Pandora's Inheritance OOC - Modern Fantasy RPG (Recruiting)

Actively Recruiting: We are down to something like four or five active players, and we need more people. If you want to RP, this plot is still open. I realize there's pressure upon stepping into an RP that is already ongoing, but all of the remaining active players are perfectly willing to answer questions and give assistance to make the transition smooth. Plz halp!

In Character Roleplaying, Here!

Character List

Audra Carlisle
Rebekah and Abigail Lanrieh
Rachel Evans
Jacob Marinucci
Euryl Keegan
Matthew Greyson
Anthony Shaw
Rachel Elizabeth Kerr
John Hipa
Eva Gonzales
Paul Michael Bjornsen
Peter "Gabe" Markson

References
Contacting the Camps and How the Government Classifies Emergents
Glossary of Setting-Specific Terminology and Concepts
The 'Containment' Camp at Nellis AFB, Nevada -- Expanded Info
The Government, Department of Homeland Security and Constitutional Rights of Emergents

Introduction:

It's July, 2009 and the uncertainty of life, often buried deep in the psyche of humanity, is suddenly a raw and very exposed nerve. Things have emerged and the false serenity of society is irrevocably swept away on a tide of the supernatural.

This is a tale of how the world copes with the imposition of a very different reality than what others know.

The world is turning upside down. Things are emerging from a long dormancy, their spirits either finding flesh on their own or fusing with the nearest host and twisting them into something else. From the beautiful to the freakish, it was almost as if someone unlocked a spiritual prison and threw the doors wide open, and all the inmates took their chance and ran out into the wider world.

This is an RP about how the world at large, our world, copes with the sudden onset of magic and the supernatural in their midst, and it is not a pretty RP. It is as much about the hysteria and paranoia of the average human and what happens on the mass psychological level when they get riled as it is about the emergence of magic.

The RP starts in a uniform fashion; the characters are just learning about themselves, and learning the true meaning of being alone in a very hostile world.

Humanity has certain reactions to the 'other' that have been used against fellow humans time and time again; the Holocaust is merely the most famous of these, but it is also often mistaken for a unique occurrence in history rather than an event that fits in the pattern of human behavior whose only real difference from other mass slaughters was the degree of modern industrial process that was applied to it. At its base was the same hysterical fear of the other, whipped into fine fettle.

One has to imagine then, what this fear of the other would entail against things that are sentient and genuinely not human. How would society cope, where would people go? Would there be any respite?

This isn't a setting of easy integration between magical beings and humanity at large. It is about time of tumult as everyone has to come to grips with the changes in their world. Some cope, and some take it out on everyone else around them.

OOC stuff:

I'm pretty loose on character ideas, but, ideally, I'd like some sort of mythological basis for the characters. That shouldn't be hard, as just about every bit of fiction we're familiar with has some sort of mythological basis itself.

I haven't gone into the details of how magic has affected the world, because I'm honestly hoping that you guys will help me. I know at least one other person, an old friend who I originally had this idea with (we've never done it on a forum, but tried an IRC channel for it once) will be involved on this one. We're hoping to get others as collaborators in the creative effort.

The idea of this RP is how people would adjust to the sudden emergence of magic in society, and I'm not sure if we are going to have characters group together or sort of go it alone; a series of vignettes by each poster as opposed to a group thing. It'll be up to the RP'er to innovate things and push their plot forward, to think 'what if?' and then work from there.

Suffice to say, this is more like 'Carrie' than 'Blade'; I'm not so interested in having long-established secret societies of vampires and werewolves emerge from the woodworks to take over the world. They, like everything else, are a fairy tale that suddenly shows up, and those people that do turn into them are as new to it as anyone else.

(That's strictly to avoid another Underworld/WOD type cliche of vampires secretly running the world-- there's plenty of those elsewhere. This is about something different.)

I'm not going to be terribly strict about characters, so it's just a matter of posting up what you want and playing. I'd ask that we keep it from going overboard on the powers, as everyone is, at this stage, discovering them in a world where even a little bit of it is a huge advantage over the rest of humanity.

