( SETTING INTERACTION. )

[silentspringmods]

Non-Event Explorations


As of 2/3/24, this is the new page where all character interactions with the setting/explorations/etc unrelated to events will reside. Here are some examples of the types of things to post on this page:

- My character would like to search the library for xyz, would they find anything?
- My character is going to approach an NPC outside of an event and do xyz, what happens?
- If my character goes asking around for x, what will they be told?

Examples of things that should still go on the FAQ:

- What kind of books does the library have on x topic? (Character is not specifically searching the library IC).
- Does the town have x facility?
- Is my character able to do x?

And, when in doubt, it's fine to just post the question on your best guess and I can move it as needed!

Comments

QUESTIONS ABOUT EXPLORATIONS/SETTING INTERACTIONS.

[silentspringmods]

Re: QUESTIONS ABOUT EXPLORATIONS/SETTING INTERACTIONS.

[lestercraft]

Arthur was told he moved into Sweetwater three years ago - would there be evidence in his house or publicly available to confirm this? (He's going to recruit Helly to act as his eyes.) Would it show if there was anyone who lived in his house previously?

PAST INTERACTIONS/EXPLORATIONS - Do not comment!

[silentspringmods]

Imported from FAQ!

Q — coefficiently:

Maureen is initially going to be under the impression that her family/crew/etc may have ended up in a similar place as her. In an effort to track them down, she's:

-Going to report to the police station and essentially put out an APB on her own kids ('Hey officer these hooligans, uh, [checks notes] bashed in my mailbox and I'd love to press charges if you can find them'). As there any sympathetic ears?

-Going to rig together a radio transmitter and basic antennae with the intent to pirate radio a distress signal. I'm not an electrical engineer/personally not really interested in the semantics of how the radio transmitter would work (something something aluminum foil as an electrical conductor), but I'm wondering at which point this would have consequences. Would collecting suspicious materials and doing a science project in her basement do it, or will she actually need to transmit something to get slapped down?

(Candidly...I'm looking to see how fast I can track past some of the initial logical but less fun to play 'I need to locate my family/significant others' running in circles.)

Thanks!

So the APB would be treated as totally normal and the officers would express their sympathy. However, Maureen should be sure to create some visible damage to corroborate...

As for the radio, collecting things would only raise some eyebrows (why is a woman at the hardware store?) but wouldn't be enough on its own. The reaction to a distress signal, however, would be immediate, and might provoke the townies to the point of a chat with the local police as opposed to just Norman. They would view it from the perspective of Communists/Russian spies using radio waves to secretly communicate and her creating her own transmitter in secret would fuel the fire, so it would potentially come with some hefty consequences. Please notify us if you choose to do this as the NPC reaction will be situation specific and plot relevant.

Q — ribticklers:

Bouncing off of this question to ask about what the science books are like in the library! Does it all match up with what we'd expect from the time period? Anything in particular missing? Sans would be most likely to notice anything out of place in terms of physics.

So glad you asked, neighbor.
The library has the standard array of books, but there's an empty space about two inches thick where a book in the physics sections has been removed, scaffolded on either side by other theoretical physics texts. The books have a degree of dust on them, but interrupted by fingerprints that haven't yet filled in with more dust. Someone pulled multiple books recently.

R: Oh boy! Is there a card catalog that would show what books are supposed to be there?

Very clever!
There is - it looks like someone's pulled the three volumes of the Feynman Lectures on Physics.

Searching Norman's House - Prelude

[silentspringmods]

Q — workingthenumbers:

Following a rather... spirited discussion at Arthur Lester's dinner party for conspiracy and colluding, Arthur, Numbers, and Norton are going to try and snoop and get more information about Norman Pollock. The three of them want to do some breaking and entering! Their intended plan is to figure out where Norman lives. Then, Norton will approach Norman at his office for a doctor's appointment and distract him, while Numbers and Arthur try to discretely break into his house to investigate. (If presented the opportunity, Norton will also try and "accidentally" wander into another room to snoop around the office.)

Would we be allowed to do this? And if so, how far would they get before being stopped? Obviously, I imagine there will be hefty consequences for their actions. If you need more details, we'll be happy to provide them!

