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.

Threaded | Flat

Pocket and Pouch did what they could to protect as many students as possible in The Thing's first assault on campus. Walls of ice and blankets of (now wilting) moss cover the far corners of the room. With the danger temporarily pulled to heel, there is nothing to do now but emerge from these safe spaces.

Outside the soft comfort of the party bugs' barriers, the air is heavy with awful feeling, sharp and voracious and wrong. In the center of it all stands that nightmare tree.

Find your friends, gather and regroup, and figure out a way to save everything.

[This subheader is for threads that occur at the start of the night. Think of it as a What's Up? But you're in Hell.]

Fallen prom decor, personal effects and parts of the auditorium, itself make the once flat, clear auditorium floor difficult terrain. All over seeds from the horrible tree are scattered. Memories to be opened. People to be freed.

Where the dance floor was, there is now a tree. Something like a tree. An awful imitation that seems to struggle against its new, solid form. It wants so badly to move, to lurch forward, lash out and eat and eat and eat. You can feel that hunger, that greed, in the marrow of your bones. But something is holding it back. Something holds it in place. Something is making sure that you have time.

Don't waste it.

It's a little chilly in this alcove, though not uncomfortable. On the
contrary, it is the one place to find a bit of relief. Pouch's magic has pushed the vines and branches back, though they still block the stairs up to the second and third floors. This landing is a small haven, a place to rest, to bandage wounds.

Some students stand by here, ready with the few scavenged healing potions, poultices, and maybe some wands, to tend to wounds their friends have suffered through the journey.

[No encounters will drop in this section, but Pre-Healer Studies students may reply to check ins under this header to heal one (1) injury per comment on an injured player.]

Edited 2020-06-04 03:25 (UTC)

Backstage is a mess of toppled shelves, broken props and performing arts club supplies. It is dark, and few seeds have grown here to illuminate the area. Vines rip up through the floor here, flowers mere buds. A bass drum hangs off a branch like a head on a pike, both its sides pierced by the jagged living wood. Despite the ruin, it seems like you may be able to scavenge items from here.

Edited 2020-06-02 13:05 (UTC)

Pushing through the foul foliage takes you into the dance studio, which is surprisingly pristine though one of the wall mirrors is shattered. A single branch, heavy with blue seeds, pokes in through the dance studio's open door. The spring floor is unrolled, putting a slight bounce in your step that doesn't quite feel right given the circumstances. A few vines creep up the walls, but the lack of damage to this room makes everything outside of it feel all the worse.

Your friends are in here. You can feel them.

Edited 2020-06-02 13:06 (UTC)

Threaded | Flat

ARE YOU THERE? CAN YOU MOVE? IT'S TIME TO COME OUT.

AT THE BASE OF THE TREE