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.

Since everyone else is asking questions:

Bonding Pacts: How revealing are the connections? Can you feel everything the other is feeling? Can you keep anything private?

Has anyone had a bad experience with a bond?

Did your bond help with corruption or beasthood?

Did you regret getting one?

[ ...and then another, since he might as well: ]

And unrelated: How many times have you died here? Does it have side effects?

[ By the 15th, this post will have disappeared off the network. ]

cw: this entire post deals with depression, abandonment issues, & loss of a loved one.
( you say that i'm perfect but am i? )

[ The feed opens up to an aggressively cheerful young woman beaming at the camera. ]

Sal-u-tations, residents of Trench! I'd like to ask you a question!

It's been a year since I came to Trench, and I've met so many wonderful people since I've arrived - including Evelyn!

[ She gestures to Evelyn who is, by all appearances, and Omen in the form of a tiny flying humpback whale. ]

I've never had a chance for this kind of celebration, though, so I wanted to ask: how do you commemorate the anniversary of something?

[to those who've been to the rookery and looked up this might be easy to put together, and definitely easier for those who have been inside jinx's treehouse - that's exactly where this pink-haired girl is sitting on the floor, in front of a sofa, holding a can of chicken noodle soup.

there's another can beside her but it's empty and on its side, with a huge hole in it - the pocket knife maul gave to jinx lying next to it.

her other hand holds up a chomper, pride, confusion and a bit of awe on her face - a face that's even more expressive at this age (not a tattoo or a piercing in sight) - before she looks directly into the omni, which fang is silently holding for her. what a helpful omen.]

Now I know my sister's here. See this? Hers, no doubt about it. So where is she? Who here knows Powder? No one better be messing with her.

[she'd say sorry about the soup, but she isn't. though ...this place? it looks like whoever she's staying with keeps a nice home. what a responsible adult they must be.]

everyone post cute pics of your omens here
or other pets if you have them
those are fine too

[There is literally no ulterior motive here. Sunny really just wants a collection of cute animal pics. And maybe it'd be good for keeping people calm, eyebleach style. He includes a picture of his own omen, Mewo. Apparently he's taken a picture of an already existing photograph.]

also
is there any way to make physical prints from the omni camera?
so the pictures could be put into a photo album
thanks

I would like to pose several questions regarding bloodstone gems.

Robby has had some luck in gathering information from Nevermind when discussing blood pollution and attempts to balance it. The pthumerian stated isolating specific abilities from the bloodtypes into gems could be an avenue. Darkblood comes to mind, the reality bending abilities used to warp the pollution or corruption directly from the environment.

I've done some initial testing with little success, hence this post. Does anyone have experience with making bloodgems they can share?

Are there bloodgem jewelers in the Trench you can recommend? Any information found in the Archives that can be useful?

For that matter anyone interested in the research is welcome to help or get involved, I am hardly an expert in blood magic itself, in truth. Donations of blood are welcome as well as we continue to look into this.

[ooc; here is the ooc plotting post for this player plot!]

[Huaisang doesn't know how to make it anonymous, but he knows how to make a funky new name, so— close enough. This isn't even important enough to be anonymous, he simply has... overbearing brothers. Of a sort.]

HELP!
HELP!
HELP!
HELP! HELP! HELP! HELP! HELP! HELP! HELP! HELP! HELP! HELP! HELP!



HELP!

[Okay, surely that is a good enough attention-grabber, so moving on to the real (not that urgent) problem:]

Hello! I have a problem, and I need someone to solve it!! I'll owe you one!! Please don't look away or new and worse problems will undoubtedly arise next!!!!

How do you get corruption out of a thing? You know, an object? Can I do that? I've already read about how to get corruption out of a person, but this is different. It's starting to stain my floor...

If it helps, it's something from my home. I don't know if that matters, I really don't know anything about this stuff.

Obviously, I don't want to touch it!! But it's going to be a hassle for me if I can't clean it up. If you help me out, I'll be in your debt!

[Hm he used that one already, well—]

Please help, it's so embarrassing!!!

alright my lil raptors!!! its ur fav person in the whole world w/ a few announcements!

and theyre pretty important so u better read up or there will be consequences!

