deercountry | All men must die, but first he must live.

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All men must die, but first he must live.

SEPTEMBER 2021 EVENT

IMAGE DESCRIPTORS IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE
Prompt One
[Image One: Woman holding skull in bag. ]
[Image Two: Plants sprouting out of earth.]

Prompt Two
[Image One: Woman rocking back and forth in dark.]
[Image Two: Woman rowing down river with corpses on stakes on horizon.]

Prompt Three
[Image One: Beef cake man breaking arrows off of shield with a sword.]
[Image Two: Beefy man slamming axe into troll-like creature, spraying blood.]

[NAVIGATION]

Prompt 1 • Prompt 2 • Prompt 3 • Plotting • Newsletter

[JUMP TO COMMENTS]

GROWING PAINS

WHEN: September
WHERE: Everywhere
CONTENT WARNINGS: Minor blood ritual.

September, for many in Trench, is considered a month of personal sacrifice. It is the month of self-actualization and promise. To grow your future, you must first be willing to sacrifice your past. You cannot walk forwards while walking backward. All throughout Trench, natives can be seen in yards and on plots of land digging small holes and planting a variety of items. Some plant seeds, some drop in a ring, others bury small parts of a body. But the ritual is simple: bury something that represents your past and seal it with a promise for your future.

You can write yourself a note or cut off a lock of your own hair. The ways in which people do this are limitless since it's a largely personal experience. Find a small patch of soil and dig yourself a shallow hole. Bury the item inside, say goodbye to who you used to be, and cover the item up with dirt. Once you are done, you must shed at least one drop of blood onto the sacrifice. It must be your own blood willingly given. Once the blood hits the soil, a small flower will miraculously grow out of the earth within seconds.

A single, powerless flower, but this flower will be completely immortal. You can either keep it on the patch of land or dig it up and bring it home. The flower will be a representation of your progress in Trench: if its petals wilt, you are lingering too much in the past. If it is in full bloom and vibrant, you're on the right path to a better future. If the flower starts to rot, you're heading down a dangerous path.

The flower may not be able to sway you one way or another, but it may serve as a valuable reminder of the kind of life you wish to lead. Some people abandon the flowers entirely and never bother with them. After all, there are no real consequences if you let the flower rot. If a character is dropped, their flower will fleck away like dust. Many believe that the flowers are made of the same stuff omens are made of.

You can dig up other people's flowers and watch their progress (make sure to get player permission) instead. After all, not everyone will care enough about their own flowers to really observe them closely. The flowers can come in any species or size, even fictional flowers, but they will only be replicas. Meaning if your character's flower is typically used for healing, there will be no healing properties in this replica. The flowers cannot be destroyed.

Many natives in Trench will repeat this ritual a few times every couple of years since the ritual is for letting go of the past. After all, the promises you make to yourself now won't be the same promises you make to yourself ten years from now. People change and so too will their flowers. What the characters bury is largely open to interpretation.

RIVER OF REGRET

WHEN: September
WHERE: Some obscure location within Gaze
CONTENT WARNINGS: Mangled corpses of loved ones, birds eating corpses, themes of regret.

You will find raven feathers all over Trench. They may drift through the air, lightly touch you, or you might decide to pick one up. The moment you come into physical contact with a feather, a conspiracy of ravens tears through the air and scoops you up into a whirlwind of feathers and caws. It only lasts a few seconds before you're deposited into a canoe drifting along a still river. Another Sleeper is in the boat with you. You pass beneath massive stone walls carved into the likeness of Never Mind and his ravens.

The world is silent around you. There is no rain here. Instead, sunlight pours through breaks in the clouds. Sunlight dapples across the water and golden-red leaves of nearby trees. It's more serene than most places in Trench.

You turn a corner and smell it before you see it. The picturesque summer day is dampened by the stench of rot. Then you come upon them: corpses. Corpses tied up to posts with barbed wire, corpses put through spikes and suspended in the air. Ravens flutter to and fro, picking at strips of meat. It isn't until you're close enough that you realize you recognize the corpses.

