Event № 3 : June 2024

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Event № 3 : June 2024
Part I; Chapter 6. Had some kind of mushroom and your mind is movin' low

universe/setting information, role assignment, and FAQs

I. The weekend squire just came out to mow his lawn

Throughout June.

CWs: game-typical sleep deprivation torture/brainwashing.

June brings a turn in the weather—the smoke from the monthly controlled burn is that much more unbearable from the first to the third, choking, suffocating, adding to the blazing heat that beats down from largely cloudless skies. Houses get muggy, mosquitoes come out in full force, biting flies besiege the stables. It’s the perfect weather for a barbecue or a trip to the community pool... but you’ll want to get up early to mow that lawn, neighbor!

No, seriously. You’ll want to mow that lawn.

With so much sunshine, bright green grass has been shooting up like crazy, and Marjorie takes the HOA’s goals of neighborhood beautification very seriously. One of those, Haven Street residents will be informed, is that grass must be no taller than two-point-five inches. Characters who haven’t come up with a way to divide summer’s new chores with their “family” members should do so now, and for those don’t know how to use a lawnmower, now’s the time to learn—because those who run afoul of that particular bylaw will land themselves a reserved seat in Norman’s re-education room.

Some characters may find that their air conditioning units very inconveniently quit working in the heat of midday and have to call a repairman to come in and fix it. There will be potential IC consequences for this next month! Sign up in the mod comment below.

II. Tropical drink melting in your hand

June 15th.

CWs: poisoning.

Those who don't find themselves confined on the 15th may want to come down to the community pool for some burgers and franks (and, of course, splashing around, if that's your thing). In any event, it's probably a good way to meet some new neighbors or could make a convenient guise to touch bases with old neighbors. It's also just nice to cool off in the water, considering that weather is in the high eighties with no cloud cover all week that week.

Marjorie does the honors of preparing a delightful snack spread for one of the tables further back from the water—cool and refreshing gelatin creations, a fruit bowl, cheese and crackers, and both alcoholic and nonalcoholic punch. There's also hand-squeezed lemonade and apple juice for the kids, and little party umbrellas for whatever drink a character chooses to add that special touch.

Characters who are unlucky enough to accidentally swallow a little pool water while swimming may find they feel slightly nauseous, in a way they wouldn't have felt back in their own world if this had ever happened to them before. It's probably fine!

III. Wearing smells from laboratories facing a dying nation

Throughout June.

CWs: poisoning, blood/nosebleeds, implied harm to children.

With summer comes the return of some familiar faces: the Good Humor ice cream truck slowly rolling down each street while playing its cheery jingles every couple of days and the Mosquito Man every Thursday evening. Who is the Mosquito Man, you might ask? The Skeeter Man, Smokey Joe, or the Fogger Truck - or simply the dark green pickup truck that rounds the corner onto Haven Street between 5 and 7 once a week, dragging a massive white cloud of fog behind it and a trail of children on bikes, scooters, and running barefoot, playing in the sweet white mist as though following the pied piper. The tremendous crate that fills the neighborhood with thick white clouds is spraypainted with the labels DDT and DMTP(II), below them smaller font that reads Sweetwater Public Works.

Kids run down the front steps to join the throng playing in the fog when the truck comes down their street, some of them shooed out of the house by their parents. Nobody seems remotely concerned—in fact, they welcome the almost ritual return of the Mosquito Man and the sudden drop in insect life that accompanies him every week. The only one who seems anything but relieved when he comes each week is Dr. Ravichandran, whose home, if characters happen to drive past it, is set apart from its cookie-cutter replicates by its closed windows and the wet rags stuffed into the windowsills behind them.

What is DMTP(II), you might ask? Answers range from the truck driver sticking his head out the window and informing characters that look, he just sprays the stuff, and he has a lot more streets to get to today to vague answers from the neighbors that can be summarized, if characters ask enough people, as a statement that it’s a new pesticide developed right here in Sweetwater after the war that combats mosquitoes and nearby yard pests like beetles that produce root-eating grubs, a magnificent and completely safe scientific marvel.

