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❅ SHITTY LITTLE TOWN ❅ PART 1
Each year in this town, the winters seem to get harder and the summers seem to get hotter, and this was no exception. After several months of sweltering afternoons and sweaty nights, fall is finally starting to break the town’s fever, although with the cooler weather comes the death of the horseflies, leaving many of the town’s flat surfaces coated in bug carcasses. The sky is overcast, the air remains humid, and in the distance thunderstorms can be heard almost every hour of the day.
During the day, people go about their usual routines, working primarily at the slaughterhouse or mines during the weekdays, vegetating in front of the television on Saturdays, and sitting straightbacked and paranoid in the pews on Sunday, fearful less of the wrath of God than the ire of the neighbors. Evenings for the average person are filled with drinking at Nog’s or Auntie’s or peering at the TV until bedtime.
This is where our heroes find themselves, waking with a new lifestory that integrates them into this, the shitty little town.
PROMPTS
a) NOG'S
Nog's bar is the preferred haunt of most of the miners and slaughterhouse workers in this town, who meet to drink their woes away, complain about their supervisors and speculate on the personal lives of the people around them. Despite Mr. Goluboy's constant harassment, Nog has managed to keep his liquor license, and as such is one of the few successful businesses in town on account of all the stress-induced alcoholism. While one won't find fancy cocktails here, if they're just looking for a beer and some scuttlebutt, this is the place.
Nog's bar is the preferred haunt of most of the miners and slaughterhouse workers in this town, who meet to drink their woes away, complain about their supervisors and speculate on the personal lives of the people around them. Despite Mr. Goluboy's constant harassment, Nog has managed to keep his liquor license, and as such is one of the few successful businesses in town on account of all the stress-induced alcoholism. While one won't find fancy cocktails here, if they're just looking for a beer and some scuttlebutt, this is the place.
b) AUNTIE'S
"Auntie's" is the name of the old-school, 1950's-esque, 24-hour diner in the middle of downtown, with big red pleather booths, checkerboard floors and a jukebox. Typically, the only difference in clientele between Auntie’s and Nog's is that the people at Auntie’s wanted a burger or a stack of pancakes alongside their beer – but unlike Nog's, Auntie’s is only barely hanging on, constantly getting ticketed for waterspots on the silverware and not having enough napkins. Thankfully, one can get a full breakfast meal at Auntie's any time of day for a few dollars.
"Auntie's" is the name of the old-school, 1950's-esque, 24-hour diner in the middle of downtown, with big red pleather booths, checkerboard floors and a jukebox. Typically, the only difference in clientele between Auntie’s and Nog's is that the people at Auntie’s wanted a burger or a stack of pancakes alongside their beer – but unlike Nog's, Auntie’s is only barely hanging on, constantly getting ticketed for waterspots on the silverware and not having enough napkins. Thankfully, one can get a full breakfast meal at Auntie's any time of day for a few dollars.
c) THE DOCKS
The town is alongside a lake, and once upon a time there was enough fish to sustain a modest fishing economy and a river that allowed for trade by boat with other nearby towns. However, with the mines' pollution, fish are no longer considered safe to eat, and only the water immediately adjacent to the springhead on the Warren Family Farm is safe to swim in. Draining from the mines has lowered the level of the river enough that it's no longer navigable. Residents will still occasionally use the lake for boating recreation, but fees at the marina keep going up (into Goluboy's pocket) and mothers are increasingly worried about letting their children get wet in that water.
The town is alongside a lake, and once upon a time there was enough fish to sustain a modest fishing economy and a river that allowed for trade by boat with other nearby towns. However, with the mines' pollution, fish are no longer considered safe to eat, and only the water immediately adjacent to the springhead on the Warren Family Farm is safe to swim in. Draining from the mines has lowered the level of the river enough that it's no longer navigable. Residents will still occasionally use the lake for boating recreation, but fees at the marina keep going up (into Goluboy's pocket) and mothers are increasingly worried about letting their children get wet in that water.
d) THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE
The other major employer, owned by Ms. Cygne. Most of the locals who don't work at the mines work at the slaughterhouse, where the work is disgusting, dreary and grueling. Sometimes people get promoted out of the trenches and into admin. Yay.
