DROPBOX

[peckishmods]

DROPBOX

This page is a quick way to get in touch with the mod team. If you have a suggestion for a future event, would like to request NPC interaction, need clarification on something, or have questions about anything Peckenpaugh-related, you can post that here. All comments on this page are screened initially, but threads with valuable information may be made public. You can also contact us via email at peckishmods@gmail.com. We will try to address all questions and requests in a timely manner. If it has been seven days and you have not received a response, we encourage you to bump your comment with an edit or reply.

What sorts of things can I ask about here?

• Questions about the setting at large.
• Questions about NPCs.
• Questions about the application or the character roster.
• If you need clarification of the rules, IC or OOC.
• If you would like mod assistance, permission or input on an event you'd like to run.
• If you want your character to do something, but aren't sure if it's okay to do, or if you'd like to know potential IC consequences before you do something.
• Suggestions for pcal slots, events or anything of that nature.
• Requests for NPC interactions with staff, townies and any other mod controlled characters roaming the hills.
• Requests for a roll if you're out late at night or otherwise doing something that might get you in trouble. What does the roll net you? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• Once a month you may request an RNG roll to see if you find anything cool at Spellunking or are successful in acquiring spirits from Elflock Liquor.
• If you need to drop a character or leave the game. :(
• And, honestly, anything game related!

Comments

[peckishmods]

After picking up his shell from beneath the trees of Thorntrail this morning and getting another, more precise feeling of strange deja vu ⁠— this deja vu definitely reminds him of Mr. Qualls ⁠— Lionel hurries his cicada to the Mothgarden fountain, opening the shell and getting sprayed with water. There in the hedge maze, he hears things, a conversation, though he can’t make out any of it at all.

Then, finally, at Wildgulch, he completes the final step. The hot springs bubble, his cicada takes flight, knocks its head on the cavern ceiling, then lands in his palm and pulls him into a dream. No, not a dream, a memory:

Lionel is shuffling through a stack of photos. Or, he's looking through the eyes of someone who is. The hands sorting polaroids aren't his, calloused and rough with old scars. Looking at each picture feels a bit like getting a snapshot of a dream. The details are a little blurry, indistinct, colors shift and faces change, but somehow Lionel knows that these are all photos from a specific series of events: the Muggle Outreach Initiative. Every once in a while, the hands pause on a picture and Lionel can get a good look at the details.

There's Lionel Qualls with his friends, many of the faces Lionel Lovelace, himself, recognizes as people who would later become teachers at Peckenpaugh or folks around town. Another photo with Lionel Qualls talking to a man in a tweed jacket. There's the man in the tweed jacket again. And again. And again. More often than not, engaging Lional Qualls or one of his friends in what seems to be uncomfortable conversation.

"Caleb, you're killing me, dear. Would you please help Bryce find his backpack?"

Lionel looks up. He's in a kitchen, warm and familiar. At the stove in plaid pajama pants and a soft pink t-shirt is his wife — no, not his wife, Mr. Qualls's — and Caleb thinks she is the loveliest thing when her hair is unbrushed and wild.

"He knows how to Accio, Mare," Lionel teases. It's Mr. Qualls voice, though, just as he sounds now, but more solid. More real. More alive.

A young teenage boy, unseen, chirps from his left, epiphanous, "I know how to Accio!" Bryce is up on his feet before Marilynn can stop him, wand raised, shouting, "Accio backpack!"

There's a crash from somewhere upstairs and Marilynn turns her big gray eyes on Caleb with a sharp scowl. Bryce stares with an identical steely gaze, though his expression is shocked and cringing. Mr. Qualls can't help but laugh, delighted. "Found the backpack. Go clean that up, eh, kiddo?"

As Bryce runs off, another boy walks in. A little older, a little taller, a little more strikingly like Mr. Qualls.

"I don't even understand why we're going to school," says the sullen older boy. Seventeen and surly, with perfectly coiffed blonde curls and a well-loved leather jacket. It's unmistakably Lionel Qualls. This Lionel slaps his own backpack on the breakfast table.

"You're welcome to ponder the necessity of public education, but I'm going to need you to eat while you do it. You're all running late," Mrs. Qualls says, brandishing a spatula at her son. He responds obediently enough, fetching a plate and going to the stove to load it with eggs and sausage.

It's all the ordinary chaos of a Qualls family breakfast, warmth running through every quip and complaint. Though this morning, Lionel can tell that Mr. Qualls feels a bit of apprehension about something. The Muggle Studies teacher joins his oldest son at the breakfast table, and does his best to remain casual as he tries to open a dialogue.

"El, we working on the car this afternoon?" Mr. Qualls asks his son as he watches him pick at his eggs.

Lionel Qualls looks up, looks Lionel Lovelace — or, rather, Mr. Qualls — right in the face and smiles faintly. Nothing lights up that boy's face like taking things apart and putting them back together. "Yeah. Finally warm enough?"

"Sure, sure," Mr. Qualls replies with a grin, then slaps his hand on the table as though he's just remembered something. "Hey! You haven't seen that old Embrace Infinity kook around lately, have you? What a weirdo."

"Nah. Tink says that guy's bad news," Lionel says around a mouthful of sausage. “Says that’s why Peter Pan’s gone.”

"Well..." Mr. Qualls drawls, and Lionel can feel a storm of thoughts whip by. "Tinkerbell knows what she's talking about. You make sure you and your friends keep away from him, huh?"

"I was for sure gonna go join a freaky cult, actually," Lionel Qualls quips, and that earns a snort from his father.

Mr. Qualls ruffles those perfect curls, just enough to mess them and earn another scowl. "Yer a crud, kid."

Lionel startles from the reverie, the memory still clinging like cobwebs to his consciousness, so vivid as to have happened just minutes ago, so real that he still feels that warmth, that love, for a family that isn’t his. The sense that this memory does not belong to him is pervasive, dreadful at first, but fading fast, taking the misplaced feelings along with it. Something tells Lionel that Mr. Qualls needs this memory, desperately misses this memory, but forgot it for a reason.

In Lionel’s open palm is a shed cicada shell, split open and empty, sparkling gold.