ph_logs | An Assortment of Happenstance (Random Events Wave 2)

An Assortment of Happenstance (Random Events Wave 2)

Pumpkin Hollow Community Bulletin

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It's been a while since the community board has been redone! The weather hasn't really been permitting long excursions into town square to do up the board, especially since the blizzard, but today is a clear day for once and Yorick is in a hurry to get it all set up for Merrymeet.

He helpfully posts a few announcements.

COMMUNITY GATHERING AT TOWN HALL TONIGHT

A community gathering is scheduled in Town Hall tonight for all new residents ("offworlders") to discuss their recent experience with a mass shared dream event. Locals who are native to Pumpkin Hollow will be present to listen, learn, and help make sense of this strange dream. The intent of the gathering is to ascertain the meaning of the dream and share details to create a bigger picture.

Sweet potato muffins will be provided, courtesy of Cecil. The meeting will officially commence at 6pm. Dress warmly!

MERRYMEET FLOWER QUEEN VOTING

Voting for the Flower Queen of our upcoming Merrymeet celebration is now officially open! Please cast your vote for one of the following candidates from our final pool of nominees:

Dahlia Leeds, town councilwoman and Historical Society leader.
Annabel Lee Whitlock, seamstress and chess extraordinaire.
Mary Dahl, shop employee and freelance theatrical performance artist.
Magne Kikiishi, Oak & Iron employee and Fight Club leader.
Zelda of Hyrule, captain of the Mipha's Grace.
Sally Boyle, chemist/herbalist and proprietor of the Blackberry Apothecary.

Merrymeet will be held on Saturday, Feb. 24th, so all votes must be cast by then. This year's celebration will also feature our first Flower Princess in a while, Bobbin Kaspbrak, escorted by her keeper, Eddie! She is a chicken. (Note: the last Flower Princess was Butter Poe, a cat. She will sadly be unable to pass on her crown in the ceremonial manner due to being a cat, but she wishes Bobbin the best of luck.)

[ Ballot Box ]

BOTTLE COLLECTION NOTICE

ALERT TO ALL CITIZENS: down on Tawny Beach there have been sightings of bottled messages washing ashore that appear to be addressed to various offworld citizens. Please scan the beach or check in with Jack's Marina Port Authority to see if there are any intended for you at your earliest convenience.

[ Those who go to the beach to investigate may find a bottle carrying curled parchment with their name on it. Within, they will find a letter from a loved one from back home. The messages read more like prayers or thoughts about their subjects, often in third person rather than second, but contain important insight about how the writer truly views the recipient that may guide them in this world. They are also obviously written in the handwriting of the person who sent them. It's unclear how they got here, but perhaps they can help. ]

After Yorick has long since walked away, another strange message also appears. Nailed to the bottom of the board haphazardly, a piece of twine with a large tooth tied to it and a piece of parchment. The text is written in a neat but jagged font, ink seeming to almost fray at the edges, outlining agreed upon terms for some manner of agreement. A shot that must be discharged within a lunar cycle, a soul to be taken from this plane by King Eligos, and a mandatory betrayal of trust. It is signed by both Eligos and Vika. A line in the terms is underlined.

For whatever purpose I deem fit.

Beneath the signatures a note is scrawled that reads,

"Never let it be said that syntax doesn't matter. You didn't think I was going to help you kill my own grandchild, did you?"

Those going to Town Hall for the community gathering will see that the Pine Devil skull that Vika had hung there is now shattered, and her notice gone. The Pine Devil is loose once more.

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Residents can post their own bulletins here!

Looking significantly less weak but still toting around a box of tissues, Dahlia can be found by the food table, snacking on a muffin and waiting for the influx of people to approach her about her siblings and father.

It's probably going to be a long evening.

Not sorry that I tried, but the plan was misinformed from the start. The Devil speaks; if it speaks, it thinks. If it thinks, it's a person. So if and when it reads this: I'm ready to talk. To everyone else, the first person to flash bindings at me is going to need prosthetic legs. - Vika

Community Gathering

She's here all right. Nothing much of note happened to Vika in the dream, but the sensations she experienced, the memories...maybe it'll do her some good to hear about it. She is at, perhaps, some of her least approachable: that note on the board has put a scowl on her face that goes well with her frozen, unblinking eye. Try her. She fucking dares you.

