Greetings, Pinecones! Welcome to our April event, featuring another mess along with another way to hop on the metaplot. Though the event technically starts today, the first few days are pretty metaplot-free anyway, so there's no rush here. :)
Now, on to the write-up.
WAYWARD FALLS
ENVIRONMENT EVENT: Meltwater Flood EVENT DATE: April 13th - 23th(?)
It begins with a crack, as many alarming and unfortunate things tend to do. Anyone who's ever jumped a little too hard on a frozen river will recognize the sound in an instant: It's the sound of ice caving under pressure, and it echoes through the cozy wooded canyon just in time for the first trickle of water to drip over the face of the northern cliffs. Within the hour, tens of thousands of gallons of water are pouring over the cliff, a waterfall of meltwater finally freed from behind an icy dam.
And it doesn't stop. The woods flood. The north end of town floods. Power flickers. And then comes the debris.
Without any real warning, solid objects come careening over the cliffs, carried in by the runoff cascading down to the forest below. First, it's large rocks, almost boulders in their own right. Then, the debris starts to look a little more... man-made. What has the floodwater brought the little town of Wayward Pines? And possibly more importantly, will the waterfall ever cease?
IN CHARACTER
DON'T GO CHASING WATERFALLS
Yes. Yes it will. But we'll get there later in the write-up.
At midday on the 13th, when the sun is high overhead, the sound of a cracking sheet of ice echoes down into the canyon that houses the town of Wayward Pines. About a half-hour later, meltwater begins to cascade over the north face of the cliffs, thoroughly dousing the forest below. The water is frigid as only glacier water tends to be, warmed just barely by the sun and the journey to the top of the cliffs from whence it came. In fact, with it comes chunks of ice up to the size of a basketball, though only throughout the first day or so.
The flooding is mild at first, not even quite reaching the river, but what area it does reach quickly becomes a lesser swamp. By the 15th, it has reached the river, and by the the 16th, the river has begun to overflow its banks despite the construction crew's best efforts to shore them up.
And that's when things get dodgy.
A handful of things occur on April 17th:
The flooding reaches the town. Individuals who live in the affected areas (most notably the 1BR homes in the northeast corners of town) will find a foot and a half of water on the street in front of their homes, though their actual yards have been largely spared due to the height of the sidewalk, with just a couple of inches of water waiting once you step out your front door.
The waterfall now begins to carry large rocks over the edge of the cliffs, some as big as three feet in diameter. These aren't frequent, just once every few minutes, but they pose a danger to anyone who might come too close to the flooding's source.
Late in the morning, the screech of metal on rock can be heard from the east end of the northern cliffs. From the right vantage point on the south end of town, a large object can be spotted peeking just barely over the top of the cliffs at exactly the place the sound seems to have come from. Whatever it is seems to be diverting some of the water flow to the eastern cliffs instead.
By now, much of the wildlife too small to wade through a foot or more of floodwater can be seen charging through the streets of Wayward Pines in a mad dash toward the thus-far-dry western forest.
Clearly, things are starting to go to hell. Citizens are starting to panic, entire sections of town are without power, and the water creeps deeper into Wayward Pines by the day.
But things are just about to get interesting.
Around 3 AM on the 18th, a large crash sounds from the northeast, though it's nigh impossible to pinpoint the source in the dark of night. Interestingly enough, at around 6 AM the power returns to the darkened section of town, though every few minutes it gives an unsteady flicker. And once the sun rises over the cliffs, the source of the mysterious crash is abundantly obvious: Some sort of mysterious cylindrical wreckage hangs precariously halfway down the face of the cliff, barely visible through the renewed downpour of meltwater now that this piece of trash isn't blocking the water flow. Below it, two more chunks can be spotted high up in the trees, having fallen farther than the first but caught on the thick forest's upper canopy.
Debris from the wreckage can then be found at a number of locations in the northeastern corner of the canyon, though in order to reach the wreckage itself, you're going to have to climb...
