case file: rottine.

  SARAH HARPER / SKOLKULV.    —  @gcdlight
Written by Doe.

  LEMUEL SANTANA.    —  @sinsuerte
Written by Tsuba.

  SAINT HARLON REDSUN.    —  @soursoil
Written by Cujo.

    MIDAS TINE. : YOUNGER BROTHER.        Is Margot her brother's keeper? Her whole life seems to be an affirmation to that question. Born to the same poisonous mother and work-absent father, the only love Midas ever felt as a child was that which his sister showed him and used to raise him practically all by her lonesome. And now, down on his luck, released on parole, and struggling with his sobriety, he's returned home to lean on her love once more. In true Margot fashion, she'd never turn him away. No one understands her more than her own blood. No one argues with her more, either.

  CASEY BELL. : INTERN & ADOPTED SON.   What Casey lacks in prior morgue experience, he makes up for in compassion and care. These and his eagerness to learn are what Margot values most about him. Casey comes to Ash Hollow and interviews for the Good Death internship having found himself disowned, deep in debt, and living out of his car. It's clear as day that they can help each other — Where Casey can lift some of her deathly workload, Margot can offer him a new lease on life. He is now a resident on Margot's property with unrivaled job security, and she regards him with all the love she would have for a son.

  SKOLKULV. : ADOPTIVE MOTHER.   Margot has been hard-pressed all her life to find a mother that did not fail her, a search she gave up before it truly ever began. But in a welcome turn of events, one has come to her side steadfastly for decades now in the form of Skolkulv, the ancient Idaic Goddess of the Wilds. Though Margot is too old to need any proper raising, Sarah provides all the maternal comfort, elder-deity wisdom, and taxidermy expertise that an adult child could ask for. And together, they make a formidable pair of women, baring their teeth in defense of one another without hesitation.

THE MOUNTAIN : THE LEVELER.

 RANK :      Ruling Entity. Personification of a Vengeful Nature.
 FACE CLAIM :      N/A. No human form.
 PRONOUNS :      She / They / It.
 AGE :      Impossibly old. An ancient thing.
 ENTITY FORM :      Hulking antlered cow moose. Coal black pelt. Massive paddles pulse amber-red like magma beneath hardened, cracking "velvet" made of igneous ore. Paddles and body drip soot to the ground as she moves.

MARGOT TINE : THE ROT.

 RANK :      The Right Tine. Enforcer of the Mountain. The Eldest Cousin.
 FACE CLAIM :      Hettienne Park.
 PRONOUNS :      She / Her or They / Them.
 ROLE :      The Decomposer. The All - Consumer. The Jaws of the Grave.
 ENTITY FORM :     

MIDAS TINE : THE SPARK.

 RANK :     
 FACE CLAIM :      Steven Yeun.
 PRONOUNS :      He / Him.
 ROLE :     
 ENTITY FORM :     

ASTER TINE : THE SPROUT.

TBD.

TBD.

WARREN TINE : THE VIE.

  DOWN IN THE HOLLER.: MAIN VERSE.   Semi-retired FBI agent and bureau forensic pathologist Margot Tine now primarily spends her days as the sole coroner, medical examiner, and mortician for her small mountain community of Ash Hollow, West Virginia. But many blue ridge locals know they can come to her for all sorts of trouble beyond a burial.

  THE DEAD DON'T DIE.: APOCALYPSE AU. The dead walk the earth and the Mountain lays dormant from starvation. Margot, in turn, left powerless beyond her wits and skills — except, of course, for her inability to truly die. Here in this world where the bodies refuse to rot in the ground, Margot searches for a restoration to the natural order of death. Heavily TWD-inspired.

  ROT HUNTS ROT.: FBI TENURE MAIN.      Pre-present day main verse for any interactions taking place between 1960-2000. Primarily follows Margot's prior career as a full-time FBI special agent for Extended Homicide, and later a lead forensic pathologist and interview analyst for the Behavioral Science Unit beginning in 1972.

  THE CRYPT KEEPER.: HIGH FANTASY AU.
Margot is a Death Mage with a proclivity for handling the funerary rites of those deaths most harrowing. She's heralded as a realm expert in all matters of rot magic, corpse-mending, and cold cases. Margot engages in academic work part-time, offering demonstrations of her specialized magic to necromancers both young and old. Can be adapted to specific settings such as D&D, Dragon Age, etc.

