peckenpaugh | 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

"Maybe we're supposed to go play the piano?" Wyatt offers. He really doesn't understand how any of this works.

How this works varies wildly. So, y'know, hey. Don't know if there are bad ideas in this thing.

"You think it wants a concert?"

"We need to find the linchpin," Presley says impatiently, which seems unfair considering how his friends just woke up. "The object that anchors this memory. These two were headed to the hot springs, so clearly—" He points across the room to the abandoned bathing suit, then seems to falter. "Uh. Deverill and O'Malley should... probably..."

Somehow Presley is still capable of being embarrassed by this when he regularly shares a bed with seven other people.

Edited 2020-06-10 00:06 (UTC)

"Deverill and O'Malley should probably... what?" Felicity gives Presley a devilish smile before picking up the bathing suit. "This?" Without warning, she throws it at him.

The bathing suit Felicity picks up and throws to Presley is a shimmering copy. The real one stays where it is, and the memory suddenly resumes around them.

Bear and Coriander take a single step into the room, Bear’s foot unfortunately finding a fully-inflated whoopie cushion. The room’s unofficial guard-dog. Ptttttthhhhhhhpt. The girls freeze. The bodies on the bed sleepily toss and turn. “Gross,” one accuses the other. “Wasn’t me,” another mumbles defensively. “Wyatt?” one yawns. “Maybe,” comes his sleepy reply. And with that, they begin to quietly snore again.

There’s no way they’re making it across the room without waking the others. ”Accio swimsuit,” Bear whispers, and the green polyester flies across the room to her. She grabs it out of the air and turns back to Coriander. “Come on birthday girl,” she says with a smile, “Let’s get out of here.”

And with that, they slip back out of the room.

[Memory complete. Linchpin found. You may continue to scene here or leave through the portal/door back to Peckenpaugh.]

Mary Grace lets out a long raspberry as the memory plays out, following Bear and Cori to the door.

Presley yelps in an incredibly unmanly way, but catches the glowing bathing suit. "I am not the enemy here! They are," he complains, and throws the linchpin at Wyatt's face before going after Mary Grace.

Big Bed has completed the memory "A Nightmare"!

Upon emerging from the memory out into the auditorium, the portal snapped shut behind them.

Elsewhere in the auditorium, Bear Santiago was freed! At the base of the tree, swamp rose, a magimagicicada was also freed!

Big Bed earned 8 Tokens for completing the memory and defeating the NPC!

They earned an additional 2 Tokens for retrieving the linchpin, and 1 Token for bullying two of their roommates all year, that takes dedication.

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

[We can keep threading but I realized Wyatt needs tokens to get his weapon lmao.]

"Y'ALL BETTER BE GETTIN' US A NEW GHOST!" Mary Grace hollers out the door, shouting at the folks in the auditorium more than Bear and Cori in the past, but WHATEVER. "And this time get us one that FUCKS."

HE IS HERE

MEMORY: A Nightmare

MEMORY: A Nightmare

MEMORY: A Nightmare

MEMORY: A Nightmare

MEMORY: A Nightmare

MEMORY: A Nightmare

MEMORY: A Nightmare

MEMORY: A Nightmare

MEMORY: A Nightmare