route666rp | MARCH EVENT LOG

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MARCH EVENT LOG

After weeks in the forest, the trees begin to fade out in favor of grass; miles of it with every shade of green you’ve ever seen, covering rolling hills. The weather tends to be mild, with scattered clouds blown on gentle winds… But the nights somehow seem just as ominous as those in the forest, with the moon uncovered and glaring down balefully like a broken eye. And wide open as they are, the grasslands have their own share of danger and weirdness.

01: MESSAGES

The grasslands are dotted with abandoned electrical poles and power pylons. Ruined electric cables hand off these towers… But along with that are kites and balloons tied to the structures. If a Drifter gets close enough to grab one, they can find a message tied to the tail end. It’s printed with a memory or a phrase that is distinctly from their home, and their past.

If a Drifter holds onto the message, it might just remind them of home and help them resist any changes. Or even pull them back out of a monster transformation! Or it might just haunt their senses instead, and almost make them visualize and hear where they heard that phrase for the first time. Try not to get lost in those visions. Drifters can potentially carry one other message for another character, if need be; especially if they need to revert someone else from a painful transformation. Be advised that doing so will result in haunted senses.

Drifters are advised not to grip the old electric wires too tightly. They might get voices from the past of this world, all crowding their mind; old talk shows, sports games, and news reports on the moon. It’s enough to leave them with a serious headache if you hang on for too long, if not knocking them out completely.

02: TRANSMITTER

Out on the road, Drifters glimpse buildings, which are unnervingly empty. Equally unnerving are strange forms lining the roads, the closer the Convoy gets to the broken buildings. All of them look vaguely humanoid, but half melted and coated in something metallic. Clearly the Husks weren’t limited to the forest, with how many litter the landscape. Some Husks become violent, breaking open as strange ostritch-bird and reptilian monsters claw their way out. Such creatures can be easily dispatched, but still harry Drifters.

Other, inert Husks give off an odd metallic hum. Getting close enough to touch the Husks makes the hum louder, and can trigger behavior changes in Drifters. While the inert Husks can’t force transformations, they leave Drifters restless, on edge, and activating psychological monster traits.

When the Convoy makes camp, it is inevitably near Husk clusters. The metallic hum only increases as the sun goes down. But the Convoy has a counter for that. A haunting melody starts to play on the Convoy speakers, and from any phones; taking the sound closer to the Husks causes ghostly forms to rise up and towards the moon. It puts a stop to the odd humming… At least until the next camp.

03: ROUND 'EM UP

Those with sharp eyes will notice something different one morning, on a nearby hill. It appears to be a flock of cattle… Which might well be a welcome sight for those wanting beef for dinner. As the Convoy rolls closer, it swiftly becomes clear these aren’t normal cattle. Their skin is shiny, scale-like and metallic, and their eyes glow. Those hooves also look sharp enough to punch right through a car door.

These are bull gorgons, the guidance computer helpfully notes. And they are capable of exhaling a petrifying mist; one deep breath is enough to make a person slow, two freezes them in place, and three turns them to stone. Luckily the blood of a gorgon bull can also cure the effect. Drifters won’t be able to capture such dangerous beasts for livestock, but they can still try and wrangle them and harvest them for meat! The skin and horns are both tough enough to be turned into tools, as needed.

Tough cars can easily square off with a gorgon bull and come away victorious. Other cars are advised to try lassoing from a distance, and wearing the animals down before moving in for the kill.

04: BUILDING THUNDER

There’s dark clouds boiling up in the sky. Those who shelter in the Convoy will be spared the worst of the storm… Though the winds have a way of screaming, trying to call Drifters out into the storm. And flecks of metal and glowing moonshard stone have a way of replacing rain and intensifying the storm.

If exposed to the storm outside the forcefield, Drifters experience the following:
Gale Force: Drifters are swept up by the winds and tossed about, and even thrown skyward. Drifters damaged by the wind will find themselves inflicted with temporary Harpy traits. These traits become more intense as Drifters experience hunger or violence.
Deluge: Drifters exposed to rain are at risk of almost drowning, along with shards of Husk metal and moon shards slicing down. Drifters damaged from rain will find themselves inflicted with temporary Naga traits. These traits grow worse as Drifters lie, omit truths, or tell falsehoods.