Or, y'know, talk. That's an option. It might be worse but it's an option.

Facing The Music | Community Board

Shortly after leaving her note, Vika starts sitting beneath the board, glaring out at the world in tick-tock silence. The local Enforcers get immediate glares any time they come within her sightline, but other than that she seems content to ignore you. You'll read the notes, or you won't. You'll have a comment, or you won't.

She's available. She's waiting, for the devil.

A Transcript

The 'letter' that arrives for Vika looks more like something done on a typewriter. She's certainly not going to go hunting for it herself...

N: She scares me. I keep telling her to hang back. A: Would you hang back? N: Of course I wouldn't hang back! N: But I have, have armor, and a real weapon, and I'm not all banged up, she should let us lead. A: Nina... N: We just helped her, we just met her, and she's going to die, Ace - A: We're all going to die. A: Let her die on her own terms. N: I don't want Vika to die. She deserves better. A: Doesn't matter, Nina. We all deserved better.

Edited 2024-02-10 20:24 (UTC)

“I was a right little bastard when I was seventeen.”

Behind Dahlia is where Ianto’s voice comes from—but it’s not the voice she knows. It’s hard, dead, and angry. Not burning rage but a cold, snowy anger that snuffs out the light wherever it touches.

Ianto himself doesn’t look much better: his suit is neat, his tie is perfectly knotted, but he’s pale and haggard looking. The bruises under his eyes are from a lack of sleep, but an aging cut through his eyebrow and knuckles scraped raw from brutality indicate what he’s likely been up to.

“I was a tailor’s son, but I would rather die than make a honest living. I stole, I lied, I made trouble because I could. It was fun for me, you see—pulling one over on those who ought to have power over me. The people I could con or pinch a coin from weren’t worth my bloody time. The ones who caught me? Those were the only people who could tell me anything, because they weren’t just smart: they understood power. They knew it couldn’t be bought or traded, only earned. Money is useless if it means nothing to those who you seek to rule.”

He moves closer, looking down into her face. His eyes hold no heat—but they’re starting to show pain.

“And the only difference the dream made was where I was born. Because there, and here, I love you. There, and here, I stole from the Leeds family for fun—but a fancy, jovial bloke named Jasper caught me, and made himself my friend. His little sister, Dahlia…I fell so hopelessly and desperately for that girl I spent the day of Jasper’s funeral taking petty larceny and using it to enact cosmic vengeance just to try and give her back a little bit of what she lost. I didn’t, and I don’t care, you see…then and now, for Jas and for you, I raised a weapon to your goddesses and dared them to cross me.”

He leans in, whispering the last in her ear.

“Now my nightmares are haunted by your face…I go to sleep, I dream you still love me…and every time, I remember that I’ve lost you, just before I wake up. Screaming.”

He draws back, his eyes dead again, but now bright with tears.

“Not that it matters, but I’m still sorry I hurt you.”

He turns on his heel, and he walks away again. If she looks for him, Ianto will have long since left the meeting.

Tarantulas cuts a rather bizarre figure with his coat draped over his spider body and stuck into place with bits of web, and scarves tied around each of his spindly legs. This does not keep him from stopping to read the note and chuckling at the look on Vika's face.

"Do you really expect it to come and talk to you, after you killed it?" he asks her, both curious and deeply amused. "How do you know it even knows how to read?"

COMMUNITY GATHERING
"Ooo, there's still muffins!" César's a simple man sometimes, and this is one moment. Because he really doesn't want to think about how his brother was the age he should have been and how Rex isn't here.

MERRYMEET FLOWER QUEEN VOTING
César puts his ballot in the box, grinning like a loon, and he shrugs to the person behind him. "I'm... probably obvious for my first pick. Even if it's supposed to be secret."

BOTTLE COLLECTION NOTICE
There was a bottle addressed to him. César's sitting at a table in the Oak & Iron, turning it around in his hand. It hasn't been opened yet, and he looks pensive.

WHAT THE FUCK, VIKA & CÉSAR COULD USE SOME PLOT HELP
César's staring at the contract, the note, and then Vika's note. "... His grandchild? Who is Eligos?"

Oh. Oh, no, honey. (Look, he got flash frozen and then his love interest BLEW UP and also he's focused on his farm and also on getting the supplies he needs to look handsome BECAUSE PRIORITIES so he hasn't asked around.)

