EVENT ★ GILLIGAN'S ISLAND

[futurologists]

MAROONED Three days after the eruptions wrecked their havoc, a storm begins. It's not so different from the storm the recruits first encountered upon arrival, but this storm seems oddly and peculiarly driven. In some places of the islands it's nothing but pattering rain, but in other places it's strong enough to lift a fully grown human off his or her feet. And that's just what it does. It sweeps up recruits here and there -- not all of them, and there is no apparent method to who it takes and who it leaves. Some stay on the Nalawi islands, some are simply swept up into the sky. Here and there the storm grabs a Nalawi as well, but these victims are always dropped again. Sometimes out over the water, sometimes crashing down into land. They do not generally survive this. The recruits stolen by the storm aren't aloft for long. They emerge eventually from the tumbling, buffeting, blinding winds, spewed out onto the beach of a strange new island. This island, to anyone paying any attention to their surroundings, is a recent addition to the surface of the ocean. In fact, flying in the face of physics and statistical likelihood (much in the way the storm had), it seems to have recently been on the seafloor. This island was clearly once inhabited, although it's been a long, long time since then. Uniform structures can be found arranged in streets and avenues, now all thoroughly caked in barnacles, coral, seaweed, and other assorted debris of the sea. Here and there can even be found dead fish, suffocated when the water began to drain away and turn to open air. Most of them are horrifying, the things that tend to keep to the dark depths of the water. Toward the center of this empty, silent, sea-claimed city a giant sea serpent threads around and through several buildings. It's just as dead as the rest of them, its huge, pale eyes staring at nothing. There are a few things here that aren't quite dead, though. Sometimes something armored, dull red, and hungry crawls out of some dark place. These creatures can't really be compared to anything on the surface, but they are each about the length of a human, with three sets of sharpened limbs held up off the ground, used for stabbing forward to pierce its prey, and one set of pinchers below that. The pinchers might anchor prey in place for easier stabbing, but they also create a tiny sonic boom when clacked. Standing too close to this can leave you dazed and momentarily helpless. These creatures aren't fazed by the lack of water around them, they're just hungry and ready to feed on anything nearby -- even each other. The danger they present to recruits is at least slightly mitigated by an unknown force, though. If a recruit finds themselves unable to handle one of the creatures or overwhelmed by it, the storm itself will lash out at the thing. This isn't a very precise defense, but it is generally enough to pick up one or both of the contestants and separate them. Nothing here looks anything like what can be found on the Nalawi islands, except perhaps the flora. It's difficult to tell. What trees have been left are waterlogged, petrified mockeries, it's unclear what they may have looked like while this island still lived. The buildings are all very inorganic, made of processed material and with the obvious aid of machinery. Whoever lived here was actually very proficient with machinery, it seems. Within the buildings, some residential and some commercial, can be found the rusted, now-useless remains of a technologically advanced society. Personal belongings can also be found, waterlogged and largely ruined, and all in an upset as if they had gone through frequent and destructive earthquakes. Still, they can tell the story of mundane, day-to-day lives here for anyone who cares to look. Food is going to be a little tricky to come by unless you're a fan of seafood; fishing will be possible for anyone who opts to brave the edge of the storm, and of course there are the bizarre delicacies so thoughtfully raised up from the seafloor, dead among the streets and buildings. Recruits would do well to be careful with those, though. There is a particular kind of seaweed that, while it looks perfectly innocuous, will cause vivid hallucinations an hour after ingesting, for 10 minutes to three hours, depending on how much was ingested. Above all else, though, is the eerie silence. The storm rages on, but although it completely surrounds the island, it keeps to the perimeter. Even the rain stays off of the island, though the sun is obscured by the heavy, ominous clouds. Thunder rumbles now and then, punctuated by lightning flashes, but there isn't a single sound on this gray, dreary, dead island that wasn't made by an ALASTAIR recruit. OOC INFO Recruits will ICly be here for one week, and OOCly the log will last for two. The storm will prevent any travel off of the island. Should anyone feel brave enough to try risking a trip into it, they will find it still possesses that ability to literally sweep recruits off their feet. It might also be due to this mysterious storm that no one on the island can seem to reach out to anyone on the Nalawi islands via jewelry network, nor to any of the NPC recruits they'd met at Oska. Players who signed up for plot slots will be receiving additional information, which we ask they share with the rest of the characters. You may sign up here for information that can be found while exploring the island, as well. Please direct any questions to the OOC write up.