  BEYOND THE GRAVE.: AFTERLIFE MAIN.   With her ability to use her burial plot as a portal between the living and the dead, Margot sometimes finds herself traversing to the other side to either find answers or visit a friend. Fitting for a death deity really, one foot is always in the grave. Default main verse for any muses stuck to afterlife locations.

  GRIZZLY MOUNTAIN REAPER.: RDR2 AU.
tbd.

Black Diamond Company first breaks the skin of the Mountain in 1805, and construction of the Number Seven shaft mine is completed by 1809. The elevator carries the men and their machines deep down past the quartz bones and slate sinew, where they claw at the coal-bed veins of a God and hollow out the very heart of her. She bleeds soot into the rivers and hills, a black ichor that sends even more flocking to her. Swarming her for a paycheck, sharks to gore in the waves.By 1810, the community of Ash Hollow is formed and named, settling in the shadow of Black Diamond's greed and the Mountain's cavernous wounds.No longer confined to igneous flesh, she walks the world of men with all of the dark things she kept tucked away inside her. Things hidden away deep under the coal beds for far longer than man's been alive on this good green earth. Hunger, lust, survival... steady machines that have stirred and toiled in the Old Mountain's heart since time immemorial. Motivations innate to the fiber of every living thing in order to continue being just that. Living things.But every basic instinct can be corrupted in the hands of greed — Twisted and transfigured until it's unrecognizable. It was man's greed that woke The Mountain, defiled her, displaced her. And it would be man's same greed that would open her wounds wider, allow all of her children to walk alongside her. Each born to flesh but no less immortal, no less immovable. Embodiments lack memories of the dark, but carry a bones-deep feeling of kinship to her. Things tasked to keeping her land balanced.

The threat of decay acts as their leveler, the first born to loom among those of man and mountain alike. Assure that they all heed their place in the family of things. As any children, they only sometimes do.The years come and go, and folks of those neighboring hollers might say there's something odd about this place. Not evil necessarily, no. Just odd. No animals should look at you so strangely. No eyes of any natural thing should glow so ghastly and bright. And no valley should burn so many times only to keep rising back all the greener.But the people born to and bound to this community will all tell you the same thing: Call it a miracle, call it a curse, call it what you will — life springs eternal and stubborn here, courtesy of the last place you'd think to look.Ash Hollow stands a testament to the beauty of nature's creation and the shadow of man's many poverties. Old Number Seven operates to this very day, eight generations of a community fed by and to the earth. Sustained and consumed by the coal and its kin. And with all of the lives lost to Number Seven's maw and its countless collapses and explosions and disasters. . .Well, what else keeps the hoist house turning, the cages falling, the ore crumbling but a God demanding a cold retribution. A slow and steady bleed, reflective of her own.Black breath, burning, or burial, the residents of Ash Hollow belong to The Mountain all the same. Their bodies and their prayers fed to her, no hopes of reaching their God on High.          Which is fitting — First come, first served.

Our MISSION.

      Founded in 1836, The Good Death has been tending to the graves of Pyre County's loved ones for over eight generations. Here, we pride ourselves on providing you and the deceased with your family's definition of Good Death — however that may look. And we are dedicated to serving the dead with the quality, compassion, and dignity they deserve. We vow to be your neighbors first, and your neighborhood business second.      Though we offer services to our coal-town families of Pyre County first and foremost, we will happily accept and care for bodies from all over Appalachia and beyond, our schedule permitting.

NOTES ABOUT OUR SERVICES :

GUARANTEE : At The Good Death, we value sympathy and transparency above all else. That's why we offer a variety of low-cost and eco-friendly funeral options. We guarantee to absorb any in-house service costs above $2,000 USD.CIRCUMSTANCE : For those families who are grieving children, or experiencing a loss from sudden and traumatic circumstance, all in-house services are complimentary. Any associated fees will be waived.CEREMONIES : Use of our chapel and reception hall for Celebrations of Life, religious services, and viewings are included in all package prices. Simply contact the office line during business hours for booking.FINANCIAL AID : For those struggling to meet financial expectations, please reach out to us. We will happily offer you sliding scales, customize payment plans, or help you apply for funeral assistance.DEATH PLANS : If you or your family are preparing for the future and wish to file an official funeral plan with The Good Death, please contact the office for appointment availability. We would be happy to help you navigate personal wishes, ceremony options, and any official legal documentation.