( what's a raptor? don't worry, it's just a chicken from her world. she is basically calling all of you chickens.)

1. theres a girl here named chizuru. her un is lookingforshinsengumi for the record. shes my girl now so dont mess w/ her unless u want to watch ur step from when u wake up till u sleep!! if that doesnt get u, then be careful what u shove in ur mouth. u might burn it off!! 🔥 😊😊😊

2. id talk about the crazy ppl under trench but someone is already screaming about it so i dont have to!!!! good thing too so i can make room for more important matters.

3. THE CLINK N CLANK IS NOW OPEN!!! 💣💥💣💥💣💥💣💥💣💥💣💥💣💥💣💥

and whats the clink n clank? GLAD U ASKED EVERYONE!!

the clink n clank is the newest and the bestest shop here in trench. run by yours truly. i will make shit, repair shit, and im selling shit.

meaning weapons.

ill also break in any lock places u want me to do. i can repair other stuff too and make keys! im not free every day tho. a girls got a life u know. SO IF URE INTERESTED!!! just contact my other un CLINX!!!

guesssss thats it! dont get swallowed up down w/ the crazies!

[Vira-Lorr had reached a point of being more active gradually, and one of her new years resolutions was to make herself useful. All of that came face to face, however, with an innocent and well-intentioned gift on her door front. The video shows an utterly innocuous sight. It's a box. There's a half dozen cans of chicken noodle soup, some tissues and a bottle of orange juice in it. There's an actual gas mask next to it, and Vira-Lorr's shaking hand clenches a hand-scrawled note that reads...

DRINK THE JUICE.]

IS THIS SOMEONE'S IDEA OF A SICK JOKE?!? [She's seething, breathing hard, through her teeth.]

I swear, I will tan your hide if one of you is pranking me!!! Do not joke about this! First I almost fall into a freaking sinkhole and have to kill a zombie, and now THIS?!?

[Huh? What?]

(OOC: Vira-Lorr's having a wee bit of a flashback because that package? Oh, she recognizes it. And it stems back to an old event in the previous game that was very traumatizing.]

[She’s been here for over a week now. Time to get the lay of the land. The video opens up to a particularly tall blonde woman with a golden skeletal arm and a smirk. She's here to cause problems on purpose.]

Greetings, hello, salutations. My name is Ianthe Naberius. I’m new in town, twenty two, a princess of Ida, unfortunately single and dreadfully bored!

Now, I come to you today, not only to introduce myself, but to ask something of all of you.

Who do you hate most in Trench and why? I’m trying to meet people, network, but it’s so hard and overwhelmingly positive! So consider this an open invitation. Warn me about that dangerous scoundrel who kicked your puppy, seethe about how much you despise me for whatever reason, tell me about your parasocial hateful fixation on one of the local divinity. It can be a minor slight you want to complain about, a friend of yours who owes you two perfectly intact human skulls, or it can be an actual danger to this lovely little community of ours.

Now, before you try to say “this is childish and stupid!” You’re absolutely right, but it is a necessary part of self care to allow oneself to be an absolute cunt once in a while. [Or all the time, if your name is Ianthe.] So let’s not make any grand claims to being above something like this, mm?

Feel free to use the anonymity feature. Or the privacy feature, I guess, if you’re shy or worried about being fileted like a fish.

[ Right, here goes. Nico is making this video from the Sanctuary kitchen, so forgive the noise of someone working behind him. ]

I'm sure you've all seen the calls for people helping to shovel snow or offering a room at the Sanctuary on the network this month. While I fully support both of those things, I'm here to offer something else to anyone who finds themselves in an emergency situation between the snow, the monsters, and weird impromptu lake trips out there.

It's called shadow travel.

[ That is kind of exactly what it sounds like. ]

I can take people two at a time from a dangerous situation and drop them off somewhere safe. This is a pretty draining power, so unless someone else has teleportation-like abilities they want to offer up, I will absolutely only be running life-saving free services.

For reference, shadow travel is like being on a roller coaster, in the dark, and cold. It isn't a long trip, since Trench is a relatively small place, but it can be pretty terrifying if you don't like any of those things.

