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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.
no subject
"It dissolves after like, a couple hours! It's meant to restrain bad guys! If they could just remove it then it wouldn't be very good at that!"
Okay so she isn't actually sure if it still comes off after a couple hours, the formula is slightly different here because it's the adjusted version Tarantulas and Peter came up with to suit the materials on hand, but it should be fine. She hasn't seen any of the stuff sticking around where she's shot it for longer than that. It's fine. Totally.
"Uhh— okay, colder, way colder, turn, like, south-west? Wait, no— never eat shredded wh— east! South-east."
no subject
He mumbles quietly to himself, trying to feel his way around with each of her instructions, banking and turning clumsily, looking for all the world like a drunken snake. It's a good thing he's holding his hand to the side, because he absolutely clunks his face into buildings more than once, his body scrunching up and doing its best impression of an accordion as he tries to pull back and find a new direction to turn.
"I--- is it too late to say I never been good at charades? Or--- trust falls? Or blindfolded act-if-it-ees? Or anything where I gotta guess?" He laughs nervously. It's hard for his face to scrunch up much further than it already is, but he certainly does when the sounds of magical pulses and screams ring out a few blocks away. "Oh cheese, oh cheese, okay, south east, south east, we got this, a--- are we close? Can yew see it? Maybe even tha clock tower? I bet yew'd be safe up there!"
no subject
"I can see 'em! We're heading kinda the right way, just, keep a hand out for— uh— hm, what building is that..." She has no idea, she runs around the rooftops she doesn't check the front of places so much. Where are they? Where's good for him to— wait. "Okay, wait, actually—"
What the heck are they doing, this is so completely and utterly unnecessary it's not even funny. Gwen perches on her knees to keep her eye on their surroundings, but—
"I don't really need keeping safe, you can probably just—plonk me down on any given rooftop and I'll be fine. Like, if you drop me at the clock tower I'm just going to end up jumping back down to deal with more zombies anyway. And maybe if we get to a closer rooftop I can just— try pull the webbing off?"
no subject
The flight stops, offended, and her weight in his palm makes it easy to find her with another one of his large hands, jabbing her with a finger. (Careful to keep it light, of course, but it's still practically a little shove.)
"Yew mean to tell me I picked yew up, got all gummed up, and yew ain't even gonna sit yewrself down somewhere safe, kid?? C'mon, yew can't tell me that, how's a guy supposed to put yew anywhere knowin' yew're just gonna run back into it! Cripes, ain't yew gonna make that lil' fox fella pop a heartery that way?"
no subject
"Okay, well, for for one, I didn't ask to be picked up! Two, I already said sorry, and three, I have! Superpowers! And Pennyburrow knows I have superpowers!"
Not that it would necessarily stop the poor guy popping a heartery or otherwise being aged instantly by her being out here doing this, but still, he does know she has superpowers and can generally take care of herself.
"I'm way more use to people if I'm out here on the defensive than holed up somewhere!"
no subject
His extra hands smooth over a roof that he finally finds, no sharp weather vanes to be seen, before he lowers the palm he carried her in for her to step out, trying to keep himself pressed as close to the building as possible. It's hard for something as large as him to camoflauge, but its at least worth trying, right?
"Fine! Fine, Miss Superhero, but if yew get in over yewr head, don't---" He pauses. "...Awright fine do call for me, I ain't gonna let yew get killed, but--- cripes, be careful, will yew?"
no subject
Gwen clambers nimbly out onto the rooftop and turns back to him, wincing apologetically at the webbing again. Yeah that's gonna be a nightmare, sorry dude.
"For something as slow as most of these zombies I'm literally nearly impossible to hit. Like, I have— borderline precognition for danger. Which is not the same as being careful but has generally the same outcome!"
Beat.
"But if anything actually goes wrong I will scream super loud."
good spot to wrap?
"Awright, fine, I can take that," he heaves an over-dramatic sigh with his words. "I can't say nothin', I was just as bad about dis sort of thing when I was a younger. Just be careful! And lemme know that yew're okay after all this is over, okay?"
Starting to bank away, he lifts his hand in that direction in a little wave.
"Stay safe, kid!"
wrap!
"I will do my best! Good luck, huge guy!"
...yeah she should probably start carrying something that can safely dissolve the webs during chaotic crises, shouldn't she. Ah well. Hopefully he'll manage fine. For now, she needs to get back to it.