This is where you sat when you were sorted, each quarter of this balcony painted beachy blue, spring pink, pine green or mahogany red. Once, it was a pain to shuffle past your peers and find a good seat for a show or assembly. Now the way is blocked by toppled tables, broken benches, fallen prom decorations and curtains of vines.
Blue seeds litter every surface, a hall of memories to be explored. Hurry.
[UNMODERATED] [CRITERIA: cramped area, 2 characters max due to size constraints, minimum replies 8]
It's cold outside, but warm in here. The old van is crammed with teenagers, so the windows fog up quickly, making it hard to see outside. The patter of rain on the roof is almost deafening, and aside from two faded yellow dome lights, it’s almost pitch black. They’re sat on a front lawn in the hills of Elflock Falls, that much is evident if you squint out the front windshield.
Within, the van is a cramped mess. Several backpacks are stuck on or between seats. One is open, papers and books jutting out of every pocket. Up front, Lionel Qualls sits in the driver seat, hands at ten and two for approximately six seconds before he starts drumming on the wheel. Beside him in the passenger seat, Percy Potkin's grinning broad, fixing a set of fuzzy dice to the rear view.
“I like them!” Percy announces gamely when El rolls his eyes.
The memory shifts, the watcher doing a turn. In the way back, two teenage Crocketts and a young Gilda Santos are piled up and laughing. Popcorn goes flying when Zed accidentally knocks the cup of it out of Gilda’s hands. A moment of raucous laughter is cut short when Wybie Youngblood climbs aboard from the left, soaked to the bone from the rain outside and announcing himself with a, "Shit!"
Z Gunzenhauser, standing on the right, pushes her way past the mystery memory owner and smacks her shin against one of the bucket seats in her eagerness to get to the front. “Autsch! Why?” It doesn’t stop her long, though. She leans over Percy to fiddle with the buttons and knobs.
Naturally, that leaves few others for the memory holder to be. "Getting any good tunes?" Georgie Trullinger teases as Zelda continues to fruitlessly seek sound from the dead radio.
"The van's not even on yet, Z," Lionel cackles as his friend hits buttons and turns knobs.
“I believe in her,” Percy says with such conviction it’s hard to say if he’s joking.
“Quatsch! Turn it on then!” Zelda snips, slapping Lionel’s shoulder. “What are you waiting for?! Do you see how I’m suffering?”
More laughter fills the tiny space.
"Alright, alright," Lionel concedes with a dismissive wave, then puts his hand on the ignition and turns the key. The lights come up bright, illuminating the sherbet green upholstery and stained faux leather dash. Then suddenly, everything freezes.
[?MODERATED? - we may slip into this memory] [CRITERIA: minimum 3 players, minimum 12 replies] [METAPLOT]
Water laps against a pebble beach. In and out. In and out. Waves climb up shore and retreat again. The stones at your feet are black and sharp, so shiny they look like hunks of glass. Some fine as frit, others as large as a human head, all of them glittering. The water rushing toward you is thick and inky blue, smelling not of algae or salt, but of something faintly sweet, unfamiliar. Above, the sky is gray. You know it's night, though it doesn't look like it. Focus long on it, and your eyes begin to hurt. You realize: it's not gray, it's just densely packed with stars. So innumerable they make a solid tapestry.
Debris litters the beach. Blankets, baskets, overturned boats, what looks a bit like a chaise lounge split in two. There are drying pools of gray goo in places, tide pools that smell faintly of chocolate. But those aren't tide pools. And that's not ocean water.
All around, vines are growing, creeping up toward the sweet indigo sea. Massive purple flowers, bigger than you are, sit dangerously every dozen or so feet, drinking in that endless starlight and singing it back in pulses of purple light. This is a battle lost, but the war still rages on.
Snap.
One approaches, a being of many limbs, many tendrils, many frills. Strangely beautiful, its body all the colors of an exotic fish, but unsettling to behold. It wears lovely adornments, metal bangles, colorful threads woven into nets, a wreath of red crystals in its hair, each one as delicate as the petal of a flower. When it moves, it moves like a spider, pulling itself forward, toward the memory's owner.
Click, click, clack. Pop. Snap snap snap.
Though the sounds have no meaning to your ear, that feeling is unmistakable. Loyalty, devotion, adoration, fear.
The two beings set to work moving pebbles about until a strange glyph has been drawn in the beach. A circle rimmed by symbols unfamiliar even to the top Symbology students at Peckenpaugh. The memory owner walks around the circle, their partner keeping pace beside them, putting their backs to the ocean and looking further ashore. More of these beings are gathered, ready with what little they can carry to flee to somewhere new.
Three of these waiting beings approach and from tendrilly limbs present items: a satchel of fine white powder, a vial of something gray, and a cube of faded gray metal. Everything freezes.
“Oh! Birdie, I—I definitely lost a contact, it’s—oh god, I think it’s going behind my eye!” Sarah-Jane Dorkins leans in close to the mirror, finger dragging down her bottom eyelid. This color-changing contact lens Birdie insisted she try tonight is definitely working its way under her eye, and she never even wanted to try it in the first place.
“Don’t worry about it,” Birdie Beridze calls back. “I’ve got plenty more where that came from.” Birdie sweeps into the room, two martinis in hand, with all that glamorous confidence Sarah-Jane could never even dream of having. Even her apartment here felt so much more exciting than her own; she had a rack of designer cocktail dresses where Sarah-Jane kept her good vacuum cleaner, she had costume jewelry that looked stolen from a movie set, she had an autograph from—okay, a lot of people that aren’t all that familiar to her, actually, but still!
Sarah-Jane lets go of her eyelid, but doesn’t relax, and there’s no way she’s going to stop worrying about it. “Okay, well, does it come out eventually?” she asks and grabs for her purse, upending it all over Birdie’s vanity. Junk scatters across the glassy surface, three chapsticks roll to the ground, an airpod and bottle of Wizine roll behind the vanity altogether. “Am I stuck with this thing buried behind my eye forever while it just, like, detaches my retinas for me?”
Birdie sips at one of the martinis, but Sarah-Jane doesn’t need input to spiral out, and she also really doesn’t want to lose that airpod. Also that Wizine! Do you know how much of that she’ll need after finally ripping this stupid contact lens out? She grabs onto the vanity and pulls it outward, sending more of her purse contents all over the floor. It doesn’t matter, because she can get all of these things, she can fix it all herself, she can clean up any mess, because she is Sarah-Jane Dorkins, goddammit.
Or, well. Sarah-Jane Grossweiner now, probably.
She stops, kneeling on the floor, surrounded by her purse shit. “Goddammit, I don’t want to be a Grossweiner again,” she wails and throws her hands to her side. Birdie sets a martini glass on the vanity, leans against it, and… stops there, frozen completely in time.
[UNMODERATED - player memory] [CRITERIA: find the linchpin, minimum 12 tags]
The bakery is quiet and all of the lights but one are low. On the street, it's cold enough to make a person hunch their shoulders in, just a little, and late enough that the sky is black. The street is too. Black like the metal of the lampposts and the paint on the bench out front where there's a boy with his gaze fixed down the street, skinny and small, fidgeting with the hem of his sweatshirt, plucking at a loose thread and winding it around his finger.
It isn't startling, the black of the sky the asphalt the door behind him. Maybe because of the dark or maybe because that's how it's always been. That is how it's always been. All the world in contrasts of bright and dark and the shades of grey between them. The boy digs his teeth into his cheek and leans forward. Sucks in a breath and leans back almost as quickly, pulling a sneaker up onto the bench and retying his shoelace. Someone's late. (It isn't you. You're here. You're waiting. You're supposed to be here. To be still. To be waiting. It'll be fine. She'll be back if you can just—)
Behind him a bell jingles, chiming sound that startles him into straightening, toes of his sneakers skimming the floor and shoulders rocking back as a woman steps out the front door of the shop with her arms full and her wand tucked behind her ear. The slow build of panic in the air quiets like a candle that somebody's gone and taken a snuffer straight to. All covered up and choked.
"You still out here, honey?" she asks, all bright and polite like she hadn't seen him through the window all day, holed up between her pansies. Her voice is warm (warm like the cup she'd placed down on the bench that morning, like the brimming-full paper bag folded over in her hands right now) like he's a pleasant thing to see and she has a smile that makes her eyes crinkle closed.
Desmond nods. "Yes, ma'am."
There are splotches of white on the dark of her shirt, one streak of it left high on her forehead. She misses it by half an inch as she reaches up to run her fingers through her hair. "And you're sure you won't stay inside?"
For a moment, she looks like she might argue when he dips his chin and mumbles out a sheepish, "No, ma'am." Her lips turning down in a way that makes something squirm guiltily in his stomach. But she drops her paper bag onto spare bit of space next to him instead, her fingers skimming the tops of the little gray flowers in the pot next to the door.
"Alright," she says. "Well, you know where the key is."
Everything is huge. Everything. The trees, the grass, the looming shoe of an incoming teenager who isn't looking where they're walking and oh no this can't be the end this can't be— Tiny mushroom legs hurry away from the crush of size 11 sneakers, rolling into the shadow of an enormous duffel bag for safety.
"SPOREZ-UM!" the little one shouts, using a pair of lost Mothgarden sunglasses as a ladder to climb up on the bag and shake an itty bitty balled up fist in the direction of the sneaker-holder. "GIBBUM VIZZUS, GIBBUM WUTFORZ." The teenager, however, doesn't hear, and they continue on their merry way. The muscheron crosses his arms and plops back onto the bag for a good pout.
But then there's a sound. Is that… purring?? The mushroom-shaped fairy gulps and turns to see a cat, five, ten, a MILLION sizes larger than him, stalking toward the bag.
"GIBBAK! GIBBAK!" The muscheron grabs the sunglasses ladder and holds it up defensively, the winged frames jabbing right into his chest. He starts to swing wildly, barely able to control the shades, momentum swinging him around in circles. "GIB SPAAAACE!"
A musty smell hangs in the air, just the scent of an old building finally getting a breeze after months of every window and door being sealed up for the winter. It's dark and dusty here, all shadows except for the triangles of orange-gold light glowing from lamps positioned around the room. It's difficult to say if the house is genuinely this dark, or if that's just how it's being remembered. It's all sort of big, the way everything seems a little big when you're still just a kid, before you've stopped growing completely.