They are the corpses of people you have hurt. And that doesn't just mean people you killed or physically harmed. These are the bodies of people you have deep regrets towards: a lover you wronged, a best friend you lied to, an enemy you wish you had forgiven. Not everything is as black and white as murder, after all, and this grisly graveyard of mangled bodies says as much. Sometimes our regrets haunt us like the dead, and it seems like yours have followed you to Trench. You might even see your own body up on a post or the body of your canoe companions.

You have one of two choices: ignore your regret or face it.
Choosing to ignore your regrets doesn't seem to have any ill consequences at first. You pass by the corpses and continue on your river voyage. But the water grows thicker, and you come across the same corpses only in a worse state. The situation gets progressively worse each time you ignore it, and the river gradually becomes a river of blood and gore. The stench becomes insufferable and you will become increasingly corrupt. Some may even turn into beasts right there on the river.

Facing your regrets means talking about them, even mildly, to your canoe companions. You simply need to acknowledge the corpses, acknowledge the slightest truth to your feelings towards those regrets. When everyone in your canoe has acknowledged their regrets, the ravens will come for you once more. You will be brought back to Trench and awaken in the School of Mutter. Those who faced their regrets will discover that they have been gifted a white gold compass. The compass's needle will always point in the direction of the nearest Lamp Friend no matter the chaos going on in the world. But the compass only works once you have calmed down and focused.

QUICK FACTS

1. Each boat can hold up to 4 people. There can be multiple canoes in the same area.

2. If you try to leave the boat, you will drown in the River of Regret.

3. This does not have to encompass every regret someone's had. It can only represent one or two things. The regret should have to do with another individual or one's self. Something like "I regret not going to college" wouldn't necessarily work within the parameters of the prompt.

4. The river can only be accessed by touching a fallen raven feather. Touching a raven feather attached to the bird or a quill does not count.

5. Characters can engage with this prompt as many times as they touch a raven feather.

6. Characters with no regrets will not see corpses, but they will still be able to interact with characters who do have regrets.

BLOODSPORT

WHEN: During the Blood Moon
WHERE: Everywhere but specifically, The Gate
CONTENT WARNINGS: Violence, fighting, forced aggression/violence, forced fighting.

The Blood Moon invokes religious reverence among Trenchies. September and October are the ultimate months of sacrifice to pay tribute to the gods and the blood that rules this world. An energy begins to swell among Trenchies and you keep hearing the same word whispered excitedly around the city: "Bloodsport."

As the Blood Moon floods the streets in red, you begin to feel antsy, like you don't know what to do with yourself. You're not necessarily angry, you just have an abundance of energy. You don't need to be told what it is: your blood is reacting to the moon. The Blood Moon enhances blood powers significantly and you're simply not used to that yet. You don't feel in control of your own power or maybe even your own mind. At least until you exert some power, some force. Slam a door shut or swing a sword, shoot some electricity or spit some poison and you'll feel at peace with yourself. That nervous energy will ease out.

Only to come back twice as strong. It starts to put you in a real fighting mood and you start to realize why the locals call this Bloodsport. Hunting down beasts and monsters might seem like the fun thing to do right now, but the real attraction for Bloodsport takes place at The Gate. You can hear the roaring crowd blocks away. Hundreds of Trenchies have settled in to watch Sleepers duke it out with each other or with locked-up monsters. Maybe join in the fight. At least you know the other Sleepers there want to be there...Right?

Unfortunately not. Those who resist Bloodsport will find themselves passing out more and more frequently. Eventually, they will be taken by Mysterious Forces to The Gate to be pitted against other Sleepers and monsters. Some Sleepers will be forced into a gladiator-style fight that they either must win or die trying. Most fights at the Gate do end in death, but there are some circumstances where someone surrenders. Of course, that never stops their opponent from killing them anyway...Hopefully, you're fighting someone who is still relatively reasonable. Both parties can be resistant to fighting, but they will feel obligated to fight each other. If they don't, monsters will be unleashed into the arena and your situation will get a whole lot worse.