Oh god it's the fourth Vika film: Vika & The Seeming Non-Sequitor

"You think if any of the Demon Princes had, I dunno, Demon Mates or Demon Princesses or whatever, that those might be really, really famous?"

There are two bottles in his arms when First Aid walks up to the spot where Vika sits.

"...Um," he says quietly, embarrassed. "I don't know if anyone told you, but...there's a bunch of bottles on the beach? People have been finding messages from people they knew back home, and I..." He holds out one of the bottles. "I think I accidentally read yours. I'm sorry?"

"...You can look at mine too, if you want..."

"...Who's it from?"

First Aid shifts his weight awkwardly from foot to foot.

"...Looked like a transcript of two people talking about you. Do Nina and Ace sound familiar?"

"My descendants. The ones who fixed me. The next version, cleaned up and battle ready. Idiots, both of them."

She holds her hand out for it.

Hm.

"It does stand to reason," he says slowly. "In many societies, even if the wives of royalty do not hold any official rank themselves, they are still granted social esteem. But then, there are also many societies that practice strict segregation based on reproductive role. Perhaps they are not permitted to show themselves in the public sphere?"

Oh.

"It seems like they cared about you very much," First Aid says, and gives her the bottle.

"Fact the second: the demons can come and go. They're not locked in here with us. And yet the devil has had to eat. To hunt. It's shown varying patterns of hostility seemingly directly linked to times of plenty versus those of want. Why would it do that?"

It takes Vika awhile to open the bottle. She reads the transcript. Re-reads it. Reads it over and over and over and over and -

The glass is smashed under her fist; it doesn't shatter, it powders, ground to dust in a single blow. Her voice is jagged splinters of a dozen others: "Fucking m-m-morons. Th-thinking I'd watch them g-get hurt for a w-walking corpse like m-me. Who d-do they think they are?!?"

Oh, so they're really digging into this, are they? Tarantulas shrinks down small enough that he can pull the tails of his coat under his body like a blanket and settles down on the stairs next to Vika.

"It behaves like a predatory animal," he says musingly. "And it left a skeleton behind when you killed it. Perhaps it is the product of some dalliance between one of the princes and a creature of this part of a reality? A...what's the word they use? A tiefling?"

"I'm not discounting that some sapient goat lived here whose evil seduction game is off the charts...but reading about tieflings after talking to the holy mammal does suggest that's more likely. They have more than one form. It lives here, and that means it's literate."

"Vika!" First Aid reaches out and wraps his hands around hers, trying to stop the grinding before she grinds glass right down into her joints and hurts herself. The glass scrapes at his paint, making him wince, but he doesn't let go. "They cared about you! You were family, maybe even their friend! And you'd been through so much. Is it so horrible that Nina wanted to protect you from even more suffering?"

"T-talk more sh-shit you fucking pacifist!" Vika stands, suddenly, wrenching her arm back, trying to free her hand. "Y-you weren't there! S-someone was going to s-suffer, s-someone had to run up f-front, t-take the sh-shots, n-navigate through the d-death traps, f-face down the hordes first, you weren't there, n-nothing but f-fire and ice and death everywhere and wh-what's the p-point of m-me if I let the ones who g-got to be HAPPY D-DIE FOR ME? HUH?"

"So your theory is that it's a shape-changer?" Tarantulas hums for a moment in thought. "Interesting. But how do you know? Perhaps it's lived isolated in the woods all its life. Or perhaps it may fear further reprisal if it reveals its other shape."

He looks at her with interest. "What are you hoping to get out of this, anyway?"

"...I committed a murder, Tarantulas."

Tarantulas sighs heavily, nearly slides right off the step from the way his weight settles. "And now you feel bad about it? You're really not selling the whole 'grr, I'm no hero' angle very well, you know?"

"Try looking at the bigger picture. You thought you were putting down a dangerous animal, right? Well, it is an animal -- all organics are. And it is dangerous. What difference does it make whether it's sapient or not?"

"The difference is I know damn well what it feels like to be killed and not die," Vika snarls, pointing her buster directly at Tarantulas. "Call me that again. I fucking dare you."

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An Assortment of Happenstance (Random Events Wave 2)

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Community Gathering

Pinned Below The Ominous Note

Non-Randomized Vikas

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Facing the Music

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Transcript

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