Community Service (adventure)
| Donate Blood for The Dead Cross |
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| The Loathing Dead Cross, which is definitely a real charitable organization and not an organized crime ring operated by ancient and powerful vampires, is collecting blood from civic-minded citizens who have blood to spare. | Reward:  blood-drive sticker
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| Feed The Children (But Not Too Much) for The World Hunger and Obesity Prevention Foundation |
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| In a world simultaneously plagued by hunger and obesity, what can you do? According to this organization, you can feed the children sacks of grain that have been specially treated to remove all gluten and carbohydrates. | Reward:  bag of grain
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| Build Playground Mazes for Habitrail for Humanity |
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| To stimulate the minds of Loathing's children, Habitrail For Humanity builds elaborate mazes for them to get lost in. The dumber kids don't make it out, so average test scores show a dramatic improvement! | Reward:  pocket maze
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| Feed Conspirators for Meals Within Wheels |
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| When you're a master of intrigue, sometimes leaving your house is dangerous. But even the most dastardly of conspirators has to eat, and that's where you come in -- delivering tasty meals via shady deals. | Reward:  shady shades
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| Breed More Collies for Doctors Without Border Collies |
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| Tragedy has struck the border collie population of Loathing -- a libido-decreasing virus has run rampant throughout the entire species. It's up to you and your familiar to provide some encouragement! | Reward:  squeaky toy rose
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| Reduce Gazelle Population for Loathing Lions Club |
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| The Nearby Plains have way too many gazelles trotting around. What, do they think they own the place? The Lions have called upon every able-bodied citizen to help them thin the herd. | Reward:  weird gazelle steak
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| Make Sausage for The Jimmy Dean Fund |
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| The Jimmy Dean fund provides sausage to the needy, and let's face it -- nobody is needier than a person without any sausage. Pitch in and help them cook and deliver it, would ya? | Reward:  sausage without a cause
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| Be a Living Statue for The Salivation Army |
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| The Salivation Army provides critical relief to children born without the ability to salivate by delivering synthetic spit. But fake spit costs Meat, and somebody has to raise that Meat by standing extremey still in front of a grocery store. | Reward:  silver face paint
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| Make Margaritas for The March of Limes |
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| Did you know that every night, tens of thousands of Loathing citizens go to bed sober? The March of Limes aims to reduce that number to zero by delivering margaritas to those in need. | Reward:  emergency margarita
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| Clean Steam Tunnels for Seaside Town Historical Preservation Society |
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| Did you know that Seaside Town has an elaborate network of steam tunnels underneath it? And did you know that those tunnels are filthy because of all of the raves kids had down there 10-15 years ago? Both are true, and it's up to you to make the second false. | Reward:  vintage smart drink
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| Coil Wire for The Rudyard Kipling Foundation |
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| Nobody knows why this is a thing. They only know that the wire isn't going to coil itself. | Reward:  a ten-percent bonus
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Final Service
| Once you've served the community enough (11 times), serve it one last time by donating your body to science! |
| You Still Have Service To Give |
or
| Perform Service |
(this will end your run)
You go to the body donation facility across the street from the Sleazy Back Alley and fill out all the forms. They congratulate you on your decision, show you to the nearest science donation vessel, and, weirdly, give you a souvenir. You'll enjoy it for the rest of your life!
 | You acquire an item: Thwaitgold termite statuette |
| Ascend |
on returning Are you ready to crawl into the science donation vessel and perform your final service to the community?
| Ascend |
If you perform Donate Blood:
You add your name to the sign-up sheet, and soon a bus arrives to take you and the other volunteers to the blood bank, which apparently is an ancient and sinister-looking castle high up in the Big Mountains for some reason? The extremely pale attendant who gives you all some forms to fill out during the ride (blood type, medical history, next of kin, flavor) says it's because the elevation and frigid howling winds make it easier to keep the blood nice and cool. That seems reasonable, right?
When you arrive at the castle, they escort each of you to a very fancy private bedroom, complete with four-poster bed -- presumably decor leftover from the previous owners of the castle, though the posts are convenient for tying your arms and legs to, which the nurse (also very pale) says is a "safety precaution".