Bloodsport can greatly enhance a Sleeper's ability and many believe it is a gift from the Pthumerian gods. It is generally considered an advantage to Sleepers during the Season of Blood to prepare them and train them to hone their skills for the Season of Bone. Many believe it is wisest to submit to Bloodsport and let yourself get used to the motions of violence in order to survive the remainder of the year.

QUICK FACTS

1. Casual physical training will alleviate Bloodsport feelings. You could get through the month just by jogging around a lot.

2. Characters forced to the Gate will not remember how or when they arrived - they will just wake up and be thrown into the Gate by some shadowy force.

3. Characters who willingly participate in violence/fighting will feel temporary relief from Bloodsport only for the feeling to increase.

4. Effects of Bloodsport last as long as the Blood Moon shines through September and October.

5. You can treat symptoms of Bloodsport with calming techniques such as aromatherapy, meditation, medications, etc. Can be based on what would ICly help calm your character but it should require a lot of it.

6. You can invent the monsters/beasts that are at the Gate. They should be killable creatures and easily captured for the purpose of the Gate.

CODING

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[The woman beside Peter is nearly a foot shorter than him, but she holds herself with firm, soothing confidence, as though she's been appointed captain of the rickety canoe. His question elicits only a swift shake of the head, and a matter-of-fact gaze from warm, steady eyes.]

Just bodies. And not real ones.

[It's a bit dismissive, maybe, but even her platitudes have always been swift and pointed. Clara Oswald is over a century old, and has never once let up on the intensity clutch.]

It's just something they're showing us to get a reaction, alright?

[She knows this as a certainty, you see, because that's her dad, right up ahead.]

( Peter knows these things, and yet it takes someone else saying them aloud for his mind to really register them. Like the voice of his conscience, manifested in form of a petite woman sat in a boat beside him as they float down a river of agony.

They're not real. They're just something drudged up from the darkest parts of yourself to upset you, the way so many things have been.

He knows it. The Purgatory, or Hell — sometimes feeling like both — that was Deerington isn't over; why would it be over? This place is different, he's different, but "punishment" is a lasting thing, which is very much how Peter is interpreting this little ride of joy.

But he freezes at the woman's firm tone, the assuredness. He hasn't caught a glimpse of any of his own family just yet, still blindsided by the sheer immensity of corpses up ahead, but somewhere deep down he knows he's expecting to see them anyway. That's always how the punishment goes. )

Do you think if we don't react... it'll stop?

( Immediately, he places High Importance in the woman's Opinion, because she seems to know what she's talking about, and Peter's shrinking in on himself, blinking owlishly at her. )

Doubtful. [She's nothing if not brutally honest... except when she's being a pathological liar, which is almost always.] It never stopped when we got bored back in the old place.

[Your experiences are not universal, Ms. Oswald.]

It ended, though. All the worst times ended, and this will too. You just gotta wait it out, yeah? [Okay, so it's been about seventy years since she was in therapy, but she's picked up a thing or two looking after shaken companions. Including: ] Now - tell me something you see. Not the bodies, something else. The trees, tell me about them.

( That's a good point — and Peter's immediately nodding, lips moving with a soundless "yeah... yeah..." Some not-quite-verbal agreement, the echo of a thing. It's some kind of logical sense to hang onto, and he is, but there's also the side of him that still can't help tipping towards panic. Peter's nerves have been worn down so raw that they may never go back to being otherwise. His pupils are strange, dilated: his eyes look too dark. His heart feels like it's in his throat.

