![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
❅ SHITTY LITTLE TOWN ❅ PART 2
There's an article in the local paper, but word travels through the town hours before the first newspaper hits a doorstep: a man went missing down the mine, and they couldn’t even retrieve his body for his wife to bury. The official story is that there was a freak cave-in while the night crew was working, that no amount of preparation or technology could have prevented the act of God that left one of the arterials from the main mining cavern obstructed. Given that it was the night crew, there was only one witness, and he was violating protocol and too far down another arterial to hear or see what happened; because Goluboy has a zero-tolerance policy for breaking protocols, he fired the surviving miner. Goluboy has informed the newspaper that there will be no further efforts to recover the body.
Thus, two events are happening in town this weekend: Ms. Cygne’s debut ball, and a protest against the mining conditions outside the mouth of the mines.
Out in the woods, the fog has been thick to the point where subsistence hunters can’t venture in more than a few yards, and there seem to be strange sounds, almost like music, soft tank drums and ringing, emanating from the murk. It almost feels like the menace of the woods is...encroaching.
PROMPTS
a) PROTEST OUTSIDE THE MINE
The rage at Goluboy has been a long time brewing, but the people who live in his apartments wisely don’t appear at the protest. Instead, it’s all about twenty people who have just managed to avoid being dependent on Goluboy’s grace who have shown up with posterboards and a loudspeaker, rallying during the miners’ workday. This was all coordinated the day before my word of mouth, and it isn’t particularly well organized; people frequently end up blocking the mining equipment, and the foreman shouts at them to stay away from dangerous areas with marginal success. The three people with loudspeakers end up talking over each other and the chants are piecemeal and overlapping; however, the fact that people are upset about the perceived lack of safety for the miners and particularly for the abandonment of the missing miner’s body. Bring Him Home is the main chant and the only one that seems to get any muscle to it. The fired miner seems to be the person leading the most vocal chants.
The administrative staff from MineCorp have been asked to come field complaints from the protesters, armed with nothing but some talking points from the MineCorp mission statement (something something synergized comparative advantage for diversified innovative solutions something something labor is our most precious resource yada yada). One scruffy man seems to have hijacked the protest with his loudspeaker and is rambling about the animal maulings in the woods. At some point, Goluboy arrives in his armored Ford F-250. He calls over his foreman and has an annoyed conversation, and then he gets out, bodyguard looming behind him, to talk to individuals, putting on an evidently forced smile with gritted teeth.
The rage at Goluboy has been a long time brewing, but the people who live in his apartments wisely don’t appear at the protest. Instead, it’s all about twenty people who have just managed to avoid being dependent on Goluboy’s grace who have shown up with posterboards and a loudspeaker, rallying during the miners’ workday. This was all coordinated the day before my word of mouth, and it isn’t particularly well organized; people frequently end up blocking the mining equipment, and the foreman shouts at them to stay away from dangerous areas with marginal success. The three people with loudspeakers end up talking over each other and the chants are piecemeal and overlapping; however, the fact that people are upset about the perceived lack of safety for the miners and particularly for the abandonment of the missing miner’s body. Bring Him Home is the main chant and the only one that seems to get any muscle to it. The fired miner seems to be the person leading the most vocal chants.
The administrative staff from MineCorp have been asked to come field complaints from the protesters, armed with nothing but some talking points from the MineCorp mission statement (something something synergized comparative advantage for diversified innovative solutions something something labor is our most precious resource yada yada). One scruffy man seems to have hijacked the protest with his loudspeaker and is rambling about the animal maulings in the woods. At some point, Goluboy arrives in his armored Ford F-250. He calls over his foreman and has an annoyed conversation, and then he gets out, bodyguard looming behind him, to talk to individuals, putting on an evidently forced smile with gritted teeth.
b) DEBUT BALL
Ms. Cygne’s debut ball at her mansion is the event of the year, with all the lavishness than this sort of town can muster; beautiful dresses, a chocolate fountain, gift bags with expensive accessories and bonbons, fine sparkling wines, and invitations embossed with gold leaf. Plenty of the little treats are the sort that were presumed extinct in this town; no one’s seen a pair of Gucci sunnies or eaten a Ghirardelli’s in years here.
