epidemiology | EVENT ★ GILLIGAN'S ISLAND

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

( he laughs a little, a rare sound from the huntsman, rolling back to his heels as he watches her work — and occasionally spares a glance for the dragon, for he can't quite help himself. he really should have guessed, shouldn't he? the dragons of his world had been keen to eat whatever was convenient, after all. )

Feeding him could be a trouble as he gets bigger. ( at least in the islands, the range of animals never get terribly big, except for those ghastly crabs they'd had to battle back into the ocean. he hopes that they find a place more fruitful before Drogon's appetite widens much further. ) When we make it back to the island, my brother is unfortunately not far from dog sized. A wolf, with mismatched eyes. I'd rather he not end up a meal, even for a dragon so beautiful.

( he hopes that request is possible to reinforce. he doesn't want to see his brother hurt, above all, that is his priority. seeing her struggle with her knife, he pads at his pocket and offers a sheathed one for her. his knives are most certainly sharper. ) That might suit you better. Dull blades don't suit this work.

As would I, [ she agrees, accepting the blade with ginger hands. A dragon eats what it will, but for the sake of the fragile bonds she is building, she prays Drogon will abstain. ] You might have cause to fear Drogon's appetite if he were to remain with us, but a village is no place for a dragon. He will lair elsewhere, when he is large enough for wolves. He may even grow accustomed to your brother's smell, in time. [ She suspects that Drogon would gladly seize a horse, though he would never attack her own mount. The silver, and the horses belonging to her knights and khalasar, are too familiar to him. ] I have no wish to give offense, but you do smell of wolf to him, I do not doubt.

[ Terse though this Huntsman was, it seems she has eased his guard somewhat. Perhaps he is no surlier than my bear. She presses the knife into the fish tip-first, and this time, the steel sinks in. Satisfied, she lowers the rest of the blade onto the flesh and drags a long, thin line toward the head. ] A wolf for a brother, [ she repeats, smiling faintly. A dragon for a child. ] How came that arrangement, pray?

[ The belly cut, she leans closer and gently makes one horizontal cut at each end of the line, hoping for a cleaner spread to part the skin. A hand is gestured toward the body, as if to ask, And now? ]

I hadn't thought of that. ( he wonders how sharp a dragons sense of smell truly was. frankly humans could probably rightly accuse him of smelling of dog most of the time. he's been scrubbed relatively clean by the ocean and the storm, at least for a less sensitive nose, yet for a dragon, it had to be hard to keep a secret. ) As long as you don't feel the same. Wet dog isn't the most appetizing.

( the task is much easier with the proper tool. he shows little discomfort in opening the creature by the cut she's made, innards and insides spilling forth. he shows her a line to a scrape them free with her knife and goes back to watching her work.

he's quiet as he considers the answer to her question. his past tends to be something he keeps locked in his head, but more and more it is his time with the queen that he locks away. he's not ashamed of his family. ) When I was a boy I lost my human parents. I don't remember how. The wolves took me in and became my family instead. My brother is all I have left of them. ( it is sad but it doesn't show as it should. part of the heart he's lacking, occasionally he seems supremely indifferent to thinks he shouldn't be. )

I have smelled far worse, [ she assures him, watching as he pulls apart the fish. How not? She has visited Astapor, after the city had fallen in her wake. She had smelled the sick and the dying. There is no stench more appalling, after that.

The innards glisten in the dim lighting from inside the house, but the rest, she feels out with her fingers. To her credit, she does not flinch; she had shed that weakness the night she'd eaten the horse heart in Vaes Dothrak. Her movements are delicate, precise. If she were hungrier, they would be more sweeping and impatient.

His tale is brief, but no less strange for the content. When she is finished scraping away, she looks up again, curious. Every world is too full of orphans, it seems--but very few of them, she assumes, could claim to have been raised by wolves. ]

I am sorry for your losses. [ She pauses, but only for an instant. ] Both of them. [ It's a simple sentiment, one she could have and has stated with little effort. But though she scarce knows him, she knows what it is to be lost and alone. ] I had thought my world unkind, but I have heard little to convince me that any world could be otherwise.

[ Wolves are pack animals, she remembers that much. But how could they have raised a little boy? How is it that he speaks so well? A hundred questions rise in her mind, but she spares him by asking only one: ] What did they teach you, your wolves?

( he doesn't mourn his parents. it's hard to mourn something you can't remember. he suspects he was with his mother long enough to learn to speak. clearly he has no trouble with that, and it's not something the wolves could have taught him. they communicated far differently than humans. he'd have been at a disadvantage without the ability to speak human language, yet sometimes he finds speaking surprisingly ineloquent. with the wolves he could say much without a word.

he shifts onto the balls of his feet to pull the monstrous fish open, showing her how to pull a fillet from the spine with a few quick cuts and leaving her to finish the second one. on a skewer it'd cook fairly easily and quite well, though he's not sure what the fish will taste like. it'll be an adventure. )

They taught me honor.

( wolves did nothing without meaning. they protected their own and did not harm without cause. they would find a mate to run with for life, and honor that commitment until the grave. they taught him more than he could say, and when he thinks of family he thinks of the time he spent running in their midst. he has no regrets, as strange as his life has been. there is plenty more to say of how he lived and his days spent with the pack, yet there's something more imperative to think about. )

Our meat is ready, now we are only in want of a fire.

[ What honor could wolves have? Dany thinks to ask, but the man before her speaks very little. He does not seek to mislead me, at least. She can discern that much: while he is taciturn, he offers no guile. Perhaps what he has told her is the most she can hope to hear, for now. Curious though she is, she is not in the habit of interrogating guests from whom she has no need of information. ]

Then they have taught you more than most men know, [ the queen tells him, with all the certainty of a woman far beyond her years. She has seen much, and learned many hard lessons. True people are rare, and honorable men rarer still.

His next words betray his true motivations, she thinks, and she doesn't trouble to hold back a smile. ]

Rise, and stand a pace apart, [ she instructs, removing the innards with her bare hands to place them aside (perhaps Drogon will take these for his offering in place of the fish). ] Drogon has never misdirected his flames, but I would not have your boots burn. You have been too patient with me for that, [ she teases once more, standing and turning on her heel. Drawn by the smell of blood, Drogon is already sitting up and unfurling his wings in the chill, his eyes gleaming like two burning rubies in expectation.

The night air is lit first by a queer word, and then even queerer flames. Her Balerion is large enough now that his fire is growing dark again, the orange all but faded in the potency of his breath. Perhaps their supper will taste strange tonight, but it will not lack for roasting power. ]

EVENT ★ GILLIGAN'S ISLAND

no subject

SORRY got ridiculous writing anxiety this week

I hope you are feeling better! I love your tags, dany inspired me to reread asoiaf. :)

you are super sweet

WOW TYPOS i am sweet but stupid, like a bear, or a well meaning individual with a y chromosome

i didn't notice anything ...