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❅ SHITTY LITTLE TOWN ❅ PART 3
The cracks are starting to show. People have been reforging connections. Rebuilding their senses of self.
Digging into things that are potentially sinister, their curiosity dangerously piqued. Now, too many truths are coming back to the surface for everything to stay suppressed.
Somewhere deep in the MineCorp mines, a wire snaps. Then another, and another.
PROMPTS
a) A CRACK IN THE DAM
A feeling of déjà vu is commonplace, and people’s dreams start to contain more and more imagery that doesn’t align with the lives they know here in this shitty little town – fantastical sleighs, huge golden globes, fae and monsters. Some people stop automatically responding when their name is called, because the name they’re being called feels wrong. Others discover they have talents at skills they don’t remember ever trying before.
But it remains out of reach until they do something that affirms their true self, an act that goes down to the core of who they are. It might be true love’s kiss, or placing a hand on their signature weapon, or invoking certain words when speaking truth to power. One way or another, once that final requirement is met...it all comes flooding back.
A feeling of déjà vu is commonplace, and people’s dreams start to contain more and more imagery that doesn’t align with the lives they know here in this shitty little town – fantastical sleighs, huge golden globes, fae and monsters. Some people stop automatically responding when their name is called, because the name they’re being called feels wrong. Others discover they have talents at skills they don’t remember ever trying before.
But it remains out of reach until they do something that affirms their true self, an act that goes down to the core of who they are. It might be true love’s kiss, or placing a hand on their signature weapon, or invoking certain words when speaking truth to power. One way or another, once that final requirement is met...it all comes flooding back.
b) PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER
Your character remembers who they are, but their powers haven’t returned! The nefarious makers of the spell suppressing powers must be defeated. But who are the nefarious makers of the spell?
Several people have several parts of the puzzle. Time to put them together, anonymously, on the network. Skye has taken it upon herself to facilitate a discussion forum online with all accounts highly anonymized and access granted only by a password; details are being spread by word of mouth, friend to friend, always with the warning that just because the accounts are anonymous doesn’t mean that Goluboy or his people couldn’t try to sleuth people’s identities from context clues.
Skye sets a time for when the discussion forum will go live, and at midnight that evening, a website goes live with a simple comment post function and a message that all data will be deleted within 24 hours.
NETWORK LINK
The jig is up!
The source of the curse – and other mischief – is traced to Kyan Goluboy, and Noire Cygne. Confrontation with each of them will trigger counter-attacks and defenses.
Your character remembers who they are, but their powers haven’t returned! The nefarious makers of the spell suppressing powers must be defeated. But who are the nefarious makers of the spell?
Several people have several parts of the puzzle. Time to put them together, anonymously, on the network. Skye has taken it upon herself to facilitate a discussion forum online with all accounts highly anonymized and access granted only by a password; details are being spread by word of mouth, friend to friend, always with the warning that just because the accounts are anonymous doesn’t mean that Goluboy or his people couldn’t try to sleuth people’s identities from context clues.
Skye sets a time for when the discussion forum will go live, and at midnight that evening, a website goes live with a simple comment post function and a message that all data will be deleted within 24 hours.
NETWORK LINK
The jig is up!
The source of the curse – and other mischief – is traced to Kyan Goluboy, and Noire Cygne. Confrontation with each of them will trigger counter-attacks and defenses.
c) CONFRONTING CYGNE
As soon as Cygne is confronted, or receives word from Goluboy that the jig is up, wilis pour into town. Normally, these undead jilted brides will dance to death whoever they get their hands on, but in a hurry they’ll resort to tearing their prey apart. Any person who the wilis get their hands on will be overwhelmed by an empathetic sense of their grief, shame, and hatred, and control of their body will be taken over as they are swept into the deadly dance.
The wilis are strong against physical violence, but can be burned by sunlight, or artificial growlights. People dancing with wilis can be pulled out of their embrace and pulled to safety, but only those with formal dance training stand a chance of changing the course of the deadly waltz, once touched.
The sheriff’s department forms the final level of defense around Noire Cygne’s mansion and person. Get past the chaos of the wilis throughout town, and Sheriff Mallard and her deputies stand between your heroes and the town matriarch.
As soon as Cygne is confronted, or receives word from Goluboy that the jig is up, wilis pour into town. Normally, these undead jilted brides will dance to death whoever they get their hands on, but in a hurry they’ll resort to tearing their prey apart. Any person who the wilis get their hands on will be overwhelmed by an empathetic sense of their grief, shame, and hatred, and control of their body will be taken over as they are swept into the deadly dance.
The wilis are strong against physical violence, but can be burned by sunlight, or artificial growlights. People dancing with wilis can be pulled out of their embrace and pulled to safety, but only those with formal dance training stand a chance of changing the course of the deadly waltz, once touched.
The sheriff’s department forms the final level of defense around Noire Cygne’s mansion and person. Get past the chaos of the wilis throughout town, and Sheriff Mallard and her deputies stand between your heroes and the town matriarch.
d) CONFRONTING GOLUBOY
Destroying the torture machine hidden hidden in MineCorp will end the curse and restore all powers. Too bad everyone will have to sneak past mine workers and security guards who’ve been promised a big fat bonus for bringing your characters alive and restrained to Goluboy’s office. As the man himself would say, nothing makes a person work harder than money. Some of the wilis have made their way into the mines as well...
