MOD EVENT ↠ Happy Campers

[faderifting]

WHO: A lot of people
WHAT: Wilderness survival practice
WHEN: Drakonis 9:47
WHERE: The Vinmark Mountains, which we will continue to spell that way forever.
NOTES: OOC post. Teams below!

After everyone in need is given a brief overview of wilderness survival skills—how to start a fire, how to craft a basic trap, how to recognize any deadly-toxic local flora, etc.—teams will be transported to a point on a nearby mountainside and told to reach a different mountaintop within five days for pickup. They'll be provided with a knife and a hatchet to get them started but otherwise not permitted to bring anything except anything truly necessary for their health (lyrium for Templars, for example), their sending crystals, and their clothes. But if they hide extra things in those clothes to cheat with, that's between them and their team members and consciences.

The terrain between the two mountains is a woody, hilly, rocky valley, cut through with a river that branches into a few creeks and feeds a few ponds. There are caves, thickets, and a few small open fields, all populated by the expected wildlife and perhaps occasionally a hermit or little group of bandits. A road crosses through the valley, but there are no villages or permanent structures. If at any time the team is in danger they can't solve themselves, they can ask for a griffon rescue.

If they reach their pick-up point before the five-day mark, they have to hang out there and wait anyway, but they'll be able to do it in a nice spacious cave beside a spring, stocked with bedrolls, soap, playing cards, and two bottles of wine.

LOG TEAMS

These teams plan to log out portions of the adventure. Our general advice is to keep it chill and spammy, but you can do serious standard logs if that's what your heart desires. The provided prompts are optional, intended to help you get started, and you're welcome to ignore them or add to them if you want.

• TEAM 1: Gideon, Vanadi, Colin, and Sol might deal with three straight days of unrelenting rain (which may cause floods, depending on where they go and where they set up their camps) and a swarm of furious hornets.
  
• TEAM 2: Petrana, Loxley, Herian, Aenor, and Bastien might deal with a day and night of strong, unpredictable winds that try to topple shelters and whip away anything loose, as well as a patch of wilderness filled with traps left behind by overzealous hunters.
  
• TEAM 3: Benevenuta, Dirghe, Sawbones, and Adrasteia might deal with a heavy, raucous thunderstorm and a rotting rope bridge over a gorge that can only be avoided by either climbing up and down the sides of the gorge or losing half a day of walking.
  
• TEAM 4: Benedict, Marcus, Laura, and Vanya might deal with a rock- and mudslide, caused by previous rains, and a bear scavenging through their food that seems more lost and confused than aggressive.
  
• TEAM 5: Edgard, Sidony, Diana, and Valerius might deal with three straight days of unrelenting rain and a pair of raccoons that follow them for the entire journey, intent on stealing their food.
  
• TEAM 6: Ket, Richard, Barrow, and Erik might deal with a day and night of strong, unpredictable winds that try to topple shelters and whip away anything loose, as well as a flock of extremely loud and somewhat aggressive birds nesting above their camp.

HANDWAVE TEAMS

These teams have opted to handwave. Feel free to just discuss OOC what they would have gotten up to or learned about each other in the process. If you wind up inspired to play something out after all, you will not be arrested.

• TEAM 7: John, Vance, Cosima, and Nell.
  
• TEAM 8: Thais, Derrica, Maud, and Joselyn.
  
• TEAM 9: Ellis, Julius, Mado, and Nadka.

Comments

II CW ANIMAL VIOLENCE

[nonvenomous]

Beneath the tree bearing a load of clamoring birds, there are larger rocks. And among the rocks, a scattering of foraging fowl call up to their brethren overhead with raised voices.

Daylight is fading fast, and there’s no sign that they plan to settle down for the night.

Richard has been a quiet, reserved companion through the woods and in camp. He has a cool, keen eye for navigation and an aversion to small talk.

Presently: he rushes clumsily from the cover of a nearby boulder with a stick, and swats a scraggly grackle flat to its perch, crack. A cry goes up and the flock erupts -- too late -- he catches another mid-flight after a whiffed swing, viper quick, and with enough hostile force to send a puff of downy fluff up on the wind.

threadjax

[thereneverwas]

Ever in the process of securing their tents, Barrow is doing that now. And doing that, of course, means standing with both of his feet planted atop their tethers as they attempt to blow away, letting his own weight prevent their destruction as he grudgingly attempts to light a cigarette.

"Get 'em, Dick," he says with no inflection, and, beckoning to Ket, points out another smallish rock back in the other direction.
It's something to watch, anyway.

[sohighandwild]

When Richard just goes up and swats them, she doesn't quite roll her eyes, though there's a sort of "...I guess" in her look. She nods to Barrow when he points out the rock but goes to her existing pile first, and unties the scrap of fabric that's been holding her hair back at the nape of her neck.

It makes a very effective sling with a quick twist or two. Ket keeps an eye out for the first bird that gets the idea of resettling. Her method is not quite as thorough as Richard's, but her aim is good. She hits the first bird she looses at squarely broadside and it half falls, half flies off its branch with an angry protest.

"If you'd tied those knots properly," Ket says, casually, to Barrow, "you could get more rocks for me instead of just serving as a human stake." It's more in the way of observation than anything else. At least bird control is something to do. (It might get less casual in a moment, but in her defense, Ket is used to city birds that might steal your food but are unlikely to dive bomb you.)

[nonvenomous]

A fourth and fifth swing find only air. The element of surprise is lost, and Richard slides down into a sit against a bird-poop-spattered boulder to the tune of the flock cawing furiously as it scatters. A few brave (stupid?) birds are quick to return, only to think better of it when Ket’s rock slaps the first of them off its branch before it’s settled.

Dick cranes to watch it go.

He seems content to sit while he recovers, breath puffed hard and fast in the cold air, ears red at a distance. With an arm outstretched, he uses the stick to drag one bird corpse closer, as if this was a calculated hunting effort and not a cro-magnon outburst.

[thereneverwas]

"I'll tie my knots how I please," Barrow says dully, following Richard's sad trajectory with his gaze but making no comment.

A hearty lot, they are.

A bird flies overhead, and Barrow reaches up to swat at it, but misses by miles.

[sohighandwild]

Ket casually tosses a rock up and down, watching in case of the birds decide it's worth returning. Her gaze upward, she says to Barrow, "I could teach you, if you're not emotionally attached to terrible knots. But suit yourself."

After a few bird-free moments, she glances Dick's way and adds, "Do you think it's worth eating?" They have enough rations they can just ... not. At least for now.

[nonvenomous]

Partway through sticking the second corpse over into reach, Richard looks up at Ket’s question, and the answer is clear at a chilly, pale-eyed glance: he has every intention.

“I don’t see why not,” is a more self-possessed answer, issued as he leans to snap a smuggled knife out of his boot. “We can use the viscera for bait.”

They’re not game birds, all feather and bone rigged together with ratty muscle, but that doesn’t stop Dick setting about the mechanical (practiced) process of clipping through joints and peeling back hide, clumps of damp down adrift on the breeze where he’s sat.