Our Ceremony Options.

All graves are lined with linen, wood chips, and hay to encourage an eco-friendly decomposition process. You can rest easy knowing your loved one is nurturing healthy soil and new plant growth. Each plot is planted and maintained as part of our lush burial gardens at no extra cost. Please feel free to request the planting of any specific species at your loved one's plot, especially if they had a favorite.

HOURS OF OPERATION.

MONDAYS THROUGH FRIDAYS:   9am — 5pm.
SATURDAYS:   9am — 1pm for Funeral Services only.
SUNDAYS:   Open for emergency intake and pick-up needs only. Please contact us via the after-hours line.

CONTACT INFORMATION.

You can reach us by phone or e-mail 9am to 5pm, Monday through Friday. Please use the after hours line for emergency intake and immediate pick-up needs only.OFFICE PHONE : ( 304 ) 444 - 1836.
AFTER HOURS LINE : ( 304 ) 444 - 1810.
EMAIL : [email protected]WE ARE LOCATED AT :
The Good Death Mortuary & Funeral Home.
137 Crypt Basin Road. Ash Hollow, WV, 41444.We thank you for your business, and for entrusting us with your loved one's post-mortem care.

the past.

THE AGREEMENT IS CRYSTALLINE. IRON-CLAD. Bones to be broken and flesh to be defiled. An invitation, an invocation for the blessing of life at the expense of death. A young miner and his wife heed the contract without thought for consequence : Two kin in exchange for the two children they'd always wanted. Two lives who would not be delivered directly to the grave, but would come into the world breathing, screaming as miracles. The Mountain does not give gifts, she expects payment in kind. Once she accepts their sacrifices, once their bloodline rots back into her wounded earth and consecrates the home as Ash Hollow's first crypt, she makes good on her word. And the Mountain is clear as day --- these children are to be made in her image.MARGOT is born to the world a quiet child, though her birth could not have been louder. Even in the deathly cold of late blue ridge autumn, cicadas rise from their slumber and swarm the windows. Coyotes pace and howl out in the yard. Ravens flock and scream praise from the rooftop. They come as if called, a symphony of scavengers greeting the newborn with all of the volume her lungs do not seem to muster. Eyes open and ever-curious, she is healthy. She is alive. She is regarded by her mother to be an omen. A punishment for prayers turned to a God not biblical.Midas is born some five years later, almost deafening the family with the power of his voice. Windows shatter, curtains set alight and doused just as quick. While her mother cries in horror and her father sweeps up ash and glass, Margot is the first to hold her baby brother. Chokes out her first word in a private moment between true kin : " Hel-lo. "Two-headed mother rejects the children she once begged for. Views their shifting bodies as a waste of the blood she spilled, their gifts a curse of retribution. Neglect is the usual punishment for existence, maternal attention is standoffish at best and vitriolic most often. Resentment so foul it would choke all the love out of the house if Margot didn't bear the brunt of it. Shield her brother from it. Offer him all of the kindness and comfort a proper mother otherwise should.Pops holds onto any affection steadfastly, eager to be at least dutiful to the children he wanted. Children he killed for. Though he tries his best, the company demands too much of his time to be completely present. Feeds him to the earth like a martyr, day in and day out, no promise of his return. And one day, when the coal finally chokes out the last bit of pink in his lungs, he doesn't come home. The body hardly grown cold when twelve-year-old Midas takes his place for the missing paycheck.