This place is somehow both empty and cluttered, and finding the linchpin is sure to be an ordeal. The floor-to-ceiling shelves are packed full of books, some titles legible — with titles like Devil's Heat and Renegade Yeti Love Affair — others gibberish. Between those there are portraits and art, families and individuals, all of it old and ugly. A massive tapestry hangs on one wall, the design looking a bit like a coat of arms. There's an empty bottle of wine sitting on the low table in the center of the room. Another bottle of merlot, still half-full sits, on a side table along with a gramophone spinning a vinyl. Rhapsody in Blue fills the air.
"Things are about to be very different," says a hawk-like woman grimly. At her words the memory's owner turns his head and stares at the massive orange cat seated beside him on the overstuffed red sofa. "I know it's frightening, but—"
Zedekiah Crockett shoves himself up off that uncomfortable sofa and the old orange cat climbs to its feet and follows after.
"—But we'll all need to adjust."
"You're going to lock him up, aren't you?" Zed protests, turning to face the hawk-like woman, his mother Healer Zipporah Crockett. The more he speaks, the more panic and anger rise in his young voice. "You and dad are going to shut him away and—"
"Of course not. We don't have to. There are advancements in—" his mother tries to explain in that crisp clinical tone of hers. When she speaks, it makes everything seem darker and colder than it is, but Zed's not really listening. He’s scooping up that empty wine bottle. The music swells, and then everything stops.
Everything is huge. Or, more accurately, everything looks huge from the perspective of the little russula muscheron. The shoebox is lit with a birthday candle in the middle of a table made from one of those plastic separators that comes in a pizza. It's a fire hazard, but you have to take chances when it comes to romance. The table is set with thimbles for cups and bottle caps for plates, filled with scavenged human delicacies. Cheez-it chunks, bacon bits, and squished tater tot pieces served in half of a sunflower seed shell. Peach schnapps from an airplane sized bottle almost as big as the muscheron. Dessert will be a surprise, chunks of Twix served on new pennies.
The musheron checks their reflection in the back of a shined up spoon. The bad luck human spore had given them face paint and adornments, and it makes them glow with pride. They are ready to woo.
The Mayor opens her eyes, blinking into the dimly lit office. Hm. There's no sunbeam here. Earlier, there was definitely a sunbeam.
Ah—there it is. The furry, four-legged mayor stretches her front paws out in front of her, digging her sharp claws into a thick manila folder on the desk. There's something big and red stamped across the front but Mayor T-Bone was elected to lead, not to read, and also she can't read. Looks important.
Mayor T-Bone ignores it and wanders over to the sunbeam's new location. There's a pen shaped like a soft serve ice cream cone in her way, and the civil servant knocks it onto the floor.
"Mr. May—Mr. Zebrowski, where are you going?" Voices in the hall threaten to disturb the Mayor's continued rest.
"Jonathan, it's Zippy now. I'm a private citizen!" They're coming closer to her office, large humans looming just outside the doorframe. The one with the long hair she likes, the one who feeds her cold food. The other one she will never like, and she doesn't have or need a reason.
"Okay, but—Zippy, who's actually in charge now? We can't—" Jonathan gestures at the desk. Mayor T-Bone keeps an eye on him.
"T-Bone is!" Zippy replies brightly. He crosses into her office and everything goes upside down as T-Bone rolls onto her back, exposing her belly for him to rub.
"You're—that's not an option, that's not actually an option." Jonathan follows him in and T-Bone tenses slightly. This belly is not for him to rub. "She's a cat, and we have actual human business to manage."
"I know, a cat managing human business, it's genius!" Zippy joyfully announces. He plops down in that old seat of his behind the desk, tugs at one of the old drawers lining either side, and takes a moment to give the Mayor a scritch on the belly. She lolls onto her side, bringing everything right side up again. "She's the only one of us truly unfettered by political bias."
"There's still a significant communication barrier, sir." Jonathan absentmindedly follows Zippy's lead, reaching out to rub T-Bone's belly. In seconds, her claws are out, and everything freezes in that moment before he realizes what a mistake he's made.
[UNMODERATED - player memory] [CRITERIA: 3 replies per player minimum]
Someone’s arguing next door, muffled voices rising in anger behind paper thin walls, but Kermie isn’t worried about them. He’s in a kitchen, surrounded by food smells. It’s warm and it’s clean and it’s comfortable, and it feels so big to his six-year-old eyes. He spins through the room, arms out, soaking it all in.
There’s a grubby little stove against the wall by the door, every burner firing. The sound of onions sizzling fills the room, while a deep pot boils away, and he wants to know what’s in there. The kitchen table is already overloaded with foil-covered dishes and steaming tupperware and Kermie’s never seen this much food in his life, how can there possibly be more?
A gray-haired woman in a floral apron paces the living room behind Kermie, chatting amiably on the phone in what’s probably Polish, but he pays her no mind as he grabs a chair from the table and drags it over to the stove. No one’s ever told him to watch out for hot stoves before. No one’s ever really cooked for Kermie before. That’s okay, he can use the microwave! But boy would he like to eat like this sometimes.
Kermie clambers up on the chair and leans over the pot while the skillet spits oil and butter just beside him. Little pockets of dough sit in the boiling water, a few of them bobbing along the surface as the water roils. His eyes go wide, because Kermie doesn’t know what these are but they look delicious, and he reaches into the pot to take one. No one’s ever told Kermie not to take things without permission. In fact, sometimes his mother encourages it and he’ll do anything to make her proud.
Before Kermie can douse his hand in hot water, the pierogies in the pot begin to swirl, twisting up, up, and up out of the water. He counts the little dumplings as they float—one, two, three, four, five, dancing around his arm. He doesn’t know how this is happening, he doesn’t know that this is magic or even that it’s out of the ordinary, but boy is this cool.
The voice in Polish gets louder, closer, right behind him as she sweeps into the kitchen. Kermie jumps, shouts, the pierogies orbiting his arm jump and splash back down toward the water, and everything freezes.
Oh. This is strange. Everything in this memory seems darker than it should be, a tinted film thrown over the entire scene. It takes a minute to adjust and catch the details, but it’s not like this is an entirely unfamiliar place—everyone who’s ever been to one of Pocket’s parties has some idea what her cave looks like. What more is there really to see beyond the spray of the Falls at the mouth of the cave and some rocks jutting out of the wall, a fun obstacle for the drunkest of teens. In the back, far behind the memory owner, something blinks. A dull whir sound echoes along the cave walls.
“Ohhhhhmigod ohmigod ohmigod, you guys!!” the memory owner, the drunk party bug herself, claps and hops in excitement as a trio of teens pushes past the curtain of water. The shadowy overlay slips for a moment as her signature sunnies nearly bounce off her face. “I am sososoooo excited to show you guys the PONIES!”
“Pocket!” a blonde girl in her finest athleisure claps and hops along with her, and it feels like glitter is exploding in Pocket’s thorax. Or whatever those cute humans call it. “So you got someone to explain them to you? Did they show you pictures and… ?”
The blonde girl looks behind Pocket, her mouth slightly agape. The other two haven’t said a word the entire time. They’re just as captivated by Pocket’s amazing display as the blonde is. She can tell.
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!” Pocket waves her hands and flutters her wings, waving the kids along to follow behind her. “You’re the very first ones and I can’t wait to show you everything!!”
Pocket pivots. On the other side of the cave, not nearly as hidden in shadow as it should be, is an enormous horse head. The eyes are wide and bulging, the mouth thrown open, displaying every single tooth in that long mouth. The closer the quartet gets to that face, the more horrifying details jump out; the warm breeze of the pony’s breath, the squishy sensation as they step on the tongue, the flashing lights at the back of the throat.
“Uh… Pocket?” one of the other teens asks, the boy this time, and Pocket can’t wait to hear his glowing review of her super realistic pony already!! “How are we, uh, getting to the party?”
Pocket grins so wide it almost splits her jaw right off. “We jump!”
[MODERATED - player-run NPC memory] [CRITERIA: defeat NPC, get linchpin]
Siobhan O'Malley stomps through the Wildgulch cavern, wet shoes squelching every step of the way. Ugh. Just—UGH!! Stupid seniors throwing her in the stupid springs (and not even WILDGULCH seniors). Stupid Mary Grace not even noticing or looking at her. Doesn't she get to listen to her dad's race too?
"Gonna put these shoes in her BED," the freshman grumbles under her breath. She leans against the walls to kick off her wet sneakers, balancing herself on one of the heating pipes snaking through the house. Something rattles inside the pipe and she yanks her hand away. Oh. If this is broken she'd rather not deal with it.
Or if it's haunted.
There had been talk of haunted things.
Siobhan takes a very deliberate step away from the pipe and freezes, one dripping shoe held up, possibly as a weapon.
There's only one way up, unfortunately, and it's via the nightmare tree. The boughs up here are so tightly packed they're practically stairs, but that doesn't make the trek to the third floor any more pleasant. The branches bend and give under foot and hand, not merely pliant but soft and warm and breathing. They groan and rumble and creak, not like wood, but like some creature, sleeping fitfully, unable to wake from its own bad dream. The malignant maple hates, hates, hates, hates being scaled. You can tell. You can feel it.
Grab a memory seed while you're here. Make it angrier.
The room is cluttered and dark, the upside down ice cream cone-shaped light fixture dangling in the middle of the tiny office extinguished. Boxes and boxes and boxes line the walls of the already cramped quarters, brown cardboard boxes labeled 'SAMPLE SPOONS' and 'BIG SCOOP CUPS' mixed up with banker boxes stamped with the Elflock Falls city seal.
Shoved in the corner of the room is a desk, old and creaky and missing a leg, stacks of papers scattered across. Bank statements for the Zippy Dip, letterhead for THE OFFICE OF THE MAYOR OF ELFLOCK FALLS, ZIPPARY ZEBROWSKI, a custom notepad for notes From the Zip's Lips!—the office's occupant, Zippy Zebrowski, shoves them all away to reveal a handwritten page in a cramped, clumsy scribble.
"Heavy hearts bring us here today, Elflock Falls..." Zippy starts to read, quietly, under his breath. But he stops. His breath catches, his lips hang, and he slaps the paper down again.
