singillppl | May 2025 Event Plotting

MAY 2025 EVENT

PROMPT ONE: THE SHUDDERING EARTH: Quake activity in the area, paired with decaying infrastructure, reveals a way for Interlopers to make their way to the coast.
THE SHUDDERING EARTH — CONTENT WARNINGS: themes of natural disasters; earthquakes; potential avalanches; themes of exploration/survival; potential injuries, potential cold injuries/hyperthermia risk.

PROMPT TWO: THE LONG ROAD: Interlopers can now embark on the long and dangerous journey to Silverpoint, and make some grim discoveries on the way.
THE LONG ROAD — CONTENT WARNINGS: themes of exploration/survival; potential injuries, potential cold injuries/hyperthermia risk; corpses; dead npcs.

PROMPT THREE — TRY HONESTY: A dream leads to Interlopers being a little more honest with one another, in different kinds of ways.
TRY HONESTY — CONTENT WARNINGS: themes of honesty/forced honesty; potential body horror.

THE SHUDDERING EARTH

WHEN: Early May, onwards.
WHERE: Everywhere, Carter Hydrodam.

Seismic activity is well known within the Northern Territories. Both last year, and over the last month or so, Interlopers have felt intermittent tremors — the ground quaking beneath their feet, enough to upset some objects around homes but never quite enough to cause some serious damage. Interlopers have been fortunate, but the damage caused by these quakes have long left their scars over the years in this world: railroads and roads buckled and crumbled, bridges destroyed and tunnels and pathways caved in, cutting off access. The quakes can cause some serious damage.

Interlopers will find that out in the late evening of one otherwise calm day in May.

Animals will notice the signs of the impending quake before humans do, growing restless and agitated in the hour or so before the shaking starts.

A low tremor that makes items in homes quiver, the ground vibrating beneath your feet. It quickly grows more violent — items can be sent flying if they’re not secured. Light fixtures sway overhead, furniture will shake and topple over, dust and debris could rain down from above — some places worse than others, depending on the building.

Diving for shelter is the best thing to do, out of the way of windows and objects that can fall over. Finding something sturdy to take cover under. The shaking grows intense, especially in the Lakeside area. There is a strange and terrible churning of metal and stone, a crash, something giving way. Roars and crackles of noise.

In Lakeside, where the quake is far more intense, the sound reverberates around the area, but the sound can even be heard so far as in Milton — distant but noticeable. It comes from the direction of the Hydrodam.

The quake is fortunately short-lived and finally dies down. Interlopers will be able to come out of hiding and assess the damage and check on one another for injuries. Within Milton and Lakeside, some buildings that have never been inhabited by Interlopers and remained empty for a long time (and thus in states of disrepair) will be found severely damaged. Water pipes may burst, causing flooding in some unused buildings — ultimately rendering them now useless and uninhabitable.

Generally, it looks like large swathes of the area have come out unscathed — but there is a risk of avalanches in some of the more remote locations near to the mountains. It might take several days for Interlopers to take stock and assess properly, even check further afield.

Interlopers who choose to investigate the Hydrodam will come to find that sections of the dam itself have given way, the metal burst open and water spilling outwards and down the river towards the coast. The huge gorge which separates Lakeside and The Coast is a raging torrent. In time, these waters will eventually calm but it looks like the previously flooded sections of the dam that had meant it was completely inaccessible might be now free to explore with the fact the water had .

The Hydrodam has been in a state of disrepair for some time. Before The Flare, it barely had a skeleton crew running things. Now, with no one to maintain the dam itself following previous quake activity — it looks like this quake has been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Traversing through the dam will reveal that the lower levels are now accessible and can be entered. But Interlopers should take caution: while the lower dam is now free to explore, this section of the dam still contains freezing cold water that can reach knee deep on the average person. What’s worse is these sections are filled with debris: equipment, furniture and even random junk and industrial supplies that had been once stored there. Some are broken, and can can injury to the unsuspecting traveller.

Travelling through the dam through an Aurora would be incredibly dangerous due to damage in the building, with exposed wiring and partially flooded areas not mixing great companions. The utmost care should be taken when exploring and finding the way through, or it may spell trouble.

But what it will lead to is a way out. On the other side of the dam.

And a way out to the coast.

