Legends

Local Legends

What world is complete without legends? This page is a compilation of stories and urban legends, some staff-created, some player-submitted. If you have an idea and would like to see it posted here, whether for fun or to support a PRP you are creating, run it by staff first in a +request to make sure it's true to theme, and if it is, staff will add it!

MOTD Urban Legends

The following entries are taken from the rotating MOTD in game. If you haven't noticed, every day between 10-11am Eastern US time the MOTD changes. These are the magenta entries, the urban legends/atmospheric tidbits. The yellow entries are IC trivia, while the green are RL Vermont factoids. The latter two are not posted on the wiki, since they are covered elsewhere.

If you would like to contribute an entry for the MOTD, keep it under 700 characters (with spaces) and send it in via +request for staff consideration. :)

Full Moon Mining

Some nights when the moon is full, you can hear stuff deep down in the mine, and anyone who goes there never. comes. back. OooooooOOOoooo.

Rainbow Daze

Down in the Riverside Market, there's this great bunch of cool ethnic carts and booths and stuff. They've all got bright umbrellas and awnings, all different colors, but the way they're set up, it's a little like a maze, and every now and then, someone gets lost. Like, really lost. It's usually just some dork without a girlfriend, toting some old rabbit's foot in hopes that he'll get lucky. Don't know about you, but what's so lucky about a rabbit that got -caught-?

The Stranger on the Bridge

Sometimes, if you go out over the Tam at night, there's a guy/girl on the bridge, just watching the water. You might get nervous, since hey, it's a stranger, who's a stranger around HERE?, but they're pretty cool, and they talk to you, and it's really interesting stuff. Weird stuff. They say the river's full of secrets, and when you ask, they point them out, stuff you'd forgotten, or maybe stuff you never knew, and the more they talk, the less you're worried about getting knifed, the less you're thinking about what your nana told you, the ways the kids get lost. You want MORE, and soon enough, the sun's rising on that bridge, but you're not there. You're just one more kid stuck in a fairy tale.

What's Yours is Mine

Everyone knows the mine closed on account of people dying there, but what about the ones as didn't die easy? Some of the ghosts, they're damned angry at the ones who're still alive, like you and me. The mine's so cold, so dark, but they're trapped in all that stone, just like they were when they died. They're the young ones, the guys who never had a chance, just didn't have the time, but now time's all they DO have, and now they're waiting. They wait for someone to come in, someone just like they were. Same age, more or less. You feel their eyes prickling at you in the dark when you go in, just staring, furious at you for breathing, listening to your heartbeat. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Sometimes you get out. If you do, you're one of the lucky ones. Sometimes... Sometimes, they're just so ANGRY, so tired of being COLD, they tear you right apart trying to crawl in and get warm.

Old Tommy

Way back before the mine was closed, there was a guy there named Tom, except there were a lot of Toms, so he was Old Tommy instead, since most of the men were young, and he wasn't. He'd been around a while, knew his business. One night when the men were tired, they got to telling stories about the mine. You know the type. Boasting. Dares. Old Tommy, he listened to us younger men, not saying much. That's when the light came. Wasn't candlelight or lanternlight, nothing so warm as all that. Not electric, either. Foxfire, more like, and just creeping along the ceiling. Old Tommy, he took one look at that light and ordered everybody out. He sounded so sure, like he knew exactly what it was. Pity he wasn't there when we went back...

Howling Devils

Sometimes, on dark and moonless nights, you can hear the devils howling in the wind. What? No, I have NOT been drinking! I'm serious! Yeah, it sounds crazy, but try it for yourself, if you're not too much of a coward. It's that mine, I've been telling you for years it's cursed. The mountain all around it, there's a reason they called it Mischance. No, it is NOT just cats in heat, nitwit. I'm telling you, something's out there, and it's not just those old witches everybody talks about...

Urban Legends/Short Stories

These short stories and legends are too long for the MOTD, but still a "canon" part of the gameworld. If player-submitted, the player's name/wiki page is linked in the text.

Lefevre Life

Written by: Annapurna

Dear Diary,

      I turned eighteen today, and the acceptance letter just came in the mail. Looks like the scholarship went through, so I'll be off to college next fall, just like I dreamed last summer. I'm never sure which ones will come true.

You don't really think about it, growing up. The family gifts. The aunts and uncles don't make much fuss when one crops up, unless it's dangerous. It's just more lessons, really. I was so glad mine only happens when I'm sleeping. Hard to homeschool in your dreams. Not like Bridget, or Tim. He frightens me, sometimes. Everyone knows not to let him in the kitchen when he's in one of his fits. Pillows flying everywhere is bad enough.

