[center][i]Everyone knows someone who knows someone who left for Delville Heights. The rumour is that it's such a sleepy, self sufficient town stead that people go in and don't come out again. Which is preposterous, because everyone also knows someone who went to visit and came back just fine. It's a hotbed for conspiracy theories and, despite the locals' best efforts, steeped in the American Gothic that seems to titillate the masses.

But why visit Delville Heights when there's much cooler places to go, like Salem or Area 51? Delville has lost most of its veneer of tourism by never feeding the hype. Every so often, a smattering of curious souls come in hoping to not really discover the truth but find signs of the illusion, buy souvenirs, take photos of carefully crafted crop circles and get out. Most are disappointed when it's just a small town. It's the party pooper of Midwestern curiosities. 

The rumour is that you can't just choose to go to Deville Heights. Deville Heights chooses when you go. It's been used for decades as a destination for the uprooted; a young man jilts his bride on the altar and blames a sudden compulsion to visit Delville Heights. But, as he will shortly find out, the town itself rejects the unwelcome; everything is irritably lame and isolated for those who are not meant to arrive and it quickly shuffles them onwards to the next sleepy town. No, you know when you are ready. It calls to you across the horizon. Life becomes desaturated, insipid and bland. Friends become boring. Family are no longer as close as you thought. It whittles away at the chains holding you to your old life until you can leave without resistance, then it helps you pack your bags in the trunk and drive. The ones that come to stay often have no idea why they did it. The ones that are meant to stay never regret what they left behind. And it's rare for anyone to come running after them.[/i][/center]

[hr][hr]

[h2]Overview[/h2]
Welcome to the ISIDH interest check! This roleplay draws inspiration from Stranger Things, Lovecraft, Welcome to Night Vale, Silent Hill and This is the Police 2. I am planning to begin running the game [b]Early-Mid August[/b], with a definite first IC post by [b]September 1st[/b]. In short - we have hella time to worldbuild and work on applications, even from as early as the interest check. (see more below)

ISIDH will be a semi-sandbox RP taking place in the odd town of Delville Heights. Players will play average civilians within the town during the 80s. As stated in the teaser, it's a town that people end up at. The Delville Horror, a cosmic entity that lurks somewhere in the area, lures individuals in to stay. A fog in the surrounding woodland that leads escapees back into the town itself keeps the population within very controlled and calculated. Sure, there are tourists - visitors - that crop up from time to time but you can usually tell them apart from the locals.

Potential applicants will have to be comfortable with minor DMing as they go along. The Co-GM and I will drop prompts through Delville Radio, and I'm hoping that we'll have an extensive list of encounters for the OOC before we start. Certain 'cues' in the prompts will open up the possibility of several encounters, and then it's up to one of you guys to take the reins for whoever's in the area and RP it out. These encounters range from hauntings and combat with monsters to strange phenomena and happenings.

[hider=Example of RP Prompt and Encounter]
1: An IC Radio post mentions static interference in Connal's Icecream Parlour. Three players, A B and C, currently have a character in/near the parlour and want to pursue it.

2: B steps up and offers in the OOC to follow the prompt for anyone interested. He checks the Encounter list to see what has the cue of 'static'.

3: There are three possible encounters  - the emergence of a Shrieker, the haunting of a ghost, and a freak storm.

4: B doesn't want to do any combat. He writes out the storm, but takes his own liberties - it's raining [i]in[/i] the parlour. A and C's characters have to save the icecream from water damage!

[/hider]

There IS an overarching storyline to all of this though. We're going to put in the work on NPCs, locations and histories only for me to come in and start 'removing' them piece by piece (you'll see when I get to it! Have faith). So with the town starting to get wiped out, the threat of being unable to leave starts to become increasingly worrying. I'm hoping the eventual destruction of the entire town and its populace would be a good incentive for our team to band together and look into who, or what, is pulling the strings in Delville Heights.

[h2]Application Process[/h2]
This one's going to be a little different from what you might be used to. You will [b]NOT[/b] be judged via CS, though a sheet with some basic info about your character is necessary before you start your interview.

Since I'm looking for people who can take initiative and are within Advanced level in terms of [b]roleplay[/b], not writing, we will be doing a short scene in PMs using the character you want to join with. In this test, I'm not looking at post length or quality of prose (though, naturally, I expect a decent grasp on grammar and writing). Instead I'll be looking at how you put your spin on things as a mini-DM - how you control the NPCs, how realistic your character and the events you create turn out. In other words, I'll lead you in with something to work with and I expect you to DM for me. As such, I'd rather see one or two paragraphs that keep the RP moving instead of large passages of introspection with very little action. (You are free to RP in the IC however you like, but if you're going to take the wheel on an encounter I'd expect to see the same proactive writing style that I saw in the interview. Don't keep people waiting!)