The other major employer, owned by Ms. Cygne. Most of the locals who don't work at the mines work at the slaughterhouse, where the work is disgusting, dreary and grueling. Sometimes people get promoted out of the trenches and into admin. Yay.
e) BIG TOP CIRCUS COFFEE
Dick's Coffeeshop is in the bottom floor of an apartment building, and many locals have no idea how it hasn't been shut down yet, given that the owner is famously generous with his resources in a way that clearly irritates the city council. Dick offers jobs to those who Goluboy and Cygne won't hire at the mines or slaughterhouse and frequently sneaks day-old pastries to the hungry. The coffeeshop is one of the few areas where artists tend to converge, usually at the weekly open mic night; however, whatever one expresses at the coffeeshop is likely to be picked up by the town gossips, mocked relentlessly, distorted and spread around.
Dick's Coffeeshop is in the bottom floor of an apartment building, and many locals have no idea how it hasn't been shut down yet, given that the owner is famously generous with his resources in a way that clearly irritates the city council. Dick offers jobs to those who Goluboy and Cygne won't hire at the mines or slaughterhouse and frequently sneaks day-old pastries to the hungry. The coffeeshop is one of the few areas where artists tend to converge, usually at the weekly open mic night; however, whatever one expresses at the coffeeshop is likely to be picked up by the town gossips, mocked relentlessly, distorted and spread around.
f) THE FARMER'S MARKET
Because Mr. Goluboy's malicious prosecution of small businesses has essentially shut down any legal avenue for a farmer's market, a few of the residents of the town have established a black market for homegrown fruits and vegetables, small-batch soaps and candles, and other small products. Words gets out through a whisper network, and a few times a month everyone in the know meets in a parking lot, opens their trunk, and does some bartering and selling with each other until they get found out. Sheriff Mallard and her deputies have arrested many people at these pop-ups and confiscated their products. By now, these pop-ups have around forty people trading and selling at a time, and the city council has announced that out of concerns for food safety the sentence for being caught vending homegrown produce will be increased to a misdemeanor with jail time.
Because Mr. Goluboy's malicious prosecution of small businesses has essentially shut down any legal avenue for a farmer's market, a few of the residents of the town have established a black market for homegrown fruits and vegetables, small-batch soaps and candles, and other small products. Words gets out through a whisper network, and a few times a month everyone in the know meets in a parking lot, opens their trunk, and does some bartering and selling with each other until they get found out. Sheriff Mallard and her deputies have arrested many people at these pop-ups and confiscated their products. By now, these pop-ups have around forty people trading and selling at a time, and the city council has announced that out of concerns for food safety the sentence for being caught vending homegrown produce will be increased to a misdemeanor with jail time.
g) THE LIBRARY
The library, once well-stocked and indulgently funded, is now kept alive sheerly by the passion of the one paid librarian, Aziraphale, and the volunteers who work there. There is no interlibrary loan program and there have been no new books in years. The library is reduced to loaning damaged copies missing pages, and story hours or public events are difficult to organize due to the complete lack of resources. The city council has also forced Aziraphale to put up a sign against loitering or using the library "for any purposes besides the borrowing of books." An organization of local busybodies drops in frequently to comb through the stacks for "objectionable material," which is then destroyed at Ms. Cygne's behest.
The library, once well-stocked and indulgently funded, is now kept alive sheerly by the passion of the one paid librarian, Aziraphale, and the volunteers who work there. There is no interlibrary loan program and there have been no new books in years. The library is reduced to loaning damaged copies missing pages, and story hours or public events are difficult to organize due to the complete lack of resources. The city council has also forced Aziraphale to put up a sign against loitering or using the library "for any purposes besides the borrowing of books." An organization of local busybodies drops in frequently to comb through the stacks for "objectionable material," which is then destroyed at Ms. Cygne's behest.
h) WILDCARD/NEW LOCATION
Feel free to set things around town anywhere you want or make up new locations.
