peckenpaugh | HE IS HERE

Entry tags:

! ic/ooc,
* endgame

HE IS HERE

the vines have run wild

it's over Everything is in shambles. Walls and floors torn and broken from roots and branches sprouting through. They block doors and crowd passages and pulse with sick life. The Thing sits in the center of it all, angry and starving, its trunk both still and moving in ways you catch only when it is in the corner of your vision. Branches that look less like bark and more like skin stretch in every direction, lush with shadowy leaves and dotted with bits of glowing blue. The ruined floor is littered with those little twinkling dots. Seeds. Everywhere, seeds. They hang on boughs, and rest on banisters in the upper levels. The one thing in this nightmare that doesn't radiate that awful, pervasive hunger.

The roof is gone, replaced with a writhing canopy of shadow and muck. Some parts of it are complex spiderwebs of tendrilly shapes, others solid formless movement. The only consistent thing about it is that it is terrible to behold, faintly nauseating to look at for too long. Ash rains down between gaps in its branches, and what glimpses of sky are visible are nothing but swirling gray clouds. What stars still shine are magic, man-made, floated between balconies by prom committee before the dance.

Those remaining begin to stir. Each one of you has heard Pocket's words, "Find the roots." And if you want to save your friends, your family, the holler — hell, maybe even the world — that's exactly what you're going to do.

You climb from protective cocoons of dying moss, push your way past walls of solid ice, emerging into utter destruction. Things move and make noise at the edge of your vision, but for now, at least, all is calm. What to do? Where to start?

it's ruined Among the twinkling maple seeds are the dropped possessions of students and staff, lost when they were pulled away. A compact mirror, a cell phone, a pair of glasses, cups of punch spilling across the floor. A single red heel sits at the edge of the jagged pit that peers down into the Sorting Path. The air here is hot. Too hot. If you jump, you'll surely be boiled alive.

Though locked when everyone tried to flee, vines and roots have torn the doors to the auditorium off their hinges. The splintered remains of heavy oak doors litter the entrance halls and stairwell alcoves, leaving an open path outside. Not that you'd want to flee, by the looks of it.

A cool night breeze is the only relief from the growing heat of the auditorium, yes, but even that is tainted by the heavy scent of flowers. Outside, vines and purple flowers have exploded over every surface. They climb up lamp posts, engulf buildings whole, hang from trees. It would be beautiful if it weren't horrifying. Campus is unrecognizable.

there is no hope Roots and vines clog the way to the Sorting Path, and most stairwells are completely obstructed by the growths of that horrible tree. Up above, something buzzes and wails, a mockery of a cicada's cry, and beyond that the twittering of birds nesting in the tree's highest branches.

Pouch coalesces in the middle of it all, a one-winged magimagicicada, weak and weary but undaunted. Resolute, if not reinvigorated. He bends down to touch a seed, and the moment his obsidian fingers light on it, a blue-white portal to somewhere else rips right through reality. A memory begins to play. Somehow, the bug seems to know what he's seeing.

She gave us what we need, the one who ran says to the gathered students, his voice in their heads as much as the air. Let's all not let her down, huh?

Find your friends. Find my siblings. It's time to fight.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Over the last few minutes, the constant noise hanging over the auditorium has gotten steadily louder. Each passing second the buzzing more difficult to ignore. Louder and louder, closer and closer, a blanket of buzzing darkness descends on the auditorium.

This isn't just a few bugs, this is a whole Swarm. So densely packed it moves like one solid entity, a bubbling cloud that bends and churns, diving aggressively toward any students not covered.

THIS CREATURE IS AGGRESSIVE. DEFEND YOURSELF:

[Any Active students may participate in this encounter! Just be sure you've checked your inventory in.]

NAME: Maisy M
WHAT DO THEY DO?: ACK! BUGS! Maisy is particularly vulnerable to this attack, because she's taken her dress off to try to modify it into something SLIGHTLY more manageable. Sure, she's in her underwear and a bunch of NASTY BUGS are attacking her... but she also has this considerable skirt to swing around like a big ol flyswatter.

Edited (i hope she dies in her underwear) 2020-06-03 23:51 (UTC)

Amazing! Unfathomable Transdimensional Entities Hate Her! This teen girl's one weird trick to stopping hell bugs!

(ROLLED 10) Maisy swings her skirt around, swatting bugs away. Her big frilly skirt makes the perfect bug net however, and she catches a massive blob of them just before it could divebomb her.

Maisy now has a skirt full of angry bugs.

The swarm seems undaunted.

NAME: Audrey Poke
WHAT DO THEY DO?: This is the one use this is going to get before it's ruined forever, so Audrey's lighting some sage and waving it at them. Purify evil and/or smoke it out

Edited (I HOPE I PLAYED TIME GOD IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION SORRY) 2020-06-03 23:58 (UTC)

It takes a moment for the smoke to get going, just long enough for the bugs to lurch out. (ROLLED 3) They buzz around from the right and hit her like a fist, buffeting Audrey with their bodies. She's knocked right off her feet, bruised, but okay.

That burning sage though does do some work (ROLLED 8). The bugs lurch away from the smell, but not fast enough. One runs right into the smoldering bundle of herbs, catches light and pops like an evil kernel of corn. Several other bugs in the vicinity, overheated in the tiny blast, immediately do the same.

...oooo bug popcorn

NAME: MGOM
WHAT DO THEY DO?: Shakes up a WizaRed Bull and sprays it at them. Shotguns part of another and then chucks the rest of the can.

Mary Grace (ROLLED 3) gets the bugs sticky with WizaRed Bull but it doesn't seem to do much. Then, a second later, the Swarm (ROLLED 6) drops the empty can on her head.

A single bug gets stuck in her hair in the process.

