Deer Country Network

[ elster hasn't been much for posting on the network. she's done it here and there, but largely she just keeps an eye on things.

the video starts with a stylized symbol of a bird and an acronym beneath on a black background, while a voice calls for attention—achtung. achtung. achtung. static, then—

it's another dreary midday on some distant corner of the beach. a dark-haired woman with polymer and metal climbing her neck, crossing her face, stands in a black jacket next to some rusted metal... thing. a wreck? her speech comes with a light german accent, almost musical even with her largely flat affect. ]

For those I haven't yet met, my name is Elster. This is a call for any other engineers or technicians in the city. A derelict spaceship came through one of the portals; its nuclear reactor is heavily decayed and unshielded. The radiation on board has fallen to relatively safe levels, but I'm concerned about the long-term effects if it starts to leak into the water. I'd... prefer to avoid that problem.

[ the camera shifts, pulling out into a wide shot of the ship, showing the crushed and buried nose of the machine in the sand and the fuselage extending out into the water. finally, elster's facing it again. ]

Any assistance would be appreciated. If we can salvage something of the reactor itself, you're welcome to it.

[ something flinty and serious enters those electronic eyes. ]

One rule. You avoid the other areas of the wreck, and try to keep your curiosity to yourself. I can answer any relevant questions for the work, and I have the ship's technical documentation.

[ if someone wants to snoop and explore, that can be on their own time. ]

Once the problem's solved, I'm scrapping the ship.

[The feed opens up to an unnaturally beautiful garden. For those familiar with Ange Ushiromiyra or Beatrice's magic they'll certainly recognize the golden butterflies fluttering about the and resting upon the golden roses. While this area looks nothing like Trench, one of the carnivorous plants can be seen going to snap at one of the butterflies.

Only for Ruby Rose to pop up on the screen and slices the plant in two with a scythe made of scythe made of pure energy that she had not been seen with before. In fact she seemed incredibly energetic for someone who should be dealing with the draining effect on cold bloods this month. She's also dressed surprisingly formal for her usually very goth tendencies. She quickly dusts herself off and looks to whatever is projecting the Feed.]

Sorry about that. Just dealing with a few nasty pests that stumbled in here.

Speaking of which~!

I thought it would be fun to give everyone a little tour of The Golden Land my beautiful wife, The Golden Witch Ange Ushiromiya has created.

[The feed turns shows off the beautiful Garden, along with a gazebo with a table set for a tea party beneath it, a massive hedge maze that contains various doors that poke out from the overgrowth unnaturally. As they pass by a couple of the doors one might hear a few bangs or something that might sound like finger nails raking on the doors. Ruby seems to ignore it until she notices one slowly start to open and she'll step in to slam it shut and lock it with a key before turning back to the camera.]

Oh, just ignore that! Some people get a little rambunctious waiting for dinner, you know?

[Speaking of dinner, the next door in the hedge maze is open, and it leads to an extravagant kitchen. Inside that kitchen, one Xerxes Break is not making dinner. He is sitting cross-legged on the table, forming bits of crust into an intricate top for a terribly pretty pie. He has already made cookies and some wads of frosting shaped like roses that probably have cupcakes underneath, and is having a grand time. He glances up as Ruby steals a cookie.]

There you are. When you've finished whatever you're up to, come see me, would you? I was thinking we ought to come up with a present to make for Miss Ange. [As he speaks, he picks up a fork and casually hurls it off to the side somewhere. There's a thunk, and the angry gurgling of another carnivorous plant that tried to follow Ruby in.] Since she's made us such a lovely new home, we ought to make something really great for her too, don't you think?

[Quite frankly sitting on tables and throwing cutlery is just normal Break behavior. But those who recognize him may notice that the one red eye he keeps visible has a distinct glow about it, and his ever present omen — who is on the floor nearby, happily chewing up a pumpkin someone has conjured for him — has all of his too many teeth out in a manic doggy grin he cannot quite seem to put away.]

[Ruby bounces on the balls of her feet in excitement.]

That's a great idea! I'll wrap this up quick!

[And quickly begins to float out of the kitchen and into a grand lobby that seems to be just as over grown as everything else. There is a Portrait of her and Ange that eventually stops by and presents with open arms.]

