The Start of the Storm

[shardofwinter]

The god hosted Yule party left the Nexus in the state of beautiful Winter Wonderland. With the snow falling softly and steadily, and the beautiful festive lights twinkling in the darkness, the Nexus is left with a sense of serene nostalgia hanging in the cold air. This peace and joy clings to the streets for several weeks, buoying everyone’s mood as they look back on the past year and forward to ringing in the new one. 

It starts in the Wilds, and the outskirts. The cold air suddenly feels like it freezes everything it touches in an instant. Light doesn’t quite pierce the gloom. Gentle snowfall becomes thick and falls hard. One or two people looking for shelter from their uninhabitable homes isn’t too noticeable. People can still enjoy their pretty Winter, blissfully unaware. Pipes freeze solid, paths become impassable, power cuts out, simple walks become baffling in the poor visibility. Soon it’s not one or two people, it’s many, it’s families. There are people coming in, bloody, bruised and scared, saying they were chased. Eventually the kindness of friends and strangers becomes strained. Spare rooms are packed to the brim and the storm that stays just shy of the bizarre torches somehow seems to have a slow, but unmistakable march closer towards a point where the Plaza, Industrial sector and Downtown meet. On top of that, people are complaining about PINpoints acting up or portals freezing over. 

Streets are becoming packed full of people with far more problems than solutions. Huddling together and whispering about ghosts and monsters moving about in the shadows. In a place with no government, no organisation, no collaborative emergency services, chaos and confusion reigns supreme. And with chaos, comes panic. With confusion, comes frustration and anger. The Nexus is a powder keg waiting to blow.

That’s certainly how one Durant sees it. As a manager, Isidor is keen on organisation and order. Both things that are lacking in the Nexus at the moment. Groups pop up to help, but struggle to communicate effectively, or work together. Some people get free food twice, some people are still waiting for some at all. It’s madness, and Isidor can’t stand it. Particularly because she, her brother and sister-in-law are stuck here. So, when nobody else takes the mantle, Isidor Durant takes it upon herself to inject some order into this scrum.

In her fur hat and long coat, leather gloves and thick boots, Isidor can be seen directing people this way and that. There’s something about a confident person taking charge that means people instinctively defer to them. She becomes the point of contact quite easily, with people soon taking her direction regardless of whether or not they know her. Under her instruction, people are directed to a building that has tables set up, queues in front of them, and volunteers behind them taking names and telling people where to go. It might still be chaos, but at least now it’s organised chaos.

The question is: Where will your character go?

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((Below are comments for each desk. Tag any of them, threadhop, or post with your own character. I suggest putting your character’s name in the subject to help keep things clear. Comments marked with a snowflake ( ❅  ) have been coordinated with the mods and I as official event comments. The OOC Post is here! If you have any questions, feel free to message me or one of the mods!))

Threads of Note
Medicine/Illness | Shelter/Heat | Food | Security/Crime | Lost items/people | Misc resources/Donations | Volunteers | Expeditions | Planning Table/The woman in charge | Drulb's Deelz | A Ship in the Outskirts 

Comments

[prescription_grade]

"You got eaten by a monster?" Danny stares at him, but he doesn't look disbelieving so much as incredibly curious. "Sorry to hear it. Only if you've gotta die somehow, at least that's a pretty spectacular way to go, don't you think? I always sort of thought if I were gonna die some weird way I'd want to spontaneously combust."

Which is surprisingly plausible when you're a sorcerer. But anyway.

Once his cans are open, Danny settles in to eating like the pro he is, sitting cross-legged on the ground. "Well," he says. "Was tryin' to teach myself some magic. I'm a sorcerer, see? An apprentice. Morganian, but don't worry, I'm not gonna hurt anyone who's nice to me."

"But my master had some business elsewhere and he had to rush off and leave me in New York. He's been gone a while and things were starting to get kind of boring, so I thought I'd experiment. Not sure if I punched a hole through spacetime or just got dragged into one that was already there, but here I am."

[outpostcook]

"Look at it this way - if you spontaneously combusted, as you put it, at least you'd die a human being."

Kinner chuckles when Danny mentions that being eaten was a spectacular way to go. It wasn't so long ago that he'd hate even discussing this, but he can almost laugh at it now. Time and distance help with things like that, and it at least gave him a good story to tell.

"Eaten by a creature from space. That isn't even the best part. The damn thing disguised itself as a cow. When I came to milk it..." He draws a gloved finger across his throat to get the point across. "Next thing I know, I wake up here."

"A sorcerer, huh?" Kinner would have commented, but he's already met Horvath. He guesses that "Morgonians" are another faction of sorcerer, one with a more sinister reputation. Kinner considers himself a neutral party in whatever feud is going on between the two groups. "Magic's new to me, but I'm open-minded. Didn't believe in aliens, either, and look what happened to me."

[prescription_grade]

"You got eaten. By an alien cow." Danny looks at him with head tilted and eyes wide and round. Part of him wants to laugh. Okay, most of him wants to laugh, and in fact his lips twitch into a little grin.

He's not completely tactless, though. He's not powerful enough to be tactless, and this guy just gave him food, so he manages to control himself. "There's bound to be a good pun there. Give me a little bit, I'll think of something."

