Chapter 2: DEHRA DUN, INDIA 1852 — 2,234 FEET
Until Sikhdar compiled the survey data and did the math, nobody had suspected that there was anything noteworthy about Peak XV. The six survey sites from which the summit had been triangulated were in northern India, more than a hundred miles from the mountain. To the surveyors who shot it, all but the summit nub of Peak XV was obscured by various high escarpments in the foreground, several of which gave the illusion of being much greater in stature. But according to Sikhdar’s meticulous trigonometric reckoning (which took into account such factors as curvature of the earth, atmospheric refraction, and plumb-line deflection) Peak XV stood 29,002 feet above sea level, the planet’s loftiest point.
In 1865, […], Waugh bestowed the name Mount Everest on Peak XV, in honor of Sir George Everest, his predecessor as surveyor general. […] Waugh pointedly chose to ignore […] native appellations (as well as official policy encouraging the retention of local or ancient names), and Everest was the name that stuck. (p. 16)
+ Modern surveys […] have revised this measurement upward a mere 26 feet – to the currently accepted altitude of 29,028 feet, or 8,848 metres.
EVEREST BASE CAMP, DEAD OF NIGHT APRIL 13, 1996 — 17,600 FEET
“My feet hurt!” Squeezing your feet into mountaineering boots three sizes too small in order to hide your identity, will do that to you. Bigfoot is in a bad mood.
Gabe doesn’t feel so hot, either.
Only Maria von Trapp is undeterred. Those climbers already did away with the ghost of Edmund Hillary! Who knows what silly thing they will do next! It’s a delight, watching them squirm. She feels like they need a bit more of a push, though, something to sow real devastation, such as… losing yet another fearless leader.
“The guy became quite popular amongst the Nazis. As you know, I married for money, only for those damn National Socialists to confiscate our castle. I say he had it coming. What say you?”, she whispers to her compadres.
Bigfoot wiggles his liberated toes under a mound of snow. “I don’t care, but you’ll have to do this one in. I’m not moving.”
“Fine!” Maria stalks over to the stack of oxygen tanks. In the dark, with nothing but the moonlight and her fine, Bösendorfer-trained fingers for guidance, she quickly assembles the bomb and sticks it to one of the oxygen tanks. “How to get it on him?”, she wonders.
As luck would have it, Frederick Barbarossa chooses just this very moment to come out of his tent, heeding an urgent call from Nature.
“Zzzz…”, he moans.
“Over here, your Excellency”, she trillers. Grateful for her youthful assistance, Frederick Barbarossa does his business over a cliff, interrupted only by the occasional “zzzz” sound. Being half-asleep even on the best of days to begin with, he remains blissfully unaware of her and Gabe strapping the oxygen tank to his back.
“You’ll make a good wife for someone one day.”, he compliments Maria.
Maria von Trapp laughs her pearliest laugh: “You should see me bake a cake!”
As Barbarossa struggles to zip up, Maria and Gabe join Bigfoot in the shade of a rock.
“Kill a few people, they call you a murderer. Kill a million and you’re an emperor.”, he declares, wiggling his toes most violently. Maria pushes down on the little red button, and the oxygen tank on Frederick Barbarossa’s back explodes, blowing him to pieces.
Along the mountaintops, the Goddess’s words ricochet: “We are all travelling in the footsteps/Of those that’d come before/And we’ll all be reunited/On that new and sunlit shore.”
Once Everest was determined to be the highest summit on earth, it was only a matter of time before people decided that Everest needed to be climbed. […] Getting to the top, proclaimed Gunter O. Dyrenfurth, an influential alpinist and chronicler of early Himalayan mountaineering, was “a matter of universal human endeavor, a cause from which there is no withdrawal, whatever losses it may demand.”
Those losses, as it turned out, would not be insignificant. (p. 16f.)
(All cursive text quoted from: Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air, Anchor Books, New York, 1999)
Frederick Barbarossa (Malthusc) has been turned into an impressive number of special snowflakes. He was a member of the Motley Mountaineering Crew (Town).
3 Wolves
(The roles are for flavor only and aren’t assigned to specific players)
- Maria von Trapp: Maria is sick and tired of her Sound of Music persona. She longs for change. Maria is ready, so ready for something other than cream-coloured ponies and crisp apple strudels. The hills are alive with The Sound of … Murder!
- Bigfoot: Two things have sent Bigfoot on this homicidal path. First, the US of Arrogance claiming him as theirs. Secondly, the constant littering of those damn climbing tourists. Some of the stuff is actually recyclable!
- Gabriel Walker as Portrayed by Sylvester Stallone in Cliffhanger (just call him Gabe): Nobody understands the mumbled motivations of The World According to Gabe, but that’s okay. His emotional issues are so massive that you can see them bulge even through a snow suit, anyway.
13 11 members of the Motley Mountaineering Crew (Town): Their only power is to vote on whom to leave out in the snow to turn into a Permanent Popsicle at the end of each day.
- Do not edit or delete posts for any reason.
- The Wolf kill is mandatory.
- On the mountain, indecision can be deadly – In the event of a tie, the wolves decide which of the tied players dies.
- Autokill is triggered if one player gets a majority, but only if everyone has voted (a retracted vote still counts for this purpose).
- Town wins when all Wolves are eliminated. Wolves win when their numbers equal Town (or when nothing can be done to prevent this).
- Play the game! Inactivity may result in replacement. Try to make at least 10 game related posts per day.
- Quoting: do not directly reference any communication with the Mod that happened outside the game threads.
- No game talk after twilight. If it’s not roleplay, save it for the next day.
- Attack arguments, not people. Be kind.
- VT Message: “You are a member of the Motley Mountaineering Crew (Vanilla Town)”
- Special thanks to Tiff for writing all the flavor (sorry, flavour).
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11Dm2aRZ9p2GNn71nOEGAGO2BUtUbreZJxJOCmI_Hx3w
- The spreadsheet will have the most up to date vote count, though I’ll also update the count in the vote thread as often as I can.
- If you’re in the document, you’ll show up as a random anonymous animal to anyone else viewing the document (including me), even if you’re signed into a google account. So you can open it without worrying about anyone seeing your IRL info.
Players
- Abby // THE BOULDER
- April // Det. Alex Cumberland, MD
- Chum // Big Rock Candy Mountain Expeditionist
- Cork // Brett, an Alternative (TM) White Guy
- Goat // MU Logicker
- Jake // Not-the-Horror-Film Jack Frost
- Lamb // Cliff Hanger
- Lindsay // Skydancer, Fairy of the Mountain
- Mike // George Mallory, Mystery Mountaineer
- Moonster // Blucifer, the Blue Mustang from Hell
- Nuka // Cuphead
- Owen // Snow Miser
- Queequeg // Yukon Kornelius
- Sic // Smash Bros Ice Climbers
Malthusc // Frederick Barbarossa– Town, Died Night 1Josephus // The Ghost of Edmund Hillary– Town, Died Day 1
Twilight will be at 3pm Central (4pm Eastern) on Friday, July 22.