Finally, late on the 18th, the downpour begins to slow down. By the end of the 19th, what was once a waterfall has calmed down to about the strength of an obscenely wide showerhead, and the floodwater finally begins to recede.
Things are a little bit damp in our lovely town for a few more days. The weather is warm and sunny, absolutely perfect to witness the wonders of evaporation in action, but a dwindling body of water still pools in the northern streets until the 20th. It'll take a few more days for the forest to dry out, but at the very least, the situation is finally under control.
OUT OF CHARACTER
THE BREAKDOWN
This event has two important features: The flood itself, and the debris hurtling over the cliffs. The former is essentially a free-for-all, do as much with the flood as you'd like. The debris, meanwhile, is our metaplot opportunity, and we'll be taking volunteers to discover it below. It's important to note that while there is plenty to be discovered in this month's metaplot, this series of investigation opportunities will not affect the outcome of the event (like it did in March's Outbreak).
You will find four top-levels below for your plotting and volunteering needs! Feel free to start utilizing them right away, though you can also do so at any point during the event.
Top-level #1 is for players to ask general questions of the mods. Unlike in last month's event, the metaplot investigation will not go here, as it involves less mystery-solving and requires fewer actual questions.
Top-level #2 is where you can volunteer your character for a number of metaplot discovery opportunities! Each opportunity will have a comment under this top-level. You're welcome to volunteer your character for multiple opportunities, provided they fit any necessary criteria. The volunteers will be RNGed on the 15th and will be guided through their segment from there. If your character is chosen but would bring their husband, bestie, roommate, or that stranger down the street, that's entirely fine. You can recruit however many people you'd like to join in the fun. :)
Top-level #3 is where the mods will work with the chosen volunteers on laying out exactly what they're about to discover. If you want to be kept apprised as things occur rather than waiting for the mod-posted summaries, this is the thread to track!
Top-level #4 is for players to plot with each other. Bring the details you receive in top-levels #1 and #3 to discuss them with your fellow players here, and plot out your next move. Conversely, if your character has nothing to do with investigating the debris but you'd like to plot out threads involving the flooding, that goes here too.
A catch-all log will go up sometime today, we're sorry for the brief delay!
The cliff feels stable enough under them. Most of the crumbling footholds were lower on the cliff face, and it seemed to stabilize as they got a little bit higher.
Now they're faced with a much smoother cliff, with at least five feet of space between every suitable handhold or foothold. The debris hangs above them, still firmly caught on the face of the cliff. By the 19th, the waterfall is almost gone altogether, down to trickling stripes of cold water wetting the cliff face at random intervals.
Feel free to ask more specific questions about the situation and I'll answer those! Or let me know how they proceed. :)
Since the places to perch seem pretty stable they're just going to continue climbing, avoiding obvious wet spots and giving each other boosts/hands up as appropriate where there are bigger gaps! Eyes on the prize, right?
The hand- and footholds are only barely large enough to provide the leverage to boost one another up, and they only get smaller as the trio nears the debris. In fact, about 30 feet below the debris (and possibly with help from the too-close-for-comfort mistake of a missed handhold or foothold), they'll find that they can no longer safely gain enough leverage to push one another up to the next spot.
'Push recklessly onward' is definitely an option. Not one I'd advise, but hey, it's not my funeral.
SO! After a round of "pls no" from her lovely assistants, Aranea is going to make use of her equipment to jump the remaining distance up to the debris. To try and offset the risk of her missing and plummeting to her doom, they're going to tie one end of the rope Ignis brought to her, and Nyx is going to cast blizzard on the other end of it in the hopes of anchoring it to the cliff face just in case.
Aranea doesn't get what all the fuss is about tbh.
Okay, but real answer. She's now hanging by her itty bitty fingertips from the bottom edge of the debris. The edge she's holding on to, however, is fragile at best. It appears to have rusted heavily and may crumble out from under her grip if she doesn't climb both quickly and carefully.