Feel free to set things around town anywhere you want or make up new locations.
i) THE SPOOKY WOODS
Outside the town, there are foggy, dense woods, difficult to navigate by foot due to thickets and brambles that come up to a grown man's waist. The city council has done what they can to ban people from going into the woods, and the gruesome animal maulings are a compelling disincentive.
Note: Let the plot mods know when your characters are going into the spooky woods.
Outside the town, there are foggy, dense woods, difficult to navigate by foot due to thickets and brambles that come up to a grown man's waist. The city council has done what they can to ban people from going into the woods, and the gruesome animal maulings are a compelling disincentive.
Note: Let the plot mods know when your characters are going into the spooky woods.
❅ OOC Plotting: Here. More locations can be found there. You can also ask the players running the plot questions there.
❅ Event Length: This part of the plot is to establish CR and characters' roles in town. It will last about a week and half before future parts that allow the characters to start digging into the mysteries of the town.
❅ New Characters: If your character is introing at this time, assume they arrived just in time at the location the plot takes place in to be caught up in the magic drawing everyone in. They would have gotten the Man in the Moon's spiel from the welcome page right before being magically sucked in.
❅ Opt-out: Anyone that doesn't want to play in the plot can handwave their character didn't go on the mission that put the characters in the location where they were sucked in. You can thread your characters back at the Pole or send them on another smaller mission with other characters.
no subject
"If we staged a fight, they might bring us in together," Aster says, already forgetting how much he hated being in jail, already moving past the damage that he and Dan seen together can do to each other's image. They have such bigger, more interesting problems all of a sudden than bad reputations. "I could help you pick 'em out."
no subject
She falls silent for a moment after Dan's question. "Ms. Cygne comes by every so often. Sometimes I go over for lunch."
Her voice is a little quieter than before, but she's doing her best to keep her tone consistent. Dan and Aster don't need to know that Ms. Cygne's the only company Lady gets these days-- the only person asking after her since the Bryants left town. She asks about Lady's dancing, her schooling, whether she's taking care of herself. Whether she's been spending time with friends (no, she's focusing on her studies) or if any boys have caught her eye (no, she's focusing on her studies). Stupid, superficial shit like that.
Lady hates how starved she is for it, every time.
no subject
Be careful with Ms. Cygne, he wants to say, but there's no way he can say that without sounding condescending, and he's sure Lady's already aware.
"Who's the last person whose body got chalked up to animal attacks? Someone a few weeks back?" Maybe there's another way to get the information they're looking for.
no subject
He hates that Lady's way of getting in sounds more efficient, because he hates that this girl is already as involved as she is, was left alone to follow her very good instincts that would have put her directly in the path of monsters. Her route of gathering info is more efficient than theirs. But he doesn't like involving a child.
Not least because he hears the loneliness in her tone, speaking of Cygne, but he almost feels it more than he hears. Her big house is no less artificially, recently empty than his is. Unlike him, her loved ones chose to leave her in that house all by herself. Aster can't imagine the devastation of it - being a child whose caretakers decided they were better off leaving them to their own grief, all alone and mired in the place where it happened.
He hates that he has no real grounds to tell Lady that she deserves more than Cygne's crumbs of attention. He isn't a source she can believe it from, but he wishes he could track down her parents and force them to do better.
