ph_logs | Mingle - Emergency Potluck

Entry tags:

bulletin

Mingle - Emergency Potluck

Pumpkin Hollow Community Bulletin

Main Nav | Permanent Bulletin | Calendar |

WELCOME POTLUCK

Greetings, residents! Those more observant sorts among you may have noticed a large influx of very crowded ferries. In order to welcome our new residents en masse, Town Hall is holding a potluck in Town Square. Please bring a dish if you are able and make a new friend!

All of our newest arrivals need only bring themselves. We look forward to welcoming you all into our community, and may your lanterns always be lit.

This event is open to all! In light of our new influx of prospective players following the Great Sail Migration, we've decided to offer a small public event to tide everyone over until the TDM this weekend.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There is a slender young man with his back to the nearest wall that's tall enough to protect him. He's holding a plate after having quickly gone through and picked a few things here and there, and only barely picking at it. He looks hunted, jumpy, uncomfortable at all of the new people.

If anyone new approaches him, they may see him stiffen up and shuffle an inch away before he catches himself with a soft apology.

"No, no...I'm sorry. Um." Raising both hands in a gesture of harmlessness, Jarrod doesn't move closer again, and his gaze turns to the crowd instead of lingering on Bart.

"I can help to watch your back, if that'd help."

Bart doesn't necessarily relax, but he is grateful at the care taken to keep his distance. Not that that really means much, considering everything else that's happened lately. Nonetheless, he keeps an eye on the crowd, and on the man, moving his fork around one of the myriad potato offerings made by the other villagers.

"It- I...don't..." he trails off, then just slumps minutely. "Thank you."

"I know sometimes physical protection isn't really enough. But that's all I can offer right now, really." His tone of voice is all apologies.

Bart looks back up again, hesitating to speak up, but understanding that feeling implicitly. When you don't have much of anything to offer but you still want to anyway.

"The thought means more than you know," he relies quietly. Then he takes a breath, and tries to push a semblance of a smile onto his face that almost makes it to his eyes. "My name's Bart by the way. Welcome to the village."

"I'm Jarrod. Uh, thanks."

Neither of them manage a real smile. Jarrod glares off anyone who gets too close. He's really good at a cold, menacing glare. He's done a lot of them.

Jarrod is immediately oddly protective, and while he's not totally sure why, he is grateful. It means that anyone else that Bart doesn't know keeps their distance, at least for now. It's nice to have someone looking out for him for a little while.

He wants to ask questions. He wants to get to know someone new as a person. He is very much not ready to do it though. Not now. Not when it seems like Jarrod is as reluctant to actually talk as he himself is.

There's a silence that grows. It might be an awkward silence, or a comfortable one, but it's there, growing.

Bart is good at silence, bad at awkward, but he doesn't want to intrude on Jarrod any further when he's decided to try and help him in this small way. Eventually though, he does break the silence again.

"Is there anything in particular that you're interested in here? Guard work or...or homesteading or research..."

Seated behind his table with his informative pamphlets, it's only a matter of time until First Aid catches sigh of Bart. His visor lights up happily and he waves, before beckoning him to come closer. He'd love it if Bart came to sit with him! -- Unfortunately he's too far away to clearly see how much the crowd has already stressed out his friend...

It takes Bart a moment to notice when he's being waved over, but he perks up a bit to see First Aid there, and he opts to skirt around the outside of the crowd to come and take a seat at his side. His leg bounces nervously, hands twisting around one another.

"There's so many of them," he muses quietly. "All at once. Like something terrible happened..."

"Yeah..." First Aid leans a little closer to Bart, not quite invading his personal space but...closer. "I think they were all from different worlds originally, like us," he says quietly, "But they were pulled into...I don't even know what to call it." He sighs heavily. "Some kind of pocket dimension shaped like a cruise ship...it sounds horrible."

With all the compassion in the world, he adds, "We should probably brace ourselves for some growing pains, as they get used to having more freedoms again."

"A cruise ship? Oh that's got to be absolutely awful, even without the idea of being in a pocket dimension." He looks out to watch some of them, noting the haunted appearance of some of them, the sheer relief on others. Paranoia in one or two, as if they expected something terrible to come along at any moment.

At First Aid's cautioning, he nods. "I think that the best we can do is let them come up to us when they know they need help, and be as open and gentle with them as possible otherwise. If we can help them, I would like to."

"I agree. I'm a little worried about what will happen as their immune systems meet our germs, but..." He sighs. "I also don't want to scare people. The best thing we can let them do is know that there are resources available; all they have to do is ask."

He looks up at Bart; for once his human friend is taller than him, so long as he's sitting down. "How are you holding? Talk to anyone nice?"

"I might have been more worried about that if not for my own experience here. We should still keep an eye on them just in case, though. It'll be important to make sure that they all have as close to full and proper physicals as we can get, and make sure that each of us has copies of their files so that treatment is consistent no matter who they might see." He's clearly thought a lot about all of this.

The question strikes him in a painful way that he doesn't really have the time to analyze when he's supposed to be trying to find some sense of equilibrium.

"I...ran into someone during one of the star monsters' attacks, patched him up at the tavern, but otherwise I... mostly just keep to myself, lately. I'm learning that I'm still not particularly adept at being social, despite my best efforts."

"Oh, that's right. You managed to avoid getting sick or passing an illness on to anyone else, when you first showed up here...maybe the goddesses did something to help out?" If they did, then he really hopes they'll do the same here. Maybe he should stop by the Temple to make a quick prayer before the day's over...

"During the attacks? But..." First Aid looks up at Bart with sudden concern. "Bart, that was weeks ago. Have you just been keeping to yourself this whole time?"

Bart's head dips briefly; he's sure that the goddesses did something about the previous bacterial disease that killed him, because he insisted that he wouldn't set foot on the island and put everyone at risk unless he could be sure that he couldn't pass it on. Coming to the clinic thereafter had merely been making absolutely sure, as well as checking that he hadn't been left with any more serious side effects than the trouble that he has breathing when he exerts himself.

He looks back up at First Aid with his mouth slightly open, eyes up on him as he starts to reiterate that yes, he had been keeping to himself for that long. Because the only person that had actively made sure that he was alright was Chris. Who had...apparently not told First Aid. Emery had come back to find him after his hunt, but everyone else that he'd made font with, he'd had to seek them out deliberately. Something that he wasn't particularly inclined to do, when it came to socializing.

"It isn't as if I haven't been doing anything," he points out with a soft pout. "With nobody taking my time away from it, I've made progress on battery production on my own, my first sprouts are coming up for my greenhouse experimentation, and I've actually found a proper vessel for deeper sea exploration than Mipha's Grace is capable of. I've lost track of Vika, but I think that she's taken to staying up near the mines for now, though I've been working on a latticework of chemical receptors to be grafted in place of a sense of smell for her."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Mingle - Emergency Potluck

Bart Torgal | Subnautica | existing player

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject