DECEMBER 2020 EVENT - PART 2

[robbies]

CHAPTER ONE, PART 2: AND ALL THROUGH THE HOUSE

A creature was stirring.

As Christmas grows closer, look up to the skies
Your city is in for a winter surprise
Come enter the village and see all the change
And come face-to-face with the hostile and strange
From iced-over ponds to the workshop's display
There's snowmen and reindeer to complete the holiday
And just when you think that you're safe and you're sound
You open your door and see what's to be found....

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LET IT SNOW
(cw: sensations of drowning)

JINGLE BELLS
(cw: mind control)

UP ON THE HOUSETOP
(cw: death and decay, claustrophobia)

RUN, RUDOLPH, RUN
(cw: animal death and dismemberment, violence, death and decay, non-human cannibalism)

HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS

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LET IT SNOW

CW: sensations of drowning

As the gala winds down and you leave town hall to head home, there’s a bite in the air, chillier than it was when you went in earlier that day. The night sky is blanketed by clouds, which only grow heavier as night wears on. By midnight, the first few flakes of snow have begun to fall… and fall, and fall. As night becomes day and the snow keeps coming down heavier than ever, it becomes clear that Santa Rosita is experiencing an unusual snowstorm—maybe the town will get that white Christmas after all! But as the day passes, the storm shows no sign of stopping… in fact, it’s only getting worse.

Over the next week and a half, a blizzard beats down upon the town. Its effects seem to vary by the hour: Though the snow never quite stops, there are times when it falls soft and fluffy, and there are times when it falls so heavily and the wind blows so fiercely that it’s impossible to see more than a few inches ahead of you. You’re welcome to pay visits to your neighbors, of course; they might need help digging out their sidewalks or hauling cords of firewood inside—especially when the electricity goes out. Hopefully you’re not caught out and about when the weather takes a turn for the worse again!

Even inside your houses, you aren’t safe from the blizzard. The first time you open your door on December 16th, feeling the blast of cold air coming from it, you think you know what’s coming. After all, you’ve certainly had enough experience with being sent to the Christmas village in the first half of the month! You sigh, resigning yourself to the long walk home… but as you pass through the door, everything changes in a way it didn’t before. Your brain doesn’t know which way is up as you find yourself underwater, breath expelling in a rush of bubbles as the shocking cold penetrates your body. Somehow you’ve come through the door and ended up beneath the lake’s surface—but the layer of ice above you has thinned and can be easily broken through to regain your feet and drag yourself out of the water to shore.

But you’d better be quick. Take too long and you might feel something grabbing at your heels, trying to pull you back underwater and further into the lake.

Here in the village, the conditions are always bad. Visibility is poor between the wind and the snow, heavy and cold and wet, and you’re soaked to the skin from your recent plunge. Thankfully, there are towels in the small building that was once the skate exchange station, and there are plenty of now-abandoned buildings around the village where you can hunker down and try to warm up before heading home. Maybe it would be a good idea to leave a spare change of clothes behind...

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JINGLE BELLS

CW: mind control

If ending up in the village is bad in the middle of the day, it's even worse at night.

Beyond the freezing winds and the ice you're liable to lose your footing as you pull yourself out of the lake, it's dark as can be out here. Don’t bother looking for a Christmas star to guide you home; out here and this close to the forests, the stars and moon are blotted out by thick clouds and the snow that falls in clumps. Unfortunately, as experience has taught you by now, this is a one-way trip and the only way out is forward.

Of course, this is easier said than done. With its empty buildings and desolate pathways, the Christmas village is a husk of its former self. The cute cobblestone thoroughfares and craft stations that were filled with screaming children only a few days ago are barren and frozen over, as if left to rot in the cold. The other little faux gingerbread and peppermint stick houses aren't much better. At some point on the first day of the blizzard, the power was knocked out, plunging the village into a blackout you now have to navigate if you want to get home. All of the windows are crusted with ice, dark and empty.

Save for one.

As you walk by one particular building, a faint yellow and red glow begins to glimmer from the storefront. One by one, the tiny cottages in the miniature village diorama begin to flicker to life, gears clicking as the mechanisms start powering up. On a miniature turntable hidden behind the display, a needle drops onto a record and a tinny version of Jingle Bells begins to play. A tiny train chugs around the tracks surrounding the diorama and a wax figure of Mrs. Claus in her chair with her candy cane knitting needles rocks back and forth, and it occurs to you just what you're looking at: Santa's Workshop. There can be no mistaking it. Even in the middle of the night, you know exactly where you are.

Don't you?

The light grows, illuminating the entire storefront and spilling out onto the street. You can see everything now. The little elf figure hammering at his workbench, the one next to him sawing at a board of wood, the two balancing on a seesaw as the toy train circles beneath them. Once you take notice of it, it's impossible to look away. The light pulls you in, glowing brighter yet turning darker. Slowly, it turns from angelic, warm gold to blood red.

As strange as this is, this is the best you've felt all week. A tipsy smile at your lips, you watch the light shift into a pretty shade of red as the snow continues to fall around you. In an abstract way, you know this isn't really where you're supposed to be, but it feels so good anyway. Your home (and not your home in Shadyside, your real home), all the bad stuff that worries you and stresses you out—it all dissolves into sugar.

Dreamily, you stare off into space as the song inside the store begins to warp and deepen. Gosh, you can't remember the last time you've felt this nice. You can't remember much of anything at all, like what you were doing earlier today or how you got here to begin with.

But you do know that it's Christmas. And if there's one place everyone should celebrate Christmas in, it's Santa Rosita. Your home.

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UP ON THE HOUSETOP

CW: death and decay, claustrophobia

It's true what they say about wintertime being the cruelest time. Even in Santa Rosita, that sentiment holds true in spite of the otherwise celebratory and comfy atmosphere throughout town. For every sweet smell trickling out of your and your neighbors' houses, a sharp and cold burst of wind follows. The weather is mostly manageable during the daytime hours, but at night it's a different story. The wind can be ferocious, whistling through the naked trees with enough force to send them swaying. If the cold doesn't keep you awake, the sound of branches tapping against your windows will.

When you wake up in the morning, you'll find a new friend waiting for you outside. Sitting in the front of your yard, positioned between the mailbox and the driveway, is a snowman. Its fingers are thin and twiggy, and the branches they're connected to are arched and spread like wings stripped to the bone. Compared to all the other snowmen you've likely passed by throughout Shadyside, there's nothing particularly unique about it, save for its lumpy build and featureless face.

The snowman is still there by the time you return from school or class. This time, however, it's invited another friend: another identical snowman, this one in a different spot in the yard.

So it goes for the next several days. Every time you enter your house or go to sleep, a new snowman is waiting for you in your yard. Their placement has no rhyme or reason: sometimes you'll find one in the back of the yard, other times in a corner off to the side. Sometimes they'll be spread out. Other times—usually when you turn around or go back inside the house—they'll be clustered together in a group, facing the front window.

Eventually, there gets to be so many of them that it becomes difficult to leave the house. Inevitably, whether it be blocking your car, the driveway, or even your front door, you'll wind up dismantling one sooner or later. And when you do, you'll find more than just snow spilling out onto your feet.

Staring back at you, whether from behind the layers of snow you've knocked off the head or up from the ground, is a Robbie, still dressed in their red and green elf uniform from the Christmas village. His—or her—glassy eyes are fixed in a thousand yard stare, mouth stretched in a grinning rictus on their blue face. Within each snowman is a similar one, all of them dressed the same, all of them very much dead, all of them smiling the same mindless smiles they had when they were alive.

With any luck, you’ll wind up taking the snowmen apart by hand instead of finding out the hard way by running one over with your car.

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RUN, RUDOLPH, RUN

CW: animal death and dismemberment, violence, death and decay, non-human cannibalism

Red and white is just as lovely a Christmas combination of colors as red and green, don’t you think? White snow and red pools spread all throughout the little village. Starting on December 16th, you might be first to notice some—or perhaps you’re the unlucky one that falls against a snowbank only to discover, once you put your hands down, that the fresh fallen snow is covering something. Something wet and meaty.

Another shows up the next day. And the next. And there’s not always enough snow to fully cover the carcasses that litter the village and its outskirts. Clustered by the reindeer racing courses children clapped and cheered for are what's left of the reindeer. They've been hunted, but not with knives or bows or guns. Chunks of flesh have been ripped off their bones and ribs are cracked where massive force has been applied, eyes white and milky—if they haven’t been plucked out. Some of the beasts are still alive and huddling in their stables, balking when the doors are open or bolting, as fast as their long strides can take them, out toward the Old Growth. Careful you don’t get in their way!

By the 18th, none of the reindeer are alive inside the stables. There aren’t enough corpses to account for the whole herd you’d seen before (bored and spoiled, wreaths around their necks). But if you follow the sounds of crunching, the wet and sticky humidity of breath, and the smell that rises up and above the dung and rot of desiccated corpses—

There, hunched over a kill, is a thing with just as many bones visible as mangy flesh upon its back. And when its head turns round, there are fangs in its mouth and claws on five-fingered paws, and both are stained deep scarlet—there are antlers bleached as white as snow—and its red eyes are socket-deep, dilated, and suddenly fixed on you.

Let’s hope you can run on ice and snow!

The creatures are looking for more food now that the reindeer have all been hunted down. Lingering in the village, slow and sluggish on all fours unless they rise to two broad feet and sniff the air, they are massive beasts. Not men, not deer, not Christmas cheer, that’s for darn sure. Unless a human happens by, they will stay in their place—the village, far from town square and blizzard-covered Main Street. If they catch sight of someone, they will pursue them with surprising speed to the ends of the earth-—or at least right up to your front door or until you manage to lose them. They’ll search long and hard, sniffing with their skeletal snouts on hand and far-too-human knee, before giving up and heading back toward their village home. Unless someone else crosses paths with them, that is.

The lights on homes and fires burning in hearths seem to deter them... unlike silver, salt, or sharpened knives (unless they are made of iron or steel), which just bring the deer rearing up onto their back legs to tower up and over you, antlers blotting out the wintry sun, ribs bulging beneath their thin and ripping skin. The cold doesn’t bother them despite their hunger—aren’t reindeer native to the arctic? Perhaps that explains why ice has no effect and they appear from the blizzard as if it was as harmless as a hearty breeze. All the speech you ever can hear is the hunting cry they make—the full body bellow of a thing in pain and rage and determined to survive at your expense.

Unless you can outrun them.

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HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS

At midnight, December 25th, everything stops.

Peek out your window and there is only peaceful, picture-perfect snow. No blizzards and no blackouts. No stalking deer, no bodies and no snowmen, save the ones that the Anderson children put up on Midwich Street. The Christmas village is gone—no teleporting doors, no lights, no reindeer (at least that you can see or find)—as if it had never been there at all. Only lightly falling snow and cars in the driveway, families at home just as they ought to be—eating cookies, drinking milk, opening the presents spilling out from under the tree. Santa has been generous this year!

And don’t think he’s forgotten you, either!

For those of you who wrote Santa a letter, a box will be waiting on your front doorstep. Try as you might, you can’t find any footprints in the snow, and you certainly didn’t hear any knock on the door or ringing of the bell. It’s addressed specifically for you, along with a little note written in someone’s (very best attempt at) cursive:

I’m sorry if you got hurt
Please don’t be mad
Merry Christmas

P.S. I tried my best to get you what you asked for

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OOC INFO

Happy holidays and welcome to part two of our December event! As always, feel free to top-level for this event, tag around, or utilize our network and log communities for your snowy-spooky posts.

As with part one of the event, mod-controlled NPCs will not be available for this event. You are, however, free to use the Santa Rosita Police Department and Robbies as player-controlled NPCs if you feel they are appropriate for your threads. Need more information? Direct your attention over to our NPC page for the most up-to-date info on your fellow townspeople.

Regular teleporting to the village still happens; the lake is now just an added destination. If you still would like your character to appear in the village but wish to avoid the lake prompt, doors still will randomly teleport you to the village as they did in the first half of the month. Each prompt with peril only can result in death to your character if that is how you would prefer the thread to go. Remember: just because a monster is chasing you or you teleport into the lake doesn’t mean there isn’t a place around for them to hide and get warm! For this event we don’t want people to feel forced to kill their characters. Consider built-in survival options as a gift from mods to players this time... except for the monster in the lake.

Well, we wouldn't say monster, but you didn't think you were the only ones in town with a home, did you?

Whatever's living in the lake can be staggered and caught off-guard, so fighting back against it if it catches you is possible—possible, but not a good idea. You'll never get a thorough enough look to even know what it is you're fighting.