There's a single, hard rap on the door. Zippy looks up and stares, at the door and at the calendar hanging on the backside of it. A looping picture of a triple scoop ice cream cone tumbling through the air hangs over the month of May, and the bright colors flash through the dark and dusky little room.
Zippy doesn't answer. The rap comes again, and then silence.
[MODERATED - player memory] [CRITERIA: defeat NPC(s), find the linchpin] [RESERVED: Armani & Chanel Addams]
"I'm sorry." It's a young voice, and while being escorted up a solemn staircase, the boy catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror. Dark hair, glasses, perfectly pressed clothing. The house is grand and dark, and very, very quiet. Just him and the man with a hand on his shoulder.
"You know the rules, Laszlo." He doesn't look down at his son, and his face never quite comes into view. "I don't have any use for your apologies now."
Laszlo falls silent. Outside the sun is hanging low in the sky. Trees stretch on for miles outside, with no signs of other people nearby. The pair pass the window swiftly, clinically, and Laszlo hardly drags his feet at all. He's stopped trying to see his father's face, and just lets himself be led.
"You could have gotten us discovered. Broken the statute. Or were you planning on leaving with those children?" His father's voice is less calm now, more desperate.
"I was—I was going to—tell— I would tell them it was—private property, and—"
"Enough, I am too busy to listen to you stammer."
They reach a door, and his father opens it. A small, plain room. No toys, just books. Some plants. A window nailed tightly shut. Laszlo turns around, perhaps to try and say something, but the door is already shut. He hears it being locked behind him.
The tinny sounds of A-ha's "Take On Me" fill the little alleyway, spilling from a muggle radio propped up on a couple paint cans. Two or three old sheets stretch along the length of the alley, pushed up against a wall in the early stages of a mural. Most of it is sketches, the words ELFLOCK FALLS + PAW PAW outlined along the top—two towns, separated by trees and mountains, connected by the spirit of the holler.
"Taaaaake ooooon meeeee," Percy Potkin sings out as he dances along the scrunched up sheets, holding his paintbrush up like a microphone. "Taaaake meeee ooooooon."
"I'll beeeee gooooone." Another voice joins the chorus, unknown yet innately familiar to the young Percy Potkin. He spins on his toe and holds the brush out to the newcomer, a young man with a cool leather jacket and even cooler Ray-Bans.
"In a day or twoooooooo," they sing together, voices cracking miles away from the right note before it all dissolves into laughter.
"Dude," the other young man says, reaching up to clap a hand on Percy's shoulder. "This is gonna be bitchin'."
Percy grins, splitting his face nearly in two. "Awww, shucks Lionel, you're gonna make me blush." The boy, Lionel, pushes at Percy's shoulder and he stumbles away with a snicker. "Think it'll be done by Homecoming?"
"Oh, not a chance." Lionel shakes his head and steps closer to the soon-to-be mural, shoving those shades back into his mop of curly blond hair to get a better look. "You'll be way too busy campaigning for King."
"King?" Percy scrunches his nose and shakes his head as Lionel runs his finger along the wall. "That crown sounds too heavy for my big ol' head. What about you? Those curls could support a whole house." He kneels down to pop open a paint can, little red droplets splattering his shoes.
Lionel doesn't answer.
"So it's agreed, we put all our efforts into King Qualls and..." He turns to look at Lionel, still silent, staring at a single spot on the wall. "El?"
Lionel doesn't speak, but he waves him over, eyes still fixed on that one spot. "What's up?" Percy asks, but he can see it. He's not sure what it is. A slash of black, there, just north of where he'd loosely sketched out Paw Paw's Main Street. Probably just a smear from his brush while he was dancing around, or something on his hand from his sketching.
But still, he doesn't like it. Percy puts his finger to the smudge and feels, for one moment, a flash of heat shoot through his entire body.
[MODERATED] [CRITERIA: minimum 4 participants, 1 from each House, solve the puzzle] [METAPLOT]
2.4.89 is penned across the top of an otherwise blank page in an open journal. The quill moves slowly, looping script, vaguely familiar to students enrolled in Charms. What is that change in the air?
What is that change in the air?
The memory's owner glances up from the page. It's a lovely day. Cloudless blue sky, bright, sunny and warm. A few butterflies flutter by overhead, bobbing lazily through the air, and all around the ambient music of high school life fills the air — a class bell, a few kids shouting and laughing, the sound of feet sprinting on pavement. There's a boy surreptitiously flicking a lighter over and over beneath a nearby pine tree. A girl drinks water from a plastic bottle and accidentally spills some of it down her shirt. If this weren't obviously the central green, the two muscheron that wave as they scurry by are a dead giveaway.
The memory owner is seated cross-legged in front of a massive tree. Up, up, up they tip their chin. The maple never seems to end, more than a hundred feet high. The massive canopy is lush with new growth, spring leaves practically glowing with that fresh young bright green — but something's wrong.
When you're kitten-sized, the greenhouse really does feel like a deep, dense jungle. All the plants loom massive, and their careful spacing within their large beds makes for a convenient path through all that green. What sunlight does filter through the leaves is hazy from passing through the greenhouse's foggy windows. Outside may be cold, but in here it's warm, cozy. Zero Sugar Pepsi sits low, pounce-ready, in the middle of a large plot of soil, surrounded by Wandering Willows who are starting to get a little restless. The little saplings sway and shift, occasionally getting up to move here or there, ostensibly to find a more comfortable spot in the dirt. Or maybe just trying to put distances between themselves and the Blob on their left.
At the end of the bed, past the little beads of fertilizer, past the tiny lawn gnome someone stuck into the earth, Tansy Treetops crouches over a particularly toothy sprout of snapping dragons. Spade in gloved hand, she carefully repots the fussy flowers, humming to herself, a pretty, improvised tune, oblivious to the tiny hunter lurking just beyond her willows.
Pepsi's eyes aren't on Ms. Treetops, though, they're focused just beyond. High up on a table sit five cacti in colorful pots. Two blue, one gray, one red and one green. The two blue pot cacti seem like they could be as tall as Ms. Treetops, herself, while the gray one and the green one look awful small to Pepsi’s eye. That red one, though. That guy’s just right.
The little cactus kitten does some complex math it probably isn't ready for, then bounds forward. A full sprint, running for those cactuses. At the lip of the bed, she leaps, tiny paws spread out and reaching for that table that seemed so much closer a moment ago.
In the corner of Pepsi's eye something moves. A vine, and not one that belongs. She freezes in mid-air. The vine does, too. Everything freezes.
The ping pong ball is poised and ready, pinched between two perfectly manicured fingernails. On the other end of a battered pine table littered with red solo cups, a young, obnoxious, and devilishly handsome Alva Berzelius holds a plastic vuvuzela to his mouth.
“Neeeessssssss,” he sings into the vuvuzela like a kazoo. “Beer’s going flaaaaaaat.”
“That sounds like a you problem to me.” There’s a Bostonian bent to her words, and a little more barely disguised amusement than usual, but the woman holding that ping pong ball is unmistakably Ms. Clytemnestra Altizer.
A grungy house party unfolds around the pair, Eurotrash club music shaking the walls while some girl vomits out a nearby window. Towers of empty beer cans dot the house, stretching from floor to ceiling and disguised as decoration. Drunk jackasses on cardboard sleds try to slalom around the towers, shooting down a flight of carpeted stairs. Some petite blonde girl with three feet of cleavage drops a solo cup of beer by Alva’s side and puts a hand on his shoulder, and Nes looks away quickly to hide the sneer on her face. A man across the party (tall, gorgeous, mature) makes eye contact with her and waves, and Nes tosses one back half-heartedly.
“Doot-doo-doo-DOOOOOOOOOOO.” Alva’s stupid plastic horn pulls her attention back to front. The blonde with the boobs is still there, standing behind him. “The pong of beer awaits, Nestra.”
“And I’m sure you can’t wait to finish,” she mumbles under her breath and lobs the ball straight at his head. Alva throws a hand out to block it, vuvuzela still sticking out of his mouth, and everything—ball, music, the trip a young Alva Berzelius is currently taking straight into disaster—stops right where it is.
The night seems to stretch on without end, and though more and more students and staff are being expelled from the nightmare tree, it's difficult to say if all this work is making any difference at all.
Pouch assures those who're losing hope that they're making a difference. He can feel it.
"He's right," says a freshman. "The canopy's thinning. I've watched."
As though on cue, something rustles above, then a wailing, painfully loud. Up on the boughs that cut through the second floor, the leaves shake and part. Something climbs out from the third floor. Two clouds of BUGS and something else, a humanoid figure cloaked in shadow, donning a grotesque mask—a CULTIST.
THESE CREATURES ARE STANDING GUARD AND WILL ATTACK ANY WHO COME CLOSE.
[This encounter is open to ANY ACTIVE CHARACTERS, regardless of how many slots you have open for activity.]
Fist bump, fist bump, double fist bump, wiggle your fingers and slap some skin, hip bump, chest bump, hip bump, high five—the truly unnecessary number of steps in this handshake just keep piling on, but Alva Berzelius has no problem remembering every single one. When you’re blessed with a brain as gifted as Alva’s, you have to make a choice: use it for good, for evil, or for utter fucking nonsense.
And you don’t need a mind as sharp as his to figure out which one he chose.
“You’re slippin’ Hel,” he teases the elder Altizer sister as she rapidly cycles through the choreography with him, and she aggressively rolls her eyes. “One of these days you’re gonna forget to slap me.”
“Oh honey, you and I both know that’s impossible,” she scoffs, blasting finger guns at him. A warm breeze plays with Alva’s hair and kicks at the floral garlands hanging from the chuppah, nestled against a towering boulder. Rows and rows of white folding chairs stretch out along white sand beside them.
“I dunno,” he hooks Helen by the arm and swings her around in a single do-si-do. “It kiiiinda seems like you won’t be able to handle another step.”
“I’m sharp as a tack, Alv, sounds like you’re just—” she pauses for a quick chicken dance, “—projecting.”
“What’ll it be then?” He grabs her hand and pulls her close. “What do you wanna do to me?”