Characters who stay out long enough on the days the Mosquito Man comes, once the children have gone back inside for dinner, may notice that the initial odd taste in their mouth progresses to less innocuous symptoms—such as dizziness, watering eyes, chest tightness, heart palpitations, trouble breathing, headaches, malaise, burning in the nose, and, most theatrically, bright red nosebleeds accompanied by redness, white spotting, and inflammation in their mouths. The symptoms take around four days to resolve, and faintly linger even longer than that. If they visit the hospital, they’ll only be told that they seem to be having an allergic reaction to something they ate, and concerns about the Public Works projects aren’t taken seriously - looks like any amelioration of symptoms that can’t be achieved with benadryl will be on a strictly neighbors-helping-neighbors basis.

IV. I fashion my future on films in space

Throughout June.

CWs: poisoning, dead bodies/death by suicide, graphic/callous discussion of death by suicide.

But those who aren’t so lucky may briefly black out if they breathe the fog long enough, and when that happens, they return to consciousness but not wakefulness, instead finding themselves frozen in place in a chill room, staring at the wrinkled bare soles of a pair of gray-blue feet belonging to the naked body of a man lying motionless on a flat steel table. A cardstock tag, identical to the photocopy found by Bucky Barnes in January, hangs from one big toe.



Characters’ line of sight doesn’t extend much higher than eye level with the cadaver, but they can see enough to register that both parties, standing with the autopsy table between them, are wearing isolation suits like the man who committed suicide in the middle of the street on that sunny April morning, a stark contrast to the vulnerability of the corpse’s nakedness between them. They seem to be completely unaware of the third presence in the room.

When one of them speaks, it’s the all-too-familiar voice of the town private practice doctor, Norman Pollock.

“Nothing. Not a single thing. He’s healthy. An ordinary 56-year-old man who blew his brains out."

There's a long pause. Then comes the voice of the man whose memory of a telephone conversation some characters shared on New Year’s, and again shortly after the man in the isolation suit pulled the trigger: "The motherfucker. They searched his house and his office. Questioned the wife too. Not a damn thing. Nobody knows shit."

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Comments

EVENT QUESTIONS.

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EXPLORATIONS/SETTING INTERACTIONS.

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If your character wants to investigate anything in the event further or engage with the setting in some way specific to the event, this is where it goes!

DR. RAVICHANDRAN'S HOUSE.

[silentspringmods]

Up to 3 characters who haven't already found a physical plot clue (ex: toe tag, ID badge, etc) can catch a glimpse of something odd while passing by Dr. Ravichandran's rented home when the Mosquito Man is out: in addition to the cloths stuffed into the sills of closed windows, he's holding a wet washcloth to his nose and mouth as he moves through the house.

Comment below to have your character be one of the witnesses.

[spaghettimonster]

💀 MOWING THE LAWN

For all he occasionally dabbles in questionable activities like talking too loudly in public or attending those 'book club' meetings, Papyrus mostly works hard at following the random and inexplicable rules of those local tyrants - the HOA and their not-so-mysterious enforcer. He's spent hours these last months brushing up on his party etiquette, accumulating a wealth of gelatin-based culinary skills, and most recently, branching in the incredible world of lawn mowing!

...It's not that incredible. The shaking of the machine makes it a discomfort to use, and he's sure he could improve the device if they had more advance (and magical) technology available... But they don't, and the lawn length has been one of the more clearly stated rules.

(If he has critiques about this whole kidnapped to another world business, one he'd most like to share is the inconsistency about all these strict and abruptly enforced rules. Why couldn't they take a note from Papyrus's book, delivering their threats of kidnapping and violence in clear introductory speeches, with equally clear rules and expectations? Is scaring people into line really the whole point...?)

So the quiet of the neighborhood is regularly broken by the sound of the lawnmower, interspersed by pauses for him to break out a ruler and checking his work.

Neighbors might also catch him bending the lawn rules ever so slightly, not in going outside the allowed length range, but varying the lengths within it. Initially it's just due to getting the hang of the lawnmower's workings, but one moody morning sees him trimming the shape of bones into the grass in a quiet rebellion. By afternoon, he's out there again, trying to reshape the bone-like contours into something like the stripes of a lopsided American flag.

💀 POOL PARTY

With the relentless sun this week, surely no one is surprised by all the faces at the community pool. The sun and heat draw people to the cool water like the opposite of moths to flame, after all.

