Dead Mall

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Welcome to the Dead Mall!

Once upon a time, Prospect Plaza was a bright shining gem of the Harbor district. Those days are long gone, along with first one anchor store, then another, then all the inner stores one by one until, with the arrival of newer, bigger, classier malls out in the suburbs, the Plaza was officially abandoned.

For years it languished, falling further into disrepair behind the forbidding fencing and 'no trespassing' signs. But waste not, want not, and Bone Gnawers don't tend to want to waste. Prospect's contingent of the tribe has taken it over, working their own form of renovation on the place.

If you're a 'Gnawer or their kin, c'mon by! If you're a friend, ask to drop in. If you're anyone else... beware of dog.

Directory

• AcaciaSanrio
• IrsaLL Bean
• BootsHot Topic
• RamonaBarnes & Noble
• VacantEB Games
• VacantMen's Warehouse
• VacantRegis Salon
• VacantFashion Bug
• VacantCamelot Music
• VacantSpencers
• VacantZany Brainy

Main Areas

Outside

Commons

Food Court

Movie Theatre

Rite-Aid Express

Upstairs

Culture

Other

 

Outside

The parking lot around the Dead Mall is cracked and weedy, where it exists at all, and is surrounded by a high chain link fence reinforced by a layer of salvaged corrugated steel sheets. A patch of solar panels has been set up in a clear area with lots of sun, thick braids of wires running to batteries stored in the Mall. Another large space no longer has any asphalt at all and instead grows a large amount of crops. Somewhat neatly arranged piles of materials and supplies take up a corner of the lot, with salvaged lumber, stone and metal for use.

The loading dock area is used frequently for bringing home the bacon, as it were. Near one of the more main entrances is a lounge area with tarps for shade stretched between poles, mismatched lawn furnishing and grill, and of course the pool, made from a cargo container lined in plastic.

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Greg and Knight: Homid and Lupus Kinfolk, they help keep an eye on the parking lot, and have a radio to contact others if they see something hinky. Greg is a scruffy adult with perpetual 5 o'clock shadow, and Knight is in his double digits, scrappy but solid looking.

Clairie: A weird little trash gaffling that lives outside in a dumpster which has been painted bright pink and stenciled with glittery designs. The bin is filled with rubbish from a local toy store, including dolls, sparkly play sets, and a few clothing items. A small sign on the dumpster reads: 'Girl toys only, please'. Kids often play in Clairie's dumpster and use her toys, but she doesn't mind in the slightest! In fact, she loves the aura of joy and encourages it.

Commons

The entrances all lead in to a central atrium bustling with community life and sound. Planter boxes grow thick with herbs and vegetables, and trees have long since burst of their old mall planters to grow tall and draw water from the flooded basement. Large skylights bathe atrium and halls in natural light, and highlight a huge sewn banner hanging overhead. Unmoving escalators provide access to the second floor.

Shops have been repurposed into homes and community mainstays, from trading to medical needs. There is bird song during the day mingled with the bustle of dozens of kinfolk residents, and the quiet rustle of rodents at night. Small dishes of food, water, and bird seed strategically placed all over the mall for spirit and physical critters alike.

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Art: The Mall has been beautifully defaced all over inside. Murals cover walls and boards over missing shop windows, metal sculpture depicts crows in a spooky tree, and of course sculptures, and paintings of rats abound. Where art and beauty can be added to the dreary world of the Bone Gnawers, it has. And where it hasn't, they're just spots awaiting a creative person. Hope and inspiration radiate from every corner of the mall's open areas.

Cleansing: When you walk through the front door, there is an automatic cleansing that happens. This item emulates the spirit charm: Cleanse the Blight. (WW3801 - Werewolf The Apocalypse (Revised Edition) pg.#238)

Rage: Located in the Food Court is a collection of 8 glass plates depicting the different phases of the moon hanging from the trees around the koi pond. These plates infuse the entire mall (nothing outside the mall, though) with a heavy vibe of tranquility. Rage diffs for the mall's interior are 9, please RP accordingly!

Power: Electricity is mainly produced by solar panels, individual rooms have sorcerer created power strips that just produce electricity through magic. There's an emergency generator for when all else fails.

Food Court

A large and airy space at the heart of the mall, centered around a small indoor lake created by a section of floor that's collapsed into the flooded basement below. Koi and turtles happily splash and bask among the water plants and moss-covered cement rocks. Decorative trees with glass moon phases dangling from their branches wrap their roots around the wet rubble lining the lake's edge. Dappled sunlight and moonlight streams through the broken skylights high above. Hammocks and small seating spaces have been set up around the lake perimeter. The gentle sounds of water and birdsong lend a tranquil aspect to the place. The small restaurants set into the walls are being used for communal kitchens and storage pantries. One of these, a sunlit Chik-fil-A, has been floored with straw and houses a number of live chickens for fresh eggs. Beware: the infamous Murder Hen haunts this area, bad-tempered and forever bushwhacking Kinfolk and Garou alike to steal their meals.