“I swear on Laveau.” From the second row of chairs, Clytemnestra Altizer barely spares a glance for the pair up front. There’s a spiral-bound planner on her lap, multicolored tabs sticking out along the pages, a small stack of textbooks and notebooks on the chair beside her. “If you two start making out, I’m calling off the wedding.”
The scene freezes, but not before a sensation known only as pride at having successfully irritated your fiancee blooms in Alva’s chest.
[?MODERATED? - this memory is lightly moderated] [CRITERIA: solve the puzzle / figure out how to get the linchpin]
The light flickers and buzzes when it’s flipped on, revealing a narrow, windowless room. It’s little more than a closet, magically expanded but still cramped and stuffed with boxes and books, out of season clothes and a filing cabinet in the corner. Everything is coated with something that looks like soot, and the little room smells faintly of mildew.
There’s a sound at the door, a curious mrrrrp from a grey and black tabby, darting through the memory holder’s legs to enter this forbidden room.
“Sirloin! Stop! Get out of here!” a young, exasperated Lir Liu shouts at the cat and tries to wave her off, but Sirloin doesn’t listen. She hops up on the filing cabinet and surveys the room, looking for somewhere even higher from which to observe her new domain. Lir sighs. “Why do you have to make everything so hard?”
Sirloin the cat doesn’t respond, and he doesn’t expect her to. It’s all part of her mission to make everything incredibly difficult. Whatever. Lir leaves her be as he drags a big plastic tote off a wall shelf. A cloud of soot and dust kicks up when it thuds to the ground.
Lir grabs for a heavy flannel coat, swinging on a wire hanger, and there’s a twist in his chest that’s hard to place before he buries it again. This coat doesn’t smell like mildew. It smells like something else — someone else. He slips it off the hanger and pops open the tote.
Mrrrrrrep. There’s Sirloin again, throwing herself off the filing cabinet to be an inconvenience to humans again. As Lir folds the coat, carefully, like he’s afraid of it dissolving if he’s too rough with it, Sirloin hops in the tote and curls up inside.
“SIR!” he shouts, not angry but something else, sharp emotions tearing through his words. “This isn’t your room and if you keep trying to lay on everything you’re gonna get rid of his SMELL and—”
The light flickers again, the buzzing growing into a drone. Something pops. It all goes dark, and it all goes still.
Little stars and galaxies sputter around you, the remains of Peckenpaugh's ruined prom night. The same sights are not reflected in the sky. Though the roof is gone, a thick, sickly green-gray blanket of swirling clouds hides the moon from sight, and that tree is still growing, reaching ever upward, because that's the only place it seems it can go.
Up here, it's a jungle, dense and dangerous. The floorboards creak and crack with each step. Vines writhe and foliage rustles and a creeping fear follows your every step. Get what you can from here and leave as soon as possible. The floor seems like it could give away at any moment, and even that feels less threatening than whatever lurks within the leaves.
This place smells of both wet basement and brimstone, which is altogether an awful combination. What doesn't help are the spindly almost-humans stationed at every entrance, their forms not quite right, and the sick feeling they leave in your stomach even worse. A half-dozen aurors are crowded in this basement, and two dozen more are stomping around upstairs. It’s a wonder the ceiling doesn’t give, the way everything’s scorched. Someone else, a middle-aged man wearing green robes, seems to notice, and flings a spell that spreads silver across the blackened boards, mending damage done. Across the room, an auror pulls a pack of cigarettes from his robes and pats it against his leg. Is now really the time? Nearby, another offers a stick of gum to his friend. Everyone is nervous. Everyone restless. The very air is charged with it.
Almost every inch of this dark, dank place is carpeted in bouncy moss. What isn't is the jagged hole in the middle of the floor, though the moss does spill down its sides. A peek into the pit reveals light like a dimly burning ember somewhere at what must be the end of this seemingly bottomless hole. A feeling of vertigo strikes, and the memory owner takes one large step away.
A few bowling balls resting on a shelf escaped coating. The contents of some open cardboard boxes, as well. Small vinyl records, probably meant for a jukebox. Caleb Qualls, Ichabod Kettleburn and Lancelot Purcell are etching glyphs into the floor, cutting through moss to carve symbols into poured cement. They've all been here for hours and hours, but no one is in a rush. When they're done, when they leave, it will be with one fewer than how they entered.
Off to the side, Pocket, here Tinkerbell, watches. Ebenezer Woodrow stands beside her fretting visibly. Zipporah's heart aches when she looks at Tinkerbell. The little creature seems so young, so innocent. She almost forgets that Tinkerbell was Tinkerbell when she was a girl, that this particular magimagicicada might even predate the Revolutionary War. Still, by human standards, just a child. A child who has lost everything, and yet here she stands, looking resolute with the rest of them, dressed in the bright colors she always does, flouncy skirt, countless bracelets and bangles, sporting a pair of sunglasses to hide her missing eye. Her presence is a soothing balm in an otherwise awful atmosphere.
Healer Crockett steps around a crouched Caleb Qualls to speak with the party bug, but before any words come, she freezes.
"Where do you learn about this stuff, Burt?" asks a man with a dark brown shag hair cut. In plaid green pants, a green button up and awful, bright yellow ascot, he so immediately dates this memory to mid-1960s America as to be jarring. He is seated in a booth with red cloth upholstery, shuffling through stacks of papers. As Burt joins him, seated opposite, the rest of the room comes into focus.
It's a dive. Dark. A dim orange glow shines from red-shaded pendant lights, but it barely illuminates anything for the thick hazy layer of smoke hanging in the air. The walls are wood paneled, grimy and rank with cigarette tar, decorated with sports memorabilia and neon lights advertising various brands: BUDWEISER, PABST, SCHLITZ. The only smell stronger than the smoke is the cheap beer being served up in tall pint glasses. Burt Bland seats himself in front of a glass so light it looks like dirty water and a basket of overly salt peanuts.
"Can't say, Henry," Burt explains. "There's a whole world we can't even see out there. I know it sounds crazy, but — look at it."
"I don't know, man," replies Henry, shaking his head as he spreads the papers out on the table between them. Text documents, black and white and color photos of people in robes, waving wands, doing magic, one of the shots even moves. A picture of a teenage boy with sandy blonde hair laughs as he sits sidesaddle on a broom, waves at the camera, and then zips off into the air. Henry points at this photo, jabs his finger at it. "That's Carl, ain't it? Your, uh..."
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peckenpaugh2020-06-01 11:18 am
THE SECOND FLOOR
Blue seeds litter every surface, a hall of memories to be explored. Hurry.
MEMORY: Test Drive
[CRITERIA: cramped area, 2 characters max due to size constraints, minimum replies 8]
It's cold outside, but warm in here. The old van is crammed with teenagers, so the windows fog up quickly, making it hard to see outside. The patter of rain on the roof is almost deafening, and aside from two faded yellow dome lights, it’s almost pitch black. They’re sat on a front lawn in the hills of Elflock Falls, that much is evident if you squint out the front windshield.
Within, the van is a cramped mess. Several backpacks are stuck on or between seats. One is open, papers and books jutting out of every pocket. Up front, Lionel Qualls sits in the driver seat, hands at ten and two for approximately six seconds before he starts drumming on the wheel. Beside him in the passenger seat, Percy Potkin's grinning broad, fixing a set of fuzzy dice to the rear view.
“I like them!” Percy announces gamely when El rolls his eyes.
The memory shifts, the watcher doing a turn. In the way back, two teenage Crocketts and a young Gilda Santos are piled up and laughing. Popcorn goes flying when Zed accidentally knocks the cup of it out of Gilda’s hands. A moment of raucous laughter is cut short when Wybie Youngblood climbs aboard from the left, soaked to the bone from the rain outside and announcing himself with a, "Shit!"
Z Gunzenhauser, standing on the right, pushes her way past the mystery memory owner and smacks her shin against one of the bucket seats in her eagerness to get to the front. “Autsch! Why?” It doesn’t stop her long, though. She leans over Percy to fiddle with the buttons and knobs.
Naturally, that leaves few others for the memory holder to be. "Getting any good tunes?" Georgie Trullinger teases as Zelda continues to fruitlessly seek sound from the dead radio.
"The van's not even on yet, Z," Lionel cackles as his friend hits buttons and turns knobs.
“I believe in her,” Percy says with such conviction it’s hard to say if he’s joking.
“Quatsch! Turn it on then!” Zelda snips, slapping Lionel’s shoulder. “What are you waiting for?! Do you see how I’m suffering?”
More laughter fills the tiny space.
"Alright, alright," Lionel concedes with a dismissive wave, then puts his hand on the ignition and turns the key. The lights come up bright, illuminating the sherbet green upholstery and stained faux leather dash. Then suddenly, everything freezes.
MEMORY: Test Drive
MEMORY: Test Drive
MEMORY: Test Drive
MEMORY: Test Drive
MEMORY: Test Drive
MEMORY: Test Drive
MEMORY: Test Drive
MEMORY: Test Drive
MEMORY: Test Drive
MEMORY: Test Drive - COMPLETE!
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MEMORY: A Distant Shore
[CRITERIA: minimum 3 players, minimum 12 replies]
[METAPLOT]
Water laps against a pebble beach. In and out. In and out. Waves climb up shore and retreat again. The stones at your feet are black and sharp, so shiny they look like hunks of glass. Some fine as frit, others as large as a human head, all of them glittering. The water rushing toward you is thick and inky blue, smelling not of algae or salt, but of something faintly sweet, unfamiliar. Above, the sky is gray. You know it's night, though it doesn't look like it. Focus long on it, and your eyes begin to hurt. You realize: it's not gray, it's just densely packed with stars. So innumerable they make a solid tapestry.
Debris litters the beach. Blankets, baskets, overturned boats, what looks a bit like a chaise lounge split in two. There are drying pools of gray goo in places, tide pools that smell faintly of chocolate. But those aren't tide pools. And that's not ocean water.
All around, vines are growing, creeping up toward the sweet indigo sea. Massive purple flowers, bigger than you are, sit dangerously every dozen or so feet, drinking in that endless starlight and singing it back in pulses of purple light. This is a battle lost, but the war still rages on.
Snap.
