(no subject)

[el_desheredado]

[Video Post;]
[Blink, blink! Nah, don't worry. It's just Tristero, standing in the City Cemetery, leaning on the handle of a rake. His smile is a little sad. Blackdog can be seen lying on a particularly flat memorial stone in the background...taking a nap.]

Hey, everyone. Kinda late to say "Happy Halloween," but...hope you had a good time last night.

But besides last night, last month sucked--I mean, let's not lie, last month sucked. It always sucks, I know, but this year sucked worse than most. I would have said it "blew major goats" but that just... Anyway, it seriously sucked and it just kept getting worse. It started bad and it just got fucking worse day by day. But I wanted to thank everybody for sticking with us. And I especially wanted to thank everyone who came up the mountain with us there at the end. I'm sorry it came to that. You put yourselves through a lot. But thanks--for your help and for what you did. You saved the City. You actually saved the City. So...thanks. And I mean that. I really mean that.

And...I thought you should know.

And, hey, after an October like that, November can't possibly be any worse. And, so far, the readings we're getting hold that up. It could be that a whole bunch of curse energy got dissipated. So, yeah, we might get lucky yet.

[That same small, sad smile as he reaches to turn the device off again. And--blink, blink! He's gone.]
[//video post ends]

[ooc: Tristero gave something up to chase out the witches and the goat, you know. But he won't tell what. He's busy cleaning up City Cemetery--because it needs doing--and thinking about it all.]

Comments

[thenormalsquint]

And now you just jinxed us all. Thanks.

[el_desheredado]

Oh, come on!

Okay, look: if this month is as bad as last month, I guess I'll owe you one. I don't know what that "one" would be for, but I'll owe you one.

[thenormalsquint]

Trust me, it'll be a big one. Only the big ones for ruining things by putting it out there in the universe.

[candothat]

What is this "curse energy," exactly? Does it differ from what you were measuring at the beginning of last month?

Ah--also, thank you for determining how to save the City. Your group has been good to us.

[el_desheredado]

Yeah, it's different. It's, you know, more in-house than that stuff. Sure, yeah, they were both major energy and stuff. I mean, you saw all the spikes on the meters. It wouldn't do that. Normally. Plus the timing was all wrong. There wouldn't be midday spikes like that for curses. They hit, they go up, and they stay up for a while. They don't tend to go up and down like that. And they're not so concentrated in one area. That's the other thing. It's--look, you can tell the difference when it's something internal and something external. We're getting better at this stuff. I hope.

You know how a couple of months ago--actually, I don't know if you were here, so I'll give you the short long answer. So a few months ago, we thought we'd figured out how we could block the curses from hitting everyone. Great idea, right? Wrong! It turned out that the City kind of figured everyone who wasn't available to be affected by curses was, like, a foreign body. So it was like metaphorical white blood cell attack time, right? Everyone got sick, people started disappearing. So that idea was a bust. Then we thought that maybe we could just reroute the energy somewhere else and keep it from hitting anyone. Oh man, wrong! That was that explosion where we needed to get all the pieces put back together or it was gonna be pandemonium forever.

So my point is--we've fucked up some, but we're getting better at recognizing what's a curse and what isn't. Me? I hope that maybe, until we can really and safely stop the curses, we can at least predict something about them and give everyone some advance warning--like a weather forecast.

And, thanks. We're trying our best.

[candothat]

I understand, thank you. [That was the least scientific explanation of anything ever, but thanks anyway.]

No, I remember both of these incidents clearly, and I am glad that you're making advances. This curse energy must have specific properties and obey specific rules, even if those rules are outside of our current comprehension; eventually there will either be an answer, or the City will be destroyed in an experiment and answers will be irrelevant.

[Because this is how Science works.]

[willworkforexperience]

You didn't have to. I could have given up my tail.

[el_desheredado]

Dude, it's okay. Seriously.

[willworkforexperience]

You're an awesome boss. Like-thing. Person. Dude. Bro. Dudebro.

voice;

[hexuality]

Novembers are never as bad as Octobers. The City's got patterns, I hope it sticks to them.

voice;

[olduvai]

Don't jinx it.

[ HAHA jinx... ]

voice;

[hexuality]

Hi, John.

Well, like Tristero said, things can't get any worse.

voice;

[el_desheredado]

Yeah, same here.

voice;

[hexuality]

You alright?

[olduvai]

To be fair, people are sticking with you because they can't exactly go anywhere.

[el_desheredado]

I'm not gonna argue with you on a technicality. Because you're right. But it's my hope that we're better than the crowd who used to be in charge.

[olduvai]

That all boils down to personal opinions.

[deadmanbusiness]

[Theo looks like the dead. Hah. Well... hungover and run over.]

And I found my knife.

[el_desheredado]

I guess everything's coming up roses, then, huh?

Tired, stepped-on, beat-up roses...

[deadmanbusiness]

Except I have no idea how my knife got up there and I really dislike what they were using it for.

[her_waterloo]

Can you track that? Curse energy.

1/2

[el_desheredado]

Yeah, we can!

[el_desheredado]

Sort of. We're working on it. It's a work in progress.

video;

[ladycroft]

It's good to see you looking well.

[Last time she saw him, he was a terrified boy.]

video;

[el_desheredado]

I think I look like hell right now I'm so tired, but thanks.

[ooc: oh, whoops: I'm a goof. The kid in the dream is supposed to be another random NPC who came up the mountain with them. I didn't have another account to use, so I just used his.]