Characters who end up getting caught by it will only have one chance to fight it off long enough to escape and swim to safety. While you can technically stick around in the lake and attempt to search, you do so at your own peril. Staying for any longer than you have to or trying to seek whatever-it-is out will be a death sentence for your character. Please remember to report all deaths and crimes that would be worthy of Tranquilization on their appropriate page here.

Any questions can go in our FAQ thread below. Try to check and see if your question has already been answered on the plotting thread first here.

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Comments

[ribticklers]

A; Get Dunked On [cw: description of near-drowning]
[Before getting stuffed into a human body, Sans didn't need to breathe. He didn't feel the cold as much as other monsters, either. Now, as cold jabs needles into his skin and he feels the wildly inappropriate urge to try and suck in air underwater, he wishes more than ever he was back in his normal skeleton body. At least, that's one of the things in his mind as his thoughts flicker and twitch from one half-formed thought to the next. He's underwater, he went through a door and now--now he's underwater, and up, which way--there's ice--his thoughts are all crumbling, turning to dust, the only thing he can think is that he's in water and needs to get out right now, echoing over and over.

Sans isn't very strong, and trapped as he is, he's not very coordinated. His first strike against the ice cracks it but doesn't break through. It feels like the inside of his chest is on fire, and he wants to breathe, but he can't--even if he wanted to, it's like his throat has locked up. This is such--such a stupid way to die. He got teleported into a lake. This is so dumb. Everything hurts.

He cracks through the ice. If something brushes against his foot as he pushes up and gasps--getting air is nearly as painful as not having it was--all his nerve endings are exploding too much for him to process that one thing over anything else. He forces his way through the ice, to the shore, with the kind of single-minded focus he can only assume is instinctual, because the rest of Sans is exhausted and aching. He collapses as soon as he's on solid ground.

He shouldn't lay here in the snow. But maybe just for a little while... He could probably use a hand.]

B; Frosty the Snowman [cw: snowman corpse]
[Sans is only leaving the house when he absolutely has to, and he's definitely not taking the time to shovel the constant snow, so he doesn't think anything of having to kick open his front door. At least it's showing the normal outside and not that fucking lake again.

He emerges to a toppled snowman and the rictus, glassy-eyed grin of the corpse that was inside it. He's left standing in front of his doorway, letting all the cold air in.]

Look, some jokes just ain't funny. [He's not really talking to anybody. He's not sure what he'd do if whoever made it was actually there.]

C; Run Rudolph Run [cw: dead/injured/scared animals]
[It's the middle of the night, and Sans is in the stupid Christmas village again. This has to be some kind of teleportation karma, and he hates it. He can hardly see in the dark and the snow--can't even see the stars like this--so it's not really a surprise when he trips over something. It's thin, so at first he thinks it's a tree branch, but as he catches himself his hand wraps around--around bone. Definitely bone. Wet bone. Unwillingly much closer to it now, Sans can just make out the corpse of the reindeer. What's eating the reindeer?

Actually, he doesn't want to know. He gets back up and ducks into the first building he reaches. The stable. He's nearly knocked over by a living reindeer as it escapes... And then he's left with a smattering of terrified living reindeer. He keeps his voice low as he addresses the crowd, pointlessly.]

You guys'd be freaking out more if there was somethin' in here killing you right now, right?

D; Wildcard
[Catch Sans climbing out of the windows of his house to avoid getting teleported, doing a food run, and otherwise trying to deal with this upsetting situation!]

A

[petsthedog]

[After the first time he got teleported into the Christmas village, he's been pretty scrupulous about not going through any doors without being fully dressed. He has, however, been lucky enough to avoid the lake. So it's legitimately coincidence that Shinji happens to walk by as Sans flops in the snow.]

Shit.

[Before he even really thinks about it, he's over there. The greaser jacket from his closet isn't nearly as warm as his old coat, but it's better than nothing--he offers it to the man wordlessly.]

What the hell happened?

[ribticklers]

[It takes Sans a moment to process someone talking to him. He can't stop shivering, and moving seems like way too much effort to be worth it. Still, he does turn toward the voice and take that jacket when he sees it.]