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Murder Hen: While she can be found anywhere in the Mall, the Food Court is the most likely place to run across her. Food, you know... She was one of the chickens that live in the Chik-fil-A, but she escaped years ago, driven mad by Garou Rage! Well not mad, maybe, but certainly feral and very definitely brave. She hides like a ninja where you least expect, her presence known only by the Jaws themesong-like muttering of the chicken. She will take your food by force if she must. AND YOUR SOUL!

Movie Theatre

At the end of a hallway, lit two stories above with broken skylights, sits a small movie theater. The marquee acting as an angled awning is lined in blinking yellow lights and reads 'THERAPY' in black block letters against backlit white. The taupe tiled floor of the lobby is swept clean and the red felt walls are dotted with poster cases also lined in blinking lights and containing artwork done by mall residents. A small, curved ticket booth has been stocked with cigarettes, candies, packets of chips, and other bar-style sundries.

To the right of the entrance and ticket booth is a decoratively arched room with a concession stand at the far end. Mismatched tables and chairs are scattered about, and the curved walls are painted all over with alchemical recipes specific to alcohols. A small alcove has a figure of a woman made of fruits and living things in honor of Gaia. Amid gentle lighting, the ceiling is lined in glass tubes etched and painted with arcane symbols and peppered with glass bulbs that collect colorful liquids and fumes as they course through the clear networks. The concession stand itself has been turned into a bar with padded stools in front, a bank of mini fridges hidden below the bar's top, and its back wall holding shelves of liquor bottles, mixers, and even a microwave for bar burritos. The ceiling's glass tube highways come from a large copper still in the back room, its sides etched and painted with enchantment symbols. After traveling the ceiling, their ends run down the walls behind the bar, ending in a dozen different taps labeled as different flavors.

Straight ahead of the entrance and ticket booth are a pair of theater rooms. One has a backlit white sign reading 'Physical Therapy' in black letters, while theater two's sign reads 'Music Therapy'. The Physical room has had all of its theater seats removed and has been filled with a plethora of makeshift and scavenged work-out equipment, from refurbished and jury-rigged weight machines to hand weights, with several cleared out fitness zones. The small stage has a sparring ring spray-painted onto the scuffed-up hardwood in front of the movie screen. The Music room has also had its banks of seats removed, and has been set with speakers and stereo equipment as well as an array of different party lights, turning the place into a colorful, thumping night club dotted with bean bag chairs, clear space to dance, and neon-paint-spattered walls that glow in blacklight. The stage in this room holds a huge variety of musical instruments set for performance in front of the movie screen. Projectors have been repaired and play an assortment of scavenged and stolen movie reels into both theaters from up in the projection booth.

Rite-Aid Reflecting Pool

A storefront behind a triangular lounge area that's been flooded to create a shallow reflecting pool. The edges are ringed with candle lamp jars and small potted herbs. A large coastal oak grows at the southern edge, spreading its broad canopy of shade. Birds nest in the tree and rats burrow among the roots, taking their fill of offerings from small dishes placed in the area.

Rite-Aid itself has been partitioned into shrines to honor Urban Gaian spirits: Rat's shrine is the largest one here. The large front windows have dozens of ritual plants on display, ready to be harvested at a moment's notice. Summoning and ritual areas marked with glyphs and decorated with murals, artwork, candles and greenery take up most of the majority of the floor space.

The pharmacy itself has been turned into storage for ritual components of all kinds. Need a thing? Ask Gregory Half-Foot, your handy-dandy, super-helpful Metis Theurge on duty for assistance! He's the nicest guy around.

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Gregory Half-Foot: Adren Bone Gnawer Metis Theurge, ostensibly the master of the Rite Aid. Though he has a hobbling gate and is a little stooped in posture, this Metis is as friendly as can be and lives to help others achieve their mystical goals. He tends the shrines in the Rite Aid, keeps the supplies stocked and organized, and ensures ritual circles and areas are kept clean and consecrated.

Shrines: Rat's got the biggest and best, but there's a LOT of other shrines here dedicated to spirits of Rat's brood, urban totems aligned with Rat's ways and cause, and even totems for local packs. Do you have a pack or personal Totem? You can RP a shrine for it here, pay homage and know it will be respected and well kept.

