, so it's not as bad as it sounds I promise. He's just here for funsies okay]

A) Not a moment of peace | The River

[Time flies when you've been sucked into a new dimension, and your work doesn't stop even when you've been forcefully wrenched from the battlefield. Rude to be pulled away right as he was mid-amputation, but it's fine. The guy didn't need that leg anyway, he'd walk it off-

Which is why Fritz is still walking around with his labcoat covered in a layer of what used to be fresh blood splatters, now darkened with the hours as he wanders the perimeter of the Grove to get a good survey of the land. He's got a massive fuck-off gun of some sort strapped to his back, but it doesn't look like the conventional gun you'd expect to be seeing used in the war. It's more like a bazooka than a pistol, and the massive handle on it suggests the way it's operated is...unique, to say the least.

Well, no matter. There are no bullets whizzing past his head at present, which means he has the opportunity to see what's what.

There are two places he can be found. By the River, inspecting the Nethersea Brand from an uncharacteristic distance. You see, he was going to collect a sample with his bare hands, at least until he watched one of the little fish under the water brush up against it and get immediately stunned for a few seconds. Fascinating.

He glances over to a white pigeon whose wings are slightly stained with someone else's blood sitting on his shoulder preening himself, his head tucked under his wing.]


What do you think, Archimedes? Are you brave enough to grab your Papa a sample?

[The bird pulls his head out and produces a feather. For you.

Fritz sighs, rolling his eyes.]


Yes, I thought not.

[He is Going to grab it. Maybe he can collect some by poking it with a stick or something...hang on he's stick hunting now brb

OR you might find him having discovered the Behemoth, who he is immediately fucking charmed by.]


Hallo mein Lieber, aren't you just a precious thing?

[You know, said about a fucking crocodile with a hundred eyes that could kill him instantly, but will she do that when Archimedes is flying over to her to light on her snout, becoming perfectly round there? No, I thought not.

At least until Fritz shoos the bird away with a wave of his hand, prompting him to land back on his shoulders.]


Archimedes, no. Don't be rude.


B) Under the Sea | Anywhere honestly

[Okay, this place is fucking fascinating and he's not in a huge rush to get back to the front, if he's honest.

Now that they're stuck underwater, Fritz has shifted course to studying the strange fish through the glass with a sort of childlike glee he hasn't experienced since his first autopsy. And if someone asks him "well if you're so excited why don't you go out there?" he'll wave a hand and laugh.]


Ach, don't be silly! I can't swim! I'd go out there and sink like a brick!

[Not that he hasn't had to swim in the trenches before, but that water was like, 5ft at most. Often times ankle deep. That is not the open sea, he isn't looking to throw himself into the mouth of a Leviathan (yet).

And while he isn't doing that...he's set up for himself a little station in one of the spare rooms. It's small and cramped and not really convenient, but he's worked on less with less. Archimedes is nearby of course, perched on the one cot like he owns it, though Fritz will be happy to shoo him away if it's needed for a patient. And if you come in for medical aid, he'll usher you over to sit down.]


Did something get you out there, my dear? Fret not, I'll have you feeling better than you did when you woke up this morning.

[Said mid-sentence alongside him just pulling out a syringe that's far too large, you guys are used to people stealing your blood around here, right? Of course you are.]
eidxiety: blush (bw. 022)

A is for uh Behemoth i think // cw: an entire thread in german

[personal profile] eidxiety 2024-07-05 11:26 pm (UTC)(link)
[Ain wheeling around because he just heard a human speak the Celestial tongue like !!!!!

Here comes an excitable!!! man who ALSO has a pigeon AND an owldog!! He is here!]


Haha, hallo! Ich hätte nicht erwartet, hier jemanden zu finden, der meine Muttersprache spricht. [This is gonna be a lot of hovering over things good luck.] Dieses Krokodil heißt übrigens „The Behemoth“.
Edited 2024-07-05 23:27 (UTC)
doharm: (7)

Sorry there's going to be so much hovertext here bc if you THINK I'm not gonna do that-

[personal profile] doharm 2024-07-05 11:37 pm (UTC)(link)
[It's funny. Fritz works with a team that is quite shockingly culturally diverse. Like, we've got a man for every country. Germany, Scotland, France, America. You want a region covered? We've probably got someone for it. But even with that in mind, they don't really speak one anothers' mother languages. They all speak English- it's what they tend to default to for ease- but sometimes. Man.

And Fritz has a heavy, heavy German accent. It's clear it's never left him, even over long years away from home. So, when this young man comes sprinting up speaking it, he can't help the grin that splits his face from ear to ear.]


Ich auch nicht! Bist du nicht auch nur ein süßes kleines Ding?

[He chuckles, bringing his hands back to himself as Archimedes decides to hop from one shoulder to the other the moment he notices another bird. Two birds!! Wow. Fritz has been without his pigeon posse, so this is a treat. He coos at them like :) hi]

Der Scharfschütze spricht ständig über Krokodile im Outback. Dies ist das erste Mal, dass ich einen persönlich sehe. Ich hatte keine Ahnung, dass sie so viele Augen hatten!
eidxiety: (c. 064)

[personal profile] eidxiety 2024-07-06 12:02 am (UTC)(link)
[Ope there goes Ain twirling his braid, boy why are you like this.

Zinnia pops to Ain's shoulder, mirroring Archimedes and cooing. In pigeon, she is saying that there are many pigeons in the church, and sometimes the nice priest man gives them breadcrumbs. :) Dachie meanwhile just sits there with his tongue lolling out of his beak.]


Normalerweise haben sie nicht so viele Augen, haha. Die Tiere hier sind alle komisch. Wo ich herkomme, sind sie normalerweise nicht so.