The debris itself roughly cylinder-shaped with both ends open to daylight, and by now it's pretty apparent that it's a good deal bigger than it appeared from the ground, at somewhere between fifteen and twenty feet in diameter and just as long as it is tall. It's a cross-section of something much larger, that much is obvious based on the way the rest of whatever this once was seems to have rusted and torn away. There appear to be 'levels', with the narrower bottom-most level (the one she's caught hold of by the skin of her teeth) following the curve of the bottom of the debris, almost like a cargo hold (here). The other two sections are equally wide, tall enough for an individual to stand in, with the middle being barely narrower than the top.
As pictured in my shitty sketches, it's stuck to the cliffs at about a 45⁰ angle lengthwise and pretty close to that same angle rotationally, with the relative "front left corner" being highest on the cliff.
(I explained all of this really poorly I feel like, so if some of it doesn't make sense, absolutely ask me to clarify.)
She doesn't want to die, but somebody's gotta pay for the fact that Prompto's still a gigantic virgin.
After climbing - quickly AND carefully - up onto that bottom edge and doing a quiet but impassioned swear, the first thing Aranea does is check for anything on the cliff itself that she might be able to lash her end of the rope to. If there is she'll do it, pulling up some slack to give her enough room to move around as she looks. Regardless of whether she can tie herself off she'll start to search the levels, starting with the bottom one.
Moving slowly and staying on alert for any ominous creaking or shifting, she's especially on the lookout for:
- any readable writing - anything small enough to be physically taken back with her - anything in the actual structure of it that might give clues, such as hatches, windows, control panels, etc. Since she's ex-airborne, the fact that the lower layer looks like a cargo hold will lead her to assume it was part of an aircraft and she'll be looking for things that will confirm or disprove this.
Edited (too busy dragging prompto to grammar) 2017-04-23 20:58 (UTC)
Unfortunately, the cliff doesn't seem to have anywhere for her to actually lash a rope around. The debris might, if that interests her?
The bottom level seems to be largely empty - it's safe to assume the contents probably fell out of the big gaping holes somewhere along the line. The inside is too spattered with mud to properly read anything that may or may not be written on the walls.
However, behind a piece of netting along one wall, she'll be able to find what looks like a wet and muddy CB radio. It looks a little too modern, like it was built as a novelty long after these sorts of things were in common use. Is it functional? Who knows.
The cargo hold has no windows, and based on the outline of an unloading hatch below her, the single control panel seems likely to drop the floor out from under her if it works at all.
There's a small ladder leading up to a hatch in the hold's ceiling.
Aranea makes a note of the CB radio (including checking whether it is attached or can be removed, please), looks at the control panel and decides not to touch it, and climbs through the hatch to check out the next level.
It can definitely be removed. It appears to be a portable radio by design.
Climbing through the next level puts her in what seems like the coach-class section of a plane. It's all pretty soaked, and most of the personal belongings seem to have fallen out in whatever tore this thing apart.
It's distinctly more modern-looking than anything in Wayward Pines, but since Aranea's not from any rendition of Earth, it will probably just register as 'different-looking' rather than any sort of era-based assessment.
Unwilling to let common sense interfere with her desire for stuff, Aranea checks each side front front-to-back for anything that looks unusual, out of place, or able to be collected. As she goes she'll be making a note of what she sees so as to be able to report back on it.
For my own reference and ease in said reporting back, when we say "more modern-looking" than Wayward Pines stuff are we talking somewhere between the glorious 90s and today, present day, or beyond? If beyond, I'd love a quick rundown of the sorts of things she'll be seeing.
I'll explain the last part first: "More modern-looking" here means beyond today's 2017 level of technology. The interior is surprisingly intact, compared to the outside and... the fact that the craft was clearly torn into segments (with the help of a decent quantity of rust). It's muddy and wet, but the gist of it is easy enough to gather. It's somewhere between this and this here in the coach section, though the stairs were farther toward the front of the plane, beyond the point where this section abruptly ends. It looks like the seats are more comfortable (supposedly, though not after all this time) and definitely more individually interactive, with a larger TV on the back of each seat and a guide in the seat-back pouch explaining a number of touch-screen buttons with a number of functions more 'luxury' than coach today would have (eg. customized drink orders, precise A/C controls, tinting and blacking out of their individual window, seat-to-seat video calls, etc). There are supposedly also increased safety measures in case of an emergency, located under and above each seat. Sure enough, some of the underseat and above-seat emergency panels are popped open, the contents missing.
