June Event - Cukey-Scary [The Cucumber Festival]

[pumpkinhollow]

**Plain text version here.

CUKEY-SCARY

Come one, come all!

The long-awaited festival to enjoy vegetables and welcome in the summer months has finally arrived - and this time, completely uninhibited by curses!

Pumpkin Hollow's streets are bright and bustling, adorned with green ribbons, baskets of flowers, and freshly arranged shop stalls to market their goods to the festival-goers as they mill about the streets surrounding the Festival Green. Cheering crowds watch performers perched upon stages, jaunty music played by thoroughly energized bands fills the air, and the smell of freshly-cut cucumbers is carried on the breeze.

Welcome to the Cucumber Festival, a sorely-missed holiday held exclusively on Marrow Isle. It is a festival begun at the town's inception to encourage the newly-established farming community, which was rapidly embraced from then on. Many smaller-scale gardeners dedicate vast amounts of energy in joining farmers to make the festival possible, and this year is more abundant than ever, thanks to the efforts of the new arrivals taking up the farming mantles. The merriment sprawls all over the Festival Green, and even further into the town.

One question yet remains: where to begin?

Cucumber Celebrations Commence!

Copious Cucumber Cuisine

With the cucumber harvest more bountiful this year than it'd ever been, the booths have a wide assortment of offerings - cucumber chips, fried pickles, bowls of salad, breads with chunks of vegetable in them, fritters, among the wide tide of other culinary delights. If you can make it with a cucumber, these people have!

Almost as abundant as the attendees are, the stalls and booths set up with cucumber-centric meals are easily found. much of it is cheap, even free in many cases, and scattered with them are other booths peddling artisan goods.

Challenges of Chance and Cheer

As much as Hollowites enjoy their food, there's rarely an opportunity that they pass up to incorporate games or rides into festivities, and the Cucumber Festival has an extremely wide variety to offer!

The Whirling Wyvern is a ride that stands shortly behind a neat arrangement of picnic tables. Rope fences wind around the ride, giving it a safe distance from any bystanders, and the surrounding area is littered with flour bags, densely stuffed to offer padding.

Watching it even briefly makes it very clear why the padding is needed: the platform, raised about two feet off the ground in the middle, begins to spin its seated riders, rotating faster and faster until they topple, roll, and fall off the sides, into the padding below. People can often be heard nearby making bets with friends to see who can stay on the longest. (It's not a recommended ride for anyone who's been drinking!)

Bumpermobiles is another ride, operating on enchantment instead of electricity and a switch, that may look familiar to some of Pumpkin Hollow's residents from more modern times! Though they lack the distinctive roofed building in favor of a section of paved road closed off with wooden beams, the small carts of the bumpermobiles resemble automobiles of the current time, outfitted with wide-edges to brace the impact they'll inevitably have on one-another! Each one seats two, but are able to be driven on their own, if you'd prefer to focus your conversations on heckling your fellow driver.

Hot Air Balloons are set up not on the Green, but just outside of it, taking a spot just off to the side that's unoccupied by booths or frequent foot-traffic. Each ride carries a maximum of three, not counting the operator, and gives any rider an impressive view of marrow isle for thirty minutes.

The Carousel stands in the center of the Festival Green, chiming cheerful music from the pillar in the center. Horses are joined by the addition of shimmering unicorns, beaked pegasi, and colorfully painted pony-drawn carts (which are crafted to be seats, for those who cannot climb on one of the other mounts).

The Wheel of Chance is a vertical wheel, perched between artisan's booths, offering low-stake prizes for a small payment! 5 Brass allows you to spin the wheel, offering one of ten available prizes:

1. a cucumber, covered in batter and fried, on a stick.
2. a goldfish in a decorative bowl.
3. a pair of pants, with several varieties to choose from.
4. a deck of playing cards.
5. a fine leather-bound notebook.
6. a set of six shot glasses.
7. a bottle of wine.
8. a basket of assorted fruits.
9. a glass-blown animal native to Marrow Isle, palm-sized, in assorted species and colors.
10. 10 Brass. Double your money!