Mary Grace smacks herself in the head to kill the bug. Fuck you, this hair took like half an hour.

NAME: Felicity Deverill
WHAT DO THEY DO?: If only she'd still had her damn tote and that comically large jug of pesticide. Alas! She's basically empty handed, so Felicity just opens and closes her journal repeatedly, trying to smush as many bugs as possible between the pages.

Felicity (ROLLED 8) fills her journal with some interesting splatter art, grays and greens and sickly yellows smeared across pages as she snaps the book shut on several clusters of bugs when they swarm her (ROLLED 4) biting or stinging or whatever it is they do.

Though no blood is drawn, it hurts like hell, and Felicity's joints start to ache [Will last for 3 tags on her next memory or adventure], but worst of all is the fact that it already itches.

NOTE: I'm going to apply this effect to the next scene she does and not any in progress. Likely Wyatt's.

NAME: Joop
WHAT DO THEY DO?: Jupiter's going to take the fight to the bugs, she turns into a bird (for...the first time?) and flies right the fuck into the swarm because she's a dumbass.

Jupiter is predictably mobbed immediately, but perhaps that seeker training does her good (ROLLED 8) because the bugs just can't catch her.

She squawks and flaps, pecks and scratches with her tiny bird feet, but a little corvid like that can't do much. That doesn't stop Jupiter from knocking a few bugs out of the air during her ascent, though (ROLLED 7).

NAME: Uriah Hatfield
WHAT DO THEY DO?: Copious swearing as he waves a knife covered in fish guts around in front of him like a jackass.

That fish guts knife doesn't seem to do much good (ROLLED 1) but apparently the flailing is enough to bat a few away when the swarm tries to engulf Uriah (ROLLED 10) he even manages to cut up a few that can't get away.

It's whittling work, but that thick cloud is dissipating!

It's clearly feeling the pain after being whaled on by six teens, and that solid cloud of buzzing, wailing gray starts to show some gap. It reassembles, tighter than before but taking up less space as well. The mass of noisy bugs flies up and then swoops down, battering the kids in its path.

Maisy (ROLLED 5) is lightly pelted. It smarts, there'll be a few little bruises from these fast moving pests, but she manages to hold on to her bug dress, at least.

Audrey (ROLLED 2) gets buffeted a second time tonight. Bit and scratched, she sees stars for a moment. [For 2 tags in the next memory she enters, Audrey will be dizzy]

Mary Grace (ROLLED 4) gets scratched and pelted, she'll be feeling this tomorrow (but it won't be worse than the hangover).

Felicity (ROLLED 10) absolutely cannot be touched by those bugs. They are really afraid of her journal smashing skills.

Jupiter (ROLLED 10), being a literal bird, easily dodges the swarm.

Poor Uriah (ROLLED 2) gets swept off his feet in a wall of bugs angry at how deftly he'd avoided them before. He lands hard on his butt, and the only thing worse than his tailbone right now is the way his head is spinning.

The swarm doesn't seem to have much fight left in it, though.

NAME: Presley Mondragon
WHAT DO THEY DO?: Time to take Pouch's discount wand for a spin. Presley twirls it between his fingers as an unnecessary flourish, and fires off an Exploding Charm at the cloud of homicidal bugs. (Or tries to, anyway.)

Just a few bugs (ROLLED 6) manage to descend from the swam onto Presley before he's blasting them away with an utterly ridiculous explosion from this sketchy wand. The bugs bite and harass him, but they don't stop his spell. The ball of light that burps out of the end of it is instantly blinding even before it's exploded.

And explode it does (ROLLED 10). What bad bugs aren't immediately vaporized are pitched against walls or slammed into the ground, easy pickings for stomping.

[ENCOUNTER COMPLETE! We will follow with tokens shortly.]

There's bug guts on Presley's shoes now, but that was deeply satisfying. Like a gunslinger in the Wild West, Presley blows on the tip of his wand.

Maisy, Audrey, Mary Grace, Felicity, Jupiter, Uriah and Presley all earn 5 Tokens!

Maisy earns 2 Tokens extra for Angry Bees Dress.

Also Pouch scoops the prom king crown up off the ground and puts it on her head.

You can check your token totals in Pouch's shop here, and maybe see if there's anything worth grabbing while you're there!

***

In the chaos, Pouch could hear yelling. With a barrage of frost magic, he managed to clear the vines blocking one of the stairwells up and found Mr. Hobgood waiting on the other side.

A path to the upper levels has been opened. Players may now participate in three memories/adventures at a time!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

HE IS HERE

ENCOUNTER: Buzzing Blanket

ENCOUNTER: Buzzing Blanket

Re: ENCOUNTER: Buzzing Blanket

ENCOUNTER: Buzzing Blanket

Re: ENCOUNTER: Buzzing Blanket

Re: ENCOUNTER: Buzzing Blanket

ENCOUNTER: Buzzing Blanket

Re: ENCOUNTER: Buzzing Blanket

Re: ENCOUNTER: Buzzing Blanket

ENCOUNTER: Buzzing Blanket

ENCOUNTER: Buzzing Blanket

Re: ENCOUNTER: Buzzing Blanket

Re: ENCOUNTER: Buzzing Blanket

Re: ENCOUNTER: Buzzing Blanket

ENCOUNTER: Buzzing Blanket

ENCOUNTER: Buzzing Blanket

ENCOUNTER: Buzzing Blanket - THE SWARM ATTACKS!

ENCOUNTER: Buzzing Blanket

ENCOUNTER: Buzzing Blanket - COMPLETE

ENCOUNTER: Buzzing Blanket - COMPLETE

ENCOUNTER: Buzzing Blanket - TOKENS & A NEW WAY OPEN