RECLAMATION !! RECLAMATION ! ! !

During the disastrous events of the 2011 Massacre, citizens of Skelleyville realized they were cut off from the world outside and took matters into their own hands, battling back the Greater Dusk and its twisted inhabitants.

The Conflict

Prelude

The Tyme's Circle cult gathers to sacrifice six children over the period of three days. While the first five children are sacrificed according to scripture, the sixth and final sacrifice manages to get away. The cult is unable to find her in time, which results in those horrors held back by blood and fear surging forth to break between realms.

Deployment

Approximately a hundred and fifty Skelleyville civilians deployed haphazardly through the main streets of the city and in the thickets outside of it. In truth, there was not much of a battle plan for these souls; they only wanted to survive.
Main groups took shelter in any area they could. A particularly brave group ventured from the town into the woods to rescue children.

Battlefield

The entire town of Skelleyville served as the battlefield, as did the surrounding woods. Beasts made of smoke and shadow surged from dens that did not exist, swarming the town's roads. Twisted forms clogged the Tayne River, limbs tangled, jutted together, twined in some horrid dance.

Conditions

The air: faint with smoke. With gore. Each breath carries metal to the back of the throat. You must keep moving. These creatures break open your friends like overripe fruit; one slithers through a home window and oh, the screaming -!
Asphalt blisters, burns, pops zitlike under your feet. Your boots sink into tar. Your hands sweep through the air. Grab what you can; the wind cuts your pelt, ash-glass grinding into your squinted eyes, your sensitive muzzle.
When you look up to see the sun, the moon, the stars, there is nothing at all like that sky you know. Above, endless, swirling thick storm-dark clouds drag onwards, crackling with grey lights, snapping strikes of not-lighting down to sear the skin on your face.

The Engagement

Primary engagements include:
Mandy Graves and ten other men and women from the Tyme's Circle cult storming their leader's hideout, holding her at gunpoint, and demanding she help them reverse the situation-- only for things to escalate horrendously once flesh-things break through windows and steal Harley Talbot away. Her screaming lingers for hours, it feels like.
Scottie Talbot leading a group of twenty through a dark-lined backroad, armed with torches and flashlights and knives and guns, because he heard the screaming of children echoing into the town. He couldn't say how he heard it, but he did. He heard the screaming. The begging. A girl's begging. Tearing me apart, she'd screamed, and Scottie took the lot into the maw of the beast to rescue a child. They circled up, stood back to back, and advanced, facing down creatures that made them cry, scream, howl in raw gut-fear.
Mayor Bev Meyers driving her pickup truck into a crowd of creatures to rescue three of her assistants. This led to a feverish chase down Skelleyville's main road, eventually crashing into the group led by Juan Ortega. The two established a base of operations and sent scouts to pilfer houses that had been slaughtered-- anything to arm a desperate crew. From there, the group began to truly fight harder and wilder than they had ever fought before.

Outcome

Deaths of approximately twenty townspeople taking part in the reclamation efforts.

Despite the failed sacrifice, due to the valiant fighting and clawing of Skelleyville's citizens, the horrid creatures from beyond the veil were battled back and sent back to their cursed realm.

Aftermath

Within six months of this ferocious battle, citizens of Skelleyville began to forget what had happened. It happened slowly at first, with subtle twists of memory and faded edges. As time progressed, the Greater Dusk's incursion eased from the minds and hearts of Skelleyville's citizenry. By the end of the next year, everyone had forgotten what had taken place due to the magics of the woods, with three exceptions:
The Tyme's Circle cult remembered due to their heavy involvement-- their failures had set the event off in the first place.
Any member of the town who had killed a dusk-beast or flensed soul could never forget. Many of these individuals were never able to sleep well again, as a matter of fact. Their minds, bodies, and souls were altered by having shed the clotted blood of creatures which hungered in deep primal wells.
Finally, the circle of friends known as the Skelleyville Seven, who had been discovered semi-conscious in the deepwoods? They remembered. One of them, Sutter Graves, was the failed sacrifice. Creatures from the Greater Dusk wrenched Domino into the shadows. She returned with hollow eyes. Her stare carried the weight of years she had not yet seen.

Historical Significance

Legacy

Sometimes, in his sleep, Scottie hears his wife screaming his name as she's swallowed up into not-night.

Conflict Type

Battle

Battlefield Type

Land

Start Date

October 13th, 2011

Ending Date

October 14th, 2011

Conflict Result

Reclamation of Skelleyville from the Greater Dusk.

Location

Skelleyville

Belligerents

Citizenry

BEYOND THE PINES

Strength

Approximately 150 individuals armed with whatever they could scrounge. Key players included Mayor Beverly Mayers, Scottie Talbot (a local farmer and husband to the woman who was revealed as the cult leader at the time), and Juan Ortega, a long-distance trucker whose rig had broken down while he traveled through Skelleyville.
Additionally, some members of Tyme's Circle took up arms with the town, realizing that they could not allow the town to fall. Their failure to sacrifice all the demanded children led to the attack, after all. Martin and Mandy Graves took up firearms and fought ferociously down main street, for example.
They did not have much in the way of concrete plans. What the group did have-- knowledge that they would be damned to some horrible fate beyond the pines if they failed to take back the town.

Over two hundred un-earthly beings from beyond the far pines, coming to take what they were promised.
One failed ritual: one starving night.

Casualties

Approximately sixty of the combatants, including Yarou I (older sibling of the girl who would take on the moniker of Yarou II in adulthood), Jessamine Holt (daughter in law of the Talbot family), and Mateo Whalen.
Beverly Mayers-- killed in battle with a spike-headed entity from beyond the pines.
Scottie Talbot -- tried to fight the horrors which came to claim his wife; died watching her be hauled away to the Great Dusk.
Mandy Graves -- slaughtered with a ritual knife by an entity that wanted to claim her husband.

The entire army was beaten back when Mandy Graves, dying, destroyed the keystone holding the earthen realm in lock with the place beyond the pines.

Objectives

Beat back the horrid creatures trying to seize the town and drag it wholesale into the Greater Dusk.

Drag the failed town to a place where it would never be found, and claim the body-mind-souls of its inhabitants.