Destroying the torture machine hidden hidden in MineCorp will end the curse and restore all powers. Too bad everyone will have to sneak past mine workers and security guards who’ve been promised a big fat bonus for bringing your characters alive and restrained to Goluboy’s office. As the man himself would say, nothing makes a person work harder than money. Some of the wilis have made their way into the mines as well...
e) AFTERMATH
The villains have been defeated!
What will your heroes do with them? Can any of their past victims still be saved? It’s time to convene and pass judgement on your captors, and check that every I is dotted and every T is crossed.
The villains have been defeated!
What will your heroes do with them? Can any of their past victims still be saved? It’s time to convene and pass judgement on your captors, and check that every I is dotted and every T is crossed.
❅ Event Length: This part of the plot will last until 10/15, and the situation with the npcs are meant to be resolved by then, though general CR threads can continue to be backtagged after that.
no subject
"No, dumbass, that would alter his chemistry. The machine takes them alert or it doesn't take them!"
The guards keep on walking Logan down the tunnels. Its a long, long walk until they reach a ladder set into the ground.
Goluboy aims a revolver at Logan and the guards untie him and stand back at Goluboy's sides, blocking the way back. "Get down there," Goluboy orders, to the hole in the ground and the ladder down it.
no subject
The errant thought makes no sense. He ignores it. He knows he's drunk, even if the adrenaline is sobering.
Logan stands there unsteadily and it is only the fact that the unknown threat might be more survivable than the known one that he even considers it, instead of just lunging. There may be a better moment to try to get the gun away than here.
"Whatever's down there better kill me," he says, the threat clear. He doesn't need to elaborate, when he's seen Goluboy's face.
He's just as human as ever, but there is something in the eyes that is something other. Something of the animal he always is alongside the man, regardless of body or powers, that only ever got tucked away and civilized out of grudging respect for those he'd cared about.
And they're all gone now, in either life.
Other people have looked into those eyes and known by shivering instinct that they weren't walking away. It's like being three feet away from a polar bear.
He slowly starts making his way down the ladder, a struggle with feet that feel like lead.
no subject
Goluboy remains at the top of the ladder, gun pointed down at Logan as one goon punches a code in on the electrified door. The door buzzes, loud and harsh, and swings open to reveal an open iron maiden plugged into a wall full of machinery. The machinery blinks and buzzes like a giant computer. The floor beneath the iron maiden is stained with blood, and the iron maiden is filthy with gore.
"Get it done," Goluboy orders, as the henchmen close in on Logan.
no subject
There's fresh blood and gore and it came from somewhere. Someone kidnapped from town? People went missing all the time. Wild animals in the woods is what they always say. Is this what's happened to some of them?
The two goons bodily drag him closer, as he drags his feet, yelling and stumbling as he tries to push against their grip.
There's a part of him that almost wants to stop fighting.
Maybe you deserve this. Maybe he deserves to die suffering. Maybe you deserve to die like they did.
But there's something about all this that starts to ring familiar. At first, it's just the familiar adrenaline surge from when he used to be in combat. But as he works his hands against his bindings while fighting against them, sloughing off skin until his wrists are sticky with blood, there's something else.
Something about the feeling of blood dripping down his hands.
Like that day at the burn pit when the explosion happens and shrapnel ripped through his hands. The soft skin between each knuckle had been full of metal, sticking out like morbid, malformed claws.
"You were an animal then and you're an animal now. I just gave you claws."
His mind starts to flash to endless battlefields - but not just ones in the desert. When the fuck had he ever stormed a beach? Fought a giant robot?
The cage...A tank. Straps. Metal piercing his skin. An agonizing burning so deep it reaches the bone.
"We're going to make you indestructible - but first, we're gonna have to destroy you."
His ragged breaths start to change to something courser, something closer to growling as something starts to awaken inside him. Something partly inhuman. Something that growls and snarls and snaps with far sharper teeth than that of a sad, old drunk. Muscles twitch on his fore-arms to spring claws that currently aren't there.
It is a testament to a life so often lived badly that this is what wakes him up. This. Dancing close to death. This feeling. He'd been lost. Lost and bitter, and even now he is lost and bitter, but he is also something else. He's always something else.
I'm the Wolverine.
This place is a place where deadly ballerinas dance in the night, in a world build on Belief. There are many stories about people transforming to beasts in an explosion of murder and rage. So what if the transformation is just in his head? There is an explosion of adrenaline and instinct, even now, even in this body.
The animal that sometimes looks out from behind his eyes is unleashed. He roars as he purposefully dislocates a thumb and rips most of the flesh off his hands where the bindings touch, in his rush to slip out of them. Hands still slippery with blood, he turns and punches one of the men in the throat, then kicks the other in the junk.
There aren't really any weapons to be found, but there are rocks, so he picks one up and bodily slams the first of the mooks face first into the chamber wall, pinning him there with an arm bar as as he slams the rock into the back of his head over and over. Blood and gore splatters over his face. It's familiar. It's even more of a wake up call, like splashing water on your face first thing in the morning.
He lets the body drop, then turns back to the other, first bashing him in the face with the rock to stun him, then bodily throwing him into the iron maiden and kicking the door shut.
Then he turns towards the door, back in the direction of hole in the ceiling and lets out another roar, one that nearly vibrates the walls of the chamber.