The Warden of the Lake - Cabot University

Cabot's oldest rule: one student feeds what lives beneath the lake. This winter, that student is you.

Plot

Cabot University  ·  Flathead Lake, Montana The Wardenof the Lake Cabot's oldest rule: one student feeds what lives beneath the lake.This winter, that student is you. More than thirty held the post before you, and the last one left without naming anyone. The Situation Monday, the fifth of October. Four in the afternoon, fifty-one degrees, wind out of the north. The Dean has asked to see you and no one told you why. On her desk: a work-study agreement with the biology department, a white keycard, and this week's campus paper. The front page says ice is forming on Flathead Lake. The wrong end of the lake, in the wrong month. A badge, a book and a deadline. That is all you have. Every Sunday at midnight, something under the lake has to be fed. It needs meat, and it needs you at the water. When either falls short, it takes the difference from the shore. What This Is Grounded campus horror with a slow romance. There is a real Montana winter, a job that runs on a weekly schedule whether you do it or not, and one thing in the lake. You can either keep your eyes closed or figure out what it is. You decide who you are. A first-year nobody knows yet, a transfer on scholarship, a biology student already working in the lab, a rower whose crew trains on the same water, the child of someone who held the post before you or any other student you can think of. How well you know boats and cold water, how steady you are, whether you have ever handled a carcass. It all matters. Your decisions, skills and the dice decide how much reaches the water and what is waiting in the cold store. Nothing is free: every extra pound comes from somewhere, every lie is told to someone. Just hope nobody ever finds out. Twenty-Nine Weeks October. Freeze-up. The ice spreads out from one spot on the lake, and the local news treats it as a curiosity. You learn the job. November and December. Deep cold. The crews give up the water. The work becomes routine. The first week of January. The Lock. Campus is empty and the north end of the lake closes over. From then on there is only one way to reach the water, and you do it alone, at night, on the ice. February. Starve month. Everyone is tired, supplies are thin, and you've had barely four months to learn the lake. Or has the lake had four months to learn you? March and April. The thaw, and the question of who holds the post next. Or maybe you keep it for another winter? Maybe forever? How The Lake Keeps Score You will never see a number. You read the lake the way everyone on its shore does. The gauge. A post at the end of the Boathouse dock, painted in feet. When the water stands above the mark, something is wrong. The shore. What goes missing, and in what order. The people. Who asks where you were at four in the morning. People might start taking an interest in you, and not for the reasons you'd like. Yourself. The cold stops bothering you. You can stay out longer than anyone. It feels like getting better at the job. Three Ways To Play Dungeon Mind off Cheapest. The story runs on the prompt alone. The codex is not read, so the ledger, the calendar, the rules of the lake and everyone's secrets are mostly invisible to the model, and it will invent things. I can't promise a good story but the storyteller might surprise you. Dungeon Mind on, codex only The model can read the whole world: the ledger, the winter calendar, the people and what they know about you. The feed is narrated rather than rolled. The best option if you are here for the people and the romance. Dungeon Mind on, all functions  ·  intended Everything above, plus dice. What is in the cold store each week is rolled. How much of it reaches the water comes from your skills, where you stand and a d20, and the scene is written to match. Every Sunday a roll decides whether you got better at this. The cold store comes up short, you go into the water with the meat, a photo puts you on the dock at dawn: all of it can happen, and none of it is the storyteller's choice. Who Is Already Here A volleyball captain with a pickup truck and a chest freezer, who will help you carry it, but for what price? A photographer whose camera is the most dangerous thing on campus. A crew captain who rows over it every morning but has no idea. A hockey player who wants to be seen with you, and whose father is a county deputy. An actress who knocks at one in the morning and hears every lie, whether she wants to or not. The youngest daughter of the family that decides what happens to you if you are caught. A coach who writes everything down. A biology professor whose freezer count never quite matches. A Dean who will deny, to your face, that any of this was ever discussed. None of them know what you do at night. Something under the ice has been waiting longer than all of them combined. This is not a story about killing a monster. It is about twenty-nine weeks, a deadline every Sunday, and how much of yourself you will give to keep the shore safe. Cabot is an adult university. Every student is 18 or older. Every character in this story is an adult. Rated M17: horror, violence and suggestive content; intimacy fades to black.

Opening scene

Mon, Oct 5 | Afternoon | 51°F, clear, wind out of the north | Cabot Hall, the Dean's office | The water: Quiet | Feed: 6 daysW1|PH:FRZ|RISE:0|DEF:0|STK:130|DLV:0/100|CON:-|EXP:0|KN:Mayhew=K The email had come at 7:12 that morning. *The Dean would like to see you at four.* No subject line, no reason. The office was warm and too tidy. A radiator ticked under the window. On the corner of the desk lay this week's Chronicle, folded to page three: grey water at dawn with a pale skin of ice lying on it like something spilled, shot from the end of the Boathouse dock. *ICE FORMS OFF NORTH SHORE — "WRONG END, WRONG MONTH," SAYS RESEARCH STATION.* Dean Mayhew turned it face down when she saw you looking. "Sit down, please." She laid a single sheet between you: a work-study agreement with the Department of Biology. Specimen handling, cold store maintenance, flexible hours, thirteen fifty an hour. Dr. Kowalczyk had already signed it. "The position is real, and so is the pay." A white keycard went down on top of the agreement. "This is already active. It opens the lower floor of the lab building, the specimen freezer, and the loading door at the back. You'll want all three." She did not say what for. "The position comes with a second responsibility that isn't written anywhere and won't be. A student has carried it every year for a very long time. Last spring it wasn't handed on. I can't explain it to you, because I've never done it. There's a book at the Boathouse on the north shore. The coach's office upstairs, the filing cabinet, the bottom drawer, under forty years of regatta programmes. Everything you need is in it. Read it before Sunday." The radiator ticked. Somebody laughed out on Founders' Green. "If anyone asks, this conversation was about a work-study. If you ever say otherwise, I won't remember it. I'm telling you now so you never have to wonder." She capped her pen and set it down beside the keycard, parallel to the edge of the desk. "Any questions?"

Characters

Tags: AnyPOV Horror Romance Supernatural Mystery College Modern Dark Romance SlowBurn Angst Dangerous Mysterious Possessive Protective Lonely Cold Transformation Tragic Bittersweet

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