What will I dream, there? At school? There will be so many people, so many strangers. More than there are in the entire city, all bundled up in a few miles of campus. I'm terrified, but...kind of thrilled? Maybe. I'm not sure. Actually, I'm a little nauseous. I don't know what to do, who to talk to. Papa's coming, so he'll help while he's there, but I've never really been alone. I know, I know. Such a whiner, right, Diary? Living fifty miles away, and suddenly the sky is falling, but the family's all I know.

Fingers are crossed.

I'll do fine. Maybe I'll make some friends, and who knows? Maybe someone else out there has gifts. Maybe I'll find them. I just hope they keep the Pact the way we do.

With hope,

Lavie Lefevre

A Tam Day

Written by: Annapurna

      She's gone. The funeral's not 'til next Tuesday, on account of Maggie and the kids, but I'm staying at her place for now, keeping it up, the way she asked. The milk and honey on the back doorstep, sure as sunrise, though there was ice on it today, what they left of it. It's a Tam day, ma would have said. Bless her. So much I should have asked, too late.

      The drive down to the river's rough, but those Miller boys have done well by us, and it's no fault of theirs the road's softening on the edges. Can't argue with the rain. Or snow. It's a shame, almost, to break the surface of that white silence, to shatter all those poor trees' dreams before they're proper in their winter sleep. Still got some leaves left on the old oak by the Peterson place, but it's nearing November now. Those'll come down soon.

      Fifty-six and still 'little' Emma to Mr. Brunson on the way through town, I stop for coffee at the general store he's run for fifty years, filling ma's old plaid Thermos and accepting what kindness he offers. For her, mostly, but for me, too. He knows as well as I do that he'll follow ma's way soon, and as he's fond of saying, he could've been my pa but for graduating two years late.

      It's not three minutes down the street 'til I'm leaving the car at the kayak launch down by Northbridge. Keys, too, of course. Ma always said taking car keys out on the bridge was asking them for trouble. Never did say what that trouble was, and I never could tell what was done for the truth of it and what was just ma being ma, but there's a truth in that, too, and today's a Tam day, after all.

      There's a hollowness to the old bridge underfoot, wood planks too solid to echo overmuch, but the wind's free, and the sound of my boots, alone, carries a little ways over the water's quiet rush. Season's too young yet for ice along the riverbanks, though I'm glad for gloves, and for the gentle curling of the coffee's heat steaming away into the early air when I get it out to hold. Sun-gilded, soon enough. As girls, Maggie and I would try and see fairies in it, but we never told our ma but once, and got a thrashing for it even so. After that, we kept our fairy stories off the bridge.

      They don't know that, these new folk coming in. Ones and twos, knocking about, spoiling the quiet of our loss. They're building. We know it, though we've let them be. How could we stop them? Been a long time since the Trouble, since the men came in the night, the fires, the Fae. The new ones will bring it back. They won't mean to. They never mean to. Ma used to say they tried to be 'more human than human,' whatever that meant. She'd know, though. She and aunt Claire were close, before they took her back.

      How long will it be before they come for us again?

PawPaw's Blues

Written by: Annapurna

Squinting through his bifocals, Old Jack cusses under his breath at the message on the page, then hunches reflexively, side-eyeing the open door out to the hall. Little Emma has some lungs on her, and likes tattling to her mémé. When no wailing protests against his language emerge from the toddling little minx busily flinging birds at pigs outside, he tosses the paper down onto his desk and slouches in his creaky leather chair, sprawling out to cross his booted ankles.

Well, crud.

That damn fool boy was right.

A burst of laughter from the kitchen down the hall, followed by a chorus of groans, prompts a guilty glance at the small TV screen on the wall, half-hidden by the hutch. The dark screen. With a purely internal curse, at himself this time for forgetting his ruse, he clicks it on to see the score on the game, then clicks it off, scowling at the dating profiles on his monitor instead. Three respectably hot redheads, a brunette AND a blonde, and none of them have stuck.

An Alexander. Annie's Jake, dating an Alexander?

Another glance down at Celine's loopy scrawl does nothing to change the words on the creased notepaper. Scarlet. What the hay sort of name is Scarlet Alexander? Her mama think she's the next O'Hara?

Jacques leans to the right, freeing a hand to reach around and slide his wallet free of well-worn jeans, then settles back, flipping it open with a frown. Can't play the old man card to wiggle out again this soon, or it'll wear too thin. Damnation.

Fifty bucks.

Tugging his glasses off and tucking them away, along with his emptier wallet, he slides the desk chair back and heads into the hall to find his son.

Next time, he'll bet the boy a hundred.