So technically, applications are open already. The RP that happens in the interview process is [b]NOT[/b] canon, though, so we don't get a full cast of players that all know the same chick they met earlier.

[hider=Basic CS Template]
(No need for any formatting here if you don't want it! Images allowed with brief description.)
Name:
Age:(16+)
Gender:
Occupation: 
Personality:
History:
Skills:
Weaknesses:
[/hider]

[h2]Lore So Far[/h2]
[h3][b]Key Locations:[/b][/h3]

[h3]Main Street:[/h3]
A cluster of shops and other necessities that cling to the main road running through Delville Heights.

[hider=Main Street][b]Floodwater Hotel:[/b] Poorly named, brilliantly maintained. Meet Sally Parker at the front desk and get yourself a reasonably priced room. You’d think a small town wouldn’t bother with hotels, but there are always a bunch of odd visitors lurking round these parts…

[b]Delville Heights Newsagent:[/b] Run by old man Tommy. A corner store, selling the local paper, sweets, tobacco, some odds and ends. Flocked by kids in the after-school hours.

[b]Delville Diner:[/b] A greasy, grimy 24hr diner. Portion sizes are gratuitous. Kelly and Simon run the orders, whilst Cookie works on the meals in the kitchen. There’s almost always a plume of steam rising in the air from this place.

[b]Delville Town Hall:[/b] Mayor Ingrid and her administrative staff do their best to keep a lid on things through infallible optimism and cheery dispositions. Their bubbly demeanours make it incredibly grating to have to deal with the council, which might be the whole point of it. Mayor Ingrid has held her position for seven years.

[b]Delville County Jail and Police Station:[/b] Even more respected than the Town hall in terms of getting things done. Becoming a cop in Delville Heights is a highly dangerous profession; you are the frontline against whatever mysterious happenstance is plaguing the town this time. 
[/hider]

[h3]The Suburbs:[/h3]
The residential area for most inhabitants of the town. The most likely place for your character to live. Also houses a few amenities to really get the community spirit going.

[hider=The Suburbs]
[b]Delville Heights Commonwealth Pool:[/b] An outdoor pool with a set of changing rooms, toilets and showers. Lined with sunbeds and bleached parasols. Bask in the stench of chlorine.

[b]Delville Heights Community School:[/b] The town's local school. There aren't enough students or teachers to maintain several different educational institutions, so the school itself has three buildings in the property - One for elementary, one for middle, and one for high school. It's poorly maintained but with an average of around 10-15 kids per class, the students receive a better quality of education than usual.

[b]Tenpin's Bowling Alley:[/b] Johnny Tenpin may not be his real name, but bowling and pizza is a beloved passtime of the locals here regardless of age. The bowling alley is moved primarily into the residential district and good for parties.
[/hider]

[h3]The Outskirts:[/h3]
The unofficial term for the part where the buildings start to thin out around the edges. There are VERY few houses out here, and the ones that still stand have been boarded up. It's bad luck to live so close to the wilderness.

[hider=The Outskirts]
[b]Alpine Lodge:[/b] A somewhat run-down winter lodge made by a hopeful ranger who vastly underestimated the temperament of the wildlife. It sees more popularity during winter and summer break - the bar sells alcohol to underage teens, the rooms are dirt cheap and the food served there is a good deal better than what's served in the Diner. A popular haunt for the younger residents of Delville Heights.

[b]Rotter's Ranch:[/b] Against all understanding of the phenomena taking place in Delville Heights, Old Man Combleberry dug deep into the ineffable roots of his farmer ancestry and started up a cattle ranch just on the borders of the forest. Sure, the cows produce a sort of lavender-coloured milk and some of them have more legs and heads than usual, but Combleberry loves them all equally. He's getting old though and appreciates the help, especially during calving season.
[/hider]

[h3]The Wilderness:[/h3]
[b](GM CONTROLLED AREA. Try not to venture out here without one of the (co) GM's characters with you.)[/b] Surrounding Delville Heights is a vast expanse of woodland, a long and winding river and a lake made out of an old, flooded quarry. By far the most dangerous part of town. Cordoned off with an old chain-link fence and plenty of warning signs - but there are many holes and entrances into this area.