They've just got to wait it out, only he doesn't know if he can get closer to what the smell of rot is coming from. The bodies are starting to become people more than just bodies; he's catching glimpses of distinctive faces, hair colours. His heart races, races; he's terrified he'll see dirty-blonde up there. )

What? ( He gasps, not understanding yet. But he's still doing what she says, almost comically (and maybe disconcertingly) obedient for someone his age, tearing his eyes upwards and over, to the trees. ) The trees? They're— they've got leaves and stuff. ( ...... )

Red ones. Gold.

[The speed at which he shifts his focus upward certainly surprises her. Long ago as it was, Clara still remembers her days herding teenagers for a living, and just getting them to pick up a pencil seemed to take a geological age on the best of days. Peter is already winning a gold star.]

Good. Great. [She hazards a glance at the corpses, and quickly averts her eyes as her dad passes by. Peeling, sun-parched skin, too close in color to the red sweater his wife had gifted him one birthday. It's hard to see where one ends and the other begins.] It's autumn here, then. I always liked autumn. The first part, at least, when it's cool enough for boots and coats, but all the plants aren't dead yet.

[Take all the green out of London, and then all the orange and red, and it's just grey. Grey sky, grey buildings, grey river. No wonder she was depressed there.]

I grew up in a resort town, and autumn's when the boardwalk would close and all the tourists would stop piling in and give us the beach back. 'Course the ocean was bloody freezing by then, but we'd swim 'til our toes turned blue anyway.

[Mission: distract. Status: ongoing.]

( Peter's greatest, and perhaps only, skill is Obediently Latching Onto Direction. Please, tell him what to do. At first he doesn't understand why she's asking about the trees — but he's following the guidance anyway, like it's instinct. Maybe by now it is; the line between 'instinct' and 'coping mechanism' is blurred to such a degree, Peter couldn't separate the two.

'Good. Great.' He breathes out a quiet exhale at that, feeling like he's done what he's supposed to, watching the woman as she keeps speaking. From the corner of his eye he can catch glimpses of vaguely flesh-coloured things, different hues of it, of flesh — but he stares at her instead, hanging onto her every word with that same intensity. Even if his mind still feels all weird and static-y and he can smell decay, he can't help forming some mental visuals as she talks. The ocean, the beach. Cold puffs of foggy breath. )

Do you miss it?

( Her resort town, the beach, any of it it. It's maybe a weird question, maybe a touch too personal, but after two years of this kind of shit, he can't pretend, can't ask nicer things. It's do you miss it, because missing things is familiar and maybe kind of a comforting thing to fall back to, as much as it's a sad one. It's what he knows to ask, what comes first. )

Sometimes.

[She misses it the same way she misses anything from her old life - her first life - like it's a sweet dream she can't quite grasp come morning. The imprints are vivid but sparse, a photograph she remembers posing for more than a scene she remembers living, with all the faded voices and static rain of an old home movie.]

But sometimes what you miss isn't what was real. Heads are funny like that. [Her eyes flit to a close blur, but her face doesn't change, her smile doesn't waver.] Suddenly Blackpool's got smooth, white sand, and the pier doesn't smell like rubbish, and you're spending all your time wishing you were back there instead of where you are now.

( He's still listening, even as his senses are pulled in so many directions — the smell of rot, the ragged croak sounds of the birds — he's still trying to listen. Trying to hang onto the woman's words like some buoy to cling onto. Heads are funny like that. He knows, he knows what she means. When he thinks of home, it's easy sometimes to forget the worse things, even though there were so many of them.

But his room was a safe place, once, and sometimes in his memories it looks a lot brighter than it ever really was. The sun never came through his windows quite as warmly as his mind remembers it.

For a long moment, he's thinking about that. It's easy to, because the sun's still shining weirdly bright in this nightmare place; he can feel it on his face. It glints on some of the corpses' faces. It glints against strawberry blonde hair that he catches from his peripheral, and he's turning his head all of a sudden. Away from the safety of the buoy trying to keep him distracted, looking out where the boat's passing a woman hanging there from a rope, tied like a noose around her neck. She's dressed in white night clothes and her legs dangle like a doll's.