Most of the festivities take place in the massive ballroom that anchors the mansion, and they spill out into the lawn, where Ms. Cygne has insisted on a sit-down dinner rather than a “ghastly” buffet. The lady of the hour is quite active, making sure to check in with every single person at least once to make sure she’s getting praised for her hosting skills and getting a good look at every youth who’s appeared. The youths themselves have been pressured, by family members, teachers or Ms. Cygne herself, to present themselves as elegantly and politely as possible, and to make a “good showing” at their first event as a notable, respectable young person who may be a contender for Ms. Cygne’s prestigious scholarship.
At the table, people rub elbows with people they may not necessarily speak to otherwise, all brought together by the commonality of being someone Ms. Cygne has deemed noteworthy. Almost nobody allows themselves to get too inebriated, but one woman has a bit too much champagne and begins to cry at the dinner table; her friend, another woman in her thirties, ushers her to the powder room, where she composes herself while everyone awkwardly changes the subject. A few people do mannered waltzes in the ballroom, and out on the lawn, people mingle and make toasts.
Ms. Cygne’s debut ball at her mansion is the event of the year, with all the lavishness than this sort of town can muster; beautiful dresses, a chocolate fountain, gift bags with expensive accessories and bonbons, fine sparkling wines, and invitations embossed with gold leaf. Plenty of the little treats are the sort that were presumed extinct in this town; no one’s seen a pair of Gucci sunnies or eaten a Ghirardelli’s in years here.
Most of the festivities take place in the massive ballroom that anchors the mansion, and they spill out into the lawn, where Ms. Cygne has insisted on a sit-down dinner rather than a “ghastly” buffet. The lady of the hour is quite active, making sure to check in with every single person at least once to make sure she’s getting praised for her hosting skills and getting a good look at every youth who’s appeared. The youths themselves have been pressured, by family members, teachers or Ms. Cygne herself, to present themselves as elegantly and politely as possible, and to make a “good showing” at their first event as a notable, respectable young person who may be a contender for Ms. Cygne’s prestigious scholarship.
At the table, people rub elbows with people they may not necessarily speak to otherwise, all brought together by the commonality of being someone Ms. Cygne has deemed noteworthy. Almost nobody allows themselves to get too inebriated, but one woman has a bit too much champagne and begins to cry at the dinner table; her friend, another woman in her thirties, ushers her to the powder room, where she composes herself while everyone awkwardly changes the subject. A few people do mannered waltzes in the ballroom, and out on the lawn, people mingle and make toasts.
c) EXPLORE ELSEWHERE [Link]
OOC: Please feel free to thread with each other at any location in the town. Available NPCs are bolded. Please indicate in bold in your comment if you would like an NPC to tag in, or reach out to Em or Juliet specifically. We request that each player only request one NPC per character so we may respond quickly. Thank you!
OOC: Please feel free to thread with each other at any location in the town. Available NPCs are bolded. Please indicate in bold in your comment if you would like an NPC to tag in, or reach out to Em or Juliet specifically. We request that each player only request one NPC per character so we may respond quickly. Thank you!
There is gossip around town that characters can be handwaved as knowing that might drive some questions about the town and npcs:
- The spooky deaths in the woods that have been going on for ages.
- Mining disasters like this have happened before, always before the announcement of a big new mining vein opening up.
- Children who take Ms Cygne's scholarship never come back to the town, and their letters are very formulaic.
- Goluboy's wife died under mysterious circumstances, his girlfriend went to jail for the murder, and he is about town courting again.
- Cygne has a pond full of so many beautiful swans, aren't they lovely!
- The curfew sure is heavily enforced. Is it because the sheriff knows something about the monsters in the woods and is withholding information?
❅ Deja Vu: Characters may optionally start getting some very brief flashes of memory or deja vu but this will be brief, confusing, and alarming rather than revelatory and full memory regain will not be possible. Still, players can opt to have this cause a feeling of possible unease or un-rightness to the situation that can be used to drive characters to have questions or be suspicious enough to investigate areas and situations.
❅ Event Length: This part of the plot will involve an npcing stage. It will last approx. two weeks before the last part, part 3, though this end time may be shortened to match player pace if npc threads progress quickly.
