deercountry | House Log 001: Find me way out there; there's no road that will lead us back

Haunted as all get out, they'd warned Xerxes Break, when the topic of snatching up an abandoned house large enough to hold himself and several teenagers had come up. No one wants it. It's just too much. Sure, there had been plenty of ghostly activity when they arrived in September, up to and including a disembodied hand that likes to run around all over the kitchen. But after a series of pranks involving sugar switched for salt and so on, it was determined that the hand really just wanted to be included in things, so they named the thing Scrabbles and now it's as much a part of the family as Elliot's slowly growing batcat army. So it's gone with most of the ghosts and that seems right and proper. After all, everyone who has arrived from their world is also firmly dead and still kicking anyway. Isn't it a pleasant thing for so many ghosts to be sharing this nice home? When you put it like that, haunted as all get out doesn't really seem like a terrible thing at all.

Anyway it's October now, the ghost activity is much worse, and it all seems to center around some sort of horrible cackling monstrosity living in the basement behind a padlocked door that someone felt the need to hide behind a brick wall.

Probably that's what the warnings were really about.

So, here's how the story goes:

- Shortly after the concerning basement discovery, Dipper Pines posts a very convenient network broadcast concerning ghostbusting, which Break happens to catch with his freshly acquired mad networking skills. It is agreed that probably the basement monstrosity ought to be investigated, and so it is that Dipper comes to visit and Break braces himself for another episode of chasing teenagers around while annoying things happen.

- Annoying things proceed to happen. Turns out the basement ghost was locked down there not to keep others out, but to keep him in. Once released, the ghost attacks and scatters the party, chasing smaller groups of them all over the house in turn. Fortunately, Dipper's presence gives them an even six and nobody ends up alone.

- Armed with Dipper's ghostbusting run-down, every team manages to plant a solid hit on this ghost. After a series of house-wide shenanigans, finally the ghost retreats to its basement lair, and our heroes follow to exorcise the thing properly. Success! ...and so it is that we find ourselves standing in a horrible homebrew blood ministration laboratory, packed to the brim with bad, bad vibes. Turns out the ghost was some crazed mad scientist doing illicit experiments at home, and probably all the other ghosts in the place are somehow his fault. No one wants to think too hard about Scrabbles the disembodied kitchen hand.

- Rifling through the blood minister's notes reveals the existence of a solidly corrupted spouse who was tossed into the attic for safekeeping long ago, and died there. Was this man trying to help his lover through her insanity, and failed? Was he the cause of it in the first place? Either way, this is a house where insane people getting imprisoned in towers and treated as experiments at best is unacceptable, and so it's off to the attic to bring peace to this ghost at last.

- It is decided that all the other ghosts in the house can stay. The only other really scary one lives outside, and to all appearances, eats threats.

- Dipper Pines gets to have the experience of joining a pack of exhausted feral Victorians at the local ramen shop.

Go to town!

Edited 2021-10-15 20:20 (UTC)

The Mission Briefing.[Open]

[It was Dipper's first case in Trench and boy was it exciting. Also terrifying. He never had a problem being consulted in Gravity Falls, but everything here is so different. Less people knew him, and the stakes were much higher. This house he was heading to now definitely promised to be wild, if by just the description of the situation was enough to go by. Okay, Dipper, don't mess this up!!]

[Anyway, this is how the Pandora House has come to have this short (4'8"), spunky Ghost expert in their house. He comes with a large bag tossed over his shoulder and immediately makes his way down into the Problem Area with the rest of the house.]

[Dipper does not have to get close to know exactly what this dude is all about. He can feel the bad vibes from the stairs.]

Oh yeah, this guy's got to go.

[Big words from someone advocating for talking ghosts down on the network. Anyway, he does not waste time getting to work. He empties the contents of his bag:

- 12 or so candles, some of them are white and glittery and smell faintly of milk
- a few jars of salt
- a few lunar orb powered handheld lanterns
- several silver objects including: two silver mirrors, a silver candelabra, a silver platter, a flute and a few silverware items.
- a few containers of blessed water.
- One large vial of paleblood. ]

Okay, so, listen up everyone. I didn't have enough silver mirrors to pass around, so instead I hunted down as many silver things as I could and gave them the same spell treatment. I don't think they will catch ghosts, but they should be effective for thwarting them, at least. I'll keep one of the mirrors and then everything else is up for grabs.

We don't know what we're gonna see on the other side of the door, so everyone look sharp. Any questions?

[ooc: You guys can use this as a mingle before we bust open the door. Ask him questions or talk amongst yourselves.]

[One of those jars of salt? It was suddenly floating up and directly in to Alice's hands as she floated as well, legs tucked underneath her as if she were merely sitting. Examining the jar, turning it a little half to listen to the salt moving inside of it.]