But alright - front to back, huh? It's a good thing she made the rounds. She'll spot what looks like a pair of handcuffs, caught on the armrest nearest the window and wedged down between the seats. The other end is attached to what appears to be a the handle of some kind of case. Too bad the case seems to have broken off at the hinge sometime in the landing.
A few seats back, she'll find... miraculously, half of the case, wedged hard in the open mouth revealed by one of the emptied underseat safety panels. This too must've broken off at the hinge - the other half is nowhere in sight. But that's okay, because nestled into what was likely once an exceptionally high-quality bed of foam padding is a liquid-filled bottle and a syringe. The bottle has a label, but it's just a quick series of numbers and a green dot sticker about a half-inch in diameter.
After a very brief fit of aircraft envy, Aranea takes the bottle and nestles it into her safety compartment (i.e, her cleavage). The syringe can stay where it is, thanks, but she's going to examine the half of the case to check it for any sort of logo or identifying marks.
She's also still thinking about that radio in the cargo hold and looking to see if there are any bags she can snag so she can try to transport it hands-free or, failing that, any loose fabric anywhere she can tear away to fashion into a kind of sling.
There are no identifying marks on this half of the case, unfortunately. Between that and the bottle's label, it almost seems like this (which is to say, the case and the bottle/syringe it held) was a quieter or more 'under the table' sort of deal.
There's no bag unfortunately, but the mesh netting holding it to the wall of the compartment does appear to come off in sections.
WE'RE GOING THROUGH THAT HOLE. If it's low enough for her to reach up and pull herself into it or close enough to one of the seats that she can climb them to give her the extra height she'll do it that way. If not, she's going to cross her fingers and hope she doesn't dislodge the whole shebang, and jump for it.
It's not close enough, unfortunately - the ceiling is low, but it's still a bit out of reach - but the jump isn't high enough to dislodge the wreckage. It gives an ominous creak, but it seems like much ado about nothing, since the structure itself doesn't feel like it moved more than an inch or so.
Still, might want to hurry.
This top level is precisely 200% as fancy as the bottom one, though the areas near each gaping end are unquestionably muddy. The seats are practically recliners, spaced much farther apart for comfort, and buttons imply in-seat temperature and massage functions. Lines run along the ceiling which, upon further investigation, seem to be tracks. The seatback instructions on this level inform of automated flight attendance, with a picture of a cute but sleek little robot (picture a rounder Roomba with four slim arms) running along the tracks, dispensing drinks and meals alike to the people who purchased these blatantly more expensive seats.
While Doranea's been roaming around like it's merc christmas, Nyx is trying to make sure he and Ignis don't die because they've climbed five thousand feet with no actual equipment. Since anchoring their ropes with ice seems to have worked for now, he's been repeatedly freezing the water still pouring down parts of the rock in order to build a kind of shelf for them to sit on.
That creak gives him pause though, looking up to see if the rock holding the wreckage up seems to be weakening at all.
If the seatback instructions are still those little cards you pull out to read, she's going to snag one of them, because that cutiepie robot is incongruous enough to everything in the town that she wants proof. You know, just in case the fact that she made a standing jump up to the lodged wreckage makes people doubt her sanity.
Then she's going to do the same sweep-process she went through on the floor below, checking along each side of anything else of note.
They are indeed those cards, though the material seems more plastic than paper these days.
That's actually all she'll manage to find in that floor. Based on the direction the case on the middle floor seemed to have broken in, most of the luggage and whatnot would've likely pooled in the tail end.... wherever that went.
Hey, a picture of a robot's better than a poke in the eye. That done, she's going to lower herself carefully back through the hole, move back through to the cargo hold to pull away that netting and fashion herself a little sling-type bag to hold the radio and the seatback info.