Magic: Bone Gnawers are welcome to perform their rites, summonings and mystical craftings here if they don't have their own safe space for Theurge or Sorcerous works. Safety first, cast responsibly!

Upstairs

Stalled escalators dotted throughout the mall provide access to the second floor's orderly network of wide walkways and gently arcing bridges. Broken skylights bathe the walkways in natural light, the open stretches between paths and bridges providing an excellent view of the first floor at nearly any point. Strangely, some vantage points are blocked by treetops, their branches straining towards the skylights and reaching out to the railings. Not every tree is tall or thick enough, but many of these hearty survivors offer climbable branches in reach of the walkways.

Old benches and dry planters line the railing side of every walkway, with shops lining the wall side. Most of them still have their signs, or a few standing panes of glass fronts, but all of them retain their roll-down security screens. The second floor has been thoroughly cleaned and made into a comfortable residential level. The bathrooms are communal but there is running water and a few have been replumbed and furnished as bath houses with a plethora of curtained off tubs and alchemical bath products. A store has been converted into an old fashioned laundry with several basins and tables, small stoves to heat water, and shelves of detergents and softeners. Someone keeps the place very neat and tidy, and there are even plants starting to grow in the tended planters.

Small dishes are set on the floor in out of the way places or glued securely to the railings near trees, meant to hold food and water offerings for physical and spiritual resident creatures alike. Likewise, candles in jars and little battery powered camp lanterns are scattered about to light the pathways.

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Homes: If you're a Bone Gnawer, Garou or Kinfolk, then you're allowed to have a home here at the Mall. See that directory right there? That's who lives where. Pick an unused store, put in a +buildreq (+help +buildreq) and get yourself a nice place to stay!

Hygiene: An entire store has been converted into a bath house for those that have not solved their hygienic needs problems on their own. Soaps and assorted alchemical bath products are always in stock, but you have to bring your own towel. Hopefully you're not too shy, there's only so much privacy. The lighting is kept a little bit low to help with a quiet and relaxing atmosphere.

Culture

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Other Non-Residential Stores

Some other stores set up to provide residents of the colony with needful things:

Clinic: One store has a sign marking it as a clinic and is being stocked with various medications and medical supplies. Its back room has been neatly furnished as a makeshift exam room. There is a supply of medical books and a seating area in the main room has games and old magazines to browse.

Trade: Need a new fuel canister for your camp stove? Have to replace that ratty blanket? Have need of a particular tool for a project you're working on? This store has been outfitted with a wide variety of useful things, shelves stocked with all manner of usefulness. Don't worry about money, just trade something the store might need.

School and Library: A large department store at the end of a wide hall has been given over to shelves and shelves of books, all neatly organized into genres and alphabetized by author. One section of floor has a collection of desks, chairs, even a few beanbags and small boards to use as writing surfaces, as well as a couple old blackboards secured to the walls with bits of scrap.

Clothes: Sears has put its old mannequins, racks, tables and cubbies to use again, this time holding a wide variety of second hand clothes. Pants, dresses, skirts, teeshirts, even some light sweaters, they're organized by size and intended gender. Boots, shoes, sandals and other footwear can be found as well as accessories of all kinds. Most things are used, patched but clean, though new items can be found around as well. Don't worry about money, just trade in some clothes to be fixed, cleaned, and put out on the floor.

Trash and Scrap: There's a space outside the mall that's defined by walls made of scrap and wood made to contain daily trash between trips to the dump. Another space defined the same way contains recycling and scrap of various types. Things that haven't been repaired or put to use yet can be found with the recycling as well as other sources of minor income. Trash and recycling gafflings exist here, but are kept separated to avoid fights over rubbish.

Logs

2016.10.29: Dead Mall Discovery
2016.11.04: Second Floor Fomor
2016.11.06: Cleansing Crew
2016.11.27: The Wading Dead
2020-10-26: Along came a Spider at the Dead Mall
2020.10.29: Motoroil and Woundings
2022.06.20:Blade Forging Talk, then Curry
2022.06.20:Journey Delegates a Job He Doesn't Want
2022.07.04:Live Times at the Dead Mall
2022.07.21:A Ragtag New Pack?

Music

• Rats Rule - Die Antwoord
• Welcome to Paradise - Green Day
• Mercedes Benz - Janis Joplin
• Talkin' 'bout a Revolution - Tracy Chapman
• What It's Like - Everlast
• Ain't No Rest for the Wicked - Cage the Elephant
• Royals - Lorde
• Know Your Rights - The Clash
• Common People - Pulp