"How much blood will you be taking, exactly?" you ask, wincing as she slides the needle into your arm and connects it to a pumping machine.
"Not much," she replies. "Sixty pints only."
"That's... I'm pretty sure that's more than I have inside me."
"Do not vorry," she purrs, patting your shoulder and checking the knots on your bonds. "Ve vill not take it all out at once. Only as qvickly as your body can make it, yes? And ve'll fill you back up vith orange juice aftervards."
"Hmmm, well..."
"Also you vill get a sticker!"
"Oh! Well, why didn't you say so in the first place! A sticker? Great!"
You spend an indeterminate amount of time in a drowsy haze, as red liquid is pumped out of your arm and orange liquid pumped back into it. Eventually, they unhook you from the machine, get you back on your feet, and give you your sticker ("I did not donate... wine!" it says, with a picture of a cartoon bat giving a thumbs-up) and a bus ride back to town. That light-headed, woozy feeling is obviously pride at having done such a good deed.
 | You lose 60 Adventures. |
| You acquire an item: blood-drive sticker |
If you perform Feed The Children (But Not Too Much):
Fortunately, it turns out that you aren't expected to personally feed the children yourself. They just need someone to help load the big sacks of grain into the cargo planes that are going to carry it to distribution centers around the world.
"Let me ask you something," you say to a clipboard-ticking supervisor as you heft another sack of grain onto your shoulder. "Isn't grain pretty much entirely gluten and carbohydrates? What's left, after you take those out?"
"Fiber, of course!" she replies. "A very important part of a growing child's diet. Probably some vitamins, too?"
You continue to lug heavy sacks of grain up the loading ramp and into the cargo plane. Eventually, the seam on one of the sacks pops open, spilling a few handfuls of grain before you manage to get the sack under control.
"Please be careful!" the supervisor scowls.
"Sorry," you say, and stoop to sweep up the spilled grain. "Wait a minute... these are whole kernels, with the hulls and stuff still on. Don't they need to be milled into flour or something before they're edible? There's even some stems still in here..."
"You want us to feed starving children processed food?" the supervisor asks, aghast.
"I... I'm just not going to ask any more questions."
You finish loading the cargo plane, and the supervisor gives you a sample bag of the grain as a "bonus". Great?
| You lose 60 Adventures. |
| You acquire an item: bag of grain |
If you perform Build Playground Mazes:
You add your name to the sign-up sheet, and a bureaucrat gives you the address for the building site. The workers there seem to be having trouble figuring out how to build sufficiently-intricate mazes in the limited playground space allotted, but once you hit on the idea of putting in interdimensional portals and building the mazes inside linked and knotted pocket dimensions, things get much more interesting.
You even incorporate some portals to particularly educational time-periods, such as the Cretaceous Period, and the sites of some major historical wars.
"This is great!" says one of the architects. "But we don't have to worry about the kids changing history, do we?"
"Nah," you say. "It's not like a military commander is gonna take any strategic advice from some kid. And raptors don't even speak English."
"Good point!"
They're so impressed with your work, they let you use some of the leftover building materials to make yourself a little pocket-maze at the end of the day.
| You lose 60 Adventures. |
| You acquire an item: pocket maze |
If you perform Feed Conspirators:
You write your name on the sign-up sheet, and hear a low whistle from a nearby alley. A shadowy figure with the brim of his hat tilted low over his sunglasses and the collar of his trench coat turned up motions you over. He hands you a small insulated cooler -- padlocked -- and a note.
The note says "Bus 23 to Central Station. Tell the newspaper vendor you like his tie."
"What's this..." you start to ask the shadowy figure, but when you look up, he's disappeared.
You shrug and catch Bus 23. The ride to Central Station is uneventful, though you're pretty sure the guy in the green jacket sitting across from you is sneaking looks at you over the top of his newspaper. You get off the bus and find a nearby newspaper stand, and tell the vendor you like his tie, although he's not actually wearing one.
He gives you a slow nod. "I got it for... Father's day," he says.