They teleport you into the lake now, I guess. [Sans is too tired to gesture to where he was, but the broken up ice makes it obvious.]

[petsthedog]

[Well, shit.]

Ugh. Getting real tired of this town's bullshit.

[So...what now? Shinjiro scans over the area, and spots an abandoned-looking building nearby. He points toward it.]

Come on, let's get out of the cold.

[ribticklers]

[Sans looks at the building and it feels like it's a million miles away. But he knows he can't stay in the snow like this. It wouldn't be good for him in his normal body, it has to be worse for this one. Sans pushes himself up onto his knees and then onto his feet, stumbling forward and almost falling flat again. His legs don't feel like legs, just a vague numb achy blob.]

Okay, yeah, gimme--gimme a sec. [This is embarrassing. That's probably a dumb thought after you drag yourself out of a lake. He moves gingerly, like he's not sure if his feet are going to cooperate. They do.] Okay.

[Onward! Slowly.]

A

[purplejaguareye]

[Kipo was safe from lake teleportation (for now), but she does see her neighbor laying sprawled out in the snow.]

Hey!

[If he doesn't respond right away, Kipo will be trying to help him up. She's a little shocked how cold he is.]

Don't worry, I gotcha.

[ribticklers]

[Sans hears her before he can actually manage a response, so it's not until Kipo starts trying to get him off the ground that he actually shifts to look at her and tries to get his feet under him. He's shivering violently, and that's not helping his coordination. He manages an exhausted smile, because he doesn't know how else to react to this situation.] Thanks. Some people take pranks way too far, y'know?

[purplejaguareye]

[She tries her best to help lift him. If she were in jaguar form, this would be no problem at all, but right now she feels a little helpless.

She's not going to leave him behind though.]

I don't know what kind of prank involves dumping people into frozen lakes, but I'm gonna kick their butt when I find out who.

Just hang in there, okay? We'll find somewhere warm.

[Some...where...]

[ribticklers]

[Luckily, Sans is only five feet even, so it's not quite as difficult as it might be with some, taller adults. As long as Kipo can keep him from tipping himself over, he can mostly keep himself moving. He isn't really thinking about a direction beyond away from the lake, but when Kipo mentions somewhere warm, that does sound like a great plan.]

Should be buildings around here, right? [The Christmas village is looking a bit more inhospitable than before, though.]

[purplejaguareye]

[She keeps him upright, moving towards the buildings in the near distance.]

I remember it being a lot friendlier... I wonder what happened?

[Looks like the closest building might be the old wreath workshop.]

In any case, let's go in that building right over there.

[ribticklers]

Maybe it's closed for the season. [That doesn't make much sense, but neither does much of anything here. Sans is happy--okay, he's not particularly happy right now, but relatively--to head for the first building Kipo points out. Anywhere inside sounds great right now.] Wonder if any of these places still have the lights working.

[purplejaguareye]

I hope so. This place could give us at least that much.

[And into the building they go! Kipo does stop to work the lights and thankfully - some do work, if not that great. Only half seem to work, and even those are flickering dimly.

Kipo will help Sans find a place to sit down and rest.]

It's not much, but we'll be out of the cold for right now. I'm gonna see if this place has something we can use for warmth.

[ribticklers]

[Sans feels some faint relief when the lights flicker dimly on. Since he mostly feels physically numb, it's nice to have some emotional feeling going on.] Maybe they've still got the wreath stuff. We could decorate me. [Maybe if he buried himself in enough pine sprigs he would be warmer.]

[purplejaguareye]

Decorating it is!

[Kipo wanders to the back, digging through the supplies. She manages to pile up a few abandoned wreaths, bringing them over to Sans and placing them on him.]

You almost look like a Christmas tree.

I'm sorry I can't do more than this. If I had my jaguar form, I could keep both of us warm.

[ribticklers]

[by the time Sans is a bit more decorative, the feeling is starting to come back into his limbs. His face feels prickly and uncomfortable, but he's sure that's a better sign than not feeling anything.] Ain't your fault. At least I'm festive, right?

[purplejaguareye]

Yeah, you're pretty festive.

[Kipo sits down next to Sans. She wish Wolf, Dave, and Benson were here. They'd all be able to figure out a plan between them.]

Not gonna leave you until you feel like you can walk without turning into a popsicle, OK?