ph_logs | May Event - All Too Familiar

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event

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.

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Town Hall (these are the days it never rains but it pours)

Zivia is at work when the first shouts of warning start, and immediately goes into action. The building's pretty solid and can serve as a safehouse, like they did during Thatcher's Blight last year; they'll need supplies, people to stand watches, all the practical considerations. If there's one thing she knows how to do, it's organize.

And once that's taken care of ... well, this is as good a place to wait it out as any, in company.

Outside (pressure on the people, people on the streets)

One other thing she can do now is provide a modicum of protection, and that means an additional responsibility. Periodically she steps out of Town Hall to gather supplies, to look for people who need help -- and, once the whisper suggests a solution, to take down as many undead as she can.

The last time something like this threatened Pumpkin Hollow, Zivia didn't have access to her magic. This time it's different.

Undead (watching some good friend scream let me out)

Of course, the last time something like this threatened Pumpkin Hollow, Zivia died of it.

Which means her corpse is one of those lurching about the streets, wearing a loose jacket over a long linen nightgown and shoes but no socks, dirt in her short graying hair. Of all the undead in town right now, she is hardly among the most threatening; nonetheless, like her living counterpart, she's out there to kill as many as she can manage.

Wildcard (this is ourselves under pressure)

[Hit me up on discord or the plotting post if you want a specific prompt!]

As Zivia exits the town hall, a paper bird flutters over to hover in front of her.

[roll a D20]

[1.]

Zivia peers at the bird; it takes her a second or two, as it flutters, to realize it's paper.

"Well hey," she says, and holds up a hand as though it might choose to perch there. "Where'd you come from?"

The bird lands on her finger and gently preens its paper feathers for a moment before unfolding into an image of a woman Zivia has never seen before. Scrolling text appears across the image.

The High Priestess

"Hello, Zivia."

Zivia ... blinks, turning toward the sound of the voice.

(It doesn't occur to her, quite yet, to be alarmed.)

There's a woman standing nearby, and she most certainly wasn't there a moment ago, but she looks exactly like the woman on the card in Zivia's hand.

She smiles.

"Don't be afraid. The undead will not bother you while I am here."

"All right," she says, with just a touch of uncertainty firming out of her voice as she speaks. "Much appreciated, ah ... I don't think we've met."

"We haven't."

The woman turns and beckons for Zivia to follow, though she will not wait for her.

"But I know all of you."

All right, a polite hint isn't doing the trick.

Zivia falls into step with the woman, following a pace behind, and asks "Then would you tell me who you are, please? Or at least what I can call you?"

"I am the High Priestess."

A paper bird flutters down to land on Amarantha's shoulder, it sits for a stride, then flies off again, carrying some message to someone else.

"But you may call me Amarantha."

Zivia Birnbaum | OTA

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+2

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PEOPLE ON THE STREETS, DEE DAH DEE DAH DEE

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Kept meaning to do this since: coworkers in town hall oops--

oops!

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