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ph_logs2025-05-21 07:05 pm
pumpkinhollow) wrote in ph_logs2025-05-21 07:05 pm
Entry tags:
May Event - All Too Familiar
May Event - All Too Familiar
Content Warnings: Walking dead, character deaths, potential for gore | Special Thanks to Meghan and Kalineh
It was a fine spring day when mysterious letters began cropping up all over Pumpkin Hollow. Letters whose apparent senders do not remember writing them, whose recipients or discoverers were harmed by reading them. Eventually these mysteries, though still unsolved, come to a quiet halt as stealthily as they began, but not before a mail carrier in a cowboy hat trots out to Elsie’s tree with a letter in hand, unmarked aside from being addressed to her.
Elsie,
River la Croix has been hiding something in her forge for a while now. It is called the Book of the Dead. In its pages are hundreds of spells from across time and space with the power to give life to those no longer with us.
Your father is doing his best to revive your mother. But this island’s barrier is blocking his will, resisting his magic. I can no longer watch you suffer in solitude when a solution exists. All you have to do is decipher the text, and its powers are yours. Your mother will be returned to you.
River does not want to part with it. She will become suspicious of you if you ask, and it will become harder to acquire it. You will have to take it without her notice by levitating it out of her forge. She, like many others, is fearful of the Book’s power. This fear isn’t entirely unwarranted for them, but for you, your connection to the Feywilds’ magic will be enough to grant you access to that otherworldly power.
Good luck, and all my love to your dear mother when she returns.
Fond regards,
A friend
Could this be it? Could this be the miracle she's been waiting for? Hope swells painfully in her chest as she clutches the note close. She mustn't celebrate too early. She still needs to get the book. At least her mysterious friend has already told her where to find it. Her jaw sets in a look of determination, and she speeds away into the dusk.
It doesn't take long to reach the forge. River has defended it well, but Elsie slips into her own shadow and sneaks beneath the door without so much as a whisper of sound. Only her hand extends from the puddle of shadow on the floor inside, like a disembodied arm hovering before the flames. Mustering her will, she reaches out to the ancient book and commands the winds to lift it. Sweat beads her shadowy brow while she concentrates, the flames flicker and dance around the slowly levitating book. Just a little more, a little more… There!
It's heavy in her hand, and remarkably cool to the touch despite having been pulled from the fire. She retracts her arm and the book back into her shadow and slips out the way she came. Her heart thumps in her chest as she races back to the safety of her tree. To her mother, who will soon be able to wrap flesh and blood arms around her like she once did. All that's left now is to read. Her friends have been teaching her how. Her mother will be so proud of her.
Carefully now, she opens the book, feeling her skin crawl as a sudden unease grips her very core. No, she will not be deterred. The language is unlike any she's ever seen. The letters, if indeed they can be called that, feel jagged and painful to her mind. Still, she will Not Give Up. She screws her eyes shut, thinks of her mother, and holds tight to her desperate hope to be reunited.
When her eyes reopen to behold the page before her, understanding strikes like lightning. Suddenly, she knows she can speak the words. As they escape her mouth, an unknown magic swells into the space around her, then beyond her. The ground shakes. The air turns foul. And as the trinkets in Elsie’s tree chime together in the unsettling breeze, ringing out with notes more sour than usual, it quickly becomes clear that the advice she received was not from any friend.
The forms of people begin to pry themselves loose from the ground all over town, as if emerging from water, leaving the ground unbroken as they lift themselves out of the ground. They bear horrid injuries, shambling along grotesquely, telling a story of death. However, these are not skeletons from the graveyard, housing the souls of long-dead locals. These are things of flesh and blood, however exposed they might be, wearing newer faces.
Much newer.
Since the barrier went up, many people have died, only to have their bodies vanish and replaced by a new one. Those bodies now walk the town, seeking to unleash a wrath brought on by the corrupted magic of the Necronomicon. Anyone who has died inside the barrier will have a violent, undead copy of themself representing each death wandering the island looking to increase their ranks. Which means that there will be many, many, many Yoricks.
Destroyed copies will remain destroyed for the standard overnight period of any other person. But there are too many of them to defeat this way, and their destruction is impermanent. Thankfully, help is on the way!
In the midst of the undead and their attack on the citizens of Pumpkin Hollow, tiny glimmers of hope appear in the form of folded paper birds. The little gold birds flit from fighter to fighter, small whispers promising that if enough enemies can be felled then the High Priestess can intervene. The necessary number is unknown, but if a bird alights upon someone, they will feel their weariness vanish for a short time, and perhaps, should she feel like it, they may receive a temporary boon to use against the undead.