Any who wish to visit this wonderful world created by our Golden Witch, Ange Ushiromiya are welcome to.

But please try not to cause any problems. I'll only politely ask you to leave once.

[And the feed closes with a smile that seems almost a little too sweet as she again grips that large scythe.]

[OOC Purple is Break.

TLDR Ange has made an interdimensional hidey hole centralized There will be a log coming up in the next few days to explore the area and have some fun!]

( click this )

( a picture is worth a thousand words.)

hiya!! so i just finished my house. im now living alone and drinking a nice cool beverage. aka bottle of wine.
rly living the good life.

SO
then i thought since im feeling prtty good. why not offer my services to all of u poor saps?
now READ CAREFULLY!!!

this is a ONE TIME OFFER from me to u. an engerinner like myself needs to fix things and solve probs. thats just waht we do. if we dont we will go bonkers and u dont want to see me go there. 🤣🤣🤣

oh and this is free of charge btw. wild right? im just feelin THAT generous.

or drunk.

anyway.

u got a prob? ill give u my advice. itll be 1000000000% honest the truth and all truths.

u can be anonymous to hide ur shame or not. CHOICE IS URS! 🐵💥🦈

Why hello there! May I just have a little bit of your time?

[Snow is, as always, surrounded by her animal friends and companions. She gently straightens her hair bow a bit and then puts her hands back in her lap.]

I was just wondering if I might have some help from people who are much more further in the timeline than I am... that is, people who are past the 1500s.

Is it alright for women to request courtship first in your time period by any chance?

[Why yes, Snow would very much like TO JUST DO THAT, she's just not sure if that's even a thing yet, or if it'd be as much a shock nowadays as it currently is in her own time. Although, since they're both women, she's not sure how that would even work if they COULDN'T request it first.]

I'm afraid modern courtship is still utterly unknown to me, though from what I have seen and read, it does seem to have a lot of things called pick-me-up lines, oh! Do people still serenade one another or is that not really what's done anymore?

Still, thank you so much for any help you might be able to offer!

(the video begins of a zoom up of a pair of eyes. an animal to be exact. they blink curiously before it gets pulled back -- revealing it's a spider monkey holding the omni. he holds it up above him and even turns it upside-down and other various angles. hopefully the lovely people aren't easily to become motion sickness upon viewing this but if they do, their own fault really.)

Got it workin'?

(there's a voice coming from off camera; familiar to some or not. but the monkey looks off to the direction of the voice before turning the omni over so whoever is watching can now see jinx sitting in a chair -- slouching with her arm hanging over the top railing. there's a grin that slowly grows on her face, however, it's not... exactly a friendly kind. impish? troubling? dangerous? you'd be the judge. nevertheless, jinx hunches over now with both her arms drape over her knees -- looking directly at the omni.)

So! — Greetings people of.... whatever this place is. Kiiiinda forgot the name but not really important. I've been hearin' a lotta here and there that I've been here before. Don't really remember it, though. (a brief pause as she thinks.) Except the last time. I remember the last time but not the other times.

Buuuuuuuuut ♪! Since I've been here a whoooole BUNCH of times that means I gotta have some friends here, right?

(she bites her bottom lip to hold back a giggle as the video suddenly wavers around. but quickly it straightens up and focus with a closer look of jinx (it seems she's the one holding it now) in a bird's eye view. her spider monkey climbs on her body then curling himself along her shoulder and neck while also looking up at the feed along with her.)

So if ya know me, contact me. OH! And you got like, thirty minutes to convince me why my former self even bothered wasting my breath on you. Don't keep me waitin' too long 'cuz I get bored easily.

(a beat.)

ACTUALLY, NEVERMIND!!! — Decided to change it to twenty minutes. (her spider monkey seems to be screeching in laughter at jinx's sudden time change but resumes on nuzzling it's head against her cheek.)

OH OH! One more big thing. There's someone here by the name of Vi. If you know her, contact me too. So we can aaaaalll be friends and get along. No shame in that, right?

(she says this but there's something about that smile that really makes it... off putting. regardless though, jinx hums quietly as she cocks her head to the side.)

Tick-tock, tick-tock.

If it gets on the Omni too, I don't care what John taught us about hubris, I'm going to- ah, there.

