No one will ever forget the Convergence. It might become a sort of remembered event as the years go by, with the details being either forgotten or misremembered and people just get used to it but it won’t be forgotten as whole. Anyone alive for it will forever remember it. For all the change it brought and how things still managed to stay the same.
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When you’re a twenty-something, recent college grad with no real direction in your life, that had been lounging on said degree for months, no real friends in the area left and whatever money your parents are willing to give drying up, something you think you need is a large change to get your life rolling.
At least, that’s what my big plan to at least give my ‘adult life’ a jump start.
I grabbed the car my parents bought me for college, pulled together some cash, some clothes and then some smaller personal items and went west. Being from a county bordering New York City, there was a lot of west to travel so there was a lot of room for my life to get the start.
I had definitely been naïve in thinking this would be a helpful thing. I had traveled a lot and had had something of interesting time doing so in what was becoming a lowering of quality of life. Over those couple of crossed states, I managed to pick up on some small jobs but those were mostly simple and off-the-cuff jobs that would last at most a week to pay out 500$ or so. I started out living in cheap motels to eventually living from the car and wondering if I should turn around. It wasn’t all a descent into bad living though, as I meet quite a few people over those states traveled. All were nice people I wouldn’t mind meeting again but they weren’t enough to keep me anywhere for longer than a week and half. A few offered me a job for longer stay and I think one guy had promising business opportunity that he invited me to at least start with but I turned him down for some reason. I can’t tell you why but I moved on from that town quickly after that.
Nothing had yet appeared to really hook my life into a new direction until the Convergence basically put a stop to all my cross-country travel.
I was driving somewhere between the towns of Oakdale and Madison when what sounded like thunder yet felt like an earthquake happened. I thought it was just a random storm that I had driven into; something that happened during my trip but the sudden lightning that almost hit me twice in the span of a couple seconds put me off that idea. After the near death experience, I decided to take the car off the road and just sleep out the storm in the car. Usually passed by then.
The next day, the skies were full of clouds that looked like they would start raining but not any time soon. I started up the car again and continued down the road, finding it that the storm I managed to sleep through had done some pretty serious damage.
The road I was on, which wasn’t an unknown road, had branches of trees a large as my car door and even large pieces of houses. The debris alone cause the drive there to be more cautious and tepid. There weren’t any easy straight-ways for maybe longer than a minute and half and whatever broke that straight-a-way was another tree branch that was probably half a tree or a piece of another house and on the rarer occasion, an animal. Usually a large deer but there was a bear at one point.
I was driving from sunrise to sunset and it was a huge hassle of dodging branches and houses. It also felt like I hadn’t made any progress to the next large town at all. It was when the car GPS had began telling me that I was going backwards, that I had decided to pull over again and sleep it off. Maybe the roads would be clearer in the morning or that that storm that was approaching would blow by in my sleep. It was an easier to fall asleep this time around instead of through the storm like last time.
Woke up to find something large enough to push a car around doing just that to mine. Like an idiot, I tried to get up and get the car moving but only managed to piss off the thing that thought the car was a plaything. I can’t say it was my proudest moment but the event was a harrowing enough experience to live through and survive. I lost the car due to the damages sustained but it managed to drive me far enough to get the thing for it to get bored and stop trying. My troubles didn’t stopped there as after discovering that the phone networks were down and the internet wasn’t going to help, I had to trek to the next town. I did so in the hopes that I’ll be able to get a tow service as well as warn the town about the thing hunting cars for food. I had probably walked a good 13 miles (something I’m not accustomed to but could manage) until I was convinced something had definitely changed in the world.
Just as I was walking towards the nearest town, mostly ignoring the few empty, destroyed or ransacked cars along the way due to them being just as empty as mine was, I heard a lot of foot stomping and angry yelling. Something told me to hide away from the large noise and I thankfully listened to that part of my mind and dove under a car. This proved to be a smart move as I was able avoid what a later found it was an Orc Raiding Band traveling. Managing to avoid it was good but the shock of what I had just witnessed had stuck with and didn’t do well.
You’d think the kid who played D&D in his college-off hours instead of actually studying for his test the next day would be, on some level, ecstatic about his fantasy knowledge finally being useful for something and I was for time. Until I remembered that I don’t know how to swing a sword for shit. I don’t know how to cast a spell. I don’t know how to pick a lock and I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t be able to draw out a good bow if memory served me correctly. So I went into something of minor crisis about the state of the world. Which was exactly what I didn’t need since the raiding party decided to make a return run. This time I was unable to hide because I saw them to late and had to leg it. Not a great idea because they’d been marching and running for longer than I had in my life and so were pretty close to catching up to me.
