reddosmod: (Default)
Deer Country Mod ([personal profile] reddosmod) wrote in [community profile] deercountry2021-12-08 02:19 am

I'd go back in time and change it, but I can't

DECEMBER 2021 EVENT
Hello! We are trying a new style of event this December with archival-like entries that characters can ICly find in the Archives. This should allow characters to be able to plan against certain events that occur in-game and do research ahead of time, during the event, or after the fact.

The idea is that these prompts will provide you with all the possibilities characters could theoretically face from the prompt. We hope this leaves more open-ended opportunities for people to engage with. Anything mentioned in the excerpts could be an experience characters encounter. You can always ask for clarification on any prompt on the plotting page.

This is a way to keep all event prompts relevant since new characters would be able to "read up" on these events/excerpts by visiting the Archives or other such resources for information about past events and what they can anticipate from the setting.

We hope this new style makes sense and is fun for players to work with! They will rely on players creating more of the atmosphere than the prompts, but we think that the prompts will provide the perfect guidance as to what the atmosphere should feel like. Enjoy!

IMAGE DESCRIPTORS IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE

Prompt One
[Image One: Holiday themed antler decoration.]
[Image Two: White stag with perfect, circular antlers with bits of ice attached.]

Prompt Two
[Image One: Sculpture of white rabbit with neck caught in a snare. Non-graphic.]
[Image Two: Person in red cloak and wolf mask turning around.]

Prompt Three
[Image One: Puppet making bloody snow angel in snow.]
[Image Two: Bloodied hands wrapped in bandages clenching.]

WINTER MOURNING
WHEN: Begins in December and can last until the end of Feb.
WHERE: Everywhere
CONTENT WARNINGS: Spoilers for various canons, survival situations, forced memory share


[A passage from Rituals of Trench: Remembering Our Pasts reads the following:]

"A long-standing tradition to celebrate Bone Season is for Deerians to collect antlers and bones salvaged from natural resources and create decorative home accents. These antler-bone decors are known formally as Winter Mournings and can be found in almost every residential home throughout Deer Country. Winter Mournings can be made to look like wreaths, candle holders, or simply an antler with a bow hung up on a wall.

Winter Mournings is seen as a way to honor one's past tribulations and how one has managed to survive and overcome hardships during their life. Winter Mournings serves as a testament to survival and a willingness to keep surviving even when things look bleak and dismal.

Creating Winter Mournings is considered a blessing to the Pthumerians Dorothea, Remina, and Argonaut. You will know if the blessing was accepted once your Winter Mourning begins to glow like the moon. Touch your Winter Mourning and you will be pulled back in time to a memory of a specific time when you or someone else had to survive something physically or mentally challenging. For some, it is merely a memory that cannot hurt, but for others, you may want to proceed with caution as it has been known to pull people physically back to times of war.

One cannot choose which memory they wind up in if it is their own, a friend's, or a complete stranger's. Winter Mournings was designed to create a sense of union and empathy among residents and is meant to open your mind and heart to those who have suffered around you. It is time you explore your past, or someone else's past, with an open mind and see how the other side has lived through hard times. These memories are known to be from adolescence, adulthood, or sometimes even futures that have not yet happened or timelines you have never known. After all, Remina sees all past and all history. That means they see all of your past and history too.

No memory lasts forever though. Once the memory has been concluded, you shall be brought back to the present by the Winter Mourning Stag: a great white beast with a circle of frozen antlers. It will come to you when the time is ready, and you will return to the present like waking from a dazzling dream.

Experiencing Winter Mournings can stabilize one's mood and provide restful sleep after, even if the memories may be difficult to swallow. It truly is a tribute to honor past horrors and traumas. Some memories are painful to remember, but forgetting them will never do anyone any good either. So hang your Winter Mournings and remember what matters.

Survive another day. You are worth it."

FAQ

1. Winter Mournings can produce new memories every time you touch them or the same memory.

2. Characters cannot choose what the memory is.

3. Characters can arrive in each other's memories regardless of if they already know each other. Multiple people can experience the same memory.

4. You can either experience the memory as a memory you can't touch or experience - or you can physically be in the memory and have to survive the situation as well. If you die in memory, your body will die wherever you had been touching the Winter Mourning.

5. Palebloods are capable of altering memories or how they or others experience memories.

6. Characters can be pulled into memories at random - as long as one of the characters in the memory share is touching a Winter Mourning at first.
RUN, RABBIT, RUN
WHEN: Month of December
WHERE: Everywhere/the woods
CONTENT WARNINGS: Themes of hunting, ghosts, curses, attempts at animal violence, hunting people based on blood types.