....Except it's not actually a rope, it's something thinner, something that glints in the sun, too. Wire (piano wire), wound so tightly against the woman's neck that it's cutting in, deep, blood pooling down her front. Peter sees it — somehow he knew he'd see it — and turns his head that way, staring. Weirdly enough, panic doesn't take him now that he's actually seeing her. He just seems sort of dazed. )

.....That's my mom. ( Voice hollowed out, worn raw, like he's already been screaming and this is what's left over. )

[Clara's brows slant in concern, and she reaches over to lay a cool, careful hand on Peter's wrist. There's something practiced and sterile about her comfort, like a nurse with a patient, but it's not without warmth. She's been a mother, and a teacher, and a friend. She still knows how to care, even if it's more an application than an instinct now, a hundred years into lonesome immortality.]

I'm sorry. [Even as the woman's swollen feet dangle just above their heads, Clara doesn't try to divert his gaze. It's his mother; she knows she'd drink in the sight of her own, horror and decay and all, until she vanished around the river bend.] I'm so sorry. Just breathe, we'll be past it in a moment.

[She wishes for an oar, or a branch - something to speed them up, to take them out of here. But having been through Deerington, she knows what this is, what it's for. There's always some affect it's meant to spark, some action they're supposed to take.]

My dad was a few meters back; I didn't want to worry you. [Make him anticipate his own family, speared on the pikes, rotting in the autumn sun.] They're just trying to get a rise out of us.

( He's surprised by himself, a little. Where there was initially kneejerk panic and fear, now there's just... a quiet calm feeling. Is he fucking... getting used to this kind of thing? Getting numb to seeing his family, loved ones, himself, in various state of rot and hurt and pain? He thinks about the Waste back in Deerington, the one with his face and body and voice. The figure had bled out against him, shaking, whimpering.

Ironically enough, growing numb used to be what he strove for, once upon a time. Icing himself over, staying zoned out and high and unfeeling. Detached from everything, barely a person at all. But now... there's a strange dull ache at the thought of being able to look at his mother hanging there and facing her with some amount of dignity.

(Were his mom's eyes more grey or more blue? Is he starting to forget?)

The touch to his wrist startles him, but quietly. Peter looks up, wide-eyed at the woman. Her... dad? She saw her dad back there? He wouldn't have even known; she didn't let it slip at all. The boy's almost awed of this fact, but it also makes him sad. Maybe she's just really good at keeping it together. Or maybe she's become numb to it, too. )

Are you..... used to it? Seeing this kind of shit. Your dad, your... family.

[Used to it. A phrase usually uttered with pride, with a cocky nod towards her vast portfolio of experience. She's been everywhere, seen everything - she's got this. But there's a sadness in the way Peter says it that gives Clara pause, that quells her chronic self-importance. Behind the wide eyes is something else, something that she almost reads as... sympathy.

She isn't sure how she feels about it.]

I've been around for a very long time. [An attempt at solace, too cool to meet its mark.] Never saw my family like that, but...

[Planets and people lost to battle, to apocalypse. The brimstone aftermath of her own rage. She never meant to be terrible, but it all feels like righteousness in the moment.]

Being used to things isn't all it cracks up to be. It's good to be upset, sometimes. Means you're human.

( A very long time? Peter watches her, quietly takes her in, the stranger. Big brown eyes and young-looking, but he well knows by now that's no measure of real age, or experience. He knows better, now.

The boat's continuing on, drifting down the river; he doesn't know yet that it'll keep looping until certain things are said aloud. Maybe things like how he was the one who saw his mother kill herself, and how he's been thinking for a good year now that maybe it had something to do with him. )

I don't even know if I'm all the way human anymore.