What's this for?

[Look, Dipper, you said any questions.]

[Dipper startled a little when the jar started to lift up on it's own, quickly looking around to see if one of the house ghosts started to preemptively get up to shit. No, it was just the spooky floating girl with white hair.]

[Twins! And he wonders if maybe they're related to Mr. Break? Anyway, he's happy to answer.]

Salt is a very common ward for spirits in a lot of different cultures- at least, where I'm from. It's considered good for purification. You can pour it in a circle or a line, and ghosts and evil spirits shouldn't be able to cross.

Ward and purification... [Repeating the words, squinting a little as she held the jar eye-level then to get a better look at it. That sounded like it would definitely be good.

Then Alice was opening the jar, letting it float from her hands as a good bit of the inside tipped out and floated in the air as well. Circling around and spreading to make it look as if she were in a perma-snow-fall snow globe, opened jar floating around herself.]

Do you think something like this could work in a pinch then?

[Pinch of salt and human salt bomb.]

[Dipper is just kind of stunned into silence when all the salt starts floating around. Wow, that was pretty dang cool! He looks impressed!]

Maybe! I bet you could also weaponize it if you get in a jam, too.

[He makes kind of an outward explosion motion with his hands complete with sound-effects.]

Oh, you've got an idea there!

[Of course she was going to move back with all of that salt-

Then it was all mobilized around her, like she was inside of a tornado made completely of salt. A very rotund salt tornado, and one she could expand as she moved her hands as if pushing it away. None of it touching her or anyone else, careful of even the inanimate objects near her.

She did laugh, however.]

It's like I'm in a snow globe!

[A salty snow globe.]

A really salty snow globe. That's awesome! And it's probably to keep you safer.

[He glances back at the door they are about to mess with.]

I don't want to put anyone on edge but, there's not telling what might be on the other side of the door. The better prepared, the better, you know?

Being able to direct it will most certainly help weaponize it if need be, too.

[That was an utter delight judging by tone alone. It all settled again, in that protective orb she'd had going at first, legs still tucked close as if she were sitting on them. Vague little patterns forming in the salt.

Mostly happy little figures, cats, and rabbits- but that was just some idle thing to wait for this all to go down.]

Being on edge and prepared is better than relaxed and unguarded, certainly. You seem well prepared yourself.

And we thwart them by hitting them with all of this? That’s easy, the Great Alice shall strike down every ghost in this territory.

[ This confident declaration is slightly muffled because there’s a candle in her mouth. Dipper said up for grabs and she’s taking him at his word. ]

That candle's made with my blood, you know.

[He offers her the silver platter for max whacking. She seems like the time to enjoy cracking people over the head with blunt objects.]

[ Alice considers this new fact for a little too long before she decides that this might actually be too weird for her and puts the candle back with hardly any tooth marks. She's not gonna chew on the blood of someone she just met. Lick it in passing, maybe, but chewing is right out. She takes the platter and gives it a few practice swings. Dipper may have been right on the money about this one. ]

Huh. Mine's tastier, more of a jam than a candle.

[ As long as we are exchanging interesting blood facts. This is how one interacts with the peers, she suspects. ]

[It is if you're a Pines, anyway. Dipper nods, not seeming put off by this tidbit! He picks up the candle she had in her mouth, regards it for a moment before putting it with some others. He seems to be lining things up near the locked door.]

Is it the sparkly dark kind? My uncle has that blood. It's like ...blackberries or something, right?

Just like it!

Sometimes it feels like it's not really in me, and sometimes it feels like it's really there and going wild - like how you can suck a drink up through a straw but also blow bubbles in it.

[ Alice has been slow to figure all this blood stuff out because she's not an inquisitive kind of person, she's going with primary sources only on this one. ]

[Break is having a "this may as well happen" kind of day, honestly. A "so this is the situation I find myself in" day. The vibe in here is very similar to the time Oscar Vessalius gathered all the kids together on a super secret mission to infiltrate a boarding school and find out who young Ada had a crush on: Very Serious Business™ to be sure but is it, though? Is it really? He read a novel like this once and it was amusing and all but not his favorite? Break is so torn between genuine concern about a thing in the house that could decide to hurt them, and hoping vaguely that the kids will have a nice time.

He is paying attention to everything, mind. And has no intention of going in unarmed. While Dipper is speaking, Baltus trots over to investigate the pile, and of course he hones in on the most stick-like thing of the bunch and brings it to his person. Feeling it out, Break is deeply bemused to realize he has just been handed a damned silver flute, but sure, sure. He spins it a little, testing out the weight and balance. Sure, he will swordfight a ghost with a flute and then he'll be able to say that he did that, why not. This might as well happen.]