[An excerpt from Legends of Trench: Curses and Causations reads the following:]

"One of the most notorious legends of Trench is without a doubt the tale of The Huntress and the Hare. Most Trenchies have been told this tale since they were children, but for those unfamiliar, settle in.

This story begins with a mischievous god and an ambitious huntress. The Pthumerian Dorothea loved to play tricks on hunters trying to survive the Bone Season, setting animals free from traps and remaking the traps to catch the hunters instead. One day, a darkblood Huntress was fed up with Dorothea preventing her from catching food for her family and decided to settle the score. The Huntress began to hunt for Dorothea specifically, but it is no small feat hunting the god of trickery and survival.

The Huntress started to rely on her darkblood powers to alter reality to make the perfect traps. Innocuous trees turned into glue traps that anyone would stick to until they were freed by a darkblood or death took their pain from them. Walking through bushes would snag legs and necks, effectively trapping whatever creatures were unfortunate enough to wander for food. Magical snares and beartraps lock around victims with unrelenting force, leaving people and animals to try for help until they cry no more. While this took many innocent lives in the woods, animals, and people alike, it never seemed to work on Dorothea.

Dorothea continued to outwit the Huntress until she eventually drove the Huntress insane. The Huntress died without ever catching Dorothea, but they say her vengeful spirit awakens in winter and begins to set her traps yet again. The Huntress sends her traps and her dead animals after vilebloods and warmbloods to spite Dorothea and hope to maybe catch the god's attention. But Dorothea is no passive god. Dorothea spurs vilebloods and warmbloods to defend themselves against darkbloods and coldbloods.

Infamously, this has created enormous tension between the blood types during December some years, and it is said that the blood lust has caused the types to begin hunting one another regardless of old friendships and alliances. Beware the Huntress's curse. Some believe darkbloods and coldbloods can still hear her haunting commands and cries from the Trenchwood.

They say there is no ease for the tension between the bloodtypes until December has passed, but some believe palebloods may provide relief if they are willing."

FAQ

1. Characters will increasingly feel the urge to actively hunt one another using traps/etc.

2. The Huntress's curse includes undead animals/beasts chasing after warmbloods and vilebloods and magical traps. Players can invent unique traps for their characters.

3. There will be an innate urge to chase/hide from one another.

4. The curse can be broken by paleblood intervention, character death, or a gradual wearing off by the end of the month.
LOCKJOINT
WHEN: All of Bone Season
WHERE: On Sleeper bodies
CONTENT WARNINGS: Mild body horror, blood magic curses, physical curses, cures through blood ministration/blood letting, possible skin removal, injuries, possible death via starvation/exposure.


[An passage from The Sleeper Condition; Chapter 13: Bodily Aches and More. Found exclusively at the Lumenarium:]

"Generally speaking, Sleeper blood allows Sleepers to navigate this world without the fear of illness and disease. However, no organic body is perfect, and Sleeper blood has its own set of ailments to fret over. Blood Ministers have studied the phenomena of Lockjoint for years now and believe that it is linked to the crystalization found in Sleeper death, though the exact connection remains unknown.

Lockjoint tends to begin and last throughout Bone Season. Some Sleepers may never experience it, but for many, it becomes a reoccurring issue to dread each season. This condition forces blood magic to gather at the joints and effectively lock up. Sleepers find it difficult to move their bodies at the bends, fingers, knees, shoulders, etc without some form of discomfort. Minimal lockjoint can be painful and annoyance, but critical lockjoint can be fatal.

The most severe cases of lockjoint documented have shown Sleepers to have crystalization form over their joints, rendering parts of their bodies completely immobile. Some Sleepers have been found dead in this condition, all their joints crystallized, and it is believed most died from natural causes thereafter.

One can determine they are experiencing lockjoint when the coloration around the joints begins to darken in color, typically looking like a bruise. Calcification may occur rapidly the more magic a Sleeper uses or the more they expose themselves to outside elements. It is imperative that Sleepers remain properly clothed during Bone Season, even if they are coldbloods, and to invest in enchanted clothes that can lock in heat.

A known cure for lockjoint is the art of bloodletting. Puncturing the joints with small incisions seems to allow a release of the built-up magic and can provide immediate relief to the Sleeper. Catching lockjoint early is imperative. Alternative methods are soaking in hot springs and salted water.

Those who are in a more severe state will have to carefully have the crystals removed. This will likely remove the skin as well. Local anesthesia is highly recommended for the procedure. This process is known to leave scarring. The crystals can be saved and used as bloodstones from whoever they were harvested from. If you find a Sleeper dead from lockjoint, make sure to harvest the crystals as they are incredibly valuable.