Incidentally, terminology:

Emergent, Manifested - A nice way of describing someone who came up with powers in the last couple months, when this all really started. This is the politically-correct term for it. There are many more less flattering terms.

NPC's - Disparaging term for regular humans used by the emergents in turn. Particularly popular with the ones that have been caught and put in camps. It was a popular term among roleplayers, before roleplaying games and science-fiction novels were pulled off bookstore shelves during the last couple months of hysteria, and outright banned in certain states, as if they were the reason all this came about.

I haven't decided where it's all going to start, but I am definitely leaning towards an internment camp in the Nevada desert, due to recent disturbances and 'emergent'-related violence. The way I see it, different groups outright took things into their own hand and there was nearly a war over it all. People have been put in these camps 'for their safety' but that's largely bullshit, or so assert those emergents and their supporters who are fairly political.

There are a lot of people who want the 'freaks' carted off and this has become a polarizing political issue. 'Normal' humans are not entirely against the people who have come up with powers, though plenty of Emergents. In the camps themselves, there are all sorts of theories, running from the fairly realistic to the simply lunatic, about what's being done.

Character Sheet Format

Name:
Age:
Hometown:
Appearance; (particularly identifying markers/abnormal traits)
Normal Human: Y/N

Bio (as much or as little as you care to share, up to you): (Suggested Items: Former occupation, education, arrest record, etc. )

[b]

Alright. Rather than a sudden "Boom, magic exists", I propose a gradual increase in magical/paranormal/mythological sightings/occurrences. By the start of the RP, some 60 years after the first noticeable "Emergent" came of age, the world is on a hair-trigger. Some people think Emergents are simply evolution at work, others think they are mutants who are dangerous to human society, while others view them as "Unholy abominations" that should be purged.

Emergents themselves are somewhat divided by this point as well. Some see themselves as little different from a normal human being, living their lives as normal as possible. Some embrace their changes for good. Others embrace them for their own benefit. Those that do are often used for propaganda as to how "dangerous" and "disturbed" they all are.

Actually, 'boom, magic exists" is how it's meant to work due to certain background data (the McGuffin) that I didn't and won't share.

That's not some lack of creativity or laziness thing, but rather a considered response based on what I've had in mind. A gradual build up is not conducive to the plan. It's meant to be sudden and traumatic. Because of that goal, a rationale for how things came about in such a sudden fashion, in a very basic way, was worked out. But I'm not particularly interested in sharing all that information because I think it would eliminate the questions that the setting is supposed to generate.

Some people and animals, for whatever reason started to rapidly change form. Others cropped up with capabilities that they didn't have the day before. That's really part of the basics of the setting. Changing it with some 'gradual buildup' scenario does three things; it creates less of an impact on society in general if it's even somewhat suspected or hinted at, it leaves room for secret societies and ruling cabals of vampires (something I wish to avoid completely and totally by this particular 'it just happened now' injunction,) and, most important, it messes with the basic mechanics I put together for it.

So I'd prefer to proceed with my plan. Making it gradual destroys a lot of the zeitgeist of the RP, which is that no one has a clue what's going on, no one has a clue how to cope with it and that everyone is starting from pretty much the same position of cluelessness. To do a gradual buildup means secret societies infiltrating government to improve their position and to blunt the impact of a revelation on society and another scenario that's been pretty well done in various RPG's and fantasy literary works.

The big point of this setting is precisely that impact.

I'm not one to contradict things, but I believe you're coming at this from the wrong angle.

Fifty or sixty years is not enough time to have "secret" societies manipulating entire governments. At any rate, "gradual" is a loose term. Linear progression is "gradual", but then again geometric or exponential growth can also be considered "gradual"

At any rate, I must also argue against the notion that a more gradual increase in magic would decrease the social implications. If anything, the tension and aggression would begin building up at the same time, the social implications would have time to mature. Gradual or sudden, humans are not exactly welcome of radical changes to their belief system. A Christian sees a man with bat wings and tail, they'll scream "demon", whether it was fifty years ago or five seconds ago.

Also, given your set-up, I doubt vampirism is something that would be wide-spread to the point of governmental infiltration.