[ Okay, that's about it. ]

If you find yourself in an emergency situation and need an escape, just give me, Nico, a call over the Omnis.

[Good day, Trench, and welcome to... whatever this is going to be. Here is one Palamedes, sitting at his desk in what may be broadly recognizable as his office in the Sanctuary, whether or not one has been in it before (it has, these days, a distressing worm-on-a-string curtain in place of a door). Palamedes shuffles through some papers, tsks, and gets up to simply walk off screen, although this is not an accidental post, for he does call back:]

Damn my filing system! Hold on, don't look away.

[So now: the sounds of shuffling, and also, footsteps on a ladder? Then the eventual soft thump as he hops back down, and finally his several layered cardigans masquerading as a torso coming back into view, before he sits back down in the chair with a hearty squeak of rusty metal.

He has even more papers now. A small pile of notebooks, actually, which he folds his hands atop before properly regarding the camera.]

So! I wrote a book. Are any of you in the publishing business? Here, locally, or otherwise? My wheelhouse is firmly the academic, and literature— while a passion project— is a field I know far less about. As such: publishing. Any tips welcome.

I am also in the market for some cover art, I think. My artistic talents leave a lot to be desired, but I've produced some helpful mock-ups, somewhere around here...

[Just kidding they're right here ready and waiting, and so he holds them up side by side:

( cut for Incredible Artwork )

...So, yes. His handwriting is, of course, perfectly legible.]

Like I said: I'm an academic, not an artist. I'll pay you in whatever you like, blood or stone or- [and he leans briefly off camera again, to mutter, then he's back] -or scones! Good ones, for people into that kind of thing.

[Yahoo... Draw him a horny squidmance cover page... This is ordinary.]

Obviously, children need not apply.

Oh, and the working title is Ceasefire of the Senses: A Treatise on the Juxtaposition of Passion and Reason, unless you happen to be my cruelest critic and dearest spouse, love of my life, in which case "that title is ridiculous" and it's actually called "that story in your fifty notebooks." Regardless.

[He pats the pile of notebooks, like, his title is good actually? This might be a thinly veiled opinion poll about the title.]

And as it's the season, again, if anyone needs a professional hand with their lockjoint, come down to the Lumenarium- or Sanctuary- and ask for Palamedes. I'll take care of it with a silk touch; you get to keep the stones. Drawings of squids entirely voluntary for that one.

[ The image is that of young man with longish white hair that's been pulled back in a low ponytail. Seventeen or eighteen maybe, with a bright red mark on his face that looks somewhere between a scar and a tattoo as much as it stems from a mark that's also halfway between a star or an inverted pentagram. Garishly out of place on an otherwise pale and muted complexion and gentle face. ]

With a lot of the city shut down because of the snow, if there's anyone having trouble finding food or shelter, Sanctuary in Crenshaw will be helping whoever it can. It might not be much, but it can be a meal or warm bed for the night. [ And hope everyone likes fish, because there's a lot of that that's been salted and stockpiled. But also a lot of baked things served with some of the corruption-cleansing jams from earlier in the year.

Which, anyone who already volunteers there... you can bet you were already cheerfully accosted and asked to help, soup kitchen style. ♥ It's a team effort. ✧ Either that or clearing snow; it's a big place... albeit warm itself this month, and shining like a jewel from the lunar lighting and heating within. The renovated Moon Presence monastery seems to be taking the blindingly bright bone moon and reflecting it back in a gentler manner for anyone inside. ]

There isn't a cost. Just try to help out however you can when you're able.

[ He pauses, about to leave it at that but hesitating. Expression still neutrally polite and composed, but... flickering for a moment. ]

...if anyone would like to help closer to when Christmas would normally be, it'd be nice to do something special for the orphanage as well. Maybe donate some presents for them. 

[ That's it. He'll just quietly leave it at that. ] 

If I may have a moment of your time...

[Meaning, the network at large, apparently. Despite the tone, one of forced politeness, there's a definite note of annoyance there.]

... I assume the unique glowing effect is part of these 'blood types' I was informed of. However, what was not mentioned was how one deals with the inability to stop said glowing. It's grown tiresome at night, especially.