Chinhandsing gleefully at this... this will indeed be allowed! However, there will be a setting change that will require that this interaction be backdated to between the day of the dinner party and the 1st of February.

I will get back to the three of you on Saturday as to the specifics of this, as there will be plot-relevant information in Norman's house (as well as heavy consequences for retrieving it if players choose to proceed)! I will note, right off the bat, that if Norman's home address is obtained by tailing him, he is likely to notice and act as though he does not, even if a character is trained to tail others.

R: Excellent!!! Excited to see where this goes!

IC dates for Reference: on January 30th, Numbers will tail Norman to get the address, and then on January 31st, the group will try to break in/have Norton distract Norman at his office.

(In the meantime, sooo hype to see what's happening for the February TDM 👀👀👀👀👀👀👀)

EDIT: The Gang will try to initially find Norman's address via the phone book, and Numbers will tail him if they can't find anything! Regardless of the way they find out his address, Numbers will be scoping out the place and will likely be spotted by Norman, even if he tries to be subtle about it.

Searching Norman's House

[silentspringmods]

The Gang finds that Norman's address is easily obtained through the phone book, and isn't protected or anything like that. It's a very nice house, a two-story colonial revival a bit smaller than Marjorie's, rectangular in shape, with white siding and deep green shutters framing the windows that decorate the front. The bushes and yard in the front are very well maintained; it's clear that Norman pays someone more skilled than himself to maintain them.

Dr. Pollock's office is pretty unremarkable; a medical degree from Yale University hangs framed on the wall. Maybe that's where he got a taste for architecture more suited to states further north than mid-Atlantic Maryland?

The interior of the house makes a few things abundantly clear: Norman is unmarried, and has no children. A dog begins to bark from one of the rooms as soon as the door opens, scratching at the door separating it from the new arrivals. There are photographs of him with his father that seem to have been taken about a decade ago, two men in white coats bearing a faint facial resemblance to each other standing in front of a clinic with the long arms of a maple tree reaching out into the parking lot behind them. Ashtrays decorate many of the surfaces. There's some art in the home, not much, but clearly quality: a Chinese-style painting of a red-crowned crane in flight, a pastoral landscape with cows drinking from a lake rendered in oil paints. Both are originals, not prints. There's also an oil painting of a red-and-white springer spaniel in the dining room—the same dog carrying on behind the bedroom door?

In the bathroom, there is a medicine cabinet with a mirror front, and behind it, there are shelves. Among the household standards such as paracetamol, there is also a bottle labeled BENZEDRINE SULPHATE TABLETS and a much larger bottle, with brown glass blocking the light from reaching quite a number of ovular round pills inside. There is no formal label on this bottle—only handwritten in permanent marker in the doctor's scrawl, 103.

There is a locked desk in Norman's office, and a 1-foot-by-1-foot safe on the ground. Does either character have experience picking locks or cracking safes?

Signup Sheet - Evening Lectures with Dr. Ravichandran

[silentspringmods]

The signup sheet for the lectures on physics held by Dr. Ravichandran at the Sweetwater Community College. These are open to the public, but the signup sheets are located within the college.

Read more about the talks here in prompt V, and comment below if your character is an attendee, specifying if one time/occasional/recurrent.

[ribticklers]

Sans is a recurrent attendee! His general behavior in/after lectures is covered here.

[puzzleking]

Edward is a recurrent guest!

[inaxorable]

Raskolnikov attends occasionally!

Re: Signup Sheet - Evening Lectures with Dr. Ravichandran

[tedandroses]

Teddy will 100% be there! Taking notes like someone who just does that when someone stands in front of a classroom, and, depending on how good at boiling things down for the layman Dr. Ravichandran is, possibly drawing boxes around things they need to look up in the library before the next one.
~~STUFF TO LEARN~~

[For just in case I lose my mind/things change a lot in the next couple weeks, my OC Mira -- tagging her into the TDM today, hopefully -- is also going to be in attendance (at least for the TDM one) and will be following right along and probably generally acting ...kinda like Sans, lol]

[spaghettimonster]

Papyrus will be an occasional attendee! He'll tag along with his brother at least once to see what the fuss is about, and show up independently from time to time later on.