"You know who would know something?" He says, instead of launching into how Lady deserves more than lunch from a role model every once in a while. "Whoever's autopsying the bodies. The papers all said the animals were mauled, but those women, they were filthy, not bloody," he recalls. "The one I saw up close, the only blood on her was her own." He shudders, thinking of those sharpened teeth, how she'd ground gouges in her own lips, how her tongue was ragged past those pointed fangs. "If they were mauling prey they'd be covered with more than dirt. Any bodies they left in the woods would have time to get gnawed on by any number of scavengers. They must kill some other way."
no subject
"It's been nineteen days since the last attack." Lady gives a new entry for 'normal information to have memorized off the top of your head'.
She tries to think back to that day, to remember what Adam's corpse looked like when she stumbled across it, but every time she looks too close her mind starts to turn to static and this horrible whine starts to build in her throat. It makes her feel like some pathetic, wounded animal. She stops trying when the noise gets too close to escaping.
She'll try again later, in the privacy of her room where there won't be any witnesses to what it takes to claw through her own mental walls.
no subject
Dan knows the answers to all the questions Lady poses, but he can tell that he isn't going to convince Lady it's a good idea. Dan's kept diligent tabs on all the deputies' comings and goings at the jailhouse, at Ms. Mallard's routines. It hasn't been with any sort of plan in mind; it's merely information to turn over in his head to pass the long, dull nights at the jail.
"Nineteen days. Might could be that the ones we saw just ain't attacked anything recently. We don't know if they're sentient enough to change to clean clothing." If that was clothing, which Dan isn't sure about. It could have been an illusion, or- or ectoplasm, or something something. Dan feels like he's taking it remarkably well, finding out that there are monsters. It feels like it just makes sense to him, and that maybe him getting stranded in this town was for a reason.
"Is this your neighbor's yard?" Dan asks. He squints; it doesn't seem possible that they got back here this quickly, almost like the woods have urged and coaxed them to get back to the town sooner.
no subject
He thinks perhaps it should bother him more, that something clearly supernatural is happening, but when he examines the facts of what he knows about the town he finds he simply believes it is happening - nothing supernatural, to his knowledge, has happened to or around him before, but it is happening now, and questioning the unbelievable nature of it feels like a waste of time. Today they crossed too much distance in a time it's impossible to cross in. A piece of machinery he doesn't understand broke in a way someone who does understand machines can't explain. There are monstrous women in the woods and the very fact of one reaching for him set off a panic reaction so deep set in his mind that he truly didn't know he could bolt so fast. Protesting that it's all too strange to be believed would be a waste of time.
"You ever had anything like this happen before?" he asks Dan, thinking, if things like this have been possible his whole life, surely he ought to have come up against something strange on his travels before.
no subject
"I don't think he died of blood loss."
Dan's observation takes her out of her thoughts. She looks up, surprised. She thought they were still at least half an hour from her neighbors' place.
"Yeah. Yeah, we're here. Follow me."
Lady leads them both the stump that sits right by the back fence. She steps up onto it.
"Keep quiet and keep your head down." With that, she lifts herself over the wooden-slat fence. She has to suppress a groan when she lands-- the impact isn't doing her legs any favors. She's definitely going to have to ice.
no subject
Dan notices the way Lady braces to land; injury, maybe, or some kind of chronic pain, and the pride and self-possession to want to keep it hidden from two men whom she trusts enough to invite home but not enough to show weakness to. He gets over the fence as well, moving with the mangled gracefulness of someone who knows how to move their body effectively but is no longer strong and able, who has the muscle memory but no longer has the muscle.
Once they're where he can speak again, Dan addresses Lady. "I hate to ask you what I'm sure is a painful question, but how much time did you get with Adam's body?"
no subject
It surprises him the way Lady and Dan don't, though out of politeness he refuses to say anything about it. He just looks at them both with a concern he's trying not to make too obvious. It's not his place to want to protect both Lady and Dan, do something about their discomfort and their difficulties, but he can't stave off the wanting any more than he can stave off hunger.
The absence of anyone to care about - actively care for, not merely want better for - haunts him more than any ghost could. Already, the amount he cares about both these strangers feels too much, feels out of line, and he'd be overstepping to express any of it. But there it is, like he has a missing limb he's trying to replace with connections that are too quick.
