Quick note: please be careful with spoilers if you have already concluded the RP for your item.

Many of you have already interacted with this story arc, but might not have known the full breadth of what was going on… until now! Dead End has long been missing a major component and that is a back story for the SIM itself. The goal of this story arc is ambitious: create a wealth of back story via role play conducted in the present time without establishing anything so concretely so as to hinder future story development. The stories are written with the additional constraint that all of the fiction must be relatable to the actual history of the region (Michigan, United States).

Although I’m planning a series of stories and preparing to cover some 200+ years of fictional history, I am committing to a minimum of four story chapters (one for each SIM).

Episode 1 introduces the entire role play by telling several different versions of Dead End’s founding. The pirate treasure items and chest looting has tie-ins and relevance to the various perspectives of the city’s origin story; lending some credibility to each story without confirming any particular version. This allows each player to cherry pick the facts their character would like and cling to the origin story that best suits them… or to mash-up what’s available and invent your own thing!

To spur further thought into the pirate loot items, the below is a consolidation of already available information along with a couple of hints. In a little while I will also be posting a spoilers thread that will explain each item and the relevance to the various origin stories.

=Hints=
1. Ask yourself what someone could do if they stumbled on a historically relevant piece. Who might deal with items like these on occasion?
2. Consider forms of broadcast to try and find your missing pieces of the puzzle. The “here is half of a web link” items are designed to be social!
3. Keep your eyes on the daily! Maybe help is already on the way…

=One version of Dead End’s founding=
There was one telling of Dead End’s founding posted as a Daily article. It can be read here:
http://news.deadend.sl/2015/12/18/the-legend-of-dead-end/

=And another version=
This version was harder to get hold of because it was seeded to DE’s business/group leads and they were asked to convey the story IC. The version rode the tails of December’s blizzard. If you hadn’t gotten a version of the story told to you (each lead may have put some of their own spin on things), you can read the following and determine for yourself if you just happened to be amongst the audience when the old man weaved his yarn.

***Below this line is IN CHARACTER KNOWLEDGE***
It was cold outside, too cold and snowy and icy to venture out. A small crowd of Dead End’s inhabitants were stuck there in a boring, and absolutely forgettable, location. Some people grumbled and moaned and then an older man spoke loudly to pierce the relative silence of the room. Attention turned to him.
How did Dead End come to be? Heh. Heard some jackass a few years back claiming we were all a bunch of pixels… part of some whack-job’s imagination like he just painted the buildings into place. Would you believe that? Well I don’t either because I know Dead End was founded by John Bonnie. A real man, like you or me or… well maybe not so much you there in the back.
Anyways, when Bonnie learned that a large French force was going to be stationed in Detroit through the upcoming winter he hatched himself a plan to get rich! See Bonnie was a pirate; and a schemer. He planned to take a crew and raid coastal Indian villages for women so that he could rent them as whores to the soldiers in Detroit; no overhead! His raids and kidnappings gathered up a whole ship full of Indian women, but his real prize was three white sisters; the Enders sisters. The Enders family had seen great prosperity before John and Mary Enders died on the same evening, leaving all of their farm lands to their three teenaged daughters. The townspeople though were suspicious. See they were average frontier folk, the common clay of 1700’s America… you know, morons. They ran the Enders sisters out of town as witches… and history would prove those morons right!
Bonnie’s scheme was wildly successful through the winter of 1719. When the lake thawed in the following spring, he set sail for a natural port he had seen during his raids the previous year. He needed to unload his cargo of furs, blankets, jewelry, gold – whatever else he earned in trade pimping those poor women- and to prepare for the upcoming season; fresh boats hit the water in the spring and that meant fresh targets for a pirate. Aboard John Bonnie’s boat just an hour’s sail from that natural harbor, he and his crew celebrated their fortune too much and gave the whores an opening. Fed up with a life of abuse, and led by the Enders sisters, the whores decided to set fire to the ship. Everyone aboard was either killed by the fire or jumped over into frigid waters, the boat itself was entirely without control and it’s said it ran into rocks where it burnt down to the water line. Unsatisfied that the treasures aboard the ship weren’t completely lost to the lake, the Enders sisters intervened. Legend has it they re-boarded the burning vessel in order to perform a witch’s ritual to curse anyone who profited from their suffering. John Bonnie managed to survive and made his way to the shallow port, with two pockets full of gold coins he’d managed to grab before abandoning his flaming vessel. He built a dock, an inn, and a warehouse. For years, only pirates would dare go to the port that was said to be cursed by the Enders sisters. Bonnie had built the whole city on two pockets full of gold, and their suffering. So here we are today, a bunch of common clay in our cursed city.
The old man folded his arms over his chest and nodded sagely at the story he’d just told. A plow whizzed by at that moment and the small crowd had a slim window to escape back to their lives.

=Special thanks=
The following people helped me out a whole bunch in bringing this story to the SIM. I may have missed some folks who are deserving of mention, but I can’t seem to find the list I’d been keeping anywhere! Sincerest apologies if you were missed and thank you all!

-Bean/Shade: General admin witchcraft, story support, and idea sounding board.
-Andi Bayne: Item notecard testing/POC, DE Daily article posting.
-Lucas Bayne: Item notecard testing/POC.
-Lyssandra Ritter: Item notecard testing/POC.
-Vie MacClawden: Event administration and spreading the word of mouth story like a boss!
-Xelan Yheng: Collaborative effort on the IC front lines of episode 1.
-Nadir Taov and Kait Windlow: The whack-jobs that painted the buildings into place. Seriously, there can be no origin story without an origin.
-Kahlen Vaniva and Fae Lindley: Kay and Fae fielded the original germ of an idea for this role play and helped bring it’s once processor (the dock-worker story arc that fell flat and never completed) to the light of day.
-The Story Weaver team and creative community contributions: All of you for the endless effort put forth. At times it’s like squeezing creativity juice from a dry sponge, but time investment ought to be applauded be it one minute, six minutes, or sixty hours.
-The DE daily staff for the AMAZING coverage of the treasure looting. Done entirely on their own with raw reporter's intuition. Really, no hints were given aside a link to the original daily article! Check out the coverage here: http://news.deadend.sl/2016/01/07/the-legend-of-dead-end-unboxed/