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.
Viola is glad to be in this memory with Ramona, who she counts among her more levelheaded and capable peers. She waits patiently on the periphery of the office while the memory plays out and freezes, before stepping out of the shadows to inspect the space for clues. "It's May," she reports to the other girl after reading over the calendar on the wall, "I think it was all over by then..."
[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 memory freezes and Armani pulls little Laszlo into a tight hug, weeping all over him. He can't help it.
"We found him!" he sobs, patting his neatly styled hair. He knows this isn't Laszlo-Laszlo like little Chanel wasn't Chanel-Chanel, but they're so close to freeing the real one. "Look at where his dad kept him. Look at the nails on the window, Chanel."
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.
Well he doesn't love this. Tybalt knows for a fact this blond kid, the Qualls kid, died back in the 80s. That's what this whole mess is about. It's not great to be reminded that he, too, was preparing for prom at any point. The flash of heat is scary, too, but as soon as he jumps back, everything freezes. He runs his fingers through his own curls. He knows, vaguely, what they're supposed to do here, now, but he's afraid whatever they do will trigger something dangerous.
Which is maybe why he just gingerly pokes Percy Potkin's hand with the cricket bat he's acquired, hoping the brush he's holding will fall to the floor and reveal itself golden, so they can leave before it gets bad. "You can use this." He tells Imogen, as he feels it's only smart to prepare, and she's professionally better with a bat than he is, "If it gets bad."
[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.
Mary Grace squints up into the sky, following the line of that trunk higher and higher. Oh, good. More heights.
"Any chance we just gotta grab her pen?" she asks, taking the rare step of not jumping straight to the most reckless option. "Or the journal?" Mary Grace starts pawing at the few things down on the ground with them, and she's prepared to just start pulling on hair if there's a chance it'll keep her feet on the ground.
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.
Wyatt is new to this memory thing, so he gawks all around. They're so small. And there's Pepsi, the same size as they are. He can't help it. "Awww! Look!" he coos, pointing at the kitten frozen in mid-air.
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.
"OH THIS IS HOW HE LOSES HIS EYE!" Trudy shouts. She recognizes the location from the photograph she found. Maybe she shouldn't be that excited about seeing it, but she is. Eager to see the rest of the memory, she starts touching things: the ping pong ball, red solo cups, the vuvuzela.
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.]
NAME: Presley Mondragon TARGET?: Left Bugs WHAT DO YOU DO?: Bombarda Maxima with his burner wand. He may or may not have actually been aiming for kazoo-playing Mary Grace.
Edited (his wand is close to breaking, go big or go home) 2020-06-07 17:51 (UTC)
[After 5 turns, the Cultist and remaining Bugs attack. Chronologically this attack takes place after Eddy's attack.]
Armani (ROLLED 10) is simply too quick to be hit by the cultist's attacks. Though the remaining Bugs (ROLLED 1) swarm him. A blow to the face knocks some of his decorative stars away, and he'll surely be left with a black eye. [For 3 turns in the next memory Armani enters, he will have trouble seeing out of his right eye.] Chanel (ROLLED 2) catches a ray of purple square in her chest that sends her flying backward. Thank god wizards bounce! She is left burnt, aching and dazed [For 3 turns in the next memory Chanel enters, she will have a hard time doing any climbing or acrobatics.] Merlin (ROLLED 6) is too small to get to properly, though he does get knocked away from the Cultist in the chaos. Mary Grace (ROLLED 4) gets swarmed by bugs that scratch and bite her and continue to ruin her hair. Eddy (ROLLED 4) gets slapped by a swing of the Cultist's hand. [For 2 turns in the next memory Eddy enters, he will not be able to see out of his right eye]
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.
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peckenpaugh2020-06-01 11:18 am
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: 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
"We found him!" he sobs, patting his neatly styled hair. He knows this isn't Laszlo-Laszlo like little Chanel wasn't Chanel-Chanel, but they're so close to freeing the real one. "Look at where his dad kept him. Look at the nails on the window, Chanel."
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
Which is maybe why he just gingerly pokes Percy Potkin's hand with the cricket bat he's acquired, hoping the brush he's holding will fall to the floor and reveal itself golden, so they can leave before it gets bad. "You can use this." He tells Imogen, as he feels it's only smart to prepare, and she's professionally better with a bat than he is, "If it gets bad."
