Once upon a time, in a land not so far away...
You wake to the feeling of being watched. Of a set of unfamiliar eyes, of warm breath on the back of your neck. A jolt back to the land of the living, and it's gone. No matter how quick you are, how sneaky, the source of the disruption has long since disappeared, so you have no choice but to try and ignore it. To continue on with your day and try to set that moment of strangeness aside.
You eat, drink, speak with others. Perhaps you explore a little. Whatever it is you choose to do for the day, that feeling from the morning won't return. And by the time the sun sets and the moon glows brightly above, you've likely set those moments of strangeness aside. It's not like it's anything new, after all.
It's the same again for the next few days. No better, no worse. Something best ignored, right?
A speck of blood on the doorframe. That wasn't there before, was it?
A snap of twigs in the distance. A crunch of leaves.
Claw marks gouged deeply into the door.
Into the wall above your bed.
Scraps of red fabric, turned darker with blood. Pieces of fur. Of flesh.
Do you run and hide? Do you fight? Whatever you choose, it's definitely time to make sure your body parts aren't scattered next...
...what a horribly big mouth you have.
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Since first waking up on the island, characters have been stuck with that feeling of being watched. It isn't a constant. Isn't more than a few seconds at a time, dotted throughout the day. Investigation has never turned up much, and there's never been any sightings of the cause of it all.
Until now.
Throughout the first half of the week, characters will find themselves suffering from that feeling of being watched on a far more constant basis. Rather than it being a one-off, few seconds occurrence each day, that feeling will last for minutes at a time, and on multiple occasions.
However, it isn't until the fifth day that they'll start stumbling across physical signs of their monitoring. There are claw marks on doors. Spots of blood on the paths outside. A crack of twigs in the forests, or the imprint of bloodied paws in the snow.
Ten days in and those signs start finding their way indoors. Wet footprints, tinged with red. Claw marks in the walls, the floor. Torn sheets and the smell of wet...something. Whatever it is that's been watching you, its finally decided to come and say hello.
Two weeks in and characters will begin to have sightings of the creature, its fur dark and its eyes a glowing yellow. At times it looks like a wolf, prowling in the distance. At other times, it's walking on its hind legs, almost human were it not for the muzzle full of gleaming sharp teeth. Get too close, and it slips away like a shadow, gone between one blink and the next. It decides when to reach out to characters, not the other way round.
It's after characters finally get a good look at the creature that it starts leaving...gifts. Characters will start to find familiar items from their home worlds amidst the mess. The remains of a childhood pet, perhaps. Photographs of loved ones, faces torn almost beyond recognition. It's only once it delivers its final gift that the creature retreats to the trees again: a blood-splattered item of clothing that clearly belongs to the person the character misses the most at the time, alive or dead.
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fablelands2018-08-27 11:34 pm
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No, I was remarking to myself that I, in fact, did not have bacon and how this must be a nightm-
[Ron stops dead in his tracks to get a closer look at Peter in the light of day and out of the haze of his unexpected sleep. He steps on a few particularly crackly leaves and squints towards him.]
Ah, Andrew. Sorry, I didn't recognize you with all the buckles? And hours of time at the gym?
[He looks over Star Lord with an incredulous look, and then gives Peter a hard pat on the shoulder with a thumbnail of a grin underneath his bushy mustache.]
This seems more like a dream again. Let me pack my things back up and we can start navigating our way back to Pawnee.
no subject
Like I need to go to the gym. [ he scoffs!!! like he doesn't clearly work out every day tbh. shut up! ] And buckles are cool. All the best outlaws have 'em.
[ wait why is he getting defensive, he doesn't even know this guy. ] Andrew is a terrible outlaw name. Hard pass. [ pawnee?? that sounds super familiar. he racks his brain and remembers, his uncle driving him to see his mom, a green sign proclaiming pawnee to be however many miles away. ]
Pawnee, Illinois?
no subject
So, I take it that FBI agent Burt Macklin has been replaced by an "outlaw?" If it leads to you taking your physical fitness seriously, I applaud it. As for the outlaw name, I have a vast knowledge of Western cinema which I could use to provide a suggestion.
[Upon hearing the name of the state "Illinois," Ron pauses his packing and rises to meet Peter's eyeline with a stern look.]
Andrew, I'll chalk that up to an innocent mistake by either my brain or your brain amidst the fresh air. Illinois is good for only a handful of things: a pizza that's closer to a casserole than a pie, the Blues Brothers movie, and a plentiful amount of open land in which to bury secrets. Pawnee, Indiana, is the destination.
no subject
[ seriously they're both just going to go on like the other is delusional aren't they? ]
It's been a long time since I could talk about Earth movies with anyone. Is Kevin Bacon still the biggest star on the planet?
[ peter is listening intently to the list, he's never been to either pawnee but this sounds like valuable info. ]
That sounds a lot like Missouri, which is where I'm from. But I haven't been there since I was nine.