THE LONG ROAD

WHEN: Early May, onwards.
WHERE: Carter Hydrodam, The Coast

Coming out and down from the other side of the Hydrodam will bring Interlopers to the destroyed Connector Bridge and onto Coastal Highway — the main road that leads to Silverpoint. There are a few extra outbuildings on this side of the dam which are dry but not particularly comfortable — but it’ll make do in the face of recovering from getting through the dam itself.

But after that? The world is far more open compared to Lakeside and certainly less sheltered than Milton, meaning winds are incredibly biting and difficult to contend with whilst travelling. There is little in terms of cover, and thus Interlopers may need to really plan well in order to keep themselves alive. Hopefully Interlopers have come well prepared for the journey ahead of them.

A great deal of the landscape has been damaged by quakes, making the terrain difficult to navigate: with huge, icy ridges and gorges in the earth and roads — providing ample danger to travellers. But sticking roughly to the road means a straight-forward way down but it will take several days to walk down, given the difficulty.

There is nowhere indoors to shelter on this journey save for a single garage and gas station about half-way through the trek south. Interlopers will need to brave the outdoors, even sleeping out doors or in the shallow, sheltered caves that may be seen just off the road. Interlopers will need to huddle for warmth, keeping an eye on one another to make sure they make it through the night. The gas station will provide decent shelter and warmth, however, and even boasts a few supplies left of food, water and fuel. Some one has definitely been here, but with it being so remote, it’s no wonder it’s generally been left alone.

The reasons why will soon come to light.

On the road down, Interlopers will make grim discoveries: frozen, partially mummified remains of people, half-hidden in the snow and ice. Many of them appear poorly dressed for the journey, and look to have died from hypothermia or some other kind of cold-induced injury. Some may be found as if they had simply collapsed in the snow and died. Others may be found in small groups, huddled and slumped together — having succumbed to the cold. Suitcases and bags will be littered around with them — sometimes luggage will be left abandoned alone, as if someone just gave up carrying it.

Some Interlopers will realise: these are the remains of Milton’s original residents. The ones that made it out of Milton and Lakeside, only to die on the way to the coast. Dozens upon dozens of bodies, making you wonder if anyone ever made it out alive at all.

One long road, a graveyard.

And then, in the distance, where the ocean stretches out before your eyes: the outline of a village can be seen before the land meets the water. Civilisation? People?

As twilight falls, more curiously, a light blinks slowly on the landscape. It may be easier or hard to spot, depending on the time of day. What… is that?

Silverpoint.

TRY HONESTY

WHEN: May and into June.
WHERE: Everywhere.

It begins with a dream. You stand in the atrium of a large cave, lit by a large campfire — the smoke drifting out an opening in the cave’s roof above. Someone sits by the fire with their hands covering their face and as you draw closer and closer to the flames, you realise it is a woman who sits on the opposite side of the flames. For some, they will not know who this woman is but some will recognise her: Enola.

She does not speak, does not look at you. She keeps her face hidden behind her hands, almost-childlike as she sits. The light is low but it’s a pleasant, peaceful kind of ambiance — even if Enola’s actions are a little strange, almost troubling. If you listen carefully, you’re almost sure you can quietly hear crying.

Across the campfire, on your own side of it, there are three stones laid out on the floor, each of them carved with a rune of sorts. It’s hard to tell what the runes mean, exactly. They don’t appear to be in any symbolic or runic language you’ve seen before. Even if you don’t understand them, you find yourself drawn to one of these runes.

You move to kneel on the cave floor and you reach forwards. Your hand hovers over it — a strange thrum in the air, like you can feel some kind of energy of vibration coming from it. You reach for the stone, Enola doesn’t move. As you move to pick up the stone, you feel the sharp burning sting of pain—

The dream ends.

You awaken. Not the sharp snapping of sleep to waking. Just the simple, natural waking that comes when one wakes up. But you feel… different somehow.

Honest. But honest, how exactly?

It all depends which rune you picked in your dream.

HEART RUNE: Interlopers who chose this rune will find themselves more emotionally honest. How this manifests is an aura of colour that surrounds the Interloper which will reflect their current emotional state — ie. golden for happy, shades of grey for exhaustion/tiredness, pinks for romantic feelings. The aura is dynamic and can shift with colours and even have multiple colours in play, depending on the complexities of the emotions.

MIND RUNE: Interlopers who chose this rune will find themselves with an honest mind, and will feel compelled to speak it. They are honest with their words: blunt and to the point, avoiding lies or bending truths. They may even feel compelled to reveal things that have been playing on their mind for some time — choosing to clear the air, and potential dirty laundry.

FORM RUNE: Interlopers who chose this rune will find themselves physically honest. Their previous hurts and injuries will become visible on their skin. This can be previous injuries or sicknesses the Interloper has sustained over the course of their life — even if they are now long since healed. It could be a physical manifestation of emotional or mental pain in some way. Your body no longer holds it secrets, they’re now plain and open for the world to see.

FAQs

THE SHUDDERING EARTH

1. Players are free to destroy their own homes/make them uninhabitable if they wish. Please amend the Housing Spreadsheet to reflect this. Commercial/Public buildings are off limits for destruction but players can handwave any other random buildings/empty homes in Milton that have been destroyed in the quake.

THE LONG ROAD

1. The Coast is now accessible to all players. Please see this page for further information.

2. Beach.....................

3. As a reminder. It takes about 24 hours to get from Milton to the Carter Hydrodam. Once out of the Dam, travel down to Silverpoint will take a number of days.

4. Three minor NPCs have been introduced! Molly, the owner of The Frozen Angler; her teenage son Jace; and Father Thomas of St Christopher's Church. There will be an opportunity to ask them questions, a top level of which can be found below!

5. Marra will not be open for interactions just yet.

TRY HONESTY

1. The durations of the effects are down to player choice, but will last at a minimum of three days or can last up to a full month or so and even continue into June.

PLOTTING FORM

EVENT POST

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Player Name: Yasmine
Player Contact: PM this journal or on discord @ redmaresociety !
Pacing: I had a really rough go of things (severe anemia, almost ended up in the hospital, etc) but I'm finally, finally starting to recover and getting back into game things. Thank you so much to all of the players behind his CR who have been so patient with me these past few months! As of right now, I'm tentatively saying I'm mostly a weekend morning tagger, and sometimes during the workday depending on what I'm doing.
OOC Limits: Horse or dog death or extreme distress, eye/nail/dental trauma

Character Name: Vasiliy Yegorovich Ardankin.
Canon: Original Character, historical. full info / warnings (these apply to synopsis below also).

[ Vasiliy is a revenant from 1930s Stalinist Russia, a devout communist, a 'true believer' for genuinely altruistic reasons, still unlearning Stalinism. He was born in 1910 in the industrial slums of St. Petersburg (then-Petrograd) and grew up a child laborer until the Russian Revolution and the start of the Soviet Union allowed him upwards mobility he never could have dreamed of. He climbed the party ranks, ended up in Orgraspred (human relations/staffing for the Party), and when the head of Orgraspred, Nikolai Yezhov, was moved to head the NKVD (secret police KGB-precursor) following a mass purge of his predecessor's people, Vasiliy and his cadre were moved with him to fill the gap.

From 1936-1940, including the duration of Russia's Great Purge, Vasiliy was one of the rare few 'good cop' interrogators in the Lubyanka classic to the Soviet split style of interrogation - he never laid a hand on prisoners or used intimidation, instead coming to them and leveraging his charisma, social intelligence, and gift for acting to appeal to them as someone genuinely concerned for their wellbeing, a friend, different and more casual than the other interrogators, willing to do favors like lighten sentences if they'd confess to the fabricated offenses and name names or sign their own death warrants — which he rationalized both through his own indoctrination and the very intensely cultlike atmosphere of the NKVD as well as a genuine belief that it was better for the condemned to sign and be immediately executed than to be tortured into signing and then executed.

When Yezhov fell from Stalin's favor, Vasiliy's days became numbered (it was typical to mass-execute anyone connected to an unfavored figure due to the cadre system of staffing), and one chilly April morning a few months after his thirtieth birthday, the banging on his door came in the middle of the night. He was arrested, interrogated, and executed with a single shot to the back of the head within a week.

But he came back. 75 years later, in 2015, Vasiliy awoke lying on his back in the snow in the middle of nowhere, the documents of a man of the same name and age in his pockets. He thought he was cold because he was losing blood, so he laid there for several minutes and waited to die—but he didn't. It was just the feeling of cold wet snow against a very much alive and intact body.

