Event - Twice Shy

[apocalypsehowmods]

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Twice Shy

➥ Touched

(cw: taxidermied animals, gaslighting, mental/memory manipulation, loss of bodily autonomy, hand injuries)

Preparations for the Thanksgiving Day Feast at Hammond Castle are well underway with the castle being closed to the public on Thursday, the big Turkey Day. Pam Ruan, HR Woman and Holiday Party Planner with a Vengeance, has been on a tear with recruiting helpers. You might be conscripted to carry dishes or final decorations over to the castle. Maybe you need some help or want to assist someone who's struggling under their own load. Pam's commandeering car space for only the largest things.

Once there and everything's set out, you might have a chance to wander the tarot card exhibit is still on display with poster-sized Major Arcana cards decorating the walls. Those aren't the only notable things around, though. There seem to be a number of taxidermied animals that have appeared around the castle. When asked about it, the caretaker, Simone, says they've always been there. Haven't they? Her expression may be a bit glassy as she explains, but that explanation is strangely compelling. They have always lived in the castle.

Been in the castle. Taxidermied creatures certainly aren't alive. Probably.

You could swear you've noticed some of them moving around the place, though. You never see the movement, but that wolf was in the other corner before, wasn't it? Next to the suits of armor. Is the elk head looking a different direction? Maybe it's someone trying to mess with you. That's probably it.

For those more suspicious souls who decide to investigate the taxidermied animals, they will seem wholly ordinary, if uncanny in the way of all taxidermy, upon a visual review. Touch them, though? Well, nothing seems to happen. They don't spring to life for an attack, but they do feel unnaturally warm, almost like there is some life still in them.

The day moves to evening, and as everyone sits down to eat, those who have touched the taxidermied animals will find their hands beginning to wander when they aren't paying attention to them. While you're digging in with your fork, the hand holding your knife might shift to the side and attempt to stab the person next to you. That steaming hot bowl of gravy you're trying to pass down the line without thinking much of it? Well, now you're pouring it into your neighbor's lap. When your full focus isn't on your hands, they seem to want to get up to their own mischief. Maybe it's time to start tying them together… and ask a friend to feed you?

➥ Fuel to the Fire

(cw: supernatural thirst, blood-drinking, toxic personalities)

It's not just troubling taxidermied animals and wayward hands that are an issue with this particular Thanksgiving feast. A few sets of cursed salt and pepper shakers seem to have made their way into the decorations and supplies. They're set out on the tables and wait as the seats fill up with people. With the salt and pepper being passed around up and down and even between the two long tables, it's not difficult for them to find their way to you.

Anyone who sprinkles their food with the salt will find themselves hit with an unquenchable thirst, no matter how much they drinks. All drinks also taste stale or otherwise rancid. The only thing that makes the need abate for even the moment is the taste of blood. That might not be so hard to discover when shoving drinks in your mouth hard enough to cut your lips. Are there any people willing to lend a vein?

Anyone who sprinkles their food with the pepper will find themselves hit with an insatiable need for attention. Is the person across from you speaking to someone else? The person to your left or right? Unacceptable. You need attention like you need air, and you will do anything to get it back on you. Negative attention is still attention, right?

➥ Strike A Match

(cw: Injury to children, pyromania, light compulsion)

The first one is small, a trash can at the end of an alley lit ablaze with no perpetrator to be found. It doesn’t even make news. The old abandoned building at the edges of downtown makes the second page, no one was injured and some local teens are purportedly suspected in the incident. It’s not until the dive bar a couple blocks from the main street catches fire that things begin to stir. The bartender says there were no fire shots served that night, but the fire certainly seems to have started by the bartop. At least there seem to be a few witnesses, even if their testimony leaves something to be desired.

Little fires start up here and there, another trash can, a park bench, the dry goods aisle of a popular general store, the back row of a nearly full movie theatre. The police and city board rally to start up a local firewatch ad campaign but the few times a suspect is captured, local minors make most of the leads turn cold. Firebugs, people craving attention, poor home situation, whatever the blame of the week, the impulse to set something alight seems to be spreading, especially among that same group who had so loudly protested the closing of Dogtown.

It’s the playground in the middle of the day on a weekend that really puts everyone on alert. With at least two children and an adult treated for burns, reports say there’s one suspect in custody, a seventeen year old who happily claims the fires are his. All his. Because sometimes the world just needs to have a little more beauty in it and what could possibly be more beautiful than a flame? Funny how the little fires and that odd impulse continue all the same, even among some at ADI.