Anyway, he holds out his hand to Dan and Lady to help them up. He keeps quiet until they're inside, but once they're ensconced in Lady's house, he asks, "What kind of scars?" and watches Lady to see how badly recalling finding her brother's body is hurting her.
cw: bugs, light body horror, light passive suicidal ideation
The Bryant house is... nice. The interior walls are eggshell white, the carpet is beige, and the floors are a warm, dark wood. It looks less like a place to live and more like a staged exhibit. There's art on the walls, but few personal photos. Tasteful sconces light up the entryway. A large vase full of fake reeds sits in a corner.
Lady takes off her shoes at the door out of habit.
A second look shows signs of residency-- a duffel bag laying against the wall, a coat on a hanger, a glass on a coaster, but everything's clean in the way people keep their hotel rooms clean-- with an understanding that, no matter how long they're staying, this space does not belong to them. It is not hers to settle into.
Lady leads the men into the kitchen where she pours three glasses of water. She sets two out on the light granite counter and keeps one for herself.
The only thing that betrays her discomfort with Dan's question is the sudden tension in her jaw. She takes a drink to stall, and to clear the static from her brain. It doesn't help as much as she hopes, but more than she expects.
After realizing he was never going to answer her pleas, Lady had sat on the ground next to him. Watched over him. Wondered if she should reach out and hold his cold hand, if it might bring him any comfort. Wonders if she should lay down and let the bug burrow underneath her skin too. Let the rats chew chunks out of her skin. Take a rock and smash her ankles into pulp. They're twins-- a matched set. There's no place he can go that she won't follow. His blood is her blood, his flesh her flesh, and if he's going to rot then she should too.
She doesn't know how much time passes between finding him and leaving to find help, but she knows she had gone into the woods in the early morning and that the sun is high when she stands up to go.
Lady comes back to herself. Her fingertips are doing their best to gouge their way into the glass she's holding. She forces her grip to relax.
"A while," she answers.
no subject
"All kinds. Plenty that I would could definitely remember getting. Plenty I can't show in mixed company, given the location," he says, raising his eyebrows at Aster to convey that Aster can look later, but Dan isn't about to take his shirt off in front of a young woman when he already has a reputation for being a creep. "Here, here's one."
He pulls up where his hair is getting shaggy to show a scar that looks surgical on the back of his neck.
He accepts the water from Lady and immediately regrets asking the question he did when he sees the way she's digging her hands into the glass. There were better ways to get the information he wanted, kinder ways. He shouldn't have asked her to recall a moment like that.
But he's already asked. She's already in pain. She was in pain before he met her and dug all that up, and he thinks he knows enough about her to accurately guess that she'd rather put what she remembers to solving this mystery than just have it brought up and then left unused. "If we get information from the coroner or the sheriff's reports, would you might be able to see what's false?"
no subject
"You don't have to look at the files themselves," he adds. "We can - we can just ask you to confirm some things, and correct others."
no subject
"I can do that. It'll better if I can read it myself, I don't want to risk playing telephone with this."
She finishes her glass and sets it in the empty sink.
"There's food if you're hungry. And I'll be honest, I don't know where the sheets for the guest room are, but my parents' room has a king if you don't mind sharing? No toothbrushes, but there should be some soap." Lady winces as she begins to realize how unprepared for guests she actually is. "Feel free to make use of whatever."
"I'm going to grab a shower-" (and pop a couple of ibuprofen) "-but when I'm out, I've got something that might help us figure out what's going on."
no subject
Even bathed and with laundered clothes, Dan feels the lingering sense that people don't want to be near him. He knows he doesn't smell bad right now and knows he isn't coated in dirt and mold, but he's seen so many people shy away from his presence that he's just started to feel that it isn't about his state of hygiene so much as it is about him as a person.