One approaches, a being of many limbs, many tendrils, many frills. Strangely beautiful, its body all the colors of an exotic fish, but unsettling to behold. It wears lovely adornments, metal bangles, colorful threads woven into nets, a wreath of red crystals in its hair, each one as delicate as the petal of a flower. When it moves, it moves like a spider, pulling itself forward, toward the memory's owner.
Click, click, clack. Pop. Snap snap snap.
Though the sounds have no meaning to your ear, that feeling is unmistakable. Loyalty, devotion, adoration, fear.
The two beings set to work moving pebbles about until a strange glyph has been drawn in the beach. A circle rimmed by symbols unfamiliar even to the top Symbology students at Peckenpaugh. The memory owner walks around the circle, their partner keeping pace beside them, putting their backs to the ocean and looking further ashore. More of these beings are gathered, ready with what little they can carry to flee to somewhere new.
Three of these waiting beings approach and from tendrilly limbs present items: a satchel of fine white powder, a vial of something gray, and a cube of faded gray metal. Everything freezes.
MEMORY: A Distant Shore
MEMORY: A Distant Shore
MEMORY: A Distant Shore
MEMORY: A Distant Shore
MEMORY: A Distant Shore
MEMORY: A Distant Shore
MEMORY: A Distant Shore
MEMORY: A Distant Shore
MEMORY: A Distant Shore
MEMORY: A Distant Shore
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MEMORY: Girls Night!
[CRITERIA: Minimum 6 Replies]
“Oh! Birdie, I—I definitely lost a contact, it’s—oh god, I think it’s going behind my eye!” Sarah-Jane Dorkins leans in close to the mirror, finger dragging down her bottom eyelid. This color-changing contact lens Birdie insisted she try tonight is definitely working its way under her eye, and she never even wanted to try it in the first place.
“Don’t worry about it,” Birdie Beridze calls back. “I’ve got plenty more where that came from.” Birdie sweeps into the room, two martinis in hand, with all that glamorous confidence Sarah-Jane could never even dream of having. Even her apartment here felt so much more exciting than her own; she had a rack of designer cocktail dresses where Sarah-Jane kept her good vacuum cleaner, she had costume jewelry that looked stolen from a movie set, she had an autograph from—okay, a lot of people that aren’t all that familiar to her, actually, but still!
Sarah-Jane lets go of her eyelid, but doesn’t relax, and there’s no way she’s going to stop worrying about it. “Okay, well, does it come out eventually?” she asks and grabs for her purse, upending it all over Birdie’s vanity. Junk scatters across the glassy surface, three chapsticks roll to the ground, an airpod and bottle of Wizine roll behind the vanity altogether. “Am I stuck with this thing buried behind my eye forever while it just, like, detaches my retinas for me?”
Birdie sips at one of the martinis, but Sarah-Jane doesn’t need input to spiral out, and she also really doesn’t want to lose that airpod. Also that Wizine! Do you know how much of that she’ll need after finally ripping this stupid contact lens out? She grabs onto the vanity and pulls it outward, sending more of her purse contents all over the floor. It doesn’t matter, because she can get all of these things, she can fix it all herself, she can clean up any mess, because she is Sarah-Jane Dorkins, goddammit.
Or, well. Sarah-Jane Grossweiner now, probably.
She stops, kneeling on the floor, surrounded by her purse shit. “Goddammit, I don’t want to be a Grossweiner again,” she wails and throws her hands to her side. Birdie sets a martini glass on the vanity, leans against it, and… stops there, frozen completely in time.
MEMORY: Girls Night!
MEMORY: Just Wait
[CRITERIA: find the linchpin, minimum 12 tags]
The bakery is quiet and all of the lights but one are low. On the street, it's cold enough to make a person hunch their shoulders in, just a little, and late enough that the sky is black. The street is too. Black like the metal of the lampposts and the paint on the bench out front where there's a boy with his gaze fixed down the street, skinny and small, fidgeting with the hem of his sweatshirt, plucking at a loose thread and winding it around his finger.
It isn't startling, the black of the sky the asphalt the door behind him. Maybe because of the dark or maybe because that's how it's always been. That is how it's always been. All the world in contrasts of bright and dark and the shades of grey between them.
The boy digs his teeth into his cheek and leans forward. Sucks in a breath and leans back almost as quickly, pulling a sneaker up onto the bench and retying his shoelace. Someone's late. (It isn't you. You're here. You're waiting. You're supposed to be here. To be still. To be waiting. It'll be fine. She'll be back if you can just—)
Behind him a bell jingles, chiming sound that startles him into straightening, toes of his sneakers skimming the floor and shoulders rocking back as a woman steps out the front door of the shop with her arms full and her wand tucked behind her ear. The slow build of panic in the air quiets like a candle that somebody's gone and taken a snuffer straight to. All covered up and choked.
"You still out here, honey?" she asks, all bright and polite like she hadn't seen him through the window all day, holed up between her pansies. Her voice is warm (warm like the cup she'd placed down on the bench that morning, like the brimming-full paper bag folded over in her hands right now) like he's a pleasant thing to see and she has a smile that makes her eyes crinkle closed.
Desmond nods. "Yes, ma'am."
There are splotches of white on the dark of her shirt, one streak of it left high on her forehead. She misses it by half an inch as she reaches up to run her fingers through her hair. "And you're sure you won't stay inside?"
For a moment, she looks like she might argue when he dips his chin and mumbles out a sheepish, "No, ma'am." Her lips turning down in a way that makes something squirm guiltily in his stomach. But she drops her paper bag onto spare bit of space next to him instead, her fingers skimming the tops of the little gray flowers in the pot next to the door.
"Alright," she says. "Well, you know where the key is."
MEMORY: Just Wait
MEMORY: Just Wait
MEMORY: Just Wait
MEMORY: Just Wait
MEMORY: Just Wait
MEMORY: Just Wait
MEMORY: Just Wait
MEMORY: Just Wait
MEMORY: Just Wait
MEMORY: Just Wait
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MEMORY: Move-In Day
[CRITERIA: Minimum 6 Replies]
Everything is huge. Everything. The trees, the grass, the looming shoe of an incoming teenager who isn't looking where they're walking and oh no this can't be the end this can't be— Tiny mushroom legs hurry away from the crush of size 11 sneakers, rolling into the shadow of an enormous duffel bag for safety.
"SPOREZ-UM!" the little one shouts, using a pair of lost Mothgarden sunglasses as a ladder to climb up on the bag and shake an itty bitty balled up fist in the direction of the sneaker-holder. "GIBBUM VIZZUS, GIBBUM WUTFORZ." The teenager, however, doesn't hear, and they continue on their merry way. The muscheron crosses his arms and plops back onto the bag for a good pout.
But then there's a sound. Is that… purring?? The mushroom-shaped fairy gulps and turns to see a cat, five, ten, a MILLION sizes larger than him, stalking toward the bag.
"GIBBAK! GIBBAK!" The muscheron grabs the sunglasses ladder and holds it up defensively, the winged frames jabbing right into his chest. He starts to swing wildly, barely able to control the shades, momentum swinging him around in circles. "GIB SPAAAACE!"
MEMORY: Move-In Day
MEMORY: Move-In Day
MEMORY: Move-In Day
MEMORY: Move-In Day
MEMORY: Move-In Day
MEMORY: Move-In Day
MEMORY: Move-In Day
MEMORY: Move-In Day - COMPLETE!
MEMORY: Move-In Day - TOKENS!
MEMORY: Move-In Day - TOKENS!
MEMORY: After An Accident
[CRITERIA: minimum 8 replies]
A musty smell hangs in the air, just the scent of an old building finally getting a breeze after months of every window and door being sealed up for the winter. It's dark and dusty here, all shadows except for the triangles of orange-gold light glowing from lamps positioned around the room. It's difficult to say if the house is genuinely this dark, or if that's just how it's being remembered. It's all sort of big, the way everything seems a little big when you're still just a kid, before you've stopped growing completely.
This place is somehow both empty and cluttered, and finding the linchpin is sure to be an ordeal. The floor-to-ceiling shelves are packed full of books, some titles legible — with titles like Devil's Heat and Renegade Yeti Love Affair — others gibberish. Between those there are portraits and art, families and individuals, all of it old and ugly. A massive tapestry hangs on one wall, the design looking a bit like a coat of arms. There's an empty bottle of wine sitting on the low table in the center of the room. Another bottle of merlot, still half-full sits, on a side table along with a gramophone spinning a vinyl. Rhapsody in Blue fills the air.
"Things are about to be very different," says a hawk-like woman grimly. At her words the memory's owner turns his head and stares at the massive orange cat seated beside him on the overstuffed red sofa. "I know it's frightening, but—"
Zedekiah Crockett shoves himself up off that uncomfortable sofa and the old orange cat climbs to its feet and follows after.
"—But we'll all need to adjust."
"You're going to lock him up, aren't you?" Zed protests, turning to face the hawk-like woman, his mother Healer Zipporah Crockett. The more he speaks, the more panic and anger rise in his young voice. "You and dad are going to shut him away and—"
"Of course not. We don't have to. There are advancements in—" his mother tries to explain in that crisp clinical tone of hers. When she speaks, it makes everything seem darker and colder than it is, but Zed's not really listening. He’s scooping up that empty wine bottle. The music swells, and then everything stops.
MEMORY: After An Accident
MEMORY: Dinner Date
[CRITERIA: Minimum 9 Replies]
Everything is huge. Or, more accurately, everything looks huge from the perspective of the little russula muscheron. The shoebox is lit with a birthday candle in the middle of a table made from one of those plastic separators that comes in a pizza. It's a fire hazard, but you have to take chances when it comes to romance. The table is set with thimbles for cups and bottle caps for plates, filled with scavenged human delicacies. Cheez-it chunks, bacon bits, and squished tater tot pieces served in half of a sunflower seed shell. Peach schnapps from an airplane sized bottle almost as big as the muscheron. Dessert will be a surprise, chunks of Twix served on new pennies.
The musheron checks their reflection in the back of a shined up spoon. The bad luck human spore had given them face paint and adornments, and it makes them glow with pride. They are ready to woo.