Margot is seventeen when she grieves her father, her brother's livelihood, and her last shred of innocence. On Midas's first day down in the dark, an explosion rips through Number Seven and shakes the Blue Ridge, methane set ablaze by the spark of a scared and flaming fawn. Twenty-six corpses now lay as kindling in the coal beds, and Midas escapes worse for wear alongside the remaining thirty men and boys. Trudges home bloodied and blistered, antlers at last bursting through his skull, skin covered in ash and burns that will heal but a mind that will not. He wails to Margot his apologies, saying it all happened so fast. That what he saw in the shadows stilled him with animal fear, eyes fixed on a beast so horrifying that he hadn't noticed the flames licking at his own feet.Panic forgoes privacy, and no sooner does their mother emerge with a saw that Margot recognizes all too well. Cruel hands drag her baby brother to the shed by still-sensitive velvet tines, and Midas is far too weakened and too frightened to resist aside from his clawing at the dirt and his cries for help.Margot knows what comes next. It is a humiliation she's suffered ten times over--- cut away the strength, the beast, so as to control it. But each time, her antlers grow back like a hydra in their defiance. Massive and sharp and multiplying evermore. Unyielding, untamable, unwilling to stand by and allow her brother to suffer the punishment. Before their mother can make the first notch into Midas's crown, Margot's own prongs find themselves swiftly buried in the blackened pit of her mother's bowels.The saw drops. The grip of anger-hot hands release. A woman stopped dead.Under a starless night, their mother is given no respect of burial and no care of a headstone. A body dragged barely halfway through the back field before the elder's wrath calls the scavengers to her, as so many times before. The ravens dive for innards. The coyotes tear at limbs. The beetles scurry through sinew. And Margot looks on while the body rapidly decomposes under her dead white gaze. Layer by layer, fiber by fiber, until bones are but dust.Beyond the veil of black wings and bile-shined teeth, her gaze meets the burning, blood-red eyes of a shadow in the pines. A hulking, hunched, mountainous thing. Fur dark as a coal bed and paddle-like antlers pulsing amber, dripping ash. With every step forward it takes, the ground quivers. Its gait all heavy stone, its breath all thunder. Midas cowers that much farther behind his sister's hind hooves. Pupils wide and alight with the fear of recognition.And when a voice like a shrill wind echoes in her mind, Margot learns what her own monstrosity was made for.

the Present.

THE MOUNTAIN'S RULES ARE SIMPLE : The residents of Ash Hollow may feed upon her, so long as she is sustained in return. Margot's gifts may be kept, hers to wield as she sees fits, so long as she feeds this wounded earth. So long as she too returns herself to the dirt once every hundred years, coffin-bare. A short stint in the grave for a divine body, sure to feed the land well enough during her rest to keep it from caving into itself.Margot offers herself to the Mountain who unveils her so-called curse for the strength it truly is. Sees how the family sins can be hand-forged into something new, something greater. Unlike her parents before her, she accepts the consequences of her nature for what they are. Everyone must lose some of themselves back to nature. Even the First Mountain Child is not spared from the balancing act.The old name is buried alongside the father taken too early and the mother snuffed out too late. The new name TINE honors the kinship to earth and entity alike. And the undertaker sheds her antlers one last time to grow new prongs never cut, never stolen. Ever-growing, stretching to the sky if she wills them.Decades pass and then centuries. Old flesh is fed to soil and new skin stitches her back together. Bringing us to the present-day beast, comfortably occupying a niche among those like herself. Keystone organism keeping the Mountain scales of life and death in balance. Those taking more than their fair share of her earth or vitality promptly fed back to her by her second in command, be they human or not. Here in the thick of rotted carrion and cellular breakdown, Margot finds purpose.Her responsibilities have allowed her to wear many hats in the two hundred-some years she has been buried by this world, crawled out of it, and subsequently walked it. Playing human means finding a role among them, and so Margot has made a name for herself among man as a renowned expert of forensic procedure, pathology, behavioral analysis, and investigation all-around. She's served the FBI's Expanded Homicide Unit extensively, and helped build Quantico's Behavioral Science Unit from the ground up, all while grave-digging for her mountain town. Rot hunting down those already rotting from the inside, burying them alongside the bodies they leave in their path of destruction. Heralded as some kind of "forensic prodigy" by her human colleagues, Margot keeps the truth close to her chest. No, she cannot think like a killer. But they do leave a scent she can smell, a flavor she can taste.

