(september catch-all) NOW WITH BIGGER, BETTER WAYS TO DIE

[vestigemods]

SEPTEMBER CATCH-ALL

► THIS SHITHOLE JUST GOT BETTER

The morning of the 10th feels just like any other. It arrives without fanfare, no itch at the back of your mind telling you something is different. If you're a homebody, you might very well go about much of your day without growing any the wiser... At least until you go outside.

The island is the first sign that something's amiss. Stepping out your front door and spotting the brand new tree-covered patch of land smack dab in the middle of your lake may not face some of you, but it's certainly not a thing that has happened before. Those who dealt with the hatch and the tunnel beyond in August might notice that the island very distinctly covers where that very hatch used to be, sealing off that tunnel system once and for all.

Those who live along the northern end of the lake will also hear the distinct sound of rushing water, a sharp contrast to the quiet atmosphere of the still lake you fell asleep to. Sure enough, a river now pours into the lake from the north, a whole ass river coming into existence overnight.

But the island and river aren't the only changes - they're just the most obvious. It may be today, tomorrow, or a week from now, but the next time someone makes their way to the north or east barriers in any shape or form, they'll find that the barrier no longer seems to exist. The trees are marked quite clearly, white spray paint on a trunk one per fifteen or so feet but you find that they're able to walk right through the area it's supposed to be. And walk, and walk, and walk. Is this a mishap with the barrier, or was it on purpose? Have the Technicians... set you free?

Maybe it's time to tell the others.

► LET'S SEE WHAT YOU'VE WON!

Those who make their way across the new and improved containment zone can encounter a fairly wide variety of things. Following the main road like a rational human being puts you on the direct route to town. Should you get curious along the way, you might detour off the asphalt to explore a stretch of farmland, with smooth rolling hills that may once have been idyllic before they fell into disrepair. If you're hungry, a grove of apple trees sit alongside the river, their branches heavy with fruits ripe for the picking. Consider sparing some for the horses fenced in the western field - they're too skittish to let you approach, but if you leave the apples inside their fence, they're certain to grab them as soon as you've backed away.

Conversely, heading due east from your cabin like the impulsive goblin you are will likely lead you smack dab into the swamp. It's dismal. It's disgusting. Use the damn road next time, and you won't be slopping your way through nearly knee-deep muck... And that's before you discover the alligators. (Are discovered by the alligators? Who discovers whom is just a matter of perspective, really.)

Whether you take the smart route or the soggy route, you'll (hopefully) end up in much the same place: the town. It's dirty and run-down and the alleys and back roads host a whole species roulette of strays, and you intermittently feel the distinct sensation of being watched or even followed, but it's not all bad. There's Foodland, which compared to the gas station pickings may as well be a five-star buffet. There's also a rec center with a functional bowling alley, if you know how to play - and across the street from that rec center sits an apartment complex, complete with nine mostly-clean apartments with fully-functional electricity and plumbing. I'm not saying the swamp-waders should hijack an apartment shower, buuuut that's definitely not not an option.

Finally, to the north, there's a bit of a mountain that I'm fairly sure that nobody is going to fuck with just yet, unless they happen to be some sort of overachiever who wants nothing more than to get a bird's-eye view of the landscape below. Mind the mountain goats. They like to shove.

► MOD NOTES

• This log is an introduction to the new expanded containment zone, but it also functions as the September catch-all log for all non-event starters.
  
• Refer to the Locations page for actual information on the various new areas and points of interest - the above flavortext is only meant to supplement the Locations page info.
  
• Also check out the September Infopost (most relevantly, the bottom two drop-downs) for more September-specific info to potentially include in your prompts.
  
• Because this is a catch-all for everywhere + all month, try to remember to label your top-levels with the date and location of each prompt (whether in the subject or in the prompt title within the comment)!
  
• Any questions (on the new setting or anything else) can be directed to this top-level or, for a quicker response, to Trace on discord/plurk. Additionally, if you catch any errors (incorrect links, etc) in the Locations post, please let Trace know!
  

Comments

gilia | ota

[seaboard]

i. farmland
She can't believe it when Wei Ying told her - no one had planned anything for winter? This close to when the season turned?

And then there is expansive farmlands?

She thinks she just about passes out in the sheer worry of it. Not for herself alone, but for all of them. She barely knew how bad it could become, what winter was like here? It might be like her own Isle, wet and miserable, but not truly freezing.

But it could be much worse. A bad winter could kill a dozen in a night, even more, when the starvation set in. The numbers fill her mind as they had every day since she took her brother's position.

So with trepidation, but fear for them all is such a greater force, she sets out. With this 'pen' and 'notebook', she had been able to procure and went about the first and most monumental task, she begins to write down the numbers of everything she can see.

It is easy to spot her, her long gowns tossed in the breeze, head bent down as she writes it seems furious and endless amounts of notes, the state of the fences, the barns, what can be seen of the animals.

"We shall need the goats before winter comes, and the barn to be well-stocked for their keeping, and the horses. What if they have no tack? They cannot pull a plough if there is no tack, can they?" Her worries are bundled up and tossed on the breeze.

