Tending to the Sculls

I make boats! They're really nice, so I must be nice, too.

[tendingtothesculls-blog]

Yesterday’s Lunch

Went looking for food today. The lunchpail tree is still exactly where it was, and exactly as full of roast chicken sandwiches as I remembered. On a more eerie note, there was a sealed bag of lemon drops which I’m pretty sure I left there myself back in the day, and which doesn’t seem to have aged.

I’m not sure if the lunchpail tree keeps food good, or if you find lunch in it because I was expecting lunchpails to be on it. Tomorrow I’m going to try expecting it to be full of first aid kits and see if anything changes.

Unfortunately, the lunch in the pails goes bad if you take it too far from the tree without eating it, so it’s not much good as an ongoing source of supplies. I went foraging and brought home a decent haul of roots, strawberries, and those little pink things that are kind of like a tomato and kind of like a fish.

It looks like this is going to be a vegetarian trip. I would like to be good at hunting, since I’m absolutely willing to eat meat someone else killed and cleaned, but... I’m pretty much not. I could pretend it’s because some animals here talk but I’d be lying.

[[OOC- Seizhi rolls for Pleasant Work and gets 6, 5, 2, 2, and 1- Success! He brings home a reasonable amount of supplies and gets 1 XP, although he would as soon forgo the XP in exchange for a hamburger.]]

[abyssgazingmemer-blog]

mic check

It’s rumored that I’m not really a Tumblr person, and yet, here I am, on Tumblr anyway.

Feel free to draw a wide range of conclusions from this without consulting me, of course.

[ooc: still not sure where to start so figured I’d just post something open-ended, respond to this however you like but replies that include details in a way designed to get me less disoriented are appreciated. also please let me know if I’m doing anything wrong.]

[kaverititova]

Just when I thought you could sink no lower, you develop a taste for social media.

Let me bring you up to speed (tw: the sun):

Attaris (blindfoldedguide) has just unearthed that stupid time capsule we filled when we were children. Before that she renovated somewhere or other and threw rocks. (Possibly due to having some sort of sad.) She seems somewhat bothered that I am not awed and overwhelmed by her somewhat dated leadership skills, so possibly you could cheer her up by reassuring her that you are still her slavish minion. Or not, of course, if you are not.

Anthony (notaprodigyreally) is sniffing flowers, making booze, herding bees, and playing Twister solo in the wilderness. In an extremely wishy-washy fashion. If you are uncertain how to play Twister by oneself in a wishy-washy fashion, I refer you theretofore; although, at the moment, he cannot actually do anything solo without heroic effort, as company has just arrived at his metaphorical door.

Lily (somesoullessgirl)​ is very concerned about soul privilege, that all posts that mention the sun have tw: the sun on them, and that sea urchins should not be slandered. She has recently alleged that inanimate objects have souls, which I find eminently disturbing inasmuch as it implicitly upgrades her own status from “tragic oddity” to “horrifying wound in the fabric of the world.”

ablazinggirl has been focused on (tw: sun) being the sun, I assume.

tendingtothesculls has been around in passing and expressed some sort of wish that I die or something of the sort. Or maybe it was that I live. Or … maybe it was an offer of booze? I don’t really pay very much attention to him on the grounds that every time I do so I begin to become beguiled and forget that he is an abomination.

As for the great Kaveri Milenya Kalikovna Titova, I have been attempting with some futility to warn others of the duplicity of the spirits of the island and the damage that magic can work upon the soul and occasionally testing my own resistance to the same through interactions with a two-headed serpent that Lily has recently informed me is apparently named "Steve.”

We have mostly kept to ourselves except for squabbling—I would like to claim that I have been a model of enlightened debate, but, wrestling a pig and all—although I believe that Lily is currently visiting with Anthony. Really, I would say that squabbling has been the defining feature of what you have missed; oddly, however, something about the island air has rendered it invigorating.

It has not been the same without you, inasmuch as I assume you will now begin picking us off one by one or something else of the sort. I recommend you start with blindfoldedguide on account of her inability to see; after that, regrettably, the field is wide open and does most likely include myself.

[tendingtothesculls-blog]

If you actually thought I was an abomination, shouldn’t you be more concerned about provoking me?