But the work has and always will be about the bodies. An extension of her goal to give even the forgotten, the brutalized, and the maimed a good death before she feeds them back to the earth. Give their grieving families the closure they deserve.Margot has been semi-retired from the Bureau for some twenty years now, having grown increasingly disappointed with the corpse management practiced by her colleagues. The reporters stacking up bodies to prop up their defilers. Few caring to provide the innocent and their families with a peaceful rest and mourning. She has instead turned her full attention back towards Ash Hollow and the industries chewing up her neighbors, still feeding themselves to the Mountain like martyrs. A retributive debt inherited from eight generations past.The old childhood home has long been re-fashioned to serve Margot's purpose, the spoiling foundation given a second chance at meaningful death. The basement has been extended and converted to her home forensic laboratory, posthumous examining room, crematory and morgue. The first story converted to a proper funeral home and chapel. And Ash Hollow's only cemetery, once the neighboring plot, has been purchased and now bleeds into her backyard. All of the holler's dead, past to present, tucked safely beneath the Undertaker's wing.Margot takes up residence just above her business ( so aptly named The Good Death ), having turned the second story into a humble one-bedroom abode. Her brother Midas - struggling with sobriety, down on his luck, and out of his power - has returned home to roost in the detached garage his sister never uses. Transforming it into a space all his own.One should be clear that the Undertaker serves her dead, her Mountain, and her community before she will ever serve human law. Margot is a balancer of the superecological above all else. A personification of the life fed by decay. A harbringer of a death and a burial reflective of the life lived. A creature of symmetry --- more often than not, law enforcement does not adequately level her scales.Margot will travel across state lines when called by the Bureau. Steadfast in her sense of duty, she keeps herself readily available to provide insights to forensic files, samples, or bodies sent her way, no matter where they might originate. But her time is now primarily dedicated to the coal pits that spat her out, and providing her community with the good deaths they otherwise could not afford. The graves to bury their darkest secrets. And the ever-watchful eye on the other creatures who've crawled out of the Mountain's wounds with her.

BASICS.

  NAME    Margot B. Tine , M.D. , Ph.D.  ALIASES    The Rot. The Undertaker. The Gravekeeper. Mother Death.  AGE    215 years. appears around 45-50 years old.  DATE OF BIRTH    [ redacted ], 1810. sometime in the autumn.  GENDER & PRONOUNS    non-binary woman.
she / her default , they / them acceptable.  ORIENTATION    bisexual.  RACE/ETHNICITY    a middle-aged korean-american woman. death deity and not-deer shifter. personification of decomposition and decay.  NATIONALITY    appalachian american.  ENTITY ASSOCIATION    The Cousins, a collection of superecological entities that personify sects of nature ruling the Mountain's land since time immemorial.  RANKING    the Right Tine ( or right hand ) of the Mountain. Eldest Cousin.  ROLE    enforcer of the Mountain's will. primary ecological tender to both the living and the dead that occupy the land. primary grave-feeder. a diplomat between the mortal and the impossibly ancient. rot as a superecological liaison between life and death.  PATRONAGE    patron deity of the scavengers & bottomfeeders, the rot, the thanatomicrobiome, the mourning, the grave, the posthumous procedure, and the morbid curiosities and humors of mortals.

BACKGROUND.

  PARENTS    [ redacted ]. deceased.  SIBLINGS    Midas Tine, younger brother. another member of the Cousins. founder and former frontman of the acclaimed metal band Backdraft.  MARITAL STATUS    default single and unmarried. verse-dependent.  OTHERS   
- Casey Bell : mortuary intern at The Good Death. unofficially adopted son.
- Sarah Harper ( gcdlight ): Goddess of the Wilds of the Idaic Pantheon. adoptive mother figure. .  OCCUPATION    sole coroner, medical examiner, mortician, and grave-digger in her small mountain town. former full-time agent, profiler, and forensic investigator / lead pathologist for the FBI's Extended Homicide Unit and Behavioral Science Unit. now consults part-time on highly complex or unusual cases.  HOMETOWN & CURRENT RESIDENCE    Ash Hollow, one of the few mining communities still operating in rural Pyre County, West Virginia, USA.  ACCENT    general american by default, a result of frequent code-switching through her career to be taken seriously. can sometimes slip into an appalachian accent, especially when talking to other folks from the regions of the South.

STATISTICS.

PHYSICAL.