Eventually the High Priestess will show herself, making good on the promises of the little birds. With a smile, her magic will wrap around the remaining undead, returning them to the unseen graves and binding them into Death once more, leaving the living to pick up the pieces.
She gleefully rips open that letter, hoping it's another message from her father. It isn't and, at first, she's crushed. But only until she starts to actually read it.
Elsie,
River la Croix has been hiding something in her forge for a while now. It is called the Book of the Dead. In its pages are hundreds of spells from across time and space with the power to give life to those no longer with us.
Your father is doing his best to revive your mother. But this island’s barrier is blocking his will, resisting his magic. I can no longer watch you suffer in solitude when a solution exists. All you have to do is decipher the text, and its powers are yours. Your mother will be returned to you.
River does not want to part with it. She will become suspicious of you if you ask, and it will become harder to acquire it. You will have to take it without her notice by levitating it out of her forge. She, like many others, is fearful of the Book’s power. This fear isn’t entirely unwarranted for them, but for you, your connection to the Feywilds’ magic will be enough to grant you access to that otherworldly power.
Good luck, and all my love to your dear mother when she returns.
Fond regards,
A friend
Could this be it? Could this be the miracle she's been waiting for? Hope swells painfully in her chest as she clutches the note close. She mustn't celebrate too early. She still needs to get the book. At least her mysterious friend has already told her where to find it. Her jaw sets in a look of determination, and she speeds away into the dusk.
It doesn't take long to reach the forge. River has defended it well, but Elsie slips into her own shadow and sneaks beneath the door without so much as a whisper of sound. Only her hand extends from the puddle of shadow on the floor inside, like a disembodied arm hovering before the flames. Mustering her will, she reaches out to the ancient book and commands the winds to lift it. Sweat beads her shadowy brow while she concentrates, the flames flicker and dance around the slowly levitating book. Just a little more, a little more… There!
It's heavy in her hand, and remarkably cool to the touch despite having been pulled from the fire. She retracts her arm and the book back into her shadow and slips out the way she came. Her heart thumps in her chest as she races back to the safety of her tree. To her mother, who will soon be able to wrap flesh and blood arms around her like she once did. All that's left now is to read. Her friends have been teaching her how. Her mother will be so proud of her.
Carefully now, she opens the book, feeling her skin crawl as a sudden unease grips her very core. No, she will not be deterred. The language is unlike any she's ever seen. The letters, if indeed they can be called that, feel jagged and painful to her mind. Still, she will Not Give Up. She screws her eyes shut, thinks of her mother, and holds tight to her desperate hope to be reunited.
When her eyes reopen to behold the page before her, understanding strikes like lightning. Suddenly, she knows she can speak the words. As they escape her mouth, an unknown magic swells into the space around her, then beyond her. The ground shakes. The air turns foul. And as the trinkets in Elsie’s tree chime together in the unsettling breeze, ringing out with notes more sour than usual, it quickly becomes clear that the advice she received was not from any friend.
The forms of people begin to pry themselves loose from the ground all over town, as if emerging from water, leaving the ground unbroken as they lift themselves out of the ground. They bear horrid injuries, shambling along grotesquely, telling a story of death. However, these are not skeletons from the graveyard, housing the souls of long-dead locals. These are things of flesh and blood, however exposed they might be, wearing newer faces.
Much newer.
Since the barrier went up, many people have died, only to have their bodies vanish and replaced by a new one. Those bodies now walk the town, seeking to unleash a wrath brought on by the corrupted magic of the Necronomicon. Anyone who has died inside the barrier will have a violent, undead copy of themself representing each death wandering the island looking to increase their ranks. Which means that there will be many, many, many Yoricks.
Destroyed copies will remain destroyed for the standard overnight period of any other person. But there are too many of them to defeat this way, and their destruction is impermanent. Thankfully, help is on the way!
In the midst of the undead and their attack on the citizens of Pumpkin Hollow, tiny glimmers of hope appear in the form of folded paper birds. The little gold birds flit from fighter to fighter, small whispers promising that if enough enemies can be felled then the High Priestess can intervene. The necessary number is unknown, but if a bird alights upon someone, they will feel their weariness vanish for a short time, and perhaps, should she feel like it, they may receive a temporary boon to use against the undead.
Eventually the High Priestess will show herself, making good on the promises of the little birds. With a smile, her magic will wrap around the remaining undead, returning them to the unseen graves and binding them into Death once more, leaving the living to pick up the pieces.
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Moving his hands off of Capochin's shoulders, he takes a reluctant first step, waving him along just the short few steps to their office space. The door is closed, and Hector sets a hand onto it, hesitating. He glances over his shoulder, brows knitted with worry.
