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Post by HAL 10,000 on Nov 1, 2023 19:05:13 GMT -5
Ophelia, that's one of the villages that was participating in the It Takes A Village campaign(either that or it was the village bank, I already can't remember).
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Post by Tiran O'Saurus on Nov 1, 2023 20:23:07 GMT -5
It was both. Mister Poe refused to let them go there because he didn't like the bank. I wanted to show that it would be a great place for them to live, just to make that bit of TVV a bit more tragic.
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Post by Tiran O'Saurus on Nov 13, 2023 20:37:55 GMT -5
I stood atop a vast dam, watching waves crash against it. Behind me was an impossibly long drop into the drained seafloor, while ahead of me the water practically reached my toes. The Mallahan Memorial Dam, named for the woman who allegedly slew the Bombinating Beast, was what separated the vast and terrifying ocean from the valley that had once been a sea that the town was stained by. I looked over the file the librarian had given me. Sightings of the Bombinating Beast -not to be confused with the Great Unknown, although they were tracking the Beast only because they thought there might be a connection- indicated mating patterns similar to salmon's. It would migrate to the area we now call the Clusterous Forest to lay eggs, and when the eggs hatched they'd swim out to sea and only to return when it was time for them to mate. But with the dam up, they'd be unable to reach the spawning grounds.
Like all animals, the Beasts would try to make their way through a vast and befuddling world that did not care about them. They'd try to go where their instincts lead them, but their mental maps wouldn't match the territory. Instead of reaching that seaweed forest, once home to a Beast and now my own home, (So, it seems nothing changed.) they'd reach the walls of the dam and be halted. So their eggs would be right here...
I jumped down and dived deep underwater. It brought back unpleasant memories of the floods, having to pull Ellington out of our house as it rapidly filled with water. Once I had the Beast, every one of those monsters in Stain'd would feel the fear I had of seeing a home be destroyed. Through the eyeholes of my diving mask, I saw the caviar-like eggs on the seafloor. I'd never eaten caviar. It struck me as something only rich people like Ingnatius Knight would eat, people unaware of the irony that their delicacy could have hatched into beautiful life. I grabbed the eggs and swam back to the top of the dam, where I put them in a bottle of water that I'd brought along. It would keep them damp for long enough to trudge back to town.
In town, I set up a simple apartment at an abandoned aquarium. I put the eggs in a fishbowl and decided to wait for them to hatch. It didn't matter when, really, since the Mallahans were sure to respond to my telegram any day now...
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Post by Tiran O'Saurus on Nov 28, 2023 20:54:21 GMT -5
Six months passed. Over time, the Beast eggs hatched and had to be moved from the aquarium equipment, to a bathtub, to the swimming pool at Colophon Clinic. They grew increasingly viscous, and it became increasingly evident the Mallahans wouldn't return my telegram. I looked over the files the librarian had given me one last time. Handing them over would end up being the biggest mistake of his life (and the last one, too, as it would turn out). Especially since, at the bottom of a page, there was a line he hadn't quite struck through. "Volunteer Factual Dispatch: From VFDhq: Telegraph Code 13667," it said. These people seemed smart enough to solve the mystery of the Bombinating Beast, I was sure they'd be able to get me a statue from a dusty lighthouse. I called Dame Sally Murphy to the Sallis mansion and got to work on a story to tell them. END OF PART ONETo: Mitchum From: HF File Under: Revenge, accounts of; resurrection, accounts of; Lemony Snicket, accounts of; monsters, accounts of; etcetera.
cc: IShq
Compiler's note: as promised, here are the remaining documents. Judging from the yellowing of the paper, they were made decades later. While the above documents where annotated by the second Hangfire, these were entirely created by her.
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Post by Resemblance on Nov 28, 2023 21:18:26 GMT -5
Very nice. The second Hangfire is a girl, that helps narrow it down. Perhaps Nurse Dander... The story so far has been very enjoyable, and given it's word count, I'll try rereading it all before Part 2. I wonder what one could find.