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
"Any chance we just gotta grab her pen?" she asks, taking the rare step of not jumping straight to the most reckless option. "Or the journal?" Mary Grace starts pawing at the few things down on the ground with them, and she's prepared to just start pulling on hair if there's a chance it'll keep her feet on the ground.
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
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
MEMORY: What Went Wrong
MEMORY: What Went Wrong
MEMORY: What Went Wrong
MEMORY: What Went Wrong
MEMORY: What Went Wrong
Re: 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
MEMORY: What Went Wrong
MEMORY: What Went Wrong
MEMORY: What Went Wrong
MEMORY: What Went Wrong
MEMORY: What Went Wrong - COMPLETE
MEMORY: What Went Wrong - COMPLETE
MEMORY: What Went Wrong - COMPLETE
MEMORY: What Went Wrong - COMPLETE
MEMORY: What Went Wrong - COMPLETE
Re: MEMORY: What Went Wrong - COMPLETE
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
MEMORY: Little Hunter
Re: MEMORY: Little Hunter
MEMORY: Little Hunter
MEMORY: Little Hunter
MEMORY: Little Hunter - CAPPED
MEMORY: Little Hunter - CAPPED
MEMORY: Little Hunter - CAPPED
MEMORY: Little Hunter - CAPPED
MEMORY: Little Hunter - CAPPED
MEMORY: Little Hunter - CAPPED
MEMORY: Little Hunter - CAPPED
MEMORY: Little Hunter - CAPPED
MEMORY: Little Hunter - CAPPED
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
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
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
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
MEMORY: Party Games
MEMORY: Party Games
MEMORY: Party Games
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
TARGET?: Cultist
WHAT DO YOU DO?: Shootin' Rope. Incarcerous!!!!
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
TARGET?: Cultist
WHAT DO YOU DO?: Throw her one very spiky remaining shoe into its face
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
TARGET?: Cultist
WHAT DO YOU DO?: Snek Bite (w/ Venom!)
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
TARGET?: Left Bugs
WHAT DO YOU DO?: She's actually blowing her kazoo at Presley and doesn't even notice the bugs.
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
TARGET?: Cultist
WHAT DO YOU DO?: Swing a backpack filled with heavy shit at its head.
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
TARGET?: Right Bug
WHAT DO YOU DO?: Bashin and smashin with his beater bat
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
TARGET?: Right Bugs
WHAT DO YOU DO?: Confundus with a burner wand. She’s also holding her sigil, in case the cultist has a pie.
Re: ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
TARGET?: Left Bugs
WHAT DO YOU DO?: Bombarda Maxima with his burner wand. He may or may not have actually been aiming for kazoo-playing Mary Grace.
Re: ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing
ENCOUNTER: Keep Climbing - THE REMAINING CREATURES ATTACK!
Armani (ROLLED 10) is simply too quick to be hit by the cultist's attacks. Though the remaining Bugs (ROLLED 1) swarm him. A blow to the face knocks some of his decorative stars away, and he'll surely be left with a black eye. [For 3 turns in the next memory Armani enters, he will have trouble seeing out of his right eye.]
Chanel (ROLLED 2) catches a ray of purple square in her chest that sends her flying backward. Thank god wizards bounce! She is left burnt, aching and dazed [For 3 turns in the next memory Chanel enters, she will have a hard time doing any climbing or acrobatics.]
Merlin (ROLLED 6) is too small to get to properly, though he does get knocked away from the Cultist in the chaos.
Mary Grace (ROLLED 4) gets swarmed by bugs that scratch and bite her and continue to ruin her hair.
Eddy (ROLLED 4) gets slapped by a swing of the Cultist's hand. [For 2 turns in the next memory Eddy enters, he will not be able to see out of his right eye]
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
MEMORY: Wedding Bells
MEMORY: Wedding Bells
MEMORY: Wedding Bells
MEMORY: Wedding Bells
MEMORY: Wedding Bells
MEMORY: Wedding Bells
MEMORY: Wedding Bells
MEMORY: Wedding Bells - TOKENS!
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