( It comes out like a confession: Peter facing the young (possibly not young) woman, the boat a confessional. He exhales, then inhales again, mouth twisting a little strangely for a moment. There's... whatever the fuck is going on in them with this place: the changes, the weird subconscious knowledge that everyone's changed. But there are other things too. )

A year ago, I wouldn't have been able to breathe if I saw her. Now.... ( Peter glances back at his mother's dangling legs. He swallows; there's still an ache, a fear, an upset. It's just... different, somehow. )

...something feels different. Like there's less of me.

[If what he says at all disconcerts her, she doesn't show it on her face. There's only peace there as she leans closer, across the boat; a calmness she wills towards him like a wish.]

I can't speak for what's happened to you, but I know what I felt, years ago. Like I'd exhausted everything in me, good and bad. Used up all my sadness and my fear and my excitement, and now there was just empty.

[She remembers saying that to a faceless, nameless psychologist, so far in the back of her head that she has to strain to reach it. She remembers the little orange bottle that hadn't yet started to help by the time everything ended. And maybe he's talking about something different, something Clara can't possibly understand, but his words ring all too familiar.]

Being able to breathe? That's good; that's progress. But sometimes when something hurts real bad, it leaves part of you locked up like that. That's the part you've got to take care of.

( Just empty. It's like listening to himself speak the things he'd never really said aloud to anyone. There's been pieces of it over time: admissions that he feels wrong, that he's nothing, but never voiced in its entire form. Never admitting that even before he was forced to lose who he is, he'd long-ago lost who he was.

It had happened so slowly, so gradually. Like being boiled alive: there was never just a day where he just woke up and knew he felt empty inside. It became his existence over time: almost easily. Sometimes he still clings to that need — to be empty. It's... familiar, it's safe. Sometimes he can feel all the ways he's grown to be loved by others here and that's what's safe. He's not sure how to juggle both; there are better days and worse days.

But there's another part to it, something that bubbles up as he listens to the woman speak. The boat's looping now, starting its journey back down the same river, only this time the bodies are more bloody, more decayed. The water's darker too, like it's bleeding. )

What if you... shouldn't take care of it? Because it's what you deserve. If you hurt someone else— you deserve to hurt too, don't you?

( It's not said like a challenge, but rather like he's... genuinely asking her opinion on that, because he is. He doesn't even know her name or if she's real at all — but maybe those things make it easier to say what he usually wouldn't say aloud. And then, added on quietly, some kind of explanation— )

My mom's dead because of me.

( It twists in his guts to say that aloud, but Peter lets the feeling happen. Guilt is something he's so accustomed to, he almost welcomes it. Almost wants this kind woman with the big brown eyes to look at him with a flicker of disgust, disapproval, fear, instead of the calm patience she's giving him. )

[He'll find no shelter in disgust, no relief in shock or fear. Instead, Clara's eyes are soft and open with something like understanding. Though she casts a quick glance to the changing, rotting scenery, her focus is on Peter, steady like a grip of the hand.]

So's mine, [she says, all too simply, as though they're comparing their mothers' middle names, rather than their deaths.] 'S what I thought when I was nineteen, at least. Did nothing for a year but shout at my dad and read miserable poetry. Because it was all an equation, yeah? A set of factors. And just me being one of them made things happen like they did.

[Of course, her own past contains no demonic possessions or grisly beheadings.]

That's not how the universe works, though. There's no scorecard. Everyone's got their finger in some unspeakable wrong, whether they mean to or not. And if we were all meant to go around beating ourselves up for it all the time, no one in the world would get anything done. So you make your amends, and you do the good that you can, and you keep living. That's the grand secret to life, right there.

[She's monologuing now, but it's always what the Doctor did best. And it's especially good at distracting scared teenagers.]

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All men must die, but first he must live.

river.

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cw corpse description

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cw: dead body, throat trauma

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cw: brief suicide mention

cw depression talk

cw: more good ole' depression talk

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