I was saved due to pure luck. From what I would later learn was a small party of cops, I had been saved through the blessing of firepower as the troop had guns while the Orcs didn’t. Alongside this lopsided battle of strength, it also seemed as though the orcs were still new to guns and so weren’t ready for the small barrage and were spooked by the loud sounds of the gunfire. It was definitely a strange occurrence that I was thankful for as the troop got me to my feet and asks me some questions. I explained my situation best I could and relayed to them the small danger I had encountered that wasn’t the raiding party. While not pleased with the information I had delivered to them, they were at least thankful for it and welcomed me back to town to at least get something to eat and sleep for the night.
That was my introduction to the new town of Oakfield. A small town that used to be Oakdale that was made bigger by the Convergence. What was once just a large, rocky forest that was mostly unworkable land had been transformed or replaced with more lush fields that local farmers were already bidding to work on. What was outside that forest was now a denser and darker place that the local hunters didn’t recognize at all. Communication with most other places had been cut and the town, while not in danger of running out of supplies, was quick to rally itself in the face of this new world in order to protect itself from those oddities. It was a pretty interesting place with lots of faces and more troubles to deal with. I was glad somehow found me with what was definitely a changed world.
DIARY JOURNAL ENTRY #1
5/01/2021
It’s surprising how quickly mundane a magical new world becomes when you have to live in it for longer than a couple days. What was first a terribly harrowing experience became a wondrous sight which then become an almost constant yet manageable worry. It’s hard to think that but when you are given more pressing matters to attend to, the magic of the literally magical world loses its luster. At least it does when it comes to the day to day things.
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After being saved by the local patrol, I was given a meal and small cot to sleep on in police’s office. I was a bit skeptical of this move but I was assured it was fine and more due to the local motel being filled with others and having little space as is. It wasn’t five minutes after this explanations that another patrol dropped off another stray they picked up, an older guy named Harris, who was apparently picked up from the west of the town. He became my bunk-buddy for the next couple of days as we worked in the town.
The next day, all of the towns ‘new residents’ were asked to come to the town hall to help give some explanations and descriptions of what we had gone through and how it looked outside town. It wasn’t a very detailed or very helpful discussion as most of the people were like me. People who had been driving to or close to the town and was either attacked by a monster, attacked by the Orc raiding bands or were spooked by something bigger and left their car because it could run anymore. From this and from the reports given out by the patrol’s investigations; the mayor, the sheriff and the head fire department were able to map out a small radius around the town that they were certain they could operate at least somewhat safely in.
From what I could tell, this was an important development since the town did have farmland that was used occasionally but wanted to put it to use now due to fact that contact was lost between everything. Phones didn’t work, any connection to the internet was essentially non-functional, with it being active for mere seconds before it’s gone again. Even the landlines weren’t functioning consistently, with them connected but being unable to really relay anything. From the looks of things, the town have been cut off from the rest of the world. It probably wasn’t that way and other towns were probably experiencing the same thing but that did little to help Oakdale at the moment. The Mayor and his office had managed to get an inventory on the town and what little food, gas and supplies and were currently trying to calculate how long it would last for. The Head of the Fire department had coordinated with the head of the hospital to get an inventory on their medical supplies and the sheriff had been doing recruiting runs around the town for those capable of helping out with further scouting runs and patrols.
Most of these things I managed to pick up from overhearing the meetings after our initial one as the ‘new residents’, after giving their testimonies, were asked about out professions and possible skills. Of the near 4 dozen and a half of us there, most of us didn’t have a very wide or helpful set of skills while few had both skills that were helpful in general. I was one of them that didn’t have a very useful set of skills since most of them were unpolished or just basic. I explained to them my education history and then what I had been up to before the whole weird stuff happened, trying to emphasize my better qualities while basically admitting I wasn’t going to be very helpful. Turns out Harris was a bit more useful than me, with him actually being a recently fired mechanic. He didn’t explain why he had been fired but no one wanted to pry. Apparently having one was good enough as the town was actually short on them after a couple of them had lost the race to old age.
The day after the initial meeting during our given breakfast, I was asked if I could help being a general hand around town with some of the mayor’s people. There was basically no reason for me to not agree and since I wanted to continue eating and at least living here until answers were enough for me to make my way about it, I felt like this would a good way to pay it forward. So for the next three days, I acted as extra hands for Margery, who was apparently an old aid of the mayor. Her job at the moment was just go about asking the people of their general state and needs and I help deliver anything she needed moved around. It wasn’t a bad job and from it, I got to know the town.