That Papyrus is one of the faces might be a little surprising, given his reluctance to actually enter the water so far. After retrieving some snacks, he's spent much of the party thus far sitting by the edge of the pool, legs dangling into water. The slow wrinkling of the skin of his feet has apparently been fascinating, the way he keeps staring down into it - or maybe he's wary to get in the water, thanks to a wooziness he isn't quite managing to hide. Anyone who's noticed recent unfortunate lawn decisions might be suspicious of just where he spent the previous night. But there is a mostly-emptied dish by his side, not quite thirty minutes eaten, and maybe he's just following the odd advice about swimming.

He's not so caught up in his fascination with the raisin effect not to notice others coming near, whether they're swimming close or walking by, and he offers them a smile somewhere between wary and conspiratorial.

"Do you think anyone would get mad if we started a 'cannonball' competition...?"

💀 FOGGER TRUCK

Most Thursdays Papyrus has been busy with one thing or another, be it continuing to navigate the new housemate situation, recovering from a completely ordinary 'illness', or working on his various ongoing projects. But later in the month, he finally spends a while outside to watch and follow the mysterious fog truck.

"I know they said it's a pesticide... But it looks so much like fog. Imagine, instead of smoke, trucks producing clouds... What incredible weather effects that could have."

Just voicing the idea to whichever neighbor is nearby is bringing a tear to his eyes. Or, actually, several tears and a funny fluttering sensation in his chest. Nothing to be concerned about, just odd reactions to an odd idea - unless he's not the only one feeling it?

[pharadyne]

Man vs Lawn:

As the ostensible man of the house, Norton has been giving this whole lawn mowing endeavour a go, although he's not very good at it. The rows aren't remotely straight and there are missed patches all over. His previous living arrangements were largely rooms in boarding houses and later a Victorian two-up-two-down in the slums of Waterloo with a front door that opened right to the street and a backyard privy and weeds. Having his own lawn to manage is a novelty.

Still, no one can say he hasn't tried, and after running the push mower over the missed patches, no one can say he isn't in compliance with the grass length regulations. Even if it looks like it was cut by a drunk Army barber.

He stands in his driveway for a while admiring the task he has completed, considering himself very manly in this moment.

Pool Party

Norton lounges on a semi-reclined pool chair enjoying the sun, and showing off (what he thinks is) a very nice body, in his (what he thinks is) very fashionable belted swim briefs. He has a pair of sunglasses to keep down the glare and also has the benefit of hiding his eyes. As he sips his boozy punch, his gaze flickers around to the others at the party to see who's here, who isn't and who looks like they might have gone through some reeducation recently. And if Norman is there, Norton hopes that Norman is noticing him.

Cadaver

He hadn't thought anything about the fogger trucks. The mosquitos were annoying and, yes, he felt a bit lightheaded after the foggers went by, but no worse than some of the winter London smogs he's dealt with, or so he thought.

So when he wakes up--or not awake, more like being a pharadyne projection--in the morgue, he pushes away a spike of shock and panic. He's silent for a few seconds, noticing the body, the corpse tag, and two men talking. Norman. And the man from his New Year's vision.

"Um, hello!" He squeaks out loudly. "Sorry to interrupt but I don't know how I got here."

He wonders if they can hear him. He might be dead. Or a psychic projection. Or hallucinating nonsense.

[firstgreenisgold]

I. The weekend squire just came out to mow his lawn

John's 'home for the summer' which means that guess who gets to do all the lawn work?

Him. Of course him.

Arthur had talked him through the beginning of it, or rather, the theoreticals of it. The both of them had had a pretty horrifying scare when the damn lawnmower had roared to life when John hadn't expected it, leading to a bit of a jump and a few feet of veering on its own before John had caught up and grabbed the handle but now he's got it.

And he really wishes he didn't because the fucking lawn will not stay cut.

He'd been hoping that he might be able to go around the neighborhood, make money, cut people's lawns as a thing to have some independent funds but the two lawns he was responsible for kept growing so he kept having to go back.

If you see a blond moppet snarl into the bend of his own elbow and pretend he's 'sneezing', it's because he's using language that is not horror commune approved.

II. Tropical drink melting in your hand

...this 'kids have different food and drink thing' is bullshit. John's curious.

It's not even that he wants alcohol to want alcohol. It's just that he's tried the non-alcoholic punch and now that he has taste buds, he wants to try and alcoholic version to see what's different.

He is a fan of the tiny umbrellas. He picked out a yellow one.

But feel free to catch him (or help him) try the booze.