(For any concerned about the wellbeing of the fish: the person operating the wheel assures the health of these goldfish, and that the bowls are simply for festival distribution. They do note, however, that you'll be on the hook, no pun intended, to provide the new home for the fish.)

The Cucumber Festival's Raffle is one of the most coveted opportunities to spend a small sum of brass and win one of the many prizes donated by the community, with all contributions going into community services and upkeep.

Each ticket costs 20 Brass, and each person may purchase up to 5 tickets. There will be three drawings total, granting a small prize, a medium prize, and a grand prize to each winner. One person cannot win more than one prize; if the same person draws a second prize after their first, it will be re-rolled.

To purchase a raffle ticket, please reply to the Pumpkin Hollow mod account comment with RAFFLE TICKETS as the title, also linked here, stating how many tickets your character will be buying. On JUNE 14TH, ticket purchasing will be closed, and the prizes will be rolled!

The prizes are as follows:

1. 1st (small): a telescope, with elegant engravings in the metal, donated by Elias Coldwood.
2. 2nd (medium): a set of two enchanted tea puppies, one glass and one metal, donated by Neil West.
3. 3rd (grand prize): a basket-hilt sword, well-weighted, masterfully crafted, and delightfully ornate, donated by Dahlia Leeds.

Contestants Convene for Competition

Of course, what's a festival without a little bit of friendly competition! Over the week of celebrations, the Cucumber Festival hosts the following activities for any and all participants interested in joining in the fun.

The Cucumber Growing Competition is a celebration of the farmers who made all this possible, as well as a flexing of gardening prowess. Each cucumber is measured in weight, length, and color! The prize for the best cucumber in show is simply a ribbon, but among the Pumpkin Hollow farmers, it's quite a statement to have. Career farmers, hobby gardeners, and onlookers alike gather to see the town's farmers' handiwork!

The Cooking Competition follows directly after the Cucumber Growing Competition. While the larger of the vegetables don't make for very good foods, sacrificing flavor for size, the rest of the entries are cut up and used for a variety of dishes. Chefs of all varieties are encouraged to participate to show their culinary prowess!

The Great Turnip Smash-Off is a cheeky jab at the prior year's failed festival. Wielding any tools they like, including but not limited to one's hands themselves, each contestant is allotted three minutes to destroy as many turnips as they possibly can. The prize for the cucumber festival's first annual turnip slayer is a small trophy for bragging rights!

The Water Walk is a fun sport for all ages! Lined up in rows with metal spoons full of water, the participants must walk carefully to the end of the "racetrack" to a small glass of water, with a line denoted on the side at the middle. The first person to fill their glass to or above that mark wins!

The Variety Show occurs throughout the week, offering the stage to many people of assorted talents. The first day is booked up for magicians (sleight of hand, specifically - mages are politely requested to refrain from participation), and on the following Monday, a "feat of strength" competition will showcase the might of those strongest in Pumpkin Hollow! The other days are yet to be filled, and several festival attendants are waiting with clipboards to accept submissions. Many newcomers have talents they've never seen before, so new submissions of the musical, magical, or other remarkable talent alike are not only welcome, but strongly encouraged!

Carnival Complications

Of course, not all things can go entirely peacefully in Pumpkin Hollow's festivities, and the Cucumber Festival has never been exempt from this. Though the prior years' incident was far more disruptive to the festival's celebrations, several things begin to crop up over the span of the week.

Capricious Crashers

As the festival goes on, it seems that some poltergeists have seen fit to invite themselves to the party. Two games are affected, with varying results.

The Whack-a-Mole Game, during the first night, becomes the first item to start experiencing a mild haunting. Though the specters only make themselves known when the participant is alone, there's a distinct feeling of guilt that comes with each smack, not unlike stepping on a cat's tail without realizing it. Instead of the triumphant jingle that the machine lets out when the game is complete, a stark silence settles in, as though the entire festival has frozen in time. Only then does a whisper, no louder than a breeze, brush past your ear.

Rolling a D3, the spirits haunting the whack-a-mole machine will tell you the following:

1. a secret that isn't yours to have about someone in town.
2. a piece of gossip, a shocking recent happening that may or may not be getting around in whispers.
3. a lie, carefully crafted to impact the way you see one of your fellow townsfolk.

