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Entry tags:
TRAVELS // WITH // METHUSELAH
T R A V E L S // W I T H // M E T H U S E L A H
"Well then, Newcomer. Let us see what we can make of you."
When players go on hiatus, they may choose to have their characters go on travels with Methuselah for an amount of time. Here, out in the wilds, they will spend time honing a skill — trapping, archery, tracking, fire-craft, field-dressing, fishing. This, however, will come with a price: injury and illness are common, and the exchange OOCly is character being injured along the way, or getting ill. Rest assured, Methuselah will look after a character when something unfortunate befalls them — and he will safely return them back to the safety of Milton.
While he is a man of few words, and unused to companionship for the most part — he will talk to characters about things. He will be focused on the task at hand, the skill they're working on, he may tell stories he has grown up with — folk tales, and off the like. But he is also sympathetic to the plight of the Interlopers, and will do his best to help them in terms of information.
Characters will be able to ask Methuselah questions whilst on travels with him, but this is limited to only three. Players/characters must choose their questions carefully, and Methuselah will try his best to answer them. Characters may not like the response given, but that's the chance they have to take.
Here, you will find interactions with Methuselah: short threads that can be played out or handwaved with Mod discussion. Handwaved interactions can simply be the three questions posted by character and the response.
Please note that this is only open to players who have gone on Hiatus and chosen Option Two, and following the acceptance of this by Mods. This feature is entirely optional.
QUESTIONS
La'an Noonien-Singh | October 2023
no subject
Also, she's been hoping she might be able to learn more about... anything involving this place. Why they're here. How. So far, he hasn't been very chatty, and she's taken the cues to know when not to press and risk pushing her host too far. (Tact isn't her strongest suit but she's managed well enough during her undercover missions.) So when he offers her answers, insomuch as he has them, she takes her own long moment to think about what to start with. ]
Those bodies we found when we first arrived. Those people lived here. There are records of them noticing things changing before they died... What did you notice back then?
no subject
An imbalance. A decline. [ That is the short of it. The most simple answer he can give. ] People often notice things after it is too late, when things have already long since been set into motion. The Northern Territories have long suffered change, perhaps even more further afield. I cannot say for certain.
[ He does not know of the Mainland. He only knows what he knows, which is here. But she means for specifics, and he continues: ]
Colder summers and even colder winters — snow lasting far longer than it ever should. Storms more frequent, more ferocious than before — and growing at an ever-increasing rate. Nature is... disturbed. The bears awakening from hibernation far too soon, wolves and wildcats grown far more aggressive. Some even dropping dead without any notable cause. Ptarmigans abandoning their eggs, kits buried in their nests, beasts eating their young.
no subject
It's clear the old man doesn't have all the concrete answers she so desperately desires, but even his opinions and theories might shed some light on the pieces she's missing of this puzzle. ]
We've heard a voice... It calls us Interlopers and preys on our darkest thoughts. I think it's tried to convince more than a few of us to end our own lives. Have you heard it?
no subject
I have. [ There is a pause before he adds grimly: ] ...It has tried to convince me not to help you. To let you fade into the Long Dark.
[ His laugh is humourless, eyebrows raising as he considers. Yes, it will try to convince him, but he remains unconvinced. ]
Interloper. The fly in the ointment. A piece of a puzzle thrown into a different box. You were never supposed to be here. It knows this, and it wishes rid of you. It will do whatever it can to ensure that feat.
no subject
Only one question left. She doesn't have to think about it to know what she needs to ask next. ]
If it didn't bring us here, what do you think did?
no subject
I suspect the Auroras have brought you here.
[ There's a pause before he quietly adds. ]
... You were not the first. Another came here, long before you all. She wandered in from the wilds. Enola. But I do not know where she might be, or if she is even alive.
Edward Kenway | December 2023
no subject
[Edward chuckles as well, into the scarf he’s wearing to keep the chill off his face. He’s done some hunting and skinning since he first found his way to town, and now he’s no longer as rusty as he used to be, the old skill returning to him readily. It helps he has both his hidden blades now, one of them carefully parting the skin from the muscle it’s covering up.
He slows for a second, as if thinking it over.]
I have more questions than just three, but I’ll take them. [It just means he needs to pick them carefully. He works in silence for a moment, turning them over in his mind, before he finally says:]
How long was it, between the townsfolk all dying and us arriving? I saw the bodies, but the cold had preserved them well enough that it was difficult to tell how long ago they’d died.
no subject
[ A man is limited in what he knows and does not know. And he cannot answer everything. But he can answer three. As for the question, he pauses from his work considers for a few moments — his brown furrowing. ]
I cannot be too sure. I was not in Milton at the time. By the time I made it back to town, I suspect it had already been several days that the townsfolk had been dead. I did not know something had happened to them. [ The last part is slightly hushed, mournful. He is a nomad, but he had friends in town. Faces he was friendly with. People he cared for and who cared for him.
