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SCRIPT/GAME OUTLINEHART TROUBLE
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PLAYER RULES Keep it friendly and PG language please. Non-game chatter is in brackets. OPEN IMPROV means light story and heavy on the improvisation. Come as you like or pick a character from the selected list below. And most of all HAVE FUN!!! |
From February 1861 to April 9, 1865 the very NOT united states of America tore itself apart. States invaded other states, attrition and scorched earth were the policies of the day. Neighbors killing neighbors, families fighting even killing each other. At the end over 1,148,000 soldiers were dead. Add the civilians destroyed by disease and famine and the hopelessly violated bodies and minds of the survivors and the horror is mind numbing. Financial devastation, assassination, vengeance where forgiveness belongs, promises of freedom forgotten or exploited. The grave wounds had barely started to scab over when pestilence strikes and an series of epidemics of yellow fever spring out throughout the country. Armed guards force away those fleeing the fever. Medical giants fight over the way to treat the ill as the bodies mount up. Many read their Bibles, and easily believed the four horsemen of the Apocalypse; War, Famine, Pestilence and Death, were loosed upon the world. In 1870, yellow fever struck New York's harbor fronts. The authorities did the only thing that the medical world agreed helped stop it's spread. Victims were quickly quarantined on the isolated Hart Island. The facilities already there from a Civil War interment camp were converted into wards. Volunteers went with those banished for merely being sick, to care for them however they could.
After the accidental opening of the TARDIS door before materialization was complete, the crew each found themselves alone at different times on the strange Hart Island of New York. Phineas prevented a nuclear accident that could have started WW III and destroyed the planet. The Doctor was able to resolve a spillover from a great and interminable galactic war. The Doctor saved those affected and unknown numbers of others that could have been lost. But the resolution was the extermination of a mighty race even though many considered them all evil, the Doctor knew at least one that wasn't, so the taste of victory was as a mouth full of ashes as he to stepped into a whirling blue cloud.
Ravena Shaw - [Jen] Virginian colonist, granddaughter of a local farmer now deceased. She is unmarried, a woman of 23 thus a spinster (by choice). She lives on her family farm with her sister-in-law and nephew. Her brother (who owns the farm) is off fighting in Washington's army. Like the women in her family, she practices the old traditions of home remedies and Irish white witchcraft.
Colonel Dr. Elias Thornton Hannigan - 66, a retired military surgeon, he is a short rotund man with an iron constitution. His balding head is fringed with snow white hair and sports a neatly trimmed beard. It was while serving in the Mexican War that he first had experience with the fever. For a man of his time he is quite opened minded. He was a strong supporter of emancipation.
Dr. Cleland J. T. Craddick - 40's,a surgeon, tall and with long dark hair, almost handsome features that were spoiled by a thin lipped twisted smile. Arrogant and petty, curing fever victims is more a mater of establishing his own name than in actually helping anyone else. Believed to have been a Confederate sympathizer.
Dr. R. L. Gordon - 25, fair skinned with flaming red hair and bright green eyes, one of the first women to become a doctor in the U.S. she has learned to use her initials instead of her name (Lenore to those close to her) if she is to be granted any position of respect. As a young teen she came to New York as a refugee from the privations of the war in the south.
Volunteers from the African Baptist Society - A volunteer group from the African Baptist church founded in the 18th century, that performed many acts of charity after the civil war. Was highly desired to care for fever victims as many believed that those of African descent were immune to the disease. Various nurses, attendants and patients as needed.
Ravena finds herself at dawn, bereft of her companions and the TARDIS, watching a swiftly sailing ship. Reasoning her best course of action was to try and see where the ship was headed. She finds a group of people on land helping ashore sickly fever victims. A tall figure, Dr. Craddick, shouts to the ship's captain to make sure he and his men bathe thoroughly and scrub the ship with olive oil before returning to the main harbor.
Ravena slips in among the family volunteers and they head for the medical facilities.
Dr. Hannigan stands on a dilapidated flat wagon and divides the patients and family members into three groups then has Dr.Craddick, Dr. Gordon and himself each take a section. They each walk thru designating each person to go to either Ward A for observation or Ward B for those already coming down with the fever and a few to Ward C "Isolation", the rest including most family members are sent to the old Union barracks across and separate from the facility.
Ravena works her way into Dr. Gordon's group hoping for more empathy from a woman, and tells her of the healing herbs and nursing skills she had learned from her mother and grandmother. Dr. Gordon still fresh from a residency in Scotland shows a refreshing respect for the old healing ways and the use of herbs to cause relief and even cure. She tells Ravena to call her Lenore and asks if she would help out in Ward B.
Ravena is appalled, for all the advances in technology that she had observed since her arrival on Hart Island, the manner in which the sick where treated and housed seem backward even to the previous century that was her home. She is disgusted that the patients bedding doesn't even seem clean. Dr. Gordon explains that they are washed everyday by the members of the African Baptist Society that they only looked dingy because their supplies of soap was very small and bleach was nearly impossible to find.
Ravena asks one of the African Baptists about the problem and is told that soap is no problem that the Society renders its own, but getting bleach would be nice. "It might help those poor souls dispossession", Ravena thinks, and there health by killing bacteria but how could she explain to the doctors that she had learned this while traveling in a time machine.
Patients slowly shuffle around the courtyard some with the assistance of volunteers. Dr Craddick and Dr. Hannigan are standing in the center of the square having one of their usual "enthusiastic discussions." Craddick admits that some of Hannigan's archaic ideas had been of benefit such as airing out the wards as Hannigan had ordered to release the "miasma" even though such "ill vapors" had been disproven before he was born. But forcing fever victims to mindlessly march in circles was unacceptable and if he did not cease the practice he would report this latest insanity via the next morning's ship. An irritated Hannigan said he saw the benefit of fever victims walking during the war with Mexico.
They are finally interrupted by the arrival of Ravena and Dr. Gordon. With the support of Dr Gordon, Ravena makes several suggestions of natural items that could be used as substitutes for disinfectants such as vinegar or citrus juice. Dr Hannigan is taken with the idea of citrus juice speculating on how the mild acidic might destroy an infecting agent without causing it's host any harm.
Dr. Gordon tells Ravena that her "Grandmother's morning tea" of maple syrup and ginger in hot water had been given to some of the patients of Ward C and that they had been able to set up in bed for a short while and even got down some broth for supper. Ravena tells Lenore she will do anything to help the fever victims.
Dr. Gordon admits that she had felt that would be the case as soon as she had heard her name. She swears Ravena to secrecy, after all, those against Dr. Gordon didn't need something else to tease her about. She had been the butt of far too many jokes at medical school because her father had named her after that blasted Poe poem, if the people here knew they shared the name Ravena they would probably accuse her of witchcraft like her poor great great grand aunt was before she vanished during the Revolutionary War. A startled Ravena suddenly looks closely at Dr Gordon and realizes why she had trusted the female doctor so quickly. Looking back were the same flaming emerald eyes of her brother! Closing theme
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