MEMORY: Dinner Date
MEMORY: Dinner Date
MEMORY: Dinner Date
MEMORY: Dinner Date
MEMORY: Dinner Date
MEMORY: Dinner Date
MEMORY: Dinner Date
MEMORY: Dinner Date
MEMORY: Dinner Date
MEMORY: Dinner Date
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MEMORY: Cat Mayor
[CRITERIA: Minimum Replies 8]
The Mayor opens her eyes, blinking into the dimly lit office. Hm. There's no sunbeam here. Earlier, there was definitely a sunbeam.
Ah—there it is. The furry, four-legged mayor stretches her front paws out in front of her, digging her sharp claws into a thick manila folder on the desk. There's something big and red stamped across the front but Mayor T-Bone was elected to lead, not to read, and also she can't read. Looks important.
Mayor T-Bone ignores it and wanders over to the sunbeam's new location. There's a pen shaped like a soft serve ice cream cone in her way, and the civil servant knocks it onto the floor.
"Mr. May—Mr. Zebrowski, where are you going?" Voices in the hall threaten to disturb the Mayor's continued rest.
"Jonathan, it's Zippy now. I'm a private citizen!" They're coming closer to her office, large humans looming just outside the doorframe. The one with the long hair she likes, the one who feeds her cold food. The other one she will never like, and she doesn't have or need a reason.
"Okay, but—Zippy, who's actually in charge now? We can't—" Jonathan gestures at the desk. Mayor T-Bone keeps an eye on him.
"T-Bone is!" Zippy replies brightly. He crosses into her office and everything goes upside down as T-Bone rolls onto her back, exposing her belly for him to rub.
"You're—that's not an option, that's not actually an option." Jonathan follows him in and T-Bone tenses slightly. This belly is not for him to rub. "She's a cat, and we have actual human business to manage."
"I know, a cat managing human business, it's genius!" Zippy joyfully announces. He plops down in that old seat of his behind the desk, tugs at one of the old drawers lining either side, and takes a moment to give the Mayor a scritch on the belly. She lolls onto her side, bringing everything right side up again. "She's the only one of us truly unfettered by political bias."
"There's still a significant communication barrier, sir." Jonathan absentmindedly follows Zippy's lead, reaching out to rub T-Bone's belly. In seconds, her claws are out, and everything freezes in that moment before he realizes what a mistake he's made.
MEMORY: Cat Mayor
MEMORY: Cat Mayor
MEMORY: Cat Mayor
MEMORY: Cat Mayor
MEMORY: Cat Mayor
MEMORY: Cat Mayor
MEMORY: Cat Mayor
MEMORY: Cat Mayor
MEMORY: Cat Mayor
MEMORY: Cat Mayor
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MEMORY: A Feast
[CRITERIA: 3 replies per player minimum]
Someone’s arguing next door, muffled voices rising in anger behind paper thin walls, but Kermie isn’t worried about them. He’s in a kitchen, surrounded by food smells. It’s warm and it’s clean and it’s comfortable, and it feels so big to his six-year-old eyes. He spins through the room, arms out, soaking it all in.
There’s a grubby little stove against the wall by the door, every burner firing. The sound of onions sizzling fills the room, while a deep pot boils away, and he wants to know what’s in there. The kitchen table is already overloaded with foil-covered dishes and steaming tupperware and Kermie’s never seen this much food in his life, how can there possibly be more?
A gray-haired woman in a floral apron paces the living room behind Kermie, chatting amiably on the phone in what’s probably Polish, but he pays her no mind as he grabs a chair from the table and drags it over to the stove. No one’s ever told him to watch out for hot stoves before. No one’s ever really cooked for Kermie before. That’s okay, he can use the microwave! But boy would he like to eat like this sometimes.
Kermie clambers up on the chair and leans over the pot while the skillet spits oil and butter just beside him. Little pockets of dough sit in the boiling water, a few of them bobbing along the surface as the water roils. His eyes go wide, because Kermie doesn’t know what these are but they look delicious, and he reaches into the pot to take one. No one’s ever told Kermie not to take things without permission. In fact, sometimes his mother encourages it and he’ll do anything to make her proud.
Before Kermie can douse his hand in hot water, the pierogies in the pot begin to swirl, twisting up, up, and up out of the water. He counts the little dumplings as they float—one, two, three, four, five, dancing around his arm. He doesn’t know how this is happening, he doesn’t know that this is magic or even that it’s out of the ordinary, but boy is this cool.
The voice in Polish gets louder, closer, right behind him as she sweeps into the kitchen. Kermie jumps, shouts, the pierogies orbiting his arm jump and splash back down toward the water, and everything freezes.
MEMORY: A Feast
MEMORY: We Don't Talk About The Pony Party
[C̴̙͙̤̈́̇̈́͝͠R̵̢̙̤͉̙̰̓̉̀̑́͝I̸͙̥̗̣̜̘̟͉͛̆̎̿T̶̡̻̥͇͒Ȩ̴̧̛̪̌͐̀R̴̼̀̾̓̇́I̴̖̲̦̩͊̈́̄A̷̡̛̗̲͔̣̮̞̎͆̀͒̊̎̀͜:̸̡̤͈̻̪̩͑̈͒̑͛̚ ̷̳͙̥̭̰̥̄̄̾̕M̶̝̜̖͚̥̖͔̈́̿͊ì̸̢̭̙̖̥̘́̚ṉ̵̐̌͝ȋ̸̛̟̭͉́͌m̷̨̃̈́̽͑̈́u̸̲͍̾m̸̱͇͖̙͚̝̘̈́͑̑̈́̅ͅ ̶̢̺̱͍͐̃̈́͘1̵̞̱͉̬̲͎͎̓̑̏̇̐̊̕0̸͎̖͓̮̗̩͚̇̄͑͐̊̽͘͝ ̴̧͚̘͚̈R̸̫̆͒̀ë̸͔͉̪̳̣̗́̇́̆͑̆͒͛p̵͓̝̞͌̒͐͒͘l̶̗̱͛͆̕ï̶̢̧̻̖͎̳̘̻̍ḙ̷͖̝̬͙͗̽͋̂͛̂̍s̴̟͈̖̫̏]
Oh. This is strange. Everything in this memory seems darker than it should be, a tinted film thrown over the entire scene. It takes a minute to adjust and catch the details, but it’s not like this is an entirely unfamiliar place—everyone who’s ever been to one of Pocket’s parties has some idea what her cave looks like. What more is there really to see beyond the spray of the Falls at the mouth of the cave and some rocks jutting out of the wall, a fun obstacle for the drunkest of teens. In the back, far behind the memory owner, something blinks. A dull whir sound echoes along the cave walls.
“Ohhhhhmigod ohmigod ohmigod, you guys!!” the memory owner, the drunk party bug herself, claps and hops in excitement as a trio of teens pushes past the curtain of water. The shadowy overlay slips for a moment as her signature sunnies nearly bounce off her face. “I am sososoooo excited to show you guys the PONIES!”
“Pocket!” a blonde girl in her finest athleisure claps and hops along with her, and it feels like glitter is exploding in Pocket’s thorax. Or whatever those cute humans call it. “So you got someone to explain them to you? Did they show you pictures and… ?”
The blonde girl looks behind Pocket, her mouth slightly agape. The other two haven’t said a word the entire time. They’re just as captivated by Pocket’s amazing display as the blonde is. She can tell.
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!” Pocket waves her hands and flutters her wings, waving the kids along to follow behind her. “You’re the very first ones and I can’t wait to show you everything!!”
Pocket pivots. On the other side of the cave, not nearly as hidden in shadow as it should be, is an enormous horse head. The eyes are wide and bulging, the mouth thrown open, displaying every single tooth in that long mouth. The closer the quartet gets to that face, the more horrifying details jump out; the warm breeze of the pony’s breath, the squishy sensation as they step on the tongue, the flashing lights at the back of the throat.
“Uh… Pocket?” one of the other teens asks, the boy this time, and Pocket can’t wait to hear his glowing review of her super realistic pony already!! “How are we, uh, getting to the party?”
Pocket grins so wide it almost splits her jaw right off. “We jump!”
MEMORY: We Don't Talk About The Pony Party
MEMORY: We Don't Talk About The Pony Party
MEMORY: We Don't Talk About The Pony Party
MEMORY: We Don't Talk About The Pony Party
MEMORY: We Don't Talk About The Pony Party
MEMORY: We Don't Talk About The Pony Party
MEMORY: We Don't Talk About The Pony Party
MEMORY: We Don't Talk About The Pony Party
MEMORY: We Don't Talk About The Pony Party
MEMORY: We Don't Talk About The Pony Party
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MEMORY: Wet Shoes
[CRITERIA: defeat NPC, get linchpin]
Siobhan O'Malley stomps through the Wildgulch cavern, wet shoes squelching every step of the way. Ugh. Just—UGH!! Stupid seniors throwing her in the stupid springs (and not even WILDGULCH seniors). Stupid Mary Grace not even noticing or looking at her. Doesn't she get to listen to her dad's race too?
"Gonna put these shoes in her BED," the freshman grumbles under her breath. She leans against the walls to kick off her wet sneakers, balancing herself on one of the heating pipes snaking through the house. Something rattles inside the pipe and she yanks her hand away. Oh. If this is broken she'd rather not deal with it.
Or if it's haunted.
There had been talk of haunted things.
Siobhan takes a very deliberate step away from the pipe and freezes, one dripping shoe held up, possibly as a weapon.
MEMORY: Wet Shoes
OUT ON THE BOUGHS
Grab a memory seed while you're here. Make it angrier.
MEMORY: After The Sealing
[CRITERIA: minimum 8 replies]
[METAPLOT]
The room is cluttered and dark, the upside down ice cream cone-shaped light fixture dangling in the middle of the tiny office extinguished. Boxes and boxes and boxes line the walls of the already cramped quarters, brown cardboard boxes labeled 'SAMPLE SPOONS' and 'BIG SCOOP CUPS' mixed up with banker boxes stamped with the Elflock Falls city seal.
Shoved in the corner of the room is a desk, old and creaky and missing a leg, stacks of papers scattered across. Bank statements for the Zippy Dip, letterhead for THE OFFICE OF THE MAYOR OF ELFLOCK FALLS, ZIPPARY ZEBROWSKI, a custom notepad for notes From the Zip's Lips!—the office's occupant, Zippy Zebrowski, shoves them all away to reveal a handwritten page in a cramped, clumsy scribble.
