lonesome_moonflower | Recent Entries

It turns out that if you have enough oincs, the mayor of Swinesbury will let you just buy a house the villagers aren't using. The shabbiest one in the town, with a gnarled, leafless spiky tree rising from its garden, but nevertheless a place to hide out from the storms of humid season and the vicious beetles that swarmed the rainforest in those foggy, damp conditions. Getting the money wasn't a problem; there were many hedges in need of haircuts around the town, and a greengrocer happy to take as many clippings as Wormwood could hand over. The old pig from the school was also very pleased with the carved stones Wormwood had found.

Once inside the shabby house, Wormwood dumped absolutely everything they didn't need on the floor. There was one room and everything from floor to ceiling was made of wooden planks nailed haphazardly together, which was a disquieting sight. Maybe they could get something to cover it up with later, besides the pile of odds-and-ends - sparkly rocks, bat skin, a chunk of Mant chitin, a bottle of antivenom, all sorts of things - taking up the corner. The overgrown lawn outside got to hold their science machine, but more importantly it was a patch of dirt to plant seeds in.

According to the science machine, they were going to need another machine that looked like a pig with wings if they wanted to get much use out of the sparkly rocks. However, that was going to have to wait, because as far as Wormwood could tell this town had absolutely no protection against lightning strikes save for hoping they came down somewhere far away from you. The round science machine at Milliways had taught them to build a lightning rod; they could make a few more of those to cover the area before they ran out of rocks.

--

There was no way around it. None of the pigs in town sold bird feathers, and they hadn't seen the door to Milliways in a while, so Wormwood was going to have to catch a bird themself. That meant they needed silk. And that meant stealing it from the spider-monkeys.

However, they wouldn't be going alone. They lobbed a hunk of purple insect meat into a thicket of snapteeth, a parent rooted to the ground and their three seedlings cavorting under the outstretched leaves.

"Hungry?" Wormwood called out, watching the snapteeth tear the ex-dungbeetle apart. They stepped closer and waved another piece of purple meat in the air; the snapteeth's snouts whipped around to face it. "Come get it!" they shouted, sprinting towards the nearest web-covered tree.

With the young carnivorous plants hot on their leafy heels, Wormwood threw the slab of monster meat underhand into a wad of sticky webbing, right between two hulking eight-legged apes. The seedlings took the bait, hopping straight past Wormwood and the spider monkeys; the monkeys howled and lumbered towards the snapteeth. Wormwood crept around the furious clash of flora and fauna and withdrew an axe from their backpack, whispering apologies to the silk-wrapped tree with every chop.

There was a crack from the tree above. The spider monkeys looked up. The snapteeth looked up. Wormwood looked up. The cocooned tree crashed to the forest floor, splintering into so much firewood across a particularly dense-boned ape's back; Wormwood tore a fistful of silk from the fallen cocoons and ran towards Swinesbury.

Wormwood liked to sleep under the stars, but usually they chose a more secluded spot to do it in; they couldn't say why they'd picked the crumbling stone square just outside the forest canopy that night, as lush season turned to temperate season under the new moon.

They woke to a multicoloured lizard staring down into their face.

"Get moving, tree," said the lizard, shuffling backwards as Wormwood stood up. "Chop, chop!"

"Where going?" Wormwood asked the lizard, which was swiftly vanishing from sight as its skin rippled with the colours of the underbrush. It didn't answer, and they were left alone among the tall grass and ancient rubble.

And a machete, stabbed shallowly into the dirt. They took it; this wasn't the first time they'd used one, but they'd dropped the last one in the lake while being attacked by frogs. There was a metal ring, too, near another crumbling wall and some unfriendly brown flowers. With their new adventuring tools, they set off in the opposite direction from the rainforest.

----

Wormwood had a sneaking suspicion that wandering around in the painted desert picking up every rock they saw, then descending into a cave to break up even more rocks and take those, was not what the talking lizard meant by "get moving". But if this was going to be a day for achieving things, anything could be the key to their success. They'd also picked up two carved stones that were just lying on the ground near a spider-monkey nest; the pigs in town liked those. Maybe they would hold onto the reward money this time instead of spending it immediately on fancy pig food.

----

Usually Wormwood would have avoided the tall, noisy machines that walked on two legs and the stone platform they guarded day and night, but today they'd noticed that there was a slot in the stone that looked the right size for the metal ring. The machines weren't quick on the uptake; maybe Wormwood could run in, set the ring in place and run out again before they could react.

Wormwood dashed to the stone, their leafy digits wrapped around the curls of the metal ring. The pointy-hatted machine squinted its mechanical eye at them; the horse-headed one made threatening accordion noises. Wormwood slammed the ring into its track in one smooth motion and spun around to leave, then flinched and cried out as a sizzling ball of pain hit them square across the shoulders. Another one scorched its way across their hip as they ran with everything they had, and a third shot crackled past their ear as it missed by inches.

They hadn't been thinking about which way they were running. There was another nest of spider monkeys over here.