Provided all that scurrying around didn't dislodge the whole shebang, she'll finally tie off her end of the rope to the debris and prepare to make her way back down.
She makes it most of the way down, until most of her weight rests on the frozen end rather than the end tied to the debris.
At that point, the pressure on the frozen end is just a little too strong to hold. It shatters loose, swinging away from the cliff face and out over the open drop. The debris above gives the faintest creak as her weight swings underneath it.
Step one: swear loudly and fulsomely Step two: look for any kind of ledge or outcropping that she might be able to swing or scramble to from her current position!
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intothepines2017-04-12 09:24 pm
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Now they're faced with a much smoother cliff, with at least five feet of space between every suitable handhold or foothold. The debris hangs above them, still firmly caught on the face of the cliff. By the 19th, the waterfall is almost gone altogether, down to trickling stripes of cold water wetting the cliff face at random intervals.
Feel free to ask more specific questions about the situation and I'll answer those! Or let me know how they proceed. :)
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'Push recklessly onward' is definitely an option. Not one I'd advise, but hey, it's not my funeral.
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SO! After a round of "pls no" from her lovely assistants, Aranea is going to make use of her equipment to jump the remaining distance up to the debris. To try and offset the risk of her missing and plummeting to her doom, they're going to tie one end of the rope Ignis brought to her, and Nyx is going to cast blizzard on the other end of it in the hopes of anchoring it to the cliff face just in case.
Aranea doesn't get what all the fuss is about tbh.
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Okay, but real answer. She's now hanging by her itty bitty fingertips from the bottom edge of the debris. The edge she's holding on to, however, is fragile at best. It appears to have rusted heavily and may crumble out from under her grip if she doesn't climb both quickly and carefully.
The debris itself roughly cylinder-shaped with both ends open to daylight, and by now it's pretty apparent that it's a good deal bigger than it appeared from the ground, at somewhere between fifteen and twenty feet in diameter and just as long as it is tall. It's a cross-section of something much larger, that much is obvious based on the way the rest of whatever this once was seems to have rusted and torn away. There appear to be 'levels', with the narrower bottom-most level (the one she's caught hold of by the skin of her teeth) following the curve of the bottom of the debris, almost like a cargo hold (here). The other two sections are equally wide, tall enough for an individual to stand in, with the middle being barely narrower than the top.
As pictured in my shitty sketches, it's stuck to the cliffs at about a 45⁰ angle lengthwise and pretty close to that same angle rotationally, with the relative "front left corner" being highest on the cliff.
(I explained all of this really poorly I feel like, so if some of it doesn't make sense, absolutely ask me to clarify.)
no subject
After climbing - quickly AND carefully - up onto that bottom edge and doing a quiet but impassioned swear, the first thing Aranea does is check for anything on the cliff itself that she might be able to lash her end of the rope to. If there is she'll do it, pulling up some slack to give her enough room to move around as she looks. Regardless of whether she can tie herself off she'll start to search the levels, starting with the bottom one.
Moving slowly and staying on alert for any ominous creaking or shifting, she's especially on the lookout for:
- any readable writing
- anything small enough to be physically taken back with her
- anything in the actual structure of it that might give clues, such as hatches, windows, control panels, etc. Since she's ex-airborne, the fact that the lower layer looks like a cargo hold will lead her to assume it was part of an aircraft and she'll be looking for things that will confirm or disprove this.
no subject
The bottom level seems to be largely empty - it's safe to assume the contents probably fell out of the big gaping holes somewhere along the line. The inside is too spattered with mud to properly read anything that may or may not be written on the walls.
However, behind a piece of netting along one wall, she'll be able to find what looks like a wet and muddy CB radio. It looks a little too modern, like it was built as a novelty long after these sorts of things were in common use. Is it functional? Who knows.
The cargo hold has no windows, and based on the outline of an unloading hatch below her, the single control panel seems likely to drop the floor out from under her if it works at all.
There's a small ladder leading up to a hatch in the hold's ceiling.
