Casting Shadows

It will be hard to top the personal enjoyment I got from yesterday’s prompt, but for today’s #RPGaDay2020 entry we do get to elevate the situation with the prompt ‘tower.’ You might have seen other responses today and you might have noticed that they are responding to a different prompt for Day 18. Most answers will be working with ‘meet’. I will be getting to that one tomorrow and they will be getting to this one tomorrow – crossing the streams as it were. That is part of the fun of having the possibility of randomization and multiple paths built into the design of the infographics.

It was not without relief that the four ghostbusters who have been risking life and financial security to be our framing device for these RPGaDay entries, Gray Stent, Diego Spencer, Dunhill Theodore, and Dieter Lemmon, climbed out of the foul air ducts. Armed now with greater understanding of what has transpired here, but still not in possession of the complete picture, the group decides it needs to get another and better look at the complex. That means going up to the roof and the unusual clocktower structure is close and convenient way to do just that.

“Great… now stairs!” says Lemmon sarcastically.

“No vomiting,” says Dunhill.

The last time the group found stairs they were scuffed and scarred by transit and heavy equipment being lugged around, not to mention being covered in graffiti. Not so these stairs.

“We are moving up in the world, I wouldn’t dream of it,” responds Lemmon with mock gravitas.

Gray and Dunhill break into Movin’ On Up and Lemmon soon joins them, while Diego smiles fondly and remembers the Jeffersons.

“I used to watch that show every day,” he says, blending personal history and fond memories into the fabric of our friendship and the characters’.

“So did we,” we all say, being of an age.

“Until I discovered more about science, I wanted to be a dry cleaner,” says Gray. “That whole idea was fascinating to me as a kid.”

“Even on our best day we aren’t anywhere near as well-off as George Jefferson, so I hear you on that,” replied Dunhill. “Good home, loving wife and family, respect, friends who are not possessed and not covered in fungus… man, we are so far down we’d have to sing this song 8 times just move up to the side walk!”

“I modelled my life on George Jefferson,” says Lemmon quietly, “His confidence and swagger were inspiring! Except instead of being an owner operator of a business…. well, until now… I went into-“

“Schmoozing?” interrupts Diego? “Swindling the university out of grant money?”

“No! Well… yeah, but… anyway, stairs!”

And with mockery and order adjustments galore, plus a little more sitcom talk to ground Diego and confuse his possessing entity, they tiredly ascend the nicely carpeted stairs up a wood paneled stairwell, toward the roof.

“This must have been where they brought investors and military brass to show off cool new weapons tech,” observes Lemmon.

“This is where we entwine!” I say as a very enthusiastic Diego.

The reaction is priceless, and to save time and awkward talk, I leap into describing the vista before them from the top of the tower stairs, before entering the main room of the tower itself (Area 18, due tomorrow).

They already knew that the whole facility was covered in large mobile vines, but they could not see what was really there because small vines had forced their way out through a wall (Area 28) and built up a large and undulating screen of vines. What they could not see from ground level is that from the main air shaft, the huge braided vine coming up from below was coiling and twisting itself into an even larger shape – that of an immense wicker man!

“What is it with these large anthropomorphic antagonists?” Dunhill asks studiously.

“To be fair, Lady Justice was in the service to the protagonists.”

“True, but still… giant marshmallow man; giant statue of an ideal, realized in metal as a woman; and now… a giant wooden…. human… caricature.”

“Are you bothered by the symbolism that all three lack something? Stay Puft was too soft, Justice was hollow, and this wooden thing… isn’t a real boy? Is this some sort of commentary on our times?”

“Dieter, these are our times… and don’t start singing My Generation.”

Lemmon with exaggerated surreptitiousness closes his mouth and starts instead to hum, about a lack of strings.

Diego shakes his head. “If that thing sheds its strings that would be extraordinarily bad.”

“The Greening of the Earth will begin!” I finish for him.

Standing there atop the tower, looking down on the seething rooftop of vines and the nearly completed form of their enemy’s walking wooden weapon, the ghostbusters has simultaneously never been so high, while feeling so low.

Questions: How do the elements brought together in this scene work to cause a shift in tone from the action phases and investigation phase which precedes it? What would this scene be like without characterization in the forefront?

Link: Later today a video will appear below because I will put it there. It will be related to this post because I will make it in relation to this post.

It’s interesting how such things work out, isn’t it?