"Heavy hearts bring us here today, Elflock Falls..." Zippy starts to read, quietly, under his breath. But he stops. His breath catches, his lips hang, and he slaps the paper down again.
There's a single, hard rap on the door. Zippy looks up and stares, at the door and at the calendar hanging on the backside of it. A looping picture of a triple scoop ice cream cone tumbling through the air hangs over the month of May, and the bright colors flash through the dark and dusky little room.
Zippy doesn't answer. The rap comes again, and then silence.
MEMORY: After The Sealing
MEMORY: After The Sealing
MEMORY: After The Sealing
MEMORY: After The Sealing
MEMORY: After The Sealing
MEMORY: After The Sealing
MEMORY: After The Sealing
MEMORY: After The Sealing
MEMORY: After The Sealing
MEMORY: After The Sealing
...
MEMORY: Rulebreaker
[CRITERIA: defeat NPC(s), find the linchpin]
[RESERVED: Armani & Chanel Addams]
"I'm sorry." It's a young voice, and while being escorted up a solemn staircase, the boy catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror. Dark hair, glasses, perfectly pressed clothing. The house is grand and dark, and very, very quiet. Just him and the man with a hand on his shoulder.
"You know the rules, Laszlo." He doesn't look down at his son, and his face never quite comes into view. "I don't have any use for your apologies now."
Laszlo falls silent. Outside the sun is hanging low in the sky. Trees stretch on for miles outside, with no signs of other people nearby. The pair pass the window swiftly, clinically, and Laszlo hardly drags his feet at all. He's stopped trying to see his father's face, and just lets himself be led.
"You could have gotten us discovered. Broken the statute. Or were you planning on leaving with those children?" His father's voice is less calm now, more desperate.
"I was—I was going to—tell— I would tell them it was—private property, and—"
"Enough, I am too busy to listen to you stammer."
They reach a door, and his father opens it. A small, plain room. No toys, just books. Some plants. A window nailed tightly shut. Laszlo turns around, perhaps to try and say something, but the door is already shut. He hears it being locked behind him.
MEMORY: Rulebreaker
MEMORY: Rulebreaker
MEMORY: Rulebreaker
MEMORY: Rulebreaker
MEMORY: Rulebreaker
MEMORY: Rulebreaker
MEMORY: Rulebreaker
MEMORY: Prom King
[CRITERIA: Minimum 8 Replies]
The tinny sounds of A-ha's "Take On Me" fill the little alleyway, spilling from a muggle radio propped up on a couple paint cans. Two or three old sheets stretch along the length of the alley, pushed up against a wall in the early stages of a mural. Most of it is sketches, the words ELFLOCK FALLS + PAW PAW outlined along the top—two towns, separated by trees and mountains, connected by the spirit of the holler.
"Taaaaake ooooon meeeee," Percy Potkin sings out as he dances along the scrunched up sheets, holding his paintbrush up like a microphone. "Taaaake meeee ooooooon."
"I'll beeeee gooooone." Another voice joins the chorus, unknown yet innately familiar to the young Percy Potkin. He spins on his toe and holds the brush out to the newcomer, a young man with a cool leather jacket and even cooler Ray-Bans.
"In a day or twoooooooo," they sing together, voices cracking miles away from the right note before it all dissolves into laughter.
"Dude," the other young man says, reaching up to clap a hand on Percy's shoulder. "This is gonna be bitchin'."
Percy grins, splitting his face nearly in two. "Awww, shucks Lionel, you're gonna make me blush." The boy, Lionel, pushes at Percy's shoulder and he stumbles away with a snicker. "Think it'll be done by Homecoming?"
"Oh, not a chance." Lionel shakes his head and steps closer to the soon-to-be mural, shoving those shades back into his mop of curly blond hair to get a better look. "You'll be way too busy campaigning for King."
"King?" Percy scrunches his nose and shakes his head as Lionel runs his finger along the wall. "That crown sounds too heavy for my big ol' head. What about you? Those curls could support a whole house." He kneels down to pop open a paint can, little red droplets splattering his shoes.
Lionel doesn't answer.
"So it's agreed, we put all our efforts into King Qualls and..." He turns to look at Lionel, still silent, staring at a single spot on the wall. "El?"
Lionel doesn't speak, but he waves him over, eyes still fixed on that one spot. "What's up?" Percy asks, but he can see it. He's not sure what it is. A slash of black, there, just north of where he'd loosely sketched out Paw Paw's Main Street. Probably just a smear from his brush while he was dancing around, or something on his hand from his sketching.
But still, he doesn't like it. Percy puts his finger to the smudge and feels, for one moment, a flash of heat shoot through his entire body.
MEMORY: Prom King
MEMORY: Prom King
MEMORY: Prom King
MEMORY: Prom King
MEMORY: Prom King
MEMORY: Prom King
MEMORY: What Went Wrong
[CRITERIA: minimum 4 participants, 1 from each House, solve the puzzle]
[METAPLOT]
2.4.89 is penned across the top of an otherwise blank page in an open journal. The quill moves slowly, looping script, vaguely familiar to students enrolled in Charms. What is that change in the air?
What is that change in the air?
The memory's owner glances up from the page. It's a lovely day. Cloudless blue sky, bright, sunny and warm. A few butterflies flutter by overhead, bobbing lazily through the air, and all around the ambient music of high school life fills the air — a class bell, a few kids shouting and laughing, the sound of feet sprinting on pavement. There's a boy surreptitiously flicking a lighter over and over beneath a nearby pine tree. A girl drinks water from a plastic bottle and accidentally spills some of it down her shirt. If this weren't obviously the central green, the two muscheron that wave as they scurry by are a dead giveaway.
The memory owner is seated cross-legged in front of a massive tree. Up, up, up they tip their chin. The maple never seems to end, more than a hundred feet high. The massive canopy is lush with new growth, spring leaves practically glowing with that fresh young bright green — but something's wrong.
MEMORY: What Went Wrong
MEMORY: What Went Wrong
MEMORY: What Went Wrong
MEMORY: What Went Wrong
MEMORY: What Went Wrong
MEMORY: What Went Wrong
MEMORY: What Went Wrong
MEMORY: What Went Wrong
MEMORY: What Went Wrong
MEMORY: What Went Wrong
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MEMORY: Little Hunter
[CRITERIA: Minimum 9 Tags]
When you're kitten-sized, the greenhouse really does feel like a deep, dense jungle. All the plants loom massive, and their careful spacing within their large beds makes for a convenient path through all that green. What sunlight does filter through the leaves is hazy from passing through the greenhouse's foggy windows. Outside may be cold, but in here it's warm, cozy. Zero Sugar Pepsi sits low, pounce-ready, in the middle of a large plot of soil, surrounded by Wandering Willows who are starting to get a little restless. The little saplings sway and shift, occasionally getting up to move here or there, ostensibly to find a more comfortable spot in the dirt. Or maybe just trying to put distances between themselves and the Blob on their left.
At the end of the bed, past the little beads of fertilizer, past the tiny lawn gnome someone stuck into the earth, Tansy Treetops crouches over a particularly toothy sprout of snapping dragons. Spade in gloved hand, she carefully repots the fussy flowers, humming to herself, a pretty, improvised tune, oblivious to the tiny hunter lurking just beyond her willows.
Pepsi's eyes aren't on Ms. Treetops, though, they're focused just beyond. High up on a table sit five cacti in colorful pots. Two blue, one gray, one red and one green. The two blue pot cacti seem like they could be as tall as Ms. Treetops, herself, while the gray one and the green one look awful small to Pepsi’s eye. That red one, though. That guy’s just right.
The little cactus kitten does some complex math it probably isn't ready for, then bounds forward. A full sprint, running for those cactuses. At the lip of the bed, she leaps, tiny paws spread out and reaching for that table that seemed so much closer a moment ago.
In the corner of Pepsi's eye something moves. A vine, and not one that belongs. She freezes in mid-air. The vine does, too. Everything freezes.
MEMORY: Little Hunter
MEMORY: Little Hunter
MEMORY: Little Hunter
MEMORY: Little Hunter
MEMORY: Little Hunter
MEMORY: Little Hunter
MEMORY: Little Hunter
MEMORY: Little Hunter
MEMORY: Little Hunter
MEMORY: Little Hunter
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MEMORY: Party Games
[CRITERIA: Solve The Puzzle]
The ping pong ball is poised and ready, pinched between two perfectly manicured fingernails. On the other end of a battered pine table littered with red solo cups, a young, obnoxious, and devilishly handsome Alva Berzelius holds a plastic vuvuzela to his mouth.
“Neeeessssssss,” he sings into the vuvuzela like a kazoo. “Beer’s going flaaaaaaat.”
“That sounds like a you problem to me.” There’s a Bostonian bent to her words, and a little more barely disguised amusement than usual, but the woman holding that ping pong ball is unmistakably Ms. Clytemnestra Altizer.
A grungy house party unfolds around the pair, Eurotrash club music shaking the walls while some girl vomits out a nearby window. Towers of empty beer cans dot the house, stretching from floor to ceiling and disguised as decoration. Drunk jackasses on cardboard sleds try to slalom around the towers, shooting down a flight of carpeted stairs. Some petite blonde girl with three feet of cleavage drops a solo cup of beer by Alva’s side and puts a hand on his shoulder, and Nes looks away quickly to hide the sneer on her face. A man across the party (tall, gorgeous, mature) makes eye contact with her and waves, and Nes tosses one back half-heartedly.
“Doot-doo-doo-DOOOOOOOOOOO.” Alva’s stupid plastic horn pulls her attention back to front. The blonde with the boobs is still there, standing behind him. “The pong of beer awaits, Nestra.”
“And I’m sure you can’t wait to finish,” she mumbles under her breath and lobs the ball straight at his head. Alva throws a hand out to block it, vuvuzela still sticking out of his mouth, and everything—ball, music, the trip a young Alva Berzelius is currently taking straight into disaster—stops right where it is.
MEMORY: Party Games
MEMORY: Party Games
MEMORY: Party Games
MEMORY: Party Games
MEMORY: Party Games
MEMORY: Party Games
MEMORY: Party Games
MEMORY: Party Games
MEMORY: Party Games
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ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
Pouch assures those who're losing hope that they're making a difference. He can feel it.