Comments

[evantuality]

[That hits him right in the chest with another kick of shame. Here she is, thanking him with that mess of a leg. But the stab of feeling doesn't last long: there's a benefit to feeling as completely emptied-out as he does just then. He doesn't have the oomph left to sustain any real misery, aside from the throbbing backbuzz that sits in his throat alongside the taste of bile.

He kneels ungracefully, not far from her.]

Can I... can I help with that?

[He gestures at the bandaging, of which he's done enough of since he lost his eye to basically get the mechanics of. She shouldn't have to do that herself.]

[adlantisag]

[ The ghost of a smile flits across her face. He's uncomfortable, but trying. It's enough. ]

It is fine.

[ She's in enough pain to tremble from it, but she doesn't really have a choice but to continue. The pain will leave eventually, or she'll learn to live with it. She ties the bandage with quaking fingers before glancing up at him. ]

I am Kidagakash. You are well met, fire-starter.

[evantuality]

['Well met'. That's almost enough to draw a startled laugh out of the man, but it dies in his throat as a strangled little noise. For a certain definition of 'well', maybe, and not one he's all that familiar with. The introduction makes him pull his gaze away from her burned leg, look to her face. Kida: he knows of her, if mostly through the network.]

Kidagad... [damn it, his tongue is clumsy with the whiplash of the day. He focuses in and tries again.] Kidagakash.

I'm Evan. [He doesn't even bother with his last name; she didn't.] I... I don't know where anyone else is on this island, or I'd help you get to them, I guess. I pretty much... just got here.

[adlantisag]

[ He's 'well met' because she still has a leg attached. It's enough for Kida. He has enough of a head on his shoulders to get a grip on himself. So far so good. ]

It is alright, Evan. [ A soft name that falls easily off the tongue, a good match for a kind young man. ] I am sorry for such a poor introduction.

[ Now that she has no more bandage to wind, her hands drop, and eventually, so does her body, overcome by the experience still. Her leg is throbbing agony, and every movement makes her wince. ]

Do you have fresh water?

[evantuality]

[Oh, and there she goes and apologizes for the byproduct of being gravely injured. He stares at her, round-eyed and aching with empathy, but is forced to wince and shake his head to her question.]

I, I'm sorry, I don't. I just got dropped here, I don't even have my pack or my notebook or lanterns... [He cuts himself off, swallows, fists his hands in his lap. Looking at her there, he knows he can't pick her up, but good lord, she looks more exhausted and demoralized than he's seen anyone look, and no wonder. He firms up his expression.] But, but I can go find someone. I'm sure there are others here, that storm can't have just snatched you and I.

[God, he hopes. He stares at her, uncertain.] Would you be okay here by yourself for -- for I don't know, fifteen minutes? Twenty?

[adlantisag]

[ Fifteen, twenty minutes? Too long. She's too vulnerable. She can't have him gone too far. Change of plans. ]

No, do go so far. We will make fresh water, instead. [ She says 'we', but really. She means him. ] Find a cup, instead. And something to use as a lid.

[ She motions with one feeble hand to the bucket of saltwater she'd brought along, then makes a triangle shape with two flat hands. ] A lid with some kind of 'peak', like this.

[ Be creative, she doesn't say. She fans the fingers of one hand. ]

Five minutes. Please.