Kinner's ideals are in the right place, for him to seek to be a neutral party. Trouble with that is the Morganian party line, as it were, is to take over the world and subjugate all non-magical humans by whatever means necessary. Danny's been steeped in it. Right now his master would be ashamed of him for sitting down to a friendly chat with a non-sorcerer without some kind of major ulterior motive in mind. But he's not here to criticize, and Danny hasn't been fully brainwashed.

He's a little confused, in point of fact. But he knows what he wants out of life: money, attention, admiration, and the benefits that come with them. Inherently selfish? Yep. Inherently evil? Not really.

"I 'spect there's a lot of it around here," he tells Kinner. "Given all kinds of worlds meet. I figured there might even be, I dunno, dragons or nymphs or elves or whatever. Wouldn't mind meeting some of those kinds of things."

"Hard pass on the carnivorous aliens, though." He winks at Kinner.

[outpostcook]

"There's an Indoraptor here. That's what he says he is. He's a dinosaur, not a dragon, but I'm guessin' that's close enough."

Kinner's never seen a dragon here, though the black dinosaur's big enough, powerful enough, and fearsome-looking enough to be mistaken for one. He isn't afraid of the Indoraptor, but he wonders what he's doing in the winter. He is a giant dinosaur who requires a lot of food, and he is a carnivore.

"It was a shapeshifter - could turn into any person or animal it ate, which means there's another Kinner walkin' around in my homeworld." Kinner's honestly a bit more resentful about being replaced. As far as he's concerned, there's only one him.

Kinner would disapprove of the world domination thing if he knew about it, though he's also seen some terrible things from humans themselves. As far as he's concerned, everyone's done things that aren't good, including himself. Kinner's killed people back in the day - for survival, it was war, but he isn't proud of it. So he's not one to judge, he thinks. But he's also fiercely opposed to brainwashing - he's furious at the Thing for reaching around in his head. His memories are his, and he'll share them if he wants to.

But in the winter, he's just grateful to have someone to talk to, so he doesn't prod Danny on his alliegances. He would understand wanting to feel big, though he expressed it through his attitude. Kinner's aggressive for his small size, though he's making a special effort to be polite and friendly now that he's working to help people.

Kinner nods approvingly when Danny winks. "Good idea. The Thing's dangerous, and it's better to stay away from creatures like that. Don't think it'll ever get here, though." Kinner hopes the Thing will never get anywhere near the Nexus.

[prescription_grade]

"A dinosaur? And he talks?" Danny's into this. "Right, meeting him is on my bucket list, good."

Danny frowns in thought at Kinner's description of the Thing. "Well...there are monsters like that on the Earth I come from, I think. Maybe not quite the same, but..."

He gives a furtive glance around him, then makes a little gesture in the air, as if he were pulling something off an invisible shelf. As if by magic (because it actually was magic), he's now got a small book in his hand, which he unfolds into a larger book and sets in his lap.

"A pooka would changes shape, but they wouldn't eat anyone. Just scare them, usually. And a Fetch can duplicate people and imitate their voices, but they usually only do it to warn people they're about to die. Not saying your Thing was any of those. Probably nothing we've got. Just, it's interesting, the similarities."

[outpostcook]

Kinner nods, though he's never directly interacted with the Indoraptor. "That's right - he can talk. He's hard to miss. Big black dinosaur, though I doubt he'll be outside in this weather. If it's too cold for people, it'll definitely be too cold for dinosaurs."

He listens to Danny's description of the creatures, though they aren't ones he's familiar with. Kinner knows some monster tales, though.

"There were stories back where I came from, though nobody really believed in 'em. They were more stories to keep ourselves amused. Hoop snakes, goofus birds, squonks, hidebehinds, that kind of thing. The Thing's the first real monster I ever ran into, though I know not all monsters are bad. There was one I met named Gaster. He seemed nice."

He wonders what pookas and Fetches were like. "The Thing I ran into had a true form - a slimy blue creature with tentacles for fingers and three red eyes. I'm guessing neither of the critters you mentioned look like that?"

[prescription_grade]

"Oh, there's definitely more stories about weird creatures than there are real weird creatures," Danny nods. "But there's more stuff out there than most people think, too."

He listens to the description of the Thing and makes a disgusted face. "I figure if it ain't a squid, octopus, or cuttlefish, just don't trust anything with tentacles. Nothing good comes of tentacles."

He shakes his head. "No, I don't think anything I've heard of has a trueform like that. Pookas usually default to black horses or goats. I think Fetches are more like...non-corporeal in their true shape."

[outpostcook]

"I'll take your word on that," says Kinner, thinking of the Thing. "There's critters out there I wish I'd never bumped into, take my word for it. And I've heard there's monsters out there, past the safe zone. Scary, huh?"

Kinner gives a quick, sharp laugh. The whole winter is very familiar territory for the cook, but it being familiar makes it no less frightening for him. He knows how bad the paranoia and cold weather can get.

"Pookas and Fetches sure sound like interestin' creatures. Tell me...you're a sorcerer. I'm takin' it you didn't know much about monsters from outer space, huh?"