[[Anger, rolls Communication and gets 6, 6, 5, 3, 2; a failure. Apparently I’m going to say a little more than I intended to.]]

Being awful would be very easy for me. If you think I’m going to be evil, you ought to be more cautious. If you think I’m not going to be evil, you should be nicer.

I suspect you are simply looking for reasons to justify the kind of judgments you enjoy making.

[kaverititova]

The Sea Cave (Continued)

IC:

Today I thought I would wander among the fields of gold and see if there was anything of value.

There is a metaphor there but I am not sure if it is favorable or unfavorable to myself.

[EXPLORATION—1 2 1 4 6. Success!

I can claim an XP if I find something cool, mysterious, or scary.]

STORY:

The vast majority of this substance is trash; or, as trash, rather. Piled jewels and gold are of no value to me; less than none, as I am confident the spirit that keeps the place would serve me no good end were I to give in to its blandishments and claim even a single piece.

But more than that—I do not plan to leave this island, save I have the wish-granting power in my hand, and the currency is of no value here.

And it may, of course, be fool’s gold, illusion-gold, enchanted gold as well; the treasure-horde of Mt. Sipylus, the snake had told me, but that place is far away.

Yet here I find, half-buried beneath the gold and a string of pearls, a coral-handled mirror that I had when I was young.

I do not know how it came to be here.

I dare not touch it; I hesitate even to brush the pearls aside.

“I could breathe beneath the waves,” I tell the serpent—it is, of course, not far from me. It is never far from me, when I am here, for all that it pretends otherwise.

“I could breathe beneath the waves, when I was young.”

The memory is oddly painful now, like a thorn stuck through me, because I was so very young, so very foolish, and I came so very close to being lost.

IC:

In the end I found nothing of any interest. An old mirror. More gold and jewels. Some pearls.

[tendingtothesculls-blog]

Kaveri, I am pretty sure this serpent is just trying to talk you into helping him clean his house without admitting that he doesn’t know how to organize things properly.

[kaverititova]

I’m sure it would delight you were I to be cursed to be the eternal skeletal or serpentine guardian of some subterranean treasure, but I think I will avoid testing your theory too thoroughly for now.

[tendingtothesculls-blog]

I really just meant that you’d find yourself in a situation where leaving him to moulder on his pile of gold felt churlish and you wouldn’t be able to get away. That seems to happen to me all the time, which is why I haven’t been posting much.

Eventually I had to sneak away in the middle of the night because rabbits kept coincidentally showing up with baskets of laundry and idly soliliquizing about their lack of opposable thumbs.

But maybe you don’t have that problem?

[kaverititova]

The Sea Cave (Continued)

IC:

Today I thought I would wander among the fields of gold and see if there was anything of value.

There is a metaphor there but I am not sure if it is favorable or unfavorable to myself.

[EXPLORATION—1 2 1 4 6. Success!

I can claim an XP if I find something cool, mysterious, or scary.]

STORY:

The vast majority of this substance is trash; or, as trash, rather. Piled jewels and gold are of no value to me; less than none, as I am confident the spirit that keeps the place would serve me no good end were I to give in to its blandishments and claim even a single piece.

But more than that—I do not plan to leave this island, save I have the wish-granting power in my hand, and the currency is of no value here.

And it may, of course, be fool’s gold, illusion-gold, enchanted gold as well; the treasure-horde of Mt. Sipylus, the snake had told me, but that place is far away.

Yet here I find, half-buried beneath the gold and a string of pearls, a coral-handled mirror that I had when I was young.

I do not know how it came to be here.

I dare not touch it; I hesitate even to brush the pearls aside.

“I could breathe beneath the waves,” I tell the serpent—it is, of course, not far from me. It is never far from me, when I am here, for all that it pretends otherwise.

“I could breathe beneath the waves, when I was young.”

The memory is oddly painful now, like a thorn stuck through me, because I was so very young, so very foolish, and I came so very close to being lost.

IC:

In the end I found nothing of any interest. An old mirror. More gold and jewels. Some pearls.

[tendingtothesculls-blog]

Kaveri, I am pretty sure this serpent is just trying to talk you into helping him clean his house without admitting that he doesn’t know how to organize things properly.

[tendingtothesculls-blog]

So. This place again.