[ If another monster shows up, that'll be it for her. ]

[evantuality]

[He stares for a moment before those instructions parse, and then Evan exclaims, popping up from his kneel to standing.]

You're talking about distilling. Of course. Of course! I'll -- oh, I should have thought of that. I'll be right back, you, you just yell if you need anything, okay?

[He lingers for another breath of time, staring at her, before he turns and rabbits away with a quickness. A bucket, the bucket she'd arrived with, is still in the sand next to her and he marks it mentally as he goes in search of the other components needed. He's running off a memory of simple desalination experiments done in elementary school science class -- plastic wrap, if only they had plastic wrap, would fabric do? Could he find a scrap of tarp or something?

Fretting away in a constant internal stream of worries and attempts to alleviate, he begins his search amongst the ruins at the end of the dock. Almost everything is covered in a thick layer of barnacles and other sea life, or at least, everything that had been exposed to the open ocean before the earth-shaking event that had risen the island back up from the depths. Enough of the landscape had been disturbed that things have moved, toppled, revealed themselves, and Evan begins scrabbling through the detritus with urgent purpose.

When he returns he's got an armful of various bits and pieces. He hadn't brought the bucket with him and so had only had memory to go off of, and now he sits in the sand beside Kida again and begins trying tops on the dented bucket. There's a sieve, a bent piece of plastic sheeting, a broad metal cone with a hole where the point should be, and a series of small vessels that could sit inside the bucket. He talks as he experiments, feeling high-strung beyond his usual coping mechanisms.]

The sieve, I figured that was the right shape and if we could just get something to cover the top -- but oh, you know what, I think maybe this one, maybe with...

[It's comfort babble as he sets aside the sieve -- which had fit perfectly but for the handles on either side -- and takes the cone, setting it atop the bucket. The open hole at the bottom seems a problem but he casts about for a moment, picks up one of the beach's many gnarly rocks, one with a point at the bottom, and tries it in the hole. It fits.]

We'll probably get some steam leakage but not that much, I think it should be alright. [He takes the cone and stone out and puts them aside, bouncing back to his feet.] I'm going to go fill this up, you'll be alright, right?

[adlantisag]

[ She breathes out quietly in relief when he seems to grasp what she's saying, letting her head fall back on the sand. Yell if she needs him--it almost makes her laugh. If she needs him, yelling won't really help, but she'll have to trust him regardless.

She counts the seconds while he's gone, trying to get the world to cease tilting for just one moment. Her eyes squeeze shut; she tries to even out her scattered breathing. She listens to the dim sound of waves, of the storm.

When he returns he finds her much as he left her, and while her eyes squeeze shut at the sharp clanging of pots, she's otherwise glad to see him. Not for long, though. ]

Mmm, no need. There is seawater in my--I already--

[ In lieu of more talking, she gesticulates to the bucket; if he peers inside, he'll find just the dregs of salwater left, obviously sloshed out as she tore up to find him. ]

Is it not enough?

[evantuality]

No, uh, not -- not if you want more than a sip.

[In the terrible case of nerves Evan is subject to, he actually laughs, a short, rather strung-out single hah]

I'll be back, um, again.

[And this time he just about sprints, feeling the pressure of her helplessness. Just because they haven't been beset by crabs yet doesn't mean they won't, and he's remembering that as he runs about. The dock is still waiting there and he uses it to get him out over the water rather than stumble into the murky shallows himself.

He's back even faster this time, panting, thumping down beside her in the sand and with shaking hands begins to set up the apparatus. Honestly, getting her water isn't strictly life-or-death in the time scale of the seconds he'd saved by sprinting, but his adrenaline-soaked self has no luck parsing that. Soon enough he's got the colander set and an appropriate rock covering it, over the pail and the nested container within. He crosses his legs and holds the bucket in his lap, hands under the bottom, and worry plain on his face, he gathers the focus he needs to bring that same shimmering fire to his palms underneath.]

This, this will take a little while, I'm sorry. I'm not at full strength... um.