(Mod Note: the information given is always going to be about someone nearby. When tagging into someone's top-level with the Whack-a-Mole Game who's got secrets or gossip, provide a piece of information about your character that the spirits might've said! Additionally, feel free to request a piece of information about an NPC, major or minor. For a lie, anything goes. Have fun with it!)

The Candle-Shooting Game is the next to become haunted, though the haunting is significantly more straightforward. In an act of simple mischief, the flame will occasionally withstand blasts from the water gun that should have surely snuffed it, or the flame will go out just as you line your shot up. These spirits are aiming to ruin this particular game, but not your night.

Cards and Consequences

On the outskirts of the festival, there is a strange building set up. Just a small shack, decorated with celestial trappings and a mysterious air. Above the door, a sign painted black with gold lettering says "HOUSE OF CARDS". Is it a funhouse? A fortune teller? No one's sure who set it up. Perhaps another effort of Captain Tuttle or something.

There is a sign on the double doors that make up the entrance, which reads, "Admission is free, but you must enter in pairs." And true to its word, the doors will not open unless two different people take each door's handle. Otherwise it is definitively locked.

So, choose a companion and go explore! What's the worst that could happen? All you have to do is open the door.

| CONTENT WARNINGS: mild manipulation, unreality, snakes, possible character death. |

Comments

[incomingchoppers]

It's so clear that he thinks it's a trick of the room for a second, like how that cliff appeared from nowhere. He looks at Fever and all the stoicism in her face is just gone; when he looks to where the scales and the golden women were, they've been replaced by fire and strangers. Quiet crackling. Soft breaths. Insects chirping in the distance, in tiny pings of I'm here, I'm here that clash terribly with the alienation of the moment.

He blinks, and everything snaps back like it was.

Radar shakes his head in a quick shiver. He hikes his glasses up to rub at his eyes, not feeling wholly steady. It didn't... it didn't feel like the choppers, but it didn't not feel like them, and the whole thing makes his head swim a little bit. And now in front of him, there's the scale with his own paltry confessions on the right and the left side bottomed almost all the way out -- because there is a difference, as big as the drop between Fever's side and his own, between mere rulebreaking and true injustice.

You have a sense of what I have done. I do not deny it.

"Miss Fever?" he asks, smaller than he means.

There's no time for a reply, though. The door opens.

[abhorrently]

"Think I pissed her off, Radar. Sorry about that."

The words are stronger, more careless even as she adjusts to the oddity of the new place they're thrust into. All the color drained out of the world, and an endless amount of graves. Unnamed, unmarked, and she wonders for a moment if it's meant to be a response to what she said. Every one of them could belong to another face, another soul cut down and struck from the world for destruction's sake.

Blame her for it, but she would not have said anything else. Only later will it come to her that she didn't have to do that, that she could have done her best to lie her way out of it. Now she's gone and thrown them in some colorless realm. Damn. Rising up on her tiptoes, she doesn't see a door yet, but she'll keep looking.

[incomingchoppers]

"It's okay, ma'am."

It's not actually that cold, but Radar hugs himself anyway, shivering, as he looks around. He's had dreams like this sometimes. Probably everybody in the army has. (The total lack of color's new, though; usually, well... usually there's red mixed in there.) When he looks down at himself, even his clothes are black and white like he's in a newsreel.

There's no clear path like there was in the garden. All they can do is step around the tombstones, gingerly, and keep walking as they look for a door. When Radar spots something in the distance -- it looks like another pair of graves, but he swears there's something different about them -- he barely raises his voice above a whisper.

"Fever, look."

Only a little more walking brings them to the spot. And sure, it might be a cheap trick, but tell that to Radar's stomach as it plummets straight into his shoes.

WALTER O'REILLY
1932-1952

"Oh -- " He stumbles backward and claps a hand to his mouth like he's going to be sick, staring at his own grave.

[abhorrently]

Her hand's on his arm in an instant, something steadier for him, as she glares at her own. No last name - and the starting year is obscured, as if someone took a chisel to it and was interrupted through trying to deface the grave. But the other number is still intact.