These traits last as long as the weather remains stormy; the symptoms ease as the skies clear, only to flare back up as storms return, and will remain that way as long as the Convoy remains in the grasslands.

04: MONSTER SHIFT, NAGA

This month, Drifters will have access to the serpentine Naga. On top of all Naga species traits being available, the following occurs:
+Cold Blooded: the rain and storms can potentially make Naga slow and sluggish, or inclined to sleep or seek out other heat sources to gain energy; this includes basking in body heat from others!
+Water Divert: With their water shaping, Naga can divert falling rain and even ground saturation to make the area or other Drifters more dry. They can also concentrate water into different areas, and can also change water into mist or ice.
+Blue shift: the scales of Naga become more vibrantly blue, or a strange mottled combination of blue and stormy gray, the more intense the rains become. These scale colors can also reflect their moods.
+Extra arms that are painful and disorienting to grow, and can result in coordination issues.
+Scale Pains: Pain and discomfort when scales grow in, as well as fangs or talons!
+Water glide: during floods from the rains, Naga find they can easily traverse deep water as though they were simply walking (or slithering) across it.
+Thermal vision, making it easy to track others in the middle of storms. Vision may also become disorienting, and eyes become slitted.

04: MONSTER SHIFT, HARPY

The storm will bring a second monster this month, in the form of Harpy. On top of all Harpy species traits being active, the following occurs:
+Storm Rider: high agility and capable of flying through the storm winds without hindrance. Even tornadoes can be mastered!
+Feather pains: itching, or full pain when growing feathers or wings. Talons may also be painful when growing from fingers or from feet.
+Wind Affinity: able to shape wind, including diverting the worst of the storm winds, or summon and focus wind into razors.
+Warbling Voice: words may waver and slip into something more songlike, or even a damaging sonic scream if emotions are heightened.
+Height Call: a need to get higher into the air, whether through perching on buildings or the convoy, or through flight. A sense of euphoria as they go higher.
+Nest Building: a compulsion to create a nest out of spare and soft objects, and feeling more safe inside that space.
+Heightened vision like a bird of prey, able to pick out details even at great distance. This may be disorienting at first, as vision becomes telescopic.

05: ZOLOM HUNT

As the Convoy travels into marshy points in the grasslands, it becomes clear something is following. Something is hunting the Convoy, disturbing the boggy ground in waves and humps as it travels. It’s hard to say what exactly the monster is, just that it’s BIG and feeling out the Convoy, seeing if it can find prey.

Drifters who try attacking as it hunts will see the shape sink into marshy ground and shrink away, before returning. After about an hour of building tension, it finally strikes. The ground erupts in a spray of water, as a thirty foot serpent called a Zolom rises out of the ground.

Going by the hissing surrounding the Convoy, it’s clear there isn’t just one. The Zoloms go for any who attacked them while hunting, identifying those as the biggest threat, followed by whatever looks like the best prey.

In the aftermath, Zoloms can be harvested. Their fangs are sharp, their scales are tough and can make good leather, and their blood, while corrosive, can still be contained in vials for poisons or anti-venom study by the more medically inclined. And the meat may taste a bit gamey and oddly spicey, but it’s still edible. But first, Drifters need to survive the onslaught.

05-A: ZOLOM ATTACK

Constrictor: The lead Zolom constricts the Convoy trailers to try and crack them open and spill any Drifters out. Other Zoloms target vehicles, trying to get at the Drifters driving them. Tough cars can stand up to the coils and ram into the Zoloms enough to disorient them. Fast cars can easily outpace the Zolom, and if needed lead serpents away from the Convoy before doubling back.

Beta and Venom: There's more danger after Zoloms take wounds. Their blood steams as it hits the ground, burning grass and earth and steaming the water. Zolom blood is laced with venom that either burns Drifters bodies… Or burns their thoughts, inflicting them with a berserk frenzy. The Zoloms also super heat the air in a circle and spit out venom as fire. Cars can protect from the firestorm, though only the Toughest of the bunch will be able to drive away without serious damage.

Death Rattle: With enough tenacity, Drifters are capable of defeating the Zoloms or driving them away. (Spiking them on the top of a nearby tree is optional.) At the end of combat, the Zoloms have a parting gift as they lash, writhe, and snap.

MICRO ENCOUNTERS:

PLEASE NOTE! These are small bits of set dressing for players to include in threads if they wish, rather than full fledged prompts or events. You may handwave your exploration of these areas, or thread them out.