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Post by Tiran O'Saurus on Dec 14, 2023 17:11:17 GMT -5
There was a town, and there was a monster, and there was a boy. I was living in the town, and I was working with the boy, and I didn't think he could possibly be the monster. I was wrong. I was older than him, or perhaps just taller, and I was wrong. I should have asked the question "Why would Hangfire never show his face to me?" Instead I asked the wrong question. One wrong question, more or less. This succeeds others' accounts of it. The Hemlock Tearoom and Stationary Shop was the sort of place where the floors always seemed dirty, even when they were clean. They weren't clean today. The so-called restaurant sold nothing edible, and while the tea was supposedly drinkable I wouldn't know, as I only drink coffee. Still, it had newspapers delivered to it, which made it an acceptable place to sit and read before I boarded my train. The newspaper I was currently reading was what had made me decide now to put this plan into action, years after Hangfire's death. It read: The Daily Punctillio All the news, in fits of print
LEMONY SNICKET'S FINAL BOOK REVEALS VERY LITTLE, ANNOYING AUDIENCES
The End, the final book of the often-dead Lemony Snicket -who was recently acquitted of arson due to newfound evidence- revealed almost nothing to the general public. Sure, it told us the ultimate fates of some characters, but it left many mysteries completely unresolved. What's in the sugar bowl? What is the Great Unknown? What does VFD stand for? In an interview, Snicket claimed these were all the wrong questions, but this reporter disagrees! The only thing the story revealed was what happened to Count Olaf and Kit Snicket. A passerby in front of 667 Dark Avenue said CONTINUED ON PAGE 4
Kit Snicket. That was a name I hadn't heard in a very long time. It was because of myself that she'd made it to that island to die. We were imprisoned in the same cell after the Thistle of the Valley crashed, and I had used a skeleton key to free the both of us. If it wasn't for me, she'd still be alive and well in a prison. This brought me joy. The death of his sister surely made him suffer, and anything that did that was good. I heard a clock ring in the belltower: "Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!" My train was here. I left the tearoom, walked into the crowded station, and stepped from the platform to the train, the Bramble of the Gulch. The conductor began speaking over the intercom. "This is the 3:00 train leaving Downtown Station on an express route to sunny Stain'd-By-The-Sea! Enjoy the beautiful beaches and rich history of this prosperous town!"
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Post by Tiran O'Saurus on Jan 16, 2024 13:29:03 GMT -5
Stain'd-By-The-Sea now was objectively more prosperous than it had been when I was a girl. But as I walked from the train station to the ruined statue of Colonel Colophon, it seemed like everything I remembered about the town was gone. Hungry's was closed after Jake Knight -nee Hix- married the CEO of Invisible, Inc. The Lost Arms had been torn down and replaced with a swanky new resort, the Hotel Preludio. The lighthouse was still deserted, the newspaper business fully moved to the city. Even the building I now stood in front of had lost its better half. The Bellerophon brothers had reopened the old library building on the other side of town, so the old city hall building was now only a police station. Putting on my mask, I knocked on the door.
"Who is it? If this is a waste of time, I'll have you arrested for impeding a police investigation!" said the man on the other side of the door. He'd grown up a lot, but it was someone I recognized quite well.
"Officer Stewart Mitchum?" I asked.
"What's it to you? And why are you wearing that mask? We put the sea back, there's no more water pressure!"
"My name," I said, "is Hangfire." At that, he went pale.
"But... you're dead! I saw it! Lemonade Snickerdoodle pushed you into that sea monster!"
"Armstrong Feint is dead. Hangfire still lives."
"So... the guy Snickersbar killed wasn't Hangfire? Ha! I always new my parents were better cops than him!"
"Sure, we can say that. And speaking of... him... you are going to help me kill Lemony Snicket."
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Post by Resemblance on Jan 16, 2024 17:01:29 GMT -5
I have had a difficult time figuring out what parts are written by Ellington, but I think I figured it out. (So, it seems nothing changed.) (and the last one, too, as it would turn out) These two quotes are probably additions from her. Some quotes from the story foreshadow what's to come, such as the name of the manuscript being alluded to by the first Hangfire, the first Hangfire saying he underestimated his opponents, and other similar cases. I want to think this is Armstrong, but their knowledge of the future leads me to believe they're written by Ellington. I'm unsure though, because I don't know when Armstrong wrote these entries. I'm also curious who the compiler is. It's not Ellington, and it's probably not Stew...
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Post by Tiran O'Saurus on Apr 5, 2024 21:25:10 GMT -5
Maps of Stain'd-By-The-Sea tend to be spotty, due to the immense upheaval of basic geographical facts about the town. When the sea was drained, many things that had been within it were lost to the ages. One of those was something that could have helped Ink Inc had they known of it, an ink derrick that had crouched on the water like a boxer or a frog. An ink derrick is a large platform elevated above the waterline, containing a large needle that would plunge down into an inkwell and extract ink from the octopi within. It was a barbaric concept. My father had found it while exploring the Clusterous Forest, and used it as a headquarters against its creators. He had imprisoned many of his captives -Lizzie Haines, for instance- within the derrick. It was also where he wrote his memoirs. I looked sadly at his handwriting on the cover and read what it said. It was the wrong question. The question I should have asked was "Is this really the writing of a moral person?" but instead I asked the wrong question. I followed it with another wrong question, this one being "How best can I make Snicket pay?" But for that one I already had a good answer. After Officer Mitchum had told me about this place, I had devised a plan. Even now, he had gone into what was once Qwerty's office in what was now a police station and typed out a message on a device I had read about in my father's manuscript as I went through and edited it. I was Hangfire now, so I made the volume truly Hangfire's memoirs. Finally, I heard a train whistle. I rapidly went about arranging things within the derrick just so, so that everything would be in position for my final revenge against Lemony Snicket. Now all I had to do was get into position and wait. End Of Part TwoCompiler's note: Now, at last, we reach the documents that you specifically wrote and sent me. I hope that putting Hangfire's records before them has better helped you understand their actions. Dedicated to Beatrice: This story began before our love sparked, It ends after it burned away.
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Post by HAL 10,000 on Apr 8, 2024 8:45:45 GMT -5
Good to see this continuing.
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