#my understanding of the pale and the geography of insulinde as well as where the porch collapses actually *are* is really vague

[mrtequilasunset]

The phenomenon of young Revacholian metalheads venturing out to the Porch Collapses (coined 'porch sitting') for the sake of proving how 'hardcore' they were started sometime in the late summer of '13 by a (then) Corpsemetal band called Timor (meaning Fear).

Fronted by 22-year-old Tobias Hawthorne, the band struggled to find any real renown, even amongst the Metal Underground. Reports of the events that took place during the early days of their arrival are based heavily on speculation, but it's believed that the group (Consisting of Hawthorne, Beauchamp "Beck" Waters, Antonio "Tony" Zaldivar, and Edgar Laaksonen) arrived to an unspecified porch sometime during September of '13 and set up camp. Though they had spent much time flaunting the plans of their endeavor to members of their circle, they had not actually told anyone exactly where they were going, for fear they might be followed by law enforcement or someone hoping to piggyback off their innovation. The four young men took only a medium sized petrol generator, one week's worth of food and clothes, two small tents, one pot, two microphones, a small mixing table with headphones, four sleeping bags, and minimal cold weather gear with them.

They claimed it would only be a brief week-long endeavor, but it took nearly a month and a half before an emaciated Laaksonen arrived back home as the only surviving member of the four piece. With very little of his memory still intact, and palesickness leaving him bedridden and decomposing from the inside out, getting the story of what had happened from the young man was an incredibly difficult endeavor. Despite this, across the few interviews that the family allowed to take place, as well as testimony from people at his bedside, the following recount of events was pieced together.

Upon their arrival, the band had set up their modest camp with the intention of capturing Pale Frequencies using one of the microphones and the mixing table, but being ill prepared to handle such proximity to the entity, they began to notice symptoms of palesickness within the first day. Nausea, headaches, and fatigue were the first, but seemed manageable, so they continued on with what they had set out to do.

It was in their minds that they were creating a new genre of metal, which they coined PaleMetal. It was set to be their claim to fame, a goal they hoped would award them with reverence, to be pioneers of a brand new sound, and, at first, it seemed they were succeeding. Only one of the mics they had brought was sophisticated enough to capture the frequencies, and Waters had been put in charge of mixing them with the demos they had recorded prior to their departure. Entroponeticists believed that being the sole person in charge of listening to and analyzing these frequencies on a near-constant basis played a heavy hand in the deterioration of his mind. As the days crawled on, Waters began to exhibit symptoms of minor fever psychosis. Laaksonen recalls hearing him have fully fledged conversations with himself, often staying up into the late hours of the night just listening to the recordings on loop. He told of an encounter the two had where Waters believed himself to be a Graadian woman. "[He] spoke the language and everything," Laaksonen claimed. "Put on this weepy little voice— couldn't remember who I was. And then, three hours later, perfectly fine".

Meanwhile, the rest of the band began to experience symptoms of their own. Hawthorne had become fixated on the microphone. Nearly every waking moment was spent out near the edge of the porch, clutching the small metallic device and holding it out towards the pale in hopes of capturing more. Every time he went out, he moved closer, soaking up more radiation. "It was as if he was waiting for something. Like he expected something to happen—I don't know what it could have possibly been. He was an entirely different person every time he came back". Laaksonen notes that physically, the man began to change as well. What started as a tall, well-built man was swiftly becoming something more akin to a shambling corpse, and every time he returned, he would have more frequencies to feed the mixing table. More frequencies to feed to Waters. 

It had become a sick cycle, but battling their own ailments, Zaldivar and Laaksonen could do little more than watch on. Rarely ever did they leave their tent, and their week-long endeavor quickly turned into two, then three. Food went mostly uneaten due to a lack of appetite, and dehydration was near constant. Their bodies had begun to show physical evidence of deterioration. Gaunt faces, sunken eyes, and pallor, along with the rapid decline in muscle mass, had made it clear that something was very wrong, and yet Laaksonen describes an almost euphoric sort of trance that snuffed any desire to leave. "It was strange," He states. "It almost felt like we were already dead. The sort of peace you find when the end is almost near and there's nothing to be done. Like, a sort of acceptance that this is where we should be for the rest of eternity, that the rest of Elysium doesn't exist for us anymore".

With self-preservation taking a backseat, the boys' physical and mental wellbeing continued its staggering nosedive until one fateful morning, when Laaksonen recalls waking to the sounds of arguing outside him and Zaldivar's tent. Upon unzipping the flap to the outside, they were met with a scuffle between Waters and Hawthorne. It is unknown who started it or why, but at some point, Waters managed to fish a switchblade from the pocket of his jeans as he was pinned to the ground. It's estimated he landed around fifteen stab wounds to Hawthorne's neck and torso before the larger man collapsed, dead. 

Waters, still in a state of psychosis and adrenaline, then took off into the pale. "I remember before he left, he sort of sat there crouched over the body for a minute, and then he looked at me with these big, white eyes. He just stared for- god- I don't even know how long, and then he just got up and took off. It was crazy, too, the way he disappeared. It's like he was there and then just... gone. Like the mist swallowed him." [Laaksonen pauses and takes a breath. His head turns to gaze out the window of his hospital room]. "Those eyes, though... I'll never forget them. There was nothing behind them. It's like he wasn't a person anymore." 

It seemed as if that encounter had been a wake-up call for the remaining band members, who gathered what they could (namely, both the mixed and unmixed recordings) into a single backpack. The MC they had used for the journey there had refused to start, so there was no choice but to make the trek on foot. Zaldivar made it through less than a day before collapsing, and it wasn't until two days later that Laaksonen was picked up by a Lorryman who recognized the symptoms of palesickness and gave him a ride to the nearest medical center.

Despite the combined efforts of many experts, Laaksonen passed away a little over two months after he was found. The damage done to his internal organs and tissues was too great to be reversed. His body was donated to an entroponetics institute to better study the effects of the Pale on the human body.

Before his death, he released the final mixes of the recordings under the band's label as the new genre Pale Metal. Despite no evidence that copies of the tracks cause adverse health effects, many still believe the recordings to be cursed, and most record shops won't even carry the EP in their stock. Copies have been known to circulate on the black market, often selling for several thousand Reál. The original tapes were given to the Waters family, who refuse to release them to authorities even to this day.

Despite the story of Timor becoming infamous amongst metal communities, it still sparked a trend of young people venturing out to the fringes where land meets pale, in search of experiencing it for themselves, as well as some wanting to create their own "True Revacholian Pale Metal". Very few who depart for the porches ever return, and the RCM (as well as other authorities) will refuse to open missing persons cases for anyone even possibly suspected of being affiliated with the PaleMetal scene. The official statement is that they "refuse to risk the health and safety of their officers by deliberately subjecting them to Pale radiation". Unofficially, it's believed they don't have the funding, manpower, or desire to go looking for "masochistic long-hair freaks". Those who do return often gain renown in metal circles for their bravery but still find themselves living with long-term health effects.

The practice of Porch Sitting has mostly died out, and PaleMetal is still considered one of the most taboo subgenres of metal, though plenty of diehard metalheads still listen from the safety of their own homes. Some bands still pop up every now and again, trying to recreate the sound. As of '51, it's estimated that nearly 300 people have disappeared due to this phenomenon.