[yupe]

Okay, so: if Dr. Ravichandran says anything that might pertain to spacecraft, space travel, or alien life at his first talk, Jupe will attend every single lecture.

If not he'll be a sporadic attendee. (And probably get the highlights from Maureen.)

[coefficiently]

Maureen is a regular (and blatantly knowledgeable/enthusiastic) attendee.

[ribticklers]

Sans has been keeping an eye on the physics section of the library--have the Feynman Lectures on Physics been returned, and would Sans be able to see who returned them? He's been trying to find out but he's prioritizing not standing out as anything other than a frequent library user, and it's not like he's there constantly, but he is curious.

[silentspringmods]

They have not been returned, but the standard checkout and renewal period have both passed.

[frauseufzen]

Agathe will be spending a lot of time in the community college library, ostensibly studying, but in part this is so she doesn't have to check out any books/have them attributed to her record.

The first topic she's delving into is the history of Sweetwater: when and how it was founded, by whom, and significant people who have shaped it over time.
Bonus question, if any information exists: what was here before the town was built?

[silentspringmods]

Re: the history of Sweetwater: It's a pretty unremarkable history in line with what you'd expect to find in the DC area. As the capitol grew, more bedroom communities began to pop up as offshoots. There aren't really any significant people or pieces of information.

The town occupies what used to be Piscataway Conoy land, and was all forest before it was cleared.

[coefficiently]

Maureen will be triggering her homemade radio transmitter in the aftermath of Birdmageddon on March 3rd. She'll have taken the transmitter and its relevant power sources/homemade antennae out to the highest, most rural-y part of Sweetwater available to her within the traversable zone around the town.

The broadcast is frequency inspecific and is high powered enough that theoretically the broadcast should be detected by any spacecraft in the vicinity under normal conditions (weird force field around Sweetwater potentially not withstanding). Its likely picked up by surrounding radios. The message itself is a looping distress signal—JUPITER 2-1 SOS [insert a series of integers here that boils down to a clever math problem whose answer just happen to plot the alleged coordinates of Sweetwater, and indicate Maureen's house number on Haven street].

The radio equipment itself has been wired with a (non-lethal but deeply unpleasant) electrical current strong enough to discourage immediate interference with the broadcast. Maureen will set the repeating message off and then drive to the nearest diner to treat herself to a very hot cup of coffee in anticipation of being caught.

TW: torture/waterboarding/interrogation

[silentspringmods]

There is no answer.

Within about 15 minutes, the broadcast stops. Within an hour, a man approaches Maureen in the diner, insistent on having her come take a look at his daughter—she's sick, he says, and he doesn't know what to do; her mother is out of town. If Maureen refuses, the man becomes more and more insistent, until he's effectively dragging her out by the arm. None of the waitresses even seem to notice.

Maureen is, of course, shoved into the back of the nondescript stationwagon as soon as the door is opened. There is a glass divider between the front and back of the vehicle, and the door locks from the outside as soon as it closes. The man gets into the car and begins to drive—as her consciousness starts to fade as a small dose of some sweet, etherlike substance circulates in the back of the vehicle. Within 5 minutes, Maureen is rendered unconscious.

She wakes in an interrogation room, wrists handcuffed to the center bar of the table as Norman and an unfamiliar man in a hat, not the same one from the car, stand before her. A third man with horn-rimmed glasses, also in a hat and suit, sits in a chair toward the corner of the room with a notepad and pen, as though he's meant to be some kind of observer.

"You have to have known that wasn't a good idea," Norman drawls blandly, head canted to one side, regarding her with contempt. "What did you think was going to happen, really?"

The man without glasses steps forward, placing his fingertips on the table between them and shifting his weight forward onto his hands. "I need you to cooperate with me, okay, ma'am? Otherwise this will be unpleasant."

He asks the following questions:
— Where she obtained the materials to build the radio
— Who helped her
— What her intentions were
— Why she felt she needed to call for help
— Where her husband is, and if he knows about this
— Who all knows about this

If she answers, the man in the horn-rimmed glasses can be seen taking notes. On the other hand, if Maureen seems to resist answering questions or otherwise 'wastes' the interrogators' time, the man in the glasses gets up and leaves, returning with a coil of rope over one shoulder, a stretcher under that arm, and a bucket of water with a clean white washcloth hanging over the edge.