On one last note: A sudden boom of magic all but spells out 'Apocalypse'. The mass hysteria and chaos stemming from people who can toss semis and ignite anything with their mind would cause a global martial law that would instantly be set upon by "Emergents" and humans alike. As you put it, it's not "conducive" to the plan of a social look as to how Human's deal with the sudden change. It's easy to predict what Human's reaction would be to waking up one morning and finding Emergents all over the place. It's the same as if we all woke up tomorrow and found that the Christian Rapture had taken place, or that everyone was suddenly the opposite gender. The reaction is simple; Explosive hysteria.

If you wish for this to be a look at human behavior coping with the new and weird, I would highly recommend you do this slowly. If you want to plunge the entire world into mass hysteria and try to make some sense of it, go sudden.

Ultimately, the decision isn't mine to make. All I can do is give you some food for though.

*Sigh*

(Edited from before)

D: I like your idea and think you should keep it. If someone doesn't like your idea, they don't have to participate. I don't see why it warrants having to close the entire RP. But it's up to you. Maybe at a later time you can bring the idea back, cuz I thought it was really interesting.

vitamin_kitten wrote:D: I like your idea and think you should keep it. If someone doesn't like your idea, they don't have to participate. I don't see why it warrants having to close the entire RP. But it's up to you. Maybe at a later time you can bring the idea back, cuz I thought it was really interesting.

You're right, instead of closing it, I'm just going to make a gut call.

Ehoron, I'm sure this will be taken the wrong way, but I'm going to request that you leave this thread. I don't think you really want to play in this and I think you'd be better off using your imagination elsewhere, perhaps on your own thread. It seems that you have some definite ideas about how something should be run, and it's probably for the better that you put them into practice.

I'm not trying to be an asshole about this, but I also am not going to spend a lot of time arguing about it when I have other players who are already here and want to run with the setting as established.

I have several other people who are into this setting, as written and don't want to change it. I also don't have the time to go over this with a fine-toothed comb and justify the reasoning behind the setting, particularly when I don't want to divulge too much. You asked, I answered, and the answers weren't good enough. I don't think that will change, and I don't intend to repeat the cycle in a vain hope that it will.

Sorry that it came to this, but it's a 'for the good of the thread' type thing.

I'm sure that by many lights, this is seen as a vaguely (or not so vaguely) fascist move, but on the other hand, I don't really want to wear myself out in arguments over something that I came up with out of my head. It's fiction, which is why I particularly don't want to argue over the viability, realism and so forth of it.

Bravo Heyseuss. I'm interested, and I'm very happy to see that this is still standing. This is your plot and your RP. If someone does not like it, so be it.

If you are still willing to go, I am as well.

ShadowPhoenix0307 wrote:Bravo Heyseuss. I'm interested, and I'm very happy to see that this is still standing. This is your plot and your RP. If someone does not like it, so be it.

If you are still willing to go, I am as well.

We're still going. vitamin_kitten set me straight. So did Haar, the fellow who joined to play this.

I just posted the character info template to the top of the page for everyone whose in.

Alright.

Do you want us to just post our filled in character sheets here?

vitamin_kitten wrote:Do you want us to just post our filled in character sheets here?

Yeah, that's the plan.

Okay, just making sure. I wasn't sure how that worked on this board- some people prefer to have character sheets PMed to them, but I'll just fill it out and post it here.

Name: Audra Carlisle
Age: 23
Hometown: Rochester, NY
Appearance: Audra is a short and gangly looking girl with thin, shoulder-length brown hair and a face full of freckles. She generally hides her blue-green hazel eyes behind a pair of wire-framed glasses when she isn't wearing her contacts- if she doesn't have either, her entire face contorts as she squints to see whatever it is she's looking at. She prefers to wear jeans that are always too long for her (being cursed with short genes, she argues that it's something that can't be helped) and are often frayed from dragging along the ground and getting caught under her sneakers, and baby tees and hoodies.
Normal Human: No