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Climbing through the next level puts her in what seems like the coach-class section of a plane. It's all pretty soaked, and most of the personal belongings seem to have fallen out in whatever tore this thing apart.
It's distinctly more modern-looking than anything in Wayward Pines, but since Aranea's not from any rendition of Earth, it will probably just register as 'different-looking' rather than any sort of era-based assessment.
no subject
Unwilling to let common sense interfere with her desire for stuff, Aranea checks each side front front-to-back for anything that looks unusual, out of place, or able to be collected. As she goes she'll be making a note of what she sees so as to be able to report back on it.
For my own reference and ease in said reporting back, when we say "more modern-looking" than Wayward Pines stuff are we talking somewhere between the glorious 90s and today, present day, or beyond? If beyond, I'd love a quick rundown of the sorts of things she'll be seeing.
no subject
But alright - front to back, huh? It's a good thing she made the rounds. She'll spot what looks like a pair of handcuffs, caught on the armrest nearest the window and wedged down between the seats. The other end is attached to what appears to be a the handle of some kind of case. Too bad the case seems to have broken off at the hinge sometime in the landing.
A few seats back, she'll find... miraculously, half of the case, wedged hard in the open mouth revealed by one of the emptied underseat safety panels. This too must've broken off at the hinge - the other half is nowhere in sight. But that's okay, because nestled into what was likely once an exceptionally high-quality bed of foam padding is a liquid-filled bottle and a syringe. The bottle has a label, but it's just a quick series of numbers and a green dot sticker about a half-inch in diameter.
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After a very brief fit of aircraft envy, Aranea takes the bottle and nestles it into her safety compartment (i.e, her cleavage). The syringe can stay where it is, thanks, but she's going to examine the half of the case to check it for any sort of logo or identifying marks.
She's also still thinking about that radio in the cargo hold and looking to see if there are any bags she can snag so she can try to transport it hands-free or, failing that, any loose fabric anywhere she can tear away to fashion into a kind of sling.
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There's no bag unfortunately, but the mesh netting holding it to the wall of the compartment does appear to come off in sections.
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Still, might want to hurry.
This top level is precisely 200% as fancy as the bottom one, though the areas near each gaping end are unquestionably muddy. The seats are practically recliners, spaced much farther apart for comfort, and buttons imply in-seat temperature and massage functions. Lines run along the ceiling which, upon further investigation, seem to be tracks. The seatback instructions on this level inform of automated flight attendance, with a picture of a cute but sleek little robot (picture a rounder Roomba with four slim arms) running along the tracks, dispensing drinks and meals alike to the people who purchased these blatantly more expensive seats.
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While Doranea's been roaming around like it's merc christmas, Nyx is trying to make sure he and Ignis don't die because they've climbed five thousand feet with no actual equipment. Since anchoring their ropes with ice seems to have worked for now, he's been repeatedly freezing the water still pouring down parts of the rock in order to build a kind of shelf for them to sit on.
That creak gives him pause though, looking up to see if the rock holding the wreckage up seems to be weakening at all.
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If the seatback instructions are still those little cards you pull out to read, she's going to snag one of them, because that cutiepie robot is incongruous enough to everything in the town that she wants proof. You know, just in case the fact that she made a standing jump up to the lodged wreckage makes people doubt her sanity.
Then she's going to do the same sweep-process she went through on the floor below, checking along each side of anything else of note.
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That's actually all she'll manage to find in that floor. Based on the direction the case on the middle floor seemed to have broken in, most of the luggage and whatnot would've likely pooled in the tail end.... wherever that went.
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Provided all that scurrying around didn't dislodge the whole shebang, she'll finally tie off her end of the rope to the debris and prepare to make her way back down.
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Ready to climb, Aranea?
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At that point, the pressure on the frozen end is just a little too strong to hold. It shatters loose, swinging away from the cliff face and out over the open drop. The debris above gives the faintest creak as her weight swings underneath it.
Your move, Aranea.
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Step two: look for any kind of ledge or outcropping that she might be able to swing or scramble to from her current position!
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PINK SPARKLY YIKES
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