Ruined Buildings: Grow more numerous, encountering one or two a day. Usually in the form of residences, or farms. Many of them have been gutted from both time, elements, and moon warps. But a handful still hold basic supplies; medical kits, canned food, etc. They also hold hastily scrawled maps that show the surrounding area… And a parched looking area surrounding the grasslands. It looks as though the Convoy is heading right towards it.

Farmlands: Occasionally interrupt the rolling grasslands. They look scraggly and overgrown, with sparse crops available. The handful of food in such areas is edible with no ill affects, but the taste profile is confused: apples taste like watermelons, corn tastes like avocados, etc.

Wind Turbines: A few lonely wind turbines still dot the landscape, spinning even without anyone to maintain them. They give a lonely whistle as they turn, perhaps even sounding a little like a whisper… And one trying to mimic the message Drifters may have received on the power lines.

NAVIGATION

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Jack and Serph are sitting in front of his van while Jack spins the rabbit-thing on a spit over a fire. The fire serves dual purposes, providing heat for the cooking and warmth for Serph. Jack may be providing warmth, too, letting Serph coil his long tail around him, should Serph want to.

He feels badly for being the cause of the transformation. If only he'd come inside when Serph wanted him to! He really doesn't know what came over him, only that it is passed now and he isn't four legged and dripping spirit fire anymore, though some of the restlessness still remains while the clouds hover in the distance. He does his best to quell it.

"This should be done," he offers to Serph. "Want to try a piece?" Because he has definitely noticed his friend not eating, and he's already refused porridge, with or without cookie crumbs.

Serph's tail is indeed loosely coiled around Jack, the rest of his serpentine body curved around the campfire so he is as close to its warmth as he can be without risk of injury. Although the worst of the storm has passed, there's still rainfall here and there. He's been slightly quieter usual. Not because he's cross with Jack -- the inconveniences of this new body chafe but he will adapt, like he always has -- but because of what the gentler rain reminds him of.

He's hungry.

He can smell the meat and fat of the creature Jack is cooking, forked tongue instinctively flickering to taste the scent without eating. It makes the hunger worse but he can't stop doing it.

It takes everything he can to restrain himself from looking too eager when Jack makes his offer, but he nevertheless sits a little straighter before he nods silently. He's not quite starving but he's certainly staring down its precipice.

Jack pops the spit off the fire and sets the not-rabbit onto the waiting plate, carefully slicing off a haunch and offering it to Serph in the end of a fork. "Careful, it's hot," he warns, but he's hopeful, too, that this will overcome whatever Serph's resistance to food has been. He even added what he's pretty sure are herbs to try and increase the flavor. It had tasted like rosemary, anyway, when he nibbled on it, even if it had looked like mint.

Serph takes the offered rabbit haunch, delicatedly holding it by the bones with his fingers so he doesn't burn himself. It smells both strange and good, and it takes everything he has not to tear into it ravenously.

With great effort, Serph blows on the haunch to cool it. Once he thinks it seems it might be cool enough to eat, he can't hold himself back from baring his fangs and sinking them into the fleshiest part of the haunch and jerking his head to rip it off. The meat comes away from bone with far less resistance than he expects, but he manages to hang onto it and swallow.

It's...

...not bad.

Unable to stop himself now that he's started, Serph rapidly devours the rest of the meat given to him... and the bones, human teeth cracking them into smaller pieces before he swallows the shards.

Jack looks delighted. He's found something Serph will eat! He readily slices up the rest of the not-rabbit into manageable pieces, for a normal human type person, and hands over the plate, so Serph can eat as he likes, but without having to actively tear the creature apart with his teeth and hands alone.

"I'm going to have to set more snares," he comments, but he's smiling as he says it.

What if he likes tearing into the meat with his teeth and hands? Still, Serph takes the plate and takes one of the slices Jack had cut for him and pops it into his mouth, chewing as he speaks.

"Is that how you caught this?"

He'd seen a few of these creatures out in the grasslands before. Small, quick creatures, easily scared into hiding. They hadn't seemed worth his time.

"Yes, I leave the traps out overnight, and then check them in the morning. Since we are driving during the day, I cannot leave them longer than that, or I would probably catch more," Jack says, a bit apologetically. This not-rabbit was all he did manage to catch that morning. Hopefully his haul will be better tonight.