"What is it you got in mind to help us figure things out?"
no subject
Somehow, the idea that Dan will be awake makes the thought of sleeping a lot easier. Like he already trusts Dan to stand watch, which implies a lot of trust for someone he just met. But it does make him feel better. He does find it easy to believe that Dan might be a night person the way he switches on with sunrise whether he's had four hours of sleep or even a luxuriant five.
"Take your time," he says to Lady. "I'm not going to be sleeping any time soon."
no subject
She approaches a closed door off of the foyer. She opens her palm to reveal a key that she fits into the locked handle. Before turning it, she pauses.
"Just... please don't tell people about this?" Not that she could really stop them, but they both seem kind enough that asking nicely might do the trick.
Lady turns the key and opens the door. She flips on the light as she walks in.
The room clearly was once used as a home office. There are tall, built-in bookshelves lining the walls and drawn blackout curtains cover a wall full of of impressive windows. A cushioned, high-backed desk chair sits behind an intimidating desk closer to the far wall. A couple of armchairs have been shoved into the corner to more floor room. All the furniture is made from matching warm-toned woods.
But all of that is secondary to the room's current purpose. The desk is covered in loose papers, some stacked and some spread out. A pile of library books sits on one of the shelves. A computer sits half-open on a side table. There are manilla file folders stacked on various surfaces, each one with a label too small to read.
Sitting in the center of the room is a freestanding, two sided cork board. Only one side is visible from the doorway. On it is a massive map of the town with various locations circled and highlighted in various colors. Multiple strings have been pinned across the board connecting various locations.
The main string is in red. The pins hold up pictures and small blurbs cut out of xeroxed news articles. Some of the faces are familiar-- some aren't. It doesn't take long to realize the connection between them all. These are people who have died from "animal attacks", their photos and obituaries tacked to the location their bodies were discovered. The articles go back decades, putting together a timeline that spans far beyond the deaths people have noticed in the past few years.
Only one point marked in red doesn't have a photo or label, and it's the one in the woods closest to Lady's home.
Other colors of string hold up names and locations. People who went missing and whose bodies were never found, places where people claimed to have seen one of the wild animals the attacks have been attributed to-- she's even marked people who have left town and never come back, not even to visit family.
Lady stands awkwardly to the side, letting Dan and Aster take it all in. It's a lot. She knows it's a lot. She also knows it looks more than a little insane, and that's before they've seen what's on the other side of the board, but after tonight maybe it looks a little less crazy than it would have otherwise.
no subject
He folds his hands behind his back and feels deep sadness that this is what Lady's been doing with her time. This solitary activity that asks her to dive back into the worst thing that happened to her over and over. It can't be healthy. It can't feel good. It clicks to Dan that it must feel like a drug does to him; it's not even necessarily that he likes the way meth makes his mind rattle or heroin makes him drowsy, but it's something when the alternative is to 'let it alone' and suffer in his own head.
Same behavior. He thinks Lady is addicted to the conspiracy, that the idea that there's an answer, some closure, is her drug of choice.
"Is it alright if I make some notes?"
He steps up to the map, fiddling with a pen in his pocket. He knows the woods slightly better than most because he has a trap line there and has gotten some squirrels and gophers as game meat during the day, and because on some nights he sleeps in a meager tarp-tent. He has some of his more precious belongings in a ziploc bag stuffed under some roots under a big tree. He can clarify which wild animals people probably saw and some of the details of the topography of the edges of the woods that never made it into the current maps.
"Did this start before or after Adam?"
no subject
"You've learned a lot, here," he says, because credit where it's due. "You got a lot of information."
But it doesn't add up to any conclusion, even with the addition of the monsters. Because the conclusion she was looking for might have been how her brother died, but the how opens up entirely into another how. How are there monsters in the woods? Why Adam? Why monsters at all?
Still, Aster's drawn to the notes Lady's taken about people who've left.
"Do you know any of these people? The ones who left?" he asks, wondering how long it's been since anybody any of them know left town.