silentspringooc | JUNE EVENT PLOTTING. (Reply)

EVENT PLOTTING #4: JUN 2024
Part I; Chapter 6.

This event will be posted on June 7, 2024 in

silentspringlogs.

universe/setting information, role assignment, and FAQs

The weekend squire just came out to mow his lawn

June brings a turn in the weather—the smoke from the monthly controlled burn is that much more unbearable from the first to the third, choking, suffocating, adding to the blazing heat that beats down from largely cloudless skies. Houses get muggy, mosquitoes come out in full force, biting flies besiege the stables. It’s the perfect weather for a barbecue or a trip to the community pool... but you’ll want to get up early to mow that lawn, neighbor!

No, seriously. You’ll want to mow that lawn.

With so much sunshine, bright green grass has been shooting up like crazy, and Marjorie takes the HOA’s goals of neighborhood beautification very seriously. One of those, Haven Street residents will be informed, is that grass must be no taller than two-point-five inches. Characters who haven’t come up with a way to divide summer’s new chores with their “family” members should do so now, and for those don’t know how to use a lawnmower, now’s the time to learn—because those who run afoul of that particular bylaw will land themselves a reserved seat in Norman’s re-education room.

Some characters may find that their air conditioning units very inconveniently quit working in the heat of midday and have to call a repairman to come in and fix it. There will be potential IC consequences for this next month, and a signup comment in the event!

Tropical drink melting in your hand

Those who don't find themselves confined on the 15th may want to come down to the community pool for some burgers and franks (and, of course, splashing around, if that's your thing). In any event, it's probably a good way to meet some new neighbors or could make a convenient guise to touch bases with old neighbors. It's also just nice to cool off in the water, considering that weather is in the high eighties with no cloud cover all week that week.

Marjorie does the honors of preparing a delightful snack spread for one of the tables further back from the water—cool and refreshing gelatin creations, a fruit bowl, cheese and crackers, and both alcoholic and nonalcoholic punch. There's also hand-squeezed lemonade and apple juice for the kids, and little party umbrellas for whatever drink a character chooses to add that special touch.

Characters who are unlucky enough to accidentally swallow a little pool water while swimming may find they feel slightly nauseous, in a way they wouldn't have felt back in their own world if this had ever happened to them before. It's probably fine!

CWs: poisoning.

Wearing smells from laboratories facing a dying nation

With summer comes the return of some familiar faces: the Good Humor ice cream truck slowly rolling down each street while playing its cheery jingles every couple of days and the Mosquito Man every Thursday evening. Who is the Mosquito Man, you might ask? The Skeeter Man, Smokey Joe, or the Fogger Truck - or simply the dark green pickup truck that rounds the corner onto Haven Street between 5 and 7 once a week, dragging a massive white cloud of fog behind it and a trail of children on bikes, scooters, and running barefoot, playing in the sweet white mist as though following the pied piper. The tremendous crate that fills the neighborhood with thick white clouds is spraypainted with the labels DDT and DMTP(II), below them smaller font that reads Sweetwater Public Works.

Kids run down the front steps to join the throng playing in the fog when the truck comes down their street, some of them shooed out of the house by their parents. Nobody seems remotely concerned—in fact, they welcome the almost ritual return of the Mosquito Man and the sudden drop in insect life that accompanies him every week. The only one who seems anything but relieved when he comes each week is Dr. Ravichandran, whose home, if characters happen to drive past it, is set apart from its cookie-cutter replicates by its closed windows and the wet rags stuffed into the windowsills behind them. It's possible to observe one other thing when passing his home if the windows are open, but characters will need to roll for this to see if they score high enough for success given the small likelihood - this is a plot opportunity that will go to someone who hasn't already had a big physical plot clue (like the toe tag) to bring back to the group!

What is DMTP(II), you might ask? Answers range from the truck driver sticking his head out the window and informing characters that look, he just sprays the stuff, and he has a lot more streets to get to today to vague answers from the neighbors that can be summarized, if characters ask enough people, as a statement that it’s a new pesticide developed right here in Sweetwater after the war that combats mosquitoes and nearby yard pests like beetles that produce root-eating grubs, a magnificent and completely safe scientific marvel.

Characters who stay out long enough on the days the Mosquito Man comes, once the children have gone back inside for dinner, may notice that the initial odd taste in their mouth progresses to less innocuous symptoms—such as dizziness, watering eyes, chest tightness, heart palpitations, trouble breathing, headaches, malaise, burning in the nose, and, most theatrically, bright red nosebleeds accompanied by redness, white spotting, and inflammation in their mouths. The symptoms take around four days to resolve, and faintly linger even longer than that. If they visit the hospital, they’ll only be told that they seem to be having an allergic reaction to something they ate, and concerns about the Public Works projects aren’t taken seriously - looks like any amelioration of symptoms that can’t be achieved with benadryl will be on a strictly neighbors-helping-neighbors basis.

CWs: poisoning, blood/nosebleeds, implied harm to children.

I fashion my future on films in space

But those who aren’t so lucky may briefly black out if they breathe the fog long enough, and when that happens, they return to consciousness but not wakefulness, instead finding themselves frozen in place in a chill room, staring at the wrinkled bare soles of a pair of gray-blue feet belonging to the naked body of a man lying motionless on a flat steel table. A cardstock tag, identical to the photocopy found by Bucky Barnes in January, hangs from one big toe.

Characters’ line of sight doesn’t extend much higher than eye level with the cadaver, but they can see enough to register that both parties, standing with the autopsy table between them, are wearing isolation suits like the man who committed suicide in the middle of the street on that sunny April morning, a stark contrast to the vulnerability of the corpse’s nakedness between them. They seem to be completely unaware of the third presence in the room.

When one of them speaks, it’s the all-too-familiar voice of the town private practice doctor, Norman Pollock.

“Nothing. Not a single thing. He’s healthy. An ordinary 56-year-old man who blew his brains out."

There's a long pause. Then comes the voice of the man whose memory of a telephone conversation some characters shared on New Year’s, and again shortly after the man in the isolation suit pulled the trigger: "The motherfucker. They searched his house and his office. Questioned the wife too. Not a damn thing. Nobody knows shit."

CWs: poisoning, dead bodies/death by suicide, graphic/callous discussion of death by suicide.

To start plotting, fill out the form below, and post it in a comment with the subject line structed as follows: Your Name | Your Character's Name | Your Character's Canon | Your Character's Role:

player info
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character info
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event plans
The weekend squire just came out to mow his lawn:
Tropical drink melting in your hand:
Wearing smells from laboratories facing a dying nation:
I fashion my future on films in space:

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JUNE EVENT PLOTTING.

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