Vasiliy spent the next year adjusting to modern society and the way perceptions of his time and what he had done had shifted, learning things he didn't know about the regime—lots of them—and beginning to deprogram from Stalin and Yezhov's cults of personality very painfully. Within a year, the guilt was overwhelming - both over what he did, which he still sees as unforgivable, and also because he, the perpetrator, came back and none of the victims (as far as he knows) had the same luxury. Fearful of being discovered and executed a second time, Vasiliy trained as an EMT and fled to America on a work visa, knowing it'd be the last place anyone would look for him, and knowing that the US was unlikely to cooperate with any extradition requests.

For the two years until he arrived in Sing, he worked as an EMT, which never truly brought him a sense of peace but at least allowed him to feel like he was undoing some of the cosmic harm he did by saving lives. He arrived in Sing September 2023 and has been there ever since, and by now he runs a small grouse farm (with a yearling caribou and a dog as well) with his partner, Konstantin Veshnyakov (sputnik) while offering his EMS services on journeys, after disasters, and to anyone who needs to visit their home as a clinic. His secret is still tightly guarded; he's still racked with guilt and never really shed the traits that allowed him to survive as long as he did under Stalin's regime: paranoia, unwillingness to share any feelings or thoughts that might be damning at a later date, and exaggerated humbleness.

Aurora Feat: Nope! He's a total normie, with the exception of being unaging. His body is in a permanent state of stasis.

Wanted CR: Friends, people he can bond with over similar backgrounds (ie, industrialized poverty, growing up in an oppressive/monarchist government, etc).
Unwanted CR: Romance! Onsided attempts to flirt with him are welcome, but he's very much in love with his partner, Kostya

sputnik.

Event Ideas:

THE SHUDDERING EARTH: Vasiliy will be scrambling around checking for injuries (and mending those that are presented to him) after the earthquake, as well as trying to help others rebuild where he can. He'll also be accepting any help offered for repairing things around the farm, which only just took a beating in massive storms.

THE LONG ROAD: Vasiliy is attending to look for supplies and provide first aid, and bringing Lyudmila, his and Konstantin's yearling caribou, along with him to carry additional things that are found. Ask him about his "reindeer", get medical help for any cuts or scratches, or scavenge with him! He'll also be doing the rounds checking in from person to person when they all stop to rest, and helping dispose of bodies when they reach their destination.

TRY HONESTY: This and The Long Road are where I'm looking to do the most threading, because this is going to be huge for him in terms of trauma and guilt. Vasiliy's gunshot wound at the base of his skull is going to reappear and start bleeding; he'll have a bandage on it once he knows, but it still bears some questioning. More importantly, though, his hands will be bloody, constantly, bleeding and tripping bright red blood from their very pores no matter how he tries to scrub it away, a very literal embodiment of his lasting feeling that he has blood on his hands in a way he can never, ever absolve.

Anything Else?: Excited to get back in the groove! I'll be backtagging as I catch up with things, but no pressure to tagback if the threads are too old.

Edited 2025-05-31 14:57 (UTC)

THE SHUDDERING EARTH:
— """helping"" chloe with the boiler
— breaking joel's fall with his body (lmao)

THE LONG ROAD:
— scavenging with reiner
— meeting fitzjames/introducing fitzjames to lyudmila

Edited 2025-05-31 15:00 (UTC)

Oh hey! I've enjoyed our CR a lot so far so I'd love to keep it going! I'm thinking either The Long Road or Try Honesty -- they could team up for some scavenging or burial of bodies they find, or alternatively I'd be down for Levi to witness that gunshot wound and blood -- he's not a stranger to guilt, or execution even if he's managed to avoid it himself, so there's potential for them to bond further over their shitty backgrounds. I don't have a TL but I can hit you up if any of this sounds good (or you have other suggestions)!

Oooh, I love scavenging/burial for them especially because I think it would emphasize that lower working class pragmatism that they both share, which is part of why Vasiliy thinks so highly of him. I'm shooting for possibly getting some open starters up next weekend and I can link you when I do if that works!

Yesss excellent, and right back at him! Levi definitely considers Vasiliy "his people" at this point. And that sounds perfect!

May 2025 Event Plotting

vasiliy yegorovich ardankin | historical oc (russian 1930s)

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