Bio: Before the Emergents made their appearance and magic was a mostly accepted concept, Audra was putting her Bachelor's degree to use as a drug counselor alongside her mother. She lived at home, but was saving up money to get a place with a friend- anything to escape the chaos that ensued in the living space she shared with her mother and stepfather, and her younger brother. The night before the world was plunged into panic, Audra dreamed of blazing infernos, people being swept away in angry flames, burned alive, screaming until their very vocal chords were charred and could no longer produce sound. She awoke the next morning to find her brother had spontaneously combusted in the night, though the fire hadn't seemed to affect anything but him. She could barely deal with the grief that overtook her entire household, not to mention the insanity that followed the strange appearance of what could only be described as magic and supernatural creatures. Over the course of the next few days, camps were erected out in the desert in order to contain the Emergent, and in hopes of finding some explanation as to what was going on, Audra left home with the money she'd saved and headed for Nevada.

vitamin_kitten wrote:
I wasn't sure what you meant about whether they were a normal human or not- Audra is human, but she's also an Emergent, so which would you have me put? I'll edit my post once I know. Also, if there's anything else you'd like me to put in here, let me know, and I'll fix it.

Yeah, she'd qualify as a no.

Okay~~ -fixes it-

That question is phrased like that because I figure that abilities will develop through RP, and there's no point in pinning anyone down at this point.

Right- that makes sense.

Also, if, at some point later on in the RP, we want to create another character, is that okay with you? I may or may not want to, but I figured I'd ask now.

vitamin_kitten wrote:Right- that makes sense.

Also, if, at some point later on in the RP, we want to create another character, is that okay with you? I may or may not want to, but I figured I'd ask now.

I'm pretty loose about that stuff, so the answer is 'probably.'

Okay.

Question! This change in humanity, does it occur overnight? Or would a hint of it occur over a few days? I'm working on a few details in one of my biographies, and they depend on what the answer is.

Side note, I'm glad that you decided to continue with this roleplay!

Lara wrote:Question! This change in humanity, does it occur overnight? Or would a hint of it occur over a few days? I'm working on a few details in one of my biographies, and they depend on what the answer is.

Side note, I'm glad that you decided to continue with this roleplay!

Within the space of two or so months. It started in late May.

Alright, thanks~.

Name: Rebekah Lanrieh ("Lan-rey")
Age: Twenty-five
Hometown: Philadelphia, PA
Appearance: Rebekah has long blonde hair that extends far down past the small of her back, as well as hangs down in bangs that fall past her eyes when not parted to the side. Her eyes are a shade of hazel, and she stands at roughly over the height of 5'6". When it comes to clothing she tends to dress warm despite the weather, wearing a turtleneck of a tan color as well as a long pair of pants that are suited for protection from the cold; these are a shade of light brown. On her feet are a pair of boots that are such a dark brown that they could be considered black.
Normal Human: Yes

Bio:Rebekah was introduced accidentally at sixteen to her future husband, John Lanrieh, and they were married shortly before her nineteenth birthday. Many members of her family were shocked at the abrupt decision, considering how she had always been so adamant about waiting until she was out of college to settle down, but her true reasons became clear a few months after the marriage, when she showed the first signs of her pregnancy. She quickly fell in the eyes of her strict Christian family, who all but shunned her for the first few years of Abigail's life.

With no financial help coming from her side of the family and barely any from her husband's, she was forced to abandon her on plans for a diploma in order to care for Abby, and could only watch as John struggled to provide for his new family. She could only assume that he left because it became too much for him to handle, for he did just that, shortly before her daughter's sixth birthday, leaving her the burden of caring for herself and Abby.

She began taking on small jobs, some offered by sympathetic friends, others by employers who were looking for people desperate to make ends meet. While she usually was able to find a friend or neighbor willing to watch Abby while she worked, she knew her daughter was left to her own devices for a good portion of the day. Maybe that was why she only smiled and nodded when Abby began talking of a new friend she had made, one no one else seemed to be able to see.

That was before things started to happen. Before she started seeing things that weren't there. Before her dreams were filled with rivers of blood... Before she woke from them to see her daughter at her bedside, giggling madly as she reached out with a stump where her hand should have been, only to whisper that it was just a joke when Rebekah began to scream.

