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silentspringooc2024-08-03 12:03 pm
silentspringmods) wrote in silentspringooc2024-08-03 12:03 pm
AUGUST EVENT PLOTTING & CR/OOC INTRO MEME
EVENT PLOTTING #5: AUG 2024
Part I; Chapter 8.
Part I; Chapter 8.
This event will be posted on August 9th, 2024 in
silentspringlogs. Cruel, cruel summer
August in Maryland brings with it an insufferable heat in the high 80s that the locals will be quick to remind characters has always been typical for this part of the state. The mosquito man continues to make his rounds to combat the sudden explosion in insect life, and air conditioning units go out here and there, but repairmen are usually easy enough to come by. (Just don’t expect immediate service–a lot of folks have finally decided now’s the time to get A/C installed, you know.) There is no controlled burn on the first of the month, and the weather is perfectly, ruthlessly sunny.
Despite that, early in the afternoon on the second, with seemingly no provocation… the lights go out. Air conditioning units suddenly stop blowing. Ceiling fans slow down until the blades come to a complete halt.
All around town, the power is completely out. There are no fallen branches, no downed power lines. Nothing seems out-of-the-ordinary. As the sun lowers in the sky and generators run out of power, the owners of the supermarket next to the town park wheel out carts with soon-to-begin-melting popsicles as well as ice cream novelties and cartons and hand them out for free - and, mercifully, bags of ice, although that’s not too terribly long for this world, either.
The hospital and fire/police station run on generator after the first day, but nothing else in town does. The heat wave continues, brutal and unrelenting, for two more days.
Living in a movie scene, puking American dreams
Power returns the morning of August the 5th. Televisions crackle to life with a loud buzz of static, and characters will find that the ‘off’ switch on the box simply doesn’t work. The screen stays on, lines of static rolling across the display, and then… a memory. But this time diverges from the last similar incidence of the phenomenon, in which a home video sent from an Indian suburb appeared on the screen. This is a memory that belongs to someone here, someone characters know. Maybe it belongs to another member of their household, or maybe it belongs to one of the non-townies across the street. And, if they ask around, they may just find that their own very personal memories have been screened on a household television set a few houses down from their own.
Could never tell you what happened the day I turned seventeen
Remember the air conditioning outages? Characters who invited the repairman into their house last month or invite him into their house for repairs this month may be greeted by a knock on the front door and a police cruiser parked along their front yard from the 19th to 21st. Over those three days, the police invite themselves into the homes of said player characters, barging in under the guise of a ‘routine safety check’ based on some ‘concerns the neighbors raised’, assuring them that there’s no cause for alarm.
It is a house search.
The members of the household–and any characters who might be visiting at the time the police arrive–are shepherded to the dining room and kept there by one officer as two more methodically go through their drawers, bookshelves, and desks, keeping anything they find that might be considered ‘subversive’ or counter to the general values of the Sweetwater townies with them. Some characters, but not all, may experience brief flashes that feel a bit like fragments of one of the more developed memories that have seeped into their consciousnesses in the past: staring at papers strewn all over the floor and a half-packed suitcase full of unfolded clothes atop them, although the sight is too blurred by tears to make out what the papers say or even what language they’re written in. The feeling of their legs folding underneath them and sinking to the ground, even though they’re seated in a dining room chair. No, a young woman, or maybe a teenager, screams through her tears from another part of the house. No, no, no! Let go of her! No!
None of the police seem to hear anything in the home, although their housemates or PC guests may have the same auditory hallucination. It is possible–not likely, but possible–for especially perceptive characters to notice that the girl’s voice sounds not unlike Marjorie’s. Not identical. Younger, maybe, or a relative. But similar.
If characters are insistent about going to the source of the voice after police tell them that they don’t hear anything, they’ll be stopped by any means necessary, be it physical force or even handcuffing; if they’re particularly emphatic about the existence of the voice, they may find themselves in Norman’s basement the next time they wake up.
When the search concludes, the findings are brought into the dining room and held up for them to see; characters are asked to explain.
Players may choose if the NPC police officers seem to accept their characters’ explanations, or if they escalate. If the police don’t buy the explanation, all members of the household are taken down to the station for ‘further questioning’, i.e., interrogation, and separated into different rooms when they get there.
Chief Clark himself is the one to conduct the ‘conversation’ about ‘what we’ve found here’, with Norman Pollock standing silently behind him and one of the character’s wrists handcuffed to the bar at the center of the interrogation table. If characters resist, they’ll be given injections of sodium pentathol, a depressant that makes further resistance and the mental processes necessary for evading questions very, very difficult. If they continue to attempt to subvert their interrogators, they’ll be given a second injection, at which point they will lose consciousness and wake up strapped into the chair in the basement where Norman conducts Sweetwater bog standard brainwashing/sleep deprivation torture.
- Note that some findings, such as overtly Communist literature, would always lead to arrest.
- Characters who cooperate with the interrogations under the influence of sodium pentathol are returned home when the police are done with them, and aren’t further bothered.
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
Player name:
Player pronouns:
Contact(s):
Time Zone:
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Favorite types of characters to write against:
About you:
character info
Character Name:
Character Age:
Character Role:
Canon:
Canonpoint:
1 paragraph summary of character/canon: Imagine that the reader is canonblind. Lay out the basics someone needs to start a thread with your character, important things to know while interacting with them, etc.
“Family” members:
Links: To permissions posts, opt-outs, info sheets, etc.
Possible non-event hooks:
What are they up to in Sweetwater?
Most Desired CR:
Undesired CR:
Any threads you really want to play out?
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event plans
Cruel cruel summer:
Living in a movie scene:
The day I turned seventeen: