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pareidoliaooc2025-07-02 01:45 am
July 2025 | Event VI
The month ahead...
The nightly fog retreats as the old month dies, but the pervasive chill remains. As the new moon waxes, the periodic flurries of snow intensify, enshrouding the trees and buildings with a glittering layer of snow.
Winter has come to Zoar at last.
Post any happenings on the appropriate header below. Letting everyone know what your character is doing gets you bonus points!
There will be no IC event post. Please post prompt logs in pareidolialogs with your top levels. Use the following form to post your plotting comment below. Fill out as much or as little of it as you like.
Snow is everywhere this month, accumulating in soft, powdery piles. It crunches beneath your feet as you traverse the town, your footprints leaving a record of your travels wherever you go. Anyone with a keen eye will have an easy time seeing what the rest of the town is up to this month—at least, until the next snowfall comes to wipe the record clean.
Not all of the footprints are human, however. Tracks from rabbits, squirrels, foxes, and deer wind through the woods and bisect the paths, and the local crows leave their own impressions on roofs and branches. Despite the abundance of tracks, you never see any animals yourself, no matter how hard you might be looking. They leave no sign but their footprints, haunting the town like mocking ghosts.
Strangest of all are the prints that appear around the cabins overnight: bird tracks, anisodactyl, with long, thin toes and a tread about the size of a human foot. Sometimes the tracks appear by a single cabin; sometimes, they encircle two or more. Other times, the tracks go into the gathering hall, or lead down into the sanctuary cellar and back out.
Regardless of where the tracks appear, they always terminate in the same place: they lead up past the treehouse cabin and vanish into the fog. Should you try to follow them in, you find yourself lost far longer than usual — and wherever you re-emerge, a single, taunting black feather waits for you atop the snow.
☠ There are signs of other animals, too, but the animals themselves are impossible to find. You’ll have to rely on the sanctuary cellar for any meat this month.
Though the fog has returned to its usual boundaries, some inconveniences remain. During the night, just as you hover on the edge of sleep, you hear feet skitter across your cabin floor or the same eerie giggles you heard last month among the fog. The mocking creatures are still too quick to catch or injure, always vanishing the moment you turn to look. No traps you set ever catch them, and they cast no shadows in the light. Though they never directly harm you, the very idea of them is maddening, a nightly itch you’re never able to scratch.
Then come the thefts.
Some mornings, you awaken groggily to find some personal item of yours gone: a tool, a piece of clothing, some half-eaten, hoarded snack. Other days, you find something that isn’t yours, some similarly pilfered item belonging to someone else. The more you try to secure your possessions, the quicker they are to disappear — and the more the creatures giggle at you from the walls.
Perhaps you return the items they bring to you. Perhaps you don’t. But if you want your own stolen items back, you’ll have to find out — and possibly talk to — whoever has them first.
☠ The creatures will deposit whatever items they take inside another character’s cabin.
Nor are the mysterious creatures the only source of pranks this month. As the snowfall continues, caches of dense, perfectly packed snowballs begin to appear: tucked along the side wall of the gathering hall, behind a tree near the sanctuary, in the lee of boulders or stumps along the paths. The piles are never obvious, but they are noticeable, always stashed near well-travelled areas as if enticing you — begging you — to put them to use. A little snow never hurt anyone, they seem to beckon. Why not have a little fun for once?
You still remember fun, right?
Perhaps you give in to temptation. Perhaps you’re too mature to stoop so low. Perhaps you’re the sort of person who only retaliates if provoked. In any case, it would be wise to keep your guard up — or risk getting a cold, soggy softball down your neck.
☠ Aside from the mystery of how they got there, the snowballs have no unusual properties. What uses each character puts them to — if any — is entirely up to them.
QUESTIONS & FEEDBACK
JULY HAPPENINGS
Everyone is stuck together on a tiny mountain town, so everyone knows everything... If something happened publicly, or if your character is being weird enough someone could notice, or even if you just want something noted for posterity, let everyone know about it here.
Alexander J. Mercer | [PROTOTYPE]
Pronouns: he/him
Contact: hunt me for sport (contact me on discord)
Character Name: Alexander J. Mercer/Blacklight/Zeus
CR Preferences: no preferences :)
Permissions: it is still the only post on the journal so click There to Look at It
General Plans: the logging project keeps on keeping on. i need to ask about the smokehouse constructionationing, even if it's not gonna see much of the intended use this month. but other than that, Alex isn't going to change up his routine this month. well. he'll do his best not to, but...
Event Plans:
-the lack of fresh meat is actually kind of hugely problematic for him! like, massively! the meat in the sanctuary is useless to him, he still hasn't figured out the mutation needed to jump to infecting plants, and his cultivation is an ongoing project. so, as the month wears on, alex is going to be increasingly irritable and spaced out, and is going to be isolating himself more and more. by the last week, he's going to be all but vanished, no longer keeping up his daily hour at the gathering hall, and only really occasionally turning up at the work sites though in an extremely strange state. you might also come across him meditating in the hot springs, or other out of the way places.
-alex keeps everything that he actually cares about keeping on (in) his person, so it's probably not going to get yoinked? if anything turns up in his cabin, he'll be actively trying to return it, so that might be fun to do
-at the start of the month, alex is going to be pelting people with snowballs. he's bored, and it's something that's totally harmless. he's an extremely good shot.
Anything Else: bwaa
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Re: Alexander J. Mercer | [PROTOTYPE]
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Nova | OC
Pronouns: she/they
Contact: memegod420 on discord
Character Name: Nova
CR Preferences: any!
Permissions: https://girlbossedtoohard.dreamwidth.org/501.html
General Plans: I neglected Nova severely last month, so she'll be back in action here and sowing some light chaos this month. It would be nice to have her interact with people she hasn't really talked to yet.
Event Plans: She's very interested in bird tracks the size of human feet because WHAT? How big is that bird? She will follow it and get lost. She's not that concerned about the things of hers disappearing, but she will be concerned about finding other people's things in her stuff. The last thing she wants is anyone thinking she was doing this malicously as it would disrupt all the hard work she's done lately to convince people to like her.
This need to be liked WON'T stop her from building a snow fortress and waging war on anyone who crosses paths with her while she's got a nice handful of snowballs. She has never in her life shared childlike whimsy in the form of a snowday with beloved friends, so now would be a great time to start.
Anything Else: no <3 hoping I will be less MIA this month!