  FACE CLAIM    hettienne park.  VOICE    cool and graveled, speaking from deeper in the throat and chest. dramatic-mezzo range. closest examples: charlize theron as monkey for general speaking, and ethel cain for singing.  HEIGHT    5’ 04”.  WEIGHT    157 lbs.  BODY TYPE    pear-shaped ( smaller shoulders and wider hips ). semi-athletic build and somewhat overweight. holds onto fat deposits typical of a middle-aged body. on the bottom-heavy side, with noticeably softer and sagging patches on her rear, thighs, and lower belly. lean muscle visible in upper arms, calves, some upper back. bust on the large side of medium.  HAIR    raven-black, dark enough to have a metallic-blue sheen in the light. grey streaks in under layers. straight and rear-length.  EYES    ice grey. features tapetum lucidum in the dark.  HANDEDNESS    right.  SCENTS    moss and pine wood. rich soil. lavender shampoo. hint of bleach.  JEWELRY    lobe piercings and double helix piercings on both ears. left nostril ring. a variety of silver rings on her fingers, piercings usually match.  TATTOOS    body is laden in ink: tattoos cover both arms, back and shoulders, chest, throat, and entire right leg. feature intricate bouquets of native poisonous and parasitic plants, saprotrophic fungi and lichens, corpse-feeding insects, and wild animal skulls all native to the greater appalachia region. more info here.  STYLE    wardrobe heavily features shades of black, grey and dark blue. some dark greens and burgundys. clothes generally favor function over fashion - worn tees, jeans, tread boots. some professional attire like turtlenecks, dark blouses, and black slacks. has a handful of floor-length black gowns for very formal occasions. vast collection of thrifted leather jackets that she's restored herself, pairs with most outfits. dark sunglasses, weather permitting.  ENTITY FORM    melanistic antlered white-tailed doe standing 6 feet at the shoulder, around the height of a belgian draft horse. ghastly , corpse-like eyes . black antlers are in a perpetual state of shedding their velvet , visibly pushing through the bleeding cartilage and often growing larger before the viewer's eye. fungi, lichens, and various mycelium sprout along the points and beams.

PERSONALITY.

  ASTROLOGY    ☀ scorpio . ☾ capricorn . ↑ virgo.  MBTI     ISTJ-A — the logistician / the investigator.  ENNEAGRAM    type 5 wing 6 , the troubleshooter.  TEMPERAMENT    phlegmatic.  ALIGNMENT    true neutral - neutral good.  STRENGTHS    patient. curious. rational. resourceful. pragmatic. organized. capable. adaptable. cunning. fair. even-tempered. loyal. diplomatic. a quick study. reliable.  FLAWS    stubborn. stern. cynical. gruff. world-weary. reclusive. sarcastic. blunt. slow to trust. can be manipulative. can come off as passive. can get violent if pushed.  DESCRIPTION    Composed, calculating, and independent to fault, Margot carries herself with a particularly foreboding air. It could be the rotation of leather jackets, the pack of large dogs in her shadow, or the simple neurosis one feels when looking their mortality dead in the eye.Beneath this intimidating exterior, Margot is a creature all can flock to in times of need. Her cocktail of pragmatic manner, resourceful nature, and morbid humor can make any crisis feel almost stupidly simple. Out-of-towners give her a wide berth, but those who've stuck to Ash Hollow their whole lives know better — The Undertaker is the first on call in times of strife, ranging from burials to body disposal.For an entity who wades this deep in death, Margot is not disillusioned to the value of human life and the impact it can make. It is for this reason that, though she hopes to provide those victim to brutal circumstances with the good deaths they or their families wish for, she is not above seeking out the brutilizers and imposing the deaths they deserve.Margot is certainly not conflicted about her more dubious acts of vigilantism, but she isn't interested in gratuitous cruelty or violence either. She has little desire to compete with others for power or status, doing only what is necessary ( and in her eyes, justified ) for her community, her dead, and her ruling entity with the minimum amount of damage possible.

OTHER INFORMATION.

  PSYCHOLOGY   

  PHYSIOLOGY   

  SUBSTANCE USE   

  GRAVEYARD GRIMS   

  OTHER ANIMALS   

  VEHICLES   

  INSTRUMENTS   

  LIKES   

ABILITIES & LIMITS.

SKILLS.

LANGUAGES.

EDUCATION.

AFFILIATIONS & CREDENTIALS.

PHYSICAL COMBAT.

WEAPONS & ITEMS.

HOBBIES.