1492 DR.

"It's not real." The words are spat viciously, before she steps to be in his eye line, and her tone softens. "Look at me, Radar. Look at me. That elf woman - this isn't justice. This is just trying to get into our fucking heads. It's my fault that she sent us here, but she shouldn't have put you into it too."

And as if she's trying to prove it, she turns and kicks at the tombstone - face immediately grimacing in pain, her having to stagger back, because she is not someone with any ability to physically destroy the stones with her body alone, but she's going to try.

"She didn't even get your name right."

[incomingchoppers]

"No, she did, that's my name," he says, voice shaking and shrill, "that's my real name, my mom still calls me Walter, everybody in Iowa does -- "

He fumbles at the collar of his shirt like he's searching for the dog tags he doesn't wear anymore. Match the tags with the personnel file. First step in processing the dead.

[abhorrently]

There's a horrible lurching urge that rises in her, and it's not the time, it's not, for things to murmur that they already have a grave here, why not fill it. He'd never see it coming from someone who promised sanctuary. The pain would be exquisite, and then she could destroy as she pleased, until she broke through this hall of illusions. She's reaching for him, knows how hands can fit around the throat and press down as they writhe-

Fever's hand rests on his shoulder. It feels like the effort needed to fight back a tide of an enemy assault, but he's safe. She promised. She promised.

"Radar. Look at me."

There's something in her voice when she says it, something like stone, a wall at one's back. Resolute. It can bear his weight. If he goes down that other path, he will be sought and chased after, pulled back to solid ground.

cw: description of gore/war injuries

[incomingchoppers]

Hold it together, Radar. We need the reports. We need more silk thread and gloves. We need more whole blood, more antibiotics, more morphine. We need you to carry that litter without dropping it even though the guy on it doesn't have half an arm anymore and his chest looks like it's caved in. Don't look. Don't look. We need a spare set of hands and you're the closest, reach in here and hold that clamp for a second. We need you to get back out there to the ambulance for the next round, watch your step so you don't slip in the blood again, get all their names, remember all their names, you're gonna have to match them with their valuables after surgery.

Look at me.

Hold it together.

Radar finally pries his gaze away from the gravestones and meets Fever's eyes. He manages a tiny twitch of a nod, followed by an uneven, "Yeah?"

[abhorrently]

"Breathe."

She's not looking away until she sees that look relax - the same one she saw on Lae'zel hearing words from texts she thought were heresies, Astarion having to process the meaning of his scars, Shadowheart aghast at her hands making a decision she thought she'd never be able to. He's not her companion in combat, she can't order Radar into a state of mind that they all begat through violence, unwilling to be destroyed, that frantic pace of go go go go. Don't stop, or the twisting and writhing thing in your head will win. Don't stop, or the thread of hope will be lost.

Don't stop, or you'll never start again.

It's as much grabbing someone and hauling them back to their feet, waves of healing magic and murmuring you're fine, you're fine, let's sit down for a moment, until the danger's passed and they can file it under more moments they don't talk about.

Steady. Steady. Be here.

It's the same thing she does to herself when she can feel herself screaming inside her head, breaking her nails on the confines, slamming her head into glass until she feels the blood start trickling down.

Pretend, just long enough to get this over with. She promised she'd shield him, after all.

[incomingchoppers]

"Yeah," he says again. Even manages to make it a little steadier. "Yeah, okay, I'm breathing."

It doesn't smell like copper when he breathes in. That helps a whole lot. Fever's right, it's just somebody messing with them to scare them. It's not like he's dead-dead yet, right? That's the whole point of Miss Mortanne bringing them here, to give them a second chance so they don't end up under a gravestone. He's got no reason to be scared of a stupid piece of rock with his name written on it.

Radar even believes all of that, right up until he hears a third person breathing right behind them.

He freezes.

[abhorrently]

She whips around on her heel to face whatever is breathing, and is now face to face with the skeleton. It gives her pause, catches her breath, but not so much that she doesn't instinctively shift - putting her body between Radar and the creature, staring it down and a light starting to gather at one of her hands. She promised, didn't she, that her magic would defend him. Here it truly can.

"Who are you?!"