➥ Watch Him Burn

(cw: body horror, including bodily dissolution, fluids, bloating, eyes where there shouldn't be eyes, and severe burn injuries; arson; self harm)

It won't be until days later that it will become clear in hindsight that the string of arson ended at Holy Light Church on the night of Thanksgiving, in no small part because small acts of arson continue to crop up throughout the city afterward (and likely will for months to come, now that the idea has been planted in certain impressionable minds). But that urge to watch it all burn suddenly ebbs away on the morning of November 25, leaving only the normal human (or inhuman) amount of pyromania tucked away in any given person's brain. Local papers report that the fire apparently started in the kitchen of the church's community hall and was prevented from spreading further by the quick-thinking of church members attending a community dinner. Officially no one's even certain whether it was actually arson at all, or merely a very unfortunately-timed accident.

Nor is the connection immediately clear when reports start coming in on Black Friday about some kind of blob or slime monster in the streets of Gloucester (and when ADI, naturally, shoulders the work of suppressing those reports). The sight of the thing is, apparently, horrendous: witnesses report something less human-shaped than trying to be so, with jiggling, boneless limbs and weeping, bloodshot eyes that seem to float within its mass, surfacing at random points on the thin, stretched skin that encases the creature. The creature favors dark, out of the way spots–indeed, the more clear-headed witnesses indicate that the monster was more keen to run (or rather, ooze) away than attack.

Patrolling to find the creature takes immediate precedence, but even those not actively searching may be lucky (or unlucky) enough to come across it over the next few days as it eludes capture. That sound in the alley–that's someone in pain, breathing through clenched teeth and occasionally sobbing as something drip-drip-drips onto the pavement. Come closer and you'll see it: something that can't be human, that mustn't be human, pressing itself under a restaurant's heat vent or holding a lighter against its own skin with clumsy, fused fingers. The air reeks of acetone, blood, and wax, and when the creature sees that it's not alone it snaps to attention, both eyes surfacing and a mouth splitting the shape of its head where there was none a moment ago. Its voice is one that some members of ADI have heard before, though the humor and warmth in Pyre's tone is gone now, leaving only raw anger and fear.

"Get away from me!"

➥ Mod Notes

• GENERAL - Pyre will both be available for NPC interaction and threading with an RNG group of players. Please bear in mind that the game does not have an easy resurrection mechanic. Characters who die are dead unless there is some sort of Entity intervention and they are reborn as avatars. Plan your character torment accordingly!
  
  
• TOUCHED (November 24) - Beyond being warm to the touch with seemingly life-like fur, there's nothing else notable about the taxidermied animals. Cutting them open reveals that they're just stuffed with what you'd expect to see. They are never seen moving, but they do move around the castle. Trying to set up cameras on the animals will result in momentary flashes of static before they move. It's simply not possible to capture evidence of them moving. Simone Clark, the castle caretaker, will tell you the animals has always been in whatever new place it was before if asked. For perceptive individuals, she seems to be affected by something, but then her words are wildly convincing, as well, and you might find yourself doubting what you saw with the animals moving. Characters who lose control of their hands will find the effect fades after a few hours. By the next day, if anyone returns to the castle after the party, the taxidermied animals are gone. Simone remembers nothing about them being there.
  
  
• FUEL TO THE FIRE (24 November) - The effects of the salt and pepper may be combined and the general effect will last for a few hours. Characters who feel compelled toward thirst will only feel okay when drinking blood (it does not have to be human). As soon as they stop drinking, the thirst returns. However, their physiology is still their physiology. Drinking large quantities of blood is likely to make a human very sick, indeed. Characters are welcome to try to find the source of the problem and destroy the salt and pepper shakers when they're found. There are as many sets of cursed shakers as might be narratively convenient for folks who want to find them to do so.
  
  
• STRIKE A MATCH (15-24 November) - Characters are welcome to help with ADI’s investigations into these incidents after the bar catches fire and to notice the smaller fires and help put them out before and after the big incidents. Those who go digging will be able to find that only some of the fires can be attributed to local teens and not all of them even solidly enough to do anything about. The bar and movie theater in particular seem to have no cause and no known witnesses. While no one in ADI will feel compelled to commit arson, they might catch themselves staring into a fire for an extended period of time, almost hypnotized, and those of a younger age group might feel compelled to carry a lighter around, just in case something might need to be burned. Those who look into the bar fire will find it’s eerily similar to those reported along the coast, including a bit of wax at the scene and witnesses who claim the person drinking the shot seemed to light it themselves.
  
  
• WATCH HIM BURN (25-28 November) - Please reply to this comment for threads with blob!Pyre. Characters may encounter him alone or in pairs (while players may form groups of three or more, we would advise against it in the interest of quicker play). Please keep in mind that Pyre's ultimate fate will be a matter of player vote and will be decided at the end of the month; if characters attempt to kill or capture him in the course of these event threads, he will escape by melting and flowing down a storm drain.
  