This curse is believed to stem from Sleeper blood magic congealing within the body in contrast with the atmospheric magic of Bone Season. There is no known prevention for lockjoint. Lockjoint can impact all Sleepers regardless of bloodtype or the material their bodies are made from."

FAQ

1. This impacts characters regardless of blood type or their body - meaning it can impact characters with metal/plastic/plant/wood/etc bodies.

2. Players can choose how rapid or severe this gets and how quickly they can be healed.
CODING
possessum: (and while the day burnt off to dusk)

[personal profile] possessum 2022-01-09 08:52 pm (UTC)(link)
( At least the wound shouldn't be as severe as some things — namely the literal chunk he'd bitten out of Ruby back in Deerington.... This is more like a snake bite, sharpened fangs sinking in around the taste of the blood he draws. It's still a dangerous place to be, however, latched onto someone's throat — and if this were literally anyone besides Ange, he would probably be trying to maim her neck right away, rip into it the way he knows how.

As it is, he's just latching onto her like that with seemingly no intention of letting go in the immediate future. He barely knows what he's doing, driven by some feral instinct. When she starts speaking aloud, he immediately bites down harder, snarling a bit against her neck. He can feel the shift of energy as the witch conjures something, something powerful and ancient and important, but he's still not letting go—

—and then something makes contact with his head.

It's hard and heavy and does the job of knocking him right off of her — mouth letting go, scrambling and stumbling back down to the ground. He's hissing and spitting angrily as he skitters backwards, but he's kind of.... leaning to the side, his balance struck off by the impact to his head. Then he just kind of topples over — still hissing and spitting, mind you.

Nearby, the long drapes hanging from the windows abruptly catch on fire, a blazing inferno caused by his mind. It's chaos.... )
entreats: (tell me that i'm alright)

[personal profile] entreats 2022-01-11 10:55 pm (UTC)(link)
[ It's total chaos. It's more and more like Ange is turning into the 'this is fine' dog, room burning around her and all.

But when Paimon flies off her throat, the first thing she instead does is put her hand on her neck, just to feel the extent of the damage. It's that way that she discovers that thankfully the wound doesn't seem deep or big enough to be truly threatening, though she still finds some glittery blood on her fingers when she presses them against her neck.

Could've been worse, she thinks - which might not be contributing to stopping becoming the 'this is fine' dog here.

While Ange is busy with that, the thing that hit Paimon - some sort of elaborately decorated stake, or icepick - flies closer towards him. But if the demon looks over, he may see another form there, though it's shimmering, barely present in reality. But just from the sheer energy that the being radiates, Paimon might be very well able to tell that it's another demon.

If he can still tell anything at all.

The other demon doesn't say anything though. She just stares Paimon down while he's hissing and spitting like that, looking incredibly displeased with him. ]
possessum: (it filled me with such heaviness)

[personal profile] possessum 2022-01-16 11:19 pm (UTC)(link)
( He's jerking his head up to look at the thing moving closer to him, lips peeled back in another vicious snarl. Despite being a bit dizzy from the impact, he's ready to fight again..... Whatever this weapon is....

But then he does sense it. That intense power, an energy that's familiar in ways and unfamiliar in others, to his own. His black eyes move to see the flickering figure there, and he's staring, for a long moment.... and stops snarling. He seems stunned, confused, even awed in parts. Though he can barely tell what's going on, he can feel her, and it does do something to him. Touches something in his true spirit up under all the layers of what's wrong.

He doesn't know how to react to this, so he just starts sort of... folding. Back bending in, he gets down on all fours, but upside down... it's very Exorcist-style; he's really defaulting back to his horror movie demon state, in all honesty. It's probably horrifying to witness, but at least he's stopped outright attacking. For the immediate moment, at least; he's kept in some sort of stunned state by the presence of the other demon.... for however long she might last.

And at least if Ange still feels it might be wise to bind him, he's an unmoving target, albeit one that is folded up like a spider. )
entreats: (walking around)

i figure we can probably fade this one out here! as ange brings spiderpaimon back home....

[personal profile] entreats 2022-01-17 10:50 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Ange seems completely speechless as she watches this scene for a moment. Not that she can see Mammon's form there - although that would have made her even more speechless, honestly - but just the sight of Peter's body jerking around like that, moving so unnaturally.. It's a lot.

Nothing that scares her, since Ange is used to so much at this point, but it's still just one more exasperating thing in the middle of this series of events. ]


This day, I swear.. [ It's mumbled to herself more than anything, since she gets the important thing is to act right now. She doesn't know how long it's going to take before Paimon will start to move again, and there's so much to do. Using her blood to draw a magic circle to bind him, and then finding a way to get him out of here and over to Peter and Luna's place..

It's going to be a pain. The things she does for friendship..

But she's going to do her best anyway. ]