psl;

[pridecroweth]

jamjar au;


monster attacks, low resources, no revival mechanics ingame but no power nerfing either.


weapons are available but hard to find. monsters are 'corrupted' but their bites don't transfer it. they are however v slow to heal.


set in a super fancy old museum with active historical displays. however, there's been lots of damage to the building/displays, few are 100 percent intact. the pcs have set up in the basement where the valuable archives were kept bc there's an actual vault.


power has been jury-rigged by pcs (idk, maybe tony stark is wandering around). water and food need to be scavenged for and rationed. maybe 30-40 pcs at present?

sam checks in with them regularly but has a 'hide-out' that's actually an old security/control room that overlooks one of the larger display rooms.

Comments

day 22;

[pridecroweth]

[ They divvy up the work. People who aren't willing — or aren't able, which are the same thing in his mind — to face the darkness get set to other tasks at the basecamp nested away in the old archival vault. People cook, clean, build shit. The rest of them kill monsters, and set up regular patrols.

Sam volunteers for it more often than not. Idle hands, his old man used to say — and he'd know, wouldn't he? Still, he wasn't wrong then, and he isn't wrong now. Away from his work, away from the pack and the kids he taught, away from that old fucking house he's been watching rot into the ground, there's not much for him to do except sit in the silence and the dark and hear gunshots the way he used to listen for the liquor cabinet doors to open downstairs.

Busy's better. Easier. Only one person ever asks him why his maps are drawn from a bird's eye view, that guy Stark. He just shrugs, and says it's how the Rangers were taught. He's not sure if he buys it — he's a sharp one, that man, one to watch — but it gets him off his back well enough.

But this mission needs another set of hands. He doesn't really want to take any of the people he likes (too dangerous) or trusts (some secrets you don't come back from) so instead he finds Carver. Tosses a pack at him. Food, water, a kevlar/nomex blended vest that's been painstakingly repaired. ]

Get up. We're going north.

[ North. No one who's gone north has made it back, but Sam's surveilled it from the air. He knows there's some sort of armament battery about eighteen miles out — it'll be at least a week, but they're running so low on ammo that somebody's gotta chance it. Might as well be them. ]

[pridecroweth]

[ It's an unceremonious end.

Sam gets the woman and kid back to basecamp. The man, ultimately, doesn't make it. But they do learn to communicate a little, bit by bit. He leaves it with the others, people who are better-suited for this sort of delicate work than he is. Instead, he sticks to patrols — solo, now. Lost his taste for the other kind, and anyway, this lets him be a bird more often. It's a lot easier to sleep tucked away somewhere high, beak tucked under one wing. He doesn't need to concern himself as much with food or supplies, though he takes care to build a few caches throughout the city.

He does make it to that battery, somewhere in the second week. It's mostly cleaned out, except for one storage container that was blocked off by debris. It takes him nearly three days to shift enough concrete and rebar out of the way to get into the container safely, enjoying the work just because it makes him sweat. He has to hunt down an angle-grinder just to get the door open — the box is half-squashed with the collapse of the building on top of it. But his efforts are rewarded with a dozen working firearms, and boxes of sealed ammunition in waterproof cases.

He takes what he can carry. Buries the rest.

He figures out where Carver's hiding somewhere into the third week. It's accidental, really — he's just enjoying a high flight in the cool morning air when he spots movement far below. Crows don't have the best static vision in the bird family, but their ability to discern movement is pretty high up the list, and no matter how well-concealed Carver is, he's not able to obfuscate movement. Sam spots him stringing tripwires across a sidestreet — way on the other side of town, away from the battery. The guy's paranoid enough that Sam's not sure he trusts him not to shoot a strange bird on sight, so he keeps tabs on him like that for a few days: the occasional lazy circle high above, playing in air currents enough that it ought not to draw suspicion.

He does make mental notes of where the traps are that he can see, and that there's likely a lot more in the building itself. He notes where Carver enters and exits, what floor he seems to have set up on. The rest is going to be a guessing game, but he's willing to take the chance.

Sometime into the next month, he packs up some of his liberated supplies. The hydroponic garden that weird-ass robot guy set up is starting to yield fresh vegetables, and between Stark and that electro-kinetic, they've figured out a way to make basic radios, so he takes one of those, his share of produce, and a box of the ammunition (Carver has enough guns, he's pretty sure) and sets out. Picks his way across the city until he's at the right street, and then he picks his way through the traps with deliberate care.

He doesn't make the mistake of trying to go into the building. He's not stupid — he watched Carver work outside enough to know that even his skills might not hold up a hundred percent against whatever traps the guy set inside. Instead, he just camps in the lobby. A small, smokeless fire, some roasting carrots. Let the guy come to him. ]

[fortitudosalutis]

[ The fire burns. It erases the names that he wrote onto the walls but not the ghosts, never that. He goes back just once after, when the ashes are still hot, and looks for bones. He wonders if he's relieved not to find them. He wonders what that means.

Carver heads out. He takes the pack and what gear he still has, and he never did get to taste the bread or Sam's wajapi. It doesn't matter, he tells himself. It never could.

He finds a new place, colder and starker than the last. A building half exposed to the elements, bristling with rebar and sharp edges. A warning of broken concrete and unsteady floors save for one particular corner he can climb to and defend.

There, he writes the names again. Finds an exposed wall and bit of charcoal and he names his ghosts. He calls them his own but this time they don't answer. He can see them out of the corner of his eye, their shapes blurring and strange. No longer comforting.

He's out there for a while this time. The days blur. He doesn't speak to anyone, not even the dead. In time he develops a routine. Goes out at night, only ever at night, and sleeps restlessly during the day. He doesn't starve but hunger bites at him. He trains regardless, doing pushups when he can't sleep. Practicing combat forms.

It's daytime now, and raining. He ought to be asleep but he can't, formless shapes biting at him from the dark, and his throat feels tight and scratchy. He wonders if he's getting sick. If the exhaustion's taking a more physical toll.

That'll be a problem, Carver thinks, but he doesn't linger with it. He can't. So he trains with his whip, swinging at a stationary target. Listening to the echoing crack over and over again. He falls into the rhythm, almost meditative. And then abruptly he stops. ]

The fuck do you want?