[Translation: Apparently I'm Paleblood and being your own nightlight sucks.]

How precisely do others manage this? I would appreciate any sort of advice, as I would like to sleep some time in the near future.

[ Rey looks awkward in front of the camera, this is not her natural element. She doesn't enjoy calling attention to herself, and this feels very self-indulgent, but save walking around and polling anyone she comes across this seems like the most efficient way to ask her questions. ]

Hello. For those of you who don't know me which is- probably a lot of you, my name is Rey.

[ She pauses, chewing on the inside of her bottom lip briefly as she tries to think of how to proceed. ]

I'm wondering how those of you who are used to running for your lives, or fighting every day to survive have settled here. How you found things to be useful to the community.

I was a pilot and a scavenger back home, there doesn't seem to be much call for either of those things here.

So I was just wondering how others adjusted.

Thanks.

CONTENT WARNING: psychological changes, hoarding, and obsessive behavior related to lavish desires

[ this video opens up with the blink of two eyes and a disgruntled chitter. perle is filming falco and focusing on . . . quite a mess of books in various assortments, stacked upon each other until they were in danger of tilting. among the open spines on the floors pinned with bookmarks were scrolls of paintings, sketches, statues, sepia photography— anything resembling a loving relationship, falco has seemed to have snatched it and keeps it all hostage in his little cabin home's attic like a greedy little dragon buried in precious, hoarded gold. he's pacing left, right, and has been caught mid-explanation as he works a red thread between his fingers. ]

( he rambles and an omen goes ham )

[A masked man in stained robes stands before a dense wall of almost unnaturally healthy rose bushes. The view sways slightly, as his Omen's attention drifts in and out.]

Greetings to friends and strangers alike. It is so good to be among you, alive and whole again. [The man makes a slight bow, a bitter edge to his voice quickly replaced by an audible smile.] I am Varré, surgeon and former guide to the lost. Now, I am among the uninitiated in this land's secrets.

But I do bring a gift from my homeland, and from my Lord. Thanks to His blessing, roses bloom in Lumenwood.

[A flurry of motion, and the Omen lands on one of the stems, causing a velvety red rose to sway under its weight. At this distance, it fills half the view. Varré turns to address his audience, voice brimming with pride.]

They drink the blood from the soil, and transform its power into beauty and medicinal strength.

As a former guardian of the Rose Church, I am pleased to offer you all these beloved flowers and their refined extracts, at a price equal to the cost of their manufacture. These preparations can stanch bleeding, drink up rot from unclean wounds, clear excess blood collecting within a patient, and more besides.

And roses that have drunk sleeper blood take on beautiful new properties. By the grace of a Pthumerian I've yet to learn the name of, my own blood spilled by senseless violence has produced a bloom of vileblood roses.

[The view turns, revealing a gently rustling stem of pale roses, edged with streaks of green and pink.]

They've proven invaluable in dulling the pain of the suffering. But with these roses still so rare and fed by my blood alone, I'm afraid I can't part with much. My own patients require their service.

[The omen turns back to Varré.]

I would, of course, welcome the aid of any Sleepers willing to donate blood to such a beautiful cause. You would be compensated, deservedly. And any who wish to propagate the roses, do come see me. I would be pleased to furnish you with all the tools necessary to do so. These are blessings to be had by all.

[ooc: Varré's withholding a bit of information about these roses, which may be relevant to others. For more information, see here! If you want to contribute a new bloodtype to the roses, let me know, and more types will be unlocked and described on the page!]

My mother, Rose Da Silva, has returned to the ocean. I know she was close to a lot of people here and I thought it was important to let everyone know.

[ She hadn’t wanted to tell anyone, truth be told, but she knew she couldn’t selfishly hold onto the information when Rose knew and cared about so many people in this place and vice versa. But even this small amount of public acknowledgment cuts her to the bone. ]

[Oh hey, it's anonymous sender time again. Jun's been doing some thinking in the last few days.]

What does family mean to you? Like... what counts? Is it your blood family? What if you're adopted?

What if you don't know you're adopted? Does family become something like a lie in that case?

Do dead people stop being family?

I don't really know what family means anymore. It's confusing and there's too many emotions tied up in it.