"Can I ask yew one last thing? I--- yew gotta know that I didn't choose this lightly. Okay? I-it--- it wasn't somethin' I did all willy-nilly, just 'cause I wanted to. I did it for times like this."
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The door to their office does not open to the quaint space with its antique furniture, its aged filing cabinets and familiar clutter. The room it opens to is dark, steel floors seeming to stretch on infinitely into a pitch-black nothingness. It isn't without anything inside of it, though - light glows from a desk, arcane instead of electrical, but familiar all the same.
Hector steps inside, stopping just before the desk. His stomach twists with dread as he turns to face Capochin fully; his tail wraps anxiously around his leg. "I know yew got questions, and I promise I'll answer 'em as soon as we got time. Just--- just don't panic, okay?"
That's a big ask for what he's about to reveal, but he's never exactly been one to shy away from asking too much, has he?
The movement is done with the certainty of practice, a hand reached up into thin air. Clawed fingers pull on nothing, until suddenly, something tangible is pulled. Red fabric lined with gold, smooth and shining, pulls free from the nothingness like a sweeping curtain. He hesitates as he holds it, taking one last look at Capochin, before he sets the switch into motion. The "curtain" is pulled closed, the fabric shifts - and from the neck of the coat, Inspekta's head emerges, hair fluffed as it settles into place.
He doesn't know what to say at first. Even despite knowing that this is something he needed to do, knowing that he'd have to present it at some point, he doesn't know what to say. He lifts his hands in an awkward, wide splay, gesturing to himself and his new-yet-familiar form.
"...T--- ta-da?"
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He peeks past Hector into the weirdly dark room, and--- gods. The God Complex. How the fuck did it get here? It looks--- different, but the same. What is this? What's happening here? A million questions race through his mind until---
There it is. That familiar face. A flood of memories follows and there is a nearly indiscernible shift in the way Capochin looks at Hector.
No, not Hector.
Inspekta.
"Wh--- wha... how...?"
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There's no pride in the notion, none of the excitement of his first ascension. He wrings his hands.
"We only got a few minutes, so--- ask what yew need'ta and I'll try to hurry n' tell yew, and I'll start gettin' my hands tew work on boardin' up tha windows n' doors, okay?"
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"Just--- just one thing, for now." His throat tightens. "Are we--- Before, when you ascended, we couldn't--- You didn't wanna--- Are we still... y'know, together?"
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Inspekta looks alarmed at the prospect, like the worry had never truly crossed his mind. He wastes little time crossing the distance between himself and Capochin, boot-heels echoing before the sound fades into that sprawling emptiness, and his two "main hands" take Capochin's shoulders gently. They're so much larger, this way, fingers falling more onto his arms than his shoulders--- Inspekta was always so much larger than life, wasn't he?
"I'm still me, n' we're still us, no matter what, okay? I promise," He insists, gentle but with an urgency to it. "I know how it used'ta be, but--- it ain't like that now, even if I got my goddy powers back!"
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"Okay," he murmurs. "Okay."
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He made the right choice. Of course, he must have.
"I won't let yew down," Inspekta adds softly. Only then does he lean back up, waving Capochin along. While they move to exit the God Complex--- something previously unheard of for this shape of his--- additional hands begin setting to their tasks, pulling shutters closed and pushing furniture against doors, drawing curtains, anything to keep the entrances shut.
"I'm gonna leave d'ese here to look after ya n' help shut everything up tight, n' I'm gonna go get tha kids. Maybe try to get a few folks to sumwhere safe, if they got a spot in town they're roundin' 'em up, if I can. If yew can find the other Bizzies, n' they need a lift, I'll get 'em, too! I got my stone on me n' everything. ...Oh! And yewrs is on top of da dresser, by the way."
The planning comes naturally, in these times of great haste and panic, each piece falling just so as he tries to set every step to be just-so. Whether that's the magic inherent to godhood or the focus sharpening in his usual tool-set is unclear, but he's doing what they need to, and that's what matters right now.
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With haste, there's a single moment taken to press a kiss atop Capochin's head, before he starts to haul himself into motion. New shapes about the house take some getting used to (along with some lingering fear knotting his stomach about this form being out and visible), but he makes for the stairs, moving to burst out of their balcony.
"BegoodloveyewbacksoonbyeCappy!"
A wooden and glass door opens, and it closes just a bit too hard in its haste. Red tears across the sky with the greatest hurry he can possibly manage. The house is left silent, save for the scurrying of hands working. Capochin is, for the most part, left alone.