"He's right," says a freshman. "The canopy's thinning. I've watched."
As though on cue, something rustles above, then a wailing, painfully loud. Up on the boughs that cut through the second floor, the leaves shake and part. Something climbs out from the third floor. Two clouds of BUGS and something else, a humanoid figure cloaked in shadow, donning a grotesque mask—a CULTIST.
THESE CREATURES ARE STANDING GUARD AND WILL ATTACK ANY WHO COME CLOSE.
[This encounter is open to ANY ACTIVE CHARACTERS, regardless of how many slots you have open for activity.]
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
Re: ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
Re: ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing - THE REMAINING CREATURES ATTACK!
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing - COMPLETE
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing - TOKENS & MORE
MEMORY: Wedding Bells
[CRITERIA: Minimum 9 Replies]
Fist bump, fist bump, double fist bump, wiggle your fingers and slap some skin, hip bump, chest bump, hip bump, high five—the truly unnecessary number of steps in this handshake just keep piling on, but Alva Berzelius has no problem remembering every single one. When you’re blessed with a brain as gifted as Alva’s, you have to make a choice: use it for good, for evil, or for utter fucking nonsense.
And you don’t need a mind as sharp as his to figure out which one he chose.
“You’re slippin’ Hel,” he teases the elder Altizer sister as she rapidly cycles through the choreography with him, and she aggressively rolls her eyes. “One of these days you’re gonna forget to slap me.”
“Oh honey, you and I both know that’s impossible,” she scoffs, blasting finger guns at him. A warm breeze plays with Alva’s hair and kicks at the floral garlands hanging from the chuppah, nestled against a towering boulder. Rows and rows of white folding chairs stretch out along white sand beside them.
“I dunno,” he hooks Helen by the arm and swings her around in a single do-si-do. “It kiiiinda seems like you won’t be able to handle another step.”
“I’m sharp as a tack, Alv, sounds like you’re just—” she pauses for a quick chicken dance, “—projecting.”
“What’ll it be then?” He grabs her hand and pulls her close. “What do you wanna do to me?”
“I swear on Laveau.” From the second row of chairs, Clytemnestra Altizer barely spares a glance for the pair up front. There’s a spiral-bound planner on her lap, multicolored tabs sticking out along the pages, a small stack of textbooks and notebooks on the chair beside her. “If you two start making out, I’m calling off the wedding.”
The scene freezes, but not before a sensation known only as pride at having successfully irritated your fiancee blooms in Alva’s chest.
MEMORY: Wedding Bells
MEMORY: Wedding Bells
MEMORY: Wedding Bells
MEMORY: Wedding Bells
MEMORY: Wedding Bells
MEMORY: Wedding Bells
MEMORY: Wedding Bells
MEMORY: Wedding Bells
MEMORY: Wedding Bells
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MEMORY: Flicker
[CRITERIA: solve the puzzle / figure out how to get the linchpin]
The light flickers and buzzes when it’s flipped on, revealing a narrow, windowless room. It’s little more than a closet, magically expanded but still cramped and stuffed with boxes and books, out of season clothes and a filing cabinet in the corner. Everything is coated with something that looks like soot, and the little room smells faintly of mildew.
There’s a sound at the door, a curious mrrrrp from a grey and black tabby, darting through the memory holder’s legs to enter this forbidden room.
“Sirloin! Stop! Get out of here!” a young, exasperated Lir Liu shouts at the cat and tries to wave her off, but Sirloin doesn’t listen. She hops up on the filing cabinet and surveys the room, looking for somewhere even higher from which to observe her new domain. Lir sighs. “Why do you have to make everything so hard?”
Sirloin the cat doesn’t respond, and he doesn’t expect her to. It’s all part of her mission to make everything incredibly difficult. Whatever. Lir leaves her be as he drags a big plastic tote off a wall shelf. A cloud of soot and dust kicks up when it thuds to the ground.
Lir grabs for a heavy flannel coat, swinging on a wire hanger, and there’s a twist in his chest that’s hard to place before he buries it again. This coat doesn’t smell like mildew. It smells like something else — someone else. He slips it off the hanger and pops open the tote.
Mrrrrrrep. There’s Sirloin again, throwing herself off the filing cabinet to be an inconvenience to humans again. As Lir folds the coat, carefully, like he’s afraid of it dissolving if he’s too rough with it, Sirloin hops in the tote and curls up inside.
“SIR!” he shouts, not angry but something else, sharp emotions tearing through his words. “This isn’t your room and if you keep trying to lay on everything you’re gonna get rid of his SMELL and—”
The light flickers again, the buzzing growing into a drone. Something pops. It all goes dark, and it all goes still.
MEMORY: Flicker
MEMORY: Flicker
THE THIRD FLOOR
Up here, it's a jungle, dense and dangerous. The floorboards creak and crack with each step. Vines writhe and foliage rustles and a creeping fear follows your every step. Get what you can from here and leave as soon as possible. The floor seems like it could give away at any moment, and even that feels less threatening than whatever lurks within the leaves.
MEMORY: Caleb Leapt
[CRITERIA: Minimum 13 Tags]
[METAPLOT]
This place smells of both wet basement and brimstone, which is altogether an awful combination. What doesn't help are the spindly almost-humans stationed at every entrance, their forms not quite right, and the sick feeling they leave in your stomach even worse. A half-dozen aurors are crowded in this basement, and two dozen more are stomping around upstairs. It’s a wonder the ceiling doesn’t give, the way everything’s scorched. Someone else, a middle-aged man wearing green robes, seems to notice, and flings a spell that spreads silver across the blackened boards, mending damage done. Across the room, an auror pulls a pack of cigarettes from his robes and pats it against his leg. Is now really the time? Nearby, another offers a stick of gum to his friend. Everyone is nervous. Everyone restless. The very air is charged with it.
Almost every inch of this dark, dank place is carpeted in bouncy moss. What isn't is the jagged hole in the middle of the floor, though the moss does spill down its sides. A peek into the pit reveals light like a dimly burning ember somewhere at what must be the end of this seemingly bottomless hole. A feeling of vertigo strikes, and the memory owner takes one large step away.
A few bowling balls resting on a shelf escaped coating. The contents of some open cardboard boxes, as well. Small vinyl records, probably meant for a jukebox. Caleb Qualls, Ichabod Kettleburn and Lancelot Purcell are etching glyphs into the floor, cutting through moss to carve symbols into poured cement. They've all been here for hours and hours, but no one is in a rush. When they're done, when they leave, it will be with one fewer than how they entered.
Off to the side, Pocket, here Tinkerbell, watches. Ebenezer Woodrow stands beside her fretting visibly. Zipporah's heart aches when she looks at Tinkerbell. The little creature seems so young, so innocent. She almost forgets that Tinkerbell was Tinkerbell when she was a girl, that this particular magimagicicada might even predate the Revolutionary War. Still, by human standards, just a child. A child who has lost everything, and yet here she stands, looking resolute with the rest of them, dressed in the bright colors she always does, flouncy skirt, countless bracelets and bangles, sporting a pair of sunglasses to hide her missing eye. Her presence is a soothing balm in an otherwise awful atmosphere.
Healer Crockett steps around a crouched Caleb Qualls to speak with the party bug, but before any words come, she freezes.
MEMORY: Caleb Leapt
MEMORY: Caleb Leapt
MEMORY: Caleb Leapt
MEMORY: Caleb Leapt
MEMORY: Caleb Leapt
MEMORY: Caleb Leapt
MEMORY: Caleb Leapt
MEMORY: Caleb Leapt
MEMORY: Caleb Leapt
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MEMORY: Planting A Seed
[CRITERIA: Defeat the NPC]
[METAPLOT]
"Where do you learn about this stuff, Burt?" asks a man with a dark brown shag hair cut. In plaid green pants, a green button up and awful, bright yellow ascot, he so immediately dates this memory to mid-1960s America as to be jarring. He is seated in a booth with red cloth upholstery, shuffling through stacks of papers. As Burt joins him, seated opposite, the rest of the room comes into focus.
It's a dive. Dark. A dim orange glow shines from red-shaded pendant lights, but it barely illuminates anything for the thick hazy layer of smoke hanging in the air. The walls are wood paneled, grimy and rank with cigarette tar, decorated with sports memorabilia and neon lights advertising various brands: BUDWEISER, PABST, SCHLITZ. The only smell stronger than the smoke is the cheap beer being served up in tall pint glasses. Burt Bland seats himself in front of a glass so light it looks like dirty water and a basket of overly salt peanuts.
"Can't say, Henry," Burt explains. "There's a whole world we can't even see out there. I know it sounds crazy, but — look at it."
"I don't know, man," replies Henry, shaking his head as he spreads the papers out on the table between them. Text documents, black and white and color photos of people in robes, waving wands, doing magic, one of the shots even moves. A picture of a teenage boy with sandy blonde hair laughs as he sits sidesaddle on a broom, waves at the camera, and then zips off into the air. Henry points at this photo, jabs his finger at it. "That's Carl, ain't it? Your, uh..."
Everything freezes.
Except Burton Bland. He nods. "Nephew. Yes."
MEMORY: Planting A Seed
MEMORY: Planting A Seed
MEMORY: Planting A Seed
MEMORY: Planting A Seed
MEMORY: Planting A Seed
MEMORY: Planting A Seed
MEMORY: Planting A Seed
MEMORY: Planting A Seed
MEMORY: Planting A Seed
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MEMORY: So Much Promise
MEMORY: So Much Promise
MEMORY: Coffee
MEMORY: Coffee
MEMORY: Coffee
MEMORY: Coffee
MEMORY: Coffee
MEMORY: Have A Heart
MEMORY: Have A Heart
MEMORY: Have A Heart
MEMORY: Have A Heart
MEMORY: Have A Heart
MEMORY: Have A Heart
MEMORY: Have A Heart
MEMORY: Have A Heart
MEMORY: Have A Heart
MEMORY: Have A Heart
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MEMORY: Moving Out But Not On
MEMORY: Moving Out But Not On
MEMORY: Moving Out But Not On
MEMORY: Moving Out But Not On
MEMORY: Moving Out But Not On
MEMORY: Moving Out But Not On
MEMORY: Moving Out But Not On
MEMORY: Moving Out But Not On