[Sayo is sitting on the rim of her bath with a robe tossed around her shoulders but otherwise wearing nothing else aside from an ireful expression. Fragments of Sleeper cocoon are strewn across the bathroom floor—a shard can even be found on her shoulder. The most eye-catching feature of this broadcast, however, is the sticky fluid that's still gumming up Sayo's hair.]

Cannot believe that after weeks of nothing but napping I'm still feeling exhausted... Ahem. First of all, today is August 25th, which is Jessica Ushiromiya's birthday. Everyone, wish her a happy birthday or I'll lay a curse on you so foul even the rats won't dare to pick at your corpse. [It's hard to tell whether the deadpan affect is because she's cracking a joke or if she means it and is too discombobulated to give her threat the proper weight. Hopefully it's the former, but the latter is not out of the question.]

Now, while it was already a minor miracle that I woke up in time to wish my dear girlfriend a happy birthday and I should be thanking my lucky stars for it, this, [she gestures at the mess of cocoon fluid in her hair,] is absolutely unacceptable to be dealing with today of all days. I'm given to understand that it breaks down on its own after a few hours but I need to get it out of my hair RIGHT NOW considering the date, and it seems resistant to normal haircare products.

Does anyone have any advice? I'll take anything at this point.

So for those not in the know, our house burned down last month.

[ What a way to open a post, right. And yet Ange manages to say it with something very close to a pokerface. Those who know her well may see something at its edges though. An annoyance that starts to bleed more and more into the girl's tone as she speaks on. ]

And not in the 'dumb accident' sense. No, it's because apparently it's socially acceptable in this place to come to someone's house and set it on fire, before bringing your friends inside to start murdering its inhabitants. [ Okay, yes. At this point it's not thiny veiled annoyance anymore. This is obvious annoyance that she doesn't bother to hide. ] And before anyone asks me if I'm alright— I'm fine. Totally fine. I mean, I half-turned into a beast back there, but it's clearly cool. It's fine.

[ It's clearly not fine. The sarcasm is thick.

Though Ange seems to realise that's not why she was supposed to make this message, and manages to snap herself out of passive-aggressive-ville for just long enough to sigh and sound a little bit more neutral as she speaks on. ]

Anyway, we want to rebuild the house, but that's obviously something we need help with. None of us are exactly architects.. I think. I've learned to not question weird Remnant hobbies. [ You never know what those Remnant people are capable of. ] Not to mention we'd need help with the actual physical rebuilding itself too.

We could use help from a lot of people, so if anyone would be willing to help, that'd be great.

[The video clicks on to show Shiro, sitting at a dining table - in the Mouse House, for anyone who's been there before. He looks... different. Hollowed-out. More exhausted than usual, which is saying something, for him. But the biggest difference? His greying hair has gone completely white. All of it.]

[His hands are curled around a mug, with the omni propped up on something else.]

Hey, feels like long time, no see.

[The smile he goes for falls flat. He reaches down with his left hand, the real hand, to ruffle the fur of his Omen, the lion with her head in his lap.]

First of all... I'm sorry for what happened, recently. [The Beasthood Incident.] I want to thank the people who helped me out. You know who you are, and - I'd rather not get into it more than that, please.

That aside - I've really noticed there aren't a lot of us left from the Dream. From Deerington. That's no one's fault. It's just a little alarming to realize. Maybe it's better forgotten - I don't know. But, I'm offering what I have to anyone who wants to learn.

Either what Deerington was, what happened there, who was involved. Anything I still have.

I don't think it should be forgotten. Not after what was done to get us here. After what people went through to make it possible to wake up here. And who we lost in the process.

[He takes a deep breath, and lifts up the coffee mug for a drink. You know, to get himself centered and everything.]

[Except... the mug stopped steaming halfway through his speech. Something heavy slides around inside instead, and impacts Shiro's face with an audible THUD. His head snaps back, which allows the object to go plummeting down to the tabletop.]

[It's a solid brick of frozen coffee.]

[It isn't even melting in the summer weather. Just sitting there. Mocking him. Another slow, deep breath, to keep his eye from twitching.]

... also, if any coldbloods out there want to... help with this... blood ability mess? I'm... listening.