Forks too? [He asks it of Baltus softly and gets a gentle "boof" in reply.] Grab me a couple of those, would you? Ranged combat, you know.

[It's really for the best if there is only one horrifying murder Ghost in a place at a time and Break has moved in, so he'll have to assert dominance over this other one, he supposes. By chucking forks at it which Break is great at. And swordfighting it with a flute. Why not! Why not. He is a squid now.]

[While the other kids are having fun with their silver weapons and Dipper has gotten most of his set up done, he will slide over to Break. This is the guy that hired him after all, so its good to touch base before uh. Stuff Happens.]

Hey, man. Can I talk to you real fast?

Ah? You can talk to me "real slow" if you like, too. I am not in a hurry.

[Soul of a grunkle in a barely middle-aged body, this one. Possibly Dipper has noticed by now that he is the lone adult in a house full of kids who do things like make salt snowglobes and chew on candles.

On the other hand given the other Pines this might just look refreshingly normal, let's be real.]

[Yeah, see. This is familiar chaos, for sure. These people are fucking weird just like his family. He feels very cozy here, even if they're about to provoke a murder ghost.]

[Speaking of which.]

Did you get that one out of the same terrible joke book my uncle has?

[He makes a face Break can't see before he clears his throat.]

I just wanted to give you a heads up about something since I'm getting the feeling no one else here is a Paleblood like I am.

Not at all, I am naturally clever. [Baltus has acquired a candlestick no one else wants and is off to the side, practicing hurling it at things. He is not bad at this, for being dog-shaped.] Mm, but -- you would be correct. We are all of us darkbloods, save Oz. He has the green kind.

[We do not refer to Oz Vessalius as "vile" in this household.]

[Baltus goes uncommented on because he's exactly the kind of punchline in the background of Gravity Falls that comes expected.]

Good to know.

[Dipper glances towards the door.]

So, I know it's pretty obvious this guy, whatever his deal is, is bad news. I just want to extra reiterate that since I can literally feel the bad vibes from over here.

I think we should be really careful.

[Break is a little taken aback by Dipper's insistence here. If they'd found a paleblood to accompany them when they first scoped out the house, would that person have picked up on things back then, and warned them away properly? Ah, but, it's not like they knew much of anything about blood or special powers back at that time. This is what they get for not listening to the warnings about how haunted this house is, apparently. Has Break put these kids in a situation where he is going to get them all killed, because he wasn't serious enough about --

No, we're going to stop this spiral right here. Damn near everything else about this place is perfect. He won't allow his kids or this one to be hurt if he can help it, but he's also not willing to find somewhere new unless he has to. Whatever other houses they find may well have the same problem anyway.]

...being careful, that goes without saying. More importantly -- do you truly believe this ghost can be removed?

I think so.

[Dipper says it with enough confidence to be believed, but he still has a frown on his face.]

I mean- I'm going to put it out there that this place, it's world, and the entities in it are still a huge mystery to us all, but ghosts tend to work on certain rules, and even if one can't be removed, they can be placated.

[The lumberjack ghost was not defeated so much as he was placated, and the same can be said of Mama back in the dream. His banishment did not remove her, so much as it removed the part of her that was violent. That could be what they have to settle for.]

This one is ...probably the most overtly malicious ghost I've seen, but I doubt he'll be as powerful as one of the ones I've dealt with back home.

[They're not all that different from Chains, is what Break is hearing here. They only need to sort out what this ghost's rules are. And if it isn't the power that's the issue, well.

Break gives a decidedly dangerous smile.]

Then, we merely need to be nastier than it is. This, I think, will not be a problem.

If I'm also a ghost, am I in danger?

[Oz cheerfully reaches for a piece of silverware anyway. YOLO or something!

... Or more appropriately, because he knows it won't hurt him. He's already accidentally touched the silverware and it didn't cause any trouble. His question is asked solely to keep the mood light. His own included.]

This is exciting. I've heard of ghost stories, but I've never met anyone brave enough to fight a ghost~.

I can't be held accountable if you end up trapped in one of my mirrors, dude.

[He says this very matter-of-factly. But hey! This is pretty cool, Oz taught him some ballroom dancing and now Dipper gets to teach him how to bust a ghost!]

[Anyway, he thinks Oz is joking maybe, but he does watch him when he picks up a silver item, being quietly relieved it doesn't hurt him.]

Not to toot my own horn or anything, but facing murderous ghosts is something I wind up doing often enough that I can actually call it a hobby.

House Log 001: Find me way out there; there's no road that will lead us back

House Ghost mini-plot!

Dipper Pines | Who ya gonna call? (Him, apparently)

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[not actually doing anything I just needed to write this out]

slides this here anyway

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