It has a weapon, and looks like the remains of the dead scribes she once met. Joy of fucking joys. One wrong move, and she's blasting this apart.

[incomingchoppers]

Oh no oh jeez when he was hoping the haunted house would just have skeletons jumping out at them this is not what he meant --

The towering figure's wings unfurl, so wide they seem to blot out the already paltry light trickling through the graveyard. The glow of Fever's magic glints off its scythe as it raises the blade high.

"Emmmbraccce... rrrrebiiiirrrthhh..." it hisses like the whisper of dry leaves.

Radar screams at the top of his lungs and bolts.

cw: negative self-esteem, gore introspection, passive suicidal ideation

[abhorrently]

Radar has the good sense to flee, which means she has more room to fight. Except, the spells she lets go fizzle out when they draw near the entity, and a cold certainty draws through her. There's a door. He can make it, he does, and the door closes behind him, while the being is focused on her. Can she win this? Will she?

It is nothing but instinct that says hold on, that refuses to be beaten down and destroyed, that has her moving back past her own grave and keeping an eye on it. And death doesn't even matter or stick here, but Fever knows, she cannot die. She cannot be overtaken. Not like this, not ever like this. Her blows pass through the creature like water, trying to strike at something older and beyond her reach.

Rebirth.

What a concept. It won't take, she wants to scream, because of everything bound up in her, every atrocity, every inch of hate that crawls and writhes in her veins, a heart that was malformed from the start and deserves to be thrown in the fire. Maybe then it would have a single ounce of warmth. The scales in her head tip low, low, and then break. Wouldn't it all happen again? There is no release, when your existence itself shouldn't be. There's only inviting a cycle to repeat, unknowing the consequences.

Things could change.

And how long before the past reasserts itself? Already, there's the itch under her skin, the need, the longing. Every throat a soft and inviting place to cut, every abdomen a new canvas to destroy and pull apart, pain dwelling so, so near. It would be so easy. Every breath of life half-nauseating.

Wiping it all clean on the surface does nothing, she's proof of that. A lack of memories does not undo all of herself. Her body needs be bled out and ground into the smallest pieces, and then there will be an effect. Maybe the bones could be used to feed someone's garden. The one actually decent thing it would ever be good for. You can't rebirth a thing that shouldn't be here. Feed it on new water, new soil, but the fruit will still poison all who partake. Make them retch blood and tear open their skin, ripping out every organ to make it stop, make it stop, rid themselves of the poison in their veins before it consumes them whole and leaves them as but a corpse in its wake.

Embrace it.

She's so tired. Control, control, control - yanking herself back so often that there ought to be marks around her throat from it. Every night the damned hammering in her head. Every emotion that doesn't come out, despite how she might wish for it. The rot hasn't yet shown itself. It will. Sickeningly sweet in scent. Before it all falls apart. Hollow at the center, sleepwalking through life.

Fine. Kill her. It doesn't matter. It won't change anything. It doesn't stick.

There is no pain, when the scythe comes down. Only emptiness, as if someone had washed out her skull, in a blank room with nothing in it but a door. And there's no Radar, even when she stumbles back out into the festival. Good. He's probably long since fled. It means she doesn't have to explain herself when she decides to just walk home.

Dead, not dead, no one needs to see her like this. Tomorrow, she'll be bright and shining and full of life again. That particular vault will be resealed. Tonight, she needs to bleed out in privacy, and keep herself awake.

cw: death (mash s3 spoilers)

[incomingchoppers]

Radar is not so lucky as he appeared.

At first, he only sprints in a blind panic, desperate to get away from the specter of Death. That changes the instant he spots the door. He can't hear any footsteps behind him, whether Fever's or the skeleton's, but he can't hear anything over his pounding heart or the blood rushing in his ears. He's gotta hope she sees it, too, and that she's right behind him.

He slams into the door, elbows it open, can't see anything but darkness, keeps running anyway --

Too late, the panic-static obscuring everything clears, just as his foot lands on nothing and drops out from under him.

Radar falls. He screams the whole way down, tumbling end over end through the darkness.

(He thinks, in one awful final rush of horror, is this what Colonel Blake felt like, when his plane -- ?)




Impact.