Why couldn't they be given this far earlier, than this few weeks they might have to prepare?

ii. foodland
Then there is the town, which - she understands the shape of it, the size of it. St. Loe's town was perhaps a little bit bigger, a little more tightly packed, for the people that came in and out, but it was plain this town had no concerns of defence to spread out and have not even a sensible fence to repel even wandering dogs.

She didn't feel safe it in, not even a little. But she went where she heard others speak of. This place where there was just food stockpiled. A whole winter stocks worth. Just sitting there? She could scarcely believe it. But if it was true, they were going to need to pickle it and store it to stop it all going off.

Oh, this was a task for weeks and days, she didn't know how she was going to manage it.

Which leads to her standing there, in the middle of an isle of cabbages, face in her hands. Sobbing her eyes out in sheer stress over the fact this task would be so huge by herself.

[battlepriest]

Ashraf has really only just begun to look around this place; it's new and fairly bewildering, and empty so far as he's seen, but he supposes he's encountered stranger things. His supposition starts to waver a little by the time he finds Foodland with its shelves and shelves of strange wares, and when he realizes there seems to be an aisle specifically for weeping women, the supposition is pretty much done for.

He hovers at the mouth of the aisle, a dark man in beautifully ornate robes, and looks a little uncertain. This feels probably like a moment that was meant for solitude.

Regardless, he tries, "Are you alright?"

[seaboard]

She hears him speak, though she does not lift her head. Only she shakes her head in reply, with another pitiful little sob as she tries to get out what is bothering her.

"We shall all starve."

[battlepriest]

Oh. Um. So this isn't some kind of, lost my kitten business, huh. Ashraf's eyebrows arch high, but it doesn't stop him from stepping nearer.

"Not immediately, right?" he ventures, as a starting point. "Some of the food in here is pretty tasty."

[seaboard]

She shakes her head against her palms.

"It might be, but it will all rot if we don't preserve it."

Which - she just keeps staring at it, completely lost with little hiccups.

"And there is so much."

[battlepriest]

He stops a fair distance from her, a respectable six feet or so, and studies her with sympathy. This is the kind of concern that should be worrying someone a lot older than she looks. Someone like him, probably. He sighs.

"Aren't there any systems in place to account for that?" he asks. Then, quickly, "Sorry, that's -- an honest question. I'm pretty new."

[seaboard]

She shakes her head. A stiff little shake that sends her veils fluttering back and forth with the gesture.

"I have asked, for I did not wish to disregard anything we might find in this place incorrectly. But there is none! None at all! And there is so much food. How are we to keep it all? This is months work."

The tears burst up again, another harder sob as she just - thinks about it, and gets overwhelmed again.

[battlepriest]

He rubs his chin thoughtfully, casting a glance around them. It is a lot of food, and he has so little information. Like how many people they should be saving it for, for one.

But he can probably pick that up. He pulls his shoulders a little straighter.

"Then I guess we better get to work," he says. "Do you have much experience with this, or are we going in blind?"

[seaboard]

At long last, she finally lifts her head. She expects no help, she expects so very little in that - not because she does not believe other people would - or that they are unkind and selfish - but simply is has never been a position to ask for an outsider's help.

Teary eyed, blue eyes all wet with the frustration and upset she feels, she blinks at him.

"I do - I know quite well - you'd help me?"

[battlepriest]

There's a face, that's an improvement. He offers her a smile, and a small shrug accompanies it.

"Someone has to, right?" No, that's dramatic. He shakes his head with an amused huff. "I don't know how many strong we are, but this kind of work is in everyone's best interests. We'll get more to help out."

[seaboard]

She tries to rub at her face, clearing the tears in the blot of her sleeve cuff. The long blue robes shifting around her as she tried to clear them away.

"I could not ask that of everyone. I am sure they have their own problems."

[battlepriest]

"I can ask it of them," he says easily. "But first, let's figure out what the scope of the work is. It'll be an easier sell if we've got specifics."

He starts forward, attention turning to shelves and food arrayed around them, apparently ready to get right into it.

"So, hypothetically for now, what's our first step?"

[seaboard]

"We need jars." She looks around them, at all of it, trying to think the first step. Bundling up a handful of skirt as she wrings her hands against it. "... Vinegar. We need - much vinegar. It needs to be pickled to survive the weeks coming."

[battlepriest]

"Jars and vinegar, got it," he says, with the sinking realization that he has no idea what stored vinegar looks like here. It's got to be in one of the labeled bottles he's seen all over, right? Hopefully? Time to go read a lot of labels.

He carries past her, scouring the current aisle, then disappearing into the next. His voice floats behind him, "Is there meat in here? I haven't made it that far yet."

[seaboard]

"Y- Yes."

Her voices carries up to answer him as he disappears, and she goes looking for the next part.

Salt. They were going to need a lot of salt.

"But that will be next."

[battlepriest]

"Hey, I know how to do meat! That's worth something, right?" He sounds very proud of himself. He should know how to preserve meat, though, or that'd be fifty-some years of roughing it in the wilderness wasted.