[hider=The Wilderness]
[b]Delville Woods:[/b] A dense, fog-shrouded expanse of towering pine trees. The further you delve into the forest, the more distorted and diseased these mighty pines become. Deer, foxes, squirrels, birds and even the odd bear or wolf are good signs. No animals at all? Get the hell out and fast - if you remember the way back.

[b]Delville River:[/b] Used to run a different course when the quarry was still active, but now runs straight through. White, frothing rapids all the way down, inter-spaced with sharp slabs of granite.

[b]The Flooded Quarry:[/b] Delville Heights was named after its position on the top of some cliffs, into which a large granite quarry was established. Once it began to get dangerous to keep digging on account of its proximity to the town, the existing tunnels were reinforced and the remnants of the mine filled up with water.
[/hider]

[h3][b]Encounter Compendium:[/b][/h3]

Below you will find a list of possible encounters to use during the roleplay. They are separated into four different categories: 
[b]Phenomenon,[/b] wherein something strange or out of the ordinary happens on the Material Plane (AKA our world) that doesn't involve spirits and has no combat element to it.
[b]Combat,[/b] wherein a variety of creatures may need to be killed or subdued.
[b]Haunting,[/b] wherein the spirits of the recently departed wreak havoc on the town.
[b]Dimension,[/b] wherein the inhabitants of the area are teleported into a familiar yet slightly different version of Delville Heights and must escape.

The Compendium itself is split by [b]cues[/b] - almost like symptoms of the encounter's presence. For ease of reference, if the post mentions any of these cues you essentially have a mixture of different encounters you can establish and get to choose one.

Below are the current cues and their encounters:
[hider=Storms]
Incredibly localised storms in certain areas provoke the following:

[u]The Dripping Realm:[/u] (Dimension) An involuntary shift into the Dripping Realm, inhabited by great, ancient aquatic beasts that float through the air. The world is a mirror of Delville Heights but everything is rotten and bloated here. It is so humid that your clothes and skin become damp to the touch, and the water slowly accumulates in your lungs, your stomach...you will slowly drown on dry land unless you escape, typically through a body of water. Do not anger the fish. They are carnivorous. They are hunters.

[u]Slapper:[/u] (Combat) A certain species of monster. Slappers look like malformed sea lions, the size of a pick-up truck. They feast on rotting corpses and the smell of the sea hangs off them. Ungainly and gluttonous, but powerful and deadly in close range, with a surprising amount of speed behind their flopping, slapping movements across the floor.

[u]Gurgling Ginny:[/u] (Haunting) The ghost of a young witch, dunked to death. She will possess anyone who steps into water when they hear her song, and attempt to drown those around her. The only way to calm her is to sing her a sea shanty.[/hider]
[hider=Static]
Radio interference, digital malfunctions - when technology is acting up, these encounters are available:

[u]Shriekers:[/u] (Combat) Typically moving in bands of threes, shriekers are glitchy, perpetually screaming entities that look like distorted echoes of humanity. They're fast, sometimes intangible and fight like animals. They are weak to water.

[u]EMP:[/u] (Phenomenon) A sudden burst of electromagnetic energy is released in the area. Damages range from temporarily disabling all electronics to making certain devices explode.

[u]Poltergeist:[/u] (Haunting) A particularly active spirit that flings objects (and, in some cases, people) around but is unable to materialise as their past self, nor can they speak. One must find the root of their anger. Each poltergeist is unique and their grievances can be decided upon by the DM.[/hider]
[hider=Low/No Gravity]
When things start floating, the following is about to occur:

[u]The Twisting Void:[/u] (Dimension) A kingdom of lost things and timeless memories. In this dimension Delville Heights has been shattered to pieces. Floating amongst these pieces are things of every time and age, from the distant rubble of Japanese Pagodas to the red British phone box jutting out of the wall of the Diner. To avoid becoming lost forever, you must find and hold your most precious possession in all of the chaos.

[u]Spaceman:[/u] (Combat) Absolutely NOT a human in that suit. The visor is pitch black and oozes the same black liquid, which burns anything it gets into contact with. Considering the current state of gravity, Spaceman is a formidable opponent. Fortunately for us, his goo is highly flammable.

[u]Zero-G:[/u] (Phenomenon) Sometimes, nothing really happens and everything is floating. The effect will either wear off on its own or it could be a worldshard - an incredibly fragile crystalline formation in the area that pulses like a heart. Find the worldshard or wait it out; all it needs is the pressure of a brush of a finger or a leaf in the wind to crumble it into dust.[/hider]