CHARACTER NAME: Wormwood the Lonesome
CHARACTER SERIES: Don't Starve (originates from Don't Starve: Hamlet)
CHARACTER PRONOUNS: He/him and they/them canonically; for RP purposes, any pronouns

[OOC]

Backtagging: I do a lot of this myself. I'd rather backtag a thread than drop it just because it's old.
Threadhopping: Sure, as long as it's okay with the rules/etiquette of the community we're playing in.
Fourthwalling: Not sure what specific fourth-wall-related practice this refers to.
Offensive subjects (elaborate): Common sense and "don't be a dick" should be sufficient; I don't have any subjects that especially upset me and are likely to come up in a written thread if nobody's deliberately trying to be a dick.

[IC]

Hugging this character: Go for it. Wormwood would love some physical affection.
Kissing this character: Sure, why not. I don't think Wormwood really understands what romance is, but a chaste kiss would garner a reaction similar to a hug. A romantic kiss will mostly just confuse them, and possibly fluster them, but if that's what you want then sure.
Flirting with this character: As above, Wormwood doesn't have a good grasp of what flirting is or means, and will almost certainly not flirt back, but I won't stop you from trying.
Fighting with this character: Within reason. If you randomly attack them they'll respond in kind.
Injuring this character (include limits and severity): Ask first if you want to severely injure them, but if a fight is in progress you can scuff them up. They don't have blood, so severe injury mainly means cutting pieces off, major blunt force trauma, or setting them on fire.
Killing this character: No permadeath. Both because I would prefer you didn't, and because any Don't Starve character who knows what they're doing will have at least one method of resurrection available and often multiple redundant ones, so it'd be difficult to stop them from coming back. Temporary death is fine though! As long as it fits in with the thread.
Using telepathy/mind reading abilities on this character: I'm comfortable with it as a player. Wormwood is pretty far from human biologically, but is obviously sapient and free-willed, and is metaphysically similar enough to the humans of their canon to have a ghost and a soul (two separate things, apparently), so it's your call whether the power would work on them.

Warnings: Unsanitary content and maybe some PG-13 violence. Wormwood is often grubbing around in animal poop or rotten food and doesn't really notice or care that humans (and certain robots and monsters) find the substance repulsive. They also come from an unhesitatingly violent and lethal world, although the violence in Don't Starve is pretty tamely depicted. They won't go around attacking other people without provocation or warning, but if someone else attacks them they have zero qualms about fighting back.

Get your own copy of the IC/OOC Permissions meme!

Being made out of wood rather than meat, Wormwood is extremely flammable compared to a human.

Wormwood doesn't consistently wear a full set of clothing, just maybe a shirt or a coat and various hats in accordance with the weather. Therefore they aren't used to having pockets, although they do know how to make a backpack. However, they do have access to a pocket-dimensional inventory, which can hold 15 different things or types of things at a time plus whatever they currently have in their hands and/or on their body. The stuff in there can be smelled or heard as if they were carrying it on their person, but only seen if it emits a significant amount of light, and even then only as a diffuse light. They can carry several times their own body weight in their inventory if so desired despite not being able to lift that much at once with their arms, but if they run out of slots they can't force anything more into it, and they can't use it to carry discrete very heavy objects such as stone statues, or open containers in which other objects can be placed. Live animals can go into and out of it unharmed and will not be able to escape on their own, but they generally can't be bigger than pocket-sized, with the exception of the Doydoy from Shipwrecked. (Perhaps it's too stupid to realise it won't fit.)

Wormwood's eyes glow a soft white. It's not enough to illuminate anything usefully, but it makes it a lot harder to see the back of their eye sockets. They don't actually have eyeballs as such.

While this is not an inherent ability of theirs, Wormwood has access to as many magic items from the Constant as the Shadow Manipulator research station and other sources of arcane knowledge can offer them, notably including items that can bring them back from the dead. If they die, their inventory space will collapse and dump its contents at their feet, except for things classified as an unbuilt structure rather than an item; those stay with their spirit. If they die while wearing a Life Giving Amulet it revives them with all their previous wounds healed, although in a state of general physical weakness; if they've activated a touchstone or placed a Meat Effigy or Magic Flower beforehand, they'll be resurrected by bursting out of it at daybreak the next day. They don't get their inventory items back in either case until they go over and pick them up.

Wormwood needs to eat food to live rather than subsisting purely on photosynthesis and soil nutrients, but their digestive system isn't as interconnected with the rest of their body as a flesh-based creature and both medicinal and moderately poisonous substances pass straight through without affecting their health. If Wormwood offers you a mushroom as a snack you should maybe not accept it.

If it's spring or an equivalent season where they are, Wormwood will bloom, growing flowers from the crest on their head and sprouting some extra leaves on their face and torso as well. Bees are attracted to them in this state, which is unfortunate in their world because the bees there become omnidirectionally aggressive in springlike conditions. When Wormwood's fully bloomed they also leave flowers in their footsteps, need to eat more than normal, and can run very fast compared to even an athletic human but slower than a racing animal or a modern motor vehicle.