Hm. It's unfortunate they're on the move all the time, in that case. He misses having a base, even if the Convoy is like a mobile base.

Serph looks down at the plate of carved up animal. Jack had given him the entire thing. Its body is small, hardly enough to take the edge off his hunger, but...

"You're not having any?"

"I had plenty of porridge," Jack points out with a smile. He pulls out a little fabric bag he made, holding it up and giving it a little shake, adding, "And I have more nuts, too. I would rather you eat this, if this is the thing you would like to eat."

He makes good on his words, too, by opening the bag and popping some of the shelled walnuts into his mouth. They taste like pecans, but he'll take it. It's protein, and really, he likes pecans better than walnuts anyway.

Serph's expression looks dubious. Is porridge really enough? That soft, flavourless thing?

He looks down at the strange creature, cut into small, bite sized pieces, a strange feeling bubbling in his chest. Jack had gone to the effort to catch this creature for him -- and intends to continue to do so -- out of no obligation. Guilt needles at him; Jack wouldn't need to do this if he were hunting like he ought to be. And yet...

He doesn't say that he would prefer the creature uncooked.

"What do you like to eat?" Maybe he could keep an eye out for something like it when he next searches the wilds.

It's only what Jack would do for any of his friends who seem out of sorts. His good friends, who he gets to cuddle with. "Oh, all sorts of things. There aren't many things I don't like," Jack muses. Though he doubts Serph will find either, but it seems prudent to at least mention, "I can't eat chocolate, or anything made with grapes, but that's more of, er, an allergy than a preference."

Ah... Serph's expression pulls into a small frown as he realises quickly the big problem of asking his question; he doesn't know what any of those things Jack answered as his allergies are.

"Could you describe chocolate and grapes?"

At least with the rabbit cut up, there's no need for Serph to ravage the meat like an animal, so he eats the slices far more politely as Jack talks.

"Oh, um. Well, chocolate is easy. Those cookie crumbs I poured into your porridge? The little brown bits in them, those were chocolate. Here." He pulls out his last bag, which he does in fact have rolled up in a pocket in case it might have actually helped Serph eat. He picks one out to hand over for Serph to examine, sniff, and maybe eat too. "They come in bigger bars, too. I do not expect you to find any here, but better to be safe than sorry."

Grapes, now, they're possible. "Grapes are round... berries, sort of. Kind of oblong. They can be purple or green. They are usually a little bit sour. They grow on vines. Though I do not know if the things that look like them will taste like them, in this place, and if something else tastes like them, if they actually are them, and will make me sick." He gives a helpless little shrug.

"You'll need to exercise caution then..."

Serph gnaws thoughtfully on the mutated rabbit's bone before crunching it. Speaking of plants...

"Earlier, Viktor asked for help bringing plants back." Serph's expression grows a little wistful. "He intends to grow them."

He'd been asked to do the same by Johnny back in 'Nirvana,' but he'll never see the fruits of his efforts. But here... maybe he'll get the chance to, if Viktor is successful in cultivating them.

"Then you could eat something besides porridge and nuts."

"Oh, that would be a good idea, if he can get the right lights inside the convoy trailer. Or I suppose if he turns the roof of car or trailer into a garden," Jack says thoughtfully. "We should have a more varied diet than just porridge and those pancakes the robot has been making." And whatever the hell Serph has been eating all this time. "And we can't assume there will always be fields and orchards to scavenge from. If he needs help, I can try, though I have never been very good at gardening."

Most of his own experience with farming had been picking things, not planting them or caring for them. He drove a tractor once or twice. For some reason he always wound up helping the women of farms more than men, caring for children or doing household chores rather than being sent out into the fields. He blames being fairly small and not particularly strong.

Serph can't help but feel a slight twinge of guilt at how easily he had convinced some of the other drifters to hunt some of the monsters and store the meat. Objectively, what he had suggested made sense. Just... his reasons were ultimately for his own self preservation. And yet even while the hunting is abundant now, he can't seem to rouse himself to do so, leading to this current situation of Jack hunting what are effectively snacks for him.

But... "We could ask him. I would like to learn."

He snaps up yet another slice of meat, shifting his coils and gaze going up to the night sky. His very first night seems so long ago now, lost and alone, hunted by demons as he searched for any path that would lead to Sera and his comrades.

