You have been trapped in Killhouse for [[eight hours now.]]A crack opened up in the dirt beneath New Bravado; and a cloud of killing gas that leaves its victims thrashing and insensate, poured out of the ground as if under [[enormous pressure.]]And when the first Survivors breathed that clear, oily death their eyes turned a ghastly red, their breath to hyperactive wheezes and in the final moments of thrashing, desperate life - you watched their organs fail in serial even as you turned to [[flee the same fate.]]And so, after hours of frantic travel over blastland, grassland and broken prarie in desperate flight from the killing cloud, you arrived at the penultimate Longhouse and Sacrament and Sin, and the only place in a twenty-five mile radius with an oxygen scrubber - prepared to beg and broker for your life with Tabitha St. Mercy, Warden of Killhouse.
But instead; [[she just let you in.]]Killhouse, you reflected upon arrival, is much larger than it first appears.
On the horizon, the boxily shaped Penitentiary recalled to mind a Lovelace's barn; all sharp angles and straight lines. As you approached its base you felt that quaint familiarity fall away as the smooth, blackstone walls of the Killhouse rose a hundred feet above your head like the impossible gates of the Mortis herself.
The black iron portcullis, complete with hermetically sealed rubber lippage, shut closed behind you and some two hundred other Survivors with all the weight and purpose of [[sacrament.]]
And you heard Tabitha's voice over a loudspeaker tinnily greet your huddled mass.
"Survivors! Welcome to Killhouse on this most Holy Day." The gravely Warden's voice asserts from behind a desk somewhere, "While it was never my plan to house you all here - I think it is too porteous a sign on the eve of the Indulgence that you would all be thrust so [[unceremoniously into my care."]]
"I have given some thought," Tabitha continues over the intercom, "To what role you play in a story that reads as if it were a recollection of the...massecre, that occured just under half a decade ago in these same vaunted and sacred halls."
"And so rather than confine you, chosen few who outstripped death to be here, [[I eleveate you."]] "To the status of Justice; my fists and my gestures, my stone and my flint, my iron and my rod - each and everyone of you who wheeze with exposure or limp with the effort of your arrival are in the unique position to decide the future of the Lonestar and-" the warden paused as if remembering;
"The future of the San Saba and [[her people."]]"I have, here at Our Good Home, two classes of incarcerated." Tabitha continues over the muttering of the crowd that presses against you. The room is getting warmer and you can smell every single other person in this tiny, blackboxed, illfated oven.
"The first is the Penitent, my transient flock. Those debtors and defilers who have earned a short sentance - and the resources at my disposal to rehabilitate them." Tabitha's voice is grim, and you know from the stories told around campfires that life in Killhouse is as terrible as the monsters who inhabit it - but that some monsters are [[worse than others.]]"While the second is the Lifer, who have committed atrocities terrible enough to demonstrate, beyond an shadow-of-a-doubt, that they must be removed from the system of our governance lest they turn us from our purpose of greater civility and raze the farms of [[common and hardworking men."]]"And it is the purpose of the Justice to determine the difference." Tabitha concludes. "For the next twenty four hours journey forth as my Justices into the sacred halls of my Great Church and solve a problem for me that is [[half a decade old.]]"Solve for me," she continues, "the issue of allocation, then. I am a private business who receives very little in the way of financial support outside the specific and grand payment I maintain for the maintenance of the Lifer population. And to put it frankly, my Justices,
"I can no longer afford to keep both types of evil-doers. I cannot contain and convert. I cannot redeem and reduce in the same breath. I must keep only the most vile monsters from arresting the San Saba with their will or I must rehabilitate the small evils of common men with a kindness that does not come naturally to me.
"But I must only be responsible for [[one of these things."]]
"And so on this day of Indulgence, when the contract is suspended and my role and caregiver and gate-guard are blissfully paused, it is myself who commits the greatest subversive act when I say to you survivors,
"That we are going to empty out my Penitentiary - and when the sun rises and when the danger has passed - you will take with you the dispossessed hundreds that you deem worthy of that passage.
"And you will damn to darkness the unyeilding evil that only I can contain. When you leave here; those you leave behind will not see light again save, of course, for our Holy Day.
[["And Justice will be done."]]That was eight hours ago now. You sit in the Hot Mess Hall between Survivors and Penitents - occassionally you see a Lifer, whose only visual indicator remains the "XXX Wing" patch across their chest, arms and backs, eviscerate an orange-jumpsuited genpop unfortunate with the glee reserved for the unshackled maniac.
Only [[sixteen hours to go.]]OOC: Alright! Let's fuckin do this!
See you in noneuclidian hell, fam.
<3 The DRTX Team(set: $transCounter to 0)
|sample1)[(transition: "dissolve")+(align: "===><===")[Dystopia Rising: Texas Presents]]
|sample2)[(transition: "dissolve")+(align: "===><===")+(css: "font-size: 150%;")[Lonestar Skies:]]
|sample3)[(transition: "dissolve")+(align: "===><===")+(css: "font-size: 400%;")[**Justicalia**]]
|sample4)[(transition: "dissolve")+(align: "===><===")[[Be at Killhouse]]]
|sample5)[(transition: "dissolve")+(align: "===><===")[ ]]
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