Here´s my appliccation. For now it is just the text, still need to apply the proper newspapery look.
Prompts:
What = Natural Disaster (Earthquake)
Where = In Heaven or Hell (Hell)
Wordcount: 1025 (text body only)
For the The Pleasant Cryer, local paper of Pleasentview, Enki Schmidt
Picture:
I kept the pause-border to make it look a little more like a sec cam footage.
In the Pleasant Cryer the picture is captioned:
„Footage of a pole mounted security camera in the Strangetown Mall.
Another camera outside the electronics store managed to capture the offender´s face (upper left).“
Headline:
Mass breakout from Hell
Alleged dark angel harasses shopkeepers in Strangetown!
Text:
(Strangetown)
It is an EASY to understand fact that more lives are lost as a result and in the aftermath of a quake, not by the tremor itself. Why is it disproportionately HARD to get into your heads that we need to be prepared for this?
- Rock Curious, Geologist
Loyal readers of our paper will remember the series of reports of Olive Specter sightings. Several unrelated people in different neighborhoods in the Strangetown desert claimed having seen the recently deceased alleged serial murderer in various shops. Every time she asked where to buy a wedding gown and a meat cleaver.
We are now in the unfortunate position of having to report that these sightings actually were genuine.
As Nervous Subject, gazetteer of hell, confirmed to our correspondents, there has been a mass escape from hell last week.
The event is connected to one of the many earthquakes the region is prone to. There has always been a lot of seismic activity around Strangetown and it is one of the reasons scientists flock to this otherwise unremarkable town. The quake in question didn't even register as especially heavy, but we know now that what our instruments picked up were just faint shockwaves of the real earthquake deep within the bowels of earth.
Said earthquake registered as „Jericho“ on the apocalypse scale (a transcendent unit of measurement that starts where our open-ended Richter scale ends).
Lacking any foreknowledge in the form an applicable prophecy, the shock of the cataclysm caused some devils to spontanously incarnate on earth. Many more are still missing and must be pressumed incarnated, too. Property damage was immense.
In addition to the measureable damages, the cataclysm made several factions within hell to lay blame for the event on each other. After all, they argue, at the bottom of any so-called natural disaster is always a divine being or anthropomorphic concept.
As an unforseeable sideeffect the earthquake damaged a security gate between the Tartaros, the innermost level of hell, and the Hades proper, an ancient facility that is hardly ever used anymore today. Hades proper mostly holds political criminals of mythical times, with Queen Niobe being one of the more prominent inmates. When the gate was breached, several hundred inmates flooded the Hade proper. Though the wardens fought valiantly, they were just nor prepared for the utter ruthlessness their opponents went at them with. Eventually they couldn't´t manage the onslaught anymore and the prisoners escaped.
Among the escapees are well-known historical and contemporary criminals like Lady Morgana Goth, Magnus Landgraab and Olive Specter.
Some of the fugitives are already armed again and dangerous. They travel fast and spread out over a large area to avoid getting captured all in one place.
Affected are first and foremost the Strangetown region, but also Viper Canyon, Oasis Springs and the outskirts of Abu Simrain.
Citizens in these districts are advised to keep a safe distance from the fugitives before calling for the police. Unlike ordinary ghosts the prisoners of hell are in their flesh and in possession of all the skills they have acquired during their lifetime.
The government of Strangetown, after getting informed about the event, didn't react with an entry ban or similar standard measures. This may lure residents of more conventional neighborhood into a false sense of security, so citizens are advised to spread word of the threat from person to person.
In fact, the police department displayed an almost cocky attitude when faced with the prospect of battling the escapees. We quote Police Lieutenant Theodore „Tank“ Grunt:
„So what? Our colleagues back in time busted those criminals once, and we'll do it again. Besides, back then the medieval city watch men had only halberds and stuff. With our cutting edge technology equipment arresting those fugitives will be breeze! (makes the gesture of firing a handgun) Bamm! The rats won´t know what hit them!“
The exact opposite opinion was voiced by Deacon Ophelia Nigmos of the United Church of EA & Maxis:
„What a wonderful opportunity! We can safely assume that the loosened convicts have been granted a second chance at heaven by some higher power. We need to assist them in every possible way to see the light and change their ways.“
Judge Traveler from Viper Canyon, who was visiting Strangetown before the earthquake, even stated that „most of those souls are actually harmless“ because „there´s a myriad of non-violent crimes that get you into hell. Short-fused killers really make up only a small fraction of the condemned.“
On a related note the aforementioned Mr. Subject stated that he could „neither deny nor confirm“ whether otherworldly being were among the escapees. Sightings of dark-winged creatures who unleashed lightening bolts in the Strangetown mall cannot be so easily dismissed as dressed up teenagers looking for excitement anymore.
Pleasantview´s famous son the palaeontologist Alexander Goth confided in our editors that a correspondent in Strangetown sent him a feather immediately after the prison break, when the first winged troublemaker appeared in the town. „It was astonishing and a little frightening“, Mr. Goth admitted, „how much the sample looked like a fossil that had come to life. Real primeval stuff, feather on the first glance, but still half scale on closer examination. A splendid example of a fully functional transitional fossil. That´s why I believe not to go out on a limb if I say that this „person“ in the mall was no simple cosplayer, but the real thing. Titan, giant, fallen angel“ - you name it.“
Yes, mythology is full of miscreants who got chained, tossed into Hades or similarly punished. If some of those beings are on the rampage, EA be with us all…
In fact, the most frightening aspect of the situation is our lack of solid information. The representatives of Hell have yet to come out about the full scale of the problem down below. Also Heaven isn't´t as quick as in the olden times to provide guidance. Misinformation and half-knowledge passed off as experts´ statements only serve to worsen the situation of the people of Strangetown.
Pleasant Cryer will keep you informed about the further development of this issue.
24th Feb 2015 at 9:06 PM