"Plants struggled to survive in the Nirvana of my world. Like the moon here, the sun was messed up." The sky, a harsh, glaring yellow. A hint of wistfulness enters his voice. "So humans asked me to bring them any plants I found so they could grow them. I don't know if they succeeded."

Jack absently pats the nearest coil. Maybe the not-rabbit isn't enough, but it's a start, and he'll be able to focus his efforts now, at least. He doesn't want Serph to go hungry, especially as he's fairly sure this whole shape thing is his own fault. "So you did find somewhere with plants in the end?" he asks. He knows where Serph originally came from didn't have them, but now he's perhaps talking about a different place.

Also solidifying his understanding that Serph is not and never has been human, if he's talking about other people as "humans".

"I found a few plants but they were small and struggling. There was nowhere that was like the forest or here."

Serph picks at the remaining scraps of his meal.

"Most forms of life couldn't live under the black sun's rays."

"It must have been very strange for you, coming here, with the forest and the grasslands, and farms, even as overgrown as they are now," Jack says, leaning over a little against Serph's side while he finishes eating. "Even without animals and all these changes, just that must have been baffling and unfamiliar."

He can imagine it. Not knowing what a dog or a burro or a sheep was. With only small, scrappy plants living in whatever world he'd gone to. It seems awfully sad, to live in a world like this. Even this one, empty of people though it might be, is still alive.

Serph nods in agreement; yes, coming to this world had been baffling and unfamiliar. But in the same breath, he had been full of wonder at all that was new and different. And yet...

"These transformations aren't so strange."

Serph leans back against Jack, mirroring the other man's action, while the set of wings closest to the other man unfurl and curl over Jack's shoulders like a downy blanket. There's only a few bones left of his meal and he absentmindedly pushes them around his plate with a rib.

"Have you wondered what it's like to not feel fear? To be without sadness or worry?"

"Er, well. I don't really have to wonder. During the storm, when I was that fox, that was why I kept doing stupid things. I wasn't afraid of anything and I definitely wasn't sad about anything." He sounds rueful. There were moments of fear, sure, and the restless energy wasn't all positive, but it felt like there was simply nothing to worry about most of the time. And it definitely made him do stupid things.

At least Serph isn't mad at him about it. The wing blanket reinforces it. It's nice having people who accept when you mess up and just let you make it up to them with cuddles and snacks.

"Why do you ask?"

Is that so?

"Imagine always being like that. Unable to feel sadness at loss. Unable to feel relief at seeing others return safely."

Serph's voice is quiet, softer than usual as he speaks, all idle movement completely stilled. The plate rests empty in his hands.

"That's what people of my original world were like before we gained our demons. We were changed, beyond just our bodies." The vision of a blue sky had entered his mind, so vivid in colour compared to drab greys of the Junkyard that he knew he had to see it for himself. "To feel uncertainty for the first time, worry, anger, grief, joy... that was stranger than coming here."

"Oh. Oh no." Jack looks up at him, expression unhappy, and moves one hand to pet Serph's arm a couple times. "No, what I was as a fox was not... that. I had feelings. Just not the bad ones, mostly. That sounds... well, I would say it sounds horrible, but you must have not known what you were missing until it all happened."

Still, Jack has a very good imagination, and he can picture going from nothing to everything. They must not have even had a frame of reference for their feelings! "It must have been terrifying, to suddenly feel. To suddenly feel terror, even."

Serph nods. That was one of the first things Heat was able to identify, even before his expressions and voice began to take on a harsher quality. Fear. He'd been able to sense it keenly, but not describe what it was.

"It vexed my strategist. We behaved illogically. There was conflict and disagreement within our tribe when there was none before." The corner of his mouth curls up in a small smile as he rests his hand on top of Jack's. "But we became capable of caring for each other. We wanted to protect each other for reasons beyond just survival."

"I hope your strategist came around. Or-- you are happier now, I hope? Well." Jack frowns. "You would have have been happy before at all, since you had no happiness. But you are glad, now, that it happened, I hope?"

Because as troublesome as emotions are, sometimes, they are better to have than to not. Jack would always prefer to care than to not care. (The memories of the wolf are sometimes like that, he thinks: no real emotions, just instinct.)

MARCH EVENT LOG

Post storm feeding attempts + truck return

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