But that was just the beginning. It wasn't long before the headlines were filled with tales of strange occurrances, of widespread panic as people began to do what some considered to be witchcraft... of 'Emergents'. Around then was when the first mentions of the camps came to light, and it wasn't long before they came for Abby. And she wasn't about to let her daughter go alone...no matter what she had become.

-~-

Name: Abigail "Abby" Lanrieh
Age: Six
Hometown: Philadelphia, PA
Appearance: Abby is a short little kid, standing around 3'8". She has bright blue eyes and light brown hair that would fall to just above her shoulders if it wasn't tied up in a ponytail in the back. Like her mother, she has bangs that fall down the front of her face, though these are always parted to the side, and don't reach her eyes except for two long bunches on either side of her head, down to her chin. She wears a snug-fitting tan hoodie whenever she goes out, and pants and boots similar to her mother's, just in a smaller size.
Normal Human: No

Bio: Abby's was fairly uneventful until her father left just before she turned six. She had asked often when he was coming back, especially when her birthday closed in and there had been no sign of him, and, for a time, refused to believe it when her mother said he wasn't. Still, believing or not, her life began to change rapidly once her mother announced that she'd be going back to work. Considering how she had lived all her life with her mom in the other room, Abby never quite took to any of the friends or neighbors who agreed to watch her while her mom was at her job. Having lost her comfort zone, she began to shy away from everyone else, and when it became apparent that her games involved an invisible playmate, most of the people around her just assumed it was a consequence for everything going on around her.

What they didn't realize, was that Abby's new friend was quite real -- at least to her, if no one else. It never seemed to take the same form twice when it came to visit, and it constantly whispered new ideas to her, mostly of tricks to play. Sometimes, it even showed her how to make things disappear, or to make it seem like something was there when it really wasn't.

Soon enough, none of the neighbors wanted to watch her anymore, and most of her mother's friends found something else they needed to do when she tried to ask for their help. Abby didn't really care; in fact, she was delighted, because that meant her mother was home more often, having no one else to watch over her daughter. When she was home, Abby tried to show her mom all the tricks her friend had showed her. What she hadn't expected, however, was for her mother to get as jumpy as everyone else had. Why, she had even screamed in fright, that one night Abby pretended she had lost her hand.

Abby was upset about the way her mother acting, but all the while, her friend had insisted that it was alright. It had whispered in her ears that her mother just didn't understand right now, that if she kept trying, everything would eventually work out. And so she had, right up until the point where strange men knocked on their door, insisting that she needed to be sent away to camp.

-----

I kinda just let the profiles take on a life of their own, so lemme know if there's anything I need to change.

No sweat, this is all fine. We're good to go. I think everyone works better when they let the biography and the concept sweep them away, so I try to be a pretty minimal-input guy when it comes to this stuff, if possible. Unless it's a setting incompatibility, I try to keep my hands off and let people's creativity run the course.

Which is me trying to say, I'm really not the dickhead I appeared to be several posts ago.

You never struck me that way, for the record. I know the feeling when someone tries to make you change your plans for something that you've worked so hard on.

Nope, haven't forgotten this at all. I have to finish writing up my character, and I'll toss her in here just as soon as it's done! *grins*

This sounds like it could be really good, I'll pull a character together.

I can see Ehoron's point but I don't think it would be easy to predict the reaction to this sort of thing at all; an extreme reaction isn't always a simple one. It's easy to imagine everyone just running around with their hands in the air or something, but hysteria itself is a lot more complex than that and the particulars of the situation could well have a large effect, on a personal level even if not so much a political one. Incidentally, anyone else think the rapture and gender-swap scenarios would be pretty fun to roleplay too?

* For character building reasons, I'd like to ask, is there any correlation between geography and the supernatural effects there, e.g. do the creatures and effects of a region tend to reflect the myths of that region specifically, or is there the same sort of disruption spread equally across the globe?

Good question, and the quick answer is, "I'm not sure." If you want to play your character under such an assumption, however, feel free... It is global, but I didn't really give a thought to the idea of there being a cultural/geographic effect at large.

Here we go, Rachel Evans.

I made one or two assumptions about the world "at large," and how she would have wound up at an internment camp - they are not meant to be canon, nor replace anything that Heyseuss may have planned or considered.