  

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Comments

fuel to the fire

[friendsfordinner]

The thirst has also hit Hickey. A thirst which he loathes. He's been hungry once. He doesn't want to feel that way again.

So when he sees Methos slip away from the dining room, he waits for a moment, letting himself come to a lull in the conversation, before he slips away as well. It's easy enough to track the man: Hickey's gotten better at searching by scent. And when he finds him, he's just so relieved that he's alone.

He's figured out that blood satiates it. And right here he's got a lovely little target.

Not that he's giving his intentions away just yet. Hickey gives Methos a wry little smile and a nod. It's a slightly shifty smile but relatively harmless. Just a bit creepy. "Wanted some breathing room as well? Won't lie, this sort of big community dinner isn't really my scene."

[easilyamused]

Between the possibly-ambulatory taxidermy displays, the erratic behaviour in the dining room, and his own disturbingly literal bloodthirst, Methos is already on guard before Hickey even enters the room. The man's slightly shady air does nothing to alleviate that, but neither does it do anything to worsen it.

"Waiting for someone, actually," he says, and offers Adam Pierson's smile, pleasant and washed with a hint of humour - you know what I mean.

It's a lie born not of suspicion, but of an acute awareness of just how isolated they are, how long it would take anyone to make it here from the dining room if they were alerted to trouble.

In retrospect, staying where he would have to care about someone observing his actions might have been the smarter bet.

[friendsfordinner]

Waiting for someone, whatever. That just means he'll have to be quick about it. He takes a few steps closer to Methos, shrugging slightly as he continues the conversation.

"What, so that'll make three of us who bugged out of the dinner? Says a lot about their dinner, if you ask me."

He is very much looking Methos over as if sizing up the man.

[easilyamused]

Methos does not typically present as a threatening figure - tall, yes, but lean and long-limbed that lends an impression of gangliness. At the moment, dressed in jeans and a sweater heavy enough to disguise any hint of athleticism, he's at his most apparently harmless.

He doesn't miss the tenor to Hickey's inspection, and half-turns as the man steps closer, keeping him in his field of vision.

It's only polite to look at the person you're talking to. Obviously.

"Nothing that hasn't been said about every office party since the dawn of time. I'd bet good money there were cavemen sneaking off for quickies in the club closet."

[friendsfordinner]

"My point still stands," he idly shrugs. This man looks easy enough to take. Hickey's definitely shorter than Methos—he's a solid 5'7" at most, but as far as he's concerned, he could definitely take Methos in a fight.

"Granted, if they wanted us to stick around for dinner, might not do any sort of Entity bullshit. I'm sure you noticed what was going on outside."

[easilyamused]

"Hard to miss," Methos says, a little dryly. He shrugs, weight shifting slightly from one foot to the other, like he's impatient and trying not to show it.

"The interesting question is, was it deliberate, or did someone just take advantage of a gathering as a chance to cause some chaos?"

[friendsfordinner]

As he talks, Hickey takes a few steps closer to Methos. His hand idly moves to his coat pocket, where his knife is. It's easy. All he'll have to do is slash. And if the man tries to run away, he can find him. He's good at finding things now.

"Seems to me like those two might be one and the same."

His position starts to shift subtlety as he gets ready to attack.

[easilyamused]

Methos doesn't miss the motion. He's seen this sort of thing play out more than once over the course of his long, long life. He heaves a sigh, not quite meeting Hickey's eyes - instead, watching his shoulders and the set of his feet, the places most likely to telegraph motion in anyone not very well practiced in not.

"Or maybe it's a test. Leave us mostly unsupervised, give a little push, and see who takes the excuse to do something unfortunate."

[friendsfordinner]

Hickey's shoulders are tense. His feet are still...until they're not. Fortunately, Hickey's not that much of an experience fighter. His moves are swift, the actions of someone who's slit plenty of throats in back alleys. However? They're telegraphed as hell, especially since he's facing Methos.

He doesn't answer Methos's question. Instead he lunges forward, bringing his knife from his pocket as he swipes it at Methos, attempting to cut him on the neck.

[easilyamused]

It's warning enough. Methos rocks away, pivoting so that the knife skims past him and taking a long step back. It doesn't put him quite out of reach - deliberately so. The better, he hopes, to bait Hickey into overextending on a second strike. The man's quick - enough so that if Methos were entirely and only what he appears to be, a career academic with some slightly unusual hobbies, he would be bleeding right now - but he's clearly unpracticed in a real fight.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" he snaps, all wounded alarm. It is, at this point, entirely for the benefit for any cameras that might be on them, anyone who might happen by.

[friendsfordinner]

Hickey falls for it. He doesn't answer Methos's question. But there's a savage grin on his face as he steps in and attempts to go for a second swipe. It's dodge-able: he's operating on instinct, bloodlust, and quick choices at the moment, nothing well though out or planned.