Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Stitches
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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. And it's rare for anyone to come running after them.






Welcome to It Sleeps in Delville Heights! The roleplay is a semi-sandbox RP with an overarching storyline. Taking place in the curious small town of Delville Heights during the 80s, your character will try to live a normal life alongside a litany of supernatural occurrences that plague the townsfolk. Naturally as time passes, the co-GM and I will start to unveil the cause of these phenomena. The roleplay takes its inspiration from various media - Welcome to Night Vale, Stranger Things, Lovecrat and Silent Hill come to mind from the top of my head. It is a mixture of urban fantasy and cosmic horror with a slice of life element running through it all.

You will be playing a resident within the town. You can start as a complete newcomer or a veteran of the paranormal; regardless of your decision, the RP only takes place within this small town and the community is largely cut off from the rest of the world. In this town the county police are the organised defence against the supernatural but the turnover rate of newcomers is constant, and the cemeteries are starting to burst at the seams. The only connection between your character and every person who set foot in the town’s threshold to stay is that a strange urge - whether you have a good reason to, or simply an absurd compulsion - compelled your character to detach themselves from the threads of responsibility that hold themselves to their old lives and seek out the town as their final destination.



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

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. 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.



Since I'm looking for people who can take initiative and are within Advanced level in terms of roleplay, 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 NOT canon, though, so we don't get a full cast of players that all know the same chick they met earlier.









The lore in Delville Heights is always available to be constructed upon. As accepted members of the roleplay, you have equal rights to decorate the stage as you see fit. Any suggestions for encounters, locations and NPCs will be greatly appreciated and added to the list.

Key Locations:

Delville Heights may be an enigma to the outside world but it is certainly acknowledged by the government. For reasons lost to the test of time, numerous white vans supply the town with provisions and amenities. The drivers do not speak to the occupants and do not take passengers, hitchikers or anything of the sort. Many believe that this is an attempt at containment of the phenomena to the town’s borders, but there is no paper trail to prove it.

Main Street:

A cluster of shops and other necessities that cling to the main road running through Delville Heights.



The Suburbs:

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.



The Outskirts:

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.



The Wilderness:

(GM CONTROLLED AREA. Try not to venture out here without one of the (co) GM's characters with you.) 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.



Encounter Compendium:


Below you will find a list of possible encounters to use during the roleplay. They are separated into four different categories:
Phenomenon, 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.
Combat, wherein a variety of creatures may need to be killed or subdued.
Haunting, wherein the spirits of the recently departed wreak havoc on the town.
Dimension, 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 cues - 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.

Encounters can be given some degree of artistic liberty according to the player, but I ask you to avoid killing NPCs and putting locations out of business for too long.

Below are the current cues and their encounters:



Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Stitches
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@lunera @Tojin @Typical @Prizrak @FiroIV OOC is up!

Applications are open. Planning to start when we get 3-5 members, and I'll get a discord going once we got 2. So far, Lunera's the only one who's been accepted, Typical's midway through an interview and the rest have yet to apply.
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Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Prizrak
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On it so long as a character living in the outskirts is still acceptable.
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Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by lunera
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So far, Lunera's the only one who's been accepted, Typical's midway through an interview and the rest have yet to apply.


That makes me feel special 😁😄
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Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Stitches
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Yeah, outskirts is fine, DW about it!!
Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Stitches
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I've been trying to fill out the encounters list but I'm having troubles thinking of cues for them. If anyone has any ideas, let me know.
Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Stitches
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Sorry about the delay, I went and had a weekend away with my friends. We're back on track as per usual and I'll get replies out for the interviews tomorrow.
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Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by DJAtomika
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Interested.
Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by kimione
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kimione Queen of Awesomeness

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Interested!
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