There were about some 2,100 people in town, mostly spread about between the different sections of the town; the inner town, the suburbs and the farmland. Margery’s work mostly focused on the Inner Town and the suburbs but it wasn’t uncommon for her to at least hear and discuss issues growing in the farmland areas. It wasn’t great to say the least due to the fact that many of the farmers weren’t entirely sure about how much time they wanted to spend outside near the edges of their farms and having provable instances of actual disappearances from the farmers and those working the fields.
From how I understand the situation at the moment, the farmers are looking to get more people to protect them as they do their work and this would come from the sheriff’s office and those recruits they’ve been getting but the sheriff’s office is looking to use them to get a better knowledge of the surrounding area so that they can secure their perimeter. There is an understandable argument to be had there since after seeing that creature play catch with my car, I would want some protection from possible monsters as well yet the idea of setting up some sort of perimeter to look out for that Orc Band and get warning before they come around is also appealing.
While I get both sides argument, it’s not my place to say since I’m basically acting as hired help to the town. I get paid with food and some logging but I can’t make any hard decisions one way or the other.
While my work wasn’t all that interesting, Harris has been having an interesting week. Due to him being a mechanic and how few there were in the town, they’ve been corralled together so that they can get some basic equipment going again and up to function for the important work. He told me that they’ve been initially working on all farming equipment such as the tractors and harvesters but that they’ve also been getting hints that they’ll also be training under the few gunsmiths they have in the town to get the weapons repaired whenever needed since they might be in used a lot more often.
Harris is actually a pretty cool guy, if you discount his clear yet still undefined addiction. He’s mentioned he has had problems with addiction in his past and that he’s been trying to kick it but it’s clear he’s still has some heavy cravings. It’s not the mood swings that I think he thinks gives him away but just that occasionally, he’ll seemingly zone out entire for a solid 30 seconds to a minute with very little getting to him. He doesn’t seem to realize he does it either since he doesn’t bring attention nor does he really miss a lot when it happens but it’s clear when it does and one can never guess what he missed during his zones.
Outside of that, turns out he reads quite a bit of historical fantasy and he managed to pick up much of his skills from his Uncle. He used to work at his Uncle’s shop for a while until he got bored in his mostly small town. Apparently that was common down in his part of the US and so he turned to drugs, of which he didn’t say he but implied it was common down there too. The only reason he was leaving town was because his dad had caught him doing something (which was probably drugs but doesn’t say himself) and was basically chased out. His uncle had apparently given him some money to get him going since he wasn’t able to house Harris due to he and his brother being real close and wouldn’t be able to hide at his place for long.
He’s a pretty good card player as we’ve taken to playing mock-poker games in the small cell with another ‘new resident’ Samantha and one of the officers at the prison, Dorian. Samantha was a nurse who was doing a cross country vacation with her friend Elisa (who bunked with her) while Dorian was an older officer who was considered too old to go on patrols and so was relegated to townie duties. We picked up the game of poker after the third night of being here after I pulled the pack of cards out of my bag, forgetting I had it. Harris asked if I could play and since then, it’s been something of nightly thing to do. After we all got back from doing our jobs in town and after eating whatever was cooked around, the four of us would pull up some chairs and just play a dozen or so rounds. I was the worst player by far with Samantha coming up as close second in bad at cards. Dorian was pretty good but it was clear that Harris had us all beat. That didn’t mean we didn’t try from time to time but it was definitely more fun when we shot the shit instead of go all out.
I picked up the idea of writing this journal thing two days ago after talking about this whole thing with one of the residents of the town, an older guy hitting his 70s. We chatted a bit about the changing times and how surprisingly calm the whole town had been at these sudden changes. He said he was worried about his kids and grandkids who were about a state away but new he’d probably never be able to contact them now. I mentioned the idea of at least trying to write them letters to get something down and he thought that it was a good idea and that he would do it with the journal he had started in his 50s, hoping to try to impart some wisdom to his grandkids indirectly. His want to keep a record while also trying to instruct or at least give out advice to later descendants or people reading it struck a strange cord with me. I don’t think I understood then but the whole mortality of the situation had hit me and was taking time to sink in.
So, in a similar hope that these entries will be of some help to anyone who picks this up when I inevitably kick the bucket, I’m going to write these entries whenever I can and chronicle my life in and maybe the growth of the town of Oakdale. While I don’t like the idea, if the whole town goes bust and we all die, maybe the survivors might be able to learn from our mistakes and try again.
I’m not going to lie but I hate how rational this all feels.