"That's nice," you say. "So, uh, I've got this food --"
"Here's your change," he says, shoving a cutlet into your hand.
"I didn't --" But he's already slamming closed the shutters on his newspaper stand. Then you notice the cutlet has something written on it:
MBOX 17/ELM
$ HOBO
You guess that it's referring to the corner of 17th and Elm Street, which is a fair distance, but still walkable. You start heading in that direction, and after a few blocks, you hear a voice from a nearby alley. "Hey buddy," says the voice, which belongs to a hobo who is staring at you intently. "Spare some change? I like your tie."
"Uh... sure," you say, and hand him the cutlet with the message. The hobo crams it into his mouth without reading it.
"Kemp goimg," he says with his mouth full, gesturing down the street with a jerk of his head.
You keep walking. Soon you hear a yell, and look behind you just in time to see the hobo grabbing a man in a green jacket by the neck and yanking him into the alley. You start walking faster.
Eventually you come to the corner of 17th and Elm, where there's a large blue mailbox. The cooler is just small enough to fit down the chute, so you slip it inside and keep walking. A mailman turns the corner almost immediately, and gives you the tiniest nod as he passes you. You decide not to watch him approach the mailbox, and instead find the nearest bus stop back to the center of town.
As you're getting off the bus, someone hands you a small leather case. "You dropped your sunglasses," he says. "Nice tie."
| You lose 60 Adventures. |
| You acquire an item: shady shades |
If you perform Make Sausage:
You add your name to the sign-up sheet, and in a few minutes a van comes to shuttle you and a few other people to a meat-packing plant where the sausage is being made and packed for shipping. If you've ever been curious about how the sausage is made, now you know: it's extruded out of little wormholes connected to the Elemental Plane of Spiced Pork. (At least, that's how these sausages are being made; you still don't know how the Knob Goblins make theirs, and almost certainly never will.)
Pulling sausages out of a wormhole is pretty easy, once you get going, and it leaves your mind free to ponder other topics: like why sausage would be marketed under the name of a guy who got famous by being in three movies and then dying in a car wreck. Although by all accounts, he was pretty into sausage himself, so perhaps there's that.
When the day's over, they let you take a length of sausage home with you, so that's nice.
| You lose 60 Adventures. |
| You acquire an item: sausage without a cause |
If you perform Be a Living Statue:
You fill out a little paperwork, and a Community Service Rep gives you a tube of silver face paint and a donations box and assigns you a street corner to stand on.
So you do.
Without moving.
Without blinking.
For hours.
...
...
...
Oh god your nose itches.
And there's a dog. Go away, dog.
...
...
...
This is the most bored you've ever been in your life. Fortunately one of the community service people finally comes around to collect the money and tell you to stop. Or rather, to start.
| You lose 60 Adventures. |
| You acquire an item: silver face paint |
If you perform Reduce Gazelle Population:
"This 'Loathing Lions Club'," you ask the Community Service Rep standing nearby, "they aren't, like, literal lions, are they? A club of actual feline lions?"
"Ha ha ha, nooo," the man says, wincing slightly as he applies some salve to three long parallel claw-marks down the side of his face. "That would be ridiculous."
"I'm just asking because, you know, those scratches on your --"
"Fell down the stairs," he says. "Nothing to worry about. Any rumors about how the local lion population has gained human-like intelligence and they're recruiting humans to do their work for them because they feel they're above all that now and also are really lazy are just that -- rumors."
"Okay, whatever," you say. "Not like I need any particular reason to go out and kill a bunch of stuff anyway."
You spend most of the day running around the Nearby Plains with other adventurers, killing gazelles and generally whooping it up. Ever punched a gazelle in the face? It's quite an experience.
| You lose 60 Adventures. |
| You acquire an item: weird gazelle steak |
If you perform Breed More Collies:
"Uh, excuse me," you ask a nearby Community Service official. "What exactly are you expecting me and my familiar to do to 'encourage' dogs to breed? Because it sounds like..."