That's about when it occurs to him that he's missed a step. After a brief pause, his head reappears around the edge of the aisle, bright smile already in place. "Oh!" comes the accompanying greeting, "I'm Ashraf, by the way."

[seaboard]

"I am very glad, perhaps the two of us, it shall not be such a great task."

She looks at the cabbages and begins to collect one and then another into her arms.

"... I am Gilia. Gilia St. Loe." The words curve perhaps differently to how they are spelt, Sinleau that drifts from between her task. "First daughter, Second child, of the Isle of St. Loe, Daughter-Sea." The comes off familiar as the titles are given in court attendance.

[battlepriest]

He'd disappeared again to get back to it, but then realizes, oh, they're doing formal introductions, huh. Dutifully he pops back into sight, though this time his arms are full of an array of pickle jars.

"Oh, um -- Ashraf Salib, High Priest of the Church of Prontera." Hell of a mouthful. He huffs a sigh and disappears again. "Also, just wondering, how much do you like pickled cucumber? There are a lot of them over here. I bet we could repurpose this brine."

[seaboard]

"I am honoured."

She looks over at his question from her arms now full of cabbages and begins to look behind the Deli, where she can see many different knives, that would be the next step.

"If there is already food, I do not think we need to disturb it. Only take what needs to be done."

foodland as promised, and once again i'll prose just for you

[mannerless]

The dogs are an issue, of this Wei Ying will emphatically agree. In fact, he slipped into Foodland without even checking the building's name, stealing a sharp glance over his shoulder as if one of the distantly-barking dogs might somehow have sensed his unease and followed him in. But the coast seems to be clear, and this place -

Is not at all what he thought he was walking into. His first actual glance at the shelves before him stops him short, a slow grin spreading on his face. No wonder the gas station has given up hope. How could it compare to this? If all of the shelves are as full as the ones he can see (which is, admittedly, half-full at best), he could've fed every last Wen in the Burial Mounds through the coming winter and beyond. And though it's very much not a productive solution, Wei Ying at once takes to strolling up and down the aisles, marveling at the variety of things available to them. He hasn't even heard of some of these things. What in the hell is quinoa? It looks like rice, but round and trickier to say aloud.

His adventure comes to a fairly abrupt end as he spots a familiar figure (or at least familiar head-coverings) with their face buried deep in their hands amidst displays of greenery.

Brow knitting in concern, he makes his way in her direction, alerting her to his presence with a quiet, "Hey." But there's a note of question to it, and even as a hand lifts to find her shoulder, his eyes are glancing from Gilia to the cabbages beside her. "Hey, Gilia sweetheart, it's alright - I promise, they're not so bad once you cook them." Sorry, Gilia. You've befriended a fool.

[seaboard]

She keeps hiccuping her sobs, even as he steps closer, and given up on any dignity whatsoever, she just turns into him. Hiding her face against his shoulder with yet more tears.

"That is not it." Is all she manages. If the blind leading the blind is a bad idea, what's a fool comforting a fool?

"... How will we cook them all before they rot?"

[mannerless]

And of course he welcomes her in, hand abandoning her shoulder to wrap around her back now as the other comes up to join it, fingers smoothing at the cloth along the back of Gilia's head. 'That is not it,' she says, and his brows knit down at her for a moment. If she doesn't find the cabbages abhorrent, what could be the matter? Is there some manner of horror creeping around that he hasn't picked up on?

'How will we cook them all before they rot?' How will they-... Ah. Ah, he had mistakenly assumed that her status as whatever form of gentry or royalty she seems to be might separate her from such concerns, but it only seems to have made them worse. "Ah, well - I suppose we won't," he says, because it's not as though he plans to lie to her. "If we put some in the freezers, they might keep a bit longer?" At least that has been his freezer experience so far, and not simply with such melting things as ice cream.

[seaboard]

Rather than saying anything, she pulls back with a tear stained face, hiccuping softly in little hitches of breath as she sniffles. She just looks confused, more than relieved.

The question is plain, freezer? What is that?

[mannerless]

She seems confused, in her miserable way, and for a moment Wei Ying looks puzzled right back. What is it?

Has she not yet learned of the freezers?

A hint of a grin curls his lips, and what remains of his embrace releases her to take her hand in both of his, tugging lightly to draw her away from the cabbages. "Oh, the freezers are brilliant - I'll show you," he says, so terribly earnest now that he has A Way To Help. If allowed, he'll lead her around the end of the aisle and into the next one, the length of which is lined with glass doors displaying various goods. Her hand is released here, but only so that he can open one of the doors and gesture inside as chilly air wafts out.

[seaboard]

She follows beside him, trying to imagine what it is that will make all this so much better.

But it does make sense, when she feels the cool air hit her face. An underground cellar? Even if it's not, obviously, that exactly, she understands at least all the concepts around it.

Her eyes go wide and the relief flushes over her with a heavy sigh. "We need to get all this food in here, as soon as possible."