And the children. The children had been the most difficult for him to discover. ]
... I had a handful of days to prepare before you began to arrive. To try to handle some of the dead and organise the feast preparations. In total, no more than two weeks.
no subject
I'm sorry for your loss, mate. You must've known some of them well. [He can only hope that their souls aren't trapped here, forced to replay their deaths every time the aurora comes back.
Then he resumes the skinning.]
The townsfolk are all dead, that's true, but you survived—I think because you weren't in town at the time. [Whatever this was, it only took the townsfolk. Then something occurs to him: if all the townsfolk are dead, why stick around? Hell, why go to the trouble of putting a feast together?] But how did you know to start preparations for a feast, for when we came?
no subject
It is.... possible. [ He agrees after considering for a moment. ] And perhaps some may have escaped the town alive.
[ The next question does give him pause, enough to make him stop at his work for a moment. There's a slightly wry smile to his mouth. ]
It is a... difficult thing to explain. It was a... sense of it. A feeling. Much like when one feels a shifting in the tides, or the coming of a storm. I have long learned the skills of understanding nature that it rests within my bones — it is much like that.
I felt you were coming, that there was work to be done to welcome you to this difficult place. It is not your fault you are here, why would I ignore you? There is no need for such cruelty.
no subject
Thank you. Truly. I’m not sure we’d have made it through the first few days without your feast. [He does make something of a note to himself: that their coming had been—felt, by someone who had a strong connection to nature. Between that and the aurora, he wonders if there’s more forces at work than just the one that wants them all dead, that sees them as invaders.
But that’s not the question he asks, because his attention is still snagged on the thought of there being other survivors. Other people, who might offer other perspectives. He’s an Assassin, he knows that one question might be answered a hundred different ways depending on who you ask. That’s just human nature.]
Last question. You said it’s likely others might have escaped the town’s death—where might they go?
no subject
[ They are surviving, and that is no small feat. Especially for those unused to such a place as the Northern Territories.
As for his last question, it is a reasonably easy one to answer. There is only one place that he suspects the people of Milton could have gone. ]
Silverpoint. A fishing village and port on the south coast. I suspect they may have tried to go there in hopes of getting to the Mainland. [ There is a pause before he offers quietly. ] Whether they reached Silverpoint is another thing entirely, but I do not know either way.
Lalo Salamanca | January 2024
no subject
2. What lies to the East? (direction bodies were looking when they all dropped dead)
3. I'm too tired/brain-fried to write it out well (SORRY 😭), but lmao pretend he described the 3 headed wolf thingy from his dream and asked what it is!
no subject
2. "Plenty. Timberwolf Mountain and Bittermarsh Muskeg, even further lies Keeper's Pass — and then the wilds of Blackwood and the nameless places. There are wilder areas of the Northern Territories than the wilds of Milton."
3. "I know of only one thing such as you described. It is a old, old story. Often children would try to frighten one another with it. The Darkwalker. The Abomination. The Devourer. The Ending of Everything. It is said that the Darkwalker will awake from its slumber and swallow the world whole. One head will swallow the stars and moon and sun. Another will swallow the seas and lakes and rivers. The third will swallow the land, and every living thing upon it — and only then will the Darkwalker be satisfied and return to sleep once more."
Heartman | February 2024
no subject
2. Is there anything we can do to ward or protect against the Dark Walker?
3. Who was the last person you talked to that wasn't an interloper?
no subject
2. "Is it truly possible to protect oneself against the Ending of Everything? ... Some of the more superstitious folks of the Northern Territories would wear amulets carved with a glyph and coloured with blood to ward off the Darkwalker — one of the many superstitions of this place. I cannot be sure if such a thing would work, but I can show it to you, if you like?"
3. "One of the townsfolk of Milton, weeks before the events here transpired. A simple greeting and farewell as I returned to the wilds after a brief trip into town. They wished me good hunting and spoke of getting away from the Northern Territories. Life here had become too difficult. I hope they made good on those thoughts and made it to the Mainland."
Rorschach | February/March 2024
no subject
2) Is there a pattern as to the reasons Interlopers are brought to Milton?
3) Are they in Hell or Purgatory?
no subject
2. "If there were a pattern, I do not know it."
3. "... I have learned to tell the difference between something quiet and something abandoned. This feels like the moments before the world goes to sleep, and we are the only ones left awake to notice it. Perhaps that in itself may be some kind of Hell."
Makoto Edamura | October - November 2024
Rorschach | January/February 2025
no subject
2) Is the world going to end soon?
3) Does he know what happens to Sleepers that just disappear? Essentially Rorschach is asking about when the Aurora option when people drop.
Max Rockatansky | April 2025