"No no no," the man says. "No no no, no. No. Whatever you're thinking. No. All we want you to do is to find border collies, distribute these squeaky-toy long-stemmed roses to them, and explain to them -- in animal language, that's why you need a familiar -- how fulfilling it is to find a mate and raise a family. That's all. Nothing weird."
"It's still kind of weird," you say. "But all right."
You explain the concept to <Familiar Name> as best as you can, and spend a few hours standing around awkwardly with an armload of rubber flowers while %familiarname makes barking noises at all the collies you can find. Eventually, you run out of dog-walking parks to get kicked out of.
| You lose 60 Adventures. |
| You acquire an item: squeaky toy rose |
If you perform Make Margaritas:
You grab a nearby community service rep by the arm. "What is this?" you ask him, horrified. "Is this really true?"
"It's true," he says, shaking his head sadly. "Those poor people. Those poor, sober people."
"This is an outrage," you say. "I cannot allow this to stand and continue to call myself a human being. How can I help?"
"Sign here."
He takes you to a nearby warehouse that has been converted into a margarita factory, where dozens of concerned volunteers are cutting limes, crushing ice, and salting the rims of margarita glasses. You are given a position at the end of the line with several other people, and armed with a blender and a case of tequila. Working with zealous determination, you mix margarita after margarita, pouring them into glasses that are then carefully sealed with plastic wrap and handed off to emergency margarita delivery people, most of them recruited from local bike-messenger delivery services. They turn on little emergency sirens and speed off into the night.
After many hours, a supervisor comes around. "All right, people, let's shut it down. We've done enough for one day."
"It'll never be enough," you say sadly, looking at the tequila and limes still unmixed.
He puts a hand on your shoulder. "Don't beat yourself up about it. There's only so much one person can do, and you did good today. Here, have a margarita."
"Damn straight I'll have a margarita," you say, throwing it down your throat and pouring another for the road.
| You lose 60 Adventures. |
| You acquire an item: emergency margarita |
If you perform Clean Steam Tunnels:
You fill out some paperwork, and the organizers give you some work gloves, a broom, a couple of buckets ("The one with the biohazard logo is for glitter, and the one with the nuclear radiation symbol is for old glowsticks"), and a breath mask (which has not had its inside coated with mentholated vapo-rub).
The steam tunnels are about what you would expect steam tunnels to look like after a decade's worth of (literally) underground dance parties being held there, although you cannot possibly imagine such a party being in any way enjoyable, considering the oppressive heat and the absolutely terrible acoustics. Must've been a whole lot of bad trips down here.
After way too long a time, you finally manage to sweep up the last of the glitter and chisel the last of the old lollipops off the floor. You also find a bottle of some kind of "smart drink", which still has its seal intact. It is still at least a decade old, but it's not like anyone ever had a good idea down here.
| You lose 60 Adventures. |
| You acquire an item: vintage smart drink |
If you perform Coil Wire:
You shrug and sign your name on the volunteer list. A supervisor directs you to a work table and several industrial-sized spools of wire. You are given a pair of wire-cutters and some work gloves, and asked to coil the wire onto smaller household-use spools.
"How long am I supposed to do this for?" you ask.
"Well, Mr. Kipling wants you to do it for the rest of your life," he replies. "And suggested that we not give you any choice in the matter. But I'll tell you what -- if you promise to spend a full day, I'll look the other way when you sneak out the back door."
| You lose 60 Adventures. |
| You acquire an item: a ten-percent bonus |
Occurs instead of The Council of Loathing during a Community Service special challenge path.
Notes
- X is the number of these services you've already done
- You Still Have Service To Give is disabled until you've done all 11.
- If you don't have enough adventures left:
- You don't have time to do that much community service.
- If you're overdrunk:
- You've been served too many drinks to serve your community effectively.
- The number of adventures lost is no more than 60, but, with the exception of Coil Wire, may take less, depending on what other food/booze/spleen items/potions you've taken first, especially those you got as rewards.
References
The Jimmy Dean Fund refers to an actor who died in a car wreck after making three movies. This is, of course, James Dean. Jimmy Dean is the name of an Illinois-based manufacturer of sausages.