❅ New Intros: If your character wasn't introed in part 1 you can handwave they've been there the whole time and just intro in part 2.
❅ New Characters: If you app a new character and want to intro them 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.
no subject
Aziraphale makes a little mental note to himself, turns over the concept of some sort of system that patrons could use to make their needs clear. Space, alone time, assistance, assistance of a less academic more personal sort-- probably wouldn't quite work.
Everyone would need to know the rules to use that system. Including the sort of people who... well, who it would largely be better to keep in the dark about it. Maybe someday. ]
Dear girl, if I found research boring, I would hardly keep a library. [ Like, come on now. ] If you would simply prefer not to go into it, that's a different matter entirely. I'm very good with boundaries. They're one of my favorite things.
[ The AU doesn't fall far from the canon at all, tbh. ]
no subject
Boundaries are not a very familiar concept, not in the way that Aziraphale means, when Skye grew up surrounded by people who were constantly in her business because of their expectations. She values her privacy and her secrets because she's been allowed so few of them.
It didn't occur to her that she could just ask Aziraphale to give her space, and she not entirely sure what to do with the offer when she was ready to lie her way out of the situation.
There's a long moment of hesitation as she looks down at her gathered work, knowing she doesn't have all the information she needs.]
I'd been hoping to find more historical surveys of the mines.
[There's an unspoken question there, hope that Aziraphale might have something tucked away.]
no subject
This is half the point of being a librarian, isn't it? Shepherding, encouraging. She wants some obscure nerdy stuff and by god, Aziraphale was born to understand that. ]
I may have just the thing. [ Nobody ever asks for old surveys!!!! His time has come! ] Nothing quite-- complete, mind you. Bit of historical salvage work I did on the side.
[ If that means charred material and scraps he dug out of book-burning piles over the years, well, that's his business. He prefers not to think about the book burnings or the number of things that have "accidentally" wound up in the flames. ]
If that sounds alright?
no subject
Mostly, though, she's relief.]
Oh my god, thank you. Anything you have would be really helpful.
[It might not provide immediate answers, but at least she'll know more than she did before.]
MineCorp's records are, um, lacking.
[On purpose, she suspects.]
no subject
This town can be. Well, it can be the way that it is. Apart from that handful of regulars, the people aren't very driven to look for knowledge or answers or history. They've got other things to worry about.
He chose this place, he made his bed, he'll lie in it. But still. It's nice to feel properly useful. ]
I expect they would be. Large businesses always let history fall through the cracks. [ Probably on purpose. Not his place to speak on that. ] Won't be a minute.
[ Metaphorically. Literally, it might take more than a minute. But he does bustle away and then back with a very unwieldy album of sorts. ]
Lots of bits and pieces in here. [ Hm. ] If anybody asks, of course, this doesn't exist in the first place. Top secret. Hush-hush.
[ There may not be anything useful enough to be bothered with, when it comes down to it. No way of knowing until they look. But Aziraphale doesn't think that would keep Miss Cygne from being cross about it. ]
no subject
She's unclenched for the first time since deciding to head down into the mines. It's so nice.]
Take your time! I'll keep myself busy.
[The relief and the fact that more information is coming serves as inspiration to get back to work, so Skye sits back down as Aziraphale leaves, setting to work reorganizing her notes. Once Aziraphale comes back, she'll be ready to compare her work against whatever he brings.]
in my defense. i have none my tabs are just a mess, my bad
[ She's very very studious, after all. Clearly invested in this research.
Aziraphale has to wonder why. Can't help but wonder, really. It's rare that someone considers bits and pieces of this town's history worth digging into. The odd history project here and there, maybe. Curioser and curioser, or so they say.
He returns after a bit with the unwieldy album of sorts, as promised, and lays it out on an empty stretch of table. It's hand-labeled Salvage in neat script, divided with little markers here and there for one reason or another. Various brochures from different past events or businesses or tourism boards (back when that was any sort of concern), scraps of fragile old pages, some half-burnt or singed at the edges, some newspaper clippings from days of yore. ]
Ought to be in the... the yellow section, I think.
[ Yes? Yes. Yellow section, there you are. If he's got old surveys to pull, it'll be in there. Goodness, perhaps he needs to start labeling those out better, too. ]