"One last time," the man says, nodding in the direction of his assistant, who is already unfurling the rope. "Let's just have a dry conversation about this."

If Maureen still doesn't answer in full, she is transferred to the stretcher while handcuffed, strapped down and laid out at an angle between chair and table, ankles slightly higher than her head. 'Night night,' Norman says as he wrings out the washcloth and drapes it over her face, eclipsing even the view of the ceiling lights. The waterboarding begins.

Maureen will be given a moment to catch her breath between spells, each time asked the same questions, the torture repeated if she evades. Norman's voice is a constant: while he doesn't partake in the waterboarding, he stands at her side, watching it, smoking a cigarette, his voice and periodic application of two fingers to her jugular vein setting the temp:

'Again.' Questions. A chance to gasp wetly for air. 'Again.' The rush of icy water, the sensations indistinguishable from drowning, a nervous system completely fooled into believing the body that hosts it is dying. Another break in the splashing to gasp for air, to feel it ripped away. Norman's voice: 'Again.'

This goes on, if needed, for hours.

How, and at what point in the process (without being tortured, early in torture, etc) does Maureen answer her interrogator, and does she name any names?

[lestercraft]

Arthur's Latest Scheme TM is investigating the stock in the shops and restaurants of Sweetwater! He's going to be asking in the diner where they get their fresh ingredients from since he's never had better ones and wants to know where to get them for his wife, when the greengrocers restock so he can come back when his favourite baked beans or whatever are back in stock - basically going to as many locations as possible with obvious out-of-town supplies, asking as innocuously as he can where the supplies come from or when they restock.

At the same time, Numbers and Wrench have been recruited to keep an eye out for any delivery trucks in town; Arthur's using the information he gets to point them to specific shops, but has advised them towards anything with fresh produce, like butchers or greengrocers, or with out-of-town stock again like canned goods from the general store, and advised them to tail any resupply vehicles to try and work out how, or even if, they are capable of leaving the Sweetwater barrier.

[silentspringmods]

Where produce, dairy, poultry, etc are concerned, he’s told for the most part that it’s local. Consumer goods will be met with an ‘Oh, I don’t know where specifically they make this’ or guesses as to the general state or region - the townspeople interpret the question as being about where the items were made, not where any truck comes from. Restocks are scattered throughout the week with no apparent pattern, but as is the case in the outside world, it’s usually on specific days.

Are they tailing the trucks in a vehicle?

cw: discussion of potential animal testing/harm

[regulararmybrat]

Margaret wants to see the effects of the mysterious unmarked white pill that Wrench gave to her to inspect--the one that Wrench took from Marjorie's house. (This thread here.) She wants to see if there are any rats/mice/whatever either at the college or maybe at a local pet shop where she can acquire a small animal and feed it the pill. (She reckons that's safer than having someone take the pill and monitoring them from symptoms.) Would it be possible for her to find a small animal to test this on?

[silentspringmods]

Absolutely. She wouldn't be able to access the laboratory animals at the college, but there is a pet shop close to the department store that sells, among other animals, mice and hamsters.

[pharadyne]

Norton will arrive at Norman's house on Friday evening as invited, dressed in his most flattering grey suit and a scarlet silk tie. He'll play things by ear, not jump too rashly, but if he perceives that Norman might be at all attracted to him, he'll be bold about following up.

(But first will pet Norman's dog because dogs are fantastic.)

[silentspringmods]

Both Norman and the dog standing directly behind him (quite insistently, trying to change positions from behind him to beside and in front of him) greet Norton with warmth when he arrives. Norman has, likewise, dressed with respect to the occasion, smiling as he steps to the side with a hand on Clancy's collar to allow his guest into the home said guest's friends broke into a few weeks prior (without letting the dog out of it).

"Well, it certainly looks like Clancy's very fond of you."

Once they're in the house, he offers to fix Norton a drink—the promised G&T is prepared before he joins him on the couch, one leg crossed over the other, head canted slightly as he regards his guest with interest.

"Her Majesty's secret service. I've been looking forward to hearing what stories you have all week."