[Makoto had spent the last few days looking in the mirror several times, looking for a mark that used to be there, that was gone now. The one that had been placed when she’d formed her bond with Atsushi, back when the handprints had been clearly visible and easy to see. With time they weren’t as vibrant but the bonds and marks were still there, the one with Usagi, Minako, Vira-Lorr, and one or two others. But his was gone.

As the video started, her hand lingered on the pink rose necklace that she was wearing, as Makoto seemed to be nibbling on a few cookies, the inside of Flour and Bloom clear in the background along with the early morning light.]

A lot of things keep happening and changing, but then they haven’t really changed either. I mean I’m still who I was before, and I have those that I care about, and they’re still who they are, but we’ve all grown too. Gotten stronger.

I wonder though, now that it seems like more people are returning. What’s a way to remember someone who’s not around anymore, but will always be a part of you?

[Clearing her throat she brushed away a few crumbs and smiled.]

Sorry, I actually just wanted to share some of the new selections that we have coming in at Flour and Bloom. We still have plenty of roses and Lavender. But now we have purple passion flowers, cardinal flowers, and Rosy honeymoon blooms.

There are also a few recipes that Snow and I have been trying out, so we’ll have a few samples to see how everyone likes them. We’re open until it starts to get dark.

[sansa's usual raven tapestry background has been replaced by one of her direwolf sigil framed by weirwood leaves and branches. a matching version is emblazoned on the front of her charcoal dress, the branches wrapping around her leaves and over her shoulders, where they are joined by raven feathers interspersed with silver scale mail pieces and sweeping around her neckline, cut just low enough that the dark bloodstone buckle of her needle necklace rests against her skin. lady wears a matching collar at her side sewn with little weirwood leaves and chips of amethyst and pale bloodstone, joined by tiny black feather pieces at the back. her hair is braided back and gathered into her usual half-ponytail; her expression is solemn, a little wistful and sad. for once her white raven omen rests on her shoulder, her hounds in the courtyard sleeping peacefully among the mushrooms.

sufficient time has passed to prove that people are no longer possessed by whatever made them so difficult in july (some of them even came by to apologize for an incident involving vi and a basement). she has already told some of her friends that she means to reveal her name when it's safe enough, and that certainly seems to be the case this first week of august.]

Hallo, most of you know me as Alayne Stone, but I'm afraid that's not my name. I am Sansa Stark of Winterfell, the rightful Lady Protector and Warden of the North in the Seven Kingdoms. My enemies in that realm murdered my Lord Father when he was Hand of the King and seized the Iron Throne. They have taken everything from me–my home, my family, my wolf, my name. They held me hostage while my brother and mother waged war in order to avenge him and rescue me. They will hold me hostage no longer.

I had been hiding as Alayne Stone for over a year before I came here. The Queen Regent thought I helped to kill her son, the cruel and unlawful king who murdered my father in the first place, and she has had a bounty placed on my head. Know then that I am innocent of that crime, and my blood on your hands will drive you to madness even as I crawl out of the sea, and you will not see even one of the golden dragons she promises.

[sansa pauses and glances down at her lap, briefly and sorrowfully, and then back up at the omni camera.]

I never wanted to deceive any of you. [...this is probably not true, depending on who's watching.] I can only beg your forgiveness, and offer in exchange what protection I am able. The words of House Stark are "Winter is Coming;" they serve as a reminder that trouble will find us as certain as autumn turns to winter. I've found that is as true here as anywhere, even if they call it the season of bone. I have done my best to fortify the Sanctuary and my home against all danger, be it corruption or starvation or the cold, and I will always offer guest right to any who seek it at the Rookery. And I will continue to aid the city of Trench to the best of my ability, whether or not any of you choose to forgive my deception. It is my duty as a Stark of Winterfell, and I will uphold it no matter where I happen to be. I would swear it on the Doorway, if it would give any of you any comfort.

[she means it. she smiles, wistful again.]

Thank you for listening to me. I shouldn't expect anybody here to care about the politics of my realm, and I won't burden you with them any longer. If any of you have need of any clothes or what bloodstone I can make, you can find me here at the Rookery, or at the Sanctuary often enough. I am very sorry that I lied to all of you.